They got out of the RV. All except Adam, who looked out just long enough to spy a solid metallic rock. Then he assumed the qualities of that rock, and became hard and heavy. Keaira tapped her knuckle against his shoulder, verifying it, almost skinned a joint, and smiled with acknowledgment. Adam looked as it he were about to float away despite being boulder-solid.
With Adam's change, the RV was firmly planted, and the two centaurs no longer had to hang tightly on to the ropes. Chlorine gave the jacket she had been wearing to David, and explained to them what Nimby had written.
“Fine,” Chena said, smiling. “Get on my back, David.” There was something perky in her attitude, as if she really did find him cute.
He adjusted that jacket, which remained pleasantly warm from its contact with the beautiful woman, and smelled faintly of—of what? Of a commercial swimming pool. Of course—chlorine! The chemical used to purify the water. Only now it was like perfume.
Dad lifted him up and set him behind Chena's lovely white wings, which were folded but remained a bit out from her body. Then Dad did the same for Keaira, putting her on Crystal.
“Remember, you are very light,” Chena told him, turning her head and the upper part of her torso so she could look him in the eye. That meant, unfortunately, that he had to meet her gaze, because he didn't want to give away what he really wanted to peek at. It was frustrating. “So you must hold firmly on to my mane.”
“Mane,” he repeated dumbly. Her hair flowed down from her head, and somewhere became the mane, but he wasn't sure where.
“In front of you. And try to wrap your legs around my barrel, if they will reach.”
“Barrel.” When she turned back to face the front, he could look—but now nothing was in sight. That was doubly frustrating.
“Take hold,” she said, as she spread her wings.
Then, finally, he did. His hands found grips in the shorter hair of her mane at the base of her human portion.
She pumped her wings, and leaped, and sailed into the air. It seemed remarkably easy, until he remembered that she had made herself almost as light as he was, so that she weighed almost nothing. The motion of her wings was mainly to move her, rather than to lift her.
But though he could see the full beautiful sweep of those wings, he couldn't see the front of her torso. Here he thought he would have his best chance yet to peek without obstruction or discovery, and instead it was no chance.
“Bleep!” he muttered.
“You might consider looking across at Crystal,” Chena murmured.
She knew! Boys were not supposed to blush, but he was afraid he was doing so. But it was a good suggestion.
“Thanks,” he said, and looked.
He was rewarded by a splendid view. Crystal's wings were pumping gracefully, and her front was completely open to view. She was also slightly better endowed than Chena. In fact—
Then Crystal looked their way, and he had to wrench his gaze away. He couldn't peek if someone was watching him peek!
So, frustrated anew, he looked around elsewhere. To the other side was Willow, who flew readily in her dress because it was cut to leave holes for her wings.
Now that they were all airborne. Willow flew close. Crystal approached from the other side, so that they could talk to each other. “Nimby wrote me a note explaining how to do it,” Willow said. “Happy Bottom is like a giant puzzle, with alternating bands of wind and cloud around her center.
We have to find our way to the center, where her eye is, so David can use his jacket to push it. Wherever the eye goes, Happy Bottom goes; she can't help it. So we'll just keep pushing her north to the Region of Air, where Fracto will try to tame her. The problem will be finding her eye, and staying with it. She may try some tricks to hide it or move it away from us. David has to push in the right place, or it won't work, and Keaira has to stay near him so he has calm weather. I'm the only one who is free to explore. But if I go outside the fair-weather zone, I'll be in trouble, so you need to stay reasonably close to me while I search.”
“Gotcha,” David said.
“We shall do our best,” Keaira agreed.
Willow flew on ahead. There was a solid-looking vertical wall of cloud, moving rapidly from west to east. It reached down almost to the ground, and up almost to the top of the sky. “Boy, she's a big b—bleep,” David said, awed. He knew Happy Bottom was a hurricane now, even if she had been a mere tropical storm when she entered Xanth; she had intensified. “Can one little jacket move all that?”
“The center is much smaller,” Chena said. “And calmer. Nimby says.”
“Oh. That should make it easier.” But he wasn't quite sure it was so.
Willow flew back. “There's a hole in the wall!” she cried, excited. “Maybe we can get through it.”
“Can't Keaira make it calm wherever we go?” David asked. “So we don't need to look for holes?”
“Perhaps,” Willow said. “But it's better to go in without disturbing the ill wind's cloud banks, so she doesn't notice us. The moment she becomes aware of us, she could start fighting us.”
“But she's just a storm!” he protested.
“So is Fracto,” Chena reminded him.
“Oh, yeah.” Here in Xanth even inanimate things had awareness. It was certainly better not to make Happy Bottom aware of them.
So the two centaurs followed Willow through the fleeting gap in the clouds. It closed in after them; they had made it just in time. Now they were between two walls of cloud, and the one ahead was moving faster than the one behind.
David remembered something about hurricanes, because he had seen their patterns shown on Miami radar. They alternated cloud bands with air bands, and most of the action was in the cloud bands. They got smaller toward the center, but also fiercer. “If we just keep going straight through them,” he said, “we'll find the center. We can't help it. There's nowhere else it can be.”
