Now Irene picked the seed out of her panty band. "Still wearing that same pair, I see," Grundy remarked innocently. "Aren't they getting a little old by now?"

"My panties match my complexion," Irene said with what she hoped was humor. She was not about to explain the niceties of maintaining changes of clothing. It had been bad enough when her present clothes had gotten soaked during the night, forcing her to grow subst.i.tutes while these dried. She did not normally wear her underclothing several days in a row. The golem knew that; he just wanted to force her to talk about t.i.tillating things in the presence of Xavier. There were levels and levels of Grundy's mischief. "Now let's get on down the mountain." She turned to face the trunk of the main ivy plant, clinging to the side of the knoll.

This was another problem. She had a good-sized bag to carry, and it weighed a fair amount. She could heft it with one hand--but she needed two hands to climb down the vine. She didn't dare drop the bag down first; it would burst apart when it struck below, and the seeds would be lost when they scattered. What was she to do now?

Xavier saw the problem. "I can carry the bag for you, miss. It don't weigh much, for me."

Irene looked at him, considering. He remained a fine, muscular man. But he, too, would need two hands for climbing, so couldn't safely carry the bag down. He might have held on to something less bulky with his teeth, but not this.

Fortunately, Grundy came up with the answer. "One of you go down a bit, and the other hand down the bag. Then the other can climb below and take the bag again. Stair-step it down. It'll take time, but the bag will get there."

"Yeah, sure, that'll work!" Xavier agreed, removing his gaze from Irene's torso. He clambered over the brink and grasped the vines, readily lowering himself. When his head was just below the brink, he hooked his left hand firmly in the ivy and reached up with his right. "Hand it down!" he called.

"He means the bag," Grundy informed Irene. She didn't bother to glare at him this time; she handed it down. Xavier had no trouble holding the bag, as long as he didn't have to move.

Now it was time for her. She didn't relish descending a vertical vine in her panties, but really, it was not worse than wearing a bathing suit. When she had been a teenager, she had believed that the mere sight of those celebrated green panties would drive men mad, so naturally she had taken every opportunity to proffer fleeting glimpses of them. Now she was in her--alas--late twenties, and long past such illusions. If only she had known what was coming, she would have come prepared!

Prepared--how? If she had not worn a skirt, she could not have caught these seeds. It would have seemed silly to bring a big bag. So maybe it was just as well, the way it had happened.

No sense dawdling. She swung her legs over the edge and found footholds in the vine. She knew Xavier was looking up at her legs, but that could not be helped; besides, he was worried that she might fall. In moments she would be below him, anyway.

She paused, glancing back up at the Tree of Seeds and the monstrous sapient bird perched on it. "Farewell, Simurgh, and thank you!" she called.

FAREWELL, GOOD WOMAN, the bird responded. REMEMBER THE NATURE OF THE SEEDS YOU CARRY. REMEMBER THE NATURE OF THE SEEDS YOU CARRY.

Scant chance she would forget! These seeds represented wealth beyond her fondest prior imaginings!

Irene resumed her descent, knowing that she would probably never again meet the like of the Simurgh.

Chapter 10: Cyclopean Eye.

In the morning. Ivy and Hugo and Stanley peeked over the edge of their ledge to spy out the worst. It was confirmed. A monster slept across the cave entrance.

They looked about the rest of the cave, seeking some other exit. There was none. This was a one-entrance domicile, and the monster blocked that one.

"Can we sneak out past him?" Ivy asked.

"Before he wakes?" Hugo inspected the monster. It was humanoid, hairy and huge. There was no gap between it and the walls of the mouth of the cave. "We'd have to climb over its legs," he said. "I don't think it would sleep long, then."

"Maybe he'll go away soon," Ivy said.

But as she spoke, the giant rolled over, so that his horrendously ugly face was toward them, and opened his eye.

"Uh-oh," Hugo said.

It was a fair comment, for the giant saw them. "Ho!" he roared with a voice like mottled thunder and scrambled to his feet. The cave entrance was high enough to admit two and a half ordinary people standing on each other's heads, but the hairy pate of the giant barely cleared it. "Midgets in cave!" the gaping mouth roared.

"Run for it!" Hugo cried in a fit of inspiration.

