Isle Of View (4 page)

The little centaur took an unsteady step. It was hard for him to move well after being hobbled.

“I'll help you!” Jenny said. She put her arms around his body where it changed from colt to boy, trying to steady him and urge him forward.

“An elf!” the mean woman exclaimed, swirling her great dark tresses about in a no-nonsense manner. “Well, we'll put a stop to this!” She waved a wand, and suddenly the foal and Jenny were lifted into the air.

“Eeeek!” Jenny screamed, totally startled.

“It's her magic wand,” the foal said. “We can't escape.”

For a moment Jenny was startled back into a normal state. “You can talk!”

“Well, I'm five years old.”

“But you look less than one year old,” she said, peering more closely at him.

“We centaurs age at the human rate, or maybe faster for the winged ones, because of our avian heritage. I think I'm about your age, in relative terms.”

“Three hands? But you're not even half grown yet!”

“Hands?”

Jenny showed her spread four fingers, three times. “Each finger a year,” she explained

“Oh, that's right. You're an elf. I mistook you for full human.” Then, after a pause: “Four fingered hands?”

Jenny looked down. “This is interesting, and we really must talk some more. But right now we have to get away from that mean woman!”

“That's Godiva Goblin. We can't get away from her as long as she has the magic wand.”

“Magic wand?” Jenny was beginning to understand the problem.

Below, Sammy heard and walked toward the woman, his tail twitching ominously.

“No!” Jenny cried, afraid of what would happen to the cat if he attacked this mean creature.

“Don't tell me no,” Godiva said. “I will keep you suspended until you tell me what the elves have to do with this. Where's your elm?” As she spoke, she lowered the wand, and Jenny and the foal came down to float just barely out of reach of the ground.

“I don't know anything about an elm!” Jenny protested.

Then Sammy leaped. He caught the wand in his mouth and tore it out of the woman's grasp.

Jenny and the foal dropped abruptly to the ground.

“Come back with that!” the woman exclaimed angrily. Her long hair swirled around her body as she turned.

Sammy had snatched the wand, after Jenny mentioned it, and now the lady goblin couldn't use it against them!

“Find somewhere safe!” Jenny called to the cat. “Run! Follow that cat!” she cried to the foal.

The little centaur moved faster than before, the kinks working out of his legs. He began to trot: Jenny ran alongside, her eyes on Sammy. It wouldn't do them much good if Sammy found somewhere safe, but they couldn't find him!

Now the male goblins were returning. “Moron! Idiot! Imbecile!” the woman screamed. “Catch them! Get the wand back!”

But the cat was moving swiftly, and the centaur was gaining speed. They got a lead before the goblins got organized.

Sammy, with something new to find, forgot the wand. It dropped from his mouth. Jenny saw it, and swooped it up. “Maybe this will stop them!” she said, turning to wave it at the goblins.

Nothing happened. “You can't use it,” the centaur said. “It's attuned to Lady Godiva and won't work for anyone else,”

“Well, I'll keep it anyway so she can't use it against us,” Jenny said, and ran on.

They plowed through more jungle, running as fast as they could. But the goblins kept after them. Every time the mean men slowed, the mean woman screamed at them and made them speed up again.

Jenny's breath was rasping. She was used to walking a lot and to hurrying after Sammy, but this was headlong running, and she had already been tired from the prior chases. She couldn't keep this up much longer!

Then they came to a river. It wasn't the biggest river Jenny had ever heard of, but it wasn't the smallest either. It was a good stretch across it. She knew how to swim, but she wasn't sure about the foal, and she was so tired that she really didn't want to try it.

But Sammy came up to a square log raft tied beside the river. What a relief!

Sammy jumped onto the raft. Jenny jumped on after him, and the foal after her. Quickly she untied the rope, then lifted the pole and shoved the raft out into the water.

The goblins burst upon them, but stopped at the waterline.

Jenny poled frantically, but the raft moved with agonizing slowness. “Oh, they can swim right across to us!” she gasped, dismayed.

“No, they can't,” the centaur said.

“But it's only a little distance!”

He pointed to a ripple in the water. Suddenly a slipper bobbed to the surface. “Water moccasins,” he said.

