Faun and Games (62 page)

The next chamber was filled with bouncing orange-green balls.

"Basketballs," Eve said after checking.
 
"For storage."

"Storage?"

She caught a ball and pulled at its binding.
 
It opened out into a

basket.
 
"Put whatever it is inside, then close it up and let it bounce.

It will keep until you open the basket ball again."

"Too bad we don't need to store anything," Ghina said.
 
She had

recovered her red cloak from somewhere and was wearing it, so they could

see her general form.

They moved on.
 
Before long they approached the surface.
 
"No passages

actually enter the castle," Jfraya said.
 
"The Wizard saw to that.
 
But

they should exit in sight of it, and I can make a door through the wall.

But it won't be safe; I understand that the Wizard has monsters and

things guarding his premises."

"Leave them to me," Ghina said.
 
"My talent is making folk sleep. When I

was young, I thought I was just boring, but then I learned it was

magic."

"And you will be able to approach them, because they can't see you,"

Jfraya said.
 
"That's nice."

"Actually, they can smell me.
 
But I'll put them to sleep before they

can do us any harm."

"Still," Forrest said, "they could give the alarm.
 
So we had better

approach carefully."

, , Let's wait until night," Dawn suggested.
 
"Then we'll all be halfway

invisible."

He nodded.
 
"We might as well rest.
 
We don't know exactly what we'll

face inside the castle."

They foraged for something to eat.
 
The first plant they found had

berries like big green toes.
 
"Well, maybe," Dawn said, touching it.

"These fruits make a special kind of jam." She paused.
 
"Toe jam."

"Ugh," Eve said, wrinkling her nose.

Then they found a sweetie Pi tree, with 3.14 sweetie pies, and feasted

on them.
 
After that they settled down in a chamber to which Jfraya

opened a door, and found a number of nice pillows therein.
 
It was

wonderful to relax for a while.

Forrest woke to find himself extraordinarily comfortable.
 
Dawn was

stroking his hair, Eve was polishing his hoofs, and Ghina and Jfraya

were buffing his fingernails.
 
He couldn't actually see Ghina, for she

had evidently doffed her red cloak, but he felt her touch on his right

hand.

"Uh-" he said, intelligently.

"Oh, you're awake," Dawn said.

"Then we had better get on with our mission," Eve said.

"Which is to get into the Green Wizard's castle," Ghina said.

"And inform the margins," Jfraya concluded.

Then they all laughed.
 
They had had their little joke, making like

quadruplets.

"I didn't mean to sleep," he said, embarrassed.
 
"Just to rest."

Ghina squeezed his hand.
 
"You forget my talent."

"We didn't want a male overhearing our Girl Talk," Jfraya said.

Oh.
 
Well, at least that demonstrated that her talent was effective.

It also left him curious about what they had talked about.

"The magic of fauns," Dawn said, answering his thought, to his further

embarrassment.

"How they may not look like much, but their touch makes a girl think of

long-legged birds."

"It's similar to the magic of nymphs," he said.
 
"Just the sight of them

running makes a male think of the same birds."

"But the magic of fauns also works on other females," Ghina said.

"So does the sight of other women running also work on fauns?"

Jfraya asked.

"Yes," he said.
 
"As does their soft touch, and their pretty speech.

So if you girls don't mind-" They laughed again, and let go of his

extremities.
 
Their Girl Talk must have established that this one faun

was harmless.

"Yes," Imbri said, in a private dreamlet.
 
"But they do like you,

Forrest."

And he liked them.
 
But they all had business to accomplish.

They organized themselves, then quietly exited the chamber.
 
It was dark

outside, but the green castle was illuminated from within, the pale

green light spilling out through the green glass of the windows at each

story.
 
Several large, ugly, grotesque, and generally unpleasant green

monsters patrolled the premises.

Unfortunately, they still could not stand on the green surface.
 
Their

feet wanted to be just slightly higher than their heads.
 
In the ease of

walking along the tunnel wall, they had forgotten the problem.
 
