Ivy was glad Hugo was so smart and knew all about such things. "The centaur?"

"No, dummy, the cloud! Imbri's translating for it."

Ivy blushed again with pleasure at the endearment. This was all new to her, but she decided it was all right. It was nice of Mare Imbri to help out like this.

"I'm Ivy," she said to the cloud. "Who are you?"

The mare must have projected a talking dream to the cloud, for it paused a moment, then scowled darkly and blew out another piece of thunder. Ivy was a little frightened when it did that, but tried not to show it because she wasn't sure Stanley could make this thing go away.

"He says you're supposed to recognize the King of Clouds when you see him and perform abject obeisance," the centaur-dreamlet said.

Ivy looked at the ground and dug a toe in the din, trying to fathom what "abject obeisance" meant.

"That's better," the centaur said. "The cloud sees you are bowing and/or curtseying. He says he is his Majesty c.u.mulo-Fracto-Nimbus, the Lord of the Air. He says you remind him of someone he doesn't like--a female with green hair."

Ivy realized that would be her mother Irene. She was about to ask where the cloud had seen her, but Hugo spoke first. "Aw, Fracto's just a bit of scud," he said depreciatingly.

The cloud heard that, and evidently needed no translation. He swelled up and turned purply-black. Lightning speared out of his Majesty's nose, followed by a belch of thunder and a smattering of rain-spittle. Hugo had to jump to avoid being scorched. It seemed clouds were sensitive about name calling.

"How dare you refer to the Lord of the Air as 'scud'!" the dream centaur translated. "He wants you to know he hails from a long and foggy line of lofty meteorological effects, from Cirrus through Stratus. His relatives process the water that grows all the plants of Xanth and fills all the lakes! He advises you that, without his kind, the whole land would be a dust bowl and you would be ashes! He is Fracto the King, a real Thunderhead!"

"Dunderhead," Hugo agreed, with uncommon wit. Nights were noted for that.

The cloud turned so black he was almost a Black Hole. He blew out such a blast of fog mixed with thunder that he nearly turned himself inside out.

"Oh, now Hugo's done it," the dream centaur said. "The King of Clouds is very volatile and tempest-headed. Flee before he strikes!"

"But there's more thunder down there!" Ivy protested, looking at the roiling layer of fog below.

The Fracto-King shaped himself up enough to take good aim at Hugo. Now he looked like a towering anvil. But before he could hammer out a devastating thunderbolt, Stanley stepped forward and shot a fierce jet of steam into the spongy nether region.

This would have sent any ordinary monster sailing high with a youp of pain, but the steam had little visible effect on the cloud. Clouds were composed of water, as was the dragon's steam; the jet only added to Fracto's strength.

Then Ivy had a bright-bulb notion. "Hugo!" she cried. "Conjure some fruit!"

Hugo conjured a watermelon and heaved it at the cloud. c.u.mulo-Fracto-Nimbus recoiled, but then saw that this was only a fruit, not a plant, and surged back. When the melon pa.s.sed harmlessly through the cloud and splatted against the ground, the moisture only added to the cloud's strength. "No, Hugo," Ivy clarified. "A pineapple!" Hugo caught on, for Nights were very quick to grasp battle strategies. "Yes, I can do it now!" he cried. A huge, firm, potent pineapple appeared in his hand. Just before Fracto spat out his next lightning bolt, Hugo heaved the fruit.

The pineapple disappeared into the mouth of the cloud just as the lightning bolt emerged. The two collided--and the pineapple exploded. The blast was phenomenal. It blew the King apart. Fragments of Fracto fog shot out in an expanding sphere, jags of sundered lightning radiated out like a sunburst, and thunder crashed into the ground, bounced, and lay quiet.

"Ooo, you destroyed him!" Ivy exclaimed, nervously chewing on a finger. She wasn't accustomed to such violence.

"You can't destroy a cloud that way," the dream centaur said. "Fracto is somewhat like a demon. He will recoalesce, worse than before, in a few minutes. Flee!"

Ivy saw that it was so. Already the mean little scud-clouds were globbing together, forming larger fragments, each with a single spike of Fracto's crown. This was no safe place!

