Part 2 (1/2)
Now she needed a way to cross the lake without soiling her body with fresh water, and the manual couldn't tell her how.
The sky darkened, dimming the page. She looked up.
There over the water a nasty little cloud was forming. So she flipped the pages until she came to clouds, and there it was: King c.u.mulo Fracto Nimbus, the meanest of clouds. But since she had nothing either to gain or fear from a cloud, she ignored Fracto, and he ignored her.
Then she saw something strange. It was a little red boat, zooming along backwards, rowed by a very big man. No, by a very small giant. No, something even odder. But what?
”Fascinating,” Metria said, and faded out.
That surely meant trouble. But it just might be a ruse.
If this was someone who could help her cross the lake, the demoness might be trying to scare her away, so that she would after all be stranded. So she couldn't be sure.
The best thing to do was chance it. If she got into the boat with the man, and he tried to get fresh-how she hated freshness!-she could always jump into the water, loathsome as it was, and escape. So she waited.
But she took the precaution of hiding behind some redberry bushes.
The boat plowed right on toward the sh.o.r.e not far distant. The rower didn't seem to realize. He banged right into the bank, and grunted as the boat suddenly stopped.
”Oh, everything's wrong!” he cried in a high voice. ”I'll never find the Good Magician!”
Mela's ears perked up. He was looking for the Good Magician? This could be a wonderful break!
She stepped forward. ”h.e.l.lo,” she said brightly.
The stranger jumped right into the air and screamed, bursting into tears. Startled, Mela fell back into the bushes, scratching her nevermind. ”Well, I didn't mean any harm,” she said, nettled. ”I just happen to be looking for the Good Magician myself, and I wondered-” She broke off, staring at the huge creature. ”Why, you're not a man at all! You're a-well, just what are you?”
”I'm an ogre girl,” the other responded. ”You frightened me.”
”But they're very strong, ugly and stupid, and justifiably proud of it. You're-”
”A very poor excuse for an ogress,” the other said. ”I can't even crunch bones very well.”
Mela decided to let that pa.s.s. ”Do you think you might row me across the lake? I think the Good Magician is somewhere on the other side.”
”He is?” the ogress said, brightening. ”Sure! Do you know the way?”
”Not exactly. Just in a very general sense. But if you want to go there too-”
”Yes!”
”Then let's introduce ourselves. I'm Mela Merwoman.
I 'm looking for a husband.”
”I'm Okra Ogress. I'm looking for my fortune. I want to be a Main Character.”
”A main character? Why?”
”Because nothing really bad ever happens to a main character, and a whole lot of bad things are going to happen to me if I don't get away from them.”
”Now that's interesting! Do you mean I could get a good husband if I became a main character?”
”Sure. Main characters always live happily ever after, so if you need a husband to make you happy, then you'd get one.”
”Well, Okra, I'm glad I met you! Let's get on across Lake Kiss-Mee, and we'll see if we can find the Good Magician together.”
”Lake what?”
”Kiss-Mee. Didn't you know?”
”But I was rowing on Lake Ogre-Chobee!”
”You must have rowed right up the river to Lake Kiss-Mee without knowing it!” Only a very strong and stupid person could have done that, but that made sense in this case.
”Okay.” Okra hauled the red boat around and plopped it back into the water. ”I'll row. Maybe it will work better if you can tell me where we're going.”
”It should,” Mela agreed, realizing that this was part of the ogress's problem: she had not been able to look forward.
So they got into the boat, and Okra started to row. The boat fairly leaped through the water with each heave. Mela looked ahead-and saw the cloud, King Fracto, changing course to intercept them. ”Urn, maybe we should turn back and wait for Fracto to go away,” she said.
But the ogress was working so hard that she didn't hear.
Well, maybe they could make it across before the storm hit. Mela hoped so. She did not relish the thought of getting doused with fresh rainwater.
Chapter 2.
It was a perfect day for a picnic. They would smell flowers and eat red, yellow, and blueberries and sun in the sun. With luck they would encounter a winged dragon or a griffin. From the time of her a.s.sociation with Che Centaur, she had had no fear of winged monsters, for all of them were his friends.
Gwendolyn Goblin could not remember when she had been as happy as during these last two years as the guest of the winged centaur family. She had been well treated at home in Goblin Mountain, but confined to her apartment, because, well, because. Then little Che Centaur had come to be her companion, and his friend Jenny Elf who was the same age as Gwenny, and they had gone to be with Che's family. For the first time Gwenny had experienced the freedom of the great outside, and she reveled in it.
Of course there were bad things too. Che's parents, Cheiron and Chex, insisted that every creature in their household be properly educated.
Thus the teenage goblin girl and elf girl shared seven-year-old Che's fate, and had to spend weary hours learning how to count and figure and read and write, and all about the geography and history of Xanth. They even had to learn the various types of magic, and the rules of human and nonhuman cultures.
What a bore! Sometimes Gwenny and Jenny pretended to lose their spectacles so that they couldn't study, but the adults were hideously astute at finding them. It was the one awful thing about centaurs: they were intellectual.
They represented the very most extreme case of the dreadful Adult Conspiracy, which dictated that anyone young enough to be a non-Conspirator must Know and Not Know a rigorous schedule of things.
Naturally most of the interesting things were in the Not-Know category.
But overall, the positives outweighed the negatives.
Gwenny was well fed and well cared for and safe, and she had close companions who didn't like studying any better than she did. The alternative was to be locked in her suite at home with only her mother, G.o.diva, for company-and the truth was, G.o.diva also had distressingly adult notions about education and behavior. The rest of Goblin Mountain was a total loss; it was dark and gloomy and full of goblins. Who wanted to be in a mountain full of goblins?
They skipped along the path, Che running beside Gwenny so that she would be guided by him and would not misstep. A visit to a healing spring had cured her lameness, but not her eyesight. Her eyes weren't ill; they merely were unable to focus quite right at ordinary distances. Jenny Elf had the same problem. Healing water restored a person's body to its natural state, and their natural state was a different way of seeing than that of most folk.