Man From Mundania (27 page)

seemed to be associated with the sand. She didn't like

mysteries in strange places; they could be dangerous.

"Wait," she said.

Grey paused. "Tired?"

"It's not that. I'm not sure I like this region."

"It seems nice enough to me. This sand is easy to walk

on; we can make good progress before night."

"Not if we walk into a trap."

He shrugged. "I wouldn't want to do that. Where I live

there can be quicksand—that's stuff that you can get caught

in, so maybe you drown."

"Ours makes you speed up," Ivy said. "And slowsand

makes you slow down, which can be awkward. But this

seems to be something else. Let me see what I can do

with it."

"Make a sand castle, maybe," he said, smiling.

Her talent was Enhancement not detection, but she de-

cided to investigate in her fashion. As she stepped on the

sand, she enhanced it, so that its qualities would become

more obvious.

For a moment the sand just lay there. Then it rippled.

Waves spread across it, as if it were water.

Ivy continued to concentrate, enhancing it further. She

wanted to see whether it was dangerous.

The ripples became humps. Was this a dread sand dune,

looking for subjects to turn into fossils? Her parents had

encountered one of those once. Dunes liked to bury living

creatures forever or until their flesh fell apart, leaving

handsome bones. Ivy wasn't yet ready to part with her

flesh.

Then a big central hump formed. It rose up and up, and

Man from Mundania
       
123

finally formed into a vague manlike form. It stood there,

half again as tall as Ivy, its hair formed of dry weeds and

its eyes of mica pebbles. It had a nose made of a twisty

root, and ears of tattered seashells.

"What are you?" Ivy demanded of it.

The sandman shifted shape, the sand humping as if

driven by the wind, except that there was no wind. It as-

sumed the shape of a four-footed animal with root horns

and a viney tail.

"You haven't answered," Ivy said. The thing didn't

seem dangerous, but she wasn't sure.

The sand changed again, becoming a small tree with a

thick trunk and stubby branches that waved clumsily in

the make-believe wind.

"Now look—" Ivy started.

"I wonder how the effect is achieved," Grey said, strid-

ing across to touch the sand formation. "I can't believe—"

Immediately the sand sifted down and became a fea-

tureless mound, its pebbles and shells and roots randomly

distributed.

"Oh, you spoiled it!" Ivy exclaimed, annoyed. "I was

about to find out whether it was dangerous."

Grey stirred the pile of sand with his toe. ' 'It's not dan-

gerous; it's just sand. But it certainly looked like a sand-

man for a moment there! I knew it was illusion; I just

wish I could have figured it out without destroying it."

"Well, I was about to do that," Ivy said crossly. But it

did seem that the sandman was no danger; the feeling of

strangeness was gone.

Now the day was getting on. "We had better find a

place to camp," Grey said. "There could be wild crea-

tures in the night."

There could indeed! They had not encountered any bad

ones so far, which was remarkable; maybe the curse burrs

and sandman kept them out. But those things seemed to

lack force, here, so she doubted it. She hoped there wasn't

some truly formidable predator who used this region as its

hunting ground, eliminating most of the other dangers.

She would prefer to deal with a series of small menaces,

rather than one really big one, because she wasn't sure

124

Man from Mundania

Man from Mundania

125

how effective her enhancement talent would be against a

truly formidable creature. Usually when she explored, she

had Stanley Steamer along, and he had taken care of per-

sonal defense.

She looked around, but there was no suitable camping

place. They would just have to go on, though her feet were

tired and her legs too; she wasn't used to this much con-

tinuous walking.

"Maybe under that tree," Grey suggested, indicating a

large tree whose tentacles reached almost to the ground.

"That's a tangle tree!" Ivy shrieked, appalled.

"Yeah, I guess so. But we can't play this game forever.

I'm sure it's harmless when its bluff is called." He walked

boldly toward it, using one of the pleasant little paths that

approached it.

"No!" Ivy cried, dashing after him. "Nobody but an

ogre or a dragon messes with a tangler, and even they are

careful. Don't go near it!"