They tried. They slid-scrambled down to the floor--but the only place to run was toward the monster, and his huge, hairy, k.n.o.bbly legs barred the way. His enormous eye seemed to flash as it watched them, and his gigantic wooden club, formed from the trunk of a medium ironwood tree, hovered menacingly. The three of them lost what little nerve they had remaining and backed away.

But the giant followed them, poking forward with the club. "What you do in cave?" he roared, causing sand to rattle loose and sift down from the ceiling.

Ivy was terrified, but she knew her friends were brave. "We must fight him!" she declared. "We'll make him let us go!"

Hugo exchanged an incredulous glance with Stanley. The logic of women was indecipherable! Then he turned a blank face to Ivy. "Fight him?"

"Throw fruit at him!" she said encouragingly.

"But my fruit is rotten!"

"No it isn't!"

He remembered. "That's right; it isn't any more! But rotten fruit is okay for this!" He conjured a huge super ripe tomato and hurled it at the giant. It struck about halfway up, splattering the crude animal-skin clothing with drippy red tomato-brains.

"And you, Stanley, with your superhot steam--you can toast his toes!" she said encouragingly.

The little dragon pumped up his steam. It was indeed superhot now, and he found his courage returning. If Ivy thought he could fight the giant effectively, maybe he could. He braced himself, aimed his snout precisely, and issued a searing jet of white-hot steam that heated the giant's callused, warty, big left toe.

The giant paused, taking a moment to realize that something was wrong. It was, after all, a long way from his toe to his head, and the pain took time to travel through the poorly maintained nerve channels. The aroma of cooking meat wafted up from the affected digit.

The giant sniffed. He licked his lips with a long sloppy tongue. That smelled good!

Then the pain plowed through the sludge clogging the last nerve channel and reached the pain center.

He roared again. Stalact.i.tes picked up the impulse, vibrating like tuning forks, and a pile of old fish scales jumped, registering two notches on the earthquake scale. The wind from the roar blew the little dragon head over tail, interfering with his aim; his remaining breath of steam shot up in a vertical geyser and petered out.

Hugo threw another fruit--this time an overripe watermelon. It was too heavy for him to heave high, so it splatted on the giant's hot toe, cooling it.

Ivy realized that they weren't making much progress. "Think of something, Hugo!" she cried. "You're smart!"

"I am?" Hugo still found this hard to believe, especially in the morning. But he discovered he was smarter than he had supposed, and he did think of something. "Cherries!" he cried. After all, they had worked pretty well to disrupt Fracto, the bad cloud, when the three children were fleeing it.

He started heaving cherries, and they exploded all around the giant with fancy red booms. But they were too small to have much effect on a target of this size.

"A pineapple!" Hugo said. It, too, had proved to be an effective fruit in the past, with some sweet results. He heaved one. This was considerably more powerful, and the explosion set the giant's animal skin on fire. The conflagration was closer to the pain center, and the nerve channels had already been reamed out, so the smell of roasting meat hardly got started before the new roar shook the cave. The giant danced about, smashing out the flames with fist and club.

In the course of this activity, the monster bent down. For a moment his eye hovered near the dragon.

Stanley shot out a blast of steam that bathed the eye.

"Owwwgh!" the giant cried, clapping his hands to his face as the club dropped to the floor. "Ungh, smarts!"

"Now we can go!" Hugo cried happily. "Stanley blinded him!"

"Oh!" Ivy exclaimed. She paused to peer up at the tears squeezing out between the monster's fingers. "Poor thing!"

"Hey, we gotta go!" Hugo said. "Before he starts blocking off the door again!"

"But his eye!" she said. She had sympathy for anyone who cried for any reason. Once she had gotten dust in her eye, and it had teared something awful. "Suppose it doesn't get better?"

"So what? Who cares what happens to a mean old monster?" Her lip firmed rebelliously.

"I care! I didn't really want to hurt him!"

Hugo exchanged a look of bafflement tinged with disgust with the dragon. They found this feminine sensitivity as bewildering as her Sorceress talent. "You want to help the monster?"

"Well, I guess if he needs it," Ivy said. "Till his eye gets better, maybe."

"And then he'll eat us!" Hugo said.

