Faun and Games (71 page)

nymph.
 
They were all colors, scintillating like gems: topaz, ruby,

opal, and lapis lazuli.

Suddenly Forrest recognized the figures.
 
They were himself and Imbri in

her nymph form.
 
But what were they doing in a picture in the foliage of

the tree?

He tried to make sense of it.
 
Imbr'l had gone to stand close to the

tree, and then the scene had formed.
 
With the two of them in it. Loving

each other.
 
As if the tree had somehow picked up Imbri's secret

thoughts and animated them.
 
The dreams of a night mare.

A glorious suspicion washed through him.
 
He reached over his shoulder

and plunged his hand into his knapsack.
 
He found the dear horn and

hauled it out.
 
As he did so, a fragment of paper fluttered down.
 
It

must have been caught in the horn.
 
He reached down to pick it up. Could

it be the lost notes of the Good Magician?

No, it was a different piece, royally embossed.
 
A single word was

written on it, in a princessly script: Imbri.

Suddenly he remembered when Dawn had touched them, on Torus, and learned

something she wouldn't tell.
 
She had talked with Ida, and then hugged

and kissed Forrest, her special favor done.
 
But she had 'd what 't was.

She must have slipped this note into his knapnever sal sack, under the

cover of her embrace.
 
Her answer about the identity of the creature he

was looking for.

But why hadn't she just told him?
 
Now that came clear too.
 
If she had,

his quest would have ended right there-and his mission with Dawn & Eve

wasn't yet complete.
 
It might have been out of his control; he and

Imbri might have dissolved into soul substance and gone back to Xanth,

unable to stop themselves.
 
Leaving the human section of Ptero to its

fate of marginalization.
 
So Dawn couldn't tell him, until after that

was done.
 
But she wanted to tell him immediately, so that her love for

him would be equal to Eve's.
 
So she had done so, in her fashion, giving

him a note that he would be sure to see eventually.

He lifted the dear horn and blew.
 
The delightful sound went out, and

echoed from Imbri, though she had no substance.
 
She was indeed the one.

She had turned and was looking at him, not understanding.
 
"Imbri-I saw

your dream.
 
Of you and me, together.
 
The tree animated it."

"Oh!" she said, blushing.

"Are you willing to become the spirit of the tree, to share its fate

until the end?"

"But I can't.
 
I have no substance."

"Yes you can.
 
And if you do, the tree will lend you enough substance to

make a solid body.
 
A nymph-or a mare, so you can gallop in new

pastures.
 
Spirits help trees; trees help spirits.
 
They are bound

together.
 
And you and I can be to either physically.
 
As in your

dream."

"But I never thought-"

"Why did you do so much more for me than was required by your Service to

the Good Magician?"

"I wanted to be sure you succeeded."

"What about when the twin princesses were seducing me?
 
You never

interfered."

"I wanted you to be happy."

"But don't you see-that's true love!
 
You were doing everything for me,

with no thought for yourself."

She blushed again, unable to deny it.

"And why didn't you return to the Good Magician for your Answer, when

your Service was done?
 
Because it was done, even if my part of it

seemed unsuccessful."

"I just-didn't want to leave you," she said.

"And you thought there was no way that the two of us could be together

in Xanth.
 
You didn't know about what trees offer."

"I didn't know," she agreed.

"But the tree knew.
 
As soon as you came near, it knew.
 
Its spirit

interacted with yours.
 
It was that interaction I saw."

She nodded.
 
"But the Good Magician surely knew.
 
Why didn't he tell

me?"

"Because I wasn't ready.
 
I thought that all I wanted was a faun for the

tree.
 
But in the course of the adventure I learned some of the human

breadth and depth of mind and emotion.
 
That left me forever unsatisfied

with less.
 
The Good Magician wouldn't take my Question because he knew

it was the wrong one.
 
He knew that I was your Answer-for you didn't

know your real desire either.
 
It wasn't for a new pasture, it was for

true love.
 
And I could be that love-once I learned how.
 
And now I know

that neither nymph nor human woman is what is right for me.
 
