Piers Anthony - Castle Roogna

Something about this scenelet reminded Dor of Cedric the centaur. How was he making out with Celeste, the naughty filly? But Dor restrained himself from peeking; it really was not his business, any more.

Something caught his eye. He focused on the corner of the tapestry. There was tiny Jumper, waving. There was another little spider beside him. "You've found a friend!" Dor exclaimed.

"That's no friend, that's his mate," Grundy said. "She wants to know where he was, those five years he was gone. So when the popping-out of the elixir vial alerted him to your presence, he brought her out here to meet you."

"Tell her it's true, all true," Dor said. Then: "Five years?"

"Two weeks, your time. It only seemed like two weeks to him, too. But back at his home-"

"Ah, I understand." Dor exchanged amenities with the skeptical Mrs. Jumper, bade his friend farewell again, promised to return next day-month or so, and strode from the room feeling better.

"You move with a new assurance," Grundy remarked. He seemed sad. "You won't be needing me much longer."

"Penalty of growing up," Dor said, "One year I'll get married, and you can bodyguard my son, exactly as you have me."

"Gee," the golem said, flattered.

They departed the Castle, going to Dor's cheese cottage. He felt increasing apprehension and nostalgia as he approached his home. His parents should still be away on their Mundane mission; only Millie would be there. Millie the maid, Millie the ghost, Millie the nurse. What had the Brain Coral animating his body said to her? What should he say to her now? Did she have any notion what he had been doing the past two weeks?

Dor steeled himself and went inside. He didn't knock; it was his own cottage, after all. He was just the lad Millie took care of; she did not know-must never know-that he had been the Magician who looked like a Mundane warrior, way back when.

"Say," Grundy inquired as they passed through the familiar-unfamiliar house toward the kitchen. "What name did you use, in the tapestry?"

"My own name, of course. My name and talent-"

Oh, no! The most certain identifiers of any person in the Land of Xanth were name and talent. He had thoughtlessly given himself away!

"Is that you, Dor?" Millie called musically from the kitchen. Too late to escape!

"Uh, yes." No help for it but to see if she recognized him. Oh, those twelve-year-old-boy mistakes!

"Uh, just talking to a wall." He snapped his fingers at the nearest wall. "Say something, wall!"

"Something," the wall said obligingly.

She came to the kitchen doorway, and she was stunningly beautiful, twelve years older than she had been so recently, but almost regal in her abrupt maturity. Now she had poise, elegance, stature. She had aged, as it were overnight, more than a decade, while Dor had lost a similar amount. A gulf had opened between them, a gulf of age and time, huge as the Gap.

He loved her yet

"Why, you haven't talked to the walls in two weeks," Millie said. Dor knew this had to be true: the Coral had animated his body, but had lacked his special magical talent.

"Is something wrong?" Millie asked. "Why are you staring at me?"

Dor forced his fixed eyes down. "I-" What could he say? "I-seem to remember you from somewhere."

She laughed with the echo of the sweetness and innocence he had known and loved in the tapestry maid. "From this morning, Dor, when I served you breakfast!"

But now he would not be put off. The thing he most feared was recognition; he had to face it now. "Millie-when you were young-before you were a ghost-did you have friends?"

She laughed again, and this time he noticed the fullness and rondure of her body as it laughed with her. "Of course I had friends!"

"Who were they? You never told me." His heart was beating hard.

She frowned. "You're serious, aren't you? But I can't tell you. There was a forget spell detonated in the vicinity, and as a ghost I was near it a long time. I don't remember my friends."

The forget spell! It had made her forget…him. Yet he tried, perversely, driven by an urge he refused to define. "How-did you die?"

"Someone enchanted me. Turned me into a book-"

A book! The book he had found in the dumbwaiter leading from the female room. Vadne must have transformed her into it, then hoisted that tome to the upper floor, and no one had caught on. A stupid mistake, courtesy of Murphy's curse. He himself had placed it on the shelf in the library-where it had remained eight hundred years, unmolested.

"I couldn't even remember what my body was, or where," Millie continued. "Or maybe a spell was on that too. So much was vague, especially at first-and then I was a ghost, and it was easier not to think about it. Ghosts don't have very solid minds." She paused, studying Dor. "But sometimes there are flashes. Your father reminded me of someone-someone I think I loved-but I can't quite remember. Anyway, he's eight hundred years dead, now, and there is Jonathan. I've known Jonathan for centuries, and he's awful nice. When I was alone and lonely and confused, especially after King Roogna died and the Castle fell into oblivion-he had a long and good reign, but it had to end sometime-Jonathan came and helped me to hold on. He didn't seem to mind that I was only a ghost. If only-"

So she had loved Dor-and forgotten, in the ambience of the forget spell. His name and talent-no giveaway after all. Nothing in his birth and youth in this world had alerted her, since she had never known the origin of that bygone hero, and she could hardly be expected to make the connection.

Only Jonathan had been her comfort across the centuries. She had not forgotten Jonathan, because he had always been there. A ghost and a restless zombie, bolstering each other when the rest of the world had forgotten them. Why torture her by restoring her memory of prior heartache? Dor knew what he had to do.

"Millie, I have obtained the elixir to restore Jonathan to life." He held up the vial.

She stared at him, unbelieving. "Dor-now I remember something. Your father-he reminded me of you. Not in appearance, but in-"

"I wasn't born yet!" Dor said harshly, repenting his recent urge to have her remember exactly this. "You've got it backward. I remind you of my father-because I am growing up."

"Yes, yes of course," she agreed uncertainly. "Only somehow-your talent of-I remember talking to pearls in a big nest, or something-"

"Take the elixir," he said, presenting it to her. "Call Jonathan." Oh, Jonathan, he thought in momentary agony. Do you know you fill the shoes of her lover, and of her betrothed? Be good to her, for the sake of what was never allowed to be!

Millie was too distracted to take the vial. "I-still, there is something. A big barbarian named-"

"Jonathan!" Dor bellowed as well as his present body permitted. "Come here!"

The door opened, for Jonathan was always near Millie. The loyalty of centuries! He shuffled into the kitchen, dripping the usual clods of dirt and mold. No matter how much fell, a zombie always had more; it was part of the enchantment. His body was skeletal, his eyes rotten sockets, and the nauseating odor of putrefaction was about him.

"Yet I know now that was only passing fascination," Millie continued. "The barbarian left me, while Jonathan stayed."

Dor tore open the corked vial. "Take this!" he cried, hurling the precious drops onto the zombie.

Immediately the body began to heal. Flesh was magically restored, tissues filled out, skin formed and cleared. The figure unhunched, became fuller, taller.

"And so my true love is Jonathan," Millie concluded. Then she looked up, realizing what transformation was taking place, and her hair flung out as of old. "Jonathan!" she screamed.

Rapidly the last of the zombie attributes disappeared. The figure shaped into a gaunt but healthy living man.