“I hope so,” Chena said doubtfully. “It can be hard to tell direction, in the middle of fog and rain.”
For sure! But soon another gap opened up ahead. They plunged through it. But this one closed up before they completed their passage, and suddenly they were caught in grayness. Keaira's controlled weather kept the winds from them, but rain sluiced down from above, drenching them.
He heard the rain pelting the centaur's wings, and Chena dipped until she flicked herself and resumed level flight.
Happy Bottom was simply too big; Keaira couldn't clear a passage to the sunlight.
“Uh-oh,” Chena said. “I think she's on to us.”
David thought the same. Maybe the storm couldn't touch them directly, but she sure could cloud things up.
Suppose they couldn't find their way out of this cloud bank?
Then they emerged, and it was clear. They had made it through, this time. “Let's pick a bigger gap, next time,” David said.
“If Willow can find one,” Chena agreed.
Willow searched diligently, almost getting caught at the edge of the calm section. David saw her do a flip in the air as one wing caught the edge. Yes, there was power in the storm, and it would blow them right out of Xanth if they got caught in it.
“Maybe I could help some,” David said. “With the jacket. I think all I have to do is open it.” There had been one of Nimby's notes about that, somewhere along the way. When closed, the windbreaker was passive, but when opened, its magic took effect.
“I think it's better to wait until we reach the eye,” Chena said. “Happy Bottom may know of our presence, but not of our power. So she may consider us a nuisance, not a threat. Best to keep it that way.”
She was making sense. So they hunted along the cloud wall, searching for that brief avenue through. While Happy Bottom's winds seemed to get stronger.
In due course another avenue appeared. But this time they were cautious; it could be a trap. So Willow made a feint at it, with the two centaurs following closely behind.
Sure enough, it closed up, the fog im
ploding from every side. But they had sheered off just before it, skirting the fringe of the cloud wall. There was no doubt now: Happy Bottom was trying to get them. But her ploy had been simple, so she probably underestimated them.
They flew along the side, and found a thinning of the wall, where fog had been borrowed to make the implosion.
They plunged into this. The storm had to know of their passage, but couldn't react fast enough to catch them, having been caught off-guard. By the time the wind and fog closed in, they were through.
They were in the next clear band. Apparently the hurricane's power was limited mostly to the cloud bands, where the magic dust swirled thickest. But they would be unlikely to catch her napping again.
They flew up to the next band, but it was solid fog.
They couldn't get through. They didn't dare risk another bold charge into the fog.
“Maybe we can sneak below it,” Willow suggested.
“The hills and trees must interfere with the wind bands, so there should be gaps she can't help.”
They flew down. Sure enough, there was a clear region in the lee of a mountain. They zoomed through that, just below the bottom of a cloud wall, skimming the terrain, and flew up into the next clear region.
“Look!” Chena cried. “That must be the eye!”
It surely was. It looked like a monstrous eyeball, turning in the center of the huge ring of clouds that was the innermost cloud wall. This was what they had to move north.
They came up behind the orb and hovered in the calm air. Then they oriented north, and David unzipped and opened his jacket. “Go!” he cried.
Nothing happened.
The two centaur fillies looked at him. Willow flew close.
“Is there an invocation you have to use?”
“Nimby didn't say so,” David said, disgruntled. What was wrong? Far from blowing anything, the jacket was completely calm.
Then David's ears popped. “Ouch! Feels like descending in an airplane,” he said, shaking his head.
“I think the local pressure is rising,” Keaira said.
“That's odd, because I'm not doing it.”
“There's a waft of breeze coming toward us,” Crystal said. “I feel it in my mane.”
“But none going away from us,” Willow said. “And what we need is a strong outward blast.”
Then Chena caught on. “It's breaking the wind! Air is coming in, but not going away. It's pooling around the jacket, building up pressure.”
“And high pressure will push the low-pressure eye away,” Crystal added. “That must be how it works. All we have to do is let it build up enough.”
“It's building, for sure,” David said. “My eardrums are getting bonged.” He held his nose and blew hard until he felt another pop in his head.
“Look!” Chena cried again. “The eye is moving!”
And it was. There was no actual wind, but the high pressure zone around them was shoving the eye away.
The eye felt it, too. It spun around to fix its stormy gray iris on them. It blinked. The pupil widened. It saw them!
“Keep pushing it!” Willow said.
David tried, but the eye slid around to the side, instead of moving north. Chena flew to get directly south of it again, but it slid farther to the side. It was just plain hard to push in the direction they wanted.
“Maybe if we all try to channel the air flow,” Willow suggested. “To surround the eye.”
They tried it. Willow hovered to David's left, and Crystal to his right, and all three winged monsters did their best to push the dense air forward, surrounding the eye.
“It's working!” David cried.
But then the eye, irritated, reddened and expanded. It grew to twice its former size, then ten times as big. Now it was impossible to push the whole thing.
“Maybe if I used my reverse wood to mess it up,” David said, tugging at the two sticks in his belt.
“Careful with that,” Keaira said, touching her own bound sticks. “This wood is dangerous, if—”
Too late. David had grabbed just one stick. The other snagged in his belt. The tape let go, and the two sticks separated.
