The Color Of Her Panties (35 page)

Mela seemed ready to faint, but she managed to stave it off, because there was just too much to appreciate in the conscious state.  Ida saw that Prince Naldo was indeed the most intelligent, handsome, nicest unmarried prince in Xanth.  It hadn't been clear before, because he had never shown them his human form, but now it was impossible to doubt.

Mela's dream had been realized.

The prince took Mela in his arms and kissed her.  They made Xanth's loveliest couple, even if they were both in human form at the moment.

Only the goblins seemed bored.

Then the Freudian slip flashed a glimpse that nudged the male goblins across the line into freakdom.

Naldo drew back half a smidgen and gazed into Mela's oceanic eyes.  “How do I love sea?” he asked rhetorically.

“Let me count the waves.” The merwoman seemed about to dissolve.  She had been warned about his humor.

A hand touched Ida's arm.  She turned to find Princess Ivy there.  “Come, sister  we must take you to Castle Roogna to meet your family.”

Ida realized that she had indeed achieved her destiny.

They all had.

Credits

Jenny Elf reported to the Good Magician's castle.  “I am here to do my year's service,” she said.

Magician Grey Murphy was there.  “But you're in the wrong place,” he said.  “This is the Author's Note.”

“The what?”

“Never mind.  You're supposed to be in your own chapter, in the main body of the narrative.”

“No, the story is done.  Gwenny Goblin is chief of Goblin Mountain, and Che Centaur is helping her.  Okra is a major character, Ida is a twin princess, and Mela is showing Naldo Naga her two very fine-”

“Beware of the Adult Conspiracy!” he said, worried.

“Her two very fine firewater opals,” Jenny continued.

“And maybe something else, but that's their business.  So everything has been wrapped up, and I'm here for my year.”

“I see you don't understand,” he said.  “It has to do with the way the Muse of History organizes these narratives.  This one has two groups of three characters each, and they take turns with the viewpoint.  So a cycle was Mela, Ida, Okra, Che, Gwenny, and you, Jenny.  Three such cycles complete the narrative.  Eighteen chapters in all.  It's done to confound the critics, I think, who don't know anything about literature.

You're supposed to be viewing Chapter Eighteen.”

“What Chapter Eighteen?” Jenny demanded.  “I gave Gwenny back her contact lens when I got a new pair of spectacles, so I can't see dreams anymore.  Is it a dream chapter?”

Grey looked flustrated.  “It's the final chapter!  Where everything gets wrapped up with a happy ending, according to the formula.”

“But everything's already wrapped up.  So there's nothing left for me to view.  So here I am, ready to get this yearlong chore out of the way, though I'd rather be with Gwenny and Che.”

“Maybe Humfrey can explain it to you,” he said.

They went up to the tiny study with its piles of everything.  The old gnome looked up.  “About time you got here, Jenny,” he grumped.  “What kept you?”

“But she's supposed to be running Chapter Eighteen,” Grey protested.

Humfrey scowled.  “Clio glitched,” he said.  “A chapter got mislaid.

Probably because Jenny came from a foreign world, and so doesn't mesh perfectly with Xanth.

There is no Chapter Eighteen.”

“But that means Jenny doesn't get her allotted viewpoint,” Grey said. “That isn't right.”

“So let her handle the credits,” Humfrey said.

Grey threw up his hands.  “All right.  Jenny, you will begin your service by handling a mundane chore.  It’s highly irregular, but we just have to make do.  Here is the list of credits; just describe them in your own words.  I'll show you to your room, so you won't disturb Humfrey.“ Jenny took the list.  It was a strange thing, but then everything about the Good Magician's enterprise was strange.  Hers, she realized, was not to reason why, hers was just to wash and dry.  Or whatever.

She took a breath and started reading:  “The hit man and the mitten bush were sent by Tim Hittle.  The piggy bank was from Guy McCutchan.  The road hog is Robert Thrbyfill.  The lemon tree is Kanayo Agbodike.

Electra's daughters, Dawn and Eve, and their talents are from Abbey Wraets.  Esk Ogre and Bria Brassies son, Brusque, is from C.  M.  Keller, and his talent of making things hard and heavy or light and soft is from Jason Menefree.  Calling a goblin child a goblet is from Ronald Foster.”

Then she came to a paragraph.  This was a big one.  It was also a surprise, because it related to a character she had just come to know.

