It was the month of OctOgre, when the ogres were tromping about and ugly forebodings stalked about the land of Xanth. Or so it seemed to Ivy, for a number of annoyances had settled about her like knick-gnats. For one thing, her mother Irene was getting quite fat in the tummy, but kept right on eating and pretending it was wonderful, and didn't seem to have much time for Ivy anymore. For another, her father King Dor had ordered a baby brother for her, and they were expecting to find him under a cabbage leaf any day now. Ivy did not need or want a baby brother, but nobody had asked her. How could they have been so thoughtless as to order something like that without consulting the one most concerned? What good was a baby anyway -- especially a boy?
Well, she could go out to the orchard and throw cherries at glass trees. That was always fun for bad moods, and the explosions created a nice commotion, not to mention the breaking glass tinkling down. Of course the adults tended to raise a fuss, but that was part of the excitement. Yes, that would do for a start!
She jumped off her bed, landing just beyond the reaching grasp of the monster-under-the-bed, and ran for the door. "Pooh to you, monster!" she cried nastily, sticking out her toungue at it as she slipped out. The thing growled, but could not reach her, and had to retreat back into its shadow.
Grundy the Golem intercepted her as she passed into the hall. "Where are you going, Princess Tadpole?" He always called her that, ever since hearing the fable about the princess and the frog; he liked the story, but refused to grant her the status of a full-grown frog.
There was another annoyance! They had sicked Grundy on her as a baby-sitter; she couldn't sneak out anywhere without him tagging along. "Nowhere, ragbrain," she said shortly.
"Then we might as well get on to the North Village, Sweetpea." he always called her that, ever since -- never mind.
"The North Village! I'm not going there!"
"Yes you are, Snippet. To visit your grandpa King Emeritus Trent for a few days."
"Grandpa Trent? Why?" Actually, this sounded interesting; still she felt obligated to protest, on general principle.
"To get you out of the way, Cutie-pie, while your baby brother arrives, of course." He always called her that, ever since she had climbed into a pie and pulled the crust over her for a blanket. The castle cook had made a fuss, for no reason.
Ivy wasn't thrilled to be reminded of that. "I'd rather stay at home and build a deadfall to trap him. Do you happen to know which cabbage leaf --?"
Grundy concidered, seeming to find something funny. "You can ask the zombies to do it. They keep an eye on the garden, and they're good at deadfalls. They use them for their deadstock."
"Good enough!" She ran down the hall, heading for the zombie graveyard.
The golem zipped after her. He could move move surprisingly quickly for such a little creature. "But we haven't time for that now! King Trent is waiting."
"Oh, pooh!" she said, skewing around a corner in the manner only she could manage, spooking a ghost who happened to be drifting through. "He's not here yet!"
"Really?"
Ivy skidded to a halt. There stood her grandfather, at the head of the stairs, awsomely stern and grave.
"Oopsy!" she exclaimed.
King Emeritus Trent smiled. Like most adults, he was subject to mellowing by cute displays. "Are you ready to travel, Ivy? What form of bird would you like to be?"
Ivy brightened. She liked flying! "A blue-J," she decided. "And Grundy can be a green-J."
"Coming up," King Trent said. He never gave her cutesy nicknames; he treated her with the dignity due royalty. Ivy had a high regard for grandparents; sometimes she wished she could eliminate the middleman and just be her grandparents' daughter.
"Wait, Grandpa!" she cried, remembering something. "What about Stanley?"
"We'll fly down and fetch him," her grandfather agreed indulgently, aware that children always wanted to take their pets with them. Then Ivy became a blue-J, and Grundy a green-J, and King Trent himself a red-J.
At which the green-J did a doubletake. "You can't transform yourself, Your Majesty!" he squawked at the red-J.
"I can when I'm only present in illusion," the red-J replied.
"Live and learn," the golem-bird muttered. "He's here in illusion -- and can still do transformations. Isn't magic marvelous!"
It occured to Ivy that it would be great talent to be able to transform oneself to any other form. Grandpa Trent could only transform others; it was Grandma Iris who handled illusions. So she was projecting Grandpa Trent as a red-J instead of himself; he wasn't really here. Ivy envied those who had such obvious talents; her own talent of enchantment was subtle, intended to do others more good than herself, so people didn't always recognize her as the Sorceress she was. That could be most annoying at times.
They flew out a window and looped down to the moat, where Stanley Steamer was was snoozing on the bank and a young moat-monster snoozed in the water. The young dragon was somewhat smitten with the female monster, and at times got fairly steamed up about her, but Ivy knew her for a tease. Males of all kinds tended to be foolish about females of al kinds; this was a fact that Ivy noted carefully for future reference. One never knew when such information might come in handy.
