Man From Mundania

  With that the horse disappeared. Girard was left to his fate.

  He lost track of how long he lay there, the blood pouring from the wound made by the ogre. He soon gave up trying to free himself; he could not. The bonds were magically strong. So he slept most of the time, slowly weakening.

  He realized, after a few days' thought, that he probably could not bleed to death here, because this wasn't his real body; what happened here was more apparent than real.

  But he still did seem to be losing strength; why? A few more day's thought developed an answer: his real body, out in Xanth, was lying there without eating or drinking.

  That could weaken him, in time. But still he could not escape. The bonds held his dream body, and the peephole held his real body.

  A nymph came by. “I'm sorry to see you in such distress, giant,” she said. “I would free you if I could, but I can't, because everyone knows how you barged in and bashed up several settings.”

  “I was looking for Gina,” he explained.

  “Gina? Oh, yes, the giantess who is a figment. I think if you just forgot about her, the Night Stallion might let you go.”

  “I can't forget her,” Girard said.

  “Gee, that's too bad. Well, I have to move on; I have a gig at the Castle Roogna set. I'm just one of the extras, but it's a major bad dream.” The nymph departed.

  Nymphs were not noted for their depth or longevity of feeling.

  Girard thought about Gina for the next few days. The horse said she didn't exist, but she had to because he had seen her. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that a person had to exist if someone believed in that person, and he believed. So he could not afford to forget her, because then she might truly be gone.

  A ghost floated up. “It must be bad, being mortal,” he said. “I'd like to free you, but I have no substance. Besides, everyone knows how you bashed up those sets. Well, I have to go on to the Castle Roogna set; I'm playing a ghost who scared a bad child.” He drifted on. Ghosts were not noted for great sympathy to mortal creatures.

  Girard thought about the thing the ghost had said that echoed what the nymph had said. Everyone knew about what Girard had done. He was cursed to remain here until someone who knew nothing about his situation passed.

  How long would that take, when everyone knew about it?

  Maybe it would be easier to forget about Gina. Then the horse might free him. But then Gina would not exist, and he couldn't abide that notion, so he gave it up.

  A goblin wandered by. “Say, who're you, bug-brain?” the goblin inquired politely, after the fashion of his kind.

  “Just a bound giant,” Girard replied.

  “Well, maybe I'd better free you, mud-foot,” the goblin said. “I mean, your stupid blood's a menace to navigation. How can we get to the Castle Roogna set when the blankety path is washed out by this stuff?”

  “Name your reward,” Girard said, remembering that he had to ask three times or it wouldn't work.

  “A reward!” the goblin exclaimed. “Say, that's a nifty notion, hair-nose! How about a big bag of fool's gold?”

  Now it happened that Girard had a small bag of fool's gold tied to his belt, along with his carving dagger. Perhaps the goblin had seen it, for goblins had extremely beady eyes. To the goblin it would seem like a big bag.

  “Yes, you can have it if you free me,” he said.

  “Great!” The goblin tried to pull out one of the bonds, but couldn't budge it. He tried to bite through it, but his teeth did not dent it. He cursed at it, but though the nearby foliage wilted, the bond remained tight. “Sorry, can't break this bond, James,” he said.

  “That's Girard,” the giant said.

  “Girard! Hey, I know that name! Ain't you the one who—?”

  “The same,” Girard agreed sadly.

  “But I'll take the gold anyway, because I did try,” the goblin said.

  But the greedy little creature was unable to liberate the bag of fool's gold either. At length, disgruntled, he stalked off. Goblins certainly were not noted for generosity or sensitivity.

  Girard thought about the goblin for a few days. It seemed it was true that the acceptance of a reward made the rescue impossible. That was too bad. Who would be fool enough to go to the effort of freeing him without any thought of reward?

  He wondered again whether he should forget Gina. But he found he just could not, even if he expired. If she couldn't exist, then he would cease to exist also. That seemed fair enough.

