Harpy Thyme (19 page)

Gloha managed to cover her ears just in time. Even so, she felt the heat of the terrible blast. The air shimmered and burned, and scorch marks appeared on the table. A fiery smell wafted outward.

As fresh air moved in, making it possible to breathe again, Hoary resumed normal screeching. “Now can you do that, chick?”

“M-maybe in time,” Gloha said, knowing it was impossible.

“In harpy thyme, maybe,” Hoary said with resignation. “Gloha, you are still wet behind the ear feathers. It would be folly to let you go out alone or in incompetent company. Do you even know where the Seeds of Destruction are kept? Can you do an aerial survey and map or organize things according to the harpy thyme line? We, the horrid harpies, the stinking untouchables, the ultimate fowl-mouths, we have that knowledge and keep the temple of hope for Xanth until the time we choose to assume the mantle of dominance for ourselves. Our time is not yet, but drawing nigh. Once we have the harpy thyme-”

She broke off, realizing that she was saying too much. “Anyway, you must at least learn to swear effectively before you can safely go out on your own. When you can do that, perhaps I will let you go.”

That was it. The discussion was at an end. Aunt Hoary had made what was by harpy definition a reasonable and moderate requirement. But how would Gloha ever be able to learn to swear like that? Her mild little mouth couldn't even begin to form the awful configurations necessary.

Gloha blinked. She was back in the forest. The waft of madness had passed. “Now that's a sensible harridan,” Metria said approvingly.

“You saw-heard Aunt Hoary Harpy?” Gloha asked, embarrassed.

“Saw her? I was her!” the demoness said. “Look at the foliage.”

Gloha looked. The leaves nearby were wilted, and some even burned, as if blasted by a truly ferocious oath. “But how could that be?”

“Those aren't mere memories,” Trent explained. “The rest of us get caught up in the parts. The magic governs us.”

“Then we must get away from here before something awful happens,” Gloha cried, appalled. “Some of my memories are not nice.”

“I don't think we can escape until your memories are resolved,” he replied. “Something is bothering you, and until that is brought out and alleviated, we shall be locked in.”

“Oh, I never wanted to get into this,” Gloha wailed.

“You were an arrogant little snit,” Metria said. “You thought the madness wouldn't take you.”

“I was wrong!” Gloha cried in anguish. “I'll flee it!” She started running, but already she saw a slight wavering of the landscape, as if its level of reality were shifting. The effect was coming right toward her. There was a rushing sound, as of swiftly flowing water. Oh, no!

Behind the kitchen herb garden Gloha could hear Chrysalis Crystal Creek before she could see it. Hugely swollen by the weird weather, with consecutive drenchpours, the creek waters had taken the bit in their wet teeth and were in a dangerous mood. They were surging at boulders, trying to rip them out of the soil, and rushing at any living thing that dared approach. Whatever they caught they were carrying away, tossing about, and finally pounding to quivering bits. This was no safe place for an antiseptic, uh, innocent winged goblin girl.

Almost blinded by her rampaging feelings and tears, Gloha half ran, half flew down the very muddy, irregular, treacherous path to the very edge of the stream. Nearby monsters woke and stirred, sniffing the air, aware of the lingering odor of juicy, tender, young winged girl. Slowly they rose and moved toward her, blocking off her escape.

Affrighted, Gloha spread her wings, about to take flight. But the violent water signaled the air, and the air stirred, whirling itself into a deadly cone that reached for Gloha's winsome little wings. She did not dare take flight now, lest her feathers be plucked, leaving her truly helpless. She had to stay grounded.

But now she saw something even worse: silvery, slithering, slinky nickelpedes, going for her tender little tootsies. Tendrils were reaching out of the ground, casting about to catch her feet and hold her there while they burrowed into the flesh. She had blundered into a truly awful trap. How was she ever to escape?

She tried to run along the only path she saw, not knowing where it led. But a tendril caught a foot, sending her into a headlong fall to the ground. Her knocked little knee twisted on the way down, making her scream with pain. “Help!” she cried. But the roar of the water drowned her out, and she knew that no one would hear or come to her rescue.

