Tandy remembered the demon Fiant. 'Never mind. I'm not going home until that danger is nullified. I'll just take my chances with the three things I'll lose in the jungle.'
But she found the message disquieting. She had no things to lose-but she knew her father never made a mistake when he pointed something out.
Princess Irene's talent was growing plants. She grew a fine, big, mixed-fruit bush, and they dined on red, green, blue, yellow, and black berries, all juicy and luscious. Smash had always liked Irene, because no one remained hungry in her presence, and she did have excellent legs. Not that an ogre should notice, of course-yet it was hard not to imagine how delicious such firmly fleshed limbs would taste.
'Uh, before you go,' the Siren said. 'I understand you have a way with the inanimate, Prince Dor.'
'Whatever gave you that idiotic notion, fish-tail?' a rock beside the Prince inquired. The Siren was sitting next to a bucket of water and was soaking her tail; she got uncomfortable when she spent too long out of the water.
'I picked up something, and I think it may be magical,' the Siren continued. 'But I'm not sure in what way, and don't want to experiment foolishly.' She brought out a bedraggled, half-metallic thing.
'What are you?' Prince Dor asked the thing.
'I am the Gap Dragon's Ear,' it answered. 'The confounded ogre bashed me off the dragon's head.'
Smash was surprised. 'How did you get that?'
'I picked it up during the fight, then forgot about it, What with the pining tree and all,' the Siren explained.
'The Gap Chasm does have a forgetful property,' Irene said. 'I understand that's Dor's fault.'
'But the Gap's been forgotten for centuries, hasn't it?' the Siren asked. 'We can only remember it now because we're still quite close to it; we'll forget it again when we go on north. How can Dor possibly be responsible?'
'Oh, he gets around,' Irene said, giving the Prince a dark look. 'He's been places none of us would believe. He even used to live with Millie, the sex-appeal maid.'
'She was my governess when I was a child!' Dor protested. 'Besides, she was eight hundred years old.'
'And looked seventeen,' Irene retorted. 'You weren't conscious of that?'
Dor concentrated on the Ear. 'What is your property?' he asked it.
'I hear anything relevant,' it said. 'I twitch when my possessor should listen. That's how the Gap Dragon always knew when prey was in the Gap. I heard it for him.'
'Well, the Gap Dragon still has one ear to hear with,' Dor said. 'How can we hear what you hear?'
'Just listen to me, dummy!' the Ear said. 'What else do you do with an ear?'
'That's a mighty impolite item,' Tandy said, bothered.
'Can we test it?' the Siren asked. 'Before you go, Prince Dor?'
'Oh, let me try,' John said. She seemed much recovered, though her wings remained nubs. It would be long before she flew again, if ever.
The Siren gave her the Ear. John held it to her own tiny ear. She listened intently, her face showing puzzlement. 'It's a rushing sound, maybe like water flowing,' she reported. 'Is that relevant?'
'Well, I didn't twitch,' the Ear grumped. 'You take your chances when there's nothing much on.'
'How is that rushing noise relevant?' Dor asked the Ear.
'Obvious, stupid,' the Ear said. 'That's the sound of the waterfall where the fairy she wants is staying.'
'It is?' John demanded, so excited that her wing-stubs fluttered. 'The one with my name?'
'That's what I said, twerp.'
'Do you tolerate insults from the inanimate?' the Siren asked the Prince.
'Only stupid things insult others gratuitously,' Dor said.
'That's for sure, you moron,' the rock agreed. Then it reconsidered. 'Hey-'
The Siren laughed. 'Now I understand. You have to consider the source.'
Prince Dor smiled. ' You resemble your sister. Of course, I've never seen her face.'
'The rest will do,' the Siren said, flattered. 'Do only smart people compliment others gratuitously?'
'Perhaps,' he agreed. 'Or observant ones. But I do obtain much useful information from the inanimate.
Now we must go talk with the villagers and head back to Castle Roogna. It has been nice to meet all of you, and I hope you all find what you wish.'
