“Don’t stand on the pages!” Humfrey cried, grabbing the copy-cat and plunking it down on the page. “Copy that copy, cat.”
The cat sat on the crewel lye recipe. It purred. In a moment it opened its mouth and extruded its tongue, which was a sheet of paper.
Humfrey tore off the paper—an act that startled Ivy—and handed it to her. “There’s your copy. Now go away.”
Naturally, Ivy got ready to argue, but realized that she wanted to go away, now that she had what she wanted, so she kept silent. Sometimes the directives of men had to be obeyed, when they chanced to be correct, annoying as that was. She scrambled down off the table and left the little Good Magician to his reading. He had become entirely distracted by the text before him, which happened to be taxidermy, while the copy-cat continued to extrude copies of the crewel lye recipe. A copy fell down before him, obscuring his text, at which he stared at the cat speculatively. “Very interesting techniques here,” Humfrey murmured. “I wonder—” but at that point the cat hastily jumped clear of the text, not having the same interest in studying, or in being a subject for, taxidermy that Humfrey had.
The Gorgon greeted Ivy as she departed. The Gorgon was an elegant, tall, veiled woman with snake hair, the Good Magician’s wife and the mother of Hugo, Ivy’s friend. “Won’t you stay for a cookie, dear?” she asked.
Ivy started to decline, but the Gorgon produced the biggest, loveliest, most aromatic punwheel cookie imaginable, and Ivy was overwhelmed. She realized that the Gorgon was probably lonely for living female company, so it would be only proper to visit for a while. She decided to stay for one cookie.
In due time, Ivy returned to Castle Roogna with the recipe, retracing her route through the gourd. No one had missed her except the ghosts—which, of course, was part of her problem. All anyone paid attention to these days was the confounded baby. She’d like to drop him into the peephole of a gourd, without the mare shoe!
But now she could clean the tapestry and get Jordan’s complete story. All she had to do was use the recipe to make the cleaner. Fortunately, the ghosts knew where all the supplies were. Ivy got a pot and some lye and some fat and stuff and cooked them together according to instructions. The lye was strong stuff that tried to burn her little hands, but the recipe told her how to be careful. Jordan’s friend Renee Ghost helped Ivy to read the more difficult parts of the instructions, so that she made no mistakes. She had to say several spells along the way, to tune the lye into the crewel, but finally she had a bottle of the elixir.
She got a sponge, soaked it with her lye mix, and wiped it across the surface of the tapestry. The result was startling. There was a swath of much brighter and clearer images. The stuff was working!
Ivy went carefully over the entire tapestry until it fairly shone. The moving pictures looked so real she almost believed she could walk into them. “Oh, yes!” Jordan exclaimed. “I can see every detail! The memories are flooding back!”
“Now tell me your story,” Ivy ordered him.
She settled back before the tapestry, watching, while Jordan concentrated on the beginning of his story. With Ivy’s help, because the ghost could not make the tapestry respond by himself, he got the correct sequence of pictures to form. Then, as the pictures showed the action, Jordan narrated the story as he remembered it. He skipped over the dull parts, such as sleeping, and lingered on the good parts, such as fighting monsters and kissing fair maidens and encountering strange magic. It was a genuine tale of Swords and Sorceries and Goods and Evils and Treacheries, and Ivy was entranced. She loved tales with guts. She watched and heard the caustic yarn as if she were there herself. She thrilled to the Thud and Blunder of it and suffered fervently with the revelation of the Unkind Untruth.
Chapter 2. Pooka
I believe it really started when I came of age. It was the fashion in those days for a young man to prove himself by indulging in some fantastic exploit; then he could marry and settle down, having earned his fame.
I had a wonderful girlfriend, Elsie, who could turn water into fine wine just by touching it with her little finger, and she was pretty and sensible, and she wanted to get married and start a family right away. I just wasn’t ready for that yet; it sounded so dull. I wanted adventure!