“Okra Ogress and the related detail is from Barbara Hay Hummel, she of the pain medicine who brought us Rose of Roogna in Question Quest.

Barb is also responsible for the fanciest of the panties Mela modeled but did not choose, and for Canis the dog and the seed of Thyme.

Jenny shook her head.  Okra had not only been a minor character, she had been fashioned by a Mundane?  No wonder she had been eager to changer her status!  And what was this about pain medicine?  Someone in pain would really have the desire to escape to fantasy!

This whole thing was weird.

She took another breath and resumed.  “The asthma is from Carson Fredericks.  The idea of the healing water for Gwenny Goblin's eyes is from Deborah Jones.  The reason healing elixir did not cure Gwenny's or Jenny's vision is from Woodrow W.  Windischaman III.  The contact lenses for Gwenny are from Kit Arnold, Rene Alexander, Lisa Campbell, and Ann Franklin.  The multiplication table is from John C.  Wear.” Jenny looked up, unable to restrain herself.  “Thank you, John Wear!” she said with the heaviest irony she could muster.  What a mess that had been!

She took another breath and went on.  “The pulpit and the putrifly are from Patrick Brown.  Attila the Hunny Bee is from John Brummel.  The leaves of absence are from Eric Meyersfield.  The gunman is from Mark Richman.

The winged fauns are from Brent Kauffman.” She looked up again.  She hoped those folks would just keep their future suggestions to themselves!  Did they have any idea how they had complicated her life and the lives of her friends?

But then the endless credits took another tack.  “The otterbees are from Virginia A.  Johnson.  The hoof-in-mouth disease is from Christopher Onstad.  The tickle- and gooseberry bushes are from W.  G.  Bliss.  The madcap is from Zoe Selengut.“ She looked up again.  That had turned out to be really useful in the end.  So maybe these credits weren't all mere mischief.

“Alister and his dog, Marbles, are from Jody Lynn Nye, the nymph who authored The Encyclopedia of Xanth.  The Propeller Plains are from Mayfair Games.  The doldrums are from Carol Jacob.  The Dragon Dola is from Russell Duffer.  Joy'nt the little skeleton is from David Edison.

Thomas Hardy provided the inspiration for the pun on Far from the Madding Crowd.  Nada Naga's debt to the gourd was pointed out by Patrick Ware.  The problem of children exposed to what the Adult Conspiracy conceals was suggested by N.  N.  Reits, though that treatment may not be precisely what was envisioned.  This is, after all, Xanth.”

Jenny looked up again.  “But it was bad enough,” she said to no one in particular.

She resumed her reading.  “The old wives' tail and air brush were by Tamara Bailey.  Darren, the boy with the ability to make things into other things, was suggested by Melinda Gordon, who was age eight when she wrote.  Isn't it odd that she was just his age?  The roc and the hard place was the genius of Jason Rodrigues; there will be more about that concept in Novel nineteen.  The algae bra was from Robert A.  Hubby, relayed from his math teacher, Dick Greseth.  Who says math can't be fun?  The Freudian slip was by Cynthia Bellah, and Mount Ever-Rest was by Charles E.  Brown.  Ivy's having a twin sister was the idea of Joanna van oorschot, who used her magic to make it come true.  It came true for Ivy's mundane identity, too:  the author's daughter Penny found a friend, Joana Janse, exactly her age to the day.  viously that's no coincideTice; Joana with the one N must have come into beirig when Joanna with the two N's thought up the notion.”

Jenny looked up again, startled.  “So that's how it happened!  It came from Mundania!  “ She was amazed at these revealed interactions between Xanth and Mundania.  She returned to the list.  .  “How do I love sea,”

etc.  was spoken by Suzan Malles.” Jenny sighed.  When would it ever end?

It got worse.  “The derivation of the title was devious.

In the dawn of history there was the promise or threat of the sound of his horn, or the playing of the Angel Gabriel's trumpet, signaling the end of the world.  Then Stephen Donaldson used a similar patterning for his novel The Mirror of Her Dreams.  Then came Powers's The Stress of Her Regard.  Xanth of course is lower brow-in fact about halfway from the brow to the ground-and distressingly naughty.  Thus The Color of Her Panties.  “ This time Jenny merely shook her head, realizing that Xanth was incorrigible.  Anyway, they were nice panties, and they had helped Mela Merwoman to nab her husband, which was the point of the whole adventure,.  If Jenny ever decided to look for a husband herself, she would remember how it was done.

