Heaven Cent (6 page)

“I guess so,” Dolph said, though he found this explanation confusing. “But that tree looks a lot older man she does.” In fact, now that she was safely gone, it occurred to him that her body had been sort of interesting. Like a nymph's, only more so. He regretted that he hadn't wrestled with her.

“They are the same age,” Marrow assured him. “Perhaps two hundred years.”

“Two hundred years! What did she want with me, then?”

“Only a human man can give her children; she can not reproduce with her own kind, for there are no male vily. She hoped you would reproduce with her; not only would her offspring be vily like herself, they would be related to the royalty of Xanth, and have special prestige. She is most eager for that.”

“I guess so,” Dolph agreed. “But how did she expect to get children from me? I mean, what is the exact process of summoning the stork?”

“That is part of the Adult Conspiracy,” Marrow said. “I am not permitted to inform you of that. It is something you will have to discover for yourself, or with a knowledgeable partner, when you are of age."

And with that frustrating answer Dolph had to be satisfied. He had hoped that Marrow would not remember the Adult Conspiracy against Children. He knew, of course, that babies were brought by storks; the secret was how adults managed to signal the storks so as to order the babies. Storks answered only to very particular directives, and absolutely refused to deliver babies otherwise. No child had ever figured out the secret; if children ever did, they would be able to order babies for themselves and bypass the adults entirely. What a dream that was!

Now that it was too late, he also realized that Vida Vila might have told him the secret, if he had thought to ask, because she was so eager to please him. Well, maybe he would return this way after all, after his Quest was done, and ask her. The trick would be to get the answer and get away before she could set up for any more mush.

But meanwhile the Isle of Illusion was there across the water; soon they would find the Heaven Cent!

In the morning they gazed at the isle. “I'll become a roc and carry you across,” Dolph said.

“Perhaps—”

Dolph was coming to dread that opening! But he knew he'd better hear it. “What?”

“—it would be better to cross by boat.”

“We don't have a boat!”

“I can assume that configuration, if you can find a paddle.”

"You can be a boat? Why didn't you tell me that back at the river?''

“You didn't ask.”

There were times when adults could be very trying! “All right, we can do it by boat. But what's wrong with flying across?”

“We do not know precisely what we will encounter there and may not wish to advertise our approach. An air approach could lead to complications about landing, and if harpies happen to be nesting there—”

“Good point.” Dolph wanted no further business with harpies! He searched around the shore until he found a flat branch that would do for a paddle.

He kicked the skeleton. The bones flew out, and splashed on the water in the form of a small boat. Dolph climbed in, finding that there was just room for him. It was amazing how many shapes Marrow could assume! The bones were set slightly apart, but seemed to keep the water out anyway, so that the boat floated without difficulty.

“What keeps the water from leaking in?” he inquired as he paddled.

“Connective magic,” the skull he was using as a seat replied. "I consist of bones and cartilage; the bones are visible, but the cartilage can become very fine, and its webbing holds the water at bay. A similar effect enables me to speak to you; that invisible webbing captures air and pushes it past my mouth bones in such a way as to make sound.”

“You're quite a creature!” Dolph said admiringly.

“Thank you.”

Dolph was not the best paddler, but the craft was well designed and the distance was short, and a gentle wind from behind helped. He made decent progress.

As they neared the isle, its outline became stranger. It was not the wilderness Dolph had anticipated; instead it seemed to be an elaborate city. He saw golden domes and silver turrets and flying buttresses and waving banners. The morning sunlight glinted from its shiny surfaces, and an intriguing network of avenues showed below. Where had this come from?

“I thought the Isle of Illusion was empty!” Dolph panted as he paddled. “Where did that city come from?”

“The isle has been uninhabited by man since your grandmother Iris left it, generations ago,” the skull said. “Perhaps you see a mirage.”

“What's a mirage?”

“Something that is not really there. When you get close to it, it is gone.”

“It sure is pretty!” Dolph continued paddling, drawing slowly closer. “I hope it doesn't go soon!”

The closer he got to the isle, the larger and clearer the fabulous city looked. The elegant buildings cast shadows, and the exotic plants growing around them waved in the breeze.

“It sure looks real,” Dolph said.

"It should be fading out very soon.”

But it didn't fade. Finally Dolph squatted in the boat and lifted the skull, drawing it up with its trailing neck bones, so that Marrow could look. “Amazing!” the skull agreed.

Finally they landed. The city loomed over them, looking realer than ever. It was huge and clean and bright, every part of it clean and polished.

Dolph kicked the boat, and it reformed into the skeleton. “I am beginning to suspect this is something other than a mirage,” Marrow remarked. "But it was certainly my understanding that the isle was deserted.”

