Dragon on a Pedestal

Dragon on a Pedestal is a fantasy novel by the American writer Piers Anthony, published in 1983. It is the seventh book of the Xanth series.

The book opens when the Good Magician Humfrey and his son Hugo, filling a vial with water from the Fountain of Youth, run into the Gap dragon. Humfrey tells Hugo to throw the water over the dragon, Hugo does, and his father catches some of it as well: both Humfrey and the dragon regress to infancy. Queen Irene discovers around the same time that her three-year-old daughter Ivy has wandered off, and sets out to find her.

Ivy meets Hugo, who is eight, and her talent proves to be enhancement, so that he becomes cleverer, braver and stronger while he is with her. She also improves the temper of the Gap dragon, which she names Stanley Steamer. The search is complicated by a spell King Dor once cast on the Gap Chasm, which made everyone forget the chasm existed and is now disintegrating into forget-whorls.