go,' he said, satisfied.
They walked to the cliff face. Behind them the Gap Dragon revived. It shook its head to clear itself of confusion-and discovered it was tied. It tried to draw back - and the tail pulled taut against the boulder.
'A little puzzle for the dragon,' Smash explained. Privately, he was nettled because he had had to have help to nullify the monster; that was not an ogre's way. But the infernal common sense foisted on him by the Eye Queue reminded him that without an ogre the girls would have very little chance to survive and the hamadryad's tree would be cut down. So he beat down his stupid pride and proceeded to the next challenge.
Chem, John, Fireoak, and the Siren rested on the ledge. The rope dangled down carelessly.
'All right, girls, it's over,' Tandy called. 'Ready for us to come up?'
No one answered. It was as if they were asleep.
'Hey, wake up!' Tandy cried, irritated. 'We have to be on our way, and there's a long climb ahead!'
The Siren stirred. 'What does it matter?' she asked dolefully.
Smash and Tandy exchanged glances, one cute girl glance for one brute ogre glance. What was this?
'Are you all right. Siren?' Smash called.
The Siren got to her feet, standing precariously near the edge of the ledge. 'I'm so sad,' she said, wiping a tear, 'Life has no joy.'
'No joy?' Tandy asked, bewildered. 'Smash tied the dragon. We can go on now. That's wonderful!'
'That's nothing,' the Siren said. 'I will end it all.' And she stepped off the ledge.
Tandy screamed. Smash leaped to catch the Siren. Fortunately, she was coming right toward him; all he had to do was intercept her fall and swing her about and set her safely on her feet.
'She tried to kill herself!' Tandy cried, appalled.
Something was definitely wrong. Smash looked up at the pining tree. The other three sat drooping, like the tree itself.
Then he caught on. 'The pining tree! It makes people pine!'
'Oh, no!' Tandy lamented. 'They've been there too long, getting sadder and sadder. Now they're suicidal!'
'We must get them down from there,' Smash said.
The Siren stirred. 'Oh, my-I was so sad!'
'You were near the pining tree,' Tandy informed her. 'We didn't realize what it did.'
The Siren mopped up her tear-stained face. 'So that was it! That's a crying shame.'
'I'll climb up and carry them down,' Smash said.
'Then you'll get sad,' Tandy said. 'We don't need a suicidal ogre failing on our heads.'
'It does take a while for full effect,' the Siren said. 'The longer I sat, the sadder I got. It didn't strike all at once.'
'That's our answer,' Tandy said. 'I'll go up and push people off the ledge, and Smash can catch them.
Quickly, before I get too sad myself.'
'What about Chem?' the Siren asked. 'She's too heavy for Smash to catch safely.'
'We'll have to lower her on the rope.'
They decided to try it. Tandy climbed the rope, picked up the weeping John, and threw her down. Smash caught the fairy with one hand, avoiding contact with her delicate wings. Then Tandy pushed Fireoak on the ledge. Finally she tied the end of the rope about the centaur's waist, passed the rope behind the tree, and forced her to back down while Smash played out the other end of the rope gradually. It was slow, but it worked.
Except for one thing. Tandy remained beside the tree, since the rope was now taken up by the centaur, and the tree was getting to her. She wandered precariously near the edge, her tears flowing. Then she stepped off.
If Smash moved to catch her, he would let Chem fall. If he did not -
He figured it out physically before solving it mentally. He held the rope in his right hand while jumping and reaching out with his left hand. He caught Tandy by her small waist and drew her in to his furry body without letting Chem slip.
Tandy buried her face in his pelt and cried with abandon. He knew it was only the effect of the pining tree, but he felt sorry for her misery. All he could do was hold her.
'That was a nice maneuver, Smash,' the Siren said, coming up to take the girl from his arm.
'I couldn't let her fall,' he said gruffly.
'Of course you couldn't.' But the Siren seemed thoughtful. It was as if she understood something he didn't.
Now they were all down and safe-but unfortunately at the bottom of the Gap Chasm. The Gap Dragon was still twitching, trying to discover a way to free itself without pulling out either its brains or its tail.
Which was more important wasn't clear.
John revived. 'Oh, my, that was awful!' she exclaimed. 'Now I feel so much better, I could just fly!'
And she took off, flying in a loop.
'Well, she can get out of the chasm,' the Siren said.
Smash looked at the fairy, and at the dragon, and at the pining tree. There was a small ironwood tree splitting the difference between the pining tree and the top of the cliff wall. He had an idea. 'John, can you fly to the top of the chasm carrying the rope?'
The fairy looked at the rope. 'Way too heavy for me.'
'Could you catch it and hold it if I hurl the end up to you?'
She inspected it again. 'Maybe, if I had something to anchor me,' she said doubtfully. 'I'm not very strong.'
'That ironwood tree.'
'I could try.'
Smash tied an end of the rope to a rock, then hurled the rock up past the ironwood tree. John flew up and held the rope at the tree. Now Smash walked over to the Gap Dragon, which was still trying to free itself from the boulder without hurting its head or its tail in the process. Smash knocked it on the head with a fist, and it quieted down; the dragon was no longer in fighting condition and couldn't roll with the punch.
Smash untied the tail, disconnected it from the boulder, unthreaded the head, and tied the tip of the tail to the nether end of the rope. Then he dragged the inert dragon to the base of the chasm wall and placed its tail so that it reached well up toward the top.
'Now drop that stone.' he called.
The fairy did so. The rock pulled the slack rope up and around the ironwood trunk. When it began to draw on the dragon's tail, the weight of the rope wasn't enough. The fairy flew down and sat on the rock, adding weight, and it dropped down farther. Finally Smash was able to jump and catch hold of it.
John flew back to the ground while Smash hauled the dragon up by the tail. But soon the weight was too much; instead of hauling the dragon up. Smash found himself dangling. This was a matter of mass, not strength.
'We can solve that,' Chem said, shaking off her remaining melancholy. She had received a worse dose of pining than the others, perhaps because of her size and because she had been closest to the tree. 'Use the boulder for ballast.'
Smash rolled the boulder over. He hooked a toe in the hole he had punched in it, then drew on the rope again. This anchorage enabled him to drag the dragon farther up the slope. When it got to the point where both ogre and boulder were dangling in the air, Chem added her considerable weight to the effort by balancing on the boulder and clinging to Smash. 'I'll bet you've never been hugged like this before,'
she remarked.
Smash pondered that while he hauled on the rope, trying to get the dragon up. Actually, he had embraced his friend Chet, her older brother, and Amolde the Archivist, the middle-aged centaur who was now in charge of liaisons with Mundania. But those had been males, and his recent company had attuned him somewhat more to the difference of females. Chem was not of his species, of course, but she was clinging to him with extraordinary constriction because it was hard for her human arms to support her equine body. She was pleasant to be close to; her present hug was almost like that of an ogress.
All these girls were pleasant to be close to, he realized as the Eye Queue curse enabled him to think the
