by Jason Beil
Wrong thing to say! “There’s this giant …”
Having listened to three different versions of Bob’s tale, the turtle pinched his eyes closed and shook his head.
“Just… tell… me… whether… or… not… you… would… like… to… cross!” he drawled in frustration.
“Ooo-err, yes, YES! Please God, yes!”
Bob tripped over himself to sit on the shell as the turtle positioned himself in the water.
“Hold… on… tight,” the turtle said.
Bob scanned the shell for something to hold onto. Finding nothing, he adjusted himself forward and gripped onto the top of the neck opening, just as the turtle screamed off the edge of the bank like a motor-launch.
Water sprayed in Bob’s face, and he gripped the shell until his fingers ached. He would not… could not… fall off. Water pounded him, rained down on him, rose up from the turbulent river to snatch at his legs. He squeezed his eyes closed. All this for a little piece of cake!
Please, God, get me out of this, and I will never, ever look at another piece of cake so long as I live!
Which might not be that much longer, the way the river was clawing at him. Gripping onto the shell as though his life depended on it, Bob saw the shoreline closing in on them at great speed.
“Shouldn’t we be slowing down?” he yelled at the turtle.
“Whyyyyyyyy?” the turtle replied in a long drawl.
“The shore! There are rocks!”
“Ooooooooh… yeeeeeeeeesssss.”
Bob screamed like a little girl as the turtle left the water, clearing the oncoming rocks by inches, before gently circling in the air and setting down in the meadow beyond. The turtle’s back did nothing to soften the landing. Bob flipped over the creature’s head, hands torn brutally loose from their grip on the creature’s shell. He tumbled head over feet, and struck the ground square on his back. His breath whooshed from him, and blackness clouded his eyes.
Am I dead? I must be dead!
Just before he passed out, he realized he couldn’t be dead. You didn’t hurt after you were dead. Did you?
Sara stood in the middle of the laundry room, hands planted on her hips, scanning the room as though she hadn’t already spent—what? Forty-five minutes?—doing the same thing. Where the hell had Bob gone? No windows here—he couldn’t have gotten out that way. He would’ve had to come back through the kitchen, down the laundry chute, and…
Then what?
Her fingertips massaged the hair now covering her palms in a soft down. He couldn’t have gotten away that easily. He would not get away that easily.
Sara licked her lips, aware of the fur thickening around them. Aware that her canines were growing longer. She chuckled, the sound emerging like a soft growl as the Change settled upon her. He had gone down the laundry chute. She turned and retraced her steps upstairs into the kitchen, to the chute.
And plunged in.
She howled as she landed and tore the mass of clothes and bed linen from around her head. This wasn’t right! Bob had come down the chute, and where had he gone? As her already shoulder-length hair grew rapidly down to her waist, she bounded up the stairs, four at a time. She hurled herself back into the chute, which twisted, turned and buffeted her as she fell… further this time, so much further.
Sliding. Tumbling. Fur flying. After what seemed an eternity of dark, bruising descent, she burst out of the chute and fell down through open air. Her searching eyes caught glimpses of high cliffs and seagulls cavorting. Then she landed with a mighty splash and came up coughing and growling in fear and frustration. Just when she thought the ride was over she was caught by the waves and dumped down again, head colliding with the sand bar beneath the breakers. She had a brief sense of complete wrongness before all went dark again.
When she came to, she was lying on a beach, alone. But someone had been there. Laid out on a palm leaf in front of her, she saw a fish, a sparkling stone, and a flower. What could it mean? As she shook her head dazedly, an old woman appeared beside her.
“Choose one” the crone whispered. “But choose wisely.”
“One,” she mumbled, through lips that felt like ancient parchment. She ran a tongue over her upper lip and tasted brine. She blinked at the woman. “Who…?”
“Who is not important,” the old woman said, the words clipped. Brittle. “Choose.”
Sara thought about it, brain still fuzzy from a combination of the Change and the fall. She was hungry, the wolf in her still imposing its primeval survival instinct, but she shook her head. She stared at the old woman, hoping she would give something away, but her face was inscrutable. Sara looked at the pretty stone, sparkling in the sunlight. She liked pretty things. She reached a hand to the stone, but a last minute peek at the woman’s expression made her stop. The flower, then? Surely not the fish! She reached for the flower, only to stop at the last minute and look at the old woman once again.
