I left Hugo and the carpet a safe distance away, because it wouldn't do to have him reduced in age, or it accidentally youthened into a doily. I brought out a disk, freed a catch, and it sprang out into a ten-foot pole suitable for touching unpleasant things. Why anyone should want to touch ten feet I'm not sure, but I did need a good long shaft.
I tramped to the edge of the spring. It wasn't actually a fountain in the sense of water sailing up; the water merely welled out continuously, always young and fresh. The vegetation at the verge of the pool was of course very small, mere seedlings, becoming older only with distance. Any animal who came to drink here departed considerably younger than it came. Most were smart enough to sip; those who drank deeply had to start their lives over.
I fixed a bottle to the end of the pole, and extended it, dipping carefully from the spring. When it was full, I twitched it so that its flip-top lid snapped into place. I shook it dry, then brought it in and wrapped it in cloth. I retreated from the spring. Someone watching me might have thought my exaggerated care foolish, but youth elixir is dangerous. I returned to the carpet and handed the wrapped bottle to Hugo, with an admonition, so that I could condense my pole to packable length. It resisted in the manner of the inanimate, but finally I got it back into cylinder form and then into its original disk, and put it in my pocket.
There was a sudden roar, and the ground shook. I looked up—and there was the Gap Dragon steaming toward us. It must have continued to run after visiting Castle Zombie. My spells were on the carpet with Hugo. I would have to get my portable dragon net and fling it over the monster, subduing it. “Hugo!” I cried. "Toss me my bag of spells!"
But Hugo fluffed it. He grabbed at the fringe of the carpet instead, and it mistook the gesture as a command and took off. Hugo, unbraced, rolled off. The carpet sailed into the air, carrying my bag of spells with it. I was suddenly without my magic, except for the compressed ten-foot pole, and the dragon was still bearing down on us. That pole was too clumsy to serve as a weapon, and the dragon could probably steam us from beyond its length anyway.
Then I saw the wrapped bottle of elixir. It had fallen beside Hugo. "Hugo!" I called. "I'll distract the dragon. You unwrap that bottle, lift the cap, and sprinkle some elixir on its tail." For the youth elixir did not have to be imbibed; it would work on any body it touched, in the manner of the healing elixir. We could make the dragon young enough to be harmless. No younger than necessary, of course, because it was needed in the Gap Chasm. Perhaps even trace youthening would confuse it, so it would leave us alone.
Hugo, never clever with his hands, struggled to get the bottle unwrapped and the lid off, while I dodged about as briskly as I could, avoiding the steam-snorts of the dragon. There were larger dragons than this one, and there were flying dragons, while this one had only vestigial wings, and there were fire breathers and smokers who were frightening to see in action. But this was nevertheless one of the most ornery and fearsome creatures of Xanth, because it normally hunted in the Gap Chasm and its prey could not escape it. That steam could cook prey where it stood. Worse, this dragon could not be spooked or frightened; it pursued its prey relentlessly until catching it. I had to neutralize it in some fashion or, it would steam and eat us both.
I glanced back at the fountain. Could I lead the dragon to that? No, it was between me and the pool. It had to be the elixir from the bottle. "Hurry, Hugo!" I yelled. I was in excellent health for my age, but my age was old.
The boy finally fumbled the bottle out and the lid open. But in his haste he did not pour a few drops on the dragon's tail; he held the bottle and made a throwing motion that sent an arc of elixir flying toward the dragon and me.
"No!" I cried, too late. The elixir scored all too well. It wet down the dragon solidly, and some of it also splattered against my skin.
Disaster! The dragon youthened rapidly, becoming smaller, with brighter green scales. But so did I. We were both overdosed, and were losing a century or more of age. As it happened, we were both over a century old; otherwise we might have dwindled all the way into pre-delivery. But it was bad enough. The dragon became a baby dragon, and I became a baby man.
I saw us both changing rapidly, and I saw Hugo gaping at the sight. I tried to call out something to him, but my youthening prevented me from making much sense, even to myself. Perhaps I was even speaking backwards.