The tendrils found her body and curled over it, anchoring her so that they could drill into her succulent little shape. The nickelpedes scuttled to arrive in time to gouge out their coin-sized chunks before the plants shriveled her body too far. The hungry shadow of a larger monster loomed close.

Gloha screamed. This time it was no meek little mock effort. It was a double-throated piercing ululation at ultrasonic and ultraviolet levels containing a suggestion of the vocabulary Aunt Hoary had been trying to teach her. The tendrils, momentarily stunned, writhed back away from her. The nickelpedes clicked their pincers, briefly disoriented. The looming monster hesitated a third of a moment, or perhaps nine tenths of an instant.

Then all three threats recovered and converged. But in that meager instant Gloha made an exhausted little effort to fight for what hopeless little hope remained to save her lost little life. She heaved herself somewhere else.

She fell down a long sandy shaft of dirt, wings over heels. She was aware of wild glowing molds, bugs, and many intriguing shades of dirt touching barely mentionable parts of her body along the way. Then she fetched up against the ragged cobweb-covered gape of a hidden hole. She plunged heedlessly into it and discovered a dark tunnel leading she knew-not and hesitated-to-inquire where. It just had to be less unsafe than what was behind.

The tunnel twisted around as if trying to dislodge her, but she followed it through every convolution, not daring to delay. Finally it gave up and let her into a faintly flowing small, forgotten, long-unused set of carved stone caves hiding under the harpy hutch caves. Against all odds, she had found a secret place that almost seemed to be safe. She stumbled under rocky crevices holding poisonous-looking twining clumps of vines glowing in brilliant vegetable green, ultraviolet, Luna white, and blood-red, growing among broken sculptures of gargoyles, through rotting logs, and across the faces of prehistoric rocky ruins. She crawled over a perilous, crumbling, narrow, rotting wooden bridge across a gaping dark chasm filled with a horrible deep menacing rustling. As she passed it, it gave way, and collapsed behind her into the depths. She listened, but never heard the sound of its landing below.

At long last the magic path ended in a pool of sinister mist. She didn't quite trust this, so she grasped a tough root growing from a crevice in a ruin. After several timid little tries she managed to haul herself through muck and mud up to a higher level. She was, she hoped, safe for a while.

“How I wish I could fly, fly, fly up to the stars once more,” she breathed. But she was too tired to fly, even if she hadn't been caught in a deep dank gloomy cave unimaginably far below anywhere she cared to be. So she did the sensible thing and let herself collapse into sleep.

After a time she had no idea when she woke, the Demi-Luna moon's silvery beams were streaming in through a network of cracks in the cave's ceiling. She lay quietly beneath her spread cape, barely breathing as she sought answers to the questions that squeezed into her helpless little head at too rapid a pace.

“Where am I?” she murmured, momentarily disoriented.

“In a long-forgotten cave,” came a whisper, perhaps from a stony face. Somehow this did not seem unusual. She was probably imagining it anyway.

“Am I alone?” she asked.

“Yes and no,” came the cold whisper. The stone face didn't move, so that wasn't it. In any event she knew stone didn't speak. Whence came the windy voice, since there seemed to be no one else in the cave?

Maybe this was sleep, and this was a dream a night mare brought. So all she had to do was wake up. She pinched herself cruelly on the arm, but though it hurt, nothing else changed. Except that now she became aware of her feet. Something was nibbling on her tasty little toes.

She moved her head, looking about. She lay with her head in a nest of egg-shaped stones and her feet in a circulating pool of chill water. There were indeed cute little fish tasting her toes, though they weren't actually biting. Maybe they were just trying to alert her to her situation.

She sat up, wrapped her cape around her, and climbed to her feet. She shouldn't have. She screamed with pain. Her right knee was swollen as big as a globular little gourd, and it hurt twice as large. She quickly sat down again. She was hungry, she was thirsty, and she missed her mother Glory Goblin and her father Hardy Harpy and her tutor Magpie ever so much. Why had she ever come to a place like this? She took sober little stock. Well, she could do something for the thirst. Carefully she lowered her face to the cold, crystal-pure pool of water and touched it with her lips. She sucked in several greedy little gulps, and her raging thirst eased.

