Authors: Piers Anthony
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Princesses, #Magic, #Epic, #Fantasy fiction; American, #Xanth (Imaginary place)
He tried one more time, passing over Melanoma, Mi-
asma, Treblinka, and Polyploidy in favor of one that
sounded safe: Salmonella. That turned out to be a mis-
take. Sal was a great cook, but the food turned out to be
contaminated.
Now, waking weak and bleary, he had finally caught
on: "Worm, you're doing it deliberately! You are offering
me only treacherous girls!"
I AM NOT WORM. THAT WAS ONLY THE INSTALLATION
"All right, already! So I'll call you Sending! Now why
are you finding me only girls who are trouble?"
HOW COULD YOU SAY SUCH A THING!
"Every one of them has something wrong with her! If
you can't do better than that, I don't want any! All that's
happened has been a lot of heartache and my grades de-
scending to D +! Let's give up on girls and concentrate on
scholastics."
TRY ONE MORE GIRL.
"No! I'm through with women! I want to make good
grades and be something in the world!"
TRY ONE MORE GIRL.
So it was that way. He could not out argue the com-
puter; it only repeated itself indefinitely. "All right: one
more girl. And when that one messes up, it's grades."
CHOOSE—
"No you don't! All those names are pied! I don't care
about the name! Just find me a good girl, one I can be
with and—"
AGREED.
"No tricks, now, or the deal's off! Any little pretext and
I'll dump her! You got that, Worm—1 mean, Sending?"
GO TO THE APARTMENT ACROSS THE HALL.
"All right! One more time!" Because, after all, he did
need a girl. Without one, he would be reduced to having
to do his homework, which was a fate only half a smid-
geon this side of oblivion.
Grumpily, still in his rumpled pajamas though he saw
by the bleary clock on the hall wall that it was nearly
noon, he knocked on the apartment door.
The door cracked open and a blue eye peered out.
"You're not a monster, are you?" she inquired.
Grey had to smile. "Well, I do feel like one at the
moment, but as far as I know, that's temporary. Who are
you?"
She opened the door wider, reassured. "Oh, good, a
human person! I was afraid that in this horror house it
would be much worse. I'm Ivy."
"I'm Grey. Are you a normal girl?"
Now she laughed. "Of course not! I'm a princess!"
26 Man from Mundania Man from Mundania 27
Well, she had a sense of humor! Despite his best inten-
tion, he liked her. Maybe the Sending really was playing
it straight this time.
Ivy invited him in, and they talked. She seemed just as
eager to know about him and his situation as he was to
know about her. Soon he was telling her all about his
dreary life, which somehow seemed much less dull when
she was listening. Ivy was an attractive girl about a year
his junior, with blue eyes and fair hair that sometimes
reflected with a greenish tint, evidently picking up what-
ever color was near her. She had been frightened at first
but now was relaxed, and was a fun person to be with.
But there were some definitely odd things about her.
For one thing, she seemed quite unfamiliar with this city,
or indeed, this country, perhaps even this world. He had
to show her how the stove worked and even how to open
a can of peas. "What funny magic!" she exclaimed,
watching the electric can opener.
For it seemed that she believed in magic. She claimed
to be from a magic land called Xanth, spelled with an X,
where she was a princess and pies grew on trees. So did
shoes and pillows. Monsters roamed the jungles, and she
even had a pet dragon called Stanley Steamer.
She was obviously suffering delusions. Sending had
mousetrapped him again. But by the time he was sure of
this, it was too late: he liked Ivy too well to let her go.
She was a great girl, apart from her dreamland. Since her
delusion was harmless, he decided to tolerate it.
But there were hurdles. One came when she realized
that he was not teasing her about his situation. Her face
clouded with horror. "You mean, this isn't a setting in the
gourd? This really is Mundania?"
That was a quaint way of putting it! "That's right. Mun-
dania. No magic."
"Oh, this is worse than I ever dreamed!" she ex-
claimed. "Drear Mundania!"
