Smash left the twitching rats and went to join her. His feet felt as if they were nothing but bones, with the flesh melted off, though this was not the case. 'That's a spell?'
'That's bad temper, my talent,' she said, eyes downcast. 'When I get mad, I throw a tantrum. Sometimes it does a lot of damage. I'm sorry; I should have controlled my emotion.'
'Sorry?' Smash said, bewildered, looking back at the rum of the rat-swarm. 'That's a wonderful talent!'
'Oh, sure,' she replied with irony.
'My mother had a similar talent. Of course, she was a curse-fiend; they all throw curses.'
'Maybe I have curse-fiend ancestry,' Tandy said sourly.
'My father Crombie came from a long line of soldiers, and they do get around quite a bit.'
Now the others came up. 'You did that, Tandy?' Fireoak asked. 'You saved me a lot of misery! If Smash had put me down amidst those awful rats, or if they had climbed up him and gotten to me, as they were trying to-' She winced, feeling her wounds. She was obviously in considerable discomfort.
'That's an extremely useful talent for the jungles of Xanth,' the Siren said.
'You really think so?' Tandy asked, brightening. 'I always understood it wasn't nice to be destructive.'
'It isn't?' Smash asked, surprised.
Then they all laughed. 'Sometimes perhaps it is,' the Siren concluded.
They found some genuine vegetables for lunch, then resumed the march. But soon they heard a
ferocious snuffling and snorting ahead, low to the ground. 'Oh, that might be a dragon with a cold,'
John said worriedly. 'I can't say I really like dragons; they're too hot.'
'I will go see,' Smash said. He discovered he was rather enjoying this journey. Violence was a natural part of his nature-but now he had people to protect, so there was a certain added justification to it. It was more meaningful to bash a dragon to save a collection of pretty little lasses than it was to do it merely for its own sake. The Eye Queue caused him to ponder the meaning of the things he did, and so it helped to have at least a little meaning present. At such time as he got free of the curse, he could forget about these inconvenient considerations.
He rounded a brush-bush and faced the snorting monster, hamfists at the ready-and paused, dismayed.
It was no dragon. It was a small oink, with a squared-off snout and a curled-up tail. But it snorted like a huge fire-breathing monster.
Smash sighed. He picked up the oink by the tail and tossed it into the brush. 'All clear,' he called.
The others appeared. 'It's gone?' Tandy asked. 'But we didn't hear any battle.'
'It was only a short snort,' the ogre said, disgusted. He had so looked forward to a good fight!
'Another person might have represented it as the most tremendous of dragons,' the Siren said.
'Why?'
'To make it seem he had done a most valiant deed.'
'Why do that?' Smash asked, perplexed.
She smiled. 'Obviously you don't suffer from that syndrome.'
'I suffer from the Eye Queue curse.'
'Cheer up. Smash,' Tandy said. 'We're bound to encounter a real dragon sometime.'
'Yes,' the ogre agreed, cheering as directed. After all, the thing to do with disappointments was to rise above them. The Eye Queue told him that.
'Speaking of dragons,' John said, 'there is a story that circulates among fairies about dragons and their parts, and I've always wondered whether it was true.'
'I've met some dragons,' Smash said. 'What's the story?'
'That if a dragon's ear is taken off, you can listen to it and hear wondrous things.'
Smash scratched his head. Several fleas jumped off, startled. Since his skull no longer heated much when he tried to think, the fleas had no natural control. 'I never tried that.'
'It must be sort of hard to get a dragon's ear,' Tandy remarked. 'I doubt they part with them willingly.'
Fireoak considered. 'There are stories the mockingbirds tell, to mock the ignorant. They would nest in my tree sometimes and talk of marvelous things, and I never knew how much to believe. One did once mention such a quality of a dragon's ear. It said the ear would twitch when anything of interest to the holder was spoken anywhere, so one would know to listen. But often the news was not pleasant, for dragons have ears for bad news. And as Tandy says, dragons' ears are very hard for normal people to come by.'
'Next dragon I slay, I will save an ear,' Smash said, intrigued.
They continued north till dusk, with only minor adventures, avoiding tangle trees, clinging vines, and strangler figs, scaring off tiger lilies and dogwood, and ignoring the trickly illusions spawned by assorted other plants. Swarms of biting bugs converged, but Smash blew them away in his usual fashion with selected roars. By nightfall the party was close to something significant, but Smash couldn't remember what.
They located a forest of black, blue, and white ash trees whose shedding ashes covered the forest floor.
Any recent footprints showed; and, because each color of tree spread its ashes at a different hour, it was possible to know how recently any creature had passed. White prints were the most recent, blue prints were older and somehow more intricate, with maplike traceries on them, and black prints dated from the night. Some ashes had been hauled, but no dragons or other dangerous creatures had been here in the past few hours.
Amidst this forest was a handsome cottonwood that provided cotton for beds for them all. 'I always thought camping out would be uncomfortable,' Tandy remarked. 'But this is getting to be fun. Now if only I knew where I was going!'
'You don't know?' the Siren asked, surprised.
'Good Magician Humfrey answered my Question by telling me to travel with Smash,' Tandy said. 'So I'm traveling. It's a pretty good trip, and I'm learning a lot and meeting nice new people, but that's not my Answer. Smash is looking for the Ancestral Ogres, but I doubt that's what I'm looking for.'
'I understand the Good Magician is getting old,' the Siren said.
'He's pretty old,' Tandy agreed. 'But he knows an awful lot, and your sister the Gorgon is making him young again.'
'She would,' the Siren said. 'I am jealous of her power over men. In my heyday I used to summon men to my isle, but she always took them away, and, of course, they never looked at other women after she was through with them.'
Because they had turned to stone. Smash knew. The fact was, the Gorgon had been as lonely as the Siren, despite her devastating power. The Gorgon had been smitten by the first man who could nullify her talent. Magician Humfrey, so she had gone to him with a Question: would i he marry her? He had made her serve a year as housemaid and guardian in his castle before giving her his Answer: he would.
Evidently that was the sort of man it required to capture the heart of the Gorgon. Smash understood that their wedding, officiated by Prince Dor when he was temporary King, had been the most remarkable occasion of the year, attended by all the best monsters. Smash's father Crunch had been there, and Tandy's mother Jewel. By all accounts, the marriage was a reasonably happy one, considering the special nature of its parties.
'I wonder what it is like to be with a man?' Fireoak said, in a half-wistful question. Her injuries of the day had fatigued her greatly, perhaps making her depressed. Evidently their conversation of the preceding night had remained on her mind.
'My friends always told me men were difficult to get along with,' John said. 'A girl can't live with them, and she can't live without them.'
'Well, I've tried living without,' the Siren said. 'I'm ready to try with. Good and ready! At least it shouldn't be dull. First pool I find with an available merman, watch out!'
'Poor merman!' the fairy said.
'Oh, I'm sure he'll deserve whatever I give him. I don't think he'll have cause to complain, any more than Magician Humfrey has with my sister. We draw on similar lore.'
'All girls do. But it seems terribly original to each innocent man.' There was general laughing agreement.
'You speak as if no man is here,' Tandy said, sounding faintly aggrieved.
'There's a man here, listening to our secrets?' Fireoak cried, alarmed.
'Smash.'
There was another general titter. 'Don't be silly,' John said. 'He's an ogre.'
