Currant Events (11 page)

 But there was nothing else here, so she
walked on down the south slope of the north peak toward the north slope of the
south peak. She moved faster, in part because the downslope was easier, and in
part because of the renewed vigor the leaf had given her. Before nightfall not
only was she off the north peak, she was well up the south peak. Just as dusk
was sneaking in, wrapping around the mountain, she reached the top.

 There was another tree, just as grand
at the other, with a great variety of colors and leaves, as if it were of
multiple species. And perched on one of its mighty branches was the biggest,
brightest bird she had ever seen. It was the size of a roc bird, though she had
never before been close to one of those, but its colors were different. It had
feathers like iridescent veneers of light and shadow, and its head was crested
like fire. Its wings did not seem quite solid, though they surely were; they
were like scintillating veils of mist over a mountain.

 A GREETING, SOLITARY GIRL. It was an
ineffably powerful thought, as from the mother of all creatures.

 Clio jumped. “What?”

 YOU DO NOT KNOW ME. It was not a
question.

 Clio stared. “The bird!” she
exclaimed, astonished. “You're the bird!”

 I AM THE BIRD OF BIRDS, THE SIMURGH. I
HAVE SEEN THE UNIVERSE FADE AND REVIVE THREE TIMES. I GUARD THIS TREE OF SEEDS
AGAINST MOLESTATION.

 “I-I'm sorry. I'm Clio. I don't
want to molest anything. I was just looking for the Muses, because-”

 NOW I SEE. And it was obvious that the
bird was peering right into her mind. THERE IS MUCH YOU HAVE TO LEARN.

 “I didn't mean to intrude. I don't
know anything about the Tree of Seeds. I'll go now.”

 NOT YET, good girl. YOU HAVE EATEN OF
THE TREE OF LIFE.

 Did that mean she was in trouble?
“Is that the other big tree? I did eat a leaf, because-”

 YOU WERE HUNGRY. YOU DID NOT KNOW. The
Simurgh flicked a wing, marvelously, and a seed sailed toward Clio. EAT.

 She caught the seed. It was a big one.
She didn't recognize its type, but it looked and smelled good, so she took a
bite. It was delicious and filling. “Thank you. I-”

 YOU ARE NOW IMMORTAL AND SAFE, AS LONG
AS YOU REMAIN IN THESE ENVIRONS.

 “Immortal! But I'm doomed to die
young!”

 YOUR CURSES ARE ABATED HERE. YOU WILL
NEVER AGE OR BE EXPOSED TO DAILY DANGER. YOU HAVE ACHIEVED YOUR AMBITION, WITH
ONE CAVEAT. WHEN YOU LEAVE MOUNTPARNASSUS, YOU WILL RESUMENORMALAGING AND
DANGER.

 Amazed, Clio grasped at that straw.
“Then I want to stay here! But what can I do to earn this reward?”
For she had no intention of taking something for nothing.

 THE MUSES ARE GONE. THEY WENT TO
MUNDANIA SOME TIME AGO. THEIR RESIDENCE IS VACANT.

 Clio tried to cushion her
disappointment. Had her journey been wasted? But perhaps not, if she already
had the secret of remaining young. Still-

 WE HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR REPLACEMENTS,
BUT SETS OF NINE SUITABLE SISTERS SELDOM PASS THIS WAY.

 “Replacements? I don't
under-”

 YOU HAVE EIGHT SISTERS. WILL THEY
SERVE?

 Clio tried to digest this. “You
mean, to live where the Muses did? To maintain the premises.”

 TO BE THE MUSES.

 This was beyond understanding. “We
can't-we don't-”

 THEY, TOO, WILL BE ALLOWED TO EAT OF
THE TREE OF LIFE, SO AS TO BECOME IMMORTAL. NONE OF YOU WILL AGE; YOU WILL
REMAIN YOUNG ETERNALLY.

 “They'd like that! But how can any
of us possibly fill such elite roles? We don't know anything about the roles of
the Muses.”

 YOU WILL LEARN. IT SEEMS YOU WERE FATED
FOR THIS. YOUR INTERESTS ALIGN. SO DO YOUR NAMES. YOU WERE CLEARLY GUIDED. GO
BRING YOUR SISTERS HERE.