"I'm sure most creatures here feel as you do," Grey

said, proceeding without pause. "That means they will

stay clear of it, and we can spend a comfortable night

under its shelter. That seems ideal to me."

Ivy caught up to him and grabbed his arm. "You don't

understand! That tree will grab you and gobble you down

the moment you come within reach! I'm not sure I can

protect you from—"

But she lost her balance, and stumbled, and they both

fell right into the nest of the tentacles. Ivy felt sheer panic.

But the hanging tentacles remained quiescent. Not one

grabbed at them. The tree seemed to be asleep.

"Oh," Ivy said, relieved. "It must have feasted re-

cently, so it's not hungry. What luck!"

Grey shook his head. "You have an explanation for ev-

erything! Okay, it's not hungry. So let's camp here tonight.

No one else will realize that it's safe under here."

"True," she agreed faintly. She remained nervous about

being this close to a tangler, but it certainly was true that

a sated tree was safe.

She located some milkweeds and a breadfruit tree; for-

tunately these were common all across Xanth, so they had

bread and milk for dinner. There was also a pillow bush

nearby, with extremely plush pillows; they made two beds

of them under the tree. Obviously none of these plants had

been harvested recently, because of the shortage of trav-

elers.

Ivy lay for some time without sleeping, bothered by

things. Where was the great menace that kept travelers

away, and why were even the ordinary menaces so feeble

at the moment? She had been making spot excuses for

them, almost embarrassed because they were not mani-

festing adequately to convince Grey they were genuine.

She had concluded that this tangle tree was sated, but she

saw no recent pile of bones, and the tentacles did not look

sleek and strong in the manner of a well-fed tree. This

tree should be hungry, yet wasn't, and that made sleep

nervous. Which reminded her: that sandman—probably it

was related to the ones that came by night to put children

to sleep, and perhaps it usually put travelers to sleep near

this tangle tree, so the tree could snake out a tentacle and

haul them in without resistance. Yet in the face of Grey's

skepticism, the sandman had collapsed into inert sand.

There, maybe, was the crux of it: Grey thought that

magic was mostly in her mind, that she saw it work be-

cause she believed it did. In Mundania she had been un-

able to demonstrate otherwise. But now they were in

Xanth—and she still couldn't penetrate his unbelief. It

seemed that he was constitutionally unable to accept

magic, and that therefore the magic didn't work for him.

That was a fundamentally unsettling notion! Suppose

magic didn't work for anyone who didn't believe in it?

Now that was an interesting idea! Could that be why

Mundanes didn't have magic talents? Because they didn't

believe in them? But when they moved to Xanth, their

children were exposed to magic from the outset and never

learned not to believe, so had talents. If the Mundanes

were just more open-minded, they might turn out to have

talents the moment they entered Xanth! After all, the cen-

taurs had turned out to have talents, those who stopped

thinking that talents were obscene.

No, that didn't hold up. Some Mundanes were open-

126 Man from Mundania

minded, but none had ever had a magic talent. Some of

their children were close-minded, but still had talents. Be-

lief might be a factor, but not the major one. A person

had to be bom in Xanth to have magic.

So what was she going to do about Grey? It was foolish,

she well knew, but she liked him. She liked him a lot. But

the moment they reached Castle Roogna, any romantic

relationship would be over. She was a princess, and while

she didn't have to marry a prince, certainly her folks would

not allow her to marry a Mundane! She had tried to ex-

plain that to Grey, but had gotten caught up in her own

rebellion and discussed only the awkwardness of marriage

between them, not the impossibility of achieving it.

What would happen if she insisted on marrying a Mun-

dane? She would disappoint her parents terribly, and that

hurt. They might have to take action, such as banishing

her to Mundania, and that would hurt more. But if she

went with Grey, would that make it worth it?

To live the rest of her life in drear Mundania without

magic—that was an appalling prospect. Yet she could

imagine doing it, almost, with him. Grey was completely

ordinary, but there was something about him that appealed

to her, and she knew his interest in her was genuine. Was

that enough?

She shook her head in the darkness. She knew, objec-

tively, that it was not enough. Love could be fun, but it

didn't last if not soundly based, and for her to move to