“I don't have any,” Hiatus said.
Gary found a puddle of water. He scooped up a double handful. This was one thing his natural body couldn't do.
“Please change this to healing elixir,” he said to Surprise.
The child only glanced at it. But he felt a change in his hands; all their little abrasions had suddenly faded. He splashed some of the elixir onto the child's scraped knees, and they instantly healed.
“After this, just make yourself stronger,” Iris suggested without any great store of sympathy.
“Gee, yes,” Surprise agreed. She jumped up, her muscles suddenly stronger. “I see a funny bug,” she said, looking ahead.
The others looked, but all they saw was a small tree some distance away. “Where?” Gary asked.
“On the top branch of that tree.”
They walked to the tree. There on the top branch was a tiny bug.
“I hear a funny bird!”
“Where?” Gary asked again.
“Way up in the sky,” she said, pointing.
They looked. After a moment a shape appeared, winging toward them. It was a bird, and as it passed overhead it fluted pleasantly, making an unusual melody.
“She strengthened her sight and hearing along with her muscles,” Iris said, as if this were ordinary. Gary knew why; she was afraid that if she made anything of it, the child would do something even wilder.
They came to the edge of the madness. They could tell by the line of weirdness ahead. The trees had regular noses, mouths, or ears on them, but at the fringe of madness the projection looked like some kind of machine.
There were even little wheels and pistons on it, moving.
“What is that?” Gary inquired.
“It was supposed to be an ear,” Hiatus said. “Now it's an engine.”
“So it's an engine ear,” Iris said impatiently. “Now are we plunging into this madness, or are we hesitating some more?”
Mentia appeared. “Are you actually going to do it?” she asked. “This should really be interesting.”
“You lead the way, demoness,” Iris said grimly. “We'll follow.”
“No, you lead, and I'll follow,” Mentia said. “I'm a little crazy, not a lot crazy.”
“We'll go together,” Gary said, suffering a fit of decision. He grabbed Mentia's hand with one of his, and Iris’ hand with the other. After an additional flicker of hesitation, Mentia took Hiatus' hand, and Iris took Surprise's hand. The five of them stepped forward, linked.
Gary's breath caught. There was air, but it seemed different, the wrong color or sound. It was as if he were looking down from the bottom of a pool, or up from the top of a mountain. The landscape had a bulgy, curving shape, as if he were looking through the eye of a fish. When he took a step forward, it was as if he were zooming a long way, while hardly moving at all.
He turned to look at Mentia on his left. She looked composed. Since a person would have to be slightly crazy to be at ease in this madness, that made sense. He looked at Iris to his right. She was clothed in illusion, looking middle-aged, perhaps in the confusion forgetting that her physical form was now much younger.
They let go of each other's hands and looked at each other. “This is different than it was before,” Hiatus said.
“Not as bad.”
“Maybe it's the luck of the draw,” Iris said uncertainly.
“Draw!” Surprise said, crossing her eyes. She picked up a thin stick and drew a figure in the dirt. It was of course a stick figure, with a balloon head.
“I wouldn't—” Hiatus began. But of course he was too late.
The stick figure jumped off the dirt, leaving the ground bare behind it.
Surprise drew a simple house, in the manner of her age: just a square with a door and windows and a peaked roof.
She put her free hand to it and lifted it up. It was like a wire figure, two dimensional but firm. She drew an animal, with a boxlike body, four stick legs, a curl of a tail, and a round head with two ears sticking up. It bounded out of the picture and away, having height and length but no depth.
“Has her talent changed?” Hiatus asked.
“It's hard to tell,” Gary said. “We didn't see that particular talent outside of the madness.”
“We had better move on,” Iris said. “Hiatus, grow some more noses so we can follow the direction.”
Hiatus concentrated. Things appeared on the trees.
“Those aren't noses!” Hiatus said.
“I had noticed,” Iris said. “Nose hairs, perhaps?”
Hiatus went to inspect the nearest one. “This looks more like a root,” he said. “I'll try again.”
This time round flat green things appeared on the trunks.
“I think those are leaves,” Gary said.
“Leave!” Surprise cried.
“Oh, no you don't!” Iris said, snatching the little girl's hand. But Gary saw that she would have been too late, if Surprise had used magic to depart; her eyes had already crossed. Instead of leaving, the girl had stayed. That suggested that her magic was fouled up, just as Hiatus' magic was.
“But I can't grow leaves on things,” Hiatus said, dismayed.
“It seems you can now, in the madness,” Mentia said.
“It seems like a reasonable talent.”
“But I've always grown ears, noses, mouths, and eyes,”
Hiatus said. “What will I do with leaves?”
“Leaves, leaves, leaves, who cares!” Iris snapped.
“Fleas fleas fleas!” Surprise cried. Suddenly there were cracks all through the ground where they stood.
“Those aren't fleas,” Hiatus pointed out. “They're flaws.”
“So her talent is changed,” Gary said. “She tried for fleas and got flaws. The madness has changed our talents.”
“What about yours?”
“I don't have one, in this form. In my natural form I'd probably be polluting water instead of purifying it.”
“What about Mentia?”