She had that right! His life had been about as drear as
it could get—until she came into it. "But what are you
doing here if you didn't know you were coming?" he
asked. For the sake of compatibility, he did not debate her
Xanth delusion; he would find out where she really was
from, eventually. The truth was, he rather liked her dream
realm; it had a special quality of appeal. Pies growing on
trees—that certainly sounded better than canned beans!
"I used the Heaven Cent," she explained matter-of-
factly. She lifted a common old style penny she wore on
a chain around her neck. "It was supposed to take me
where I was most needed, which is where the Good Ma-
gician is lost. But the curse must have—oh, no!''
He was catching on to the rules of her magic land. "You
mean it would have taken you there, but a curse made it
go wrong? So you're stuck where you shouldn't be?"
"Yes," she said tragically, near tears. "Oh, how am I
to get out of this? There's no magic in Mundania!"
"That's for sure." Yet somehow he wanted to help her
to return to that magic land, even though he knew it wasn't
real. Her belief was so firm, so touching!
"Oh, Grey, you've got to help me get back to Xanth!"
she exclaimed.
What could he say? "I'll dowhat I can."
She flung her arms around him and kissed him. She was
an expressive girl. He knew she was suffering from a per-
vasive delusion, and that sooner or later the authorities
would pick her up and return her to whatever institution
she had escaped from, but he also knew that he liked her.
That made his dilemma worse.
Grey did what he could. He took Ivy to the college
library and looked up Xanth. It turned out to be a prefix,
"xantho," meaning "yellow," that connected to various
terms. Ivy said that wasn't what she wanted. The library
was a loss.
Then, on the way back to the apartment building. Ivy
spied something in a store window. "There's Xanth!" she
exclaimed, pointing.
Grey looked. It was a paperback book. On it was a star
proclaiming "A New Xanth Novel!" Did Ivy think she
came from this book?
"There's Chex!" she continued.
"Chex?"
28 Man from Mundania Man from Mundania 29
"The winged centaur. She's actually four years younger
than me, but she seems older because her sire's Xap the
hippogryph, and monsters mature faster than human folk,
so she matured halfway faster than I did, and she's married
now and has a foal, Che. And there's Volney Vole, who
can't say his esses, only he thinks we're the ones who have
it wrong. And—"
"This book—it really describes where you think you're
from?" he demanded incredulously.
She faced him, baffled. "Where I think I'm from?"
"This book—it's fantasy!"
"Of course! Don't you believe me?"
Damn! He had his foot in it now! Why hadn't he thought
to avoid the issue? "I believe—you think you're from
there," he said carefully.
"I am from Xanth!" she retorted. "Look in the book!
I'm in there, I know!" But she was perilously close to
tears.
Grey wavered. Should he get the book and check? But
if she was in it, what would it prove? Simply that she had
read the book and made it the focus of her delusion. Be-
sides, he remained broke.
"Uh, I'm sure you're right," he said. "I don't need to
look in the book. '
That was a half truth, but it mollified her. They contin-
ued walking back to the apartment building.
Grey's mind was seething with thoughts. Now he knew
where Ivy thought she was from, but he didn't know
whether to be relieved or alarmed. It wasn't a land of her
own invention—but was it any better as a land someone
else had invented? The delusion was the same. Still, it did
offer some insight into her framework; if he got the book
and read it, he would at least be able to relate to the things
she did.
Still, he wished that she had a better notion of the dis-
tinction between fantasy and reality. She was such a nice
girl in other respects, the perfect girl, really, and he could
really like her a lot, if only—
Could like her a lot? He already did! Which made it
that much worse.
In the hallway she stopped. "This can't be Mundania!"
she exclaimed.
"Where else would it be?" he asked warily.
"Because we can understand each other!" she said ex-
citedly. "We speak the same language!"
"Well, sure, but—"
"Mundanes speak gibberish! They can't be understood
at all, unless there is magic to translate what they say into
real speech. But you are perfectly intelligible!"
"I should hope so." Was this the beginning of a break-
through? Was she coming to terms with reality? "What
language do they speak in Xanth?"
"Well, it's the language. The human language, I mean.
All human folk speak it, just as all dragon folk speak Dra-
gonese, and all trees speak tree-talk. Grundy Golem can