Well-Tempered Clavicle (40 page)

The third day was busy. I use an adult scooter, the kind you push with one foot, to fetch in the morning newspapers, a round-trip of just over a mile and a half. On the way back the rear tire popped, and I walked the rest of the way. My wife’s front bicycle tire also went flat. So I dismounted both, and discovered neither could be patched; we would have to buy new tubes and a new tire. That took an hour to ascertain. We also had shopping to do, another generous hour. A novel manuscript arrived, for reading and comment. I planned to read the first ten pages, getting it started, then start writing my novel.

Then came The Call: our elder daughter, Penelope Carolyn Jacob, in treatment for cancer, who had recently had brain surgery to remove tumors that were paralyzing her right side, had suddenly died. Her forty-second birthday would have been the next month. That wiped out the rest of my day, and in fact it was four days before I could return to this novel. It wasn’t just the emotional turmoil. We were busy notifying family of the tragedy and setting up monetary and practical help for her widowed husband and eight-year-old daughter; their loss was greater than ours. Fortunately our younger daughter, Cheryl, had taken time off from work and flown there to assist for the month. Three days into that, Cheryl suddenly had a lot more responsibility.

So this novel was written under a cloud. Penny was constantly on my mind. I really wasn’t in the mood for funny fantasy. But neither was I in the mood to curl up and suffer. Writing is what I do, and it was time for this novel. My wife and I maintained our activity, consoling each other, and supporting the others. There is no need to belabor this further. It will be two years later by the time this novel is published. Anyone who wishes to get more of the story can check my blog-type column for OctOgre 2009, at
www.hipiers.com
, where I give a sort of memorial life history of my daughter.

But I will mention here that Penny had impact on Xanth. She was ten when the first Xanth novel was published. She contributed the pun about the dirty mind of Jordon Barbarian, after his skull got split open and his horse used his hooves to scrape his brains back in, along with some dirt. Every time thereafter when Jordon saw a pretty girl, that dirt got stirred up and colored his thoughts. That also happens, oddly, to many mundane men. Penny said after her own brain surgery that, yes, there was some air and dirt from that, so now she was an air head with a dirty mind. When I made up the Xanth calendar, with the Ogre Months, I was stumped on February. She suggested FeBlueberry. I laughed, dismissing it, but soon realized that it was perfect: the month when the red berries got blue with cold. Penny’s horse, Sky Blue, became the model for the Night Mare Imbrium, with the hoof print on the moon named after her, and for Neysa unicorn in the Adept series.

In fact, I had Penny in mind when I crafted Princess Ivy and followed her as she grew up over the course of several Xanth novels. When Penny made a friend her exact same age, she demanded that Ivy find a twin sister; thus Princess Ida came to be. When Penny got engaged, so did Ivy. But then Penny didn’t marry for eight years, so neither could Ivy. I finally lost patience and divorced them, freeing Ivy. She immediately married Grey Murphy.
Then
Penny married. It seemed the character had started leading the way. Ivy went on to have triplet princesses, but Penny was satisfied with just one mundane daughter. Ah, well.

However, this novel is not about Penny. It just happened to be the one I was writing when Penny died. Because her death colored my world while I was writing it, Penny gets this recognition here. And no, Ivy will not die, any more than will my memory of my daughter.

*   *   *

The writing started slowly, but gained speed as I recovered my equilibrium. Life does go on, though the hole in my soul will never completely heal. Before the novel ended, I had dental surgery to remove five teeth, setting up for partial dentures. At this writing I’m seventy-five, and my teeth have never been great; I’m tired of pouring money into the aching cavity. I thought my recovery from the extractions would have me zonked out on pain pills, but it wasn’t that bad, and I continued to write, and completed the novel on schedule. But I remain in doubt whether it is as sharp as prior novels; that will be for the readers to judge. Meanwhile I had to wrestle with the dread Soft Diet while my mouth healed, and lost weight before bouncing back.

There are the usual half slew of puns. There may be fewer in future, as the puns are methodically collected and locked in the Caprice Castle dungeon. But I suspect that more will continue to leak in from Mundania, so there won’t be much difference for a while. We’ll see. The title itself is a pun on
The Well-Tempered Clavier
by J. S. Bach. The clavier is the keyboard of any musical instrument; think of it as a piano. Bach’s piece is about four hours of gentle piano music. My second daughter, Cheryl, gave me a four-disc CD set with the complete preludes and fugues, and I listened to it while working on this novel. To my untrained ear it’s just music, but I understand that knowledgeable musicians consider it to be a pinnacle of this form, the “Old Testament.” So we have even-tempered Picka Bone playing his ribs as a keyboard, and yes, his music sounds just like Bach.

