Dream a Little Dream (9 page)

Night had fallen and the unisi could no longer navigate by land. Unfortunately, the sky was overcast and dark. No hope there; they would have to camp, which was just as well.

They found a spot that was fairly clear of big rocks and sprinkled with soft grasses. Nola was still a bit shy around her dream man, but Spirit wanted to graze, so she was forced to choke back her shyness and lie down with Mich. The nights could be cold in Kafka, and Mich’s strong body should help keep her warm and safe.

Nola was very tired. So much had happened. She wondered how her ornery cat was doing and hoped that Lori would stop by, as promised, and feed her. Since Snort was doing well enough, considering, she thought Kudo must be all right too.

Despite Mich’s closeness, the chill air made Nola shiver next to
him. Mich covered her with the blanket he was using in lieu of a saddle. It smelled of sweat and horsehair, but it was warm. He put his arm over her shoulder.

As Mich held Nola’s small body, he knew it would be only a matter of time before he lost his senses and fell for her. The Sorceress Madrid had predicted it. He hoped he could complete his mission before thoughts of love clouded his mind. He was king now and he had to prevail, for the sake of his people and for his father.

Nola snuggled closer. His arms were strong and secure. He was so like the man in her dreams; how could she ever have thought he wasn’t? She wished she could lose herself in those green eyes forever, but that was ridiculous. She barely knew him. Or did she?

Again she experienced the strange sensation of conscious sleep. Her body was relaxed and numbed while her mind wandered over die day’s events, fully aware of the sounds and smells of the night.

Yet at the same time, it seemed like such a waste. Here she was with the whole night to pass away, unsleeping, in the arms of her dream man—and they were doing nothing but just lying here? She could think of a thousand things to make the time pass swiftly and pleasurably. Well, one thing, anyway. But until
he
thought of it, she wasn’t about to suggest it. A girl just didn’t in a situation like this.

In the morning, Mich got up early and picked fruit. He lay a large pile of it next to Nola. The fruit looked like oranges with green spots. These were more like it!

She tasted one. It was just like an orange. She ate two of them and discovered underneath a small pile of mushrooms. She ate those too, sure that Mich wouldn’t pick poisonous ones. Wouldn’t do to wipe out a Creator before the job was done, after all! They were sort of squishy and slimy, but they tasted okay.

Snort was busily crunching on some small animal that he had hunted down, and Heat was plucking leaves from the orange tree.

Spirit trotted over to where Nola was standing.
I smell something foul,
he thought urgently.

Nola, feeling his distress, conveyed the information to Mich.

“Heat smells it too. What is it, friend?” Mich asked, patting Heat’s nose.

I
can’t place it. I haven’t smelted anything this grotesque in ages,
Heat replied.

Mich could smell it too now. The aroma of mud and rotting flesh. Every second the foul odor grew stronger. Then they heard a low, rumbling noise. Soon everyone was attuned to it. It was coming toward them.

“What is it?” Nola asked, alarmed.

“I’m not sure,” Mich confessed. He glanced at the unisi, but they did not seem to recognize it either.

Mich and Nola stumbled as the ground moved beneath them with the force of a small quake. The stench burned their eyes, and the source of it appeared at their feet.

The rocky ground was cracked open and an enormous, wormlike head poked through the rubble.

Its breath was that of carrion that had been slightly cooked with sulfur gas. It was slimy pink and had thorny protrusions, sort of like a spiked collar, around a bulbous head. It had no visible eyes or nose. Inside the mouth was a tube. It was lined, all the way down the throat, with sharp, backward-pointing teeth.

It struck out at Nola, who reflexively tried to punch it. Her fist squashed into the thing’s head and slurped as she pulled it back out. No damage showed on the creature, but Nola’s hand was covered with putrid goo.

Heat dashed it with his chrome hooves and skewered it with his long horn, but they simply squashed through it with a sickly sound and the hole left by the horn immediately healed over. Without, however, abating the festering stink.

“Enough!” Mich cried. He valiantly unsheathed his sword and pointed it at the worm’s head. The worm seemed unconcerned and did not even turn its head toward him.

Instead, it opened its mouth and stuck out a red tongue. The tongue was ropelike, and it wrapped about Nola’s legs and pulled her down. Nola screamed and struggled uselessly. Some Creator she was! She was about to be eaten by a miasmic worm!

Mich brought down the sword and separated the worm’s massive head from its neck. Purple slime spilled out. The body and severed head writhed and formed two new worms, each smaller but every bit
as awful as the first. The second worm lashed another tongue around Nola’s arms and waist and began pulling her into its tunnel.

