"You mean human men really do have, uh, dealings with mermaids?" Tandy asked.
"Human men have dealings with any maid they can catch," the Siren said with a wry smile. "I understand my mother wasn't hard to catch; my father was a very handsome man. But he had to leave when my sister the Gorgon was born."
After a pause, Fireoak resumed her story. "So if I can just talk to the King and get him to save my tree, everything will be all right."
"What about the other trees?" John asked.
Fireoak looked blank. "Other trees?"
"The other ones the villagers are cutting down. Maybe they don't have dryads to speak for them, but they don't deserve destruction."
"I never thought of that," Fireoak said. "I suppose I should put in a word at Castle Roogna for them, too.
It would be no bad thing to lobby for the trees."
They found good locations in the trees and settled down for the night. Smash spread himself out on the glade ground; no one would bother him. His head was near the liquidly flowing trunk of a water oak Fireoak had chosen; he overheard the hamadryad's muted sobbing. Evidently her separation from her beloved home tree was harder on her than she showed by day, and the threat to that tree was no distant concern. Smash hoped he could find a way to help her. If he had to, he could go and stand guard over her tree himself. But he didn't know how long that would take. He didn't want to delay his own mission too long, lest the time for the Good Magician's Answer should run out. There was also the matter of the gourd-coffin's lien on his soul; anything he had to do, he had better get done within three months.
Already he felt not quite up to snuff, as if part of his soul had been leached away, taking some of his strength with it.
Next day the five of them marched north. The land leveled out, but hazards remained. Tandy blundered into a chokecherry bush, and Smash had to rip the entire plant out of the ground before its vines stopped choking her. Farther along they encountered a power plant, whose branches swelled out into strange angular configurations and hummed with power; woe betide the creature who blundered into that!
Around midday they discovered a lovely vegetable tree, on whose branches grew cabbages, beans, carrots, tomatoes, and turnips, all in fine states of ripeness. Here were all the ingredients for an excellent salad! But as Smash approached it, Tandy grew nervous. "I smell a rat," she said, sniffing the air. "There are big rats down in the caves where I live; I know their odor well. They always mean trouble."
Smash sniffed. Sure enough, there was the faint aroma of rats. What were they doing here?
"I smell it, too," John said. "I hate rats. But where are they?"
The Siren was walking around the tree. "Somewhere in or near the vegetable tree," she announced. "I fear this plant is not entirely what it appears."
Fireoak approached it. "Let me check. I'm good with trees." She was showing no sign of the agony of her separation from her tree, but Smash knew it remained. Her night in a tree must have restored her somewhat, though of course it wasn't her tree.
The hamadryad stood close to the vegetable tree. Slowly she touched a leaf. "This is a normal leaf," she said. Then she touched a potato-and one of its eyes blinked. "Get away from here!" Fireoak screamed.
"It's a rat!"
Then the fruits and vegetables exploded into action. Each one sprouted legs, tail, and snout and dropped to the ground. A major swarm of rats had camouflaged itself by masquerading as vegetables, luring the unwary into contact-but the smell had given them away. Once a rat, always a rat, by the smell of it.
The Siren, Tandy, and John scurried back in time to avoid the first surge of the rat-race. But Fireoak stood too close. The beasties swarmed around her, biting at her legs, causing her to trip and fall.
Smash leaped across, swooping down with one hand to lift the hamadryad clear of the ground. Several rats came up with her, chewing savagely at her barklike skin. She screamed and tried to brush them off, but they clung tenaciously and bit at her hands.
Smash shook her, but hesitated to do it vigorously enough to fling away the rats, lest it hurt her. As it was, bits of bark and leaf were flying off. Smash had to pinch the rats off one by one, and their claws and teeth left scratches on the 'dryad's body. By the time the last was gone, she was in an awful state, oozing sap from several scrapes. The swarm of rats surrounded Smash and tried to bite his feet and climb his hairy legs.
