"A Prince of Whales," Tandy said. "Is he really?"
"I don't think so. That's why he wails."
"Life is hard all over," Smash said without much sympathy. "Let's get down off this mountain."
Indeed, the sun was losing strength and starting to fall, as it did each day, never learning to conserve its energy so that it could stay aloft longer. They needed to get to a comfortable place before night. Fortunately, the slope on this side was not as steep, so they were able to slide down it fairly readily.
As they neared the northern base, where the forest resumed, a nymph came out to meet them. She was a delicate brown in color, with green hair fringed with red. Her torso, though slender and full in the manner of her kind, was gently corrugated like the bark of a young tree, and her toes were rootlike. She approached Tandy, who was the most human of the group. "Please--do you know where Castle Roogna is?"
"I tried to reach Castle Roogna a year ago," Tandy said. "But I got lost. I think Smash knows, though."
"Oh, I wouldn't ask an ogre!" the nymph exclaimed.
"He's a halfway tame ogre," Tandy assured her. "He doesn't eat many nymphs."
Smash was getting used to these slights. He waited patiently for the nymph to gain confidence,
then
answered her question as well as he could. "I have been to Castle Roogna. But I'm not going there at the moment, and the way is difficult. It is roughly west of here."
"I'll find it somehow," the nymph said. "I've got to." She faced west.
"Now wait," Tandy protested, as Smash had suspected she would. The girl had sympathy enough to overflow all Xanth! "You can't get there alone! You could easily get lost or gobbled up. Why don't you travel with us until we find someone else who is going there?"
"But you're going north!" the nymph protested.
"Yes. But we travel safely, because of Smash." Tandy indicated him again. "Nobody bothers an ogre."
"There is that," the nymph agreed. "I don't want to bother him myself." She considered, seeming somewhat tired. "I could help you find food and water. I'm good at that sort of thing. I'm a hamadryad."
"Oh, a tree-nymph!" the Siren exclaimed. "I should have realized. What are you doing out of your tree?"
"It's a short story. Let me find you a place to eat and rest, and I will tell it."
The dryad kept her promise. Soon they were ensconced in a glade beside a large eggplant whose ripe eggs had been hard-boiled by the sun. Nearby was a sodapond that sparkled effervescently. They sat in a circle cracking open eggs, using the shells to dip out sodawater. Proper introductions were made, and the dryad turned out to be named Fireoak, after her tree.
She was, despite her seeming youth, over a century old. All her life had been spent with her fireoak tree, which had sprouted from a fireacorn the year she came into being. She had grown with it, as hamadryads did, protecting it and being protected by it. Then a human village had set up nearby, and villagers had come out to cut down the tree to build a firehouse, Fireoak made fine fire-resistant wood, the dryad explained; its own appearance of burning was related to Saint Elmo's fire, an illusion of burning that made it stand out beautifully and discouraged predatory bugs except for fireants. In vain had the dryad protested that the cutting of the oak would kill both it and her; the villagers wanted the wood. So she had taken advantage of the full moon that night to weave a lunatic fringe that shrouded the tree, hiding it from them. But that would last only a few days; when the moon shrank to a crescent, so would the fringe, betraying the tree's location. She had to accomplish her mission before then.
"But how can a trip to Castle Roogna help?" John asked. "They use wood there, too, don't they?"
"The King is there!" Fireoak replied. "I understand he is an environmentalist. He protects special trees."
"It is true," Smash agreed. "He protects rare monsters, too." Now for the first time he realized the probable basis for King Trent's tolerance of an ogre family near Castle Roogna: they were rare wilderness specimens. "He always looks for the solution of least ecological damage."
The dryad looked at him curiously. "You certainly don't talk like an ogre!"
"He blundered into an Eye Queue vine," Tandy explained. "It cursed him with smartness."
"How are you able to survive away from your tree?" the Siren asked. "I thought no hamadryad could leave for more than a moment."
"That's what I thought," Fireoak said. "But when death threatened my tree, desperation gave me extraordinary strength. For my tree I can do what I must. I feel terribly insecure, however. My soul is the tree."
