“I read something somewhere about the attentions of a virgin girl being irresistible to a unicorn.”
“An ancient and more-or-less accurate notion, which Hathcar was counting on to draw me out. They would have succeeded with their plan except for ignorance of one fact.”
“Wot fact, mate?” Mudge asked.
Drom turned to look back at the otter. “I’m gay.” He increased his pace.
“Uh, ‘ere now, mate, maybe we’d all be better off walkin’ after all.”
“Nonsense. We are still not far enough away from Hathcar’s troop to chance slowing down.”
“That’s debatable. Besides, there’s no need for you to keep on carryin’ us about like this. Don’t want to make you uncomfortable or nothin’.”
“It sounds to me as though you are the one who is feeling uneasy, otter.”
“Wot, me? Not me, guv’nor. It’s just that I—”
“What’s wrong with you, Mudge?” Jon-Tom asked him. “I thought you’d be glad of the chance to rest your precious feet.”
“Relax, otter,” the stallion said. “You are not my type. Now if you happened to be a Percheron, or a Clydesdale, or maybe a shire. . .” He let the images trail off.
“If you have to worry about something, think about Hathcar,” Jon-Tom instructed the otter.
Mudge did so, though he still kept a wary eye on their mount. Later, his confusion was broken by the sound of distant thunder. Or perhaps it was only a bellow of outrage.
Silky’s parents kept the money already paid to them by Hathcar, and as Jon-Tom surmised, the cuscus did not try to take it back by force from the heavily defended town.
There seemed no way for him to vent his rage and frustration until it occurred to him that since the girl had truly done her best, if anything she actually deserved a bonus.
So it was that while Silky did not get her much-desired candy, she was the only girl in the village who could look forward to the coming winter confidently, clad as she was in her brand-new wolfskin coat.
The travelers stopped in late afternoon. The roast that Mudge had risked his life to salvage was almost gone, but Roseroar soon brought in enough fresh food for all. Drom nibbled contentedly at a nearby field of petal pedals. Each blue-and-pink flower produced a different musical note when it was munched.
Mudge ate close to Jon-Tom. “Don’t it bother you, mate?”
“Don’t. . . doesn’t what bother me?”
The otter nodded toward the unicorn. “ ‘Im.”
Jon-Tom bit into his steak. The meat was succulent and rich with flavor. “He saved us once and might save us again. As for his personal sexual preferences, I could care less. He’d be downright inconspicuous on Hollywood Boulevard.”
“Well, maybe you’re right. Now, me, I knew it from the first. The way ‘e minced out of the woods toward us.”
Drom overheard, lifted his muzzle, and said with dignity, “I do not mince, otter. I prance.” He looked at Jon-Tom. “You really believe your former acquaintances will beat you to Crancularn and to the medicine you have come for?”
“I hope not, but I fear it. They stole our only map.”
“That is a small loss. Do not regret it.” The unicorn crunched a clump of purple ortnods with petals the shade . of enameled amethyst. The flowers hummed as they were consumed. “I can guide you there.”
“We were told it moves around.”
“Only in one’s imagination. There are those who stumble through it without seeing it, or circle ‘round it as if blind. So they say it has moved. It does not move, but to find it you must wish to. I know. I was told by those who could know. I will lead you to Crancularn.”
“That’s bleedin’ wonderful,” Mudge confessed aloud.
He was mad at himself. There was no reason for him to be nervous or wary in the unicorn’s presence. Drom was a likable chap, wasn’t he, and Mudge didn’t look in the least like a shire horse, did he? And hadn’t he always been told never to look a gift unicorn in the mouth? He was upset with himself.
Hadn’t the four-legs carried himself and Jon-Tom all this way from Hathcar’s territory without complaining? Why, with him galloping along and the rest of them taking turns riding him, they might yet overtake that prick Jalwar and his whore of a helpmate Folly.
They made rapid progress westward, but still there was no sign of their former friends.
When they finally found themselves on the outskirts of Crancularn itself, Jon-Tom found it hard to believe. He’d half come to think of the town as existing only in Clothahump’s imagination. Yet there it was.
