'I am a woodwife,' she replied. 'I thought you knew. I comfort lonely men.'
A facade covering absolute vacuity! A man who made love to such a creature-
'I-uh, guess I don't need that kind of comfort,' Dor said.
'Oh.' She looked disappointed. Then she dissolved into vapor, and drifted away.
'Did I do that?' Dor asked, chagrined. 'Did I make her into nothing? I didn't mean to!'
'I think she existed only for whatever man she might encounter,' Jumper opined. 'She will no doubt re-form for the next traveler.'
'That will likely be a zombie.' Saying that, Dor felt humor bubbling up inside him, until it burst out his mouth in a laugh. 'A zombie lover!' Then he remembered Millie's lover of his own time, Jonathan, and sobered. It wasn't funny at all!
They went on. The glade opened into a rocky valley. The rocks were irregular, some of fair mass, with cuttingly sharp edges: a disaster for zombies. But down the center was a clear path, with only a little coronet supported on four hornlike twigs in the way. All they had to do was remove that object and its supports, and the path would be clear.
Dor moved toward it-then paused. This was suspicious. 'Something wants us to touch that coronet,' he said.
'Allow me.' Jumper fastened a small stone to a line of silk, and tossed it at the coronet.
The ground erupted violently. A snake emerged, whose head bore the four horns; it had lain buried in the ground except for those points. The reptile struck at the stone as Jumper jerked it along on the string, making it seem alive. 'Lucky we checked,' Dor said, shaken. 'Better you than us, stone.'
The stone shuddered. 'Oh, the poison!' it wailed, and fragmented into gravel.
'That must have been some poison!' Dor exclaimed.
'It was,' the gravel agreed, and fractured into a mound of sand.
'What would poison do to a zombie?' Jumper inquired.
'Nothing, I think. How can you kill a thing that is already dead?'
'Then we can ignore the hornworm.' Startled, Dor had to agree. 'Except we must post a warning for Millie and the Zombie Master, so they know to send a zombie ahead.' He walked back and emplaced a magic marker of the WARNING type. When they saw that, they would send Egor Ogre ahead to spring the trap. If the hornworm was smart, it would scoot right out of there!
The valley spread into a field of grassy growth dotted with Mundanish trees. It was pretty scenery- but all of this country was lovely, and improving as they went. If only he had watched more carefully when he rode the dragon horse! One missed a lot by riding swiftly.
Then he recognized the vegetation. 'Roats!' he exclaimed happily. 'If there are any mature ones-'
'What are roats?' Jumper cluttered. 'A cereal. Soak old roats in water or milkweed, and they transform into excellent porridge.' He shook some stems, obtaining the flat kernels. 'And those are primitive mixed-nut trees.'
'Nuts grow on trees?' the spider inquired dubiously. 'With magic, all things are possible.' Dor went to a tree and took hold of a cluster of nuts, drawing it down. They clung to the branch. 'These are tough nuts!' he said. Then the cluster let go, and he staggered back. The branch snapped up, and a small hail of nuts fell about him. One shot by his nose, and he coughed. Others came, and he coughed again. 'Oh, no-some of them are cough drops!' he said, retreating.
But he had his old roats and mixed nuts. 'Now all I need is water.'
The field dropped down to a river, its liquid crystalline but not, fortunately, crystal. Catfish swam in it, meowing hopefully as they spied Dor, then stalking away as well as their flukes permitted when they saw there was no red meat. A pack of sea dogs sniffed up, but soon spied the cats and went baying after them. Obviously this water was wholesome.
Dor dipped his double handful of substance into a pothole, and abruptly had a doughy mass of food. He offered some to Jumper, but the spider declined, preferring to fish the river for crabs. So Dor ate his pot-roats himself, enjoying it immensely.
However, this seemingly excellent route was cut off by the same river they had looked for. The stream was small but deep; no trouble for Jumper and Dor to cross, but disaster for the marching zombies, who would never emerge from it intact. Wading in the quiet moat had been one thing; swimming across the current was another.
It would be possible to fell some trees to form a crude bridge across the water, but this would take time and possibly alert hostile magic. So they followed the river down a way, looking for a better fording place. It was never possible to anticipate what lay ahead; there could be some natural bridge just out of sight.
There was not. There was a hill. The river flowed merrily up over it and down the other side. Dor and Jumper contemplated this, wondering what to do. A river that flowed up as well as down was unlikely to be tractable. 'I could make a silk sling to swing them across one by one,' Jumper chittered.
'That would wear you out and take forever,' Dor objected. 'And we would have to wait here until the zombies arrive, instead of scouting out the dangers ahead. We need a bridge or a ford.'
They followed the river over the hill. 'I wonder whether we could divert it temporarily,' Jumper chittered.
'We'd still have to get the zombies across it some-where,' Dor pointed out. 'Unless we could turn it back on itself-and that hardly seems reasonable.'
At the top of the hill, a cockfish crowed. 'Oh, shut up,' Dor told it. But it was alive, so did not obey him.
