There was also a pattering drumbeat punctuating the wails.
The Siren paused in place. 'I don't like this,' she said. 'That thing is trotting on the surface of the water; I feel the vibrations of its footfalls. And it's headed for us. I could outdistance it, I think; but Tandy can't, and Smash can't do much without imperiling John. We had better get out of the water.'
'It's coming too fast,' John said. 'It will catch us before we get back to shore.'
She was right. The monster loomed rapidly onward, casting a dark shadow. It was not actually a cloud, but was composed of gray-blue foam, with a number of holes through which the wailing passed, and hundreds of little feet that touched the water. When it moved to one side, they saw the prints left on the surface, just like the ones they had seen before. The prints of wails.
'Oh, we are doomed!' John cried. 'Save yourself, Smash; dive under the water, hide from it!'
An ogre hide from a monster? Little did the fairy grasp the magnitude of the insult she had innocently rendered. 'No,' Smash said. 'I'll fight it.'
'It's too big to fight!'
'It probably smothers its prey by surrounding it,' Tandy said. She was being practical. She seemed much less afraid of things since having 'discovered the ultimate nature of fear inside the gourd. Monsters were only monsters, when one's soul was intact. 'You can't fight fog or jelly.'
Smash realized she was probably right. These assorted girls were making more sense than he would have thought before he came to know them. In the water, with a delicate and flightless fairy on his head, he could not fight efficiently anyway-and if there was nothing really solid to punch out, his fists would be of little use.' It galled him to concede that there were monsters that an ogre couldn't handle, but in this case it seemed to be so. Curse this Eye Queue that made him see reason!
'I'll lead it away!' the Siren cried. She was hovering in the water, her powerful tail elevating her body, so that it was as if she stood only waist-deep. She would have been a considerable sight, that way, for a human male. It seemed to Smash that she should have no trouble attracting a merman, at such time as she found one. 'You swim on across the lake,' the Siren continued. She set off toward the west, moving with amazing velocity. She was like a bird in flight across the surface of the lake.
When she was a fair distance away, she paused and began to sing. She had a beautiful voice, with an eerie quality, a little like the wailing of the monster. Perhaps she was deliberately imitating it.
The monster paused. Then it rotated grandly and ran toward the Siren, its little feet striking the water without splashing, leaving the prints. That mystery had been solved, though Smash did not understand how the prints remained after the wailing monster moved on. But, of course, the effects of magic did not need any explanation.
Once the monster had cleared the area, lured away by the Siren, Smash and Tandy swam on across. It was a fair distance, and Tandy tired, slowing them; it seemed there were not many lakes this big in the underworld. Finally Smash told her to grab hold of one of his feet so he could tow her. The truth was, he was getting tired himself; he would have preferred to wade, but the water was far too deep for that. It would have been un-ogrish to confess any weakness, however.
They made it safely to the north lip. They drew themselves out and rested, hoping the Siren was all right.
Soon she appeared, swimming deep below the surface. Her tail gave her a tremendous forward thrust, and she was a thing of genuine beauty as she slid through the water, her hair streaming back like bright seaweed, her body as sleek and glossy as that of a healthy fish. Then she came up, her head bursting the surface, her hands rising automatically to brush back her wet tresses, mermaidlike. 'My, that was interesting!' she said, flipping out of the water to sit on the rim, her tail hidden in the water, so that now she most resembled a healthy nymph.
'The monster was friendly?' Tandy asked doubtfully.
'No, it tried to consume me. But it couldn't reach below the water because its magic prints keep it above.
It tried to lure me close, but I'm an experienced hand at luring creatures, and was too careful to be taken in.'
'Then you were in real danger!' Tandy was now very sensitive to danger from monsters that lured their victims, whether by an easy access path or a convenient peephole.
'No danger for me,' the Siren said, flinging her damp hair out as she changed to human legs and climbed the rest of the way from the water. 'Few creatures can catch my kind in our element. Not that there are many quite like me; most merfolk can't make legs. That's my human heritage. Of course, my sister the Gorgon never was able to make a tail; it was her face that changed. Magical heredity is funny stuff! But I talked briefly with the monster. He considers himself a whale.'
'A whale of a what?' Smash asked.
'Just a whale.'
'Isn't that a Mundane monster?' John asked. It was generally known in Xanth that the worst monsters were Mundane, as were the worst people.
'Yes. But this one claims some whales migrated to Xanth, grew legs so they could cross to inland waters, and then kept the legs for lake-running. Some find small lakes; they're puddle-jumpers. Some find pools of rum; they're rum-runners. He says he's of the first water, a royal monster, a Prince of his kind.'
'A Prince of Whales,' Tandy said. 'Is he really?'
'I don't think so. That's why he wails.'
'Life is hard all over,' Smash said without much sympathy. 'Let's get down off this mountain.'
Indeed, the sun was losing strength and starting to fall, as it did each day, never learning to conserve its energy so that it could stay aloft longer. They needed to get to a comfortable place before night.
Fortunately, the slope on this side was not as steep, so they were able to slide down it fairly readily.
As they neared the northern base, where the forest resumed, a nymph came out to meet them. She was a delicate brown in color, with green hair fringed with red. Her torso, though slender and full in the manner of her kind, was gently corrugated like the bark of a young tree, and her toes were rootlike. She approached Tandy, who was the most human of the group. 'Please-do you know where Castle Roogna is?'
'I tried to reach Castle Roogna a year ago,' Tandy said. 'But I got lost. I think Smash knows, though.'
'Oh, I wouldn't ask an ogre!' the nymph exclaimed.
'He's a halfway tame ogre,' Tandy assured her. 'He doesn't eat many nymphs.'
Smash was getting used to these slights. He waited patiently for the nymph to gain confidence, then answered her question as well as he could. 'I have been to Castle Roogna. But I'm not going there at the moment, and the way is difficult. It is roughly west of here.'
'I'll find it somehow,' the nymph said. 'I've got to.' She faced west.
'Now wait,' Tandy protested, as Smash had suspected she would. The girl had sympathy enough to overflow all Xanth! 'You can't get there alone! You could easily get lost or gobbled up. Why don't you travel with us until we find someone else who is going there?'
'But you're going north!' the nymph protested.
'Yes. But we travel safely, because of Smash.' Tandy indicated him again. 'Nobody bothers an ogre.'
'There is that,' the nymph agreed. 'I don't want to bother him myself.' She considered, seeming somewhat tired. 'I could help you find food and water. I'm good at that sort of thing. I'm a hamadryad.'
'Oh, a tree-nymph!' the Siren exclaimed. 'I should have realized. What are you doing out of your tree?'
'It's a short story. Let me find you a place to eat and rest, and I will tell it.'
The dryad kept her promise. Soon they were ensconced in a glade beside a large eggplant whose ripe eggs had been hard-boiled by the sun. Nearby was a sodapond that sparkled effervescently. They sat in a circle cracking open eggs, using the shells to dip out sodawater. Proper introductions were made, and the dryad turned out to be named Fireoak, after her tree.
She was, despite her seeming youth, over a century old. All her life had been spent with her fireoak tree, which had sprouted from a fireacom the year she came into being. She had grown with it, as hamadryads did, protecting it and being protected by it. Then a human village had set up nearby, and villagers had come out to cut down the tree to build a firehouse, Fireoak made fine fire-resistant wood, the dryad explained; its own appearance of burning was related to Saint Elmo's fire, an illusion of burning that made it stand out beautifully and discouraged predatory bugs except for fireants. In vain had the dryad protested that the cutting of the oak would kill both it and