Before I started writing the novel I had a problem: I did not remember how walking skeletons reproduced. That information was buried somewhere in a prior novel, and I was not about to reread several novels to locate it. So I went to the readers of my monthly column and asked, promising a credit in the Author’s Note. They came through. The most comprehensive early answer was by Erin Schram, who identified the novels and even quoted relevant passages. Others were by Russell Leverett, Heather Hatch, Sean Draven, Jan Perlmutter, Bridget “Bee” Allen, and Kerry Melissa Anne Garrigan. Thank you, one and all. Oh—how
do
they do it? He strikes her so hard she flies apart. This is known as knocking her up. He selects small bones from the collection and assembles them into a baby skeleton. I was not sure how Princess Dawn would go for that, nice as her bones may be—women can be fussy about the darnedest things—but in the course of the novel I learned that Dawn could handle it. How are the genders distinguished? Girl skeletons have one more rib.

That settled, I proceeded to the writing. I have a list of reader suggestions that keeps growing; I try to use them up, but some readers send in pages at a time, and so I never quite catch up. But I try to use one suggestion by each contributor before using more than one by some. That means that a number of available notions were not used here; I ran out of room. They should find homes in future novels. I don’t want to annoy readers unduly, but the truth is that I would find it easier to write the novels without reader suggestions. I know, because I do write non-Xanth novels, even if many readers seem not to know that. It can be a challenge to fit in so many reader notions without disrupting the flow of the story. At any rate, here are the credits:

Appundix: the list of contributors to the novel—suggested by Ken Sundvik. Bring back the Baldwin pets, Woofer, Tweeter, Midrange—Michael Putch. F & G gravestones, Flight of Stairs chained down—Taz Spivak. Cody deciphers codes or languages—Cody White. Think tank, Chopping Chop Sticks, Gorgon’s marble cake, Isle of Cats littering law—Robert. Astonish- and fig-Mints—Olivia Davis. Coco-nuts with cocoa inside—Nicole. Iron Maiden, Talent of changing the color of trees, boy with hot hands, Snowshoe Tree—Aaron Jackson. Psycho Path—Cassandra York. Rob, who robs—Robert Tobara. Talent of making balls of light—Aaron Amberg. Lending strength of body, substance, or character—Champion. Meaty Oar—Logan Addotta. Curse Sieve—Sophia Hanson. Glitch in the spell making Bink’s descendents magicians, makes most female too, Chameleon gets split into Fanchon and Wynne—Matt Yarnot. Riding a day mare—D.B. Bone-headed ideas—Kerry Melissa Anne Garrigan. Sound Barrier, Diplo-mats, woman makes dreams real—Nicolas Birchett. Key Limes that unlock doors—Adrian. Jack in the Box, Occu-pie, crack-hers, crack his—Jennifer Macleod. Frayed Knot—Dave Gomberg. Evil Devil Tree, Blood, Fog, River Banks, Salad Bar, Infini Tea, petroleum jellyfish, jellyfish bean, many pun demons—Tim Bruening.

Thought Projection, Worry Wart, absorbing talents, answering a question without confusion, pausing time for others—Brant Tucker. Box containing all puns (Pundora’s Box)—Belgarion Kheidar. Caprice Castle—Ron Leming. Attila the Pun, Hairdo/Hairdon’t, finding something in the second-to-last place looked, Greased Lightning—Jesse McBeth. Punisher—Jamie Conner. Tom Boy, SOGA (Sea of Gruesome Arms), Walking skeletons have desiccated souls, the woman Steel who becomes a weapon, Buddy who is best friend—Bithor. Aliena—name borrowed from Aliena Scarlet. Bass Fish—Chris Hamilton. Drift wood makes thoughts drift—Kyle Martin Paddock. Ci-Gar, Ci-Garette—Donald Dickerson. Water Shed—Anna Pool.

