Dor stood at bay, his trusty blade unmasked. The goblins in front of him faded back, afraid, before he could get a close look at them. He hadn’t seen goblins in the flesh before. They were small, twisted, ugly creatures with disproportionately large heads and hands and feet.
Goblins? Of course he hadn’t seen them before! There had been few goblins on the surface of Xanth in daylight for centuries! They hid in the caverns beneath the surface, afraid of light.
Oh—this was no longer the present! This was the tapestry, depicting the world of eight hundred years ago. So there could be goblins here—bold ones, uncowed by light.
But he, himself—what of him? What body—oh, yes, the huge-thewed, giant young man. Dor had never before experienced such ready power; the massive sword felt light in his hands, though he knew that in his real body he would barely have been able to swing it two-handed. This was the kind of body he had daydreamed about!
Something stung him on the head. Dor clapped his hand there, knocking himself momentarily dizzy, but whatever it was was gone. It had felt, however, like a louse or flea. He had no antifleas spell with him. Already the penalties of the primitive life were manifesting.
The jungle was close. Great-leaved branches formed a seemingly solid wall of green. There were fewer magic plants than he was used to; these more closely resembled Mundane trees. Which, again, made sense; the Land of Xanth was closer to Mundania in nature than it would be in Dor’s day. Evolution—the pedagogue centaur had taught him about that, how magic things evolved into more magical things, to compete and survive better.
Something entered the periphery of his vision as he looked around. Dor whirled—and discovered that it had not been his sword that made the goblins retreat. Behind him stood a spider—the height of a man. Dor forgot all about the lurking goblins. He lifted .the great sword, feeling the facility with which his body handled it. This was a trained warrior whose muscles had been augmented by experience and skill —which was fortunate, because Dor himself was no swordsman. He could have sliced himself up, if this body hadn’t possessed good reflexes.
The spider reacted similarly. It carried no sword, but hardly needed to. It had eight hairy legs and two huge green eyes—no, four eyes, two large and two small—no, there were at least six, scattered about its head. Two sharp fangs projected inward from the mouth parts, and two mouth-legs fitted outside. Overall, the creature was as horrible as Dor could imagine. Now it was preparing to pounce on him.
On top of that, the thing was chittering at him, making a series of clicking sounds that could only be some sort of threat. Grundy the golem could have translated instantly—but Grundy was eight hundred years or so away, now. The spider’s two larger forelegs were raised; though they had neither fingers nor claws, they looked formidable. And those mandibles behind them, and those eyes—
Dor made a feint with his sword, surprising himself; his body was bringing its own expertise into play. The monster drew back, clicking angrily. “What’s that thing trying to say?” Dor asked himself nervously, not at all sure he could fend the monster off despite his own greatly enhanced size and strength.
The sword he held thought he had spoken to it. “I know battle language. The monster says he doesn’t really want to fight, but he’s never seen a horror like you before. He wonders whether you are good to eat.”
“A horror like me!” Dor exclaimed incredulously. “Is the monster crazy?”
“I can’t be the judge of that,” the sword said. “I only understand battle competence. This creature seems disoriented but competent enough to me. For all I know, you could be the crazy one.”
“I’m a twelve-year-old boy from eight hundred years in the future—or from outside this tapestry, whichever makes more sense.”
“Now my doubt has been allayed. You are indubitably crazy.”
“Hell, you’re in my hand now,” Dor said, nettled. “You’ll do as I direct.”
“By all means. Swords have ever been the best servants of crazy men.”
The monster spider had not actually attacked. Its attention seemed to be diverted. It was hard to tell what was the object of its diversion, because its eyes aimed in so many directions at once. Maybe it was only trying to understand his dialogue with the sword. Dor tried to spot what it was looking at—and saw the goblins returning.
One thing about goblins: they were enemies. No one knew exactly what had happened to them, but it had been conjectured that they had been driven underground after centuries of warfare, because of their implacable hatred of man. Once, legend claimed, the goblins had gotten along with man; indeed, they were distantly related to men. But something had changed—
“This is no good,” Dor said. “If I fight the monster, the goblins will attack me from behind. But if I turn my back on the spider, it will eat me. Or something.”
“So slay the monster, then fight the goblins,” the sword said. “Die in honorable combat. It is the warrior’s way.”
“I’m no warrior!” Dor cried, thoroughly frightened. It had not occurred to him that the world of the tapestry would pose an immediate threat to him. But now he was in it, this world seemed thoroughly real, and he didn’t want to find out whether he could die here. Maybe his death would merely catapult him back prematurely, terminating the spell, dumping him into his own body, mission unaccomplished. Maybe it would be more final.
“You were a warrior until a few minutes ago,” the sword said, “A very stupid one, to be sure, to have gotten yourself trapped by this motley band of goblins, but nevertheless a warrior. Brains never were a requirement for war anyway; in fact they tend to be a liability. Now all of a sudden you’re timid as hell, and you’re also talking to me. You never did that before.”
“It’s my talent. Talking to inanimate objects.”
“That sounds like an insult,” the sword said, glinting ominously.
“No, not at all,” Dor said hastily. He certainly didn’t need to have his own sword mad at him now! “I am the only person privileged to talk to swords. All other people must talk to other people.”
“Oh,” it said, mollified. “That is an unusual honor. How come you never did it before?”
Dor shrugged. He didn’t want to go into the insanity bit again. “Maybe I just didn’t feel worthy.”
“Must be,” the sword agreed. “Now let’s slay that monster.”
“No. If it hasn’t attacked by this tune, I believe it when it says it doesn’t want to fight. My father always says it’s best to be friends if you can. He even made friends with a dragon once.”
“You forget I was your father’s sword before you inherited me. He never said anything of the kind. He said, ‘Gorge, guzzle, and wench, for tomorrow we get gutted.’ Then a wench’s husband caught up with him while he was gorged and guzzled, and he got gutted.”
Mundanes were brutes; Dor had already known that. So this news about the family of this body was not all that shocking. Still, it was a lot more immediate than it had been. “About making friends with a dragon—the word dragon may be taken as slang for an aggressive woman.”
The sword laughed. “Oh, clever! And absolutely crazy. You’re right; your old man could have said it. Friends with a dragon!”
Dor decided to gamble. Though the sword could translate some of what the monster said into human language, it could not translate what Dor said into monster-spider language, for that was not the sword’s talent. It was one-way. But communication should be possible, if he tried hard enough. “I’m going to make a peace overture by gesture,” he told the sword.
“A peace overture! Your father would roll over in his booze-sodden grave!”
“You just translate what the spider says to me.”
“I only understand combat language, not that sissy peace stuff,” the sword said with warlike dignity. “If the monster doesn’t fight, I have no interest.”
“Then I shall put you away.” Dor looked for the scabbard. He touched his hip, but found no sheath there. “Uh, where do you go?”