“But that looks like a shoe!” she pointed out.

“It is a shoe—but it bites the toes of any footed creature it catches.”

Now she saw that inside the moccasin, where the toes would fit, there were sharp white teeth. The tongue curled, slurping around the edge. She wouldn't want to put her foot in that!

The goblins seemed just as reluctant to trust their feet to the water. Several water moccasins were waiting, licking their rims. This was after all a safe place, in its dangerous way!

The current took the raft, moving it downstream. Jenny relaxed, not having to pole anymore. “What river is this?” she asked. “Do you happen to know?”

“I believe it is the With-a-Cookee River,” the centaur said. “I heard the goblins say they wanted to avoid it.”

“With a cookie?” she asked. “What an odd name! Why would anyone call a river something like that?”

“It might be because of the cookies,” he replied, pointing.

She looked, and saw toadstools growing on the bank. But as the raft drifted closer, she saw that they were indeed cookies, or something with a very similar appearance. She reached out and took one, fearing that it would be no more edible than the cherries had been, but it turned out to be what she called a sandie, sugary and crisp. She sat on the raft and ate the rest of it, savoring it.

The centaur picked one himself and tasted it. “Very sweet,” he commented. “That's probably because of the sugar sand.”

“The what?”

“The sugar sand. It is found throughout much of Xanth, and is excellent for growing sweets. Sometimes I eat it straight, but my dam doesn't like that.”

“But sand isn't sweet!” she protested.

He glanced at her, surprised. "You, an elf, do not know of sugar sand?''

“There is no such thing, Chay!”

His brow furrowed. “Are you addressing me?”

Jenny borrowed a notion from the foal's mother. “I think we had better start over. Let's introduce ourselves. You are...?”

“Che Centaur of the winged monsters of Xanth,” he replied promptly.

“Che? I thought it was Chay! I'm sorry.”

“Quite all right. And you are ... ?”

“Jenny of the World of Two Moons. Where I come from the sand is made of crushed rock or something; we can't eat it.”

“Crushed sugar crystal,” he said. "From the big Rock Candy Mountains, I believe. I gather you are not a local elf. Where is your elm?''

“What's all this business about elms?” she demanded. “I never saw an elm!”

“But all elves are associated with elf elms,” he said. “They never stray far from them, because their vitality is inversely proportional to their distance from their home elm. If you are far from yours, you must be feeling quite weak now.”

“I'm not associated with any elm!” she said. “No elves I know are! I'm tired, yes, but not weak because of any tree!”

He pondered. "I assumed your land of two moons was merely one that my dam had not yet educated me about. Do you mean to say it is beyond Xanth? In another land where there are doubled moons?''

“Yes. My world is nothing like this one! I never heard of Xanth before, and I find it impossibly strange. All these magic things like cherries that explode and man-animals that fly—” She paused. “Oh, no offense.”

“None taken. Centaurs derive from the stock of the human folk and the horse folk—and of course my kind derives also from bird folk, ultimately. My grandsire was a hippogryph.”

“A what?”

“You would call it a horse with the head of a bird.”

Jenny shook her head. “If I weren't right here talking to you, I think I wouldn't believe any of this. But I did see your mother fly.”

“Yes, my dam makes herself light by flicking her body with her tail; then she can fly. But my wings are as yet insufficiently formed for that, so I have to content myself with leaps when necessary.”

“You can make yourself light?” she asked, surprised.

“I can make anything light,” he said. “But of course I don't do it indiscriminately. That would not be polite.”

“I wish you could make me light!” she said. “Then maybe I wouldn't be so tired!”

“As you wish.” Che flicked her shoulder with the tip of his tail.

Immediately Jenny felt quite light. She got up—and almost sailed off the raft! “I really am light!” she exclaimed.

“Certainly. But be careful, because I cannot make you heavy again. My magic is one-way. But the effect slowly fades.”

Jenny felt her mind spinning, and not because her head was light. There really was magic here, practiced by ordinary folk instead of High Ones, and it worked on her! That explained a great deal.

“I remain unclear how you came to Xanth if you are from a foreign region,” Che said.

