“We shouldn't do this,” she said, putting her arms around him. His own arms circled her, passing beneath the feathery softness of her wings.
“I know.” He kissed her. Half the dreams he might ever have had were realized in that moment.
After an eternity, she drew her face away just enough to speak. “You are Mundane. I am magical. We can not be together.”
“How can we be apart?” He kissed her again, and she met him avidly.
“In time the spell will fade,” she said as they broke for breath.
“How much time?”
She considered. “About four years. I think. But often the magic love is replaced by natural love in that time, so there may be no escape other than separation.”
“I couldn't stand that.” He was about to kiss her again, but this time she beat him to it.
“Neither could I,” she said after another precious pause.
“Oh, Willow, I know this is all magic, but I—don't even want to say what I want to do with you.” That was the other half of his dreams, not yet realized.
“I want to do it too,” she said. “The storks get a lot of business from love springs. But I beg you to wait while we consider alternatives.”
“Anything you ask of me, I want to do,” he said. He made a supreme effort and withdrew from her. “But I can't stop loving you.”
“I am making the greatest effort of my life to be objective,” she said. “I—I believe I would die in your realm.
You—would not be comfortable in mine. Your people and my people would oppose our union. We would be pariahs.
Our love can't be.”
“Yet it is,” he said.
“So we must end it. I think there is a way.”
“Oh, Willow—”
“We know it is not natural,” she said. “We know it can't work. So we must be sensible. If there is a way to get us out of love, that is best.”
“That is best,” he echoed. “But I hate the very notion.”
“So do I. But we are not brainless or soulless creatures.
We know what is right, and we have the will to do right.
So we must do it.”
He didn't want to but he forced out the words. “How can we cancel our love?” “I saw an old Forget Whorl nearby.”
“A what?”
“A fragment of the original Forget Spell on the Gap Chasm. It broke up at the Time of No Magic, but some Whorls remain. They are invisible, but I could tell, because I saw insects fly though it and lose their bearings.”
“It—makes you forget?”
“Yes. They used to make any creature who passed through them forget everything, but now they are good for only half an hour or so. That is, the creature forgets the last half hour he has lived. And that amount of time—”
“Would make us forget our love!” he exclaimed.
“Would make us forget our love,” she agreed sadly.
“Please understand, this is not a thing I want to do, but I think it is best, for us both. My rational mind is at war with my emotion, and I have always prided myself on being sensible.”
“So have I,” he said. “So I guess we shouldn't do anything that we might regret when we are out of love.”
“Yes. I'm glad you understand.”
“I understand that I don't want to mess up your life, and if loving you will do that, I should try to stop loving you.” He smiled grimly. “But it gripes me that maybe the hardest, noblest thing I will ever do in my life—-I won't remember.”
She nodded, agreeing about the irony, for them both.
“Let's get clean,” she said. “The spring can not do anything more to us. Then we can go to that whorl.”
“Yes.” He was clamping down as hard as he could on his emotion. “But you know, I think if I had gotten to know you without the love spring, I could have loved you anyway, because you are a remarkably smart and sensible woman, as well as being lovely.”
“Thank you,” she said as she scrubbed his back with her gentle hands. “Observing your restraint, when I know the desire you feel, I suspect I could have loved you, too, despite your origin. And you are not unhandsome.”
“Thank you.” He turned, and she turned, and he did her back, working carefully around her lovely wings, and splashed water on the feathers until they were clean too.
Then they both ducked under the surface to get their hair clean. Finally they hauled their clothing into the water and rinsed it, and donned it wet.
They waded out of the spring, and Willow led the way to the Forget Whorl. It was, as she had said, invisible, but he believed she knew whereof she spoke. “Who goes first?” he asked, half hoping she would change her mind.
“I can readily fly home, now that my wings are clean.
But you are in a strange land. I would prefer to watch, and make sure you are safely reunited with your family, before I go through that Whorl. Then I will be able to be in peace, I think.”
“So be it.” He looked at her. “But can we—one last time?”
She flung herself into his arms and kissed him several times. Then she hauled herself away. “Now go, quickly, before I shame myself and do what I must not,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks.
He nerved himself, turned away from her, and strode toward the Forget Whorl. Part of him hoped it wouldn't work.
“But it did work,” he said, concluding his intense memory. “I found my way back to the RV, and never thought of you again.”
“I know,” she said. “I watched you.” The tears he remembered were still on her face.
“But why are you here?” he asked.
“When I returned to the Forget Whorl, it was gone,” she said. “I think it was in its last stage, very faint, and 'you used it up. So I could not forget.”
“Oh, no,” he groaned. “I should have let you go first.”
“No, my love. I would not have you suffer so.”
They kissed again. “But how is it that I remember, now? And why did you follow me?”
“Once you complimented me on my sensibleness, but perhaps it was unwarranted. I was able to rein my emotions for the time we were first together, but not thereafter. I wanted you so much—” She shrugged. “I did try. I flew home and talked to my family, and to the elders of our tree. They knew of no other Forget Whorl I could use.