The sword said something unintelligible.
“Where?” Dor repeated, frowning.
“Into my scabbard, idiot!” the sword said cuttingly.
“Where the hell is the scabbard? I can’t find it.”
“Don’t you remember anything? It’s across your big stupid back where it belongs!”
Dor felt his back with his left hand. There was a harness, with the scabbard angled from his right buttock to his left shoulder. He lifted the sword and maneuvered the point into the end of the sheath. Obviously there was an art to this, and he lacked that art. Had he allowed his body to do it automatically, there would have been no problem; but now he was opposing the nature of his body, putting away a sword in the face of battle. “Bro-ther!” the sword muttered with disgust.
But when Dor relaxed, distracted by his own chain of thought, his body took over, and the sword slid into its scabbard and was fastened into place at last.
“Then you, scabbard,” Dor said. “You must understand peace, or at least truce.”
“Yes,” the scabbard replied. “I comprehend the language of negotiation-from-strength, of peace-with-honor.”
Dor spread his arms wide before the monster spider, who had remained frozen in position all this time, while the goblins inched forward, suspecting a trap. Dor was trying to suggest peace. The monster spread its own front legs wide and chittered. Behind it the face of another goblin appeared, watching with suspicion. It seemed the goblins were not allied to the spider, and didn’t understand it any better than Dor himself did.
“It says it was wondering when you would attack,” the scabbard said. “It thought for a moment you intended peace, but now you are making ready to grasp it with your pincers so you can bite or crush or sting it to death.”
Hastily Dor closed his arms.
The spider chittered. “Aha,” the scabbard said. “Now it knows it has outbluffed you. You are huddled in terror. It can consume you without resistance.”
Dor’s embarrassment turned to anger. “Now look here, monster!” he snapped, shaking his left fist in the creature’s hairy green face. “I don’t want to have to fight you, but if you force me—“
Another chitter. “At last!” the scabbard said. “You have elected to meet it on equal terms, it says, neither threatening nor cowering. It is a stranger here, and is willing to declare a truce.”
Amazed and gratified, Dor held his pose. The spider brought its left foreleg forward. Still Dor did not move, afraid that any change might be misinterpreted. Slowly the segmented leg came up until the mittonlike tip touched Dor’s fist. “Truce,” the scabbard said.
“Truce,” Dor agreed, relieved. The monster no longer looked so horrible; in fact its green fur was handsome in its fashion, and the eyes gleamed like flawless jewels. The top of its abdomen was variegated, so that seen from above it might resemble a smiling human face: two round black fur eyes, a white fur mouth, a broad black fur mustache, and delicate green complexion. Maybe the face-image was meant to frighten away predators, though what might predate on a spider this size Dor hesitated to conjecture. The eight legs were gray, tied neatly in to the base of the thorax. The two fangs were orange-brown, and long tufts of hair sprouted around some of the eyes. Really, quite a pretty creature, though formidable.
Suddenly the lurking goblins attacked in a swarm. Dor’s body acted before he knew what it was doing. It whirled, drawing the sword from its sheath, and swung at the nearest enemy. “I thirst for your black blood, spawn of darkness!” the sword cried in a happy singsong. “Come let me taste your foul flesh!”
The goblins were hardly daunted. Two charged right at Dor. They were half Dor’s height, and the outsized extremities made them look like cruel caricatures of the Good Magician Humfrey. But where the Magician was grumpy, these were evil; there was incredible malignance in their misshapen faces. Their bodies were thin, like the stalks of weeds, and bumpy. They carried crude weapons: chips of stone, splinters of wood, and small thorny branches.
“Stand back!” Dor cried, brandishing the hungry, thirsty sword. “I don’t want to hurt you!” But emotionally he did want to hurt them; antipathy flooded through him, for no good reason he could fathom. He merely hated goblins. Maybe it was inherent in being a man, this revulsion by the caricatures of Man. Something completely alien could be tolerated, like the huge spider, but something that looked like a distorted man—
Then he jumped. A third goblin had sneaked in from the side and bitten him on the thigh. It hurt horribly. Dor punched him on the head with his left fist—and it hurt worse. The goblin’s head was like a rock! Dor tried to grab an arm and haul the creature off, but it clung tenaciously, overbalancing him, still gnawing. Meanwhile, the other two were advancing, watching the gleaming blade with their beady eyes, trying to get safely around it. More goblins were crowding in behind.
Then a hairy leg swung in. It inserted itself between the goblin and Dor’s leg and thrust out. The goblin was ripped away, screaming with rage.
Dor turned—and stared into the nearest eye of the monster spider. He saw his own reflection in the green depth: a large, flat, bearded man’s face, wholly unlike his real face. Even after allowing for the distortion of the lens. “Uh, thanks,” he said.
Then both goblins at the front dived for him. Their little gnarly legs propelled them with surprising power, perhaps because their bodies were so small and light. They sailed right at his head.
The body’s mighty arm flexed. The sword swistled joyfully across in an arc, pointing outward. There was an awful double jerk, as of a stick banging through weeds—and the two goblins fell in four pieces.
Had he done that? Dor stared at the dark-red blood, seeing it turn black as it spilled out over the ground. Those goblins were thoroughly dead, and he was a killer. He felt nauseated.
The spider chittered. Dor looked—and saw four goblins clinging to four of its legs, while others tried to reach its body. The spider was stretching its legs out, lifting its roughly globular body high to keep out of their reach, but was being inevitably borne down by their weight. The underside was unprotected; even small sharp stones could puncture it quickly.
Dor took his sword, pointed it at the nearest goblin, and thrust it violently forward. The sharp point transfixed the scrawny body and plunged into the earth beside the spider’s foot. Not that the spider had any foot in the usual sense; the final segment of its leg bulged slightly and rounded off toelessly.
“Don’t do that!” the sword cried. “Dirt dulls my edge!”
Dor jerked it out. The transfixed goblin came up with it. “Ghaaah!” it cried, its eyes bulging, arms and legs kicking wildly. The little monster couldn’t even die cleanly, but had to make it as grisly and awful as possible.
Dor lifted one of his boots—he had not realized he was wearing them, before—braced it against the goblin’s contorted face, and shoved the creature off his sword. Blood squirted across the blade as the thing collapsed in a messy heap.
Then Dor transfixed a second goblin, more carefully so as not to dull the edge of the blade, removing the remains more efficiently. Something in the back of his mind was throwing up, vomiting, puking out its guts, but Dor walled that off while he methodically did his job.
The spider reached behind him with a long foreleg. A goblin screamed; it had almost reached Dor’s back. Dor hardly reacted; he stabbed and cleared the third goblin, then the fourth. He was getting pretty good at this.
