Vale of the Vole

  Could he escape on his own? He struggled to remember what else Smash had said about the gourd. It was the home of the night mares, who were the couriers of bad dreams; the mares delivered them to deserving sleepers, and could pass freely in and out. No other creature could, except by means of the peephole.

  Well, perhaps he could find a night mare and ask her to help him. If she went out and put a dream in Latia’s head that showed exactly where he was, then the old woman could locate him. This would take time, but at least it was a chance.

  It seemed to him that there was some terrible price that a mare required for such assistance, though. What was it? He couldn’t remember. Well, he would find out in due course.

  Where could he find a night mare? Smash had said something about a pasture where they grazed, somewhere beyond a haunted house and a city of moving buildings where the brassies lived. Esk didn’t know what a brassy might be, but hoped he would recognize it if he saw it. So he would start looking for those things.

  Now he examined his environment more closely. He perceived an assortment of paths, all tangled together like a helping of spaghetti. Did one of them lead to the haunted house, or the brassies, or the night mares?

  There was one way to find out. He set foot on the clearest path and walked along it. The tangled terrain seemed to retreat slightly, reorienting to accommodate the perspective of the path he had chosen.

  But Esk was cautious. He distrusted, as a matter of principle, any path that was too easy, because that was exactly the kind that could lead to a …

  And there it was: a tangle tree. Just as he had feared.

  Esk backed off—and discovered that this was a one-way path. It was clear and open ahead, and did not exist behind; the brush had closed in, girt with glistening thorns and slime-coated leaves. In normal Xanth such foliage would be dangerous; here in the gourd it was surely worse.

  He hesitated. Certainly he did not wish to go forward into the tangler, but he couldn’t go back, and the sides looked no more inviting.

  The tangle tree had no such concern. Already it was reaching for him with its tentacles. They were stout and green and moved with a dismaying sinuousness; this was the largest and most aggressive tangle tree he had encountered, the stuff of a bad dream.

  A bad dream! Of course! The gourd was the repository of horrible dreams. The night mares surely came here to pick up the dreams of tanglers, which they then carried to the Xanthside sleepers. Dreams, like other forms of art, required effective original models.

  Maybe this would be a good place to stay, so that when a mare came, he could ask her to take his message.

  The first tentacle reached for his face. Esk ducked, but it pursued him. The tip of it caught in his hair and coiled it tight, drawing him up.

  Esk drew his hunting knife. He reached up and sliced off the tip of the tentacle, freeing his hair.

  Green goo spurted from the severed tentacle. “Ooo!” the tree groaned. Then, wrathfully, it intensified its effort. Six more tentacles swooped in.

  Esk knew he couldn’t fight all these off with his knife. So he ducked under and ran in the direction that surprised the tree: straight down the path toward it. Behind him the path dissolved and the jungle closed in—just in time to get grabbed by the tentacles that had aimed at Esk.

  Suddenly the tangler was in a struggle with the thorn vines and poison slime leaves. Horror against horror! Esk ran on, directly into the embrace of the tree, while the tree was distracted by the outside action. Tanglers, like most vegetation, were not unduly bright; once launched into a grab, they tended to fight it through without regard to the nature of what they had grabbed.

  The path led right to the huge wooden maw of the tree, which was now grimacing with concentration. Above it was a bole that opened into a giant eye. Normal tanglers did not have eyes, as far as he knew, but this was no normal plant; this was a bad dream. Esk stopped, hoping the eye would not spy him.

  There was the sound of tearing. The tentacles ripped out the thorn and slime plants by their pallid roots and hauled them into the wooden orifice. The tree took a big bite—and of course got a mouthful of thorn and slime.

  Now was as good a time as any to sneak away. Esk sheathed his knife and started out on another path, one of several that led in to the tree. But the moment his foot touched it, it vanished. These were all one way: in. How could he get out?