Tandy and Smash jumped. The analogy was too close for comfort. It was no easy thing to be separated from one's soul.
"I know the feeling," the Siren said. "I lived all my life in one lake. But I suddenly realized that it had become a desolate place for a lone mermaid. So I am looking for a better lake. But I do miss my original lake, for it contains all my life's experience, and I wonder whether it misses me, too."
"How will you know the new lake won't be desolate for you, too?" Fireoak asked.
"It won't be if it has the right merman in it."
The dryad blushed, her face for an instant showing the color of the fire of her tree. "Oh."
"You're a hundred years old--and you have no experience with men?" Tandy asked.
"Well, I'm a dryad," Fireoak said defensively. "We just don't have much to do with men--only with trees."
"What sort of experience have you had?" the Siren asked Tandy.
"A demon--he--I'd rather not discuss it." It was Tandy's turn to blush. "Anyway, my father is a man."
"Most fathers are," the Siren said.
"Mine isn't!" Smash protested. "My father is an ogre."
She ignored that. "I inherited my legs from my father, my tail from my mother. She was not a true woman, but he was a true man."
"You mean human men really do have, uh, dealings with mermaids?" Tandy asked.
"Human men have dealings with any maid they can catch," the Siren said with a wry smile. "I understand my mother wasn't hard to catch; my father was a very handsome man. But he had to leave when my sister the Gorgon was born."
After a pause, Fireoak resumed her story. "So if I can just talk to the King and get him to save my tree, everything will be all right."
"What about the other trees?" John asked.
Fireoak looked blank.
"Other trees?"
"The other ones the villagers are cutting down. Maybe they don't have dryads to speak for them, but they don't deserve destruction."
"I never thought of that," Fireoak said. "I suppose I should put in a word at Castle Roogna for them, too. It would be no bad thing to lobby for the trees."
They found good locations in the trees and settled down for the night. Smash spread himself out on the glade ground; no one would bother him. His head was near the liquidly flowing trunk of a water oak Fireoak had chosen; he overheard the hamadryad's muted sobbing. Evidently her separation from her beloved home tree was harder on her than she showed by day, and the threat to that tree was no distant concern. Smash hoped he could find a way to help her. If he had to, he could go and stand guard over her tree himself. But he didn't know how long that would take. He didn't want to delay his own mission too long, lest the time for the Good Magician's Answer should run out. There was also the matter of the gourd-coffin's lien on his soul; anything he had to do, he had better get done within three months. Already he felt not quite up to snuff, as if part of his soul had been leached away, taking some of his strength with it.
Next day the five of them marched north. The land leveled out, but hazards remained. Tandy blundered into a chokecherry bush, and
Smash
had to rip the entire plant out of the ground before its vines stopped choking her. Farther along they encountered a power plant, whose branches swelled out into strange angular configurations and hummed with power; woe betide the creature who blundered into that!
Around midday they discovered a lovely vegetable tree, on whose branches grew cabbages, beans, carrots, tomatoes, and turnips, all in fine states of ripeness. Here were all the ingredients for an excellent salad! But as Smash approached it, Tandy grew nervous. "I smell a rat," she said, sniffing the air. "There are big rats down in the caves where I live; I know their odor well. They always mean trouble."
Smash sniffed. Sure enough, there was the faint aroma of rats. What were they doing here?
"I smell it, too," John said. "I hate rats. But where are they?"
The Siren was walking around the tree. "Somewhere in or near the vegetable tree," she announced. "I fear this plant is not entirely what it appears."
Fireoak approached it. "Let me check. I'm good with trees." She was showing no sign of the agony of her separation from her tree, but Smash knew it remained. Her night in a tree must have restored her somewhat, though of course it wasn't her tree.
The hamadryad stood close to the vegetable tree. Slowly she touched a leaf. "This is a normal leaf," she said. Then she touched a potato--and one of its eyes blinked. "Get away from here!" Fireoak screamed. "It's a rat!"
Then the fruits and vegetables exploded into action. Each one sprouted legs, tail, and snout and dropped to the ground. A major swarm of rats had camouflaged itself by masquerading as vegetables, luring the unwary into contact--but the smell had given them away.
