The Time Of The Transferance

“Then how can they know that?” Corliss shrugged expressively, pursing his thick lips. “Who knows how tourists come up with the things they do? Myself, I am not one for the jungle. I much prefer the coast.”

“Lovely,” growled the otter. “More creepers an’ cannibals.”

“No cannibals, I’d say.” Marley’s goatee twitched as he shook his head. “Not between here and the Mews, I shouldn’t think.”

“Other things, though,” said Corliss. “What other things?” Jon-Tom inquired. “Don’t know. Tourist talk. Traveler tales. Me, I stick to me coast.”

“All right then.” Jon-Tom’s exasperation was beginning to show. “If we can’t find anyone to guide us to this place, can you tell us if there’s at least someone who can point us in the right direction?”

The physicians exchanged a look. “Try Trancus the outfitter,” Marley suggested. “He’s the one who would know.”

“He’s also,” Corliss added sagely, “the only one I would trust.”

XIII

Trancus the outfitter was a wombat, overweight as were most of his kind. His features seemed to sit loosely in pockets and folds of firm flesh covered by dense black fur. At first he tried to discourage them but when they continued to insist, he agreed to provide them with directions.

“There’s a trail that runs straight to the Mews. Sometimes, not often, folks come from there to here to buy what they can’t make or grow. I hear it is the most wonderful sort of place, full of talented, kind people. They like to keep to themselves. Seem to find their way to Chejiji lots easier than people from here can find their way there. It doesn’t make me glad telling you this, but I will be glad to sell you supplies.” And he did.

When they had been appropriately reoutfitted for the hike ahead he closed his shop and waddled to the edge of the city to make sure they didn’t miss the trail head.

“You be careful in there.” He waved a stubby paw at the wall of jungle. “Get a few leagues away from good old Chejiji and you never know what you might run into. That’s what Mews means: jungle.”

“Then what does Strelakat mean?” Jon-Tom asked him.

“Beats hell out of me. We always wondered about that here in the city. If you find out you can tell me. If you come back.”

“Now ‘ow did I know you were goin’ to say that?” Mudge sighed, started up the narrow, muddy track that wound its way among the trees.

“Good luck, friends.” They left the wombat waving to them as they filed into the unknown.

Some of the flora and fauna was known to Mudge and Cautious, much of it was new and strange, but nothing challenged their progress. They carried no waterbags, for as everyone knew, jungle water is pure and palatable. There was an abundance of wild fruit and while the atmosphere was humid it wasn’t unbearably so. By the second day they were all enjoying the level, easy walk. All except Mudge, who complained incessantly. This was normal for him, however, and everyone ignored him.

One new variety of lizard in particular interested Jon-Tom. Instead of the familiar webbed or feathered wings, this aerial charmer had thin wafers of skin mounted on small bones that rotated on a gimbel-like mount. Spinning at high speed, these provided sufficient lift to raise the brightly colored reptile straight up. Not only could it hover like Teyva, it could also fly sideways and backward. They seemed to delight in bouncing up and down in the air in front of the marchers’ faces like so many snakes on yo-yos. One exceptionally iridescent six-inch specimen buzzed along in front of Jon-Tom for five minutes before flying off into a nearby calimar tree. “Amazing how they can stay aloft that long.”

“Not really, when you consider that anything makes more sense in this soggy country than walking.”

“What was that, Mudge?”

“I didn’t say anythin’.” And for a change, he hadn’t. Neither had Cautious or Weegee.

They were walking parallel to a five-foot-high ridge of smooth stone. As they neared the far end the ridge turned its head to block the path. It was large, reptilian, and full of sharp teeth.

“I said that anything was better than walking.” The monster let loose with an uproarious guffaw, convulsed by its own humor. The convulsion rippled down the length of the ridge, which they now saw was not fashioned of stone but of flesh and blood. The tail of the snake vanished somewhere far back in the forest. It made an anaconda look like an earthworm.

“S-s-snakes can’t talk.” It took Mudge a moment to find his voice, when what he really wanted to do was get lost with it.

“Oh so?” The massive head rose twelve feet off the ground and made a show of looking in all directions. “You think there’s a ventriloquist back in the bushes maybe?” It laughed again, its great weight shaking the earth.

Jon-Tom leaned over to whisper to Mudge. “Whatever you do, don’t make it angry.”

“Angry? Looks to me it’s ‘avin’ one ‘ell of a fine time.” He shut up as the head dipped down to stare at him.

“Besides, there are no such things as snakes my size. I am a dragon.”

Jon-Tom had fond memories of their occasional companion, the giant river dragon Falameezar. “I’m sorry, but you look like a snake to me.”

The monster did not take offense. “What do you think a snake is, anyway? I can see that you don’t know.” It sighed. “I’d hoped you weren’t as stupid as you look.” Another earthshaking belly laugh.

“It all happened, oh, several millennia before the first age of eons ago when a dragon offended the Ur-wizard Ivevim the Third and he placed a curse upon that dragon and all its descendants. What you call snakes are nothing but quadraplegic lizards. I am to a footed dragon as snakes are to lizards. This is a defect over which I have no control, but I am still sensitive to the misidentification.”

“That explains how you can talk.” Everybody knew dragons were capable of speech. Look at Falameezar, who talked entirely too much. “But you’re still the biggest dragon, with or without legs, I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s a pituitary condition. At least, that’s what the wizard who identified it called it.”

“I know a few wizards. Would I know this one?”

“Not anymore.” The legless dragon quivered with amusement. “I ate him. Waste of time, really. As a rule wizards tend to be stringy and sour.” It smiled at him. “Whereas you look a particularly flavorful quartet.”

Mudge took a step backward. “Not me. I’m all fur an’ bone, I am. Eat ‘im, if you’re ‘ungry. ‘E’s big an’ slim an’ e’d slip down easy-like. You don’t want to eat me. I’ve got bad breath, strong body odor an’ I don’t cut me toenails. I’d scratch your throat on the way down.”

“Mudge,” said a disgusted Weegee, “you do yourself no credit by these expressions of base cowardice.”

“I know, luv, but wot am I to do? I am a base coward.”

They could see the great muscles beginning to tense beneath the skin. “A few scratches don’t bother me. There’s nothing better than a nice midday snack—except maybe one thing.”

“What that be?” Cautious had already resigned himself to ending up in the dragon’s belly.

“Why, a good laugh, of course.” The monstrous coils relaxed slightly. “Any fool knows laughter’s more nutritious than meat.”

“Doen look to me, then. Cleverness not my strong suit. Can’t recite my last will and testament and make jokes at same time, you bet.”

“Come on then, mate.” Mudge hissed at his tall friend. “Sing ‘im some funny songs or somethin’. Meself, I think everythin’ you sing is silly, but this ‘ere tree-sized caterpillar obviously fancies ‘imself somethin’ o’ a connoisseur.”

“Mudge, I can sing rock and spells and ballads and blues. Even some classical. But I’m no Smothers Brother.”

“You’re gonna be a smothered brother if you don’t do somethin’ fast. Please, mate,” he pleaded, “give ‘er a try.”

“Yes, give it a try, man,” The dragon’s hearing was evidently as acute as his vision. “Help me try to forget the unhappy circumstances engendered by that cursed distant relation.”

“Unhappy circumstances?” Jon-Tom stammered. With that gaping mouth so near it was difficult to concentrate.

“The fact that I don’t have any limbs, you limivorous biped!”

Closing his eyes to shut out the sight of that bottomless maw, Jon-Tom strove to recall a humorous tune or two. Try as he might, however, he couldn’t remember any of Newhart’s sidesplitting ditties or those of any of the other great recording comedians. He knew “Hooray for Captain Spaulding” from Animal Crackers but doubted it would have any effect on the expectant serpent coiled around them.

Part of the problem was that while he was used to dealing with serious life-threatening situations this was the first time he and Mudge had faced a threat which insisted on being amused. It was enough to throw any spellsinger off stride and off key. Difficult enough to play and sing when one’s hands were shaking and throat was tight without having to be funny at the same time. He lightly strummed the suar’s strings in the hope the music might stimulate some humorous reminiscence, but none was forthcoming.

That’s when he noticed Mudge arguing quietly with Weegee. Finally she shoved him from behind until he was standing next to Jon-Tom.

“I—I know a joke, I do.” The otter’s whiskers were quivering.

The dragon shifted his attention from Jon-Tom. “Do you now? Well let me hear it, let me hear it. If I’m sufficiently amused and not too hungry when you’ve finished I might let you go so you can tell it to another, though I warn you that ‘m hard to satisfy. It usually takes more than one joke and more than one meal.”

“Is that right now, guv’nor? We’ll see, because this is the funniest, most rib-ticklin’, sidesplittin’, uproarious, knee-slappin’—skip that latter—belJy-bustin’ story anyone ever “card.”

“Bravo. Do tell me.”

Jon-Tom looked sideways at the otter, searching for a sign, a clue that Mudge was up to something. Instead of hinting that he was trying to put something over on the dragon, the otter settled down to recite his tale. Not knowing what else to do, Jon-Tom plucked at the suar. Perhaps the music might serve to soothe their adversary somewhat while enhancing the quality of Mudge’s storytelling. Despite this determination he found he couldn’t concentrate on his playing. Even as he was still trying to think of an effective spellsong, he found himself caught up in Mudge’s tale. When he put his mind to it, the otter could be engaging to a fault, and he was pouring every ounce of personal charm and wit into what was developing into a lengthy, complex story. Cautious was listening also. So was Weegee, even though she’d played a prominent part in convincing him to tell the tale in the first place.

For its part the dragon listened intently, its initial casual indifference changing with the telling to enthralled interest. As Mudge rambled on and on, beginning to use his acrobatic body and malleable face to enhance various aspects of the story, the dragon’s smile broadened in proportion. It began to chuckle, then to laugh, and finally to bellow with amusement, its lower body whipping convulsively and barely missing Jon-Tom’s head while snapping the crowns off a pair of small trees. It laughed and shook and trembled with hilarity, and the only reason it didn’t drown in its own tears was that it had no tear ducts.

Jon-Tom found himself smiling, too. Soon he, Weegee, and Cautious were rolling about on the ground, holding their sides. Mudge was hard pressed to retain his composure long enough to finish the extended joke and barely managed to wind it up with a flurry of distorted expressions and a neatly placed punch line. This grand finale resulted in sufficient hysteria to shake leaves from the nearby trees.

Knowing something of the joke in advance, Weegee was the first to recover her senses. She gestured and winked until her companions got the idea and the four of them began, still laughing uproariously, to slink away through the trees. Possibly the dragon saw them but in any event it was laughing too hard to pursue.

“That,” wheezed Jon-Tom when they’d made good their escape and he could finally breathe freely once more, “was the funniest story I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“I know.” Weegee was leaning against Mudge and he against her. “Mudge told it to me one night on the ship to Orangel. I’m sure I laughed so long and so hard that the crew thought there was something seriously wrong with me. I urged Mudge to tell it to the dragon. He made it even funnier this time. That part about the Baker’s College and the traveling lady’s choir always cracks me up.” So saying she fell to her knees with renewed laughter, clutching at her sore ribs. They were all aching from laughing too much.

“I don’t know.” Jon-Tom wiped at the streaks on his face. “I can’t get past the part where the elephant shows up.”

“And the six chimps,” Cautious reminded him. “Don’t forget about the six chimps.”

This provoked a renewed outburst which resulted in all of them rolling about on the ground. When this latest eruption of hysteria was over they were finished, chuckled out, incapable of laughing anymore. Then they picked up their supplies and shuffled off up the trail, unworried by the dragon’s proximity. It wouldn’t be tracking any prey for days. Mudge’s joke had put it in stitches, and it would be some time unknotting its coils.

That night as they were sitting around the campfire finishing their supper Jon-Tom’s eyes locked with Cau-tious’s and he said simply, “The elephant.”

Cautious replied by saying, “Six chimps,” thus beginning the entire round of laughter one more time. Exhausted not by their tense confrontation with the dragon but by Mudge’s joke telling, all fell into a deep and restful sleep.

The next day the trail began to climb, winding its way up one steep hillside only to switchback down the other and then repeat the cycle on the slopes of the mount beyond. By mutual consent there was no mention of elephants, chimps, bakers or any other portion of what had come to be known as The Joke. Jon-Tom didn’t want to lose any more time. The woods through which they were tramping still qualified as jungle, though it had lost some of the steamier aspects of rain forest. Brush lizards swarmed in the trees, dropping down fearlessly to inspect the travelers. Their relative lameness was a sure sign that this region was little visited.

Civilization in this part of the world hugged the temperate coast and left the vast jungle lands alone. At times the narrow trail they were following vanished entirely, swallowed by the dense undergrowth. This did not slow down the seekers. Not with two otters and a raccoon as members of the expedition.

Cautious was chewing on a leaf from a variety of tree that was new to him. “Not so much many kinds where I come from.”

“Far more than where Mudge and I come from, too.” Jon-Tom hesitated. Where he and Mudge came from, he’d said. Was he beginning to think of this world as home, then? The thought should have made him uncomfortable. That it did not was surely significant of something.

“Like that one there.” The raccoon pointed to a tree full of what looked like flattened apples. “Look like benina tree but is something else.”

“You mean ‘banana,’ “ Jon-Tom corrected him.

“What ‘banana’? I mean benina. You never seen benina tree, man? Fruit is bigger and yellow. Peels this way.” He demonstrated. “You eat one, you can’t stop. Want to eat everything on the tree. That why it called what it called. We see someone come back with bad bellyache, holding stomach and moaning, we know he benina tree too long.”

“And I suppose that’s not a mango?” Jon-Tom indicated a small sapling on their left that was heavy with purplish fruit.

“Look like it but really a mungo tree. And that one there look like nielce but ain’t. One next to it got fans like a palm but no nuts, and one here has fruit like shrooms but got branches that look just like a net.”

“Like a what?” Then Jon-Tom felt himself going down under the weight of the falling mesh. Mudge hardly had time to utter an oath while Cautious fought to remove his knife.

“Get ready sell your lives again, friends.”

The otter was struggling with his longbow. “Wish I could, but I’m afraid by now me own’s been ‘eavily discounted for anyone in that market.”

