Jumper Cable (15 page)

“Let me touch the original paper,” Eve said.

Jumper held it out, and she touched it. “Oho! There’s a hidden subtext between the lines: ‘Risk the wrath of the Lost Path. You’ll be unbound when what’s Lost is Found.’ ”

“The Lost Path is in the gourd!” Wenda protested.

“Where?” Jumper asked.

“The dream realm,” Olive explained.

“It does make some faint sense,” Dawn said. “When you enter the gourd realm, you are blind to the regular realm. We may find out how the rest relates when we go there.”

“What about getting unbound?” Phanta asked. “Who is bound?”

“We are all bound to our mission,” Eve said. “It may be an oblique way of saying that there is something lost that we must find if we want to complete our quest.”

“How do we go there?” Jumper asked.

“We fetch hypno gourds and peer into their peepholes. But we’ll need a safe place to do it, because our bodies will be vulnerable.”

“Here in the Ogre’s Den,” Tandy said immediately. “There’s nowhere safer.”

“Oh, we couldn’t impose,” Olive said.

“No, I’m serious. Smash explored the gourd realm long ago. He knows how it is. He’ll be glad to protect your bodies.”

Jumper glanced at the ogre with several eyes. “True?”

“Me see,” Smash agreed. He continued to use ogre talk in public, and Jumper didn’t question it.

So they marched into the Ogre’s Den, which turned out to be surprisingly spacious and well kept inside. That would be Tandy’s doing. Smash went out to harvest a basket of gourds while Tandy fed them and set them up on comfortable mats. “You will be going in together,” she said. “But we will need to know when to bring you out, so you need to assign one person we can wake periodically.”

“Me,” Haughty said. “I distrust the gourd the most.”

“And we will need to find the Lost Path,” Olive said.

“But you said it was in the dream realm,” Jumper said.

“Yes. But the dream realm is huge. Bigger than reality, actually. The Lost Path is lost somewhere within it. So entering the dream realm is only the first step. We will need an adequate strategy to find it.”

“Who can find something that is lost by definition?” Haughty asked. A dim bulb flashed over Smash’s head. “Damme, Sammy.”

“What? Who?” Jumper asked.

“It’s the ogre way of saying d**n me,” Haughty explained.

“No, the other.”

Tandy smiled. “That’s Jenny Elf’s cat, Sammy. He can find anything except home.”

“Anything? Even the Lost Path?”

There was half a silence as the realization sank in. “We need Sammy Cat,” Olive said.

“And how do we find Sammy?” Haughty asked.

“We may just have to trek to where Jenny lives,” Jumper said.

“That will be a whole ’nother adventure,” Haughty warned. “She’s across Xanth from here.”

“Then why does the Prophecy list the Lost Path now?”

“There must be a reason,” Tandy said. “Prophecies may be opaque and confusing, but they don’t waste space.”

Now a bulb flashed over Phanta’s head. “Olive! Conjure Jenny as a friend.”

“But she’s not my friend. I don’t even know her. I’m sure she’s a nice person, but we’ve never met.”

“Your imaginary friend.”

“But she’s not imaginary.”

Phanta spelled it out. “Jenny is real. You don’t know her, so your friendship with her is imaginary. Conjure her as your imaginary friend.”

Olive’s mouth fell open. “Could I do that?”

“You can try it, certainly,” Phanta said.

“Well, then, I will.”

“Not yet!” Phanta said. “Wait till we’re in the dream realm. Then conjure her, and have her bring her cat.”

Olive looked at the others. They were surprised too, but it did seem worth a try.

“One other thing,” Jumper said. “Exactly what are we looking for on the Lost Path? The Prophecy doesn’t seem to say.”

“Yes it does, in its fashion,” Eve said. “We’ll be unbound when what’s Lost is Found. We already figured that out.”

“But hundreds of things could be lost. That’s not much help. What specific thing do we need?”

“Prophecies specialize in obscurity,” Eve said. “That’s because they are prone to paradox. If we understood perfectly what is going to happen, and didn’t like it, we would act to change it, so then the Prophecy would no longer be true. So the words have to just nudge us in the right direction without providing the whole answer until it is too late to change it.”

A small silence circulated. Finally Olive shrugged. “Maybe Jenny will know.”

Jumper was not entirely satisfied with that either, but had no better suggestion.

