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really positive reason to be here in this weird world .
    “Oh—I forgot. Mundanes don't have magic. Only folk made in Xanth.”
    “What's a Mundane?”
    “A person or animal originating in the dreary nonmagic realm beyond Xanth. My dam does not like to speak of it.”
    “But I'm not from there! Does Mundania have two moons?”
    “I don't think so. Just one moon, like ours, only its green cheese has calcified into inedible rock.”
    “A moon made of green cheese?”
    “And honey on the other side. My sire and dam went to the honey moon, where they conceived me. Perhaps that is where I obtained my taste for sweets.”
    “So if I'm not from Xanth or Mundania, then we don't know whether I have magic,” Jenny concluded. “But if Sammy has magic, maybe I do too.”
    “Perhaps it is true,” Che said doubtfully.
    “Why did the goblins kidnap you?”
    “I assume they wished to eat me.”
    “Eat you!” she exclaimed, horrified. “But that would be mean, cruel, and awful!”
    "True. That is the nature of goblins. Yet I confess to bewilderment that they did not slaughter me immediately. They seem to be saving me for some future occasion.”
    “They certainly had you all tied up!” she agreed.
    “They seemed to be taking me somewhere. The men are brutes, of course, but Godiva kept them from mistreating me. Goblin women are much nicer than goblin men, of course. The fact that she was put in charge of the party suggests that something other than incidental mayhem is involved. It is quite odd.”
    “How did they get you? Didn't you know to stay away from goblins?”
    “Certainly I knew! But they tempted me with the smell of baking pastry and I couldn't help myself. If you think sugar sandies are good, you should taste fresh pastry! Then a horrible fog surrounded me, and suddenly I was all trussed up and the captive of goblins. I think they had a one-way path.”
    “A one-way path? But all paths go both ways!”
    “By no means! Magic paths typically are unidirectional, and some can be used only once. I suspect that the goblins used theirs to convey me a distance from my home glade, so that my dam would not be able to follow my tracks. Now they have exhausted their path spell and must proceed in more ordinary fashion. But they seem not to be local goblins, for they do not know the local terrain. Godiva was exploring the region ahead when you came upon me.”
    Jenny decided not to argue about the directions of paths; when she saw a one-way path, then she would believe it, not before. “It's funny that they ran into such trouble. I would have thought they would just take you straight back where they came from.”
    “That was my conjecture. But apparently something malfunctioned, because when they stepped off the magic path, they seemed bewildered. They were supposed to be on the east side of the Elements, and instead they were on the west side.”
    “But a path can't just change where it goes!”
    “Ordinarily they don't, but that is by no means fixed. Because this was a speed path, the scenery around it was blurred; they must have assumed that they were going in the right direction. We walked for perhaps half an hour before coming to the end, and then of course we had to get off, and it was gone. When Godiva saw where we were, she said something almost unladylike, which is unusual for a gobliness.”
    “She didn't sound ladylike to me!” Jenny said stoutly. “I heard her calling the men stupid, and worse.”
    “No, she was addressing them by their names: Moron, Idiot, and Imbecile. Stupid did not come on this mission.”
    “Goblins have funny names!” Jenny said, laughing.
    He smiled. “I understand they consider our names to be odd, too.” Then he glanced up. “Oh, I fear trouble!”
    Jenny looked. “But that's just a little cloud! We have nothing to fear from that.”
    “On the contrary! That looks very much like Cumulo Fracto Nimbus, the very worst of clouds. He brings mischief to all good folk and even