And they pointed out something I had not thought of: that if the Whorl was so close to extinction when you used it, it might not have done the full job. You might come to remember, after some time had passed. Then I would have done you no favor. So they suggested that I do two things.
First, that I meet you again, to see whether the forgetting held. If the sight of me made you remember, then you would have remembered later on your own. But if you did not remember, then the spell was holding, and you would be safe.”
“It did not hold,” Sean said. “It was weakening before I saw you; I know that now.”
“Yes. For your sake I hoped it would hold, but for my sake I hoped it would not. I was shamefully selfish.”
“Shamefully,” he agreed, kissing her again. “But what now? We still are not right for each other.”
“We still are not right,” she agreed. “I think we shall have to go to the Good Magician for the Answer. He surely has potions—”
“Damn it!” he swore, noting peripherally that he had managed to override the Adult Conspiracy on that one.
Maybe it was because love was adult business. “We tried to do the right thing. Why must we try again? Is our love really so wrong?”
“Not wrong—unworkable,” she clarified. “You must return to your realm, and I must remain in mine.”
“But hasn't this sort of thing ever happened before?
How do other forbidden couples work it out?”
She smiled wanly. “When animals meet at a love spring, they simply summon the stork and go their ways.
When human variants do, they try to make the best of it.
But I'm
not sure that those unions work out as well as normal love does. Sometimes there are unfortunate repercussions. But none of them have had the problem we do, a Xanth/Mundane liaison.”
“I would be willing to stay in Xanth, to be with you.”
“But you have no wings. You can't fly. You can't go where I go.”
“If you want to fly away from me, I can't stop you,” he said. “And wouldn't if I could. I would never want you to be tied down.”
“But I would be tied down—by love,” she pointed out.
“So I think the Good Magician is our alternative, though he does charge horrendously for his information.”
“I suppose you're right. But we can't do that until the present crisis is over. First Xanth has to be saved; then our incidental problem can be dealt with.”
“Are you being ironic?”
“You bet I am! What do we do in the interim?”
“Not what we would like to do. The constraints are still upon us.”
“I wish we could just forget those!”
She gazed levelly at him. “If it is your choice, I will not deny you, Sean.”
“I know you won't.” He understood all too perfectly.
She could stop herself from throwing herself at him, but would lack the will to resist his approach. Just as he could restrain himself, but could never actually push her away, if she— ”But I think I must deny myself. Let's get out of here; at least I can introduce you to my folks.”
“But how could they approve of me?”
“How could they not? We'll just have to explain the situation.”
“Yes, as I did to my people,” she said sadly. “They were horrified. They understood getting caught in a love spring, but not with a Mundane. They chided me for my carelessness.”
Sean laughed. “They were right. You should have flown right past, when you first saw me.”
“And let you drown? How could I?”
He shook his head. “You know, you're not doing anything to discourage my love. You're a lovely person.”
She flushed in that fetching way he remembered. “Neither are you discouraging me.”
They embraced and kissed again. But then he forced himself to pull partway away. “If we don't get out of here soon, all our noble resolutions will count for nothing.”
“Yes.” She grimaced cutely and pulled the rest of the way away.
He looked around the cave, then up at the hole in the sky that was the cave entrance. It was too high, and the walls were too steep, for them to reach. He considered lifting her up on his shoulders, but even so it was too high.
The cave was too narrow for her to spread her wings, so she couldn't fly out, either. They were definitely stuck.
“We've been here for maybe half an hour,” he said. “I wonder why my folks haven't come to check on me.”
“That's true,” she agreed, surprised. She glanced at the eye on her wrist. “In fact, an hour, I was so glad to be with you again that I lost all track of time. Surely they would not depart without you.”
“Surely they would not,” he agreed, “It should have taken them maybe five minutes to realize I was gone, and five more to check.”
“It is almost as if—yes! There it is!”
“There what is?”
“A thyme bomb. See, there's the sprig of thyme.” She pointed to a dried-up leaf lying on the cave floor.
“Let me guess,” Sean said. “In Xanth, thyme plants affect time, so when you get close to one—”
“Yes. Usually the living plants slow things down, and their seeds speed them up. But when leaves get separated and dry out, their effect reverses, and they stretch time out, in the manner of the seeds. So time expands explosively in their vicinity, and we call them thyme bombs. Usually they are harmless, because all folk have to do is walk away from them. But—”
“But we can't,” he finished. “So we're stuck in the fast lane.”
“In a cave,” she corrected him gently.
He didn't bother to clarify his reference. “So how do we get away from it, so we don't die of hunger before anyone finds us?”
“Oh, I can nullify it,” she said brightly, “I have a napsack in my purse.” She produced a small purse and rummaged in it, pulling out all manner of things: clothing, slippers, fruits, a mirror, a fancy hat, a bedroll, and a collection of pretty stones. “Ah, there it is,” she said, drawing out a strapped pack.