Mich could do nothing but watch. The worms seemed to have the same power as the Wood Trolls. If he tried to cut the worm again, it would only form two more and that would just make it easier for them to drag her in. He felt more helpless now than ever. How could he leave her to creatures like that? She was too nice a girl to be killed by a giant worm. He had to rescue her! Quite apart from the fact that his mission and the salvation of Kafka depended on her. He couldn’t afford to let it happen.

That helped get his inadequate mind operating. “Snort! Follow them! Scorch their tails!” he yelled.

The brave little basilisk slithered down the tunnel after the worms. Mich followed into the dark tunnel on his hands and knees, leaving Heat and Spirit outside. The hole was small, and crawling was difficult. The tunnel wound down steeply, and in a moment it was dark.

The tunnel ahead was lit momentarily as Snort scorched the worms’ tails. More rancid fumes wafted toward Mich’s nose. In the glow, he could see that Snort’s fire did little to stop the worms. They didn’t even seem to notice.

Farther in the tunnel, Mich could walk. The tunnel continued to wind into the ground, corkscrewlike. He followed Snort by holding on to his tail because it was too dark to see. The floor of the tunnel was slippery, probably from the slime of the worms. The smell was so awful that Mich could barely breathe. He could hear Nola’s faint sobs and that gave him strength to withstand the smell and press on.

Abruptly, Snort halted. Mich wondered why his pet had stopped, as he could hear the worms slurping on down the tunnel. Too bad he couldn’t talk to Snort the way he talked to Heat.

He tugged the tail gently. “What’s going on? Give me a little light.”

Snort lit the tunnel with a tiny flame, enough to see by but not enough to call attention to them.

Ahead, there was a huge cavern with alternating tunnels and round doors. He could see the worms dragging Nola through one of the doors and into a small room. They cast her down and nudged the door closed, making her a lone prisoner. It seemed they weren’t going to eat her just yet; she would keep until they finished whatever other business they had.

When the worms had gone down another tunnel, Snort and Mich crept to the chamber that held Nola. There was a small round window he could look through, but no visible latch. Nola saw the light of Snort’s flame and ran over to the door.

“Mich! Where are we? What are those things? I’m so afraid!” She collapsed next to the door.

Mich couldn’t bear to see her so distraught. He drew his sword and was preparing to deal the door a fatal blow when the weapon was wrenched from his grasp by a red tongue. He stood for an instant, uncertain what to do.

Then Snort blasted the worm with fire. This toasted its skin and melted a little of its thorny collar into goo. It quickly healed itself, but Mich used the respite to take action. He grabbed on to the tongue and pulled it out of the worm’s head. He recovered his sword while the worm was forming a new tongue.

Mich had his sword again, but in only a few seconds the tongue he still held in his other hand became another worm, and started wrestling with his hand. This was useless! How could he fight a creature like this? While he was trying to throw away the clinging tongue worm, the larger worm was shoving against him, trying to lasso his head with its new tongue. Mich tried to chop it with the sword, but it dropped down and caught his ankles while the rest of its body jammed against him. He couldn’t step back because his feet were entangled. He crashed into the door with such force that the catch apparently broke.
He fell ignominiously into the chamber, landing on his back. The worm shoved Snort after him and closed the door, barring it somehow.

Nola sat up and threw her arms around Mich. “Oh, I was so scared! I thought that thing was going to eat you!” She released him. “I don’t think I could survive in this place alone. Look!” She pointed behind her.

At this point, the source of the smell became apparent. Behind her in the chamber was a heap of rotting refuse. It looked to be composed of mud, manure and bodies of dead creatures. It was likely that this stuff was what the worms ate. They probably stored it here until it was sufficiently dead and rotten to be tasty. That explained why they hadn’t eaten Nola immediately: she was too fresh.

“I wish I could tell you what this place is,” Mich said, “but I have never seen anything like it, or those worm things.”

He stood up and went to the door and felt along it. It felt hard and slick; there seemed to be no way to open it. He chopped at it with his sword and Snort fired a jet of flame at it, to no avail. The door was impervious to damage. The worm had done a good job of jamming it closed.

“This doesn’t make sense,” he muttered. “My sword is magic; it should cut through almost anything.”

“Almost anything?” Nola asked. “What are the exceptions?”

“Well, dreamstone, mainly. But—” He paused. “Dreamstone! The worms must have found a lode and mined enough of it for their purposes. Who would have guessed? We can’t make a dent on this stuff.”

