"Thank you," Trent said.
Gloha thought they were joking, though neither creature had been much for humor before. But Marrow bent over, and Trent delivered a fine kick to the skeleton's hipbone. Marrow flew apart. The bones landed in a pile-in the shape of a small boat. Trent pushed the boat into the water, where it floated despite not seeming to be watertight, then stepped into it and sat down. The craft then moved across the water under its own power. Trent got out on the far bank, then kicked the boat, and the bones flew apart and landed back in Marrow's natural form.
Gloha finally got her gape hinged. She had known that the walking skeletons could change the arrangement of their bones, but hadn't realize how neat and useful this could be. After all, Marrow had changed to clamp the dragon's nose. Trent's kicks had merely facilitated the effort. She flew across the river herself. They resumed walking.
"We seem to be skirting the Region of Madness," Trent remarked. "Perhaps the folk of the Magic Dust Village were operating at reduced efficiency the past few days as the poison flow approached, so the dust level is not high. But now they are likely to be back at full efficiency, and we are apt to encounter more of the effect."
"I believe you are correct," Marrow agreed, his skull turning. "There may be a waft of it approaching now."
"Well, I don't see any madness yet," Gloha remarked impertinently. She shouldn't have.
Gloha sucked and licked at the sticky ends of her fingers. She was too old for Aunt Grobigatail's honey flummery, but a taste of honey always whetted her appetite for more. She sighed, her joy mixed with a little bit of sadness. She was, at the age of eighteen, getting more than a bit long in the tooth, too old for sweet treats. But she was still too young for goblin garbage rituals. Now she was too bored doing her usual good job of baby-sitting her obnoxious little brother Harglo. He might be her sibling, but he wasn't her kind; he had the head and legs of a goblin, but the full-feathered body of a harpy complete with tail, and no hands. He was a stronger flyer than she was, and a stronger runner too, but couldn't do much delicate handling of things with just his wings. He made up for that by having an excellent command of harpy vocabulary; already at age nine he could make some foliage wilt when he swore, and he was still confined to non-Adult Conspiracy words.
But today she was free of him, having a day off while he took flying lessons (and probably illicit cussing lessons) from Aunt Fowlmouth. So she could relax and enjoy herself. So why wasn't she happy? She tasted her fingers again, but this time her scalding-hot salty tears caused her fingers to hurt like the singing stinging threads of sea wasps. The problem was that today she had time to appreciate just how much it hurt being a half-and-half crossbreed, never quite fitting in with either the goblins or the harpies. So now she was caught up in her self-pity party. She had stopped grooming herself; her wing feathers were droopy and creased, her hooded blue bio-luminescent eyes were dull, and her glorious blue-black glossy hair hung in salty honey-sticky twisted loops.
Harpies flew overhead, hooting and hurling a golden coprolite about. This was a gold-plated fossilized ball of dragon dung that they caught in their claws and tossed up again. Whoever could get out the longest and foulest string of cussing before the next harpy touched the flying ball was winner for the moment. Harglo loved that game, and longed for the day he could play it; Gloha had never even tried, as she could not even begin to understand the implications of its most basic terms without going into a terminal blush.
These were good days in Xanth, in the harpy caves and goblin dens, when things went medium to bad instead of bad to worse. But from time to thyme a demonic, shot-fowl (or maybe foul-shot) rogue-awful day sneaked in, and this seemed to be one of them. So instead of enjoying her rest from spite, her respite, she was having Xanth's most miserable little mood.
It had started with dawn, which had lifted its brooding mists to reveal a bleary red-eyed sun surrounded by bruised purple clouds whose only desire was to make an acid rain and wet on someone's head. Then had come the snarling, whining, grunting, screaming rush to the breakfast cave, aptly termed the mess hall, where her dozens of aunts fought for the juiciest dripping raw bleeding morsels. Gloha had found herself wedged between Aunt Hoary Harributtes and the Grand Harridan Queen-Chief of this branch of the family clan, each of whom could screech more piercingly than the other. Gloha managed to plead difficulty clinging to the perch, so she took her quivering chunk of whatever to a separate bench where she could sit in what was disparagingly termed human style. Then someone had accidentally dropped a splash of hot coffee down her back, never mind that harpies never dropped anything they had ever snatched up unless they meant to. Gloha had had to flee to her personal nest to change clothes and put salve on her burn.
