Faun and Games (2 page)

urged her to stay-, then she would have been sure that he was up to

nothing interesting.

The tracks veered toward the Void.
 
That was the nearby reion of no

return.
 
Of course every faun and nymph knew better than to enter it,

because there was no way out of it.
 
Anything that crossed the boundary

was doomed.
 
Only special creatures, like the night mares, could escape

it, because they weren't real in the way ordinary folk were.
 
They had

very little substance.

"Don't float too near the Void," Forrest warned the demoness.

She changed course to approach the boundary, then paused.
 
"Say, you are

a cunning one!" she said with admiration.
 
"You knew I'd automatically

do the opposite.
 
It almost worked, too.
 
But I'm only a little crazy.

You have to be a lot crazy to venture into the Void."

"Maybe next time," he muttered.

The nymph was clearly teasing Branch, by passing flirtingly close to the

fringe of the Void.
 
Her prints almost touched the boundary, then moved

away, then came close again.
 
The menace of that drelid region added to

the thrill of the chase.
 
Forrest had done it too, and knew exactly the

steps to take to be sure of never straying across the line.

Then his sandals balked.
 
He stopped, perplexed; what was the matter?

His sandals were magic, and protected his hoofs from harm, and if he

were about to step somewhere harmful, they stopped him.
 
Yet he saw

nothing ahead to be concerned about.

"So what's with you?" Mentia asked.
 
"Tired of walking?"

"I didn't stop," he explained.
 
"My sandals did."

"Say, I'm getting to like you.
 
You're almost as weird as I am."

"That's impossible."

"Thank you." This time her flush of pleasure was purple with green polka

dots, and it extended down her legs and out across the ground around

her.
 
"So why did your sandals stop?"

"I'm not sure.
 
Maybe it was a false alarm."

Still, his sandals had never yet been wrong.
 
So he dropped to his furry

knees and examined the ground before him.
 
It was ordinary. There were a

few smiling gladiolas, the happiest of flowers, and beyond them some

horse radishes were flicking off flies with their tails. He thought of

asking the nearest horse if it knew of anything harmful here, but he

didn't understand plant language very well, and in any event all it

would say would be "neigh." So finally he got up and made a detour

around the place.

"Oh, well," the demoness said, disappointed.

But now he couldn't find the trail.
 
Both sets of tracks were gone. So

he turned back-and that was when he saw it.
 
A splinter of reverse wood

on the ground.
 
He was sure of its identity, because the gladiola

closest to it was drooping sadly.
 
And right across it was a lady

slipper print.
 
The nymph had inadvertently stepped on the splinter.
 
It

hadn't hurt her directly, because it was lying flat.
 
But it must have

affected the fleet magic of her slipper, so that she had lost her sure

footing.

"You see something," D.
 
Mentia remarked astutely.

Now he saw the clog-print next to it, and realized the awful truth. The

nymph had lost her balance, because of the reversal of her slipper

magic, and teetered on the edge of the boundary of the Void.
 
Branch had

collided with her, caught by surprise by her sudden stop.
 
And the two

had sprawled into the Void.

"Yes.
 
They are gone."

It was a freak accident, the kind that would happen hardly once in a

century.
 
The reverse wood splinter might have been blown there recently

by an errant gust of wind.
 
It would have been harmless, except when it

came into contact with something magical.
 
Then that abrupt reversal

Branch and the nymph were lost.
 
They would never get out of the Void.

And their trees would suffer, for without its spirit a magical tree

slowly lost its magic and became, dreadful destiny, virtually mundane.

It was a fate, many believed, worse than extinction.

"I'm sorry," the demoness said.
 
"That means that you won't be

entertaining me any more."

Forrest had no idea where the nymph's tree was, but knew it was

suffering similarly.
 
He hoped there would be another nymph free to join

it and save it.
 
Meanwhile, he did know where Branch's tree was. But

what could he do?
 
He could not care for two trees; the relationship

didn't work that way.
 
He was bound to his sandalwood tree.
 
He knew of

no fauns looking for trees.
 
There were more trees than amenable fauns

and nymphs, so that some trees that might have flourished magically

became ordinary.
 