 “But my sisters want to find good
men, princes, to marry. They don't want to be in isolation all their
lives.”

 THEY ARE WELCOME TO GO OUT TO SEEK
PRINCES, AND TO BRING THEM HERE TO STAY, PROVIDED THEY FULFILL THEIR ROLES AS
MUSES. YOU, TOO, MAY SEEK A PRINCE OR MAGICIAN TO MARRY.

 Clio laughed uncomfortably.
“Somehow I doubt any would be interested, since I would not deceive him
about my curves.”

 THAT WILL BE YOUR CHOICE. BRING YOUR
SISTERS.

 “But-”

 The Simurgh's beak might have shown
impatience, had she not been an eternally patient bird. EAT OF THIS SEED, AND
TAKE IT WITH YOU FOR THEM. Another seed flicked toward her.

 Clio caught it. Still she tried to
protest. “I don't think they could get past the Python and the maenads.
When I left them, they were fighting each other, but some may survive, and
they're vicious.”

 THEY ARE IMMORTAL. THEY KNOW THEY CAN'T
DIE, SO THEY FEEL FREE TO FIGHT.

 Oh. That did make sense. “But
suppose the Python swallows a maenad?”

 SHEWILLPASSTHROUGH HIS DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
AND EMERGE UNSCATHED, IN DUE COURSE.

 Clio had to smile. “But I suppose
she would not much like the experience.”

 There was an echoing smile in the
Simurgh's thought. TRUE. YOUR SISTERS WILL TRAVEL SAFELY. NOW EAT OF THE SEED.

 She had forgotten it for the moment.
She nibbled on it. Suddenly she was filled with positive belief. “I'll do
it,” she agreed.

 IT IS THE SEED OF CERTAINTY. REST HERE
THIS NIGHT.

 Suddenly that seemed the most sensible
thing to do. She lay on the ground where she was and slept. That hinted how
tired she was, because princesses never roughed it in such manner. Walking the
way she had was bad enough; this was downright crude. Suppose some man came by
in the night and gazed lasciviously at her exposed ankles?

 In the morning she woke, well
refreshed. She discovered a downy feather the size of a pillow under her head,
and a flexible feather the size of a quilt covering her. She had had a most
comfortable bed, and her ankles were not exposed.

 She got up and stretched. The Simurgh
remained perched on her limb, evidently asleep. There was no point in bothering
her; Clio had a job to do. She turned and looked for a suitable path down the
mountain.

 I WILL TAKE YOU, GOOD GIRL.

 Then a taloned foot reached down and
enclosed her gently. Clio hadn't even realized that the bird had taken wing;
her flight was quite silent. Suddenly they were gliding down the mountain
slope, then up into the sky, then across the variegated landscape of Xanth.

 Before she really got her bearings,
they were at Castle Roogna, landing by the orchard. The Simurgh set her down
and disappeared, literally: there was no sign of the bird. But Clio didn't
hesitate; she walked purposefully to the castle, entered, and called out:
“Sisters! I'm back, and I have somewhere for us all to go.”

 In a moment they clustered around her.
Rather than try to explain, she held up the big seed. “Try this
first.”

 They tried it, as it was fragrant and
tasty. Then they too were certain. “We will go,” they agreed.
“This is what we have been waiting for.”

 They gathered their things and bid
farewell to Rose, who was sorry to see them go but recognized the need. Then
they went outside.

 An invisible curving cage formed about
them. It lifted, carrying them into the sky. Once they were fully airborne, the
rest of the bird appeared; they were within the loose enclosure of her talons.

 “Sisters, meet the Simurgh,”
Clio said. “Simurgh, these are my eight sisters. We are all certain we
want to join you onMountParnassus, and assume the roles of the nine
Muses.”

