The Woods Out Back

Gary floated in the dim grayness, searching for some bearing, for some reference point in this unremarkable universe. He saw a seam before him, far in the distance, a line, perhaps, in the fabric of existence.



Gary willed himself towards that seam, understood then that this was not some physical place he had been dropped into, but an extra dimension, a place of the mind. He reached for the seam with prying fingers, tried to push himself through it, figuring that anything beyond it could only be an improvement.



One finger slipped through. Suddenly Gary was not so sure of his actions. What if he was at the gates of Hell? Or what if his tearing of this seam unraveled the fabric of the physical universe. But he decided at last that he couldn't just hover in the grayness and wait. Determinedly he drove his hand through the barrier, and then his other hand, and with all his strength began pulling the gray walls apart.



His blood pounded in his head - he could feel that distinctly, the pressure growing, though he was sure that his consciousness was somehow detached from this physical form. Gary steeled his mind and pulled. He feared he wouldn't be strong enough, and indeed, the sides of the curtain, for that is what he now believed it to be, barely moved apart. Through the crack came a blinding light, stinging Gary's eyes and all his sensibilities.



He thought he would surely collapse. He thought all the world would be destroyed if he persisted. He thought that his tear might loose a thousand other demons upon the land of Faerie. He thought...



But while he thought, Gary continued to pull, stubbornly held on to his course, and gradually the curtains did begin to move apart.



The light overwhelmed him.



And then he was back in Ceridwen's room, holding a torn page from the magical book. Kelsey and Geno stood side by side in the center of the room beside the burned and broken corpses of several goblins and the troll; the lone living goblin cowered in the corner. The demon was gone, but above the goblin's head, another egg (or was it the same egg?) teetered on the edge of a cubby much too shallow to hold it.



"Egg!" was all that desperate Gary managed to cry out, pointing to the cubby. Kelsey seemed to understand. The elf spun around just in time to see the egg drop.



It landed on the goblin's stooped shoulder. It did not break, though, but started to roll. The stupid creature reflexively caught it. Kelsey rushed in; the goblin squealed and threw the egg at him.



Kelsey's sword and shield went flying to the sides. The elf fell to his knees, juggling the precious egg, his hands moving in a blur to soften the impact until he finally managed to get control of it. Quickly Kelsey inspected the delicate shell, then breathed a sigh of relief to see that it had no visible cracks.



The companions' troubles were not ended, though. The troll body rose up suddenly and flew back through the air to the spot where the demon had thrown it. It shook a few times and dropped to land on its feet, very much alive. One of Geno's hammers, lying on the floor, came spinning back at the dwarf, who kept the presence of mind to catch it. Fire crackled and shot out of the bodies of the dead goblins, and some of them began to stir once more.



"What is happening?" Gary cried, but he had a better guess at the answer than either of his stunned companions. He had torn the fabric of time, at least as far as Ceridwen's magical journal was concerned. He felt himself falling away again, into the grayness, into the void.



He reached over and closed the book.



The dead goblins fell dead again, the troll crashed down in a heavy, broken lump, and the fires died away. And Kelsey, still on his knees, held the fragile egg.



"What have you done?" Geno asked Gary breathlessly.



Gary had no answer, had never seen the tough dwarf so unnerved.



"Pleases! Pleases!" the lone living goblin begged, groveling on the floor before Kelsey. Geno, frustrated and confused, started for it, hammer raised, but Gary stopped him.



"The goblin can show us the way out," he blurted.



"But we have not found the spear," replied Kelsey.



Gary fell within himself, consciously tried to reach his thought out to the spear. He knew that it was in here, that it had been the one who had warned him when Kelsey had reached for the phony case.



"Up high, above the room,"came an answer. Gary looked up to the unremarkable ceiling, thinking there must be a concealed trapdoor somewhere. Then his gaze settled on the high canopy of Ceridwen's silk-covered bed.



"The canopy," he explained. "The spear is on top of the canopy."



One of the bottom bedposts was already down, having taken a hit during the fight. Geno made short work of the other bottom post, flinging a hammer through it. The canopy fell diagonally to the floor and the precious spear case rolled off it, coming to a stop just a few feet from Kelsey.



The elf reached for it, but this time, Gary's warning came quickly enough to stop him.



"No!" Gary shrieked. He grabbed a blue-glowing torch from a sconce beside him and rushed over, and to Kelsey's horror, he put the flames to the case. The leather erupted in a sizzling display, sickly green fumes rushing up from the white-hot fires.



"What are you doing?" Kelsey demanded, and he pushed Gary aside. The elf hopped about the blaze, blowing at it, kicking at it, frantically trying to save the legendary spear - though, if Kelsey had not been so badly shaken, if he had taken the moment to calm himself and consider things, he would have realized that no simple torch fire could have possibly harmed the legendary spear.



