“That it won’t change everything immediately,” Nona said. “That I now understand. But the power of the despots will be curtailed, and the next generation will be ours.”
“Note that in the legend, Earle and Kara did not remain to face their people after the change to animus,” Angus said. “Had they done so, they might have encountered unkind treatment at the hands of the amazons, who would have wielded considerable power for a time, even without their magic. So they went anonymously to a new world, escaping that consequence.”
Nona considered that. She had assumed before coming here that the change would be instant and complete, with the men losing their magic and the women gaining it, according to their orders of birth. That way she would have been queen immediately. That was not actually a role that appealed to her. She desired to be queen no more than she desired to be a theow housewife; both were confining for life. She was doing this not for any personal gain, but for the welfare of her people. It was now apparent that the anima, when long established, was no better than the animus; both were merely vehicles for the transmittal of power. But it seemed best that they be changed every so often, to clear out corruption and give new folk a chance to do better.
So she would not be queen. She might instead be a martyr, as the despots struck savagely in revenge for their loss of heredity. That was even worse. Still, she had to do it, if only because now that she had come here she was known, and her family and friends would suffer if the despots retained power.
“Not so, lovely little lady,” Angus said, receiving her thought. “You will be the only person on your world with full magic. You will therefore be queen immediately, having the power. You will have to organize your people and institute the new order, abolishing the old. Then there will be no threat to those close to you.”
“But I am no leader!” Nona protested. “I can not be ruthless!”
“Riding the tiger,” Colene murmured. In her mind was a picture of a young woman on the back of a monstrous ugly feline, in control only so long as she did not dismount.
“However, interpretation leads to further insights about the spread of man across the worlds,” Angus said. “In the legend, they had the secret of size change, and it was presumed that those who crossed between the worlds invoked that magic to become the appropriate size for that world. But their instruments did not follow; Earle did not think to make them conform. Nothing is said about animals and plants, which must have been brought by the colonizing explorers. But there would have been similar magic for them, for all things are in proportion to the size of their worlds. Yet I know of no such magic. No one in real life can change size. Was the magic lost after the initial colonization? The legend suggests otherwise, for Earle and Kara were different sizes, yet each changed to become another size. Why, then, can we not discover or remember the secret? I have quested through the ruins of past times, and found no record of any such magic. I do not believe that it exists.”
“But folk are different sizes!” Nona protested. “We differ from you, and from the tiny folk of the little world we passed. We know this is the case.”
“Folk are different,” he agreed. “But there may be no magic about that.”
Nona shook her head, confused. “But there has to be! How else could they become the right sizes?”
Angus glanced at the others. “I wonder whether any of your companions from other realms have ideas on this?”
“Sure,” the intense young Colene said immediately. “Evolution.” Nona heard the word, but the concept was too complicated to fathom.
Angus, however, was interested. “This is a science concept?”
“It sure is,” Colene agreed. “It means that plants and animals change little by little, over the millennia, the fittest surviving, the unfit dying. They grow small or large, depending on what works best. In this reality it would mean that they evolve to fit the worlds they are on; there must be an advantage to being the right size for each.”
“Then how would you interpret the presence of small musical instruments here, or large ones on the little world of Oria?”
“Easy. The people brought them along when they settled. But each generation changed in size, while the instruments didn’t, so finally the people couldn’t play them, and had to make new ones that matched their size. I admit I find the acoustics hard to believe; the longer strings and larger sounding chambers in the large instruments should play deeper notes than the small ones, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. But then big people like you should collapse under their own weight—square-cube ratio, you know—but you don’t, and Jupiter doesn’t have any stronger gravity than Oria; we’re the same weight here as we are there. But even so, you should feel twice as much strain on your feet, and you don’t, so science just doesn’t apply. So okay, the rest of science doesn’t work here, but maybe evolution does. That hammered dulcimer Nona just played belonged to your distant ancestors, who were small when they came here. And those big instruments on Oria belonged to folk your size, before they evolved down to regular size for that world.”
“I can’t make sense of this!” Nona said, her mind awhirl. “There must be size spells!”
“I admit it is difficult to believe,” Angus said. “But it is just one of those impossible things we are constrained to accept. The archaeological evidence indicates that Colene is correct. We have found small bones and tools, and larger ones, and larger still, and the smallest are the oldest. It happened gradually, for people and animals and trees too.”
“But Earle and Kara—”
“A legend is only a story,” Angus said. “A simplified memory, an attempt to explain what we otherwise have difficulty understanding. We see the relics of past times, and they are the wrong size, so we suggest that magic was responsible. But in this case there seems to be another explanation, and Colene’s ready appreciation of it satisfies me that she is indeed from a different kind of place.”
“But if it happened slowly,” Nona said, trying hard to reason out the consequences of this incredible notion, “then Earle—Kara—”
“Did not invoke magic to change size,” Angus finished. “True. If they existed at all, it was not in the fashion described. That must be a happy ending put on to satisfy more recent listeners. But it does suggest that there was travel in each direction. Small folk came from Oria to Jupiter, and colonized it, and slowly grew large. Then, later, large folk must have returned to Oria and colonized it again, and slowly grown small. The myth and the physical remnants agree on this; only the particular manner and timing of it remain obscure.”
“But then the Megaplayers—”
He smiled sadly. “Are merely your name for ordinary folk like me, on this larger world. I have no magic to help you, pretty little woman. Even if I went to Oria, I would have no more power than you, except that I could step on despots. In fact I would have less, for I can not compel loyalty to your cause by playing a melody, and I could not bring the anima to Oria no matter how hard I tried. None of the folk of Jupiter could,”
“But my mother told me to seek the Megaplayers!” Nona was near tears of confusion and frustration.
“Perhaps she spoke wisely,” Angus said. “I can not do such magic myself, but I may be able to advise you in such a way as to enable you to do it yourself. Though I believe there is no magic of living size change, there obviously is the magic of animus and anima, and location is surely vital to it. I believe if you ask the folk of the smaller world you passed, they will tell you that they had a woman of the appropriate lineage, and that she stood at the appropriate site and invoked the anima for her world. That is what you must do.”