"And what would a long-haired goblin woman have to do with any of this?"
"She"s my mother," Gwenny said shortly.
"So your mother left Goblin Mountain to come to the centaur family, and next day you three depart alone, going in another direction. You say that"s not interesting?"
Gwenny realized that Metria would not be denied. "If we tell you what we"re up to, will you leave us alone?"
"That depends. Let"s make a different deal: if what you tell me is interesting, I"ll tell you something interesting."
Gwenny looked at Che. "Is that a good deal?"
"It probably is," the centaur said. "I understand that Metria always honors her deals, and always tells the truth.
But that often the deal doesn"t turn out the way the other party thinks it will, and often the truth is not what he, wants to hear."
Metria shot him a glance. "Even little centaurs are entirely too intelligent."
"However," Che continued, "it will be necessary to obtain her commitment to privacy, because our mission is of a private nature."
Metria grimaced. "That ruins half the fun of it. But secrets are more interesting than what everyone knows. I"ll agree."
"Very well," Gwenny decided. "I"ll make that deal."
For she realized that if their story bored the demoness, she would go away, and that was what they really wanted.
"My father, Gouty Goblin, just died, and I have to try to be the first female goblin chief of Goblin Mountain. But I can"t see very well without spectacles, and I"ll never get to be chief if the other goblins know that, so I"ve got to get contact lenses instead. I"m going to ask the Good Magician where I can get them."
"The first female chief," Metria said. "Does that mean your tribe of goblins will start acting civilized?"
"Yes."
"I can see that there will be no entertainment there. But of course you may not win the chiefship, in which case the goblins will continue to be interesting."
"Yes."
"That must be what Che Centaur is fated to accomplish: getting you to be chief. That certainly would change the history of Xanth."
"Yes. Now what do you have interesting to tell?"
The demoness made an expansive gesture. Her arms seemed to jump from one position to another in a series of placements, instead of smoothly the way mortal arms did. "Only that there is another group of three traveling to see the Good Magician. They are Mela Merwoman, Okra Ogress, and Ida Human. Only the other two don"t know yet that Ida is to be part of their party."
"Mela Merwoman," Che said thoughtfully. "Isn"t she the one who-?"
"Yes, the color of whose panties represents the Question the Good Magician couldn"t answer. It seems the time is coming for her to don them. She doesn"t know this, of course; she"s entirely innocent, which is a paradoxical appellation to apply to such a brute."
"Such a what?"
"Animal, beast, critter, freak, monster-"
"Creature?"
"Whatever," Metria agreed crossly. "How come you didn"t stumble over "paradoxical appellation"?"
"I am a centaur. Such vocabulary is natural to me."
"Well, I stumbled," Jenny said. "What does it mean?"
Metria was pleased. "It means that this is the only way in which Mela is innocent. When it comes to males, she oops, just how old are you?"
"Fourteen," Jenny said, just as crossly as Metria had been before. "I haven"t joined the Adult Conspiracy."
Metria looked her over. "But you"re about to. It isn"t just a matter of age. After all, mice grow up and join in a matter of weeks."
"But why should Mela Merwoman"s excursion be of interest to us?" Che asked.
"Well, she isn"t, of course. Your kind has no interest in panties, and the girls already know about them. But Okra Ogress is of interest to Jenny Elf."
Jenny was startled. "She is?"
"Yes. Aren"t you aware of the rationale behind your arrival in Xanth?"
"It was an accident. I was trying to catch Sammy, and we wound up in Xanth."
"It was no accident. You were chosen to come here. Someone had to be Jenny in Xanth, and you were the one."
Jenny was fl.u.s.tered. "I don"t understand."
"There were two finalists: a foreign elf and a local ogress. The elf was chosen, so you were guided through the hole in Xanth, and the ogre girl was dumped."
"Chosen?" Jenny asked, bewildered.
"Someone wanted a Jenny here, so she was brought.
That"s why the Muses were so interested; they hadn"t done it.
"But then the ogress-"
"Had to take whatever name and role were left over.
So Okra Ogress is a minor character, and not too pleased about it. It should be interesting when you two meet."
"When we meet!" Jenny exclaimed, appalled.
"Maybe it will happen at the Good Magician"s castle. Ida, of course, is even more remarkable, in a weirder way. So the future of that trio is a good deal more intriguing than your future. With that interesting news I leave you."
Metria faded out.
"You were right," Gwenny said. "We don"t like her truth. Who wants to meet an ogress?"
"Nevertheless, we learned something unexpected," Che said. "When I started to ask about Mela Merwoman, I was thinking of the way she kidnapped Prince Dolph, intending to marry him when he came of age. But Metria told me something of which I had no inkling; it must be known only to the demons. Now at last we know the Question the Good Magician could not answer."
