Yon Ill Wind (28 page)

Mentia went out to talk with the fillies, who were somewhat taken aback by the RV.  Then the two stepped into the calm surrounding the vehicle, evidently relieved, shaking out their wings.  The folk inside stepped out to make introductions.  The two were indeed Chena and her friend Crystal.

“But how is it that you are winged?” Mary asked.

“Your brother Carleton sends his greetings and goodwill, but he said nothing about wings.”

“I wasn't winged then,” Chena explained.  “I was a normal centaur.  But then I met Che Centaur, and, well, I had a wishing stone, and it made me winged.  Crystal was a human girl, whom I talked into converting.  You see, we need more flying centaurs, of different derivations, if we are to have a viable species.  So now I'm out recruiting.

Crystal here agreed that her prospects would be better as a centaur.  I have been showing her the centaur ways as we look for more recruits.”

“But won't you need male flying centaurs too?” Mary asked.

Crystal flushed.  “Yes,” Chena said.  “We are looking for suitable males of any species to recruit.”

Mary studied them.  Both were healthy fillies in the equine portions, and slender girls in the human portions, with the rather full breasts that the centaur species tended to have.  “I suspect you will succeed.  But I can provide an expert opinion, if you wish.”

“You can?” Crystal asked, speaking for the first time.

Mary glanced to the side.  “Sean, if you were not otherwise attached, would you consider becoming a winged centaur in order to be with one of these fillies?”

“You bet!” Sean agreed.  Then he had another notion, and Mary could have bit her tongue for not anticipating it.

“Say, I could be transformed to a winged elf to be with Willow!”

But Willow herself countered that, to Mary's great relief.  “No, my love.  Magician Trent can transform anyone to any form, but you are Mundane.  He could give you the form of a winged elf male, but not the magic.  Only if you already had magic could it change with your form.  You would not be able to fly.  Your wings would be useless. And…” She paused delicately.  “I love you as you are. I would not have you change.”

“We just can't make it in each other's worlds,” he said, disheartened.

“Not very well,” she agreed.

“That's sad,” Chena said.  “You fell in a love spring?”

They nodded together.

Chena exchanged a glance with Crystal, then looked back to Sean.  “I don't mean to be crude, but if we find males to recruit—do you mind telling us exactly where that love spring is?”

Sean and Willow laughed together, ruefully.  “I will show you, when this crisis is over.  But I hope you will tell your stallions of its nature, before—”

“Oh, of course!” Chena said.  “We wouldn't cheat! That leads to mischief.”

“We know,” Sean agreed, and Willow nodded.

Mary did not comment, but it struck her that for a random coupling of dissimilar species, the two were remarkably well matched.  Sean had a wild side that needed taming, while Willow was quite realistic and sensible, yet they laughed at the same things.  Sean could do a good deal worse in Mundania.  In fact, some of the girls he had been interested in had had only one thing going for them, youth.  That asset was all too fleeting, as Mary knew so well from her own experience.

But all that was beside the point.  She had to explain things to the centaur fillies.  “We were looking for you, Chena,” she said.  “And perhaps for Crystal too.  Because we need help to deal with this storm, before it blows Xanth away.  Will you come with us?”

“What kind of help?” Chena asked.  “We can't safely fly in this fierce wind.”

“I'm not sure,” Mary confessed.  “But I am sure that we need you, and that the manner of it will become apparent in due course.  As for flying—you should be able to do that in the ambiance of our traveling house, because Keaira is keeping the weather calm here.” She glanced at Keaira, who nodded shyly.

“Why, certainly, then,” Chena agreed.  “We can fly above it, or to the side.  As long as the terrible wind is kept away.  It isn't just the force of it, but the magic dust it carries.  It makes us dizzy, and weird things attack.”

“Like phantasms,” Mary agreed.  “Even when they are illusions, they are mischief enough.  Very well, then, let's get moving again.”

But Nimby was writing a note.  Chlorine took it and read it aloud.  “Why—why he says the house can fly!  The fillies can make it fly.”

Chena looked at the RV.  “Well, we can make it light enough to float, but that's not the same as-—”

“But then we could haul it along by ropes,” Crystal said.  “It could move through the air.  It might be clumsy, but it could be done, in calm weather.”

