“Of course I know him. He’s right next door, in the adjacent reality. You’re half brothers. But of course you wouldn’t know that, Drew.”
“I know it now,” Drew said wryly. “But you never mentioned him before.”
“Certainly I didn’t. The concept of alternate realities just confuses most folk who are limited to one.” She turned to her husband, a handsome older prince. “Why don’t you go take a nap, dear, while I see to these needful folk? There’s no need to bore you.”
Hilarion nodded and went to a spare couch. He lay down and was promptly asleep. Evidently he was used to her activities.
“She’s also your aunt?” Mera asked Dolin during the pause.
“Oh, yes. She’s my father’s sister.”
“I thought that was King Ivy,” Emerald said.
“I am Ivy’s twin sister,” Ida said. “Dolph is our little brother.”
“Oh.” Now Emerald was embarrassed. “I’m from the dragon realm, and know only a very general outline of your royal family.”
“Nor do you need to, Emerald,” she said, smiling.
“You know me?” Emerald asked, surprised.
“Of course I know you, dear. Human/Dragon relations are vital if we are to avert internecine warfare. I wish you every success in your quest.”
“And do you know me?” Mera asked.
“Certainly, Mera. You and I will be working closely together in the future. Your talent of changing realities is invaluable when there’s a mix-up.” Ida glanced around. “As seems to be the case at the moment. There seem to be folk from three realities here.”
“We need to return to the reality where the Princesses Dawn and Eve exist,” Dolin said. “Without complicating things further. We thought maybe someone on Ptero would be able to help us.”
“Certainly. That person would be my alternate self on that world. You will recognize her by the world of Pyramid orbiting her head. She will be able to direct you to the people you need to see.”
Mera eyed the ball orbiting Ida’s own head. “That’s a—a world?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot you are from the distant past, and are not familiar with more recent discoveries. Let me explain, briefly. Ptero, here, may seem small, but it is actually a full world rendered seemingly tiny by the magic of perspective. You will visit it spiritually, with only your souls going there while your bodies remain as anchors here.”
“Ah,” Mera said. “The way I left my body in one reality while my spirit visited another, so that I could return when the time came.”
“Exactly, dear. Also the way Tartan and Tara leave their hosts in Mundania while their spirits explore Xanth. They are parallel processes. Spiritual travel is much safer than physical travel, especially among realities, because returning is so much easier.” Ida looked around. “Suppose we get to it now? It will take about an hour.” She held up a hand to forestall any objection. “Time is different on Ptero. You may spend days there, but return here shortly after you departed. Drew has been there before; he will guide you. I will nap with my husband while we wait. Then when you return we will resume our separate journeys, missions accomplished.”
A glance circled around. This did seem to be the expedient course.
They settled back in their chairs, and Princess Ida released a waft of some kind of incense. Tartan sniffed it, and felt his soul withdrawing from his host’s body. “But I’m coming too,” Demon Ted said. “I wouldn’t miss this for all the worlds.”
Tartan saw that the other members of their party were similarly unconscious, at least physically, while their spirits pulled out and floated above their bodies. Both Amara and Isis emerged, Tara and DeMonica, Dolin and his anonymous host, Tata Dogfish and Princess Eve, Emerald, Drew, and Bernard. A party of approximately thirteen.
Drew, who had prior experience, beckoned the others, and they floated toward him. They linked hands and paws, forming a circle. Then they flew toward Princess Ida’s orbiting moon, which grew strangely larger as they approached it. By the time they reached it, it was the size of a planet. Then they drifted down toward its surface. Tartan saw that there were mottled patches separated by thin membranes. To the north the planet was deepening blue, and to the south it was red. The western side was green, and the eastern side was yellow. It did not seem to be rotating, or if it was, they were rotating with it.
They descended to a large field and landed on firm sand. They might be traveling in spirit, but they seemed perfectly solid here. The world of Ptero also seemed to be full planet sized, with the same gravity they were used to.
“Oh, it’s good to be real again!” Monica said. “Even if only here on the world of imagination.”
Only then did Drew release the hands of those he held. “We are here in the designated landing field for visitors,” he said. “Princess Ida’s abode is to the north; she is currently in her winter residence. We should soon find her. But there are cautions.”
“Cautions?” Tartan asked warily.
“Time is not as it is in Xanth. To the west is the future; to the east is the past. We will age as we go west, and youthen as we go east. It therefore behooves us to remain close to the proper path.”
“Wait,” Tara said. “How far does this go? I mean if we go west, how old will we get?”
“That is different for every person. We can go no farther than our natural lifespan on Xanth. Beyond that we seem to be at a wall, looking beyond but unable to go there. Similarly, we can go no farther east than our age, first becoming children, then babies. The older ones among us can proceed farther.”
“I am eighteen,” Mera said. “But I date from almost nine hundred years ago. Which age counts?”
“The older one. That may be useful, should we have to veer east; you could carry the babies.”
“What, a dozen babies?”
“Maybe you could use a wagon,” Tara said, laughing.