“I'm unclear on that myself! I was following Sammy, and when he found what he was looking for—which was one of your feathers—we were here.”

“Oh, that explains it. Sammy's a magic creature.”

“No, he just has an uncanny ability to find whatever he looks for.”

“Isn't that magic?”

Jenny reconsidered. “I suppose it is. Certainly it is now, because he's finding things much faster and better than he used to.”

“Do you have a magic talent of your own?”

“Me?” She laughed. “I can hardly do regular things, let alone magic ones! I'm fortunate just to see straight, thanks to these nice spectacles your mother gave me.”

“Do you mean to say you have not tried?”

Jenny was intrigued. “You mean you really think I might have some magic? Like making things light or heavy or something?”

“It seems possible. Human folk all have talents, and some other creatures have them too, if they have human lineage. Elves as a general class seem to be content with their tribal magic associated with their elms, but if you are not of that type, perhaps you conform to the human mode.”

“I wonder what mine could be?” For the first time she had found a really positive reason to be here in this weird world .

“Oh—I forgot. Mundanes don't have magic. Only folk made in Xanth.”

“What's a Mundane?”

“A person or animal originating in the dreary nonmagic realm beyond Xanth. My dam does not like to speak of it.”

“But I'm not from there! Does Mundania have two moons?”

“I don't think so. Just one moon, like ours, only its green cheese has calcified into inedible rock.”

“A moon made of green cheese?”

“And honey on the other side. My sire and dam went to the honey moon, where they conceived me. Perhaps that is where I obtained my taste for sweets.”

“So if I'm not from Xanth or Mundania, then we don't know whether I have magic,” Jenny concluded. “But if Sammy has magic, maybe I do too.”

“Perhaps it is true,” Che said doubtfully.

“Why did the goblins kidnap you?”

“I assume they wished to eat me.”

“Eat you!” she exclaimed, horrified. “But that would be mean, cruel, and awful!”

"True. That is the nature of goblins. Yet I confess to bewilderment that they did not slaughter me immediately. They seem to be saving me for some future occasion.”

“They certainly had you all tied up!” she agreed.

“They seemed to be taking me somewhere. The men are brutes, of course, but Godiva kept them from mistreating me. Goblin women are much nicer than goblin men, of course. The fact that she was put in charge of the party suggests that something other than incidental mayhem is involved. It is quite odd.”

“How did they get you? Didn't you know to stay away from goblins?”

“Certainly I knew! But they tempted me with the smell of baking pastry and I couldn't help myself. If you think sugar sandies are good, you should taste fresh pastry! Then a horrible fog surrounded me, and suddenly I was all trussed up and the captive of goblins. I think they had a one-way path.”

“A one-way path? But all paths go both ways!”

“By no means! Magic paths typically are unidirectional, and some can be used only once. I suspect that the goblins used theirs to convey me a distance from my home glade, so that my dam would not be able to follow my tracks. Now they have exhausted their path spell and must proceed in more ordinary fashion. But they seem not to be local goblins, for they do not know the local terrain. Godiva was exploring the region ahead when you came upon me.”

Jenny decided not to argue about the directions of paths; when she saw a one-way path, then she would believe it, not before. “It's funny that they ran into such trouble. I would have thought they would just take you straight back where they came from.”

“That was my conjecture. But apparently something malfunctioned, because when they stepped off the magic path, they seemed bewildered. They were supposed to be on the east side of the Elements, and instead they were on the west side.”

“But a path can't just change where it goes!”

“Ordinarily they don't, but that is by no means fixed. Because this was a speed path, the scenery around it was blurred; they must have assumed that they were going in the right direction. We walked for perhaps half an hour before coming to the end, and then of course we had to get off, and it was gone. When Godiva saw where we were, she said something almost unladylike, which is unusual for a gobliness.”

“She didn't sound ladylike to me!” Jenny said stoutly. “I heard her calling the men stupid, and worse.”

“No, she was addressing them by their names: Moron, Idiot, and Imbecile. Stupid did not come on this mission.”

“Goblins have funny names!” Jenny said, laughing.

He smiled. “I understand they consider our names to be odd, too.” Then he glanced up. “Oh, I fear trouble!”