They made themselves comfortable on their mats. “Now we want to bee together,” Wenda said. “Otherwise we’ll find ourselves in different areas and wood really bee lost. We dew knot want that. So we need to touch each other as we peek, at least to start.”

Jumper moved his mat to the center. He settled down and extended seven legs to touch each of the others. He used the eighth leg to orient his gourd.

“Are we ready?” Wenda asked. “Then on the count of three. One. Two. Peek.”

Jumper tuned out seven eyes and put the eighth to the peephole of the gourd. He knew the others were doing the same thing with their fewer eyes.

He found himself in a region of circles. The seven maidens were in a circle around him, of course, but there were also patterns of circles painted on the floor. Beyond these were a number of men who seemed to be idle.

One approached him. “Hello, giant spider. What tangled web have you woven to get caught in this circumference? Did you bring your succulent captives here so you can suck out their juices in peace?”

“No, no!” Jumper exclaimed, startled. “These are not captives!

They are friends. We are here on business. I am Jumper Spider.”

“I am Sir Vice. I am here to help. What can I do for you?”

“It would help to know the nature of this place.”

“This is the home of Sir Cumstance, where idle sirs gather. Both spiders and maidens seem out of place here, being animal and female.”

“We do find ourselves in an unusual circumstance,” Jumper agreed.

“We are looking for the Lost Path.”

“I have no idea where that would be; it was lost eons ago and never found. But perhaps Sir Vey would know; he lists and itemizes many things.” He made a hand signal. “Sir Vey!”

Sir Vey came forward. But it turned out that he did not know the location of the Lost Path either. “That is the one that doesn’t make the listings,” he explained. Neither did the obsequious Sir Vant, or the crazy Sir

Tified, or the doctor Sir Junn. “We don’t get around much,” Sir Culation said. “We stay close to the ground,” the snakelike Sir Pent explained.

“But we are very sure it isn’t here,” Sir Tain said. “We simply do what we need to endure,” Sir Vivor said.

So it seemed. “Then we shall summon another friend, and move on,” Jumper said. “Thank you for your help, sirs.”

“We are amazed you can handle it,” Sir Prize said. They huddled in a private circle, and Olive concentrated on Jenny Elf, her imaginary friend, together with her cat Sammy. Would it work? A woman formed. She looked fairly ordinary, but was somewhat smaller than average human size, and had pointed ears and only four fingers on each hand. That had to be Jenny Elf.

“Well, hello, Olive,” Jenny said. “It has been so long I must have forgotten we were friends.” She went to hug Olive. “But I don’t think I know your other friends.”

Olive quickly introduced them, starting with Jumper, and summarized their situation. “So we are hoping Sammy can find the Lost Path for us,” she concluded.

“Surely he can,” Jenny agreed. “He can find anything but home, so I try to keep him fairly close. But Claire has good sense, and fathoms things Sammy doesn’t, so he doesn’t really get lost anymore.” She lifted her voice. “Sammy! Where are you?”

An orange fluffball of a cat appeared. “This is Sammy,” Jenny said. He settled down into speed-bump mode, in no hurry about anything. Then beside him appeared a sleek female cat, looking at Jumper and the others alertly. “Claire Voyant,” Jenny said. And an odd little cat. “And Kitten Kaboodle,” Jenny said. “She has nine tails. One for each of her lives, each a different story.”

This was somewhat more than Jumper had anticipated. “They are welcome, especially if they have any idea what we are looking for. We just hope Sammy can find the Lost Path.”

Claire arched her back and gave Jenny a look. “She says you are looking for the Found Cabin.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She says you will when you get there.”

At least now they had half a notion where they were headed. “Then let’s find the Lost Path,” Jumper said.

Suddenly Sammy was up and running. “Wait for us!” Jenny cried, running after him. The rest of them followed her, except for Claire, who paralleled him, seeming to know where he was going. There was a blur of dream realm settings: a horror house, walking skeletons, moving buildings, and several sets where creatures with cameras were recording bad dreams for deserving sleepers. Jumper was surprised that some scenes they passed through were quite pleasant; they weren’t all scary. Then he realized that dreams could be good as well as bad. Also, a seemingly nice dream could have a savage undercurrent. It all depended on the dreamer. Then, abruptly, they were on a winding path, vaguely similar to the enchanted paths they had traveled on. But this one was littered with lost things: lamps, pictures, coins, shoes, pencils, half-eaten sandwiches, homework papers, and many odd socks. There were two roughly human bodies with heads that seem to sit crosswise on their necks. He did not understand them at all.

