The Nameless Evil

by Mizu Ash

Part One of Two

CHAPTER ONE

Breathe in. Breathe out. Darkness. No, eyes closed. He tried to feel what was underneath him. Flat, cold. Stone. A stone floor. His head hurt. He tried to open his eyes, and found he couldn’t. Change of plan: try to sit up. That worked. He sat on the floor, cross-legged, and tried to remember his name.

I don’t even know my own name. I should remember, or find out. Did I used to know my name?

He rubbed his eyes.

Nat! Nat, that’s my name. That’s it, Nat.

He scrunched his eyes together, and rubbed them again. With some difficulty he could open them. Gray, everything was gray. The slab of stone, the air around him. Nothing above him, well, nothing he could see. Just a gray fog, a thick gray fog above him. It looked oppressive, heavy. He looked around him. The same gray fog, but thinner.

What’s that?

His heart beat faster. It seemed as if someone else was lying there as well, motionless.

No, not just one person. There’s one there, and there, … Oh my God, there must be four or five of them. Are they dangerous? No, they’re not moving. Are they sleeping, unconscious? Dead?

He looked around him in amazement and...

****

They looked at each other in astonishment. Nat counted them quickly – three, four, five. Five people, including himself, sat in a circle, cross-legged, looking at each other. He didn’t know them, and judging from the look on their faces, they didn’t know each other either. Nat looked at them a bit more closely. A little girl with a Harry Potter lunchbox in her lap. A boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen. A young woman, probably in her twenties. A young man in strange clothes.

He’s dressed as a crew member of the Enterprise…

He didn’t know how he knew that, but he knew it was true.

That was a TV show, wasn’t it? Why is he dressed as a character on a TV show?

The answer came to him as soon as he could think the question.

A Trekkie! They do that for fun! He’s a Trekkie!

Four people. And then there was him, number five. Nat. He felt older than the other people in this little circle, in his thirties. Was he supposed to be the leader of this little band? Was he supposed to ask the

****

“I studied English literature. Shakespeare, mainly. I’m twenty-five.”

“Could you repeat that, please?” Nat asked her. He knew she had said more, or at least he thought so, but he’d only heard what she had studied and her age.

They were sitting in a circle, cross-legged. Had they been talking? He didn’t remember. Stuart didn’t look as if he remembered either. What had Stuart been thinking, dressing as a Trekkie? At one of their conventions it was all right, but here? Lily had opened her lunchbox and was playing with the small Harry Potter dolls that were in there. Sweet kid. Michael was looking at Nat as if he expected him to pull a rabbit out of a top hat, or at the very least a string of scarves. His mouth was slightly open, and Nat didn’t think Michael realized that. Nat looked at the boy’s acne with sympathy. He could remember the time when he would break out in spots just by looking in the mirror. What was that woman’s name again? He looked at her and tried to remember.

“Twenty-five, English Lit, Shakespeare. What didn’t you get?”

“I’m sorry, what’s your name again?”

“Katelyn,” she said. “I told you, I’m Katelyn.”

She seemed suddenly uncertain of herself when she said this. Why would she be; he’d only asked her name.

“No, that’s not completely right. It’s … it’s Kate. Just Kate, yes. That’s shorter, easier. Sounds more like me.”

What was going on here? Nat looked around the little group. No one seemed to have noticed anything strange in Kate’s answer. No one except him, that is. He looked at the young man.

“You’re Stuart, right?”

Stu nodded, as Nat knew he’d do.

“You’re twenty-four, you’re an orderly in a hospital. You play Magic and fantasy role plays. You like Star Wars and Star Trek and stuff like that. That true?”

Stuart grinned.

“Beam me up, Scottie!”

Everyone smiled, except Lily. Well, she was a bit young to understand. Nat turned to the boy.

“You’re sixteen, aren’t you, Michael? You play computer games, you read comics, graphic novels, SF mainly, you like SF films, too, and animated movies. And …”

There seemed to be something else, something important.

“You draw as well, don’t you? You draw fantasy characters and invent your own comic books. Right?”

Michael nodded, blushing furiously at suddenly being the center of attention. Nat looked at the little girl.

“Lily, you’re nine, aren’t you?”

The girl nodded, proudly.

“I’m almost ten!”

“That’s great! Your first birthday with a double figure – one zero!”

Lily nodded very fast, eyes shining.

“When does that happen, Lily, when’s your birthday?”

She looked puzzled for a moment.

“I can’t remember, exactly, but it’s soon.”

“And you read Harry Potter books?”

“Yeah, they’re the best books in the bookstore! There’s six of them now! I’ve read all of them at least three times, well, except the last one. But I'm going to read that one three times too!"

The young woman was smiling when Nat turned to her.

“OK, Hercule Poirot, you’ve got your suspects rounded up, haven’t you? So shoot, why do you think I killed the butler?”

“No, you do me.”

“What?”

“Tell me what you know about me. Please,” he added.

“You’re Nat, you’re thirty-four. You work with computers but you seem to enjoy reading books about traveling to other galaxies or parallel universes or similar nonsense.”

Nat looked at her sharply.

“Now tell me about me. I dare you!”

“Well, you’re Kate, you just told us. You studied Elizabethan theater. You seem to be the only one of us who’s not into SF or fantasy.”

Her look at him was condescending, to say the least.

“What, should I have watched all those silly TV series to qualify for your little band?”

“Yes, especially the one with the puppets.”

She was going to get angry at his answer, he saw that, but her sense of the absurd won and she burst out laughing.

“OK, there is a reason you said that about the puppets. Tell us your insights, oh great one, because frankly, I don’t have a clue.”

“Neither do I, Kate, but it doesn’t feel right, does it? How did we know all these things about each other, for starters?”

“That’s an easy one. We told each other!”

But she seemed uncertain as she said it. Had they indeed told each other? They must have, Nat supposed.

“What’s going on, Nat?” Stuart asked.

Why did they turn to him? He wasn’t the leader, was he, just because he was the oldest?

“I don’t know…” He got up and looked around. They were sitting on a large gray slab of stone. There was no sky, just a heavy grayness above them. It didn’t seem inside, or outside for that matter. It seemed … nowhere, that was the word. Strange though it was, they seemed to be in a gray nowhere. He could see for about forty or fifty feet in all directions, but no further. That grayness again, as if the world wasn’t finished yet.

The others had followed his example and were all standing up now. Nat took a few steps away from their little circle, and bumped into an invisible wall. Very carefully he stuck out his hand. The air sizzled and crackled.

“Ouch! What the bloody …”

“What’s happening, Nat?” Kate asked.

“Look, when I try to take a step forward...”

He slid his foot slowly forward on the slab of stone. The air sizzled again, and his foot stopped abruptly a few inches in front of him.

“It seems we can’t leave here. We can’t get off this slab. There’s an invisible wall.”

Nat looked at his companions. The boy, Michael was it, looked positively alarmed. Kate looked peeved, as if the whole thing was a personal insult. Stuart looked interested; he seemed to regard the whole thing as a fascinating adventure.

“What, we can’t leave here? Why is that, what is happening?”

They all looked in the direction of the place Nat had touched. Nothing to see there. Just the same grayness, nothing was different.

“Oh God, Nat, what happened to your hand!” Stuart suddenly called out.

They all looked at Nat’s hand, and saw thin red lines, no, blue lines, no, it was red lines running down his palm, the back of his hand, his fingers. Nat felt the pain slowly starting to creep through his fingers, his hand, his wrist even.

“Damn, what’s happened to my hand?”

“It doesn’t look good! And it seems to be getting worse!” Michael sounded worried.

Nat cradled his sore hand. Carefully he rolled up his sleeve. There was a gasp of surprise, or horror, in the little group. They could actually see the red lines creeping up his arm, gaining an inch, no, two or three inches in the short time they were looking. It looked … spooky. It also looked extremely dangerous.

“I think you’d better roll down your sleeve again, Nat.”

Stuart’s voice sounded unsteady. Nat thought that was a great idea. His heart was beating faster. The thin pain now stretched to just below his shoulder. He looked around to see if Lily was all right. What was Kate doing?

“Kate! Don’t touch it!” Nat cried out. She’d gone to the end of the slab and stretched out her hand.

“I’m not going to! I’m not an idiot!”

She’s not an idiot? Then what is she doing, for God’s sake! She’ll get hurt in a minute, too, and then what?

But then he saw what she was doing. She was stretching her hand out to hear the crackling, without actually touching the invisible barrier.

