Jumper Cable (7 page)

Maeve laughed. “Serves it right!” she gasped. “By the way, Jumper, thanks for rescuing me. What a smell! Rotten carrion is sweet in comparison.”

“You are welcome,” he said. “But won’t the stork catch you, now that it knows where you are?”

“Not if I get to the Good Magician first and get my problem solved.”

“So we had better move on before that noxious gas clears.”

“We had better,” she agreed, struggling to her feet. “But it may be hours before that stork tries again to pass it. I’m just lucky I have a tolerance for decayed flesh.” Even so, she looked distinctly sick. Jumper made a mental note to stay away from stink horns. They rejoined the others, who were waiting a bit farther from the rampaging cloud of stench.

“I think we have navigated the first Challenge,” Haughty said. “By invoking Xanth’s worst f**t.”

“Fret,” Maeve said. “Something that truly disturbs people. Like that gas.”

Phanta choked back something that might in better times have resembled a laugh. Was that really the word the harpy had used? They came up to the moat. The moat monster lifted its head from the water and surveyed them hungrily. Snappish little fish crowded close to the bank, hoping for tasty flesh to bite. No crossing there; it was hard enough just to wash the remaining stink off. Fortunately they could use the drawbridge.

But when they approached the drawbridge, they discovered that there was a woody curtain hanging across its near end. A number of

lengths of wood were bound together to make a flexible barrier. Jumper was about to draw it aside so they could pass, but Wenda stopped him.

“Dew knot touch it! That’s bamboo.”

“Isn’t that a type of wood?” Olive asked. “That should be harmless.”

“Knot bamboo,” Wenda said. “It is dangerous. I’ll show yew.” She picked up a small stone and flipped it at the curtain. The wood struck one piece, and it detonated. BAM! The explosion rocked the whole heavy curtain and blew out a blast of hot air that pushed them back. Wenda was right: they did not want to touch it.

“But we can throw more stones, and make it all explode,” Olive said. “Then it won’t be in our way.”

“Knot bamboo,” Wenda repeated. “Watch.”

In a moment, maybe even half a moment, BOOM! and the fragmented section of bamboo regenerated and was whole again. They would never be able to detonate all the pieces fast enough to get past them before they were dangerous again.

“Again, your expertise has identified a woodland project we need to know about,” Olive said. “We’re lucky this environment didn’t nullify your knowledge as well as your magic.”

“By the way, what is your magic?” Haughty asked.

“Being hollow yet animated,” Wenda said. “I could knot function this way if I weren’t magic. So yew could call it my talent. I call it my curse.”

“So we can’t cross the drawbridge,” Jumper said. “We need to find some other way across the moat.”

“As I understand it,” Olive said, “there is normally some way at hand to handle the Challenges. Just as there was a stink horn, waiting for Wenda to recognize it and use it. We just have to find the key to getting across the moat.”

“Let’s walk around it,” Jumper suggested. “And see if we can find that key.”

They started walking. There was a parklike strip outside the moat, with a con ve nient path through it. This must be what they were supposed to do. If they circled all the way around the castle without finding

the key, that might signal their failure. Then they wouldn’t get to see the Good Magician, and would be stuck with their assorted fates. Not to mention a wasted prophecy. So they needed to be alert. A woman came running toward them, laughing. They gave her room, and she ran right on by, still laughing. But something odd happened: each person she passed burst into similar laughter. Soon they were all collapsing in spasms of mirth, even Jumper, who didn’t know what was so funny.

After a while they gradually subsided. So he inquired: “What was so funny, to make us all laugh like that? I didn’t even know spiders could laugh.”

“Nothing,” Haughty said seriously. “I seldom laugh. Yet I was overcome.”

“It’s as though it spread from her to us,” Phanta said. “That’s weird.”

“Infectious laughter!” Olive said. “That’s her magic!”

Haughty shook her head. “So it must be. But how is that relevant to our need to cross the moat, either as help or hindrance? Because everything is relevant, isn’t it?”

“It is supposed to be,” Olive agreed. “Maybe if we were smarter, we could figure out how it relates.”

