“I can’t see any thoughts,” Flip complained.
“Can you normally see thoughts?” inquired Sir Tombin.
“Well, no.”
“Then why do you expect to see any here?”
“Because …” The little fellow pondered over his reply for a moment before continuing, “because I just do, that’s all.”
Samzing laughed, making a hollow noise that Flip imagined as a puff of pale purple smoke. “You might see thoughts here, for all we know. Our senses seem to be muddled up, somehow, but be wary of the thoughts, whether you can perceive them or not.”
For a while they walked on in silence. Flip wondered how they knew the right direction to walk in. If they abruptly took a right or left turn, would the road alter its course to match? He wished he were a bit bigger so that he could try this out for himself, rather than being restricted to going only where Samzing went. Then, for the first time he did see something, a distant light in the nothingness off to the left.
“Look!” he cried. “Do you see what I see?”
Sir Tombin came to a stop, and raised his hand to warn Snowmane and Samzing to do likewise.
“Yes, I can see it too,” said the Frogly Knight softly.
As they watched, the glowing green object grew larger and larger, swooping around in haphazard curves across their field of vision. After a few seconds, it was hovering quite close to them and they could make out its details, such as they were. It reminded Flip of a lime jello pudding, though he’d never seen a lime jello pudding that had eyes before. Lots of eyes. Not very friendly ones.
The thing spoke. Its voice sounded like that of a lime jello pudding too – a lime jello pudding that was trying to pluck at the heartstrings of its listeners.
“Oh, nobody wants me,” it whined piteously. “Please help me. Please give a poor little orphan thought like me a home. All you have to do is think me.”
“Just look down and keep walking, is my advice,” said Sir Tombin to Samzing.
“Couldn’t agree more, old chap.”
“Oh, I see, I see,” wailed the Lime Jello Pudding. “I’m not good enough for you, am I? All lah-di-dah and high and mighty, are we? Too snot-nosed to pay any heed to a lonely little thought that hasn’t got a roof over its head, that’s all alone in the wide world.”
“Buzz off,” said Flip, pleased to be safe in a wizard’s pocket.
“I’ll be back,” the Lime Jello Pudding threatened. “I’m off to tell my friends about the strangers who think they’re too fine to acknowledge a humble thought like me when it’s speaking to them. Then we’ll all be back and I warn you, you won’t like it.”
With a sound like a bicycle tire being punctured, it soared away and was gone in an instant.
“Thank goodness we saw off that one,” exclaimed Flip, drawing the back of his paw across his brow. “That wasn’t too hard at all, was it? Easy-peasy, if you ask me.”
“Too easy,” responded Samzing. “Don’t get over-cocky, Flip. I think it was just sent to lull us into a false sense of security. I think it was meant to be easy to repel that thought. While it was here, I could feel countless other thoughts and ideas – invisible ones – clustering around us, waiting for a weak point to open up in our minds so that they could dart in.”
“Well, I didn’t feel anything,” averred Flip staunchly.
“Ah … I believe that’s because you’re of less interest to them than Sir Tombin and myself. Or Memo. Or Snowmane, come to think of it.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, Flip, how can I put this tactfully?”
“Try.”
Samzing breathed out noisily through his nose. In the absence of light, Flip couldn’t tell if the wizard were genuinely trying to formulate his explanation or simply amused. “You see, Flip, your mind isn’t as big as the rest of ours to begin with, and you normally keep it chock-full of nonsense. There wouldn’t be very much room for an extra thought to cram its way in.”
Flip thought about this while his larger friends took another few steps, then realized what it meant. “You—” he began wrathfully.
“Quiet,” snapped Sir Tombin. “Stop wasting breath, you two. You should have better things to do with it.”
“Better things than breathing, you mean?” asked Samzing mildly.
“Yes, of—oh, I’m not quite sure what I mean.”