She resumed reading.  “But why that particular color?

Indeed, who says it is a color?  Well, the official colors of the author's 1952 class at Westtown Friends School in Pennsylvania were plaid and white, partly in honor of their chosen female faculty member, Teacher Rachel Letchworth, who had Scottish blood.  But the printer was unable to reproduce plaid for the yearbook, so brown had to be substituted.  (There was a male faculty member, Master Charlie Brown, but it is unknown whether he had anything to do with this).  Ever since, the class colors have been erroneously listed as brown and white.  Those are actually the school colors.  Perhaps this helps correct the record it has been a forty-year indignity.  This, at any rate, is the precedent for using plaid as a color.  You have a problem with that?”

Jenny shook her head, listening to what she had read.

“I never questioned plaid as a color,” she said quickly.

She looked at the list again.  “There were several more suggestions, but they didn't manage to squeeze into this volume.  Probably they will be used in the next.”

Then it got really odd, because she found herself reading about herself-only not exactly.  “Jenny of Mundania, the model for Jenny Elf, who was paralyzed by a drunken driver, continues to improve.” She paused.  She herself derived from a Mundane?  Just as Okra did?  And this Mundane had chosen her instead of Okra, to represent her in Xanth?

The concept was so strange she set it aside and resumed reading.  “This report will be over a year out of date by the time you read it, but here it is:

“Jenny is now able to use a cup and drink by herself.

She can sit in a chair in the shower, washing herself.  She is in the hospital, being trained to use her computer, and is getting more facile with it.  She can use it to call home, and her mother has made a game of it by installing a security code, so that Jenny has to figure out how to break it in order to gain entry to the home computer.  The first code was simple, but each subsequent one is harder, so that Jenny really has to use her mind.  Since she has much more use of her mind than her body, this is good.  Her speech is improving too, but she needs surgery on her jaw-I would mention the temporomandibular joint, but only a nerd would understand the term-so that her mouth will be able to move for better enunciation.  Remember, Jenny was really bashed up, and some things that don't show cause her endless complications.  Her mother estimates that Jenny has now received over two thousand nice letters, and they are still coming in at the rate of three or four a day from all over the world.  They would really like to answer them, but are presently unable.

It's pretty much a full-time job just surviving.  However, one letter write happened to be in the area, and recognized Jenny at the store-oh, yes, it is possible to shop in a wheelchair-and exclaimed  “I wrote to you!” Just so.

There was a knock on the door.  Jenny opened it.  Grey Murphy was there.  “There's been another mistake,” he said, embarrassed.  “Good Magician Humfrey forgot.  You are supposed to report to the demons game, to work with Nada Naga.  That will complete your service.”

Jenny was pleased.  “ ada's nice!” She handed him the sheaf of credits.

“These are weird.”

“They always are,” he agreed.  “Yet also true.  I once lived in Mundania, and saw how Xanth looks from there.”

“If I could believe more than just a little of this, I would be extremely mixed up,” she said.

He nodded.  “It is probably best just to forget it.  The Good Magician will conjure you to the demons' studio.”

Jenny followed him down the hall.  She knew she would have an interesting experience in the game.  But she wasn't sure she would forget what she had just read.

And so we finally get it straightened out, and I, the author, will finish this Author's Note myself.  I have just one thing to add.  It is of a personal nature, but important to me.  While working on this novel in Mayhem 1991 I attended a memorial service, and I spoke there.  The person being honored was extremely popular in her community, and there ere many there to speak well of her.  I think my own words are self-explanatory.  Actually I did not speak as well as this rendition makes it seem; my thoughts got tangled by emotion, and some were left out.

So this is the full text, including what I meant to say as well as what I did.

“My mother said.Oh, I'm going!” and she died.  I was not ready.  I did not want her to start that journey so soon.

I cannot change it, but perhaps I can conjecture where it was that she was going.  Call this a fantasy, if you will.

My mother was in her way a creature of trains; when she traveled she did not like to fly, though she would do so when she had to, and I don't think she really liked long car drives either.  I share these sentiments.  So I'm sure it was a train she chose when it came time to make this final journey.  There is just something about a train, in its beauty and power and reliability.  A train is like portable civilization.  Everything you need or want is there.  Edna St.  Vincent Millay put it nicely:  “There isn't a train I wouldn't take, no matter where it's going.” You can trust a train.