"Conjure some fresh cherry bombs!" Ivy cried to Hugo. "We'll beat a strategic retreat!" She almost surprised herself with that word "strategic"; it had been beyond her comprehension before, though she had heard her father use it when discussing the ancient War of the NextWave, which had happened two years before she was born. But now she was in a battle situation, and the meaning of the term was manifesting clearly enough.

"Gotcha," the boy agreed, with the excellent grammar of the typical Night. A huge bunch of cherries appeared, a double handful. He flipped one cherry at the northeast side of the island, and when the bomb exploded, the layer of cloud there was disrupted. It started closing in again immediately, but obviously the fight had been temporarily knocked out of it.

Hugo marched down, clearing the way with a series of detonations. Whenever thunder threatened, Hugo threw a cherry at it, and the effort dissipated explosively.

Before long they emerged below the mist. The cloud had suffered enough concussion. It lifted high in the sky, out of reach, and floated away in a gray dudgeon.

Ivy was thrilled by the victory. "You defeated Fracto!" she exclaimed. "Oh, let me award you, Hugo!" She flung her arms about him and planted a fat kiss on his left ear, in the way she had. She might have had her terminology a trifle confused, but the boy was quite satisfied with his award. It was the first such thing he had ever earned. He began, almost, to believe that he might be worthwhile.

Stanley might have had a different opinion, and his pedestal seemed somewhat cramped, but he was so glad to get away from the clouds that he didn't bother to develop that opinion. He did rather like the cherries; they were his kind of fruit. The pineapple, too; that had been a real blast!

They continued on through the valley. But the jungle remained thick with recognizable menaces like tangle trees and hanging vines--an unfortunate animal caught in one of the latter was not a pretty sight--and unrecognizable ones like sections of ground that were suspiciously still. The shadows were lengthening, where they showed at all. It was obvious the three of them needed a safe place to spend the night.

Stanley sniffed the ground. He had excellent reptilian perceptions. Little drifts of steam puffed up between sniffs. He picked up some kind of scent and followed it to the side. Ivy and Hugo trailed after him.

The valley narrowed here, becoming a kind of chasm. Suddenly the side of the chasm opened into a hole--a large cave. In the fading light, they could see that it was a fine, dry place, with warm air wafting from it. It seemed to be the shelter they were looking for.

They entered, found a convenient ledge, and hauled in some fragrant brush to make a comfortable nest for the three of them. Hugo conjured several kinds of fruit, and they feasted and tossed the seeds on the floor below. Then, in the dark, they settled down to sleep.

In what seemed like the middle of the night, something huge and sweaty loomed in the entrance of the cave. They couldn't see it, but the ground shook with its tread, and the air stank with its body odor, and its great rasping breath stirred breezes near the top of the cave.

Abruptly wide awake, the three young travelers cowered in their nest, aware that they had camped in the lair of a monster.

The very worst place!

The monster didn't spot them. It had brought something in with it, evidently a dead animal. They heard the crunching of flesh and bones as the monster consumed the animal. Then the creature flopped down across the cave entrance and snored. The sound was like the distant roaring of Sphinxes with indigestion.

They were trapped inside the monster's cave, and the coming of the light of dawn would expose them to the monster's view. How were they going to get out of this picklement?

Chapter 8: Tisi, Alec & Meg.

They traveled southeast into the depths of Unknown Xanth. Chem was delighted, for it was her personal mission to map all of the peninsula she could find, especially what had never before been recorded. Periodically she projected her magic map, adding the new features--and marking their progress with a neat, black, dotted line.

Grundy, true to his fashion, irritated her by finding minor fault with the details. "Your stupid line-dots are covering up key features," he said, pointing to a section of the line. "There's a tiger lily squished under this dot!" He pointed to one of them.

"Serves it right," Chem retorted. "It snapped at my tail as I pa.s.sed it."

Irene looked up, keeping track of the flying hippogryph. She was half afraid the beast would disappear entirely, but evidently Xavier was taking his mother's directive seriously and was guiding them correctly. It was obvious that the gryph could have flown much higher and faster than it was doing, had it so chosen. At least those two were getting their desire: to go fly. Even if they did have to carry a zombie along.

