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They cooked several sweet potatoes, and had a nice meal washed down by water from the river. That of course led to a round of kisses. At least they knew it was not illicit passion. Then Auspice faded out, and the party settled down for the night.
Fortunately this time the girls allowed Jumper to sleep alone. They knew that it wasn’t fair to douse him with Kiss Mee water and count it as any kind of seduction.
In the morning they washed up in very friendly fashion, ate some leftover potato, and mounted their bikes again. They moved well, until they reached the huge Gap Chasm. This suddenly balked them, because the path led right up to the brink, and stopped.
“Not to worry,” Dawn said. “My sister and I are long since familiar with this route. There’s an invisible bridge.”
“But Eve—” Jumper protested, remembering her fear of heights.
“You take the high route, I’ll take the low route,” Eve said.
“I don’t understand,” Jumper said. “I could revert to spider form and climb down the wall, with a safety line. But your magic does not relate.”
“We’ll show you,” Dawn said. “Follow me, girls.” She stepped out over the brink.
Jumper leaped to catch her before she plummeted to the depths—
and crashed into an invisible barrier. He wrapped his inefficient human arms about it and hung on. “What?”
“Weren’t you listening?” Dawn chided him gently. “It’s the invisible bridge.” She took another step out into midair, not falling. So it seemed. Jumper hauled himself up onto it, then stepped back toward the brink— and abruptly fell. He barely caught the edge of the cliff in time.
“Oh, a detail I may have forgotten to mention,” Dawn said. “It’s a one-way bridge. You have to keep going the way you start across; you can’t turn back. It doesn’t exist behind you. Only for the next person.”
Jumper scrambled back to land. “Thank you for that clarification.”
“But now you can’t use it,” Eve said. “It no longer exists for you. You’ll have to come with me.”
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“Gladly,” Jumper said, disgruntled.
The four remaining girls started across, following Dawn, walking the bicycles, while Haughty spread her wings and flew along beside them. They walked out over the chasm, the breeze playing with their hair and skirts.
“This way,” Eve said, and she too stepped over the brink. This time Jumper did not leap after her. She obviously knew what she was doing. He hoped.
She disappeared into the gulf. Jumper went to the brink and looked down, almost afraid of what he might discover. Eve was walking down the side. Her body was oriented vertical to the wall, horizontal to the ground. It was as though she were walking on level ground, only it was the sheer face of the cliff. Jumper sipped a vial and assumed spider form. Then he stepped cautiously over the brink. It felt like level ground. Now he too was walking down the cliff without falling.
“It’s a special path,” Eve said. “It works for anyone. You just have to know about it.”
Jumper looked around, not having to turn his head. Ahead of him was the distant depth of the chasm. Behind him was the lip of the gulf. He felt level, despite the confused orientation of the rest of the landscape. He glanced at the girls on the invisible bridge. They were making good progress, their skirts flaring as the playful wind continued to tease them. Their legs showed to lesser or greater extent, and sometimes their pan ties flashed.
Jumper looked away. He wasn’t freaking, but he was losing concentration at a time when he thought it best not to. His job at the moment was to get safely down to the bottom of the chasm. But they were nice legs, and nice pan ties.
In due course they reached the foot of the wall. They stepped out onto the roughly level bottom, and the world resumed its normal orientation. That had been an experience!
“Something else,” Eve said. “We have a friend down here.”
“A friend?”
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“He’s on his way now.”
Jumper looked. There was a puffing cloud of steam whomping their way. In four and a half moments it manifested as a long, low, six-legged dragon blowing steam with each breath. “A dragon?” he asked, surprised.
“Stanley Steamer,” she said. “Princess Ivy tamed him when she was a little girl, and we have been on good terms ever since.” She lifted her voice. “Stanley! It’s Eve! With a friend, Jumper Spider. Don’t steam him.”
The dragon drew up before them, eyeing Jumper as if not sure whether to take her at her word.
“We’re on a mission,” Eve said. “Can’t linger here long. But it’s nice to see you again, Stanley.”
The dragon nodded, then went on its way. Jumper was impressed. The princess really did know the dragon.
“Look, there’s a patch of little squirts,” Eve remarked. “They protect themselves from the heat of the dragon by storing cool water. Some folk drink from them. You may want to collect a few.”
“I may?”
“You never can tell when one might be useful.”
So he collected a few. They were bulbs with thin necks pointing upward. They seemed satisfied to be harvested. They crossed to the far wall, then walked up it in the same manner they had walked down the other. As they neared the top, there were the girls, having evidently dallied. They shook their skirts in unison, teasingly flashing Jumper.
“Dawn must have put them up to that,” Eve muttered. “She’s a naughty girl.”
“And you aren’t?”
She smiled obscurely. “I’m not up there.”
