Stanley took the plunge. He scrambled off the ramp, slip-sliding down its sloping side. He got to the right of the whorl, braced himself, and flapped his wings vigorously.
The whorl slowed in its descent, paused, and nudged back onto the ramp, providing better cover for Hugo and Ivy. But the little dragon, off to the right side, was now completely exposed.
Fracto fired out a lightning jag of wrath. He took another breath, ready to blow out an adverse gale. Ivy saw that and pointed her finger in a perfect righteous fury. "Hugo--destroy!" she cried.
Hugo knew better than to argue with that tone. He conjured a pineapple and hurled it with all his force into the hovering cloud. The fruit exploded with a dull boom, and Fracto fragmented. Straggles of gray fog scudded away; the King of Clouds would need time to recuperate. But the damage had been done. Stanley was in deep trouble.
Zzapp! Zzapp! Holes appeared in the dragon's wings. He winced but kept flapping. Now that there was no further adverse wind, Stanley's breeze prevailed. Slowly the whorl, defined by Hugo's renewed stream of cherries, moved across and onto the far side of the crack.
Zzapp! A wiggle holed Stanley's tail, for the dragon remained exposed. He yiped but kept flapping.
"Stanley!" Ivy screamed. "Get back on the ramp, behind the whorl!"
The dragon scrambled up. But as he did so, his wings paused, since he could not concentrate on two complex coordinations at once. The whorl slid back and teetered on the edge of the crack.
Stanley saw the cherries falling and knew what that meant. He stopped, braced himself, and flapped again, vigorously. The whorl resumed its forward motion, despite the opposing slope.
Zzapp! Stanley's neck was holed. Dark blood welled out and streamed down his scales. His head dropped, and his wingbeat faltered. The whorl began to backslide again.
"Keep going, Stanley!" Ivy screamed desperately. "I know you can do it!" But water was welling in her eyes in much the way the blood was welling in the dragon's neck. With a great effort, she compelled her own belief. "You're too tough to be stopped by worms!"
Perhaps in her maturity. Ivy's magic would have been enough, but she was only a child. Stanley tried to lift his head, but could not. Still, he flapped his wings as hard as he could. The breeze was off, since he could no longer see the guiding cherries, and the whorl began to go astray.
"Blow left! Blow left!" Ivy cried, and the dragon aimed farther left and pumped desperately, though there were more holes in his wings and his eyes were glazing. The whorl drifted back on course.
It wasn't sufficient. Stanley was halfway down in the crack, straddling the mound of fruits, while the whorl was beyond it. His draft was losing effect.
"Climb out quickly!" Ivy cried. "You can do it, Stanley! You can do it!" But she could hardly see him through her tears.
Hugo kept the cherries flying, knowing there was nothing he could do.
Stanley made his six legs move. His head dragged on the ramp, getting smeared with greatfruit refuse, but his long, low body moved. He scrambled awkwardly up the slope and out, leaving a trail of blood.
The whorl drifted back, impelled by the slight slope beyond the crack. The vectors never gave up!
The dragon made it to the edge just as the whorl did. "Flap, Stanley, flap!" Ivy screamed, horrified. Cherries were falling all around the dragon, bouncing off his green hide.
Stanley flapped. But he was now in the middle of the whorl and wounded; he had little strength remaining. The breeze he blew was not enough to do more than hold the whorl in place.
Hugo's smart mind was still working, and now he perceived a new strategy. "Hold your wings out!" he called. "Walk forward!"
The dragon heard him. Feebly, Stanley whomped forward, wings out, pelted by falling cherries.
The whorl moved with him.
"The forget!" Ivy exclaimed, remembering. "It'll make him forget! He's in it!"
Hugo looked at her, horrified. "Even if he survives the holing, his memory will be gone!"
The nest loomed close. Stanley saw it and gathered his last remaining strength for a final effort. All six legs heaved together, and he leaped, and sailed into the air--and landed on top of the nest.
The whorl was dragged along with him, settling around and into the nest.
