Vale of the Vole (22 page)

Esk concluded that he did not want to drink from that spring. He walked slowly back along the path, seeking some other route.

He had tried three obvious, well-formed paths, and each had led him to mischief. It was time to change his approach. What about a hidden, devious path?

He almost missed it. The path was so inconspicuous that it was virtually lost in the tangle. It might not be a path at all. But he decided to try it. He stepped carefully across.

Once more the perspective shifted, and the path became more evident. But it was in poor repair, and was so convoluted as to seem to make loops in places. Brush overhung it, and stones intruded on it; he had to watch his step, every step. Was it worth it?

He decided that it was. After all, if nothing had used this path recently, then it probably was not being maintained by some monster for a bad dream. Its very difficulty made it safer. He proceeded with improving confidence.

Then, abruptly, he encountered a human skeleton. It lay athwart the path, its skull on one side, its leg bones on the other. There was no flesh remaining on it at all.

Esk sighed. "Obviously this path is not safe either," he said. "This poor fellow—" He touched a hipbone with the toe of his boot.

The skeleton stirred. Esk leaped back, though he knew that he had probably just caused the bones to shift and collapse. After all, bones could not move on their own!

The skeleton twisted around and sat up.

Esk retreated farther. It was moving/

The skeleton got to its feet, somewhat unsteadily.

"All right!" Esk exclaimed. "I'll vacate your pathl I don't need to fight another bad dream!"

The skull turned on the neck bones, and the hollow eye sockets oriented on him. "You found me?" the toothy jawbone asked.

"I found you, and now I'll leave you," Esk agreed. "Really, I'm not looking for trouble, just for a way out of here. No need to chase me."

"Please, keep me," the skeleton said. Its lower jaw moved as it spoke. Esk wasn't sure how it could speak with no flesh to guide the air, but it

did.

"Keep you?" Esk asked blankly. "What for?"

"So I will no longer be lost."

"You are lost? I thought you were dead!"

"No, I'm lost," the skeleton said firmly. "This is the Lost Path."

"How can a path be lost?"

"When no one finds it," the skeleton said. "Please, I must find my way back to the Haunted Garden, but I cannot unlose myself. Take me by the hand and help me be found."

Esk's initial horror of the skeleton was fading. After all, this was the place of bad dreams, and the skeleton was no worse than others. "But I'm lost too."

"No, I can see you are of mortal vintage. You must be peeping."

"Uh, yes," Esk agreed. "I fell, and my eye came up against a hypnogourd. I'm trying to find a night mare so she can take a message out, so that my line of sight can be broken. But until then, I'm stuck

here."

"Yes, you are only temporarily mislaid. But I am properly lost. Therefore I must plead for your help; if you do not unlose me, I may never recover my station."

"Your station?"

"I am part of the skeletal set, adjacent to the Haunted House. Some horrendous ogre came through and—"

"That was my father!" Esk exclaimed, remembering what Smash had

said. The skeleton drew away from him with alarm. "Oh, no! I thought you

might be a rescuer!"

"Wait, skeleton," Esk said quickly. "I suppose if my father was the cause of your getting lost, I should try to get you found. What's your

name?"

"Marrow," the skeleton said.

"My name's Esk." Then, somewhat awkwardly, he extended his hand.

The skeleton took it. "Oh, thank you, Esk! I will make it up to you! I am lost, but I do know something of the environs. If there is any way I can be of assistance . . ."

"I think you have already helped me," Esk said, disengaging from the bones of the hand as quickly as he could do so without affront. "I was looking for the haunted, uh, set, because my father mentioned it; if I can find that, maybe I can follow his route to the pasture of the night mares."

"That certainly might be true!" Marrow said with bony enthusiasm. "I cannot tell you the way because I am lost, but I can tell you anything else about it, and I'm sure my associates will have information."

"Good; let's get going."

But the skeleton hung back. "You must take my hand; I can not unlose myself."

"Oh." Esk took the hand again, realizing that he had to follow the strange rules of this place. Actually, the bones were firm and dry, not slimy as he had feared. "Do you know the proper direction?"

"Alas, no," Marrow said. "When that ogre started throwing bones— no offense intended—I fled, and I lost track of location. I tried to find my way back, but somehow I had stumbled onto this path, and that was it. I have remained lost ever since. Finally I just lay down to rest my weary bones, so to speak, and then you came."

"But once you were on the path, it wasn't lost any more," Esk said. "So you should have been able to find your way out."

"Not so. Once I was on it, I became part of it, because I did not find it; I merely stumbled on it."

"I'm not sure I did much better. I tried three other paths, and all were bad, so then I looked for a different kind—"

"And found it!" Marrow exclaimed. "So you are not lost. Even though you cannot directly escape this world, you can find your way from this path."

"Are you sure of that?"

"No," Marrow confessed.

Esk shrugged. The thesis made as much sense as anything else, and it was more encouraging to believe in the chance of escape than in the lack of any chance.

The jungle thinned, becoming more like a forest. That was a relief; Esk felt more at home in forest. Perhaps he was finding the way out. If he returned Marrow to the garden of the walking skeletons, and if one of the others did know the way to the pasture of the night mares—

Something bounded away, startling him. It looked like a mundane deer, but it was bright red. "What was that?"

"Only a roe," Marrow said. "Didn't you see the color?"

"Yes. That's why I couldn't be sure what it was."

"Roes are red," Marrow said. "I thought everyone knew that."

**I happen to be a stranger here," Esk said somewhat shortly.

They came to a potted plant. It was bright blue, and had knobs on the ends of its stems. As they approached, it lifted the knobs menacingly; obviously it intended to punch at anyone who came too close. "What is that?"

