Isle Of View (3 page)

Chex was taken aback. “I am a flying centaur, of course! A winged monster, technically. Haven't you ever seen a centaur before?”

The girl shook her head. “No.”

“Your elm must be far from civilization!”

“What's an elm?”

“A tree, of course.”

“We don't have many trees in the World of Two Moons. At least, not ones I can see well.” She looked around, blinking. “Are those trees?”

"Yes, of course. It's allt forested here. But how can you not have an elm? All elves—“

“I don't have an elm, not even a wolf friend, though I think one day I will be with Lone Wolf. So right now I just have a cat,” the girl said, “who finds things, but gets lost, which is how I met him, because there aren't any others like him in our world—and this time I think I'm lost too, because this is a very strange place.”

“But all elves are associated with elms!” Chex protested. “Where did you say you were from?”

“My holt is at—”

“Your what?”

“My holt. It's—”

Chex realized that something was not merely odd, it was decidedly strange, just as Grundy had said. “I think we had better start over. Let's introduce ourselves. You are. .. ?”

“Jenny of the World of Two Moons.”

“And I am Chex Centaur of Xanth. Now I think we should—” She broke off, because she had noticed something even stranger. “Are those your ears?”

The child touched her left ear. “Yes. Is something wrong?”

“It's pointed!”

Jenny was perplexed. “Aren't yours?”

“No. Can't you see?”

“Your head is sort of fuzzy, from here.”

So it was true: the elf could not see well at a distance. “My dear, we must get you some spectacles,” Chex said. It was as if she had to mother someone, while her foal was missing. “We have a spectacle bush here, and we haven't harvested any of its fruit, so there are plenty.” She led the elf to it. “They correct vision, and fit magically, of course. Here, try this pair.” She picked it and set it on Jenny's face, carefully. It was rather big for her, but the side pieces closed around her head and hooked behind her phenomenally pointed ears. Her hair had masked the effect somewhat before, but now there was no doubt. There were no ears in Xanth like that! Not on humanoid folk.

Jenny's eyes grew even bigger than they naturally were, magnified by the spectacles. “I can see everything!” she exclaimed, amazed.

“Well of course. That's what spectacles do. They enable you to see every spectacle in sight. I'm surprised you didn't have a pair before.”

“There are none at home,” Jenny said, lifting a hand to touch the amazing device.

Chex was surprised yet again. “Your hand—you're missing a finger!"

Jenny looked at her hand. “No I'm not. All four are there.”

“But other elves have five fingers!” Chex protested. “All humanoids do. See, I have five.” She held forth her hand.

Jenny stared. “How odd!”

“You're really not from Xanth!” Chex said, realizing why the girl was confused. “You look like an elf, but you're quite different in detail."

Jenny shrugged. “I guess you can call me an elf if you want,” she said. “I'm just a person, really.”

“Yes, of course. But here in Xanth you are considered an elf. How did you get here?”

“I didn't see.” Which made sense. How could she have seen where she was going, if she could not make out details of the landscape as she passed them? She was as lost as Che!

“I think you will have to stay here until we find out what happened,” Chex decided. “You are here looking for a feather, and I am looking for the one that feather came from, my lost foal, Che. Now perhaps we should—”

But she broke off, because at that point the little cat came alive and bolted for the forest. “Sammy!” Jenny cried, running after him. “Wait for me! You'll get lost again!”

“Jenny!” Chex cried in turn. “You'll both get lost! That forest's dangerous!”

But cat and elf were already disappearing into the jungle, heedless of the danger. Chex realized that they must have come through it, somehow escaping the predators.

“We'd better find her,” Grundy said. “Maybe it's coincidence that she appeared right when Che disappeared, but maybe not.”

Chex hadn't thought of that. Could her foal have been turned into—? No, impossible! But it was true that this was a remarkably strange business.

She trotted to the center of the glade, spread her wings, and leaped into the air as she smacked her body with her tail. In a moment she was climbing up past the trees. She flew over them in the direction the elf girl had gone, but the canopy was too thick and she could see neither the ground nor anything on it. They were gone.