 “And so it was,” Clio
concluded, opening her eyes and seeing the tiny dragons. “We became the
Muses in the year 937, and have been so for the past hundred and sixty-seven
years. The Simurgh was right: we learned, and I think we have performed
adequately. We seldom leave the mountain, though I did attend Humfrey's first
wedding and have seen him on occasion since then. I have written many histories
of Xanth, and now am on a quest to discover why one volume has become opaque to
me. I have to find a red berry. I will age normally as long as I am away from
the mountain, and face daily danger, but it just has to be risked. If I get too
old, I will die, but I hope to wrap this up expedi-tiously and remain young
enough to live.”

 “We will assist you,” Drew
said. “Those maenads seem like fun. So does the Python.”

 “I will introduce you to them.
They no longer chase me, lest I write them out of history.”

 The two tiny dragons chuckled.
“You have power now,” Drew said. “That helps. But we'll help
too.”

 “We can do a lot, when we put our
little minds to it,” Drusie agreed. “We'll find the red berry. This
should be easy.”

 Clio suspected that they were mistaken,
but she didn't argue. It would be nice if it did turn out to be easy.

 So how do we start?" Drew asked.

 “Well, I'm not sure. I had rather
expected more direction from the Good Magician than I received.”

 “You are being polite,”
Drusie said, reading the situation in her mind. “I'd have steamed his
little toe.”

 Clio stroked the little pink dragon's
back with one finger. “I appreciate the support, but there's surely a
reason for his attitude.”

 “Take us there,” Drew said.
“I'll toast his big toe until he gives you more information.”

 Clio suppressed a wicked temptation.
“That would not be expedient. I believe it is best simply to muddle
through on my own.”

 “The trouble with you is that
you're too nice a person.”

 “Would that it were so. Then maybe
I could find a compatible man and marry.”

 “You can do that?” Drusie
asked.

 “Marry? Of course. Except that who
would want to marry a Muse and be confined forever toMountParnassus?”

 “We'll work on it,” Drew
said.

 They meant well. “Thank you.”

 “What's that on your wrist?”
Drusie asked.

 Clio looked. There on her left wrist
was the magic compass Humfrey had given her. She had thought that would fade
out, now that her Service was done. “That's the device I used to locate
you, so that you could help me on Dragon World. The blue arrow shows the way I
should go, and the red one shows how much time I have to get there.”

 “That must show you where to go
next,” Drew said. “You don't seem to have long.”

 Surprised, Clio actually read the
dials. “True. I'd better see what it wants me to see.”

 They set off. Clio knew the fastest
paths down the mountain, and no one bothered her. Soon they were walking across
the regular terrain of Xanth.

 It turned out to be a longish walk,
with the red arrow constantly getting nearer to zero hour. Clio hurried, but
realized she might be a bit late.

 Naturally, since she was in a hurry,
she encountered another person. But maybe this would help. “Hello. I'm
Clio. My talent is to wind time back when I need to.”

 The girl jumped. “Oh, I'm sorry-I
didn't see you. I'm Deirdre. My talent is oversight. I see everything from
above, but nothing in front of me.”

 “Do you see anything unusual in
the direction I'm going?”

 “Well, there's an ogre with a
garden. That's unusual.”

 It was, but Clio doubted that was where
she was headed. “Thank you.” She hurried on.

 “Another girl ahead,” Drew
said.

 Sure enough, there she was, right in
the path. Clio couldn't escape another introduction. “I'm Clio, and I'm in
a hurry.”

 “I'm Michele, and it's not my
fault.”

 Clio paused. “What's not your
fault?”

 “That you're in a hurry. My talent
is shifting blame or credit.”

 That was interesting, and Clio would
have liked to learn more of it, but she simply couldn't wait. “It's
working; my hurry has nothing to do with you.” She rushed on, leaving
Michele somewhat nonplussed.

 Just as the red arrow touched the mark,
they came into sight of an ogre. He was twice the height of a human man, and
solid in proportion. “Me bash, you crash!” he said in the typical
dull rhyme that was all most folk ever heard of ogre talk. He struck something,
and it went flying into the distance.

 The blue arrow followed the flying
object.

 Clio sighed. She had another windback
to do.

 She wound back the scene. The flying
thing reappeared, came up against the ogre's hamfist, and touched the ground.
“!hsarc uoy, hsab eM”

 She wound it back a bit more, then
looked. It was a human man getting bashed. “Stop that ogre!” she
cried.

