Letters to Jenny

by Piers Anthony

  We were getting bit something awful by the chiggers. Those are a Florida phenomenon: tiny mites, so small you can’t even see them. They are on the foliage outside, and when you walk by they brush off on your socks, and climb down into them and then burrow into your skin, and you get an itchy welt that can take a couple of weeks to clear, and some get infected. I got blisters from them on my ankles, which I had to puncture so I could run without a problem. My wife gets bitten more than I do, though she spends less time outside. Well, it’s a fact that women taste better than men. So the past few days I’m been dousing my socks with bug spray or repellent, and that seems to be stopping it. So if you ever visit Florida, watch out for chiggers.

  You know, I have some trouble with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. No, that’s not when you carp at tunnels. It’s a problem with the hands. The nerves leading to them go through the Carpal Tunnel in the wrist, and if it’s tight, your hands and fingers start getting numb. I wear my watch on my right wrist, though I’m right handed (well, what I was taught, I do right handed; what I learned myself I do left handed. Folk with ambiguous handedness are said to be confused mentally too. Now you know) because the slight pressure of the band on my wrist turns my hand numb. As it is, my left hand only tingles a little and perhaps is a bit weak, but I normally have no problem. Sometimes my right hand has trouble too, but not too much. Anyway, what I was thinking is that it is as if you have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, only your whole body is affected. Now if only you could take off your watch and have everything better— well, it was only a notion. Stick with the dull therapy. I keep hoping that you are about this far // from making a key nerve connection, and suddenly all circuits will light up and you’ll be able to do everything. Well, it’s a nice hope, isn’t it?

  While we’re on the subject of you (how did that happen?): the Xanth Pinup Calendar is now getting published, and I’ll send you a copy, maybe next week when I get my copies. Maybe I’ll send one for your daddy too, so he doesn’t get jealous. Men have a better notion what pinups are, for some reason. You will see that we have gotten a bunch of good artists together, and there are some nice pictures. But I’m only leading up to my subject. The artist who handled the project for me—you see, I did this calendar myself, paying for all the art, and then found a publisher for it, but I needed someone to actually do the job, who knew the artists and all—his name is Ron Lindahn, and he and his wife will be at a convention near you this NoRemember. I told him about you, and he said he and his wife Val might visit you and show you some more art. He knows you’ll probably be in your wheelchair and not able to jump up and down and scream in typical teengirl fashion. In short, these are nice folk, and you will know them through their art in the Calendar, and if you would like to meet them, they will come to your house or the hospital or wherever you happen to be at the time. Now don’t get the galloping shyness! I just thought that here’s a chance for you to meet some artists—Xanth artists, really, and since you may some day be an artist yourself—well, think about it, and if you say you’re not interested, I’ll write you another paragraph about it.

  I lost an hour here: phone call and horsefeeding. Oh, yes, the horses are fine, but a bit perturbed because the call made me about fifteen minutes late for their feeding. I got neighed at, and they had pushed the gate somewhat. The horses have firm rules about feeding time. As for the call— now don’t say you’re not interested, how do you know that, until I tell you what it was? It was about the Xanth video movie. Yes it was; I’m not making this up. So a year or two from now, when you see it, you’ll know what this was when it was getting going. We haven’t signed a contract yet, but it looks good to me, and if the animation and integration of live and animation figures works well, I’ll sign, and we’ll be on our way. This isn’t any big Hollywood outfit see; this is a guy way out in Washington state, who was cued in to Xanth by one of his children—I guess you know how that happens—and he’s in the business of making video commercials, and he wanted to do something creative and fantastic and fun for a change, so he approached me about Xanth, and I like what he is showing me. Today it was about twenty-five artist’s sketches of the things of A Spell for Chameleon, of the chameleon lizard at the beginning who assumes wild other forms, of Sabrina— she was Bink’s first girlfriend, remember?—Justin Tree, Chester Centaur, Cherie Centaur, and so on. We were discussing important aspects at length over the phone, such as here is a full-busted lady centaur, and what happens to her front when she goes at full gallop? No, this is a legitimate question. A human woman that big in the bosom would have a real problem galloping naked, because, well, take my word for it. Also, we don’t want to bring the censors down on our heads. So we concluded that lady centaurs are surely evolved to gallop bare-breasted without knocking themselves up, er, without flopping—well, anyway, they could probably handle it, and their firm flesh would move just a little. Remember that, when you see it, because I think we are going to make this video, and it may be the start of a great video series. Yes, I know he shouldn’t have interrupted this letter for it, but he didn’t know. Maybe you will grow up to be a fantasy video animator, drawing the original art for the computer to work on. Keep it in mind.