This was getting very difficult. Elsie really wanted me to stay, and she didn’t care about heroic tradition, and she was certainly attractive. We were having some awkward scenes. I promised her that, after I had my adventure and became a hero, I would return to her, but this was really a lie, because we both knew I would never get tired of adventure. She promised me that, after we started a family, she would let me go out and travel in Xanth and maybe slay a dragon or two, but we both knew that was also a lie, for a family never lets go of a man. I wanted to sow my wild oats first; that way I would be sure of them.
Elsie really wasn’t very keen on wild oats; I’m not sure why. So finally we made a deal: Elsie would have one night to show me how nice tame oats could be and demonstrate the advantages of family living, to persuade me to stay. If she couldn’t, then I would travel. It seemed fair enough.
Little did I know what kind of night she planned! I was really pretty naive in those days and knew a lot less about a lot of things than I thought I did. I supposed she was going to feed me good food and treat me well and talk to me convincingly about the advantages of the settled life. Instead she—well, I’m not sure I should say much about this to—in fact, I think we’d better just skim the pictures on past that night and—No? But I could get in trouble with your folks if I said too much about—well, all right, I’ll describe just a little of it.
Elsie met me wearing a gown that—well, I had known she was pretty, but hadn’t quite realized how pretty she could be when she really tried. I found myself staring at—at the way she breathed. And the way she sat. Then she took me inside her, uh, bedroom, and I followed her and found myself staring at the way she walked. Then she—this is really pretty dull, so maybe we should skip this scene—No? Um, well, she showed me how to send a message to the stork, and I agreed that this was all the adventure I ever needed, and we finally fell asleep.
But in the morning I remembered about the other type of adventure, exploring strange places and fighting strange creatures, and I knew I had to try that first. Elsie was still asleep, half smiling, and I felt really terrible as I dressed and buckled on my sword. But I didn’t even kiss her; I just sneaked out of the house like a grounded child and started walking south, toward the center of Xanth, where the real action was supposed to be.
Guilt followed me like a lowering cloud, because my promise during the evening had turned out to be another cruel lie, and I almost turned back again. But the lure of the adventurous wilds drew me on and it was stronger than my guilt.
Somehow I didn’t feel very bold or heroic at the moment. I felt more like a coward, for I had not had the courage to wake Elsie and tell her honestly, “I’m going, gal, sorry about that.” She would have—well, women can be very difficult about that sort of thing. And once I was fairly on my way, I lacked the courage to return and apologize. Some heroes aren’t very courageous or heroic inside.
But now I was committed and I had to look forward instead of back. Already I had learned a lesson of life: that the sweetest, saddest thing is what-might-have-been. I suspected I was doing wrong and would pay some hideous price for it, but still I kept doing it, ashamed to confess that wrong.
The wilds of Xanth were wilder in those days than they are today, I think, and many strange creatures and magics existed that no longer exist today. The plants had not yet learned the proper respect for man, and the dragons came even to our village of Fen to gobble people. That was why we had a warrior tradition; we needed bold young men to fend off stray monsters. We were near the northeast border of Xanth, beside what was later to become known as the Ogre Fen, but at that time the ogres were far away, still migrating clumsily northward. My boots tended to bog down in the interminable reaches of the fen, and I soon reali
zed that it was a long way to the heart of Xanth, where the fabulous Castle Roogna stood. It would take me forever or so to get there by foot, and I found I really didn’t like walking. I needed a ride.
That was a problem. There weren’t any centaurs in our isolated region of Xanth, and dragons did not make good steeds—they tended to conspire to carry their passengers inside their bodies instead of outside—and I was afraid to fly with a flying creature; never could be quite sure where one of those might drop you off. I knew there were sea-horses in the sea, but I was trekking inland. There was a man in Fen Village who made hobby-horses, but I hadn’t thought to check with him before starting off. In any event, his horses didn’t really carry people, they just seemed to. What was I to do?
