"You can do better than that, squawkhead!" Jumper chittered. And jumped again, as the bird wheeled in the air. The Hoorah was remarkably agile for its size.
After several futile passes, the bird realized that Jumper was too quick for it to catch. Just as well, as the translations of the spider's insults were turning the girl's ears a delicate shell-pink. The Hoorah looked around, casting about for the other prey. Fortunately all they had to do was remain still and silent.
Dor, trying to make his fatigued left arm more comfortable, shifted his hold slightly. The girl slipped down a bit, her bosom getting squeezed. She screamed, almost without taking a breath, catching him off guard.
Oh, no! Dor, needing his right hand to help hold on to the branch, had uncovered her mouth. Foolish mistake!
The Hoorah oriented immediately on the sound. It zoomed directly toward them. Jumper was behind it, unable to distract it this time. The Hoorah knew easy prey when it found it.
With the inspiration of desperation, Dor grabbed with his right hand at the girl's clothing, questing for her pockets. Though she wore a showy dress that was cut high at the knees and low at the bodice, her apron covered much of that, and was utilitarian.
She screamed as if attacked-not unreasonably, in this case-but he continued until he found what he was looking for: the cultured pearls she had picked up from the nest. "What is your pet peeve?" he demanded as he flipped the first pearl into the air.
"I don't make pets of peeves!" the pearl retorted. "But I hate people who drop me off branches!" It dropped out of sight-and the Hoorah, tracing the sound of its voice, followed it down.
Jumper half-bounded, half-swung across to them.
"Marvelous ploy!" he chittered. "Throw the next to the side, and I will lower you quietly to the ground."
"Right!" Dor agreed. He faced the girl. "And don't scream," he warned.
She inhaled to scream.
"Or I'll tickle you!" he threatened.
That got her. Meekly she let herself deflate. She even handed him a pearl from her apron breast pocket, so he wouldn't have to dig it out himself. That was almost more cooperative than he liked.
"And what is your peeve?" he inquired of the pearl, and hurled it to the side.
"I hate uncultured people who can't appreciate cultured pearls!" it cried.
They heard a "Hoo-rah!" in the distance as the bird went after it The bird certainly appreciated cultured pearls!
By the time they reached the ground, they were out of pearls-but also out of peril. They had lost the bird. Dor picked up a few sticks of wood for emergency use in case the Hoorah came near again, and the three of them hurried away.
"You see!" the ring on Dor's finger cried. "I granted your wish! You are safe on the ground!"
"I guess I can't argue with that," Dor agreed. But he maintained a healthy private reservation.
Dor judged they were now fairly close to Castle Roogna, since the Hoorah bird had carried them in the right direction, but the day was waning and he didn't want to hurry lest they fall into another trap. So they foraged for supper, locating a few marshmallow bushes and an apple pine and some iced-tea leaves. Jumper tried a bit of pine apple, but declared he preferred crustaceans. The girl had finally come to accept the big spider as a companion, and even allowed Jumper to string her up for the night. She was, she confessed daintily, afraid of bugs and things on the ground, and at the moment was none too keen on birds in trees either.
Thus the three of them hung comfortably from silken threads, safe from the predators above and below. There were advantages to the arachnid mode, Dor decided.
Jumper fell silent, no doubt already asleep and recuperating from his formidable exertions of the day. But Dor and the girl talked for a while, in low tones so as not to attract unwanted and/or hazardous attention.
"Where do you come from?" she inquired. "Where do you go?"
Dor answered as briefly as he could, omitting the details about his age and the relation of his world to hers. He told her he was from a strange land, like this one but far removed, and he had come here looking for the Zombie Master, who might help him obtain an elixir to help a friend. He made clear that Jumper was from that same land, and was his trusted friend. "After all, without Jumper, we would never have escaped from the Hoorah's nest."
Her story was as simple. "I am a maid of just barely maybe seventeen, from the West Stockade by the lovely seashore where the gaze-gourds grow, traveling to the new capital to seek my fortune. But when I crossed a high ridge-to stay away from the tiger lilies, you know, because they have a special taste for sweet young things, those lilies of the valley-the Hoorah bird spotted me, and though I screamed and flung my hair about and kicked my feet exactly as a maid is supposed to-well, you know the rest."
"We can help you get to Castle Roogna, since we're going there too," Dor said. It probably was not much of a coincidence, since the Castle was the social and magical center of Xanth; no doubt everyone who was anyone went to Castle Roogna.
She clapped her hands in that girlishly cute way she had, and jiggled in her harness with that womanly provocation she also had. "Oh, would you? That's wonderful!"
Dor was pleased too. She was delightful company! "But what will you do at Castle Roogna?" he inquired.
"I hope to find employment as a chambermaid, there to encounter completely by surprise some handsome courtier who will love me madly and take me away from it all, and I shall live happily ever after in his rich house when all I ever expected was a life of chamber-maiding."
Dor, even in his youth, knew this to be a simplistic ambition. Why should a courtier elect to marry a common chambermaid? But he had sense enough not to disparage her ambition. Instead he remembered a question he had overlooked before, perhaps because he had been looking at other aspects of her nature. Those aspects she kicked and bounced and flung about so freely. "What is your name?"
"Oh." She laughed musically, making a token kick and bounce and fling. "Didn't I tell you? I am Millie the maid."
Dor hung there, stunned. Of course! He should have recognized her. Twelve years younger-eight hundred twelve years younger!-herself as she was before he ever had known her, young and inexperienced and hopeful, and above all innocent. Stripped of the grim experience of eight centuries of ghost-hood, a naive cute girl hardly older than himself.
Hardly older? Five years older-and they were monstrous years. She was every resilient inch a woman, while he was but a boy of-"I wish I were a man!" he murmured.
"Done!" the ring on his finger cried. "I now pronounce you man."
"What?" Millie inquired gently. Of course she didn't recognize him. Not only was he not in his own body, he wouldn't even exist for eight hundred years. "Uh, I was just wishing-"
"Yes?" the ring said eagerly. Dor bopped his head. "That I could get rid of this infernal flea that keeps biting me, and get some sleep," he said.
"Now wait," the ring protested. "I can do anything, but you're asking for two things at once!"
"I'll settle for the sleep," Dor said. Before long, the sleep came to pass. He dreamed of standing near a huge brightly bedecked gumball bush, wanting a gumball awful bad, especially a golden one close by, but restrained by the magic curse that might be protecting the fruits. It was not merely that he wasn't certain how to pluck a gumball without invoking the curse, it was that the bush was in the yard of another house, so that he really was not sure he had the right to pluck from it. It was a tall bush, with its luscious fruits dangling out of his normal reach. But he was up on magic stilts, very long and strong, so that now he stood tall enough to reach the delightful golden globe easily. If only he dared. If only he should.