Then Keaira reeled in the stick, until it lined up with the other. She had to do this because otherwise the wood would reverse their own magic, like it—as it had before.
Yuck! Now he wasn't even waiting for Chena to correct him; he was doing it to himself. Disgusting.
Meanwhile the air pressure was building up. David held his breath and blew out his ear tubes, happy to suffer this inconvenience.
Keaira hauled in the two sticks and held them together.
Then Chena stroked with her wings, and moved slowly forward toward the eye. Happy Bottom had not yet realized what they had done, and the eye was just staying there. As they advanced, it retreated, wafted along by the high pressure.
That was the way of it. Each time the eye expanded, the reverse wood contracted it again, so that it couldn't escape.
They pushed it north to the Gap Chasm. By then night was falling; they could see the curtain of darkness dropping from the sky in the east. The sun, afraid of the dark, fled to the west. It would be too hard to herd Happy Bottom by night. She was unlikely to pursue them southward, if she ever realized they were withdrawing. So they flew rapidly south, following Willow, who best knew the terrain.
They were hardly concerned about the bands of clouds, because those had been pretty much broken up with the focus on the eye.
Even so, it was after dark by the time they made it to the RV. Fortunately it had a light on, so they could spy it from afar, and they landed safely beside if.
Sean must have heard them coming, because he was standing out waiting. Willow flew down into his embrace.
There followed a disgusting amount of hugging, kissing, and breathless endearments. David made a mental note, never stray near a love spring.
Chapter 14
REVERSAL
Tweeter rather liked this magic land of Xanth, where birds were so prominently represented. It had been fun meeting Roxanne Roc and playing with Sim Chick, and Tweeter had taught Sim some dirty bird jokes that no nonbird would understand. But now he was about ready to go home, where things were more settled. He really wasn't an adventurous bird; good seed, a daylong snooze in the cage, and some fun with Karen at the end of the day were all he really craved. Even this business of being intelligent was becoming wearing, in part because it made him so much more aware of things. How could a bird be happy and secure in his ignorance, when he was too smart? True, it had been nice getting to know Woofer and Midrange better, and they had proved to be loyal friends, but all of them now recognized that they were not looking for independent existence. Let the human folk suffer the stresses of intelligent life.
Now it was dawn, and time for the winged monsters— nice identification, that—to take David and Keaira out to finish herding Happy Bottom into the Region of Air. By nightfall the job would be done, and Xanth would be saved. Tomorrow they could go home.
The winged posse headed out. David was clearly feeling pretty important, because he had figured out how to use the reverse wood to stop Happy Bottom's eye from escaping them. Now the hurricane had no choice but to be pushed ever northward, until she got locked into the Region of Air, where Fracto would seduce her and tame her.
Fracto was probably more interested in that aspect than in saving Xanth, but certainly Fracto was helping them to accomplish the mission. Give the ornery cloud his due.
The winds had died with the retreat of the storm, and the magic dust was settling out. It fertilized the landscape with another layer of magic, so that the plants were recovering vigorously and the animals were getting frisky. They knew that the terrible threat to Xanth was being abated, so their lives were reverting to normal.
Now it was time to move the RV north, to be closer to the scene of action. With the storm abated, they needed neither Keaira's patch of calm weather nor the winged centaurs. Adam looked at a cloud and became as tenuous as it was. Without his rock-solid ballast, the RV floated gently into the sky. The Demoness Mentia became a crazy inflated giant hand and pushed it north. Tweeter went out for a fly and watched. It was weird seeing the ungainly contraption floating like a huge loaf of bread, with that big hand grabbing it. It was weirder when Karen came out to join him; she had no wings, but remained air-light because of Modem's spell of changed reality, so she floated. She had a tether so she couldn't drift; her sensible mother had insisted on at least that much. This was the first, and probably the last, time they would fly together like this.
By midday they were nearing Castle Roogna. They went inside the RV to clean up so they would be presentable for the royalty there. Tweeter settled onto his perch and did a careful preening. The adventure was nearing its conclusion.
Suddenly Nimby the transformed dragon got nervous.