I knew what: I had to toughen my legs so I could walk all day without getting so fatigued that I lost the pleasure in the adventure. So far, adventure wasn’t really much fun. There was a lot to be said for staying home and starting a family. I almost turned about—but again found I could not. To turn back then, I would have to admit my error—that I had been wrong to leave Elsie. That was more difficult to do than fighting a dragon. If I had not been wrong, I think I could have turned back; but since I was wrong, I could not do it.
I think now, after four hundred years as a ghost to reflect on philosophical matters—ghosts are better with intangibles than they are with tangibles, because they are intangible themselves—that women are more practical than are men, and the reason that women have most of the sex appeal is to enable them to lure men away from the foolishness they are otherwise prone to seek. Certainly my adventure, when considered as a whole, was a consummate exercise in folly, and would have been even if it hadn’t cost me my life. I could have had night after night with Elsie; instead I courted—and won—disaster. If vanity be the name of woman, folly is the name of man!
So I walked on—and fate came to me, undeserving as I was. At first it didn’t seem good, but that is often the way of things. The bad seems good, like a pleasant path leading to the tentacles and maw of a tangle tree, and the good seems bad, like the pooka.
It was dusk, and I had scrounged up some sugar sand and tapped a beer-barrel tree for beer, the true barbarian beverage. My head was spinning pleasantly, detaching my mind from my tired feet, when I heard the sinister rattling of a chain. Now, I was young and foolish and a coward about personal relations, but very little of the physical world scared me. Yet this rattle did—and that brought me alert. If that sound sent a cold shiver along my spine, it had to be because it was meant to—and that meant magic. Therefore I was intrigued, for strange magic was part of what I sought. I had the sword; I needed the sorcery.
I quickly got up, drew my sword, and stalked the rattle. I heard it again, farther away, so I hurried to catch up. But still it was distant, leading me through the wildest and most desolate landscape. The trees were silhouetted by fuzzy moonlight and looked like gnarled giants frozen in place. But one was not frozen; when I brushed against it, its tentacles grabbed for me, and I realized that I had blundered into the clutches of a tangler, one of the most fearsome vegetables of Xanth. So I slashed about me with my blade, severing the tentacles, and the tree quickly let me go. My sword was not magic, precisely, but it was good and sharp, and I wielded it well; I really did not fear a tangle tree, either. To a barbarian, cold steel is the answer to most problems and, you know, it’s a pretty effective answer. I suppose I might have felt otherwise if my magic talent had been different; I actually could afford quite a bit of foolishness.
After that, I realized that the rattling chain was only leading me into mischief. I was playing its game. But I remained intrigued by it; the sound had become a challenge, a minor adventure in itself. So I decided to get smart and make it play my game.
I returned to my camping spot. Sure enough, the rattle followed me, coming closer. But on the way I foraged in the darkness for some rustle-weeds and centipede grass, and I set them at my place under a chocolate-smelling cocoa-nut shell. Naturally they rustled and scrambled faintly, so that it sounded as if a person were lying there somewhat restlessly, as he would if disturbed by a rattling chain. Then I sneaked silently away—I was good at that sort of thing—and circled widely around behind the chain rattle.
Sure enough, I fooled it. Barbarians are very cunning about such things. I watched as it approached my campsite, wondering why I no longer spooked. Spooks don’t like to be ignored! It came over a ridge and I saw it in silhouette against the moonlight—and it was a night mare. No, not a mare, I realized after a moment, for several reasons. The mares did not tease sleepers with distant sounds; they came right in to deliver their bad dreams, then trotted on to the next. They did not have time to fool around, for there were many dreams to deliver. Besides which, I wasn’t asleep. And this was no mare; it was a colt. Maybe a stallion. A shaggy, wild thing hung with chains; that was how it rattled. It was, in fact, a pooka—a ghost horse.
A horse. My barbarian brain began to percolate. I could use that horse! But how could I catch it? I was sure that it was at least halfway solid, because its chains rattled, so they were solid, and it had to be solid enough to carry them. But it could simply outrun me—which was one reason I wanted it. Not only would travel be easier with a horse, but would be faster, and I would be able to carry more. Besides, the challenge interested me; as far as I knew, no one had ever captured a pooka before. So this was exactly the sort of adventure I sought. Think of the amazement if I rode back into Fen Village on a ghost horse!