Hugo, dismayed and confused, began to cry. The baby dragon shook itself, then scooted away, evidently as alarmed as I. But I could do nothing, for I was now too young to talk.
Then abruptly I was back at the castle. The Gorgon had evidently been watching us in the magic mirror, seen the disaster, and used the emergency conjure spell to bring me home. Unfortunately it, like the mirror, was tuned to me only, and she did not know how to retune them. That meant that Hugo remained out in the wilderness, alone.
The following years are a bit vague for me. I aged at the normal rate, except when Zora Zombie, whose talent was accelerated aging, came to baby-sit me. My wife managed somehow, and worked with Queen Irene to keep things in order. But it was three-year-old Ivy who did the most. It seems that she, lost in that region of the jungle, encountered the Gap Dragon and used her talent to tame it. Then she met Hugo, and her talent made him a virtual night in shiny armor, as she put it. The three had a great adventure, and in the end even managed to help Glory Goblin, the youngest, prettiest, and sweetest of Gorbage Goblin's daughters, unite with her lover Hardy Harpy, and also to defuse a wiggle swarming.
Then, when Ivy was five, she came to ask me a Question. She had, she felt, been Grounded, for no reason at all. Actually she had gotten into such mischief that the entire chapter of that volume of the Muse of History's record had been censored out. The missing chapter turned up years later in a Visual Guide to Xanth, where no one would notice it. These things happen, in Xanth. All children got into mischief, but Ivy could Enhance mischief to an excitingly new level. Now she was compounding it by sneaking out to visit me.
I had managed to age rapidly, and was now about seven years old, physically, and the same actual size as she was. Ivy had had considerable effect on me, because she Enhanced Zora's aging talent, enabling me to age much faster than otherwise. However, I was now old enough to remember my principles, so I made her go through the challenges.
Ivy used stepping stones to step across the moat. She used a dark lantern to get through a region of intolerable brightness. She nullified a flying kitty hawk by intensifying its hawk and kitty aspects until the two got into a fight with each other, and the fur and feathers really flew. Then she encountered a headstone who sounded the alarm so that she would get the brush-off, and that huge flying brush really terrified her. But she buried a dead moth by the headstone, so that it become silent like a moth, and could not alert the brush. So she won through, as I had known she would. I couldn't turn her in, of course; that would have been in violation of the Juvenile Conspiracy, to which I technically belonged until I got old enough to rejoin the Adult Conspiracy.
"Okay, okay, what's your Question?" I inquired graciously.
"I need something to clean up the Magic Tapestry so Jordan the Ghost can remember.”
Another person might have had difficulty grasping this, but I was the Magician of Information. I knew that she referred to a ghost of Castle Roogna who had died in the year 677, and been dead for 397 years, approximately, and who was now trying to tell her the story of his life to alleviate her boredom while she was Grounded. They were using the Tapestry to show pictures and refresh his memory, but the Tapestry was somewhat dirty after 838 years, approximately, and its crewel stitchery needed cleaning by caustic lye. So I gave her the recipe for the crewel lye, and she took it back to use the caustic on the yarn. The Tapestry brightened immediately, and Jordan the Ghost was at last able to tell his sad tale of an unkind untruth. It was replete with Swords and Sorceries and Goods and Evils and Treacheries and Thud and Blunder, and Ivy of course loved it, even though some of the juicier parts got censored
out. After she heard it, Ivy managed to get Jordan restored to life, and then his girlfriend Threnody, who was half demon (I knew the type). Everyone was happy, except maybe for Stanley Steamer, her pet little Gap Dragon, who had gotten accidentally banished by a misinvoked spell.
So naturally that led to more mischief. Ivy was going to send her shape-changing little brother, Dolph, out to find the dragon. But Dolph was only three years old when she decided this. To stave this off, Grundy Golem did something unusually caring, and volunteered to go on this search himself. And of course the first thing he did was come to me for an Answer.