Wenda was immediately above him. She jumped on the invisible bridge, making her skirt flare up to her waist. She wore a forest green panty. “Yew can knot touch me!” she teased.
Then Jumper realized what the little squirts were for. He aimed one and gave it a hard squeeze. A jet of cool water shot up and scored on the middle of the panty.
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“Eeeeek!” she screamed, snapping her legs together. “Yew have a little squirt!” Of course she recognized the forest plant. The other girls, catching on, broke out with a severe case of the giggles. Until Jumper squirted them too. Then the giggles became eekgles. They danced out of range, their motions showing even more naughty details.
At last they were all on level ground beyond the chasm, the girls still laughing helplessly. They were fortunate they had not dropped a bicycle into the chasm in their mirth. Somehow five of them had managed to wheel seven cycles across.
“We make a compatible group,” Olive remarked.
“We do,” Jumper agreed, not admitting that their nether displays had left panty-shaped spots floating before his eyes. They surely knew it anyway; their display had hardly been accidental. Yet now their teasing was friendly rather than seductive. They trusted him not to take advantage of them, and if he did, they wouldn’t really mind. Jumper changed back to manform so he could ride his bicycle. They mounted and cycled north.
Even traveling at speed, on the enchanted path, it took time, and as eve ning approached they pulled into a rest stop area near the Region of Fire. “There are five Regions,” Dawn explained. “Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and the Void. They each have their typical climates, and it is best to avoid them unless you know what you’re doing.”
“Climates?” he asked.
“Air is stormy,” Eve said. “Earth has volcanoes and earthquakes. Fire has fires sweeping across, burning everything up. Water is flooded with a few islands. And the Void is the original from which the black hole fragment came.”
“Best avoided,” Jumper agreed, shuddering.
br />
Phanta came and kissed him. “From which you saved me. I will be forever grateful.”
“Nu-uh,” Olive said. “You had your turn, Phanta. Someone else can be grateful to night.”
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Sure enough, when they settled down to sleep, Wenda and Maeve came to join him, lying close on either side. Again, he had the impression that neither would really object to anything he might choose to do with them, though they neither spoke nor acted seductively. They had their own boyfriends, and he had his girlfriend; this was something else. It was . . . friendship.
In the morning they discovered that two more people had come to the camp. A young man and a young woman, similar in appearance. They were just washing their faces and hands at the edge of the pond.
“Hi,” the girl said. “I’m Gin. I’m very friendly. This is my brother Tonic; he’s very active.” Indeed, Tonic was already foraging for their breakfast.
Jumper introduced the members of their group. “We’re looking for a cable, somewhere near the Ogre Fen.”
“I know where there’s a cable,” Tonic said. He led the way to a steep hillside.
There was a metal vehicle on a track that led up the side of the hill. It was pulled by a metal cord attached to its front, so that it was moving rapidly up toward the top.
“That’s a cable car,” Eve said. “Not what we want.”
“I know where there are several cables,” Gin said. She led them to a house with a number of cords strung from its roof.
“That’s a house of seven cables,” Dawn said. “Not what we want.”
Still, they checked with a woman who was sitting before the house, busily knitting. No, not sitting, hovering over the chair. She was short and thin, with small blue-green dragon’s wings and blue-green wavy hair.
“Hello,” Jumper said.
She dropped to the chair, and her wings folded, forming a cloak around her body. “Yes?”
“I am Jumper and my companions are at the shelter. We are looking for a cable, but I don’t think it is of the type that festoons your house.”
“I am Aura Dawn. I am knitting cable stitches for more festoons, but I could knit one for you if you need it. What will you use it for?”
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“To repair the connection between the Internet and the Outernet.”
Aura shook her head. “That’s a much more complicated cable than I could ever knit. You will need the children’s magic cable.”
“The children’s cable?”
“Five weirdly talented children. But you don’t want to go near them. They are dangerous.”
“If they have what we need, we may have to get it from them.”
“Well, in that case, be very careful.” Aura unfolded her cloak, re forming her wings, and flew back to her prior height. She resumed her cabling.
“Thank you,” Jumper said, and returned to the shelter. “It seems that five talented children have the cable we need,” he reported.
“Do we know where they are?” Haughty asked.
“No. I presume somewhere between here and the Ogre Fen.”
“Could Dawn or Eve tell?” Phanta asked.
“No,” Eve said. “We have to be close to a thing or creature to learn about it. We can’t get close without knowing where.”
“Or when,” Jumper said, remembering the odd word in the Prophecy.
“Maybe I can find a friend who will be able to help,” Olive said. She concentrated.
A woman appeared. She was shaped somewhat like a string bean, without curves. “Yes?”
“Oops,” Olive said. “I was looking for a friend who could find things.”
“I am she. I am Samantha. I can find flesh.”