“What is it?” Chlorine asked. She had been paying Nimby more attention, now that Sean was no longer interested in looking at her legs. What humans saw in human legs, Tweeter didn't understand; they were such fat fleshy things that couldn't even take hold of a branch, with laughably inadequate claws. For that matter, the rest of the featherless bodies of the humans weren't very aesthetic either, which was why they usually covered them up. But evidently they had learned to live with their liabilities.
Nimby wrote a note. Chlorine read it, and was alarmed.
“Land immediately? But soon we'll be at Castle Roogna. It's just jungle below us here.”
Dad came alert. “If Nimby says it, we had better do it.
Adam, can you shift slowly to stone nature?”
Adam could; he had emulated a stone so long that he remembered it. The RV lost its buoyancy and began to descend.
Mentia popped in. “Hey, what gives? You're sinking!”
“We have to land now,” Chlorine said. “Nimby says.”
“When we're so close to the comforts of Castle Roogna? Ask him why.”
Chlorine turned to the nondescript man. “Why?”
He handed her another note. She read it aloud. “ 'Because the Law of Averages has been overturned on appeal.' “
All of the humans drew blanks. A question mark appeared over Chlorine's head. “What law?”
“That's not something that can be repealed,” Dad said.
“It's a law of nature.”
“You forget where you are,” Mom said grimly.
“Who appealed it?” Chlorine asked Nimby. “Who overturned it?”
It turned out that the junior computing program Sending was the culprit. He had not liked losing possession of Woofer and Tweeter, or getting disconnected by the reverse wood, or losing his windbreaker jacket. According to the Law of Averages, he was bound to win some and lose some, but he didn't like losing, so he had appealed to the Muses of Mount Parnassus. He had claimed that no ordinary person could have answered his twenty questions, so something extraordinary was afoot, messing up reality.
He wanted that reality changed.
“But that's just your nature,” Chlorine protested to Nimby. “You know everything around you.”
Nimby shrugged. Evidently the Muses had seen merit in the challenge, so had granted the appeal. The Law of Averages had been reversed.
“That's liable to have one bleep of a consequence,” Dad said grimly. “The fundamental order of the universe is governed by—” He was interrupted by a sudden buffet of wind that shook the RV. He staggered, almost getting thrown into a wall.
“Get it down!” Sean said. “Happy Bottom's coming back!”
Adam increased his solidity, and the RV dropped. Even so, the wind tried to bash it. Mentia extended an eyeball from her face and peered outside. “Ground coming close; lighten up.” she said.
Adam did, and the RV made a halfway soft landing in the jungle. Tweeter looked out, and saw that it hadn't missed a tree by much. The winds howled as if angry to have let the RV get away. As if? They were angry.
“David!” Mom cried, distraught. “Willow! The centaurs! Are they being blown away?”
“Willow!” Sean echoed, agonized.
“Keaira's with them,” Dad reminded
them. “She can keep their weather calm. But they may have trouble getting back here.”
Sean looked at Nimby. “Sending got the Law of Averages revoked—and now everything's going haywire? All the unlikely wrong things are happening? And we're all in deep bleep? Just when we figured we'd won the game?”
Nimby nodded four times.
“Why didn't you warn us?” Mom demanded hysterically. “Before we sent them out into disaster? My poor child!”
“Nimby is omniscient, not prescient,” Dad reminded her. “He can't see the future. And probably this appeal Sending made was done privately, with no obvious evidence until the decision was made, so it didn't attract Nimby's attention. Even if a person can see everything, he can't pay attention to it all; the volume is overwhelming.”
“Spoken like a true physics professor,” she retorted bitterly. “That's our son out there.”
“And my love,” Sean added.
Adam also looked pained; Keaira was out there too, and she had shown an interest in him, which he evidently returned.
Dad spread his hands. “I'm concerned too. But it isn't fair to blame Nimby. Without him we couldn't have gotten even this far.”
Mom suffered a pang of reasonableness. “Yes, of course.” She faced the dragon man. “I apologize. Nimby. I spoke intemperately.”
