Why couldn’t even Jex hear her?
“Let’s have a look,” said Benayu. “I should be able to tell…Yes, this is it! By all the levels, this is it! There’s the hair. Woven itself right in…No, there’s two of them…Jex! Are you all right, Jex?…Must’ve been too much for him. He should be fine—he said he’d be ready for it this time. But he was right, it would’ve destroyed Maja.”
“Almost did, I think,” said Ribek. “In the oyster pool, the moment she touched it. You’re sure she’s really all right in there?”
“Should be. Pass her across….”
“Can you clean her up a bit? I suppose I could rinse her in the pond and wring her out, but it doesn’t feel right.”
Benayu laughed again. Ribek’s vast hand appeared, closed round Maja’s body and swung her through the air. Briefly the contents of the eggshell wheeled past, Ribek himself, serious and anxious, more lawn, three narrow cypresses, Sponge fast asleep with his muzzle on his paws and his wings folded behind his back, the horses nuzzling into their fodder as if they’d worn wings all their lives (and Pogo was really beautiful—talk about dazzling white!), Benayu reaching to take her…
His hand closed round her and she felt the touch of his mind.
“Benayu?”
“Good, you sound fine, Maja. You heard all that?”
“Yes, but Ribek doesn’t remember. I forgot to remind him I’d be able to see and hear. What’s happened to Jex? He can’t hear me either.”
“He’s resting. That was all a bit much for him. I think he’ll be all right.”
“And I want to see what we found.”
“This.”
He adjusted his hold to turn her and with his other hand picked up from the grass beside him a piece of old rope, about as long as the real Maja’s foot and as thick as her two thumbs laid together. The strands at the lower end had unraveled into a fuzzy tangle.
No. They were meant to be like that.
“You’re holding him upside down. That’s his hair.”
“Ah.”
Benayu laid the rope down to reverse his hold and picked it up again. He must have done something, though Maja couldn’t feel it, or see one single strand of the rope stir or change color, but now, though still rope, it seemed to have a definitely human shape, a tall, thin figure with a wild shock of hair concealing the neckline, and body and limbs hidden beneath a long robe.
Huh, she thought. That makes two of us, one rag, one rope.
Benayu must have heard that too, because he laughed as he settled the manikin carefully against the rim of the pool.
“Say thank you to Ribek for looking after me. And remind him to show me things. He’s been doing it sometimes, but sort of by accident, I think.”
Ribek didn’t say anything for a moment when Benayu passed the message on, then chuckled. (What did that mean? Relieved? Embarrassed? No telling.)
“Glad you’re still with us,” he said. “I’ll try to remember.”
“So far so good,” said Saranja. “We got what we came for, and that’s great. Now what?”
“Let’s talk about it while we’re eating,” said Benayu. “I’ve fetched something from that restaurant the Magister was going to take us to.”
That meant the others had all got to taste oyster-and-bacon pie, but Maja hadn’t even been able to smell it. If Ribek had thought to smear some of his supper onto her painted lips she still couldn’t have tasted it because she hadn’t got a tongue. Life as a rag doll isn’t all kisses and cuddles.
“How long have we got, d’you think, Benayu, before the Watchers find a way in?” said Ribek.
“I don’t know,” said Benayu wearily. “I’m not sure they even can.”
“The Ropemaker got in somehow.”
“The touching point was still open then. I closed it as soon as we were through. I had to use Fodaro’s equations for that. So first they’d need to know a lot of other-universe stuff to open it again, and if what Jex heard is right they’ve only just found out about it. If they have, and that’s not certain.
“Then they’d have to have thought about it a lot, the way Fodaro did from what Jex had told us. There’s all sorts of really difficult mathematical relationships you have to sort out before you come up with the equations. You can’t do that by magic. It’s pure brain-stuff, and it took Fodaro years. So I doubt if the Watchers can do anything about it from the other side, except trial and error. That’d be wildly dangerous.”
“So you don’t think we’ll see them again before we go back to our own universe?” said Ribek. “Never mind that they’ll be waiting out there with everything they’ve got, ready for us to come out. We can think about that later.”
“But we’re stuck in the same kind of bind, aren’t we?” said Saranja. “We’ve got to find the Ropemaker somewhere out there, and we haven’t got Maja to help us do that, and then we’ve got to get him out of whatever he’s stuck in and bring him back here to join up with what you found in the oyster pool, but none of us can go outside the eggshell to do any of that without being destroyed….”
“The horses can, as far as I can gather,” said Ribek. “And Sponge, I suppose. They’re magical animals now. And Jex’s other self must be somewhere out there—I imagine he’d help—but…”
“It’s not even worth thinking about until I’ve talked to Jex,” said Benayu. “Getting us here was as far as I’ve worked out, and it took everything I’ve got. I’m practically dead on my feet. The first thing is for me to have a good night’s sleep, and after that I’ll need to get a lot of new stuff out of Jex and see if Fodaro’s equations still apply, and then, well, it’ll still be a question of finding the Ropemaker without Maja’s help. That’s going to be the hardest bit.”
“It would kill her to bring her back, even for a few moments?” said Ribek.
“Not worth the risk. The whole set-up here is wildly magical, and I’ve got nothing to spare to protect her.”
“All right,” said Ribek. “Let’s sleep on it.”
“Not until we’ve said thank you to Benayu,” said Saranja. “He’s done absolute wonders for us today. Back at my warlord’s they’d have held a feast and filled his cup with rubies and had the poet compose a praise-chant.”
“At least he did get oyster-and-bacon pie,” said Ribek. “Even if he had to fetch it himself.”
So now they were all asleep, people, horses, dog. All except Maja. Ribek had wished her good night and kissed her forehead and laid her beside him on the rolled-up cloak he used as a pillow. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t feel if he was actually touching her, but she could hear the steady whisper of his breathing close beside her, and that was enough.
He began to dream. She knew that because she caught faint glimpses of what he was dreaming about, a large dim space with heavy sacks stacked against one wall—it must be his mill. He was looking for someone or something. His breathing changed, became heavier, and now, still in the same dim place, he was leaning on a rail, desperate with worry and loss, staring down into a torrent of foaming water tumbling into a series of scoops attached to the rim of a great wooden wheel that was turning, turning…Something soft and green floated for a moment in the pother in one of the scoops, then was carried down into the mill-race. Loss and grief like a spear in the heart…
“Ribek! It’s all right. I’m here, me, Maja, on the pillow beside you.”
He snorted and half woke. She heard him turn toward her. His breathing faltered as fragments of the nightmare returned and trailed away.
I’ll wait till he’s stopped dreaming, she thought. Jex never came to me in the middle of a dream. But Ribek really minded. Only it probably doesn’t mean what I’d like it to. He’d feel like that about a pet dog, or something. She lay there, perfectly happy, thinking about what she was going to say.