What I need

is a companion who has a similar length of life to my own.
 
Who truly

understands.
 
Who I can love and be loved by.
 
And that is you, Imbri.

It was always you.
 
It just wasn't always me."

"This is so hard to believe."

"Just adopt the clog tree.
 
Then we will play out your dream scene.

While you learn to believe, I will learn to love you.
 
I am already

failing." For he saw the little hearts forming, orbiting his head like

tiny moons.
 
They were shaping into gem-like hummingbirds.
 
She was

perfect for him, and not only because they had shared an experience like

no other.

"Oh, you mustn't fall and crash," she said.
 
She turned to the tree,

stretching out her arms.
 
As she did so, the foliage became brilliant,

and her body became solid, in the form of a lovely nymph: small but

perfect.

Then she turned back to Forrest, to catch him before he fell too far.

When I wrote this novel, I was reminded of the fifth novel, Ogre, Ogre,

because that one introduced a wild new setting of Xanth: the world of

dreams, inside the gourd.
 
This twenty-first Xanth novel, Faun & Games,

introduces the wild new settings of Ida's moons.
 
I love them, and I

hope that my readers do too.
 
Whether there will be more adventures

there I don't know; not 'immediately, as the next novel will relate to

zombies.

When I started on this one in Jamboree 1996 I checked my list of reader

sent notions, and discovered there were 300-and more were piling in.
 
It

wasn't possible to use them all.
 
There are limits, even to Xanth, and

the story comes first.
 
Readers seem to be unable to stifle their urge

to emit puns.
 
But not all readers like puns.
 
So I try to maintain a

healthy, or at least tolerable, balance.
 
The problem can be shown by

this example, which occurred while I was writing Faun: a reader wrote to

suggest that too many puns were degrading Xanth, so I should slow them

down.
 
Then he concluded his letter with a page and a half of more puns.

Any questions?

Some readers send me multi-page notions for future Xanth stories. I

consider these, but often they just don't fit in the framework I have.

It's much easier to invent my own story than to work from notions

suggested by others.
 
The idea most often suggested is the talent of

borrowing talents from others.
 
I finally have reference to it in this

novel, and do give a credit, but at the risk of alienating hundreds of

readers who suggested it before and haven't been credited.

This time I used reader notions dating from 1993-96, trying to give

preference to older ones, and managed to catch up on most of them

through FeBlueberry 1995, and scattered ones thereafter.
 
So there are

over 100 waiting for the next novel.
 
I'm still making notes of good

ones, but this seems to be a losing race; each novel I am further

behind.
 
So for those of you who hoped to see your notions here, and

didn't: maybe next time.
 
I'm really in the business of writing novels,

not publishing lists of names.
 
It's not that your notions are bad, just

that there are too many of them.

Meanwhile, my dull mundane life continued as I wrote this novel. I am

not entirely sure why readers want to know about my personal existence,

but they complain when I don't mention it, and on occasion I'll get a

letter inquiring whether I have died.
 
No, not that I know of. I gave a

talk for the "Last Lecture" series at the University of South Florida,

the theme of this series being that if you knew it was to be your last

lecture ever, what would you say?
 
I thought about it, and concluded

that I would want to let others know what I had learned, in the course

of my researches for my serious writing-the GEODYSSEY historical fiction

series-about the nature of mankind.
 
So I told of the evolution of our

species from Australopithecus to the present, of the complications

entailed by learning to walk two-footed, of the "triple ploy" women use

to capture and hold men, and the true nature of dreams, which are

actually the brain's "downtime" processing of the experiences of the day

for cross-referencing and long-term memory.
 
The following month I

talked at the American Humanist convention in Florida, telling a love

story adapted from the third GEODYSSEY novel, relating to the global

crisis we face and the manner in which two communities, survivalist and

pacifist, manage to work together to survive it, despite their opposite

philosophies. No, not many laughs in these talks; both were deadly

serious.
 
For laughs, come to Xanth.

This was the first novel I wrote completely on Windows 95 and Word 7 on

my new Pentium system.
 
These are powerful programs, and slowly I am