by Jack Sharkey
"Practice, you bonehead!” snarled the faun.
I bestowed my most withering glance upon his horny forehead.
"People who live in glass houses—"
"-shouldn't take baths!” finished Lorn. “That's an oldie. Do you know this one: Too many cooks—"
"Make light work,” finished Timtik.
I felt like a character onstage who'd forgotten to read his part of the script. They were talking my brain into a tangle. “Look, Lorn,” I said, taking advantage of the speaking of her name to hold her closer, as if for emphasis, “if the key won't answer when you call, maybe it won't work to take you anywhere. Maybe it only works for me."
"Well, I like that!” the key shrilled angrily. “I would too work for them, except that it was so warm and cozy in here that I got just a wee bit sleepy and dropped off just the teensiest bit and didn't hear them calling me, but I did hear you, so that's when I answered, so there!"
Timtik was intrigued. “If that's so, then why did Lorn's drapery start to sag?” A shocked expression widened his eyes. “Unless she wanted it to!"
"I did not!” said Lorn, pink with indignation. “When it was intimated that spells might not work here, I simply tried my drape-dropping spell to test the theory. It worked perfectly. That's all. Of all the nerve, Timtik!” She was quite put out, and I was about to intercede to prevent any physical violence, when suddenly—
The faun froze in position, eyes alert, breath hushed. Lorn, too, had gone rigid, tense. I looked left and right. “What's wrong?” I said, feeling uneasy myself. “Is something..."
"Aunt Annabel!” came a familiar shriek behind me. “Albert has a LADY in there with no CLOTHES on!"
Too late I slapped my hand over the keyhole.
"Elizabeth,” I—said lamely. “She spies."
"No time to lose! Come on, Lorn!” said Timtik.
"Hicks!” came Garson's shocked voice through the oaken paneling. “What's going on in there! Open this door!” I couldn't tell from his tone if he wanted to stop the scandalous goings-on or take part in them.
"Oh, Albert,” said Lorn, taking the key from my numb fingers. “I can't come back if there's going to be trouble. Maybe it's best if we never see each other again..."
Her beauty was unmarred, enhanced, really, by two crystal tears issuing over her rose flushed cheeks. Her lovely eyes were cloudy, and my heart wrenched painfully to see them so. “No, Lorn,” I pleaded. “Don't go—"
My outstretched hand clutched the air she was just vacating, as she glided swiftly toward the window, soundless and deft on her small bare feet. Timtik had the window swiftly yawning wide against the night, and was helping her over the sill. I stood frozen, dazed at the abruptness of Elizabeth's yelp and the strange duo's precipitate departure. I watched the last trailing gossamer bit of the viridian drapery slither like a foaming green mist over the sill, then snapped out of my bewildered trance. I dove through the air, fingers out to grasp that last fleeing foot.
"Albert!” Annabel was shrieking. “Open this door at once! How could you! And in your own home!"
But even while Garson was cursing, and Annabel was alternately urging and egging him on and begging Elizabeth not to listen to him, and the hinges were screaming with the pounding strain, I was coming down toward the windowsill like a pouncing leopard after its prey, and my fingers were closing tightly over the wisp of veil remaining, and I was yelling loudly a single word ... “Lorn!"
There was an abrupt, sharp click, a strange sort of tremor throughout my trunk and limbs and mind, and then my face smacked stunningly against hot, moist earth where it should have met the parquet flooring of my study.
CHAPTER 4
I LAY there, slightly stunned, for an instant, then managed, with a soft groan, to roll over on my back. I tried to catch my breath and get my mind in order. As my mind sent out fingers testing for broken limbs or at a few frayed tendons, I heard the voices of Lorn and Timtik, and slitted my eyes to see them. I was prone at their feet, or rather, at her feet and his hooves. I lay where I was, and simply listened, for the moment.
"Pour water on him, Lorn,” suggested Timtik.
"Do you have any?” Her voice was plaintive with worry about me. I liked that.
"No, but I think I can make some. Maggot showed me how,” he said. Timtik proceeded to cross his fetlocks, fall down, swear, get up again, re-cross his fetlocks, fall down again, and swear again.
"That's a fascinating spell,” Lorn enthused.
