Glenda shrugged. "My father thought you might need some help about now. And when my father told me about Skeeve after he bought the map, I thought he might be cute. I was right."
I think I blushed from the ends of my toes to the top of my head. Luckily the only thing visible to her was my face.
Aahz snorted even louder, an ugly sound that seemed to just hang in the warm cabin like a bad smell.
"Why would your father think we need help?" Tanda asked.
Glenda went back to cutting the fresh bread as she answered. "Because no one has ever made it past this point before, and returned alive."
"Ohhhhh," Aahz said, "now I understand. Your father keeps selling the map over and over and your job is to get it back."
"Actually, he's tired of selling it," Glenda said. "And get ting it back has never been a problem. He usually just pops in here every spring and takes it off the bodies."
The faint crackling of the fire and the wind against the eaves of the cabin were the only noises. I didn't want to think about the fact that a map I had carried around for a week had been on dead bodies.
"Why does that happen?" Tanda asked, but I noticed that she wasn't really putting as much anger into her voice as before.
Glenda smiled at her. "You're the one with the ability to dimension-hop. You tell me."
Tanda's eyes seemed to fade out for a moment, then she looked up at Glenda and said softly, "We're too far away from any place I know, including the last place we jumped to."
"Exactly," Glenda said, putting the cut bread on the table in front of us. "The Shifters have done that to six groups of treasure-seekers that my father sold the map to. Vortex #6, this place, is just too far from any known dimension, and any other dimension on the map, for almost anyone but the most traveled dimension-hopper. And until I fixed this cabin up a few weeks ago, there was nothing here but a shell of old logs."
"We would have starved to death," I said.
"Given time, you would have starved, or jumped to some other dimension and gotten lost," Glenda said, pulling out the chair and sitting down beside me. "My father tracked two groups with the map who did that. Both met very ugly ends at the hands of creatures they never should have faced."
My memory of the snakes was clear enough to understand exactly what she was saying.
She took a piece of the wonderful-smelling fresh bread and bit into it, never taking her gaze from mine.
"And your price to rescue us is...?" Aahz asked.
I glanced at him. Typical Aahz, always leading with the pocketbook first.
Glenda smiled at my green-scaled mentor.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Aahz," he said. "And you haven't answered my question yet."
"I want to go with you," she said. "And for helping you find the golden cow and getting us all back to a dimension near the Bazaar at Deva, I want the same share as each of you are getting, after paying off the Shifter."
It still wasn't making sense.
"So why haven't you just gone after the cow on your own, before now?"
"Honestly," she said, looking directly into my eyes while answering, "my father thought you, Skeeve, were the first one he had ever sold the map to that had a chance of actually getting to the cow."
"You didn't answer his question either," Aahz said. "And why should we give you such a large share of the treasure?"
She laughed. "Besides getting you out of this place? This is only one of the problems you face. My father tried a num ber of times to go the distance before he sold the map the first time, but he always had to turn back. There are many problems ahead. I know what they are. You need me."
"And your father thinks Skeeve can make it?" Tanda asked. I would have been unhappy with the sound of disbelief in Tanda's voice if I didn't feel exactly the same way.
Glenda reached over and touched my hand on the table. Electric shocks went up my arm and I am sure my face again turned a bright shade of red. I couldn't even begin to think about moving my hand away from hers. And I didn't want to. She was doing things to me I had only dreamed about, all with a single touch of her hand.
"My father has the ability to see the true nature of people," Glenda said, "and their true strengths."
She rubbed the top of my hand and it was everything I could do to not let out a long, loud sigh.
"If he thinks Skeeve can get to the golden cow and win over the problems that lie ahead, then I believe in Skeeve as well."
I just smiled at Aahz, giving him my widest grin. In all our time together, I had never seen him look so disgusted.
It felt wonderful.
And so did Glenda's hand on mine.
Okay, so there was tension in the small cabin. Lots of it, of all kinds. I have to admit that having a girl my age along on this crazy quest sounded just fine by me. Especially one that thought I was special without really knowing me, and could make my entire body tingle at the touch of a hand. I liked the advantage of that. With her, I didn't have any past mistakes to climb over or make up for.
Aahz and Tanda, on the other hand, weren't so certain about taking Glenda along and cutting her in on the possible prize. And that wasn't good tension at all. And since none of us knew her, there was that tension as well.
But the way I figured it, there really wasn't much choice. Tanda couldn't hop us back to any dimension she knew of. It was just too far, and we didn't dare just risk hopping dimen sions trying to get close enough. We would end up lost, or more likely dead from something like those snakes or creepy identical-people on that street.
We needed Glenda. And besides, I wanted her along. It would be fun getting to know her.
"So now there's four of us," I said, smiling across the table at Glenda and ignoring the scowls coming from my mentor.
"Great," Glenda said. "You won't regret it."
I doubted I would either.
"We split the treasure four ways," Aahz said, making the deal clear.
"After the Shifter's part is taken out," I reminded him.
"Yeah, after the Shifter's twenty-five percent."
He almost spat the last few words of the sentence as he glared at Tanda.
"There'll still be more than enough for everyone," Glenda said as she offered everyone some fresh bread. "If we can get to the golden cow and make it ours."
I took a large piece and them some of the wonderful apple jelly she had on the table. After one bite I knew that fresh bread and jelly was the best-tasting thing I remembered having in a long, long time. It more than melted in my mouth as it turned my taste-buds into a wonderful world of flavors. Man, if Glenda could make all the food she cooked do that, I was never leaving her side.
After we were all eating-and I noticed that even Tanda and Aahz enjoyed the bread-Glenda looked at me. "Dig out the map and let's figure out where we're headed next."
I pointed to Aahz. "I'm letting the big guy carry it."
I thought Aahz would choke on the bread.
Tanda laughed, and the tension in the room eased a little.
Aahz took out the map and unfolded it on the table.
Glenda moved around so that she stood beside Tanda. I scooted over to get a better look as well.
Again the map had changed.
No surprise there. We were on Vortex #6, which was now clearly highlighted on the map. There were four lines from our dimension headed to four different places. I didn't like the sounds of the four dimensions at all.
Febrile was the one on the right, Hostile the next one, Durst the next, and Molder the farthest left.