"Though I understand that he charges a year"s Service for an answer, and I have to be back with my tree in a month. And I can"t even find my way across this creva.s.se. So I"m not sure exactly what I"m doing."
Sean and Willow exchanged a Significant Glance. Then she spoke. "You helped Woofer, and we appreciate that. So maybe we can do you a return favor. I don"t know how to solve your dilemma, but I think I know who might be able to help. I"ll call her." She lifted a whistle she wore around her neck and blew on it.
In barely a moment there was a crashing in the brush as something huge charged through it. "A dragon!" Forrest exclaimed. "You had better fly out over the gulf."
"A dragon a.s.s," she corrected him. "Friendly."
Indeed, now he saw that the dragon was striped and had the head of a donkey. It was forging through the brier patch, not even noticing the briers. And on it was a young woman half a shade lovelier than D. Sire in her seduction mode.
"Disgusting!" the demoness agreed, forming beside him.
The dragon a.s.s came to a stop before them. "We heard your whistle," the beautiful woman said to Willow. "How may we help?"
"This nice faun helped get Woofer out of trouble," Willow explained. "We"d like to help him in return."
The woman turned her graceful gaze on Forrest. "I am Chlorine. My talent is poisoning water. This is my friend Nimby, whom I love more than anything in Xanth, and to whom I owe everything. His talent is making the two of us anything we want to be. We travel around, looking for good deeds to do. Who are you, and why are you worthy of a favor?"
"I am Forrest Faun, and I"m not worthy of any favor."
Chlorine glanced at Willow. "That"s not true," the winged elf girl said. "He"s trying to find a replacement faun for a tree that will fade or die otherwise. He needs to get across the Gap Chasm so he can go ask the Good Magician"s advice. And he doesn"t have time to serve a year there, because the tree will last only a month."
The woman"s gaze returned to Forrest. "I gather you"re not the smartest faun in Xanth, but you mean well."
That summed it up nicely. "Yes."
"So we"ll help you," she decided. "Won"t we, Nimby?" She leaned forward to hug the dragon"s neck. They seemed to be the perfect combination: a beauty and a beast.
Nimby nodded yes. "I love you," Chlorine said, kissing his neck. "You gave me back my tear, and so much more."
Forrest gathered that there was more to that relationship than showed on the surface. Why should such a lovely woman care so much about such an ugly dragon? But that was the same kind of a question others asked about fauns and nymphs with trees: why did they bind themselves to such unresponsive plants? There was no point trying, to explain the wonders of the relationships to those who lacked any basis for understanding. Maybe Nimby protected Chlorine from other dragons, though he did not look very formidable. Maybe he just had a nice personality. Or maybe it was that great beauty was attracted to great ugliness.
Chlorine straightened up and looked at Forrest again. "Get on behind me," she said. "We"ll take you across the Gap."
Forrest looked at the daunting vast void. "But how?"
She smiled, and the local scenery brightened. "You"ll see."
So Forrest walked to the side of the dragon, and scrambled up on its back. But his perch seemed insecure. The dragon"s small wings were right behind him, and Chlorine"s remarkably contoured backside was before him.
"Put your arms around me," Chlorine said. "And hold on TIGHT"
"But-" She reached back and caught his hands, drawing them forward until his hands touched across her small waist. He clasped his fingers together. His face was almost in her flowing hair, which smelled of new mown hay.
The dragon strode forward, directly toward the brink. His head dropped down into the chasm, disappearing from view. Then the main body crossed the edge, turning at right angles. They were going down into the gap!
The sky seemed to whirl as they changed orientation. Terrified, Forrest clung tightly to Chlorine, expecting to plummet into the awful depths of the chasm.
But it didn"t happen. He found himself jammed tight against Chlorine"s shapely back, his thighs against her hips, his face buried in her fragrant hair-and they weren"t falling. Instead they were moving down the vertical wall, as if it were level. Chlorine"s hair wasn"t even out of place.