  Then at last the young human couple came. Girard had so little hope left that he hardly bothered to awaken, and his voice was out of practice. But to his surprise the young man did not know of his situation and did not accept any reward, even though Girard diligently asked three times.

  What an amazing and worthwhile creature this was!

  “So now at last I am free!” he exclaimed. “Because of you, Grey Mundane.”

  “That's Murphy,” Grey said. “Grey Murphy of Mundania.”

  “Murphy! Hey, I know that name! Aren't you the one who cursed folk?”

  “No,” Ivy said. “It's just a coincidence.”

  “Well, I am glad you came, because now the horse's curse has been abated and I can resume my search for Gina.”

  “But if she's just a figment—” Ivy began.

  “I've been thinking about that,” Grey said. “If she is just a figment, why is the Night Stallion so eager to have Girard forget about her? I mean, who cares who believes in something that doesn't exist?”

  Ivy looked at him as if suspecting an insult somewhere, but didn't speak. He realized too late that his question could be taken as a reference to her own belief in magic.

  “The horse doesn't want me to believe in Gina,” Girard said. “I don't know why.”

  “I think I do,” Grey said, warming to his thought.

  “Here in the dream realm, things go by different rules. So some things that don't exist in the real world can exist here, because folk think they do. So maybe it is your belief in Gina that makes her real. Nobody else believes in her, but as long as you do, maybe she is real.”

  “Yes!” Girard agreed. “So maybe I can still find her!”

  “So maybe you can,” Grey agreed. “But maybe it would be better not to bash down any more sets while you're looking, or the stallion will tie you down again.”

  “But how else can I look?”

  “Maybe we could talk to the stallion. There might be some kind of deal we could make. I mean, you want Gina and he wants you out of here.”

  “You want to negotiate with the Night Stallion?” Ivy asked, amazed. “How can you, when you don't believe in him?”

  “I believe that there is some authority with whom we can deal,” Grey said. “I don't care what his title is.”

  Ivy shrugged. “The Night Stallion isn't like other authorities. He's dangerous.”

  “What can he do—enchant me?” Grey asked. But there was a small core of doubt in him, because the giant seemed to have been enchanted. Of course that could all be part of the setting; still, Girard certainly seemed like a real person. “But how do we find him?”

  “I can summon the Night Stallion for you,” Ivy said.

  “How? With a spell?”

  “With my magic mirror,” she said. She brought out a small hand mirror.

  Grey shut his mouth. If she thought she could do something with that, let her try!

  “Night Stallion,” Ivy said to the mirror.

  What concerns you. Princess? the mirror replied.

  Grey jumped. Had the mirror really spoken? He had almost thought it had!

  “My friend Grey wants to negotiate with you,” she said.

  In a moment, Princess.

  Princess? Had he heard the mirror say that? Did that mean that he imagined that the mirror not only could talk but also accepted Ivy as a Princess of Xanth? They had told the giant their story, but Ivy had not identified herself to the mirror.

  Then, a horse appe
ared. It was a great black stallion, standing like a glistening ebony statue. Its eyes nickered. What is this? A man from Mundania?

  “Yes,” Ivy said. “He just freed Girard Giant, and now he wants to make a deal.”

  The near eye oriented on Grey. Deal?

  Grey plunged in. “You tied up the giant for a long time, hoping he would forget Gina Giantess so you could wipe her off your books. Well, it didn't work! He still loves her, and you can't get rid of her until you get rid of him. I think it's better to try another tack. Why not let him have her, and he'll take her out of here, and then you can forget them both?”

  The sinister eye flickered again. If you take the giant's part, you will share his fate.

  “Then I share his fate,” Grey said stoutly, though his inner core of doubt was expanding. “What's right is right, and it isn't right to tie a man down and let him bleed a river of blood just because he's romantic!”