She’s trying to find a door, or an opening! If the air doesn’t make that sound somewhere, we might be able to get out!

He looked at her again. So maybe she wasn’t very friendly or nice, at least she was thinking on her feet. She was careful, too, and meticulous. She felt high up, went lower and lower, and then moved over to the next spot. He felt himself admiring her a little bit for her courage, to do this when she’d seen what it had done to him.

They sat down again, except for Kate, who kept up her careful and thorough work checking the barrier. Stuart sat down next to Lily, and softly started speaking to her. The girl looked up at him, smiling. Good, that was one worry off his mind. Nat had thought Kate would befriend the little girl, but obviously she wasn’t the maternal type. Stuart was a nice man, it showed in his face even. Open, friendly. Nat wouldn’t be surprised if Lily and Stuart would start playing with the little Harry Potter dolls soon.

He looked around. This seemed hopeless. No way of getting out of here, no food, no drink. On the plus side, no one seemed hungry in the least, or thirsty. Strangely enough, no one wanted to go to the bathroom, either. Just five people stranded in grayness. Now that could be a title of something, albeit a strange one. Maybe for a minimalistic piece of music, a weird one. Definitely not a catchy title for a book. He grinned to himself. Here he was, not knowing where they were, barely knowing who they were, his arm hurting like hell, and he was thinking what would make a good title for their predicament. He thought he’d lie down and have a little nap. He tried not to think about the red lines spreading, spreading.

****

How had a good thing gotten bad so quickly, Michael wondered. He stopped walking for a moment and stretched his neck. It creaked ominously. He’d been walking with his head down for – well, he didn’t know how long exactly. Long, a long time. He looked ahead, to where Stuart and the woman were helping Nat walk. Well, they were half carrying him, to be exact. He started walking again. Couldn’t risk being left behind.

It had started out so great. The unfriendly woman had given up her search without finding even one little crack in the barrier. They were all sitting around when the kid was suddenly gone. Stuart had noticed first, of course, he really liked the brat. Well, she wasn’t a brat really, she was a sweet kid. Stuart had jumped up, said “What the …” and whirled around to try and see her somewhere. And he’d seen her. Right at the end of the slab. He’d called out: “No, Lily, no!” as he tried to get to her in time. But he was too late. Lily had stepped out of the circle, through the invisible wall, and stood now on the first large tile outside of their safe slab. She turned around and smiled. Then she took another step, and another, very carefully placing her small feet. Stuart was standing at the edge of the circle.

“How does she do that?” Kate asked. She sounded mad as hell, as if the smurf had insulted her by getting out of their invisible prison.

“Lily, careful, sweetie!” Stuart shouted. He sounded more than concerned; he sounded downright frightened. There was no answer, the little girl just went on, not worried by all the ruckus behind her. Cautiously going on, balancing herself, swinging her arms. In one hand was still her Harry Potter lunchbox.

What sort of secret path was she following? The older man, Nat, had tried and failed miserably, and the woman hadn’t even found one little hole.

Suddenly the kid stood still, she was already gone for some forty feet. In fact it was getting harder to see her in the gray nothingness. She turned around, carefully, and waved at them. It was a cheery little wave that seemed completely out of place. She then put her lunchbox between her legs, and cupped her hands around her mouth.

“Mister … Stuart …!” she called from far away, as if she was in a bright sunny playground, calling out to her favourite teacher.

“Mister … Stuart … can … you … hear … me …?”

It was strange. She was only about forty feet away from them, but her voice seemed to come from much further.

“How does she know she has to shout?” Nat asked, softly. Nobody could answer. The kid seemed to realize more about this place than they did.

“Yes, Lily, yes!” Stuart shouted. Michael saw Nat wince at the loud sound. He wondered how the older man was. He didn’t look too good, to tell the truth.

Lily waved again, with both hands this time. Then she cupped her hands around her mouth again.

“Mister … Stuart … don’t … step … on … the … cracks!”

“What …?”

“Yes, I see!” Stuart was the first to realize what the girl meant. “Step on the crack, break your mother’s back! We just have to avoid stepping on the cracks between the tiles.”

Stuart had looked at all three of them, elated at finding the answer.

“It’s so easy. Lily’s probably found it, because it’s a kid’s game. I did it when I was her age. Let’s go!”

Stuart stepped through the invisible wall easily enough, followed by Kate. Michael had turned around to Nat.

“Er, mister, er, Nat, are you alright to walk?”

The older man had smiled at him.

“Sure, Michael. It hurts everywhere, but I can walk. As long as we’re not going to run or jump, I’ll manage.”

And he’d stepped through, too. Michael had let him go first, just to be on the safe side. He’d keep an eye on Nat.

And that was a good thing, too, because Nat was not alright. Not by a long shot. At first Nat had been able to walk, even though it took him longer than the rest of them. It was tiring work, Michael thought, much more tiring than he’d imagined it would be. It looked dead easy: just avoid the cracks. But you had to look at the ground all the time, and you couldn’t get into a comfortable walking rhythm, because the tiles were just too big for two steps, and just too small for three steps. You had to pay attention all the time.

So it was really a matter of luck that Michael had looked up just in time to see Nat standing still on a tile, slightly swaying to and fro. Michael had jumped from tile to tile to get to Nat in time, as he saw Nat’s legs starting to sag, starting to double up under him. Michael’s heart had skipped a beat when he saw the older man slide down on the tile. He’d jumped forward and caught Nat just as he was about to fall on the dangerous, treacherous cracks. He could barely hold Nat, who was broader and heavier than he was. He yelled to the others, ahead, once, twice, as loud as he could. He saw Stuart turn in surprise, and then he started sliding down himself under the weight of the fainting man. Panicking, he caught Nat a bit lower, around his midriff rather than across his chest, and put one foot forward a bit (but not on the crack, never on the crack!) for extra support. He managed to hold Nat, back to chest, a bit longer. He felt the other man’s sweat soaking through his own shirt. How long could he keep this up, Nat on his tile, and he on the tile behind that, how long would it take for him to fall down on the cracks, he was already slipping, slipping …

And then someone had grabbed him from behind, steadying him, while other arms were taking Nat from him, from beside. He wobbled a bit, but he found his balance right in the middle of his tile. He was breathing heavily, almost panting, scared of falling. He sat down, very, very, gingerly, in the middle of the tile, trying to catch his breath. That had been too close, much too close for comfort. On the next tile he saw Stuart sit down as carefully as he had, holding Nat against him. So it must have been Kate who had caught him. He blushed to the roots of his hair thinking she had held him so close. Now Kate was kneeling down on the next tile, making sure Nat’s feet didn’t slip away. Lily was still making her way here, he noticed. She’d been the farthest away. She looked scared to death, clinging her lunchbox to her chest.

“That was close,” Stuart whispered. He held Nat in a strong embrace. Sweat trickled down his face, and Michael supposed his own face didn’t look much better. Kate was sitting on the next tile, cross-legged too, with Nat’s feet on her lap. Stuart turned to Michael with a big grin on his face.

“Nice work, Michael. Nice job. If it hadn’t been for you, Nat would have crashed right on the cracks. You saved him!”

Michael didn’t know where to look. Now everyone was watching him. He looked down, to the tile. His legs started itching, and the skin on his hands seemed to be crawling. He felt his face get hotter. He hadn’t even done anything special. Anybody would have done that for Nat. Besides, he hadn’t even been able to hold him; they’d had to help him. A real hero would have.

And then they’d started walking again. They took turns to support Nat: Michael and Stuart had taken the first turn, now it was Kate and Stuart. The kid couldn’t help; she was just a shrimp. Michael was getting desperate. They had been walking on these tiles for what seemed like hours, and there was no end to the tiles. In all directions there was nothing to see but these awful, hateful, spiteful tiles. Where would this end? There was no solution, no way of getting out. Ever. This was hopeless.

And he was falling through the air, he kept falling down, down to the ground, and he was going to smash to the ground, he was going to die…

He landed in something strange, something soft. He wasn’t dead; this was great, he’d been so afraid he’d die crashing on the ground, but no. It was hard to turn around, he couldn’t move very well.

“It’s worms! It’s giant worms!”

Michael couldn’t even tell who had called out. There was a shrill panic in the voice that made his stomach turn. He looked around him and his breath caught in his throat. They were lying on an enormous, writhing mass of worms. The panicky voice had been right: they were giant worms, most were at least a three feet long or longer, and as fat as a man's arm.