The crone was unreadable. Sara had to make a choice on her own. Taking a deep breath, she reached out and grabbed the flower. The old woman gave a sharp nod.
“So be it,” she said. “Your path is Vegetable. Now come with me.”
Sara would have refused, but her feet helplessly carried her in the old woman’s wake. Soon they entered the forest, and a drowsy white owl lit upon the women’s shoulder.
“Don’t mind her,” said the woman, stroking the owl. “Olive’s a Dragon Owl, but she’s quite tame.”
Sara stopped and stared at the back of the old woman’s head.
“Hang on a minute… who are you?”
“I’m the Wobbly Witch of the South!”
“The South? Not the Wes—”
“Don’t start with all that W.W.W. stuff. I’m not a website! South! Got it, sweetie?”
“Got it,” Sara said, raising her eyebrows. “And we’re going…?”
“We have to stop my sister.”
“And she is…?”
“The Exorcising Enchantress of the—”
“North?” Sara offered.
“East, you twit!” the witch growled. “I have to have a champion to face her chosen champion.”
“And what has this ‘Vegetable Path’ got to do with it?”
“You shall have the power of the Vegetables at your beck and call when you face the other champion.”
“Awesome.” Sara rolled her eyes. “Can’t wait.”
Back at the apartment, Sara’s dad stepped in through the open door, his arms full of birthday gifts for his daughter. He saw traces of a struggle, and he sniffed the air.
Hmm. Smells like werewolf.
He had hoped for more time before she began to turn, but now he would have to deal with it. He removed his wand from his old walking cane and passed it over the gifts. It wouldn’t do for them to be tracked here after all he had gone through to get them.
Lupo sniffed the air. His daughter’s scent was particularly strong. He smelled human too, but no blood. Both scents grew as he approached the laundry chute. Sighing, he walked over to the doorway and down the basement stairs. His daughter’s scent was strong on the stairs—too strong—but the human odor was weaker. He stepped over a pile of dirty clothing and looked very closely at the floor. There! Was that…? Yes! There had been a portal there. Who had placed it, and why?
Lupo studied the floor more closely, and felt a slight wavering of reality just… there! He drew a deep breath. There were spells that he could speak. He wasn’t strong enough to open the portal on his own, but with the residual energy, maybe… just maybe…
But did he want to? There was something in the feel of that quiver in Time and Space, something… wrong. Very, very wrong. He felt his hackles rise. Danger on the other side of that place. Yet…
His daughter.
Was she worth it? Worth the risk of his own life? A growl formed in the back of his throat and flowed past his lips. Taking hold of the energy around him, he began to weave his spell.
Bob blinked open his eyes and rubbed his achi
ng head. Overhead, the biggest vulture he’d ever seen lazily skimmed through the sky.
Damn! That thing has the be the length of a football field! And its wings…!
Weren’t there any normal people in this world? Any Bob-sized people? He closed his eyes. His head hurt.
I’m just going to go to sleep. When I wake up, this crazy dream will be over and I’ll be back home with Sara. Just go to sleep…
Water splashed on his face, and he stirred, opening one eye. Far above, the vulture still circled and he watched it for a long moment. A sudden kick in his ribs was followed by a harsh, withered voice.
“Get up, you lazy lump!”
He flung himself into a sitting position, one hand clutching his head, the other his ribs. An old woman stood over him shaking her head.
“You’re not exactly what I expected,” she sighed, “but you’ll do.”
“I’ll do what?” he grimaced.
She gestured to the large leaf on the ground, which held a fish, a sparkly stone, and a bent twig.
“Choose one!” she said.
He was hungry. Very hungry. That one bite of cake seemed to have been taken days ago. He couldn’t help himself, he quickly grabbed the fish.
“You can’t eat it, you fool!” the old woman said, slapping the fish from his open mouth.
“Wha…?” he pouted, “You said ‘choose!’ I’m hungry!”
“You’re an idiot, is what you are!” she scolded, “Right, your path is Floppy. Follow me.”
Like a zealot, he followed her across the meadow, holding the fish. The turtle munched sedately on the grass, watching them go.
There was a shimmering haze at the edge of