Faun and Games (15 page)

He was already becoming happier to have the day mare with him. The

notion of losing his soul halfway between his body and the little moon

did not appeal.

He sat on the bed, then removed his knapsack and lay on it.
 
It was very

comfortable, but he was unable to relax.
 
This was the weirdest kind of

journey he had never before imagined.
 
Still, he had to do it. He

reached into the knapsack, which he now had beside him on the bed, and

brought out the Good Magician's bottle.
 
He nerved himself, took hold of

the stopper, and pulled.
 
It came loose with a pop, and he held the

bottle to his nose and sniffed.

Suddenly he felt quite alien.
 
He was half caught in a cloying, clinging

swamp, truly bogged down.
 
He fought to haul himself free of it. He

needed expansion room.

"Be easy," a voice said.
 
"You don't want to tear off any."

He looked, but his eyes didn't focus.
 
In fact, he didn't seem to have

any eyes.
 
He tried to speak, but he didn't seem to have a mouth either.

"Just float," the voice said.
 
"Let your soul coalesce."

His soul?
 
He followed the advice, and found that he didn't have to

struggle; he just floated out of the swamp, and as the rest of him came

free, it drew in together so that he was a single cloud.

"Now form an eye, so you can see better."

He focused, and the eyeball formed.
 
It focused, and he was able to see

a large whitish wall.

"You are looking at the celling.
 
Look down."

He rotated his eye, and saw his body lying on the bed, asleep.
 
He tried

to exclaim in surprise, but couldn't.
 
So he formed a mouth. "Oh!" For

he realized that that was the bog he had just hauled himself out of.

"Now make yourself small."

He willed himself small.
 
That improved his focus.
 
He saw a horse

standing beside him.
 
Her hoofs were planted firmly in mid-air.
 
"Mare

Imbri!
 
"

"Yes.
 
Follow me to Ptero." She walked away.

He tried to walk, but had no legs, so he just floated in her wake. She

was going toward a huge statue.
 
In a moment he realized that it wasn 't

a statue, but was Princess Ida.
 
They were gong toward her head.

"Keep getting smaller," Imbri said.
 
"We have a long way to go."

He realized that he wasn't actually hearing her, for he hadn't formed an

ear; he was simply aware of her thoughts.
 
He saw that she was getting

smaller herself, so he did the same.

Ida's head seemed to grow enormous.
 
Then he saw a small object, like a

white ball.
 
It was coming toward them, or they were going toward it.

It, too, grew, or seemed to, becoming more like a boulder. Then it was

like an island.
 
In fact, it was looming like a moon, which was perhaps

unsurprising.
 
Finally it seemed more like a whole world, filling his

entire view.
 
It was no longer pure white; he saw that the white was in

patches, which seemed to be clouds.
 
Their designs were much more

interesting from above than clouds usually seemed from below, because

they weren't flat, they were mountainous.

Now they were falling toward the planet, and it became ever larger. The

spaces between the clouds expanded, and he could see green land and blue

sea below.
 
He realized that he and Imbri were still getting smaller,

because Ptero was still looking larger.
 
It was amazing how big it

seemed, as they plunged toward its varied surface.

"Time to slow," Imbri cautioned him.
 
"We don't want to land too hard."

"But we're just souls, aren't we?
 
We have no solidity."

"That's not true.
 
There is a small amount of substance in a soul, and

on a world as small as Ptero, that becomes significant.
 
We will be

assuming solid form there."

He thought of the size of Ptero when he had seen it as a tiny moon

circling Princess Ida's head.
 
Now it seemed larger than all Xanth.

Which meant that they were so small as to be invisible specks.
 
Maybe it

was possible for their souls to take physical form on that scale. That

was a relief, because he wasn't at all comfortable as a nebulous blob

that had to form an eyeball just to see anything.

He tried to slow, but it didn't work.
 
He was plunging faster than ever.

"How do I do it?"

"Just form into a wide, flat shape, like a leaf or feather.
 