  Meanwhile I’m still writing Tatham Mound, my archaeological/historical novel. My hero married two Cherokee women: a mother and her daughter. No, this sort of thing happened; men could marry sisters or mother/daughter or whatever, because they got along better. If they married two wives who were not related, they had to set up separate tipis for them so they wouldn’t fight. Both of them gave him sons—and then the white man’s plague came through and killed them. Don’t read this novel; it will sadden you. What? Oh, the daughter was thirteen when he married her. No, that’s coincidence; she’s not like you at all.

  This past week I saw a pure black dragonfly. In fact, it sat on the tap handle when I needed to turn on the water to refill the horses' drinking tub. It wasn’t pleased when I put my hand on the tap, so it sat on my hand and told me so. What a handsome dragonfly!

  We have a swimming pool, which we seldom use, mainly because we’re busy and the water seldom gets up to 85°. It is paved all around, but in the winter a blade of grass decided to try its luck at the edge. We let it be. After all, if it is willing to try growing in such an inhospitable spot, who are we to interfere? Now it’s about three feet across, dipping a stem into the pool—and another plant is starting at another corner. I guess the word spread that it could be done. We really don’t want to take them out, but how far should we let this go?

  Back in FeBlueberry when our tree farm was mowed and I first heard about you, we transplanted several wild rosemary plants to be around the house. They all died; apparently the soil or climate was wrong for them here, or maybe the shock of transplanting. But this past week I looked at one, and it had a single living sprig growing! It is recovering, when we thought it lost. That reminded me of you, because—

  And we’ve been watching some movies on video. When they gave me the CD player and disks, one of the songs was “Mrs. Robinson,” and I remarked that I’d always wanted to see the movie that was associated with. My wife and daughter said the movie was dull and we’d seen it before anyway, but since it was my birthday they humored me and rented The Graduate. No, I’d never seen it before; my memory for names and faces and dates may not be much, but I remember story lines very well, and know in a few seconds whether I’ve seen a movie before. No, it wasn’t dull, either; it’s about this twenty year old young man, who is seduced by this forty year old woman—am I running afoul of the Adult Conspiracy? Sigh. Anyway, she may have been forty, but she was one attractive woman. I guess my wife and daughter find such themes dull, but I found it fascinating. Actually, the age of forty may be considered old for a woman, but young for a man; President Kennedy was 43 when elected and they kept saying how young he was. But this business of assuming the older women can’t be attractive—well, ask your daddy whether it’s possible for any woman over thirty to be attractive. See? I told you. Another
night we saw The Accused, which.

  ********************

  Oops, that time the Adult Conspiracy censored me out. Sigh. Well, anyway, have a halfway decent day, Jenny, and blow your mother a kiss—it will reach her even if she is twenty miles away—and tell Cathy not to goof off on her exercises. Oh—I found out why I didn’t have the Alligator page enclosed, because this time I looked for it and THEY DIDN’T HAVE IT. The wretches! I’ve half a mind to sic your mother on them. But here’s “Curtis,” anyway.

  PS—now the skink is here in the study. Okay.

  AwGhost 18, 1989

  Dear Jenny,

  I didn’t expect to hear from your mother this week, because of her ongoing game of Tooth or Consequence— she lost the first, so pays the second about 29 times over— but I had one last Saturday and another this Thursday. She returned the picture of the cat painting, which she says you enjoyed, and says your wheelchair and computer are still in the works, with varying degrees of frustration and progress.