"Spell, nothing!” muttered the faun. “I can't even assume the primary position. Oh, for a pair of feet! Sometime you try standing with your fetlocks crossed!"
Lorn frowned prettily. “Maybe you could tell me what to do, and I could assume the primary position?"
Timtik rubbed his beardless chin between thumb and forefinger, carefully sheathing his talons as he did so. “Well, all spells are very secret, you know. I can't give them away; Maggot would be awfully angry."
Lorn nodded briskly. “Very well, then. I'll cross my legs, and you do the rest, and maybe if we hold hands it'll work. What do you think?"
Timtik pursed his lips. “Not a bad idea. Let's try."
Lorn carefully crossed her legs, gripping the faun's hand for a reason that seemed to be equal portions of necromancy and balance, and Timtik began his spell. It was quite a spell. His cabalistic incantation was punctuated with waving arms, and grunts and groans, sounding like a banshee in a bear trap. Suddenly, a tiny cloud, pink in color, began to materialize about two feet over my face.
Timtik frowned and howled some more. The cloud darkened and began to quiver. The faun emitted a savage curse, and the cloud sparked a bolt of lightning about three inches long.
Lorn whistled in appreciation. “It's working!"
"Quiet!” growled Timtik. “I'm not through yet!"
He began snapping his fingers, increased his howl, and moved his haunches in that motion Hawaiians call ‘around the island’ when the hula is in full swing.
The cloud was quite black now, like a blob of inked cotton, and the lightning bolts were flashing on and off like flashbulbs at a Hollywood premiere.
Suddenly there was a grinding noise, a little gasp, and the cloud exploded into nothingness. And at that same, moment, I received about a cupful of water, full in my upturned face.
I sat up gasping and sputtering. “That was cold!” I complained, wiping at my dripping features.
Timtik, crowing his delight, was dancing on the sunlit sward. “Oh what a witch I'm gonna make!"
"Warlock!” said Lorn, then looked to me for approval. I smiled my approval back at her. Who could disapprove of Lorn?
"All right—warlock!” Timtik muttered. “But whatever I become, I'll be the best damned enchanter this forest has ever seen, that's for sure!"
I took a deep breath of the warm fresh air and sighed, then looked around at the bright greenery of the forest that impinged upon the glade in which I'd landed. “It's certainly beautiful here,” I said. “A guy could sit here and look at nature forever."
Timtik suddenly turned his gaze upon a dusty grey globe, about the size of an orange, burgeoning on the ground near my right hand. “No you couldn't, Albert,” he said. “That's a hotsy—"
Lorn took a backward step such as a woman might do on hearing the word “bug'. Her eyes widened. “You're right, Timtik! Let's go, quickly. Come on, Albert."
I looked again at the globe, which was now the size of a grapefruit. "A hotsy! What does it do?"
Lorn and Timtik each grabbed an arm and hove me to my feet. “We'll explain later. Don't just sit there, it's almost ripe!"
I found myself stumbling along toward the encroaching edge of the woods with them. I shook their grips free of my arms, impatiently. “But what is a hotsy?” I looked back at it again. It was easy to see it. Already the size of a medicine ball, it was turning dull crimson. Then the grass about this ruddy spheroid began, abruptly, to smoke. Then it turned black and died. And still the hotsy grew, swo
llen and bloated, and radiating raw heat that I began to feel, a good sixty feet away. I no longer needed warnings from the wood nymph and faun. I turned on my heel and dashed after them (they hadn't halted their flight when I had).
Then, just as they were about to penetrate the first fringe of the woods, Lorn halted dead, and Timtik jumped backward a good yard. “They're coming!” she cried, throwing herself flat on the earth. Timtik was pivoting about on one hoof, looking from quivering globe to the forest back again. Then I heard the sound. Off in the tanglewood, there was a hissing, buzzing, swishing, whizzing of angry noise. The sound was too much for Lorn. She jumped up again. “I'm afraid!” she whimpered to Timtik. “I can't stay here!"
"The other side of the hotsy, it's our only chance!” shrieked the faun, galloping off without her. I stood as he passed me, his head down and tiny hooves throwing up divots, from the sod. Then Lorn rushed up to me, and right by me, yelling, “Run, Albert! Run!” I ran.
