The Wood Nymph, the Cranky Saint

“A nymph’s conversation takes time,” he answered, again with a reminiscent smile. “But it’s worth it in the end.” He leaned forward abruptly. “Why do you want to move her out of the grove anyway?”

“Well,” I said uneasily, “the bishop had asked the royal chaplain to ask me what I could do. The church considers that grove a holy grove, and they don’t like having a nymph in it.”

The old wizard stopped smiling and snorted as though thoroughly disgusted. “I thought I’d warned you about becoming too good friends with that chaplain. Why should you do errands for the Church anyway? They’ve always done their best to discredit wizardry, so we certainly don’t owe them any favors. Why should a wood nymph have to leave the grove where she’s always been happy, just because some bishop becomes fastidious about her proximity to an old hermit? Afraid she’s going to corrupt him, is that it?”

I did not try to deny it. Clearly I would get no help from the old wizard here. I almost agreed with him anyway, and would have agreed completely if Joachim had not seemed so troubled.

“I’m sure you’re right, Master,” I said hastily, trying to recover something from this conversation before he threw me out. “But I have another question for you. Some strange magic creatures have started appearing in the kingdom, and it looks as if they were made with wizardry.”

“Strange magic creatures,” he interrupted with another snort, “and you, a supposedly competent wizard, can’t even deal with them yourself?”

I pushed ahead. “I had merely hoped, since you’d been in Yurt so long, you might have seen something similar before and would have some suggestions. They look like rabbits, but big rabbits, and they have horns.”

“Horned rabbits,” he said, looking at me thoughtfully. “So there are horned rabbits in the kingdom, and you don’t know what to do about them. I hope you weren’t going to accuse me of making something so silly. Unless you created them yourself, eh? I suggest you talk to your fancy school. An apprentice wizard in the old days wouldn’t have had these problems!”

I expected in fact that an apprentice wizard of a century or two earlier would have had just as much trouble, but I didn’t say so. Rather, I decided I ought to leave before I did any more damage to our always rather dubious relationship.

“And how many horned rabbits have you seen?” he asked as I stood up to go.

“There are at least three of them.” I wondered if there had been great horned rabbits in Yurt before, or if the old wizard was just pleased to see me facing-certainly not for the first time! — a problem I didn’t know how to handle.

The old wizard smiled grimly. “If you’ve got a renegade wizard here in the kingdom making horned rabbits- rabbits! — there may be a lot more before you’re through.”

I left with this discouraging comment. As I flew back home, I thought that at least the old wizard himself didn’t seem to be creating great horned rabbits, or anything else at the moment, and certainly not with diabolical assistance. But that left me back at the beginning. Where had they come from, and why had they now appeared in Yurt?

IV

That evening, as I’d hoped, the telephone call came from the castle, halfway to the great City, where the queen’s parents lived, telling us that the royal party had arrived safely. Dominic himself spoke to the king, but standing at his side I could see the king with the queen and the baby prince behind him, tiny figures in the base of the glass telephone.

“Yes, we’re all well,” said the king. “Any problems yet you can’t handle, Dominic?”

The royal nephew and regent took this comment entirely seriously. “Nothing I can’t handle, sire.”

I thought that, on the contrary, there was a great deal happening in Yurt over which Dominic had no control. I wondered if it could be pure coincidence that Nimrod and the great horned rabbits had both appeared in the kingdom at the very time the king left. I even wondered for a moment if Dominic himself might be responsible, if he had arranged for the kingdom to be invaded by magic creatures in the king’s absence to demonstrate his ability to deal with them.

But this seemed a little far-fetched. There was no question, however, that Dominic was throwing himself into the role of royal regent. When we had reached home the day before, we had found him sitting on the throne in the great hall, gripping the arms and staring grimly at nothing in particular.

Hearing from the king made everyone more cheerful, except for Joachim, who was still waiting to hear from the bishop. He had hoped that an answer to his message of the preceding day would be here when we reached the royal castle yesterday, but no pigeons had arrived. The cathedral had never put in a telephone, probably afraid that to do so would be a concession to the forces of institutionalized wizardry, and Joachim could do nothing but mutter about pigeons being lost or caught by hawks-all of which was quite possible-before going up to bed early.

Perhaps the most cheerful person in the castle was Gwen, the assistant cook. She and I had been friends since I first arrived in Yurt, when she was still a kitchen-maid. Not only was she glad the royal family was safe, she was also pleased that they were at least temporarily out of the way. She and her husband, who played in the castle’s brass choir, were the only people in Yurt who did not consider the baby prince the most important person in the kingdom. That honor they gave to their own baby daughter.

“I think she’s going to start crawling soon,” Gwen said to me. Her daughter was lying on a rug on the flagstone floor of the great hall. “Look at her kicking!”

The little girl, four months younger than the royal prince, was indeed kicking with great enthusiasm and pride of accomplishment.

I sat down on the floor next to her and patted her on her diapered bottom. She gave me a wide, toothless smile. “I like baby girls,” I said to Gwen. “She’s so full of energy; are you sure she isn’t going to get into trouble once she starts moving around?”

Little Gwennie grabbed the hem of my trouser leg and tried to pull it toward her mouth. Gwen disengaged her. “There is a lot she could crawl into in the kitchens-they’re much more dangerous than anything the little prince is likely to get into,” she added pointedly.

We were interrupted at this point by Dominic coming toward us. I frequently had the uncomfortable feeling that, despite his silence and apparent slowness, he saw and recognized every one of my inadequacies-and probably a lot of inadequacies I didn’t even have. But he was also capable of surprising me by speaking to me on occasion as though he had no doubts of my competence.

“It sounds as if the count and the duchess are having a great deal of trouble in their neighborhood these days,” he said as I scrambled to my feet, “what with great horned rabbits and a troublesome nymph.” I had of course given him a sketch of our trip as soon as we returned. From the stony look I had received then I was rather surprised how much of it he’d understood, even though he didn’t now mention the people trying to restrict access to the holy relics. “Do you think it would help if I rode over to that side of the kingdom tomorrow with a few knights?”

“Not for several days, anyway,” I said. “Brute force won’t be any good against the nymph. If any of our knights are good trackers, however, I’m sure the duchess would appreciate their help tracking the horned rabbits.”

Dominic considered, as though wondering again why his uncle the king had even taken me on in the first place. “And are you doing anything about these strange events?”

“I’m checking what my books of magic have to say about such things,” I said with dignity. Since I had been meaning to get to my books very soon, I didn’t feel this was too great a prevarication.

Unexpectedly, Dominic’s frown turned into a smile. “It was good to hear the royal family is well,” he said, “especially the little prince.”

I agreed wholeheartedly, although somewhat surprised, since Joachim had felt Dominic might be jealous.

“His hair is so light blond it’s almost white,” continued Dominic with a sentimental smile. “They tell me mine was just the same color when I was his age. Tell me, Wizard,” with a sudden sharp look, “have you ever thought of getting married?”

“Me? Of course not,” I said, startled by this sudden change of subject. “Wizards never marry.”