"And this is my husband Grey Murphy, whose talent is to nullify magic."
Magician Murphy turned again to Umlaut. "And what is your business with us?"
"I have an, uh, letter to deliver to Princess Ivy." He stepped across to Ivy and handed her the letter. "From Mundania."
"From Mundania!" Ivy said, surprised. "I only really got to know one person there, and I married him." She glanced at Grey.
"All the letters are from Mundania," Umlaut explained. "They seem to be from strangers to different Xanthians. I have delivered letters to Princess Ida, the Zombie Master, Queen Irene—"
"My mother and my twin sister," Ivy said. "You have me bracketed. How did you come across the letters?"
Before Umlaut could go into the dull details of that, Magician Murphy broke in. "All in good time. First we have one other introduction to make: our feline associate, Claire Voyant." He gestured to a cushion set in a nook on the far wall where a cat reposed.
Sammy looked, of course. His gaze met that of the other cat, and he did the feline equivalent of freaking out. She was—just so— feline. He had never encountered a cat like her. Actually he had not encountered many cats at all in the Land of Xanth and fewer he would care to know. This Isle of Cats was a rare discovery and surely had many interesting folk of the feline persuasion. But Claire—what a queen! She was pure glossy black, her fur in perfect order, her whiskers long and fine, her paws delicate, an absolutely lovely creature.
The human dialogue continued, but Sammy tuned it out. His attention was wholly taken by Claire. She stretched languorously and jumped down from her nook, indicating by a significant twitch of her tail that he should follow her.
He wriggled in Ivy's embrace, and she automatically set him down. She was a princess and therefore well trained. Then he moved in a relaxed manner toward Claire and followed her out of the room. She led him through the kitchen and to a cat door in the back, leading to the outdoors. She continued walking along a catwalk, and he continued following.
The isle seemed to be divided into sections, each with its own habitat. They passed through a lion veldt, a tiger jungle, puma country, a jaguar forest, a leopard spot, a Persian carpet, a Siamese temple, and other distinct regions. Claire ignored them all, and Sammy tried to, though they were interesting. He had had no idea that so many varieties of cat existed in Xanth. But of course that was the nature of these special islands: They were only deviously related to mainland Xanth. Sammy thought of the Isle of Women and the Isle of Wolves in the W section; they faded in and out as convenient for their inhabitants. Had he realized there was an Isle of Cats he would have sought it long ago.
They almost collided with an unsteady black cat. Claire was annoyed but then picked up on the situation. This was Midnight Cat, recently arrived from Mundania, and lost. Go to the admission center, Claire suggested. They would assign a suitable residence. Midnight nodded appreciatively and headed in the indicated direction.
They came to a massive tree with wonderfully rough bark. Claire shinnied up the trunk, and Sammy followed. They passed branch after branch, some occupied by other cats, some clear. They continued upward until the trunk grew small and swayed in the wind. At last they came to the highest branch, which was actually a triple fork topping the tree, with cords strung between the branches to make a kind of nest. What a penthouse!
Gaze that way, Claire indicated.
Sammy gazed that way and saw a neighboring isle. His ears perked up and his eye slits widened. Birds!
The Isle of Birds, she agreed. Every kind of bird nested there, from humming to roc. Of course the treaty of noninterference they had made with the residents prevented them from raiding it or eating any of the birds, even when they strayed across to the Isle of Cats. But it was always a salivating pleasure just to watch.
Sammy had to agree. Even the little bit of the Isle of Birds he could see was mouthwatering in its collection of feathered flyers, a most pleasant sight. Then he glanced at a giant nest atop a stout tree even taller than this one and saw the head of a roc watching them with similar avidity. Rocs were birds of prey, rather large ones. Perhaps that treaty was just as well; predation was a two-way process.
The small talk was done. Now at last they could relax and converse in depth. They did so by body positions, tail switches, whisker twitches, and spot smells the human folk called pheromones. Taken all together, it was a far more competent language than the limited vocal sounds the humans uttered from their bunghole mouths.