Ivy couldn't definitely refute that, so she ignored it. She called to the giant, who was now standing silently, blinking his sore eye, from which huge tears were flowing. "Does it hurt bad, giant? I'm sorry."

The giant seemed as surprised as Hugo and Stanley had been. "Me? You talk to me?"

"You see any other gross, awful, one-eyed, hairy giants in here?" Hugo inquired sarcastically.

"I see nothing at moment," the giant said, rubbing his...o...b..with a callused fist.

"Don't do that!" Ivy cried, remembering admonitions by her mother. "You'll get dirt in it and make it worse!"

The giant stopped immediately. It seemed he was responsive to the voice of female authority. "It hurt, but will mend," he said. "I got steamed worse before and mended okay."

"I'm glad," Ivy said. "We didn't mean to hurt you, really. We just wanted to get away, so you wouldn't eat us."

"Why you not say so?" the giant demanded. "I not eat people! Too small, bad taste! I let you go."

"I don't believe you," Hugo said.

"All I ask, what you do in cave," the giant pointed out, blinking his eye. "Why you not answer me?"

Now Ivy and Hugo exchanged glances, then looked at Stanley, who rippled a shrug down the length of his body. "I guess we didn't think of it," Ivy confessed. "We just thought naturally you'd--we're only children, you know."

The giant's eye finally cleared, though it was red around the rim and still rather watery. He sat down with a thump that made the earthquake scales jump again. "I not know, or not have yelled. Get monkeys come in, steal bones--"

"We wouldn't do that," Ivy said quickly. "We just needed a good place to sleep. We didn't know it was your cave." She leaned forward confidentially, for the giant's face was now not nearly so far distant. "There are monsters out there, you know."

"Sure there are," the giant agreed. "Good thing, too. What I eat."

"I don't trust him," Hugo said.

"Hugo doesn't trust you," Ivy informed the giant privately.

"Well, I not trust him neither!" the giant replied, disgruntled. "He fire my uniform!"

"I'm sure Hugo is sorry."

"I am not!" Hugo exclaimed. "It was war!"

"Oh, that different," the giant said. "All fair, love and war."

"Yes!" Hugo agreed, mollified. "My mother says that!"

"She know. Mothers know. What bomb you use?"

"A pineapple." Hugo conjured another and held it in his hand, all bright yellow with a green top. "I conjure fruit."

"That good talent," the giant said. "Wish I do magic."

"Why don't we all be friends?" Ivy suggested, for she was a friendly child.

The giant laughed. "Real people not friends of Cyclops!" he protested.

"Why not?"

That stumped him. Now that she made him consider the matter, friendship seemed more reasonable. He didn't know she was a Sorceress, or that what she perceived tended to become more real. "Just tradition, I 'spose."

"We're too young to know about tradition," Ivy pointed out.

"Oh, well, okay. Be friends. Have some monster." The Cyclops reached across the cave and hauled up the dead griffin he had brought with him during the night. It was half eaten, but considerable ma.s.s remained.

Ivy recoiled. "It's all gooky with ick!"

"Blood," the Cyclops explained. "Taste good. I lick off hunk for you. Then it nice and clean."

"Thank you," Ivy said, remembering her manners. "But I guess I'm not really that hungry." She glanced about. "But maybe Stanley would like some."

The dragon agreed immediately. The Cyclops tore off a hind leg and dumped it down before Stanley, who chomped blissfully into it.

"Would you like some fruit?" Hugo asked, feeling neglected. "I can conjure some more."

The Cyclops eyed the pineapple. "Uh, thanks, but that not nice for teeth and burn tongue."

"Oh, I didn't mean this," Hugo said, carefully setting down the pineapple. "I meant regular fruit." He conjured a hand of bananas and proffered it.

The Cyclops' eye widened. "Bnans! Not taste in decades! Got big kind?"

"Oh, sure. Anything." Hugo, happy to show off his present power, conjured a hand of plantains. This was, of course, a giant hand, and each finger looked like a monstrous banana, but was too tough for a normal person to eat raw.

The Cyclops tore one plantain off and popped it into his mouth, skin and all. He chomped down. "Oh, slurp!" he exclaimed with his mouth full of squish. "Scrumptious!"

Hugo conjured colored berries for himself and Ivy. He preferred yellow, while she liked blue. They all ate contentedly.