  He would have to use his magic. He chose another path, and as his foot came down on it, he murmured “no.” This balked the path’s natural inclination, and it remained as it was. Esk had not thought to use his talent quite this way before, and hadn’t been sure it would work in the gourd; he was now reassured.

  The path gradually diminished as it got farther from the tree, and finally petered out amidst a confusion that was similar or identical to the one he had started at. He had accomplished next to nothing, apart from ascertaining that the easiest path was not necessarily the best.

  He looked at the other paths that now offered. They couldn’t all lead to tangle trees, because tanglers were notoriously isolationist; they reserved hunting territories and resisted encroachment by others of their kind.

  He shrugged and stepped across to the best looking of the other paths. It couldn’t lead to a worse evil than the last!

  Again the surroundings reformulated to accommodate the new perspective, and it seemed that this was the only natural path for any person to take. But Esk was more cautious than before. He turned around and followed it back the way he had come. It did not vanish; it was a two-way path. Good. He turned again and proceeded in his original direction.

  Soon enough he discovered its bad dream. This was a monstrous (of course!) kraken, the nefarious seaweed monster that snared unwary swimmers. But this one was swimming in the air above the path. Its tentacles were just as long and sinuous as those of the tangle tree, and had saucer-shaped suckers.

  Even as he spied it, it spied him. It floated toward him, tentacles reaching.

  Esk drew his knife again, knowing that this was hardly a threat to a creature such as this. He ran along the path, knowing that escape would not be feasible either. He was correct on both counts; the kraken paced him without seeming effort, its tentacles extending toward him in a leisurely manner. It knew it had him; it was supremely unworried about his effort either to fight or to escape.

  He could tell it no, of course. But Esk was annoyed by these trouble-leading paths, and now that annoyance burst into anger.

  As the tentacles touched him, he sheathed his knife and tackled them bare-handed. His ogre strength manifested. He caught one tentacle and squeezed it and its sucker to a painful pulp; he caught another and yanked violently.

  The kraken reacted as had the tree, keening in momentary pain, then throwing half a dozen more tentacles into the fray. This time Esk did not avoid them; he grabbed them and tied them into knots. He knew he was taking out his private frustration on a weed that was only trying to do its job, but his ogre nature didn’t care. Nothing in its right mind messed with an ogre!

  Very soon, the kraken had had enough; the bad dream had turned on it. It jerked away and fled, leaving Esk in command of the path.

  He relaxed, feeling a bit guilty. He should have told the weed no, and passed on unmolested. He should not have taken out his frustration at being trapped in the world of the gourd on a relatively innocent creature.

  Soon he came to the end of the path. It simply stopped, and the mess of thorns and poison slime resumed. So he reversed, and followed it to its other end—which terminated similarly. This was a path that went nowhere; it was simply the kraken’s run. Again, he had gained nothing.

  Well, there were other paths. He walked back toward the center of the limited one he was on, casting his gaze about until he saw another that departed at right angles. He found a stick and used it to push the thorns and slimes to one side, and stepped carefully across.

  The perspective shifted again, centering on the new path; the one he had just left
was now almost invisible, and what he could see of it seemed twisted, while it had been fairly straight before. The floating kraken was nowhere to be seen. This was certainly a deceptive region!

  This present path wound pleasantly around and down, following a contour he had not noted before. Soon it presented a clear spring, whose water sparkled without moving.

  If Esk had not known that this was the region of bad dreams, his experiences with the other two paths would have warned him. He did not trust this water at all! Obviously the traveler was intended to drink from it. What was the trap? What could be so bad about it that it was part of the source region for sleeping horrors?

  He heard a commotion. Something was coming down the path. He stepped carefully off it, avoiding the big thorns, and made himself as inconspicuous as he could.

  It was a desperate bunny, fleeing a gross, slavering wolf. The bunny hopped down the path, its soft pink ears thrown back by the wind of its velocity, its little nose quivering. The wolf charged straight after, fangs bared.