The three of us, with Timtik's lead growing by the second, skirted the bulging diameter of the hotsy at a distance of ten feet, and even there my entire hotsy-side felt half-cooked before I got beyond it. The thing was almost ten feet high, now, and sagging horribly, like a huge scarlet-and-orange paper bag filled with wet mud. And just as we stumbled to a panting halt at the edge of woods bordering the opposite side of the glade, the hotsy was riven from within by its internal pressures, and splayed sluggishly open, disgorging a steaming red viscosity cluttered with small spheres. It looked like overgrown salmon roe, glowing with an incandescence that was nearly blinding. This gleaming glut of globes lay there for only an instant, and then the whizzing sound, which had been growing more piercing by the instant, reached a peak, and I cringed back, startled by the blue-white cloud of tiny flying things that came out of the other rim of the woods, at speeds well surpassing any bug I'd seen, ever.
Lorn clutched my arm, leaned her mouth to my ringing ear, and shouted, over the chaotic racket, "Frost flies!"
As the insects reached the goal of the globes, and crashed head-on, there came a keening screech, such as a warm coin makes on a block of dry ice, except that it would take all the coins in the U.S.A. on all the dry ice in the world to duplicate the volume of the shattering sound. The blue-white bugs glowed red, the globules shivered into rime-coated raisins, and the erstwhile blast of heat became a sudden wintry chill in the air. As quickly as they'd come, the flies left, their reddish bodies turning blue-white again as they zoomed off and disappeared in a direction at right angles to the one they'd approached the glade at. The ensuing calm was downright soothing.
Lorn sagged against me and sighed. “That was very close. We were almost destroyed, you know.” I hadn't known, of course, but I'd most certainly suspected something of the sort.
"Are those things as dangerous as they sound?"
"They live on heat. Any kind of heat. Body heat, for one,” said Timtik. “And the hotsies live on cold. So they get along fine."
"They ... they fly so fast," I remarked, shivering.
"Have to,” said Lorn. “To get from one hotsy to the next. They need the heat for enough pep to get from one hotsy to the other. They use it up fast. If they don't make it, they die. Not that anyone cares."
"I guess a metabolism like that would keep you on the go,” I agreed. Then, to change from an unpleasant topic, “By the way, where are we bound?"
"Well,” said Lorn, “I have to take Timtik back to Maggot, first, then...” She gave me a sideways look.
"Then?” I said, my voice cracking.
Lorn shrugged, and gave me a friendly twitch in the ribs with her elbow. “We can maybe play charades or something."
Inside my collar, my neck did a brief imitation of a hotsy. “Uh...” I said intelligently.
Timtik tugged impatiently at Lorn's diaphanous drapery, then. “Let's go, Lorn. I'm getting hungry."
"All right, Timtik.” Lorn took his hand, and I took hers, and we headed back across the glade, past the scene of the fly-hotsy encounter. In the circle of withered black grass, nothing remained, not even a wrinkled raisin. But my eyes stayed peeled for any more of those swiftgrowing grey globes. It had been a close call, I began to realize, with delayed shock. One had a choice of running from the flies into that hellish heat, or from the heat into the deadly bullets of heat-hungry bugs.
As though sensing my thoughts over that scorched earth, Lorn said, “I saw Dalinda, another wood nymph, get caught in the middle, once. It was awful. She ran from the flies, and fell against the side of the hotsy, and as her front burnt up and turned black, the flies struck, and her back turned blue with spots of frostbite. It took more than five minutes until she was completely gone. The flies sat on her, and as the hotsy heated up a hunk of her they bit into it, and she screamed and kicked, and—"
"Lorn,” I choked, feeling deathly ill, “I get the picture!"
"But don't you see what we missed, Albert?"
I saw, and nodded. “And I'm going to follow you and Timtik and do every single thing you say.
Timtik tugged Lorn's hand. “Come on, Lorn, huh? I'll be late for supper, and Maggot will whip me.” Lorn nodded and picked up her pace. Together, the three of us entered the emerald gloom of the forest. The ground under my feet was springy as the base of a needle floored pine forest, and the bushes were very strange.
As we'd near one in the gloaming, it seemed to fold back upon itself until we passed, then close up the gap behind us.
