Isle Of View (36 page)

Oh, there are some credits for puns and notions, but I discourage these now, as Xanth is not quite as punny as it once was. As Xanth enters its teens—this is number thirteen—it is maturing, developing new awarenesses, touching on more serious matters, and putting aside some of its childish things, though with luck it will never grow up enough to join the Adult Conspiracy. So fans who send in puns are unlikely to see them in Xanth. But some did appear in this novel.

Arthur Hoover fired off the .22 and other caliber shells. Bob Leonardi had the heart attack. Chris Cha stuck me with the traffic jam. Margaret Drennan got the stage fright. Chris Swanson saw the see shells and got bogged down in the corkscrew swamp, Plant City, Crystal River, horseshoe beach, and Cross City, all of which strange places show up in Mundane Florida by a suspicious coincidence. Becky Shoenberg and Asia Lynn drank the red whine. Shelly Poirer unwrapped the cheesecloth. And Ramiro Gonzalez, Jr. interpreted the Good Magician's Answer for the naga folk, just barely in time; I had already recorded the scene the wrong way when I received his letter.

I have regarded Xanth as the least consequential of the writing I do. It's easy, fun, and popular, but the critics revile it, and it's hard to find anybody who likes it except the readers and booksellers. I have been told that I should never have done more than the first Xanth novel, and disgust abounds about this business of having as many as nine novels in a trilogy. I guess I thought a trilogy was three multiplied by three. So here I am with the fourth novel of the second Xanth trilogy, not having learned better.

But there have been some slight indications that there is more to Xanth than meets the Mundane eye. One naturally expects great literature as defined by the critics to achieve permanence and be read by following generations, while the junk is quickly forgotten. But Xanth is violating that rule too, and refusing to be forgotten. Every Xanth novel remains in print and continues selling well, and Xanth-related things like calendars and statuettes and game books are appearing. Some day there could even be a movie, if the motion picture companies ever catch on to what folk like. Also, there seems to be some genuine human benefit deriving from Xanth. So if literature were to be defined not by the critics, but by permanence and relevance to the interests of real people, Xanth might score better than it has.

For example, there has been more than one person who read Xanth to alleviate the discomfort of illness, including chemotherapy treatments. There was a girl who was taken into a barn, attacked with a hammer, and raped. She didn't dare tell, but the experience shattered her. Then someone showed her Ogre, Ogre, which addresses a similar problem, and where the girl finds comfort at last with an ogre. This Mundane girl found an ogre (they aren't nearly as horrendous as they look, when you get to know one), and her life mended, and she wrote to tell me about it. There was the girl who survived an auto accident but lost her ability to remember things; she was a Xanth reader, and I attended her birthday party, and I think it helped her to remember. There are the mothers who have written to tell me that their children had no interest in reading until introduced to Xanth. There are the teachers who have told me similar things. I suspect that literacy is the most important skill for today's person; learning to read is vital, and it's getting harder to get folk to read. This sort of thing is causing me to reconsider the value of Xanth; it may be more than just passing entertainment.

And Jenny—yes, there is a real girl, Jenny Gildwarg, twelve years old, whose ordinary life abruptly became extraordinary, but not in a nice way. Jenny has a separate story, which for our purpose begins Dismember 9, 1988. Jenny is much like Jenny Elf in the novel, only her ears are round and her hands have five fingers. On this day she was walking home from school with several of her friends. She stopped at an intersection, looked both ways, and waited for a car to pass. The car slowed and stopped, and the driver motioned to the children to cross. They did so. Another car was approaching the intersection, but the driver was intoxicated and impatient; he passed the stopped car and took off. He struck Jenny and hurled her a fair distance. That was almost the end of her life.

A driver behind that one witnessed the accident, radioed for assistance, and ran out to help. The police and ambulance arrived promptly. They arrested the drunk driver, who was belligerent and had to be handcuffed. They administered first aid to Jenny and made ready to rush her to the hospital. The mother of one of the other children saw the whole thing, and came to tell Jenny's folks, A family friend went to the scene and identified her for the police and ambulance crew. He came home to report that there was a lot of blood, but that she was still breathing.

