Part 4 (1/2)

She heard a noise in the brush and discovered a large animal grazing. It had horns like those of a sea cow, a tail like that of a centaur, and silky hair along its sides like that of a beautiful woman. In short, it was a strange, composite creature.

But Ivy was too young and inexperienced to realize how strange this animal was or to know proper fear. She marched right up to it. ”What, are you?” she asked. She had always found this question useful, because, when her father was near, things always answered.

The creature raised its head and stared down at her with a huge and lovely eye. ”I thought you'd never ask! I'm a yak, of course, the most talkative of wild creatures. I will talk your ear off, if you don't figure out how to stop me.”

Ivy put a hand to her delicate little ear. It seemed to be securely fastened, so she relaxed. ”How do I stop you?” She was rather pleased with her ability to a.s.semble a question correctly; after all, she wasn't very big. But she had discovered that she could do a lot more than she thought she could, if she only believed she could. She had decided to believe she could talk as well as a grown-up person, and now she could, almost. But she didn't do it when her folks were present, in case they should object. Grown-ups had funny notions about what children should or should not do, so she had learned caution.

The yak shook his head. ”Not so readily, cute human child! That is the single thing I won't tell you! It is my nature to talk as long as I have a receptive ear--an indifferent ear will do in a pinch--regardless how anyone else feels about it. You can't shut me up unless you know how. What do you think of that?”

Ivy looked up at him. ”You're a real pretty beast. I like you.”

The yak was taken aback. ”You aren't annoyed?”

”You talk to me. Most people don't. They don't have time. My folks don't know how well I can talk, fortunately.”

The yak seemed uncertain whether she was joking. He twitched his horns. ”Well, I have time. I have nothing better to do than talk. I'd rather talk than eat.”

”Eat.” Ivy realized she was hungry. ”I want to eat.”

”I will talk about eating, then. But first we must introduce ourselves more formally. What is your given name?”

”Ivy. I'm King Dor's child.”

The yak's mouth curved into a tolerant smile. ”Ah, royalty! You will surely have royal tastes!” He was humoring her, not believing her parentage. ”What do you like?”

Ivy considered. It was not that it took her any great cogitation to come to a conclusion, but that she enjoyed this particular type of consideration. ”Chocolate cake.”

”I never would have guessed! As it happens, there's a chocolate moose in the vicinity, but it doesn't like getting nibbled. Once a bunch of ducks started nibbling, and it said--”

”I don't want to hurt anything,” Ivy said, sad for the moose. ”Now I don't know what to eat.”

”Then we'll just have to explore. There's lots of succulent gra.s.s in this glade; do you like that?” By way of ill.u.s.tration, the yak took a mouthful of it.

Ivy bent down and took a similar mouthful of gra.s.s. She chewed a moment, then spat it out. ”No. It's too much like spinach.”

”There are also leaves,” the yak said, reaching up to pull down a leafy branch. Ivy took a leaf and chewed it. ”No. Too much like cabbage.”

”You are hard to please!” the yak lamented cheerfully. ”Let's look around more widely.”

They walked back the way Ivy had come. ”What's that?” she--asked, pointing to the metallic plant with the pickle smell that had refused to identify itself before.

”Why, that's an armor-dillo,” the yak said. ”It grows the best armor, but it stinks of the brine used to store it. Some creatures like the odor, though.”

Ivy wrinkled her cute little nose. ”Ugh. They must be dillies.”

”They are indeed! They get pickled every night.” They moved on to a plant whose huge limbs terminated in delicate human hands, each finger manicured and with bright polish on the nail. ”What's that?”

”A lady-fingers plant, naturally,” the Yak said. ”You have hands; you can shake hands in the typical human fas.h.i.+on if you wish.”

Ivy tried it, extending her right hand toward the nearest branch. She could tell her right hand from her left because her hands lined up the same way her feet did, and her shoes were marked R and L. The nearest lady-fingers grasped her hand immediately. But then all the other hands clamored for attention by snapping their fingers, and she had to shake them all.