Abruptly the goblins were gone. A dozen of them lay dead on the ground; the rest had fled. Dor had killed six, so the spider must have matched him kill for kill. They were a good fighting team!
Now, in the aftermath, Dor suffered realization of what he had done. The back of his mind burst its retaining dam and washed forward with grisly abandon. Dor looked upon the carnage, and spewed out the potato soup sandwich he had recently consumed, eight hundred years from now. At least it looked like potato soup, more than like goblin guts. He hardly cared. To kill humanoid creatures—
The spider chittered. Dor needed no translation. “I’m not used to bloodshed,” he said, suppressing another heave. “If only they hadn’t attacked—I didn’t want to do this!” He felt tears sting his eyes. He had heard of girls being upset about losing their virginity; now he had an inkling what it felt like. He had defended himself, he had had to do that, but in the process had lost something he knew he could never recover. He had shed humanoid blood How could he ever get the taint from his soul?
The spider seemed to understand. It moved to a dead goblin, held it with its palps, and sank its fangs into the body. But immediately it raised its head and spat out the goblin’s blood. Again, Dor needed no translation: the goblin tasted awful!
There was no way to undo what had been done, no way to reclaim his lost innocence. His body had fought in the manner it was accustomed to. As his revulsion abated, Dor realized that both he and the monster spider had had a narrow escape. Had they not been together, and made their truce, and fought together, both would have fallen prey to the savage goblins.
Why had the goblins attacked? Dor could find no reason except that he and the spider had been present and had seemed vulnerable. If goblins thought they could prevail, they attacked; it seemed to be that simple. Maybe they had been hungry, and Dor and the spider had appeared to be easier prey than whatever else offered. At any rate, it had been the goblins who started it, so Dor told himself he should not feel complete guilt. He had only done to the goblins what the goblins had tried to do to him.
Still, there remained a grim pocket of negation in him, or horror at himself, at the capacity he had discovered in himself for slaughter. His new, powerful body had been the mechanism, but the will had been his own; he could not blame that on anything else.
If this was part of growing up, he didn’t like it.
He turned his attention to the spider. Was this creature native to this jungle? This seemed unlikely. The scabbard had said the spider was a stranger here, and it surely would not have fallen prey to goblins on the ground if it were familiar with this region. It would have been safe in its web, high in some tree. Dor had not seen any giant spiders illustrated in the tapestry. So yes, this could be a stranger, as he himself was. In any event, a useful ally. If he could only talk to it.
Well, he could talk with it, if he worked out a system. If he could find some object that understood spiders, not just war talk or negotiation-from-strength talk. Some pebble on the ground where spiders foraged, perhaps, or—
“That’s it!” he cried.
“What’s it?” his sword replied, startled. “Are you going to clean me off now, so I won’t rust?”
“Uh, of course,” Dor said, abashed. Swords in his own day all had antirust spells, but now he was amid primitive times. He wiped the blade carefully on the freshest grass he could find, and sheathed it. Then he walked to the nearest tree and inspected its bark carefully.
Meanwhile the monster spider was cleaning its body, wiping the blood off its legs with its mouth parts, making itself look glossy-clean again. One of its eyes—it turned out to have eight of them, not six—watched Dor. Since the eyes faced in each direction, it did not have to move its body at all to watch everything around it, but Dor was sure one of those eyes was assigned to him.
“Aha!” Dor exclaimed. He had found a cobweb.
“Are you addressing me?” the cob inquired.
“I am indeed! You’re from a spider, aren’t you? You understand the language of spiders?”
“I certainly do. I was fashioned by a lovely Banded Garden Spider, the prettiest arachnid you never did see, all black-and-orange-striped, with the longest legs! You should have seen her snare a mosquito! But a mean old gnat-catcher bird got her, I don’t know why, it certainly wasn’t out of gnats—“
“Yes, very sad,” Dor agreed. “Now I’m going to take you with me—may I put you on my shoulder? 1 want you to translate some spider talk for me.”
“Well, my schedule is—“
Dor poked a finger at it waringly. “—really quite flexible,” the web concluded hastily. “In fact I’m not doing anything at the moment. Do try not to mess up my pattern when you move me. My mistress put so much effort into it—“
Dor moved it carefully to his shoulder and fixed the pattern there, only messing up a few strands. Then he returned to the monster spider. “My, he’s a big one!” the web remarked. “I never realized that species grew quite so large.”
“Say something to me,” Dor said to the spider. “I’ll signal yes or no, some way you can understand.”
The spider chittered, “I wish I knew what you wanted, alien thing,” the web translated. This was almost like having Grundy the golem with him! But Grundy could translate both ways. Well, on with it; he was a human being, albeit a young and inexperienced one, and he should be able to work this out. Dor raised his fist in the spider’s greeting-among-equals mode. Maybe he could let this indicate agreement, and the wide-open-arms gesture the opposite. “You desire to renew the truce?” the spider inquired. “It doesn’t really need renewal—but of course you are an alien creature, so you wouldn’t know—” Dor spread his arms. The spider drew back, alarmed. “You wish to terminate the truce? This isn’t—“
Confused, Dor dropped his arms. This wasn’t working! How could he hold a dialogue if the spider interpreted everything strictly on its own terms?
“I wonder if something is wrong with you,” the spider chittered. “You fought well, but now you seem to be at a loss. You don’t seem to be wounded. I saw you regurgitate the refuse from your last meal; are you hungry again? How long has it been since you’ve eaten a really juicy fly?”
Dor spread his arms in negation, causing the spider to react again. “It is almost as if you are in some fashion responding to what I am saying—“ Gladly, Dor raised his fist.
Startled, the spider surveyed him with its biggest, greenest eyes. “You do understand?” Dor raised his fist again.
“Let’s verify this,” the spider chittered, excited. “It hadn’t occurred to me that you might be sapient. Too much to expect, really, especially in a non-arachnid monster. Yet you did honor the covenant. Very well: if you comprehend what I am saying, raise your forelegs.”
Dor’s hands shot up over his head. “Fascinating!” the spider chittered. “I just may have discovered non-arachnid intelligence! Now lower one appendage.”
Dor dropped his left arm. It was working; the spider was establishing communication with a non-arachnid sapience!
They proceeded from there. In the course of the next hour, Dor taught the spider—or the spider evoked from his subject, depending on viewpoint—the human words for yes-good, no-bad, danger, food, and rest. And Dor learned—or the spider taught—this:
He was an adult middle-aged male of his kind. His name was Phidippus Variegatus, “Jumper” for short. He was a jumping spider of the family Salticidae, the most handsome and sophisticated of the spider clans, though not the largest or most populous. Other clans no doubt had other opinions about appearance and sophistication, it had to be conceded. His kind neither lazed in webs, waiting for prey to fly in, nor lay in ambush hoping to trap prey. His kind went out boldly by day—though he could see excellently by night too, be it understood—stalking insects and capturing them with bold jumps. That was, after all, the most ethical mode.