Nimby looked embarrassed. Dragons surely did not receive many apologies from human women.
“You guys are missing the point,” Karen said. She faced Nimby. “What can we do about it?”
Nimby wrote a long note and gave it to Chlorine. “ 'The success of the mission now hangs by a thread that is rapidly unraveling. We must go to fetch a new thread, before the old one breaks. Then all can be salvaged.' “
“Who must fetch the thread?” Sean asked.
“ 'Nimby, Chlorine, and Tweeter,' “ Chlorine read from the next note.
Tweeter almost fell off his perch. “Meep?” Sean smiled.
“Yep, youp, birpbrain,” he said. “Go . fetch the thread.”
“When?” Chlorine asked, almost as surprised.
Nimby walked toward the door.
“Now,” Chlorine answered herself. She looked around.
“I promise to do my very best. Come perch on me, Tweeter.”
He looked uncertainly at Karen.
“Do it. Tweet,” Karen said. “But take care of yourself. What would I do without you?” She looked as if she had more than one or two tears to stifle.
Tweeter flew over to perch on Chlorine's greenish hair.
It didn't have the special familiarity of Karen's reddish hair, but it was very nice regardless.
“May you succeed soon,” Mom breathed as they stepped out into the howling wind. “We'll wait here.”
“Thank God for a good anchor,” Sean said, as another gust of wind tried to get at the RV.
Outside, Nimby assumed his dragon form, and Chlorine mounted him. “Are we going far?” she asked through her windblown hair. Tweeter was scrambling to get a better grip, lest he be blown right out of it. That was one savage ill wind out here!
The dragon shrugged, unable to answer. But Tweeter knew it couldn't be too far, or they would not be able to get the thread in time.
A swirl of magic dust stirred up ahead of them. Nimby plunged into it. Tweeter experienced disorientation; this was awful stuff, which didn't merely coat the wings and beak; it affected a person's interior too.
“Where are we going?” Chlorine asked, evidently as uncomfortable as Tweeter was. But Nimby couldn't write a note, in his dragon form.
So as the swirl of dust settled out. Nimby assumed his human form and began writing a note. Meanwhile Chlorine saw a path leading to a pleasant-berry patch, so she walked toward it. The berries looked good to Tweeter too, so he stayed with her, riding on her head.
She picked the first pleasant-berry and put it in her mouth. Suddenly an unpleasant man appeared. “You have stolen my berry!” he cried. “Now I shall steal something of value to you.” He advanced on her, looking as if he happened to be thinking of the roughest, ugliest stork.
“Stop, or I'll poison your water,” she warned him.
“You can't poison anything after eating a pleasantberry,” he retorted as he grabbed for her, and evidently it was true, because he did not double over in pain.
Chlorine tried to escape, but the path behind her had abruptly overgrown with horrendous brambles. So she screamed instead. Even that had a pleasant sound, as if she didn't really mean it.
“That won't save you, you luscious creature,” the man said. “You are trapped. Nothing less than a dragon could rescue you—and what dragon would bother? Dragons don't like being pleasant.” He reached for her.
Then there was a thud and crash, and Nimby came charging across. He did not look at all pleasant. Comical, maybe, but not pleasant. The man took half a look at the huge dragon body and fled. Tweeter was glad the man hadn't gotten a good look at Nimby's innocuous head; he would have realized that this dragon wasn't much of a threat even away from a pleasant-berry patch.
Nimby paused just long enough for Chlorine to get on him, then moved on. “You saved me. Nimby!” she cried, relieved. “This damsel needed a dragon, and you're my dragon.” She paused. “But I guess you lost the note you were writing.”
Nimby nodded, looking embarrassed.
“Well, I wouldn't have gotten in trouble if I hadn't asked you a stupid question and made you change to manform, and then wandered away from you, like the shallow creature I am,” she said. “So you just stay the way you are. Nimby; I'm sure you know where you are going, and will get us safely there.”
But Nimby's donkey snoot looked doubtful, and that alarmed Tweeter. Suddenly he suspected that this mission might not be as simple or safe as they had assumed.
