Crewel Lye (2 page)

Indeed it was. Bugs of every description crawled on the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and the door behind her. Others fluttered in the air. One bug-eyed monster buzzed up to her, waving its purple antennae.

Ivy used the scream she had saved. She tried to use the mare shoe to fend off the bug, but the shoe missed and struck the wall instead. Shoe and hand sank through the wall, and Ivy stumbled after, stepping through as a ghost might.

She blinked in bright sunlight. She stood on a beach, just outside a gourd. Across the water she saw a large island, and near the island was a raft with a centaur standing on it. That must be Centaur Isle, down at the south of Xanth. She had come a long way!

But that wasn't where she was going. So she nerved herself and touched the mare shoe to the gourd. She was getting the hang of this. She fell right into the bug-house again.

Hastily she opened the door and plunged outside. She remained in the gourd, since she hadn't used the shoe this time. But now the garden was not candy; it had changed radically for the worse. Awful spinach grew all about, along with turnips and radishes and onions and other terrible stuff, the kind that existed only to nauseate children at mealtimes. There were even--horrors!--cabbages. She held her nose and hurried along the garden path until it came to a lake of placid, brownish fluid.

What could this be? Surely not anything worse than mashed squash! She touched her finger to it and tasted a drop, her curiosity leading her unerringly into mischief.

Instantly she spat it out. This was the worst yet! It was castor oil--the stuff used to lubricate rolling castors, the bane of all children.

She looked about. How could she get out of the gourd for another peek at real-life Xanth? She might be close to Humfrey's castle, and didn't want to pass it by. But with no walls to touch--

Then she had a notion. Carefully she touched the mare shoe to the surface of the stinking oil lake. It sank through, drawing her along with it. She held her nose and her breath, closed her eyes tightly, and passed painlessly through the surface to come to rest on firm ground. She opened her eyes and found herself standing in front of a gourd in sight of the Good Magician's castle. She had nerved herself to take the most obnoxious route, which naturally was the proper one, and she was there!

Well, almost. There was the little matter of getting in. She was standing outside the moat; there was no drawbridge, and the walls looked most forbidding.

First she had to cross the moat. She looked around. Under a spreading tree she found several small stones. “Stepping stones!” she exclaimed, recognizing the type.

She picked them up, but they were hard to hold all together, so she reached for a big green leaf to wrap them in. But lo, it was not a leaf; it was the wing of a giant luna moth. The creature was motionless, and just dangled when she picked it up; she realized reluctantly that it was dead. A tear squeezed from her eye; she hated to see pretty things die.

She found some blanket moss, set the stones, moth, and mare shoe on it, and carefully drew up the corners of the blanket so she could carry it as a bundle. She saw herself as a fairly resourceful child, so of course she was. Then she walked to the moat, held the bundle in one arm, and used her free hand to cast the first stone.

The stepping stone plopped onto the surface, hobbled, expanded somewhat, and settled firmly, the top of it just above the water. She tossed a second one a little farther out, and it settled similarly on the surface. When she had a somewhat irregular line of several--for stepping stones never settled regularly, no matter how accurately they were placed--she stepped carefully on the first. It gave slightly but supported her weight; that was, after all, its nature, enhanced by her talent. Incorrectly placed, a stepping stone could become a stumbling block, but she had set these down properly.

She stepped on the second, and the third, then tossed out a couple more. This was nervous business, especially when she stepped across deep water, but she had enough stones and she made it all the way across with one to spare. That was excellent management, if she did say so herself.

Now she was on a narrow bank between the moat and the castle wall. On one side, the bank narrowed until there was no space between the wall and the water, so she couldn't go there. On the other side, it curved around the castle. She was sure there was a door somewhere, so she started walking.

She passed an alcove that was absolutely dark; no light penetrated its depths at all. That was interesting, but not very; she moved on. Then she rounded a corner and encountered blinding brightness. She shaded her tender eyes, but the light squeezed through the crevices between her fingers and pierced her eyelids anyway. It was just too bright!

