Jumper Cable (24 page)

“I do have half a notion,” he said with deep regret. “But I made a deal, and I will honor it.”

“You and that stupid ogre,” she said. “Chained by your souls. Now that I think of it, I would really hate to be bound by honor. It leads only to mischief.”

“Yes.” He got off the bed and put his silk shorts back on. It was time to see what kind of a deal Dawn was fending off.

“You should dress better than that,” she said. “The servants would freak out if you attended the banquet in that.” She got lithely up and went to a closet. In half a moment she brought out a nice human suit.

“Don this.”

He didn’t question how it was she had a male suit in her bedroom closet. This was, after all, the dream realm. He donned it, and it fit perfectly. They returned to the king’s bedroom. Belial lay exhausted on the bed, while Dawn was just snapping her bra back together. There was no need to inquire as to the nature of her reasoning with the man.

“But our mission—” Jumper said, afraid she had made the same deal he had turned down.

“Continues,” she said. She walked to the closet and put a key to the lock.

“Oh, bleep,” Sharon said. “You sold it for the key.”

“He couldn’t resist the deal,” Dawn agreed. “He’s a man. You know how it is.”

“And you’re a woman,” Sharon agreed. “You know how to use it.”

Jumper realized that Belial was supposed to tempt Dawn from the mission. Instead she had tempted him from his key. She was a princess and a Sorceress, but also some woman.

Dawn turned the key. The lock clicked. The door opened. Beyond it was a swirling blankness.

“I’ll be d**ned,” Dawn breathed, emulating the harpy’s word blotting.

“Yes, it’s a secret portal to Mundania,” Sharon said. “Your mission evidently takes you there.”

Sammy got up and walked into the swirl.

“Let’s go,” Dawn said, grasping Jumper’s hand. They followed the cat into the unknown.

And landed in the room of a young Mundane girl. She was sitting on her bed, sobbing piteously. Beside her sat an ornate little box. Sammy settled down by her feet for a nap. This was definitely the person they were looking for.

“Uh, hello,” Jumper said.

The girl looked up. Her face was streaked with tears. “Who are you?”

“I am Jumper, and this is Dawn. And that’s Sammy Cat. We’re from the Land of Xanth. We’re here to restore your lost innocence.”

The girl burst into renewed tears. “No one can do that!” she cried. “I am Dora, beset by the Drums of Dole, and have fallen into a Blue Funk. There is no hope for me.”

Dawn approached her, extending the Unicorn Symbol, but it shied away. Something was preventing the restoration of her innocence. Dawn touched Dora’s head. “You need to visit Xanth,” she said, fathoming more about the girl. Jumper realized that Dawn now knew how Dora had lost her innocence, and what to do about it.

“Where?”

“Come with us. And bring your box.” She took Dora’s hand and led her to the closet.

Jumper and Sammy followed, trusting Dawn to know what she was doing.

They passed through the blank swirl and emerged in King Belial’s bedroom. Belial and Sati/Sharon were standing there, still surprised by the party’s passage through the portal.

“This is Dora,” Dawn said. “Short for Pandora. She opened her box, when she shouldn’t have, and all the evils of Mundania were loosed, making it a horrible place. Those evils cost her her innocence. But Xanth is new to her, so she can start over, with renewed innocence.”

Dawn extended the unicorn symbol again. This time it sank into the girl. “Oh!” she cried with innocent delight.

“Now open the box again,” Dawn said.

Dora did. Something flew out, swirled around the room, touched Jumper, then sailed on out the window.

Jumper’s eyes and mouth opened in awe. “Suddenly I have Hope!”

he said. “Hope to complete our mission despite the barriers yet to be overcome.”

“Yes, the one thing left in the box was Hope,” Dawn said. “It seems that was what you needed, Jumper. Now it is loose in Xanth, so anybody will be able to share it.”

“But what about me?” Dora asked.

“You have a private portal to Xanth,” Dawn said. “You will be able to visit here whenever you want to. I’m sure these nice people will help you start your innocent exploration of it.”

“Why should we do that?” Sharon demanded.

“Because if you don’t, you will anger Jumper and me,” Dawn said decisively. “Then you will have absolutely no hope of achieving your mission. You can’t afford the risk.”