“We can alert the others about the elf,” Grundy said. “If she really is from elsewhere, she can't stay hidden long.”

Chex agreed, but remained disquieted. Why should a strange elf girl show up here, right at this time?

She looped about and glided back to the glade. She had better things to do than loop helplessly around the forest! She had to find Che and could not afford to waste her time or energy pursuing strangers. But it was certainly a curious encounter!

Jenny ran after the cat. “Wait for me! You'll get lost again!” But of course Sammy didn't listen; he never did. He wasn't trying to run away from her, he just got so caught up in whatever he was chasing that he lost track of everything else and often got himself into trouble. She couldn't let that happen; they were already in a very strange region, and if it got any stranger they might never find their way out!

Sammy plunged into the thickest foliage of the jungle. Jenny had no choice but to plunge in after him, though the brush threatened to ruin whatever remained of her clothing. It was bad enough getting her hair all tangled in a knot from burrs and things in her desperate effort to keep up. If she ever lost sight of him, she might never catch him again!

She heard the centaur lady calling after her. “That forest's dangerous!” That was the strangest looking creature Jenny had ever seen, like an animal, and a bird and a woman all jammed together, but she seemed nice. She had a foal, she had said, which meant she was somebody's mother, and that was a good sign. Mothers were a class unto themselves, a good class. It had been very nice of her to find the magic spectacles; Jenny had never known such things existed. They made all the difference in this strange world! But she just couldn't stay and talk when Sammy was taking off.

She tore through the brush, and in a moment spied Sammy ahead of her, running up a slope, dodging around bushes that grew pretty colored pillows. Pillows? That was crazy; pillows didn't grow on bushes, they had to be made of bird down and cloth, sewn together and all. When the hunters and their wolf friends brought back birds for eating, they always saved the feathers. Nothing was wasted. But those certainly did look like pillows growing!

Sammy ran on over a ridge and down the other side. Here there were cornlike plants, with their ears getting ripe. Jenny brushed by one, and it exploded, sending bits of puffed corn out. It was popcorn! She snatched some out of the air and stuffed it in her mouth, because she was hungry after chasing Sammy this far.

Now the cat got on a nice little path through the jungle, leading to a giant tree with hanging tentacles.

“No, Sammy!” Jenny cried in alarm. She had seen one of those trees before. The tentacles had tried to grab her, and she had been lucky to escape them. In fact she had lost her knife in the process, which upset her considerably. “Don't go near that tree!" At least now she could recognize it from a distance, instead of blundering into it. She would have to thank Chex for the spectacles, once Sammy stopped and they could go back.

Sammy jumped off the path and scrambled back through the thick brush. For once Jenny was glad for that; she didn't want him getting caught by that dreadful thing!

They came to a region of larger but more peaceful trees, and it was easier going here, because the thick leaf cover above shaded the ground and there wasn't much brush. Sammy slowed to a fast walk, but didn't stop moving; she could keep up but not catch him. She would just have to follow until he found what he was looking for this time, and then see what to do next. She was tired, but still had no choice; she just couldn't let Sammy get even worse lost alone.

As she hurried along, she thought about how she had come to this weird region. She was just an ordinary girl of her holt, nothing special at all. In fact she was unspecial, because she just couldn't see well; without sending she would have been in constant trouble. She liked to paint and weave and make jewelry, and was learning how to decorate pottery. Those hearthside skills did not suffer from her myopia. She hoped to grow up to be a good weaver, making rugs of special beauty with designs and pictures that every elf would want. She also liked to make berry pie, mainly because she liked to eat it so much. The main problem there was all the time it took to pick the berries, because the berry patches close to the village were all picked out and she had to range fairly far afield, and that was hard because she was lost the moment she strayed from the main paths. She couldn't count the times she had had to call for help, mentally , just to find the path again. When she got a wolf friend she would be able to go out farther, more safely. For now, she had her cat friend instead, and she could do her hearth-side practicing. Her fingers were long and nimble, but she still had a lot of skill to develop. While she practiced with these things, alone, she liked to sing to herself. She always stopped when any other elf was near enough to hear, of course. But Sammy liked it, and that was most of what counted.