“But it opened right away for them,” Nola pointed out.

“They must have some secret mechanism, or maybe they found out how to make it respond to them.”

“Well, maybe we can find the key,” Nola said. She faced the door. “Open sesame!” There was no response. “Well, I didn’t really think that would work.”

“Maybe if you screamed at it,” Mich suggested, trying to be humorous.

Nola screamed, piercingly.

A worm creature slurped up to the door and poked its head through the window. Nola squirmed, thinking it was going to crawl in and consume them. That was why she had screamed. Instead, it spoke.

“Keep schilent, humanoid creature. You are schupposed to be schaved, but I will not heschitate to make a schnack of you right now!” It slurped its tongue around the orifice in the middle of its head.

The thing was surely bluffing, because Nola was nowhere close to being spoiled rotten, and would be hard for the worm to digest. But Mich, being a pampered prince, was not used to this kind of treatment. He didn’t yet understand that his life could actually be at stake. So he did something stupid.

He poked the worm in the snoot with his sword, hard enough to make some goo well out. “Leave us alone, you refugee from a troll’s dump, or I’ll cut you into little pieces and stuff them into cracks in the floor.”

The creature could of course heal itself long before he could make good on such a threat, but was evidently annoyed at this challenge. It opened the door so suddenly that it banged Mich’s sword from his hand, pulled Mich up with its tongue and drew him toward its mouth. Mich knew better than to pull out the tongue again. That would just make it harder on him. What could he do? As a hero, he was failing miserably.

“Help me, Nola!” The words were out before he realized.

Nola was taken aback. What could she do? What could anyone do? But she had to try. Mich had risked his life to save her and had gotten captured himself. She could do no less. So she picked up the fallen sword and advanced on the monster, hoping that a two-handed
slice would accomplish something. Snort moved with her, ready to toast any flesh she managed to cut off. Maybe they would be able to bother the worm enough to make it let Mich go. Of course it might then grab Nola. But she would try to deal with that problem when she came to it.

Just as she was about to stab the worm, the thing let go of Mich. Nola looked at the sword, wondering what could have cowed the worm so easily. The worms had shown no fear of the weapon when Mich had wielded it, and it should have been clear even to them that she was an utter novice at swordcraft.

The worm spoke again in its slurpy voice. “You schpeak the name Nola. Why?”

Mich looked shaken but retained his composure. “I am Prince Michael Edward of Kafka, son of King Erik Edward, and this is Nola Rollins of Earth, and Snort of Mangor,” he said, indicating them in turn.

The worm leaned forward as if trying to get a closer look at Nola, though it had no eyes. “Sche doesch not schmell like a Kafkian.”

“Sches not! I mean, she’s not,” Mich said indignantly.

“Why do you hold us?” Nola put in, realizing that dialogue was safer and a whole lot less messy than fighting. “Who are you?”

The worm swung its grotesque head to orient on Mich. “Thatch isch not for mech to schay. The king of Kafka chwill give you audiancech. Come with me.”

Mich wondered what he meant by “king of Kafka.” After all it was his father who was king, wasn’t he? But he had come to a similar conclusion about fighting, and would happily talk with the worms as long as they cared to. He recovered his sword from Nola, and sheathed it.

They followed the worm through a side tunnel, with Snort illuminating
the walls. The smell was not as bad as it had been because his nose was now numb to the odor, but the fumes still stung his eyes.

Soon they arrived at a great domed chamber. The room was absolutely huge. It was lit by a tiny dot of daylight, high in the ceiling of the dome. In its very center was a tall pedestal made of a silvery material, probably dreamstone. On that elevation coiled a huge worm. It was twice as large and twice as ugly as the ones they had seen thus far, and it had two gleaming red eyes. It wore a silver bowl, upside down, on its head. It was obviously the king.

“Approach me, you foul nothings,” the worm called down. He spoke plainly, with no slurring accent. Rank evidently had its privilege.

Uncertain what the king intended, the three did as they were told, which was probably the best course.

“My guard informs me that you have among you a Creator. Is this so?”

Nola stepped forward, nervously. Mich could see that she was terrified.

“Yes, Your Highness!” Nola thought how literal that address was as she looked way up at him. “I am Nola.” She had to speak loudly in order to be heard.

“You?” the worm roared. “You are such a pitiful creature! Hardly even worth notice and yet you claim high status! How can that be?” He looked at her more closely. “I see you wear a Creator’s stigma around your neck. From whom did you steal it, cretin?”