Disappointed, Trolla accepted the situation with grace. 'Which way do you go?'
'That way,' Bink said, indicating the direction Crombie had pointed for the resumption of their quest.
'But that's into the heart of the Region of Madness!'
Bink smiled. 'Perhaps our access is through madness, then.'
'The route past the tangle tree is open now. You could go out that way, and loop about to avoid the madness-'
Bink shook his head in negation, knowing that had that been the best way, Crombie would have indicated it.
'You males are so unreasonable! At least wait a few days. We will stop lofting the magic dust into the air, and the effect will diminish. Then you may traverse the region less hazardously.'
'No. We have decided to push on.' Bink feared that a few days' relaxation in this village of eager females would be as ruinous as continued dalliance with the siren and gorgon. They had to move on.
'Then we shall provide a guide. She can warn you of the immediate traps, and it is barely possible you will survive until clear of the worst of it. You are already half mad, after all.'
'Yes,' Bink agreed with a wry smile. 'We are males.' Neither sex understood the other; that was yet another aspect of the magic of Xanth. He rather liked this tame female troll; apparently almost any monster could be worthwhile once it was possible to know it personally.
The guide turned out to be a very pretty female griffin. 'Squawk!' Crombie protested. 'Awk! Awk!' she replied archly. 'Don't saddle us with a chick like that!' Grundy translated happily. 'Who are you calling a chick? I'm a lioness!'
'You're a nuisance!'
'And you're a bore!'
'Female!'
'Male!'
'Uh, that's enough translation, Grundy,' Bink said. 'They're down to ultimate insults.' He turned to Trolla. 'Thank you for the guide. We'll be on our way now.'
All the females of the village lined up to wave goodbye. It was a sad but necessary parting.
The wilderness of Xanth soon abolished sentimentality. The trees were extremely large here, closing in to form a dense jungle. This was the downwind region of the magic dust, as Trolla had warned; magic flourished here. Monstrous pincushions grew at the lowest level, stabbing anyone who passed too near, living stalagmites projected between the cushions, their stony points glistening with moisture that fell on them from above. Oil slicks twined wherever suitable depressions were available. The oil was more slippery than anything else, and at the same time more tenacious. 'Those tanker trees shouldn't flush their wastes on the surface,' Chester muttered. 'They should bury it, the way civilized creatures do.'
Yet the higher growths were no more promising; the huge metal trunks of ironwood trees crowded against the burned-out boles of ash. Rust and ashes coated the ground around them. Here and there bull spruces snorted and flexed their branch-horns menacingly. Above, it was worse yet; caterpillar nettles crawled along, peering down with prickly anticipation, and vomit-fungus dangled in greasy festoons. Where was there safe passage?
'Awk!' the guide said, showing the way. She glided past an outcropping of hissing serpentine, between two sharp blades of slash pine, and on over the rungs of a fallen ladder-bush. The others followed, wary but swift.
It was gloomy here, almost dark, though the day was rising onto noon. The canopy overhead, not satisfied with shutting out the sun, now constricted like an elastic band until it seemed to enclose them in one tight bubble. Like elastic? Now Bink saw it was elastic, from a huge elastic vine that stretched between and around the other foliage. Elastic was not a serious threat to people carrying swords or knives, but it could be a considerable inconvenience.
There seemed to be few large creatures here; but many small ones. Bugs were all over. Some Bink recognized: lightning bugs zapping their charges (this must have been where the demonstration bug had come from, the one that had burned up in the village), soldier beetles marching in precise formations to their bivouac, ladybugs and damselflies hovering near in the immemorial fashion of easy virtue females near armies. Almost under Chester's hooves a tiger beetle pounced on a stag beetle, making its kill with merciless efficiency. Bink averted his gaze, knowing that such activity was natural, but still not liking it.
Then he noticed Humfrey. The man was staring as if enchanted: a worrisome sign, here. 'Are you all right, Magician?' Bink asked.
'Marvelous!' the man murmured raptly. 'A treasure trove of nature!'
'You mean the bugs?'
'There's a feather-winged beetle,' Humfrey said. Sure enough, a bug with two bright feathers for wings flew by. 'And an owl-fly. And two net-wings!'
Bink saw the large-eyed, tufted bug sitting on a branch, watching the two nets hover. How a net- wing flew was unclear, as the nets obviously could not hold air. But with magic, what did it matter?
'And a picture-winged fly!' the Magician exclaimed, really excited. 'That's a new species, I believe; it must have mutated. Let me get my text.' He eagerly fumbled open a vial. The vapor came forth and formed a huge tome that the Magician balanced precariously on the back of the griffin, between the folded wings, as he turned over the pages. 'PICTURE-WING,' he read. 'Pastoral, Still-life, Naturalistic, Surrealistic, Cubist, Watercolor, Oil, Pastel Chalk, Pen-and-ink, Charcoal-I was right! This is a Crayon-Drawing species, unlisted! Bink, verify this for the record!'
Bink leaned over to look. The bug was sitting on the griffin's right ear, its wings outspread, covered by waxy illustrations. 'Looks like crayon to me,' he agreed.