  Again the eye nickered. A gray cloud surrounded Grey, and strange forces strove at him. Alarmed, he reminded himself that none of this was real; the setting might be impressive, but there was no such thing as magic, so it could not touch him. The stallion was trying to fake him out, and he refused to be faked.

  Then things cleared, and the tableau was as it was before.

  I can not deal with you, the stallion said, with seeming surprise.

  “What I want is reasonable enough,” Grey said reasonably. “Just give Girard what he came for, and we can all go.”

  He wants a figment!

  “Look,” Grey said. “I don't care what kind of a setup you have here or how it looks to the people who come in for tours. If you can make a setting as big as a whole mountain with a castle on top of it and fake flying dragons with fire and doors that disappear after being used, you should be able to make a giantess. That's all Girard wants: the lady he saw in your dream. It was your fault the dream hit the wrong person; if you put your night mares on a proper schedule they wouldn't be too rushed to check closely. Maybe instead of trying to punish Girard you should work with him to shape up your operation so such foul-ups don't happen next time.” He saw Ivy trying to signal him to be quiet, but his dander was up and he was sick of authorities who pushed regular folk around. He had had more than enough of that in college! This horse was the mouthpiece of whoever ran this carnival, so he was telling him a thing or three.

  It seems I must come to terms with you, though you know not what you are, the stallion said, annoyed. He turned to Girard. The figment can exist only here, not in Xanth. Would you come here physically to be with her?

  “Sure!” Girard said.

  Then so shall it be. The eyes nickered, and the ground shuddered.

  A shape loomed from over the hill. Some huge creature was approaching.

  It was the giantess. “Gina!” Girard boomed as her towering head came into sight. He lurched to his feet, and lumbered across to meet her.

  “Girard!” she boomed back. “I was afraid you would forget me and I would cease to exist, for no one but you believed in me!”

  “Never!” Girard cried passionately. They came together with a crash that shook the whole setting.

  Satisfied? the Night Stallion inquired.

  “You'll find work for him—for them both—here?” Grey asked. “No more tie downs?”

  Work for them both, the stallion agreed.

  “But Grey can't stay here!” Ivy protested.

  The stallion turned to her. Obviously not.

  “But you said he would share the giant's fate, if he took his part!”

  The stallion paused, as if figuring something out. And so shall it be. The two shall be linked by exchanging settings. Girard here. Grey there. Do you accept the exchange?

  “Exchange?” Grey asked.

  His body for yours.

  “Now wait—” Grey protested.

  “He means he'll bring Girard's body into the gourd, and move ours out of it,'' Ivy explained. “It's a fair deal.”

  “Oh. Okay.” That was a kind of sharing, he realized.

  Once more the stallion's eyes nickered in the unmoving figure. Then the scene changed.

  Chapter 7

  Sharing

  Ivy breathed a sigh of relief. They were in Xanth proper at last! She wanted to hug the familiar acorn and birch bark trees she saw around them, and kiss the familiar turf.

  Grey stood beside her. He looked around. “Oh—another setting,” he said.

  “It's not another setting,” she said. “This is Xanth!”

  “How can we tell?”

  “I've lived in Xanth all my life! I know it when I see it,” she said defensively.

  He shrugged as if it didn't make much difference. “It does seem to be where the giant was. See, there is the indentation where he lay.”

  “And there is the gourd, right beyond the holes where his elbows were propped,” she agreed. “The Night Stallion brought his body in and put ours out. Now if I can just figure out where we are.”

  “I thought you said you know Xanth. Haven't you been here before?”

  “I know the general way of Xanth,” she said. “The types of trees, for example. But I stay mostly on the enchanted paths, and this must be way off those, because the giants don't use them. We'll just have to find our way to a path, and then walk down it to Castle Roogna.”

  “If this is a magic land, why don't you just enchant us there?”

  “Are you making fun of me?” she demanded.

  He raised his hands in the Mundane surrender signal.

  “I guess I don't know the rules.”

