But its rock got in my way, threatening to squish my fingers, and I had to leave the roll alone.
I heard some music, and hoped that there might be some people there. But when I made my way through the forest, I discovered that the music was coming from another collection of rocks. Or rather from the way they were being eaten; a very nice-looking animal was grazing on them, probably a dear, and with each bite the rocks popped, making attractive music. But I wasn't sure I was ready to eat pop rocks, however tasty they might be to the dear.
So I set my face in the direction it was facing and began to march straight ahead. I wasn't sure where I was going, but I was surely going somewhere.
“Child,” a woman's voice called me. I paused, orienting on the sound. There was a woman standing by a spreading acorn tree. She wore a brown dress and seemed adult.
At this point my bravado had just about expired. I wanted very much to have an excuse to go back home, or, failing that, to find another home where someone like my mother would feed me and give me a safe place to sleep and take care of me. Of course I couldn't admit that, even to myself, but it may have influenced my reaction.
I went to her. “I—I—could you tell me where the nearest human village is?” I asked politely. “I seem to be— be—”
“Lost?” she inquired gently.
I nodded, abashed.
“How did you come to this region?” she asked me, with that tone of unconscious authority that comes naturally to all adults.
Naturally I had to answer. “I rode my pet zombie dragon. But he went home.”
“Perhaps you should go home also,” she suggested, with more of that inherent authority, making it somehow seem reasonable.
“I, uh, suppose,” I agreed reluctantly.
“Where is your home?”
“I, uh, live at—at Castle Zombie,” I faltered, preferring to remain anonymous.
“Oh, you must be the Zombie Master's little boy,” she said brightly.
“I'm not little,” I protested bravely. “I'm eleven.”
She gave me a glance that made me feel nine without actually insulting me. “Of course. What is your name?”
“Hi.” Then, as she continued to gaze at me, I realized that my answer was incomplete. “Atus,” I added.
“Hiatus,” she repeated. “Don't you have a sister?”
“Lacuna,” I agreed. “Our names mean the same thing: a gap or a missing part. Our parents thought that was cute.”
“That was very clever of them. I am Desiree Dryad.”
I remembered my rudimentary manners. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Dryad.”
She nodded. “Well, Hiatus, are you ready to go home?”
I scuffled my feet. “I guess.”
“I happen to know a nice magic path that will take you there before nightfall. I think you would not care to remain in this forest at night.”
I was uncomfortably aware of that. “I guess I'd better take it.”
Desiree eyed me again. “But I think not without some food. I wouldn't want your mother to think I had sent you home hungry. I have some hybiscuits and finger and toe matoes.” She stepped around the tree and returned in a moment with a plate of these things: exactly the kind of wholesome food I really wasn't much keen on eating. But I knew better than to protest, because that's a sure way to make adults get even more set in their ways, so I reached for the plate.
“But first you had better go to that toiletree and clean up,” she said firmly.
“Oh. Yes.” I went to the tree and cleaned up. Then I took the plate from her and ate the healthy food, and it was surprisingly good once I got into it, even if I would have preferred dragon steak and chocolate milkweed juice.
I did try to wheedle some, though, in my naive childish cunning. “I'm thirsty!” I exclaimed. “Do you have some tsoda popka or beerbarrel tree juice?” I knew she wouldn't let me have those, but might compromise on flavored milkweed.
“No, Hiatus,” she replied gently. “Just some excellent water in the little spring there.” She gestured to a pleasant depression I hadn't noticed before, where a spot of clear water showed.
Oh. There was no help for it but to go and glug some straight unadorned flavorless water. Actually it wasn't bad;
I hadn't realized that truly fresh water could quench thirst so well.
I burped and returned to Desiree, wiping my wet mouth on my sleeve. “I guess I better go now,” I said. “Where's the path?”
She frowned. “There might be a more polite way to ask a favor,” she remarked to no one in particular.
I realized that she meant something. “Huh?”
She made a moue. “Don't you usually say 'please'?”
Oh, that. I obeyed the adult protocol. “Please show me where the path is,” I said formally.
She smiled exactly as if she meant it; adults are good at that. “Of course. It is right that way.” She gestured.
I peered, but all I saw was a tangle of brush. “Where?”
She was silent, and after a moment I realized that this was a hint that I had used the wrong phrasing. Adults were funny about such things. “I mean, please show me more clearly where the path is, Ms. Dryad.”
She smiled again, turning, and I realized that though I was a boy and she was a woman, she was no taller than I was, and she probably weighed less. That surprised me, because adults had always seemed by definition to be larger than children. “It is concealed by foliage, as most private paths are. If you walk directly between those two laurel trees you will find it, and once you are on it you will see it clearly. But be careful not to stray from it until you get in sight of your castle, because the moment you step off it you will not be able to see it again.”
“Oh, an invisible path!” I exclaimed, delighted.
“In a manner of speaking,” she agreed, seeming to find something amusing. “We prefer to think of it as being visible to those who appreciate nature.”
I was about to protest that I appreciated nature, but then I realized that she probably meant things like dull vegetables and plain water. “Thank you,” I said somewhat doubtfully, because it sure didn't look like any path there.