Mera didn’t laugh. “Let’s stay on the straight and narrow.”
They walked north, and the landscape soon started turning bluish and the air cooled noticeably. “We’ll need warmer clothing,” Drew said. “There are clothes horses in a nearby pasture.”
They went to the pasture. The horses wore all manner of clothing. In fact it became apparent that they were entirely made of clothing. “But won’t taking their clothing cripple or kill the horses?” Tara asked.
“No,” Drew assured them. “They will rapidly grow it back. In fact they like being useful.”
So it seemed. The horses crowded to the fence, whinnying eagerly.
“Still, we’ll have to trade for what we take,” Drew said. “There are sugar maples, canes, and beets out of their range.”
They went to the plants and harvested pocketfuls of sugar cubes. The fair trade seemed to be one cube for one item of clothing. In Mundania this would not have been a fair exchange, but Tartan realized that this was not Mundania.
Tartan harvested a warm jacket and boots, and the others got similar clothing. Soon their pockets were empty, but they were well dressed for cold weather. The horses seemed to be well satisfied.
They resumed their trek north. “Uh-oh,” Drew said as he peered ahead.
Tartan did not like the sound of that. But looking north, he saw dark turbulence in the sky. It was a storm, and seemed to be shaping rapidly into a bad one. Still, could they duck their heads and plow on through the snow flurries?
Then several sticks flew through the air and struck the ground ahead of them. Tartan went to pick one up. It was a cane.
“Oh, no,” Tara groaned. “It’s a hurry-cane.”
“Puns exist on Ptero too,” Drew said. “In fact they are more persistent here than on Xanth. Fortunately they are mostly confined to the comic strips.”
“Comic strips?” Isis asked.
Drew looked at her, and took a breath. Tartan knew why:
the man was really seeing her in her natural beauty for the first time, no longer masked by her host. Stunning hardly described her. Even fully clothed in winter gear she put men at the verge of freaking out. In fact Dolin’s host, now a person in his own right, had already freaked out. “Uh—”
She produced a pair of dark glasses she must have harvested from one of the horses. “Put on these snow glasses so that the brightness doesn’t blind you.” She set another pair on the face of Dolin’s host, and snapped her fingers to bring him out of it.
Drew took the glasses, which surely cut down her image to little more than a dark shadow. “Thank you. I can explain about the comic strips. They—”
“I know about them,” Isis said. “In fact I live in them. I can handle them.”
“Are you sure? They can rot minds.”
“I am sure.”
“Very well. The storm to our north must have overlapped a comic strip and ripped out some of the puns. Regardless, there is a good deal of physical force there, and we should not risk it. We must veer to the side to get around it. That means—”
“That they risk becoming either too old or too young to function effectively,” Bernard said. “Fortunately that is my domain. I can immunize them from the ravages of time.”
“Ah, yes, I forgot about that,” Drew said. “That will be very helpful.”
“Gather around me, folks,” Bernard said. “I will detonate a time stasis bomb that will lock you into your present ages, regardless where we travel.”
They gathered around him, except for Isis. “I am four thousand years old,” she said. “I am already essentially timeless.”
“You impress me, Goddess,” Bernard said. “You do indeed seem timeless. I wonder—”
“No. I have other business.”
Tartan kept silent. Isis might be timeless, but that was not the quality that impressed men. She was obviously used to their reactions, and not much interested.
They walked to the east, skirting the storm. The land turned yellow, and they could see trees and buildings getting younger, but they were not affected. Soon they came to the border of a comic strip.
“I don’t think the storm actually crosses the strip,” Drew said. “So if we can get through that, then we can proceed north and in due course return to our original route, north of the storm.”
“Now it is my turn,” Isis said. “Stay close to me and do what I say, even if at times it seems odd or outright crazy. Remember, most of the puns are sight gags made up of illusion, not actually dangerous in themselves. The danger is in getting lost in them, totally confused, so that you can’t find your way out of the comic strip. I do know the way out, and here on Ptero I can use it, as I can’t on Xanth proper because this is only my spirit, not my actual body. Trust me.”
“We do,” Amara said. Then to the others: “I have come to know the Goddess well, as we have been traveling together. She is many things, but she is not a liar. She can and will do what she says.”
“I believe it,” Drew said. “I have observed her.” And his observation was something no other person could match.
Isis stepped across the comic strip border, and the others followed close behind. It was some behind, Tartan noted, even through the heavy winter coat. Then Tara slapped his arm warningly, and he focused on their surroundings. He suspected that Tara wasn’t really jealous, but was protecting him from making a fool of himself before the others. But he wasn’t quite sure.
“Why hello, visitors,” an older woman said, spying them. “Uncle, see who we have here!”
Tartan looked. It wasn’t a woman, but a small island. Two islands, with pie plants, lollipops, and tea trees on one, and a beerbarrel tree on the other, catering to female and male tastes. It might be nice to rest on those.
“Forget it,” Isis snapped. The islands faded back, their feelings clearly hurt.
“Why did you rebuff them?” Tara asked the Goddess. “They didn’t mean any harm.”