At that moment, they suddenly noticed a big neon yellow sign in the middle of the invisible path blocking their way. Flip was certain that it hadn’t been there before, because he’d been looking in that direction the whole time and was sure that he hadn’t blinked. Nor had it come swooping down out of the darkness like the Lime Jello Pudding had. It had just abruptly appeared there, with the confident aura of a sign that’s been there for a very long time.
The yellow sign had orange lettering on it, so that reading it made a person wonder if a headache was on the way.
“Don’t, Tombin,” Samzing warned his friend, but it was too late.
“If the right path is the path you want to take, then there’s no problem,” the Frogly Knight was musing, rubbing his chin. The yellow glow of the sign was lighting them up just enough so that they could see each other. “But I think the sign is trying to tell us that we should be going to the left. So, if we went to the right that’d be going the wrong way, no? You follow me so far, Samzing?”
The wizard’s reply came through gritted teeth. “Only too well, but I don’t think you should be going there. This is just another attempt to—”
Sir Tombin waved away his words impatiently. “So, it’s right not to take the right path. We need to go left, because that isn’t right. Except that it is. It’s the right path that’s not right.”
“I take back what I said about you having a smaller brain than the rest of us, Flip,” murmured Samzing.
“I think we should take the left path,” said Flip, certain he’d solved the riddle.
“I think it’s the right one we ought to take,” said Sir Tombin, equally sure.
“I think we should take neither but just go straight on,” announced Memo, emerging for the first time from Samzing’s robe. Flip felt ashamed that he’d almost forgotten his little pal was there.
“Why do you say that?” Sir Tombin sounded testy. Under his breath, he added something that sounded like “nincompoop.”
“Because there isn’t a right path and there isn’t a right path,” piped Memo. “There’s only one road and it goes straight ahead.”
There was a sluggish silence, and then the sign winked out as if it had never been there.
“He does have a point, you know,” said Sir Tombin reluctantly. “Definitely a point.”
Samzing chuckled, but then his mirth trailed off awkwardly.
“That was another attempt,” he said, “to invade your mind. I told you, we’ve all got to be very careful. While you and Flip were cogitating like that, you were leaving yourselves quite defenseless to any alien thought or idea that might have wanted to sneak in. If it hadn’t been for Memo here—”
“It was clever of me to bring Memo along with us, wasn’t it?” put in Flip, trying to claim at least a little credit.
“Indeed it was, Flip,” said Samzing soothingly. “But,” he added, spoiling it all, “it was even cleverer of Memo to see that you two were talking the most blithering tripe that’s ever been blithered.”
“I say, dear chap,” Sir Tombin took up Snowmane’s reins again, “that’s rather strongly put, don’t you think?”
Samzing drew breath to make a retort, then decided against it.
Flip realized that there was a role here as peacemaker. “Let’s keep going.”
The interruptions by the Lime Jello Pudding and then the eye-searing yellow sign had distracted them from the fact that the nothingness around them was aswarm with those sinister shufflings and touches, but as they walked along – seemingly downhill – it became harder to ignore them. It was, thought Flip, as if you were quietly
enjoying a good bath with lots of bubbles when something unseen brushed your leg under the water. Was it the soap? Was it just your imagination? Or was it something else entirely? He shivered in Samzing’s pocket and resolved to never have a bath again.
The odd little twinges were affecting Memo as well. Flip could hear the memorizer muttering at his spectacles and burrowing down deeper into the shelter of Samzing’s pocket. “Gh–ghosts,” Memo said in a shaky wail.
“Not ghosts,” Flip whispered to him through several layers of fabric that seemed not to have been laundered in a good long while. “Just thoughts that don’t belong to you, thoughts you don’t recognize.”
“I’d rather think of them as ghosts, if it’s all right with you,” came a thin, muffled response. “You know where you are with a ghost, but these things …”
Flip puffed out his chest ready to say something reassuring. Memo brought out his protective instincts, but before he could speak, he saw a little flock of tiny lights, all moving together.