I told him to ride the Monster under the Bed to the Ivory Tower. I had of course already researched it. Little did he know, then, that the Ivory Tower contained the maiden Rapunzel, Ivy's pun pal, who was the distant descendent of Jordan the Ghost back in his Barbarian years and Bluebell Elf, who had used an accommodation spell to have a rather special tryst with him. As a result, Rapunzel could change sizes, being of elf stature or human stature or anything between or around. But her magic was in her hair, which was marvelously long. Rapunzel was to become the love of Grundy's life, as there were not many suitable female golems, and anyway he was no longer a true golem, having been rendered real. I did not bother to tell him all this, of course; he hadn't inquired. Suffice to say that he did rescue Stanley Steamer from a fate considerably better than death, and brought the dragon back to Ivy.
Incidentally, Grundy said something that changed my life again. He suggested that I use reverse-wood in conjunction with youth elixir to age myself instantly to any level I wished. Now why hadn't I thought of that? As a result, I was able to restore myself to the physical age of a hundred, or perhaps a bit less, to the pleasure of the Gorgon. We lived happily ever after—for three years.
Then it was 1080, and the Lethe elixir I had taken in 1000 abruptly wore off, and I remembered Rose of Roogna. Naturally I departed immediately. My wife and son insisted on coming with me, so the castle was deserted.
But this chapter is about Ivy and the ways her-life related to mine, so I shall complete that discussion before getting into my more private continuation.
My great grandson, Eskil Ogre, encountered that most mischievous of demons, the Demoness Metria. It seemed that she was seeking a convenient and comfortable place to relax away from the hummers which infested her home region, and so she intended to take over Esk's private retreat. Perhaps she had an affinity for his family, having been a surrogate mother for his grandfather two generations before. Esk decided to come and ask me for a solution to this problem.
Meanwhile Chex Centaur, the winged offspring of Chem and Xap Hippogryph, was unable to fly, so was coming to ask me how to do it. She was only seven or eight years old at the time, but had matured rapidly because of her animal parent, and was now a young adult. It helped that she was a centaur, for even the youngest of centaurs is uncommonly intelligent, educated, and poised. So she met Esk on the path leading to my castle.
Finally, Volney Vole was coming from the region of the Kiss-Mee River, to ask how the once curvaceous and friendly river could be restored to its natural state, because the Angry Corps of Demoneers had pulled it straight. Now it was known as the Kill-Mee River, and was hostile to normal life. Volney encountered the other two on the path.
So it was that the three of them traveled together, getting to know each other and overcoming the hazards of the route. I had seen them coming in my mirror, of course, and was readying a series of challenges calculated to dissuade them from entry to the castle. Because the truth was that each of their Questions represented a problem for me. I did not want to tangle with the Demoness Metria again, knowing that she would find a way to make me regret it, such as telling the Gorgon too much about my prior wives, and that Esk was my great grandson. Esk was also scheduled to meet Bria Brassie, the love of his life, in the course of his search for Volney's answer, and I did not want to deny him that. I did not want to tell Chex how to fly—it was simply a matter of flicking herself with her magic tail, which made what it touched get light—because centaur pride was such that she would never forgive herself for not figuring it out on her own. She was destined to play a part in something truly significant for Xanth, and to meet Cheiron the winged Centaur, the love of her life in the course of this quest, so it was best for me not to interfere at all. And the solution to Volney's problem was elementary: the hummers who were bothering the demons would go away if the demons restored the curves of the Kiss-Mee River. All he had to do was tell the demons that. But my tomes indicated that Volney could find lasting happiness if he solved his problem the hard way—a happiness he would lack if I made it easy for him. This was because in the course of searching for the answer, he would encounter Wilda Wiggle, who was both to educate Xanth on the true nature of wiggles and to become the love of Volney's life (wiggles being another branch of the great family of voles in Xanth). So I had excellent reason to avoid giving the Answers. But how was I to accomplish this, if they made it into the castle and insisted on asking their Questions and agreed to pay their year's services, to their mutual loss? The sound of tearing hair reverberated through the castle, and I hadn't even started doing that yet.
