Oh. She saw that it was true; the fauns were endlessly chasing the nymphs, who were not trying very hard to flee. When they caught up with each other, they hugged and kissed, then separated to try other partners. “That’s a relief!”
“It’s no joking matter,” Dolph reproved her.
Jess paused, then looked at her club. She took it to Electra for a recharge. She returned to Dolph. “That’s a relief!” she repeated.
“It is indeed,” he agreed. He looked at her gulf club. “Oh—the charge was down! No wonder.”
This time Jess did better, taking only eight strokes to make a par three hole. She noted that the fauns and nymphs never interfered with the actual gulf playing, but hovered around the edges. They were incidental scenery, as it were. Now that it was clear that nothing serious was being violated, Jess was almost coming to like the game of gulf. It consisted of skill in striking and aiming the ball; most else was background.
Of course she plopped her ball into another puddle. A passing nymph saw the wretched shot and tittered. Distracted, then the nymph tripped and splashed into the puddle herself just as her pursuing faun caught up.
“Oh, my,” Jess said as the nymph got back to her feet caked in tsoda and chocolate mud. “Your lovely hair is a mess!” That was hardly all. The faun was eyeing her with misgiving, not wanting to get caked himself. “Maybe you should go for a swim in deeper water to get properly cleaned off.” The nymph nodded and ran for a suitable pond.
Which left the faun without a partner. He was plainly distressed. “My fault,” Jess said, as she fished out the ball. “I’m sorry I deprived you of your squeeze. Will I do instead?” She opened her arms to him.
The faun hugged and kissed her. He was a surprisingly manly creature, and his attention was actually quite pleasant.
“You’re a wonder,” Dolph said as the faun ran off.
“Well, my bad play did mess them up. I just wanted to make up for it.”
“I believe it did,” he agreed.
“It is curious that the Simurgh made you take the oath, then never reminded you later,” Jess said as they played on. “We conjecture that she could not intervene directly herself, because that could trigger serious paradox mischief. But if you are essential to this effort to save Xanth, why would she let you forget it?”
“She’s a very old bird,” he said thoughtfully. “If I forget some things at my age, think of how much she could forget at her age! Probably it’s such an incidental detail that it slipped beneath her notice.”
“Or maybe she knew we would remind you.”
“We mortals lack the mindset to fathom the mental processes of such great minds,” he said amiably.
Only when they had finished the hole did Jess realize that there had been a ring of sleeping nymphs around it, that they had had to chip over. She had been distracted by her dialogue with Dolph. It was such a pleasure to discuss serious matters seriously, for a change.
The girls finished their holes. Their scores were still better than Jess’s, but not by as much. They moved on to the next.
The third hole was a simulated griffin’s den. That could have been dangerous territory in real life, but here the fabulous beasts merely watched the players as they passed. They had the head and wings of eagles, and the bodies of lions, and were formidable predators. There was a huge nest on a simulated crag where a mother griffin spread her wings protectively over the baby griffins within. They were the color of shoe polish, as all griffins were. But Jess noticed something.
“The father griff has a thorn in his paw!” Indeed, the creature was trying to pick at his front paw, but his eagle bill was not suitable to extract it without worse damage.
“All part of the display,” Dolph agreed.
“Not a necessary part,” Jess said, annoyed. She walked to the big creature. “Peace,” she told him. “Will you let me try to help you?”
The griffin merely looked at her.
Jess squatted before him. “Give me your paw, please.”
He let her have his sore paw. Sure enough, there was a huge thorn embedded beside a claw. The flesh was swollen around the area. Jess brought out a pin from the emergency kit all women carried, along with some salve. “This will ease the pain,” she said, spreading salve on the reddened area. “Now hold still a moment.” She pried at the thorn with the pin, but it wouldn’t budge. Then she put her mouth down and clamped her teeth on the base of the thorn. Slowly she drew her head back, wrenching the thorn from the flesh. It was done.
“It will take a few days to heal fully,” she said. “But it should be all right now.” She got up and returned to her game. The griffin merely watched her go.
Dolph shook his head. “If you had existed in my day, I think I might have married you.”
“No, you would never have taken me seriously.”
Dolph made another par on the hole. Jess made a triple bogey, but it was nevertheless an improvement. The girls were in between again.
The fourth hole was a grove of tangle trees, which looked ordinary only from a distance. Up close their dangerous masses of tentacles showed. Only a fool ever went within grabbing range. Yet the green was surrounded by them. Jess was taken aback. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
“Here, yes,” Dolph said. “In the rest of Xanth, never.”
“They look so—so alert.”
“They are.” Dolph threw his ball at the nearest tree. A tentacle whipped out and caught it, then threw it back to him. “But under strict instructions to leave the players alone.” He smiled grimly. “We get very few intruders or vandals here. They are not protected.”
They played, and naturally Jess sent her ball well into the rough. It came to rest by the trunk of a sadly drooping tree. Its tentacles hung loosely, and some were turning brown. “There’s been a drought,” Dolph explained.