“Get off, get off, get off! Aargh! Get off, get off!”

The voice was getting higher, even more panicky, but Michael didn’t have time to worry about that. He saw something that made his heart stop for a moment: the kid was slipping through the wriggling worms. Only her head and one arm, holding on to the Harry Potter lunchbox, were still above the horrid, slimy beasts. Her eyes were glazed over, as if she was in shock. Michael started getting to her, but it was incredibly hard. He tried to wade, to crawl, to swim, all the while trying not to concentrate on the cold, wet feeling of these massive worms, not to concentrate on the claustrophobic feeling of being surrounded by these awful creatures. The kid was sinking, and Michael doubled his efforts to get to her in time. He was thrashing like mad, but he wasn’t getting anywhere, he wasn’t going to get to her, she was going to drown in worms, and that sucked, that really sucked.

The waves almost made them fall. They held on to each other, spluttering, gasping.

“There’s another one!”

And there it was. They braced themselves, and the big wave slapped into their faces and bodies. Michael almost slipped, but someone held on to him on his right side. He started coughing up the seawater which had gone down his throat. Where was he, what was happening?

“And another one!”

The voice was right. This time Michael stayed upright. He shook his head to get the water out of his hair and his eyes.

“Look! The water is getting higher!”

Michael looked down. It was true! The water now came up to his waist! It was rising so fast, too fast. They had only stood here for the time it took two waves to reach them. And the water kept rising, it was coming up to his chest now! He looked up to the night sky. There was no lightning yet, but the thunder was rolling ominously. How where they going to get out of this? It was impossible, it was madness!

“NOW where are we?”

The voice sounded angry as well as bewildered, and Michael agreed wholeheartedly. He felt something in his right hand and looked down, astonished at finding a huge shiny sword there.

“Look out, there they are!”

Thousands of little hairy men, about three foot high, came rushing to them, yelling and shouting in the most bloodcurdling way, waving their clubs and axes. Michael raised his sword and dropped it almost immediately. The weight of the thing! He looked down and saw the sword had missed his foot by about half an inch. He felt faint from fear and relief, but there was no time to think. He had to get the sword out of the earth again, fast, very fast. The dwarves, no, the goblins, no, the orcs, were now only about 300 feet from their little group. They couldn’t run away, what with the steep precipice behind them. Was there no end to this insanity? Michael squared his jaw. They weren’t going to go down meekly, they weren’t going to give up without a fight. He looked around: all five of them looked grim and ready to fight to the death. The men all had swords, Kate, incongruously, held a big mace and even Lily had a grenade in her little hands. A what? A grenade? And the little hairy men were upon them.

They were lying under a tree, panting. The evening sun was setting slowly, gently, in a blaze of warm colors. The meadow was soft and safe. Safe, that was the main thing. Michael sat up, still breathing heavily, and looked around. No worms, good. No waves, no hairy midgets, no tiles. Good good good. He looked at his companions, who were also trying to sit up. Nat was looking at his arm. He looked up at Michael and smiled.

“They’re gone.”

“What?”

“They’re gone, the red lines on my arm. They’re not there any more.”

“That’s great!” Stuart said.

“How did that happen?” asked Kate, who was coming closer to have a better look.

“Beats me. But …”

Nat fell silent, and his mouth fell open. The rest of them were sitting in a little circle around Nat, all looking at him expectantly. Stuart bent over a bit.

“What is it, Nat? You’ve just thought of something, haven’t you? Go on then, tell us.”

Nat looked at them and shook his head, slowly.

“I think I’m on to something, but I need a bit more time to think about it. You know what, have a lie-down, all of you, you’re probably tired. We’ll talk when you wake up.”

His eyes rested on Lily.

“Poor mite, she’s completely beat.”

The rest of them turned to Lily, and indeed, the kid had fallen asleep where she was sitting, cross-legged. Her head had fallen forward, and they heard the slow rhythm of her breathing. Michael saw Stuart smile, and take the girl in his arms to lay her down a bit more comfortably. He stretched out next to her and closed his eyes. Kate stuck out her chin and lay down on the grass as well. Michael suddenly felt so exhausted. He joined the others. He saw Nat stand up and start pacing. He couldn’t imagine how Nat could still stay awake after all they’d been through. He closed his eyes: sleep didn’t take long coming.

****

Nat waited impatiently till the rest of them would wake up. He knew now what was going on, and he was dying to tell them. Stuart would believe him, he thought, and Michael would too, probably. Kate wouldn’t. He sighed. It was important to convince her. Their survival depended on them staying together, fighting together.

Stuart was the first to stir. He looked around and saw Nat, waiting. Stuart smiled and got up. He came to Nat and whispered to him.

“Nat, you look like you don’t know if you’re going to laugh or cry. Did you find out what you were thinking about?”

Nat nodded. “I think I did. I need to tell you guys.”

“So why didn’t you wake us?”

And before Nat could stop him, Stuart was nudging the others, gently.

“Rise and shine, rise and shine, boys and girls. Our leader has a big announcement to make.”

Slowly they woke up. They yawned or stretched, got up, came to the burning fire and sat around it. Kate looked appreciatively at Nat.

“Neat trick, Nat. Where did you learn to make a fire?”

Nat shook his head. “I didn’t make the fire.”

“So Stuart made it?”

“Nope, not me. Never was a boy-scout.”

“So who made the fire? It can’t just have walked here on its own for our comfort!”

“Sit down, Kate, please. I’ll try to explain everything.”

“You’ll have some explaining to do before you can explain that fire away!”

“Forget about the fire! Never mind the bloody fire! Do you honestly think this is the strangest thing that’s happened to us today?”

Kate opened her mouth to snap back at him, but closed it again, abruptly. Good. This was going to be tough enough without her quarreling. Nat looked around to his companions around the fire. Stuart had an arm around Lily. She leaned against him, but she was fully awake. Michael was drawing figures in the sand with a finger.

“Well, we had a strange day today, didn’t we?”

They nodded.

“So what’s wrong with us? What’s wrong with here, with this place?”

No answer. Then again, he hadn’t expected one. He looked around again. It was tough to come out with it, to say it out loud.

“I’ve been thinking about this, really thinking, and I can only come up with one explanation that fits the bill. I think we’re characters in a book.”

Kate’s mouth fell open. “You’re joking, of course.”

“No.”

Kate kept looking at him, raised her eyebrows and started laughing. It wasn’t a mean laugh, fortunately, it was a very infectious case of the giggles. She held her hand in front of her mouth and roared with laughter. Her eyes were dancing.

“Oh, Nat, it’s finally happened. All that science fiction you’ve been reading has affected your brain. It’s gone, whoosh. No more brain for Nat. Poor thing, we’ll be kind to you in your declining years.”

A new idea struck her, and she smiled mischievously. “Can we choose which character we want to be? I’d love to be Ophelia. No, Lady Macbeth, that’s even better, Lady Macbeth! I’ve always wanted to be a tragic heroine!”

Stuart was smiling because of Kate’s merriment, but he was still looking at Nat, too.

“Shush, you, let Nat explain what he means.”

“Stuart! Don’t you encourage him!”

“Just listen to the man.”

Nat took a deep breath and started.

“Do you remember when I asked Lily when her birthday was?”

“Yes, sure, she’s almost ten.”

“Yes, but she couldn’t say when it was, which day it was.”

“So?”

“Do you know any kid who can’t tell which is their birthday? It’s just that our writer hasn’t invented a date yet. And it’s not just that. You weren’t even sure of your name, you thought it was Katelyn.”

Kate looked at him through the narrow slits of her half-closed eyes. She wasn’t laughing any more; she was starting to get angry. That was even worse.

“Well, I’m not saying there aren’t any strange things happening around here. Those jumps from place to place would get the most level-headed of persons dizzy. But that doesn’t mean we’re not real.”

“I’m not saying we’re not real. But I think we’re only real because someone is writing us.”

“Don’t be absurd. We live, don’t we? Look, I can pinch myself and I feel it, don’t I? Shall I pinch you too, or punch you, for that matter? See how you like that.”

“You could beat the crap out of me and you wouldn’t prove a thing, except that you’re a character who beats the crap out of other characters. Kate, you’ve studied literature, you must recognize this for what it is: a first draft with lots of ideas. Our writer hasn’t solved me getting rid of those red lines yet, he’s just left it open. But he wants me to survive, because otherwise they wouldn’t be gone now. He’ll have to find a solution for how I got cured in between what we went through today.”

