“It certainly will be,” Eve agreed. “But the Prophecy didn’t know that we wouldn’t get that missing section of cable from the children.”
“It didn’t actually say we had to have it,” Jumper said. “Just that we’d find it when, in the Ogre Fen. We did find it when we were there. We didn’t get it, but the mission doesn’t seem to have ended yet.”
“We found it when we were in the Ogre Fen,” she agreed. “But I’m afraid the maidens fair did yield to despair.”
“Actually they all found happiness. But they wouldn’t have left if they hadn’t believed it was over.”
“I just got a weird thought. We had to pass three bad obstacles. One was the challenge of getting the cable, after you promised not to take their trea sure. Maybe the real test was of honor. We might have stolen their cable section, but none of us questioned the need to keep our promise. So maybe we passed that after all. Could another have been the belief that we had lost? So that we would give up when maybe we didn’t need to?”
“That could be!” he agreed, surprised. “Demon bets can be devious, as we know. And the third is to splice the cable back together, if we can.”
Two people approached. “How are yew?” one called.
“Wenda!” Jumper and Eve said together.
“I just could knot let yew go on alone,” Wenda said as she came up.
“So we came to help, if we can.”
“Prince Charming too?” Jumper asked.
“I haven’t done anything useful in a de cade,” Charming said. “Now Wenda has motivated me. How can I help?”
“Well, we will need to pull the two sections of the cable together,”
Jumper said, pointing to the gap. “If we can get enough people, maybe we can do it.”
“Yew have the two of us,” Wenda said.
Two more people appeared, one carry
ing a baby. “Halloo!” the
woman called, her sharp teeth glinting in the sunlight.
“Maeve!” Eve said.
“I remembered that line in the Prophecy, about the maiden fair yielding to despair,” Maeve said. “I refuse to be the one.”
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“Warren too?” Jumper asked.
“This is a kind of battle,” Warren said. “Fit business for a warrior.”
Eve caught Jumper’s eye. “If this continues . . .”
“We might have enough people,” Jumper agreed. “The girls are not yielding to despair.”
Soon two more arrived: Olive Hue and Dick Philip. “We had this crazy notion that maybe it wasn’t over,” she said. “So we came to check.”
And Phanta with Shepherd. “I had this ghost of a thought that maybe you could use some help.”
A harpy flew in. It was Haughty. “Charon can’t come; he has to stay out of it. But I told him I had to help my friends, and would return to him later. He couldn’t stop me.”
Finally Dawn reappeared. “Did you find a prince?” Eve asked.
“Not exactly. But I got a great idea.”
“Oh?”
“I can’t say what it is yet. But it will be perfect if it works out. Meanwhile I’m here to help.”
Jumper looked at Eve. “Now we are twelve. Is that enough?”
“Just barely,” she said. “We can haul the cable together, but there are a couple of caveats. I’m not sure what they are, but they need to be dealt with.”
“Then let’s get started,” Jumper said. “We’ll deal with them as they occur.” He glanced at Olive. “It would help if you could summon a strong friend.”
“I know just the person,” she said. “Not strong, but with a relevant talent.”
A woman appeared. “Hello, Olive,” she said, looking around. “Who are your nonimaginary friends?”
“Hello, Leslie. This is a crew of us with a mission to re-connect two cables. I thought your talent would be ideal. You can put any two things together.”
“Not exactly,” Leslie said. “I can blend any two different objects, like a bottle and a stuffed animal to make a bottlemal, or even living and nonliving. Such as a man and a book, to make a manual. Or a woman and a mirror, which becomes a looking lass. But re-connecting two 039-40892_ch01_4P.qxp 7/30/09 12:35 PM Page 301
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cables would be merging the same thing, and that’s really fixing something broken, which is not my talent. So I can’t help you there.”
“Oh,” Olive said. “Sorry. My mistake.”
“Some other time, perhaps,” Leslie said, and faded out.
“So this time I’ll try strong,” Olive said. “Hoping to get it right.”
