Jumper Cable (13 page)

“She was careful. It was something I needed to learn. Please don’t tell the others.”

“Dawn surely already knows. You can’t keep anything from her.”

“She knows,” he agreed. “But I promised Angie to keep the secret.”

“And Olive knows,” she continued inexorably. “Because Angie was a creature of her imagination, and what ever she learned would have reverted to Olive once they re united.”

He hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe she does. Still, it’s supposed to be secret.”

“When three of the seven know it? Jumper, they’re women. The others will fathom it by osmosis.”

“But at least I would not have betrayed my trust.”

Haughty shook her head. “A spider with honor. Well, in that case I’ll let it be.”

“Thank you.”

The folk ahead had paused, and Jumper caught up to them. They were gathered around an old woman working with a huge pot on a low fire. The pot was bubbling vigorously. “That looks good,” Olive said.

“Is it some sort of soup or stew?”

“Not at all,” the woman replied, dumping an armful of foliage in. The broth bubbled up, absorbing it.

“Because if it is, we might like to share it with you. We are travelers, and it is about lunchtime. Is there anything we might trade for it?” Actually they had small backpacks with sandwiches and tsoda pop provided by MareAnn for their journey, but it made sense to forage when they could, extending their supplies. It might be a long journey.

“Nothing,” the woman said, tossing in a few mossy stones.

“Exactly what are you cooking, then?” Phanta asked.

“I am cooking up a storm,” the old woman said with half a cackle.

“You had better get under cover soon. It’s going to be a drenchpour.”

At which point a huge puff of steam rose from the pot and floated toward the sky. Little jags of lightning flashed from it, followed by burps of thunder. It was indeed a forming storm.

“D**t!” Haughty said. “It was bad enough when Fracto chased us.”

“That piker?” the woman asked. “He has no taste at all. I brew superior storms. Mine are boiling hot, of course.”

It certainly seemed to be threatening. “Is there anywhere we can seek temporary shelter?” Jumper asked.

The woman glanced at him. “My, you’re big for a spider! You might try for the old abandoned music shop. It’s right down the path. But beware of the luters.”

Jumper would have liked to learn more about the luters, but fat drops of hot rain were starting to fall and they had to hurry. They ran on down the path, and soon did spy the shop. Its front sign said ye old abandoned music shoppe.

The door was unlocked, and they piled in just as the boiling rain got serious.

“It might be abandoned,” Olive said, “but its wares remain.” Indeed, there were all manner of musical instruments laid out on shelves. There were drums, violins, flutes, brass instruments, harps, and many others.

“A harp!” Haughty exclaimed. She fluttered to the nearest, set herself at it, and drew her legs forward to touch the strings. The tips of her talons plucked at the individual strings. Lovely music sounded. The others stared, amazed. It had never occurred to any of them that harpies had anything to do with harps.

“Well, we don’t advertise it,” Haughty said, picking up on their reaction. “Bad for our reputation as totally gross creatures. But I couldn’t resist.” She finished the melody and stepped away from the instrument.

“We will keep your secret,” Dawn said with a halfway obscure smile. The others laughed.

“What are these luters we were warned about?” Phanta asked.

“Maybe I can fathom it,” Eve said. She put her hand on a wall, paused, looked surprised, then spoke. “This is one of those private minor tragedies that needs to be corrected. The shop proprietors were called away several years ago on a family emergency, putting a spell on the shop to protect it from theft. But they never returned, and the spell is wearing thin. Soon it won’t be effective anymore, and then everything will be stolen.”

“But that’s not about the luters,” Phanta said.

“I’m getting to that. The luters are neighboring folk who aren’t very honest. In fact they are thieves; they steal anything they can. The first night the proprietors left, the luters came and stole everything. The protective spell is passive; it won’t take direct action. That’s because the proprietors are pacifists; they don’t like violence. So the robbers aren’t hindered. But when morning comes, it draws the instruments back to their places in the shop. So the luters come again in the night to steal them again. This has been happening for three years.”

“How much longer can the spell do that?” Phanta asked.

“Maybe another month. The luters know that, so they keep stealing,

wearing it out, knowing that eventually they’ll get to keep and sell their ill-gotten gains. By the time the proprietors return, the shop will be empty.”