They went on, nonplussed if not nonminussed. And soon another person came running, this one a man. He looked as if he were about to be sick. They let him pass— and choked up, feeling ill in the throat, unable to speak. After a few uncomfortable minutes they recovered. None of them had actually upchucked, but all had been silenced.

“And what was that?” Haughty wheezed.

“A running gag,” Olive said. It seemed she was good at puns. The others groaned, and not because they found it very funny. In fact they were not amused. They got up and resumed their walk around the moat.

They came across a small group of people at the bank of the moat. Two were children, a boy and a girl, plainly unhappy, while the third was a merman trying to console them.

Jumper, leading the way, paused. It bothered him to see anyone unhappy, especially a child. “What is the matter?” he inquired. If the children were surprised to be addressed by a big talking spider, they didn’t show it. “I am Mercury,” the merman said. “My talent is to change the temperature of water. I can make it hot, cold or comfortable in my vicinity.” He swished his tail in the water. “These children also have talents relating to water, but they aren’t happy with them. I am trying to encourage them, but they don’t believe me.”

“Any talent surely has some use,” Olive said to the children. “What are yours?”

“I am Caitlin,” the little girl said. “I can turn wine to water. But nobody likes me to do that. They say it would be better if I could turn water to wine, and I can’t.”

“Have you tried it with reverse wood?” Olive asked. The girl’s mouth fell open. “Do you think that would do it?”

“I think it might,” Olive said. “Reverse wood reverses most things. Of course you can never be sure how it reverses them, so you just have to try it and see. But it might work.”

“I’ll try it,” Caitlin said, pleased.

“And what is yours?” Olive asked the boy.

“I am Ian,” he said. “My talent is pushing water away from my body. People say that’s no use at all.”

That obviously set Olive back. Reverse wood might just get him soaked. She looked helplessly at the others. They shrugged, not able to offer anything.

“There must be something,” Olive said at last, defeated. “If we think of it, we’ll let you know. Meanwhile, would a kiss cheer you somewhat?”

Ian considered. He was a child, but there were some pretty girls here. Maeve, bare, was especially fetching, but Phanta was quite pretty too. “Maybe.”

“Choose one of us,” Olive said.

“Her,” Ian said, pointing at Haughty.

Haughty almost fell over with surprise. “But I’m a harpy! No one wants to be kissed by a harpy.”

“I think harpies are great,” Ian said. “They have all these bad words.”

Oh. Boys did tend to be naughty.

“Well, I’m not saying a bad word to a child,” Haughty said. Ian started to cloud up.

“Oh, h**l,” Haughty said, disgusted.

“Heel,” Maeve murmured too faintly for the boy to hear. As a result, he imagined a much worse word.

“Great!” Ian exclaimed. “H**l! I love it.”

“You’re welcome,” Haughty said, touched. She flew across and kissed the top of his head as she passed over him.

“She touched me!” Ian exclaimed. “I probably got dirty! Great!”

“You folk seem to have a certain talent with children,” Mercury said. “You have cheered them as I could not.” He slid back into the water and swam away. They walked on. They might have cheered the children, but they were no closer to solving their own problem. They encountered a man walking the opposite way. “Hello,” Jumper said.

The man paused. “I never met a big talking spider before,” he remarked.

“I was given the gift of tongues,” Jumper explained. “Otherwise all you would hear would be mandible clicks. Do you have a talent?”

“I do indeed,” the man said proudly. “I can transform my arms into anything.” He demonstrated by changing them into wings, then giant claws, then longer arms, and finally into lengths of rope. “I can do just about anything I want to.”

“Can you help us get across the moat?” Jumper asked.

“Well, I can form paddles.” He did so. “But the moat monster and those piranha fish would eat me up, and anyone with me. So I don’t think I can help you there.”

That had been Jumper’s impression. “Thank you.”

The man moved on, and so did they. Soon they encountered another man. He had large insect eyes. “Hello,” Jumper said.

“I see you are a transformed spider with the gift of tongues,” the man said. “That’s interesting.”

“How do you know all that?” Jumper asked.

“I am Todd. I have the Eye of the Bee-holder. I can see things from more than one angle. You are obviously a normal spider, except for your size, and I see a bit of the tongues plant in the corner of your mouth.”

Jumper was impressed. “Do you see a way for us to cross over the moat?”