She retreated around the corner, and the day returned to normal, with only a dull red spot that played tag with her peripheral vision. How could she pass that region? If the door she wanted was there, she would be unable to see it. She might even blunder into the moat and get her feet all wet; that would be awkward to explain to her mother! Irene might have no time for Ivy when Ivy wanted attention, but she would appear like magic the moment those little feet and shoes got wet; that was the way mothers were. Also, Ivy wasn't sure just how fast her sight might recover, after too great an exposure to that light; how awful it would be to be blind! If she came home blind, they would feed her nothing but--screaming horrors!--carrots, because they had a magic yellow ingredient that was good for vision. There was no question about it: she had to find a different way.

“Come on. Ivy,” she chided herself. “You're smart enough to figure out how to get through a little light!” Whereupon she became smart enough; confidence was wonderful stuff, especially when abetted by magic.

Ivy returned to the dark alcove and reached inside. Sure enough, there was a dark lantern. She brought it out, and its darkness spread all around her, converting day to night. Fortunately, she was able to see a little dim light ahead, around the corner, and she headed for that.

As she rounded the corner, the effulgence surrounded her--and was met by the darkness radiating from the dark lamp. The two struggled and canceled out, and an approximation of normal daylight returned. A small globe of darkness remained about the lantern itself, into which her arm disappeared, while the bright lantern remained too bright to gaze upon. But in between were the shades ranging from night to day. If Ivy had been of a more philosophical bent, she might have realized that life itself was like that, with the impossible extremes of good and bad at either side and many gradients between, through which normal folk navigated with indifferent success. But she was as yet too young for such a thought, so she shoved it aside and proceeded through the shades of gray until she rounded another corner. Then the dark lamp became too dark, blotting out everything; she set it in an empty alcove and went on.

But a new threat materialized. A small winged cat screeched and circled above her. When she tried to take a step, the cat circled lower, claws extended. This was too little to be a cat-bird; it was a kitty-hawk, and it would not let her pass.

She looked in her blanket bag, where there was one stone, the dead moth, and the mare shoe. She might throw the stone at the creature, but she doubted she could score; the throwing arm of a five-year-old girl wasn't strong. So she left that stone unturned. She needed another way.

As she pondered, the kitty-hawk circled lower. Ivy was right at the edge of its attack range and the creature hesitated. Probably it didn't want to get too close to the brilliance around the corner, as that would blind the kitty-hawk as readily as it blinded her. So this was a safe place to pause.

Ivy watched the creature, noting the separate components of its body. The hawk-wings were of the bird kingdom, with brown feathers, and there was a feathered tail to match; the head and legs were of the cat kingdom, with white teeth and claws. She wondered which kingdom was dominant. Did the creature lay eggs or give live birth? Animals had more direct and crude ways of reproducing themselves than people did; maybe cabbages didn't grow for animals. She blushed to be thinking such naughty thoughts, but still, she was curious. She knew that some creatures birthed and others hatched, or maybe it was the other way around, and people arrived under cabbage leaves, and then there was the matter of the storks--

Ivy frowned, because that reminded her of Baby Brother Dolph again. Too bad the stork hadn't brought him, because then there would have been a chance of dropping the bundle into a nest of cockatrices, or maybe onto a bad-tempered needle-cactus. She could almost see the needles flying out, striking the little cockatrices, who naturally glared balefully about, turning everything around them to sludge. Or was it stone? Anyway, the little birdbrained lizards were getting stabbed by flying stone needles, and it served them right.

Ivy caught a flicker of something just off the edge of her vision. It looked like a swishing horse's tail. The day mare! Imbri had brought her the nice, violent day-dream, but now the mare had to gallop off to her next delivery.

There was a yowl. Ivy looked up. The kitty-hawk had come quite close to her and was having some kind of problem. The parts of it had intensified, the cat-head and feet becoming more feline and the bird-wings and tail more avian. Now they were fighting for dominance. The head was reaching around to bite at the wings, and the wings were pounding on the head.