It was time for the formal introduction. He was Sammy Cat, he signaled, actually giving his real name rather than the limited designation humans knew him by. His normal associate was Jenny Elf.
She was Claire Voyant, she replied similarly. Her normal associates were the Magician Murphy and Sorceress Vadne.
His talent was to find anything except home.
Hers was clairvoyance, of course.
Then they went into proper detail. Sammy explained how he had taken Jenny Elf as his associate, because she couldn't see well and constantly needed help finding things. They had resided on the World of Two Moons until Jenny had said she wanted a feather, so naturally Sammy had zeroed in on a good feather. That turned out to be in another realm, a feather from the wing of a flying centaur. Then of course they couldn't get home again so had been stuck here in the foolish Land of Xanth. So they had made themselves useful, keeping company with little Che Centaur and poor lame Gwendolyn Goblin. Eventually, with Sammy's guidance, Che Centaur had become the tutor for Sim Bird, who was destined eventually to know everything in the universe; he was very smart for a bird. Gwenny Goblin, with similar guidance, had become a goblin chiefess. Finally Sammy had guided his associate Jenny to marriage with a werewolf prince. That wouldn't have been his choice, but she had a thing about wolves; she liked to ride them. So now she was happy riding Prince Jeremy in his wolf form, and who knew what she did with his human form, it was disturbing the storks, and Sammy was taking some time off for himself. Since he couldn't find what was now his home, he was associating with Umlaut Human and Sesame Serpent, both of whom really needed guidance.
Claire had noticed. In fact she found Umlaut distinctly odd, because he wasn't really there.
Not there?
To explain that she had to clarify the nature of her own history and talent. She had dwelt all her life on the Isle of Cats, never feeling the need to wander elsewhere, and now had high status here. But her prior human associates had proved to be unsatisfactory—they had twice forgotten to warm her evening dish of cream—and had to be replaced. The new associates were of magician and sorceress caliber, which qualified them, and had had some experience with cats in Mundania, so Claire had decided to give them a chance and let them occupy her house. That had worked out well enough, so she had kept them. Their son Grey was a magician who married the Sorceress/Princess Ivy, who would someday rule the Land of Xanth. Overall, it was a satisfactory situation, but of course that was not coincidence, because of Claire's talent. Neither had she been surprised by Sammy's arrival, for similar reason: They were going to bat about fine catnip together.
Sammy did not like to confess ignorance—it wasn't feline—but needed a clarification of the nature of clairvoyance. Was it like seeing another place via a magic mirror?
Hardly. It was far broader than that and infinitely more subtle. By expanding her clairvoyance she became very aware of herself, her thoughts, and her beliefs. Most folk, animal, human, and feline, had lives constructed from thoughts that were not even their own. They were actually living other folk's expectations and desires for them. In fact most folk were defined in the past, and the definitions had become irrelevant. They no longer applied to who they were now. But those folk did not realize that and so remained captive of those outdated definitions.
Sammy was amazed. It was true; he had been defined as a routine cat, doing things for his human associates instead of for himself, and had never thought to break out of the pattern. He had guided any number of prominent human folk (Jenny El
f and Jeremy Wolf were human where it counted) to success and satisfaction, but only recently had he tried to guide himself.
And not very successfully, Claire pointed out with justified feline smugness. Instead of guiding Jenny and Jeremy, he was now guiding Umlaut and Sesame. Nice enough folk, surely (some of her best friends were humans or reptiles), but in the end defined by their irredeemable limitations: They were not felines. Therefore they could never even hope to achieve ultimate grace.
Sammy had to admit it was true. Their ultimate fault had no remedy. Still, he wished them no ill and wanted to help them achieve their peculiar mission of delivering mundane letters and somehow saving Xanth from the dread Red Spot.
