Castle Spellbound

QUEEN'S LADIES' QUILTING ROOM

Snowclaw.

He of the ice-white claws and fierce yellow eyes-a mountain of a beast in arctic fur as white as the driven snow. "Snowy."

"Big Guy." "The Snowster!"

These were, among his human friends, but a few of his sobriquets. Nevertheless, many a human had run at the sight of him. And no wonder, for he was a fearsome beast.

He stepped out of the magic doorway linking his home world to the castle and found himself confronted with quilts at every turn; quilts, garishly multicolored quilts, draping the walls and lending the room an air of comfortable coziness.

He hated it.

He was an intelligent beast; therefore he knew that his doorway had shifted position in the castle. But no matter. As long as he was in the castle. And he was. He sniffed. He could smell it.

He strode out of the room and down the hall. At the corner he turned right, walked the length of the passageway, turned left, and hiked past several sitting rooms, a banquet hall, a meeting room, a parlor (in Victorian decor), and a ballet studio (mostly used for aerobics).

Right. He knew where he was now.

There seemed to be a lot going on. He heard noises. In passing, he glanced down a few crossing corridors and saw much activity.

A few groups of humans in fancy dress passed going the other way. Humans were always dressing to kill.

Clothes. Who needed them? Not when you had a thick silky pelt like Snowclaw's.

More humans. Dancing! Females, mostly. He paid them no mind. He heard noise that he knew to be "music." Awful stuff. He hated it. But he had heard worse.

A few more turns brought him to a hallway lined with bedroom doors. He stopped at the third one on the right, turned the handle, and went in.

There were creatures in his room. They were sweeping the floor.

He looked them over. Little fellows. Vaguely human. Fine. It was all right. Someone came in to sweep up occasionally. Not often, but occasionally. (Only the bravest chambermaids went near the place, along with the odd pageboy who had no fear.)

He had thrown out most of the furniture. For a bed he had substituted a pile of furs, comfortably strewn about with gnawed bones.

He had eaten the nightstand one evening after waking up hungry.

The wardrobe he had not consumed, for in it he kept his trusty weapon: a huge broadaxe, its wicked blade oiled and gleaming. He opened the door and took the deadly thing out.

After swishing it about a few times, he slung it over his shoulder.

Now he felt ready to face anything. In fact, he was itching to get into a fight or two. Hadn't been in a dust-up in… oh, must be two lunations. No, three. More, possibly.

He looked at the little fellows again. Still doing their job. "Hey!" They paid no attention to him.

"Leave those bones in a pile there. Right there."

They were pushing all the dirt and stuff into little piles. Well, they could keep the dirt. But those bones came in handy as snacks.

"You're doing a good job, guys."

He strode out of the room, leaving the door open.

He encountered more humans, and these sang as well as danced. The males carried black canes and wore black suits and black cylindrical hats, and the females wore little. The males picked the females up and threw them around. More music played.

Well, good.

More dancers. More singers. There certainly was a great deal going on around here. But there usually was. Humans. You had to like 'em, they were so interesting.

Snowclaw was hungry. This also was nothing unusual; he was in a perpetual state of being ravenous, some stages more acute than others. He sniffed and snorted, smelling human food.

He hated human food.

Well, not really. He'd eat it in a pinch. And this was such a pinch.

A male human, unknown to him, stepped up. Dressed in a loud sports coat, he was fat and bald and had a sad face. Snowclaw halted.

"I'm telling you it's murder," the man said. "I never get invited to parties. Last time I got invited to a party I bought a hundred bucks' worth of Tupperware. I don't have any luck at all, none at all. I have to crash parties. Last one I crashed turned out to be an A.A. meeting. They threw me out. Said they couldn't stand drunks."

Snowclaw said, "Right." He strode on.

"I never have any luck, no luck at all." the man called after him.

Snowclaw turned left and met up with a huge animal. It was four-legged and hairless, with baggy gray skin, wide round hooves, big floppy ears, a tiny tail, and a long prehensile proboscis. A pretty female human rode high on its back.

"Right," Snowclaw said.

A procession of these creatures lumbered past, leaving in its wake a string of odoriferous punctuation, deposited along the flagstones.

Farther on, he came across more dancers, these with little metal things on their shoes that made tapping sounds on the floor. Then another bunch of dancers in different outfits, wearing slippers. The females spun on their toes, and, again, the males threw the females around.

The place was certainly busy today. Then again, that's the way things usually were in the castle.

He entered the dining hall. No one was about except for a lone human, drinking coffee at the end of the long table. As was the custom, the table was set with all sorts of food.

"Where is everybody?" Snowclaw asked the man, who wore a white turban.

"They are all out trying to find the source of the disturbance."

"Yeah? Okay. Thanks."

Snowclaw searched the table, ignoring tureens of ox-tail soup and plates of truffles and chafing dishes of veal Prince Orloff, until he found what he wanted. Beeswax candles. He liked them better than the paraffin kind, which would do only in the tightest of pinches. He snapped one off between his ferocious gleaming choppers.

He chewed. Not bad. But where was the stuff to dip it in? He liked to eat candles dipped in Thousand Island dressing.

He searched the table again, to no avail. No Thousand Island dressing.

"Now, that's odd," Snowclaw said.