Jumper Cable Read Free Page A

there’s a campsite,” Wenda exclaimed. “Let’s stop there.”
    “There is something there we want?”
    “Food. Rest.”
    Jumper realized that he was getting tired, and certainly he was hungry. He hoped there would be fat bugs there. They entered the camp. It was very nice, with all manner of pie plants, and a pleasant shelter.
    And there was a beefsteak tomato plant. Jumper picked a beefsteak and brought it to his mandibles. It was delicious. One of the pie plants
    had a shoe-fly pie; he threw away the shoe and ate the fly. This camp was all right.
    Meanwhile Wenda found a small acorn tree and chewed on several acorns. Jumper remembered that she was made of wood, so must need wood food to sustain her substance. He wasn’t sure how she assimilated it, because her mouth opened on emptiness inside, but concluded that was her business.
    They entered the shelter. There was a bloodcurdling scream. Jumper fell back, as curdled blood didn’t work well for his system.
    “Someone’s in there,” Wenda said. “A girl. She must have thought yew were going to eat her.”
    “Actually I prefer fat bugs.”
    “I will talk to her.” Wenda went on in.
    Jumper inspected the adjacent pond. Something leaped out of it and sailed through the air. Jumper snagged it with a loop of web and reeled it in: a flying fish. So he stripped away the ing fish and ate the fly. Yes, this would do.
    Wenda emerged. “This is complicated,” she said. “Yew had better come in and listen. I have told her yew are knot for eating.”
    She seemed to have it garbled, but he let it be. “Told who?”
    “It’s Maeve Maenad,” she whispered. “Hiding from the stork.”
    He was astonished. “The one we didn’t see! We should inform that stork.”
    “No. That wood be telling.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Yew woodn’t. Take my word: storkly secrets are knot bruited about. We must help her.”
    “But you said maenads are dangerous.”
    “They are, normally. But Maeve has become a maiden in distress. That’s different. I am similar, in my fashion. I must help her if I can.”
    Jumper clicked his mandibles in perplexity. It remained a very strange realm. “So we help her.”
    “Yes. We’ll take her to the Good Magician, since we’re going that way anyway, so she can ask him how to escape the stork. Meanwhile
    we’ll have to hide her from the stork. That’s why we need to hear her story. So we know exactly how to help her.”
    What could he do? “We listen,” he agreed.
    They entered the shelter. This time there was no scream. There was a succulent morsel of a bare girl, with wild hair and a feral smile.
    “Jumper, this is Maeve Maenad,” Wenda said. “Maeve, this is Jumper Spider. We are meeting in peace.”
    “Peaches and cream!” Maeve swore. “He’s mouthwateringly fat.”
    “And she’s saliva-dribbling fleshy,” Jumper replied. He realized that Wenda had not misspoken when she said he was not for eating: the wild woman really would have attacked him. Of course then he would have bitten her head off and sucked out its juice. It was a nice head, surely very tasty.
    “Yew both wood like to eat the other,” Wenda said. “Yew must knot. We need to get along together.”
    “Why?” Maeve asked. Jumper couldn’t have put it better himself.
    “Because yew both need to see the Good Magician, and yew can get there better together.”
    Maeve sighed, making her body jiggle in a truly appetizing way. Her flesh, unlike Wenda’s, was edible. “If we must, we must.”
    “Now tell us yewr story,” Wenda said. “So we can figure out how to help yew.”
    Maeve grimaced, then launched into it, while they listened. She was dropped into the central pool of bloodred wine with a resounding splash, with her name tag tied to her wild hair: Maeve, she who intoxicates. She immediately gulped some of the wine and got drunk and vicious: a true maenad. Gorged on wine, she soon grew into the flower of her wildness, racing with the other