It was sad, because the right trees had much to offer

their companion spirits, but true.

Then he thought of something.
 
It was a vanishingly tiny chance, but

marginally better than nothing.
 
"You're a spirit," he said to the

demoness.
 
"How would you like to adopt a tree?"

"You mean, become a tree dryad, so that I would live almost forever and

always protect it?"

"Yes.
 
It's a worthy occupation.
 
It doesn't have to be a nymph. Any

caring spirit will do, if the commitment is there.
 
And the clogs would

protect your feet."

"Commitment.
 
Protected feet." She tried to look serious, but smoke

started puffing out her ears, and finally she exploded into a hilarious

fireball.
 
"Ho ho ho!"

Then again, maybe the notion had been worse than nothing.
 
Demons had no

souls, because they were the degraded remnants of souls themselves. They

cared for nothing and nobody.
 
"Sorry I mentioned It."

Oh, I'm not!
 
That was my laugh for the day." The smoke coalesced into

the extraordinarily feminine female woman distaff luscious shape of

girlish persuasion with the slightly translucent dress.
 
"A tree nymph!

You are a barrel of laughs." She formed into a brown barrel with

brightly colored pancake-shaped laughs overflowing its rim.

Forrest ignored her as well as he could, and headed for his home tree.

How could he have been so stupid as to make such a suggestion to a

demoness?

She followed.
 
"The oddest thing is that my better half well might have

agreed, were she not otherwise occupied.
 
She has half a soul. But also

a half mortal child, so she's busy.
 
I'm the half without the soul."

As if he couldn't have guessed.
 
"You could share the soul of the tree.

"The soul of a shoe tree," she exclaimed, her laughter building up

another head of steam.
 
"A clog sole.
 
Protecting my feet.
 
Oh, hold me,

somebody; I think I'm going to expire of mirth." Her body swelled until

it burst and disappeared, leaving only a faint titter behind.

This time, it seemed she really was gone.
 
But Forrest didn't chance it;

he walked directly back without looking around.

When he returned and looked at the clog tree, his heart sank into his

stomach.
 
The poor thing was so droopy and sad.
 
It was all that

remained of his friend Branch.
 
He had to do something to help it.

He walked up and put a hand on the trunk.
 
"Have confidence, clog tree.

I will find you another spirit.
 
Just give me time to do it."

The tree must have heard him, because its leaves perked up and became

greener.
 
It knew him, because he had been near it many times, and was

the friend of its faun.
 
It trusted him to help it.

He had promised, and he would do his best.
 
Some folk thought that fauns

and nymphs were empty-headed creatures, incapable of feeling or

commitment, but those folk were confusing types.
 
The creatures of the

Faun and Nymph Retreat had no memory beyond a day, so every new day was

a new adventure.
 
But that was the magic of the retreat; any who left

there started to turn real, which meant they aged and had memories. Some

preserved their youth by finding useful jobs.
 
Jewel the Nymph had taken

on the chore of spreading gems throughout Xanth, so that others would

have the delightful challenge of finding them, and later she had married

a mortal man and become a grandmother.
 
Many others had adopted magical

trees, just as Forrest had.
 
It was a kind of symbiosis, which was a

fancy word meaning that the two got along great together and helped each

other survive. The trees kept the fauns or nymphs young, because trees

lived a long time and their spirits shared that longevity.
 
The fauns or

nymphs protected their trees, bringing them water in times of drought

and harassing woodsmen who wanted to chop the trees down.
 
Nymphs had

very effective ways to distract woodsmen, or to persuade them to spare

their trees. Sometimes a nymph would even marry a woodsman, if that was

what it took. But her first loyalty was always to her tree.
 
Fauns had

other ways, such as setting booby traps or informing large dragons where

a nice man sized meal could be had near a certain tree.
 
One way or

another, they protected their timber, as well as enhancing the natural

magic of the trees.

But the sudden loss of Branch left the clog tree in trouble.
 
Such

relationships were not lightly made or broken.
 
A faun who lost his tree

died, and a tree who lost its faun turned mundane, an even sadder state.

So he had to find a replacement.