She had tried to cheer herself by dressing up. She donned her festival outfit: mock-leather jerkin, thongs of molten golden color trimmed in a Musical pattern with mellow golden bells, brazen Hell's Bells, and icy crystal stars. A really nice outfit always made her feel so good. But then her tutor, Magpie, had told her not to wear it, because harpies didn't wear clothing and she would be a laughingstock.
"But I'm a laughingstock anyway!" she protested.
"Nonsense. You just haven't found your place yet."
"What do you know about it?" Gloha flared rebelliously. "You aren't really a harpy at all! You're just an unlikely kindly demoness."
"But I have worked with quite a number of mortals," Magpie said with an evenness impossible to mortals. "Okra Ogress thought her life was hopeless, and now she's a Major Character. Rose of Roogna thought she'd never find a good husband, and then she married the Good Magician and had a lovely daughter. I could list others."
Gloha knew she could. At length. So she didn't ask. Instead she went into Routine #2: a terrible little tantrum. "Don't tell me what to do!" she screamed with a great deal of hair tossing and foot stomping. Her show frightened several nearby birds, who flew under the bed to hide, disturbing the snoozing monster there.
But Magpie had seen it all before, and was unmoved. In the end Gloha had to remove her finery and return to her dull ordinary state. Her dreary life continued unabated.
Gloha shook her heavy little head. She was back in the forest with Magician Trent and Marrow Bones. What had happened?
"I had supposed your life was happy," Trent said, surprised. "But I realize now that no one living among harpies could be satisfied."
"You saw my flashback?" Gloha asked, amazed.
"It appeared before us," Trent said.
"I am not expert in the ways of living folk," Marrow said. "But it seems to me that it was not nice of that harpy to spill hot black liquid down your back."
"You really did see it? In wild living color? Even when I threw my-"
"I averted my gaze when you changed clothing," the Magician said. "I thought you might consider that private."
She had been going to say "tantrum," but now she realized that she had more to be concerned about. She had relived an episode of her past life, and they had seen it unfold exactly as she had. Including her temporarily bared body. What madness was this?
Then she realized the rest of it. This was the Region of Madness, with the intense magic of the concentrated magic dust making even memories become visible. She hadn't realized that it would be like this. She wasn't at all sure she liked it. "Let's get quickly out of here," she suggested.
"What, when the fun is just beginning?" a voice demanded.
"Who is that?" Gloha asked, alarmed.
Smoke swirled. "Nothing to concern you, antiseptic goblin girl."
"What kind of goblin girl?"
"Unpolluted, sanitary, unadulterated, immaculate, faultless-"
"Innocent?" Trent suggested.
"Whatever," the smoke said crossly.
"What are you doing here, Metria?" Gloha asked a brief little bit crossly herself.
"I poke around wherever anything interesting is happening. Anyone fool enough to blunder into the Region of Madness is bound to be inter
esting."
"Well, my past life is about as uninteresting as anything can get, so you might as well go away."
"Oh, I don't know about that. Magpie always takes the interesting characters to work with."
"You know Magpie?"
"She's a demoness, isn't she? She knows when something's going to happen, and she's always there to nursemaid it through."
"Well, nothing's going to happen right now, so-"
"That's what, you think. Here comes another waft of madness."
"I don't believe it," Gloha said. "You're just saying it to tease-"
... and long lonely hours had been spent conducting endless imagined conversations with her adversary, that harpy flying tiger, her Aunt Hoary.
"Chaos and coffee!" Hoary Harpy screeched as she used one soiled wing to sweep strands of slop, glop, and flop out of the mess hall and into the fire pits. She clutched a teaming mug of brew in one claw while standing on the other scrawny leg. She vaguely resembled a black-feathered desultory stork, her red eyes glowing like soiled coals in the dusky purple shadows of the messy hall. She swept long dirty strands of feathery black hair back from her stony alabaster brow and glowered at her niece.
Gloha's sensitive little stomach knotted and burned, her heart cramped, and her hair wanted to wriggle out of sight. How had she gotten into this dill picklement?
"I said, what game are you playing?" a low whispery voice repeated, which was somehow worse than the usual screech.
