CHAPTER SEVEN
Iddo
I
The creature studied the assembled trio with unfathomable jewel-black eyes. It was almost as big as Thoralf, covered head to hoof in fur—a really astonishing amount of fur, golden white and luxuriantly soft looking, and so immaculately styled that not a strand seemed out of place. Wherever the creature had come from must have had a good salon, indeed a supernatural salon. Its creamy locks rippled majestically in the breeze… except no breeze was blowing. The autumn sun was shining, but the old sycamore tree, whose orange leaves had not yet fallen, cast its shade upon the gathering; and in that shade the creature clearly glowed… with moonlight. Its fuzzy ears stuck out like flags beneath its sickle horns, which, like its hooves, might have been chiseled from obsidian. “I see you’re all duly impressed,” it said.
“You…” Gramma sputtered, too angry for eloquence, “you… you…”
Thoralf wandered over and bumped noses with the creature. Then he wandered off again to eat more grass.
“You!” Gramma said furiously.
“And you,” the creature agreed, “and you and you,” it added, nodding to Ez and Wilburn, the latter of whom stared slack-jawed in amazement. There was something familiar about that rich, supercilious baritone… but Ez was too disoriented from the stoppage and restartage of time to recall where she had heard it before.
“You’ve got some nerve turning up now,” Gramma said, finding her tongue at last, “after you refused to lift a finger to help us last night!”
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“My dear Nyreen, you speak a partial truth,” the creature said. “I have never once lifted a finger, on account of owning none. However, the suggestion that I refused to come to your aid last night is slanderous, and furthermore unfounded. I would have come, if the Path had led me to do so, as evidenced by the fact that it has led me to do so now, and here I am.”
These pompous words jogged Ez’s memory. Of course—the voice in the teacup! This must be the philosopher, Iddolorious Bungflower, who Gramma so reviled, but who happened to be the most powerful magician in the world. Ez hadn’t expected him to be… not human. When Gramma said he was a yak, Ez had supposed this meant some special kind of wizard or something. But apparently it meant a talking ox. Ah, I get it, Ez thought. They must be called yaks because they yak.
A clever inference, Ms. Totkins, although regrettably incorrect, for as it happens, I am the sole member of my species who is fluent in the languages of yours. The binomial nomenclature of yaks is, incidentally, Bos mutus, which means the mute or silent ox. I am, you see, an aberration.
It took a moment for Ez to piece this all together, and another moment for her to realize the yak had not said it aloud. His shaggy muzzle remained closed. Yet Ez had clearly heard his voice… and then she heard it again. Thought-speech, it told her. Nifty little trick, eh?
Ez supposed it was at that. So, you’re a psychovate too, Mr. Bungflower, she thought.
Meanwhile, Gramma was still hectoring Iddo: “There’s more than one path, you dolt. I would think you of all people ought to know. You have the power to do anything you want. They’re called choices, Iddo. Choices.”
“I do not deny the existence of choice,” Iddo said mildly. “For many lifetimes I strayed far from the true Path, believing, in my arrogance, that I could forge a better destiny for myself than what the universe assigned me. I made a great many choices, and reaped much unpleasant karma. One can’t help noticing the pattern eventually. Cause and effect, my dear, cause and effect. One may persist in bouncing off the wall, or one may try the door. There are worse and better ways to live, and then there is the best way, the Path of perfect harmony. The Path I now choose to follow… which, at present, is not leading me to continue justifying myself to you. I predict, however, that you are about to forgive me anyway.”
Gramma folded her arms. “Fat chance,” she said.