“Headphones,” Eve explained. “Pick one up and hold it to an ear.”

Jumper did so. Eve picked up the other. “Hello,” she said into one end of it. “Hello,” her voice said in his phone.

“Hello,” he replied, startled. At least now he understood: these heads could talk to each other.

They put the heads back on their necks and checked other lost things. Some were vague blobs. “Causes,” Jenny murmured. “Nonphysical things can also get lost, especially when a person is distracted by greed or love.”

One lost thing was a man. “Don’t come near me,” he said, cringing. But they had to pass near him to follow the path. “Why?” Haughty asked. “We mean you no harm.”

“Because I am José,” he said. “My talent is Empathy. I feel what ever others are feeling.”

“But that’s a good talent,” Dawn said. “Akin in a manner to mine. I am Dawn, and I know all about any living thing I touch.” She touched him in midcringe. “Ouch! Now I understand! You can’t tune it out.”

“That’s right,” José said. “I feel your pain, joy, confusion, anger,

guilt— everything. And I can’t turn it off. I have little chance to be myself except when I’m alone. So please leave me alone.”

Dawn turned to the others. “We need to get past this man as quickly as possible, so he won’t suffer all our feelings.”

“Then we had better run,” Eve said. She led the way, running past José. The others followed, and soon they were clear, while the poor man recovered from their feelings.

Jumper realized that this was truly an unusual region. He really had no idea how they had found it, or how to leave it. “What do we do now?” he asked.

“We follow the Lost Path to its end,” Jenny said.

“That must be where the Found Cabin is,” Olive said.

“What ever would we want with a cabin?” Haughty asked.

“Only the Prophecy knows,” Phanta said with a pained laugh. They followed the path, increasingly tuning out the litter of lost things strewn along it, though Jumper was surprised by some. What was a haunted sailboat doing here, or a yellow submarine, or a set of carved stone tablets? There was even a town whose inhabitants didn’t seem to know they were lost. And countless lost opportunities. Those seemed especially sad.

Then at last they reached the Found Cabin. It was perfectly ordinary, nestled in a scenic valley. It was overgrown with weeds; no one had been here in a long time.

They entered it and looked around. Dust covered everything. Wenda and Olive got busy with broom and dust cloth to clean things off, and soon they were revealed. And what things they were!

There was a shining sword. Maeve picked it up and flourished it, and it moved and glinted marvelously. On its steel side was printed the word courage. “I could really use this weapon,” she said. “It’s magic; it fits my hand perfectly, though it was surely made for a man, and is feather-light, though I’m sure its real weight is heavy.”

“Test it,” Olive suggested.

Maeve set a heavy bolt of wood from the rack beside the fireplace on a chair, and swung the sword at it. The wood flew into two sections as if made of jelly. “It’s solid,” she announced unnecessarily.

Eve came forward to touch it. “You can’t keep it,” she said. “It’s not really a sword. It’s a symbol. It’s a man’s lost courage. It needs to be returned to him.”

“Then I will help return it,” Maeve said regretfully. “It is far too fine a thing to allow to remain lost, whether real or symbolic.” She returned the sword to its resting place.

There was a large red heart. Wenda picked it up, pressed it against her chest, and almost dropped it. “It’s beating!”

So it was. Dawn came to touch it. “This is another symbol,” she said. “It is the lost love of a man or woman, who is slowly dying for lack of it.”

“Then it must bee returned,” Wenda said. “Though for a moment I felt so gloriously in love I could hardly stand it. I wish I could find a love of my own like that.”

Another was a statue of a human head. Olive picked it up— and she too almost dropped it. “It’s alive!”

Indeed, the head’s eyes were blinking, and its mouth was twitching. But it looked confused.

Dawn touched it. “This is the symbol of a lost mind,” she said.

“Someone is going crazy without it.”

“It must be returned,” Olive said, setting it back down. “Though for a moment I felt so much more intelligent.”

Phanta picked up a small tombstone. On it were engraved the words what’s the point?

Eve touched it. “Symbol for the lost will to live,” she said. “He is very unhappy, and will die if he doesn’t recover this in time.”