Geis of the Gargoyle (15 page)

Her eyes were green and as deep as the spring I had drunk from, like two grassy pools.
 
I felt myself drifting into them, now swimming, now floating, now sinking, just getting encompassed by the way of them.
 
Her hair was brownish red, with leaves on it, like a tree in autumn.
 
It was as if I stood within a quiet magic forest, just looking at her.
 
It was wonderful in a way I had never before appreciated.

"When you are a man," she said with quiet conviction, "you will never see a girl as fair."

And I realized that she was fair, and more than fair; she was the most beautiful creature I could ever have imagined.
 
Strange that I hadn't noticed that before, but maybe it was as it was with the magic path: I couldn't see it until she showed me.
 
There was simply nothing in all Xanth that could possibly be as lovely as this maiden of the forest.
 
I had known that dryads were pretty creatures, but never actually experienced it.
 
Now I knew completely and forever.

She moved her tiny hands, and they were like delicate leaves fluttering in the breeze.
 
She made a little turn, and for the first time I saw just how slender yet well-formed her body was.
 
I had never thought to notice any such thing before in my life.
 
She lifted her arms above her head and swayed in the wind, and it was as if she were a graceful fern or a slender tree, yielding to the force of the air and returning to equilibrium as it passed.

She came to a halt and met my gaze again.
 
"And what have you to say now, Hiatus?" she inquired gently.

"Oh, when I'm a man I'll have a girl just like you!" I swore.

"I doubt it." She smiled, a bit sadly it seemed.
 
"But you will remember me, for the rest of your life." Then she walked away from me.

I started to follow her, suddenly unwilling to let her out of my sight.
 
What a transformation there had been! She had seemed like an ordinary woman, and now she was more lovely and precious than anything I could dream of.
 
But she walked around the tree where I had first seen her, and behind the trunk-and did not appear on the other side.
 
I ran there, and around the tree, but she was gone.

"Desiree!" I cried, suddenly desolate.
 
"Where are you?" But already I realized that she was a magic creature, a dryad, a nymph of the wood, and would appear only at her desire, not mine.
 
She was through with me.

So I returned to the two laurels, and the path reappeared.
 
I took one look back at Desiree's tree, marking its exact place, then set my face firmly toward home.

The magic path led me promptly to Castle Zombie.
 
There may have been lollipops growing beside it, but I never noticed them; I was still bemused by the vision of the girl in the wood.
 
How gorgeous she had so suddenly been! Never again would I encounter a dryad without remembering.

I stepped off the path and walked to the castle.
 
Then I thought to verify the location of the path, so I could follow it back on another day.
 
But I couldn't find it, though I must have crossed and recrossed it several times.
 
Like the dryad, it was gone.
 
There was nothing to do except return to the castle and make what I could of the rest of my life.

Next day I searched for the path again, trying to track my own footprints back, but there was nothing.
 
I realized that it was foolish to seek something magical; a mortal could never find such a thing without the help of a magic creature.
 
Yet I kept trying, day after day, until finally my heart realized what my mind did, and I gave up the effort.
 
But for some time thereafter I cried myself to sleep.

I don't know why it didn't occur to me to find my way directly to the dryad's tree by my original route; perhaps there was a spell on me to make me miss the obvious.
 
But that may not have been feasible anyway, because I really hadn't paid attention when trying to run away from home; Doofus Dragon had taken me.
 
He had found his way home, but was too stupid to find his way anywhere else; he would be as likely to take me in the opposite direction, and I would hardly know the difference.
 
So I suffered at home, and told no one, not even my twin sister Lacuna.
 
Who, after all, would understand? I didn't understand myself; all I knew was that I wanted to see Desiree again.
 
I didn't know why, or what I would say to her; I just wanted to be with her, even if she fed me more finger matoes.
 
In fact I found that I had developed a taste for them, and for unadulterated spring water, especially from green grassy pools.
 
And for the sight of acom trees in their autumn colors.

For Desiree was a dryad, a nymph associated with a tree.
 
She resembled the things of the forest, and her hair surely changed color with the seasons.
 
I had known about dryads, of course, but now I cared.
 
One might wonder why I didn't seek some other dryad, and the answer is that not all trees have dryads; they are relatively scarce.
 
In any event, it was only this one dryad I wanted to be with, no other.

In fact I was in love, but too young to know it.
 
Desiree had fascinated me, in the nicest possible way; she had shown me her beauty, and I was destined to remember her, as she had said, for the rest of my life.

Time passed, and I became a man.
 
I was, as I had expected, handsome, and the girls did flock around me.
 
But the memory of the girl in the wood made all of them uninteresting.
 
Not one of them came close to matching Desiree.
 
None of them possessed that first wild beauty that only I could see.
 
