"The monster was friendly?" Tandy asked doubtfully.
"No, it tried to consume me. But it couldn't reach below the water because its magic prints keep it above.
It tried to lure me close, but I'm an experienced hand at luring creatures, and was too careful to be taken in."
"Then you were in real danger!" Tandy was now very sensitive to danger from monsters that lured their victims, whether by an easy access path or a convenient peephole.
"No danger for me," the Siren said, flinging her damp hair out as she changed to human legs and climbed the rest of the way from the water. "Few creatures can catch my kind in our element. Not that there are many quite like me; most merfolk can't make legs. That's my human heritage. Of course, my sister the Gorgon never was able to make a tail; it was her face that changed. Magical heredity is funny stuff! But I talked briefly with the monster. He considers himself a whale."
"A whale of a what?" Smash asked.
"Just a whale."
"Isn't that a Mundane monster?" John asked. It was generally known in Xanth that the worst monsters were Mundane, as were the worst people.
"Yes. But this one claims some whales migrated to Xanth, grew legs so they could cross to inland waters, and then kept the legs for lake-running. Some find small lakes; they're puddle-jumpers. Some find pools of rum; they're rum-runners. He says he's of the first water, a royal monster, a Prince of his kind."
"A Prince of Whales," Tandy said. "Is he really?"
"I don't think so. That's why he wails."
"Life is hard all over," Smash said without much sympathy. "Let's get down off this mountain."
Indeed, the sun was losing strength and starting to fall, as it did each day, never learning to conserve its energy so that it could stay aloft longer. They needed to get to a comfortable place before night.
Fortunately, the slope on this side was not as steep, so they were able to slide down it fairly readily.
As they neared the northern base, where the forest resumed, a nymph came out to meet them. She was a delicate brown in color, with green hair fringed with red. Her torso, though slender and full in the manner of her kind, was gently corrugated like the bark of a young tree, and her toes were rootlike. She approached Tandy, who was the most human of the group. "Please-do you know where Castle Roogna is?"
"I tried to reach Castle Roogna a year ago," Tandy said. "But I got lost. I think Smash knows, though."
"Oh, I wouldn't ask an ogre!" the nymph exclaimed.
"He's a halfway tame ogre," Tandy assured her. "He doesn't eat many nymphs."
Smash was getting used to these slights. He waited patiently for the nymph to gain confidence, then answered her question as well as he could. "I have been to Castle Roogna. But I'm not going there at the moment, and the way is difficult. It is roughly west of here."
"I'll find it somehow," the nymph said. "I've got to." She faced west.
"Now wait," Tandy protested, as Smash had suspected she would. The girl had sympathy enough to overflow all Xanth! "You can't get there alone! You could easily get lost or gobbled up. Why don't you travel with us until we find someone else who is going there?"
"But you're going north!" the nymph protested.
"Yes. But we travel safely, because of Smash." Tandy indicated him again. "Nobody bothers an ogre."
"There is that," the nymph agreed. "I don't want to bother him myself." She considered, seeming somewhat tired. "I could help you find food and water. I'm good at that sort of thing. I'm a hamadryad."
"Oh, a tree-nymph!" the Siren exclaimed. "I should have realized. What are you doing out of your tree?"
"It's a short story. Let me find you a place to eat and rest, and I will tell it."
The dryad kept her promise. Soon they were ensconced in a glade beside a large eggplant whose ripe eggs had been hard-boiled by the sun. Nearby was a sodapond that sparkled effervescently. They sat in a circle cracking open eggs, using the shells to dip out sodawater. Proper introductions were made, and the dryad turned out to be named Fireoak, after her tree.
She was, despite her seeming youth, over a century old. All her life had been spent with her fireoak tree, which had sprouted from a fireacom the year she came into being. She had grown with it, as hamadryads did, protecting it and being protected by it. Then a human village had set up nearby, and villagers had come out to cut down the tree to build a firehouse, Fireoak made fine fire-resistant wood, the dryad explained; its own appearance of burning was related to Saint Elmo's fire, an illusion of burning that made it stand out beautifully and discouraged predatory bugs except for fireants. In vain had the dryad protested that the cutting of the oak would kill both it and her; the villagers wanted the wood. So she had taken advantage of the full moon that night to weave a lunatic fringe that shrouded the tree, hiding it from them. .But that would last only a few days; when the moon shrank to a crescent, so would the fringe, betraying the tree's location. She had to accomplish her mission before then.
"But how can a trip to Castle Roogna help?" John asked. "They use wood there, too, don't they?"
"The King is there!" Fireoak replied. "I understand he is an environmentalist. He protects special trees."
"It is true," Smash agreed. "He protects rare monsters, too." Now for the first time he realized the probable basis for King Trent's tolerance of an ogre family near Castle Roogna: they were rare wilderness specimens. "He always looks for the solution of least ecological damage."
The dryad looked at him curiously. "You certainly don't talk like an ogre!"
"He blundered into an Eye Queue vine," Tandy explained. "It cursed him with smartness."
"How are you able to survive away from your tree?" the Siren asked. "I thought no hamadryad could leave for more than a moment."
"That's what I thought," Fireoak said. "But when death threatened my tree, desperation gave me extraordinary strength. For my tree I can do what I must. I feel terribly insecure, however. My soul is the tree."
Tandy and Smash jumped. The analogy was too close for comfort. It was no easy thing to be separated from one's soul.
"I know the feeling," the Siren said. "I lived all my life in one lake. But I suddenly realized that it had become a desolate place for a lone mermaid. So I am looking for a better lake. But I do miss my original lake, for it contains all my life's experience, and I wonder whether it misses me, too."
"How will you know the new lake won't be desolate for you, too?" Fireoak asked.
"It won't be if it has the right merman in it."
The dryad blushed, her face for an instant showing the color of the fire of her tree. "Oh."
"You're a hundred years old-and you have no experience with men?" Tandy asked.
"Well, I'm a dryad," Fireoak said defensively. "We just don't have much to do with men-only with trees."
"What sort of experience have you had?" the Siren asked Tandy.
"A demon-he-I'd rather not discuss it." It was Tandy's turn to blush. "Anyway, my father is a man."
"Most fathers are," the Siren said. "Mine isn't!" Smash protested. "My father is an ogre."
She ignored that. "I inherited my legs from my father, my tail from my mother. She was not a true woman, but he was a true man."
"You mean human men really do have, uh, dealings with mermaids?" Tandy asked.
"Human men have dealings with any maid they can catch," the Siren said with a wry smile. "I understand my mother wasn't hard to catch; my father was a very handsome man. But he had to leave when my sister the Gorgon was born."