The owners of the net surrounded their captives, pinning them to the ground until their wrists were bound securely and their legs shackled together. The scenario was distressingly familiar. The appearance of their captors was not.

“What the devil have we fallen into?” He stared in amazement at the figures surrounding them.

“Devil double.” Cautious was working on the ropes securing his wrists. “I think they called ogres. I never see one but I heard them described, and brother, these sure fit description.”

“Shit, they don’t look like much o’ anythin’, the sorry slobs.” Mudge peered up at his companion. “I’m beginnin’ to get pretty sick o” this, mate.”

“No more than I am, Mudge.”

“I mean,” the otter continued as they were marched off into the depths of the jungle, “am I bein’ unreasonable? Am I bein’ greedy? All I’d like is to be able to spend one day in your bleedin’ company without bein’ jumped by somethin’ that wants to, kill us, keelhaul us, or cook us. Used to be all I ever ‘ad to worry about was stayin’ one step ahead o’ the local sheriff or tax collector.”

“You’re just lucky, I guess,” Jon-Tom told him dryly. “It really isn’t part of some sinister plot on my part to run into every tribe of homicidal maniacs between the poles.”

“Wish I ‘ad a pole right now,” the otter grumbled. “I know where I’d put it, I do.”

Human ogres Jon-Tom could have handled, but this was Mudge’s world and not his own. Therefore most of the ogres flanking them were grotesque variations of many species and not exclusively human.

On his right strode a snaggle-toothed wolf. One ear grew from the side of his head instead of the top. His left eye was larger than the right and he had puffy, unwolflike paws. Behind him marched a pair of margays, but instead of the handsome, symmetrical faces common to their breed they displayed long upward curving fangs, piggish nostrils and greatly elongated ears that flopped over their foreheads like those of a basset hound. Their whiskers were kinked instead of straight.

Weegee found herself prodded along by a four-and-a-half foot-tall monstrosity with not one but five stripes running raggedly down its spine. Two of them trailed off to one side instead of continuing on down the tail. One of the major incisors had twisted up and back until it resembled an ivory mustache growing from the upper lip, and both shrunken eyes had shifted over to the left side of the skull. Chipmunk as ogre, Jon-Tom thought. The sight was enough to shake one’s faith in nature. Yet none of their captors limped or looked diseased. All seemed healthy, certainly healthy enough to stomp anyone foolish enough to try and escape.

There was a capybara whose distinguishing characteristic was a complete absence of fur on its back and belly. Overhead flew a pair of ravens with three-foot wingspans and necks like stunted vultures. Several humans brought up the rear. They had megalocephalic skulls, hair growing in long strands from their forearms and calves, and pointed, protruding teeth. There was no sympathy to be had from that quarter, not even for a fellow human in distress.

“Wonder where they’re taking us?” he murmured.

“Ain’t it obvious, mate?” Mudge laid the sarcasm on thick and heavy. “We’re all off to the local snaffleball game. See, this lot o’ fancy dandies were a few lads short so they shanghaied us to fill out their roster.”

“I imagine they’’re taking us to their village,” opined Weegee.

“Don’t worry. I’ll use the suar on this simple-minded bunch and we’ll spellsing ourselves free like always.”

“Mate, did it ever occur to you that each time we gets away from some ‘ostile natives or other danger that the odds rise against us for the next confrontation? That we’ve been pushin’ our luck for more than a year now, we ‘ave, and that maybe ‘tis time for it to run out?”

“It can’t, Mudge. Not this close to Strelakat Mews. Not this near to success.”

“Cor, you an’ your bloody deathless optimism. Damned if I don’t think it’ll live on without you.”

“Hey you, good-looking.” A hunchbacked mink with one good eye stepped close to Mudge, eyeing him up and down. “Can I get you something? You want something maybe?”

“Want something? Why sure, lump-lass. I want to leave. I want a million gold pieces. I want two dozen lovely otterish houris to comb out me fur.”

“Watch those wishes.” Weegee bumped him from behind. “They may come back to haunt you someday.”

“Piffle.” Mudge looked at the female ogre. “I wouldn’t mind knowin’ what you lot intend doin’ with me and me friends “ere.”

“That’s up to the chief.” The mink grunted, spat indelicately into the nearest bush.

“How about a ‘int?”

The mink’s distorted brow clenched. There was a revelation, because she smiled brightly. “Food.” She shifted the spiked club she was carrying from one shoulder to the other.

“Hey, ‘ow’s that for an optimistic assessment o’ our chances, mate? Sound familiar, wot?”

“We’ll get out of this.” Jon-Tom stumbled, regained his balance. “You’ll see. We always do. We got away from the pirates, we got away from Cautious’s people, and we got away from the normal cannibals. We can get away from the abnormal ones, too.”

“Odds, mate, wot about the odds? They’re runnin’ against us. You can’t throw twelves forever.”

“I don’t need to throw anything but music. All I need is a few minutes with the suar.”

The otter sounded reflective. “You know, I almost welcome gettin’ stewed. I’m so sick an’ tired o’ marchin’ around the world with you, goin’ from one crisis to the next, that me enthusiasm’s just about run out.” He glanced back at Weegee and his tone softened. “O’ course, somethin’ new’s been added that I kind o’ ‘ate to miss out on.”

“Relax, Mudge. This doesn’t strike me as an especially dangerous bunch. Certainly they have no supernatural powers.”

“They don’t need none, not with all those teeth.” So primitive were their captors that they hadn’t bothered to construct even a rudimentary village. Instead they lived in a line of caves worn in the side of a sandstone cliff. As the hunting party approached, a horde of cubs came shambling out to grunt and chuckle at the captives. Two began throwing pebbles at Mudge, who dodged them as best he could and said sweetly, “Why don’t you two infants go make like a bird.” He nodded toward a twenty-foot-high overhang. Fortunately for the otter the preadolescent ogres were not possessed of sufficient intellectual capacity to comprehend his suggestion or the implications behind it.

The captives were arraigned before the largest of the caves so that the chief of the ogres might inspect them. As befitted a leader of. monsters he was an impressive specimen, this mutated bear, standing some seven feet tall. Add to his natural size an extended lower jaw, additional teeth, rudimentary horns, a sharp-edged protruding backbone and it was self-evident he had reached his position by means of something less refined than sweet reason. Strips of plaited vines swung from his massive shoulders together with strings of decorations fashioned from colored rocks and bones. He wore a matching headdress made from the skulls and feathers of numerous victims.

After a brief examination of the four captives he favored each with an individual sneer before turning to bark a query to the leader of the party which had brought them in.

“City folk.”

The bear nodded understandingly. “Damn good. City folk less filling, taste right.”

Mudge boldly took a step forward. “Now ‘old on a minim ‘ere, your inspired ugliness.” The otter barely came up to the chiefs thigh. “You can’t eat us.”

“Wanna bet?” growled the chief of the ogres.

Jon-Tom advanced to stand next to Mudge, demonstrating moral solidarity if not physical superiority. At least he didn’t get a crick in his neck looking into the giant’s eyes.

“Mudge is right, dammit. I’ve had it up to here with everybody we meet wanting to eat us instead of greet us. What happened to common courtesy? What’s happened to traditions of hospitality?”

The ogre chieftan scratched his flat pate. “What’s that you talking?”

“Wouldn’t you rather make friends with us?”

“Can’t eat friendship.”

Jon-Tom began walking up and down in front of the chief and his aides. “If half you people would learn to cooperate with one another instead of trying to consume your neighbors you wouldn’t have nearly as many problems nor spend half as much time fighting one another as you do now.”

“I like fighting.” The wolf ogre who’d helped capture them grinned hugely. “Like eating, too.”

“Everyone likes to eat. But it’s an accepted tenet of civilization that you don’t eat people who want to be friends with you. It makes for uneasy relationships.”

“Need vitamins and minerals.” The chief was clearly confused.

“This is a rich land.” Jon-Tom gestured at the wall of greenery surrounding them. “There’s plenty to eat here. You don’t have to eat casual travelers.” He shook a finger at the bear. “This business of attacking and consuming anyone who enters your territory is primitive and childish and immature, and to prove it I’m going to sing you a song about it.”

Mudge looked skyward and crossed mental fingers. Perhaps the unexpected verbal assault had stunned their captors, or maybe they were simply curious to hear what the afternoon meal wanted to sing, but none of the ogres moved to interfere with Jon-Tom as he slid his suar into position. Meanwhile the otter stepped back to whisper to his lady.

“ ‘E’s goin’ to try an’ spellsing this lot. I’ve seen ‘im do it before. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it works worse.”

Try Jon-Tom did. It’s doubtful he ever sang a sweeter and more beautiful set of tunes since being brought into Mudge’s world. And it was affecting the ogres. Anyone could see that. But magic had nothing to do with it. It was just Jon-Tom singing about love, about life and friendship, about common everyday kindness toward one’s neighbors and the understanding that ought to prevail among all intelligent species. As he sang he poured out all the contradictory feelings he held toward this world in which he found himself. Feelings about how it could be improved, how violence and anarchy could be restrained and how it could be transformed by cooperation into a paradise for one and all.

Tears began to run down mangled cheeks and bloated nostrils. Even the chief was crying softly until finally Jon-Tom put his suar aside and met his gaze straight on.

“And that’s how I think things ought to be. Maybe I’m naive and innocent and overly optimistic... .”

“ ‘E’s got that right, ‘e does.” Weegee jabbed Mudge in the ribs.

“. . .- but that’s how the world should be run. I’ve felt this way for a long time. Just never had the right opportunity to put it into song.”

The chief sniffed, wiped at one eye with a huge paw. “We love music. You sing beautiful, man. Too pretty to lose. So we not going to eat you.” Jon-Tom turned to flash a triumphant grin at his friends.

The chief gestured to his left. From the cave flanking his own emerged a female bear ogre almost as big as he was. “This my daughter. She like music too. You hear?”

“I hear,” she said, blowing her nose into a strip of burlap the size of a coffee sack.

The chief looked down at Jon-Tom. “Such good thoughts should stay with us allatime. I believe in what you sing. You stay and sing to us on all lonely days and nights.”

“Now wait a minute. I don’t mind sharing my thoughts and music with you, but I’m afraid I can’t do it on a permanent basis. See, my friends and I are on a mission of great importance and....”

“You stay.” The chiefs hammer-like hand cut the air an inch from Jon-Tom’s nose, then gestured to the young female standing nearby. She wasn’t bad looking, Jon-Tom thought. Rather lithesome—for a professional wrestler.

“You stay and marry my daughter.”

Whoa! “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Two tons of ogre bear tilted toward him. “Wassamatter, you don’t like my daughter?”

Jon-Tom managed a weak smile. “It’s not, that. It’s just that, well, it would never work. I mean, we’re not even distantly related, species-wise.”

“What was all that you say about all intelligent species working together?”

“Working together, yes; not living together. I mean, living together domestically, in a state of matrimony, like.”

“Wot ‘e means, your supreme ghoulishness,” said Mudge as Jon-Tom’s protests degenerated into babble, “is that ‘e don’t know wot ‘e’s talkin’ about. I know: I’ve ‘ad to listen to Mm spout drivel like that for more’n a year now.”

“Something else,” Jon-Tom said quickly. “I’m already married.”

“Oh that no problem.” The chief raised both paws some ten feet into the air and proceeded to declaim a steady stream of incomprehensible gobbledygook. “There.” He lowered his paws, smiled crookedly. “Now you divorced and free to marry again.”

“Not by the laws of my land.”

“Mebbenot, but you living under law of this land now. Come here.” He reached out and grabbed him by the right wrist, nearly lifting him off the ground as he dragged him over until he stood next to the daughter. She stood half a foot taller than he did and weighted eight hundred pounds if she weighed a hundred.

“Darling.” She put both arms around him and he was treated to the rare experience of a genuine bear hug. The fortunately brief encounter left him with bruised ribs and no breath, as though he’d just spent a week in a chiropractor’s office. Possibly she recognized the fact that blue was not his normal healthy color. As he gasped for air the chief raised his arms and declaimed grandly to the rest of the tribe.

“Big wedding tonight, you all come, plenty dancing and singing, plenty to eat. Though not,” he added as an afterthought, “any of our guests.” A few groans of disappointment greeted this last, but they were swept aside in the general jubilation. The charmingly bucolic scene reminded Jon-Tom of the cheery Night on Bald Mountain sequence from Fantasia, with himself as one of the prime performers.

“So ‘is gruesomeness is magnanimously lettin’ us off. That’s big o’ Mm.”

“I suspect he realized, in his slow dull witted way, that it would be impolitic to eat the bridegroom’s companions,” Weegee told him.

“Yeah—until after the weddin’. You wait an’ see. Or rather you don’t wait an’ see because we bloody well ain’t ‘angin’ around to find out. First time they takes their eyes off us, we evaporate.”

“What about Jon-Tom?”

“Wot about ‘im?” Mudge was less than sympathetic. “ ‘E got ‘imself into this lovely fix, wot with Mm ‘avin’ to go on singin’ about luv an’ friendship an’ intelligent species an’ all that rot. Let Mm sing ‘imself out o’ it. We can’t ‘ang around after the weddin’ to find out wot’s goin’ to ‘appen to ‘im. Got our own lives to think about, we does, and we ‘ave to make a break for it while our charmin’ ‘osts are still in a good mood.” He whispered to the raccoon standing nearby.

“Wot about you, Cautious old chap?”

“Afraid I must agree with you this time time for sure. Poor Jon-Tom got himself in one great galloping mess. I don’t see way out of, you bet.” He chuckled ruefully. “Better he do something before tonight. Making love to mountain could be dangerous. She get carried away, he find himself in pieces like his duar.”

Mudge and Weegee concurred with the raccoon’s assessment of their friend’s connubial prospects.

They put Jon-Tom and his intended in a cave of their own. The floor was of clean sand. There was a table and chairs and a brace of unexpectedly modern looking chaise longues. Not knowing what else to do he lay down on one. The lady ogre immediately settled into the other. It creaked alarmingly.

The official waiting room, he told himself. Just like waiting for surgery. He wasn’t allowed to leave the cave but he could see his companions strolling about outside. Apparently they’d been given the freedom of the encampment. This forced his thoughts to work faster still because he knew Mudge wouldn’t hang around waiting for him to extricate himself from this new predicament forever. The otter was a friend but not a fool. Jon-Tom knew if he didn’t try something fast he’d find himself completely on his own. Meanwhile the female ogre lay in her longue and stared across at him in what could only be described as an affectionate manner.

