“But I have to find that faun, or the tree will fade! It was bad enough losing my friend, without losing his tree too.”
“Yes, of course. I just want you to understand that this is no ordinary mission. It is stranger than anything you may have experienced.”
“Whatever it is, it is better than letting my friend's tree fade.”
“But if you should be lost, then your own tree would fade too.”
That made him pause. “Do you think that will happen?”
“I don't know. I assume the Good Magician made sure you were capable of handling the situation, to the extent anyone could be.”
“No, he didn't even talk to me,” Forrest said crossly.
“Did you go through the Challenges?”
“Yes! And then he refused to hear my Question.”
“What were the Challenges like?”
He described them to her, as she seemed genuinely interested, though he saw little point in this. Still, it was best not to be impolite to a princess. As he described each scene, it appeared on the Tapestry, just as it had happened.
“So in each case, there was a physical Challenge,” she said, which you surmounted by using the talent of a person who happened to be there.”
“Yes, actually. The psychologist, the dot girl, and the wood changing man. I found a way to get them each to help me.”
“I think this is the kind of ability that would be required on Ptero,” the princess said. “Surely this was the Good Magician's conclusion.”
“But he didn't-”
“He always has good reason for his actions, though they are seldom immediately apparent to others. I believe he is trying to help you, in his fashion. He did put you in touch with Mare Imbri, after all.”
“Yes. But-”
“Now I think you are ready to see Ptero. It is my moon.”
“Your what?”
Then he saw something even more surprising than the Tapestry. A tiny ball was swinging around the Princess' head. It must have been hiding before, because until this time all he had seen was a flicker of something not quite there. It was about the size of a large eyeball. As it came closer to him, it brightened.
“This is Ptero,” Ida said. “It orbits my head, and reacts to my moods.
But it is more than just a tiny moon. It is an idea.”
“It looks pretty solid to me.”
“ It is, in its fashion. You see, I am a Sorceress, and my talent is the Idea. Ptero is a condensation of all the ideas of Xanth, as they were too numerous and complicated to fit inside my head. So it would appear that the faun you seek is no more than an idea, not yet formulated in Xanth.”
“But how can I find a faun who doesn't exist?”
“He does exist. Just not in tangible form. You will have to locate him, and cause him to exist.”
She had said this was strange. He was beginning to appreciate how serious she was. “You mean that the idea of him is-is there in that ball?”
“Yes. The idea of everything is there. It seems you will have to go there to find the idea you need.”
“But I can't go there!” he protested. “It's tiny!”
“Mare Imbri has a spell to make you small enough, in a manner.”
He didn't much like the sound of this. “In a manner?”
“Your body will have to remain behind. Only your soul can go. As you said, Ptero is tiny.”
“But suppose something happened to my soul?”
She nodded gravely. “This is the risk you take. I think it will be all right, because the Good Magician evidently thinks so, but there are always risks when the unknown is braved. We don't know what you may find on Ptero. So it might after all be best if-”
“No! I must save that tree.”
“Then we shall have to prepare you for your journey. Your body will rest in this room while your soul visits Ptero. I will be going around the castle, but once you and Imbri are there, that will be no problem. I will return every few hours, so that your soul can find your body when it needs to. And of course Imbri will be guiding you. She has visited Ptero before, so has a small notion of its nature. But none of us will be able to help you if you have trouble. In fact we won't even know what you are doing. The Tapestry doesn't orient on Ptero, because it isn't part of Xanth. It's a derivative. So you will truly be on your own.”
Forrest swallowed. “And nobody knows exactly what I'll find there? But if Imbri has been there-”
“I went to deliver only brief daydreams,” Imbri said, appearing beside him. He realized that she couldn't speak to two people at the same time, because she wasn't physically real. She had to be in the dream of one or the other, so she had disappeared when she talked to Ida. “I had a specific summons. It was like going toward a light. I don't actually know the geography. I caught only glimpses. Enough to know that it's a whole world in itself, bigger than Xanth, and maybe more varied. And that time is strange, there.”
