Feline Savior

anyway. I mean whaddya expect it ta be, a secret command and control room, or a sex dungeon with captives?"

  "I don't know, but why keep it locked to us?"

  "Why not? She's entitled to her privacy, and in this house, with you around, a locked room's probably the only way she can get it."

  "Oh, hardy-har, very funny. Still, you may have a point. I mean, Medb respects our privacy."

  "Damn right, Missy, so come on, I can't keep my motor revving forever, ya know."

  Sunny giggled. Eile was still amazed at how the thought of sex turned her into a little girl, but then it seemed like lots of things could do that.

  "Why do you spend so much time down here anyways?"

  "I don't know; I guess I just have the feeling I could get in if I just knew the right way."

  "Have you tried 'open sesame'?"

  "It's not voice activated. It reads palms, see?" And she placed her hand over the glass-covered scanner.

  "I was only kidding, ya ditz."

  Sunny giggled again, but then the reader lit up as a laser flashed over her palm.

  "Aaaah!" She leapt back. A moment later, the red light above the door turned green, there was an audible click, and the door unlatched and swung open into the darkened room.

  "What did you do!?"

  "Nothing!" she squealed in a panicky tone, but then she brightened. "But it worked!" And she started into the room.

  "Gaaah!" Eile ran up and caught Sunny by the arm. "What are you doin'?!"

  Sunny gave her a perplexed look. "Going in to take a look around. Duh!"

  "Are you nuts? Medb doesn't want us going in there."

  "But she must, otherwise she wouldn't have programmed the reader to recognize us."

  For a moment, Eile didn't know how to answer that. It made sense, in a way. Then she shook her head. "It's gotta be a glitch of some kind. Come on, we'll call Medb and she'll get it fixed."

  "But it can't hurt just to take a look around. Please? If we don't touch anything, what could go wrong?"

  Plenty! Eile thought, but Sunny was right. What difference would a quick look see make? Besides, her curiosity was stronger than she let on.

  "Aw, cripes. Alright, we'll take a look, but just for a few moments. Okay?"

  Sunny smiled and crinkled her eyes. "Okay, partner!"

  She stepped through first, and Eile followed. The light coming through the door wasn't strong enough to illuminate very far, but either the room was no bigger than a walk-in closet, or they were in a short corridor. Either way, they couldn't see anything.

  "There's gotta be a wall switch around her somewhere," Eile muttered as she felt along the wall.

  "I think I got it!"

  Eile heard her flip a switch, and an overhead panel of lights came one.

  The door also closed with a slam, and as they spun around in surprise, a gate closed across an opposite opening.

  "Geezus, we're trapped!" Eile said.

  "Identify yourselves," a feminine voice said over a loud speaker, but it wasn't Medb's.

  "What the--?" But Eile was interrupted by a minigun popping out of the floor and pointing it's six barrels at them.

  "Identify yourselves, please," the voice insisted.

  "Geezus! I'm Eile and this is Sunny!"

  The barrels started to spin.

  "Full names, quickly!"

  "Goddammit, Eile Chica and Sonne Hiver!"

  At first nothing seemed to change and Eile was certain they were both dead, but the barrels stopped spinning and the gun dropped back into the floor.

  "Stand by for verification."

  A fan-shaped, blue-white laser passed over their bodies. Eile squinted and held up a hand to shield her eyes, but then it cut off.

  "Identities confirmed: Chica, Eile Marelys; Hiver, Sonne Aourgen. Access granted." The gate in front of them opened and lights came on in what turned out to be a back room.

  Eile relaxed; she realized she had been holding her breath, and she let it out.

  Sunny turned to her and flashed a lopsided smile. "Marelys?"

  "Yer one ta talk; what's the deal with Aourgen?"

  "That was my Dad's Mom's name."

  She felt embarrassed. "Oh. Sorry, I wasn't tryin' ta be a jerk. Marelys was my father's mother's name, too."

  Sunny smiled. "It's okay, partner, I wasn't upset."

  "Welcome, Team Girl!" the voice broke in. "Please, come in, I've been expecting you."

  From "The Golden Mushroom"

  By that time they had reached the spot indicated on the map. It was a boggy hollow, in area a little larger than a baseball field. Pools of debris and silt-filled water lay interspersed by mounds and ridges of soggy earth. The trees were small and thinner there, and more widely scattered, but the only other vegetation were thick mats of a ground-hugging herb.

  Shadow sat on a rock waiting for them as she gazed into the hollow. The long, lean, smoky-gray cat looked up at them with her mint-green eyes as they came abreast of her. "This may be a little more difficult."

  To Eile she sounded smugly satisfied. "What do you think?" she asked Sunny.

  "It doesn't look too bad." But there was a hint of uncertainty in her tone. Eile couldn't blame her. While it wasn't going to be as easy as the other items, it looked simple enough: avoid the pools, stay on the land, and hope it was solid enough to support them. But it would make searching for the gilded toadstool all the more difficult.

  "If only we knew where to look," Sunny added in frustration.

  As if her words were a prayer, a shaft of sunlight dropped out of a break in the clouds and fell on the central mound. At its center an object winked and twinkled with a distinctive metallic sheen.

  Though stunned, Eile felt suspicious too. "Alright, now that was just too convenient."

  "Yeah, but what choice do we have?"

  Sunny sounded nervous, but she was right. "None." She placed the pack on the ground. "You go first. Use yer bow ta test the ground ahead, make sure it's firm." She unsheathed her sword and held it at the ready. "I'll watch our backs. Okay?"