Jumper had been stalking a particularly luscious-looking fly perched on the tapestry wall, when something strange had happened and he had found himself —here. He had been too disoriented to jump, what with the presence of this—pardon the description, but candor becomes necessary—grotesque creature of four limbs, and the onslaught of the goblin-bugs. But now Jumper was back in possession of his faculties—and seemed to have nowhere to go. This land was strange to him; the trees had shrunk, the creatures were horribly strange, and there seemed to be no others of his kind. How could he return home?
Dor was able, now, to fathom what had happened, but lacked the means to convey it. The little spider had been walking on the tapestry when Good Magician Humfrey’s yellow spell took hold, and the spell had carried him into the tapestry world along with Dor. Since the spider was peripheral, his transformation had been only partial; instead of becoming small in scale with the figures of the tapestry, and occupying the body of a tapestry spider, he had kept his original body, becoming only somewhat smaller than before. Thus, here in the tapestry, Jumper seemed like a man-sized giant. Dor, had he entered similarly, would have been the size of several mountains.
The only way Jumper could return to his own world was by being with Dor when he returned. At least, so Dor conjectured. It might be that the spell would revert everything it had put into the tapestry, when the time came. But that would be a gamble. So it was safest to stay together, returning more or less as a unit: Dor to his body and size, Jumper to the contemporary world. Dor could not make the details clear, since he hardly had them clear in his own mind, but the spider was no fool. Jumper agreed: they would stay together.
Now both of them were hungry. The black flesh of the goblins was inedible, and Dor saw none of the familiar plants of his own time. No jellybarrel trees, flying fruits, water chestnuts, or pie fungi, and certainly no giant insects for Jumper to feed on. What were they to do?
Then Dor had an idea. “Are there any buglike forms around here?” he asked the web. “You know—the big six-legged creatures, segmented, with feelers and pincers and things?”
“There are crabapple trees an hour’s birdflight from here,” the web said. “I have heard the birds squawking about getting pinched there.”
An hour’s birdflight would mean perhaps six hours’ travel by land; it depended on the bird and on the terrain. “Anything closer?”
“I’ve seen some tree-dwelling lobsters right around here. But they have mean tempers.”
“That should be just the thing; I’d feel guilty about fingering sweet-tempered ones.” Dor faced Jumper. “Food,” he said, pointing to the nearest tree.
Jumper brightened. It was not that his eyes glowed, but merely a heightening of posture. “I shall verify.” He moved with surprising rapidity to the nearest trunk.
“Uh, is it safe?” Dor asked the web.
“Of course not. There are all manner of bug-eating birds up there, and maybe some bird-eating bugs.”
Oh. Birds were deadly to spider-sized spiders. Jumper was something else. Still, best not to take chances. “Danger,” Dor said.
Jumper clicked his tusks together. “All life is a danger. Hunger is a danger too. I am at home at the heights.” And he continued climbing the tree with his marvelous facility, straight up the trunk. His eight legs really helped. Dor had assumed that two or four legs were best, but already he was having second or fourth thoughts. He could not mount a tree like that!
In a moment Jumper’s worried chitter percolated down through the foliage. “Unless there are praying mantises up here?”
“What’s a preying whatsit?” Dor asked the web quietly.
“That’s p-r-a-y, not p-r-e-y. The mantis prays for prey.”
“All right. What is it?”
“A bug-eating bug. Big. Bigger than almost any spider.”
Just so. “None your size,” Dor called up, hoping Juniper understood. Then he waited at the base, nervously. No mantises, surely—but wouldn’t a steam dragon be as bad? His acquaintance with the big spider was recent, but he felt a certain responsibility for Jumper. It was Dor’s fault Jumper was in this predicament, after all. And yet, if Jumper hadn’t been brought along in the eddy-current of the spell, what would have happened to Dor himself, thrown innocent into the pack of goblins? The two of them together had overcome the menace, while Dor alone would have— He shuddered to think of it. He owed Jumper a considerable debt already, and his adventure in the tapestry had just begun!
Something loomed at his face. Dor ducked, alarmed, fingers scrambling at his hip for his sword—and of course not finding it there. Then he saw that the looming thing was a tree-lobster, descending on a thread. Except that lobsters didn’t use threads! No, this, one was tightly bound, helpless, its leaf-green claws tied close to its bark-brown body, swinging head down. A captive of the big spider!
Almost, Dor felt sympathy for the lobster, for it was still alive and struggling vainly against its web-bands. But he remembered the time he had climbed a butternut tree to fetch some butter, and a lobster had nipped him. He had been nervous about them ever since; they were ornery creatures. This one’s red antennae radiated malevolence at him.
Another bound lobster was lowered to hang a few feet above the ground, and then a third. Then Jumper himself floated down. “I ate the rest,” he cluttered. “Less juicy than flies, but nonetheless excellent. These ones I shall save for future repasts. My gratitude to you for your timely information, Dor-man.”
“Yes,” Dor said, using the best word he had to indicate a positive response directly. He was glad that he had been able to help, but it was not enough. His responsibility would not be through until he had returned Jumper to his own world.
Now it was Dor’s turn to look for food. He asked the web, but it had seen mainly things that moved, while Dor preferred sedentary food. So he inquired of stones he saw, and sticks of wood, and soon located a hominy tree with a few ripe grits on it. This wasn’t much, but it would hold him for a while. The magic vegetation did exist; it was merely sparser, more secretive than in his own day, forcing him to search it out more carefully.
By this time it was late afternoon. It would not be safe to spend the night on the ground; more goblins could come, or other threats could manifest. If this were Dor’s own world, there would have been half a dozen bad threats already, as well as several nuisances and a couple of annoyances. But maybe the goblin band had cleaned out the local monsters, not liking the competition. “Rest,” Dor said, pointing to the declining sun.
Jumper understood. “I can see very well in the dark, but it may be unsafe for Dor-man. The trees are not safe either; there are other things than birds up there, that I perceived a moment ago. One resembled a bird, but had a man-face and a bad odor—“
“A harpy!” Dor cried. “Face and bosom of a woman, body of a bird. They’re awful!” Of course he knew Jumper couldn’t follow all that, but he would pick up the tone of agreement.
“Therefore we should sleep in the air,” Jumper concluded. “I will string you from a branch and you will swing safe for the night.”
Dor was not sanguine about this notion either, but could neither express his objection adequately nor offer a better alternative. To be trussed up like one of those living lobsters—
With misgivings that he trusted were not evident to the spider Dor suffered himself to be looped by several strands of line. Jumper drew the material from his spinnerets, which were organs in his posterior. He cheerfully explained it in more detail than Dor cared to know, as he proceeded: “My silk is a liquid that hardens into a strong thread as it is drawn out. With my six spinnerets I shape it into strands of whatever texture, strength, and quality I happen to require. In this case I’m using single threads for the hammock and a multistrand cable for the main line. Now you wait here a moment while I make the connection.”
