Chlorine was about to get out, but Nimby restrained her and indicated Mary. Oh? Well, there had to be a reason.
Mary had a good deal of respect for Nimby's awareness of things. She got out and knocked on the shack's door.
“Go away, spook!” a voice called from inside.
“I'm not a spook,” Mary protested, though she had a notion what kind of apparitions had been bothering this house. “I'm a dull Mundane woman looking for Modem.”
The door opened a crack, held closely by a glittery hand.
A gnarly eye peered out. “And I'm the hag of this hut. What do you know of Modem?”
“Only that we need him to help save Xanth from the ill wind.”
The door cracked wider. “Let me get a look at you,” the hag said. “Why, you're someone's mother.”
“Yes.”
“Then it must be all right. See that he doesn't get into mischief. He's got weird magic.” She called back into the hut. “Modem lad, go with this mother.”
“Yes, Haggi Ma.” A boy about David's age appeared, tousled of hair and ragged of garb.
Now it was clear why Mary had had to be the one.
Nimby had known. “Thank you,” she said to Haggi. She took the boy by his grubby hand and led him to the RV.
“We'll try to bring him back safely,” she called. Then to the boy: “We have a magic moving house. You may look out the window, after you wash your hands. You will sit with my son David. You may call me Mom for now.”
“Yes, Mom,” he replied dutifully.
Chlorine came out to meet them. “This is Modem,” Mary told her in a motherly manner. “Clean him up and find out the nature of his magic. Give him the window seat beside David.” She really meant for Chlorine to find out from Nimby. Also, the boy would more likely hold still if Chlorine washed his face and hands. Chlorine had a certain effect on males of any age; might as well make positive use of it.
“Hello, Modem,” Chlorine said. “I am Chlorine.” She smiled.
“Chee.” The boy looked stunned. That meant he was socially normal.
They resumed driving, looking for the next name on Nimby's list. This was Keaira, off in another direction.
While Jim navigated the twisty turns of the almost trackless jungle, Chlorine washed the stunned Modem's face and hands and dulcetly questioned him.
It turned out that Modem's magic was indeed related to the Mundane term. It was what he called a magic mirror, only it was inside him. He could communicate with Com-Pewter.
“With who?” Willow asked.
“Com-Pewter,” Chlorine explained. “The evil machine turned good. The one who first sent Sending. He changes reality in his vicinity.”
“Yes,” Modem agreed. “When I connect with him, I can do it too, but only because I'm a wo—wor—”
“Work station,” Jim called back.
“Yes. That's what he calls it.”
“That's nice,” Chlorine said. “Can you show us?”
At that point the RV reached a dead-end trail. A huge tangly tree with dangling tentacular vines barred their way.
“Watch it,” Mentia said. “That's a tangle tree.”
Karen giggled. “Like my hair?”
“Not exactly. Watch.” The demoness floated out and assumed the form of a little girl. She walked up to the tree.
Suddenly the vines writhed. They wrapped around her and hauled her into the tree. A big wooden mouth opened in the trunk. The tentacles stuffed the girl into that orifice.
Wooden teeth clamped down.
Then the mouth opened and spat out, the girl. The trunk turned green. The tentacles wilted.
Mentia resumed luscious woman form and floated back into the RV. “Any questions?”
“Yuck, no,” Karen said, looking a bit green herself.
“Yeah,” David said. “What made it spit you back out?”
The demoness smiled in a female dog way. “I gave it a whiff of stink horn.”
“Of what?”
Mentia made a foul-smelling noise. The most ghastly imaginable stench filled the vehicle. “Like that,” she said.
“Only stronger.”
“Ghaa!” Karen cried, rushing to open a window. Mary quietly did the same. That was nose-numbingly dreadful.
Only Nimby wasn't choking.
“Great!” David cried. “And that's what that dumb tangle tree bit into?”
“I'm afraid so,” the demoness said with mock regret.