Then the

air will catch you, and you'll drift down."

He tried that, but was still falling uncomfortably fast.
 
"It's not

working very well."

"Oh, I forgot: you have a whole soul.
 
It's twice as dense as my half

soul.
 
So you are twice as heavy.
 
See if you can form into a

parachute."

"What kind of a parrot?"

"Like this." She became a kind of upside-down cup, with strings leading

down to a lump of herself below.
 
"It's a Mundane concept. The canopy

catches the air, and the blob guides it down."

He emulated her form, and it began to work.
 
His broad cloth-like upper

section caught the air, and dragged, and slowed the descent of the

compact lower part of him.
 
Even so, they were coming down a good deal

faster than he liked.
 
He expanded his mantle, but before it was able to

do much good, he plunged into the blue sea near the white coast of the

green land.

He descended way down below the surface of the water.
 
He held his

breath and spread his hands, trying to swim toward the surface. Then he

heard Imbri: "Be a fish!"

Oh.
 
He formed into a fish, and then he had no problem.
 
She formed into

a sea horse beside him.
 
"Swim to land.
 
I must tell Ida that we are

safely here."

"But-" But she was already gone.

So he strengthened his tall and fins and swam as strongly as he could

toward land.
 
He hoped there weren't any sea- nonsters here, because one

of them could gobble him up.
 
Though probably he could change into

something else, like a stink horn, and get away.

He saw the sand of the bottom rising beneath him.
 
The water was getting

shallow; he was nearing the beach.
 
He was glad; this business of

shifting shapes did not come naturally to him, though he supposed it

could be fun if he learned it well enough.

The water became too shallow to swim in.
 
Now what should he do?
 
Try to

become a flatter fish?
 
But it would keep on getting shallower, until no

amount of flatness would work.

Then he laughed at his own stupidity.
 
He was there!
 
He was at the

shore.
 
He no longer needed to be a fish.
 
He could assume his own

shape.

He did so.
 
In a moment he was standing ankle deep in the surf, complete

with his knapsack.
 
His knapsack?
 
How had he managed to bring that

along'?
 
He reached into it, and found everything there, including the

stoppered spell bottle and his spare pair of sandals.
 
Apparently his

soul was equipped with whatever his body had.
 
That was reassuring.

Something plunged down to splash in the water behind him.
 
Then the

figure of a horse appeared.
 
"I have told her," Mare Imbri said. "Now we

are safely on Ptero, and can go about your mission."

"Great," he said.
 
"And exactly how do we do that?"

"I have no idea."

Forrest gazed at the beach ahead of them.
 
This was indeed going to be a

challenge.

hey waded the rest of the way out of the water and stood on the shore.

Forrest splashed, while Imbri's feet moved through the water

splashlessly.
 
The beach was a pretty white ribbon of sand, curving

around so as to stay between the water and the land with remarkable

precision.
 
The air was comfortably warm.

Forrest mulled over what Imbri had said.
 
"If you have no idea what to

do, and I have no idea, how are we going to do it?"

"Maybe we can ask someone."

Something was bothering him slightly, and he managed to figure out what

it was.
 
"When you talk, your mouth doesn't move."

"That's because mares can't talk well with their mouths.
 
They can only

neigh.
 
So I talk in your head, in dreamiets."

"But now I'm using my mouth to talk to you.
 
I can hear the sound."

"That's because you are physical."

"Physical?
 
But only my soul came here."

"The soul has a very small amount of substance.
 
Just enough to make a

solid body here, where everything is very small.
 
So you have naturally

assumed your regular form, complete with sandals and knapsack."

"And you have assumed yours," he said, catching on.
 
"But you look a bit

hazy."

"That's because I have only half a soul, while my mare body is several

times as massive as your faun body.
 
So I have less than a tenth of your

solidity.
 
If you touch me, your hand will pass through me." I

"It will?" He reached out to pat her shoulder-and his hand sank into her

body with only faint resistance.
 
He snatched it out.
 
"Sorry."