It was as if the dryad's face was superimposed on the face of any girl I saw, a model for comparison representing perfection, and in each case the mortal face deviated and was imperfect.
 
The same was true of their bodies; all seemed gross and unfinished, like sculptures that had been done by an unskilled artisan.
 
They turned me off.
 
So while I would have liked to marry, I just could not; I did not even want to touch any ordinary girl.

As time passed, my mother and sister became concerned.
 
My mother tried to be delicate about her concern, but my sister Lacuna was blunt: a line of print appeared on the table before me.
 
DON'T YOU LIKE GIRLS?

That was the question.
 
"I like one girl," I told them.
 
"I just can't find her."

Then they had the story from me.
 
My mother was appalled.
 
"A dryad! How could you?"

"I didn't know it was going to happen," I said.
 
"She was just a woman to me, an adult, treating me like a child.
 
She asked me what I was going to do with my life when I grew up, and I told her, and she flashed her beauty at me and vanished."

"You told her about your low opinion of women," my sister said accusingly.
 
"That all we're good for us to wash dishes and clean house."

"Well, sure.
 
It's true, isn't it?"

Millie and Lacuna exchanged a glance that was almost two and a half glances long.
 
Then my sister resumed.
 
"So she decided that maybe you weren't going to be Xanth's gift to womankind, so you shouldn't marry, so she saw to it that you wouldn't.
 
And you aren't."

I began to understand.
 
Desiree was, for all her nymphly nature, a woman.
 
"Then I guess I'm doomed to bachelorhood," I said.
 
"Because there isn't any mortal woman I want to marry." But by this point I wished that Desiree had never looked at me that way, flashing her loveliness.
 
She had, indeed, doomed any future romance I might otherwise have had.
 
No mortal woman would have to suffer through my attitude.

Millie sighed.
 
"There seems to be no help for it.
 
You will simply have to find her."

How much I would like to do that! "But how? I can't find the path!"

"And it's no good searching for every acom tree in Xanth," Lacuna said.
 
"You could go right by it and never see her, because she wouldn't show herself."

"But I looked carefully at her tree," I protested.
 
"I would know it if I saw it.
 
And I know the general area.
 
It's southeast of here, the distance Doofus can go in a run."

"Then perhaps there is a chance.
 
Ride Doofus there, then grow some ears and eyes and make them tell you what they have heard and seen."

"I never thought of that!" I exclaimed.

"Because she didn't want you to," Lacuna said.
 
"She wanted you to remember her, but not where she was.
 
But now time has passed and the peripheral magic is wearing off, so you have a notion.
 
But she still may not show herself if you do locate her tree."

"If I found the tree, I'd just go there and beg her to join me," I said.
 
"She'd have to listen."

"And if she didn't," Lacuna said wickedly, "you could threaten to chop down her tree."

I felt as if a shaft had pierced my heart.
 
"Oh, no, I could never do that! I could never hurt her.
 
I love her!"

"I didn't say to do it," she retorted.
 
"I said to threaten to.
 
To make her appear."

"I couldn't even threaten her," I said, still feeling pained.

"Very well, no threats," Millie said decisively.
 
"But you can at least try to locate the tree.
 
Maybe she'll appear when you ask her to.
 
She doesn't sound like a bad sort; indeed, I rather understand her attitude.
 
If you locate her and apologize, perhaps she'll relent." She focused on me, frowning.
 
"But you have to understand that a dryad can't leave her tree, normally.
 
She has to be in it or near it So if you want to be with Desiree, and if she's willing, you will have to stay there too."

"I don't care where I am, so long as it's with her," I said.

So we organized the search, and I rode Doofus southeast as far as he could go.
 
The region began to look familiar.
 
I got excited, thinking my quest was going to be successful.
 
But then came disaster.
 
Something none of us had anticipated.

The dryad's tree was in a region of high magic.
 
In fact it was not far from the Region of Madness, where there was so much magic that things went crazy.
 
I discovered that the madness had expanded, or shifted, perhaps because of a change in the prevailing winds, and now the dryad's section of forest was within it.
 
I knew better, but such was my desire for Desiree that I entered the fringe of madness, hoping to find her.
 
Naturally I got hopelessly lost and fouled up.
 
I encountered a limb-bow, which looked like a branch of a tree with ribbons.
 
In fact all the branches of all the trees here were like ribbons tied into huge bows.
 
They seemed harmless, until they started to untie themselves and reach for me; then I ran back the way I had come.

But I was lost; the more I ran, the less familiar things seemed.
 
So I forced myself to pause, because I was after all no longer a child.
 
I decided to grow an ear on a boulder, and an eye, so that I could inquire the way out and the eye could look in the proper direction.
 
But to my horror I discovered that I could not grow either ear or eye; instead the rock formed a vile purple excrescence with waving green tentacles.
 
What was the matter? This had never happened to me before.