'I'm a naiad,' one nymph called from the lake. She was lovely, with hair like clean seaweed and breasts that floated enticingly. 'Come swim with me!'
'I, uh-' Dor demurred. Nymphs might not be hollow in quite the way woodwives were, but they were not quite the same as real women either.
'I meant Jumper!' she cried, laughing.
'I prefer to skate,' Jumper chittered. He stepped carefully onto the water and slid gracefully across it.
The nymphs applauded madly, then dived into the lake and swam after the spider. Once their confidence had been won, it was complete!
'I'm a dryad,' another nymph called from a tree. Her hair was leaf-green, her nails bark-brown, but her torso was as exposed and lush as that of the water nymph. 'Come swing with me!'
Dor still had not learned how to handle this sort of offer, but again he remembered the hollow woodwife. 'I, uh-'
'I meant Jumper!' But the spider was already on the way. If there was one thing he could do better than skating water, it was climbing trees. In a moment the other dyrads were swarming after him. Soon they were squealing with glee, dangling from silken draglines attached to branches, kicking their feet.
Dor walked on toward the mountain, vaguely disgruntled. He was glad his friend was popular; still-
'I'm an oread,' a nymph called from the steep side of the mountain. 'Come climb with me!'
'Jumper is busy,' Dor said.
'Oh,' she said, disappointed.
Now a faun approached him. 'I see you aren't much for the girls. Will you join us boys?'
'I'm just trying to scout a route through here for an army,' Dor replied shortly.
'An army! We have no business with armies!'
'What is your business?'
'We dance and play our pipes, chase the nymphs, eat and sleep and laugh. I'm an orefaun, associated with the mountain, but you could join the dryfauns of the trees if you prefer, or the naifauns of the pool. There really isn't much difference between us.'
So it seemed. 'I don't want to join you,' Dor said. 'I'm just passing through.'
'Come for our party, anyway,' the faun urged. 'Maybe you'll reconsider after you see how happy we are.'
Dor started to demur, then realized that the day was getting late. This would be a better place to spend the night than the wilderness-and he was curious about the life and rationale of these nymphs and fauns. In his own day such creatures were widely scattered across Xanth, and highly specialized: a nymph for every purpose. The fauns had largely disappeared. Why? Perhaps the key was here.
'Very well. Just let me scout the terrain a little farther, then I shall return for your party.' Dor had always liked parties, though he hadn't gone to many. People had objected to his talking to the walls and furniture, learning about all the private things that went on under the cover of the formal entertainment. Too bad-because the informal entertainment was generally far more intriguing. There seemed to be something about adult people; their natures changed when they got into small groups, especially when such groups consisted of one male and one female. If what they had to do was good and wholesome, why didn't they do it in full public view? He had always been curious about that.
The fauns danced about him merrily, playing their little flutes, as he walked beyond the lake and mountain. They had horn-like tufts of hair on their heads, and their toenails had grown so heavy as to resemble hooves, but they remained human. In the following centuries the horns and hooves would become real, as the fauns took on their distinct magical identities. He had thought they were real when he first spied the fauns here, but his mind's eye had filled in more detail than was justified.
Dor realized that if he or any other man so chose, he could join them, now, and his own hair and toenails would develop similarly. It made sense; the hooves were much better for running about rocky terrain than ordinary feet were, and the horns were a natural defense, albeit as yet token, that could not be carelessly lost the way other weapons could. And as for dancing-those neat, small, hard feet were much better than Dor's own huge soft flat things. Suddenly he reminded himself of a goblin.
The subspecies of fauns were already distinguishable, as were the species of nymphs. The dryfauns of the forest had greenish hair and bark-brown fur on their legs and lower torsos, and their horns were hooked to enable them to draw down fruit. Their hoof-toes were sharp, almost spiked, so that they could climb sheer trunks, though as yet they had little difficulty walking on land. Perhaps that was the key to their eventual demise as a species, when they became so specialized they could not leave the trees, and something happened to those trees-yes.
The orefauns of the mountains had more powerful legs, their hooves merging like those of goats or deer. Even their hands were assuming a certain hooflike quality, to enable them to scamper up on all fours, and their horns curled back to enable them to butt.
The naifauns of the lake had flattened flipper-hooves and horns pointing straight up like speartips; they speared foolish fish on them when hungry. They had delicate scales on their nether portions instead of fur.
A naifaun saw Dor looking at him. 'You should see my cousin the nerefaun,' he called, splashing cheerily. 'He lives in the sea at the foot of the river, and he has scales like those of a sea serpent, and full flipper feet. He can really swim-but he can hardly walk on land.'
Scales and flippers for the sea-faun. Could this specialization eventually lead to the merfolk, the tritons and their counterparts the mermaids, who had lost their legs entirely in favor of a tail? Yet he had already encountered a triton here-no, that was at Good Magician Humfrey's castle, eight hundred years hence. There were no naifauns or nerefauns in Dor's own time because they had become sea and lake tritons, and the naiads and
