The Siren gave her the Ear. John held it to her own tiny ear. She listened intently, her face showing puzzlement. "It's a rushing sound, maybe like water flowing," she reported. "Is that relevant?"
"Well, I didn't twitch," the Ear grumped. "You take your chances when there's nothing much on."
"How is that rushing noise relevant?" Dor asked the Ear.
"Obvious, stupid," the Ear said. "That's the sound of the waterfall where the fairy she wants is staying."
"It is?" John demanded, so excited that her wing-stubs fluttered. "The one with my name?"
"That's what I said, twerp."
"Do you tolerate insults from the inanimate?" the Siren asked the Prince.
"Only stupid things insult others gratuitously," Dor said.
"That's for sure, you moron," the rock agreed. Then it reconsidered. "Hey-"
The Siren laughed. "Now I understand. You have to consider the source."
Prince Dor smiled. " You resemble your sister. Of course, I've never seen her face."
"The rest will do," the Siren said, flattered. "Do only smart people compliment others gratuitously?"
"Perhaps," he agreed. "Or observant ones. But I do obtain much useful information from the inanimate.
Now we must go talk with the villagers and head back to Castle Roogna. It has been nice to meet all of you, and I hope you all find what you wish."
There was a chorus of thank-yous. Prince Dor and Princess Irene remounted the holey cow. Chet kissed Chem good-bye, and Grundy the Golem scrambled onto his back. "Get moving, horsetail!" Then Grundy paused thoughtfully, exactly as the rock had. They moved off toward the village.
"Dor will make a fine King one day," the Siren remarked.
"But Irene will run the show," Chem said. "I know them well."
"No harm in that," the Siren said, and the other girls laughed, agreeing.
"We'd better get started north," Tandy said. "Now that the tree is safe."
"How can I ever thank you?" Fireoak exclaimed. "You saved my life, my tree's life. Same thing."
"Some things are simply worth doing for themselves, dear," the Siren said. "I learned that when Chem's father Chester destroyed my dulcimer, so I couldn't lure men any more." Her sunshine hair clouded momentarily.
"My father did that?" Chem asked, surprised. "I didn't know!"
"It stopped me from being a menace to navigation," the Siren said. "I was doing a lot of damage, uncaringly. It was a necessary thing. Likewise it was necessary to save the fireoak tree."
"Yes," Chem agreed. But she seemed shaken.
They bade farewell to the hamadryad, promising to visit her any time any of them happened to be in the vicinity, and started north.
At first they passed through normal Xanth countryside-carnivorous grasses, teakettle serpents whose hisses were worse than their fires, poisonous springs, tangle trees, sundry spells, and the usual ravines, mountains, river rapids, slow and quicksand bogs, illusions, and a few normally foul-mouthed harpies, but nothing serious occurred. They foraged along the way for edible things and took turns listening to the Gap Dragon's Ear, though it was not twitching; this became more helpful as they gradually learned to interpret it. The Siren heard a kind of splashing, as of someone swimming. She took this to be the merman she wanted to find. Goldy heard the sounds of a goblin settlement in operation: where she was going. Smash heard the rhyming grunts of ogres. Biythe, persuaded to try it, jumped as the Ear twitched in her hands, and she actually heard herself mentioned. The brassies missed her and feared the ogre had betrayed their trust. "I must go back!" she cried. "As soon as I recover enough of my courage. My nerves aren't iron, you know."
But when Chem tried it, her face sobered. "It must be out of order. All I get is a faint buzzing."
The Siren took back the Ear. "That's funny. I get the buzzing, too, now."
They passed the Ear around. Everyone heard the same thing, and it twitched for none of them.
Smash applied his Eye Queue curse to the Ear. "Either it is malfunctioning," he decided, "or the buzzing is somehow relevant to all of us, without being specific to any of us. No one is talking about us, no one is lurking for us, so it is just something we should know about."
"Let's assume it's not malfunctioning," Tandy said. "The last thing we need is a glitching Ear, especially when my father says there is danger ahead. So we'd better watch out for something that buzzes. It seems to be getting louder as we go."
Indeed it was. Now there were variations in it, louder buzzes in front of background ones, an elevating and lowering of pitch. It was, in fact, a whole collection of buzzes, sounding three-dimensional, as some pitches became louder and clearer, while others faded back and some faded out entirely. What did it mean?
They came across a wall made from paper. It traveled roughly east/west and reached up to the top level of the trees, too high for Smash to surmount. It was opaque; he could not see through it at all.
However, a wall of paper could hardly impede an ogre. He readied a good punch.
"Careful!" John cried. "That looks like-"
Smash's fist punched through the wall. The paper separated readily, but glued itself to his arm.
"Flypaper," the fairy concluded.
Smash tried to pull the sticky stuff off, but it stuck to his other hand when he touched it. The more he worked at it, the more places it adhered to. Soon he was covered with the stuff.
"Slow down. Smash," Chem said. "I'm sure hot water will clean that off. I saw a hotspring a short distance back."
She took him to the hotspring and washed him off, and it did clean him up. Her hands were efficient yet gentle; Smash discovered he liked having a female attend to him this way. But of course he couldn't admit it; he was an ogre. "Next time use a stick to poke through that paper," the centaur advised.
But when they returned to the wall, they found the others had already thought of that. They had poked and peeled a hole big enough for anyone to pass through. "But there's one thing," Tandy warned. "There are swarms of flies over there."
So that was what the Ear had warned them of. They were going to pass through a region of flies.
That didn't bother Smash; he normally ignored flies. Biythe was also unworried; no fly could sting brass.
But Tandy, Chem, Goldy, John, and the Siren were concerned. They didn't want stinging flies raising welts on their pretty skins. "If only we had some repellent," Tandy said. "In the caves there are some substances that drive them off-"
"Some repellent bushes do grow in these parts," Goldy said. "Let me look." She scouted about and soon located one. "The only problem is, they smell awful." She held out the leaves she had plucked.
She had not overstated the case. The stench was appalling. No wonder the flies stayed clear of it!
They discussed the matter and decided it was better to stink than to suffer too great a detour in their route north. They held their breath and rubbed the foul leaves over their bodies. Then, reeking of repellent, they stepped through the rent in the flypaper and proceeded north.
There was a sound behind them. Marching along the paper wall was a monstrous fly in coveralls, toting a cart. It stopped at the rent, unrolled a big patch of paper, and set it in place, sealing it over with stickum. Then the flypaper hanger moved on to the east, following the wall.
"We're sealed in," Tandy muttered.
A dense swarm of stingflies spotted them and zoomed in-only to bank off in dismay as the awful odor smote it. Good enough; Smash's nose was already acclimating or getting deadened to the smell, which wasn't much worse than that of another ogre, after all.
They walked on, watching the flies. There were many varieties, and some were beautiful with brightly colored, patterned wings and furry bodies. John became very quiet; obviously she missed her own patterned wings. There were deerflies and horseflies and dragonflies, looking like winged miniatures of their species; the deerflies nibbled blades of grass, the horseflies kicked up their heels as they galloped, and the dragonflies even jetted small lances of fire. At one spot there was music; fiddler flies were playing for damselflies to dance. It seemed to be a real fly ball.