A huge shape appeared beside her. It was an ogre. He looked dully around. “Uh, duh?”
“Welcome to our mission,” Olive said to him. Then to the others,
“This is Online Ogre. He was really annoyed when the cable broke so he couldn’t indulge his surfing passion.”
Oho! “Yes, we can certainly use a motivated ogre,” Jumper said. Because ogres were almost as strong as they were stupid, and they were exceedingly stupid. At least, that was how they preferred to seem; Smash Ogre had not been at all stupid once Jumper got to know him. Probably neither was Online, because it surely required some wit to surf, what ever that was.
They or ga nized. Four people climbed to the far cable, including the ogre, using sticky web bits on their feet and silk web safety harnesses Jumper spun, and seven went to the near side. They took hold of the strong strands Jumper had attached loosely to the cables and hauled. Haughty was among them, using her claws and wings. So was Maeve, now with Baby Mae on her back in a makeshift carrier so she could keep her hands free. The two sections started coming together.
“Now I will need a pair of eyes to guide my connections,” Jumper said. He was of course in spider form. “Because it will be all I can do to grasp the individual strands, and my color perception is not great. So you—”
He broke off, because Eve was looking pained. “I can’t,” she whispered. He had forgotten her fear of heights! That was one of the caveats. But he had to have help.
“Maybe if I spin you a cocoon,” he suggested doubtfully.
“Then I couldn’t see to guide you.”
There was no help for it. “I will do my best alone.”
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strength in one team to maintain sufficient pull. They were losing it regardless. Eve gulped. “If the mission fails because of me, then I am condemning myself to a lifetime of degradation. I might as well end it now.”
“No, Eve! We’ll manage somehow.”
“No, you won’t. Not without me.” She closed her eyes, clenched her teeth, and took hold of the slanting cable. She started climbing. And quickly let go, dropping back to the ground. “I can’t,” she said. Indeed, she looked as if she had aged three de cades; her jaw was slack, her breathing shallow. She looked considerably less beautiful than usual.
Jumper hastily flung a safety harness about her. “If you lose your grip, you won’t fall,” he said. “You will merely hang below it.”
“Thanks,” she said through gritted teeth. But she still couldn’t do it. Jumper searched his mind desperately for something that might help. He came up with a faint notion. “You are close to your sister,” he said. “You two argue, but you’re close.”
“Yes, we are twins,” she agreed. “Almost identical.”
“You might almost identify with her. That’s why the two of you have quarreled about boyfriends. You have very similar tastes.”
“Yes. She’ll be wanting a Demon consort too.” She smiled briefly through her pain. “Which she just might get, the hard way, by changing genders.”
“In fact you are almost telepathic. You generally know where each of you are. That’s why she returned.”
“
Yes, we relate.”
“Can you put yourself in her frame of mind? Think of yourself as her?”
“I suppose. Sometimes when we were younger we switched clothing and fooled our parents, just for fun.”
“She’s afraid of depths. If you relate to her, maybe you can exchange fears. For a while.”
She looked at him sharply. “I wonder.”
“If you close your eyes and think Dawn thoughts, maybe you can get up that cable.”
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She kissed his mandible. “Maybe.” Then she closed her eyes again and concentrated.
Her aspect subtly changed. Bright highlights seemed to appear in her hair, and she became almost fair. Then she smiled, and sunlight seemed to flash. “Who’s afraid of the big bad sky?” she asked. She took hold of the cable. He could see that she was not quite convinced, but the mind change enabled her to fight off enough of the fear. He watched as she climbed, eyes closed, to the end. Then, guided by the instructions of the others there, she caught hold of a strand and pulled. The cable ends started coming together again. It was working!
But now he lacked a partner to guide his detail work. Could he manage to do it anyway? He went up and tried. The torn ends had multicolored wires sticking out wildly in every direction. He simply could not tell them apart. The valiant effort of the girls and men was being wasted. Sharon appeared. “So you are doing it,” she said.
