Yon Ill Wind

by Anthony, Piers

  Then Microsoft marketed a new “ergonomic” keyboard, which looks as if it was designed by Salvador Dali, he of the melted watches: take a regular keyboard, melt it halfway over a flame, stretch it so the keyboard separates in the center, push it together again so that the center humps without rejoining, and put a bar under it that lifts it in the front, rather than the back, so that the keys tilt slightly away from you, and you have it. The Microsoft Natural Keyboard. Only a crazy person would try to use that. Right: I bought it, and I love it. Because now my hands can address it halfway naturally, easing the pressure on my wrists, so that maybe my carpal tunnel syndrome will alleviate. I tried it for ten days, getting used to it, then tried my old keyboard again—and in one minute gave up; I can no longer stand the type of keyboard I used for ten years. I fancy myself as an ornery independent cuss, and I dislike Big Business on principle, but Microsoft got my number on this one. I changed to the new keyboard, with my Dvorak layout pasted on, in Chapter Nine, during Chlorine’s seduction scene, right after the window fan and before the ogre eater. So, again, if you notice a change …

  So my life shifted in the course of this novel, and not just because I turned (ugh!) sixty. Thanks so much to all of you readers who wrote to remind me of that milestone, in case I should overlook it.

  Long-term readers will remember that Jenny Elf is based on a real girl, who got struck at age twelve by a drunk driver and was in a coma for almost three months before my first letter woke her. Then it turned out that she was almost completely paralyzed. That was several years ago, and as I write this she is eighteen, still mostly paralyzed, but doing better. She can use a powered wheelchair, and can walk a few steps using a walker, and can speak some words. Her computer helps a lot. She hopes to take college courses. At this time the collection of my first year’s letters to her, titled Letters to Jenny, is being published in paperback. Jenny Elf was a major character in Isle of View, and has been around as an incidental Xanth character since, as in this novel.

  Readers keep sending me puns, characters, and suggestions. This year I have written two Xanth novels, and used about 150 reader notions in the last, and close to 100 in this one, and there are still half a slew waiting in line, with more crowding in. The wait for admission to a Xanth novel is getting long. Apart from a number earmarked for the next novel, Faun & Games, I’m caught up through roughly JeJune 1994. There will be another year’s worth by the time I write F&G, which will take place mostly in an unusual setting, even for Xanth: Ptero Moon. This is no ordinary site.

  Here are the credits for reader contributions to this novel: Mundane hurricane and Baldwin family into Xanth, Willow Elf—Michael Weatherford. Hurricane Fracto—Tim Cumming. Demon X(A/N)th assumes mortal form for quest—Brian Laughman. Aqua duck, antacid—J. W. Manuel. Miss Fortune, “No thyme like the present,” block parents, scents of humor flowers, ogre eater, junk male, spoils of war—Princess Mandy Owston. Bow-vine, punish-mint—Gershon Allweiss. Toad stools—Isaac Hansen-Joseph. Wrist watch, ear drum, cow bell, ring finger—Daniel McBride. Speed demon, kinder/meaner garden—Aimee Caldwell. Fly-by-night, fly-fishing frogs—Brian Visel. Magic marker—Joel Hayhurst. Com-bat, re-in-carnations—Matt “Powerman” Powers. Dock spider, centaur/mermaid, naga/harpy crossbreeds—Kevan Gentle. Poul-tree—Nick Kiefel. Mean well—Stephanie Erb. Mean time—Bill Fields. Blobstacle course—Garrett Elliott. Meatier shower—Eric Sanford. Imp names—Leighton Paquette. Gem puns—Jew Leer. Car pool puns—John R. Short. Bpuns—R. J. Frey. Fire ants, pain cone—Jake Watters, Chris Warren. Thim bull—Brock Moore. New, clear cherry bombs; thyme bomb—Daniel Serrano. Crimea River, whinery—Brandy Straus. Cat-ion—Damion D. Betts. Art-illery—Adam Ross. Glass jaw—Paul-Gabriel Wiener.