“Perhaps I should lead you there,” Desiree said.
“Gee, yes!” I agreed immediately.
She walked in the direction she had indicated, and I followed. I marveled again at her smallness, because she certainly had that adult woman way of walking. It's as if their bones are more bendy. When we reached the two laurel trees, suddenly there before us was a nice little path, winding on through the forest. I blinked, wondering how I could have missed it before.
Desiree turned, and saw my confusion. “If you step back a pace, it will disappear,” she said.
I stepped back, and the brush closed in, leaving no path in sight. “Oh, it's magic,” I said, catching on.
“What we call situational magic,” she agreed. Adults always had complicated words for simple things. “I think you would have had trouble seeing it even when on it, if I were not showing you. So it would be better not to be tempted by things like lollipop plants just off the path. Those can be mischief.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, impressed. “I sure better not get off it till I'm home.”
“Yes, you certainly had better not do that,” she agreed.
I realized that she was correcting my speech, in the maddeningly oblique way adults had. But she had fed me and shown me the way home, so I had to forgive her, her adultish ways.
“Thanks, Ms. Dryad,” I said, about to go. “I know I'm just a kid, but I do like the favor. You're a nice woman, for a grown-up.”
A curious ripple of emotions crossed her face. Maybe she realized that I was making a real effort to be proper by adult definitions. That I wasn't a bad boy, just an ordinary kid, crude around the edges but gradually getting polished.
“Hiatus, what are your hopes for the future?” she inquired.
“Oh, that's easy,” I said with enthusiasm. “I'll grow up and get fam
ous, growing big eyes and ears and noses on everything in sight, and everybody will be amazed.”
“That is an interesting ambition,” she agreed. “But what of romance?”
“Huh? I mean, what's that?”
“Normally boys grow up and get interested in girls, and marry them and form families of their own. Have you no such ambition?”
“Oh, sure, I guess,” I agreed, catching her drift. Girls were always more interested in the mushy stuff than boys were. My sister was stupid in the same way. “I'll marry the most beautiful girl in Xanth and let her do the housework.”
“That is all?” Something concerned her, but I couldn't tell what.
“Naw, I'll be out growing big noses on trees and things, making them sneeze,” I said.
“On trees!”
“Sure. Trees look real funny with noses. It's real fun to grow a Mundane elephant nose on a tree. Get it? A trunk on a trunk.” I had to laugh at my cleverness.
For some reason she seemed annoyed, but she didn't make anything of it. “What about your wife?”
“Her? I dunno. I guess she'll do what women do. You know, laundry, cooking, sewing, making beds, sweeping dust, all that dull stuff they like.”
Desiree still seemed to have some kind of subtle problem. “Are you sure they like it?”
“Well, maybe not, but who cares? Mom never complains.”
Desiree considered. “As I recall, your mother was a ghost for eight hundred years. Perhaps she had her fill of freedom, so was glad to be mortal again, even if it meant tolerating dull routine. But do you ever thank her for what she does for you?”
“Huh?”
The dryad seemed to come to a decision. “Perhaps it would be better if you did not marry,” she remarked irrelevantly. “Better for womankind.”
I shrugged. “I'll find someone, 'cause I'll be handsome and they'll all want to marry me,” I said confidently.
“Perhaps so,” she agreed. But then she contradicted herself. “And perhaps not.”
“Huh?”
Desiree faced me squarely. “Child, look at me,” she said. “Look deep into my eyes, and at my hair, and at the rest of me.”
Curious, I did as she bid me. I met her gaze. And something happened.
Her eyes were green and as deep as the spring I had drunk from, like two grassy pools. I felt myself drifting into them, now swimming, now floating, now sinking, just getting encompassed by the way of them. Her hair was brownish red, with leaves on it, like a tree in autumn. It was as if I stood within a quiet magic forest, just looking at her. It was wonderful in a way I had never before appreciated.
“When you are a man,” she said with quiet conviction, “you will never see a girl as fair.”
And I realized that she was fair, and more than fair; she was the most beautiful creature I could ever have imagined. Strange that I hadn't noticed that before, but maybe it was as it was with the magic path: I couldn't see it until she showed me. There was simply nothing in all Xanth that could possibly be as lovely as this maiden of the forest. I had known that dryads were pretty creatures, but never actually experienced it. Now I knew completely and forever.
She moved her tiny hands, and they were like delicate leaves fluttering in the breeze. She made a little turn, and for the first time I saw just how slender yet well-formed her body was. I had never thought to notice any such thing before in my life. She lifted her arms above her head and swayed in the wind, and it was as if she were a graceful fern or a slender tree, yielding to the force of the air and returning to equilibrium as it passed.
She came to a halt and met my gaze again. “And what have you to say now, Hiatus?” she inquired gently.
“Oh, when I'm a man I'll have a girl just like you!” I swore.
“I doubt it.” She smiled, a bit sadly it seemed. “But you will remember me, for the rest of your life.” Then she walked away from me.