“I was thinking more of—”
“In fact I can find any flesh I need to make myself luscious,”
Samantha said. “Like this.” She stroked her pipe-stem legs, and they became much thicker. She kneaded them into shape, and they became, indeed, luscious. Jumper couldn’t help looking.
“Well, that’s fine,” Olive said. “But what I meant was—”
“Or like this,” Samantha said, stroking her skinny arms. They thickened, and became firm and nice.
“Actually, we’re looking for a—”
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“Or this.” Samantha cupped her chest with her hands, and mounds of flesh appeared. Soon she had amazingly sightly breasts. Jumper felt his eyes starting to glaze.
“Cable!” Olive cried.
“What?”
“We’re looking for a section of cable, to do a repair.”
“Why didn’t you say so? I can’t help you with that.” Samantha faded out.
“Maybe we had better find it the old-fashioned way,” Olive said, frustrated. “I usually just visit with my imaginary friends. Summoning them for par tic u lar tasks doesn’t seem to work as well.”
“Let’s go on toward the Ogre Fen,” Jumper suggested as his eyeballs slowly recovered. He suspected that their difficulty locating the cable was not coincidental; it was a Demon challenge they would have to struggle to overcome.
Jumper found himself riding beside Dawn. This was surely no coincidence. He wanted to talk to her, and chances were she knew it.
“Eve said you put the girls up to flashing their pan ties at me,” he said. “Why?”
“A little friendly teasing isn’t in order?”
“And then Wenda and Maeve slept beside me last night. I had the distinct impression they were offering me something.”
“We are all your friends.”
“Then be a friend. Answer my question. What is going on?”
She sighed. “You may not like the answer.”
“I don’t like the mystery. I want to be able to focus on the mission, not on the charms of my associates.”
“Much is riding on our mission, for once no pun,” she said, glancing down at her bicycle. “We don’t know exactly why the Good Magician stressed its importance, but we believe him. Some of us now have our own personal stakes in it too. We know that if any member of it is lost, it will fail. So we have to handle not only the impediments, but our own unity. The one is as important as the other.”
“Agreed. So why are they teasing me?”
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are, in effect, the prizes they can win for their victories: she for marriage, me to obtain a suitable prince.”
“You should be able to find a prince. Eris is beautiful.” He felt a foolish qualm as he spoke, because of his foolish crush on Eris.
“Not necessarily. Princes can be notoriously choosy, and there are not many available at present. If I am unable to deliver, I will have to sacrifice myself.”
“Sacrifice?”
“There is a portal that changes the gender of any person who passes through it. I would become a prince, and marry her myself. To complete my commitment.”
“Dawn!” he exclaimed, shocked.
“So you see, this is desperately serious business. We can handle it; we are Sorceresses, far more conversant with magic and the way of things than we normally pretend. We are not innocent.”
“Agreed. The two of you are no longer teasing me. But I am committed too; I am bound to Sharon, one way or another.”
“That’s the problem.”
“I am as committed to the mission as you are. If you make sacrifices, so will I.”
“This is commendable,” she agreed. “But you see, you are innocent. You are a spider, with no prior experience with human or Demon scheming. Your word is your bond, withou
t nuances.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Sharon is a Demon, with all that implies. You are not in her league. Thus you are our most likely weak spot.”
Jumper was hurt. “If she doesn’t want me, of course I’ll go away.”
“She wants you. But we do not know her real commitment. If it is to Pluto, she will use you to achieve his ends. We need to see that you are not hopelessly helpless.”
He had to concede that this was true. “I will try my best.”
“We—that is, the girls— want you to know that there are alternatives. If one of them must go with you to protect you from Sharon, she will.”
“Go with me?”
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“Be your woman.”
“But they have their own boyfriends.”
“We discussed it, and they agreed: if any of them must protect you from Sharon, they will. Whichever one you prefer.”
Jumper was having trouble getting his mind around this. “Like Phanta, that time?”
“Yes. They all like you, and are dedicated to the mission. It would not be too great a sacrifice. They will do what it takes to complete it.”
“But I’m a spider!”
“In human form. If you chose one, she would seek a transformation spell so she could join you as a spider, if that is what you want.”
Jumper shook his head. “You’re right: I am innocent.”
“In the interim, if you are inclined, take one of them temporarily. They are not as skilled as Sharon, but they can be trusted not to hurt or corrupt you. They are all worthy.”
“I know it! I’m not sure I am worthy.”
“You are, Jumper, you are. We are all in this together.”
His emotions were mixed and confused. “I don’t know.”
She glanced at him sidelong. “That interim includes Eve and me. We can’t commit to anything long-term, obviously, but during the mission we can be with you.”
“This is awful! It tempts me. I hate that.”
“Just keep it in mind.”
Jumper was desperate to change the subject. “The cable— we have been asking strangers if they know where it is. We haven’t gotten anywhere. Since we know that Pluto is trying to stop us, is there some sort of curse on the word?”