Then they were all laughing, even Modem, despite the awful odor.
“I can change it,” Modem said. “When I connect.”
“Then please connect with Com-Pewter,” Chlorine told him. “And change it to roses.” Modem closed his eyes, concentrating. Suddenly a beautiful rose scent permeated the RV. Reality had changed.
“Do you know, I begin to see why this talent may be useful,” Jim remarked. “Can he get us past that tangle tree?”
Chlorine spoke to the boy. The tangle tree became a pie tree. Mentia went out and harvested the best pies and brought them in for consumption as they drove on. Chlorine returned to her seat beside Nimby, and brought out a greenish bug. She passed this across her mouth.
“What's that?” Karen asked.
“A lips tic, of course. It colors my lips.” Indeed, they were now a much firmer green.
What else? Mary thought.
They entered a windswept plain. The power of the storm continued to rise, and the flying dust made visibility short.
Blasts of it struck the RV, pushing it around, and scattered phantasms flew by. Sword blades seemed to rise out of the ground, threatening the tires, but Nimby indicated and Mentia verified that they were mostly illusory. Still, Mary would not care to plow through much more of this.
Keaira's residence was an oasis amidst the barrens.
Pretty flowering softwoods surrounded a larger dust colored tree with a fancy tree house. “Oh, a cottage in dust tree,” Chlorine said, pleased.
“Since when do pine trees flower?” Jim muttered.
“Since we came to Xanth,” Mary replied.
They pulled up near the dust tree. Despite its name, there was no dust flying here; the air was calm and sweet.
This seemed to be an enchanted spot which was surely why Keaira had chosen to live here.
The door of the tree house opened, and a young woman with brown braids emerged. “A traveling house?” she asked, surprised.
Mary approached her. “Yes, and we would like you to join us, if you are Keaira. We are on a mission to save Xanth from the terrible storm, and we need your help.”
“But my power over weather is very small,” Keaira protested. “I can affect it only quite near me. I couldn't do anything about a giant magical storm like this.”
“Your talent is weather control!” Mary exclaimed, catching on. “That's why your house suffers no bad weather!”
“Yes, of course,” Keaira agreed. “But only as far out as you see. That's not very much.”
“It should be enough to enable us to get through the increasingly bad weather we face,” Mary said. “Will you come with us?”
“Of course, if it will help Xanth. Will it take long?”
“We hope not. But it could be several days. We have to travel behind the storm and herd it north.”
Keaira looked wistfully at her house. “But if I am away too long, the ill wind will blow my house and trees away, and it has taken so long to cultivate them.”
Mary appreciated her reluctance. But she had a notion.
“Maybe we can do something about that.” She turned to Modem. “Can you change her reality so that her oasis won't suffer?”
The boy considered. “Would a dome over it help?”
“Not if it got suffocatingly hot under it,” Mary said.
“Maybe a thyme plant, to keep it unchanging,” Sean suggested.
“But we don't have a thyme plant,” Chlorine protested.
“Yes we do,” Sean said. “Willow has a sprig of
thyme in her napsack.”
“What knapsack?” Mary asked, for the girl had no more than her little purse with her.
“It wouldn't help,” Willow said. “It would speed things up, when they need to be slowed down.”
“How about with reverse wood?” Sean asked. “Mom's got some stashed with the luggage.”
“Yes, that should do it,” Willow agreed, surprised.
So Sean got out two pieces of reverse wood, and Willow pulled a knapsack out of her purse, and a sprig of thyme from that. They set the thyme in Keaira's tree house.
“But nothing has changed,” Mary said.
Sean smiled. “Yes it has. Mom. Look beyond the oasis.”
She looked. The dust was still flying out there, but very slowly, as if embedded in syrup. “I don't understand.”
“We're living ten times as fast as usual,” he explained. “Outside is normal. The thyme has speeded us up. But the moment we put the reverse wood with it, it will have the opposite effect, and the oasis will be a tenth as fast as the outside.”