“I think our jello-bellied acquaintance is returning as he threatened,” said Samzing glumly. “And, just as he said, he seems to be bringing his presumably equally ghastly friends with him.”
Snowmane’s hooves had made only a couple more muted thumps on the road when Samzing was proved right. The lights whooshed up and gathered around the companions like schoolchildren around a playground fight.
“See?” said the Jello Pudding Thought. “Them’s the ones I told you about. Think they’re the lords of the land when all the time they’ve got their heads stuffed right up their—”
“Hello,” said an exceedingly small thought, drifting up within inches of Flip’s face. Close up, he could see that it looked like a miniature pink elephant covered in green spots. To make matters even more bizarre, it was wearing a T-shirt rather like the one Sagandran wore. Backward on its head, balancing unsteadily, was a curiously pointless hat that seemed to be more hole than covering. The thought had what Flip guessed was its name stitched across either the front or back of this cap, depending on which way you chose to think about it.
“Hello, Red Sox,” said Flip politely.
The thought looked startled. “Why did you call me that?”
“Isn’t it your name?”
“No, why should it be?”
“I think you’ve put someone else’s hat on by mistake.”
Now the thought degenerated from startlement into consternation. “I think I’ll try somewhere different,” it mumbled as it fled.
Flip crossed his paws in satisfaction, trying to pretend to himself that he wasn’t puzzled by the alien thought’s odd behavior. Dealing with the attempts of thoughts to inveigle their way into your mind seemed to be a lot simpler than Samzing had imagined it was going to be.
The Lime Jello Pudding had been watching all this, and now it sneered. “I wouldn’t bother with that little twit if I were you,” it advised Red Sox, who had spontaneously burst into tears. “You’d be like an extra sardine in the can if you got inside his skull, I can tell you.”
Flip, who hadn’t a clue what a sardine was, but suspected it was something fishy, bristled pugnaciously on principle.
The Lime Jello Pudding paid him no heed but carried on comforting his friend. “Forget about him. Little squirts like him, they’re two a penny. Why not try the big fat one with the stupid face?”
Now it was Sir Tombin’s turn to indicate displeasure, which he did with a trademark harrumph.
A different thought emerged from the back of the throng. This one was shaped like a mermaid, its outer layer a fleshy pink. It was wearing nothing but a couple of sea shells and seemed not to care that this was at least one too few.
A sardine, thought Flip, pleased with his own powers of deduction.
The sardine batted her eyes seductively at Sir Tombin (ignoring a protesting squeak from Red Sox of “But I saw it first!”) and said to him in a preposterously thick accent that Flip couldn’t identify, “’Ello, monsieur. You are, ’ow they say, such a fine figure of an homme, n’est-ce pas? ’Ow would you like unforgettable evening with moi in the seclusion de votre mind, big boy?”
“It’s extremely kind of you to make the offer, young lady,” said Sir Tombin with an obvious effort, “and your charms are exceptionally alluring, let me assure you with all honesty, but I fear my heart and my devotions are already in the possession of another.”
“Stuffy,” husked the sardine.
“No.” The Frogly Knight looked confused. “Queen Mirabella of Spectram, in point of fact.”
“Ah, but mon ami, she is, ’ow you say, there, and I am, glorieusement … here!”
“What you say may be true,” began Sir Tombin chivalrously, “but—”
“Oh, just tell her to get lost,” snapped Samzing. “It’s the only way to deal with creatures like these.”
“You are no gentilhomme, monsieur.”
“Nope. I’m a wizard. Your maman should have told you about wizards.”
Samzing gave a predatory leer and the sardine, her mouth popping into an “o” of dismay, bolted.
“Thanks, old fellow,” wheezed Sir Tombin. His face, Flip noticed, had gone an indescribable tint. The glowing thoughts were casting a motley of different hues, mainly gaudy, across the companions, and Sir Tombin’s skin had been green to begin with. Under the circumstances, it was hardly a wonder that the color of a blush should be difficult to describe.