I started to follow her, suddenly unwilling to let her out of my sight. What a transformation there had been! She had seemed like an ordinary woman, and now she was more lovely and precious than anything I could dream of.
But she walked around the tree where I had first seen her, and behind the trunk—and did not appear on the other side. I ran there, and around the tree, but she was gone.
“Desiree!” I cried, suddenly desolate. “Where are you?”
But already I realized that she was a magic creature, a dryad, a nymph of the wood, and would appear only at her desire, not mine. She was through with me.
So I returned to the two laurels, and the path reappeared. I took one look back at Desiree's tree, marking its exact place, then set my face firmly toward home.
The magic path led me promptly to Castle Zombie.
There may have been lollipops growing beside it, but I never noticed them; I was still bemused by the vision of the girl in the wood. How gorgeous she had so suddenly been! Never again would I encounter a dryad without remembering.
I stepped off the path and walked to the castle. Then I thought to verify the location of the path, so I could follow it back on another day. But I couldn't find it, though I must have crossed and recrossed it several times. Like the dryad, it was gone. There was nothing to do except return to the castle and make what I could of the rest of my life.
Next day I searched for the path again, trying to track my own footprints back, but there was nothing. I realized that it was foolish to seek something magical; a mortal could never find such a thing without the help of a magic creature. Yet I kept trying, day after day, until finally my heart realized what my mind did, and I gave up the effort.
But for some time thereafter I cried myself to sleep.
I don't know why it didn't occur to me to find my way directly to the dryad's tree by my original route; perhaps there was a spell on me to make me miss the obvious. But that may not have been feasible anyway, because I really hadn't paid attention when trying to run away from home;
Doofus Dragon had taken me. He had found his way home, but was too stupid to find his way anywhere else, he would be as likely to take me in the opposite direction, and I would hardly know the difference. So I suffered at home, and told no one, not even my twin sister Lacuna.
Who, after all, would understand? I didn't understand myself; all I knew was that I wanted to see Desiree again. I didn't know why, or what I would say to her; I just wanted to be with her, even if she fed me more finger matoes. In fact I found that I had developed a taste for them, and for unadulterated spring water, especially from green grassy pools. And for the sight of acorn trees in their autumn colors.
For Desiree was a dryad, a nymph associated with a tree. She resembled the things of the forest, and her hair surely changed color with the seasons. I had known about dryads, of course, but now I cared. One might wonder why I didn't seek some other dryad, and the answer is that not all trees have dryads; they are relatively scarce. In any event, it was only this one dryad I wanted to be with, no other.
In fact I was in love, but too young to know it. Desiree had fascinated me, in the nicest possible way; she had shown me her beauty, and I was destined to remember her, as she had said, for the rest of my life.
Time passed, and I became a man. I was, as I had expected, handsome, and the girls did flock around me. But the memory of the girl in the wood made all of them uninteresting. Not one of them came close to matching Desiree. None of them possessed that first wild beauty that only I could see. It was as if the dryad's face was superimposed on the face of any girl I saw, a model for comparison representing perfection, and in each case the mortal face deviated and was imperfect. The same was true of their bodies; all seemed gross and unfinished, like sculptures that had been done by an unskilled artisan. They turned me off. So while I would have liked to marry, I just could not; I did not even want to touch any ordinary girl.
As time passed, my mother and sister became concerned. My mother tried to be delicate about her concern, but my sister Lacuna was blunt: a line of print
appeared on the table before me. DON'T YOU LIKE GIRLS?
That was the question. “I like one girl,” I told them. “I just can't find her.”
Then they had the story from me. My mother was appalled. “A dryad! How could you?”
“I didn't know it was going to happen,” I said. “She was just a woman to me, an adult, treating me like a child.
She asked me what I was going to do with my life when I grew up, and I told her, and she flashed her beauty at me and vanished.”
“You told her about your low opinion of women,” my sister said accusingly. “That all we're good for us to wash dishes and clean house.”
“Well, sure. It's true, isn't it?”
Millie and Lacuna exchanged a glance that was almost two and a half glances long. Then my sister resumed. “So she decided that maybe you weren't going to be Xanth's gift to womankind, so you shouldn't marry, so she saw to it that you wouldn't. And you aren't.”
I began to understand. Desiree was, for all her nymphly nature, a woman. “Then I guess I'm doomed to bachelorhood,” I said. “Because there isn't any mortal woman I want to marry.” But by this point I wished that Desiree had never looked at me that way, flashing her loveliness.
She had, indeed, doomed any future romance I might otherwise have had. No mortal woman would have to suffer through my attitude.
Millie sighed. “There seems to be no help for it. You will simply have to find her.”
How much I would like to do that! “But how? I can't find the path!”
“And it's no good searching for every acorn tree in Xanth,” Lacuna said. “You could go right by it and never see her, because she wouldn't show herself.”
“But I looked carefully at her tree,” I protested. “I would know it if I saw it. And I know the general area. It's southeast of here, the distance Doofus can go in a run.”
“Then perhaps there is a chance. Ride Doofus there, then grow some ears and eyes and make them tell you what they have heard and seen.”
“I never thought of that!” I exclaimed.