There wasn’t any point in arguing, though Maja could think of plenty of arguments, but not now. Perhaps if she talked to his sister. For the moment it was enough that he’d really been thinking about it. Even that was more than she’d hoped for. Best thing now was to make it easy for him.
“It’s a good thing for you I can’t cry, or you’d be having to wring me out again.”
“There’s that.”
“How much younger would you have to be, d’you think? Five years? Ten? Fifteen?”
“Ten at least. But—”
“And if you tell me about this nephew you’ve got who’s only sixteen and the spit image of you at that age…”
“How did you know?”
He was teasing, of course. He’d already told her he had just five nieces, two living at the mill plus the three he’d been talking about. But so was she. Why couldn’t he see it? They were so right for each other. Not now. Change the subject.
“This is only a dream, isn’t it? We won’t talk about it when I’ve changed back.”
“Right. Thank you, Maja.”
“Wait. There’s something I do want you to talk about. To the others, I mean. It’s about one of us getting outside the eggshell. Ask Jex and Benayu if I’m a sort of magical animal, like Sponge and the horses.”
“No!”
“Or if I’m not, can they make me into one?”
“Absolutely not! It would kill you.”
“You can ask them about that too, and then we can decide. There are five of us, so Jex can have the deciding vote. You’ve got to ask them, Ribek. It isn’t fair if you don’t, because I can’t talk to them myself. You can tell them what you think, of course, but you’ve got to tell them what I think too. I’ll be listening, remember, and if you don’t play fair I’ll get into your dreams and give you horrible, horrible nightmares.”
“If they let you go I’ll be in one already.”
“It’s what I’m here for, to find the Ropemaker. It’s why I’m like this now. I’m still the only one who can do it, the way I did in the sheep-fold and the oyster-beds. It’s all meant.”
“All right. We’ll see what the others say.”
CHAPTER
17
By morning Jex had recovered enough to talk and listen, so he was there when Ribek told the others about that part of the conversation over breakfast (oyster kedgeree). He put Maja’s case fairly enough but then argued so passionately against it that she wondered whether the others might guess something about the part of the conversation he hadn’t told them.
“I don’t like it either,” said Saranja. “She’s been wasting away as it is, despite what Jex has been doing for her. It all depends whether there’s anything else we can try first. If there isn’t, then it’s a question of whether Jex and Benayu think they can actually do what Maja suggests. But if it’s our only chance then I think we’ve got to let her try. Benayu?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of doing it like that. Off the top of my head I think it might be possible, not quite the way she says because a rag doll is four-dimensional and she wouldn’t survive like that. So she’d have to do something like the Ropemaker must have done and put herself into a different form for the other universe….”
“Could you protect her at all while that’s happening, Jex?” said Ribek.
“No more than partly. And remember that she would also need to endure the stress of following the line left by the Ropemaker’s hair when his name is spoken by one of you. Both the previous times that that has happened she has been very near the limit of what she can stand.”
“Then that’s out,” said Saranja and Ribek together but in different tones.
“Anything else?” Saranja added. “I mean, could you move the eggshell about, for instance?”
“Not a hope…But…Wait…I think there’s just a possibility…If we combine that with Maja’s idea…It’s going to take a lot of thinking. Pure brain-stuff, like I said. No shortcuts. And I’ll still need to talk to Jex. I wish Fodaro were here….”
“Do not forget that I also exist on the other side of your eggshell. I do not understand the equations, but I may still be useful.”
“We wouldn’t have a hope without you. Let’s talk about it when I’ve finished eating.”
The morning passed slowly. When breakfast was over Ribek propped Maja into the crook of a small tree, where she could see almost everything that happened inside the eggshell. Then he brought the saddlebags across, unpacked their contents onto the turf, spread the bedding out to air and sorted and repacked everything else.
Saranja groomed the horses, combed their manes and tails, cleaned a small cut in Pogo’s hock—and goodness, did he make a fuss about it!—and checked the harness. The horses preened their wings with their front teeth as far as they could reach, and then took turns to spread them so that the other two could finish the job. They did this as naturally as if they’d had wings all their lives. So did Sponge, though with his more flexible neck he didn’t need help.
When he’d finished he settled to sleep against the rim of the pool, close to where Benayu sat gazing into the depths of the still water as if he could read the answers to his equations in them. Jex squatted next to him on the stonework. Maja could sense the murmur of his stone voice in her mind, in much the same way that she could faintly hear the rhythm of what Benayu said without being able to distinguish the individual words.
After a long while Benayu rose, stirred Sponge with his foot, lifted Jex down onto the turf and all three came across to Maja’s tree. In the normal course of events Jex didn’t move about much, but when he chose to he did it with an easy, fluid motion, unexpected in so clumsy-looking an animal. Ribek looked up, saw what was happening, and called to Saranja, who came across too.
“You talk to Maja, Jex, and I’ll explain to the others,” said Benayu, and turned to meet them. Jex spoke in Maja’s head.
“Maja?”
“Yes. How are you getting on?”
“There is something we would like to try, but all this is unknown territory.
“The difficulty is that what we are thinking of will become inoperative if I shield you, and you will also need to be to some degree sensitive to external magic if you are to follow the trail to the Ropemaker. So you will have to tell me the moment you feel that it is becoming too much for you.”
“All right. What do you want me to do?”
“Benayu believes that he can construct a much smaller version of what you have been calling the eggshell, just large enough to contain you and therefore light enough to be transported. The form in which I exist in the universe outside the eggshell is largely sedentary, like a sea anemone in your universe. In that form I can, after some preparation, relocate myself over considerable distances. Indeed, I have only a short while ago arrived immediately outside the eggshell, which will make the transfer of large magical impulses between the universes very much easier for me.