Now it was coming clear. Except for one detail. “How will you get out of there, once the reverse wood reverses the thyme?”
“I won't. I'll simply throw in the two sticks, and when they land, they'll separate and take effect. That's how Chlorine nulled Sending, way back when. She told me.”
Mary looked at Nimby. He nodded. It seemed that it would work as specified. “Then it seems you can safely come with us, if your oasis will last for a day or so of its time.”
“Yes, that should be all right,” the young woman agreed.
They cleared the oasis, and Sean hurled the two sticks of wood in. They landed beside the dust tree and bounced apart. And the scene seemed to freeze. The magic had taken effect.
The RV was yet more crowded, but that couldn't be helped. Or could it? Mary had a notion. “Modem, do you know what an accommodation spell is?”
“A corn a days in?” he repeated blankly.
“The imps use it to make their tiny house seem big enough for full-sized folk. It isn't really, but—well, maybe it is. I was wondering whether you could make this moving house seem larger inside, without being larger outside.”
“Mom, you're a genius!” Sean exclaimed.
“Yes, I guess,” the boy agreed doubtfully, “if Pewter knows it.” He concentrated.
Suddenly the RV was twice its former size. There was room for everyone. Mary was seated on a seat big enough for two. The roof was twice as high. Jim was manhandling a monstrous steering wheel. But when she looked out the window, she saw that the RV was taking up no more road space than before. It was big only inside.
“Isn't magic wonderful,” she breathed.
“For sure,” Jim said, shifting to get to the edge of his seat so that his feet could reach the pedals.
But outside the weather still buffeted the vehicle. The gusts of wind were becoming frighteningly powerful, and visibility was diminishing alarmingly. Something had to be done, or they would be blown into disaster.
Mary had an idea. “Keaira—can you give us calm weather, in the vicinity of our moving house?”
“Certainly,” the girl said. And suddenly they were in an aisle of calm. Beyond it the ferocity of the storm was undiminished, but no gust touched the RV, and the air surrounding it was clear.
“Thank you,” Mary said, much relieved. Then she set about finding some blocks of wood or something else to enable her husband to reach the pedals more comfortably.
She didn't want him to lose control of the vehicle.
The next name on Nimby's list was Chena Centaur. “I recognize that one,” Mary said, sifting through her memory. “Carleton Centaur's little sister. He asked us to relay his greeting to her, if we saw her.”
“You're right,” Jim agreed, surprised.
“But I'm not sure how a centaur will fit in here, even with our increased interior space.”
Nimby wrote a note. “ 'Chena won't come inside,' “
Chlorine read. “ 'She's a winged centaur.' “
“Winged?” Mary asked. “I'm sure Carleton didn't say anything like that. She must be a regular centaur.”
But Nimby, as always, turned out to be right. They came up to two somewhat bedraggled winged centaurs taking shelter in the lee of a large chest nut and bolt tree. Chests of nuts and bolts were scattered everywhere, harvested prematurely by the wind.
Mentia went out to talk with the fillies, who were somewhat taken aback by the RV. Then the two stepped into the calm surrounding the vehicle, evidently relieved, shaking out their wings. The folk inside stepped out to make introductions. The two were indeed Chena and her friend Crystal.
“But how is it that you are winged?” Mary asked.
“Your brother Carleton sends his greetings and goodwill, but he said nothing about wings.”
“I wasn't winged then,” Chena explained. “I was a normal centaur. But then I met Che Centaur, and, well, I had a wishing stone, and it made me winged. Crystal was a human girl, whom I talked into converting. You see, we need more flying centaurs, of different derivations, if we are to have a viable species. So now I'm out recruiting.
Crystal here agreed that her prospects would be better as a centaur. I have been showing her the centaur ways as we look for more recruits.”
“But won't you need male flying centaurs too?” Mary asked.
Crystal flushed. “Yes,” Chena said. “We are looking for suitable males of any species to recruit.”