 Both dragons darted forward, flying
low. One jetted a small blue flame, toasting the ogre's right big toe. The
other pink-steamed his left little toe.

 “He go, me toe!” the ogre
said, aware of some slight discomfort. But that was enough to distract him from
the man he had been about to bash. He squatted, swatting at his feet. The
dragons zipped away and rejoined Clio.

 Clio caught the man's arm. “Get
out of here,” she said. “We'll distract the ogre.”

 The man stumbled away, obviously
uncertain what was happening. Clio stood before the squatting ogre, whose huge
ugly face was now about her own head height. “What do you think you're
doing?” she demanded imperiously. She could invoke the Voice of Authority
when she needed to.

 “Me Bash, he dash,” he said.

 “I saw that.” Though now it
hadn't happened.

 “He means his name is Bash,”
Drew said from her pocket. Because this was a mental effect, he was inaudible
to the ogre. “He hurried to save his garden from molestation.”

 “Garden! Molestation!” Since
when did ogres care about either? Yet this was obviously the gardening ogre
Deirdre had mentioned.

 “Since Bash started farming
puns,” Drusie said. “He's got a garden of them, and the man messed it
up. So Bash got rid of him. He has a case.”

 “He doesn't grow them all,”
Drew said. “Some he collects. He really cares about it.”

 What a reversal! But it seemed this was
a situation she needed to rectify. It did not seem to have anything to do with
a red berry, but maybe that was in another part of the garden. “Hello,
Bash. I am Clio. Perhaps I can help. What damage did the man do to your garden?”

 The ogre pointed a hamfinger to what
looked like the wreck of a Mundane car. Steam was rising from it.

 “It's a car-burr-ator,” Drew
said. “It's supposed to freeze cars, whatever they are. Now it makes them
overheat.”

 “I will fix it,” Clio said.
“What else?”

 Bash pointed to an apelike creature.

 “You certainly look charming, fair
lady,” the ape called. “You must be a king's daughter.”

 Of course she was a king's daughter,
but that was a long time ago. “What is wrong with this?” she asked
Drew.

 “That's a harang-u-tan,” the
dragon explained as he did more mind reading. “He's supposed to hurl
insults. Now he wafts compliments.”

 Which ruined the pun. “I will fix
that too,” Clio told the ogre. “What else?”

 He pointed to several big white letter F's
lying in a pile. “Those are tasteless white F's,” Drew explained.
“They used to be tasty brown E's.”

 “That too,” Clio said with a
sigh.

 There turned out to be a number of
spoiled puns in the garden. There were retro specs that could see the past; now
the glasses looked into the future. There was a grain of sand that was actually
a peep show, showing a distant person whatever it saw; Clio had heard of those,
and knew they were popular with young men who liked to scatter them around
girls' private living quarters. Now it was reversed, showing the person who was
trying to use it. There was an impro vise that was supposed to hold anything on
the spot; now it repelled things. This garden had become a disaster.

 Clio did what she didn't like, and
wound the scene back farther yet, until the visiting man was entirely gone from
the scene. That should fix the problem.

 “Now we need to intercept the man
and find out what he did to that garden,” she told the dragons. “But
he came from the other side, and I'll have to run by the ogre to get to him.
That hardly seems feasible.”

 “I'll fly ahead and intercept
him,” Drew said. “I'll tell him to wait where he is and meet you when
you arrive.”

 “Thank you.” The dragons
really were helping.

 Drew flew ahead so rapidly he looked
like a small blue bird. Clio walked at her normal sedate pace. In a generous
moment she passed the garden, which now had a car motor with frost on it, a
pile of warm brown E's, and a talking ape. “Who do you think you are, you
crazy damsel?” he demanded. “Can't you see this is private property?
If my master Bash Ogre finds you, he'll squeeze you into pulp juice.”

 Yes, the garden was back in form. She
ignored the haranguing ape, avoided stepping over the peep show sand, and
walked on. Soon she encountered the ogre. “Who you?” Bash demanded
truculently.

