They moved on south, but it was a long time before Dor lost his nervousness about looking back. That stunflower . . .
Chet halted. “What’s this?” he asked.
The others looked. There was a flat wooden sign set in the ground.
On it was neatly printed NO LAW FOR THE LOIN.
It was obvious that no one quite understood this message, but no one wanted to speculate on its meaning. At last Dor asked the sign: “Is there any threat to us nearby?”
“No,” the sign said.
They went on, each musing his private musings. They had come to this island naked; could that relate? But obviously that sign had been there long before their coming. Could it be a misspelling? he wondered. But his own spelling was so poor, he hesitated to draw that conclusion.
Now they came to a densely wooded marsh. The trees were small but closely set; Dor and Irene could squeeze between them, but Smash could not, and it was out of the question for Chet.
“Me make a lake,” Smash said, readying his huge hamfist. With the trees gone, this would be a more or less open body of murky water.
“No, let’s see if we can find a way through,” Dor said. “King Trent never liked to have wilderness areas wantonly destroyed, for some reason. And if we make a big commotion, it could attract whatever monsters there are.”
They skirted the thicket and soon came across another sign: THE LOIN WALKS WHERE IT WILL. Near it was a neat, dry path through the forest, elevated slightly above the swamp.
“Any danger here?” Dor inquired.
“Not much,” the sign said.
They used the path. As they penetrated the thicket, there were rustlings in the trees and slurpings in the muck below. “What’s that noise?” Dor asked, but received no answer. This forest was so dense there was nothing inanimate in it; the water was covered with green growth, and the path itself was formed of living roots.
“I’ll try,” Grundy said. He spoke in tree language, and after a moment reported: “They are cog rats and skug worms; nothing to worry about as long as you don’t turn your back on them.”
The rustlings and slurpings became louder. “But they are all around us!” Irene protested. “How can we avoid turning our backs?”
“We can face in all directions,” Chet said. “I’ll go forward; Grundy can ride me facing backward. The rest of you can look to either side.”
They did so, Smash on the left, Dor and Irene on the right. The noises stayed just out of sight.
“But let’s get on out of this place!” Irene said.
“I wonder how the loin makes out, since this seems to be its path,” Dor said.
As if in answer to his question, they came upon another sign: THE LOIN IS LORD OF THE JUNGLE. Obviously the cog rats and skug worms didn’t dare bother the loin.
“I am getting more curious about this thing,” Irene said. “Does it hunt, does it eat, does it play with others of its kind? What is it?”
Dor wondered, too, but still hesitated to state his conjectures. Suppose it wasn’t a misspelling? How, then, would it hunt, eat, and play?
They hurried on and finally emerged from the thicket-only to encounter another sign. THE LOIN SHALL LIE WITH THE LAMB.
“What’s a lamb?” Irene asked.
“A Mundane creature,” Chet said. “Said to be harmless, soft, and cuddly, but stupid.”
“That’s the kind the loin would like,” she muttered darkly.
Still no one openly expressed conjectures about the nature of this creature. They traveled on down to the southern tip of this long island. The entire coastline of Xanth, Chet explained, was bordered by barrier reefs that had developed into island chains; this was as good and safe a route as they could ask for, since they no longer had a boat.
There should be very few large predators on the islands, since there was insufficient hunting area for them, and the sea creatures could not quite reach the interiors of the isles. But no part of Xanth was wholly safe. All of them were ready to depart this Isle of the Loin.
As they came to the beach, they encountered yet another sign: A PRIDE OF LOINS. And a roaring erupted behind them, back along the path in the thicket. Something was coming-and who could doubt what it was?
“Do we want to meet a pride of loins?” Chet asked rhetorically.
“But do we want to swim through that?” Grundy asked.
They looked. A fleet of tiger sharks had sailed in while Dor’s party stood on the beach. Each had a sailfin and the head of a tiger. They crowded in as close to the shore as they could reach, snarling hungry welcome.
“I think we’re between the dragon and the dune again,” Grundy said.
“I can stop the tiger sharks,” Irene said. “I have a kraken seaweed seed.”
“And I still have the hypno-gourd; that should stop a loin,” Chet said.
“Assuming it’s a case of misspelling. There is a Mundane monster like the front half of a tiger shark, called a-“
“But there must be several loins in a pride,” Grundy said. “Unless it’s just one loin standing mighty proud.”
“Me fight the fright,” Smash said.
“A pride might contain twenty individuals,” Chet said. “You might occupy half a dozen, Smash-but the remaining dozen or so would have opportunity to eat up the rest of us. If that is what they do.”
“But we don’t know there are that many,” Irene protested uncertainly.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Grundy cried. “Oh, I never worried about my flesh when I was a real golem!”
“Maybe you weren’t as obnoxious then,” Irene suggested. “Besides which, you didn’t have any flesh then.”
But the only way to go was along the beach-and the tiger sharks paced them in the water. “We can’t escape either menace this way,” Irene said. “I’m planting my kraken.” She tossed a seed into the water.
“Grow, weed!”
Chet held forward the hypno-gourd that he had retained through all their mishaps, one palm covering the peephole. “I’ll show this to the first loin, regardless.”
Smash joined him. “Me reckon the secon’s” he said, his hamfists at the ready. “An’ nerd the third.”
“You’re the Magician,” Grundy told Dor. “Do something.”
Dor made a wild attempt. “Anything-is there way way out of here?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” the sand at his feet said. “Of course there’s a way out.”
“You know a way?” Dor asked, gratified.
“No.”
“For goodness’ sake!” Irene exclaimed. “What an idiot!”
“You’d be stupid, too,” the sand retorted, “If your brains were fragmented mineral.”
“I was referring to him!” she said, indicating Dor. “To think they call him a Magician! All he can do is play ventriloquist with junk like you.”
“That’s telling him,” the sand agreed. “That’s a real load of sand in his eyes.”
“Why did you say there was a way out if you don’t know it?” Dor demanded.
“Because my neighbor the bone knows it.”
Dor spotted the bone and addressed it. “What’s the way out?”
“The tunnel, idiot,” the bone said.
The sound of the pride of loins was looming louder. The tiger sharks were snarling as the growing kraken weed menaced them.
“Where’s the tunnel?” Dor asked.
“Right behind you, at the shore,” the bone said. “I sealed it off, took three steps, and fell prey to the loins.”
“I don’t see it,” Dor said.
“Of course not; the high tide washes sand over it. Last week someone goosed the tide and it dumped a lot more sand. I’m the only one who can locate the tunnel now.”
Dor picked up the bone. It resembled the thighbone of a man.
“Locate the tunnel for me.”
“Right there, where the water laps. Scrape the sand away.” It angled slightly in his hand, pointing.