“Sharon! I need help! I can’t see the fine wires well enough.”
“Too bad,” she said. “I suppose that means your mission will fail. Pluto will be pleased.”
“Please! I can’t do it without you.”
She sighed. “If I do it, will you marry me?”
Jumper hesitated. He didn’t want to marry her, but did he have a choice? “Yes.”
“Exactly what is it you need?”
“The wires are of many colors. I need to match the colors from each cable, so I can tie them together correctly.”
“Like this?” She reached out and found two yellow wires.
“Yes!” He reached for them.
She drew back, holding them just out of his reach. “These?”
“Sharon, this is no time for teasing,” he said. “Give me the wires.”
She let them go. “You fool! Did you really think I would help you, let alone marry you? You’re a spider! I’m going to marry Pluto, and Eve will be my scullery maid.”
“But you promised!”
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“Funny thing about Demon promises,” she remarked. “They don’t mean anything unless couched as Demon bets or disciplined by half a soul. Deception is merely a means to an end. So long, sucker!” She vanished. So she had betrayed him when it really counted. She was still Pluto’s minion. Jumper was more disgusted than heartbroken. That was the second caveat: the help that could have made the difference, and chose not to.
Then another figure appeared. “Button Ghost!” Jumper exclaimed.
“You can get this far from the castle?”
Button held up a ghostly sign. WHEN I HAVE TO. WHEN THERE IS SUFFICIENT MOTIVE. HOW CAN I HELP?
He was a ghost, without substance. But substance was not what Jumper needed at the moment. “Can you see fine detail? Colors?”
YES.
“Then you are what I need!”
Soon Jumper was connecting red to red, blue to blue, green to green, and the other colors that Button matched up. This was the job that only he could do, because the opposite charges of the wires of the two cable sections would electrocute any regular person. But his positive and negative leg charges could handle it. Strand by strand the cable was getting reconnected. As it was, the tension was taken up by the connections, and the men and girls were able to hold the ends in place more readily.
“Jumper.” It was Haughty.
“Good work,” he said, continuing to focus on the wires. About half the connections were made, and it was getting easier as it progressed. Success was coming into view.
“Jumper, we’ve got a problem,” Haughty said urgently. He glanced up at her. “No, it’s doing well, thanks to you and the others.”
“Look at the horizon.”
He looked. There was a murderously black cloud rapidly expanding. “Uh-oh.”
“That’s Cumulo Fracto Nimbus, Fracto for short,” she said. “Remember, we ran afoul of him before we started the mission.”
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“I remember. We had to get under cover.”
“We can’t do that this time. I think Demon Pluto put him up to it.”
“But Pluto can’t interfere directly.”
“He could have set it up in advance, as part of the challenge. We can’t prove otherwise.”
She was right. It would be nice if they could splice, but this could be one reason they couldn’t. They would have to deal with it.
“Girls,” Jumper said. “And men.”
The others looked at him, giving him their attention. Even Eve opened her eyes to look at him, saw the great open sky, shuddered, and clamped them shut again.
“What is it?” Olive asked.
“A storm is coming. Fracto. He’s going to try to stop us from completing our work.”
They looked around, spying the cloud. “Can we descend and wait him out?” Phanta asked.
“Not at our present stage. Only half the wires are connected. The storm will shake the cable, tearing the ends loose again unless we hold them. But that means—”
“That means we have to hold on,” Maeve said. “Somehow.”
“Oh,” Eve said. “I— I don’t think I can.”
“I can tie us all on,” Jumper said. “So no one can fall. But it won’t be fun.”
“Do it,” Eve said grimly.
Jumper got to work spinning silk and casting lines. He wrapped them all in a kind of cocoon. They continued to grip the cable lines, so that the ends remained close enough together for him to connect. He connected a few more. Then Fracto struck. First there was a powerful gust of wind. Then a burst of rain. Then lightning and thunder right next to them.