Once a rat, always a rat, by the smell of it.
The Siren, Tandy, and John scurried back in time to avoid the first surge of the rat-race. But Fireoak stood too close. The beasties swarmed around her, biting at her legs, causing her to trip and fall.
Smash leaped across, swooping down with one hand to lift the hamadryad clear of the ground. Several rats came up with her, chewing savagely at her barklike skin. She screamed and tried to brush them off, but they clung tenaciously and bit at her hands.
Smash shook her, but hesitated to do it vigorously enough to fling away the rats, lest it hurt her. As it was, bits of bark and leaf were flying off. Smash had to pinch the rats off one by one, and their claws and teeth left scratches on the dryad's
body.
By the time the last was gone, she was in an awful state, oozing sap from several scrapes. The swarm of rats surrounded Smash and tried to bite his feet and climb his hairy legs.
Smash stomped ferociously, shaking the glade and crushing several rats with each stomp. But there were hundreds of the little monsters, coming at him from every direction, moving rapidly. They threatened to get on him no matter how fast he stomped. He didn't dare set the dryad down, lest the same fate befall her. His great strength hardly availed against these relatively puny enemies.
"Get away from him!" Tandy screamed from a safe distance. "Leave him alone, you rats!" She seemed really angry. It was almost as if she
were
trying to defend him from the enemy; that, of course, was a ludicrous reversal of their situation, yet it touched him oddly.
Smash stomped away from the tree, but the rats stayed with him. In order to run he would have to do two things: move the dryad back and forth as his arms pumped and flee a known danger. The one seemed physically hazardous to another person, while the other was emotionally distasteful. So he moved slowly, stamping, while the rats began climbing his legs.
Then Tandy's arm shot out as if hurling a rock. Her face was red, her teeth bared, her body rigid, as if she were in a state of absolute fury--but there was no rock in her hand. She was throwing nothing.
Something exploded at Smash's feet. He was knocked off them, barely catching his balance. All around him the rats turned belly-
up,
stunned.
He stared at the carnage, standing still because his legs were numb. He set down the hamadryad, who stepped daintily over the bodies. "What happened?"
Tandy sounded abashed. "I threw a tantrum."
Smash left the twitching rats and went to join her. His feet felt as if they were nothing but bones, with the flesh melted off, though this was not the case. "That's a spell?"
"That's bad temper, my talent," she said, eyes downcast. "When I get mad, I throw a tantrum. Sometimes it does a lot of damage. I'm sorry; I should have controlled my emotion."
"Sorry?" Smash said, bewildered, looking back at the rum of the rat-swarm. "That's a wonderful talent!"
"Oh, sure," she replied with irony.
"My mother had a similar talent. Of course, she was a curse-fiend; they all throw curses."
"Maybe I have curse-fiend ancestry," Tandy said sourly. "My father Crombie came from a long line of soldiers, and they do get around quite a bit."
Now the others came up. "You did that, Tandy?" Fireoak asked. "You saved me a lot of misery! If Smash had put me down amidst those awful rats, or if they had climbed up him and gotten to me, as they were trying to--" She winced, feeling her wounds. She was obviously in considerable discomfort.
"That's an extremely useful talent for the jungles of Xanth," the Siren said.
"You really think so?" Tandy asked, brightening. "I always understood it wasn't nice to be destructive."
"It isn't?" Smash asked, surprised.
Then they all laughed. "Sometimes perhaps it is," the Siren concluded.
They found some genuine vegetables for lunch,
then
resumed the march. But soon they heard a ferocious snuffling and snorting ahead, low to the ground. "Oh, that might be a dragon with a cold," John said worriedly. "I can't say I really like dragons; they're too hot."
"I will go see," Smash said. He discovered he was rather enjoying this journey. Violence was a natural part of his nature--but now he had people to protect, so there was a certain added justification to it. It was more meaningful to bash a dragon to save a collection of pretty little lasses than it was to do it merely for its own sake. The Eye Queue caused him to ponder the meaning of the things he did, and so it helped to have at least a little meaning present. At such time as he got free of the curse, he could forget about these inconvenient considerations.