“I don’t buy it. I can think, I can feel, I live. I’m alive, for heaven’s sake.”

“I didn’t say you aren’t. I think our writer is not too shabby, so he’s drawing us well. Look, I know a bit about Shakespeare. I would be able to tell you the plot of, say, Macbeth and Hamlet and a few more plays, the famous ones. But I wouldn’t know the plots of the less famous plays, Titus Andronicus for instance, or Twelfth Night. You studied Shakespeare, so tell me the plot to either one of these.”

She was silent, frustrated. She shook her head. That’s what he had thought: she couldn’t do it.

“You can’t, because the writer doesn’t know any more Shakespeare. He made you an expert, but what he doesn’t know he can’t put into you.”

“Come off it, Nat. Even you must realize how nuts this sounds.”

She looked around for support.

“What about the rest of you? Do you believe this crap?”

Stuart and Michael looked at each other and smiled for a second. Then they both nodded. Nat felt a surge of relief that they, at least, believed him. Stuart was the one to answer her question.

“Yip. It feels right, that idea. And I can even hazard a guess as to what book we’re in."

“Don’t tell me. One of your stupid science fiction stories. At least you’re dressed for the part.”

“No. Close, but not quite. There's no science anywhere, and we're not on another planet or in space. It's fantasy. I’m sure it is. Lily’s way of finding a way to travel across the tiles? Magical thinking. Typical for children, and very popular in fantasy too. The hairy little men, too.”

Nat smiled. He’d known all along, of course, but he was glad Stuart had found out himself and told Kate. Now it was two against one. And by the furiously blushing look on Michael’s face, he was preparing to speak as well. And he did, but without looking at Kate.

“But it’s not very good yet. It needs a lot of work, a lot. The sets are not very good yet. And, you know, it’s still too empty? It’s just us. I, I think he’ll add elves and dwarves and creatures and so on, later.”

Nat looked at Michael with a new respect. That was good thinking. He saw Stuart look proudly at Michael too.

“It’s like he’s drawing and he hasn’t filled in the background yet, you know? And the way we look, you know, it’s, it’s not finished yet. We, we’re only quick sketches, as characters, I mean. No work on the details yet.”

Michael looked helplessly at Stuart and Nat, and Nat suddenly felt very close to both men. He realized he was now counting Michael as a man, rather than as a kid. Nat turned to Kate.

“Michael is absolutely right. I hadn’t even realized that, but we don’t have any specific looks yet.”

“Nothing wrong with MY looks, thank you very much.”

“Look at me, Kate. Look at me and try to describe me,” Nat said patiently.

She tried, he saw her trying. But she didn’t get very far, as he’d known.

“You’re a man, obviously in your thirties. Nothing special in your face. Masculine face. Not very ugly, not very attractive. Normal face.”

“Which color are my eyes?”

“I can’t tell, it’s too dark.”

“You can’t tell because the writer hasn’t decided yet.”

Kate turned her face away in disgust. Her eye fell on Lily, who’d taken the Harry Potter dolls out of her lunchbox and was playing with them on her lap.

“Lily, do you think Nat is right? We live in a book?”

The little girl turned to Kate and shrugged.

“Of course. We’re in a story. Like Harry Potter.”

This answer took Kate completely by surprise, that much was clear. The men, who hadn’t paid any attention to the little girl during the whole conversation, stared at her as well.

“Did you know that before I told you just now, Lily?” Nat asked. She shrugged again.

“I think so. I never thought about it really. I suppose so.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Fight the bad thing and live happily ever after, of course.”

It was said so matter-of-factly that they all started laughing, even Kate.

When the laughter died down, Nat stayed silent. He understood Kate well enough now to realize she wasn’t the type to be bullied into accepting the truth. She’d have to work it out for herself. And sure enough, after a few minutes she sighed and looked at him.

“Okay, you win. I’m outnumbered anyway. I suppose it makes sense, but I reserve the right to come up with a better theory if I think of one.”

“Of course.”

She sighed again and grinned. “Why oh why did it have to be fantasy? I would have been great in a detective story. Or a historical novel, with all those great costumes to wear and Mr Darcy’s strong manly arms to fall into.”

They laughed, and Stuart looked at her quizzically. “Be glad we’re not in a horror novel.”

“Why?”

“Because horror authors have a very, very high death rate among their characters.”

The mood had lifted, they were all laughing now. Nat hated what he had to do, but it was necessary. It was a matter of life or death.

“One more thing,” he said.

They all looked at him expectantly. He seemed to be the leader now, like it or not.

“We are not out of danger yet.”

They didn’t seem very surprised at this bit of news. Kate answered him.

“Of course not. It’s like Lily said, we have to fight evil in one form or another if we’re in a fantasy book. Don’t worry, I have a sneaking suspicion I swing a mean mace, myself, and I don’t mean the kind that comes in spray cans.”

“That’s not what I mean. It’s obvious this novel is in a very early stage. We’re only in a very rough draft of a story.”

They nodded, but Nat saw that no one saw the implications of this bit of news.

“This means our writer can still lose interest and tear up the sheets he used to write this bit down, or delete us on his computer. End of story for all of us.”

It stayed quiet, deadly quiet for a while. They all looked at him with fear in their eyes. He had gotten through to them.

“My God, you’re right,” Stuart whispered. The flickering flames threw strange shadows on his face.

“The main danger doesn’t come from within the story, it comes from outside the story. We need to make sure this story survives, in order for us to survive.”

“And how, how do we do that?” Michael asked, clearly frightened out of his wits.

Nat shook his head, frustrated at not being able to come up with an answer.

“I don’t know. There’s not much we can do, is there? We’re pretty much puppets when he’s writing, like when we were standing in the sea and the waves threatened to drown us.”

Lily unexpectedly got up and came to Nat. He smiled and opened his arms to her. She sat in his lap and wriggled until she was comfortable. She looked around the group and smiled her sunny smile.

“Easy peasy. We need to have an adventure.”

“And how are we going to do that, little one?” Nat asked.

She shrugged. "It's not difficult. We can have an adventure tomorrow, I’ll show you. But now we need to sleep. It’s the night.”

She got up and walked to Stuart. She bent a bit so that he could kiss her on the forehead, as if it was part of a very familiar nighttime ritual. Stu kissed her forehead gently, and she lay down. The others looked at each other and smiled.

“How does she know so much about this place?” Kate asked. Nat couldn’t answer her. He remembered wondering the same thing in the first scene, when she’d found the way to walk on the tiles. Stuart answered her.

“It’s often that way in fantasy, or in horror, for that matter. Kids often realize more than adults, probably because they are less hampered by too much logical thinking. Women often have the same gift, but our writer seems to have left that out of you.”

Nat saw that Kate was getting ready to get angry again, so he stopped the conversation before it could go any further.

“Whatever it is, we can talk about it in the morning. Let’s all get a good night’s sleep first.”

They all lay down, but Kate suddenly sat up again. What now, Nat thought wearily. But it was not another outburst. Very sedately she looked to the sky and said: “Thank you, mister writer man, for the nice fire you gave us.”

And under her breath she added to Nat, who was closest to her: “ Might as well be polite to the bugger if he has the power to kill us all without a moment’s notice.”

She lay down and closed her eyes. Nat smiled and did the same.

CHAPTER TWO

Kate woke up to the song of hundreds of little birds. The sun was already up, and was shining down on them softly and cheerfully. She stretched and yawned. That was odd. This didn’t seem like the place they had fallen asleep in. She got up and turned around. Yes, that was different all right: the meadow was still there, but the tree they had fallen asleep under had changed into a huge wood. She smiled. Their writer was already hard at work. Good.

The others were stirring as well. The little girl was already up and about. She was picking little flowers and singing to herself. Michael was also up. Stuart was sitting up, his legs stuck out in front of him, his shoulders slack, his face still sleepy. He was looking around, as if that was all the action he could take at the moment. Nat was standing up and inspecting the trees with a frown on his face.

“Hey, what is this?” Kate said.

“What is what?” Stuart said, stifling a yawn.

“Something is happening in my mind! It’s, you know, as if ants are crawling in my head. It’s weird. I want it to stop!”

Nat had come closer, and he was grinning.

“It’s all right. It’s just the writer looking through your eyes now. Point of view. Multiple personal narrators, you know. I’ve had it too.”

