"I am a centaur," he said modestly.
"Maybe by the time we get there, she"ll have forgotten us," Gwenny said.
"That is my hope."
The path enabled them to travel rapidly. Nevertheless it was more than a day"s walk. "Maybe we should look for a place to camp for the night," Jenny said.
Sammy ran ahead of them. As always, she followed, because the cat was almost as good at getting lost as he was at finding things. Che and Gwenny followed her.
Sammy took a side path they wouldn"t otherwise have noticed. It led to a little park. They found a nice umbrella tree, conveniently placed for just such travelers as themselves, with nearby fruit and nut trees and a big pillow bush. So they dined on breadfruit with b.u.t.ternuts and drank vanilla milkweed pods, with candy canes for dessert.
"Do you think we"ll stop liking such things, when we turn adult and join the Conspiracy against fun?" Gwenny asked.
"Oh, I hope not!" Jenny exclaimed.
"Yet somehow it seems that everything changes, when a person grows up," Che said sadly. "Look at Electra."
"Actually, she"s not so bad," Gwenny said. "She still wears blue jeans by day. Maybe she didn"t really join the Conspiracy."
"She summoned the stork," Che pointed out.
"Maybe it"s possible to learn how to do that, without adopting the bad parts, like spinach," Jenny said hopefully.
"Let"s agree that we"ll subscribe to only the good parts of the Conspiracy," Che suggested. "We"ll be different, when we grow up."
"Yes!" Gwenny agreed. The three of them clasped hands, sharing the oath.
They settled down for the night, moving into a dream and then into sleep, as usual.
Che suffered a bellyache during the night. He wished he hadn"t eaten quite so many candy canes; they now had a distressing aftertaste. He heard the girls tossing restlessly in their sleep, and knew that they had the same problem. It was of course impossible that a person could ever get too much candy; still, there was something.
Maybe there had been a curse on some of them.
In the morning they marched the rest of the way to the Good Magician"s castle. None of them had been here before, so it was more daunting than Castle Roogna had been, despite being smaller and without the tree guardians. Well, technically Jenny had been here, but only briefly; she had been allowed to inquire about the way back to the World of Two Moons, but then had changed her mind before getting the Answer. She had decided that she wasn"t ready to leave Xanth yet, to Che and Gwenny"s relief. But since the Good Magician"s castle was different each time anyone visited it, that hardly counted. Now it was just a somewhat dilapidated stone edifice surrounded by a small moat. It seemed undefended: there was no moat monster, and the drawbridge was down. No person was in sight.
As they came closer, they saw that their first impression had been deceptive. This was not an ordinary castle at all.
It was made of pastry and candy. The walls were not stone, but fruitcake with large stonelike sections of fruit. The roof seemed to be peanut brittle. The drawbridge was gingerbread, and the moat fizzed like pop from Lake Tsoda Popka.
They managed to exchange a three-party glance. "Why don"t I trust this?" Gwenny inquired.
"Because it is not trustworthy," Che replied. "The Good Magician always knows when a querent is coming, and is always prepared."
"Querent?"
"Supplicant, pet.i.tioner, beggar, moocher, sponge-"
"Oh, stop it!" Gwenny said, laughing. "You mean folk like us, who come to ask a Question."
"Whatever," Che agreed, scowling. But he couldn"t hold it more than a moment, and had to smile. At least it broke their tension, or dented it somewhat.
"There must be something we don"t see," Jenny said.
"Since I will ask the Question, so that I can do the year"s service, I might as well lead the way." She started toward the drawbridge.
"Wait!" Gwenny protested. "There may be danger. I should go first, even if I"m not going to actually ask the Question.
"No need to quarrel, girls," Che said, putting on a superior smirk.
"First, we can be reasonably sure there"s no danger, because the Good Magician wouldn"t want to hurt us, and the winged monsters wouldn"t allow it anyway.
"But the winged monsters aren"t watching at the moment," Jenny said, looking around.
"Certainly they are," he said, maintaining his superior smirk.
"Oh? Where?"
Che pointed to a purple dragonfly perched on a nearby bush. "There."
She looked. "But that"s only a bug!"
"That"s a winged monster. He will report to the others if anything happens, or take care of it himself."
"I don"t believe it," Jenny said.
"Ixnay," Gwenny murmured warningly.
She was too late. The dragonfly had taken umbrage. It jetted into the air, leaving a trail of sparks and a contrail of vapor. It zoomed away.
In a moment it returned, leading a phalanx of dragonflies. Now the sound of their wings was audible. They swung around in formation and oriented on Jenny Elf.
"Duck!" Che cried. "It"s a strafing run!"
The three of them threw themselves to the ground. Little streaks of flame pa.s.sed over them and burned the nearby foliage. The dragonflies flew on out of sight.
They picked themselves up. "They weren"t shooting for effect," Che said. "If we hadn"t ducked, they would have held their fire. I think."
"I guess they made their point," Jenny said. "I"m sorry I doubted."