But I was very tired now; contrary to carefully fostered myth, barbarians do get tired on occasion. It would be better to get a night’s rest and commence the pursuit in the morning. On the other hand, the creature could be long gone by then, so I didn’t dare wait.
I sighed. It would have to be now. Fortunately, I was a robust young man, so my fatigue was an inconvenience, not a crippling thing. I organized for the chase.
First I used my sword to cut some supple long vines to serve as rope for a lariat, since I wanted to capture, not kill, this creature; that was a more difficult matter. I wasn’t sure it was possible to kill a ghost horse, but I didn’t want to take the chance. Naturally I had practiced with ropes in the course of my preparations for herodom and had a pretty good touch; it is one of the basic uncivilized skills. Then I started off.
Of course the pooka realized almost immediately that I was pursuing him; ghost horses are quite alert about such things. With a rattle of chains, he took off. I could not come close to matching his pace, but I could see his hoofprints in the moonlight, and the continual clink of the chains enabled me to follow him more readily by ear.
I plodded on, giving short shrift to whatever got in my way. I didn’t like traveling by night, for the only class of menaces that is worse than that of the day-wilderness is that of the night-wilderness. But maybe the night-horrors realized that I was tired and irritable and not to be trifled with, for none attacked me. Maybe I was just lucky. Some fools have phenomenal luck, and of course they need it.
So I kept the clink of the chains just within audible range, for the pooka had not expected me to persist in the pursuit and kept pausing to forage. That confirmed that it was solid; true ghosts didn’t have to eat. At that point, in my mind, the pooka changed from “it” to “he.” It is a ghost; he is a living creature. I don’t claim that this was deep thinking on my part; it was just the way I saw things.
I realized that the pooka had teased me simply because I was there; it had been a chance encounter. Now I was overreacting, and the ghost horse was uncertain. He didn’t know that I intended to capture him. He would stand for a while in silence, thinking I would lose him without the rattle; but I always walked directly toward the last chain sound I had heard, using my unerring primitive sense of direction. Inevitably he would move again. He couldn’t walk or run without those chains sounding off; that was his curse. If this had not been the case, I never would have been able to track him, either by night or by day. At least, not so
readily.
Morning dawned, and the pooka had led me generally southwest. At that point, as the sun got ready to heave itself up into the sky, he found a hidden thicket and froze. I couldn’t hear him and I couldn’t see him, and the brush was so thick I knew I would make so much noise searching it that the pooka might escape, his chain clinks drowned out. So I waited, and it became a siege. I knew he was near, but had to make him move. And of course he was determined not to move, having tired of this game.
I made good use of the wait. I snoozed. I really needed that sleep!
But I woke instantly at the clink of the chain. The pooka was trying to sneak out! He thought I was one of the civilized sleepers who wallow so deep in dreams they can’t break free for six hours at a time. Not me! I knew when I planned to go adventuring that I could never afford to tune out the wilderness, so I had learned to wake the moment anything threatened and to sleep again the moment the threat was gone. Wild creatures sleep that way, and I was pretty wild myself. So that single little clink of a link alerted me, and I unkinked my legs and set off in renewed pursuit.
Now the pooka bolted. I followed, feeling better, though I really hadn’t had enough sleep. I had held the trail through the night and gotten just as much rest as the pooka had. I grabbed edible berries from bushes as I walked, feeding myself; there again I had an advantage, for the pooka had to pause to graze and could not do that while running. He was probably getting really hungry now. I realized, now that I thought about it, that anything solid enough to carry heavy chains had to take in energy-food.
I passed a region where the bushes had twice as many berries, for each was double. I was about to pop the first twin-berries into my mouth when I hesitated. I had, of course, familiarized myself with many natural things, so that I could safely forage in the wilderness, but these were strange. Something nagged; Something about twin-berries, paired berries, doubleberries—
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