“No offense. Nimby, but I think I could use a weapon, just in case,” Chlorine said. Tweeter agreed; Nimby wouldn't be able to bluff too many more hostile creatures.
“So you won't have to rescue me from any more berry patches. Ah—there's a gourdless phone; let me make a call on that.” And she swept up a small gourd that had no vine. “Hey, do you have any ribbons or bows in stock?” she said into it.
The dust cleared farther, and the forest seemed to be returning to a reasonable semblance of normal. Tweeter had a dropping to drop, so he flew to a tree ahead to take care of it. It wouldn't be proper to drop it in Chlorine's beautiful silken hair, after all.
He landed on a branch and took care of his business.
But then a larger bird appeared. “Haa!” he cried in bird talk. “You have besmirched my tree, and now I shall besmirch you, you tasty morsel of a mouthful.” He looked as if he were thinking of savory fresh gizzards garlanded with hot drops of blood.
Tweeter tried to flee, but the predator took off too, and he had more powerful wings. “I am rapt with the rapture of wrapping your ragamuffin remains with my ravenous rapier,” the raptor rapped.
Tweeter flew desperately toward Nimby, but knew he wouldn't get there in time, and anyway, what could a donkey head do to stop a swift predatory bird?
Then a shaft flew by him, so close it ruffled his tail feathers. It was an arrow, and it passed close to the pursuing raptor too.
“The next one won't miss, hawk-eye,” Chlorine said.
“This bow is cross, if not actually angry, and it is eager to score.” Indeed she held a crossbow.
The raptor considered, then veered off. It knew that irate bow wouldn't fire another mere warning shot; it would go for the kill. Chlorine had saved Tweeter from a fate worse than life. He landed in her hair, thankful for her help.
They moved on through the forest. Later they paused by another berry patch to eat. There was a man there, but he did not look hostile. “Do you mind if we eat some of these berries?” Chlorine inquired, smiling nicely. But Tweeter knew she was braced for possible trouble, with her crossbow near at hand.
“Not at all,” he replied. “I'm just passing through. They are good berries
.”
“I'm Chlorine, and these are Nimby and Tweeter. We're looking for a new story thread. Have you seen any?”
“I'm Ray. All I have seen are worn old story threads, I'm sorry to say. They don't make them the way they used to. The person you want to ask is the Pawpaw Wizard.”
“The who?”
“He's a storyteller,” Ray explained. “He surely knows where all the best story threads are.”
“Then we must go to him,” Chlorine said. Tweeter saw Nimby nod; this was evidently where the dragon had been taking them anyway. “Could you tell us where to find him?”
“I'll do better than that,” Ray said. “I'll show you where he is. It's not far from here.”
Tweeter realized that the man was probably being so nice because Chlorine looked so nice, for her species. Still, they could use the help. Nimby had no objection, which was a good sign.
“Where are you going?” Chlorine inquired as they ate.
“I am looking for a money tree I was told grows in this vicinity,” Ray said. “I've been looking all day, but I just can't find it.”
“But money isn't any use,” Chlorine said. “It just gets dirty.”
“I know. But I have a pet money spider, and all it will eat is money, so I need some more.”
Tweeter finished his berry and flew up to get a look at the lay of the land. In a hollow just out of sight of the berry patch he spied a tree whose leaves had green backs.
That could be it. So he swooped down and plucked a leaf with his beak, then flew back to drop it by the man.
“That's it!” Ray exclaimed. “That's money! You found it! Where is it?”
Tweeter flew back toward the money tree, leading the man. Ray was delighted. “This will feed Spider Mon for a year!” he exclaimed, stuffing a pocket full of the leaves.
“How can I repay you?”
Tweeter shrugged. He didn't need any repayment for such a favor; it was just an incidental thing.
“Well, maybe something will turn up,” Ray said.
They resumed their travel, with Ray walking ahead to show the way. “There is a bad dragon in these parts,” he said. “I prefer to avoid him, but he lurks near the Pawpaw Wizard's home, hoping to catch a careless child. He looks like this.” An image of a ravening fire-breathing dragon appeared before him.