Yes, there it was, and after too many close calls with death, after crossing the Muddletup Moors and the Glittergeist Sea and innumerable hills and vales, he was more than a little discouraged by the sight of it.
The setting was impressive enough: a heavily forested slope that climbed the flank of a slowly smoking volcano. The town itself, however, was about as awe-inspiring as dirty, homey Lynchbany. Tumble-down shacks and ramshackle two-and three-story buildings of wood and mud crowded close to one another as if fearful of encountering the sunlight. A dirty fog clung to the streets and the angular, slate-roofed structures. As they headed toward the town, a familiar odor made his nostrils contract: the thick musk of the unwashed of many species mixed with the stink of an open sewer system. His initial excitement was rapidly fading.
Massive oaks and sycamores grew within the town itself, providing more shade where none was required and sometimes even shouldering buildings aside. Jon-Tom was about to ask Drom if perhaps they might have come to the wrong place when the unicorn reared back on its hind hooves and nearly dumped him and Mudge to the ground.
Roseroar snarled as she assumed a defensive posture.
Coming straight at them, belching smoke and bellowing raggedly, was a three-footed demon. A rabbit rode the demon’s back. This individual wore a wide-brimmed felt hat; a long-sleeved shirt of muslin, open halfway; and a short mauve skirt similar to the kilts favored by the intelligent arboreals of this world. His enormous feet were unshod.
The demon slowed as it approached. Jon-Tom drew in a deep breath as it stopped in front of him and hastened to reassure his companions. “It’s all right. It can’t harm you.”
“How do yo know, Jon-Tom?” Roseroar kept her hands on her sword hilts.
“Because I know what it is. It’s a Honda ATC Offroad Three-wheeler.” He admired the red-painted demon. “Automatic too. I didn’t know Honda made an ATC with automatic.”
“Funny name for a demon,” Mudge was muttering.
“Hiya,” said the rabbit cheerfully, revving the engine.
“Can I help you folks?”
“You sure can.” Jon-Tom pointed at the ATC. “Where’d you get that?”
The rider raced the motor and Drom shied away. “From the Shop of the Aether and Neither. Where else?”
Jon-Tom felt a burst of excitement. Maybe Clothahump was right. The inexplicable presence of the ATC in this world was proof enough that powerful magic was at work here.
“That’s where we want to go.”
“Figures,” said the rabbit. “Nice of you to drop in. We don’t get a lot of visitors here in Crancularn. For some reason, travelers avoid us.”
“Might be your wonderful reputation,” Mudge told him.
The rabbit eyed them appraisingly. “Strangers. Don’t know if Snooth will serve you. She don’t get much business from outsiders.” He shrugged. “Ain’t none of my business, your business.”
“Who’s Snooth?” Jon-Tom asked him.
“The proprietress. Of the Shop of the Aether and Neither.” He looked back over his shoulder, pointed. “Go through town and stay on the north trail that winds around the base of the mountain. Snooth’s place is around the side a ways.” He turned back to inspect them a last time.
“You’re a weird-looking bunch. I don’t know what you’ve come to buy, but you’ll need all the luck you can muster to pry anything out of Snooth’s stock. And n
o, you can’t have one of my feet to help you.” He put the all-terrain vehicle in gear and roared off into the woods, the ATC popping and growling.
“I still say it were a demon,” Mudge muttered.
“No demon, just a machine. From my world.”
“Ah’d dislike being a resident o’ yoah world, then, Jon-Tom.” Roseroar made a face. “Such noise. And that smell!”
It had to have been conjured, Jon-Tom knew. Conjured by a magic even more powerful than Clothahump’s. His heart raced. If this Snooth could bring something as solid as the ATC into this world, something lifted from a dealership in Kyoto or L.A. or Toronto, then perhaps she could also send things back to such places.
Things like himself.
He didn’t dare dwell on that possibility as they made their way through town. For the most part, the busy, bored citizenry ignored them. Many of them were using or playing with otherworldly devices. Jon-Tom began to have second thoughts about his chances of being sent home.