Claire conceded that he was nice to feel that way. Then she resumed her clarification of her talent. As she had expanded her clairvoyance relating to others, she had seen the thoughts, beliefs, and games that were played out in the other folk's realities. As she saw them more clearly, she had also come to see herself more clearly. She had become aware of the aspects of her own existence that held similarly limiting beliefs. She developed tools of understanding that enabled her to surmount these negative patterns within herself that had been holding back her life. She had learned to restructure herself, to fill herself with her own positive energy patterns that could best support her in the present—her now. Today she had the full power of her talent available to apply to whatever she chose.
Thus she had known that Sammy was coming, because of his future impact on her own life. His talent of finding complemented her talent of knowing. Together they could perhaps accomplish the salvation of Xanth and, more important, their own uplifting to higher consciousness.
Sammy was impressed. She was correct; she had to be. Her understanding vastly surpassed his, but she was willing to share it with him. But how did this relate to the nonexistence of Umlaut Human?
Well, she hadn't had a chance to study the human carefully, but it was immediately clear that he did not relate. He wasn't really there. Oh, she conceded that maybe he thought he was there, but that was a function of his limited perspective. So much of what folk thought about themselves was erroneous, as she had explained. It was possible for them to ascend beyond their illusions, with proper guidance. But not for Umlaut, because there was no there there.
But Sammy had been traveling with the human man, and he not only seemed to be there, he had kissed two women and they had liked it.
Well, she explained, they thought he was there. That made the difference.
Sammy remembered what the twin princesses had said to Umlaut, about the state of his existence. Dawn, whose talent was to know anything about anything living, had said he was not living. Eve, whose talent was to know anything about anything that wasn't living, had said that he wasn't dead. He had said that he didn't understand, and they had said that they didn't understand either. That was all there had been to that dialogue. Of course, those princesses were only eleven years old, which was young for their kind. Still, they were both sorceresses and so should have known what Umlaut was.
So their judgment concurred with Claire's, she concluded. That meant it was correct. But there still was no answer. They would have to put it aside for a while, to gather more information and greater understanding.
But they would not be here on the Isle of Cats long, Sammy reminded her. The letter had been delivered, and they would be moving on.
True, and she had known their presence here would be brief. She would have to leave her house in charge of the human tenants and accompany him on the remainder of the mission, in order to fathom what had to be fathomed.
Sammy tried to mask his pleasure at that prospect, but of course she was aware of it. But she had something else to show him before they left this perch. She directed his attention to the other side of the Isle of Cats. There was another island there, overgrown by trees, looking pretty wild.
Sammy wondered whether that would be the Isle of Dogs. No, she clarified, that was beyond. This was the Isle of Dystopia, otherwise known as the Isle of the Damned or the Isle of Dread.
Damned?
Dystopia was the opposite of Utopia, she clarified. A miserable place.
Bad magic?
Worse: no magic at all.
But that was Mundania, Sammy protested.
No, Mundania had some magic. There was gravity, which also helped Xanth, and rainbows, and scattered instances of magical thinking, so it wasn't an entire loss. But the Isle of Dystopia had no magic at all. That was why it shunned contact with Xanth, lest its shame become known.
Sammy could appreciate why.
Of course others avoided it, further isolating its denizens. But there was a legend, she continued. It was that someday an inhabitant of that dread isle would manage to visit Xanth and turn out to have a most awkward magic talent. So it would be shown that the folk there did have magic, but not of any kind they wanted. A supreme irony.
That must be why the original people settled there, Sammy thought. They knew their magic was bad, so they fled to a place without magic and hid from Xanth.
But someday, Claire asserted, that person would escape to Xanth and spoil the effort of centuries.
What was the awkward talent? That she didn't know. But she intended to find out, someday when she had nothing better to do. To have her talent work she would have to set foot on the isle, and no one would help her do that. So that project was on hold for now. There was more immediate business.