“My talents are inherent,” the demoness said. “I can still do the usual demonly things.”
“But you don't seem crazy.”
“Oh!” she said, appalled. “You're right. I'm perfectly sane. This is awful.”
“Shall we get on with our journey?” Iris demanded impatiently. Then she forged ahead on her own.
“But maybe she's a little crazy, now,” Hiatus muttered.
They proceeded through a region that wasn't as bad as they had feared, perhaps because this was actually the fringe of the Region of Madness, where the effects were not really intense. There was silence for a time as they passed through a field of deaf-o-dils, and then they had to dodge to avoid a group of hopping plants which turned out to be rabbit's foot ferns, and then they had to duck out of sight lest they be caught by a mad dentist who was determined to dent anything he could find. “The brassies must really hate him,” Hiatus remarked as the sound of denting moved on beyond. “They're made of brass, and dents really spoil their appearance.”
“They should hate this, too,” Gary said. For now they encountered several metal sheep who were grazing on ironwood leaves and twigs, and on ironweed. They were covered with steel wool.
At last they came to the dryad's tree. They could tell it was the right one because the roots and leaves that sprouted from treetrunks in lieu of ears and noses led right to it. There was a somewhat haggard nymph resting against the tree's base.
“Desiree!” Hiatus cried. “I have found her at last! See how beautiful she is!”
Gary, Iris, Mentia, and Surprise exchanged a combination of glances. Beautiful? The nymph was hardly that, in her present state.
“I think we have a problem,” Iris murmured, and the others nodded agreement.
Chapter 5
RUINS
But Hiatus was already plunging ahead, and they had to follow. “Desiree!” he cried. “I have found you at last!”
The nymph saw him and tried to hide, but both
she and the tree were so gaunt that there was no way. So she leaned against the twisted trunk and faced him with weak resignation. “Please pass on by, stranger,” she said. “I have no dealings with adults.”
“Don't you know me? I'm Hiatus.”
Desiree looked blank. “I'm sorry, but I don't know you or your companions. Please go away, because I am very shy, I look awful, I don't have the strength to turn invisible, and I'm afraid you'll hurt my tree.”
Iris stepped in. “Let me introduce myself. I'm the Sorceress Iris, with the power of illusion.” She made the scene change, so that the forest seemed to become a vast grimy dump. “Oh, that's not what I meant,” she said. The scene changed to a bleak plain. “Nor that! What's the matter with me? I wanted a nice meadow.”
“Your talent is being fouled up by the madness, just as the other talents are,” Mentia said. “Try making a horrible scene.”
“I'll make hell itself,” Iris said. Heaven formed around them: a lovely place with sculptured cloudbanks and soft music in the background.
“What the Sorceress was about to say is that we are a party on a special quest,” Mentia told the dryad. “Perhaps she can enable you to look as you once did.”
“Don't bother with me,” Desiree said. “Beautify my tree.”
Iris focused on the tree. It worsened, becoming a rotting column. The nymph was a hideous crone. “Oops.” Then the tree turned beautiful, with a rich brown trunk and enormously spreading crown of leaves. The nymph was radiantly lovely. Gary realized that Desiree was a reflection of her tree, prospering or suffering as it did, even when only in illusion. Now it was clear how anyone could have fallen instantly in love with her, for she was as pretty as the human form could be. He was a gargoyle, who hardly appreciated beauty, but maybe the madness was interfering with that, because the dryad definitely looked appealing.
“And what Hiatus is trying to say,” Mentia continued with perfect sanity, “is that he was a child of eleven or twelve when he met you, twenty-seven years ago.”
“Oh, then,” Desiree said. “But now he is grown. That's different.”
“You told me that I would never see a girl as lovely as you,” Hiatus reminded her. “And I never have. So you are the one I want to marry.”
“Marry!” Desiree exclaimed, appalled. “Dryads don't marry. Especially not mortals.”
“But you—”
“I never promised to marry anyone,” she said with all the firmness of her present appearance. “I merely said you would never see a mortal girl quite as fair.”
Hiatus seemed somewhat discommoded. “But I thought—”
“She's right,” Iris said. “Nowhere in your story of her did she say that she had any intention of marrying you, or even of seeing you again. She was just teasing you.”
“But—”
“Butt!” Surprise exclaimed, crossing her eyes. A bunch of balloonlike faces appeared and floated away. Her magic had been diverted upward by the madness. It occurred to Gary that this was probably just as well.
“It's what dryads do,” Mentia said. “Just as demonesses do. Teasing foolish men is amusing, because they are so readily deluded by appearance. They don't care about substance at all.”
“I do care about substance,” Hiatus protested. “I want to hug her and kiss her and feel her substance against me.”
“What about her personality?” Iris asked.
“Her what?”
“Point made,” Mentia said. “Hiatus, I'm afraid your dream is as empty as your own personality. The dryad isn't interested in you.”
“But there's no one else,” he said plaintively. “She spoiled me for any mortal woman.”
“As she intended to,” Mentia agreed soberly.
“There must be some way,” he said.
Mentia shrugged. “Is there some way?” she asked the dryad.
“No way,” Desiree said.