“This is a nice shop,” Haughty said. “It is giving us shelter from the hot rain. We need to help it.” She glared around, but no one disagreed.

“Then we’ll need a plan,” Dawn said. “And a leader to implement it. Anyone volunteer?”

The girls sent a glance ricocheting around their faces. It caromed back and forth, split into fragments, and finally caught seven of Jumper’s eight eyes, beating him back half blinded. “Ungh!” he exclaimed.

“Very good,” Eve said. “Jumper has volunteered.” She turned to face him with a smile that looked disarming from one angle, and somewhat predatory from another. Highlights reflected from her dark eyes, in the shape of pan ties. She knew he had seen!

What could he do? “Uh, okay.”

“And what is your plan?” Dawn inquired sweetly. Her eyes reflected the shape of bras. It seemed she was the higher twin, while Eve was the lower. But both knew his secret, and were threatening to reveal it if he did not cooperate. They were Sorceresses, and acted with the assurance their powers gave them. He should have done what Haughty recommended, and come clean about his liaisons with Angie. Now he had to come through.

Then a bulb flashed. It illuminated the entire plan. He scrambled mentally to collect all the details before the light faded. “We will stay the night. We will ambush the luters when they come, and scare them so badly they will never return. Then they won’t steal the instruments, and the spell won’t have to work so hard to protect the shop until the proprietors return.”

“Brilliant!” Wenda said, and kissed him on the carapace. He was ashamed to admit how much he liked that. She was the first friend he had made in this realm, and the most innocent, and in that sense was his favorite.

“We don’t want to actually hurt anyone,” he continued, “because the shop proprietors don’t want that. But the luters won’t know that. So I will threaten to bite the head off one, and Maeve can threaten to chew

the hands off another, and Haughty can threaten to p**p on the face of another. Phanta can turn ghost and scare the s**t out of others. Olive can summon a friend, maybe Angie, to threaten to make them drop dead. Wenda can ask them what kind of wood they’d prefer to have jammed up their backsides. And the princesses . . .” Here he faltered. He hadn’t quite secured their roles before his bulb faded.

“We are Sorceresses of Information rather than action,” Dawn said.

“And we prefer to be anonymous to outsiders. But I can touch the luters and find out what will scare them most, so that you can assign the most effective threat to each one.”

“And I can touch their clothing and find out more about them,” Eve said. “Between us, we should know their names, homes, friends, and possessions. That may help lend verisimilitude to the threats.”

“Lend what?” Wenda asked, perplexed.

“Make it all seem realistic,” Eve clarified. “That counts, if we want the scare to last.”

“Very good,” Jumper said, pleased. “Now we should eat, and rest, and perhaps sleep, so as to be wide-awake when night falls.”

The girls agreed. They ate their sandwiches, drank their tsoda, and lay down on the chairs and floor to sleep. Haughty, tired, found a canvas form to lie down on. Then she screeched.

“What’s the matter?” Olive asked, startled.

“This thing— it’s stretching me!”

They all looked. Sure enough, the harpy was stuck to it, and was getting elongated. Her head and wings were at one end, while her tail and legs were at the other.

Eve touched it. “No wonder! It’s a stretcher!”

“A what?” Olive asked.

“A stretcher. It stretches anyone who lies on it.”

“Just get me off it!” Haughty cried.

Eve touched it again, to discover that. Jumper noticed that the harpy’s body was coming to resemble that of a winged nymph, with more fully fleshed legs and fully formed midsection. But she was a harpy, and did not want that.

“Say the magic word ‘contraction,’ ” Eve said.

“Contraction?” And the stretcher shrank back to its former dimensions and unstuck her. Haughty hopped off and found a perch by a window. She was back to her natural form, but seemed somewhat wrung out. Jumper threw a web up to stick to the ceiling, spun a quick hammock, and swung from it for his rest.

“Jumper.”

He looked down. It was Wenda. “Yes?”

“That looks so cozy. Wood yew make one for me too?”