“Those were Auntigua and Uncletigua,” Isis said. “Abysmal puns there to distract us at the outset. Get on one of them, and it might be days before you think to move on.”
Oh.
“You reject our offerings?” a librarian demanded. “I’ll throw the book at you!” He hurled a hefty book so hard it caught fire.
“Dodge it!” Isis cried.
They managed to avoid the flying tome. It crashed through the foliage beyond them and set it afire. Oh, again.
“That’s a representative of the censor ship,” Isis explained. “They cruise around and use books as weapons rather than education or entertainment. They prefer to burn them.”
“But that doesn’t make much sense,” Tara protested. “If they don’t like books they should just leave them alone, not destroy them.”
“This is the comic strip,” the Goddess reminded her.
Oh, yet again.
They came to a river that was too broad to jump across and surely not safe to wade through. But there was a ferry boat. “I’ll take you,” the captain called.
“You will not, Harper,” Isis snapped, and the boat and river faded out. “He’s not a man,” the Goddess explained. “He’s a malign fairy.”
“Harper’s fairy,” Tartan said with a groan.
“And that water was filled with aqua tics that would have sucked out your fluids.”
“Oh?” Bernard asked. “Then what would that linguis tic I see to the side do?”
“It would suck out your language.”
Tartan was concluding that they were lucky to have the Goddess along. Some of these puns were dangerous.
They passed through a section with small men wielding little sticks. “Ignore them,” Isis said. “Those are only chap sticks.”
“Is there much more of this to endure?” Tara asked.
“Not a lot,” Isis said. “Avoid those creatures.”
They drew back in time to let two disreputable things converge and collide with each other. They exploded into a sickeningly brown stench.
“Diar and Rhea,” Isis said.
“Best avoided,” Tartan agreed.
Now a sweet melody sounded. It came from a tiny hovering bird. “But the humming bird is safe,” Isis said. “And we are at the far border.” Then she paused, looking out. “Bleep.”
“Bleep?” Amara asked nervously.
“Now I see that the storm does cross the comic strip. We shall simply have to wait to let it pass.”
“In here?” Emerald asked with a quaver.
“I see a comfortable spot.” The Goddess forged toward a factory building. “This is a fact-ory. It manufactures satis-faction.”
Indeed, the closer they got to it, the more satisfied they were. Now the comic strip did not seem bad at all.
“However, we will not remain here any longer than necessary,” Isis said. “Lest we become too satisfied to continue our mission.”
“I’m glad we have you as a guide,” Tartan said.
“You may appreciate why I want to get out of the comic strip,” the Goddess said. “I have learned its nuances, but it can become wearing.”
“Why are you confined?” Bernard asked.
“To prevent me from conquering Xanth and becoming its queen.”
“Which I suspect King Ivy would not appreciate,” Bernard said. “Nor the heir apparent, Princess Harmony.”
“This is the nature of royalty. Not everyone who wants to rule can be accommodated.”
They waited comfortably. Tartan found it odd seeing Dolin sitting alongside his host, but of course he himself was sitting alongside his host, Ted, and the same was true for Tara and Monica.
Isis glanced at the nearby border. “Ah, I believe the storm has retreated somewhat. Now we can skirt it and resume our trek.”
“No hurry,” Tartan said, and several others agre
ed.
She sent him a piercing look that made him wince. “You are already succumbing to the satis. Rise and follow me.”
Reluctantly they followed her on out of the strip. The moment they cleared it, their satisfaction fell away. “What were we thinking of?” Tara asked rhetorically. “We never wanted to leave.”
“Exactly,” Drew said. “It is possible to get lost emotionally as well as physically. The Goddess has served us well.” He glanced at Isis. “I wonder—”
“No.”
He shrugged and walked on. Men, Tartan noted, tended to be slow to get the message when loveliness like that of the Goddess was near.
They could see the turbulent edge of the storm to the west. They stayed clear of it, and in due course rejoined their original path going north. It was increasingly cold and covered with blue snow, but they were dressed for it and glad to be back on track.
“And there at last is Princess Ida’s winter abode,” Drew said. “We have arrived.”
“That’s a relief,” Tara said. “I hope it’s downhill from here.”
But Tartan feared it would not be.
Chapter 11
Conclave
Princess Ida was vigorously shoveling blue snow out of her walk. She was thoroughly bundled, but there was no mistaking the moon orbiting her head, Pyramid, four triangular sides, blue red, green, and gray. “Why hello, all,” she said, and it was plain that she recognized them all. “I had a feeling I would have company today, and Prince Hilarion isn’t much for winter sport, so I was clearing the way.”
And since her talent was the idea, and what she believed was true inevitably became true, she did have company. It was also possible that she had personal communication with herself on the ground level and the chain of moon level realities; that would surely help her in maintaining the connections between worlds. “We need to meet with our assorted relatives in other realities,” Drew said. “Some of us need to cross realities, without disturbing the general order unduly. And some are looking for suitable life partners, myself included, as you know.”
“Then you will want the sauna.”