“Me too”, the boy said. Working up his courage to look in her eyes, he added: “You’ll get used to it quickly. It’s no big deal.”

“It IS a big deal to me! No one gets into my mind just like that!”

“Well, there’s not much you can do about it,” Nat added reasonably.

Kate looked at the sky and shouted: “Well, you’d better behave while you’re in there, mister writer man!”

She looked back at her companions. She gasped, for Stuart suddenly stood out much more. He was, he seemed, more real than the others, more there. He had thick, very dark hair, quite short. It was sticking out from sleeping on the ground. His eyes were blue, light blue. Dark hair, blue eyes, good combination. It was a funny face, a friendly face, with a nice nose and quite a broad mouth. Good teeth, too, by the look of it. His ears were sticking out a bit. He wasn’t very tall, but well-built. No beer-belly here! Kate looked at him with a new appreciation. No more Trekkie-costume: instead he wore very nice black cotton pants and a white cotton shirt. Stylish! Stuart was scratching his left shoulder.

“Is it itchy?” she asked. A horrible thought struck her. “It’s not those awful lines Nat had too, is it?”

Stuart seemed horror-struck at that idea. He took off his shirt and tried to peer over his shoulder.

“Here, let me have a look at you,” Kate said.

She went to him and looked at his shoulder. The others had come closer as well. Kate laughed.

“No, it’s just a tattoo! You must have known you had a tattoo!”

Stuart looked nonplussed. “No, I didn’t. I could have sworn it wasn’t there before!”

“It’s a tribal tattoo, a nice geometric pattern. Something Celtic, I would think,” Nat added. Mischievously he added: “I wouldn’t mind getting one of those myself, but how do I convince our writer to give me one?”

A delighted shout from Lily broke the morning quiet. They turned around to look at her, and saw she had on a very sweet short summer’s dress with flowers on it. It was light blue, yellow and orange. She had dark blue sandals on with orange apples on them. Her black hair was in two pigtails, with orange bows in them. And the strangest thing of all: she was Asian! Chinese, Kate reckoned, or maybe Japanese or Korean. She looked like a million dollars, she was positively shining. She looked like an ad for spring.

“Mister Stuart! Look at my dress! I’ve got a pretty dress on! And I’ve got a Harry Potter backpack!”

It was true. They burst out laughing when they saw the Harry Potter lunchbox had magically transformed into a small but sturdy backpack. Kate turned to Nat.

“So what’s happening here, you think?”

Nat was still laughing with Lily, who was jumping up and down with the sheer joy of having a new dress. He turned to Kate, smiling.

“Isn’t it obvious? Our writer is working on our appearances. Just wait, you’ll be next.”

But Michael was next. They saw him transform from a nondescript adolescent into this gangly young man, very skinny. Not so much acne as before, which was an improvement. Nice brown eyes, and thick brown hair, curly and rather unruly. He seemed to have grown a bit, even! Black jeans, a black T-shirt and sneakers made up his outfit. Kate turned to Nat.

“He’s not stretching his imagination on Michael’s clothes, now is he?”

Nat smiled. “Well, he’s not added a cap yet, so the picture is not complete.”

They both burst out laughing when Michael suddenly had a baseball cap on his head. The boy looked very surprised.

Nat was next, and he was done quite quickly. Thin blond hair, a manly, open face with some freckles and blue eyes. His strong arms were full of freckles too. Jeans too, but blue, a checkered shirt with short sleeves and good quality leather sandals. To her relief Kate saw no beer belly here either. He wasn’t thin or skinny by any stretch of the imagination, but it seemed mostly muscles.

And then, finally, it was Kate’s turn. Her skin seemed to crawl. It was a very strange feeling, but not unpleasant.

“Ooh, it tickles!”

She felt her face change, her hair grow.

“Nat, which color is my hair?”

“Reddish-brown, very nice.”

“Cool. What about my eyes?”

He came a bit closer.

“Gray."

She didn’t have to ask if she was pretty. She saw the answer in his eyes, so wide. They looked at each other.

He broke away, and took a step backward. So did Kate. That moment had just been a bit too intimate to her taste.

She looked down at her clothes. White linen shorts and a white top without sleeves. Elegant low-heeled sandals.

“I’m not really dressed for adventure, am I?”

But there was no more time to speak about clothes, because that was the moment the memories came flooding in. The air was full of happy shouts.

“I play the violin? Cool!”

“My best friend at school is Tammy! She’s read Harry Potter too!”

“I remember the balloons at the funfair! And the smell of candied apples! And the taste, yum, the taste!”

"My older sister's called Jenna! She's a physical therapist!"

“Hey guys, I have a good one! I spent a summer as a farmhand in Arizona! I’m a cowboy, yeehah!”

“Knock it off, Stuart, you empty bedpans at the hospital.”

“Yeah, I know, but still. Maggie, my first real girlfriend, that was there, too! Making out in the hay of that farm. She had the giggles and I was so serious, so dedicated to the task at hand. It was the first time I had sex and it was …”

“Stuart, please! Think of the kid!”

“Oh yeah, sorry.”

“I saw Midsummer Night’s Dream in the park, on a beautiful summer evening. It was magical, it was so great! No wonder I love Shakespeare!”

“The taste of hot strong coffee in the morning!”

“So that’s where I got that tattoo! And a scar too, I have a scar from a fight in a bar in Philadelphia, can you believe it?”

“Michael, come on, don’t just stand there smiling like an idiot, tell us something of your memories!”

But Michael just shook his head and kept on smiling angelically. A happy shout came from under the trees, where Nat was looking at something in the grass.

“Come over here! Look here! Supplies, and a backpack for all of us! We’re going to travel in style, people. No more roughing it!”

They all hurried to where Nat was standing. There was an old-fashioned green backpack with a bedroll for everyone but Lily, who already had hers. There was bread and cheese and dried meat, and flasks full of water for all of them.

“Finally our writer is going to be a bit more realistic. We didn’t eat or drink yesterday, and no one was hungry or thirsty. This looks more like it.”

“Yeah, maybe we’ll need to go to the bathroom too.”

"I doubt it. Not very often, anyway. Fantasy writers don't usually like their writing to be that realistic. A bit of vomiting maybe, that's all."

They all put their backpacks on their backs. They felt comfortable enough. All of them walked around a bit to see how the backpacks felt.

Kate heard a strange sound, and she turned around quickly. She saw Stuart standing near the wood, at a small sandy path leading into the wood. Tears were streaming down his face. Kate’s heart stood still for a moment, and then started beating furiously. What was that, what was wrong? She hurried to Stuart, and she saw Nat do the same. And then she saw what was happening.

Stuart was crying because he was howling with laughter. He was bent double, and he was hiccuping from laughing so hard. Nat asked him sharply: “Stuart, what is it?”

Stuart was too far gone to even answer. He just pointed at two wooden signs a bit farther on. They were shaped like a traffic sign pointing in a specific direction, except they looked home-made. The letters had been carved out of the wood with a chisel, probably. And then Nat and Kate started laughing too.

The first sign simply read: ‘This way to save the world’. And the other one read: ‘The Nameless Evil: very many miles’. And they both pointed into the wood.

****

This was more like it, Stuart thought. No more hauling Nat across these murderous tiles, no more jumping to all sorts of frightening situations, no, just a leisurely walk through the leafy wood, where a light breeze made sure they didn’t get too warm. A nice path to follow, just broad enough for two people to walk alongside each other. Michael and Lily were up ahead. They were chattering away to each other. He smiled. He’d thought that Michael would be more comfortable talking to the child than to them. He’d held back on purpose so that he wouldn’t be too close to them. Behind them came Nat en Kate. Kate was gesturing a lot, and Nat seemed to be having a hard time explaining something to her. That woman needed a lot of explanations. But she would come in handy, he was sure of that, otherwise their writer wouldn’t have included her. No one seemed to have noticed yet that their writer had chosen them well indeed: different ages, sexes, backgrounds, everything you needed if you wanted to form an Intrepid Little Band to Save the World from Evil. Enough differences for a bit of friction, but decent people anyway. A bit flawed, perhaps, the time of Tolkien's big heroes was long past, but still, decent people. They’d have to overcome their weaknesses in order to triumph, that was the way it worked.

They had been walking for a few hours now, with only two stops to have a drink. Stuart grinned to himself. He was glad their writer wasn’t doing things too realistically yet: no one was the least bit tired, or had sore feet, or a painful back or anything. They felt as fresh as the moment they started. He was sure they’d get tired in the end, probably just before they came to their sleeping place.