Frustrated by the continuing silence as much as his unhelpful thoughts he said, “This isn’t going to work, you know. I told your father that.”

“How you know? Haven’t tried it yet.”

“Take a good look at us. I see you, you see me. I see different.”

“I see two. What more is needed?”

With that kind of axe logic Jon-Tom saw he was in for a long conversation.

“Ever been married before?”

“Once. Was fun.”

“But you aren’t married now?”

“Mopes.”

“What happened to your first husband?”

“He got broke.”

“Oh.” Better shorten the conversation somehow, he thought rapidly. But his usually fast if not always accurate wits had deserted him. Since his suar and spellsinging had gotten him into this situation it was unlikely he’d be able to use them to extricate himself from it. If only his duar was intact. If only, if only—he wondered if another ogre would find her attractive. He couldn’t imagine what she saw in him. Of course, it wasn’t him, it was his haunting sweet songs which had enchanted the entire tribe.

“What’s your name?” he asked her, not really caring but unable to stand any more silence between them.

“Essaip.”

He almost smiled. Cute moniker for an uncute lady.

“What should we do now?”

“Anything you want. You to be husband, me to be wife. If you want anything you must tell me. Is wife’s duty to wait on her husband, even on husband-to-be. That is the way of things.”

“You don’t say?” A hint of an inkling of a thought was beginning to take shape in his brain. “You mean that if I wanted you to do something for me, anything at all, you’d have to do it?”

“Except help you run away.”

Dead end. Or—maybe not. “Are all the females of your tribe required by custom to act that way?”

“Certainly. Is way of things. Is what’s right.”

He sat up and faced her. “What if I were to tell you that it’s not only wrong, it’s unnatural.”

That lengthy jaw line twisted in confusion. “I don’t understand what you say.”

“Suppose I told you—and you have to believe me, remember, because I’m your husband to be—that males and females are equal, and that it’s wrong for one to wait on the other all the time.”

“But that not right. Has always been this way.”

“I see. I wish I had some Kate Millet or Gloria Steinem to read to you.”

“I don’t know such names. Are they names of magical deities?”

“Some people think so.” He rose and walked over to her. It was an awesome body. Those enormous paws with their long heavy claws could tear out his throat with one swipe. The parody of a bear face was frightening. But behind those large, even attractive eyes he sensed an emptiness waiting to be filled, an eagerness to learn. Would she be receptive to new ideas, especially as propounded by an outsider?

“I think you like me, Essaip, even though we are not the same.”

“Like you much.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to live as a slave. It doesn’t mean that any female of your tribe has to live in servitude to any male. This is a fact that holds true whether one is talking about otters or ogres. Times they are a-changing, Essaip, and it’s about time you and your sisters -changed with them.”

“How you mean, change?”

“Well, it’s kind of like this ....”

Mudge was trying to see into the depths of the wedding cave. “I don’t ‘ear no suar music but I can see ‘is mouth movin’. ‘E’s talkin’ up a storm, old Jon-Tom is. I know Mm. ‘E can work a different kind o’ magic just with words. ‘E’s sharp enough to confuse a magistrate. You’ll see, luv. In a few ‘ours ‘e’ll ‘ave ‘er spoutin’ sweat reasonableness.”

Before long Essaip emerged from the cave spouting, all right, but she didn’t sound very reasonable. She sounded steamed. When the two guards refused to let Jon-Tom exit behind her she knocked both of them into the bushes.

Another warrior, a large jaguar ogre, stepped in her path and tried to halt her.

“Is not good for bride to leave wedding cave before feast.”

“Ahhhh, shaddup you, you—male!” The jaguar’s jaw connected with a paw only slightly smaller than a 725-15 radial ply tire.

Other warriors came running to try and quiet the chiefs daughter, who had apparently gone berserk. No one bothered to stop Jon-Tom. He strolled past the battle royal toward the staring otters, grinning like the Cheshire cat. Mudge turned to his lady. “Get ready to leave.”

“What? But just because she’s fighting with the guards doesn’t mean they’re going to let us walk out of camp.”

“Just be ready. ‘Tis like I told you: Jon-Tom don’t always need to sing to work magic.”

Behind them the rest of the tribe’s females had put aside domestic tasks and emerged from their caves. They listened intently as Essaip recited the feminist litany Jon-Tom had relayed to her while she simultaneously fought off half a dozen hunters. Most of the male ogres were off preparing the wedding ground for the nighttime ceremony. They would have found Essaip’s speech most interesting. Growls and grunts began to issue from the tightly packed cluster of females. Weegee picked up a few sentences. “This is very interesting.” Mudge tugged on her arm.

“Come on, luv, we’ve got to be ready to leave when Jon-Tom reaches us.”

She held back. “Extremely interesting. I’ve never heard the like before.” Mudge overheard, too. His tugs began to take on an aura of desperation.

Abruptly the fighting ceased. The chief and the rest of the warriors had returned. “Not nice to begin festivities without us,” he said disapprovingly. “Plenty of time to play after wedding ceremony complete.”

“No wedding ceremony.”

The chief gaped at his daughter. “SAY WHAT?”

“No wedding ceremony.” Breathing hard, her fur mussed, Essaip was clearly in no mood to back down. “Who you think you are to give order like that?”

“Who I think I—I am your father! I am chief of this tribe!” The giant’s face was flushed, a remarkable sight.

“By what right you make such a demand?”

Speechless, the chief waded through his warriors, scattering them left and right, and tried to cuff her across the muzzle. She blocked the blow and caught him with a return right to the chops. Several warriors stepped up to grab her. As they did so they were set upon by the tribe’s females. Shouts and snarls filled the hitherto peaceful evening air, along with bits of fur and flesh.

Abandoning the fight, the chief chose instead to confront Jon-Tom as he was trying to tiptoe inconspicuously around the dust of battle.

“You! You have brought this trouble among us. You have been talking to my daughter and filling her head with superstitious nonsense. What evil magic have you worked? Marriage is off. Dinner is back on.” He reached for Jon-Tom, who skipped back out of the way.

“Essaip!” He called to her several times, but she was too busy raising male consciousness by cracking skulls to help.

The chief advanced, grinning nastily. “I going to eat you myself, have you raw for dinner. One piece at a time. I think I start with head first.” He reached out again. Jon-Tom saw Mudge running to recover his longbow but he knew the otter would never make it in time. His oh-so-clever scheme had backfired. Mudge was right. The odds had finally run out.

A massive shadow interposed itself between him and the chief and thundered, “You not going to eat anyone without my permission.” The ground shook as the new arrival moved forward to engage the chief in combat.

“Come on, mate!” Mudge had his longbow in hand, but there was no reason to use it now. “Let’s get out o’ “ere.”

A bit stunned by the extent of the reaction he’d provoked among the tribe’s ladies, Jon-Tom allowed himself to be led from the scene of battle. No one tried to stop him and his companions as they recovered their supplies and slipped unnoticed into the forest.

“Who was that?” he finally mumbled when they had put the village a safe distance behind them. “Who saved me?”

“I’m not sure,” said Weegee, “but I think it must have been Mrs. Chief. I still don’t understand quite what happened, Jon-Tom. What on earth did you tell the daughter to make her and the other females react so violently?”

“I had no idea how they’d react, to tell you the truth. All I did was sit her down and tell her about....”

“Right, mate,” said Mudge energetically, “we can get to all that later, wot? Right now we need to save our breath for puttin’ as many trees between ourselves and that lot as we can.”

“Sure, but I....”

“Sure but you can talk about it later, when we ‘ave a chance to sit down an’ chat without worryin’ about no pursuit, right?”

Jon-Tom caught the otter’s drift and shut up. There was no harm in acceding to his friend’s unspoken request for silence. He doubted Weegee needed any otherworldly philosophical help anyway.

XIV

The ogres did not follow. Jon-Tom suspected they wouldn’t. They were too busy sorting out their own lives to worry about their former captives.

Mudge should have been cheered by their easy escape. Instead, the otter tramped along enveloped in melancholy, his expression dour. When he replied to questions it was in monosyllables. Finally Jon-Tom asked him if anything was wrong.

“O” course somethin’s wrong, mate. I’m tired. Tired o’ stinkin’ jungle, tired o’ runnin’, tired o’ followin’ you ‘alfway around the world every time I think life’s settled back to somethin’ like normal. An* there’s somethin’ else, too.” By way of illustration be began scratching under his left arm, working his way around to his back.

“Ever since we left Chejiji I’ve been itchin’. Last few days ‘tis gotten considerable worse. I must’ve picked up some kind o’ rash. Worst place is in the middle o’ me back, but I can’t reach back there.”

“You should’ve said something, love.” Weegee halted and began peeling off his vest. “Let me have a look.”

They took a standing break while she inspected Mudge’s back and shoulders.

“Well, wot is it?” he asked when she didn’t comment. When she finally did speak it wasn’t to him.

“Jon-Tom, I think you’d better come have a look at this.”

He did so, and was too shocked by what he saw to say anything.

All the hair on the otter’s back had fallen out. A glance beneath the arm where he’d just been scratching showed that the fur there was likewise coming out. Weegee brushed her paw across the back of his leg and came away with a whole handful of fur.

“Wot’s the matter with you two? Wot’s wrong?”

“I’m afraid it’s more than just a rash, Mudge.”

“Wot do you mean, more than a rash? ‘Ave I got leprosy or somethin’?”

“No—not exactly,” Weegee murmured.

That brought Mudge around sharply. “Wot do you mean, ‘not exactly’? Will somebody kindly tell me wot’s wrong? Tis just a damn itch. See?” He rubbed his right forearm. When he brought his paw back he’d left behind a bare strip of skin. “Oh me haunches an’ little sisters.” Horrified, he stared up at Jon-Tom. “You got to stop it, mate.” A patch of fur fell from his forehead. “Do somethin’, spellsing it awaaaay.” He was hopping about frantically, the fur fairly flying off him.

“I’ll try, Mudge.” He whipped the suar around and sang the most appropriate songs he could think of, ending with a rousing chorus of the title tune froni the musical, Hair. All to no avail. Mudge’s alopecia continued to worsen. When the exhausted otter finally ran down several minutes later there wasn’t a tuft of fur on his denuded form.

Cautious regarded him with his usual phlegmatic state. “Never seen a bald otter before. Ain’t pretty.”

“Wot am I goin’ to doooo!”

“Stop moaning, for one thing,” Jon-Tom chided him.

“I might as well be dead.”

“And don’t talk like that.”

Weegee was leaning on Mudge, trying to comfort him. Now she pulled away slightly to peer at his spine. “Wait a minute. I think it’s starting to grow back already.”

“Don’t tease me, luv. I know I’m doomed to wander the world like this, an outcast, furless and naked like some mutated ‘uman.”

“No, really.” There was genuine excitement in her voice. “Look here.” She raised his left arm to his face. Jon-Tom looked, too. Sure enough, little nubs of fur were sprouting through the skin. They could see them growing.

Mudge all but leaped into the air with relief. “Comin’ back she is! Wot a relief. I thought ‘twas all over for poor Mudge. Wouldn’t ‘ave been able to show me face in any o’ me old “aunts. Come on, mates, let’s not ‘ang around ‘ere. I might get reinfected.”

By late that night half-inch long fur, dark brown and glossy, covered the otter’s entire body. By morning it had grown back to its normal length. Each bristle was unusually thick, but the color and feel were otherwise correct and Mudge could have cared less about the one unnoticeable variation. He looked like himself again.

Toward the end of the day he no longer did.

“When do you suppose this’ll stop growin’?” He was staring down at himself and muttering.

“Don’t worry about it.” Weegee gave him a reassuring caress. “If it gets any longer we can always give you a trim.”

Trouble was, it continued to grow and short of swords they had nothing to trim it with. So it continued to lengthen, growing at the same steady extraordinary speed, until it was a foot long. This slowed their progress since Mudge had a tendency to step on and trip over the fur growing from his feet. He’d long since had to removed his boots. Finally it was decided to resort to the use of a short sword, but trimming it back only accelerated the rate of regrowth.

By the morning of the next day the quartet included three anxious travelers and a shambling ball of fuzz. Mudge was reduced to holding the fur away from his eyes in order to see.

“You look like the sheepdog that ate Seattle.”

“This is gettin’ bloody absurd, mate. Pretty soon I won’t be able to walk.”

“Then we roll you into Strelakat Mews.” Cautious ducked beneath a branch. “I hope among their master craftsfolk there be a master barber.”

“And I’ve about had it with the clever comments!” the otter bawled angrily. He would have taken a swing at the raccoon except that he could barely move his arms.

By afternoon a light rain was falling and, perhaps by coincidence, so was the fur. It came out in four-foot long strands. When the last hank lay upon the ground there stretched out behind them a trail of fur sufficient to fill a couple of goodsized mattresses. Mudge was bare-ass bald again.

Yet new bristles were already starting to appear on his back. By nightfall his coat had grown back to normal.

“Maybe we’ll wake up in the mornin’ an’ I’ll be meself again,” he said hopefully as he wrapped himself in a light bedroll.

“I’m sure you will.” Weegee patted him soothingly. “It’s been a terrible couple of days for you but I bet the infection’s run its course. You’ve lost it all, had it come back in multiples, lost that and regained it again. Surely nothing else can happen.” She lay down next to him.

The main problem with jungle trekking, Jon-Tom reflected, was that you sweated all the time. Not that it mattered to anyone but him, since odor was an accepted bodily condition in this world. But he wasn’t used to smelling as strongly as Mudge, say, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to ignore his own intensifying aroma.

For a change he was the first one up. The camp was silent. Weegee slept comfortably on her side and Cautious lay on his belly not far away. But where was Mudge? Had the otter wandered off in a fit of depression and perhaps fallen into one? The cycle of too much fur-none at all had stressed his stubby companion considerably. A quick inspection of the camp revealed no sign of the otter.

“Weegee.” He shook her firmly. “Wake up, Weegee.”

She sat up fast. Otters do not awaken gradually. “What’s wrong, Jon-Tom?”

“Mudge has disappeared.”

She was on her feet fast and he moved to wake Cautious.