But something suspiciously like fate solved my problem, because about a day before the dread trio arrived, the Lethe wore off and I remembered Rose. So I was gone and the castle was vacant. In our rush to depart we forgot to shut down various ongoing activities, which was a nuisance. One of them was an amnesia ambrosia, ironically, that I was brewing in the cellar. That stuff could be extremely awkward to handle.
The trio arrived and navigated the reduced hazards of the defunct castle. They were perplexed, but of course unable to ask their Questions or get their Answers. So they went on to Castle Roogna to inform the King of the mystery of my disappearance. There they met Princess Ivy, now just about eleven years old, and the growing Stanley Steamer, her pet Gap Dragon. Ivy insisted on helping them in their quest, for they had decided to work with Volney to save the Kiss-Mee River. Thus Ivy got involved in this adventure. Because her talent of Enhancement can be devious, it is not possible to say to what extent she changed things. But by the time their adventure was done, they had explored new aspects of the gourd, and brought out Marrow Bones, one of the walking skeletons, who was to remain as one of the solid (or at least bony) citizens of Xanth. Remember, he had gotten-lost when Smash Ogre bashed up the dream realm.
But they did not figure out what had happened to me. So three years later Prince Dolph, then nine years old, decided to go on his own Quest to find the Good Magician. It was Ivy's fault, really, because at age fourteen she was an insufferable nuisance to her little brother, and he felt he had to Prove himself. His mother, Irene, insisted that he be accompanied by an adult—mothers are funny about things like that—so he took Marrow Bones. First they checked my deserted castle. There they found a message I had set up for another purpose and put in storage until needed: SKELETON KEY TO HEAVEN CENT. It was for Dolph, actually, but only when he came of age and had to go rescue a sleeping princess. Unfortunately he found it early, and that complicated things.
In fact, by the time he was through his adventure, not only had Prince Dolph failed to find me, he had gotten himself betrothed to two nice girls: the wrong one and the right one. They came to live at Castle Roogna for several years, while he tried to make up his mind which one to marry, because his mother was being unreasonable again and said he couldn't marry both. They became fast friends of Ivy. Thus her insufferability to her little brother had resulted in her gaining two excellent companions, which was surely a miscarriage of justice. And Dolph's misadventure had resulted in Queen Irene's Dictum: One Wife at a Time. This was to complicate things for me in yet another way, because it meant that I could not bring Rose of Roogna back to life while married to the Gorgon. But that complication must wait for the end of this narration.
Three years later, at age seventeen, Ivy got into it with both feet. She decided to look for me. She invoked the He
aven Cent, which was a magical device that sent the user where most needed, assuming that that was where I would be. That was specious logic, of course, but one does not expect common sense in a princess.
The Cent sent her to Mundania, where lived the one who really did need her most: Grey Murphy. He was the son of Evil Magician Murphy and neo-Sorceress Vadne, who had escaped the Brain Coral's pool in the Time of No Magic and fled to Mundania. It took the Brain Coral so long to complete its inventory after that shake-up that it never knew they were gone and was still claiming to have both of them in storage decades later. Grey and Ivy made their way back to Xanth and looked up my temporary address in the gourd. That was a real nuisance. You see, I was down here in the anteroom of Hell, waiting to see the Demon X(A/N)th, and I did not want to be disturbed. My body was resting peacefully in a coffin at the address on Silly Goose Lane where no sensible person would ever think to look, and protected by a spell of illusion. But Grey Murphy's talent was the nullification of magic. His parents had signaled the stork before leaving Xanth, so he had magic despite being delivered in Mundania. In fact he was a Magician, and as a result was able to penetrate the illusion hiding my coffin. Thus Ivy had finally succeeded in disturbing my peace by the devious route of causing her brother to find the Heaven Cent and then using it to bring Grey Murphy to Xanth.
So they braced me at my physical body, and I had to risk a moment away from Hell's antechamber to talk to them. Grey lifted the lid. "Hey, Magician Humfrey!" he said boldly. What a brash young man!
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