He looked up from his daydreaming. The kids had stopped and were shouting at the others behind them. What was wrong? He saw Nat en Kate run to them, and he followed suit. It was one thing to know that you were in a fantasy story and you’d have to overcome Temporary Setbacks, quite a few of them, it was quite another to suddenly see something was really wrong!

But there was nothing wrong. When he got to the kids he didn’t see anything but a broad river and a stone bridge spanning it. All three adults turned to Michael and Lily. They were grinning.

“What’s wrong, why did you shout?” Stuart asked.

Michael answered: “We thought this was a great place to have our first adventure.”

Nat looked sceptical. “That’s up to our writer, surely. We don’t have to make things dangerous for ourselves, do we?”

“Yes, we do!” Lily said. “You said it yourself, yesterday, mister Nat. We need to have adventures or we’ll die.”

Nat frowned. “Yes, I see what you mean. But what can we do? I mean, it is a bit silly for one of us to jump in the river and pretend to be drowning, so that the others can save him.”

“No, no, not like that. But in the water could be a waterdragon, a big big dragon, with a snout and wings and scales and everything, so that we wouldn’t be able to swim across the river,” Lily said.

Michael took over from the little girl: “Yes, and on the bridge itself could be a giant warrior, all metal, with no face, sort of Japanese manga style, with all sorts of weapons hanging from his armor, stopping us from crossing the bridge, so …”

“So we couldn’t swim, and we couldn’t walk across the bridge, …”

“And we’d be stuck here!” Michael finished proudly, as if being stuck somewhere was a very important goal for any group of travelers.

“So then what would we do?” Nat asked reasonably.

Both Michael and Lily shrugged their shoulders.

“We hadn’t come that far yet. But that’s what it is all about anyway, isn’t it, finding a clever solution in a difficult situation.”

“Yes, but we do know what they’d look like, Mister Nat: the waterdragon would be purple and green, with orange and yellow spots along her flanks, and her head would be quite small, you know, and her nostrils would be wide, and breathe fire when she was above water, but she wouldn’t really be bad, not really, she was only protecting her little dragons who’d just been born, and …”

“And the warrior would be huge, just huge, about eight or nine feet tall, and built very broadly too, with these enormous shoulders and hands like claws, but you wouldn’t see any hands, not really, because they’d be in these gauntlets, and all his armor would be Japanese, see, and his legs would be …”

“You idiots, now look what you’ve done!” came a cry of distress from Kate. They all turned around and gasped at what they saw. As the kids had been describing their fictional enemies, there suddenly was a big waterdragon in the river, and a big warrior on the bridge. Both of them were eyeing the little group keenly and cruelly. They were still a bit vague, but growing clearer by the second. The warrior was drawn with very fine lines, as if in Chinese ink. The details on him were outstanding, he could have walked out of a manga comic this minute. The waterdragon was a bit rougher around the edges, and a bit flatter, too, but very colorful: she looked like she’d been drawn and filled in with crayons. The lines where the crayons had been were still visible. She had the vibrancy but also the stiffness of a child’s drawing. Stuart understood: the warrior was Michael’s idea, and the waterdragon’s Lily’s. They looked just like the kids would have drawn them.

“Oh my, what do we do now?” Nat asked.

It stayed quiet. All five of them were staring at the dragon and the warrior. Kate was the first to speak.

“Well, reverse it, of course! If we describe an empty bridge, that big museum piece should be gone. So we’re at a river, there’s a bridge, and there’s no danger whatsoever. There is no dragon, no Japanese warrior, and we are just about to walk across the bridge to get to the other side of the river.”

Nothing. The big warrior stayed where he was, and so did the waterdragon. Kate turned to the others in frustration.

“Why does it work when the kids do it and not when I do it? I hate this.”

Nat answered: “Well, the writer’s goal is to get an interesting story. Everything we can come up with that helps him do that, is going to stay, but if it just makes the story more boring, it’s not going to stay. This is the adventure we need, isn’t it?”

Kate looked at him unbelievingly, but Michael was nodding. “Yes, so if we said that the warrior was coming closer, very slowly, that would stay, see?”

And indeed, they felt the earth shake underneath them as they heard the big thud of the feet of the warrior, coming closer, coming from the bridge, coming towards them. Michael gasped, looking horrified at what he’d done.

"Will you stop it, you freak, before it kills us?” Kate yelled, angrily.

“We need to find a solution, fast, one that heightens the excitement without killing us!” Nat shouted, as the warrior came closer, loomed a bit larger in their sight with every step he took.

“There’s another warrior, equally big, and he comes closer, and they start fighting each other, so that we can slip past them!” Stuart shouted. Nothing.

“The, er, I don’t know, the goddess of the sun comes down and strikes him dead for, er, disobeying her orders, whatever,” Kate yelled. Nothing.

“It’s night, and it’s raining and thundering, and there’s lightning,” Michael cried.

Suddenly they were standing in the dark, heavy rain soaking through their clothes and backpacks. There was just enough moonlight to see the outline of the warrior, still coming closer. Kate shouted at Michael furiously.

“Will you stop it? Haven’t you done enough damage already, you nitwit?”

The boy seemed momentarily lost at hearing her words. Stuart shouted at him: “Don’t listen to her, Michael, do what you have to do!” Big hailstones were pelting down now, hurting his head and his arms. He ran to Lily and took her in his arms. He bent over her to protect her and himself from the worst of the storm. She was whimpering. Stuart noticed darker blotches on her arms where she’d been hurt by the hail.

A bolt of lightning cleaved the sky, followed almost immediately by thunder. Close, this was very close.

Michael was trying to make himself heard over the din of the storm. “We sneak past him in the dark. When lightning strikes, freeze, don’t move an inch! Only move in the dark, very quietly. Keep to the right of the bridge.”

Michael started to creep forward, followed by Kate. Nat gestured to Stuart to go next with the little girl. Stuart’s heart was hammering in his chest. He put Lily to his right, so that he would be closest to the warrior, although he didn’t think it would make much of a difference if that thing spotted them.

Hunched over they crept closer and closer. Stuart felt Lily’s nails dig deep in his palm, but she kept going forward with him. They were on the bridge now, getting closer to the metal warrior. Up ahead Stuart saw that Michael and Kate had already passed their enemy.

Lightning. They froze. More lightning, and it kept coming. The sky was ablaze with it. The warrior turned slowly around in their direction. He seemed to have noticed something was wrong. He took a step towards Stuart and Lily. Stuart fought against the temptation to go back a bit, just a bit. The warrior took another step in their direction, and another. The bridge was shaking with each step.

“Hey!” Nat, behind them, was shouting to the warrior. Involuntarily Stuart turned his head. Nat was jumping up and down and waving his arms in the streaming rain.

"Hey, you big can of corned beef, here's where the fun is! Don't just stand there, come here!"

He's trying to draw that thing to him to save us! That's insane!

The big warrior had turned to Nat and was walking towards him. Nat was backing away, but there was no way he would be able to avoid the warrior. Stuart didn't know what to do; he stood rooted to the spot, Lily's hand still in his, both of them drenched through and through.

The warrior was getting closer and closer to Nat. It looked incredibly frightening, that big metal thing now so close to Nat, who looked woefully small and vulnerable next to him. Nat was still going backwards, slowly. Suddenly Stuart heard Michael behind him, shouting to be heard over the noise of the storm.

"Suddenly there's lightning and it hits the warrior! He falls down and we can cross the bridge!"

Another bolt of lightning cleaved the sky and struck the metal warrior. All of them dived down while the giant let out a deafening roar, angry and hurt and even a bit sad. It was overshadowed by the thunder, cracking and roaring. Stuart, trying to cover Lily as best as he could with his arms and body, didn't dare to look up. He heard metal parts falling, crashing against the wood of the bridge. Something fell on his shoulder. A fierce pain shot through him.

"Come on, come on, let's get to the other side!" he heard Kate shout. "We don't know if he'll stay down. Let's go!" Stuart got up, wincing at the pain. He looked at Lily, wanting to pick her up but knowing that was not going to work. She seemed to understand, anyway, and they started running to the other side. The rain kept pouring down, half blinding them. They heard Nat running behind them, slightly limping but keeping up with them.