"Come on, Stanley -- we're flying north!" Ivy called.
The dragon peered up at the J's, perplexed. He flapped his wings, as if to show that the spirit was willling, but the flesh was inadequate. He recognized Ivy by her voice and smell; sometimes Grandpa Trent had transformed her to other forms, so Stanley was used to that. But as for flying -- he was a half-grown dragon, far too massive to get airborne.
Then he became a green dragonfly. He buzzed up, looked startled, and more than a little nervous now about the birds. "It's okay, Stanley," Ivy called. "The others are just Grundy and Grandpa Trent; none of us eat bugs."
The dragonfly remained uncertain, for a real bird might say anything to lure a tasty dragonfly within reach. Ivy saw the problem, for she perceived herself as a bright child, and unlike her grandfather she could apply her magic talent to herself as well as others. "Maybe if you were bigger --"
"No problem," Grandpa Red-J said. Stanley became a larger dragonfly, more massive than any of the birds, with six big bright wings and twice that many teeth. Now he had much more confidence. He buzzed loudly and shot out an experimental jet of fire, pleased. In his natural form all he had was steam.
They looped above the castlle and headed north toward the Gap Chasm. Ivy was thrilled to see Castle Roogna and it's environs from above. It looked so small, almost like an elaborate toy castle. The trees of the orchard resembled bushes. The whole landscape of Xanth was a tapestry of greens, with fields and forests alternating intriguingly. Here and there were houses of people and the dens of dragons and the warrens of unidentifies creatures. She had explored some of that on the ground once, two years ago, and met a nice goblin girl and a cyclops and of course Stanley Dragon himself. She'd have to do that again sometime!
Soon they were over the Gap. This was a huge, deep fissure that extended across the peninsula of Xanth. For centuries it had been forgotten, not even appearing on maps, because of the Forget-Spell on it, but now that spell was mostly gone. Ivy wondered where the monstrous spell had come from, and who had made it, for she was curious about everything. No one seemed to know about that Forget-Spell, which she found very frustrating. Ivy liked to know about everything that caught her passing fancy, especially things that were secret.
A gleam caught her eye. There was a lake perched at the edge of the Chasm; in fact it overlapped the Chasm slightly, but refused to drain down. The perversity of the inanimate in various ways in Xanth; if a lake wanted to hold it's position, it used magic to do so. Ivy knew that Mundane lakes lacked that sort of determination. That was just one of the squintillion things wrong with Mundania.
She peered more closely at the lake -- and saw that the gleam was in the shape of a star. It was a starfish in the water! Ivy knew what to do with a starfish.
"Star light, star bright, starfish shining bright, I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish for my delight!" she chanted according to the magic formula. "I wish I knew who made the Forget-Spell!" She waited expectantly, but nothing happened.
"Dummy!" Grundy said. "You didn't specify when!"
Ivy squawked with dismay. Magic always had to be nailed down tight, or it slipped away. The starfish might wait till she was a mean old woman of sixteen or seventeen to grant her wish, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Now a shape loomed ahead, in the air above the Gap. It was too large for an ordinary bird, and too small for a dragon. This creature was extraordinarily thin, with a body like a pole, and a huge, narrow, axe-beaked head.
"That's a hal-bird!" Grundy exclaimed, alarmed.
"That's awkward," Grandpa Trent said. "Though I am here in illusion, I still must bring my apparent identity within my normal reach of a creature in order to transform it. That battle-axe could go after one of you before I reach it."
Indeed the hal-bird looked as if it were considering which one to chop up first. "Transform Stanley into a griffen," Grundy suggested. "He'll tear the hal-bird to dripping pieces." He glanced at Stanley, who seemed to be fascinated by the Gap. This was hardly surprising, since he had once been the dread Gap Dragon, and some day would be again, as soon as he got over his rejuvenation.
"Don't you dare!" Ivy cried fiercely. "It's not right to hurt exotic wildlife!"
"That's my grandchild," Trent said approvingly. "Mayhem should never be practiced unnnecessarily, and that creature is on the Rare Species list, as is the Gap Dragon. But what alternative do you recommend, Ivy?"
Ivy realized she was being tested. Her father was easy to manage; she had learned how to do that from her mother, Irene. But her grand-father was of sterner stuff, and though he humored her in little ways, he also expected her to come up to princessly standards. That awed her when she happened to think about it. Grandpa Trent expected her not only to be a sorceress, but to be smart too, and even with her talent that was more of a challenge. "Uh -- maybe we can distract it --"
Trent was sient, and the hal-bird loomed nearer and larger. Its razor-sharp blade-beak glinted. She had to figure out a distraction -- and the pressure of the situation distracted her. That was the problem with a real-life challenge; the details interfered with being smart.