"Hey, that's nice," Grundy said, reaching out to grab a small flower from a plant growing on a close bank.

"Don't touch it!" Irene warned.

Naturally the golem touched it anyway.

"Eeeek!" the flower shrieked piercingly, wrenching itself away.

Startled, Grundy looked back at the protesting flower. "What was that?"

"I told you not to touch that touch-me-not," Irene said complacently. "They are delicate plants, and don't like to be handled by clumsy oafs."

The golem started to say something, then thought better of it.

They continued on through a field of creature plants, generally harmless but sometimes startling. Duckweed quacked, an alligator pear ground its teeth at them--naturally it had two jaws for the purpose, an upper and a lower, making the pair--a windmill palm rotated its great blade-leaves, causing wind to gust past them, a pig lily oinked, a p.u.s.s.y-foot crept away on little fog-feet, fish gra.s.s swam away, several toad plants croaked with great displays of mortal agony, and a money plant waved green papery leaves at them. Then the air was filled with the frozen petals from a giant snowflake plant; the petals settled in a maidenhair tree, much to her annoyance. She took a brush from a bottle-brush plant and brushed off the snow, then plucked a powder-puff to restore her complexion.

Chem, distracted by the novel plants, stumbled against a rock. Fortunately, it was a sham-rock, so her hoof wasn't hurt. A real rock would have been much worse. A running myrtle, spooked by the noise, ran off. A nearby punk tree laughed, making the sound by cracking its wooden knuckles and creaking its limbs.

"Yeah?" Grundy demanded, always ready for an argument.

"You ain't so hot yourself, punk!"

A short distance away, a pencil tree was making busy notes on a paper plant. Irene smiled; apparently to these plants, the sight of a centaur, woman, and golem was worthy of note. The visitors were as strange to the plants as the plants were to the visitors. But notes weren't really necessary, as there were several forget-me-not flowers around to remember.

Near the edge of the field, a spider lily was hot in pursuit of a b.u.t.terfly flower, while silver bells rang a warning. That startled a zebra plant who was grazing on some unlucky clover. Chicken corn squawked as the zebra ran past, and a curiosity plant craned its stem to see what was going on.

They must be getting closer to the Tree of Seeds, Irene reflected, for all these unusual plants had to have sprouted from seeds scattered from an unusual source. The thought of that Tree excited her. She would try to fetch the witch's three bad seeds, but she also hoped to garner some exotic specimens for herself. All the seeds of the wilderness would be available!

As they re-entered the deeper jungle, Grundy reached for a feather fern, surely intending some ticklish mischief with it, but a fan palm fanned it aside. The golem slapped at the palm, but it drew back, closing its fingers about itself, and all Grundy struck was a section of a neighboring crown-of-thorns. That plant dropped its th.o.r.n.y crown on the golem's head. What the golem said as he wrenched the p.r.i.c.kly crown off was not comprehensible, since it was in plant language, but a bleeding heart vine blushed, a trumpet lily sounded a retreat, an artillery plant fired off a salute, and a never-never plant wilted.

They halted for a snack, as traveling made them hungry. Xap and Xavier came down; company might not appeal to them, but the food certainly did, and they knew they could separate from the zombie when they landed, at least for a while.

Irene grew a custard-apple plant, a honey plant, and a swisscheese plant for Xavier, Chem, and herself; a hot red pepper for Xap; and a genuine has-bean for Grundy.

Evening was nearing. "How much farther do we have to go?" Irene asked Xavier.

"Oh, Xap could be there in an hour," the yellow man replied cheerfully. "But I guess you'll need more time."

"Yes," Chem agreed succinctly. It was evident she was tired from the long run through such varied terrain. Wings were definitely an a.s.set for this sort of excursion.

"So we'd better make camp," Grundy said. "And move on to Parna.s.sus in the morning."

"Yes, I think that's--" Irene started. Then she froze, absolutely horrified.