Ivy watched closely, so of course the intensification of separate qualities continued. The fight got worse. Feathers and tufts of fur flew out. Finally the kitty-hawk spun out of control, crashed into the moat, and was gone. This was one experiment of nature that didn't seem to have worked out. The sharpening of its facets, as it had approached Ivy and her violent day-dream, had caused the creature to fragment and destroy itself.

Ivy walked on, glad to be past the kitty-hawk but sad how that had happened. She was still looking for the door into the castle. She came to a small plot that contained a single headstone. It was in the shape of the head of an old man, with sparse stone-gray hair and white whiskers. It looked almost alive, and became more so as she contemplated it; its stony gaze was fixed on her. Slowly one mineral eye closed in a wink.

“You are alive!” she exclaimed, startled.

“No, snippet, I'm just cold stone,” it said. “I take the form of the head of whoever is buried near me. That is my nature; I'm a headstone.”

“You mean you look like--” she began, glancing at the oblong of dirt in front of it.

“Exactly, peanut. Like the loudmouthed old man who is buried here.” Actually, he sounded to Ivy like a loudmouthed golem, but maybe all loudmouths were similar.

“That's interesting,” Ivy said. This headstone didn't seem like much of a threat.

“Last year I was planted near a lovely, dead, young woman; you should have seen me then! My surface was like polished alabaster, and my shape was beautiful.”

“That's nice,” Ivy said, losing interest. “I've got to go now.”

“Ah, but if you try to pass me, I'll yell, and you'll get the brush-off,” the headstone warned.

“Oh, pooh!” she said. “You can't do anything, rockhead!” She walked on defiantly.

“Intruder alert!” the headstone yelled loudly. “Undisciplined child! Probably a real brat! Give her the brush-off!”

From around the castle flew the most awesomely terrible object Ivy could imagine: a huge hairbrush. She scooted back the way she had come, covering her behind. That headstone hadn't been bluffing!

Ivy backed up against the wall so that her tender posterior wouldn't be exposed. What was she to do now? She couldn't face that--or turn her back on it, either.

The brush hovered a moment. Then, spying no naughty posterior, it flew back the way it had come. Ivy relaxed; she had escaped this time.

But she knew with sick certainty that the moment she passed the headstone again, it would cry another warning and that horrendous brush would return. She was stuck. She was a fairly self-assured little girl, but that brush--! She had to figure out a way to be rid of it!

Then she had another notion, for her mind was filled with notions, some of them almost as cute as she was. Suppose she nullified the headstone instead? If she could just stop that loudmouth from blabbing, somehow silencing it--She looked in her bag again. Maybe she could get creative. Stone, mare shoe, dead moth. Nothing here to--

Then a creative bulb lit up, for an instant flashing as brightly as the brightside effulgence she had so recently negotiated with the dark lamp. Yes, there was a way, maybe!

She marched up to the headstone. “Hi, rockbrain!” she said boldly.

The stone eye eyed her stonily. “You again, twerp? If you try to pass this point, I'll see that you get the brush-off for sure. You won't be able to sit down without blistering the chair!”

“I've got something for you,” she said, taking out the dead luna moth. “Let me just scrape out some dirt beside you here--” She dug a little hole.

“That doesn't look like much,” the headstone said. “If you dig too deep, you may encounter something you don't like, sweetie-pie.”

“I just want to bury this closer to you than that,” Ivy said and dropped the dead moth in the hole. Then she swept the dirt over and patted it firm.

She stood and watched. If what the headstone had told her was true--

It was. The headstone began to change. The human features weathered into anonymity and assumed a greenish cast. Then a new form took shape. It was the head of a luna moth, with furry antennae and lovely color.

“That's very pretty,” Ivy said and walked on by.

The stone-moth's antennae waved frantically, but there was no sound, for moths did not make sounds in the human range. The giant brush was not roused, and Ivy passed the dread region without hindrance. She had navigated the final hurdle, thanks to her creativity. She had used a dead moth in a way no one had thought of before.

She walked around to the castle door and pushed it open. A young and pretty woman came to meet her. “Why, hello, Ivy--you surprised me. Why didn't you use the carpet to fly in, as you usually do?”