Then she saw a puff of vapor to the side. "Hey, isn't that your breath?" she called to the hal-bird. "You'd better go catch your breath!"
The hal-birdturned its axe-head and peered at the puff, which accelerated its drift. Horrified, the bird flapped off in pursuit of his breath. The rest of them were left unmolested.
"That is the way for a future King of Xanth to do it," King Trent murmured approvingly, and Ivy felt very good. She had come through.
They completed the Gap crossing and flew to a region of clouds. Ivy looked aaround nervously, remembering the evill cloud, King Cumulo Fracto Nimbus, her nebulous enemy, but there was no sign of him here. Relieved, she relaxed and enjoyed the company of those more gentle clouds. Certainly it woulld be unfair to judge all clouds by a few ill-winds. These ones were fabulous, displaying themselves in many fleecy forms and types; indeed, the cloudscape was more phenomenal than the land-scape below. There were cloudy puff-balls, toadstools, trees, anvils and cliffs. One cloud was shaped like a mundane pig, with a slot in its back. "A cloud-bank!" Ivy exclaimed, recognizing it.
She flew to the left, to get in the middle of the formation. "I'm part of the cloud!" she exclaimed.
"Princesses are never part of the cloud," Grandpa Trent said. Embarrassed, Ivy dropped out and flew right.
Soon they closed on the North Village. This was a small collection of houses arranged about a central large tree.
"Good ol' Justin Tree," Grundy remarked. "Ever since you transformed him, fifty years ago, Magician Trent!"
"Transformed him?" Ivy asked, peering down at the tree. This sounded like something she hadn't known about.
"Back before I was King," Trent explained. "Then I was known as the Evil Magician, because I transformed anyone who got in my way. Ah, the impetuosity of youth! In the Time of No Magic, about thirt years ago, he reverted to manform, but he insisted that I return him to tree-form. He likes it that way."
"He's really a man?" Ivy asked, uncertain whether this was humor. Adults had funny senses of humor, and could laugh at incomprehensible things while frowning at what was really funny, like someone accidentally sitting on a stink-horn.
"He started as a man," Trent agreed.
"And there's no other tree just like him?"
"No other," Trent agreed. "He's unique."
"Then he must need a woman-tree," she decided.
"Your ma's probably got a seed to grow one," Grundy said. "From the Tree of Seeds."
"She's too busy for me," Ivy said, pouting. Her bird-beak wasn't very good for that, however.
They swung toward Justin Tree, coming in for a landing. Then Ivy saw something interesting to the side. It seemed to be a mass of eyeballs that waved about, peering up at the party. Ivy abruptly swerved to fly closer.
"Oh, that's nothing," Grundy said disparagingly. "Just a seeing-eye dogwood tree."
"I want a branch of that!" Ivy insisted.
"Wait, Ivy!" Grandpa Trent called after her. "Things are not always what they seem!"
But she was already dropping down to perch on the seeing-eye tree. "This will only take a moment --" she began.
Suddenly a tentacle reached up and grabbed her. "Eeeek!" Ivy screamed in the manner of her mother. There had always been a right way and a wrong way to scream; it was one of the things a girl had to learn early.
"That's no dogwood!" Grundy exclaimed. "That's a tangler in disguise!"
Indeed it was! Now the illusion puffed away, and the dread tangle tree, one of the worst vegetable monsters of Xanth, was revealed in all its horror. The tentacles wrapped around Ivy's naked-J-bird body and drew her down into the mass of it, where the terrible mawin the trunk awaited with its wooden teeth and dripping saliva-sap.
Ivy screamed as piercingly as she could, no longer bothering with mere polite eeeking. She was, after all, five years old, and this was business. But the tree only slavered thicker sap and carried her in toward its orfice.
"... can't reach her in time!" she heard Grandpa Trent saying in the distance beyone the barrier of the tentacles. "Have to transform the tree instead..."
Then the tangle tree became a man. He was big and bare except for a tangled mass of green tentacle hair and brown root boots that maybe were his feet. He was holding Ivy by her wings, about to cram the tasty blue-J into his mouth -- but now his mought was too small. He paused, startled.
The green-J flew up. "Put her down, Tangleman!" Grundy cried.
Tangleman focused on the golem-J. "Why?" he demanded in a windy voice, for that was normally all any tree had. Then he did a double-take, as if nearly bown over; it was the first time he had heard himself speak.
"Cause if you don't, tentacle-top, Magician Trent will turn you into a skink cabbage!" Grundy said with gusto. He liked bullying a tangler, when he had the chance.