There wasn’t much else Dor could do at this stage except wait as requested. That silk was strong stuff!
Jumper climbed up through the air. Noting Dor’s startled reaction, he chittered down the explanation: “My dragline. I left it in place when I finished catching the lobsters. We spiders could not survive without our draglines. They keep us from falling, ever. Sometimes my hatchmates and I would have drag races, when I was young, jumping from high places to see who could bounce closest to the ground without touching ...” He climbed on out of sight.
“Hatchmates?” Dor inquired, mainly to keep the spider chittering so he would know where he was.
“My siblings who hatched from the egg sac,” Jumper responded from above. “Several hundred of us, shedding our first skins and emerging into the great outer world to disperse and fend for ourselves. Is this not the case with your kind too?”
“No,” Dor admitted. “I am the only one in my family.”
“My consolations! Did some monster consume all the rest before they could escape?”
“Uh, not exactly. My parents take good care of me, when they are home.”
“Your sire and siress remain together? I fear I misunderstand your expression.”
“Uh, well—“
“Intriguing notion, maintaining a relationship with one’s mate and offspring after procreation. Perhaps I should check with my mate, when I return, just to see how she’s managing with the egg sac. Wouldn’t want my spiderlings to hatch prematurely.” Then, abruptly, Dor was hoisted off the ground. Jumper was hauling him into the air like a lobster!
Yet it was oddly comfortable. Jumper had not bound him, but had placed his strands competently so that Dor was well supported without being confined. Most of the lines were invisible, unless he knew exactly where to look. The spider was really expert at this sort of thing!
It was easy to relax in this hammock, to rest—and he did feel safe. In a moment Jumper glided down to hang beside him. They dangled together as the serenity of the night closed in above them, secure from the threats of ground and tree.
Dor jumped. He scratched his head. Something scuttled away through his hair. It was that flea again, probably the same one who had bitten him when he first arrived. He thought of mentioning it to the spider, who .should certainly know how to catch a flea, but then worried that he might lose an ear in the process. Those tusks of Jumper’s were fierce! This was one problem he preferred to handle himself. Next time the critter bit him...
Dor woke as the light filtered in through the branches. He felt some discomfort, for he was not used to sleeping in a vertical position, but he knew he was better off than he might have been. His leg was sore where the goblin had bitten it, and his right arm was stiff from swinging the heavy sword, and his stomach rumbled with borderline dissatisfaction. But this was a well-conditioned body; the sensations were mere annoyances.
Jumper stirred. He dropped to the ground to make sure it was safe, then climbed back up to lower Dor. As Dor’s foot touched the forest floor, the big spider moved his legs dexterously around him, and the net of web fell away. Dor was free.
Now, suddenly, he felt an urgent call of nature. He retreated to a bush to take care of it. Floating in air was nice, but was limiting in certain ways! He wondered whether real heroes were ever embarrassed by such problems; certainly the subject never came up in the heroic tales of this period.
Jumper chittered as Dor returned. Dor listened, but could make no sense of it. What had happened to his translator?
After a moment he found out: the big spider had removed it when he cut away the net-web. It was a natural error. Dor found a strand of Jumper’s own left over silk and put that on his shoulder. “Translate,” he ordered it.
“. . . mission, while mine is merely to return to my normal world,” Jumper was saying. “So it behooves me to help you complete your mission, so that we can both return.”
“Yes,” Dor agreed.
“Obviously magic is involved. Some spell has carried me to your world—except that you do not seem overly familiar with it yourself. So it must be a strange aspect of your world. You are here to accomplish something, after which you will be released from your enchantment. So if we stay together—“
“Yes!” Dor agreed. Jumper was one smart arachnid. He must have thought things out during the night, recognizing the seeming change in his size and Dor’s ignorance of these surroundings as linked things.
“So the best thing to do is get your job done as fast as possible,” Jumper concluded. “If you will indicate where you need to travel—“
“To the Zombie Master,” Dor said. But of course that wasn’t clear. Also, he had no idea where to find the Zombie Master. This led to a somewhat confused discussion. Finally Dor asked some of the local artifacts; they knew nothing of the Zombie Master, but had heard of King Roogna. It seemed a detachment of the King’s army had passed this way.
“King Roogna! Of course!” Dor exclaimed. “He would know! He would know everything! I should talk with him first, and he will tell me how to find the Zombie Master.”
Thus it was decided. Dor got general directions from the landscape, and they began their trek toward Castle Roogna. In one part of his mind Dor remained bemused by the fact that this was the tapestry world, and the entire tapestry was inside Castle Roogna. Yet they evidently faced a journey of many days to reach the Castle. It did make sense, somehow, he was sure. As much sense as magic ever did.
He was getting used to this new jungle. Rather, this old jungle. Many of the trees were giant, with voluminously proliferating foliage, but had very little magic. It was as if it took longer for magic to infuse the vegetation than the animals. Sweat gnats were present, and bluebottle flies, their bottle bodies refracting the beams of sunlight they buzzed through. But even these minor insects did not approach Jumper too closely. This was one advantage of traveling with a spider.
“No!” Dor cried suddenly. “Danger!” He pointed. “You’re walking into a tangle tree!”
Jumper paused. “I gather there is some threat? All see is the collection of vines.”
In the spider’s normal, small world there would be no tangle trees, Dor realized. Tanglers were there, to be sure, but they would hardly bother anything as small as a spider. Also, Jumper might have lived all his life in the tapestry room of Castle Roogna, so never encountered any of the jungle threats, regardless of relative sizes. Yet he seemed familiar with trees in general, so he must have spent some time outside.
“I’ll show you,” Dor said. He picked up a large stick and heaved it at the tree. The tangler’s tentacles snatched it out of the air and tore it to splinters.
“I see what you mean,” Jumper said appreciatively. “I believe I walked on the foliage of such a tree once in my youth, but it paid me no attention. Now that I am on its scale, it is another condition. I am glad I am keeping your company, weird though your form is.”
Which was a decent compliment. Dor inspected the tangler from a safe distance. He had identified it almost too late, because it was of a different subspecies from the ones he had known. It was cruder, more like a mundane tree, with light bark on the tentacles, and it lacked the pleasant greensward and sweet perfume beneath. Tanglers had grown more sophisticated over the centuries as their prey became more wary. For a person attuned to the end product, the cruder ancestral version was hard to identify. He would have to be more careful; there was less magic in the jungle, but what there was was just as dangerous to him and Jumper.