“I'm sure Mare Imbri will be a great help,” Ida said.
He glanced at her. “How did you know that Imbri had finished speaking to me?”
“I waited for your blank look to pass. It isn't polite to interrupt a daydream.”
“She says she doesn't know a whole lot about Ptero, and that time is strange there.
“She will be able to locate friendly folk there, because she is used to entering minds. That may be your most important asset. And she is always good company, because of the nature of her business.”
“Yes, of course.” But he was being polite. He had expected a competent guide, and it seemed that Imbri was going to be something less than that.
“I'm sorry,” Imbri said. “I will do my very best. But it's true; I can't guide you perfectly. I think that I turned out to be the best of a bad lot, as far as the Good Magician was concerned.”
There wasn't much he could say to that. It would be dishonest to deny what she said.
“I must ask you again,” Princess Ida said. “Do you really wish to make this excursion? Realistically, I think we have to say that your chances of success are no better than half, and if you fail, both trees may fade. This is at best a doubtful endeavor.”
He knew she was making sense. But the thought of giving up, of breaking his promise to his friend's clog tree, appalled him. “No. I must do it.”
“As you wish. Are there any arrangements you wish to make before you go?”
“No. I just want to get it done, and return to my tree.”
“Then lie on this bed, and sniff from the bottle the Good Magician gave you. Its spell will free your soul from your body, so that it can go to Ptero. I will remain close until you arrive there.”
“But how will you know?” Now that he had decided, he was finding new things to worry about.
Imbri will tell me. She will guide you there, then make a quick trip to let me know.”
He was already becoming happier to have the day mare with him. The notion of losing his soul halfway between his body and the little moon did not appeal.
He sat on the bed, then removed his knapsack and lay on it. It was very comfortable, but he was unable to relax. This was the weirdest kind of journey he had never before imagined. Still, he had to do it. He reached into the knapsack, which he now had beside him on the bed, and brought out the Good Magician's bottle. He nerved himself, took hold of the stopper, and pulled. It came loose with a pop, and he held the bottle to his nose and sniffed.
Suddenly he felt quite alien. He was half caught in a cloying, clinging swamp, truly bogged down. He fought to haul himself free of it. He needed expansion room.
“Be easy,” a voice said. “You don't want to tear off any.”
He looked, but his eyes didn't focus. In fact, he didn't seem to have any eyes. He tried to speak, but he didn't seem to have a mouth either.
“Just float,” the voice said. “Let your soul coalesce.”
His soul? He followed the advice, and found that he didn't have to struggle; he just floated out of the
swamp, and as the rest of him came free, it drew in together so that he was a single cloud.
“Now form an eye, so you can see better.”
He focused, and the eyeball formed. It focused, and he was able to see a large whitish wall.
“You are looking at the ceiling. Look down.”
He rotated his eye, and saw his body lying on the bed, asleep. He tried to exclaim in surprise, but couldn't. So he formed a mouth. “Oh!” For he realized that that was the bog he had just hauled himself out of.
“Now make yourself small.”
He willed himself small. That improved his focus. He saw a horse standing beside him. Her hoofs were planted firmly in mid-air. “Mare Imbri!“
“Yes. Follow me to Ptero.” She walked away.
He tried to walk, but had no legs, so he just floated in her wake. She was going toward a huge statue. In a moment he realized that it wasn 't a statue, but was Princess Ida. They were gong toward her head.
“Keep getting smaller,” Imbri said. “We have a long way to go.”
He realized that he wasn't actually hearing her, for he hadn't formed an ear; he was simply aware of her thoughts. He saw that she was getting smaller herself, so he did the same.
Ida's head seemed to grow enormous. Then he saw a small object, like a white ball. It was coming toward them, or they were going toward it.