There, at the base of a barrel cactus, lay the battered body of a child. It looked like a girl, and Irene knew with a sick and awful certainty whom it had to be, for the hair had a green tint.

Her vision, when they approached Castle Zombie--had it come true?

She forced her frozen limbs to move, and ran to the body--and there was nothing. Just undisturbed forest floor.

"Whatever did you see?" Chem asked solicitously. "I saw nothing out of the ordinary."

"It must have been--my mistake," Irene said faintly. "I saw--Ivy. She was--she looked dead!"

"But your ivy plant remains healthy," the centaur pointed out. "So whatever was there, it could not have been your daughter."

"Yes, of course," Irene agreed, touching the ivy plant. "I should have realized. But it had green hair--"

"Oh, that's the fetch," Xavier said. "Don't pay that no mind, miss."

"The what?" Irene asked dazedly.

"The fetch. It's around our place all the time. I told you, it don't mean nothing."

Chem switched her tail nervously. "I'm sure that is the case, Xavier. But what exactly is the fetch? An apparition?"

"Naw. It's when you see a live person, only you see him dead. Maw likes the fetch; it suits her sense of humor."

"It would," Grundy put in.

"The person you see dead--is really alive?" Irene asked, her horror abating. It was not like her to be so destabilized by such a minor event, but this vision had reinforced her prior vision, reviving a deeper horror, and that was hard to shake.

"Sure. Always," Xavier said. "It ain't no fun for the fetch to show a real dead person."

"Fun!" Chem exclaimed indignantly.

"I don't like the fetch," Xavier confessed. "It used to be death to see it, in the old days when Xanth was new; now it's just bad luck. Maw likes bad luck, but I don't."

Irene glanced sidelong at the handsome young man, liking him better despite his backwardness; "You don't get along with your mother?"

"Oh, I get along. She tells me what to do, and I do it, so she don't use the eye on me. But I'd rather fly."

Irene could appreciate why. Any normal person would seek an excuse to spend time away from such a witch. "Thank you for the information about the fetch," she told him. "It's a great relief to me."

"Well, you're a pretty gal, real pretty, even if Maw does say so," he said, as if that related.

Irene considered the ramifications of that minor comment before responding. His mother the witch had wanted to match the two of them, and both Xavier and Irene herself had resisted. So he had complimented her, despite the negative phrasing. She rather liked, at the age of twenty-eight, being called a "pretty gal." Her days of girlhood were long past, and sometimes she missed them. She had been a showoff and a tease a dozen years ago, and though it embarra.s.sed her to remember it, she had to admit it had been fun. So if someone saw her as that sort now, she was not really displeased. Even if he was an ignorant lout and she was a devoted wife to her distant husband and mother of a precious child. So she behaved recklessly and returned the favor. "And you're a handsome lad."

"Aw, don't start on that mush stuff," he said, disgusted. Irene smiled privately. Xavier was truly a boy at heart! The witch must really have sheltered him from life.

Grundy chuckled, though theoretically he had not been listening.

Xavier grimaced. "Maybe I better clear up a misunderstanding," he said. "I don't need no help from Maw to figure out what to do with a nymph, when it comes to that. It's just that something like marriage is too important to be done offhandedly. I aim to make my own choice of women--and when I do, it'll be forever. Maw don't understand that; maybe you do."

Irene appraised him again. He made a good deal more sense than she had thought him capable of. "Yes, perfectly," she agreed. "I wish you well."

"And the same goes for Xap. He knows his own mind; he just hasn't found no fem-gryph he likes yet."

Irene didn't comment; she was satisfied to let it stand exactly at that. It was not, after all, so bad traveling with this pair of males.

She grew a nice tree house and some cushion cactus for bedding--that kind had spines so soft they hardly even tickled--and swept out the house with some broom she sprouted for the purpose. Xavier watched her at work with open admiration. "You sure are good at that," he exclaimed.

"I should be," Irene murmured. "It's my talent." Then, to distract his interest, which she judged to be getting possibly too personal, she asked: "What is your talent, Xavier?"

"Oh, I zap things," he said nonchalantly. "It ain't nothing much."

"Xap? Your hippogryph?"