“Don’t they water the course when it’s too dry?”
“Yes. But this is the kind of isolated section only you could find in normal play. They must have missed it.”
Jess considered. This was the first and maybe the last time she would ever have sympathy for a tangle tree. But she had to do something. “I need a bucket.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to fetch water!”
“What else? It’s not right to let the tree suffer. Here it is obeying the rule and not grabbing people, and how is it being treated in return? It’s not fair.”
Dolph sighed. “I will find you a bucket.” He changed form to a hawk and flew away. In barely three moments he was back, now in the form of a roc, with two big buckets of water in his talons. He set them down carefully and changed back to manform, clothing and all.
“But I didn’t mean you had to do it. Prince Dolph,” Jess protested. “I was going to haul the buckets myself.”
“Which might have taken the rest of the day. We have a game to play.” He picked up a bucket, hauled it to the base of the tree, and dumped it out on the ground. Jess did the same with the other bucket, though it was so big and full she could barely manage it.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I guess I wasn’t thinking.”
“Let’s get some more.” He changed form again, picked up the buckets, and flew away to refill them.
Eight buckets later, they seemed to have brought enough. The tree was turning green and looking distinctly more perky.
“You watered a tangle tree?” Noe asked, amazed, as the girls discovered their activity.
“I’ll probably never forgive myself,” Jess confessed.
A look circled around, somehow managing to miss Jess.
The fifth hole was an underwater scene. There were fish swimming through, and seaweed growing, yet somehow the players were able to breathe normally and the balls flew through the (air) without trouble. At least there were no ailing creatures. There were patterns of stones and sand that formed a lo
vely underwater tapestry.
“It beautiful,” Jess said. “A whole underwater landscape. The fish are so graceful! I’m glad I got to see it.”
“You’re welcome,” Dolph said. “I have played here many times, but am finding a new appreciation of its details.”
Then a mermaid swam down, her fair hair flowing out behind her head. “And its sea-tails,” Dolph amended, though he did not seem to be looking at the tail.
Jess could only wish she had a shape like that, at least from the waist up.
They finished the hole and moved on to the next. The sixth hole was a moonscape with craters and seas. As with the seascape, they had no trouble breathing; it was another emulation, not the real thing.
Then Jess noticed something. The sea they were playing across was quite shallow, and the water did not interfere with the balls. It was the name: MARE IMBRIUM. It was Mare Imbri’s home turf! Odd that it was a sea.
But there was a smell. Jess oriented on it and it got stronger, until the stench was almost overpowering. Finally she located it: someone or something had dumped a load of green cheese on it and left it there to spoil.
“This won’t do,” Jess muttered. “Imbri would have a fit if she knew.”
“Are you spying something that needs fixing?” Dolph inquired warily.
“This is the base of one of my friends. I realize it’s just an emulation, but she would be most annoyed if it stank like this. I need to clean it up.”
“What friend?”
“Mare Imbri. She used to be a night mare, before she retired.”
“I know of her. She had a whole story to herself, and shared in another.”
“Imbri!” the girls said almost together. “Yes, we have to help her.”
“Then we need to gather up this dumped cheese and recycle it, or whatever they do on the moon.”
They got to work, and soon had several cheese barrels full of the dreadful stuff. They dumped it down the mouth of an old volcano. Then they used the water of the shallow sea to swish out the region so that it was clean again. Imbri’s turf was no longer an embarrassment.
Jess made her usual bad score, but hardly cared. Cleaning up the gulf course had become more important to her. She continued to talk with Dolph, finding him pleasant and knowledgeable. She was also coming to appreciate how socially pleasant such a game could be.
The next hole was a cityscape evidently modeled after a typical Mundane metropolis. Big ugly blocky buildings stretched as far as her eyes could see in every direction. The fairway was an eight-lane highway passing through the center. They had to try to avoid veering into the spot forests that were parks, the ponds that were cesspools, and the slums that were bunkers.
Dolph, as usual, hit straight down the center of that fairway, deviating neither left nor right. The girls hit along the edges, but still out of bad trouble. Jess hit straight into a park. There she found a lost child, a little five-year-old boy alone and crying. So maybe he was part of the background scenery; she still had to try to help him.
“Where is your mother?” she asked the boy.
“She’s stuck in a traffic jam,” he wailed. “She sent me out to find a way clear, but now I’m lost.”
“Jess’s doing it again,” Dolph muttered to the girls. “If we don’t help, she’ll never get through this hole.” That was a pretty sharp assessment.
So the others helped. Dolph changed to helicopter form, which was a weird creature with a whirling propeller over his head. He picked up the boy and the others and flew over the mass of stalled vehicles that was the traffic jam. Jess, following, didn’t even need to taste the jam to know it tasted horrible; it looked way too metallic and polluted with noxious gas. The boy, however, seemed used to it, and was enjoying the flight.
“There!” the boy cried, pointing to the very center of the jam.
It was a traffic light stuck on red. No cars could move until it changed to green, and it refused to do this.
