Up In A Heaval (17 page)

Para nodded. He would be glad to wait. He was a very obliging boat.

There was a path leading into Euphoria. The four of them followed it. Sammy did not lead the way, because his talent was absent here; neither could Claire know their situation. They had been reduced to mere cats, and Sesame was a mere serpent, and Umlaut a mere human youth.

Euphoria was beautiful. The trees might not have magic, but they had solid trunks and foliage. They passed a field of fine flowers. There was a stream that was absolutely unmagical but seemed not to mind; it trickled merrily on its way. There was a garden with many unfamiliar vegetables growing. And finally there was a pleasant little house on a little hill. There was a sign saying GOLEM. That must be the place.

They approached it, expecting it to grow as the magic of perspective reverted it to its real size. But it turned out really to be little. The hill was about knee high on Umlaut, and the house's roof was about waist height. Umlaut realized that he had been thinking magically, allowing for perspective when actually that magic too was gone. So this looked like a dollhouse because it was really that size.

He sat down beside the house, then extended one finger and cautiously tapped on the little door. In a moment it opened and a woman no taller than his spread-fingered hand stood there. “Hello,” she said, not seeming surprised by their size.

“Uh, I'm Umlaut. I have a letter for Grundy Golem.”

“I'm Rapunzel, Grundy's wife.” She touched her hair, which was so long it pretty well surrounded her. “A letter? Who is it from?”

“A woman in Mundania. I, uh, had to read it first. It gets complicated to explain.” He held out the envelope.

She looked at it. The envelope was almost as long as she was. “I think we'll have to have our daughter read it to us. She's out on a nature walk at the moment; you can find her if you follow the path on beyond the house.”

“Uh, okay, I guess,” he said with his usual certainty. “Uh, these are my friends Sesame, Sammy, and Claire. They—”

“Sammy! I didn't notice you. Come give me a kiss. How's Jenny doing these days? Has she signaled the stork yet? And you have a girlfriend now? It's about time, you rogue.”

Everybody knew Sammy. Umlaut decided it was okay to leave the others with Rapunzel, since she knew Sammy, and his friends wouldn't hurt her despite being much larger than she was. He walked on along the path.

The country continued beautiful. This was a perfect place, apart from its lack of magic. But there were nice regions within the magic portion of Xanth; why had they chosen Euphoria?

He had no idea where the Golem family's daughter was; she could be anywhere. He didn't want to do something awful, like inadvertently stepping on her, so he kept his eyes on the path and walked carefully. He didn't know how old she was but couldn't envision anyone that small being very old, so thought she might be seven or eight. Why they wanted her to read the letter he wasn't sure; maybe she was learning to read and it would be good practice. They could perhaps prop it up against the house and read it from a suitable distance.

“Hello.”

He jumped. The soft voice was close, but he didn't see the child. He froze in place so as to present no danger to her until he saw exactly where she was. But he didn't see her. “Uh, where are you, miss—?”

“Surprise,” she said. “I'm up here.”

He looked up. There before him was a full-sized human girl. She was pretty in an ordinary way, having some family resemblance to Rapunzel despite the size differential. Maybe it was her hair, which reached to her knees, changing color somewhat as it went. “Uh, I, uh, thought you'd be smaller,” he said, then realized how clumsy that sounded. “Uh, younger.”

“I'm fourteen,” she said pertly. When she twitched her head, the ends of her tresses curled up like little yo-yos. “That's old enough.”

He remained taken aback. “Uh, yes, of course. I'm Umlaut. What uh, is your name?”

“Surprise.”

“Yes, you surprised me. But what I was asking—”

“You're cute.” She stepped into him and kissed him. There was no wine in it, but it made him feel remarkably good. Then, while he stood half stunned by her gesture, she explained: “My name is Surprise Golem. That's because I was a surprise. The storks had a horrible confusion, and by the time I was delivered I was five years old and could already walk and talk. Grundy and Rapunzel accepted me anyway, and we went on from there. My magic was even more surprising.”

Everything about her was surprising! “My, uh, talent, is emulation. When there's magic. I can make myself seem like other, uh, people.”