"But that"s such a simple Question," Gwenny said.
"Any magic mirror could answer it, just by looking ahead."
"There must be more to it than we know," Che said.
Then they both looked at Jenny, who was oddly silent.
"You don"t have to meet any ogress, Jenny," Che said rea.s.suringly.
"It isn"t that. It"s that I didn"t know I was chosen. That someone else got excluded. I didn"t mean to do that. I thought it was just an accident, my coming here."
"You didn"t exclude anyone," Che said. "You have no responsibility for that."
"Still, I feel guilty. That poor ogre girl."
Gwenny laughed. "Poor ogress! That"s impossible. All ogres are brutes."
"How do we know?" Jenny asked.
Gwenny exchanged a glance with Che. It was evident that Jenny had not had much experience with ogres.
Che changed the subject. "We must build our raft."
"That"s right!" Jenny agreed. "I forgot about Sammy.
I hope I can find him." She hurried off again, in the direction the cat had gone.
This time the other two followed her. The three spread out, so as to be able to cover more territory. The little orange cat could be anywhere.
He was able to find anything except his way back from wherever he went.
That was why Jenny was so careful about letting him go in strange territory. The demoness had appeared at just the wrong time, perhaps by no accident.
But it was all right. Sammy was just a short distance away, playing in a pile of vines. There was a quiescent tangle tree nearby. They were able to recreate what had happened: an ogre had pa.s.sed by, and the tangle tree had made a grab for it, and the ogre had twisted off a number of tentacles and thrown them away. Such incidents occurred all the time in Xanth, because neither ogres nor tangle trees were noted for their intelligence or caution.
They hauled the drying vines to their a.s.sembled wood.
They bound the wood together until they had a ragged but serviceable raft. It took only half the day, because it was no fancy job.
They hauled the raft to the water, clambered onto it, and used deadwood poles to push off. When the water became deep, they used deadwood paddles to move the raft forward.
"I hope Fracto doesn"t spy us," Jenny said.
There was a rumble of thunder. Horrified, they paddled madly, but the raft moved as slowly as it could. The inanimate tended to be perverse.
The thunder turned out to be a false alarm. It wasn"t Fracto, but a routine action of offsh.o.r.e clouds that did not come closer. They nudged on toward the sh.o.r.e to the south of the Gap.
Then the current caught them. The raft was carried out to sea, and they were unable to stop it. They watched helplessly as they moved away from the land.
But there was an island. The current carried them tantalizingly close to it. Yet they were afraid to try to swim to it, because there could be lurking water monsters waiting to gobble them.
The raft pa.s.sed the northern tip of the island and started out into the larger part of the sea. They watched despairingly. As adventures went, this was a bleak one.
There was a breeze here, blowing from the sea toward the land. But it wasn"t enough to reverse the effect of the current. It merely slowed their outward travel, prolonging the agony.
Then Gwenny had an idea. "Che! You can make the raft light! Then we can use the wind to get to the island!"
Che did it. He flicked every log of the raft with his tail, and the raft rose in the water, floating very high. Then they braced themselves and stood with their backs broadside to the wind. Now the current had less raft to work on, and the wind had more to work on. The raft slowed, jogged a bit, twisted around, and finally nudged back toward the island. It was working!
Finally they reached the beach and jumped back onto firm land. They hauled the light raft after them, for they would need it to cross from the island to the mainland.
But meanwhile it was getting dark, and they had to make camp for the night.
"Find us a good place to sleep, Sammy," Jenny said, putting her cat down on the sand. Because this was an island, she didn"t need to worry as much about his getting lost.
Sammy bounded toward the center of the island. They followed. And there, suddenly, they spied a tent.
"That looks familiar," Che said.
"It certainly does," Gwenny agreed. "It"s almost as if we have been here before."
"Playing in the sand," Jenny agreed.
Then it came to them. "This is the Isle of View!
Gwenny exclaimed. "Where Prince Dolph married Electra!"
"And that tent is where they summoned the stork, Che agreed.
"So well that the stork brought them two babies," Jenny added.
"Dawn and Eve," Che said.
They looked at each other. A naughty thought flitted between them. "Do you think-" Gwenny started.
"That if we spent the night here-" Jenny continued.
"That we might learn the secret of summoning the stork?" Che concluded.
"Let"s find out!" Gwenny said.
So it was that they spent the night in comfort, using the same pillows that Dolph and Electra had left. They had a fine pillow fight, for there was no adult to tell them no.
But they didn"t learn the secret of summoning the stork. It seemed that Dolph and Electra had taken it with them.
They had joined the dread Adult Conspiracy. What a pity.