She had gone out looking for berries in the cool morning, with Sammy. The cat had seemed bored; the truth was, he wasn't much interested in berries. “If I had a feather, I'd tickle your whiskers,” Jenny said teasingly. Then the cat had taken off, and she had known she had to follow, no matter what, because when he got into one of his moods and set out in pursuit of something, he didn't stop until he found it. She had no idea how far the chase was to take him, this time!

He had cut through a section of the forest she was unfamiliar with. It was said to be haunted, but she doubted it; spirits normally didn't waste time with simple trees. Mainly she was afraid of poisonous serpents or other hungry wild things that would be lurking to gobble Sammy or her. Yet she had to keep going, lest Sammy be lost.

She ran and ran, her vision blurring as she struggled to keep up. All she saw was Sammy's fleeting tail, and bits of scenery whizzing by. She was better at seeing motion than things; otherwise she wouldn't have had a chance to stay near Sammy. Then, suddenly, the cat went over a ridge, and she followed, and discovered that there was no other side to it. She flailed in air for a moment, too scared to scream. Then her feet touched ground again; it had only been a slight drop, shrouded by fog. She ran on, still barely keeping the cat in sight.

But now the scenery was strange. She didn't have time to stop and examine it closely, but she knew this wasn't like anything she had seen before. She would have to come to this forest some time when she wasn't chasing her cat to see just what there was about it that was so different.

Sammy skirted an odd green tree. Jenny ran by it—and the tentacles snapped up and tried to grab her. One hung on to her flaring dress, and as she tried to pull free others grabbed her, but she drew her knife and sliced the awful green things and was able to pull free. Unfortunately, her knife got caught in the last tentacle, and she lost it. That was her first experience with the aggressive tree, and the confirmation that she had wandered into a very strange region.

Then Sammy scampered into a clearing in the forest and stopped. He had finally found what he was looking for: a big white feather.

“You dragged me all the way here for a stupid feather?” she demanded, not really angry with him, but having to exclaim about something to someone before she burst. The truth was that she was frightened by the strangeness of this region, and still shaken by the way that tree had grabbed for her. She had never even heard of a kind of tree that did that! But now she realized that this business had started with her, because she had teased Sammy about tickling him with a feather. He had oriented on “feather” and gone in search of one—and what a feather he had found!

A shadow had descended, and the amazing animal-bird-lady came down. She seemed almost as surprised to see Jenny as Jenny was to see her. She said she was a checked centaur, or something, and talked about elms. Jenny learned that an elm was a tree; she wasn't sure why the centaur thought she should have something to do with it.

The centaur lady was looking for her lost foal, called Chay. But Jenny hadn't learned any more, because Sammy had suddenly taken off again, and she had had to follow. She hoped it wasn't going to get even stranger, because she wasn't at all sure she could find their way back as it was.

Now Sammy slowed. Maybe he was approaching what he sought. Maybe it was another feather, and she could carry it for him, and they could go home. No, not another feather, because he never looked for the same thing twice in a row. Maybe a—

Jenny paused, amazed. There ahead of them was a little winged centaur! That must be the foal! The centaur lady had said she was looking for it, and Sammy had taken off to find it, just like that.

But the poor thing hadn't just wandered away. He was a captive. There was a rope around his neck, and his hands were tied behind his back, and his legs were hobbled so that he could hardly stand. He was fluttering his wings helplessly, and he looked very unhappy. That was all Jenny needed to see; she knew she had to help Chay get back to his mother.

However, there were mean creatures around the foal. They looked a bit like people and were her own size, but their heads, hands and feet were larger and knobby. They were dark, and their scowls were darker. There were three of them, evidently guarding the foal. They weren't doing anything to him, but it was obvious that they would if he made any real effort to escape.

Jenny put her hand on Sammy's back. He had paused, satisfied not to go farther now that he had spotted what he had come for. “We have to rescue Chay from those mean folk,” she whispered. “I could untie him, so he could run but they'd only tie me up too. I wish I had something to make them go away, just long enough!”

Sammy took off. “No!” she whisper-cried. “I didn't mean for you to—” But of course it was too late, as it always was with Sammy. When would she learn not to speak carelessly when he was listening?