Now, with her face close to the pool, she paid attention to the gold and scarlet shapes in it. They were three tame Coy fish she knew from her occasional swims on the surface. She recognized their distinctive patterns. They weren't trying to eat her; they just wanted company.

She reached down with one hand. “I won't hurt you,” she said. “I'm in the same position you are. Come, let me tickle you, and I'll share my life-and-death struggle with you.” They wiggled appreciatively, and played faint music on their scales.

Suddenly the presence of the fish unnerved her. They gave her hope, and that frightened her. Maybe she could give them a message to take to the harpies, to come and rescue her. So she couldn't just give up and peacefully expire.

“Go, friends, and tell my folk where I am,” she said. “Especially Magpie, if you can find her.” Because Magpie, as one of the few caring demonesses, would surely have the will and ability to help.

The fish played another little melody and scooted away.

Gloha lay down again, trying to return to sleep, as there wasn't much else to do except suffer. It took her only eight long minutes and two or three short ones to realize that sleep was unlikely to come. She just lay there, cold, hungry, wretched, and rigid on the bed of egg stones, wishing it were made of ruffled feathers, though she had never been exactly comfortable on those either. The stones glowed in pretty colors, but remained uncomfortable.

So she got up, putting her weight on her swollen knee very carefully so that the pain was almost bearable. She walked to the largest crack in the cave wall. She looked at each stony detail with a reasonably clear and open little orb or two. If this were harpy thyme for her, so be it. She would make it as pensively little pleasant as she could.

She made her way to the center of the ruins in the cave, hummed to herself, and thought about Magpie. If the fish found her, she would come. If not-

Gloha tapped a column. It rang with a somber note. She tapped another. Its note was different. She found several other notes. She organized them into a tune, and sang along with it, setting the golden motes to dancing in the shards of sunlight which now fell through the jagged cave cracks. The rays of light vibrated like the strings of a harp, changing color, touching different places on the sandstone slab. The effort warmed her body, and perhaps the stone too. Each ruined runic surface seemed to resonate to her music, becoming friendlier. The spirits of the stones whispered counterpoint to her song, and clustered around a breach in the wall she hadn't seen before. She went there, and lo, it was a window to another world that might be part of the surface of Xanth, or might lead to it. This could be her way home. If she could just somehow wedge her battered little body through the crack and follow the new chamber up and out.

Her awareness of the surroundings increased, and she heard the whispering voices of the stoned gathering of gargoyles. Now she knew their identity, and what had happened to them. “Some day your story will be known, O gargoyles,” she said. Then their faint voices increased, becoming an incoherent babble, as if the air were being sucked out of the cave. The cavern began to shake, and stone fragments flaked off the ruins. The crevice before her yawned wider.

Afraid that the cavern was collapsing on her, Gloha screamed and with a dreadful little determination jammed herself through the crack, out of the cave, and into the next. She fell down slippery shale and slid to the base of the scene.

Was she truly free, or was this but a tantalizing dream? She would soon enough find out. She half ran, half flew, taking as much weight off her bad knee as she could without rising up to bang into the rough ceiling. She followed the steep trail up and around-and it opened on the surface, in sight of the harpy caves. She ran out, and the scene changed. She tripped, almost falling, and turned around.

There were no ruins behind her, no caves. Just Xanthly forest. So had it all been a bad dream? She wasn't sure.

Gloha blinked, realizing that another wave of madness had passed, leaving her damp but no longer immersed. She had relived the time she got lost in the nether caves-the ones the harpies claimed didn't exist. She knew better, and perhaps some day she would be able to prove it.

“So there are ancient ruins with gargoyles,” Trent remarked. “Someone should excavate them and restore them to their original grandeur.”

“You could see to that,” Gloha reminded him, “if you decided not to fade away yet.”

He smiled. “There will be others after me. It would be no good for us old folk to remain too long, cluttering the later history of Xanth. That's one reason the Good Magician keeps the secret of the Fountain of Youth.”

She thought of something else. “Why is it my madness that keeps being explored? Doesn't anyone else have any bad memories?”

“Not I,” the Demoness Metria said. “I'm infernal. I have no soul, therefore no conscience. My past doesn't bother me, so I would not have any bad memories or dreams even if I cared.”