Tangleman, horrified, bolted, carrying Ivy with him. He had forgotten her, but lacked the wit to put her down before he panicked. He wasn't used to being a flesh-and-bone creature, and wasn't good at it; he still thought of himself as a block-head. He charged into the deepest available jungle in Xanth, where he felt most at home. The green-J and dragonfly followed, but the tangler's progress was so swift and erratic that they couldn't catch up. Magician Trent, present only in illusion, had more trouble; he veered the wrong way, unable to reorient effectively on such short notice.
Ivy managed to keep her wits about her, after almost dropping them, and realized she was in no right-now-immediate danger, since the green giant was paying no attention to her. She began to watch the scenery, to see if there was any way to help herself. She spied a cabin with legs; it scrambled up to avoid the charging tangler. Actually it was just a single room, a living room, that hadn't yet found a home. No help there. In a moment they left it behind, the poor thing seemed nearly dead from fright.
Tangleman charged up to a four-footed creature who had hooves and horns but did not look aggresive. "Who you?" the green man demanded.
"I'm a steer," the creature replied. "Can I bum a smoke?"
"Where there's smoke, there's fire," Ivy remarked wisely.
"Where's the fire?" Tangleman cried, alarmed. Trees could get quite nervous about fire.
"That way," the bum steer said, pointing with its tail.
"That's the wrong way," another four-footed creature said. This one was powerfully constructed, with stubby claws on its feet and a protruding muzzle, and no hair on its body.
"Who you?" Tangleman asked.
"I am a bear."
"I see you bare!" Tangler replied. "Who you?"
"Not bare. Bear," the creature said with dignity. "Bear witness. Don't trust the bum steer; you won't find any fire where he tells you."
"No fire!" the tangler agreed, and charged off in that direction.
The bear witness was right; there was not fire there, which was exactly what Tangleman was looking for. Instead there was a deep dark shadow. The Tangler paused just outside it, distrustfully. "Who you?"
"That's the shadow of a doubt," the bear witness called. "Ignore it, and it will go away."
Tangleman stepped into the shadow, ignoring it, and sure enough, it faded away and a beam of sunlight shone down.
Bong! The sound was dull but loud, startling them both. "Who you?" the green man demanded, glaring about, was a big stalky plant with bulbous growths on each end.
This time Ivy knew. "That's just a dumb bell," Ivy said.
Tangleman scratched a wart on his wild head. "I not dumb bell," he protested. "I worried."
"That's what happens when you scratch a worry wart," Ivy said. She had made that mistake once herself, so she knew. The trouble with worry warts was that sometimes it was almost impossible to ignore them.
Something clamped a pincer on his big brown toe. It was some crab-grass, and it was really crabby. Tangleman leaped up with a vegetable roar, and the grass let go. He landed in a bush -- and a flock of screaming meanies burst out, startled. Their screams buffeted the tangler like the strings of B's, and he took off again.
This time the green man charged into a strange region. It was characterized by sound. There was a constant, stiff wind there, and the trees had many radiating spokes that angled into the wind and generated sounds from it. Each spoke had it's own sustained note, and each tree had it's own typical pattern of notes. Large trees had complex chords; small trees had simpler sounds, and saplings had but one single note.
As Tangleman charged through this forest, he moved past the trees, and the sounds Ivy heard changed. The dominant chords shifted, forming a kind of melody. "It's playing music!" she exclaimed.
Now that music bacame more pronounced. Definate themes developed, governed by the progress of the listeners through the forest. Their motion was affected the music, and the effect was enhanced by Ivy's power. Ivy's attention was enough to bring the qualities of anything out; now that she perceived the music of the trees, the music became louder and more interesting than it had been before. The forest became an orchestra.
Tangleman slowed, hearing the mmusic, trying to face it. "Who you?" he demanded.
"That's music, silly," Ivy said. "It's not a who, it's a what." She had realized that the tangler wasn't such a bad man, even though he had been a bad tree. He was just wild and confused. A little guidence could make him a decent companion.
He stopped, peering about, still trying to face the music. "Moo-sick?" Naturally the music stopped when he did; now it was merely fixed sound, no notes changing.
"Well, it used to be music," Ivy said. "You have to move to make it."
"Move," he said. "Move-sic." The concept was a real problem for him. He took a step -- and stumbled, for clinging vines had grown about his feet. He ripped his legs free and charged on.
There was an earsplitting screech. Startled, Ivy looked down. Tangleman had just stepped on one of the tails of a cat o'nine tails. The other eight tails were swishing angrily as the cat got ready to pounce.
The tangler reacted in his naturall manner; he grabbed for the cat with a dozen tentacles and gaped his wooden maw. Of course in manform he didn't have tentacles, so it was merely a one-handed grab, and his wooden maw was just a fleshy mouth. But the ferocity of the gesture alarmed the cat, who retreated.