I am trying to restrain myself, but it's difficult to stifle my attitude about drunk driving. That man was convicted on all counts, including reckless driving and nonappearance (bail jumping); he paid court costs, and got a suspended sentence. Chances are that by the time this sees print, that driver will have forgotten this episode; with luck he may already have notched another pedestrian on his bumper. Who can measure the grief brought to innocents because this soused burro-sphincter couldn't wait his turn?

Jenny's folks scrambled to get to the hospital, where they learned that Jenny was in critical condition and comatose. The doctors worked on her for several hours to get her stabilized. Then she was flown by helicopter to the emergency ward of another hospital, where they worked on her for another several hours and transferred her to a children's hospital. At this point Jenny's folks were told that she would probably die; she had only a 15 per cent chance of survival. Her father had a heart attack, which he survived; her mother hung grimly on, helped by the support of good friends and family, but months later she was suffering things like bleeding ulcers and staying out of the hospital herself more by defiance than sense.

Jenny made it through the critical period of seventy-two hours. After those three days they increased her chances to 50 per cent, but not much was said about the state of her brain. The specter that can haunt such cases is brain damage, which the surgeons can't repair. Physically she was in a sorry state. Her lovely waist-length hair had been cut short and half her head shaved. Perhaps it was just as well that she remained unconscious, for her awakening would have been a horror at this stage.

About three weeks later she was transferred to another hospital, still in a coma. She remained there six more weeks, barely responsive to outside stimuli. Occasionally she would wiggle her big right toe, lift her head a little, and track with her eyes on request. Her mother showed her pictures of her cats—Jenny rescued every homeless cat she encountered, and there were eleven cats at her home—and read notes from her friends to her. Jenny's eyes widened and she sighed heavily. This suggested that her nervous system was there and that her mind remained. But that was all. They had tried to tell her what had happened, and perhaps then she had spoken her only word, if that was the meaning of the sound she made: “No!” She did not cooperate with therapists. It was as if she was deep in a pit, and only the most evocative things could reach her at all, and then only briefly. She did not seem to want to live. What was the point, with her body paralyzed? Weeks passed without change.

At last Jenny's mother, grasping at straws, wrote to me. She thought that maybe a letter from the author of Xanth would strike some spark and motivate Jenny to come out of the coma. Jenny had read the first ten Xanth novels; the accident had cut her off from the eleventh, published not long before. The things of Xanth were common in Jenny's house. The Spelling Bee was as balky as ever, forcing them to use the mundane dictionary; Agent Orange sometimes wilted their plants (that turned out to be their big orange cat, using the pots in lieu of kitty litter); the Gap Chasm had an extension past their backyard; the Forget Spell frequently caused things like homework and room tidying to be forgotten; the Monster Under the Bed made things disappear; and the hypnogourd-TV tended to trap her father after his hard day's work. So maybe Xanth would have the magic needed to wake Jenny from her long sleep.

Jenny's mother happened to know a novelist of the genre, Andrea Alton, whose novel Demon of Undoing featured civilized catlike creatures. She asked Andrea about this business of writing to me, and Andrea suggested that she ask me to name a character of Xanth after Jenny, as this could be done without reference to Jenny's real nature and might encourage Jenny to take notice. At worst, I would say no.

As it happened, when I received the letter in FeBlueberry 1989, I was about three weeks from starting this novel. I knew how it would begin and how it would end, and I knew about Che Centaur needing help. But much of the rest was inchoate; I would figure it out when I got there. So I wrote a letter to Jenny for her mother to read to her, and I told her of the novel and offered to put in a character with her name. Would she prefer an elf girl or an ogre girl? I asked whether she liked ElfQuest, the series of novels in comic form—many of my younger readers do—and mentioned that her Bed Monster had gotten lonely at home without her so had moved in under her hospital bed. But he was in danger there of having a nurse give him a loathsome shot in the rump. Monsters don't much like shots, for some reason.

I really had my doubts. I hoped my letter would help, for I have raised two daughters, and by an odd coincidence each of them was once twelve years old, and to me there is nothing more precious than a little girl. But by the time my letter could reach her, Jenny would be almost three months in her coma, and that was no positive sign. So I schooled myself not to hope too much, like Electra with Prince Dolph.

I should say that I am not eager for a deluge of requests for characters named after readers. This was a special situation. I would rather have every young reader live safely and never suffer any pain or even a low grade at school. One character can be named after a reader, but I have half a million readers. So if you're not in a coma, don't ask.