The zapping of the wiggles faded at the center. They still moved outward outside the nest, but no new ones emerged. The whorl had made them forget, and so they had become harmless. The nest had been nullified, thanks to Stanley's heroic concluding jump.
The three of them were safe from the wiggles--and so was Xanth, once the ring of people got rid of the remaining wiggles. That was no easy task, but it was at least possible to do.
Stanley lay astride the huge nest, as if he were mounted on a pedestal, his blood dripping down around it to the ground.
"Oh, Stanley!" Ivy cried, rushing up to him.
Hugo grabbed her arm, whirling her around and holding her back. "No!" he cried. "Don't go into the forget-whorl!"
"Oh--the forget!" She nodded. "I don't want to be forgetted. Poor Stanley!"
One of the dragon's ears twitched. Stanley had always had excellent hearing, especially when he was mentioned; that was the nature of his ears. One eye opened.
Ivy clapped her hands. "Ooo, he lives! He remembers!"
"That doesn't necessarily follow--" Hugo said cautiously, his intelligence interfering with his emotion.
"Yes, it does!" she insisted. "It has to! Make it reasonable, Hugo!"
Hugo put his mind to work again. He could do some pretty impossible things when Ivy told him to. "Well, since he is the Gap Dragon and he has lived for centuries in the middle of the forget-spell that's on the Gap, we conjectured that he could be partially immune. But he could be completely immune, in which case--"
"Oh, yes! That must be it! He can't be forgetted!" She stood and looked at the dragon. "But he's hurt awful bad, Hugo. He's bleeding and everything! We've got to help him!"
Hugo knew there was nothing they could do at the moment. He looked about--and spied the Gap Dragon.
The what? Hugo blinked.
Then he saw, beside the full-sized dragon, the Gorgon. "Mother!" he cried, waving violently.
From the distance, the Gorgon made a familiar signal. "Cover your eyes," Hugo told Ivy. "You too, Stanley. Do not look. Mother is on the way. She will make everything right."
Obediently Ivy faced away and closed her eyes, and Stanley relaxed into unconsciousness. He was a tough little dragon, but he was badly hurt.
They waited for some time. Then they heard something like pebbles dropping to the ground. "Mother's glaring at wiggles," Hugo said, figuring it out. "They're turning to stone!"
There was also a whomp-whomp approaching. "How can the Gap Dragon be big--and small?" Hugo asked, then answered his own question. "There must be another of the same species."
"A lady dragon," Ivy said with female intuition.
The dropping-pebbles sound stopped. "You may look now," the Gorgon said. "I am veiled."
Ivy opened her eyes and looked. The Gorgon and the dragoness were crossing the greatfruit ramp.
The Gorgon paused to turn and wave to the outer circle. "I have cleared a channel!" she called.
Another figure detached itself from the circle. It was a centaur, bearing a rider. Ivy knew who that would be.
The Gorgon completed the distance and picked Hugo up. "You get lost like this again," she said severely, "and I'll show you my face!" Then she kissed him through the veil. "My, aren't you handsome! Whatever happened to you?"
"Aw, Mom, it was fun!" Hugo protested. "But we've got to help Stanley!"
"Who?"
"Stanley Steamer," Ivy explained, indicating the little dragon. "He saved Xanth--but he's hurt!"
"Oh, yes, of course." But the Gorgon stood aside while the big dragon whomped up, sniffed Stanley, then opened her huge jaws and took him in her mouth. She lifted him down off the nest and set him on the ground.
"But the forget-
-" Ivy protested.
"She's immune too," the Gorgon reassured her.
A monstrous shape glided down from above: the biggest bird Ivy had ever imagined. It banked and flew away. A single feather drifted down.
"Thank you, Simurgh!" the Gorgon called. She picked up the feather, paused, and looked at Ivy through her veil. "I think it is better if you do this. Ivy," she said. "He's your friend, and it will work most effectively for you." She handed her the feather.
Ivy looked at the feather. It had seemed small in the sky, but it was as long as she was, now that she held it, but not heavy. "Do what?"
"Touch Stanley."