There was a chorus of thank-yous. Prince Dor and Princess Irene remounted the holey cow. Chet kissed Chem good-bye, and Grundy the Golem scrambled onto his back. 'Get moving, horsetail!' Then Grundy paused thoughtfully, exactly as the rock had. They moved off toward the village.
'Dor will make a fine King one day,' the Siren remarked.
'But Irene will run the show,' Chem said. 'I know them well.'
'No harm in that,' the Siren said, and the other girls laughed, agreeing.
'We'd better get started north,' Tandy said. 'Now that the tree is safe.'
'How can I ever thank you?' Fireoak exclaimed. 'You saved my life, my tree's life. Same thing.'
'Some things are simply worth doing for themselves, dear,' the Siren said. 'I learned that when Chem's father Chester destroyed my dulcimer, so I couldn't lure men any more.' Her sunshine hair clouded momentarily.
'My father did that?' Chem asked, surprised. 'I didn't know!'
'It stopped me from being a menace to navigation,' the Siren said. 'I was doing a lot of damage, uncaringly. It was a necessary thing. Likewise it was necessary to save the fireoak tree.'
'Yes,' Chem agreed. But she seemed shaken.
They bade farewell to the hamadryad, promising to visit her any time any of them happened to be in the vicinity, and started north.
At first they passed through normal Xanth countryside-carnivorous grasses, teakettle serpents whose hisses were worse than their fires, poisonous springs, tangle trees, sundry spells, and the usual ravines, mountains, river rapids, slow and quicksand bogs, illusions, and a few normally foul-mouthed harpies, but nothing serious occurred. They foraged along the way for edible things and took turns listening to the Gap Dragon's Ear, though it was not twitching; this became more helpful as they gradually learned to interpret it. The Siren heard a kind of splashing, as of someone swimming. She took this to be the merman she wanted to find. Goldy heard the sounds of a goblin settlement in operation: where she was going. Smash heard the rhyming grunts of ogres. Biythe, persuaded to try it, jumped as the Ear twitched in her hands, and she actually heard herself mentioned. The brassies missed her and feared the ogre had betrayed their trust. 'I must go back!' she cried. 'As soon as I recover enough of my courage. My nerves aren't iron, you know.'
But when Chem tried it, her face sobered. 'It must be out of order. All I get is a faint buzzing.'
The Siren took back the Ear. 'That's funny. I get the buzzing, too, now.'
They passed the Ear around. Everyone heard the same thing, and it twitched for none of them.
Smash applied his Eye Queue curse to the Ear. 'Either it is malfunctioning,' he decided, 'or the buzzing is somehow relevant to all of us, without being specific to any of us. No one is talking about us, no one is lurking for us, so it is just something we should know about.'
'Let's assume it's not malfunctioning,' Tandy said. 'The last thing we need is a glitching Ear, especially when my father says there is danger ahead. So we'd better watch out for something that buzzes. It seems to be getting louder as we go.'
Indeed it was. Now there were variations in it, louder buzzes in front of background ones, an elevating and lowering of pitch. It was, in fact, a whole collection of buzzes, sounding three-dimensional, as some pitches became louder and clearer, while others faded back and some faded out entirely. What did it mean?
They came across a wall made from paper. It traveled roughly east/west and reached up to the top level of the trees, too high for Smash to surmount. It was opaque; he could not see through it at all.
However, a wall of paper could hardly impede an ogre. He readied a good punch.
'Careful!' John cried. 'That looks like-'
Smash's fist punched through the wall. The paper separated readily, but glued itself to his arm.
'Flypaper,' the fairy concluded.
Smash tried to pull the sticky stuff off, but it stuck to his other hand when he touched it. The more he worked at it, the more places it adhered to. Soon he was covered with the stuff.
'Slow down. Smash,' Chem said. 'I'm sure hot water will clean that off. I saw a hotspring a short distance