Sean was amazed. “How can all that fit in that little purse?”
“It's magic, of course. Don't Mundane women have purses?” Sean remembered how much Mom could carry in hers.
“Yes. But if you have a complete change of clothing in there, why didn't you use it when we came out of the pool, instead of putting your wet things back on?”
“I knew you lacked a change of clothing, so I did not wish to embarrass you.”
“How do I love thee,” he murmured. “Let me count the ways.”
“I tried to count, but there were too many ways,” she said. “Even though I know it's all just because of the love spring.” She opened the napsack and put the sprig of thyme in. Then she rolled up the napsack and put it back in her purse. “That should take care of it.”
“I don't understand,” he said. “Why does putting it in there change anything?”
“Because anything in a napsack sleeps,” she explained.
“In fact, I seldom put it on, because then it makes me take a nap too. But it is useful for storing perishable food, as it won't spoil while sleeping, and the thyme bomb has little effect while napping.”
Sean shook his head. “Knapsack—napsack. I keep forgetting how things work in Xanth. But if our time is now normal, how come I don't feel any different?”
“We didn't change,”, she explained patiently. “The time around us did. Now we are aligned with the time outside. Thyme bombs normally speed time up tenfold, so perhaps six minutes passed during our hour. If it requires ten minutes for your family to find you—”
“Got it. Let's make our remaining three or four minutes count.” He held her and kissed her.
“Hey, whatcha doing down there?” David called from above.
“Trust my little half brother to arrive at the least opportune time,” Sean muttered, turning her loose. But he was glad to have been found. “I'm kissing my girlfriend, punk!” he called up. “What's it look like?”
“Like making time with a strange woman,” David called. “But it's too dark down there to see any detail. Do you have your clothes on?”
“Yes, we have our clothes on,” Sean called. “Now, go fetch some rope or something to haul us out of here.”
“Okay.” The head disappeared.
He turned back to her. “Quick, let's finish our kiss.”
Willow laughed and obliged.
Then the other members of the family were there at the cave entrance. “What happened?” Dad called.
“I fell in a hole with a girl,” Sean called back.
“Gee,” Karen called. “Is she pretty?”
“Yes.”
Willow blushed.
Then Dad was letting down a knotted rope. “We've got it anchored. Can you climb?”
“Can you climb?” Sean asked Willow.
“Yes. I have recovered from my fatigue, and this is closer to my elm than we were before.”
“Then you go up first. I'll wait till you're clear.”
“Thank you.” She kissed him again, quickly, and put her hands on the rope. He put his hands on her petite waist and helped her up. He let go when she climbed beyond his reach. He looked up to be sure she was all right, but realized that it was now possible to see under her skirt, and hastily averted his gaze. In Xanth it just wasn't done, and he would never embarrass her in any way he could avoid. Even though he had seen the whole of her before, and knew she didn't wear those forbidden panties. He would look at her only when she wished him to. Because he loved her.
“Your turn,” Dad called down.
Sean grasped t
he rope and hauled himself up. It was hard work, and he realized that Willow had climbed faster than he was. She had not been fooling about the way her strength increased near her tree; she was probably stronger than he was, now, despite her delicate physique.
He heaved himself up through the hole, panting, and Dad caught him. The whole family was there, as well as Chlorine and Nimby, the pets, and Sim. And Willow.
“What happened?” Dad asked.
“I love her,” Sean said before he thought. “We washed in a love spring, back near the goblin dam.”
“A love spring!” Chlorine said. She was wearing what looked like a Mundane windbreaker jacket. “But didn't you know—”
“We thought it was a regular pool. Willow helped me out of the rushing water. She maybe saved my life. But we both got all muddy, so—”
“But you returned alone,” Mom said.
“I went through a Forget Whorl. But she couldn't. And when I saw her again—it all came back. It would have come back anyway, before long. I still love her.”
“We had better get back to the RV,” Dad said. “I presume Willow will join us.”
“Yes she will,” Sean said, going to her. “We can't separate again.”
The others hesitated, but Chlorine clarified the matter.
“When two people meet at a love spring, they are in love.
Nothing else matters much. Not even species. It is useless to object. They must marry.”
“No,” Willow said.
Chlorine glanced at her. “You were not in the love spring?”
“I was in it. I love him. But I am a winged monster.
He is Mundane. We cannot marry.”
“Monster!” David cried laughing.
“That's what they call themselves, dolt,” Karen said in superior fashion. “All the winged creatures. It doesn't mean they are ugly.”
“Then why did you follow him here?” Chlorine asked Willow.
“I could not help it. But if we go to the Good Magician, we can get a potion to nullify the love.”
“We can't go anywhere until Xanth is saved,” Dad said.
“After that, of course,” Willow said.
“And he charges a year's Service, or the equivalent,” Chlorine pointed out. “I'm on Service for him now. How could Sean do that, when he has to return to Mundania with his family?”