The green man took another step -- and waded into a huge web. Immediatly several spider lilies swarmed down from their garden -- and paused when the saw the size of their prey.
Tangleman grabbed at a black rope, pulling himself out of the spider's range. The rope yanked back, jerking itself out of his grasp as he stumbled into the marsh surrounding it.
"Silly -- that's a horsetail!" Ivy exclaimed. "Now we're stuck in the mud!"
Indeed they were. The tangler lifted one foot out with a great sucking noise, but the other sank in deeper. Meanwhille the horsetails continued to swish angrily at being disturbed, and one of then rose out of the muck to reveal a broad brown hide. "A horse chstnut!" Ivy said, thrilled. She had liked horses ever since encountering the night mares and day mares, but they were evasive and fleeting. A genuine chestnut horse, however, suggested solider possibilities.
Tangleman sloughed his way toward firmer ground, but spied a bright metel object there. It was copper, wrought in the likeness of a reptilian, complete with impressive fangs. It was mounted on a serpintine neck. As the greenman approached, the snake reared up on it's coils and hissed menacingly. "Better stay clear of that copperhead," Ivy advised.
He heeded her advice and squished to the side -- only to come up against a bank bristling with green claws that snapped alarmingly. "More crab grass," Ivy said. "Stay clear; you didn't like the one that champed your toe."
Tangleman was getting confused. Ivy realized that he just wasn't ready for the flesh-folk's world. She wondered whhat it was like being a tree, just soaking up the sunshine and grabbing whoever came near. She pictured herself as a tangler. If any of that crab-grass scuttled near, she'd just snag it with a tentaclle, and --
She paused. There, at the corner of her consciousness, was the day mare Imbri, who had brought her the day-dream. "Imbri, you're out of your gourd!" Ivy exclaimed happily.
Startled at being discovered, Mare Imbrium bolted. But Ivy wanted to tell her about the horse chestnut. "Follow that mare!" she told Tangleman.
He tried, but his feet couldn't keep up. He started to fall forward. "Idiot!" Ivy cried. "Don't fall on your face; you'll hurt the ground, not to mention getting my nice blue feathers all gunky!"
If Tangleman thought it strange to be taking orders from a captured blue-J, he didn't indicate this. He reached out desperately and grabbed the nearest thing, which happened to be a cabbage pallm. The huge fingers were normal, but the palm was solid cabbage. Great leaves tore away, leaving Tangleman holding a handful of green -- and still falling. It was never wise to trust a cabbage-leaf, Ivy knew.
Tangleman grabbed again, this time catching hold of a giant ear. It was a cauliflower ear, pulpy around the edges and not very pretty, but it was well anchored, and finally the tangler managed to pull himself out of the muck.
There stood Grandpa King Trent and Stanley Steamer and Grundy golem, all in their natural forms. They had caught up while Tangleman was bogged down.
"Now --" Grandpa Trent began.
"Oh, don't make him change back here, Grandpa!" Ivy exclaimed, abruptly returning to her own form as his magic touched her. "This is no place for a tangle tree!"
Trent paused, not making the transformation. "What did you have in mind, Ivy?" He always encouraged her to think things out and make her own decisions, because that was what she would have to do when she eventually became King of Xanth.
"Tree?" Tangleman asked. "Me no tree!"
"Well, you started as one, vegetable-brain," Grundy said.
"He means he doesn't want to be a tree again," Ivy explained.
"I'm afraid we can't leave him as a man," Grandpa Trent said. "He would not survive long, with his lack of man-experience."
Ivy knew not to argue with her grandfather, but she tried to divert his intent. "Maybe we can find him a good place to be a tree, a better place than he had before --"
"I'll ask the top banana," Grundy said. "He trotted over to a plant that bore a single monstrous banana, and made silent noises at it. Grundy coulld talk to anything; that was his talent. "It says to ask the big potato, whose eyes see all," and he trotteed across to the potato that sat on the ground and had eyes all over. "It says it saw a lot of real peaches and tomatoes not far from here," he reported. "They're young and sweet and really nice company."
"No doubt," Grandpa Trent agreed. "Very well -- we shall plant him there."
They started toward the promising spot. Tangleman, responsive to Ivy's talent, had calmed down considerably, and went where she directed without protest, still carrying her though she was now a regular girl. Unfortunately it wasn't a simple walk, becasue Ivy was not only a Sorceress, she was a child, and she remained interested in things. She spied a hem lock growing beside the path, quickly had the tangleman set her down so she could unlock it and put it on her dress, locking it in place there; it looked very nice as a border, and of course it would never slip.