They resumed their journey. The Land of Xanth was a peninsula connected to Mundania by a narrow, mountainous isthmus at the northwest extremity. Dor’s body appeared to be that of a Mundane who had recently crossed the isthmus; maybe that was why he had been easy for the goblins to trap. It took time to appreciate all the hazards of Xanth, and even a lifetime did not suffice for some people. A Mundane would have all the wrong reflexes, and perish quickly. Which perhaps was why the Mundanes invaded in Waves; there was security in great numbers.
Now they were proceeding toward the center of Xanth, Castle Roogna, in a southerly direction. How they would cross the Gap that cut Xanth in two Dor wasn’t certain. In his day the northern wilderness was not as dangerous as the southern wilderness, and since there was less magic now—or rather, less-developed magic—Dor did not anticipate too much trouble this side of the Gap. But the Land of Xanth had a way of fooling people, so he remained on guard.
Castle Roogna. He wondered whether there was a tapestry on its wall, depicting—what? The events another eight hundred years past? Or the present, including himself coming toward the Castle? Intriguing thought!
Jumper paused, raising his two frontmost forelegs, which seemed to be the most sensitive to new things. Dor had noted no ears on the spider; was it possible he heard with his legs? “Something strange,” Jumper chittered.
The spider had grown accustomed to the routine strangenesses of this land, so this must be something special. Dor looked. Before them stood a creature vaguely like a small dragon, yet obviously not a dragon. Yet with dragon affinities. It had an irregularly sinuous body, small wings that did not seem functional, claws, tail, and a lizard head, but lacked the formidable teeth and fire of a true dragon. In fact, it did not look very formidable.
“I think it will be safe to circle around it,” Dor said. There was a swampy region to the west with malodorous bubbles, and a thicket of glistening brambles to the east, so it was necessary to pass through this creature’s territory. “We’re not looking for trouble, and maybe it isn’t either.” Knowing Jumper could hardly understand all that discussion, he set the example by detouring right, to circle the monster at a safe distance without going too near the bubbly swamp.
But the creature extended one leg enormously, so that it stretched way out to block Dor’s progress. “You may not pass,” it rasped. “This is my domain, my precinct, my territory. I govern.”
At least it talked! “We do not seek any quarrel with you,” Dor said, remembering adult protocol for such things. “If you let us pass, we will not bother you.”
“If you pass, you prevail,” the monster said. “I am Gerrymander; I prevail by whatever devious configuration.”
Dor knew of no such creature in his own time. This must have been an evolutionary dead end. Gerrymander—who prevailed by changing its shape to block the passage of others? A strange definition of success!
“I do not wish to damage you, Gerrymander,” Dor said, placing his hand on the hilt of his sword. He feared it looked as if he were scratching his shoulder, and wished this body had a more conventional harness for the sword, but that couldn’t be helped. “But we must pass.”
Gerrymander’s shape settled grotesquely. It contracted along its extremity and stood in its original form before Dor. “You shall not. I hold this office eternally, regardless of the need or merit of others.”
The thing was meeting his challenge squarely. Dor was daunted. He was using the body of a powerful grown man, but he remained a boy at heart, and he never had been much for combat. Those goblins, the horrible way they had died—no, not that again! “Then I’ll just have to go around another way.” He backed off.
“You shall not!” Gerrymander repeated. “No one supersedes me by fair means!” Its neck extended in a series of odd jumps until its head came to rest behind Dor. Now he was half encircled.
Sudden fear prompted him to do what determination had not. Dor drew his sword with the practiced speed of his warrior-body and pointed it directly at the creature’s heart region. “Get out of my way!”
For answer, the thing’s left wing began extending with the same chunky jerks, forming a misshapen barrier around Dor’s other side. “I am surrounding you, isolating your influence,” Gerrymander said. “You have no power, your grass roots are shriveling, your aspirations fading away. Your strength will be mine.”
And Dor did feel a sinister weakening, as if his body were being drained of some vital imperative.
Terrified by this strange threat, he reacted savagely. He struck with all his power at the thing’s neck. The great sword cut cleanly through Gerrymander’s substance as if it were mere cocoa from a nut, cleaving the monster in twain.
But no blood flowed. “I don’t have to be contiguous,” Gerrymander cried, its severed head forming little legs as its ears elongated. The ears were now limbs. “I don’t have to be reasonable; I have the power of accommodation. I can be any shape and any number, anytime. I am master of form and number. I cover whatever territory I need, regardless of my actual base, to hold power.”
Dor struck again, separating a section of body, but the thing did not die or yield. Dor cut it into half a dozen bloodless segments, yet they maintained their formation about him. An arm coalesced into a torso, the fingers of its hands stretching into separate arms and legs; a leg sprouted legs and a tail; the original tail grew a head. “I convolute, I divide, I conquer!” the original head cried, as the segments closed in.
“Help! Jumper!” Dor cried, entirely unnerved.
“I am here, friend,” the spider chittered. “Sheathe your blade, lest you injure me, and I will aid you.”
Dor obeyed. His body was shaking with fear and humiliation. Whatever had given him the notion that all he needed to be a hero was a hero’s body?
Jumper bounded phenomenally, passing right over Gerrymander and landing beside Dor. “I will tie this creature,” the spider chittered. “I will bind it together so that it cannot move.”
Jumper rapidly drew yards of silk from his versatile spinnerets. He looped his line about Gerrymander’s tail section, anchoring it in several places with sticky lumps. Then he looped another segment and drew the two together, making a package. Working rapidly with his eight legs and with marvelous dexterity, he looped more segments and drew them in tight. He was forcing Gerrymander to collect back into its original volume.
As the segments came together, they merged, forming one creature. The superfluous arms, legs, heads, and tails flowed back into the main mass. Gerrymander was being put back together. But this wasn’t enough.
“I surround, I select, I conquer!” the monster cried, its tail re-expanding to fill the space it had occupied as a separate segment. Jumper’s strands could not prevent this; they remained in place, anchoring the creature, but could not stop its projection from growing around and between them. All the spider had accomplished was the undoing of Dor’s slicing; the monster’s basic talent was not affected.
“I fear that I, like you, am being overcome,” Jumper chittered. “Come, friend, let us retreat and reconsider.” He flung a loop around Dor, then leaped straight up thirty feet to cling to the overhanging branch of a mundane tree. Then he hauled on his line, and drew Dor slowly up after him.
Gerrymander gave a shriek of pure anguish. “Ah, they escape me!” It tried to catch Dor’s rising legs.
Dor yanked his feet out of the thing’s grasp. The creature extended itself, rising high to pace him, and grabbed again. Dor drew his sword and slashed at the grotesquely reaching hand-limb. Gerrymander’s catching claw was cut off, and it fell to the ground, where it quickly merged with the rest of the body. The thing might not be hurt by having chunks of itself cut off, but it was unable to lift such pieces very far into the air without support. “Aaahh!” it cried despairingly. “I have been outmaneuvered!”