  Esk would have stopped the wolf’s pursuit by telling it no, but the pair was moving so fast that both animals were by him before he worked up the thought. He simply had to watch as the bunny made it to the spring and leaped in, barely avoiding the wolf, who screeched to a halt at its brink. Apparently bad-dream wolves did not like water, so the bunny was safe.

  But the bunny, having plunged into the water, suffered a transformation. Its appearance didn’t really change, but its aspect did. It emitted a peculiar keening growl, then swam purposefully toward the waiting wolf, who seemed hardly to believe its luck. The crazy bunny was returning to its jaws!

  The bunny scrambled to shore and shook itself. It growled again, and its eyes blazed red. It bared its teeth. Then it leaped on the wolf, who was so surprised it didn’t move. The bunny’s teeth snapped closed on one of the wolf’s ears, and its two feet thumped hard against the wolf’s nose.

  The bunny was savagely attacking the wolf! The wolf, amazed, leaped back. The ear tore free of the bunny’s teeth, leaving a splatter of blood. The bunny leaped again, toward the wolf, teeth snapping.

  The wolf should have been able to dispatch the bunny, but its confusion was such that it turned tail and fled, the bunny pursuing.

  Esk watched, as amazed as the wolf. What was in that water?

  The bunny’s nose wiggled. The creature paused, winding Esk. It stopped, turning toward him. It growled again, and its eyes ignited. It leaped.

  “No!” Esk cried.

  The bunny was in midair so could not change course, but it did change its mind. Instead of biting Esk, it simply landed against his chest and immediately jumped off. Then it resumed its progress up the path, following the wolf.

  Esk looked at the spring. There was only one thing he could think of to account for what he had seen. He knew of love springs, that caused any creature drinking them to fall violently in love with the next creature of the opposite sex it encountered. It was understood that the most prominent crossbreeds had arisen because of the intercession of love springs: centaurs, harpies, merfolk and so on. But here in this realm of bad dreams, this must be the opposite: a hate spring. Thus the bunny had imbibed, and been filled with such hate that it had lost all fear of the wolf. It had hated Esk, too. It was no longer gentle and frightened; now it was vicious and bold. Its personality had changed radically.

  Esk concluded that he did not want to drink from that spring. He walked slowly back along the path, seeking some other route.

  He had tried three obvious, well-formed paths, and each had led him to mischief. It was time to change his approach. What about a hidden, devious path?

  He almost missed it. The path was so inconspicuous that it was virtually lost in the tangle. It might not be a path at all. But he decided to try it. He stepped carefully across.

  Once more the perspective shifted, and the path became more evident. But it was in poor repair, and was so convoluted as to seem to make loops in places. Brush overhung it, and stones intruded on it; he had to watch his step, every step. Was it worth it?

  He decided that it was. After all, if nothing had used this path recently, then it probably was not being maintained by some monster for a bad dream. Its very difficulty made it safer. He proceeded with improving confidence.

  Then, abruptly, he encountered a human skeleton. It lay athwart the path, its skull on one side, its leg bones on the other. There was no flesh remaining on it at all.

  Esk sighed. “Obviously this path is not safe either,” he said. “This poor fellow—” He touched a hipbone with the toe of his boot.

  The skeleton stirred. Esk leaped back, though he knew that he had probably just caused the bones to shift and collapse. After all, bones could not move on their own!

  The skeleton twisted around and sat up.

  Esk retreated farther. It was moving!

  The skeleton got to its feet, somewhat unsteadily.

  “All right!” Esk exclaimed. “I’ll vacate your path! I don’t need to fight another bad dream!”

  The skull turned on the neck bones, and the hollow eye sockets oriented on him. “You found me?” the toothy jawbone asked.

  “I found you, and now I’ll leave you,” Esk agreed. “Really, I’m not looking for trouble, just for a way out of here. No need to chase me.”

  “Please, keep me,” the skeleton said. Its lower jaw moved as it spoke. Esk wasn’t sure how it could speak with no flesh to guide the air, but it did.

  “Keep you?” Esk asked blankly. “What for?”

  “So I will no longer be lost.”