With an icy start Gloha realized that the subject of her worries was now focusing her formidable annoyance at her. She blushed, which of course only made things worse, making her seem even more guilty that she probably was. "Auntie?"
"You politely requested this early morning interview, which showed how unharpyish you are," the harpy said. "You should have demanded it in the foulest vernacular. Now what in the name of idiocy do you want?"
Gloha somehow nerved herself enough to speak her muted little mind. "Auntie Hoary, I've been made sick and tired by living a dull and middle-of-the-road life amidst creatures who aren't exactly like me. We all know what happens when you stay in the middle of anything: you get run over. Auntie, I want to be an alchemist, a geo-alchemist on a wizard's team. I think a person without a dream becomes mired in our st-st-" She faltered, unable to get the ugly word out.
"Stinking!" Hoary screeched. "S-T-I-N-K-I-N-G! Where's your harpy vocabulary? Girl, you need to learn to swear, if you're going to get along. Now try it again."
Gloha made an effete little effort. "M-mired in our st-stinking pig pit," she managed to eke out. "Over and over I dream a bad dream brought by a night mare, that I can no longer fly-that I am a crippled broken-winged bird. Let me leave the nest-"
"What kind of nest?" Hoary screeched.
"The st-stinking nest, and go to seek-"
"What in the hell is the hurry?" Hoary demanded. "Leave the safety of the flock when you still don't know how to swear? You'd really break your wings then! The nest is best for chicks."
"But I'm eighteen, Auntie," Gloha reminded her.
"And have the vocabulary of a dirty bird half your age," Hoary pointed out, cleaning gore from her teeth with a dagger like claw. "If a monster came to eat you, you wouldn't even be able to give it a toothache with either your voice or your hygiene. You'd be one mouthwatering little morsel."
All too true. But Gloha, knowing that she'd never get up the courage to broach this subject again, tried to see it through. "Couldn't you let me fly with a proper escort to pay a professional visit to the castle of the Good Magician Humfrey, there to ask my one Question and give my year's Service for his Answer? Oh, please, Auntie Hoary! I would do anything if only I could-"
"Harpies never plead!" Hoary snapped, disgusted by this weakness. "Show me that you can let out one incendiary oath, and I'll let you go."
Gloha tried. "Darn!" she cried. "Help! Ship!"
Hoary sighed. "You're improving; at least you are taking aim at the words. But you're off by one letter in each case. That nullifies it. There's not even a stir of fire in the air. Now pay attention: this is the proper mode of harpy expression." She took a breath. "*%#(c)/$!!"
Gloha managed to cover her ears just in time. Even so, she felt the heat of the terrible blast. The air shimmered and burned, and scorch marks appeared on the table. A fiery smell wafted outward.
As fresh air moved in, making it possible to breathe again, Hoary resumed normal screeching. "Now can you do that, chick?"
"M-maybe in time," Gloha said, knowing it was impossible.
"In harpy thyme, maybe," Hoary said with resignation. "Gloha, you are still wet behind the ear feathers. It would be folly to let you go out alone or in incompetent company. Do you even know where the Seeds of Destruction are kept? Can you do an aerial survey and map or organize things according to the harpy thyme line? We, the horrid harpies, the stinking untouchables, the ultimate fowl-mouths, we have that knowledge and keep the temple of hope for Xanth until the time we choose to assume the mantle of dominance for ourselves. Our time is not yet, but drawing nigh. Once we have the harpy thyme-"
She broke off, realizing that she was saying too much. "Anyway, you must at least learn to swear effectively before you can safely go out on your own. When you can do that, perhaps I will let you go."
That was it. The discussion was at an end. Aunt Hoary had made what was by harpy definition a reasonable and moderate requirement. But how would Gloha ever be able to learn to swear like that? Her mild little mouth couldn't even begin to form the awful configurations necessary.
Gloha blinked. She was back in the forest. The waft of madness had passed. "Now that's a sensible harridan," Metria said approvingly.
"You saw-heard Aunt Hoary Harpy?" Gloha asked, embarrassed.
"Saw her? I was her!" the demoness said. "Look at the foliage."
Gloha looked. The leaves nearby were wilted, and some even burned, as if blasted by a truly ferocious oath. "But how could that be?"
"Those aren't mere memories," Trent explained. "The rest of us get caught up in the parts. The magic governs us."
