'In this circumstance, perhaps. But in the jungle, alone, it would be otherwise.' 'Why did you leave the jungle, then?'
'I was dissatisfied. As I said before, I must have needed a wife, only I didn't know it then.'
'And you could have had a nice brute of an ogress, with a face whose full glare would have made the moon rot, if
you'd reacted more like an ogre. Are you sorry you blew it?'
Smash laughed, becoming more conscious of her hand on his. 'No.'
'Do ogres laugh?'
'Only maliciously.'
'So you've thrown away the Answer you worked so hard for, you think. Are you going back to the lonely jungle now?'
Strangely, that also did not appeal. The life he had been satisfied with before seemed inadequate now.
'What choice do I have?'
'Why not try being a man? It's all in your viewpoint, I think. The people at Castle Roogna would accept you, I'm sure. They already do. Prince Dor treated you as an equal.'
'He treats everybody as an equal.' But Smash wondered. Would Prince Dor have been the same with any of the Ogre-Fen Ogres? This seemed questionable.
Then something else occurred to him. 'You say I was able to make the illusory Eye Queue vine work in the Void because I always did have human intelligence, so there was no paradox?'
'That's what I say,' she said smugly.
'Then what about the gourd?'
'The gourd?' she asked family.
'That was illusory, too, in the Void, and it had nothing to do with my human nature, yet it also worked.'
'Yes, it did,' she agreed. 'Oh, Smash, I never thought of that! But that means-'
'That illusion was real in the Void. That what we thought was there really was there, once we thought it, such as gourds and glowing footprints. So there is no proof I'm smart without the vine.'
'But-but-' She began to sniffle.
Smash sighed. He hated to see her unhappy. 'Nevertheless, I admit to being smart enough now to find the flaws in your logic, which, paradoxically, proves your case to that extent. Probably we're both right.
I have human intelligence, and the Void makes illusion real.' He paused, yet again aware of her hand on his. What a sweet little hand it was! 'I have never in my life thought of myself as a man. I don't know what it could accomplish, but at least it might be a diversion while we wait for the dragoness to stop searching for us.'
Her sniffles abated magically. 'It might be more than that. Smash,' she said, sounding excited.
Smash concentrated. He imagined the way men were: small and not very hairy and rather weak, but very smart. They used clothing because their natural fur didn't cover the essentials. They plucked shoes from shoe trees and socks from hose vines. He had a jacket and gloves; that was a start. They lived in houses, because wild creatures could otherwise attack them in their sleep. They tended to congregate in villages, liking one another's company. They were, in fact, social creatures, seldom alone.
He imagined himself joining that company, walking like a man instead of tromping like an ogre. Resting on a bed instead of on the trunk of a tree. Eating delicately, one bite at a time, chewing it sedately, instead of ripping raw flesh, crunching bones, and using sheer muscle to cram in whatever didn't conveniently fit in his mouth. Shaking hands instead of knocking for a loop. But the whole exercise was ridiculous, because he knew he would always be a huge, hairy, homely monster.
'It isn't working,' he said with relief. 'I just can't imagine myself as-'
She set her other hand on his gross arm. Now he felt the touch of her soul, her half soul, for he was attuned to it after borrowing it. There seemed to be a current of soul traveling along his arm between her two tiny hands. He had rescued that soul from the gourd, and it had helped rescue him from the ogres.
He also remembered how quick she had always been in his defense. How she had kissed him. How she had stayed with him, even when he went among the ogres, even when she lacked her soul. Suddenly he wanted very much to please her.
And he began to get the point of view. He felt himself shrinking, refining, turning polite and smart.
Suddenly it opened out His mind expanded to take in all of Xanth, as it had when he first felt the curse of the Eye Queue. This time it was no curse; it was self-realization. He had become a man.
Tandy's hands remained on his arm and hand. Now he turned to her in the dark. His eyes saw nothing, but his mind more than made up the difference.
Tandy was a woman. She was beautiful in her special fashion. She was smart. She was nice. She was loyal. She had a wonderful soul.
And he-with the perspective of a man he saw her differently. With the mind of a man he analyzed it. She had been a companion, and he realized now how important that had become to him. Ogres didn't need companions, but men did. The six other girls had been companions, too, and he had liked them, but Tandy was more.
'I don't want to go back to the jungle alone,' he murmured. His voice had lost much of the ogre guttural quality.
'I never thought you belonged there. Smash.' Oh, how sweet she sounded 1
'I want-' But the enormity of the notion balked him.
It didn't balk Tandy, however. 'Smash, I told you before that I loved you.'
'I have human perception at the moment,' he said. 'I must caution you not to make statements that are subject to misinterpretation.'
'Misinterpretation, hell!' she flashed. 'I knew my mind long before you knew yours.'
'Well, you must admit that an ogre and a nymph-'
'Or a man and a woman-'
'Half-breeds,' he said, half bitterly. 'Like the centaurs, harpies, merfolk, fauns-'
'And what's wrong with half-breeds?' she flared. 'In Xanth, any species can mate with any other it wants to, and some of the offspring are fine people. What's wrong with Chem the Centaur? With the Siren?'
'Nothing,' he said, impressed by her vehemence. Moment by moment, as she talked and his manhood infiltrated the farthest reaches of his awareness, he was warming to her nature. She was small, but she was an awful lot of small.
'And the three-quarter breeds, almost identical to the humans, like Goldy Goblin and Biythe Brassie and John the Fairy-'
'And Fireoak the Hamadryad, whose soul is the tree,' he finished. 'All good people.' But he wondered passingly why, since nymphs were so nearly human, they didn't have souls. Obviously there was more to learn about the matter.
'Consider Xanth,' she continued hotly. 'Divided into myriad Kingdoms of people and animals and in-betweens. We met the Lord of the Flies and the Prince of Whales and the Dragon Lady and the
Kingdoms of the goblins, birds, griffins-'
'And the Ancestral Ogres of the Fen,' he said. 'All of which believe they dominate Xanth.'
'Yes.' She took a breath. 'How can Xanth be prevented from fragmenting entirely, except by interaction and cross-breeding? Smash, I think the very future of Xanth depends on the half-breeds and quarter-breeds, the people like us who share two or more views. In Mundania, no species breeds with another-and look at Mundania! According to my father's stories-'
'Awful,' he agreed. 'Mundania has no magic.'
'So their species just keep drifting farther apart, making that land more dreary year by year. Xanth is different; Xanth can reunify. Smash, we owe it to Xanth to-'
'Now I understand what men object to in women,' Smash said.
She was startled. 'What?'
'They talk too much.'
'It's to fill in for inactive men!' she flared.
Oh. He turned farther toward her in the dark, and she met him halfway. This time there was no
confusion at all about the kiss. It was a small swatch of heaven.
At last they broke. 'Ogre, ogre,' she murmured breathlessly. 'You certainly are a man now.'