  “Well, it's because that isn't my kind of magic,” she said, cooling. “My talent is Intensification, not Transportation. I could make us walk there faster, but that's about all.”

  “I don't mind walking,” he said. “It looks like a nice place.”

  She was relieved that he hadn't thought to inquire about the magic mirror. Of course she could use it to contact her mother again, and she knew that she should do just that. It was right in her knapsack, along with the sign language book. But the episode with the giant had shown her more about Grey, and she wanted to work things out with him before turning up at the castle. The long walk should take several days, and that might be enough.

  “But first we had better eat,” she said.

  “We had plenty of Girard's crackers and cheese.”

  “I'm not sure it's the same, in the gourd. I'm hungry again; aren't you?” That was one thing that was not in her knapsack: food!

  He rubbed his stomach. “Yes, come to think of it. But—”

  “There's a pie plant over there,” she said, spying it.

  She walked over to it. It was young, with small pot pies in the budding stage, but she was able to enhance these into ripeness so she could pluck them. They were only warm, not hot, but that was the best this immature plant could do, even enhanced. She gave one to Grey and took another for herself.

  “That's a nice trick,” he remarked as he ate. Ivy didn't comment, because she knew it wasn't exactly a compliment. He thought she had found food provided by the Mundane management.

  The thing about Grey was that he had acted forthrightly in the gourd even though he didn't believe in its magic.

  He had figured out a way to get the across the river, then had sought the source of all that blood and found the suffering giant. She would never have thought of that, because she took magic for granted. Then he had insisted on helping the giant, and had succeeded in freeing him. She liked that; it showed how Grey cared about people, even strange ones. Then he had faced down the Night Stallion, and that had to have taken sheer courage. Even if Grey didn't believe in magic, he knew that the stallion had power of that realm. Yet he had stood his ground and finally made his point.

  “What did the horse mean when he said I would share the giant's fate?” Grey asked as he finished his pie.

  “He meant that whatever he did to Girard, he would also do to you,” she answered. “My little brother, Do
lph, ran up against that when he helped Grace'l Ossian. But he didn't flinch, and in the end the stallion let him go, and her too. So when you didn't flinch either, he let you go.”

  “But he took the giant in! So I didn't share his fate. In the dream it seemed to make sense, about exchanging places, but now I'm not so sure.”

  “Maybe he interpreted it in another way.”

  Grey looked perplexed. “What other way?”

  “Well, Girard got his girlfriend.”

  He looked at her, startled. “Are you my, uh—?”

  Ivy felt herself blushing. “Yes.”

  “I—but I thought you were mad because I don't, uh, you know, believe.”

  “Not mad. Frustrated. But now we're in Xanth, I can show you how magic works, and it will be all right.”

  “Ivy, I don't care about magic! But I think you're, uh, great. You're just the sort of girl I always wanted, without really knowing it until I met you.”

  “I feel the same about you, even though you're Mundane.”

  “You mean you'd like me better, if I believed in magic?”

  “Not exactly. You don't believe I am a princess, either.”

  “Well, I suppose you don't have to be magic to be a princess.”

  “I am both, and I want to convince you. But I like you because you don't believe in either.”

  Grey shook his head. “I don't understand.”

  Ivy decided that this was at last the time for candor on this subject. “Let's assume that I am what I say I am, even if you don't believe: a Princess who can work magic. How would a man react, who believes?”

  “Well, he'd figure you were a pretty good catch, I think. I mean, he could maybe marry you and be a king or something, and even if not, it could still be a pretty good life. And you're pretty, which doesn't exactly hurt.”

  “So you believe he would seek my hand for reasons other than my personality?”

  “I didn't mean to say there was anything wrong with your personality! But yes, I think maybe he would.”

  “So how could I be sure that a man liked me for myself?”

  “Well, you couldn't, really, if you didn't hide what you were. I mean, men don't always tell women the truth about things.”