The fire was gone an instant later, the leather case completely consumed. The spear remained, though, unscathed, and Kelsey thought himself foolish for his fears.



"The case was poisoned," Gary explained. "Contact poison. If you had touched it..." Gary let the thought hang in the air as he tentatively moved to pick up the spear. He found it surprisingly cool to his touch.



"Hello again," he said, and then, though he didn't really know why, he added, "I have missed you."



"My greetings as well, young warrior,"came the spear's telepathic reply. Gary considered that title and smiled, obviously pleased.



"What are you planning to do with the egg?" Geno asked Kelsey. "I do not believe that we would take it along."



Kelsey paled at that suggestion.



"Give it to me," Gary said, nearly laughing aloud at his plan. Kelsey hesitated for a moment, but then, apparently realizing that Gary had earned his trust, handed it over.



Gary moved to Ceridwen's desk again and took one of the side drawers right out of its perch. With all caution, he placed the egg deep inside the hole, then replaced the drawer, easing it halfway in, but taking care not to crush the fragile egg.



"Ceridwen will have a bit of a surprise waiting for her when she closes that drawer," Gary snickered, letting them in on the joke.



"Again you have proven more valuable than I would have believed," Kelsey remarked, his tone brightened, almost light-hearted. He looked to the book on Ceridwen's desk. "Against the demon, with the spear, and in this matter. Not many, I would guess, could look into one of Ceridwen's tomes and find the strength..."



"My thanks," Gary interrupted, reverently sliding the spear through a loop on the side of his belt. "But can you tell me later? Right now, I just want to get the hell out of here."



"That is a curious way to put it," Geno piped in, though the dwarf wholeheartedly agreed. "Do you know the way out?" he barked at the goblin.



The goblin thought it over for a moment, then answered, "No know."



"Kill him," Geno said evenly to Kelsey, and not a person in the room had any doubts about the dwarf's sincerity.



"Knows the way out?" the goblin cried, as though it had misunderstood the original question. "Yesses, oh yesses. Jesper shows you out, oh yesses!"



"I guess you have to know how to talk to them," Gary remarked, and Geno nodded and grinned, his missing tooth again reminding Gary of his mischievous nephew. Their smiles abruptly disappeared, though, and Geno whirled towards the bed and whipped a hammer. Following the hammer's flight, Gary and Kelsey both saw a flash of black dart back under the bed.



"A cat," Gary said, hearing the creature's ensuing cry.



"Witch's familiar!" Kelsey corrected, and he dove down flat to his belly and poked his sword under the bed. But then the cat's meow became a lion's roar and a huge paw shot out, hooking Kelsey under the shoulder blade. A split second later, the elf disappeared under the bed, only his feet sticking out.



Geno roared and charged right into the bed, his cord-like muscles heaving wildly. The bed came up, and so did the lion, bowling over Geno and bearing down on Gary.



The sentient spear cried a hundred different telepathic commands in that one terrible instant, but Gary heard none of them. He fell backwards - he had nowhere else to go - bringing his dwarven spear up defensively as he toppled. Unable to break its momentum, the lion came on, catching the spear in the chest. The dwarf-forged shaft bowed but did not break as the lion's full five-hundred-pound weight fell over Gary. The beast thrashed and roared as it impaled itself.



Unlike the goblin Gary had impaled many days before, though, this enemy kept thrashing, and with its huge claws getting closer and closer to Gary as it slid down the spear pole, the young man thought he was surely doomed. One paw raked at his chest, claws squealing against the metallic armor.



Geno roared again and ran headfirst into the flank of the impaled cat, knocking it over to the side. The lion continued to thrash, but no one was in its range then, the dwarf having gone right over and continued his rolling and Gary quick to scramble the other way.



Kelsey helped Gary to his feet. The elf didn't seem too badly hurt, though one of his sleeves had been torn off and his bare arm showed several fairly deep scratches.



"The spear will finish it," Kelsey said uneasily, obviously shaken from the second or two he had spent under the bed with the lion.



"How many pets does Ceridwen keep?" Gary asked.



"Too many," came Geno's reply.



A moment later, the cat lay still. A gray mist surrounded it and it seemed to melt away. To the friends' surprise, the black house cat sprang out of the mist and zipped into the cubby formed by the overturned bed. Geno started for it, then changed his mind.



"I am thinking that we should be leaving," the dwarf offered, and he found no arguments, not even from the still-cowering goblin.



They had barely gone through the adjacent meeting room, pointedly closing the door behind them, when there came another lion's roar from Ceridwen's chambers.



"Stubborn cat," the dwarf remarked dryly.