They got to the other side, where Kate and Michael were already waiting. Both of them seemed okay. Lily was alright too, it was just Nat and him who had gotten hurt. The storm was already clearing up, and a watery sun was shining through the clouds. All of them were dripping.

"That was close," Kate said, trying to wring her clothes. Her top was torn a bit. "That's enough adventure for me, thank you very much." Nat and Stuart glanced at each other.

"Er, I don't want to alarm you, Kate, but there are going to be more adventures like this, even before we get to the big one, the nameless evil," Stuart told her.

She looked up, wiping the wet hair out of her eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's fantasy! It is about adventures, fighting, magic, overcoming evil, preferably against all odds. It's not a slow psychological novel, it is about plot, about story, about action. Things happen in fantasy."

"And no one told that writer you can write a perfectly good poem with just a single woman, say in her mid-twenties, in a rocking chair on a porch, sipping a glass of white wine and being happy?"

Stuart laughed. "Oh come off it, Kate, how boring would that be, sitting in that chair for eternity? Besides, look at the bright side."

She eyed him critically. "There's a bright side? Surprise me, then."

"Well, chances are we'll survive, like I said before. Especially in a novel, like our writer seems to be aiming for. In a short story all bets are off, he might just kill the lot of us for the one off effect, but in a novel we're quite safe."

Nat nodded, and added: "Yeah, Stuart is right. Lots of adventures, maybe he'll kill off some minor character he is going to write in the story, later, and maybe one or two of us will get hurt, even seriously, but that's probably it."

She sighed, finally stopping her futile efforts to wring the short skirt. She stretched and yawned.

"Well, that's all very well, but I'm beat. Since he's not writing this scene so well that I feel very uncomfortable in these wet clothes, I'll just go to sleep. If we lie down, he'll probably get the hint and make it night again."

And that's what they did. And that's what happened.

And the next morning they woke up. At the other side of the river again. The wrong side. And the bridge was gone. But the waterdragon wasn't. And the way Stuart found out all this was because Kate was swearing and shouting and shaking her fists.

"We did this river already! This is not fair, mister writer man! We had enough trouble as it was, what with the giant warrior and the dark and the storm and everything! Now the dragon too? How on earth are we supposed to do that?"

All of them got up. Stuart and Nat seemed okay again, without a trace of the injuries they had gotten yesterday. The sun was shining, the water was rippling. It looked peaceful enough. Except for the fact that there was no bridge. And that a huge waterdragon was looking at them as if they'd make a nice snack.

Stuart turned to Lily. "Lily, do you have any idea how to get to the other side without getting hurt?"

The girl was chewing on a long stem of grass and nodded, looking completely unconcerned.

"You do? How do we do it then?"

"Become mermaids."

"Come again?"

"Become mermaids. Waterdragons don't hurt mermaids. Mermaids even babysit little baby waterdragons when their mommy's away for a bit."

Stuart, Nat and Michael all looked at the little girl with doubt in their faces.

"But honey, we can't just turn into mermaids. We're people, we have legs."

"Yeah, but with magic!" she said impatiently. To his surprise Nat noticed Kate wasn't angry any more: she was actually laughing.

He tried to explain to the little girl. "Lily, dear, it doesn't work like that. You can't just wish and it'll happen."

"It does, it does, mister Nat! We'll grow fish tails and swim to the other side! You have to believe!"

Kate looked at the three men with scorn. "Oh ye of little faith. Have you forgotten about the tiles already? You bunch of woosies. Are you men or mice?"

And without waiting for a reply, she took Lily's hand. They walked the twenty feet to the river, looked at each other, nodded solemnly, and jumped in. Kate felt her legs come together, grow together, become fishy. She went underwater with no hesitation. For one panicky moment she couldn't breathe in the unexpectedly cold water, but then her gills opened up and she started swimming. The gentle touch of the water didn't feel cold or uncomfortable any more, no, it felt familiar. She realized her tail was flipping up and down without any conscious thought.

Kate looked to her left and smiled a strange, watery mermaid's smile. Lily had turned into the cutest little mermaid. Her tail was the most gorgeous pink, with purple and light blue streaks, and even seemed to be changing color in the dappled light of the sun under water. Kate wondered what color her own tail was.

They swam closer to the dragon, who didn't seem to mind them swimming near her one bit. Kate gasped when she saw that, true to Lily's prediction, five or six very small and very cute baby dragons were peeping out from under mommy waterdragon. They had the same sort of crayon-like flatness as their mom, but the most gorgeous big baby-animal eyes a nine-year-old girl can imagine. And their eyelashes had to be seen to be believed.

They passed the waterdragon and her babies, and swam on. Kate was sorry they were almost there! She luxuriated in this strange feeling: belonging to the water. Small red and white fish darted away from them, frightened of these big fish.

Kate had a sudden craving for sushi.

****

On the riverbank the three men watched in amazement as Kate and Lily jumped in the water (Lily shouting 'abracadabra', and Stuart could have sworn Kate shouted 'Josh Homme for president') and turned into beautiful mermaids right away. They swam away easily and confidently, purposefully to the other bank. Kate's legs had changed into a stunning tail of green and bright blue, with flames of orange and red. Lily's tail was princessy, in pink, purple and light blue.

Kate and Lily were now very close to the dragon, and Nat noticed he was biting his lip. But there was nothing to it, it seemed, because the two elegant mermaids didn't even change course to avoid the fearsome beast. Nat held his breath as they passed, very close, but mommy waterdragon didn't bat an eyelid. Nat breathed out in relief, and looked at the other two.

"So, guys, what do you think? Shall we give it a go?"

Stuart and Michael nodded apprehensively. The three of them walked to the edge of the bank. Nat counted quietly "One, two, three" and they jumped in.

Nat went under, and instinctively held his breath. He opened his eyes and was amazed he could see so well. Twenty/twenty vision. He felt his legs, and was pleasantly surprised it had worked: he had a sturdy, strong merman tail.

But he was running out of breath, and he knew he'd have to exhale his last breath and start breathing through his gills, as he'd seen Kate and Lily do.

So he breathed out and breathed in. He choked on the water coming in his mouth, his nose, his lungs. He started splashing to get to the surface. This wasn't supposed to happen! It took so long to get there, and all the while he felt as if he was suffocating.

Air! He coughed, sank again, gulped down some water and tried to remember how to tread water. Could you even do that with a tail? He gulped down quick, shallow breaths, all the while trying to stay above the treacherous, dangerous water. He shook his head to get the water out of his face and eyes. He moved his tail to keep himself above water. It worked, barely. He heard someone breathing heavily to the left. He opened his eyes and saw Stuart struggling to keep above water.

Nat tried to get closer to Stuart, who was wheezing. His eyes were glazed over, and he seemed to be losing consciousness. Nat grabbed his friend and held him above water.

"Nat! Over here!" Nat turned around at the sound of Michael's voice. Michael seemed to be in trouble too, but he had gotten hold of a large tree trunk floating in the river.

"I can't push the tree to you! Can you get here?" Nat didn't hesitate. He grabbed Stu under his armpit with his left arm, to keep him above water, and started swimming with his right arm and his strong tail. It was hard, because the movement of the tail pushed him down, under water, as if he was a dolphin.

But they got to the tree. Nat unceremoniously draped Stu over it, and then tried to hoist himself up to it. He couldn't, so he just held on, all the while keeping an eye on Stuart. Wordlessly he and Michael started flapping their tails up and down again, trying to push the big tree trunk to the opposite bank.

They came closer to the dragon. Nat noticed that even here, in the water, she was breathing fire. Small golden sparks flew out of her nostrils each time she breathed out. She looked at them suspiciously. Nat fervently hoped their tails would be enough to convince her they were not the enemy.

No such luck.

Slowly she left her nest, or whatever it was, and edged closer to see what this was all about. She seemed to be growling deep in her throat, and then slowly opened her mouth. Nat's heart was thumping in his chest. He wished Lily had thought of the dragon without quite so many white sharp teeth. There were at least a hundred of them.

"Stop moving," Michael whispered to Nat. Nat obeyed immediately, and they both just held on to the huge log. It started floating downstream, away from the dragon. She raised her head, looked at them with bright yellow eyes (and girly lilac eyebrows, Nat noticed) and then went back to her brood. Silently offering a prayer to whatever gods inhabited this strange world, Nat started paddling again to the bank. It wasn't so far now. He saw Lily and Kate hurry downstream to meet them. They were already back on their own two legs.