Surprised, he agreed. Soon she was slung beside him in her own cocoon. The more he thought about it, the more he liked her request. She was a true woodland creature, uncomfortable inside a house. But he had hardly relaxed before he heard something. It wasn’t yet night, but someone was approaching the house. So Jumper got down quietly and went to the door, just to make sure it wasn’t a sneak attack. He opened the door half a crack.

A woman stood there in the limited shelter of the arch over the doorway, dripping wet from the rain. “Hello,” she said. “I am young Chelsea, seeking shelter from the storm.”

Was this a ruse by the luters, to get someone inside to open the door for the main attack? Jumper did not trust this. “This is not a good place,”

he said.

“Oh, is it happening with places too, now?”

Had he misheard? “Is what happening?”

“I am cursed to fall in love only with folk who are already committed to others. I invariably befriend them, and they return my interest, but of course we can never be together. I need to find a way to break the curse. If now I am also finding nice places of refuge that won’t work out, it’s getting worse.”

This certainly did not sound like a ruse. Jumper found that he believed her. “Wait one moment,” he said. He went inside and sought Dawn, who had awakened and was alert. “I need to verify the validity of a person at the door.”

“Got it,” she said, and went to the door. She returned in little more than a moment. “She’s as she says; she’s not a luter. But that curse—”

“Do you think Olive has a friend?”

She pursed her lips, nodding. “You’re pretty smart, for a spider.” She went and fetched Olive. “Have you a friend who can nullify a curse?”

“That depends on the curse,” Olive said.

“A curse of misguided emotions.”

“I do have a friend for that. His curse is to destroy love. He’s not very pop u lar. But he might cancel hers out.”

A scowling man appeared. “I smell someone in love,” he said. “I hate that.” He walked to the door and poked his hand out. “Not anymore,” he said with grim satisfaction, and faded out. Was that really a cure? Jumper wasn’t sure. He went to the door, but young Chelsea was gone. So he returned to his cocoon; what else was there to do? He hoped he had done the girl some good. In the early eve ning they set up for the luters’ raid. Dawn and Eve stood on each side of the doorway, ready to touch the luters as they entered, and the others hung back, waiting to have their victims identified. They arrived on schedule. The door flung open and a typical village lout barged in.

Dawn touched him. “Hugh Mann, who can change the shade, color, tone, type, description or manner of anything he touches,” she announced.

“That’s a good talent; I don’t know why he is a luter.”

Hugh glanced at her. “Because I want more,” he said. “I don’t want just to change things, I want to have more of them. I’ll never be satisfied.”

Angie Ina appeared, summoned by Olive. “Your greed will be the death of you,” she said.

Hugh stared at her. His heart throbbed violently. He dropped to the floor.

“Remember, next time you get greedy,” Angie said, and faded out. The next lout entered. He saw Hugh and paused. “Huh?” he asked in lout language.

Dawn touched him. “Really dull. Terrified of spiders.”

Jumper’s turn. “I’m going to bite off your stupid head,” he said, clashing his mandibles. “After I finish with your friend.”

The lout turned and fled back out the door. “I’ll be lurking for you, right here,” Jumper called after him.

The third lout came in, tripped over the body, and fell onto the

stretcher. “Ooooww!” he howled as he got stretched. Then he somehow managed to turn over, get his feet under him, and dive out the window, the stretcher still fastened to his back.

“Let him go,” Olive said. “He won’t be back.”

They went through about six men in all. They had been effectively demoted from luters to louts. When no more came, Jumper hauled the first one out and left him in front of the shop as a warning to others. He wasn’t dead, because Angie had turned down the heat just enough, but he had suffered a severe heart throb that he would surely remember. They had done it. They had scared off the luters. The music shop would be safe from robbery for some time.

“Now we can sleep the rest of the night,” Olive said. “Mission accomplished.”

“Those hammocks,” Phanta said. “They look more comfortable than the floor. Can you make them for the rest of us, Jumper?”

So he spun more hammocks, and soon all of them were hanging, even Haughty. They had found a better way to camp out. In the morning they finished off their sandwiches and tsoda, girded themselves, and resumed their journey.

Olive’s compass guided them accurately, and by noon they knew they were coming into ogre country. The trunks of trees were twisted into pretzels, the mirror surfaces of ponds were cracked from ugliness overload, and small dragons were furtive.