“Do you think there is any danger?” After the business with the harpies, Dolph was more alert for danger. Back at Castle Roogna things had always been safe. He had seen much danger in the Tapestry, but that wasn't real. Rather, it was real, but it was somewhere else, so didn't threaten him. To have things actually come after him—that was unnerving.

“There should not be any we can not handle. But perhaps—”

Dolph waited patiently. Apparently, skeletons could be disconnected in their speech as well as in their bodies.

“—we should contact Castle Roogna, just in case.”

“Contact Castle Roogna?”

“With your magic mirror.”

“Oh.” For a moment Dolph had feared this was a pretext to go back to Castle Roogna, from which he might never again escape. He dug in his pack for the mirror.

He held it up. “Castle Roogna,” he said.

The reflection of the isle disappeared. Momentary static played across the glass. Then a new reflection appeared: Dolph and Marrow standing before the strange city.

“What's this?” Dolph asked. “I said 'Castle Roogna' not 'Isle of Illusion'! Why are you back here?”

“Try turning around,” Marrow suggested.

Dolph saw no point in this, but didn't argue. He turned slowly, until he was facing the opposite way.

“It's no good; the picture hasn't changed.”

“Precisely,” Marrow said. “It is not a local reflection.”

“Sure it is! There's the two of us and the city!”

“But you are not facing the city. The local reflection would show the ocean behind you.”

Dolph glanced back. There was the ocean behind him. He peered again into the mirror. There was the bright city.

He turned again, so that now he held the mirror between him and Marrow. The reflection remained: the two of them standing before the city. Now as he peered more closely he saw that the Dolph figure was holding something between the two of them. The mirror! How could the mirror show a reflection of itself?

“Enlarge the scene,” Marrow suggested.

Dolph had the mirror do that. The image contracted as the scope of it expanded. A border appeared. “It's the Tapestry!” Dolph exclaimed.

“Which is oriented on us,” Marrow said. “It would thus appear that they are already aware of our situation.”

“They're spying on me!” Dolph said angrily.

“Perhaps it is just your sister,” the skeleton said.

“Urn, yes. Maybe she's jealous of my adventure!” Suddenly Dolph felt much better.

“So if there is danger here, your parents will know of it, and take what action is required. We may rest easier now.”

Dolph put away the mirror with mixed emotions. He was glad that there might not be real danger, but he didn't like being spied on. He wished there were some way he could stop it. But the Tapestry could be tuned to just about anything in Xanth. At least it meant that they knew he was solving the mystery of the Good Magician's disappearance. He was a genuine adventurer, instead of a dumb boy. That was a big consolation!

They walked into the city. The domed buildings were huge, and just as pretty up close as from afar. The streets between them were narrow but sparkling with bright multicolored tiles and polished copper borders. Now it was evident that the plants and flowers growing around the buildings were not real, but cunningly crafted to look genuine.

“This reminds me somewhat of a setting within the gourd,” Marrow remarked. “The City of Brass, for example.”

“A city in the gourd? Are we in the gourd?”

“No, we seem to be in your world still, and this is not identical; it merely reminds me of the way the gourd is set up. That is where the substance of dreams is fashioned; there are many settings that are used as models for the dreams. This could be such a setting.”

“A setting for a dream!” Dolph said. “This could be fun!”

“I do not dream, of course,” Marrow said, “because I am from the realm of dreams. But I know that many dreams are unpleasant. Let us hope that this setting is not for a dream borne by a night mare."

“Yes,” Dolph agreed, realizing that this adventure could become just as nasty as it could become fun.

“Also, we must remember our mission. We are here to find the Heaven Cent. That may not be easy.”

“Maybe it's in one of these domes,” Dolph said, glancing at his friend for the first time since entering the fascinating city.

He stopped, amazed. Marrow Bones was gone; in his place stood a handsome living human man in a white suit.

The man glanced back at him. “Is something wrong?” he asked with Marrow's voice.

Was it Marrow, or was it some stranger imitating his voice? Dolph didn't know how to judge. If it was Marrow, he should tell the skeleton right away. But if it was a stranger, maybe he should pretend not to notice the difference, so that the man would think he had succeeded in fooling him. “Uh—” he said.

“You look as if you'd seen a ghost,” the man said. “And not a friendly one. What is the matter?”

He had to say something—but what? Dolph wished he had some adult judgment so that he would know what to do. “Uh—” he repeated.

The man extended a hand to him. “You seem about ready to faint; let me help—”

Then the man's gaze fell on his own hand. His eyes seemed to bulge. “Uh—” he said.

“Yeah,” Dolph agreed.

“Something's happened to my hand!” the man cried, horrified. “It's all covered with meat!”

“Right,” Dolph said. At least this was solving his problem of what to say.

“My arm too! And my legs! I think I'm going to be sick!”

“Sickening,” Dolph agreed, reassured.