Then she found a honey comb that the B's were no longer using, and used it to comb out her tangled hair. She paused at a small silvery pond to look at the silverfish swimming in it. She reached to pick one up, but it turned out to be a goldfish, very pretty and heavy metal, but not much value out of the water. She plucked a golden rod growing at the bank and used it as a staff, though it too was quite heavy. So she threw it in the water, making waves, and the waves were enhanced by her presence, spreading into the air, and the air waves shook a nearby date tree so that the down-dates quivered and some of the up-dated at the top were shaken loose. Ivy grabbed one; it was in the shape of a little 8 connected to a little D, as was proper for a D8. She nibbled on the 8 part, as that was all of it that could be ate.
Meanwhile, Stanley's attention was wandering, so he sniffedalong a brown hedge and finally took an experimental bite out of it. The hedge threw up its limbs, scattered leaves all around, and scurried away. It was a hedge hog, and didn't like getting chomped by a dragon, even a small one.
They moved on, past a clump pf hypno gourds. "I looked into one of those once," Grandpa Trent remarked. "Back in the days when they were less common, before I was King. I --"
But meanwhile Ivy spied something bright lying on the ground. She picked it up. It was a glass disk with a handle on it. "What's this?"
Grundy peered at it. "A magnifying glass. They have them in Mundania.
"You mean it makes things bigger?"
"Sure, Pipsqueak. You just look through it, and --"
"Oh goody!" Ivy held the glass up and looked through it at the nearest gourd, which grew under a canopy that was anchored by several mussels that seemed to enjoy stretching themselves.
Immediatly the gourd became much larger. In fact, it swelled to monstrous, with a peephole twice the size of a port-hole. Startled, they all looked at it -- and into it, and were caught by the spell of the gourd.
They stood in a haunted house. The walls were rickety, covered with badly faded and peeling wallpaper, and the light was gloomy. There were handsome spider webs in the upper corners, and a mouse squeaked with surprise and scooted into a hole.
Ivy was delighted. "What's this?" she asked.
"We're in a gourd, dodo!" Grundy said. "You magnified it so we all saw into the peephole, and now we're stuck until someone breaks our eye-cantact and lets us out."
"Which may not necessarily be soon," Grandpa Trent said heavily. "We're deep in the jungle; no one knows where we are, or what has happened."
Grundy glanced at him curiously. "Say, King Trent -- you're only here with us in illusion. How come you got caught?"
"I'm not sure," Trent confessed. "I have not had a great dea of experience with gourds, and all of that has been involuntary. I presume that if I can see about me in iusion, I can also be trapped by the gourd in that state."
"But since the Sorceress Iris generates the illusion --"
Trent shook his head. "Evidently my wife doesn't realize. She's not as young as she once was, and doesn't always pay close attention. In any event, I'm not eagger to remain here longer than necessary. Let's try to find a way out."
"But getting out from the inside of a gourd has never been done before," Grundy protested. "It has to be done from the outside. Only the night mares can pass out of the gourd freely."
Meanwhile, Stanley was sniffing around. He hadn't been in a place like this before. In a moment he spooked a ghost, who had evidently lled a sheltered life and had never seen a dragon before. The ghost floated up, considered, and then tried to scare the dragon by making a horrendous face. Stanley was not scared; he was annoyed. He responded with a jet of steam. The ghost zipped out of the way, alarmed. Not it was angry; it drifted close to a dragonfly ear and yelled "Boooo!"
Furious, Stanley lept at the ghost, trying to chomp it with his teeth. Naturally they closed on nothing. He crashed into a waall, breaking through it.
Two more ghosts, a haunt, and a spectre started up, spooked. It seemed they had been napping in the wall. Stanley pounced on them, too, snapping violently for their backs. But none of these were tangible. In the process he stirred up something else. Something strange.
It lifted from a crevice and spread out above the dragon in a somber cloud. Pale white streamers hung from it. "What's that?" Ivy asked nervously.
"It looks like an ectoplasm," Grandpa Trent said. "Generally harmless, but it woud be best to leave it alone, as it can have unusual properties."
"Stanley, leave that icky-plasm alone!" Ivy ordered the dragon preemptorily.
But already Stanly was leaping at it. His jaws closed on the cloud. It squished, and its streamers wrapped around the dragon's snout. He tossed his head about, trying to get the stuff off his face and into his mouth, but it just stretched like taffy and clung. Stanley smacked into the wall, trying to knock the ectoplasm free, but merely succeded in bashing another wall. Finally he lept right throught the hole, carrying the stuff along with him, streamers of it trailing back.
Tangleman, convinced something was going on, charged after the dragon, knocking out more pieces of wall. Grandpa Trent winced. "The Night Stallion will never forgive me for this!"