  "Okay, partner!" She grinned, excitement shining in her eyes. "Team Girl laughs in the face of death as we brave the dangers of the bog of doom! Ha-ha-ha!"

  Eile grimaced and pressed the fingers of her left hand into her forehead. "Just...be careful where you step, will ya? Shadow, you stay here."

  "I'll be sure to tell Mayv where to scatter the flowers."

  She gave the cat a dirty look. "Thanks a bunch."

  "Don't mention it."

  Sunny made her way to the closest ridge and started out over it, probing the earth with her bow before she took each step. Eile made sure she stepped into Sunny's footprints. At first the ground seemed quite firm, but after a couple of yards Sunny started to sink. For a moment her heart seized up as she expected Sunny to be sucked down out of sight, but she only sank to her ankles. The ground was getting softer, but the vegetation seemed able to hold it together.

  "Ick!" Sunny squealed as she extracted her foot.

  "Keep moving!" She sank as well, but fortunately no deeper despite her armor. Apparently the herb mat was strong enough to bear their weight without breaking.

  Sunny took another step. "I hope I tied the laces tight enough. I don't want to be stuck out here without boots."

  After nearly twelve Dream-months, Eile had gotten pretty good at estimating the passage of time without a watch. It was sort of like dead reckoning. By her calculation, it took them a total of forty-five minutes to reach the central mound. It was a nerve-wracking trip; with each step, she expected them to stumble into quicksand or fall through an unsuspected dirt bridge and sink into a deep bog hole. But they made it safely, and she figured the journey back would be faster.

  Sunny lifted her skirt and examined her feet. They were covered in muck half-way up her shins. "Ugh. I'm gonna need to get new shoes after this." She then dropped the hem and looked around, while Eile looked with her.

  The mound was no different from any of the others
, except larger. It was covered by an herb mat, but in its center stood the Golden Mushroom. It resembled its name exactly: a standard toadstool stalk and cap, but metallic gold in color. In fact, it looked like it was made of real gold.

  "Here." Sunny held out her bow, and she took it.

  "We'll take the same route back." She watched Sunny put on her gloves and go up to the fungus.

  "Right." She spoke in an absentminded fashion as she knelt down.

  In the same moment, Eile felt something strange in the woods around them. The hairs on the nape of neck stood up as her skin crawled and turned to goose flesh. Raising her sword, she turned around in all directions, trying to identify it, but she saw nothing. But she heard it: muffled thunderclaps like the stamping of huge feet. Then she felt the ground tremble with the concussion shock. Something was coming, something huge, but she couldn't pinpoint from where.

  She looked back at Sunny. She had heard and felt it too, and she stood slowly as she looked around.

  "Sunny!" She tossed her the bow. She caught it and nocked an arrow, ready for whatever came.

  The sounds grew steadily louder as the tremors intensified. Then Eile saw them: gigantic anthropoid figures striding around the perimeter of the hollow, just beyond the tree line. She tried to count them, but lost track as they crossed and recrossed each other's paths. They moved faster than she expected from their size. She looked for Shadow, but the cat was gone.

  Before she could try to find her, one of the figures emerged into the hollow. It came at her with startling speed as it covered great distances with each enormous stride.

  "Sweet Jesus!" She saw it clearly for the first time: it looked like a tree!

  Sunny screamed. Eile whipped around in time to see a second tree-creature stalking off with her in one hand. She struggled, kicked, and pounded on the fingers, but it had her in an iron grip.

  "Eile!! Help me!!!" The monster merged with the woods and vanished from sight.

  "Sunnyyy!!!" She started off after her. The creature coming up behind her passed her in two massive strides, then turned and swung an arm at her. It caught her before she could dodge, picked her up, and threw her backwards in a high, long arch. She landed in one of the pools with a shocking splash. Terrified, she flailed about for some moments, desperately trying to stay afloat, when she realized she was already resting on the bottom. She sat up and wiped detritus away from her face as she sputtered to expel the foul tasting water from her mouth.

  She looked around and found that the tree-monsters were gone.

  "Shit!" She groped for her sword, and when she found it she stood up and ran back to the central mound, heedless to any danger. She gained the top and glanced around, looking for the spot where the one creature had taken Sunny into the woods, but she saw nothing to indicate where they had gone.

  "Arrrgh, dammit, dammit, dammit!" she raged, as much from misery as wrath.

  "Eile!"

  She turned and saw Shadow standing on a farther mound.

  "I know where they took Sunny. Follow me!"

  She didn't argue. She charged off the mound and across a ridge, and followed the cat as it crossed the rest of the hollow and dashed into the woods. Eile ran as fast as she could push herself, relying on instinct to avoid roots and branches, and luck to avoid what her instincts couldn't detect. The scenery around her passed in a blur as her sight focused into tunnel vision and she became oblivious to everything except the chase and her desperate desire to find Sunny.

  God, whoever or whatever you are in this place, please let her be safe. I can't live without her; I can't stand to lose her. Please, I beg of you, let me find her alive.

  From "Oak Do Hate"

  She ran back out to the cart and rode off; the source of the glow seemed to be just ahead. As she got closer her anxiety mounted, and in her imagination she saw all sorts of horrendous possibilities, each worse than the one before. What she finally did see, however, mystified her as she slowed the cart to a halt.

  In the space of the