“We had only to jump over it!” Dor cried with realization. “Just as it blocked us, knowing no laws of motion, we could pass it without such laws. The moment we pass it, we win. That’s how you fight Gerrymander!”
Indeed, the defeated monster was rapidly dwindling into its smaller original form. Its power existed only so long as it was matching its challenge. According to its definition.
“Strange are the ways of this world,” Jumper chittered.
Dor only shook his head, agreeing.
Jumper lowered Dor down beyond Gerrymander, and the two resumed their trek. Now Dor knew how the spider got his name! He had never before seen such jumping ability. He had thought all spiders made webs, but Jumper didn’t, though he certainly had faculty with silk. It was, Dor realized, not safe to categorize creatures too blithely; there were enormous variations.
They were becoming wise to the ways of this region, and traveled rapidly. Most wild creatures were wary of Jumper, who looked more ferocious than he was, and seemed quite alien to this world—which he was not. He was merely large for his type.
By nightfall they had traversed most of northern Xanth, Dor judged. They might have traveled faster, but had had to stop to forage for food every so often. He remembered that there was supposed to be a grove of peace trees in this vicinity; not a good place to sleep, for the sleeper might never find the initiative to wake again. So at his behest they camped just shy of the main forest, suspended from a solitary crabapple tree in a field. A stream nearby provided water for Dor, and the crabs from the tree were a minor feast for Jumper,
Next morning they passed hastily through the peace grove, never stopping to rest. Dor felt lethargy overwhelming him, but these trees, too, had not developed their magic to its potency of later centuries, and he was able to fight it off. Jumper, unused to this effect, became sluggish, but Dor goaded him on until they were out of the grove.
At last they stood at the brink of the Gap. A thousand paces across, here, and just as deep, it was Xanth’s most scenic and devastating landmark. “It doesn’t appear on any maps of my day,” Dor said, “because there is some kind of forget spell associated with it. But most of us at Castle Roogna have become more or less immune to the effect, so we can remember. I don’t know how we can get across except by climbing down this wall and up the other. You could do that readily, I’m sure, but I’m not nearly as good a climber as you, and I get nervous about heights.”
They had conversed during then trek, and Jumper was already picking up a small versatile vocabulary of Dor’s words. He could now make out the general gist of Dor’s speech. “I believe we can cross this, if we must,” he chittered. “There is however, a certain element of risk.”
“Yes, the Gap dragon,” Dor said, remembering.
“Danger?”
“Big danger, at the bottom of the chasm. Dragon —like Gerrymander, only worse. Teeth.”
“We can jump over it?”
“The dragon would—the teeth—it’s just not safe,” Dor said, frustrated. He could not remember whether the Gap dragon was a fire-breather or a steamer, but didn’t want to risk it either way. Nobody in his right mind, and not too many in their wrong minds, messed with a full-sized dragon!
“However, we do not need to descend,” Jumper chittered. “I contemplate ballooning.”
“Ballooning?”
“Floating across the chasm on an airborne line. There is updraft here; I believe conditions are favorable, in the height of the day when the warm air rises. But there remain risks.”
“Risks,” Dor repeated, stunned by the whole notion. “Flying on silk?”
“If the air current should change, or a storm arise—“
The more Dor thought about it, the less he liked it. Yet his other options did not seem better. He did not want to go down into the Gap, or to try to walk all the way around it. He had a couple of weeks here in the tapestry to complete his mission, and had used two days already; going the way around the Gap could use all the rest. He needed to get to Castle Roogna as rapidly as possible.
“I guess we’d better balloon,” he said reluctantly.
Jumper stood at the edge of the Gap and drew out some silk. Instead of attaching it to anything, he let the wind take it. Soon it was unreeling rapidly, the end of the silk being drawn upward like a magic kite. Dor could see only a few feet of it; beyond that the silk became invisible in the distance no matter how carefully he traced it He did not see how this could carry anything across the chasm.
“It is almost ready,” Jumper chittered. “Let me fasten it to you, friend, before it hauls me away.” Indeed, the huge spider was now clinging to the ground.
There was evidently quite a strong pull from that invisible thread. “Please approach.”
Dor stepped close, and with deft motions of his forelegs the spider fashioned a hammock to support him. Then an extra gust of wind came, and Dor was hauled into the air and out over the Gap.
Too startled to move or scream, Dor stared down into the awesome depths. He swung down on the end of his tether as his kite achieved its special orientation. He thought he would sink right down into the chasm, but then the updraft caught hold strongly and carried him upward.
The walls of the chasm angled down on either side to form a wedgelike base. The sunlight angled down from the east, making stark shadows in the irregularities of the cliff. Even so, the depths remained gloomy. No, he didn’t want to go down there!
As he rose back above the rim of the canyon the wind eased. It lifted him slowly, but also carried him westward along the chasm. He was not really getting across. Jumper remained on the rim, spinning a balloon line for himself—but this took time, and the distance between them was extending alarmingly. Suppose they got completely separated?
Dor had known Jumper only two days, but he had come to depend on the big spider. It was not merely that Jumper was company, or that he fought well, or that he had so many useful tricks with his silk—such as ballooning!—it was that Jumper was adult. Dor had the body of a man, but fell far short of the judgment or certainty of a man. He got frightened when alone, and insecure, not always for sufficient reason. Jumper, in contrast, coolly assessed every situation and reacted with level-minded precision. He could make mistakes, but they didn’t throw him. He was a stabilizing influence, and Dor needed that. He hadn’t realized it until this moment—which was part of his problem. He was not good at analyzing his own motives ahead of a crisis. He needed the company of someone who understood him, someone who could prepare for Dor’s mistakes without making an embarrassing issue of it. Someone like Jumper.
There was a pain in his scalp. Dor swatted at it. Damn that flea!
The wind was, if anything, picking up now. Dor sailed faster and higher. His apprehension mounted. It hardly seemed he was going to come down anywhere, certainly not the far side of the Gap. He might be blown all the way out to sea and drown or be consumed by sea monsters. Or he might float higher and higher until he starved. Worst of all, he might even land in Mundania. Why hadn’t Jumper anticipated this?
The answer was, he had. The spider had warned of the risk. And Dor had decided to take that risk. Now he was paying the price of that decision.
A speck appeared among the clouds. A bug, no a bird, no a harpy, no a dragon—no, it loomed larger still. A roc—it must be a roc-bird, largest of all winged creatures. But as it came closer yet, and he gained perspective on it, he knew that it was after all to small to be a roc, though it certainly was large. It was a bird with bright but tasteless plumage; patches of red, blue, and yellow on the wings, a brown tail speckled with white, and a body streaked in shades of green. The head was black with a white patch about one eye and two purple feathers near the gray beak. In short, a hodgepodge.
