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thing. I listened to the complaints of villagers throughout the kingdom, and did what I could to alleviate
them. I was surprised when Dana, who liked to turn invisible and float surreptitiously through villages
and eavesdrop on conversations, informed me that I was becoming known as "Good King Humfrey." I
really wasn't accomplishing much, but I was listening and responding, and apparently that was more
than the folk were accustomed to.
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In one village I encountered a young man who was quite smart. Like me, he had a passion for
knowledge, but unlike me, he didn't care unduly about magic. The information he craved was historical:
he wanted to know everything that had happened through the ages of Xanth. But no one else cared.
Well, I cared! "I appoint you Royal Historian," I said. "Question the people about past events, and make
a compilation of what you learn for the royal records." For this was what King Ebnez had done for me,
with my survey of talents, and it had been a great employment. Too bad it hadn't enabled me to find a
true Magician to inherit the throne! "Incidentally, what is your name?"
"E. Timber Bram," he said.
So it was that Bram commenced what was to prove a significant effort. He was the one who defined the
dates of Xanth that I have used here. By his reckoning, I became king in the year 952, when I was
nineteen years of age. Very well; I would note the dates of the subsequent events of my life. It provided
a kind of framework that hadn't been there before. I was proud of instituting this, but I knew that no one
else would care. People were so uninterested in dates that the task of keeping the holiday calendar had
finally fallen on the ogres, who were too stupid to get out of it. Fortunately no one cared to argue about
errors with ogres, so there were few complaints.
About two years into my kingship, Dana had news for me. "I tried to prevent it, Humfrey, but you were
simply too healthy."
"Of course I'm healthy," I said. "I fell in the healing spring. If there is anything I have done which you
regret, tell me and I will undo it."
She shook her head, smiling. "You can not undo this. We have succeeded in summoning a baby boy
from the stork."
"Well, we sent several hundred signals," I said. "One of them was bound to reach the stork."
"Demons can dampen out those signals," she informed me. "This I tried to do."
"Why?"
"Because I wanted to remain longer with you."
"You may remain with me as long as you like! You have been excellent company, and I look forward to
many more signals."
"But I fear that a delivery from the stork will complicate things."
"I will be a father and you a mother. That is wonderful news!"
She did not argue, but I could see that she was pensive. Fool that I was, I did not think to ask her why. I
was too pleased with the notion of having a son. Even one who was half demon. The storks are very
firm on this: they will not deliver a fully human baby to a mixed couple.
I had villages to visit, so this time I went alone, leaving Dana home to await the stork. The stork wasn't
due for months, but delivery dates were never quite certain, and it would be a disaster if the stork came
while the mother was absent. We didn't have any cabbage leaves growing around our house, so the baby
might be set down anywhere. Unfortunately this left Dana with nothing much to occupy her attention,
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and she took to eating. Of course she had to eat some and remain solid, so as to build up enough milk to
nurse the baby; milkweed pods were available, but it was considered better to do it personally. But she
ate a lot and became quite fat. I didn't say anything, not wanting to have a bad scene before the stork
arrived and perhaps scare it away, but I intended to put her on a diet once the baby was safely with us.
Then the stork did come, with a beautiful human/demon boy, and I discovered disaster. We had not
understood the whole of the oracle's answer; we had forgotten Dana's original Question. She had wanted
to rid herself of her soul. Now that soul went to the baby, and Dana was free of it.
She was abruptly also free of her conscience and her love for me. "Well, it's been fun, Humfrey, can't
think why," she said. "Maybe some year I'll return for one last good ****; maybe not." She used a term
which caused the curtains to blush, and which I think only an angry harpy would understand. It seemed
to relate in a derogatory way to the process of stork summoning. Then she fogged into smoke and drifted
away.
I was left with my half-breed baby, and no wife. Now I understood somewhat better than before why
men were not supposed to associate with demons. It was a hard lesson, and my second significant
disappointment.
I needed a new wife, because the King was supposed to be married and because what I knew about
caring for a baby could be tallied on the fingers of one foot. As it happened there was a girl recently
come of age who was smitten with the trappings of the kingship. She always smiled at me when I
walked through the South Village, and lifted her hem in a manner that indicated that she would love to
learn something of stork summoning from me. I was somewhat soured on storks at the moment, but I
needed a woman in a hurry.
"Would you be willing to adopt my son, if I married you?" I asked her.
"I would adopt an ogret if that was the price of marrying you, Your Majesty," she replied.
So I married the Maiden Taiwan, and she took care of my son, Dafrey. She was really very good about
it, and I came to like her well enough, though it would not be proper to say that I loved her. In due
course I did do some stork signaling with her, but the stork, perhaps annoyed by the business with Dana,
refused to acknowledge. I can't say I was unduly upset about it; perhaps I was afraid that she too would
take off if she got a baby of her own.
I continued to travel, because I kept absentmindedly walking into hanging diapers at home. My wife was
happy to have me travel; that left more room in the house.
In the North Village I discovered something truly significant: a six-year-old boy who could generate
thunderstorms. I examined him carefully, asking him to make small storms and big ones, and he was
glad to oblige. His mother didn't like him making storms inside the house, but was surprised and pleased
to see the King taking such an interest in him. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]