She clapped her hands with girlish glee. “That explains it! You're emulating a socially inept boy.”

Umlaut blushed. “I, uh, wasn't trying to. I mean—”

“Oh, this is so much fun! Let's walk and talk a bit.” She took his hand with her nice fingers and led him on along the path. “Tell me all about yourself.”

“But I'm just here to, uh, deliver a, uh, letter.”

“And what kind of epistle is an 'uh' letter?”

“It's a, uh—” He stopped. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Am I doing that? I apologize.” She kissed him again.

This set him back farther than the first kiss had. “You didn't, uh, need to do that.”

“What, didn't you like it?”

He blushed twice as badly. “That's not the, uh, point.”

“Yes it is. It's a gourd apology.”

“A what?”

“Oh, you don't know about that? This is even more fun.”

He tried to get angry, but it was so nice being with her that he couldn't manage it. “All that fun is at my expense.”

She put on a contrite mien. “I will explain. In the gourd—you do know what the gourd is?”

“Uh, no,” he admitted.

“Then I will explain that too. Come sit by me.” She led him to a broad tree stump and made him sit. Then she sat beside him and put one arm around his waist.

“Why are you doing that?”

“First things first, and that's about third. First the gourd: it's known as the hypno-gourd, and it looks like an ordinary garden-variety gourd, but there's a little peephole in the end, and if you look in that, you freeze. All you can do is keep looking, and your mind is inside it, seeing all manner of weird things. That's the realm of dreams, and the night mares go there.”

“Night mare,” he said. “I met a day mare. They said she was called Imbri.”

“Yes, she was a night, but now she's a day. She must have brought you a daydream. What was it about?”

“A girl,” he said, blushing yet again.

“How sweet. Was it me?”

He looked at her, not even able to say “uh.” She was the girl. He was blushing so hard and hot he was afraid the red would start peeling off his face.

“Anyway, that's the gourd,” she said. “Now the denizens therein have a quaint custom that is slowly spreading to the outside. They don't apologize by words so much as by gestures. That is, a hug and a kiss. If it isn't accepted—” She broke off, glancing sharply at him. “Did you accept?”

“Accept what?” He was flustered on top of his embarrassment.

“I guess you didn't. So I have to try again. Maybe I can do it right this time. Let's get you into position.” She put her fine hands on his shoulders and turned him half around on the stump, then drew him in for an embrace. Before he could get out another “uh” she kissed him, firmly and lingeringly.

There was still no wine in it, but he did feel as if he were floating. Yet he knew this wasn't right. “You're, uh, only fourteen,” he said when she released him.

“That's old enough,” she repeated. “Do I take this to mean that you still haven't accepted my apology?”

“I don't even remember what you're apologizing for!” he blurted.

“For teasing you. Since you haven't accepted—”

“I accept!” he cried.

“Awww, spoilsport,” she said, making a cute moue.

She was still teasing him, but he decided not to make an issue of it, lest she kiss him again. Besides, he liked it.

“So that's why I'm doing this,” she continued after a moment, putting her arm around his waist again. “To be in position for an apology. I trust everything is quite clear now?”

“Nothing is clear!” he exclaimed. “I came here to deliver a letter, and Rapunzel said you would have to read it to them, because it's sort of big for her to handle. So I looked for you, and all you've been doing is—teasing me.”

“You really don't know,” she said. “That's part of what makes it fun.”

“What don't! know?”

“That you are my ideal man.”

He stared at her, dumbfounded again.

She glanced modestly down at the ground, then back up to catch his gaze, and smiled. He felt a little thrill when she did that. “I think I had better go back a bit. You see, 'I have an unusual magic talent.”

He started to try to speak, but she laid her finger across his lips. “I'll answer that question in a moment. My talent is to be able to do anything—once. That is, I can make myself fly, but after I'm done, I can't invoke that ability again. It's gone. I can conjure a chocolate pie to eat, and it will be an excellent pie, but thereafter I can never do that again. And so on. I have all the talents in Xanth, but every one I use, I lose. I was brokenhearted when I discovered that, as you might imagine. If I live long enough, I will be entirely out of magic. Unless I never use my talents—in which case, what good are they?” She looked pensive.

