Fracto saw what she was doing and tried to stop her. But he couldn't grow fast enough to block both Mount Rushmost and the moon, and knew that she would zip past him and fly south if he gave her the chance. So he could only blow snow at her.

There was a crack of thunder. Then a lightning bolt zapped past her. Oops—Fracto had more than snow to hurl!

"You missed, sizzle-snoot!" the golem cried gleefully.

"Grundy!" Chex hissed.

"Don't worry, old diaper-bottom couldn't hit anything smaller than Xanth itself, and half the time he misses that too," the golem said reassuringly.

Then a bolt zapped just past his head, singeing his hair. "Lucky shot, vapor-brain!" he yelled, but his confidence seemed slightly shaken. He kept quiet while Chex winged on toward the moon.

The moon was somewhat larger than it appeared from the ground, because of the special inanimate magic called perspective. Each object and part of the landscape liked to think it was larger than it was, so it pretended that everything else was smaller, and the farther away anything was, the smaller it could safely be considered. Thus some quite large objects were made to seem quite small by those far enough away to get away with such belittling. The moon was at a serious disadvantage in this respect, because it was far away from everything else, so had no supporters. It got even by pretending that the whole of Xanth was small. The moon was actually big enough to walk and run on, and a number of flying centaurs could camp on it—if there only had been more than two to do it. But in time there would be Che—

Chex had a horrible thought. When Che got old enough to mate, who would there be? Certainly he could not do it with a sister! Before Chex, there had been only Cheiron, and Chex herself derived from mixed ancestry. Well, maybe there could be another mixed mating, to produce another winged centaur. But it seemed doubtful, because Chem had been unusually liberal for her kind, and perhaps no other centaur would consider crossbreeding. Unless one happened to run afoul of a love spring.

"Watch it, mare!" Grundy cried.

Chex realized that she was about to land in a big dish of thoroughly moldy semiliquid cheese. The smell was terrible! She pumped her leaden wings and lurched up, but came down almost immediately in another dish of cheese. This one wasn't moldy, but the smell was if anything worse. It couldn't be helped; she landed squarely on all four hooves and slid to a gooky stop.

"Ugh!" Grundy said. "Did you have to pick Limburger?" He was right: she saw the slimy little limbs embedded in it.

Chex folded her wings and stepped ahead. Each foot came out with a slurp and a belch of awful odor. Those must have been zombie limbs used to prepare this batch! What a mess! She had had no idea that the near side of the moon was this bad. She wanted to hold her breath, but was still breathing hard from her exertion.