It, too, grew, or seemed to, becoming more like a boulder. Then it was like an island. In fact, it was looming like a moon, which was perhaps unsurprising. Finally it seemed more like a whole world, filling his entire view. It was no longer pure white; he saw that the white was in patches, which seemed to be clouds. Their designs were much more interesting from above than clouds usually seemed from below, because they weren't flat, they were mountainous.
Now they were falling toward the planet, and it became ever larger. The spaces between the clouds expanded, and he could see green land and blue sea below. He realized that he and Imbri were still getting smaller, because Ptero was still looking larger. It was amazing how big it seemed, as they plunged toward its varied surface.
“Time to slow,” Imbri cautioned him. “We don't want to land too hard.”
“But we're just souls, aren't we? We have no solidity.”
“That's not true. There is a small amount of substance in a soul, and on a world as small as Ptero, that becomes significant. We will be assuming solid form there.”
He thought of the size of Ptero when he had seen it as a tiny moon circling Princess Ida's head. Now it seemed larger than all Xanth.
Which meant that they were so small as to be invisible specks. Maybe it was possible for their souls to take physical form on that scale. That was a relief, because he wasn't at all comfortable as a nebulous blob that had to form an eyeball just to see anything.
He tried to slow, but it didn't work. He was plunging faster than ever.
“How do I do it?”
“Just form into a wide, flat shape, like a leaf or feather. Then the air will catch you, and you'll drift down.”
He tried that, but was still falling uncomfortably fast. “It's not working very well.”
“Oh, I forgot: you have a whole soul. It's twice as dense as my half soul. So you are twice as heavy. See if you can form into a parachute.”
“What kind of a parrot?”
“Like this.” She became a kind of upside-down cup, with strings leading down to a lump of herself below. “It's a Mundane concept. The canopy catches the air, and the blob guides it down.”
He emulated her form, and it began to work. His broad cloth-like upper section caught the air, and dragged, and slowed the descent of the compact lower part of him. Even so, they were coming down a good deal faster than he liked. He expanded his mantle, but before it was able to do much good, he plunged into the blue sea near the white coast of the green land.
He descended way down below the surface of the water. He held his breath and spread his hands, trying to swim toward the surface. Then he heard Imbri: “Be a fish!”
Oh. He formed into a fish, and then he had no problem. She formed into a sea horse beside him. “Swim to land. I must tell Ida that we are safely here.”
“But-” But she was already gone.
So he strengthened his tall and fins and swam as strongly as he could toward land. He hoped there weren't any seamonsters here, because one of them could gobble him up. Though probably he could change into something else, like a stink horn, and get away.
He saw the sand of the bottom rising beneath him. The water was getting shallow; he was nearing the beach. He was glad; this business of shifting shapes did not come naturally to him, though he supposed it could be fun if he learned it well enough.
The water became too shallow to swim in. Now what should he do? Try to become a flatter fish? But it would keep on getting shallower, until no amount of flatness would work.
Then he laughed at his own stupidity. He was there! He was at the shore. He no longer needed to be a fish. He could assume his own shape.
He did so. In a moment he was standing ankle deep in the surf, complete with his knapsack. His knapsack? How had he managed to bring that along'? He reached into it, and found everything there, including the stoppered spell bottle and his spare pair of sandals. Apparently his soul was equipped with whatever his body had. That was reassuring.
Something plunged down to splash in the water behind him. Then the figure of a horse appeared. “I have told her,” Mare Imbri said. “Now we are safely on Ptero, and can go about your mission.”
“Great,” he said. “And exactly how do we do that?”
“I have no idea.”
Forrest gazed at the beach ahead of them. This was indeed going to be a challenge.
They waded the rest of the way out of the water and stood on the shore.
Forrest splashed, while Imbri's feet moved through the water splashlessly. The beach was a pretty white ribbon of sand, curving around so as to stay between the water and the land with remarkable precision. The air was comfortably warm.