“Ain’t here.” The raccoon turned a slow circle. “Wonder what happened to him, you bet.”

“He’s always hungry,” said a worried Weegee. “Maybe he’s just gone berry hunting or something. Let’s shout his name simultaneously and see what happens.”

“Right.” Jon-Tom cupped his hands to his mouth. “All together now: one, two, three....”“MUDGE!”

This provoked an immediate response, but not from a distant section of forest. “Will you lot kindly shut up so a body can finish ‘is bleedin’ sleep?”

The voice seemed to come from close by, but though they searched carefully there was no sign of its source.

“Mudge? Mudge, where are you?” Weegee looked up at Jon-Tom. “Has he gone invisible?”

“No, I ain’t gone invisible,” the otter groused. “You’ve all gone blind is wot.”

Jon-Tom nodded to his left. “I think he’s sleeping under that flower bed over there.” Sure enough, when he walked over and parted the blossoms a pair of angry brown eyes glared back at him, blinking sleepily.

“Gone deaf, too. I said I were tryin’ to catch up on me sleep, mate. Do I boot you out o’ bed when you’re sleepin’ late?”

Jon-Tom took a deep breath as he stepped back. “I think you’d better take a good look at yourself, Mudge.”

“Cor, wot is it this time?” The flower bed sat up slowly. “No fur? Too much fur?” He glanced downward and his voice became an outraged squeak. “Oh me god, now wot’s ‘appened to me?”

What had happened was as obvious as it was unprecedented. During the night Mudge’s fur had returned to its normal length and consistency but with one notable exception. The slight thickening they had noticed at the tip of each bristle had blossomed into—well, into blossoms. Each bristle was tipped with a brightly hued flower. Other than being a bit thicker and tougher than most, the petals appeared perfectly flower-like.

Weegee found more than a dozen different types. “Daisies, bluebells, yellowlips, murcockles, redbells, twoclovers— why Mudge, you’re beautiful. And you smell nice, too.”

“I don’t want to be beautiful! I don’t want to smell nice!” The apoplectic otter was dancing in an angry circle and waving his arms at the injustice of it all. Petals flew off him as he flailed at the air. He looked like a piece of a Rose Parade float making a break for freedom. Eventually he ran out of steam and settled down in a disconsolate lump—a very pretty lump, Jon-Tom mused.

“Woe is me. Wot’s to become o’ poor Mudge?”

“Take it easy.” Jon-Tom put an arm around a flowered shoulder. A happy bee buzzed busily atop one ear. “I’m sure this conditon will pass quickly just like all the others. And to think you’re always calling me a blooming idiot.”

Mudge let out a shriek and charged his friend, but Jon-Tom had anticipated the attack and dodged out of the way. Normally Mudge would have run him down, but he was so encumbered by his floral fur that Jon-Tom was able to elude him.

“Vicious,” he mumbled. “Vicious an’ evil an’ sarcastic, you grinnin’ ape.” He looked down at himself, spreading his arms. “Positively ‘umiliatin’.”

“Look at it this way,” Jon-Tom told him from a safe distance, “if we have to hide from any pursuers you’re already perfectly camouflaged.”

“Jokes. ‘Ere I’m sufferin’ terrible an” me best friend ‘as to make jokes.”

Jon-Tom put his chin in hand and studied the otter with exaggerated seriousness. “I don’t know whether we should have you mowed or fertilized.”

Even Weegee was not immune. “Don’t worry, dearest. I’ll make sure to water you twice a week.”

Mudge sat down on flowery hindquarters. “I ‘ate the both o’ you. Individually an’ with malice aforethought. Also afterthought.”

“Now Mudgey....” Weegee moved to caress him but he pulled away.

“Don’t you touch me.” He didn’t retreat a second time, however.

She began plucking petals from one of his blooms. “He loves me, he loves me not.”

By the time she’d finished plucking him there wasn’t a petal left on his back. Nor did the flowers rebloom. The bristles that moments earlier had doubled as stems stayed bare.

“See, Mudge? Under the flowers your fur is normal.” Together they began removing the rest of the blossoms.

There was a lot of hair and a lot of petals and plucking kept them busy the rest of the way to Strelakat Mews. By the time they were approaching the outskirts of the town Mudge looked and felt like his old self again. The mysterious (if colorful) disease had run its course. A good thing, too, since Mudge and Weegee were worn out from three days of continuous plucking.

There was no road sign, no warning. They didn’t so much march into Strelakat Mews as stumble into it.

Jon-Tom had been too preoccupied with other matters to envision the town in his mind, so he wasn’t prepared for the enchanting reality. Neither were his companions. It cast an immediate spell over all of them. All the dangers and travails of the long journey were behind now. They could relax, take it easy, and let themselves succumb to the charm of this unique community carved out of the middle of the Mews.

At the edge of the town the jungle had been pruned rather than merely cleared away. Those trees and bushes which put forth large flowers had been left intact to lend their color and fragrance to the periphery. No one pointed this out to Mudge as he was still somewhat sensitive where the matter of blossoms was concerned. Any mention of flowers tended to tilt him to the homicidal.

A single cobblestone street wound its way through town, its very existence as astonishing as the precision with which the stones had been set. Jon-Tom could only try to imagine where the townsfolk had quarried perfect cobblestones in the middle of the jungle.

The first shop they passed was a bakery, from which such wonderful smells issued that even the grumpy Mudge began to salivate. As was true of every establishment they passed, the exterior reflected the inhabitant’s occupation. The roofing shingles resembled slabs of chocolate. Surely the window panes were fashioned of spun sugar, the doors and paneling of gingerbead, and the lintels of strudel. Ropes of red licorice bound candy logs together. Yet all was illusion, as Mudge discovered when he tried to steal a quick lick of spongecake fence only to discover it was made of wood and not flour.

A master sculptor’s residence was hewn from white marble which had been buffed to such a high polish not even a solitary raindrop could cling to it. Woodworkers’ homes were miracles of elaborate carving, baroque with curlicues and reliefs. Seamless joints were covered with fruitwood veneers. Such work was normally reserved for the fashioning of fine furniture.

A painter’s house was a landscape of mountains and clouds set down amidst green jungle. A rainbow seemed to move across the face of the building.

“Magic,” said Cautious.

“Not magic. Superior artistry. Superior skill and craftsmanship.”

They passed a mason’s house, an infinity of tiny colored stones set in an almost invisible matrix. A furniture maker’s establishment resembled a giant overstuffed settee surmounted by a dining room table. But nowhere did they see a storefront or home that suggested its owner was a maker of musical instruments.

They finally had to stop outside the house of a master weaver. Jon-Tom rang the bell set in the door of woven reeds, a rectangle of brown against walls of dyed wool, alpaca and qiviot. The weaver was a four-foot-tall paca, built like a pear and clad in a simple tunic. She rested against the door jamb while she pondered the stranger’s story.

“I don’t know that you should bother Couvier Coulb,” she said at last.

Jon-Tom relaxed slightly. At least they’d come to the right place. He said as much to the weaver.

“Oh, this is the right place, yes.” She looked into his eyes, studied his face. “You’ve come a long way. And you say you are a spellsinger?”

Jon-Tom slid the sack containing the remnants of his duar off his shoulder and exhibited the contents. “Yes. My mentor, the wizard Clothahump, said that in all the world only Couvier Coulb might have the skill necessary to repair my duar.”

“A magical device.” She eyed it curiously. “Not many of us here deal with magic, though visitors think otherwise. Shomat the baker now, he can make decorations dance atop his cakes and spin spun sugar webbing spiders mistake for their own. Couvier Coulb knows also a trick or two.” She sighed, apparently arriving at a conclusion to some unspoken internal argument. “I can show you where he lives.” She stepped out onto the cotton porch and pointed.

“You go to the end of the main street. A trail turns to the left. Don’t take that one. Take the one after it. The house you want lies at its end a short walk from town, back in the trees beside a waterfall. You can’t mistake it for anyone else’s place.

“Be quiet in your approach. If there is no response when you knock on the door, please leave as silently as you came.”

Jon-Tom was carefully repacking the pieces of his duar. “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t be here unless it was an emergency.”

“You do not understand. You see, I fear you may have come too late. Couvier Coulb is dying.”

XV

Mudge kicked pebbles from his path as they made their way down the street. “Great, just great. We slog ‘alfway across the world to get your bleedin’ instrument fixed an’ the only bloke wot can maybe do it up an’ croaks on us.”

“We don’t know that. He isn’t dead yet.” Jon-Tom shifted his pack higher on his back. “The weaver said he was dying, not that he was deceased.”

“Dyin’, dead, wot’s the difference. You think ‘e’ll be in any kind o’ shape to work? The inconsiderate schmucko could’ve waited a couple of weeks till we’d finished our business before gettin’ on with ‘is.”

“I’m sure if he’d known we were coming he would have postponed his fatal illness just to accommodate us.”

“Precisely me point, mate.”

Jon-Tom looked away. Just when he thought the otter might be turning into a halfway decent person he’d up and say something like that. Though by the standards of this world his behavior was hardly shocking.

They found the second trail and turned into the trees. It was a short hike to the house of Couvier Coulb. They were able to hear it before they could see it because the house itself reflected the mood of its master. This morning it was playing a funeral dirge, which was hardly encouraging. The melancholy music permeated the air, the earth, their very bones, filling them with sadness.

The walls of the house were composed of pipes: some of bamboo, others of dark grained wood, still others of gleaming metal. The ropes which bound them together vibrated like viola strings. Bright beams thrummed with the sonority of massed muffled trumpets. The waterfall which tumbled over a nearby cliff splashed in percussive counterpoint to the melody the house was playing. Sight and sound affected all of them equally. Even Mudge was subdued.

“This ‘ere chap may not know ‘ow to cure ‘imself, but ‘e sure as ‘ell knows ‘ow to make music. Rather wish ‘e weren’t dyin’. I’d give a gold piece to see this place when ‘e were “ealthy.”

“Maybe we ought to just leave,” said Cautious. “Go back to town, try find somebody else.”

“There is no one else. That’s what Clothahump told us. That’s why we’ve come here. We have to see him.”

“Wot if ‘e ain’t receivin’ no visitors, mate? Blimey, wot if ‘e ain’t even receivin’ air no more?”

“We have to try.”

As they approached the front door the stones on which they trod rang like the plates of a gamelan. The doorbell was a flurry of flutes with an echo of panpipes. It was opened by a matronly possum. Her wise old eyes flicked over each of them in turn, stopping to rest on Jon-Tom.

“Strangers by the look of you. We don’t get many visitors. I don’t know from whence you come or why, but this is a house of the dying.”

Jon-Tom looked to Mudge for advice, found none available. He had come to this place for reasons of his own. Now he would have to deal with the results of his decisions in the same way.

“It’s about an instrument. Just one instrument. I don’t know where else to go or what else to do. I’ve come so far in the hope that Master Coulb might be able to fix it.”

“Master Coulb cannot rise from his bed, much less replace a reed in an oboe. I am Amalm, his housekeeper.” She started to close the door.

“Please!” Jon-Tom took a step forward, forced himself to be patient. “The wizard who teaches me insisted only Coulb could repair my duar. I must have it fixed or I can’t spellsing.”

The door opened a crack. “You be a spellsinger, young human?” He nodded. The door opened the rest of the way. “A wizard sent you here?” Another nod. “Then there is magic involved. Truly only Master Coulb could help you. If he were capable of helping anyone.” She hesitated, then sighed resignedly. “Because you have traveled far and magic is involved I will see if Master Coulb will speak to you. But be warned: he can do nothing for you. Perhaps he can recommend another.”

As they entered Jon-Tom had to bend to clear the opening. Their guide continued to talk. “There are other master instrument makers, but none like Master Coulb. Still, he may know of one I do not. After all, I am only the housekeeper. This way.”

She led them into a living room which was dominated by a tall stone fireplace. The wind whistled mournfully down the chimney, perfectly in tune with the melody the house was playing. There were several couches, each fashioned in the shape of some stringed instrument.

“Rest yourselves while I see to the Master.”

They sat and listened and stared. Wind whistled through the rafters while loose floor slats chimed against one another. The windowpanes resonated like drumheads.

“Gloomy sort o’ place,” whispered Mudge. “Too bleedin’ dignified for me.”

“What did you expect?” Jon-Tom asked him. “Bells and laughter?”

The housekeeper returned. “He is worse today, but then he is worse each day.”

“What kind of disease is he suffering from?”

“Maybe ‘e’s just old,” Mudge said.

The possum eyed him sharply. “Aye, old he is, but in the prime of health before this affliction brought him down. It is no normal sickness that afflicts the Master. Potions, lotions, painkillers and pills have no effect on it. He is haunted by demons.”

“Right.” Mudge sprang from his chair. “Thanks for your ‘ospitality, ma’am. Time to be goin’.”

Jon-Tom caught him by the collar of his vest. “Don’t be so quick to panic, Mudge.”

“Who’s quick? I’ve thought it right through, I ‘ave. See, all I ‘ave to do is ‘ear the word ‘demon’ an’ it don’t take me but a minim to carefully an’ thoughtfully decide I’d be better off elsewhere.”

“They’re not very big demons.” The housekeeper sniffed. “Quite small, actually.” She held her thumb and forefinger apart. “Such strange demons as have never been seen before. They wear identical raiment and they all look something like—you.” And she shocked Jon-Tom to the bottom of his heart by pointing at him.

“Not you personally,” she said hastily, seeing the effect her words had produced. “I mean that they are all humanlike.” Her eyes rolled ceilingward. “Why they picked on poor Master Coulb, who never did anyone any harm, none of the experts in town have been able to divine. Perhaps it was just his time. Perhaps it was the special trumpet he sold to another traveler who passed by this way not long ago.

“One thing we know for certain: Something angered these demons enough for their own master to set them upon poor Coulb. Every attempt by our local wizards and sorcerers to exorcise them has failed. We even imported an urban wizard from Chejiji but his efforts were no more helpful than those of our own. The evil of these demons is insidious and slow. They kill gradually by poisoning the mind and the spirit rather than the body. Most demons suck blood, but these are worse, far worse. They suck the will out of a person. I feel the Master has little left with which to resist them. They will claim him soon.”