  Centaur/night mare crossbreed—Emily Waddy. Tree-men-dous—Melanie Wahl. Snarl—Louis Kammerer. Upsy-daisy, talent of making pictures—Ray Koenig. Ursa (Snarl’s girl)—Ursa Davis. Junk shun, Déjà and Vu, Law of Averages overturned on appeal—Richard Vallance. Trenita—Trenita Taylor. Window fan—Thomas-Dwight, Sawyer, Dorr. Twenty questions (and more) answered—David H Zaback. Melody, Rhythm, Harmony—Eric and Melody Moyer. Poison Ivy; Sherry, Terry, and Merry—Rachel Gutin. Demon Ted—Michelle Aakhus. Fracto’s side—Sarah Gordon. Che’s release from Companionship—Erin Kay Sharp. Napsack—Sara Rosehill. Modem—James Morrow. Keaira the weather girl—Eden Miller. Lips tic—Drew Beauler. Crystal Centaur—Crystal Centaur. Centaur magic conjecture—Brandee Irwin. Adam—Adam McDaniel. Fat character in Xanth—Jenna Grambort. Mariana—Bryan J. Moll. Twin girls who shape and animate rocks—Jenifer Trapp. Twins who change color of hair—Amanda Galli. Leai and Adiana—Michelle J. Siedlecki. Timber wolf—Brent Rowe. Gourdless phone, crossbow, money tree—Scott Thompson. The Pawpaw Wizard—Suzanne T. Persampieri. The origin of reverse wood—Joshua Breitzer. Talent of sticking to walls—Kevin Crisalli. The right spot—W. D. Bliss. The origin of mosquitoes—Jessica Grider. Snowshoes—Murray Sampson. Ash hole—Brian Bouchard. The four fair forces of nature—Amanda Dickason. Table salt—Andy Hartwell.

  And one additional credit, of a different nature: as I edited this novel, I tired of the regular background radio music, so listened to an audiocassette tape sent to me by reader Judy Furgal: Loreena McKennitt’s Elemental. I do like folk songs, and Irish music, and there are a number of such singers I can enjoy. But the one that caught my fancy this time, Loreena arranged but did not sing; it was sung by Cedric Smith: “Carrighfergus.” It’s the story of an alcoholic who longs to return there and die. I’m not alcoholic, but I do at times long for the old isles.

  And so farewell, for another fantastic year. Dismember 3, 1994.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Xanth Novels

  1

  FORREST

  “Hey, Faun, how about some fun?”

  Forrest Faun rubbed what remained of his night’s sleep out of his eyes and looked down to the base of his tree. There stood a fetching nymph with all the usual nymphly features: pretty face, flowing hair, perfect figure, and no clothing. But there was something amiss.

  “What do you mean?” he asked as he sat up in a fork, still getting his bearings.

  “What do you think I mean, Faun? Come down and chase me, the way fauns always do to nymphs.”

  Then he had it. “You’re no nymph.”

  “Oh, pooh!” she swore, pouting. She dissolved into smoke and reformed as a luscious clothed demoness. “I am D. Mentia, out seeking routine entertainment or mischief while my better half waxes disgustingly motherly. What gave me away?”

  “If I tell you, will you go somewhere else?” It was usually possible to get rid of demons if one made a suitable deal with them.

  “Yes, if you want me to.” Her bright yellow dress fuzzed, showing the vague outline of her body beneath, with almost a suggestion of a forbidden panty line.

  So there was a catch. “Why wouldn’t I want you to?”

  “Because I have dreadful information that will puzzle and alarm you and perhaps change your whole outlook.”

  That seemed like adequate reason. Forrest, now fully awake, jumped down to the ground, landing neatly on his hoofs. “What gave you away was your manner. You were not acting like a nymph. You were way too forward and intelligent. Much of a nymph’s appeal is in her seeming reticence and lack of intellect. Now what’s this dreadful information?”

  “Follow me.” Mentia whirled in place, so that her body twisted into a tight spiral before untwisting facing the opposite direction, and walked away. Her skirt shrank so as to show her legs as far up as was feasible without running out of limb. But of course Forrest didn’t notice, because nothing a demoness showed was very real.

  She led him across the glade to a tree on the far side. “See.”

  Forrest stared with dismay at the clog tree. It was wilting, and its clogs were falling to the ground. That could mean only one thing: it had lost its spirit.