Forrest mulled over what Imbri had said. “If you have no idea what to do, and I have no idea, how are we going to do it?”
“Maybe we can ask someone.”
Something was bothering him slightly, and he managed to figure out what it was. “When you talk, your mouth doesn't move.”
“That's because mares can't talk well with their mouths. They can only neigh. So I talk in your head, in dreamlets.”
“But now I'm using my mouth to talk to you. I can hear the sound.”
“That's because you are physical.”
“Physical? But only my soul came here.”
“The soul has a very small amount of substance. Just enough to make a solid body here, where everything is very small. So you have naturally assumed your regular form, complete with sandals and knapsack.”
“And you have assumed yours,” he said, catching on. “But you look a bit hazy.”
“That's because I have only half a soul, while my mare body is several times as massive as your faun body. So I have less than a tenth of your solidity. If you touch me, your hand will pass through me.”
“It will?” He reached out to pat her shoulder-and his hand sank into her body with only faint resistance. He snatched it out. “Sorry.”
She shrugged her shoulders, an interesting maneuver. “It doesn't hurt.
As long as you can see me and hear me, it's all right.”
“I wonder-if you don't mind-could you become all the way solid, here? If you assumed a smaller form? So you could use your mouth to speak?”
“Certainly, if you prefer.” She shrank, becoming a small human woman or girl, in a close black dress. “Will this do?” she asked, using her mouth. “I have only about half your mass, so I can't be any larger without diffusing.”
“That's fine. You look great.” He meant that her form was satisfactory in the solid sense, but actually it was more than satisfactory. She looked just like a rather prett
y girl, or a nymph, with lustrous black hair. Except for the slightly equine set of her nose, which was understandable. She was, after all, a type of horse.
Imbri took a step-and tripped, falling on her face. “Neigh!” she exclaimed, chagrined. “I'm not used to being physical.”
Forrest realized that that made sense. She had been a half soul, seemingly without substance, for thirty years, and when she had been a night mare before that, she had had four feet. She wasn't used to handling a real human body. “My fault,” he said. “Maybe you had better return to mare form.”
“But I don't want to make you feel awkward because I don't talk with my mouth,” she said. “I'm sure I can learn to handle this form, if I concentrate.”
But she had a scratch on her cheek, from a shell on the beach. That made him feel guilty. “I would rather feel awkward, than have you falling and scratching your face.”
She looked alarmed. “Oh! Did I do that?”
He dug into his knapsack and pulled out a mirror. He gave it to her, and she held it up so she could see her face. “I did! Oh, that's embarrassing.” She brushed her fingers across the scratch, wiping it out, so that her face was smooth again. That surprised him, but he realized that since she had shaped the body to begin with, she could readily re-shape it to eliminate an imperfection. Like most females, she was sensitive about her appearance, even in a form that was unnatural for her.
She returned the mirror, and he put it back into the knapsack. It banged into something, and he realized that it was his spare pair of sandals. That gave him an idea. “You can wear my other sandals!
They'll protect you from tripping!” He dug them out and offered them to her.
“They will?” She looked dubious.
“Yes. They are magic. They protect the feet. They won't let you misstep.”
“But those are faun sandals. I'm having enough trouble balancing on these human feet; I don't think I could do it at all with hoofs. Of course I'm used to hoofs, but only when I have four of them.”
“Sandals from my tree fit anyone. That's their nature. Try them.”
So she sat down and lifted her knees so she could reach her feet. In the process she showed a very nymphly pair of legs almost up to the panty line, in much the way the Demoness Sire would have done on purpose. He wondered if he should mention that, because it was clear that Imbri was not accustomed to the ways of a physical human body. Then she got the sandals on, discovering that they did indeed fit her human feet-and the position of her legs shifted so that much less showed. He realized that the sandals were now protecting her feet from harming the rest of her legs by undue exposure. Because the legs connected to the feet, and missteps were not merely of the ground. So he didn't have to say anything.