“Is this safe?” Mary asked, surprised.

Nimby nodded.

“And we can travel over the jungle, instead of through it?” The notion had definite appeal.

Nod.

This was evidently the way to go.  “How do you make it light?” she asked the centaurs.

“We simply flick things with our tails,” Chena said.

“That's really our magic.  To make things light enough to float or fly.  When we flick bothersome flies, they become too light to sit, so must fly away.  When we flick ourselves, we become similarly light.” She looked at the RV.  “However, that's pretty big.  It would take a number of flicks to lighten it enough, and we'd have to flick each of you who go inside it, too.”

“And the effect fades with time,” Crystal said.  “With each passing moment, you lose lightness.”

“You lose moments of effect,” Jim said.  He was speaking technically, because this was in his specialty of physics, but it didn't matter here.

“Yes.  So you have to get flicked again.  I think you would have to settle to the ground every half hour or so to get renewed.”

“I wonder,” Mary said thoughtfully.  “Modem, could you change that reality to make it last longer?  Like maybe a day instead of half an hour.”

“I guess so,” Modem said.

“Then let's try it,” Mary said.

First the two centaurs worked on the RV.  They were right:  they were making it lighten, but only at the rate of a hundred pounds or so per flick.  Mary could see the tires getting less flattened.  But it would take about twenty flicks apiece to complete that job, and they had to pause briefly to recharge between doses.

“Say, can you split into your halves?” David asked as they worked.  Mary didn't like the way he was staring at their breasts, but the centaurs seemed oblivious.  Obviously they wouldn't go bare if they felt there was any shame in it.

“Halves?” Crystal asked.

“You know.  Horse and person.”

“No,” Chena said between tail flicks.  Those breasts quivered with the effort of every flick, and so did David's eyeballs.  But Mary was determined to give no sign of her distress.  The centaurs simply didn't know how things were in Mundania.  “We are complete creatures, crossbreeds who have become our own species.”

“Anyway, it wouldn't be halves, it would be thirds,” Crystal said.  “Equine, human, and avian.”

 “Well, can you maybe turn all human, or all bird?” the boy persisted.  “Back and forth.”

“No, that's not our magic.  You are thinking of the merfolk, some of whom can make legs and become fully human and walk on land, or perhaps make a fish's head and swim underwater.  Or the naga folk, who can assume human or serpent form, with their natural form being between.  Others, like the harpies, are fixed in their merged forms.”

“Well, could they maybe get together and teach each other?” David persisted.  “So the centaurs could change form, and the naga could have magic talents, like flying?” Chena laughed heartily, and Mary struggled not to wince.

“Maybe so.  But Crystal and I have been working so hard to master our present forms that we are not much interested in experimenting with any other type of magic.

We are satisfied with the magic we have, which enables us to fly, and don't crave any other type.”

Then one end of the RV lifted off the ground.  It was just about light enough to float away.  It was time to do the people.

“One person should be ready to hold each one as we lighten them,” Chena said.  “We wouldn't want anyone to float away.” She smiled, but the warning was serious.

Jim took a stance by the RV.  “I'll go last,” he said.

They started in on the people.  Karen went first, and of course, the moment she was flicked and lightened by Chena's tail, she leaped into the air to see how far she would go.  As it happened, she leaped away from Jim, who reached for her but missed.  But Mary had been alert for something like this, and snagged the flying girl.  She was prepared, yet even so, was surprised; Karen really was feather light, as if she were no more than an inflated balloon in girl form.  Obviously centaur magic did work on Mundanes.

She passed the girl to Jim, who popped her into the open side door of the RV.  “Hey, it's small again!” she cried.

“How are we all going to fit?”

Mary looked at Modem.  “That magic was temporary?”

The boy fidgeted.  “No.  But I can change only one reality at a time.  You said to make the lightness last.”

Oops.  They needed two aspects of magic now.  This was getting complicated.  But maybe there was an answer.

“Jim?”

Her husband rose to the occasion.  “Modem, reality is mostly the way we see it.  Agreed?”

