There was a nasty cloud nearby, but even it didn't seem to want to make a storm. It was just watching, and perhaps would float away and rain somewhere else.

"Hey, Chief!" a goblin called. "Aren't we going to make them race?"

The cloud jumped. Then there was a heavy hand on Jenny's shoulder that jolted her into silence. The fancy faded away.

"What are you trying to do, you elven vixen?" the chief demanded. He seemed shaken. "Elves don't have that kind of magic!"

"Magic!" Che exclaimed. "That's it!"

"Now for the race!" the other goblin said.

"Naw, not right now," Grotesk said. "There's something funny about her. She's got magic. Look at those ears!"

The goblins clustered closer. Evidently they hadn't noticed Jenny's ears before. She had never thought her ears would save her from hate and death!

They were hustled back into the hut. As the door slammed, shutting them in, Jenny turned to Che. "You know I don't have any magic!" she said. "I don't even know what it is, really. Where I live, only the High Ones have anything like that."

"I think you do," Che said. "When you sang, I was in your dream about the Princess and the dragon, with Castle Roogna, only it was perched on top of a funny mountain instead of in the jungle where it really is. Then Grotesk was in it too, as the dark cloud. You have dream magic!"

"No I don't!" she protested. "I wasn't asleep, and neither were you, and certainly the goblin chief wasn't. I was just imagining it." But she realized that it couldn't be as simple as that. How could they share her daydream? She had never told either of them what was in it, and her song had not done it either; it had been just made-up words. Yet she had known when Che was there, and when Grotesk was—and they had known also.

"Night mares bring bad dreams to sleeping folk," Che said. "Mare Imbri and other day mares bring good dreams to waking folk. Maybe you have day mare magic."

"I never heard of this!"

"Well, you haven't been in Xanth long."

He had a point. "These day dreams—do several folk share them?"

He frowned. "I don't think so. Also, the mares don't sing. But it must be something like that, because Grotesk felt it, and now he's not sure he wants to cook us until he figures it out. Perhaps he likes to exploit any captives fully before he eats them."

"But it didn't last," she said. "Otherwise I might have been able to keep singing, and we could just have walked out of here."

"That is an intriguing notion," he agreed. "Why didn't it last?"

"Grotesk put his brute hand on me."