"Oh." Ivy took the feather and touched the tip to the little dragon's nose. "Like this?" she asked, perplexed.
"Wherever he hurts, dear."
"Oh." Ivy stroked the feather across the wound in Stanley's neck--and it healed immediately. "Oh!" she exclaimed, thrilled. She proceeded to touch the feather to every place Stanley had been holed, and soon the little dragon had mended completely. Once more he was able to hold his head up. "Oh!" she cried a third time and hugged him joyously.
"Hugo, how were you able to conjure good fruit?" the Gorgon asked her son, though her manner indicated she had an idea of the answer. This was the way of mothers.
"It's Ivy's fault," Hugo replied. "When I'm near her, I can do almost anything. I can even think straight. She's a Sorceress."
The Gorgon studied Ivy through her veil. "Yes, I believe she is."
"Just the way my father is a Magician," Hugo continued happily. Then he sobered. "Except--"
"He will be a Magician again," the Gorgon said. "It will take some time, of course, for him to grow--"
Another figure approached, seemingly careless of the remaining wiggles. It was a fairly pretty young woman Ivy didn't recognize. "May I help?" the woman inquired.
"Thank you, no," the Gorgon said, glancing at her in perplexity. "We seem to be in order here."
"Who is she?" Ivy asked. "Why don't the zap holes hurt her?" For the woman had several perforations.
"I am Zora Zombie," the woman said. "Holes don't hurt zombies, so I walked across in case there was anything I could do." She spoke with a slight slurring, as if her lips weren't quite tight.
"You don't look like a zombie," Hugo remarked.
"True love has almost restored me to life," Zora said. "And perhaps my spine was stiffened when I looked at your mother's face."
"That's why I didn't recognize you!" The Gorgon exclaimed. "You have changed so much--"
"I am what every zombie could be, if conditions were right, Zora said. "Now I can even do my magic again."
"What's that?" Ivy asked.
Zora smiled depreciatingly. "It's not very useful, I'm afraid. I can make creatures age faster."
"Age faster?"
"When I turn on my talent, any animal will mature two years in only one year," Zora explained. "But since no one in his right mind cares to speed up his life--certainly the man I loved when I was alive didn't--" She frowned, then set that aside as dead history. "So I never had use for it."
But the Gorgon perked up. "Could you make a baby grow twice as fast as normal, without harming him?"
"Oh, certainly," Zora agreed. "My talent never hurt anyone, except that most people feel that aging is the same as hurting."
"If you did it near Ivy, you could age a baby ten times as fast," Hugo said confidently.
"Ten times as fast!" the Gorgon exclaimed. "Zora, you must come to baby-sit my husband!"
"Certainly, if you wish," Zora said. "I always like to help people, especially older folk like my parents. But isn't your husband already over a century old?"
"He is and he isn't," the Gorgon said. "Believe me, you will be welcome at our castle! You and Ivy together!"
The centaur arrived. Ivy heard the beat of hooves and looked up, her arms still around Stanley's healed neck. It was Chem, and on her was--
"Mother!" Ivy cried, with tears of joy and relief. Now she knew everything would be all right. "You must meet my friend Stanley! He saved Xanth!"
"Yes, he did," Irene agreed, dismounting. "And in the process, he helped show us how to move the forget-whorls out of our way so no one else will be forgetted. We shall make a statue of him."
"No!" Ivy cried, gazing wildly at the Gorgon.
Irene laughed, patting Stanley on the head. "Not that way," she reassured her daughter. "We shall carve it from genuine stone, and set it beside the statue of Night Mare Imbri, exactly as I envisioned. It will be on a pedestal, with the words HERO DRAGON in the base. He will be famous." She glanced across at the full-sized dragon. "His place in the Gap will have to be filled by a substitute for a while, until Stanley is able to resume his duties there."
"Oh, goody!" Ivy said, clapping her hands. "He'll stay with me! Stanley is my friend!"
"That too," Irene agreed, getting down to hug child and dragon together.
Dragon on a Pedestal Page 33