“Life’s irony,” said Mudge. “ ‘Ere stands me friend, a special spellsinger if ever there was one, but ‘e can’t ‘elp cure your master because ‘is instrument is broke. An’ if it were ‘ole, we wouldn’t be ‘ere now.”

“I still have this.” Jon-Tom displayed the suar. “My spellsinging’s not as effective with this as it is when I’m playing the duar, but I can still rouse a gneechee or two. Let me try. Please?”

“I don’t know.” She was shaking her head slowly. “Little enough peace has Master Coulb. I’ve no wish to make his last days, perhaps even his final hours, uncomfortable ones.”

“Let us talk to him,” Weegee pleaded. “I’ve seen Jon-Tom’s powers at work.”

Jon-Tom started but managed to hide his surprise. Exception to the rule she might be, but Weegee was still all otter. When the need arose she could lie as fluidly as Mudge.

“I suppose it can’t hurt letting you see him,” Amalm murmured. “Perhaps some company would do him good. I will put it to him—if he’s awake and able to respond. We’ll see what he says.” She turned to leave the room.

“Tell him not only am I a spellsinger, but I’m a spellsinger from another world. My magic, if I can make any, might be effective against these demons “where that of local practitioners might not.”

She looked back at him. “I will tell him, but I don’t think it will matter.” She vanished into the next room.

“Wot do you think, mate? Can you really do ‘im some good?”

“I don’t know, Mudge, but even if he can’t help me we have to try.”

“You mean you can try.” Weegee was studying the weakly pulsating windows. “The rest of us can only watch. I want nothing to do with any demons, no matter how small they may be.” She shuddered. “Suppose they take offense at our intrusion and decide to strike us as well?”

“That’s a chance we’ll have to take.”

“Don’t you love the way ‘e uses the word ‘we’?” Mudge walked over to stand close to Weegee. He felt as if the house was beginning to close in around him. Or maybe it was just the tightness in his throat. “Whenever ‘e runs into trouble or danger, suddenly ‘tis ‘we’ this an’ ‘we’ that.”

“You can leave if you want to, Mudge.” Jon-Tom gestured back toward the front hall. “You know where the door is. I won’t stop you. All you have to do is walk out.”

“Don’t tempt me, mate. One o’ these days you’re gonna tempt me one time too many. So you think I’m going to walk out, wot? Why, I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction, you skinny-legged, flat-nosed pale excuse for a feeble fart.”

The otter would have continued but the housekeeper had returned. “He is very weak, but your story intrigues him.” She smiled warmly. “He loves music, you see, and the idea of meeting a spellsinger, much less one from another world, was enough to rouse him from his lethargy.” She shook a motherly finger at Jon-Tom. “You weren’t lying about that just to get in to see him, were you?”

“No, ma’am. I am a spellsinger and I am from another world.” I’m just not a spellsinger in the other world, he murmured silently.

“Come then.” She turned and led them into the next room.

At the far end of the sitting chamber a stairway led to a second floor. Much more than a revitalized attic, this spacious area had been turned into a comfortable bedroom complete with dresser, chairs, a washtub in the shape of a squashed tuba, and an exquisitely carved bed. The headboard was composed of wood and metal pipes while the foot of the bed comprised ranked wooden keys.

Presently the bed was humming a sad lullaby. Every so often it would strike an odd atonal note, pause as if confused, back up and recommence playing like an elderly musician suffering from Alzheimer’s.

Lying in the middle of the bed was a single figure no taller than Mudge and considerably slimmer. In fact, the elderly kinkajou was more closely related to Cautious than to the otters. Couvier Coulb wore a plain white nightdress and white tasseled sleeping cap. His nose was much too dry and his big eyes appeared more deeply sunk into his head than was normal. But they were open. He squinted at them, as was only to be expected of a nocturnal creature awakened during the day. The absence of upstairs windows kept the bedroom comfortably dark during the daytime.

Amalm stood on tiptoes to whisper to Jon-Tom. “Try not to tire him; he’s very feeble.” He nodded and approached the bed while his companions held back. At the bedside he dropped to his knees to bring his face closer to the kinka-jou’s level.

“I’ve crossed part of an ocean and many strange lands to see you, Couvier Coulb.”

“So Amalm tells me.” The small mouth curled upward in a semblance of a smile. Jon-Tom felt dampness at the corners of his eyes. He had expected to encounter an aged and kindly individual, but hardly one with the mien of a favorite uncle—if one could imagine having a kinkajou for an uncle.

A hand emerged from beneath the sheets. The fingers were narrow and delicate, the grip unexpectedly strong. “I have met many musicians, but never one from another world. How strange I should have the opportunity to do so on my deathbed.”

“Don’t talk like that.” It sounded silly but he didn’t know what else to say. “I really am a spellsinger, you know. Maybe I can do something to help you. I’ve helped people before, but almost always with the aid of this.”

Carefully he slipped off the sack containing his duar and brought out the fragments one by one. Couvier Coulb examined each piece thoroughly, turning them over and over in his sensitive fingers. “How did you break this?”

“I fell on it.”

“That was most clumsy of you. These are the components of a duar. One of a design unfamiliar to me, and quite unique. So you see, there is at least one other instrument maker in the world of a skill to match my own, for whoever fashioned this is no less a master. In the hands of a truly gifted spellsinger I can believe this would work great magic.” He placed the pieces back in Jon-Tom’s hands.

“Alas, I fear that would not be enough to save me. I would be more than happy to repair your instrument, young human, but these days I cannot muster enough strength to climb out of bed. Even the thought of resetting strings that fade into another dimension tires me.” He looked past his visitor.

“Amalm looks after me well and attends efficiently to my simple needs. But I am glad you came. It is pleasant to have guests even in one’s last days.” The delicate fingers patted the back of Jon-Tom’s hand.

“Those demons who torment you so; Amalm could describe them to us only vaguely. Why should they pick on you?”

“I don’t know.” The kinkajou’s breathing was labored. “They simply appeared one day and declared they had been assigned to my case—whatever that means. Demon lore. I thought perhaps they were talking of a case I had fashioned for a bass twiddle not long ago, but as it turned out they were talking of something else entirely. No doubt Amalm has told you we have tried everything. Wizards and magicians, doctors and physicians: None have been able to help me. I even went so far as to try to comply with their incessant demands, but these are so strange and incomprehensible I believe they invent them simply to torment me further. You can’t fight them, young man. You can only try to mitigate the agony they inflict.” Making a supreme effort, the kinkajou lifted his head off his oversized pillow.

“You should go. Go now, before they assign themselves to your case as well.”

Jon-Tom rose, looked around the room. There was defiance in his tone. “I’m not afraid of demons, much less small ones. Neither are my friends. Are we, Mudge?” He peered into the darkness. “Mudge?”

“Went downstairs.” That was Weegee’s voice from near the head of the stairs. “Said he had to take a leak.”

“He’s had plenty of time. I’ll go get him. I may need his help.” He took a step toward the stairwell.

A faint glow appeared in the air between him and the exit. Weegee let out a gasp and Cautious a curse. Amalm rushed from her place to stand protectively close to the bed.

“Damn them,” the kinkajou muttered weakly, “they’re coming for me again.” He raised his shaky voice. “Why can’t you leave me alone? Why can’t you suck at someone else? I’m not guilty of anything!”

“None are innocent; all are guilty,” intoned a sepulchral voice. “Nor could we leave you if we wished to. We have been assigned to you—assigned to you—assigned to you.” The words echoed through the room.

Jon-Tom held his ground. Shapes were beginning to form within the pale white mist that had filled the bedchamber. They were not the shapes he’d steeled himself to see. They took the form of words, quite indecipherable, that drifted hither and yon. Black letters that formed snakelike blobs and scorpion shapes. They danced and pirouetted and closed in on the bed and its helpless elderly occupant.

Poor Couvier Coulb sank deep into his pillow as the sheer force of the mysterious words pushed Jon-Tom aside. They did not try to injure him, but they did shunt him several steps backward as though he weighed nothing at all.

Then the words coalesced and shrank to create the figures Amalm had described. They accumulated on the headboard and the blankets in little knots of twos and threes, tiny faceless men some four inches tall. Each looked exactly like the one next to him, interchangeable and expressionless as they regarded the kinkajou stonily. Each wore a miniature three-piece gray pinstriped suit complete with matching gray tie and gray shoes. Now faces appeared, eyes and mouths and nostrils, and Jon-Tom saw that their eyes were as gray as their clothing. About half of them carried matchbook size gray briefcases.

“You haven’t filed on time,” declared one of the group gravely.

“But I told you,” Coulb whined, “I don’t know what it is you want filed, or how to go about filing it.”

“That does not matter,” said a second.

“Ignorance is no excuse,” insisted a third.

“We have examined what you have returned.” The first demon opened his tiny briefcase and portentously examined the contents. “You did not sign your form 1933-AB Supplement.’’

“Please, please, I don’t know what a 1933-AB Supplement is.”

The demon ignored this plea and continued relentlessly. “There is an error on Line 4, Subsection H of your 5550 Supplement.”

The kinkajou moaned.

“Your 140 Depletion Allowance was filed incorrectly.”

Couvier Coulb pulled his sheets over his head and whimpered. At the same time Jon-Tom noticed that each of the demons had a forked tail emerging from the seat of their perfectly pressed pants. The tip of each tail was darkly strained, possibly by ink.

“There is a mistake on your Form 440 which we have not be able to resolve with the current data.” Tiny lines of type leaped from the open briefcase to stab at Couvier Coulb like so many micropoint hypodermics. He let out a yelp of pain.

“Now wait a minute!” Jon-Tom stepped forward and glared down at the tiny shapes. It seemed impossible anything so small and bland could be causing the kinkajou such agony.

A dozen tiny faces turned up at him and the power of those blank stares froze him in place. “Do not interfere,” said the one Jon-Tom had come to think of as the leader. “You cannot help. No one can help. He did not file properly and must pay the penalty.”

“Pay the penalty,” echoed the whey-faced demonic chorus.

“Come to think of it,” the leader continued, “have you filed?”

Jon-Tom stumbled backward. A huge, invisible fist had struck him in the gut. His breath came in short, painful gasps. Cautious started toward him but he waved the raccoon away.

“It’s okay, I’m all right.” He straightened, glaring down at the demon. “You still haven’t explained why you’re tormenting poor Couvier Coulb.”

“Indeed we have. He did not file. Anyone who does not file is visited by representatives of the IRS—the Inter-dimensional Reliquary of Spirits. Us.” Each word was uttered with utmost reverence by the demonic chorus.

“But he doesn’t know how to file. Hell, he shouldn’t have to file.”

“Hell says otherwise. Everyone has to file. It is required. It is the Law.”

“Not here it isn’t. You boys not only have the wrong individual, you’ve got the wrong world.”

“We do not have the wrong world. We cannot have the wrong world. We are infallible. We are always sent to the right place. He has not filed and therefore he must pay.”

“How do you expect him to comply with rules and regulations he knows nothing about?”

“Ignorance is no excuse,” the line of demons standing on the edge of the headboard intoned ritualistically. “He has been audited and found wanting. He must pay.”

“All right.” Jon-Tom reached toward his purse. “How much does he owe? I have some gold.”

“Money?” The leader’s lips formed a miniature bow of disapproval. “We do not accept money. We have come for his soul and we mean to have it and if you continue to interfere, man, we will take yours as well as interest earned. I Lescar, Agent-in-Charge, say this.”

“Jon-Tom,” whispered Weegee urgently, “the goblet’s prediction!”

He stared at the tiny, threatening demon. Certainly his expression was lugubrious enough. Wildly he wondered if the goblet was also right about IBM.

“It doesn’t matter, Weegee. I have to get my duar fixed. Coulb’s the only one who can do it, so I have to try to help him. I think I’d try anyway. I don’t like these smartass bureaucratic types.”

“No one likes us,” the demons moaned. “We like no one. It does not matter. The end is never in doubt.”

“We’ll see about that.” He began strumming the suar’s strings, trying to think of an appropriate spellsong. What might have an effect on demons like these? Armies of the dead, skeletal apparitions, ogres and monsters of every description he could and had dealt with, but this was a different kind of evil, sly and subtle. It required spellsinging of equal cunning.

He started off with another bold rendition of Pink Floyd’s “Money.”

Though he was functioning without the power of the duar, the bedroom rang wih the sound of his voice. The house picked up on what he was trying to do and added a throbbing, contemporary backbeat. But no matter what song he tried or how well he played the demons simply ignored him as they concentrated their efforts on the rapidly weakening kinkajou.

Eventually Cautious put a gentle hand on Jon-Tom’s arm. “Might as well save your breath. Ain’t having no effect on them. Ain’t nothing gonna have an effect on them, maybe.”

Jon-Tom requested a glass of water, which Amalm readily provided. His throat was sore already. He’d been singing steadily for more than half an hour, with no visible effect on his opponents. Not one demon had disappeared. They continued their insidious harangue of Couvier Coulb.

“There’s got to be a way,” he mumbled. “There’s got to be.”

“Maybe spellsinging ain’t it.” Cautious looked thoughtful. “When I was a cub my grammam used to tell me ‘bout magic, you bet. She always say you have to make the magic fit the subject. Doen look like you doing that, Jon-Tom.”

Was he going about it all wrong? But all he knew how to do was spellsing. He couldn’t use potions and powders like Clothahump. What was it the wizard was always telling him? “Always keep in mind that magic is a matter of specificity.”

Specifics. Instead of trying to adapt old songs to fit the situation, perhaps he should improvise new ones. He’d done that before. But what kind of lyrics would give such demons as these pause?

Fight fire with fire. Clothahump hadn’t said that, but somebody had.

He considered carefully. A gleam appeared in his eyes. His hand swept down once more over the suar. Take equal parts Dire Straits, Ratt, X and Eurythmics. Mix Adam Smith with Adam Ant. Add readings from The Economist and Martin Greenspan. Mix well and you have one savage synoptic song.

Heavy metal economics.

Instead of singing of love and death, of peace and learning and compassion, Jon-Tom began to blast out raw-edged stanzas full of free trade, reduced tariffs, and an international standard of taxation based on ecus instead of the dollar.

It staggered the demons. They tried to fight back with talk of protectionism and deficit financing, but they were no match for Jon-Tom musically. He struck hard with a rhythmic little ditty proposing a simplified income tax and no deductions that sent half of them scurrying for shelter, moaning and covering their ears.