  “You are lost? I thought you were dead!”

  “No, I’m lost,” the skeleton said firmly. “This is the Lost Path.”

  “How can a path be lost?”

  “When no one finds it,” the skeleton said. “Please, I must find my way back to the Haunted Garden, but I cannot unlose myself. Take me by the hand and help me be found.”

  Esk’s initial horror of the skeleton was fading. After all, this was the place of bad dreams, and the skeleton was no worse than others. “But I’m lost too.”

  “No, I can see you are of mortal vintage. You must be peeping.”

  “Uh, yes,” Esk agreed. “I fell, and my eye came up against a hypnogourd. I’m trying to find a night mare so she can take a message out, so that my line of sight can be broken. But until then, I’m stuck here.”

  “Yes, you are only temporarily mislaid. But I am properly lost. Therefore I must plead for your help; if you do not unlose me, I may never recover my station.”

  “Your station?”

  “I am part of the skeletal set, adjacent to the Haunted House. Some horrendous ogre came through and—”

  “That was my father!” Esk exclaimed, remembering what Smash had said.

  The skeleton drew away from him with alarm. “Oh, no! I thought you might be a rescuer!”

  “Wait, skeleton,” Esk said quickly. “I suppose if my father was the cause of your getting lost, I should try to get you found. What’s your name?”

  “Marrow,” the skeleton said.

  “My name’s Esk.” Then, somewhat awkwardly, he extended his hand.

  The skeleton took it. “Oh, thank you, Esk! I will make it up to you! I am lost, but I do know something of the environs. If there is any way I can be of assistance …”

  “I think you have already helped me,” Esk said, disengaging from the bones of the hand as quickly as he could do so without affront. “I was looking for the haunted, uh, set, because my father mentioned it; if I can find that, maybe I can follow his route to the pasture of the night mares.”

  “That certainly might be true!” Marrow said with bony enthusiasm. “I cannot tell you the way because I am lost, but I can tell you anything else about it, and I’m sure my associates will have information.”

  “Good; let’s get going.”

  But the skeleton hung back. “You must take my hand; I can not unlose myself.”

  “Oh.” Esk t
ook the hand again, realizing that he had to follow the strange rules of this place. Actually, the bones were firm and dry, not slimy as he had feared. “Do you know the proper direction?”

  “Alas, no,” Marrow said. “When that ogre started throwing bones—no offense intended—I fled, and I lost track of location. I tried to find my way back, but somehow I had stumbled onto this path, and that was it. I have remained lost ever since. Finally I just lay down to rest my weary bones, so to speak, and then you came.”

  “But once you were on the path, it wasn’t lost any more,” Esk said. “So you should have been able to find your way out.”

  “Not so. Once I was on it, I became part of it, because I did not find it; I merely stumbled on it.”

  “I’m not sure I did much better. I tried three other paths, and all were bad, so then I looked for a different kind—”

  “And found it!” Marrow exclaimed. “So you are not lost. Even though you cannot directly escape this world, you can find your way from this path.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “No,” Marrow confessed.

  Esk shrugged. The thesis made as much sense as anything else, and it was more encouraging to believe in the chance of escape than in the lack of any chance.

  The jungle thinned, becoming more like a forest. That was a relief; Esk felt more at home in forest. Perhaps he was finding the way out. If he returned Marrow to the garden of the walking skeletons, and if one of the others did know the way to the pasture of the night mares—

  Something bounded away, startling him. It looked like a mundane deer, but it was bright red. “What was that?”

  “Only a roe,” Marrow said. “Didn’t you see the color?”

  “Yes. That’s why I couldn’t be sure what it was.”

  “Roes are red,” Marrow said. “I thought everyone knew that.”

  “I happen to be a stranger here,” Esk said somewhat shortly.

  They came to a potted plant. It was bright blue, and had knobs on the ends of its stems. As they approached, it lifted the knobs menacingly; obviously it intended to punch at anyone who came too close. “What is that?”