  As it happened, the clog tree’s spirit was Forrest’s friend: Branch Faun. They had known each other for
almost two centuries, because their two trees were in sight of each other. Almost every day Forrest would drop out of his sandalwood tree, and join Branch in the glade between them to dance a jig or two. With luck, their jigging would attract the fleeting attention of a nymph or three, who would join in, jiggling. With further luck, jig and jiggle would lead to a pleasant chase and celebration.

  But this morning Branch’s tree was in a sad state. It wouldn’t fade so soon if its faun were merely absent; fauns and nymphs shared an awareness with their trees that alerted them instantly if harm came to either. Let a human forester even come near such a tree with an axe, and its faun would have a fit. Let a faun split a hoof, and his tree would shudder. Such reactions were independent of distance; a faun could run far away from his tree, and still be closely attuned to it. They felt each other’s pain.

  “Are you trying to ignore me?” Mentia asked warningly. Demonesses could handle almost anything except that.

  “No. You’re right. I am puzzled and alarmed by this dreadful scene. Do you know anything about it?”

  “No. I just happened to note it in passing, so I looked for the closest creature who might be tormented by it.”

  He glanced at her. “You’re one crazy organism.”

  “Thank you,” she said, flushing red with candy stripes. The color extended to her clothing and hair, and traces of it radiated into the air around her.

  The clog tree’s distress meant that Branch was in serious trouble, if not dead. What could have happened? Branch had been fine yesterday. In fact he had encountered a nymph from a lady slipper tree whose slippers gave her special fleetness, just as the sandals from Forrest’s sandalwood tree gave him excellent footing, and the clogs from Branch’s tree protected his hoofs. They had had quite a merry chase. Because that was what fauns and nymphs did; they chased each other until they came together, and then they celebrated in a manner that children were not supposed to see. Because it did tend to get dull just sitting in one’s tree all the time.

  In fact, Forrest now remembered, the nymph, clad only in her slippers, had led Branch a chase right out of sight. Meanwhile her friend from an oak tree, named Kara Oke, had done some very nice singing to background music of wind through trees, so Forrest had had his own distraction. Naturally he had chased her, and naturally she had fled, but not too swiftly, because she was still singing her oak song. So he had caught her, and they had celebrated in the usual fashion, while she continued singing. That had been interesting, because she had sung of every detail of the experience they were sharing, making it a work of musical art. Then she had returned to her tree, satisfied that her song worked. There weren’t any other nymphs around at the moment, so Forrest had returned to his own tree and settled down for the night. And now his friend was gone.

  “So what are you going to do about it?” Mentia inquired.

  Do? She was right; he probably should be doing something. But what? “What do you think?”

  “I think you will follow their footprints, so you can find out what happened to them.”

  “Now that’s really sensible,” he agreed.

  The demoness turned smoky black. “Darn!”

  He set off in search of them. He had no trouble following their tracks: her slipper prints, which were hourglass shaped, in the manner of the nymph herself, and his clog prints, which were forceful and furred. They looped around other trees, as she made cute dodges and diversions. It was the chase that counted; fauns and nymphs loved to run almost as much as they loved to dance. The better the chase, the better the celebration at the end. Forrest remembered a nymph once who had been in a bad mood, because her tree was suffering a fungus infestation, and had simply stood there. This was of course a complete turn-off, and no faun had touched her. Any nymph who wanted nothing to do with any particular faun had only to refuse to move, and he would leave her alone. Sometimes a nymph teased a faun, pretending disinterest, then leaping into pursuit the moment he turned his back. If she caught him, it was her advantage, and he had to do whatever she wanted. Of course that was exactly the same as what he wanted, but other fauns would taunt him unmercifully for getting caught.

  Mentia, floating along beside him, was getting bored. “Are you ready for me to depart?”

  “Yes,” he agreed absently.

  “Good.” She remained where she was. He realized that he should have urged her to stay; then she would have been sure that he was up to nothing interesting.

  The tracks veered toward the Void. That was the nearby region of no return. Of course every faun and nymph knew better than to enter it, because there was no way out of it. Anything that crossed the boundary was doomed. Only special creatures, like the night mares, could escape it, because they weren’t real in the way ordinary folk were. They had very little substance.

  “Don’t float too near the Void,” Forrest warned the demoness.

  She changed course to approach the boundary, then paused. “Say, you are a cunning one!” she said with admiration. “You knew I’d. automatically do the opposite. It almost worked, too. But I’m only a little crazy. You have to be a lot crazy to venture into the Void.”

