After a pause, Fireoak resumed her story. "So if I can just talk to the King and get him to save my tree, everything will be all right."
"What about the other trees?" John asked.
Fireoak looked blank. "Other trees?"
"The other ones the villagers are cutting down. Maybe they don't have dryads to speak for them, but they don't deserve destruction."
"I never thought of that," Fireoak said. "I suppose I should put in a word at Castle Roogna for them, too.
It would be no bad thing to lobby for the trees."
They found good locations in the trees and settled down for the night. Smash spread himself out on the glade ground; no one would bother him. His head was near the liquidly flowing trunk of a water oak Fireoak had chosen; he overheard the hamadryad's muted sobbing. Evidently her separation from her beloved home tree was harder on her than she showed by day, and the threat to that tree was no distant concern. Smash hoped he could find a way to help her. If he had to, he could go and stand guard over her tree himself. But he didn't know how long that would take. He didn't want to delay his own mission too long, lest the time for the Good Magician's Answer should run out. There was also the matter of the gourd-coffin's lien on his soul; anything he had to do, he had better get done within three months.
Already he felt not quite up to snuff, as if part of his soul had been leached away, taking some of his strength with it.
Next day the five of them marched north. The land leveled out, but hazards remained. Tandy blundered into a chokecherry bush, and Smash had to rip the entire plant out of the ground before its vines stopped choking her. Farther along they encountered a power plant, whose branches swelled out into strange angular configurations and hummed with power; woe betide the creature who blundered into that!
Around midday they discovered a lovely vegetable tree, on whose branches grew cabbages, beans, carrots, tomatoes, and turnips, all in fine states of ripeness. Here were all the ingredients for an excellent salad! But as Smash approached it, Tandy grew nervous. "I smell a rat," she said, sniffing the air. "There are big rats down in the caves where I live; I know their odor well. They always mean trouble."
Smash sniffed. Sure enough, there was the faint aroma of rats. What were they doing here?
"I smell it, too," John said. "I hate rats. But where are they?"
The Siren was walking around the tree. "Somewhere in or near the vegetable tree," she announced. "I fear this plant is not entirely what it appears."
Fireoak approached it. "Let me check. I'm good with trees." She was showing no sign of the agony of her separation from her tree, but Smash knew it remained. Her night in a tree must have restored her somewhat, though of course it wasn't her tree.
The hamadryad stood close to the vegetable tree. Slowly she touched a leaf. "This is a normal leaf," she said. Then she touched a potato-and one of its eyes blinked. "Get away from here!" Fireoak screamed.
"It's a rat!"
Then the fruits and vegetables exploded into action. Each one sprouted legs, tail, and snout and dropped to the ground. A major swarm of rats had camouflaged itself by masquerading as vegetables, luring the unwary into contact-but the smell had given them away. Once a rat, always a rat, by the smell of it.
The Siren, Tandy, and John scurried back in time to avoid the first surge of the rat-race. But Fireoak stood too close. The beasties swarmed around her, biting at her legs, causing her to trip and fall.
Smash leaped across, swooping down with one hand to lift the hamadryad clear of the ground. Several rats came up with her, chewing savagely at her barklike skin. She screamed and tried to brush them off, but they clung tenaciously and bit at her hands.
Smash shook her, but hesitated to do it vigorously enough to fling away the rats, lest it hurt her. As it was, bits of bark and leaf were flying off. Smash had to pinch the rats off one by one, and their claws and teeth left scratches on the 'dryad's body. By the time the last was gone, she was in an awful state, oozing sap from several scrapes. The swarm of rats surrounded Smash and tried to bite his feet and climb his hairy legs.
Smash stomped ferociously, shaking the glade and crushing several rats with each stomp. But there were hundreds of the little monsters, coming at him from every direction, moving rapidly. They threatened to get on him no matter how fast he stomped. He didn't dare set the dryad down, lest the same fate befall her. His great strength hardly availed against these relatively puny enemies.
"Get away from him!" Tandy screamed from a safe distance. "Leave him alone, you rats!" She seemed really angry. It was almost as if she were trying to defend him from the enemy; that, of course, was a ludicrous reversal of their situation, yet it touched him oddly.
Smash stomped away from the tree, but the rats stayed with him. In order to run he would have to do two things: move the dryad back and forth as his arms pumped and flee a known danger. The one seemed physically hazardous to another person, while the other was emotionally distasteful. So he moved slowly, stamping, while the rats began climbing his legs.
Then Tandy's arm shot out as if hurling a rock. Her face was red, her teeth bared, her body rigid, as if she were in a state of absolute fury-but there was no rock in her hand. She was throwing nothing.
Something exploded at Smash's feet. He was knocked off them, barely catching his balance. All around him the rats turned belly-up, stunned.
He stared at the carnage, standing still because his legs were numb. He set down the hamadryad, who stepped daintily over the bodies. "What happened?"
Tandy sounded abashed. "I threw a tantrum."
Smash left the twitching rats and went to join her. His feet felt as if they were nothing but bones, with the flesh melted off, though this was not the case. "That's a spell?"
"That's bad temper, my talent," she said, eyes downcast. "When I get mad, I throw a tantrum. Sometimes it does a lot of damage. I'm sorry; I should have controlled my emotion."
"Sorry?" Smash said, bewildered, looking back at the rum of the rat-swarm. "That's a wonderful talent!"
"Oh, sure," she replied with irony.
"My mother had a similar talent. Of course, she was a curse-fiend; they all throw curses."
"Maybe I have curse-fiend ancestry," Tandy said sourly.
"My father Crombie came from a long line of soldiers, and they do get around quite a bit."
Now the others came up. "You did that, Tandy?" Fireoak asked. "You saved me a lot of misery! If Smash had put me down amidst those awful rats, or if they had climbed up him and gotten to me, as they were trying to-" She winced, feeling her wounds. She was obviously in considerable discomfort.
"That's an extremely useful talent for the jungles of Xanth," the Siren said.
"You really think so?" Tandy asked, brightening. "I always understood it wasn't nice to be destructive."
"It isn't?" Smash asked, surprised.
Then they all laughed. "Sometimes perhaps it is," the Siren concluded.
They found some genuine vegetables for lunch, then resumed the march. But soon they heard a
ferocious snuffling and snorting ahead, low to the ground. "Oh, that might be a dragon with a cold,"
John said worriedly. "I can't say I really like dragons; they're too hot."
"I will go see," Smash said. He discovered he was rather enjoying this journey. Violence was a natural part of his nature-but now he had people to protect, so there was a certain added justification to it. It was more meaningful to bash a dragon to save a collection of pretty little lasses than it was to do it merely for its own sake. The Eye Queue caused him to ponder the meaning of the things he did, and so it helped to have at least a little meaning present. At such time as he got free of the curse, he could forget about these inconvenient considerations.