"Who?" Ivy asked.
"He runs the gourd-world," Grundy explained. "You know -- the boss of the night mares. We're ruining one of his best sets."
"Oh." Ivy hadn't thought of that. She had considered the wall-bashing interesting; now she realighned her reaction. She hurried after dragon and tangler. "Boys! Boys!" She scolded. "Stop that this instant! What do you think this is, a battlefield?"
Grandpa Trent rolled his eyes -- adults did that every so often without apparent reason -- and followed.
Ivy's reprimand was effective. Dragon and tangleman drew up short, looking abashed. Stanley had finally scraped most of the ectoplasm off his snout. The stuff quickly floated elsewhere, having enough of the dragon.
They were in a chamber with table, and on the table was a box. On the box was a small green plant. "Oh, goody!" Ivy cried, reaching for it.
"Hey, you don't know what's in it, Turnip!" Grundy warned. Hey always called her that, knowing that she hated both turnips and turndown. "Might be a hobgoblin!"
"No, Rapunzel wouldn't do that," Ivy said confidently, lifting the box down to the floor.
"Rapunzel?" Grandpa Trent inquired warily.
"My pun-pal," Ivy explained, admiring the box. She liked wrapped packages.
"Pun-pal? Perhaps my ancient brain is ossifying. If you would explain --"
"It's simple, Grandpa! We can't read or write yet, so we can't be pen-pals, so we're pun-pals instead. We send each other punny things. Or she does, anyway; I send her regular things like flowers and pebbles, and she seemes like them very well."
"Flowers and pebbles?" Trent asked. "They're rather common, don't you think?"
"Not where she lives," Ivy said. "She's in an ivory tower or somewhere, and she can't get out. Her gardian's an old witch who never lets her near any of the good stuff like mud or peanut butter."
"I can't think why," Trent murmured, smiling in that devious way aduts had.
"'Cause it gets in her hair," Ivy explained matter-of-factly. "She has real, real long tresses she can dangle right down to the ground outside the tower, but she can't get down herself. So I send her all the things she can't get,and she sends me puns 'cause she's a pun-dit."
"That sounds like a fair exchange, now that you have explained it," Grandpa Trent agreed gravely. "But shouldn't you tell your father, King Dor, about this person being held captive in a tower? We don't encourage that sort of thing in Xanth, you know."
Ivy cancidered. "Maybe I should. But Rapunzel says she's of elven descent; maybe she doesn't count."
"She counts," King Trent assured her.
"How do you know know this box is from her?" Grundy asked. "Or that it's for you?
I know what her boxes look like, silly! See, it's a tress-ract."
"Tesseract? Trent inquired.
"Tress-ract, 'cause of her tresses," Ivy explained patiently. It seemed that her grandfather had not been fooling about his brain mossy-fying; he was pretty slow on concepts. "And it's for me 'cause it's got my Ivy on it."
"So it does," Trent agreed.
"How's it get here in the gourd?" Grundy asked. "And how'd she know to send it here, right where you'd be? Does she live in the goured?"
Ivy shrugged. "'Course not, silly! She's in an ivory tower. I told you. She's not in the real world, really. She just sends the boxes to where I am, and here's where I am."
"Perhaps we had better see what's in the box," Grandpa Trent suggested. "I note that it says O-PUN on the top."
"And PUNDORA on the side," Grundy said. "Are you sure it's safe to open Pundora's box?"
But Ivy was already opening it. She reached in and brought out a thin cylinder, pointed at one end. "A pun-cil," she explained, waving it about. As she did, a line appeared in the air, reamaining in place. She turned it around and rubbed the other end along the line, and it dissappeared. Then she lost interest and gave the pun-cil to Tangleman, who waved it about, admiring the lines of it. They did vaguely resemble tentacles.
Ivy reached in again and drew out a bundle of sticks. When she untied them, they sprang out into an enclosure like a play-pun, but messier, and a lot worse smelling. "Oh, a pig-pun," She said, losing interest again. She was, after all, only a little girl, so her attention span was no longer than she was.
Tangleman climbed into the pig-pun and sat, satisfied. He liked rich soil.
Next she brought out a soft-ball that radiated small shining rods. "A pun-cusion," she said, and carelessly tossed it to Tangleman, who tried to chew on it. He thought the puns sticking out of it were thorns.
Then Ivy found a basket of warm-smelling pastries. "Hot cross puns!" she exclaimed, delighted. Indeed, each had an angry face painted with icing on its top, and fairly steamed when touched. Ivy ignored the frown and bit into one, and whereupon the the icing-face smiled. "They don't like waiting to be eaten," she explained around her mouthful. "When they wait too long, they get cold. That's why they're so cross." She handed them out to the others. Soon everyone was eating them, and all the pastries were smiling. They tasted very good. "Rapunzel is very good at baking-puns," Ivy explained.