Most were doing all right, and Dick, the crazy writer, even seemed to be enjoying it. He was surely making mental notes for a terrific story about cables in the sky. But Eve’s face was ashen beneath her wildly waving hair. She was not taking this well.
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low on silk. He formed it about her body, shielding it from the rain. She would be in her own world, as she had been when crossing the gulf.
“Thank you,” she gasped as he closed the hood. Now the storm worked into its main strength. The winds became gale force, then hurricane force. They whipped the cable back and forth like a plucked string. More lightning crackled. But it didn’t strike the cable. Jumper realized that the cable must be protected by magic, so it couldn’t be shorted out that way.
Hailstones pelted them. “Ooo, that smarts!” Dawn cried. But she ducked her head down and did not let go.
The storm shook them for what seemed like hours but was probably minutes. But it could not make them let go or give up. Finally it waned, as Fracto exhausted himself, and passed. They had outlasted it. Jumper resumed work, with Button’s assistance. The ghost had not been bothered by the storm, of course. The others remained as they were, holding the links in place. No one said anything. No one needed to.
At last it was done. Jumper wrapped a few more strands around the repair to secure it. The cable had been spliced. Victory!
There was no immediate effect. They descended to the ground, dripping wet but exultant. Online Ogre faded out, his job done. Jumper hauled Eve’s cocoon down, and opened it.
“Did it hold?” Eve asked.
“Yes.”
“Good.” She fainted.
Dawn came to help her. “You did your part, sister dear,” she said.
“You helped us beat Pluto.”
“And you conquered your fear, almost,” Haughty said.
“Weird,” Eve said, recovering. Girlish swoons seldom lasted long.
“This is a really happy occasion. I mean, we have just saved Xanth from flying apart. Yet somehow I feel heavy.”
A bulb flashed over Jumper’s head. “That’s it! Gravity is being restored. We were all getting lighter, but now we are getting heavier.”
“That’s it,” she agreed. “So it’s good news after all.”
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A figure appeared. It was Pluto. “Yes, good news for you,” he agreed soberly. “Now I must marry Eve. It was the deal.”
A male harpy appeared. “And I must marry Haughty,” Charon said.
“We’ll have a wedding,” Dawn said. “As a princess I have the authority to perform it. But can you wait a bit? We all need to clean up.”
“I have no choice,” Pluto said grimly. He seemed about as eager for the nuptial as Eve had been to become a plaything without it. But the Demon bet bound him.
Eve climbed out of the cocoon and smiled at him. “Do you really mind?”
He gazed at her, wet despite her time in the cocoon, her hair plastered half across her face and her dress matted across her chest. “You’re beautiful.”
She kissed him, and Jumper thought he could almost see her soul enclosing Pluto, starting to impose decency on him. He was already a handsome man, externally; he would soon be handsome internally too. She would have an excellent marriage. That had, almost incidentally, solved the problem that had brought both Eve and Dawn to the mission: competition for the same man. They would not be competing anymore. Actually, all the girls’ problems had been resolved, not necessarily the way they had anticipated. Wenda had wanted to have a whole body so she could interact normally with men, but now had a man regardless. Maeve had wanted escape from the stork, but now she was satisfied with the baby it had brought. Olive seemed satisfied with her talent as it was, thanks to its usefulness for her crazy writer. Phanta was no longer afraid of Gheorge Ghost, thanks to Shepherd and Ram Bunctious. And Haughty was satisfied to change to Hottie anytime, because Charon liked both her aspects and was turned off by neither. There was a pond not far distant. The girls and men stripped and went to it to wash, leaving their clothing to dry in the sunlight. Only Jumper was left, in more than one sense. He couldn’t help noticing how the increased gravity affected the bodies of the girls as they ran. He wished he had a girl of his own. If only Sharon had not proved to be ultimately fickle. He had achieved his mission. Now he could return to his natural 039-40892_ch01_4P.qxp 7/30/09 12:35 PM Page 308 308