Castle Roogna by Piers Anthony Page A

again? How long has it been since you've eaten a really juicy fly?"
           Dor spread his arms in negation, causing the spider to react again. "It is almost as if you are in some fashion responding to what I am saying-" Gladly, Dor raised his fist.
           Startled, the spider surveyed him with its biggest, greenest eyes. "You do understand?" Dor raised his fist again.
           "Let's verify this," the spider chittered, excited. "It hadn't occurred to me that you might be sapient. Too much to expect, really, especially in a non-arachnid monster. Yet you did honor the covenant. Very well: if you comprehend what I am saying, raise your forelegs."
           Dor's hands shot up over his head. "Fascinating!" the spider chittered. "I just may have discovered non-arachnid intelligence! Now lower one appendage."
           Dor dropped his left arm. It was working; the spider was establishing communication with a non-arachnid sapience!
           They proceeded from there. In the course of the next hour, Dor taught the spider-or the spider evoked from his subject, depending on viewpoint-the human words for yes-good, no-bad, danger, food, and rest. And Dor learned-or the spider taught this: He was an adult middle-aged male of his kind. His name was Phidippus Variegatus, "Jumper" for short. He was a jumping spider of the family Salticidae, the most handsome and sophisticated of the spider clans, though not the largest or most populous. Other clans no doubt had other opinions about appearance and sophistication, it had to be conceded. His kind neither lazed in webs, waiting for prey to fly in, nor lay in ambush hoping to trap prey. His kind went out boldly by day-though he could see excellently by night too, be it understood-stalking insects and capturing them with bold jumps. That was, after all, the most ethical mode.
           Jumper had been stalking a particularly luscious-looking fly perched on the tapestry wall, when something strange had happened and he had found himself here. He had been too disoriented to jump, what with the presence of this-pardon the description, but candor becomes necessary-grotesque creature of four limbs, and the onslaught of the goblin-bugs. But now Jumper was back in possession of his faculties-and seemed to have nowhere to go. This land was strange to him; the trees had shrunk, the creatures were horribly strange, and there seemed to be no others of his kind. How could he return home?
           Dor was able, now, to fathom what had happened, but lacked the means to convey it. The little spider had been walking on the tapestry when Good Magician Humfrey's yellow spell took hold, and the spell had carried him into the tapestry world along with Dor. Since the spider was peripheral, his transformation had been only partial; instead of becoming small in scale with the figures of the tapestry, and occupying the body of a tapestry spider, he had kept his original body, becoming only somewhat smaller than before. Thus, here in the tapestry, Jumper seemed like a man-sized giant. Dor, had he entered similarly, would have been the size of several mountains.
           The only way Jumper could return to his own world was by being with Dor when he returned. At least, so Dor conjectured. It might be that the spell would revert everything it had put into the tapestry, when the time came. But that would be a gamble. So it was safest to stay together, returning more or less as a unit: Dor to his body and size, Jumper to the contemporary world. Dor could not make the details clear, since he hardly had them clear in his own mind, but the spider was no fool. Jumper agreed: they would stay together.
           Now both of them were hungry. The black flesh of the goblins was inedible, and Dor saw none of the familiar plants of his own time. No jellybarrel trees, flying fruits, water chestnuts, or pie fungi, and certainly no giant insects for Jumper to feed on. What were