flair! 'The spider is my companion.'
Distrustfully, she watched Jumper. 'Ooo, ugly! I've never seen a monster like that before. I think I'd rather be eaten by the bird. At least it's familiar.'
'Jumper's not ugly! He doesn't eat people. They don't taste good.'
She whirled to face him again, and once more her golden hair flung out in a spiral swirl. She looked suddenly familiar. But he was sure he had not seen her here before; he had encountered no girls here in the past. 'How does he know?'
'We were attacked by a band of goblins. He tasted one.'
'Goblins! They aren't real people! Of course they taste bad!'
'How do you know?' Dor countered, using her own query.
'It just stands to reason that a sweet maid like me tastes better than any old messy goblin!'
Dor found it hard to refute that logic. Certainly he would rather kiss her than a goblin.
Now what had put that thought in his mind?
'I am unable to follow your full dialogue,' Jumper said. 'But I gather the female of your species does not trust me.'
'Right on target, monster!' she agreed.
'Uh!, you do take some getting used to,' Dor said. 'You, un, appear as strange to her as she does to you.'
Jumper was startled. 'It could not be that extreme!'
'Well, maybe I exaggerated.' Diplomacy or truth?
The thing actually talks!' the girl exclaimed. 'Only it throws its voice to your shoulder.'
'Well, that's hard to explain-'
'Nevertheless,' Jumper cut in, 'we had better vacate this nest quickly.'
'Why does its voice come from your shoulder?' the girl insisted. Evidently she had a lively curiosity.
'I made a translation web,' Dor explained. 'Jumper's voice is the chitter. You should at least say hello to him,'
'Oh.' She leaned forward, giving Dor his first conscious peek down into a buxom bodice. Stunned, he stood stock-still. 'Hello, Jumper-monster,' she said to the web.
'Wow!' said the web. 'Get a load of that-'
'You don't have to speak to the web,' Dor said quickly, though he was sorry to undeceive her. Now she wouldn't be leaning on him any more. A background region of his mind wondered why a spiderweb would care to remark on the particular view offered, as it was surely not of interest to spiders.
'?yellow silk,' the web finished, even as Dor's guilty thought progressed. Oh-of course. Spiders were interested in silk, and colored silk would be a novelty.
'That's hair, not silk,' he murmured. Then, more loudly to the girl: 'Jumper understands you without the web.'
'About vacating the nest-' Jumper chittered.
'Yes! Can you make another dragline for her?'
'Immediately.' Jumper moved toward the girl.
'Eeeeek!' she screamed, flinging her silk about 'The hairy monster's going to eat me!'
'Be quiet!' Dor snapped, losing patience despite the impression her attributes had made on him. Either this body had singular appetites, or he had been missing a whole dimension of experience all his prior life! 'You'll bring back the Hoorah.'
She quietened reluctantly. 'I won't let that thing near me.'
She would talk to the spider, but not cooperate with him. She seemed almost as juvenile as Dor himself. 'I can't carry you down,' he told her. 'I'm only-' He broke off. He was no longer a twelve-year-old boy in body, but a powerful man. 'Well, maybe I can. Jumper, will the line hold two of us?'
'Indubitably. I have only to make a stronger cable,' the spider chittered, his spinnerets already at work. In moments he had made a new harness for Dor, with a stronger cable.
Meanwhile the girl, with her irrepressible feminine curiosity, was exploring the nest. 'Oh, jewels!' she exclaimed, clapping her cute little hands together excitedly,
'What kind?' Dor asked, wondering whether they would be useful for buying food or shelter later on. Jewels were not nearly as valuable in Xanth as in Mundania, but many people liked them.
'We are cultured pearls,' several voices chorused. 'Most refined and well mannered, with our lineage dating back to the emperor of all oysters. We are aristocrats among jewels.'
'Oh, I'll take you!' the girl cried, seeming unsurprised at their speech. She scooped them up and filled her apron pockets.
Now they heard the Hoorah returning. Dor put his left arm around the girl's slender and supple waist and lifted her easily off her feet; what power this body had! Maybe it wasn't his muscles so much as her lack of mass; she was featherlike though firmly fleshed. There must be a special magic about girls like this, he thought, to make them full yet light. He leaped over the edge of the nest, trusting Jumper's dragline to preserve them from