The bird loomed close, cocking one eye at Dor. This was another danger he hadn’t thought of: attack by a flying creature. He grabbed for his sword, but restrained himself, afraid he would cut through his silken line and plummet into the chasm. He had been lucky he didn’t sever his line when he was escaping from Gerrymander—but that had been a far lesser height than this. Yet if he didn’t defend himself, the bird might eat him. It did not look like a predator; the beak was wrong. More like a scavenger. But the way it peered at him—
“Hoo-rah!” the bird cried. It dived forward, extended its big handlike feet, and snatched Dor out of the air. “Hoo-rah! Hoo-rah!” and it stroked powerfully south, carrying Dor along.
This was the direction he had wanted to go, but not the manner. Prey for a monstrous, loud-beaked bird! Now he was glad Jumper wasn’t with him, for the spider could not have helped him against so large a creature, and would only have fallen prey too. A big bird would be the worst possible menace to a big spider!
Now that his fate was upon him, Dor found himself much less afraid than he had thought he ought to be. Here he was going to be cruelly consumed, but most of what he felt was relief that his friend had escaped that destiny. Was this a sign he was growing up? Too bad he would never have the chance to complete the process!
Of course Jumper would be stuck in the tapestry world, without Dor’s spell to release him from it, unless the spell automatically reverted whatever didn’t belong here. Such as one live spider, and the digested refuse of—still, it wasn’t his own body getting eaten. Maybe a compromise: his spirit halfway dead, so he would return as a zombie. He could wander about the dismal countryside swapping ghoul stories with Jonathan. Yuck!
“Hoo-rah!” the bird cried again, descending toward a hugely spreading mundane-type tree. In a moment it landed on a tremendous nest, depositing Dor in its center.
The nest was incredible. It had been fashioned from every imaginable and some unimaginable substance: string, leaves, bark, snakeskins, seaweed, human clothing, feathers, silver wire—Dor’s father had mentioned a silver oak somewhere in the jungle; the bird must have found that tree—dragon’s scales, a petrified peanut-butter sandwich, strands of hair from a harpy’s tail—harpies had hairy feathers, or feathery hairs—a tangle-tree tentacle, pieces of broken glass, seashells strung together, an amulet fashioned from centaur mane, several dried worms, and a mishmash of less identifiable things.
But what filled the nest was even more remarkable. There were eggs, of course—but not this bird’s own eggs, for they were of all colors, sizes, and shapes. Round eggs, oblong eggs, hourglass eggs; green ones, purple ones, polka-dotted ones; an egg the size of Dor’s head, and another the size of his littlest fingernail. At least one was an alabaster darning egg. There were also assorted nuts and berries and screws. There were dead fish and live wires and golden keys and brass-bound books, and pine and ice-cream cones. There was a marble statue of a winged horse, and marbles carved from unicorn horn. There was an hourglass with a quarter hour on it, and three linked rings made of ice. A soiled sunbeam and a polished werewolf dropping. Five goofballs. And Dor.
“Hoo-rah!” the bird cried exultantly, flapping its wings so that papers, leaves, and feathers flew about in a miniature windstorm within the nest. Then it took off.
It seemed this bird liked to collect things. Dor had become part of the collection. Was he the first man so collected, since he saw no other here? Or had the others been eaten? No, he saw no human bones. Not that that proved anything; the bird could digest the bones along with the flesh. Probably he had become collect-worthy because he had seemed to be a flying man: an unusual species.
Dor made his way past the bric-a-brac to the nearest rim of the nest so that he could peer over. But all he could see were layers of leaves. He was sure he was far up in the tree, however; it would be suicidal to jump. Could he climb down? The limb of the tree on which the nest perched was round, smooth-barked, and moist; only the fact that it branched at the base of the nest made it possible for anything to remain on top of it. Dor was almost certain he would fall off. He simply was not a good climber.
He knew he should make a decision soon, and take action before the Hoorah bird returned, but he found himself paralyzed with objections to any positive course. To jump was to fall and die; to climb was to fall and die; to remain here was—to be eaten? “I don’t know what to do!” he cried, near tears.
“That’s easy,” the unicorn statue said. “Make a rope from fragments of the Hoorah’s nest, and let yourself down to the ground.”
“Not from my substance!” the nest protested.
Dor took hold of a piece of cord and yanked it out of the nest. It snapped readily. He drew on some long straw with similar result. He tried for some cloth; it, too, lacked cohesion. He took hold of the silver wire, but it was so fine it cut into his hands. “You’re right, nest,” he said, “Not from your substance.” He looked about, however, taking some faint heart. “Any other notion, things?”
“I am a magic ring,” a golden circlet said. “Put me on and make a wish, any wish, any wish at all. I am all-powerful.”
Then how had it ended up here? But he couldn’t afford to be too choosy. Dor put it on his little finger. “I wish I were safe on the ground.”
Nothing happened. “The ring is a liar,” the werewolf dropping growled.
“I am not!” the ring cried. “It just takes a little time. A little patience. Have faith in me. I’m out of practice, that’s all.”
Its statement was greeted by a rumble of derisive laughter from many other artifacts of the Hoorah’s nest. Dor cleared junk from one area and lay down, trying to think of something. But his mind would not perform.
Then a hairy leg came up over the rim of the nest, followed by another, and a pair of huge green eyes plus a collection of smaller black eyes. “Jumper!” Dor cried, delighted. “How did you find me?”
“I never needed to search for you,” the spider chittered, hauling his pretty abdomen over the brim. That variegated fur-face had never looked so good! “As a matter of routine I attached a dragline to you. When the Hoorah took you, I was carried along behind, though at a fair distance. I daresay I was virtually invisible. I did get hung up on the tree, but once I climbed the line to its end I found you.”
“That’s great! I was afraid I’d never see you again!”
“You forget I need your magic to escape this world.” Actually their dialogue was not nearly this concise, because Jumper still did not know many human words, but it seemed like normal conversation in retrospect. “Now shall we depart?”
“Yes.”
Jumper attached a new line to Dor and made ready to lower him down through the foliage. But just then they heard the beat of huge wings. The Hoorah was returning!
Juniper sprang out of the nest and disappeared below. Dor, alarmed, remembered almost immediately that no spider ever fell; his dragline protected him. Dor might have jumped similarly, but wasn’t sure his own dragline was properly anchored. The Hoorah’s approach had become audible just when Jumper was seeing to it, interrupting the process.
Or maybe, Dor reminded himself savagely, he was simply too scared to do what he had to, in time.
The Hoorah’s mishmash plumage appeared. It covered the nest. Something dropped. “Hoo-rah!” Then the bird was off again on its insatiable mission of collection.
The thing most recently deposited stirred. It flung limbs about, and a curtain of hair. It righted itself and sat up.
Dor stared.
It was a woman. A young, pretty, girl-type maiden.