At length she drew away, resolving to be more careful thereafter. She started toward a somewhat vague bush. ”What's that?”

”Don't go near that one!” the yak warned. ”That's a trance plant. It doesn't belong here at all.”

”Why not?”

”It grows elsewhere. Probably someone carried it here and set it on the ground and it rooted. Anyone who gets too close to it gets dazed.”

Ivy considered. She was a pretty smart little girl when she tried to be, especially when she thought she was. Her father's friend Smash the Ogre had said she might have had an Eye Queue vine fall on her head; Smash knew about jungle vines. But that was their secret. Smash took her for walks sometimes, and he had been quick to discover that she was smarter than she seemed, sometimes, because he was that way himself, but he had promised not to tell her folks so she wouldn't get in trouble. In fact, it was because of Smash that she wanted to explore the jungle; he had told her how fascinating it was. Now she had her chance! ”How did they carry the trance plant?”

The yak paused. ”Why, I never thought of that! Anyone carrying it would have gone into a trance. Yet I happen to know that all trance plants grow elsewhere, and are moved to new locations. It seems to be their lifestyle. They must have some additional magic to enable them to travel.” He looked ahead. ”Ah, there's a foot-ball.”

As he spoke, the foot-ball rolled into view. It was a sphere formed of feet. Every kind of extremity showed in it--dragon talons, bird claws, griffin paws, human feet, centaur hooves, insect legs, and so on. The feet tramped down a path wherever it rolled, so that it was easy to tell where the ball had been, but not where it was going. With so many feet, it was able to travel quite swiftly and was soon out of sight.

However, the path it left made their route easier, since there were no brambles or pitfalls in it. It didn't matter to Ivy where it led, as long as there were interesting things along it.

Ivy spotted a glittering gla.s.sy ball the size of her two fists, not round but carved with many small, flat facets. She strayed from the path long enough to pick it up. Beams of light coruscated from it as she held it in a stray shaft of sunlight. ”What is this?”

”That is a very precious stone, one of the gems distributed by Jewel the Nymph,” the yak said. ”Crystallized carbon in spherical form: a very hard ball. Specifically, a baseball diamond.”

”What's it for? It's pretty.”

”People play stupid games with it. I understand the main game is very tedious--a bunch of players spread themselves out around the diamond and simply wait, and someone else throws the ball, and another stands with a stick resting on his shoulder and watches the ball go by him three or four times, and then either he gets mad and quits trying, or he runs around the diamond. Then they start over.”

Ivy's smooth little brow furrowed in a fair emulation of her mother's expression at times like this. ”That's no fun! Who does that?”

”Mundanes, mostly. They are strange creatures and, I suspect, not too bright. Otherwise they would take more of an interest in magic, instead of pretending it doesn't exist. What can you say about a person who refuses to believe in magic?”

”That he deserves his own dullness.”

”That's a most astute remark!” The yak glanced ahead, hearing something. ”Hark! I think I hear a game now!”

They walked on toward the sound. Two centaurs were doing something. ”No, that's not a baseball diamond they're throwing. It must be some other game.”

Indeed it was. Two wooden stakes had been pounded into the ground, and the centaurs were taking turns hurling shoes from a nearby shoe tree at them. They were the type of shoes human folk used, with shoelaces and all. One shoe would land leaning up against a stake, but the next one would knock it away. Finally one centaur managed to hang a shoe up on the stake, whereupon he clapped his hands and the other grimaced.

”Oh, that makes you look so sick you'll need a new croggle-test!” the winner teased the loser.

”Equines need regular croggle-tests,” the yak explained privately to Ivy. ”To make sure they haven't been infected by magic. It is very bad to be croggled.”

Ivy felt a little croggled herself, though she was not an equine. Some of her best friends were magic-infected centaurs, but she knew that most centaurs rejected magic as determinedly as the Mundanes did. ”What are you playing?” she called to the centaurs.

”People-shoes, of course,” one of them responded absently, then trotted off to pick up his collection.

The yak shrugged. ”There's no accounting for tastes,” he remarked. ”Some folk like to talk, some like to throw shoes.”