Only

Jfraya was properly upright.

"We will just have to crawl," Forrest decided.
 
"It won't be

comfortable, but it will get us there."

"Maybe I can fly," Ghina said.
 
She tried it-and promptly flew sideways,

almost colliding with a tree.
 
They couldn't see her, but saw the

disturbance in the air.

"Try flying up at a steep angle, or diving down," Forrest suggested.

Ghina experimented, and after a while managed to get the right

onentation.
 
"I think I'm flying almost straight up, but I'm really

flying more or less level," she said.
 
"I have room to make mistakes, if

I stay high enough."

"I don't think I can crawl well enou h," Imbri said.
 
"But I think I can

project my dreamlets as far as the castle.
 
Why don't I remain here, and

be with you in dreams?"

"Then we are ready," Forrest said.
 
He started crawling mostly on his

hands, pulling a foot down frequently to give a push.
 
He was getting

the clumsy hang of it.
 
The others did similar maneuvers.
 
The twins

made intriguing outlines, with their jeans mostly in the air.
 
He

noticed that their hair fell to the side, instead of toward the ground.

It was clearer than ever why few creatures crossed to faces of Pyramid

not their own.

Ghina went first, spreading her invisible red wings and flying toward

the nearest monster, which resembled a corpulent tangle tree with

tentacle rot.
 
In a moment that monster lay down to sleep; Ghina had

exercised her talent.

In two and a half more moments, another monster lay down.
 
That one was

a cross between a huge green slug and a crushed caterpillar. Then the

third and fourth, which were too ill-favored to describe.
 
Now the six

of them could approach the castle without being challenged.

But they were careful, because the folk inside the castle were not

asleep, and if any of them looked out and saw the sleeping monsters,

they might give the alarm.
 
So there was no hurry, so that they would

not stumble in the darkness, and no talking; they knew what they were

doing.
 
Any communication between them was to be handled by joint

dreamlet.

There was no moat; apparently the Green Wizard believed that the

monsters and wall sufficed.
 
They reached the wall, and Forrest put his

sensitive ear to it, instead of to the ground where it had been

dragging, and listened.
 
There was a faint sound to the side.
 
That

should be the margins.
 
Eve touched the wall, and verified it; the

little creatures were working inside.
 
They went to the portion of the

wall closest to that sound, and Jfraya drew a door.
 
They opened it and

stepped inside.

There were perhaps a dozen little green pyramids with triangular faces,

sitting on the stone floor.
 
From several of them green lines projected

upward.

"Are these the margins?" Forrest asked mentally, his thought taking the

form of a dreamlet that Imbri shared with the others.
 
"Are they alive?"

"They are alive," Dawn replied in her own dreamlet as she touched the

nearest pyramid.
 
"But clothed in green stone.
 
They live in the

fissures of the stone.
 
They can't move of their own accord, but can be

moved by others.
 
The Green Wizard brought them here."

"Can you establish contact with them?" he asked Imbri.

"I think so." Imbri formed a picture of a green pyramid.
 
"Hello. I am a

visitor from another world."

"Hello!" several pyramids chorused.

"Would you tell me what you are doing?"

"We are marginalizing a segment of Ptero, so as to improve it, and thus

gain mass."

Dawn & Eve put their hands over their mouths, so as not to exclaim in

maidenly indignation.

"How does marginalizing it improve it?" Imbri asked.

"There are bad folk there.
 
Marginalizing captures them, and takes away

their magic, so they can't do any more harm."

Dawn opened her mouth to protest, but Eve stifled her.

"Who told you this?"

"The Green Wizard."

"Let me show you how it really is," Imbri said.
 
In the dreamlet, the

world of Ptero appeared and expanded.
 
There were happy people all

across the human section.
 
Then colored lines appeared, cutting people

off, making the others afraid and unhappy.
 
"Those are not bad folk,"

Imbri said.
 
"They are good folk.
 
They are being harmed by your