Smash stomped ferociously, shaking the glade and crushing several rats with each stomp. But there were hundreds of the little monsters, coming at him from every direction, moving rapidly. They threatened to get on him no matter how fast he stomped. He didn't dare set the dryad down, lest the same fate befall her. His great strength hardly availed against these relatively puny enemies.
"Get away from him!" Tandy screamed from a safe distance. "Leave him alone, you rats!" She seemed really angry. It was almost as if she were trying to defend him from the enemy; that, of course, was a ludicrous reversal of their situation, yet it touched him oddly.
Smash stomped away from the tree, but the rats stayed with him. In order to run he would have to do two things: move the dryad back and forth as his arms pumped and flee a known danger. The one seemed physically hazardous to another person, while the other was emotionally distasteful. So he moved slowly, stamping, while the rats began climbing his legs.
Then Tandy's arm shot out as if hurling a rock. Her face was red, her teeth bared, her body rigid, as if she were in a state of absolute fury-but there was no rock in her hand. She was throwing nothing.
Something exploded at Smash's feet. He was knocked off them, barely catching his balance. All around him the rats turned belly-up, stunned.
He stared at the carnage, standing still because his legs were numb. He set down the hamadryad, who stepped daintily over the bodies. "What happened?"
Tandy sounded abashed. "I threw a tantrum."
Smash left the twitching rats and went to join her. His feet felt as if they were nothing but bones, with the flesh melted off, though this was not the case. "That's a spell?"
"That's bad temper, my talent," she said, eyes downcast. "When I get mad, I throw a tantrum. Sometimes it does a lot of damage. I'm sorry; I should have controlled my emotion."
"Sorry?" Smash said, bewildered, looking back at the rum of the rat-swarm. "That's a wonderful talent!"
"Oh, sure," she replied with irony.
"My mother had a similar talent. Of course, she was a curse-fiend; they all throw curses."
"Maybe I have curse-fiend ancestry," Tandy said sourly.
"My father Crombie came from a long line of soldiers, and they do get around quite a bit."
Now the others came up. "You did that, Tandy?" Fireoak asked. "You saved me a lot of misery! If Smash had put me down amidst those awful rats, or if they had climbed up him and gotten to me, as they were trying to-" She winced, feeling her wounds. She was obviously in considerable discomfort.
"That's an extremely useful talent for the jungles of Xanth," the Siren said.
"You really think so?" Tandy asked, brightening. "I always understood it wasn't nice to be destructive."
"It isn't?" Smash asked, surprised.
Then they all laughed. "Sometimes perhaps it is," the Siren concluded.
They found some genuine vegetables for lunch, then resumed the march. But soon they heard a
ferocious snuffling and snorting ahead, low to the ground. "Oh, that might be a dragon with a cold,"
John said worriedly. "I can't say I really like dragons; they're too hot."
"I will go see," Smash said. He discovered he was rather enjoying this journey. Violence was a natural part of his nature-but now he had people to protect, so there was a certain added justification to it. It was more meaningful to bash a dragon to save a collection of pretty little lasses than it was to do it merely for its own sake. The Eye Queue caused him to ponder the meaning of the things he did, and so it helped to have at least a little meaning present. At such time as he g
ot free of the curse, he could forget about these inconvenient considerations.
He rounded a brush-bush and faced the snorting monster, hamfists at the ready-and paused, dismayed.
It was no dragon. It was a small oink, with a squared-off snout and a curled-up tail. But it snorted like a huge fire-breathing monster.
Smash sighed. He picked up the oink by the tail and tossed it into the brush. "All clear," he called.
The others appeared. "It's gone?" Tandy asked. "But we didn't hear any battle."
"It was only a short snort," the ogre said, disgusted. He had so looked forward to a good fight!
"Another person might have represented it as the most tremendous of dragons," the Siren said.
"Why?"
"To make it seem he had done a most valiant deed."
"Why do that?" Smash asked, perplexed.
She smiled. "Obviously you don't suffer from that syndrome."