“Yes,” the boy said.  “Only—”

“So what we need is a special kind of reality for this moving house.  Suppose we think of it as having several properties:  it moves, it is larger inside than outside, and it holds a given spell for a day or more.  These are not different realities, but aspects of this particular structure.  One reality covers all its qualities.  Does this make sense?”

“I guess,” Modem agreed.  He concentrated.  And suddenly the interior was twice its natural size.

Crystal flicked David, and Jim passed him inside.  Then Chena did the next, and so on, until only Nimby and Jim were left outside.  Mary suspected that Nimby didn't really need the centaur magic to make him light, but he accepted the flick and went in.  Finally Jim closed the side door, opened the driver's seat door, and accepted his own lightening.  All ten of them were inside, with the two winged centaurs outside, taking the ropes now attached.

The centaurs flicked the vehicle twice more, and the rear end lifted.  They were floating!

“Where to?” Jim asked Nimby.

Nimby pointed south.  But he wrote another note.

“South,” Jim called out the window.

“One more to pick up,” Chlorine read.  “Adam.  About an hour, as the house flies.”

“An hour,” Jim called out the window as the ropes lost their slack.  Just as if this were routine.  Chena looked back and nodded.

They were hauled smoothly up until the trees were below.  Mary saw their branches being furiously whipped by the wind as the calm-weather patch left them behind.  The storm was still intensifying, and it was not hard to appreciate how in time it could start blowing trees down.  Happy Bottom was increasing to hurricane strength.

Now they bore south.  The children peered out and down, fascinated, and so did Jim and Mary.  It was as if they were in the cab of a blimp, floating silently across the terrain.  The landscape spread out below, varied and variegated.  The outline of Xanth, Mary knew, resembled that of Mundane Florida, but within that outline the detail could differ considerably.  Here there were mountains and chasms and endless types of magic.  She looked at the two flying centaurs, who made a pretty pair as their great wings rose and fell together.  They were nice girls, she knew.  In fact, most of the folk of Xanth were nice.  Parents were trusting, because the average stranger deserved trust.  The bad creatures, like dragons, were obvious—and even they weren't always bad.  The winged monsters had pitched in to help save Xanth, even the filthy harpies, and none had broken the truce.

There were things she was coming to like about this land.  She would be sorry to leave it.  And she did want to save it.  She felt somewhat responsible for the storm, because it had entered Xanth through the same aperture as their family had.  She realized that that wasn't completely reasonable, but neither was it completely unreasonable.

The storm was Mundane in origin; let the Mundanes defuse it.

The flight continued with no sign of weight gain.  Jim's rationale for double reality shifting had worked.  For someone who, until this adventure, had had zero tolerance for fantasy, he had made a remarkable accommodation.  As had she herself.  There was just something about Xanth, magic aside.

Nimby pointed down.  Already?  How the hour had flown—no pun.  Now they had to fetch in Adam.  What would his magic talent be?  How would it integrate with those of the others?  Only Nimby knew.  Nimby, she realized, was the true leader of this expedition.  A mute donkey-headed dragon!

“Below!” Jim called out the window.

The centaurs angled down.  There was a squat stone house.  At least that would be secure against the wind, for a while.  They landed before it, but the RV tended to float up again when the rope went slack.  The centaurs picked up rocks and brought them to the RV as ballast.  Jim and Sean took the stones and piled them in the center of the floor in back.  Then the vehicle stayed put.

“But watch it,” Jim warned.  “We still float.”

Then the centaurs brought smaller stones, which Mary and Willow put in their purses as personal ballast, following Nimby's indication.  It seemed that they were the proper ones to make the appeal to Adam.

They disembarked and approached the house.  A face appeared in a window.  “Are you real or spooks?” it demanded.

“We are real,” Mary answered.  “I am somebody's mother.”

“I am somebody's love,” Willow added.

“Then come in before the wind starts again.” The door opened.

They entered.  A rather stout young man stood there.

“You must be Adam,” Mary said.  “I am Mary Mundane.”

“I am Willow Elf.”

“Yes, I am Adam.  What do you folk want with me?”

“We are on a mission to save Xanth from the terrible storm,” Mary said.  “We need your help.  Will you come with us?”