“A way!” Surprise cried, making her expression. The dryad's tree glowed.
“What way?” Hiatus asked the child.
“Save her tree.”
Mentia turned back to Desiree. “Would you marry Hiatus if he saved your tree?”
“I would do anything, no matter how awful, to save my tree,” the dryad said. “Because without my tree, I will cease to exist.”
“There you have it,” Iris said with a third of a smile.
“Save. her tree. Hiatus, and she will do the awful thing of marrying you.”
“Then I'll save her tree,” he said enthusiastically. “How do I do that?”
“Make the madness go away,” Desiree said. “Since the madness came, my tree has wilted and lost its leaves. Its roots have turned square. I'm afraid it will die if the madness doesn't go away soon.”
“How do I do that?”
“I wish I knew,” Desiree said sadly. “The madness has been expanding and taking up more territory than it used to. I saw it coming, but I hoped someone would stop it.
Every year it was closer, until finally it got here, and my poor tree started suffering.”
“Then it must be more than just the vagaries of the wind,” Mentia said. “There must be more madness than there used to be.”
“But the madness is merely the intensification of magic near where the magic dust emerges from the ground,” Iris said. “It should dissipate as it gets carried away.”
“Intensification?” Gary asked. “Shouldn't that mean you can do your magic better?”
“It should. But for some reason it doesn't. It just fouls things up.”
“This doesn't seem to make much sense,” Gary said.
Mentia nodded agreement. “Nothing makes much sense in the Region of Madness.”
“Then I suppose we should just get on with the quest,”
Gary decided, ill at ease. He didn't like leaving the dryad to her fate, but saw no alternative.
“But we need Desiree's help for that,” Hiatus reminded him. “Why else would the Good Magician have put us together?”
So Gary spoke to the dryad. “I need to find the philter. Do you know where it is?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “I understand it's in the ruins, beyond a veil.”
“In ruins!” Gary exclaimed. “I need a good philter, not a broken one.”
“In the ruins, she said,” Mentia clarified. “Beyond a vale.”
“Veil,” Desiree said.
Mentia frowned. “Whatever.”
“Where are the ruins, then?”
“I used to know, before the madness changed everything,” Desiree said.
“Then how can you help me?” Gary asked.
“I could show you the path to the fallen giant.”
“What good would that do?”
“He may know where the ruins are. He blundered around a good deal before falling.”
“Then show me the path to the giant.”
“What deal will you make?”
“What do you mean, what deal?” he demanded, frustrated.
“If I help you, you should help me in return.”
Oh. “What deal do you want?”
“Save my tree.”
“I don't know how to save your tree! I can't make the madness go away.”
Mentia stepped in again, rationally. “We do not know that Desiree's information will truly help you find the philter,” she pointed out. “The giant may not remember where the ruins are, or we may not find the philter at the ruins.
We simply have to take the effectiveness of her help on faith.”
“Which makes it an even worse deal,” Gary said.
“It is also true that you do not know how to save her tree,” the sane demoness continued. “So you can not agree to do that. However, you can reasonably promise to try to find a way, just as she can reasonably give you information that may help your quest. This seems like a fair deal.”
“Why so it does,” Iris said. “You each try to help the other, without being certain of success.”
Gary looked at the d
ryad. “Does that make sense to You?”
“I'm not a man at all. I'm a gargoyle in manform.”
“Oh, then it's all right. Gargoyles are very constant.”
“But if Gary saves her tree, she won't marry me,” Hiatus protested.
“Gary will try,” Mentia said reasonably. “You will try. Whoever first succeeds will have his reward. And Desiree has two chances to survive.”
“But—”
“If you fail and Gary succeeds, would you prefer to see her tree die rather than be saved his way?”
Hiatus looked stricken. “No, of course not. I want her and her tree to prosper, even if I don't”
The dryad glanced at him, surprised. The first faint flicker of maidenly interest crossed her face.
“Then I will undertake to try to find a way to save your tree,” Gary said.
“The path is over there,” she said, pointing.
“But that's just a tangle of nettles.”
“I trust her,” Hiatus said. He marched into the nettles, and through them without getting snagged. Meanwhile the second flicker of interest touched the dryad, as the illusion surrounding her faded and she and her tree turned gaunt again.
The others followed him, and lo, there was a path there.
Gary was the last to go. “I'll try,” he repeated. “I have no idea what will help, but I'll try to find it and bring it back to you.”
“Thank you,” she called, and her tree almost seemed to wave a branch, though that was probably just from a breeze.
After a suitably maddening trek they stumbled across the giant. That was because he was invisible, as most giants of Xanth were. He was lying on the ground, his huge outline roughly marked by the foliage that was starting to grow around him.
“Ahoy there, giant!” Mentia called. “Where is your head?”
“Over here,” the giant responded.
The brush was so thick that they could not get through it, so they scrambled up onto the giant's leg and walked toward his distant head. Now they seemed to be floating, though they were as solid as ever, because they were half the height of the surrounding trees with only air showing beneath them. Actually it wasn't air, but giant flesh. It would have been scary if the leg weren't so solid to touch.
The giant was enormously huge.