"I suffer from the Eye Queue curse."
"Cheer up. Smash," Tandy said. "We're bound to encounter a real dragon sometime."
"Yes," the ogre agreed, cheering as directed. After all, the thing to do with disappointments was to rise above them. The Eye Queue told him that.
"Speaking of dragons," John said, "there is a story that circulates among fairies about dragons and their parts, and I've always wondered whether it was true."
"I've met some dragons," Smash said. "What's the story?"
"That if a dragon's ear is taken off, you can listen to it and hear wondrous things."
Smash scratched his head. Several fleas jumped off, startled. Since his skull no longer heated much when he tried to think, the fleas had no natural control. "I never tried that."
"It must be sort of hard to get a dragon's ear," Tandy remarked. "I doubt they part with them willingly."
Fireoak considered. "There are stories the mockingbirds tell, to mock the ignorant. They would nest in my tree sometimes and talk of marvelous things, and I never knew how much to believe. One did once mention such a quality of a dragon's ear. It said the ear would twitch when anything of interest to the holder was spoken anywhere, so one would know to listen. But often the news was not pleasant, for dragons have ears for bad news. And as Tandy says, dragons' ears are very hard for normal people to come by."
"Next dragon I slay, I will save an ear," Smash said, intrigued.
They continued north till dusk, with only minor adventures, avoiding tangle trees, clinging vines, and strangler figs, scaring off tiger lilies and dogwood, and ignoring the trickly illusions spawned by assorted other plants. Swarms of biting bugs converged, but Smash blew them away in his usual fashion with selected roars. By nightfall the party was close to something significant, but Smash couldn't remember what.
They located a forest of black, blue, and white ash trees whose shedding ashes covered the forest floor.
Any recent footprints showed; and, because each color of tree spread its ashes at a different hour, it was possible to know how recently any creature had passed. White prints were the most recent, blue prints were older and somehow more intricate, with maplike traceries on them, and black prints dated from the night. Some ashes had been hauled, but no dragons or other dangerous creatures had been here in the past few hours.
Amidst this forest was a handsome cottonwood that provided cotton for beds for them all. "I always thought camping out would be uncomfortable," Tandy remarked. "But this is getting to be fun. Now if only I knew where I was going!"
"You don't know?" the Siren asked, surprised.
"Good Magician Humfrey answered my Question by telling me to travel with Smash," Tandy said. "So I'm traveling. It's a pretty good trip, and I'm learning a lot and meeting nice new people, but that's not my Answer. Smash is looking for the Ancestral Ogres, but I doubt that's what I'm looking for."
"I understand the Good Magician is getting old," the Siren said.
"He's pretty old," Tandy agreed. "But he knows an awful lot, and your sister the Gorgon is making him young again."
"She would," the Siren said. "I am jealous of her power over men. In my heyday I used to summon men to my isle, but she always took them away, and, of course, they never looked at other women after she was through with them."
Because they had turned to stone. Smash knew. The fact was, the Gorgon had been as lonely as the Siren, despite her devastating power. The Gorgon had been smitten by the first man who could nullify her talent. Magician Humfrey, so she had gone to him with a Question: would i he marry her? He had made her serve a year as housemaid and guardian in his castle before giving her his Answer: he would.
Evidently that was the sort of man it required to capture the heart of the Gorgon. Smash understood that their wedding, officiated by Prince Dor when he was temporary King, had been the most remarkable occasion of the year, attended by all the best monsters. Smash's father Crunch had been there, and Tandy's mother Jewel. By all accounts, the marriage was a reasonably happy one, considering the special nature of its parties.
"I wonder what it is like to be with a man?" Fireoak said, in a half-wistful question. Her injuries of the day had fatigued her greatly, perhaps making her depressed. Evidently their conversation of the preceding night had remained on her mind.
"My friends always told me men were difficult to get along with," John said. "A girl can't live with them, and she can't live without them."