Those remaining countered with an accusation about an unqualified deduction retroactive to the first date of filing, a vicious low blow that cracked the front of the suar and nearly knocked him off his feet. He recouped the ground briefly lost and more with the ballad of unlimited textile imports and suggestions for a free market in autos. When he slammed them with a flat tax tune it was more than the strongest among them could bear. They began to vanish, holding their briefcases defensively in front of them, dissolving in a refulgent gray cloud of letters and incomprehensible forms.

Still he sang of banking and barter, of one page returns and other miracles, until the last of the cloud had dissipated. When he finally stopped it was as if the air in the room had been scoured clear of infection, every molecule handwashed and hung out to dry. He was hoarse and exhausted.

But Couvier Coulb was standing tall and straight by the side of his bed, assuring his sobbing housekeeper that if not completely cured he was surely on the way to total recovery.

At which point a fuzzy head popped into view atop the stairwell and declared at this solemn and joyful moment, “Damn, I thought I were goin’ to piss for a week!”

“As always, your timing never ceases to amaze me.” Jon-Tom had to struggle to form the words. His voice was a breathy rasping.

Mudge glanced rapidly around the bedchamber. “Timin’? Wot timin’? Now where are these ‘ere demons everyone’s so worried about? I’m ready for ‘em, I am. Big demons, little demons, let me at “em.” He stode briskly into the room.

To her immense credit and Jon-Tom’s everlasting appreciation Weegee booted the otter right in the rear.

As the two of them quarreled, Couvier Coulb led the rest of his guests downstairs. “Come, my friend. Amalm, I am sure our guests must be hungry.” He put an affectionate arm and his prehensile tail around Jon-Tom’s waist, which was as high as he could comfortably reach. “And I know this young man must be thirsty. I am going to fix your duar, Jon-Tom. Have no fear of that. If it is at all possible I will do it.” He winked. “I may even do it if it is impossible. But first we must rest. You are tired from battling demons and I from a long illness. You must talk of your travels in distant lands and of the world you come from, and I would know more of this Clothahump who knew to send you to me.”

“That’s easy.” Mudge and Weegee had rejoined them, Mudge still rubbing his backside. “ ‘E’s a senile old faker with a ‘ead as ‘ard as ‘is shell.”

By nightfall Coulb had recovered much of his strength and led his guests into his workshop. The house was already perking up, having set aside its month-long funeral dirge in favor of some sprightly, cheerful tunes that would have done well on Broadway. It had a rejuvenating effect on Coulb and Jon-Tom. Mudge thought it spooky.

The kinkajou carefully laid out the shattered components of the duar on his workbench, a glistening long table made of pure white hardwood. When the last piece had been set down he turned the carrying sack inside out to check for dust and splinters. These were collected, placed in ajar, and added to the display. As he donned a pair of extra-thick work glasses Jon-Tom took a moment to examine the workshop.

Musical instruments in different stages of repair lay on other benches or hung from the walls. The air was thick with the rich smells of oil and varnish. Some of the tools meticulously arranged in boxes next to the workbench looked fine enough to do double duty in a surgery.

Coulb was muttering aloud. “Align these here, replace some wood there; that seam can be fixed, yes.” He looked up, pushed the work glasses back on his forehead. “I can repair it—I think.”

“You think?”

The kinkajou rubbed at his eyes. “As I said before, this instrument is unique. The most difficult part will be setting the strings. It is hard to achieve perfect pitch in two dimensions at once.” He gestured toward the bench. “All the strings are there?” Jon-Tom nodded. “Good. I’ve never seen strings like these and I’d hate to have to try to replace them. Fortunately they are metal. But I will need help setting them properly.”

Jon-Tom looked around the shop. “An apprentice?” Coulb just smiled.

Oil lamps, each in the shape of a different instrument, lined the walls. It was pitch dark outside. They were full of Amalm’s good cooking. Jon-Tom sensed he was in the presence of another master magician. What else could you call someone who took wood and glue and gut and created from such disparate elements the essence of music?

“Not an apprentice.” The kihkajou was walking to another table. “Gneechees. A spellsinger should know gneechees.”

“That I do, but I’ve never seen anyone except Clothahump and myself call them up.”

“Not only must we call them up, young man, we must isolate those we need. In order to be able to do this I collaborated some years ago with Acrody, a master manufacturer of medical devices. Working together we built this.”

Jon-Tom studied the contraption intently. It consisted of a series of transparent tubes, each stacked inside the other. Their sides were perforated by minute holes. The largest tube, which contained all the others, was nearly a foot in diameter, while the innermost was as narrow as a straw. This emerged from the middle of the stack and continued up and out until it entered a glass plate that was perhaps a quarter inch deep and some two feet wide by three long. It resembled a solar collector without the silicon cells. Coulb assured him it was covered with small holes but Jon-Tom could perceive them only as a roughness on the flat surface.

From the underside of the plate hung thin strips of metal, wood, glass, plastic—every imaginable substance. Coulb leaned over and blew on the plate. As the air passed through the glass the streamers began to vibrate, producing an infinity of musical tones.

Keys ran in a circle around the base of the big glass tube. They did not appear to be connected to anything but Jon-Tom knew better. Coulb hadn’t placed them there for decoration.

“What is it?” Weegee finally asked.

“A gneechee sorter.” Coulb looked proud. “Not an easy thing to build, I can tell you. I use it to isolate those gneechees who are musically inclined from those with other ethereal interests. It will help us to tune your duar, young man. If I can put it back together again. Which I cannot do if I stand here nattering away with you. Go on now, out, shoo, leave me to my work. Amalm will attend to your needs. It is late and you need your sleep while I am just waking up. I will see you again tomorrow night.”

They filed out, Jon-Tom’s gaze lingering long on the fragments of his duar. He felt as though he was abandoning his only child to another’s care. Better care than you gave it. he reminded himself.

There was a large guest house out back. Amalm found beds for all of them and bid them a good night. They fell asleep instantly, lulled by the music of the house and the waterfall nearby which combined to sing them a liquid lullaby.

XVI

They spent several days as Coulb’s guests, enjoying Amalm’s cooking and exploring the village, regaining the strength they’d expended during the arduous journey to Strelakat Mews. Many times Jon-Tom was tempted to look in on Couvier Coulb. He did not, mindful of Amalm’s admonition that the master worked best when he was not disturbed.

There came a day when Coulb interrupted their breakfast. He was tired from working through the night but quietly exultant. The right lens of his work glasses was almost obscured by varnish and he held a brush in his right paw as he looked straight at Jon-Tom and smiled.

“It’s done. Come and see.”

Though he wasn’t finished eating, Jon-Tom pushed back his chair and moved to follow Coulb. So did Cautious. Weegee dragged a disgruntled Mudge away from the food.

Even Amalm put her apron aside and came to see what musical miracle the kinkajou had wrought.

Miracle was the only description that fit, Jon-Tom thought in wonder as Coulb proudly displayed the restored duar. At the very least he expected cracks and seams to show. After all, the duar had not merely been broken; it had been shattered.

It hung between padded metal clamps atop the workbench, and it glowed. Coulb had done more than restore it, he had improved on it. Those sections which had been irreparably damaged had been seamlessly replaced with jewel-like pieces of exotic woods. New wood and old had been polished to a mirror-like sheen. The tremble and mass controls sat flush with the resonating chamber.

“May I...?”

“Of course you may, young man. It is your instrument, is it not?”

Holding the duar by its neck, Jon-Tom loosened the clamps and removed it from its mounting. He tried the controls. They turned with a fluid firmness. The old uncertain give and play was gone.

Even. the feel of the wood was different. It was soft, almost malleable, the result of penetrating oils Coulb had worked into top, bottom and sides. Yet no matter how much he caressed it there was no lingering greasiness on his fingers.

The strings looked right. They gradually ran together over the openings in the resonator, vanishing into another dimension before reappearing on the other side. Yet when he ran his fingers lovingly over their taut surfaces the sounds they generated were unnaturally discordant.

“We still have to tune it.” He was enjoying himself, Jon-Tom saw.

Taking the instrument, Coulb placed it between two braces beneath the strips of material that hung from the underside of the gneechee collector plate. Moving to the peculiar keyboard that encircled the concentric glass cylinders, he began to play.

Oddly clear, lilting notes filled the workshop. Slow Mahler on a glass harmonica. The chords deepened as Coulb leaned harder on the keys and picked up the beat. Sounds of several symphony orchestras mixed with synthesizers assailed the ears of the onlookers. Mudge put an arm around Weegee and pulled her close while Cautious closed his eyes. Amalm looked on and nodded knowingly, her face alight with pride.

The sonority brought forth a glow, one familiar to Jon-Tom and his companions. Gneechees, attracted by the thousands to the magic of the music. They clustered around old Couvier Coulb .until he was encased in a luminescent blanket. More of them swirled around the glass columns. As Jon-Tom stared they began to filter through the minuscule perforations, filling one cylinder after another, until at last the most persistent of them reached the central and final tube.

It conveyed them up in a neon arc, up and around and into the collection plate as the cylinders separated out those gneechees whose especial affinity was for music. They filled the collector plate to overflowing, the glass growing so bright with the light of their concentrated bodies that Jon-Tom could hardly bear to look at it. Compacted within the plate they continued their joyous, celebratory dance, thereby agitating the tuning strips which hung from the underside of the glass. Jon-Tom began to cry from the sheer ecstasy the resultant music produced.

And as it poured into and through and around the duar that extraordinary instrument strained against its braces, bending slightly upward in the middle. But the clamps were strong and held it in place as it and everyone else in the room quivered in time to the rampaging music.

Then it was done. Couvier Coulb stepped away from his keyboard. The gneechees put forth a few Final, questioning chords before they began to filter out of the collection plate and concentric cylinders. The music faded with them, back into the unreal realm from which the master instrument maker had summoned them forth.

Coulb took a deep breath and then, as if in intentional contrast to the indescribable musical sweep they had just endured, cracked his knuckles. He walked over to the now transparent plate collector, reached beneath the motionless tuning strips, and removed the duar from its braces. In appearance it was unchanged, but when Jon-Tom took it from the kinkajou’s grasp a subtle trembling ran from the instrument through his fingertips and up his arms, drifting away like a lost sigh.

Coulb looked up at him out of wise, gratified eyes. “Now try your instrument, young human.”

Jon-Tom put the strap over his shoulder, let the duar rest against his chest. It felt familiar, comfortable, a part of him. The wood was golden and the strings gleamed like chrome. It had not been restored so much as resurrected.

The first sounds that issued from the resonating chamber when he passed his fingers across the double set of strings were exalted.

Couvier Coulb looked satisfied and found himself a chair. “Play something. Not for magic. For the music.”

Jon-Tom nodded and smiled at the old craftsman. The bond between them transcended such insignificant differences as species. This was to be the kinkajou’s reward. Play he would for the master, something high-spirited and full of life. A celebration.

Too much of a celebration for Mudge, who never had become a heavy metal fan. He ran from the workshop, his paws clapped over his ears. He was followed by a reluctant Weegee and an apologetic Cautious.

Though she winced a lot, Amalm stayed. As for Couvier Coulb, he seemed to drop twenty years. As the smile on his face grew broader he began snapping his fingers and tapping his feet, and his long prehensile tail twitched back and forth behind his chair like a furry metronome. The house went dead quiet for about five’ minutes before it began to join in, hesitantly at first, then with growing confidence.

Jon-Tom had never felt better in his life. Never played better either, he reflected happily. He bounced and pranced and leaped about the room, even managing an exuberant aerial split h la Pete Townshend. And when he concluded, the sweat pouring from his face and beneath his arms, the breath coming in long sweet sucks, it still was not silent in the workshop. Couvier Coulb was on his feet, applauding mightily.

“Such depth of feeling! Such insight and enthusiasm. Such wanton expression of personal karma.”

“Say what?” Jon-Tom straightened.

“What do you call it?”

“A song for my lady love, who I wish was here to share this moment with me. It’s called “The Lemon Song,” by a quiet bunch of good-natured fellows who named themselves Led Zepplin. Very refined.”

The kinkajou stored this information, then turned and walked toward the back of the workshop. “Come, young man. I have something else to show you.” The twinkle was back in his eyes.

“Please, before I forget, let me pay you. My pack is out in our room.”

“No money. You saved my life. Don’t insult me by offering me money. And you have gifted me with this wonderfully sensitive music of yours as well.” He grabbed Jon-Tom’s hand and pulled him along.

The back wall was filled by a filing cabinet that ran from floor to ceiling. A rolling ladder provided access to the top drawers. Coulb climbed a few steps, halted to trace minuscule labels with one long finger, then opened one of the files. Jon-Tom could see that it was filled from side to side with five-inch-tall bottles of colored glass. They looked a lot like old-fashioned milk bottles except that their stoppers were made of some odoriferous golden-hued resin. The kinkajou removed one bottle and showed it to his young guest.

“The stopper is pure frankincense. I buy it from a trader who visits the Mews once a year from the desert lands. It is the only substance that seals.”

The bottle appeared to be empty. Jon-Tom wasn’t close enough to read the stick-on label. He gestured at the filing cabinet. “What is all this?”

“Why, my music collection, of course. I am a maker of instruments. I can repair or design devices that will produce sounds imagined but not yet heard. I can play many of them passing well. But I cannot compose. I cannot create. So when I am tired or bored I go to my collection.” He pointed toward the now empty gneechee collector.

“The music our little friends produce emerges through the tiny holes in the collector plate. When I am in the mood I place another filter atop it. This filter shrinks down to a tube which I then insert into one of these bottles. Thus do I collect music. Much of it I do not recognize, but that does not keep me from enjoying it. I have become something of an expert on the music of other worlds and dimensions. The gneechees move freely among many. Listen.” He pulled the stopper.

The sound of a symphony orchestra again filled the workshop. Brass rumbled and strings queried. As Coulb began to close the stopper the music reversed itself, playing backward as it was drawn back into the bottle by some unimaginable suction.

“I have been able, by dint of hard work and much study, to identify music and composers.” He squinted at the label. “That was part of the second movement of the Fourteenth Symphony by a gneechee who called himself Beethoven.”

Jon-Tom could hardly breathe. “He wrote only nine symphonies.”