They took a last lingering look at the Isle of Birds, then started down the tree. This was harder than climbing up had been, as it always was, but Sammy didn't want to appear incompetent, so he struggled felinefully along. But Claire knew that too and did not bother to mask her amusement.
Finally they reached the bottom. Sammy was afraid his stretched claws would never retract, but they did. He was getting old for this sort of thing.
Claire, still amused, let him in on a secret: She knew where there was some healing elixir—and some youth elixir. It was one of the benefits of her talent. He need have no concern about health or age.
Sammy had been halfway mesmerized by her from the outset. This only added to the effect. They had understood that the delivery of the letters would solve the problem of the Red Spot. They were coincidentally solving more than that.
Coincidentally, perhaps, Claire indicated. But not accidentally. It all was part of a larger pattern whose meaning even Claire did not understand. But she intended to, in due course.
The humans were wrapping up their long-winded discussion of inconsequentials, and Umlaut and Sesame were ready to go. Grey and Ivy would be continuing their visit, however. That might cushion the despair of Murphy and Vadne when Claire departed. Sammy didn't envy her the task of conveying her decision to them.
But meanwhile he had the task of telling Umlaut and Sesame that their party was expanding, and why. They decided to separate, each cat meeting with the appropriate folk, conveying the news separately but at the same time.
It was a job just getting the parties separate; they seemed determined not to comprehend. But finally they succeeded, and Sammy got Umlaut and Sesame outside the house to play nineteen questions, which was a clumsy but sure way to get something across.
Soon Umlaut was getting there; he wasn't entirely obtuse. "You want the other cat to come along with us? Why?"
Sammy tried to explain about clairvoyance, but this concept was beyond the human's intellectual means. So he pretended it was mere romance.
"Oh, she's the cat for you, just as Sesame's the serpent for Soufflé. Now I understand." At least he thought he understood, not having the benefit of clairvoyance. It would have to do.
"But what about Magician Murphy and Sorceress Vadne? She's their cat. They may not let her go."
Sammy suppressed his ire at this galloping ignorance. The man couldn't help it; he was human. Sammy just hoped that Claire did not pick up on this with her magic perception. He would have to caution her about this, so she didn't get too ups
et. Meanwhile, to Umlaut he simply indicated that Claire was explaining the matter to her residents now.
"Well, if it's okay with them, I guess it's okay with us," Umlaut said, glancing at Sesame for confirmation. She nodded; she had been quicker to understand than he had. That made sense, because she was another animal, even if not a cat.
Soon the Murphys emerged from the house. "It seems Claire wants to accompany you," Magician Murphy said. "If that makes her happy, we would not care to be the ones to deny her. We'll remain here and keep the house in good order. But we'll certainly miss her. She's some cat."
The man was so girt about by his ignorance that it was painful, but he was right about the last of it: She certainly was some cat.
They set out immediately, as they understood that the isle remained in contact with Xanth but would separate in a half hour. If they did not leave it now, they would not be able to depart for several more days.
Para was waiting for them. Claire went up to sniff noses with him, and Sammy saw that he knew her and accepted her. That was probably a good recommendation, not that one was needed at this point.
They got in, and Para duck-footed it into the water. He was orienting to cross to the mainland Xanth when Claire suddenly stood with hair on end, hissing. Para halted immediately.
"What is it?" Umlaut asked, confused. "We need to cross, before—"
Then he broke off, staring ahead, as did the rest of them. There was a stirring in the water, deepening as it moved. The water was moving in a great circle, faster and faster. In fact it was a whirlpool.
"Charybdis!" Umlaut exclaimed. "She would have caught us and swallowed us whole!"
Indeed she would have—and Claire Voyant had known and stopped them before they got too far out to avoid it.
Slowly the whirlpool moved on, pushed by the current. It seemed to want to stay, in the hope that the boat might yet be foolish enough to venture within reach, but Para valued his life as much as anyone did. Only when Charybdis was well beyond their route did Para resume the crossing.