Zosi was silent, feeling guilty for not agreeing to stay alive to be Plato’s governess, but she had promised to think seriously about it. Kody suspected that what she lacked was some positive personal reason to counteract the chore of continued life, but he didn’t know what such a reason could be. Once they were clear of Hades, the chessboard worked again. They pondered the sixty-four little pictures, hoping to avoid the kind of mischief they had encountered before. Yukay recognized one picture. “That’s the Ever and Ever Glades,” she said. “The Everglades?” Kody asked. “In Xanth they go on forever and ever, if you get lost in them,” she explained. “Careless travelers can have a problem.” “We should not have a problem, as long as the board works, because we’ll simply jump to our next site.” “It should work, since they are in Xanth proper.” They clustered together, and Zap pecked the picture. Now they were on a broad, level plainlike swamp interspersed with islands of palm trees.