Finally they reached the riverbank. By now Stuart was coming to, and Kate and Lily helped pull him from the water. Nat and Michael crawled on land themselves, and felt their tails change into legs again. Exhausted the three men lay down on the grass.

"Ugh, what was that?" Michael was the first one to speak.

Nat shook his head. "I honestly don't know." He looked at Kate. "It worked for you two, why not for us?"

She smiled sunnily. "Well, you have to believe, don't you? Doubting Thomases don't turn into mermaids, so it seems, well, not all the way. Lily believed it would work and I believed Lily, so we did change."

Nat shook his head again, both to doubt Kate's words and to get the water out of his ears. "I don't know. You two were quick, you surprised our writer. But by the time we jumped in he might have decided this was all a bit too easy."

Kate looked at him with a smile that was just a tad too sweet. "You know, let's make it a bet. I'll bet you a week's worth of firewood duties that it'll be the same in the second draft: us getting here because we believe, and you lot in trouble because you don't."

She held her hand in front of him, and they shook solemnly to clinch the deal. He didn't know if she was right or wrong, and frankly, at the moment he didn't really care. He closed his eyes, completely exhausted.

"And there's another thing," he heard Kate say.

Nat opened his eyes with difficulty. She was squatting next to him, looking him squarely in the eye.

"Go on then."

"Well, he hasn't solved the problem of our backpacks yet, has he? We didn't swim with them, and yet here they are. That is sloppy work! And there's one more thing."

She was looking at him expectantly, so he took the bait.

"What do you mean, one more thing?"

"You haven't noticed yet? I'm standing here with all my clothes on."

She suddenly giggled like Lily, patted him on the arm and got up, eyes dancing.

"And as a mermaid, I was absolutely, completely, utterly buck naked. Not a stitch on me. You explain that to me."

She walked away. Nat smiled and closed his eyes again. He felt like shouting after her, "Don't think too much about it or he'll take them off!" But it felt like too much work and he didn't.

****

They walked along a sea. The huge waves crashed violently on the beach. The thirst was unbearable, next to all this salty water.

****

It was hard to climb the hundreds of stairs of the deserted temple. It was hot, too.

****

They waded through something that looked like a rice-paddy, hunger gnawing at their stomachs.

****

They trudged up a narrow, winding mountain path, hunger gnawing at their stomachs.

****

They walked through a huge wood, with difficult undergrowth, hunger gnawing at their stomachs.

Struggling with a few thorny twigs which had caught on her skirt, Kate shouted at the heavens: "WILL you make up your mind? AND we'd like a snack now and again!"

****

They were sitting around a campfire. The sun had already disappeared behind the trees, and dusk was slowly taking over the world. Crickets were singing their monotonous songs in the tall, green trees.

"That was close," Stuart whispered. Nat and Michael nodded, looking white as sheets.

"WHAT was close?" Kate asked scornfully. She was looking at the dead snakes and salamanders in her lap with disgust. Were these supposed to be dinner?

"Well, what the writer is going to insert before this scene. It's going to be pretty bad."

"Let him write it first, and then I'll be impressed. Please!"

"Solutions. That's what we need. We need solutions!" Nat said.

Kate turned to him.

"Since we're not having any problems right now, which is fine by me, I don't see what we need solutions for."

"Look, we were caught unaware at the river. We had a problem, two even, and no solution. Why don't we do it the other way round? We find a number of original solutions, and our writer can invent problems to go with them. Much less stress for us, and probably a better story, too."

It was quiet for a while after Nat's words. They were all thinking. Then Stuart smiled. "I have one!

"Let's hear it!"

His face clouded over again. "No, sorry, false alarm."

Unexpectedly Kate spoke. "I think I have a few!"

They all turned to her.

"A few, no less. Not just one, but a few. Go on then!" Nat said.

"Well, we can get a few ideas from Shakespeare's plays and adapt them. Especially the comedies, I suppose. Something with mistaken identities, that is a workable idea. A magic potion for in your eyes, as in Midsummernight's Dream. A bit obvious, maybe, but still."

"Not bad! Not bad at all!"

Lily jumped up. Standing stiff, with her feet together and her arms held neatly to her sides, she looked as if she was going to do a 'show and tell' at school.

"My idea is: the trick box!" She bowed, and they all clapped their hands.

"When I was a little girl, I had a little box, closed with a white ribbon. I would give it to a visitor at our house, or to my friend, and they would open it, and BOOM, a funny little guy would jump out! And that person who saw it, would be very, very scared!"

"A jack-in-the-box! Great idea, Lily!" Stuart exclaimed. She waved impatiently with her hands, silencing him.

"So! If we had a big box, one of us could crawl in. And someone else could push the box to the bad thing, and it would be very, very curious, and it'd open the box, and that person 'd jump out and go 'Boo!', and the bad thing would be very scared and fall down or run away!"

"I like it, Lily, I like it a lot!" Nat said. Lily let go of her formal school voice and posture, and leaped in his arms.

"And I'd REALLY like to be in the box, mister Nat, can I, can I?"

"We'll see, little one, I'll keep it in mind! If the bad thing isn't too dangerous, you can, I promise!"

"Yes!" She waved her little hand triumphantly and flopped down next to Stuart, who cuddled her proudly.

Nat looked over to Michael, who seemed to be struggling with his words again. He smiled at the young man.

"Out with it, Michael. Knowing you, it's probably a good one."

"You know like in a comic? But with real people, like a tableau vivant? We're in this giant room, maybe a throne room. The dangerous thing can only see you when you move, so we only move in the dark, and we should be able to turn the light on and off, and we freeze when the light is on."

Nat scratched his head. "Good idea, but I have an idea it is a bit close to the solution with the warrior. You know, with the lightning."

Michael looked dumbfounded. "Yeah. I mean, of course. I hadn't even noticed that!"

"We should steal laundry somewhere, I think, clothes or sheets hanging on a line to dry," Stuart said.

"What on earth for?" Kate asked.

"I don't know, as a solution somewhere. It just looks like a nice idea."

"We're not the A-team, Stuart, we can't build a tank out of a white pillow-case, two potatoes and a mousetrap," Kate answered.

Stuart laughed. "The A-team! They had the right idea about solutions! The same one every week, no writer ever got tired writing those scripts!"

Kate pretended to glower at him. "I'll have you know my favorite TV-show was the A-team, when I was Lily's age. I think the least our writer can do for me is try and come up with an A-team solution, albeit it a bit more sophisticated."

Stuart nodded, happily. "It was my favorite, too, so it was probably the writer's, too. Maybe we will have to find or steal several magic words to make up a complete spell, like the A-team had to find all the things to make a makeshift tank."

Nat said, thoughtfully: "I'm still not sure about that lightning on the warrior. If there's no one in the armor, and that's how it looked, wouldn't the electricity just be conducted to the ground, like a Faraday cage? In that case he could still attack us."

"PLEASE, Nat, don't give him funny ideas or he'll write us back in that same scene and we'll have to start all over again!" Kate answered.

"Well, I know one thing," Nat said, stretching himself and yawning.

"What's that?"

"I'm getting sleepy, and I'd really like a good night's sleep, but I'm pretty sure we're going to have a cliffhanger ending in a minute or so. This seems to be the ending of a whole part, a chapter maybe, and he won't want us to sleep quietly through it. Keep the readers interested."

"Oh brother," Kate sighed. "And I was so looking forward to a nap."

****

They were standing on the top of a mountain. Giant mosquitoes were attacking them from everywhere. It was all they could do to try and swat them away.

****

The island was just too small! The ferocious monkeys left them no place to hide.

****

They were all sitting on the broad branches of an enormous tree, clutching to the trunk so as not to fall off. The ground was a long way away.

"I vote we start a fantasy characters' trade union and demand less jetlag in the first draft," Kate said through clenched teeth.

****

They all huddled together, miserably. They were standing on a huge rock column in the middle of a desert. It was hundreds of feet in the air. It was only a few square feet in size, and little pieces of the rock kept crumbling off. They clung to each other for dear life.

"Could you please write a bit faster, mister writer man," Kate asked the heavens, "this is not a fun spot to spend a lot of time."

Night fell.

Wind blew, harder and harder.

A storm seemed to be brewing in the north.

A giant hand, at least twenty or thirty feet long, appeared out of nowhere and held an index finger cocked against a thumb, ready to flick them off the rock.

That's when they started screaming.

To Be Continued

© 2005 by Mizu Ash. mizu_ash@hotmail.com