Khari Saia—Khari Saia. Cow peas, reci peas—Darrel W. Jones. Pop fly (soda)—Wes Didier. Finger Prince (finger prints)—Rusty Burkett. Matter Horn, Turn Coat—Thomas Pfarrer. Pastree for pastries and paste, razor tree—Webster Neely. Window Pain—Richard Dickerson. Pie in the Sky—Wes Didier. See an Enemy (anemone)—Ian deJoode. Aphid David, the legal bug—Misty J Zaebst. Poultrygeist, Doris who sees the truth—Deneen Jardstam. Rockchuck—Kelley Gililland. Car Pet—Cathy Priller. Have a female giant—Jareth. Granola
=
Granny Ola—Chris Dalton. Wear-Wolf, Where Wolf—Laura C. Punishment—cursed with a pun to live with—James Kollinger. Demon Litho fragmenting into asteroid belt—Kim Delaney IV. Furn, Airic, Peat, Wyck, Quantum—Wade Moriarty. Skully Knucklehead—Joe Birchett. Ports of Xanth: C, D, M, X, Car, Pass, Purr, Trans, Rap—Avi Ornstein. Smart Bombs—Richey Birchett. Crymea River—Adria Nyxx. Common Tater—Amber Hamm. Skyler making gray days bright, Sky Violet blending into scenery—Audrey Willoughby. The two Claire Voyants meeting—John D. Heinmiller.

Mim Barbarian, changing her wings—Maddragon. Eunice, who adds the silent E. Text Tiles, Text Us—Dragonlord. GoDemon making music from anything—Benjammmin St. Rebel. Talent of making any rolling object come up as wanted—Mike Kloss. Tracy Berry McLain—Tabby McLain. Anthony Liaw “Pirate”—Kara Ogushi. Talent of summoning cheese from the moon, summoning stink horns—Dan Clarke. Adora Bull, minotaur maiden, with door talent—Jamie O’Neill. D Sist, A Sist—Chris Bullard. Sara Nade—Kari Lambert. Emily Bee Keeper, Erin Kitty Litter—Lora Beuoy. Grease monkeys, fuel hogs—Russell Styles. Convey-Her-Belt, Transparents—Emma Schwarztans. Talent of becoming a shadow—Noah Goodman. Bubble of Silence—Justin Hernandez. Rain Bow—Alexander Jones. Centaur gets things wrong—Sparrow.

Thus concludes Xanth #35. I have not yet decided on the next, but suspect it will be
Luck of the Draw,
wherein there is a Demon contest to determine the ideal man for Princess Harmony as she comes of age. Xanth has many princesses, as noted, and finding suitable men for them is a continuing project. They do not like to be denied. Meanwhile, readers are welcome to catch up on my current events at my website,
www.hipiers.com
, where I have a monthly blog-type column and maintain on ongoing survey of electronic publishers and related services. That’s because it seems that about half my readers are aspiring authors, and they need to find suitable publishers. That’s almost as difficult as finding situations for princesses.

TOR BOOKS by PIERS ANTHONY

THE XANTH SERIES

Vale of the Vole

Heaven Cent

Man from Mundania

Demons Don’t Dream

Harpy Thyme

Geis of the Gargoyle

Roc and a Hard Place

Yon Ill Wind

Faun & Games

Zombie Lover

Xone of Contention

The Dastard

Swell Foop

Up in a Heaval

Cube Route

Currant Events

Pet Peeve

Stork Naked

Air Apparent

Two to the Fifth

Jumper Cable

Knot Gneiss

Well-Tempered Clavicle

THE GEODYSSEY SERIES

Isle of Woman

Shame of Man

Hope of Earth

Muse of Art

Climate of Change

ANTHOLOGIES

Alien Plot

Anthonology

NONFICTION

How Precious Was That While

Letters to Jenny

But What of Earth?

Ghost

Hasan

Prostho Plus

Race Against Time

Shade of the Tree

Steppe

Triple Détente

WITH ROBERT R. MARGROFF

The Dragon’s Gold Series

Dragon’s Gold

Serpent’s Silver

Chimaera’s Copper

Orc’s Opal

Mouvar’s Magic

The E.S.P. Worm

The Ring

WITH FRANCES HALL

Pretender

WITH RICHARD GILLIAM

Tales from the Great Turtle

(Anthology)

WITH ALFRED TELLA

The Willing Spirit

WITH CLIFFORD A. PICKOVER

Spider Legs

WITH JAMES RICHEY AND ALAN RIGGS

Quest for the Fallen Star

WITH JULIE BRADY

Dream a Little Dream

WITH JO ANNE TAEUSCH

The Secret of Spring

WITH RON LEMING

The Gutbucket Quest

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.