Flip was just wondering if he should share this fascinating information with his friends or keep it until later when Red Sox gave a cry of delight and vanished.
“What happened?” said Flip, looking up the length of Samzing’s robe at the wizard’s stubbly chin.
“I think someone in one of the real worlds has just had that idea. It’s gone into Sagaria or the Earthworld to be used.”
“That’s right,” agreed the Lime Jello Pudding sourly. “Lucky devil. Seems to happen to everyone else here but me. I been here for years and years, whole millennia, I can tell you, and I’ve never even had an inquiry.”
“Perhaps it’s because you’re so unpleasant?” suggested Sir Tombin politely.
“I’ll have you not take that tone with me,” said the Lime Jello Pudding as another couple of the mob abruptly popped out of existence. “Any of you bunch ever heard of horror movies?”
None of them had.
“Well,” said the Lime Jello Pudding with a resigned expression on its, well, “face” wasn’t the right word, but it was the nearest Flip could think of.
“They’re things that have been invented in the Earthworld. Lots of people go along to them so that they can have the unpleasantest thoughts they’re able.”
“Why in the world would they do that?” said Sir Tombin.
“I dunno,” said the Lime Jello Pudding. “Beats me. They say if you go to one of these so-called ‘horror movies’ that it’s not any good unless you get to see your popcorn twice.”
“What’s popcorn?” asked Flip.
“Haven’t the remotest idea,” said the Lime Jello Pudding. “I don’t think anybody has. Anyway, I thought these horror-movie things might be my big opportunity, I did. People wanting repulsive ideas? Here’s me, fitting the bill perfectly, in a manner of speaking. Only I guess that however revolting the ideas them folks are having, I’m even revoltinger.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Flip, trying to comfort the unfortunate creature. “Perhaps it’s the other way round. Perhaps you’re not revolting enough?”
Tears sprang into the Lime Jello Pudding’s many eyes. “That’s even worse.”
Plop. Another of the colored blobs evaporated.
Plip. Yet another.
Pleurp. One more.
If this kept up much longer, the Lime Jello Pudding was going to be left on its own. It seemed to realize this, because it looked around uneasily then, in a move that rendered it more nauseating than ever, it became ingratiating. “I don’t suppose I could come along with you bunch, could I? You know,
just for the ride? I’d be ever so well behaved. I’d not try to take over anybody’s mind or anything, and I don’t eat much. I’d—”
“No,” said Samzing firmly.
“But—”
“No.”
A little staccato string of popping noises indicated that the rest of the unclaimed thoughts had just been claimed. Even the sardine.
“Someone, somewhere, must have a very, very smutty mind,” observed Samzing drily.
“There’ll be more where those came from soon, I’m sure,” said Flip anxiously. “You won’t be alone for long.”
The Lime Jello Pudding looked even more dejected than ever.
Then it wasn’t there any longer.
“What an astonishing coincidence,” cried Sir Tombin. “At the very moment we were talking to it, it succeeds, after all these years, in getting itself thought.”
“I hope that’s all it was.” Samzing’s voice was contemplative. “I don’t suppose any of us got all soft-hearted and took it in, did we, Flip?”
“Not me,” said Flip in a less certain tone.
Sir Tombin gave him a long stern look. “You better not have Master Flip.”
“I didn’t take it in,” squealed Memo. “I’d know if I had.”
Sir Tombin was anxiously separating the lids of one of Snowmane’s eyes with two webbed fingers and examining the pupil as best he could in the darkness. “He seems to be all right.”
The horse snickered in protest at the indignity and the others listened to the sound for any symptoms of puddingnosity.
All seemed well.
“We’d better keep, ah, you know,” said Sir Tombin, “an extra-special lookout for each other for a while in case, you understand, one of us begins to behave a bit, harrumph, oddly, if you catch my drift.”
“Puddiculously, you mean?” said Flip.
There was a long silence.
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