The purple dragonfly reappeared and perched on her shoulder. "He accepts your apology," Che said.
Gwenny laughed. "But you don"t have to kiss him."
Jenny was serious. "Still, they can"t help us with the Good Magician"s challenge. It"s not allowed."
"Maybe Sammy can find a safe way in," Che suggested.
Immediately the little cat bounded across the gingerbread drawbridge.
Jenny ran after him, as she always did.
"Wait for me, Sammy!" she cried.
Gwenny rolled her eyes. "You"re my two best friends, but sometimes I do wonder about both of you," she said.
"You should know better than to suggest that Sammy find something, and she should know better than to dash madly into a strange castle."
"We should," Che agreed apologetically. "But we don"t.
"I just hope there"s not a mean witch in there."
They hurried after Jenny, who was by this time across the drawbridge and coming to the main entrance gate of the castle. The drawbridge surface was slightly spongy, but solid. The gate was open, and the cat was scampering on in.
They almost banged into Jenny, who had suddenly stopped just inside the gate. She was staring up.
Che looked in that direction. There was a giant. More correctly, a giantess: a huge human woman.
Sammy, no help in this crisis, had curled up for a snooze under the giant"s chair.
"Come in, children," the woman said, her voice boomingly dulcet.
"She doesn"t I-look like a witch," Gwenny said faintly.
"No, I am not a witch, dear," the woman said. "I am the archetypal Adult. I am here to initiate you into the Adult Conspiracy."
"No!" Gwenny cried, affrighted.
"We"re too young," Che protested in what he hoped was a reasonable tone.
"Two of you are on the verge, and one of you is of a culture that recognizes another standard," the Adult said, gazing down at Che.
"But I"m with those of human derivation who honor the Conspiracy," Che said. "So I honor it too."
"I have a question for each of you," the Adult said.
"Each will answer in turn. If any of you fail to answer, or answer incorrectly, none of you will be admitted to the presence of the Good Magician. Is that clear?"
Che opened his mouth to protest that the rationale wasn"t clear, but the Adult"s gaze bore down on him with such severity that he was daunted. He realized belatedly that it had been a rhetorical question: one that allowed only the answer desired by the one who put the question. He scuffled his front hooves. "I guess so," he said reluctantly.
The gaze moved across to the girls. Then they too fidgeted and mumbled their agreements.
"You," the Adult said, fixing imperiously on Gwenny.
"Identify yourself."
"I-I"m Gwendolyn Goblin, from Goblin Mountain. I"m here to-"
"That is quite enough. Gwendolyn, what is the Adult Conspiracy?"
Gwenny was taken aback. "That"s my question?"
"No, dear. That is my question ,to you."
Che clenched his teeth. This Adult was so adultish that it was painful.
They were always so sure of themselves, and so obnoxious about it. But a child could never tell them that, because they always twisted it around to make it seem that the child was the obnoxious one. It was impossible to reason with an adult, because the mind of any adult was set, like old cement.
"Well, everyone knows that-" Gwenny began.
"No, dear. I do not want anyone"s answer. I want your answer."
Gwenny began to show a bit of righteous rebellion. "My answer is that it is a conspiracy by adults to make children miserable!" she said.
"Because-"
"No, do not tell why. Just what."
"Anything that really interests children, the adults deny.
Like all the good words that can make plants wilt and dry gra.s.s burst into fire, and the ones that curse-burrs respect.
And anything about how to summon the stork. And they make children eat awful things, like castor oil and broccoli, instead of the good things like cake and candy. And they won"t let any boy child see anyone"s panties, even if they"re really pretty panties. Or any girl child see what a boy"s got instead of panties. And they make children go to bed early, when they"re not sleepy. Things like that."
The Adult nodded with distant tolerance. That reminded Che of another adultish annoyance: they seldom praised a child"s efforts unless it was insincere, such as saying "Very good!" when the child succeeded in choking down a nauseating brussels sprout. She turned to Jenny.
"Identify yourself."
"I am Jennifer Elf from the World of Two Moons."
"Jennifer, why is the Adult Conspiracy?"
"What?" Jenny asked, startled.
"Not what, dear, why." The Adult was insufferably patronizing, but that was normal.
"I don"t know why adults want to make children miserable!" Jenny exclaimed angrily. "Maybe they"re jealous of our open minds and sunny dispositions. It"s not that way where I come from."
The Adult frowned. "You can do better than that, dear, I"m sure."
There it was again, Che thought: the Adult was twisting things around, not accepting the obvious answer. Adults always preferred to be devious.
But Jenny tried. "Well, I can tell you why it might be, if adults really cared about children. There might be something dangerous that might hurt children, so the adults try to keep children away from it.
Like maybe those words of power: if a child said one in a straw house, it could set the house on fire, and the family would lose its home."
Che and Gwenny looked at her, astonished. She was making sense! There might actually be reason for a small part of the Conspiracy, though of course that did not justify the rest of it.
"And?" the Adult inquired in that uncomfortably prodding way they had.