Well, there was no help for it. She had to follow him, though it delayed whatever action she might take to free the foal. Maybe that wasn't too much of a loss, because she had no idea how to free him. Still, she hardly needed distractions right now!

Sammy led her to a tree. It had bright green leaves and bright red berries. Berries? No, those were cherries! It was a cherry tree. But she was in no mood to eat right now.

"What possessed you to come here, when I said I needed something to make the mean little men go away?” she asked the cat, knowing he couldn't answer.

He merely stood by the tree, ignoring it now that he had found it. His joy was in the search; once he found whatever he sought, he usually did ignore it.

Perplexed, she reached up to pluck a cherry. It was round and red, but evidently not ripe, because its skin was hard, not soft. She touched her teeth to it, but could not dent it. The thing was like a wooden ball!

She plucked another. It was just as bad. These couldn't be real cherries. Maybe they were there just to fool hungry people—and she was a hungry person, even though she didn't want to eat at the moment.

Suddenly she was angry. Not only did she not want to eat, these cherries would be no good if she did want to! She hurled the two as far away from her as she could. They arced past the trees and came to the ground.

Boom! Boom!

Jenny stared. The two cherries hadn't bounced or rolled, they had exploded! There were two small craters in the ground where they had hit, and dirt and leaves were scattered around.

Amazed, she looked at the tree. Cherries that exploded?

And she had tried to bite into one! Suppose it had exploded when—

Then something clicked in her head. Sammy had led her here, and maybe this was why. What would happen if she threw a cherry at the mean men?

Jenny smiled. She did not regard herself as a mean person, but she thought maybe she could be mean for just a short time if she tried.

She gathered a number of cherries and put them carefully—very carefully!—in her pockets. She carried two in her hands, too. Then she walked quietly back to where she had seen the mean men. She hoped they hadn't heard the two explosions. The cherry tree was some distance away, so maybe they hadn't.

She was in luck: the party remained exactly as it had been before. The mean men seemed to be waiting for something, and of course the foal couldn't do anything.

Now she had to plan this carefully. She had to drive off the men, then -run down and untie the foal so he could run away. His mother had talked to her, so probably he could too. She would tell him what she was doing. With luck, he would get away before the mean men knew what happened.

Jenny was scared, but that didn't stop her. She just had to rescue that foal!

She nerved herself, clenched her teeth, and hurled a cherry bomb down toward the party. She had a pretty good arm, and now she could really see where she was throwing. She aimed it so that the cherry wouldn't actually hit anyone, just land nearby.

It worked perfectly. The bomb exploded right behind one of the mean men. He jumped right off the ground, his stubby legs running while he was still in the air. He thought somebody was attacking him—which was the general idea.

Jenny threw another bomb. This one detonated behind one of the other men, and he ran off too. It was such a joy to see what she was doing! The foal was also alarmed, but he couldn't run, because of the hobble, so he just stood there looking scared.

Jenny dug a bomb out of her pocket and threw it behind the third mean man. He was already running away, and this made him run faster. In a moment all three were gone.

Jenny ran down to the foal. “Don't be frightened, Chay!” she called. “I'm here to help you!” Of course he was frightened, but maybe this made him less so.

She reached him, panting. “Let me untie your hands!” she gasped. “I don't know how much time we have!”

She worked on the knot, but it was very tight. She was good with knots, but knots were ornery things, and it just wasn't possible to rush it. Slowly it came undone.

But that was only the hands. She still needed to do the hobbles on his legs. “Oh, I wish I had a knife to cut these!” she exclaimed as she wrestled with the second ornery knot.

Sammy took off. But he stopped in a moment, by something on the ground. Jenny looked. It was a knife, dropped by one of the fleeing men! She hurried over to get it, and used it to saw through first one hobble rope, and then the other.

But then a mean man returned. “What's this?” he cried.

No, it wasn't a mean man; the voice was too high. It was a mean woman! She was a lot prettier than the men, with head and hands and feet much smaller, but of the same species, maybe. “Run, Chay!” Jenny cried.