Man From Mundania Read Online Free PDF Page B

Soon he was telling her all about his
    dreary life, which somehow seemed much less dull when
    she was listening. Ivy was an attractive girl about a year
    his junior, with blue eyes and fair hair that sometimes
    reflected with a greenish tint, evidently picking up what-
    ever color was near her. She had been frightened at first
    but now was relaxed, and was a fun person to be with.
     
    But there were some definitely odd things about her.
    For one thing, she seemed quite unfamiliar with this city,
    or indeed, this country, perhaps even this world. He had
    to show her how the stove worked and even how to open
    a can of peas. "What funny magic!" she exclaimed,
    watching the electric can opener.
     
    For it seemed that she believed in magic. She claimed
    to be from a magic land called Xanth, spelled with an X,
    where she was a princess and pies grew on trees. So did
    shoes and pillows. Monsters roamed the jungles, and she
    even had a pet dragon called Stanley Steamer.
     
    She was obviously suffering delusions. Sending had
    mousetrapped him again. But by the time he was sure of
    this, it was too late: he liked Ivy too well to let her go.
    She was a great girl, apart from her dreamland. Since her
    delusion was harmless, he decided to tolerate it.
     
    But there were hurdles. One came when she realized
    that he was not teasing her about his situation. Her face
    clouded with horror. "You mean, this isn't a setting in the
    gourd? This really is Mundania?"
     
    That was a quaint way of putting it! "That's right. Mun-
    dania. No magic."
     
    "Oh, this is worse than I ever dreamed!" she ex-
    claimed. "Drear Mundania!"
     
    She had that right! His life had been about as drear as
    it could get—until she came into it. "But what are you
    doing here if you didn't know you were coming?" he
    asked. For the sake of compatibility, he did not debate her
     
    Xanth delusion; he would find out where she really was
    from, eventually. The truth was, he rather liked her dream
    realm; it had a special quality of appeal. Pies growing on
    trees—that certainly sounded better than canned beans!
     
    "I used the Heaven Cent," she explained matter-of-
    factly. She lifted a common old style penny she wore on
    a chain around her neck. "It was supposed to take me
    where I was most needed, which is where the Good Ma-
    gician is lost. But the curse must have—oh, no!''
     
    He was catching on to the rules of her magic land. "You
    mean it would have taken you there, but a curse made it
    go wrong? So you're stuck where you shouldn't be?"
     
    "Yes," she said tragically, near tears. "Oh, how am I
    to get out of this? There's no magic in Mundania!"
     
    "That's for sure." Yet somehow he wanted to help her
    to return to that magic land, even though he knew it wasn't
    real. Her belief was so firm, so touching!
     
    "Oh, Grey, you've got to help me get back to Xanth!"
    she exclaimed.
     
    What could he say? "I'll dowhat I can."
     
    She flung her arms around him and kissed him. She was
    an expressive girl. He knew she was suffering from a per-
    vasive delusion, and that sooner or later the authorities
    would pick her up and return her to whatever institution
    she had escaped from, but he also knew that he liked her.
    That made his dilemma worse.
     
    Grey did what he could. He took Ivy to the college
    library and looked up Xanth. It turned out to be a prefix,
    "xantho," meaning "yellow," that connected to various
    terms. Ivy said that wasn't what she wanted. The library
    was a loss.
     
    Then, on the way back to the apartment building. Ivy
    spied something in a store window. "There's Xanth!" she
    exclaimed, pointing.
     
    Grey looked. It was a paperback book. On it was a star
    proclaiming "A New Xanth Novel!" Did Ivy think she
    came from this book?
     
    "There's Chex!" she continued.
     
    "Chex?"
     
     
     
     
    28 Man from Mundania Man from Mundania 29
     
    "The winged centaur. She's actually four years younger
    than me, but she seems older because her sire's Xap