"A violent," Marrow said. "Didn't you note the color?"

"Oh, I see," Esk said, irritated. "Roes are red, violents are blue."

"I think he's got it!" Marrow exclaimed.

"Just who are you talking to?"

"The violent, of course. Didn't you hear?"

"I guess I don't speak the local dialect. What does it say?*'

"It says it isn't its fault it got lost. They were planting violents on the median strips between major paths, but they rejected this one and threw it away."

Esk began to have some sympathy for the blue plant. "Why did they

reject it?"

"Because they didn't want any more violents on the media."

"Oh." He should have known that no explanation would make much

sense here.

They continued along the path. In due course they had to pass under a kind of woven vine that seemed to have eyeballs set into it. "Say, isn't that an eye queue?" Esk asked. "My father encountered one of those; it made him very smart for a while. What's it doing here?"

"Maybe I can find out," Marrow said. He reached out, caught the vine, and set it on the top of his skull. "It says it was lost from the Lexicon," he reported.

"The Lexicon? What's that?"

"The eye queue says that some ass from Mundania came through with a secretary and listed all the things of Xanth—except the eye queue vine. So the vine is lost."

'Too bad," Esk said. "Now nobody will be smart."

Marrow stepped out from under the vine, and it fell back into place over the path. Apparently it could not become a part of the skull, probably because there was no brain to enhance.

Farther along was a little squiggly thing, hardly large enough to see. "What's that?" Esk asked.

"A lost vitamin, I think. Let me see." Marrow put out a finger bone to touch the thing. "Yes, vitamin F."

"What's it for?"

"Oh, it has potent F-ect."

"Potent effect?"

"F you make the right F-ort."

"Let's find vitamin X instead," Esk said grimly. "Then maybe we can become X-pert in finding the X-it, if it X-ists."

"X-actly," Marrow agreed, not catching Esk's irony.

They continued past other lost items: a lost fossil bone that Marrow greatly admired, as it was of a species of creature unknown in Xanth or Mundania, whose discovery would revolutionize the understanding of both; a lost band of the rainbow, more wonderful than any other; a lost stream of consciousness; and a lost dire strait. Esk would have found all these things considerably more interesting if he hadn't been so acutely concerned about finding his way out of the gourd before his body got into trouble in Xanth. Suppose a dragon sniffed it out? He could wake up to find himself chomped.

Then they came to a young woman sitting in a bath. She was of metallic hue, and quite nicely proportioned. Esk could tell because her only clothing seemed to be a metallic halter covering her front.

She jumped up as they approached. "Oh, good!" she exclaimed. "Found at last!"

"Uh, hello," Esk said, trying to keep his eyes above the level of her chest. He knew that Chex Centaur would have called his attitude foolish, but the attitude was one of the things that had not gotten lost. "I am Esk, and this is Marrow."

"Hello, Esk and Marrow," she said brightly. "I'm Bria Brassie."

"You're a brassy!" Esk exclaimed.

'That's brassie," she corrected him. "I'm female, as you evidently hadn't noticed. A male is brassy."

"Oh. Sorry. I, uh, noticed, but—"

"That's not much of an apology," she muttered.

Esk plowed on. "I've been looking for you!"

"Well, you have found me. Have we met before?" She gave her brass hair a shake so that it glinted prettily.

"I mean, I was looking for where you live, because I think that's near the night mares* pasture! Do you know where—?"

"No, I'm hopelessly lost. I thought you knew. Didn't you come to get me out of here?"

"I came by accident," Esk admitted, glancing down, then wrenching his eyes up again. That wasn't much better, because her bosom was full and her brassiere was scanty.

"He's a peeper," Marrow explained.

Esk felt himself starting to flush, though he knew that the skeleton was referring to the gourd, not what Esk was trying not to stare at. "Yes,

yes," he said quickly. "I fell, and landed against a gourd before I knew, and now I'm stuck here." He swung his gaze around, to indicate the surroundings.

"Are you having trouble with your eyes?" Bria inquired.

"Uh, some, maybe. Do you have any information about the terrain? Anything that might help us get, er, unlost?"

She turned, looking away from him. In the process she showed her pert brass bottom, that flexed exactly as if made of living flesh. "I'm afraid I don't. I like to explore, and was seeking a way to visit the outer world, but as you can see, I got lost." She completed her turn, and Esk hauled his eyes up once again. "Are you sure you're well?" she asked solicitously. "You seem flushed, which I understand is a signal of distress among living folk."

"Uh, yes, I am distressed," Esk agreed quickly. "My body is stuck in that pit, and I'm very much concerned that something will happen to it before I get rescued. If I can just get to a night mare—"

"Yes, it must be quite a problem, being alive," Bria said. "Is it true that you have to eat and eliminate, just to keep going?"

"Brassies don't?"

"Of course not. Why bother with all that inconvenience and mess if you don't have to? I suppose you have to wear all that clumsy clothing to keep you warm, too."

"You shouldn't embarrass him by remarking on his weaknesses of the flesh," Marrow reproved her.

"Oh, that's right," she agreed. "I apologize, Esk." She stepped into him, put her arms around him, and kissed him on the mouth. "Is that enough?"

Stunned, Esk just stood there, for the moment as still as a metal statue himself.

"It seems it is not," Marrow said.

"I'll just have to try harder, then," she said brightly. "Esk, I apologize for anything I may have said to offend or embarrass you, and hope you will forgive me that transgression." Then she embraced him so closely that he started to lose his balance and made an involuntary grab for support, reaching around her. Then she kissed him again, deep and long. She was made of metal, but her lips were warm and soft and firm, and so was her body.