Todd shook his head. “I see no way for you to do that. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” Jumper said regretfully. For a moment he had had hope.

They moved on. “There are people with many talents here,” Olive remarked. “But none of them seem to relate well.”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” Haughty said. “Somewhere here there’s one who can help us, but we can’t find him or her in this welter of irrelevant talents.”

“That must be it,” Jumper agreed.

They approached a man who was sitting at a table, looking unhappy.

“What is your problem?” Olive inquired.

“I have a useless talent,” he replied. “I can turn gold into lead.”

“But have you tried reverse wood?” she asked, evidently remembering her prior success with the girl who turned wine to water.

“Yes, and it enables me to turn lead into gold. But nobody wants either gold or lead anymore; they have all they want from the Gold Coast, and they tell me to get the lead out. So what use is my talent?”

That stumped them. “We don’t know,” Olive said. They came next to a woman sitting in a deck chair. She looked ordinary, and not satisfied, though she had very nice legs. “What is your talent?” Olive asked.

“I have freak-out knees,” the woman said. “But they work only on men. I want to freak out women too.”

That explained why they hadn’t noticed, as they were a party of five females and a spider. Actually she did have very shapely knees, for a human, with good flesh and bone, surely quite tasty. But Jumper did not normally freak out at the sight of edible joints.

“It occurs to me,” Phanta remarked as they moved on, “that some

folk don’t appreciate what they have. They are unhappy because they want more.”

“Like us?” Wenda asked.

That made them pause. “Are we missing something obvious?”

Haughty asked. “Something these other folk are showing us?”

“We must be,” Olive said. “As bold smart querists we aren’t much.”

“Querists? You used that term before. I don’t know it.”

“People who ask questions,” Maeve translated. “Inquirers.”

“Let’s keep pondering it as we go,” Jumper suggested. “Something may occur to us.”

The next person they encountered was a woman who seemed ordinary. “Hello,” Olive said. “I am—”

“Don’t get too close to me,” the woman said, making a face. “I’m about to— ahh, ahh—”

“I’m sorry,” Olive said, stepping back. “We don’t mean to intrude.”

Then the woman sneezed. “CHOO!” It was a hard sneeze. In fact, her whole head flew off, bounced on the ground, and rolled into the brush. Her body was left wandering aimlessly.

“Here!” the head called. “I’m over here!” But the body had no eyes or ears, so it could neither see nor hear.

Jumper reached down to pick up the head, carefully. He brought it to the body and set it on the neck.

“Thank you,” the restored woman said. “I am Miss Gesundheit. It is my curse to sneeze my head off.”

“We noticed,” Jumper said. “That must be incon ve nient.”

“It’s awful. That’s what brought me here to see the Good Magician. He’s going to glue my head on more securely, after I complete my Ser vice.”

This did not seem promising either. They moved on. Then next was another woman, this one older. She looked really down.

Olive approached her. “Hello. We—”

“Don’t touch me!” the woman said. “It’s contagious.”

Again, Olive stepped back, cautioned by their experience with the last woman. “What do you have?”

“I am Auntie Depressant. Touch me and you will feel better, but then much worse when the effect wears off. It is better simply to stay clear.”

That seemed like good advice. They moved on, and came to half a crowd of people having a party.

A man staggered toward them. “Welcome to the Cate Family picnic,” he said. “I am Intoxi Cate, who makes revelers happy. This is my brother Impli, who is a lawyer for the offense, and my other brother Vindi, who is a lawyer for the defense. And here is Recipro, always quick to return a favor. Things are always interesting here.”

“Thank you,” Olive said smoothly. “But we’re just passing through.”

The next group was no better. This was the Burr Family, with Tim who could make wood appear from nowhere, but was always falling over. Lim made things limber, but at the moment he was experimenting with cheese, and it stank. Slum made folk sleepy. Num could always make the right number needed. Encum tended to weigh things down. Har made good places for boats. Em made hot coals. Unfortunately these were not the talents the group needed. They moved on, and encountered the Tard Family. Pe Tard knew all about green, black-eyed, and chickpeas. Mus Tard tended to make a hot tasting mess of things. Bus Tard was a big black and yellow bird capable of carry ing 66 passengers.