"Upon my soul," Grundy agreed, munching his own pastry, though it was as massive as he was. Fortunately he had a big mouth.
When they had snacked, Ivy brought out the rest of the items in the box. There were two doll-like figures identified as Puns and Judy, and a pair of snake eyeson small cubes that must have fallen from the Ivory Tower, and a couple of miscellaneous spells locked in globes. Grundy looked at these, and identified them as captured noises; one was an outcry, the other a sound-of-mind.
That was it; the box was empty at last. Ivy gramaced. "Not much, this time. Well, I'll send her some stuff back." She walked about, picking up pieces of plaster, wood and wallpaper and tossing them into the box. A poltergeist wandered through the room, rattling its chain; Ivy grabbed the chain, starting a tug-of-war, til Grandpa Trent interceded.
"That chain belongs to a ghost," he explained. "It's not right to take it."
"Oh, all right!" Ivy said with bad grace, suddenly letting go of her end so that the ghost shot backwards through a wall. "But I don't have enough things for the box yet."
Now they all cast about, scavenging for fragments, until there was a fair selection. Then Ivy snapped off one of her hairs and tucked it in the top of the box, in this manner addressing it to Rapunzel of the long tresses. She clapped her hands, and the box vanished.
"Live and learn," Grundy remarked. "I never heard of a pun-pal before."
"Lots of things you don't know, golem," Ivy said smugly.
"But our problem remains," Grandpa Trent said. "We need to find some way out of the gourd, and I don't believe walking about will do it."
"This is probably the gourd Mare Imbri was heading for when the tangler chased her," Grundy said. "As a night mare, she can travel in and out at will. Maybe we can get her to carry a message to the Sorceress Iris --"
"Imbri doesn't use the gourds anymore, silly," Ivy said. "She's a day mare now. She won't come here."
Anyway, Peanut," Grundy said -- he always called her that -- "we have to break the eye-contact we have with the peephole of the gourd from the outside, not the inside."
"Which means we'll have to be creative," Trent said. "Let's see what we have her." He assembled the remaining items from the pun box. "Here -- let's pass these out and let each person try to fashion what he has into a device for escape."
No one seemed very positiverabout this, but each accepted a couple of puns. The green tangler got the two noise spells, because they seemed the least promising. He tried to eat one, but the globe resisted his teeth; he shook one, but the noise merely swirled inside. Finally he bashed the two together, hard.
They cracked and the sound escaped. There was a deafening shout -- and suddenly the group was standing outside the huge gourd. Tangleman, startled, pushed his fist forward, into the gourd, shattering it.
"We're out!" Grundy exclaimed. "But how?"
"The only one of us to act was Tanglemanm" Grandpa Trent said. "But I don't see how cracking the noise spells could have --"
"Ask the mussels," Ivy suggested.
Trent looked at her. "The mussels?"
"They covered up the peephole," she said. "Why?"
Grundy asked the mussels, who had indeed contracted and drawn the canopy down over the peephole, breaking the people's line of sight and freeing them from the gourd's spell. The mussels replied that they had reacted to a mind-jolting outcry from within the gourd, that had so alarmed them that they had immediatly contracted.
"So it was Tangleman!" Grandpa Trent exclaimed. "He smashed the sound-of-mind into the outcry, and the result was so loud it reached right out of the gourd!"
"That's the nature of outcries," Grundy said. "They've got to get out of whatever they're in Onlyl the magic spell kept that outcry contaned before, and when that cracked --"
"Now let's get on to my house," Grandpa Trent said a triflle grimly. Adults were like that, their moods changing inexplicably. "Before we get into any more mischief."
"But what about Tangleman?" Ivy asked. "He saved us, by being the most creative, didn't he?"
Grandpa Trent sighed, then quirked a smile. "I suppose he does deserve credit for thhat. Perhaps he'll work out in our society after all, if he wants to. Very well, we'll bring him along too." He glanced about. "We can't risk any more of this jungle trek," amd he transformed them all back into birds, including Tangleman, and they flew in a flock back to the North Village.
They had a wonderfull time at Grandpa Trent and Grandma Iris's house, and Grundy took over the management of the tangler, perching on his green shoulder and telling him what to do to get along in the strange world of flesh folk. The golem was good at that sort of thing, and it did get him off Ivy's case. So all problems were neatly solved.
But two days later, when Ivy returned to Castle Roogna, and her parents heard about the great adventure, they acted in the truly inexplicable manner of adults. They grounded her, for no reason at all. It was very unfair.
Chapter 2: Get the book!