Maybe this Snooth was no sorceress but just some local shopkeeper who happened to have stumbled onto some kind of one-way transdimensional gate or something.
Mudge pointed out a traveling minstrel. The diminutive musical mouse was plinking out a very respectable polka not on a duar or handlebar lyre or bark flute but on a Casiotone electronic keyboard. Jon-Tom wondered what the mouse was using for batteries.
Not all the devices in use were recognizably from his own world. The sign over a fishmonger’s stall was a rotating globe of red and white lambent light that spelled out the shop’s name and alternated it with that of the owner. There appeared to be nothing supporting the globe.
As they stared, the globe twisted into the shape of a fish, then into the outlines of females of various species in provocative poses. Sex sells, Jon-Tom reminded himself.
Even fish. He walked over to stand directly underneath the globe. There was no source of support or power, much less a visible explanation for its photonic malleability. One thing he was sure of: it hadn’t come from his own world.
Neither had the device they saw an old mandrill using to cut wood. It had a handle similar to that of a normal metal saw, but instead of a length of serrated steel the handle was attached to a shiny bar no more than a quarter-inch in diameter. The baboon would hitch up his gloves, choose a piece of wood, put both hands on the handle and touch the thin bar to the log. It would cut through like butter.
There were other worlds, then, and this Snooth apparently had access to goods from many of them. As they made their way through the town, he thought back to his companion’s reaction to the ATC. To someone unfamiliar with internal combustion devices on a world where magic held sway, it certainly must have looked and sounded like a demon. Crancularn was full of such alien machines. No wonder it had acquired an unwholesome reputation.
But the townsfolk themselves were open and friendly enough. In that they were no different from the inhabitants of the other cities and villages Jon-Tom had visited. As for their blase” acceptance of otherworldly devices, there was nothing very extraordinary about that. People, no matter their shape or size or species, were infinitely adaptable.
Only a hundred years ago in his own world, a hand-held television or calculator watch would have seemed like magic even to sophisticated citizens, who nonetheless would have made use of them enthusiastically.
For that matter, how many of his contemporaries actually understood what made a computer tick or instant replay possible? People had a way of just accepting the workings of everyday machinery they didn’t understand, whether it was powered by alkaline batteries or arcane spells.
Then they were leaving the town again, fog drifting lazily around them. They had attracted no more than an occasional cursory glance from the villagers. Huge trees hugged the fertile lower slopes of the volcano, which simmered quietly and unthreateningly above them.
Inquiries in town had produced no mention of visitors resembling Jalwar or Folly. Either the two had lost their way or else with Drom’s aid they had already passed the renegade pair in the woods. Jon-Tom experienced a pang of regret. He still wasn’t completely convinced of Folly’s complicity in the theft of the map.
No time for that now. The rabbit on the ATC implied they might have trouble purchasing what they wanted from this Snooth. Jon-Tom struggled to compose a suitably effective speech. All they needed was a little bit of medicine.
Nothing so complex as a malleable globe or toothless saw.
His hand went to the tiny vial dangling from the chain around his neck. Inside was the formula for the desperately needed medicine. He hadn’t brought it this far to be turned away empty-handed.
There was no sign, no posted proclamations to advertise the shop’s presence. They turned around a cluster of oaks, and there it was, a simple wooden building, one story high. It was built up against the rocks. A single wooden door was set square in the center of the storefront, which was shaded by a broad, covered porch.
A couple of high-backed rocking chairs sat on the porch, unoccupied. Wooden shingles in need of repair covered the sloping roof that likewise ran up into the rocks. Jon-Tom estimated the entire building enclosed no more than a thousand square feet of space. Hardly large enough for store and home combined.
As they drew close, a figure emerged from inside and settled into the farther rocking chair. The chair creaked as it rocked. The tall kangaroo wore a red satin vest which blended with her own natural rust color and, below, a kilt similar in style to the rabbit’s. There were pockets and a particularly wide one directly in front to permit the owner access to her pouch. Jon-Tom stared at the lower belly but was unable to tell if the female was carrying a joey, though once he thought he saw something move. But he couldn’t be sure, and since he was ignorant of macropodian etiquette, he thought it best not to inquire.