“I don't know,” Umlaut said. “I'm sorry.”

“So am I. The thing is, we use our talents automatically in Xanth; it's part of our natures. I'm sure you do emulations whenever you need them.”

“Yes.”

“So if I was hungry, I'd use a new way to fetch a pie. If I wanted to go somewhere, I'd use another way to do it. There are many variants of each talent, so I could fly by flapping my arms, or by making myself light enough to float, as the winged centaurs do, or by magnetically repelling the ground so that I pushed off from it. But each time, I lost another talent. I was afraid I'd be out of the best ones before I ever grew up and joined the Adult Conspiracy.” She glanced at him. “Do you belong?”

“Uh, not quite. I'm seventeen.”

“But you know that a significant part of it is knowing the signal to summon the stork, and not believing in monsters under the bed, and losing your taste for meals consisting entirely of candy, and being able to say bad words—all those supremely dull things that make adults adult?”

“Yes. I dread it.”

“So do I. The last thing I want is to lose all my magic talents before I turn adult, because then I'd have none of the joys of childhood left. So I knew I had to protect my talents, even from myself. That's why we moved here, where there is no magic. So I can't waste them inadvertently.”

“That does make sense,” he agreed. He was feeling more at ease in her presence.

“But the fact is, I will turn adult in time, and I figure it will be a lot less worse if I have a good man to love. Of course at my age I have no inkling of what real love is; my parents have assured me of that. But they also say that the right partner can make all the difference, and seeing them together, I believe it. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he said before he thought. “I mean—”

“Oh, don't take it back! So you dreamed of your ideal girl, just as I dreamed of my ideal boy. Then just a few hours ago I wandered near the edge of the magic region, and a demoness appeared. She tried to be anonymous, but she had trouble with her words—”

“Metria!”

“You got it. She told me that my ideal man was on the way and would arrive any day now. And here you are.”

“But I'm not ideal. I'm really not much of anything.”

“Metria also told me that you were unreasonably modest. I like that too.”

“I've got a lot to be modest about! I mean, because I don't have anything to be proud of.”

“And she warned me that you had a double helping of decency. She thought that was a liability. I don't.”

He was surprised. “You, uh, don't?”

“She said you kissed two women just because you knew it would make them feel good.”

“Well, uh, yes, but—”

“And that you helped the fauns & nymphs just because they needed it.”

“Uh, yes, but anyone would have done that.”

“Not just anyone, I think.”

“But—”

“Oh, shut up.” But before he could do that, she did it for him, by covering his mouth with another kiss.

When the little hearts stopped orbiting his head, he tried once more to clarify that he wasn't remarkable. “I'm just delivering letters. It's sheer coincidence.”

“Very little in Xanth is coincidence. So I knew who you were the moment I saw you come down the garden path.”

“But I'm not anything special, let alone ideal! In fact I'm a klutz.”

“I noticed. I like it.”

“You can't be serious. A girl as pretty and talented as you, you can do so much better.”

“I don't want better. I want appreciation and understanding as my magic diminishes and my age increases. I want a malleable man I can do anything I want with, who will like whatever I do. Who will still love me when all my magic is gone. What do you want?”

“In a girl? I, uh, I guess maybe the same. But—”

“There's always a but,” she said. “That's part of the beauty of it.”

“You won't like this.” He realized that, horrendously against his better judgment, he was falling into the pattern she described. She was exactly the kind of girl he wanted. “I don't seem to have a past. I mean I can't remember anything before I started this mission, and others tell me I don't exist. There's something wrong with me.”

“Nothing that love can't fix, I'm sure.”

“I don't know. I—”

Then she kissed him again, and all remaining resistance crumbled. It didn't matter that all this was very sudden and completely unexpected on his part. She had overwhelmed him. “Oh, Surprise,” he said. “Whatever there is of me, you can have. If you really want it. I'm mal—mal—soft putty in your ringers. But—”

“I know. We have to join the Adult Conspiracy first. I think I can manage that in two years; the age isn't quite fixed. Meanwhile we can have our understanding and feel what we feel.”

“And feel what we feel,” he agreed, his head spinning. “May I— is it all right if I—that is, uh—”