  Meanwhile, I got my Author’s Copies of the Xanth PinUp Calendar, and am enclosing two. One is for you, because you like Xanth, and the other is for your daddy, because he likes—never mind, just shut up and let him look at the cover, okay? Men are the only ones who really understand pinup calendars, for some reason. I didn’t want to unseal them in order to autograph them for you folk, so I’m enclosing autograph labels for each of you, hoping I got the names right. You can stick the labels somewhere safe, where they don’t show. No, not on the toilet seat! On the Calendars. Anyway, if you read the credits on the back you can see that the Calendar’s design is by Ron Lindahn, and that he and his wife Val painted the picture of Chex Centaur and the Xanth center-map. They’re the ones I mentioned last time, who might visit you in NoRemember if you’re interested. They are now assembling the one for 1991, the Question Calendar, featuring Grundy golem and Rapunzel. The deal is, I pay for it and they do the work. Well, I also develop the basic theme, and I approve the final pictures, but I’m not in there dealing with all the artists. Having set aside any hopes I had to be an artist myself, I now came at it as a sponsor. What? You want to do a Calendar picture? Well, first you have to get through the dull therapy, and learn to use your computer. If you get so you can make a really good picture—well, we’ll see, when. Not this year, though. Which reminds me: they hired a model for Rapunzel, and photographed her so they could send copies to all the artists, because she’ll be in the background of most of the Question Calendar pictures. She turned out to be a Xanth fan, who was thrilled with this assignment. Not the real Rapunzel, silly—the model. Wasn’t that a nice coincidence! No, her hair wasn’t that long naturally; she had to wear a wig. The truth is, very few girls have hair that long. Oh, you already knew that? Meanwhile, keep growing yours back.

  My agent is working out a deal for a couple of hard-cover editions of Isle of View, which may be published at the same time as the paperback edition, in OctOgre 1990. One would be a limited MORROW edition, for folk who just plain like hardcovers. The other would be a limited showcase edition, for folk who like beautiful books, with a cover painted by Wendy Pini showing Jenny Elf. No, don’t go screaming the news all over the hospital; this is in the formative stage, and by no means certain yet. It’s just what we’re trying to set up if things work out. Richard Pini has expressed interest, but they are mighty busy folk, and we don’t know what will happen. I just thought you’d like to know, since you’re the one who made an Elfquest elf come to Xanth.

  Meanwhile, how are things here? I’ve been going over my daughter Penny’s college papers. She has this crazy professor who is grading off for things like having paragraph indentations of six spaces, when he thinks five are right. This is nonsense; the computer default settings establish such things—your mother will tell you all about that, in due course—so Penny was getting graded down from A level to D level because of things that were out of her control. So we have had to get into the programming and revamp the default setting on her computer, and we have corrected every possible syntax or spelling error or confusion, setting it up the professor’s way even when it’s wrong—as a pro writer and former English teacher, I do know what’s right—so she can get through that course. But it does things to my blood pressure. So when you get to college—what do you mean, you’re having second thoughts about that? You’re afraid you won’t be out of the wheelchair yet and folk will laugh at you? No they won’t. Yes I know it’s a long way away. So watch out for that kind of professor. I don’t want to have to go over your papers like that.

  Out at the horse stalls—we never shut them in there, we just feed them there—there were six and a half big spiders this summer. You know what I mean: one was small. Gradually they disappeared, until now there is only one and three-quarters spiders. No, I don’t know where the others went; I didn’t ask them.

  I saw a listing for a fanzine—that’s an amateur magazine in the SF genre—called PIRATE JENNY. No, I’ve never seen a copy of it. I suppose I could order one for you, but it probably doesn’t relate well to your interests. I just thought it had a cute title.

  Cat News: the newspaper says Miss Kitty of the old Gunsmoke program died. Too bad. I guess that program was before your time, and probably not to your interest either. Oh, well.

  Did you know there was an eclipse of the moon this past week? Frightened the night mares something awful. We went out and looked, and there it was: the moon half eaten away. Fortunately it grew back again by morning.