Sharon exchanged a glance with Belial. Then she extended her hand to Dora. “We’ll start with our magic gardens,” she said. “They have wonders galore.”

“Time to return,” Dawn said. She addressed the cat. “Sammy, this time show us the direct route, not the scenic route.”

Sammy was up and in the air, leaping out the window. Jumper hesitated, but Dawn didn’t; she scrambled out after the cat. So Jumper did also, though hardly sanguine about it.

He found himself suspended from a hook that somehow caught the back of his neck without hurting him. He saw that Dawn was similarly hooked, and holding Sammy in her arms.

“These are not narrative hooks,” Jumper said.

“We have hooked up,” she explained. “These will transport us where we are going.”

Oh. There were still surprises in this larger realm. But as they swung along below an invisible line, proceeding rapidly across the variegated terrain of dreamland, Jumper saw that Dawn was pensive. “Is there something wrong?” he asked, concerned.

“There is,” she agreed. “Maybe you will be able to figure out a way to handle it.”

“I will try.”

“You know how these dream episodes have seemed scripted? We figured out that Demon Pluto was involved, using his minion Sharon to distract you while the men charmed our girls.”

“Including you?” he asked.

“Including me. King Belial turned out to be quite a man. I must confess I loved being with him as we seduced each other. But did you wonder why I was so eager to do it? It wasn’t just to win the key to the portal.”

“The other girls had their turns; you wanted yours.”

“Yes. But more than that, I wanted to get close to one of those men so I could use my talent to really study him, to fathom the riddle of these settings. To ascertain exactly how Pluto plans to balk us, even if we don’t get corrupted. Because I was sure it couldn’t be as simple as just charming us, or you.”

“But isn’t Belial a minor Demon too, like Sharon? So you can’t truly fathom him?”

“Yes. But I am after all a Sorceress, and my power goes beyond the ordinary. Those men may be dream emulations of living men, but that emulation enabled me to pick up some information. Being as close to

Belial as I was, for as long as I was, I was able to glean a fair amount of information. And that’s the problem.”

“You learned more? But that’s good!”

“That’s better than ignorance, yes. But not good. I learned that we have understood only the upper layer of the deception. The next layer down is worse.”

“What ever it is, we’ll tackle it together,” Jumper said. “Now that we have a fair Hope of success.”

“Maybe. The top layer was the series of lost things to be returned. That Challenge was all scripted by Pluto. The next layer will challenge our unity as a team. That may be more difficult.”

“I think I am not properly understanding you.”

“Here is what I found: those were not six different men employed by Pluto. They are Pluto.”

“Pluto himself?” Jumper said, surprised.

“Pluto himself, playing six different roles. Seducing six different girls. Including me.”

“But then—”

“We are in competition with each other for his attention. Because we are all fairly smitten with him. The nice men we have loved do not exist. The privacy we thought we had was non ex is tent. We have all been scr**ed. I am personally furious. How do you think the others will feel?”

“They’ll be spitting fire.”

“And how do we tell them?”

“I have no idea.” But he knew he would have to get an idea soon, because already the Found Cabin was coming into view ahead.

D*MSEL FURY

What happened?” Wenda asked. “Did yew prevail?”

“In a manner,” Dawn said. “We were able to gain Hope for the success of the mission.”

“Why do I suspect that’s not all?” Haughty asked rhetorically.

“Jumper will explain. After we leave the dream realm. How did the rest of you fare, these past two days?”

“Two days?” Phanta asked. “Two hours.”

“But

we

were gone a day and a night and another day,” Dawn protested.

“In your dream,” Eve said, laughing.

Jumper exchanged a glance with Dawn. Could this be true?

“Believe it,” Maeve said. “We had some good card games, but only two hours’ worth.”

“I suppose time is different, in dreams,” Jumper said. “But we are ready to return to our waking state.”

“Then I think you won’t be needing us anymore,” Jenny said. “It has been nice knowing all of you. You really must come visit me in waking life, at Werewolf Island.”

“We’ll try to,” Olive said. “Sammy has been a big help.”

“He always is,” Jenny agreed, picking up her cat. “Fare well, all.”

Then she and the cats faded out.

“We need to wake also,” Jumper said.