The man touched his own arm. “But it's not real!” he exclaimed with vast relief. “My bones are still there!”

“Not real?”

“Feel my arm!” the man said, reaching for Dolph.

Dolph retreated, then realized that it was better not to show fear. Gingerly he touched the arm.

His fingers passed through the arm and touched cold bone. “It is you!” he cried joyfully.

“Of course it's me!” Marrow replied. “Who else would it be!”

“But you look just like a living man! It's awful!”

Marrow went to stand facing a mirrorlike wall. “Appalling!” he agreed. “This is a dream brought by a night mare! How can you stand to look at me?”

“It isn't easy,” Dolph said. “But I think I can hold my breakfast down.”

“But at least it isn't real!” Marrow's hands were feeling his head. “There's no hairy skin on my skull, no loathsome eyeballs in my sockets, no grotesque tongue in my jaw. No fat clings to my body. I only look grotesque; I'm not really that way.”

“That's great,” Dolph said, conscious of his own hairy bead, loathsome eyeballs, and grotesque tongue. What was he doing with all that stupid flesh on him?

“It is all right for you, of course,” Marrow said. “You're supposed to be that way. You would even look a bit strange in bare bones. But for me—what a horror!”

“What a horror,” Dolph said, feeling better.

“I wonder—” Marrow stepped closer to the mirror wall and poked a fleshed finger at it. “—whether this too is illusory.” The finger passed through the wall. “It is! That explains it! This whole city must be illusory!”

Dolph touched a wall. His questing hand found nothing. Sure enough, it wasn't there. That explained how there could be a great fancy city on a deserted isle.

“But am I changed?” he asked. He looked at his own hands. “I don't look different to me.”

“No, you are exactly as you were,” Marrow reassured him.

“But if you've changed the way you look, how come I haven't? I should look like a skeleton or something, shouldn't I?”

“That is odd,” Marrow agreed. “I can only conjecture that you are a Magician, so it has no power over you. But it is possible that it clothes all living things with flesh, and you are already fleshed, so it has no further effect. Perhaps it would be the same with genuine buildings, leaving them alone.”

“Some of these illusions may be real? We'd better watch how we walk into them, then.”

“Yes. Fortunately, we can stay on the streets and use the apparent doors to enter. That way we won't risk banging into anything solid.”

“But suppose the Heaven Cent is covered over by some illusion? How could we ever find it?”

Marrow made a remarkably human type frown, lips and all. “I fear we shall have to do some very tedious checking, unless we can discover a way to abolish the illusion.”

That was what Dolph had been afraid of. “Then I guess we'd better get started. I sure wonder what all this illusion is doing here, though, when Grandma Iris is so long gone from here.”

Then they both stopped short. “Her missing talent!” Marrow exclaimed. “It came back here!”

“It missed the old Isle of Illusion!” Dolph agreed. “This is where it feels at home!”

“I had not realized that talents could do that,” Marrow confessed.

“Well, she's pretty old. Maybe she lost her grip on it. ”

“That may be the case. I am surprised she has not acted to recover it.”

Dolph considered. “Maybe she doesn't know it's here. I mean, it could be just about anywhere, and she didn't think to look here. If it's just my stupid sister watching the Tapestry, and not even watching now, 'cause she never sticks to anything long except bossiness, she wouldn't've told anyone, so they don't know.”

“Perhaps so,” Marrow said. “I suppose it could become tedious watching another person's adventure constantly. Still, we ought to draw attention to the matter. I wonder if we could alert them?”

“You mean, call on the minor?”

“That does not seem to differentiate sufficiently, at this range. It merely focuses on one site in Castle Roogna, which is the Tapestry.”

“Yeah, it's a small mirror, and I never was too good at tuning them in. If I messed with it, I might lose Castle Roogna entirely. But how else can we call in?”

“Perhaps—”

Dolph wished he had a speed-up spell, to quicken that hollow skull's thinking process. He waited.

“—if we set up a message," Marrow concluded.

“Like a note on a piece of paper? They'd never see it because it would be too small.”

“A big note.”

“Oh.”

They got to work at the fringe of the region of illusion, collecting sticks and stones. Marrow's body changed oddly as he passed in and out of the illusion, one moment reverting to his normal bare bones, then becoming fleshed. At times he was part bones and part flesh.

In due course they had laid out objects in a big pattern on the small beach, spelling out words: TELL IRIS. Actually it should have been Grandma Iris, but they didn't have enough material for a big word like that. When Ivy saw that in the Tapestry, she would surely tell someone, and when Grandma Iris learned of the phenomenal city back at her old haunts, she would understand. Then she could reclaim her magic talent, and all would be well again. Dolph had not yet found the Good Magician or even the Heaven Cent, but already he was accomplishing something!