"Bye," Sean said, waving. He was floating beside them, but angled differently, because to him down was still down.
"It was nice meeting you," Willow said. She was flying similarly, her wings beating with a gentle cadence. Forrest felt the wind from them, and knew it was going down, but it was like a level breeze to him. He was anch.o.r.ed to the wall, and it had become his ground. The experience was weird, but not unpleasant.
"You can relax a little," Chlorine said.
Oh. He loosened the near death grip he had on her body. It really wasn"t necessary.
Sean and Willow waved again, then flew away. There was a woof as Woofer followed them, running along the land beyond the chasm.
"Thank you!" Forrest called to them, remembering his manners. "And you," he added to the woman and dragon.
"It"s just what we do," Chlorine replied. "Nimby and I have such good fortune that we try to share some of it with others, when the others are deserving."
"But I"m just trying to help a neighboring tree. That"s not anything special."
"It"s something generous and nice," she said. "The fact that you don"t regard it as worthy of comment suggests that you are decent and modest.
That"s the type of person we like to help."
He was getting quite curious about her and the dragon. "If I may ask-"
"What"s with the damsel and dragon a.s.s?" she finished for him.
I"m just a somewhat dull, plain, indifferent girl with not much of a talent. But Nimby makes me beautiful and smart and healthy and nice, and now we live in the Nameless Castle where a full staff of servants takes care of our every whim. Once a month we go out around Xanth, looking for good deeds to do, in this minor way sharing our happiness with others."
"The dragon lives in a castle?"
She laughed, causing his linked hands on her soft but firm belly to shake. "Oh, Nimby changes to handsome princely man form for that, because he wouldn"t fit very well in some of the pa.s.sages in dragon form. And while I love him in any form, when it comes to sharing my bed, I prefer him as a man. More cuddly, you know."
She thought the dragon could become a man? That had to be delusion, because everyone knew that each creature had only one magic talent, and Nimby"s was walking along vertical walls as if they were horizontal. So she must have a fond imagination. Her notions about her own body and personality were the opposite: she credited the dragon with making her beautiful, when it was plain that she was stunningly lovely on her own.
Still, she and the dragon were doing him a favor, so it would be best not to disparage her notions. "That"s nice," he said.
"You don"t believe me, do you."
"I didn"t say that."
"You didn"t have to. But you don"t."
"I mean no offense. But yes, I don"t quite believe you."
"That"s good. I don"t want to be believed. Can you believe that Nimby and I are married, and that we spent a month on the far side of the moon, reveling in honey?"
"I do find that similarly hard to believe."
"Wonderful! I could probably tell you anything, and you wouldn"t believe it. So I can be completely candid."
"Well, I wouldn"t say that."
"If I told you who Nimby really is, you truly wouldn"t believe me. So I won"t bother."
Maybe that was just as well. The farther they rode, the less sense Chlorine was making.
As they continued down, D. Sire reappeared. "I trust you are having fun?" she inquired, glancing significantly at his hands.
"Yes, this is a remarkable experience," Forrest agreed. "I have never seen such a chasm before."
"I meant hanging on to Miss Water Poison, who looks good enough to drink."
Chlorine glanced at her. "Haven"t you got some better errand elsewhere, demoness?"
Sire smirked. "No. I-" Then she looked surprised. "As a matter of fact I do. " She faded out.
They reached the bottom of the gulf, for the dragon"s big feet made for swift progress. They turned the corner and walked across the level bottom. Forrest looked up, and saw the rim of the chasm impossibly far above, and a couple of gnat sized specks that might be Sean and Willow.
Then he remembered something. "Isn"t there supposed to be a Gap Dragon down here, that eats anyone who get caught?"
"He"s not in this section at the moment," Chlorine said. "Did you want to meet him?"
"No! I want to avoid him."
"His name is Stanley Steamer, and he eats only folk he doesn"t know. I could introduce you."
"Thanks all the same. I"d rather not."
"He has a really cute son named Steven Steamer. All the girls swoon over that baby dragon."