“I can fix it,” Kadence said. “I can align it more properly.” Ula made her way through the stalled cars to the stalling light. Kadence reached up and touched it.
There was a multi-colored flicker. Then the light locked on green.
Immediately the cars started to move. In a few moments and many bleeps the jam was cleared.
Dolph flew down to the car in the center and returned the child to his mother. “Oh thank you so much!” she exclaimed, and zoomed away.
They resumed their game, with the usual spread of scores.
The eighth hole was a snowy mountain, with snow that wasn’t actually cold. It was a challenge reaching the frosty green, which was in a mountain pass, and of course Jess messed it up. Her ball landed right before a white monster with monstrous feet.
“That’s Bigfoot!” Dolph exclaimed, astonished. “No one has seen him in centuries.”
“I’m sorry,” Jess said. “I just can’t seem to hit the ball straight.”
“That’s not bad, dear girl. That’s a remarkable accomplishment.”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t look happy.”
Indeed, the monster was staggering. There seemed to be something wrong with his huge foot.
“He stubbed his toe!” Noe said. “That’s why he’s in sight. He couldn’t get away.”
“With feet his size, that must be awful uncomfortable,” Ula said.
“We have to help him,” Jess said. “But I don’t know how.”
“I do,” Dolph said. “I keep some healing elixir in case of emergency.”
But Bigfoot was clumsily fleeing the scene. He was so big that even badly limping he made good progress.
Then Aria manifested, and sang a lullaby. It was so compelling that the monster slowed, stopped, then fell asleep. Jess had to fight off sleepiness herself.
Dolph, with his Magician caliber talent, seemed unaffected. He walked to the creature and poured some liquid from a vial directly onto the sore foot. In barely three quarters of a moment, the foot healed.
Aria halted her song. Bigfoot revived and charged up the mountain slope and away. Soon he was gone, leaving only his giant tracks in the snow.
“He didn’t even say thank you,” Ula said.
“He’s a monster,” Dolph said. “They don’t know those words.”
The ninth hole was another complete change: a maze-cave. There were several routes, each walled off by waist-high board fences. It was possible to see over them, but the larger pattern was such a confusing array that dizziness soon followed. They had to hit their balls along the winding passages without getting lost.
“Each day it’s a different pattern,” Dolph said. “I have gotten apt at analyzing them, but can never be certain. It’s always a gamble.” He promptly hit his ball down the third of four passages.
The others considered. “Why don’t we each take a different passage?” Noe asked. “That way one of us will be sure to get the right one.”
Ula shrugged. “Why not.” She hit her ball down the first passage.
Noe then hit hers down the second passage.
That left the fourth one for Jess.
Well, she couldn’t go far wrong, because the ball bounced off the walls and continued down the passage. When it rolled to a stop, she hit it again, harder. She really didn’t care if she hit it out of the fairway, if there was one; she just wanted to get through the course and be done with it. The passage curved around until it crossed another passage. That made her think of the challenge at the Good Magician’s castle, though there was probably no parallel.
Indeed, it was different, because as she got closer she saw it was actually four passages crossing, or eight paths coming together. Still, it could be the same in that maybe the four passages crossed each other here, so it was possible to take a different route if a player changed her mind. Maybe the challenge was not to decide which cour
se to choose, but which one to stay on. Did that make any sense?
Well, she would stay her course. She hit the ball down through the intersection so that it would sail on straight ahead. It disappeared.
She paused, staring. She had been watching her green ball, expecting it to roll rapidly past the converging passages with nary a hesitation. Instead it had vanished. Had she not been watching it, she might have assumed it had rolled on and was now out of sight in the far passage. But it had not gotten there.
Something was odd.
She walked to the intersection, carefully tapping the floor with her club. When she got there, the tapping stopped, because there was no floor to tap. The club passed though as if there were nothing there. Had she not been proceeding slowly, she might have stepped into it and dropped into who knew what.
This needed a more thorough investigation. Jess got down on her hands and knees and felt around the floor. There was a panel missing, covered over by illusion. This was dangerous!
“Bleep!” she muttered. Then she retreated a few paces, set aside her club so as to be free of its magic charge, and advanced on the intersection.
Sure enough, the illusion did not take her seriously. The missing panel was now plain by its absence. The edges of the hole were ragged; it had worn through because of frequent use, and finally dropped down.
A repairman must have spied the gap and rather than take the trouble to fashion a new tile, simply covered it over with spot illusion. Sloppy work that could have caused a bad injury. It must have happened not long before they reached this hole.
Then she froze. The missing tile—could it have been deleted? When Ragna Roc deleted something, it looked the same, at least for a while, but was no longer real. Could he be lurking?
Then she caught up with herself. No, this was the present, not the future. Ragna Roc remained confined. She looked more carefully, and saw the tile resting on the ground a few inches below the hole. No deletion.
This needed to be fixed. She glanced about, saw nothing useful, so got brutally innovative. She banged on a section of the wall, knocking out a four-panel section, and laid that carefully over the hole. That would do until there was time for a proper repair.
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