The waves gathered for one concluding effort. They lifted the raft and tilted it so sharply that elf, cat, and centaur slid off it and into the shallow water. Jenny screamed as she splashed.

But the water moccasins did not clamp onto their toes. It seemed that the storm had scared them too, and they were either stunned or elsewhere. The goblins charged in and grabbed Jenny and Che. In a moment both were hopelessly tied up.

"Find help, Sammy!" Jenny cried desperately, though she feared there was no help to be had.

Sammy jumped past the goblins and disappeared. Maybe he would find help—but how would the help find them? For she knew the goblins wouldn't just leave her by the bank of the With-a-Cookee River. What had she accomplished in her effort to save the foal? Nothing but a delay, she feared. Now she was in just as much trouble as he.

Chapter 3. Electra's Exam

Electra watched Chex fly away with Grundy Golem. She hoped Che was found soon, but she had a bad feeling about it all. The foal had been kidnapped, and that meant that someone was trying to hide him away. He would not turn up innocently wandering through the forest.

Who could want to do such an awful thing? Che was the only winged centaur foal in Xanth. If something happened to him, it would cut off the childhood of that entire species. That was even worse than an ordinary kidnapping, bad as that was. She wasn't sure that anything like that had happened in Xanth before.

Nada looked grim. She was such a lovely young woman in her human form that she looked terrific even that way! Electra envied her, and had no trouble understanding why Prince Dolph liked her better than Electra. Electra liked Nada better than Electra! She was a princess and a really nice person, too. If Electra could have chosen any woman to compete against, Nada would have been at the very bottom of her list. But for friends, the top of the list.

"We'd better get moving," Nada said. She became a giant serpent.

Electra got on the serpent's back. Nada moved, sinuously gathering speed. There was a certain similarity to the way she walked in the human form, but then it had more effect on the eyeballs of any men in the vicinity: they practically popped out of their sockets. As a matter of fact, the golem's eyes had bulged similarly just now, perhaps because Nada was not wearing her clothing. Grundy had a perfectly lovely wife, Rapunzel, but like all males of any size he liked to stare at whatever else was in sight. He had not given Electra a second glance, and not just because she was clothed. No man gave her a second glance when she was with Nada, as she usually was. She was used to it.

It was too bad that Nada did not love Dolph the way he loved her. But of course she was five years older than he, now twenty to his fifteen. Nada was a poised young woman, while Dolph—well, even Electra had to admit that he was sort of unpolished. Electra loved him anyway; she couldn't help it, because of the enchantment she had fallen into. She had to love and marry the Prince who had kissed her awake after her thousand year (well, almost) sleep. She had not been the one who was supposed to make that sleep, and she was certainly no princess. But Evil Magician Murphy's curse had fouled everything up, and she had somehow bitten the apple and fallen into the special coffin, and now she was here.