There was a knot up near the apex. Bink braced his feet against it and used his relatively fresh leg muscles to push him up, and somehow scrambled around the root. Now he perceived that rough bark underlay the fur on top, making it good for clinging to, good for scrambling. He clung and scrambled, and finally inched over to the top of it and lay there, panting weakly, too worn out even to feel proper relief.
"Bink!" Jewel cried from below. "Are you all right?"
That roused him. His labor was far from over! "I should be asking you that! Are the rats staying back? Can you get in the seat, to come up?" He didn't know how he would pull up her weight in his present state, but he couldn't tell her that.
"I'm not all right. I'm not coming up."
"Jewel! Get up the rope! The rats can't reach you there, if you pull the end up after you!"
"It's not the rats, Bink. I've lived down here all my life; I can handle the rats and even the goblins, as long as I have my light It's you. You are a handsome man."
"Me? I don't understand!" But he was beginning to. She was not referring to his present appearance, which was homelier than Chester's face. (Oh, noble centaur-in what state was be now?) The signs had been there; he had merely refused to interpret them.
"When you took the potion, you remained an honest person," Jewel called. "You were strong, stronger than any nymph could be. You never used the potion as an excuse to betray your quest or your friends. I respected and envied that quality in you, and tried to use it as a model. The only exception was that one kiss you stole, so I stole it back. I love you, Bink, and now-"
"But you never drank that potion!" he protested. "And even if you had, now that the magic is gone-"
"I never drank that potion," she agreed. "Therefore the loss of magic could not take my love away. Growth was forced upon me, driving out my nymphly innocence. Now I can perceive reality, and I know there can be no antidote but time, for me. I can not go with you."
"But you have no life down there!" Bink cried, appalled. His love for her had been magic; hers for him was real. She loved better than he had. Her nymph-hood was, indeed, behind her. "There must be some way to work it out-"
"There is, and I am utilizing it. When I saw how you sacrificed me when the spell was on you, I knew there could be no hope at all when it was off. It is ironic that my love bloomed only when you gave me up, because you gave me up. Because you were true to your principles and your prior commitment. Now I shall be true to mine. Farewell, Bink!"
"No!" he cried. "Come out of there! There has to be some better way-"
But the rope was sliding and bumping over the root. She had untied it at the bottom part of the loop and was drawing it free. He grabbed for it, too late. The end passed over the root and dropped into the darkness.
"Jewel!" he cried. "Don't do this! I don't love you, but I do like you. I-" But that was a dead end. She was right: even when he had loved her, he had known he could not have her. That was unchanged.
There was no answer from below. The nymph had done the honorable thing, and gone her way alone, freeing him. Exactly as he would have done, in that circumstance.
There was nothing he could do now but go home. "Farewell, Jewel!" he called, hoping she would hear. "You may not have my love, but you do have my respect. You are a woman now."
He rested, listening, but heard nothing more from her. Finally he got off the root and looked about. He was in a deep cleft that he now recognized as a section of the Gap, the great chasm that cleft the Land of Xanth in twain. The tree was anchored in the bottom, but reached up toward the top, and a branch extended over the rim. In the absence of magic, the tree was safe to climb. In fact, the terrain would hold few direct threats for him now. He could proceed directly to the King's palace, arriving there within a day.
He spied some inert bugs. They were lying in a patch of sunlight, their pincers twitching. Bink felt compassion, and nudged them gently toward the nearest shadow with one foot. Poor little things!
Then he recognized them. These were nickelpedes, shorn of their magic! What a fall they had taken!
But when he swung himself from the last tentacle of the tangler and reached the surface, he discovered it to be unfamiliar. This crevice ran north-south, not east-west, unless the loss of magic had somehow turned the sun around. It had to be a different chasm, not the Gap. He was lost after all.
Now that he thought about it, he doubted he could have come as far north as the Gap. So he was probably somewhere south of it, and south of the palace. His best bet was to travel north until he encountered the Gap, or some other familiar landmark.
The trek was more difficult than he had anticipated. There was no hostile magic, true-but there was also no beneficial magic. The nature of the landscape had changed fundamentally, becoming mundane. There were no flying fruits, no shoe-trees or jean-bushes to replace his ragged apparel, no watermelons to drink from. He had to find ordinary food and water, and hardly knew what to look for. The animals, stunned by their loss of magic, avoided him; they weren't smart enough to realize that he, too, had been shorn of magic. That was a blessing.
It was late afternoon. How many hours or days he had spent below he could not be sure, but here in the sight of the sun he would be able to keep track again. He would have to spend the night in the forest. It seemed safe enough; he could climb a tree.
He looked for a good one. Many of the trees of this forest seemed dead; perhaps they were merely dormant, in this new winter of the absence of magic. It might take months or years for the full ravages of that winter to become known. Some trees flourished; they must be the mundane varieties, freed from the competition of magic. Would he be better off in a healthy mundane tree, or a defunct magical one?
Bink shivered. It was getting chill, and he could find no blanket bushes. However, it was not merely temperature that affected him. He was tired and lonely and full of remorse for what he had done. Tomorrow he would have to face his friends at the palace and tell them-
But surely they would already have guessed his guilt. It was not confession that bothered him, but punishment. Jewel had been wise to avoid him; he had no future at home.
There seemed to be a certain vague familiarity about this region. There were trails through the brush like those of ant lions, and brambles, and regions of odoriferous plants-
"That's it!" he exclaimed. "Where we intersected the magic highway to the magic-dust village!"
He peered up through the languishing foliage. There it was-a walkway fashioned from logs and vines, suspended from the stoutest trees. It made no loops in air, but of course it wasn't magic now.
He climbed aboard the lowest loop and walked along it. The thing seemed dangerously insecure, sagging beneath his weight and swinging sidewise alarmingly, but it held. In due course it brought him to the village.
He had feared a scene of gloom. Instead, the entire village seemed to be celebrating. Another great bonfire was blazing, and men and women of all types were dancing around it.
Men? How had they gotten here? This was a village of women! Could it be another Wave of conquest from Mundania, with the brutish men reveling in this village of helpless women?
Yet there seemed to be no threat. The men were happy, of course-but so were the women. Bink walked on into the village, looking for Trolla, its leader.