“While he was alive, yes.” Coulb wagged a finger at his guest. “In the gneechee form we all eventually come to inhabit he has continued to compose. Originally from your world, it seems. Let’s see what else I have from the same plane.” He chose another bottle and cracked the stopper.

An oceanic orchestral surge swamped Jon-Tom’s senses. Coulb let him listen a little longer this time, until the last note of the overwhelming crescendo had receded into the far reaches of time and space. It continued to echo in Jon-Tom’s brain.

The kinkajou checked his label. “This one must have been an interesting fellow. It took three bottles to hold all of this composition. Another of your symphonies, this one the Twelfth, by a Gustav Mahler.” He climbed to the top row of drawers, examined the contents of another. “Here is one of my favorites: Prist’in’ikie’s Tanglemorf for Gluzko and Eelmack.”

The sounds that now assailed Jon-Tom’s ears were utterly alien. Atonal without being disorganized, dissonant without being harsh, and extremely complex.

“I don’t know that composer.”

“Doesn’t surprise me, young man. I’m not sure I know the dimension. Gneechees do get around.”

“You’ve heard the kind of music I play. The Beethoven and the Mahler were wonderful but—don’t you maybe have something a little lighter from my neck of the woods?”

“Lighter? Like your own music, you mean?” Jon-Tom nodded. Coulb descended the ladder, opened another new drawer and chose a bottle. The glass was a rich, dark purple.

It contained sounds that were as familiar as they were new and unmistakable. Only one man had ever been able to make such sounds with an electric guitar. It was full of raw, disciplined power.

“Let me guess,” Jon-Tom whispered. “Jimi Hendrix?”

“Yes.” Coulb peered through his thick glasses at the label. “From the Snuff an’ Stuff double album. Bored yet?”

“I don’t think new music could ever bore me, sir. I even liked that Pristinkeewinkie stuff.” He stared silently at the cabinet. It must hold thousands of songs and symphonies and other posthumous unheard compositions by hundreds of long-deceased musicians.

“Call me Couvier. We have a lot to listen to.”

The house shook all that day and on into the night as Coulb played for Jon-Tom pieces of Bartok’s opera, A Modern Salammbo, selections from Wagner’s second Ring cycle, and most of a heartrending album by Jim Morrison.

And when kinkajou and man fell asleep, it was to the haunting strains of Janis Joplin’s “Texas Eulogy.”

Both woke with the sun. Jon-Tom thanked the old kinkajou profusely. Coulb shrugged it off. “Any time you feel the need to refresh your soul with new music, come and visit. The enjoyment ‘one gains from listening is doubled when shared.”

“If I could get back home and then return here with a good cassette recorder and a crateful of blank tape I could set the music world on its ear forever.”

“Ah, but you can’t hear anything if you’re standing on your ear.” Coulb laughed softly. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Jon-Tom?” He blinked sleepily despite his recent rest. The sun was rising higher outside and the nocturnal craftsman would be wanting to retire, his guest knew.

“Just one thing. Can you recommend someone to guide us safely back to Chejiji? Preferably by a roundabout route? We had a minor altercation with some locals on our way here and I’d rather not have to deal with them again.”

“Ah, the ogres. Yes, we can find someone to escort you around their territory. I wish you could stay longer. I have so much music to share with you.”

“I’ll be back, I promise. I’ve got to come back here with a tape recorder.”

“I could loan you some bottles.”

“I’d feel safer with a recorder. It won’t break as easily if I fall on it.” He grinned ruefully.

Together they exited the workshop. “What will you do once you get back to Chejiji?”

“Try to charter a boat to take my friends and I back to a certain section of the eastern Glittergeist. We found what I think is a permanent gate between our worlds. If it’s still there I’m going back for that recorder—and other things.”

“Then I hope I have the pleasure of seeing you again. And hearing you play.” Man and kinkajou shook hands.

True to his word Coulb had Amalm locate someone to lead them safely through the Mews. There Weegee suggested they look up Teyva before bothering with an uncertain ship and unreliable crew.

They located the flying stallion in an aerial stable on the far side of town. He was delighted to see them again. With his fear of flying permanently cured, he readily agreed to carry them back to the eastern swamplands. Nor did he have to strain to transport them alone. Having won a substantial amount at cards, he called in his debts among his friends. So Jon-Tom and his companions each had their own mount.

From the air most forest looks alike, but eventually Mudge’s sharp eyes spotted a certain tree, and from the tree they managed to locate the rocky ledge and the subterranean orifice it concealed. They landed, and while the flying horses chatted of alfalfa wine and cloud dancing Jon-Tom made his final preparations.

He was taking his duar and ramwood staff, neither of which should draw any unusual attention. His iridescent lizard-skin cape he would leave behind. As for the rest of his unusual clothing he had concocted various explanations with which to satisfy the curious until he could purchase sneakers, jeans and a shirt to match. It shouldn’t take long to convert Clothahump’s gold coins into ready cash at any pawn shop.

Cautious was regarding him fondly. “You be careful for sure now.”

“You too. What are you going to do now?”

“I think maybe my hometown friends still pretty mad at me, you bet. So I think I go back with your otter fella and see what this Bellwood country is like.”

.”We’ll be waiting for your return.” Was Weegee crying? “I’ll have a talk with your lady Talea, female to female, and explain what you’re about. How will you make it home when you come back this way, Jon-Tom? You don’t know how long you’re going to be and Teyva can’t wait here forever.”

“I don’t expect him to wait at all. Mudge and I have traveled a fair portion of the world. I’m not worried about getting home from here.” He took a last look around, checked to make sure he had several torches handy. “I guess that’s everything. Teyva and his friends will fly you back to the Bell woods and....”

A large furry mass struck him square in the chest. He staggered backward with Mudge clinging to him. The otter was sobbing uncontrollably.

“You ain’t comin’ back!” Black nose and whiskers were inches from his face and tears were pouring down fuzzy cheeks. “I know you ain’t. Once you get back to your own world through that bloody ‘ole in the ground you’ll be back in familiar surroudin’s, back among your own kind, an’ you’ll forget all about us. About poor ol’ Mudge, an’ Weegee, and that senile ‘ardshell Clothahump who needs you to look after ‘im in ‘is old age, and even about Talea. You’ll get back to where everythin’s comfortable an’ safe an’ relaxin’ an’ you won’t be comin’ back ‘ere.” He grabbed the vee of Jon-Tom’s indigo shirt and shook him.

“Are you listenin’ to me, you ugly, ignorant, naive bald-faced monkey? Wot am I goin’ to do if I never see you again?”

“Take it easy, Mudge.” Feeling a little teary-eyed himself, Jon-Tpm disengaged the otter’s fingers from his shirt. “I wouldn’t run out permanent on my best friend, even if he is a liar, a cheat, a thief, a drunk and an incorrigible wencher.”

Mudge wiped at his eyes and nose. “It does me ‘eart good to ‘ear you talk like that, mate.” He stepped back. “Maybe you will come back, but I ain’t goin’ to ‘old me breath. I’ve seen wot ‘appens to folks when they gets back to where they belong. I sure as ‘ell ain’t goin’ to take any bets on you retumin’.”

“If for some reason I don’t, I don’t want you lying around moping and moaning about it all the time.”

“Wot, me?” The otter forced a cheery smile. “Not a bleedin’ chance!”

Jon-Tom looked at the entrance to the cave. “We had ourselves an interesting time, didn’t we? Set some evil back on its heels, met some special folks, spread some goodwill and generally shook up the status quo. No reason for regrets.’’ He dropped to his knees and lit the first torch, crawled toward the opening beneath the ledge.

“I’ll be back, you’ll see. Tell Talea not to fret. I’ll be coming for her.”

“Sure you will, mate.” Mudge stood next to Weegee. Cautious waved farewell along with the otters while Teyva pawed the earth. The only thing absent from Mudge’s goodbyes was a feeling of conviction.

Jon-Tom stumbled down the familiar tunnel until he could stand. Shouldering his backpack he held the torch close to the floor, following the damp footprints he and his friends had left on their previous subterranean excursion as well as those of the pirates who had pursued them. Within an hour he was following the crumbling wire back to the cleft in the rocks that led to his-own world.

Halfway through the narrow passage he extinguished his torch. Light and voices reached him from the other side. He was able to use the distant glow to guide him the rest of the way through the defile.

Soon after he emerged, a voice yelled at him.

“Hey, you there!” He blinked as his eyes received the full force of a multicell flashlight, put up a hand to shield them as he tried to locate the speaker.

“What is it?”

The light was lowered along with the voice. “Don’t lag back there. This cave’s full of dangerous dropoffs and unexplored dead ends. We ain’t lost anybody yet and I don’t want to start today.”

“Sorry.” As his eyes adjusted he found a dozen people staring at him. A couple of families, some young couples, one or two younger people traveling on their own. One shouldered a backpack as grungy as his own.

The guide resumed his well-worn spiel. “Now over here, folks, we have a formation called the bashful elephant.”

The faces turned away. Children oohed and aahed. No one questioned Jon-Tom’s sudden appearance. Those in the front of the guided party assumed Jon-Tom had been in the back, and those in the back assumed he’d entered with the guide. He simply fell in step with the tour and followed it back out into the bright warm sunshine of a Texas afternoon. There was the old building where he and his companions had battled Kamaulk’s pirates and then drug runners, behind him the stone entrance to the cavern below, at the end of the dirt road the sign identifying this as the location of the Cave-With-No-Name, and off in the distance the highway where a passing eighteen-wheeler had startled his friends. South of the highway lay San Antonio. Twelve hundred odd miles to the west was the megalopolis of Los Angeles, his home.

He turned to watch the old guide latch the gates which sealed the cave entry. Not too many yards below lay a small twist in space-time. Through that inexplicable, tenuous passage could be found a land where otters talked and a certain turtle practiced at sorcery, where he had battled armies of intelligent insects, ferocious ferrets and parrot pirates.

As Mudge would say, it was bloody unreal.

The tourists were filing back into their cars. Jon-Tom made several hopeful inquiries before one of the young couples agreed to give him a lift into San Antonio. Comfortably ensconced in the back seat of their Volvo he was removing his backpack when he happened to notice the elaborate digital clock set in the dash. In addition to the time of day it also provided full date information.

He knew he’d been gone more than a year, but it was one thing to view time in the abstract, quite something else to see it solid and irrefutable in the form of cool blue LED letters and numbers. How would his parents react when he turned up after a silence of more than a year? Fortunately he wasn’t one of those clinging absentee college students who called in once a week. They were used to long silences from their distant, hard studying son. But a year?

What was his counselor at UCLA going to say? And his friends, and semi-regular dates like Suzanne and Mariel?

They and everyone else were going to have to buy the story he’d carefully worked out.

A unique opportunity had arisen (and that part of it was certainly no lie, he told himself) for him to go to work for the government. When the inevitable question arose as to what sort of work that entailed, he was going to smile knowingly and explain that he wasn’t at liberty to go into details just now. Then his parents and friends and everyone else would (hopefully) nod knowingly in turn and let the matter drop.

It wouldn’t go over as well with the university administration. There would be classes abruptly abandoned he would have to make up, professors to mollify. He was confident, though, that he could get his life back on track.

The Volvo had turned out onto the highway, heading southeast toward the interstate. Trucks and cars zipped past, belching fumes that reminded him of the swamplands. At first he thought there was a funny smell in the air. Then he realized it was the air itself. There were no industries, no internal combustion engines in the other world. The air there, if not the inhabitants, was pure.

Of course he was going back. Talea, the love of his life, was back there. The love of his life in that world, anyway. What was Mariel doing these days? And Suzanne? What would they think of his exotic gone-to-work-for-some-secret-government-agency story? Would it score points for him?

The young wife turned the radio to the local rock station and the Volvo was filled with the mellifluous sounds of a Ronald McDonald clone hawking the opening of three new San Antonio area burger Xanadus. Ads for Po Folks, underarm deodorant and used-cars-se-habla-espanol followed. The Cowboys were on their way to the playoffs again. Nothing had changed since he’d been gone.

Nothing much at all.

-A Great Deal Later-

The giant came trudging up the river road. He was impossibly tall and gaunt. A scraggly seaweed-like growth clung to his face and there was a wild gleam in his eyes.

The observer of this approaching apparition did not panic, did not flee. She stood her ground.

The giant saw her. Across his back was slung a thick wooden staff, knobbed at one end. Tied to and around it were a number of bulging sacks. Perhaps he was a pedlar, the observer thought.

“Hello there.” The giant did not have a threatening voice. He sounded tired. “What have we here?”

By way of reply the observer darted forward and sank her teeth into the giant’s leg midway between knee and ankle. Letting out a yelp of pain, he began hopping about on one leg, trying to balance his precarious load as he attempted to shake his attacker free. The third kick of that long limb sent her sprawling.

Rolling to her feet, she began spitting ostentatiously while rubbing at her mouth. “Phooey, phooey, phooey! Stink!”

Regaining his balance the giant felt of his not-too-severely injured leg and eyed the young otter warily, ready to dodge or defend against another attack.

“I can’t say much for the resemblance, but the attitude is unmistakable. Will you go and tell your father that an old friend is here to see him?”

The young otter’s brows drew together. She wore a frilly pair of short pants and a flowery necklace. “See Dada? Stinkman want to see Dada?”

“Yes.” Jon-Tom couldn’t repress a smile. When she wasn’t trying to amputate his leg the little furball was damn cute. “See Dada.”

The cub considered, then turned and scampered up the road. “Come wid me.”

As he followed, Jon-Tom drank in his surroundings. The forest appeared unchanged, eternal. The belltrees tinkled melodiously at the merest hint of a breeze. Already the young otter was almost out of sight. She would stop and turn to wait impatiently for him to catch up, then take off with another burst of speed.

“Quick-quick, stinkman! You too slow.”

He would smile and try to lengthen his stride.

She led him to the bank of a large stream. Several homes were built on the gentle slope and as many more in the sides of the banks themselves. His guide led him to one underground domicile which boasted broad windows looking out over the water and a large oval doorway. As they drew near another trio of youngsters materialized to cluster questioningly around him. Thankfully none of them decided to find out what he tasted like.