“I’ll let the ogres know,” Haughty said, and disappeared. Then Jumper thought of something. “I thought Olive was limited to one imaginary friend at a time. How could she summon Jenny, then summon others elsewhere?”

“This is a communal dream,” Olive reminded him. “The rules are more liberal. We can all do things in dreams we can’t do in real life.”

“Like wildly making out with men we hardly know,” Phanta said.

“Because we know it’s only partly real.”

Then the others started disappearing too, one by one. This time Eve was the last to go. “You spent a night with my sister? What did you do with her?”

She was surely teasing him, so he teased her back. “Nothing I wouldn’t do with you,” Jumper said. “Especially in a dream.”

“That’s entirely too much.” She hoisted her skirt, but disappeared before any panty showed. She had mistimed it, this time. That was just as well. What would she do when she learned that her centaur king was really the Demon Pluto?

Jumper found himself back in the Ogre’s Den. “You must be tired,”

Tandy said. “Maybe you should rest and sleep before you move on.”

Jumper realized that he was indeed tired. Also, that would postpone his explanation about Pluto. “Yes.” He reverted with relief to his natural spider form; somehow the change he had made in the dream had held in the waking state.

First they had a simple meal. Then they found nooks and crannies and settled down to sleep. Wenda came to join him, as she had before. He truly appreciated her trust and support. She was their group’s most innocent member, but also the most sensitive one.

“What ever is on yewr mind is pretty heavy,” she murmured. “Even in yewr spider form.”

“It is,” he agreed.

To his relief, she did not press him further. She was really a nice girl.

In the morning they or ga nized and set off early on the path to Castle Roogna, the next address in the Prophecy. Because that was where Button Ghost resided. They were no longer sure the Prophecy was valid, but it was their only guide.

They found bicycles again, and rode them, making good time. Jumper remained in spider form, preferring to bound along rather than struggle with the wheeled machine. It was not an enchanted path, but no monsters threatened them. Maybe the monsters didn’t care to tackle a giant spider. Or maybe the monsters just hadn’t yet roused themselves. They halted a couple hours out at a wayside shelter, where they foraged for breakfast. Then they gathered for the inevitable. The girls had not forgotten Jumper’s promise to explain what had happened in their two days/two hours excursion. This was what he dreaded.

“Dawn and I learned something on the way to discovering and releasing Hope,” he said. “You aren’t going to like it.”

They waited, not interrupting him, unfortunately.

“In the dream missions, each of you except Haughty encountered a man,” he continued. “We suspected that these men had been disposed by the Demon Pluto to distract you, just as Sharon was distracting me. First they tried to delay us. Then they tried to make us love them, so that we would heed their pleas to abandon our mission. This did not work.”

“If they still like us after we complete the mission,” Olive said,

“then we’ll certainly be interested.”

“Because then we’ll know they like us for ourselves,” Phanta said.

“And are not faking it.”

“A girl needs that reassurance,” Maeve agreed. And they were not going to get it. “What we learned is that those were not men influenced by Pluto,” he said. “They were Pluto.”

There was half a silence. They were not getting it. Dawn stepped in. “Pluto assumed their forms.”

An indefinable but not pretty expression hovered in the vicinity of Eve’s face. “We were all making out with the same man?”

There it was. “Yes,” Jumper said.

“I fathomed it,” Dawn said. “My talent is to know anything about

anything I touch that is alive, and the Demon Pluto is not exactly alive, but I got close enough to him long enough to pick up on it.”

“I’ll bet you did, you sneak,” Eve snapped. “You’re trying to steal my man again.”

“I’m no more thrilled than you are,” Dawn said. “I thought I had a handsome king to myself.”

“My courageous warrior?” Maeve asked.

“My jilted lovesick prince?” Wenda asked.

“My crazy genius writer?” Olive asked.

“My remorseful slaughter house shepherd?” Phanta asked.

“My honorable centaur king?” Eve asked.

“My dust-creature king,” Dawn said regretfully. “All the same.” She frowned, an unusual expression for her. “That’s not even the worst of it.”

“There’s more?” Eve asked.

“That mysterious man we were competing for before— the reason why we were banished to this mission— he’s Pluto too.”

Sudden fury shook Eve. “Him too!”

“Him too,” Dawn agreed, for an instant mirroring her sister’s expression. “He was corrupting us before we even knew there was a mission.”