  Book Review time: I’m reading this one titled New World, New Mind. It’s a serious book—deadly serious. You know how I don’t like to see our global environment damaged, or animals rendered extinct. But Man is doing it at a horrendous rate, so that the greatest extinction is not the time of the end of the dinosaurs, but right now. Why is man so shortsighted? This book explains it. Man evolved to handle a more natural world, with reflexes to fight the sabre-tooth tiger and such, rather than to sweat the slow stuff like advancing glaciers. It was a matter of survival, and it worked. But now those slow things are becoming important, like ozone depletion, and Man needs to do something about them before our world is ruined. But he just ignores them, as he did the glaciers, figuring that if it isn’t pouncing on him, it can’t hurt him. So we need to retrain our thinking to match the needs of the day—but are we going to? I don’t much like the answer I see. So when you have nothing better to do, you might ponder that, and see if you can work out a way to save our planet before it’s too late.

  Some other enclosures: some time back a fan sent me some play money he made up, and I thought it might amuse you. I wrote his name, Hellerstein, on the No Dollar bill, so I’d remember who made it. The guy has a fun imagination. Also a picture of a snow leopard plate; I didn’t care to buy such expensive plates, but I thought you’d like the picture of those big cats. This time I cut out Calvin & Hobbes along with Curtis, because it’s a cute one all about Hobbes, just in case your mother didn’t send that one in for you.

  Now I have to go back to my chapter about thirteen year old Tappy, the blind girl who is now in a strange science fiction adventure I’m collaborating on with Philip Jose Farmer, and to Tatham Mound, where my nine year old girl has grown up to age 24. Such things happen. Say Hi for me to Cathy; I hope she’s doing okay. I hope you’re doing okay; you’re not slacking off on those therapy exercises, are you?

  AwGhost 25, 1989

  Dear Jenny,

  Well, I’ve done it again: I have foolishly frittered away my time, and now am late writing to you. I was trying to figure out why my file handling program DirMagic would copy readily from Drive C to Drive D, but balk at copying from Drive D to Drive C. Over an hour gone, but I finally did figure it out. When I get hold of a puzzle, any type, grrr, I can’t let go. I don’t suppose you know anyone like that? More in a moment.

  Several Big Events this week. One is that they are getting close pictures of the planet Neptune and its big moon Triton. Another is that I had to shovel a bag full of horse
manure. But the most important is that I GOT YOUR LETTER!! Laurie sent it, together with a letter of her own. Rather than write to her directly (mainly because I frittered away that hour) I’ll just tell you to tell her I got it. She says it took you five hours on your Scan Pac to do it. It says that you appreciate my writing to you, and are thrilled that Jenny Elf is in a novel, and you thank my wife Cam for the beautiful pillow. You also say you like the Elf Letter. I think that’s a confusion; I didn’t send you an Elf Letter, Richard Pini did. But next time I’m in touch with him, I’ll relay the message. I may have mentioned that we hope to have a special hardcover edition of Isle of View with a Pini cover showing Jenny Elf. We’ll see how that works out; it gets complicated because we have to negotiate with the publisher. Anyway, thanks for the letter, but next time you have five hours to spare I hope you’ll spend them eating chocolate pudding; that’s surely more fun for you. Laurie showed me your Scanning Boards too, with all the letters and words you can point to. Hey, I see my name is there! Right next to your cats. I like your messages “That’s Not Fair” and “I Don’t Like This.”

  Now I was going to tell you why I frittered away that hour. It started when I made a serendipitous discovery, and—what? Oh, you don’t know that word? Okay, I’ll tell you about Serendipity. Serendip is the old name for Ceylon, a big island off the south of India. The new name is Sri Lanka. There is a story that there were three princes of Serendip who were always finding good things that they weren’t looking for. So they made it into the word serendipity. Yes, it’s true—there really is such a story, and the word does derive from the name of that island. So when you look for a lost penny and find a dollar instead, that’s serendipitous indeed. It’s pronounced seren-DIP-ity; I know you’ll like that word.