His guide vanished inside. While he waited for her to return he set his burden down one sack at a time. This did not allow him to relax, since he had to repeatedly but gently slap tiny paws away from straps and seals.

“You’re your father’s cubs, all right.”

“Who’s father’s cubs?” snapped a demanding voice. Jon-Tom spun to confront the speaker. Eyes locked.

For a moment Mudge was speechless, in itself sufficient indication of the shock he felt. Then he rushed to greet his old friend. “ Tis a ghost.” Hand met paw. “No, ‘tis too solid to be a ghost. I never thought you’d come back, mate. We’d sort o’ given up ‘ope, wot?”

“It took longer than I thought to set my affairs in order, Mudge.” Another figure emerged from the doorway. “Hi, Weegee.” She wore an apron covered with appliqued flowers.

“I’m glad you came back Jon-Tom. We all worried about you, every day.”

Insistent fingers were tugging at the bottom of Mudge’s vest. “Dada know stinkman?” Mudge backhanded her across the face, sending her tumbling tail over head. In an instant she’d regained her feet and zipped around to stare at Jon-Tom while remaining out of her father’s reach.

“This is the human I’ve told all o’ you about.”

“Jun-Tum?” Another of the otterlings had her finger in her mouth. “One dad have to save alia time?”

Mudge coughed self-consciously. “Well, once in a while, anyways.”

The cub was not so easily silenced. “You say alia time, dada. Got to save mans alia....”

“Shut up, sapling. Cubs should be fuzzy an’ not ‘card.” He smiled wanly at his friend. “You know kids; tend to misremember wotever they’ve been told.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Well come on in then, mate! Tell us o’ wot you been up to all this time in the other world.”

He shrugged. “Not much to tell. It’s the same dull, smelly, dangerous place you visited yourself.” As he spoke he was staring upstream. Mudge noticed the direction of his gaze, grinned and nudged the tall man in the ribs.

“Now you wouldn’t be worryin’ about a certain red-‘eaded ‘uman, would you, mate? No need to. She’d been tendin’ the ‘ome fires, so to speak, ever since you left. I admit the rest o’ us tended to give up ‘ope from time to time, but she never did. Not that flame-’aired lass. Oh, she’s ‘ad one or two lengthy affairs, but aside from that . . .”

“Mudge!”

He glanced back at the doorway. “Take it easy, luv. Old Jon-Tom knows when ‘is mate is funnin’ with ‘im. Come on, you skinny sight for sore eyeballs. I’ll run up with you.”

“Me too, me too!” The girl cub who’d chomped Jon-Tom’s leg ran up to join them. Mudge ruffled the fur between her ears fondly.

“This is Picket. Fancies ‘erself the family lookout.”

“Does she always look out for you by trying to take a bite out of every stranger who comes down the road?”

“Usually,” said Mudge with exaggerated cheerfulness. “You’ll get to like ‘er. You’ll get to like ‘em all. ‘Ave ‘em callin’ you Uncle before you know it.” He yelled at another of his obstreperous offsping. “ ‘Ere you, Smidgen, put that down or I’ll knock you in the creek!”

Together they shooed the other cubs away from Jon-Tom’s packages. Mudge studied them with interest. “Wot you got ‘ere? Stuff from your world?”

“Treasures, yes. But I’d rather reveal them to everyone at once—if I can get home before your brood steals everything at that isn’t tied down.”

“Wot, me kids—steal?”

“Why not? They’ve got the most light-fingered instructor in this world.”

Mudge put one paw in the air and the other over his heart. “Take me for a cookfire cinder if I ever teach one o’ me own flesh an’ blood to take wot ain’t theirs.” He looked apologetic. “I swear I ain’t been teachin’ “em, mate. They seem to come by it naturally.”

With the otter’s assistance Jon-Tom shouldered his heavy load. Not much farther now. A long walk from Westwood. “If there’s a gene for that I’m sure it runs in your family.”

Mudge frowned as he scratched his head uncertainly. “Don’t ‘ave any relations name o’ Jean. They’ll turn out all right. Their mother’s the civilizin’ influence on ‘em.” He turned to his daughter. “Be a luv an’ get dada ‘is favorite ‘at, that’s a dear.”

Picket rocketed back toward the house, re-emerged an instant later carrying a red felt cap with two long white and yellow feathers protruding from the crown. Mudge carefully placed it between his ears.

“What happened to the green one?”

Mudge nodded at the unkempt beard. “Wot ‘appened to your face? Time takes all things, mate. Even green ‘ats.”

The trail led up the bank away from the stream and back into the woods. “Didn’t throw it away, though,” the otter continued. “Got it in a drawer somewheres. Sort o’ a memento o’ our former travels together. Each stain on it tells a story.”

“So I come back to find an old married Lutra with a family and responsibilities, a pillar of his community. What do you do for a living these days, Mudge?”

“You asked me that strange question before. Me answer’s still the same. I live. Still got your duar, I see.” The familiar double-stringed instrument hung from Jon-Tom’s right shoulder, as bright and shiny as the day they’d taken it from Couvier Coulb’s skilled hands. The varnish the old kinkajou had rubbed into the instrument protected the wood like Lucite.

“Yep. Been doing a little singing here and there. Being a wandering minstrel grows on you.”

They were in sight of the familiar grove. Little had changed in his absence. The ancient dimensionally-expanded oaks looked the same. There were more flowers, evidence of Talea’s handiwork. A familiar figure let out a shout from the branch that hung over Clothahump’s doorway. Sorbl yelled a greeting, then vanished through an upper floor window to convey the good news to the wizard.

Jon-Tom’s attention was on the tree next door. Every limb, every leaf was engraved in his memory. Mudge saw the look on his friend’s face and motioned for his noisy offspring to be silent. They were perceptive enough to sense that this was an important moment in adult lives.

The door opened and there was Talea. A little older and a little more beautiful. She’d been busy with housework and wore a bandana around her red hair and a large work apron over her shorts and halter. There was no wind to ruffle the vision she made.

He put down his oversized backpacks. “Hello, Talea.”

She dropped her broom and stared back at him. “Jon-Tom.” Slowly she walked up to him, stood there inspecting every line of his face, every hair, remembering. Then she kicked him in the shin, the same one that Picket had sampled. He yelled.

“Hello Talea, hello Talea—is that all you can say after years have gone by, you mindless son of a whore? Years! Not one letter, not one frigging postcard.”

“But Talea my sweet, there’s no mail service between worlds.” She advanced on him and he backed up as best he could on one good leg.

“Don’t give me any of your clever spellsinger excuses. Years I’ve been waiting for you, years hoping you would come back so I could tell you how angry I was that you went back without me.”

Four otterlings sat politely nearby and paid rapt attention to his unplanned lesson in adulthood. Mudge stood next to them, making salient points as Talea chased the apologetic Jon-Tom several times around their tree home.

“Now pay attention an’ maybe you lot’ll learn somethin’,” daddy told his brood. “ ‘Umans do this sort o’ thing all the time. This is ‘ow they show affection for one another after they’ve been apart for a long time. ‘Umans are like clocks that always need windin’. Soon these two’ll run down. Then they’ll strike love an’ fall into each others arms.”

Sure enough, Talea was running out of breath. Jon-Tom let her run down, just as Mudge said, and then swept her against him. She was too weak to do more than batter feebly at his chest. Before long the pounding ceased altogether and was replaced by a different kind of contact.

“Now lady crying,” said Picket thoughtfully. “He hurting her?”

“No. They’re just demonstrating their love for one another,” Mudge explained.

“Humans are crazy,” said Nickum, one of two boys.

“Absolutely. All ‘umans are crazy. These two are crazier than most. But they can be fun. We’ll give ‘em another couple o’ minutes to sweat against each other and then we’ll see if we can’t find out wot me old friend ‘as brought back from ‘is own world, wot?”

Before that happened Clothahump put in an appearance. Jon-Tom thought the ancient wizard moved a little more slowly, a little more hesitantly than before he’d left, but those wise old eyes missed nothing.

“It is good to have you back, my boy. I’ve always felt, since you first came among us and we dealt in summary fashion with the Plated Folk, that you belonged here. Let us go inside. It is hot in the sun.”

Everyone moved into Clothahump’s tree. The otterlings were on dieir best behavior and Mudge only had to cuff one every two minutes to keep them in line. Jon-Tom sat in his favorite chair sipping Selesass tea while Talea curled up on the floor next to him. Sorbl provided refreshments.

“It’s funny, but while I was here all I could ever think about was going home, and once I got home I couldn’t stop thinking about coming back here.” He smiled at the woman sitting beside him. She was resting her head against his arm. “Of course, Talea’s presence here made my return imperative.

“Once home I had a life I’d left behind to clean up. I told everyone that I’d been away on a secret mission for my government and that I was going to have go away again soon, probably for a longer period. They were puzzled and confused, especially my parents, but in the end they understood. As long as the money was good and I was happy, they said.”

“At least you’ll be ‘appy,” Mudge chortled.

“While I was home I discovered that in my heart and maybe also in my mind I wasn’t cut out to be a lawyer. A solicitor, you call it. I also found out that playing lead in a rock band was pretty dull stuff after spellsinging. I thought of trying my hand at spellsinging in my own world, but I’m afraid they don’t take very kindly to magic over there unless its packaged in cellophane, advertised on TV, and equipped with a government sticker.

“But I wanted to be sure. The passageway between our worlds might close up some day and if it does I wanted make certain I ended up on the right side. So I took my time exploring my options and learning about myself. Then when I decided this was where I really belonged, I scoured my world in search of those truly important things I would want to bring back with me. Items of value and importance. I had to be very selective because I knew I could only bring what I could carry on my back.”

Rising from the chair and walking over to the pile of overstuffed backpacks, he began loosening straps and buckles. The otterlings stirred excitedly.

The first thing he extracted was a large tin containing twenty pounds of his world’s finest chocolate chip cookies. “Got the recipe, too,” he declared proudly. Setting the tin aside, he wrestled free a small bucket with a crank attached to the top. “Hand ice cream maker. All we need is rock salt, sugar, flavoring and the cooperation of a contented cow.”

The next sack disgorged several strange and wondrous objects. “Portable television, VCR, pedal-powered generator. Had to find the last in a surplus store.” From a third pack came two cases filled with videotapes of classic cartoons: Disney, Warner Brothers, Fleischer and some new Japanese features. Sandwiched in among the tapes were music books full of songs old and new.

“For spellsinging,” he told them.

Clothahump surveyed the bounty spread out on the floor before him. “I know of your world only what you have told me, my boy, but based on that little information I have I should say you have made excellent choices.”

“I want you to be proud of me, Clothahump. Here, let’s get the big stuff out of the way.” He picked up the TV. Talea moved the VCR and Mudge fought with the generator.

As he was shoving it along the floor it caught a rising plank. Generator and wood collapsed and Mudge barely escaped tumbling down with them. Everyone moved to the edge of the unsuspected cavity.

The secret compartment Mudge had accidentally revealed was the size of several bath tubs. Reaching down, he brought up a handful of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls and fireines. The compartment contained a hoard that would have-to be measured in bushels instead of karats.

Years had passed but Jon-Tom had not forgotten. He turned furiously on the wizard.

“I knew I should have put in that extra closet last year,” Clothahump murmured. “One can never have too much storage room in a tree.”

Jon-Tom grabbed himself a handful and shook it in the wizard’s face. Precious stones went bouncing across the floor as they slipped from between his fingers.

“Look at this! You lied to me. All the danger and pain, all the travails of that nearly fatal journey of years ago could have been avoided. Mudge and I nearly got killed a dozen times on that trek to Strelakat Mews, and for what?”

“Calm yourself, my boy. I honestly don’t know what you’re raving about.”

“You don’t, eh? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about the night those thieves broke in here and I had come over to and rescue you, breaking my duar in the process.”

“Of course I remember.” Clothahump’s expression was placid, his demeanor composed.

“All that risk to protect a few lousy jewels.”

Mudge’s eyes were popping out of his head as he stared at the treasure. “Let’s not dismiss old ‘ardhshell’s motives out o’ ‘and, mate. ‘Tain’t like ‘e didn’t ‘ave anythin’ worth risking a life or two for.”

“I did not lie. As you may recall, my nocturnal visitors specifically asked to be given gold. Not once did they demand gems. Only gold. If you will look carefully you will find no gold. If I’d had any I most assuredly would have given it to them. But surely you wouldn’t expect me to volunteer information about what I did have, now would you? That wouldn’t have been sensible.

“Now consider this: If you hadn’t been forced to intervene on my behalf your duar would not have been damaged. Consequently you would never have been compelled to travel to Strelakat Mews. Mudge would never have encountered his Weegee. You would not have discovered the gate between your world and mine. You would not have been able to return to your home to learn where your true destiny lies. Consider.”

Putting aside his initial anger, Jon-Tom did just that. It wasn’t easy. He didn’t want to consider the matter logically and dispassionately. He wanted to stomp about and yell and shout imprecations. Unfortunately he knew he was doomed to lose from the start. Not only was Clothahump right, the turtle had two hundred and fifty years of debating experience on him.

“I resent having to admit it, sir, but you’re right.”

“Of course I am,” said Clothahump blandly. “You are a spellsinger; not a solicitor, not a ‘rock singer’, whatever that may be, not anything else. I am your teacher and you are my student. That is your fate and that is your mate.” He nodded toward Talea, then gestured around the room.

“These are your friends.”

Jon-Tom took a deep breath and returned their stares: Mudge and Weegee, the four otterlings, a sober Sorbl, and back again to Clothahump. Talea completed the circle. So many things seemed to have come full circle. He thought of all the delightful companions he and Mudge had encountered; of massive but ladylike Roseroar, of Teyva and Colin the koala, of Clothahump’s first famulus Pog, the transmogrified bat.

For company they sure as hell beat hanging around the pre-yuppies at the student union.

“I guess you can’t argue with the world’s greatest wizard.”

“Not advisable,” said Clothahump.

He smiled down at Talea. “Will you have me back? If love can be magnified by traveling, then mine’s big enough to encompass the whole world.”

“Have you back? A big, ugly, clumsy catastrophe-prone freak like you? On one condition.”

“Name it.”

“That you shave that grotesque fuzz off your face as soon as we’re back in our own tree. It makes you look like a damn otter.”

He bent to kiss her but Wicket bit her on the leg.