Jenny's mother read my letter to her. It brought a great widening of Jenny's eyes and her first smile since the accident. She became responsive. She would squeeze someone's hand on command. They used flash cards saying YES and NO, and Jenny's eyes would track to one or the other in answer to questions. By such means her mother ascertained that Jenny definitely preferred to have an elf girl, not an ogre girl. Big surprise! I was teasing her, of course.

After that Jenny cooperated with the therapists, and each week saw improvement. She remained largely paralyzed, and was in a body brace, and unable to move her left side or to talk. She could not close her mouth; a smile was about the limit of what she could do. She had to have nerve blocks to free up her limbs. She was, we suspect, in pain at times. But Jenny is a cheerful girl, and her smiles became more frequent, and then her laughs, and then she managed to say the first word we are sure of: “Hi.” It's hard to speak when your face is paralyzed. So she had miles to go, and how far she would get no one could say, but now she was in motion. She was climbing out of the pit, an inch at a time.

I wrote again, and again, on a weekly basis. Jenny became a major correspondent, though she could not answer. Her mother reported on Jenny's reactions to my letters, and interpreted. The blinking of eyes could be a signal, and a kind of game of “twenty questions” could run down what Jenny had in mind. She was so responsive now that it was easy to forget that she remained mostly paralyzed. I learned that she is a vegetarian, like me, and I saw the drawings she had made before the accident, for her story about the flowers and the blind girl. Yes, that was Jenny's story that Jenny Elf told; this is my listing of credit for that. As I write this, they are shopping for a wheelchair, looking forward to the time when Jenny can come home. I joked about how she would zoom down the halls, setting the nurses spinning, and be known as Spinning Jenny. I will, if you wish, make a report in the next Xanth novel Note about Jenny's progress. As for Jenny Elf, we don't yet know about her either. She may remain in Xanth, or she may return to the World of Two Moons. Only the Muses know for sure, and they don't seem too certain. Any of you who haven't visited that world may do so now, to check it out for her: ElfQuest graphic novels are in your bookstores. For now, take my word: they aren't junk, any more than Xanth is.

Meanwhile, back in Mundania: what would I do with that drunk driver, if I ruled the universe? I'd sentence him to three months in a coma, and a possible lifetime crippled. It is past time to start taking action with teeth in it to stop such brutal idiocy. For this was no isolated event; every day, other drunk drivers are doing this to other innocent children. Why should they stop, since punishment is a joke?

So I got into the novel, and Jenny Elf took form as a cross between Jenny of Mundania and a visitor from ElfQuest. I wrote to Richard and Wendy Pini, who record ElfQuest, and they gave me permission to make Jenny an ElfQuest elf rather than a Xanth elf. In fact they also got in touch with the original Jenny, sending her things of their realm. I understand that at one point Jenny, annoyed by the rock music of a boy in the ward, turned up her ElfQuest tape to drown it out. Should we call that spar wars? So it was that an ElfQuest elf came to Xanth, making this novel unique. The rest you know.

After I completed the novel and the Note, back in Mayhem, something came up. I discovered that Jenny lived close to a science fiction convention that was scheduled for NoRemember 1989. So I told her folks about it and said that if it turned out to be possible for Jenny to attend, I would go too. I hate to travel, but this was special, and anyway it seemed unlikely that the hospital would let her go that soon.

Surprise! It could be arranged. The hospital gave Jenny a one-day pass, and she came with two therapists and her family. Thus it was that I attended Sci-Con 11, in Virginia, and met Jenny, who was now thirteen. She was still unable to move well, or to talk, and could not remain sitting in her wheelchair for long. But I took her hand and talked to her intensely for about half an hour, tuning out the rest of the world. The essence of what I said to her was that maybe she had decided to wake from her coma on her own, then learned of my first letter, and said “How nice. What's for lunch?” At that point she began to smile; we both knew it hadn't been that way. Then I got serious: “But maybe you were walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and you faced resolutely toward that other world, until my hand caught your hand, and held you, and turned you back to face this world.” I explained how I had been just the final person in a long chain of her parents and friends reaching for her, and so I had been able to stretch the last bit of the way and finally catch her hand. But I hoped that what I had brought her back to was more than paralysis. This convention was part of what the world offered for her.