"I"m not a girl."
She laughed again. "Very well. No introduction. But if you should ever meet him, just say that Nimby sent you, and he won"t eat you."
"Oh-you mean dragons don"t eat the friends of dragons?"
"Something like that. The winged monsters, especially, are very honorable. They protect their own, and the friends of their own. But don"t abuse the privilege. They have to make their living, you know."
By eating most folk they encountered. "I won"t abuse it," Forrest promised. So was this more fantasy on her part, or was it valid? He hoped he never had occasion to find out.
They reached the far wall of the chasm, which wasn"t far off, because the gulf was narrower at the base than at the top. Forrest knew that if he cared to ponder hard on that, he might conclude that this meant that the walls weren"t quite vertical. But that intensity of thought wasn"t worth the effort, so he didn"t reach that conclusion.
The trip up was like the trip down, only now "forward" was toward the distant sky. The dragon seemed to have no trouble walking on the wall, and Forrest did not feel any great pull of gravity holding him back.
Just the supple form of Chlorine"s body as he kept his hands linked.
"You must be hungry," she said after a bit. "Have a dough nut. They"re very filling." She made a quarter turn, and put a big spongy nut to his mouth so he could take it without letting go of her.
He opened his mouth and took it. It tasted very good, rather like fresh pie crust, and was surprisingly filling. "Thank you."
"You are welcome."
Forrest looked ahead and saw a dark cloud approaching. "That looks like Fracto, the worst of clouds," he said. "I hope he doesn"t decide to wet on us."
"He wouldn"t dare," Chlorine said.
However, the cloud came floating toward them, growing bigger and uglier by the moment. Until Chlorine tapped Nimby on a scale. "Mischief at two o"clock," she murmured.
The dragon lifted his head and glanced at the cloud. The cloud blanched, and then changed course, scudding swiftly away.
Forrest blinked. Surely he hadn"t seen that. How could one glance from a comically stupid looking dragon dissuade as mean a cloud as Fracto? It must be an illusion. Maybe the woman"s craziness was spreading to him.
They reached the top and bent around it. Things were on the level again.
The dragon stopped. "This is as far as we"ll take you," Chlorine said.
"There is a magic path right ahead. Follow that, and it will lead you safely to the Good Magician"s castle."
"Thank you," Forrest said, sliding down to the ground.
"And don"t be concerned about the Year"s Service," she told him.
"Humfrey won"t require it of you. So you will be back with your tree in time."
"I will?" he asked, astonished.
"Yes. And I think happier than you have ever been." She shrugged. "But of course I don"t know the future, so I could be wrong."
She seemed so reasonable in her madness! "Thank you," he repeated.
"Thank you for everything."
She smiled, lighting up the local scenery again, and waved as Nimby started off into the jungle. He didn"t seem to need a path. Forrest turned and followed the magic path.
In a moment he thought of something else, and turned back. A moment wasn"t long, so he had plenty of time to catch them and ask his question. But when he returned to the brink of the Gap Chasm, there was no sign of damsel or dragon. He followed Nimby"s tracks to the jungle"s edge-and there they stopped. It was as if the creature had simply vanished without walking farther. Could he have flown?
No, there was nothing in the sky. They were simply gone.
That was one curious pair of creatures! How could he query a vanishing donkey-headed dragon? Oh, well, he had forgotten his question anyway.
"Yes, they are really gone," D. Sire said, fading in.
"What happened to you?"
"I had a sudden urge to busy myself elsewhere. It didn"t fade until you got free of Miss Poison. So I never got to see whether any b.u.mps in the terrain caused your hands to b.u.mp up to her b.u.mps."
Yet another evidence of the odd woman"s power. She had banished a demoness! "Well, I no longer need your guidance, so you can continue your business elsewhere."
She shook her finger at him, and the shaking progressed down her arm and through her body. "Nuh-uh, faun. I have half a favor to complete."
"You have done so. I am now on a magic path leading straight to the Good Magician"s castle."