  “Maybe next time,” he muttered.

  The nymph was clearly teasing Branch, by passing flirtingly close to the fringe of the Void. Her prints almost touched the boundary, then moved away, then came close again. The menace of that dread region added to the thrill of the chase. Forrest had done it too, and knew exactly the steps to take to be sure of never straying across the line.

  Then his sandals balked. He stopped, perplexed; what was the matter? His sandals were magic, and protected his hoofs from harm, and if he were about to step somewhere harmful, they stopped him. Yet he saw nothing ahead to be concerned about.

  “So what’s with you?” Mentia asked. “Tired of walking?”

  “I didn’t stop,” he explained. “My sandals did.”

  “Say, I’m getting to like you. You’re almost as weird as I am.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Thank you.” This time her flush of pleasure was purple with green polka dots, and it extended down her legs and out across the ground around her. “So why did your sandals stop?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe it was a false alarm.”

  Still, his sandals had never yet been wrong. So he dropped to his furry knees and examined the ground before him. It was ordinary. There were a few smiling gladiolas, the happiest of flowers, and beyond them some horse radishes were flicking off flies with their tails. He thought of asking the nearest horse if it knew of anything harmful here, but he didn’t understand plant language very well, and in any event all it would say would be “neigh.” So finally he got up and made a detour around the place.

  “Oh, well,” the demoness said, disappointed.

  But now he couldn’t find the trail. Both sets of tracks were gone. So he turned back—and that was when he saw it. A splinter of reverse wood on the ground. He was sure of its identity, because the gladiola closest to it was drooping sadly. And right across it was a lady slipper print. The nymph had inadvertently stepped on the splinter. It hadn’t hurt her directly, because it was lying flat. But it must have affected the fleet magic of her slipper, so that she had lost her sure footing.

  “You see something,” D. Mentia remarked astutely.

  Now he saw the clog-print next to it, and realized the awful truth. The nymph had lost her balance, because of the reversal of her slipper magic, and teetered on the edge of the boundary of the Void. Branch had collided with her, caught by surprise by her sudden stop. And the two had sprawled into the Void.

  “Yes. They are gone.”

  It was a freak accident, the kind that would happen hardly once in a century. The reverse wood splinter might have been blown there recently by an errant gust of wind. It would have been harmless, except when it came into contact with something magical. Then that abrupt reversal—

  Branch and the nymph were lost. They would never get out of the Void. And their
trees would suffer, for without its spirit a magical tree slowly lost its magic and became, O dreadful destiny, virtually mundane. It was a fate, many believed, worse than extinction.

  “I’m sorry,” the demoness said. “That means that you won’t be entertaining me any more.”

  Forrest had no idea where the nymph’s tree was, but knew it was suffering similarly. He hoped there would be another nymph free to join it and save it. Meanwhile, he did know where Branch’s tree was. But what could he do? He could not care for two trees; the relationship didn’t work that way. He was bound to his sandalwood tree. He knew of no fauns looking for trees. There were more trees than amenable fauns and nymphs, so that some trees that might have flourished magically became ordinary. It was sad, because the right trees had much to offer their companion spirits, but true.

  Then he thought of something. It was a vanishingly tiny chance, but marginally better than nothing. “You’re a spirit,” he said to the demoness. “How would you like to adopt a tree?”

  “You mean, become a tree dryad, so that I would live almost forever and always protect it?”

  “Yes. It’s a worthy occupation. It doesn’t have to be a nymph. Any caring spirit will do, if the commitment is there. And the clogs would protect your feet.”

  “Commitment. Protected feet.” She tried to look serious, but smoke started puffing out her ears, and finally she exploded into a hilarious fireball. “Ho ho ho!”

  Then again, maybe the notion had been worse than nothing. Demons had no souls, because they were the degraded remnants of souls themselves. They cared for nothing and nobody. “Sorry I mentioned it.”

  “Oh, I’m not! That was my laugh for the day.” The smoke coalesced into the extraordinarily feminine female woman distaff luscious shape of girlish persuasion with the slightly translucent dress. “A tree nymph! You are a barrel of laughs.” She formed into a brown barrel with brightly colored pancake-shaped laughs overflowing its rim.