“A ringworm!” Dor cried in dismay, dropping the hideous thing.
“If it’s a ring, we need it,” Chet said. “Before this mat gets away.”
Chagrined, Dor felt on the ground and picked up the ringworm.
He passed it gingerly to the centaur. “Here.”
Chet wove it into the nose of the craft, then jerked several long hairs from his beautiful tail and twined them into a string that he passed through the ring. Suddenly the bulrush craft settled down. “The nose is sensitive,” Chet explained. “The ring makes it hurt when jerked, so even this powerful entity can be controlled.”
“Some come!” Smash warned.
Rather than wait to discover what it was that could make an ogre nervous, the others hastened to lead the now-docile bulrush boat to the water. Once it was floating, they boarded carefully and pushed off from the shore. The craft was not watertight, but the individual rushes were buoyant, so the whole business floated.
Something growled in the dark on the shore-a deep, low, throbbing, powerful, and ugly sound. Then, frustrated, it moved away, the ground shuddering. A blast of odor passed them, dank and choking. No one inquired what it might be.
Now Chet gave the bulrushes some play. The raft surged forward, churning up a faintly phosphorescent wake. Wind rushed past their faces.
“Can you see where we’re going?” Irene asked, her voice thin.
“No,” Chet said. “But the bulrushes travel best in open water. They won’t run aground or crash into any monsters.”
“You trust them more than I do,” she said. “And I grew them.”
“Elementary calculation of vegetable nature,” the centaur said.
“May I lean against your side?” she asked. “I didn’t sleep today, and your coat is so soft-“
“Go ahead,” Chet said graciously. He was lying down again, as the woven fabric of the raft could not support his weight afoot. The rushes had swelled in the water, and Dor had succeeded in bailing it out; they were no longer sitting in sea water. Dor had not slept either, but he didn’t feel like leaning against Chet’s furry side.
The stars moved by. Dor lay on his back and determined the direction of travel of the raft by the stars’ apparent travel. It wasn’t even; the bulrushes were maneuvering to find the course along which they could rush most freely. They did seem to know where they were going, and that sufficed for now.
Gradually the constellations appeared, patterns in the sky, formations of stars that shifted from randomness to the suggestion of significance. There seemed to be pictures shaping, representations of creatures and objects and notions. Some resembled faces; he thought he saw King Trent peering down at him, giving him a straight, intelligent look.
Where are you now? Dor asked wordlessly.
The face frowned. I am being held captive in a medieval Mundane castle, it said. I have no magic power here. You must bring me magic.
But I can’t do that! Dor protested. Magic isn’t something a person can carry, especially not into Mundania!
You must use the aisle to rescue me.
What aisle? Dor asked, excited.
The centaur aisle, Trent answered.
Then a wait of ocean spray struck Dor’s face, and he woke. The stellar face was gone; it had been a dream.
Yet the message remained with him. Center Isle? His spelling disability made him uncertain, now, of the meaning. How could he use an island to seek King Trent? The center of what? If it was centaur, did that mean Chet had something essential to do with it? If it was an aisle, an aisle between what and what? If this were really a message, a prophecy, how could he apply it? If it were merely a random dream or vision, a construct of his overtired and meandering mind, he should ignore it. But such things were seldom random in Xanth.
Troubled, Dor drifted to sleep again. What he had experienced could not have been a nightmare, for it hadn’t scared him, and of course the mares could not run across the water. Maybe it would return and clarify itself.
But the dream did not repeat, and he could not evoke it by looking at the stars. Clouds had sifted across the night sky.
Dor woke again as dawn came. The sun had somehow gotten around to the east, where the land was, and dried off so that it could shine again. Dor wondered what perilous route it employed. Maybe it had a tunnel to roll along. If it ever figured out a way to get down without taking a dunking in the ocean, it would really have it made!
Maybe he should suggest that to it sometime. After all, some mornings the sun was up several hours before drying out enough to shine with full brilliance; obviously some nights were worse than others.
But he would not make the suggestion right now; he didn’t want the sun heading off to explore new routes, leaving Xanth dark for days at a time. Dor needed the fight to see his way to Centaur Isle. Jewel’s midnight sunstone was not enough.
Centaur Isle-was that where he was supposed to find King Trent?
No, the centaurs wouldn’t imprison the King, and anyway, Trent was in Mundania. But maybe something at Centaur Isle related. If only he could figure out how!
Dor sat up. “Where are we now, Chet?” he inquired.
There was no answer. The centaur had fallen asleep, too, Irene in repose against his side. Smash and Grundy snored at the rear of the raft.
Everyone had slept! No one was guiding the craft or watching the course! The bulrushes had rushed wherever they wanted to go, which could be anywhere!
The raft was in the middle of the ocean. Bare sea lay on all sides.
It was sheer luck that no sea monster had spied them and gobbled them down while they slept. In fact, there was one now!
But as the monster forged hungrily toward the craft, Dor saw that the velocity of the rushes was such that the serpent could not overtake the craft. They were safe because of their speed. Since they were, heading south, they should be near Centaur Isle now.
No, that did not necessarily follow. Dor had done better in Cherie’s logic classes than in spelling. He always looked for alternatives to the obvious. The craft could have been doing loops all night, or traveling north, and then turned south coincidentally as dawn came. They could be anywhere at all.
“Where are we?” Dor asked the nearest water.
“Longitude 83, Latitude 26, or vise versa,” the water said. “I always confuse parallels with meridians.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything!” Dor snapped.
“It tells me, though,” Chet said, waking. “We are well out to sea, but also well on the way to our destination. We should be there tonight.”
“But suppose a monster catches us way out here in the sea?” Irene asked, also waking. “I’d rather be near land.”
Chet shrugged. “We can veer in to land. Meanwhile, why don’t you grow us some food and fresh-water plants so we can eat and drink?”
“And a parasol plant, to shield us from the sun,” she said. “And a privacy hedge, for you-know.”
She got on it. Soon they were drinking scented water from a pitcher plant and eating bunlike masses from puffball plants. The new hedge closed off the rear of the craft, where the expended pitchers were used for another purpose. Several parasols shaded them nicely. It was all becoming quite comfortable.
The bulrush craft, responsive to Chet’s tug on the string tied to the ring in its nose, veered toward the east, where the distant land was supposed to be.
Smash the Ogre sniffed the air and peered about. Then he pointed.
“Me see the form of a mean ol’ storm,” be announced.
Oh, no! Dor spied the roiling clouds coming up over the southern horizon. Smash’s keen ogre senses had detected it first, but in moments it was all too readily apparent to them all.
“We’re in trouble,” Grundy said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“What can you do?” Irene asked witheringly. “Are you going to wave your tiny little dumb hand and conjure us all instantly to safety?”