"Well, I've tried living without," the Siren said. "I'm ready to try with. Good and ready! At least it shouldn't be dull. First pool I find with an available merman, watch out!"
"Poor merman!" the fairy said.
"Oh, I'm sure he'll deserve whatever I give him. I don't think he'll have cause to complain, any more than Magician Humfrey has with my sister. We draw on similar lore."
"All girls do. But it seems terribly original to each innocent man." There was general laughing agreement.
"You speak as if no man is here," Tandy said, sounding faintly aggrieved.
"There's a man here, listening to our secrets?" Fireoak cried, alarmed.
"Smash."
There was another general titter. "Don't be silly," John said. "He's an ogre."
"Can't an ogre also be a man?"
The tittering subsided. "Yes, of course, dear," the Siren said reassuringly. "And a good one, too. We take Smash too much for granted. None of us could travel freely here without his formidable protection. We ought to thank him, instead of imposing on him."
Smash lay still. He had not intended to feign sleep, but thought it best not to join in this conversation. It was interesting enough without his participation. He had not known about this conspiracy of the females of Xanth, but now he could remember how he had seen it in action when Princess Irene snared Prince Dor, and even when his mother pacified his father. It did seem that the distaff knew things that the males did not and used them cleverly to achieve their desires.
"What's a lady ogre like?" Tandy asked.
"One passed my tree once," Fireoak said. "She was huge and hairy and had a face like a bowl of overcooked mush someone had sat on. I never saw anything so ugly in all my life."
"Well, she was an ogress," the Siren said. "They have different standards of beauty. You can bet they know what bull-ogres like, though! I suppose an ogre wants a wife who can knock down her own trees for firewood-no offense, Fireoak-and kill her own griffins for stew so he doesn't have to interrupt his dragon hunting for trifles."
They laughed again, and their chatter meandered across other femalish subjects, recipes, prettifying spells, jungle gossip, and such, until they all drifted off to sleep. But the images they had conjured enchanted Smash's imagination. An ogress who could knock down her own trees and slay her own griffins-what an ideal mate! And a face like squashed mush-what sheerest beauty! How wonderful it would be to encounter such a creature!
But the only ogress he had met was his mother-who wasn't really an ogress, but a curse-fiend acting the part. She acted very well, but when she forgot her makeup, her fa
ce no longer looked like mush. Smash had always pretended not to notice how distressingly fair her face and form became in those unguarded moments, so as not to embarrass her. The truth was, had his mother the actress chosen to pass among females like these Smash now traveled with, she could have done so without causing alarm. And, of course, as soon as she prepared herself, she was the complete ogress again, as brutish and mean as any ogre could ask for. Certainly his father Crunch loved her and would move mountains for her, despite her secret shame of an un-ogrish origin. One of those mountains had been moved to rest near their home so that she could climb it and look out across Xanth when the mood took her.
At last Smash slept. He still wasn't used to doing so much thinking, and it tired him despite the amplification the Eye Queue provided. He had never had to work things out so rationally before, or to see the interrelationships among diverse things. Well, one day he would win free of the curse and be a true brute of an ogre again. He slept.
Chapter 6. Dire Strait
Next morning they came up against the barrier Smash had been unable to remember. It was a huge crevice in the earth, a valley so deep and steep that they shrank back from it. It extended east and west; there seemed to be no end to it, no way around.
"How can we go north?" Tandy asked plaintively. "This awful cleft is impossible!"
"Now I remember it," Smash said. "It crosses all of Xanth. Down near Castle Roogna there are magic bridges."
"Castle Roogna?" Fireoak asked. She looked wan, as if she had not been eating well, though she had been provided with all she wanted. Smash suspected her absence from her beloved tree was like an ordinary person's need for water. She would have to return to it soon, or die. She was suffering from deprivation of soul, and would soon become as Tandy had been within the gourd, if not helped. Her rat wounds only aggravated the condition, hastening the process.
"That's right," Tandy said brightly. "If this crack passes near Castle Roogna, you can follow it there!
Your problem is solved."
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