“Eeeeee!” Chena screamed, putting a good six e’s into it. She dropped out from under him like a rock.
He had separated the reverse wood, and one stick had landed on Chena, and it had reversed the centaur's magic lightness, making her magically heavy. He himself was falling too, but not as fast, because as a Mundane, he was more resistive both to magic and reversed magic.” But even the limited effect on him was too much; he was falling toward the ground at normal falling velocity, and that would be enough to pulp him when he struck the ground.
So he did the sensible thing: he threw away the stick.
His plummet became a slow descent, as most of the lightness returned to his body. But he was still going down.
Already he saw the trees below.
But that wasn't all. Happy Bottom's malignant eye reappeared, casting about, looking for him. She must have pretty will figured out the nature of the windbreaker.
The windbreaker! It was still open, still generating a high-pressure zone around him. That was what was enabling the eye to orient on him; it could probably see the crowded air. So he closed the jacket and zipped it up.
But there was still too much pressure in his vicinity.
Happy Bottom's eye continued to cast about, looking to one side and the other, finding the pressure gradients. She would soon locate him, and then—she would probably blow him headfirst into a cliff. Jacket and all. He had fallen out of Keaira's calm-weather zone, so Happy Bottom could get at him now.
He looked desperately for some escape, but there seemed to be none. He no longer had the reverse wood, thanks to his idiocy, and he had no wings to fly with. All he could do was float gently down, while the hurricane worked up her strength for a doomsday strike.
Then a bit of fog formed below him. But it didn't look like Happy Bottom's fog; the color and texture differed.
What could it be?
The fog thickened into a low-lying cloud. The convolutions of the cloud formed a fuzzy face. He knew that face from somewhere.
A cloud eye winked.
“Fracto!” he cried. How had he gotten here? He must have sneaked in, camouflaging himself as a section of Happy Bottom. Like most clouds, Fracto could be large or small, noisy or quiet, depending on his mood. Right now he was being as quiet as mist.
Happy Bottom didn't realize. David hoped his exclamation hadn't given Fracto away. But just what could the enemy-turned-friend do? The hurricane was about to blow him away regardless. Fracto, in his present form, had only a tiny fraction of the hurricane's strength, so couldn't counter that ill wind.
Then David fell into the cloud. The fog of its substance surrounded him, so that he couldn't see anything beyond it.
Which meant that no one could see him, either. Happy Bottom would not know where to blow, and he was such a small target that she'd never get anywhere blowing blindly.
His feet touched ground. David tumbled, but wasn't hurt, being still quite light. He was alone in the magic jungle of Xanth.
The fog lifted just enough to let him see around if he kept his head low. Fracto was still shielding him from the ill wind's view, giving him a chance to find his way back into action. But to do that, he had to find Chena Centaur.
Or rather, she had to find him. He hoped she was all right.
She should be, once she got away from that reverse wood stick. But if he was hidden from Happy Bottom, he was hidden from Chena too. But maybe she would know to look for him under Fracto.
So what should he do? Stand here and wait, or try to find a better rendezvous point? It might be dangerous to blunder around an alien jungle, but it might also be dangerous to sit and wait for whatever came to find him.
So he would at least try to find a less exposed region, a safer place. Then if he saw a flying centaur, he could hail her, and all would be reasonably well.
/>
He started walking—and his right toe kicked something.
Pain shot up his leg, and he fell to the ground. What bad he stubbed his toe on?
There was nothing there but a regular pinecone. That couldn't be it. He reached for it—but when his fingers touched it, another jolt of pain encompassed them and shot up his arm. That was it!
He got up, staying clear of the cone. What kind of tree had produced that? To look so ordinary, yet bring so much hurt to anyone who touched it.
In a moment it came to him. That wasn't a pinecone, it was a pain cone. No wonder it had made him hurt.
He looked down at the turf by his feet, in case there should be anything else to avoid. And shuddered. There was somebody's severed finger! No, maybe not severed, as it wasn't bleeding. It was curved into the form of a circle.
Then he laughed. He knew what that was: a ring finger.
A finger circled into a ring. Maybe ogres wore it.
He walked carefully around the ring. Ahead was a sign.
It said TWIN CITY. A city? Maybe that would be a good, safe place to go. So he followed the path that led away from the sign.
He came across two girls of about his own age, playing by the side of the path. If there was anything he wasn't interested in, especially at this time, it was girls his own age. So he tried to pass them by.
But they didn't let him do that. “Hi, boy—who are you?” one called.
“And what's your business?” the other added.
Should he make up something to try to get rid of them?
No, maybe they wouldn't believe the truth, so that was best. “I'm David Mundane, and I'm trying to save Xanth from being blown away.”
Sure enough, they tuned it out. “I'm Mariana,” the first girl said. “And this is my twin sister Anairam. Come see what we do.”
He was stuck for it, because he didn't want to make a scene and maybe get tangled up worse. He went to see what they were doing. To his surprise, it turned out to be interesting.
“I do rock shaping,” Mariana explained. She lifted a stone, and ran her hands across it, and it changed shape as