She also wore thick hexagonal granny glasses and a heavy necklace of turquoise, black onyx, and malachite. A matching bracelet decorated her right wrist, and she puffed slowly on a corncob pipe which was switched periodically from one side of her mouth to the other.
He halted at the bottom of the porch steps, “Are you the one they call Snooth?”
“I expect I am,” the kangaroo replied, “since I’m the only one around here by that name.” She took her pipe from her lips and regarded them thoughtfully. “You folks aren’t from around here. What can I do for you?”
“We’ve undertaken one hell of a shopping trip,” Jon-Tom told her.
She sighed. “I was afraid of that. Just when I got myself all nice and comfortable. Well, that’s par for the course.”
Jon-Tom’s eyes grew wide. “That’s an expression of my world.”
“Is it? I traffic with so many I sometimes get confused. Sure as the gleebs are on the fondike.”
Jon-Tom decided to tread as lightly as possible, bearing the rabbit’s admonition in mind. “We don’t want to disturb you. We could come back tomorrow.” He tried to see past her, into the store. “You haven’t by any chance had a couple of other out-of-town customers in recently, have you? An old ferret, maybe accompanied by a human female?” He held his breath.
The kangaroo scratched under her chin with her free hand. “Nope. No one of that description. In fact, I haven’t had any local out-of-town customers stop by in some time.”
Forbearing to inquire into the nature of a local out-of-towner, which seemed to Jon-Tom to be a contradiction in terms, he permitted himself a moment of silent exultation.
They’d done it! With Drom’s help they’d succeeded in beating Jalwar to Crancularn. Now he could relax. The object of their long, arduous journey was almost in his grasp.
He turned to leave. “We don’t want to upset your siesta. We’ll come back tomorrow.”
A small brown shape pushed past him. Mudge took up an aggressive stance on the lowest step. “Now let’s ‘old on a minim ‘ere, guv’nor.” The otter fixed the proprietress with a jaundiced eye. “This ‘ere dump is the place I’ve been ‘earin??
? about for weeks? This cobbled-together wreck is the marvelous, the wondrous, the magnificent Shop o’ the Aether and Neither? And you’re the owner?”
The kangaroo nodded.
“Well,” announced Mudge in disgust, “it sure as ‘ell don’t look like much to me.”
“Mudge!” Jon-Tom angrily grabbed the otter by his shoulder.
The kangaroo, however, did not appear upset. “Appearances can be deceiving, my fuzzy little cousin.” She turned to face Jon-Tom as she stood on enormous, powerful feet. She was as tall as he was. The rickety porch boards squeaked under her weight.
“I can tell just by looking at you that you’ve come a long ways to do your shopping. Except for the Crancularnians, most of my customers travel far to buy from me, some by means most devious. Some I sell to, others I do not.” She turned and pointed toward a thin scrawl on a worn piece of wood that was nailed over the doorway. The sign said:
WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYTHING
“It’s not for ourselves that we come seeking your help,” Jon-Tom told her. “We’re here at the behest of a great wizard who lives in the forest of the Bellwoods, far across the Glittergeist Sea. His name’s Clothahump.”
“Clothahump.” Eyes squinted in reflection behind the granny glasses. She put out a hand, palm facing downward, and positioned it some four feet above the porch.
“Turtle, old gentleman, about yea high?”
Jon-Tom nodded vigorously. “That’s him. You’ve met him?”
“Nope. But I know of him by reputation. As wizard’s go, he’s up near the top.” This revelation impressed even the skeptical Mudge, who’d always thought of Ciothahump as no better than a talented fakir verging on senility who just happened to get lucky once in a while. “What’s wrong with him?”
Jon-Tom fumbled with the vial around his neck, removed the small piece of paper from within. “He says he’s dying, and he’s in terrible pain. He says this can cure him.”
Snooth took the fragment, adjusted her glasses, and read.
Her lips moved as she digested the paper’s information. “Yes, yes. . .I believe I have this in stock.” She glanced back at Jon-Tom. “Your devotion to your mentor does you credit.”