"Then we must get away from here before something awful happens," Gloha cried, appalled. "Some of my memories are not nice."
"I don't think we can escape until your memories are resolved," he replied. "Something is bothering you, and until that is brought out and alleviated, we shall be locked in."
"Oh, I never wanted to get into this," Gloha wailed.
"You were an arrogant little snit," Metria said. "You thought the madness wouldn't take you."
"I was wrong!" Gloha cried in anguish. "I'll flee it!" She started running, but already she saw a slight wavering of the landscape, as if its level of reality were shifting. The effect was coming right toward her. There was a rushing sound, as of swiftly flowing water. Oh, no!
Behind the kitchen herb garden Gloha could hear Chrysalis Crystal Creek before she could see it. Hugely swollen by the weird weather, with consecutive drenchpours, the creek waters had taken the bit in their wet teeth and were in a dangerous mood. They were surging at boulders, trying to rip them out of the soil, and rushing at any living thing that dared approach. Whatever they caught they were carrying away, tossing about, and finally pounding to quivering bits. This was no safe place for an antiseptic, uh, innocent winged goblin girl.
Almost blinded by her rampaging feelings and tears, Gloha half ran, half flew down the very muddy, irregular, treacherous path to the very edge of the stream. Nearby monsters woke and stirred, sniffing the air, aware of the lingering odor of juicy, tender, young winged girl. Slowly they rose and moved toward her, blocking off her escape.
Affrighted, Gloha spread her wings, about to take flight. But the violent water signaled the air, and the air stirred, whirling itself into a deadly cone that reached for Gloha's winsome little wings. She did not dare take flight now, lest her feathers be plucked, leaving her truly helpless. She had to stay grounded.
But now she saw something even worse: silv
ery, slithering, slinky nickelpedes, going for her tender little tootsies. Tendrils were reaching out of the ground, casting about to catch her feet and hold her there while they burrowed into the flesh. She had blundered into a truly awful trap. How was she ever to escape?
She tried to run along the only path she saw, not knowing where it led. But a tendril caught a foot, sending her into a headlong fall to the ground. Her knocked little knee twisted on the way down, making her scream with pain. "Help!" she cried. But the roar of the water drowned her out, and she knew that no one would hear or come to her rescue.
The tendrils found her body and curled over it, anchoring her so that they could drill into her succulent little shape. The nickelpedes scuttled to arrive in time to gouge out their coin-sized chunks before the plants shriveled her body too far. The hungry shadow of a larger monster loomed close.
Gloha screamed. This time it was no meek little mock effort. It was a double-throated piercing ululation at ultrasonic and ultraviolet levels containing a suggestion of the vocabulary Aunt Hoary had been trying to teach her. The tendrils, momentarily stunned, writhed back away from her. The nickelpedes clicked their pincers, briefly disoriented. The looming monster hesitated a third of a moment, or perhaps nine tenths of an instant.
Then all three threats recovered and converged. But in that meager instant Gloha made an exhausted little effort to fight for what hopeless little hope remained to save her lost little life. She heaved herself somewhere else.
She fell down a long sandy shaft of dirt, wings over heels. She was aware of wild glowing molds, bugs, and many intriguing shades of dirt touching barely mentionable parts of her body along the way. Then she fetched up against the ragged cobweb-covered gape of a hidden hole. She plunged heedlessly into it and discovered a dark tunnel leading she knew-not and hesitated-to-inquire where. It just had to be less unsafe than what was behind.
The tunnel twisted around as if trying to dislodge her, but she followed it through every convolution, not daring to delay. Finally it gave up and let her into a faintly flowing small, forgotten, long-unused set of carved stone caves hiding under the harpy hutch caves. Against all odds, she had found a secret place that almost seemed to be safe. She stumbled under rocky crevices holding poisonous-looking twining clumps of vines glowing in brilliant vegetable green, ultraviolet, Luna white, and blood-red, growing among broken sculptures of gargoyles, through rotting logs, and across the faces of prehistoric rocky ruins. She crawled over a perilous, crumbling, narrow, rotting wooden bridge across a gaping dark chasm filled with a horrible deep menacing rustling. As she passed it, it gave way, and collapsed behind her into the depths. She listened, but never heard the sound of its landing below.