 “I am Clio, the Muse of History. I
believe you'll find everything in order in your garden.”

 “Me see.” He tromped on to
investigate.

 “Why didn't he squeeze you into
pulp?” Drusie asked.

 “He didn't think of it. I
distracted him by reminding him of the garden. Ogres are proud of their
stupidity, with good reason; they can't entertain two thoughts at the same
time. Actually they are not bad folk, once you understand them. They don't even
speak in dull rhyme among themselves; it is only the ignorant who hear them
that way, expecting no better.”

 “But you heard him in rhyme.”

 “I didn't want to socialize with
him, so I kept it basic. Another time may be different.”

 “At least you have handled your
danger for today,” Drusie said.

 “I don't believe so. The ogre was
never a threat to me. That's why I was so bold in bracing him.”

 “So your danger is still to
come?”

 “Yes, I believe so.”

 “Then when it's done you'll be
able to relax.”

 “No. Actually there is no maximum
limit; I can encounter more than one danger in a day. Just never less than one.
So I must be on constant guard.”

 “That's one mean curse,” the
dragon said.

 Clio nodded. “I am accustomed to
it. But it is another reason I'm generally not keen on
leavingMountParnassus.”

 They came to the man, who was standing
still with the tiny dragon perched on his shoulder. Drew had given her time to
talk with the ogre without encountering the man at the same time, thus avoiding
another bashing sequence.

 He looked up and saw her. “Hello,
Muse; I am honored to meet you.”

 “I told him all about you,”
Drew said proudly. “And how you just saved him from getting bashed by Bash
Ogre.”

 Clio sighed inwardly. She would have to
caution the dragons about saying too much to strangers. She preferred to
introduce herself, and to keep personal information to herself unless making it
known was warranted.

 “Oops, sorry,” Drew said
contritely.

 “I am glad to meet you,” Clio
said somewhat insincerely to the man. “There was a problem, so I abated
it.”

 “The telepathic dragon says that
you wound time backward so as to spare me mischief. To what do I owe this
considerable favor?”

 “I am not sure.” Now she
really looked at him for the first time, and saw that he was an unprepossessing
middle-aged man of dark countenance. “You look familiar; have you been a
significant character before?”

 “Oh, yes. I am Sherlock, of the
Black Wave. I made one of your volumes when I traveled with Dug Mundane twelve
years ago, helping him play his game while I searched for a suitable region for
the Wave to settle. That turned out to be aroundLakeOgreChobee. We normally get
along well with ogres; I find it hard to believe that I affronted one, or will
do so.”

 Sherlock. Yes, he was a decent man from
Mundania who would now be about forty-five. He should have settled down and
married long since, instead of wandering out here in nowhere. “I remember
you now. I agree; you are not likely to give offense to anyone. Yet it seems
you did to that ogre, by changing aspects of his garden.”

 “I wouldn't know how to change a
garden.” Sherlock paused, considering. “But I can't say I'm
surprised. Weird things have been happening around me. That's why my people no
longer wanted me around. No one wants me around for long.”

 “We must explore this,” Clio
said. “Because I was guided to you. I do not know why, but of course the
things set in motion by the Good Magician are often devious.”

 “I agree. Maybe he made a mistake
this time. I'm really a person of no account, and I wouldn't want to cause you
any mischief, Muse. I appreciate the good work you are doing. So I think I
should just be on my way before anything else happens.”

 Clio glanced at her wrist. The blue
arrow still pointed to the man. "No, we have business together, and it
behooves us to discover what it is.

 “No offense, but I find that hard
to believe. You are an important person and are surely wasting your time with
me.”

 Clio smiled. “Let's find
out.” She looked around, and saw a couch potato. She sat in it, and it was
comfortable. “Join me, please.”

 Sherwood shrugged and sat beside her.
But as he did, the cool soft couch suddenly became burning hot. Both of them
leaped out. The thing was now a hot potato.

 “That must be your danger,”
Drusie said.

 “I doubt it; I didn't need to wind
back to get out of it.”

 “It's happening again,”
Sherlock said, dismayed, as he brushed off his hot backside. “Really, you
don't want to associate with me any longer, Muse.”