"Hey,” I said, slowing my pace. “The way these things go shifting around, I'd never get out of here without help. Is the woods always so lively?"
Lorn smiled. “That's one of the handy things about being a wood nymph. The trees and shrubs and vines move aside for you. But don't worry, Albert. You'll have me with you on trips."
"If Maggot lets him make any,” said Timtik, mysteriously. “She might not want a non-resident roaming around the woods."
"You're teasing!” I said uneasily. “She wouldn't stop me."
"Of course not, Albert,” said Lorn. “I'll even take you on a tour as soon as we get Timtik to Maggot's cave."
"She lives in a cave?” I asked, stepping around an idiotically grinning froggish thing that squatted lazily upon our path.
"Sometimes yes, sometimes no,” Timtik explained. “Her dwelling changes with her moods."
Lorn tugged at me, as I lagged behind for another look at the froggish thing, which was now in the process of being consumed alive by another froggish thing, and looking quite rapturous about its grisly fate. “They're making love,” said Lorn, pulling me along.
"But ... It looks like the big one is devouring the little one!"
"Why not?” Lorn's voice was tinged with impatience, as a parent speaking to a beloved imbecile child. “Haven't you ever heard of being so deeply in love with a person you felt like just eating him up?"
"Well, sure. But if they really do it, how do they reproduce?"
"They don't,” said Lorn with a shrug. “They never get the chance. One look and it's love, and the next thing you know, it's dinner."
"But,” I persisted, peering back into the fronds trying to catch the finale of the catastrophe, “if that goes on, the species will dwindle!"
"Oh,” said Lorn, matter-of-factly, “it has."
"Then why haven't the forest people set up a sort of-um-preservation program?"
Lorn looked at me. “Who'd want to preserve one of those?"
At that moment, a mewling twang in the region of my upper trunk reminded me that I never had gotten around to making myself that ham sandwich back home. It seemed ages since I'd first thought of doing it. “Lorn.” I said, “I'm getting hungry, too. Are there any restaurants, or ... No, I guess that's out of the question. But is there any food available?"
Lorn paused, despite Timtik's impatient grumble. “I think Maggot should have enough to go around. I'd planned on joining her and Timtik for supper. You can probably sit in, too, if you don't mind a meal cooked by a witch."
Lorn proceeded to move onward. “If you're that choosy, Albert, you're not as hungry as you think."
"But Lorn,” I pleaded. “A witch's cooking sounds so..."
She had not paused, however, so I had to drop the subject and hurry to keep up with her before the shrubbery snapped back into my path. I came abreast of her, and she gripped my arm suddenly, making me go warm all over for the next five steps. Above us, then, something screamed, a raucous sort of scream, and a moment later, there came crackling of branches, and some thing plunged to the path ahead of us with a sickening crunch.
I thought some magnificent bird had crashed, but only for a moment. As the bushes twisted out of our way, I saw that the broken wings, a good fifteen feet from tip to tip, were growing out of the back of a mannish creature, bronzed of flesh, right fist still clutching the haft of a slender, wicked-pointed brass trident. “A Kwistian,” said Lorn. “That means we're getting near the Thrake.'
"Thrake?” I stepped gingerly about the corpse. “What's that?"
"A blue thing about five inches long, and it does something no one understands to the wings of the Kwistians,” said Timtik kicking the corpse over on its back. The face was only semi human, I saw with near-nausea. In lieu of nose and mouth, it sported a beak like a parrot's. And the eyes, human in size and shape, had no lids or lashes, just a nictitating membrane just now moving to cover the glazing yellow sclera. It was a mean face. Lorn shivered.
"Those beaks ... Horrible. They eat people, you know."
Just about to touch the beak I withdrew my hand in haste “Eat people? Lorn, isn't there anything friendly in this forest?"
"Just me,” she said softly, closing one dark-lashed eye in a wink. Then she turned to the path again. “But come on. I have to get Timtik home."
"People,” I said thoughtfully as we moved onward, “should be rough on those beaks. You need teeth to get through thick muscle. They might give a sharp nip, or take off a finger or toe, but—"
"They ... they cook their victims first,” said Lorn, with a kind of uneasy twitch of her slim shoulders.