Mary studied them. Both were healthy fillies in the equine portions, and slender girls in the human portions, with the rather full breasts that the centaur species tended to have. “I suspect you will succeed. But I can provide an expert opinion, if you wish.”
“You can?” Crystal asked, speaking for the first time.
Mary glanced to the side. “Sean, if you were not otherwise attached, would you consider becoming a winged centaur in order to be with one of these fillies?”
“You bet!” Sean agreed. Then he had another notion, and Mary could have bit her tongue for not anticipating it.
“Say, I could be transformed to a winged elf to be with Willow!”
But Willow herself countered that, to Mary's great relief. “No, my love. Magician Trent can transform anyone to any form, but you are Mundane. He could give you the form of a winged elf male, but not the magic. Only if you already had magic could it change with your form. You would not be able to fly. Your wings would be useless. And…” She paused delicately. “I love you as you are. I would not have you change.”
“We just can't make it in each other's worlds,” he said, disheartened.
“Not very well,” she agreed.
“That's sad,” Chena said. “You fell in a love spring?”
They nodded together.
Chena exchanged a glance with Crystal, then looked back to Sean. “I don't mean to be crude, but if we find males to recruit—do you mind telling us exactly where that love spring is?”
Sean and Willow laughed together, ruefully. “I will show you, when this crisis is over. But I hope you will tell your stallions of its nature, before—”
“Oh, of course!” Chena said. “We wouldn't cheat! That leads to mischief.”
“We know,” Sean agreed, and Willow nodded.
Mary did not comment, but it struck her that for a random coupling of dissimilar species, the two were remarkably well matched. Sean had a wild side that needed taming, while Willow was quite realistic and sensible, yet they laughed at the same things. Sean could do a good deal worse in Mundania. In fact, some of the girls he had been interested in had had only one thing going for them, youth. That asset was all too fleeting, as Mary knew so well from her own experience.
But all that was beside the point. She had to explain things to the centaur fillies. “We were looking for you, Chena,” she said. “And perhaps for Crystal too. Because we need help to deal with this storm, before it blows Xanth away. Will you come with us?”
“Wh
at kind of help?” Chena asked. “We can't safely fly in this fierce wind.”
“I'm not sure,” Mary confessed. “But I am sure that we need you, and that the manner of it will become apparent in due course. As for flying—you should be able to do that in the ambiance of our traveling house, because Keaira is keeping the weather calm here.” She glanced at Keaira, who nodded shyly.
“Why, certainly, then,” Chena agreed. “We can fly above it, or to the side. As long as the terrible wind is kept away. It isn't just the force of it, but the magic dust it carries. It makes us dizzy, and weird things attack.”
“Like phantasms,” Mary agreed. “Even when they are illusions, they are mischief enough. Very well, then, let's get moving again.”
But Nimby was writing a note. Chlorine took it and read it aloud. “Why—why he says the house can fly! The fillies can make it fly.”
Chena looked at the RV. “Well, we can make it light enough to float, but that's not the same as-—”
“But then we could haul it along by ropes,” Crystal said. “It could move through the air. It might be clumsy, but it could be done, in calm weather.”
“Is this safe?” Mary asked, surprised.
Nimby nodded.
“And we can travel over the jungle, instead of through it?” The notion had definite appeal.
Nod.
This was evidently the way to go. “How do you make it light?” she asked the centaurs.
“We simply flick things with our tails,” Chena said.
“That's really our magic. To make things light enough to float or fly. When we flick bothersome flies, they become too light to sit, so must fly away. When we flick ourselves, we become similarly light.” She looked at the RV. “However, that's pretty big. It would take a number of flicks to lighten it enough, and we'd have to flick each of you who go inside it, too.”
“And the effect fades with time,” Crystal said. “With each passing moment, you lose lightness.”
“You lose moments of effect,” Jim said. He was speaking technically, because this was in his specialty of physics, but it didn't matter here.
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