Subscribers Only: Phoebe September, the Rainbow Bridge and the Ghost Cat

Phoebe September wished that she could tickle the ghost cat behind the ears but ectoplasmic fur could not be tickled. It really was a beautiful creature, milk white, softly glowing. It languished on the sill of the window as if considering an evening's prowl, maybe one with a few dead mice at the end.

Like most ghosts the cat was tied to the structure that it haunted. Phoebe felt sad for the cat. It was stuck in an abandoned shadow mansion all alone. All alone most of the time. All alone except for tonight.

"Come on, light, fiddlesticks!" Frederick said. He was hunched over a pile of wood intended to serve as that evening's fire. It appeared that he wasn't having much luck with his tinderbox.

"There's no need to get uptight," Phoebe said, fully aware of the irony of her encouraging someone else to calm down.

"What?" Frederick said, looking up at her from his task. "No. I was actually telling the fiddlesticks to light. I think a musician may once have lived here. That's where I got this wood."

Phoebe examined the wood pile closer. Now that she was paying attention she could make out the tangled wisps of horsehair curled up on the ends of some of the sticks.

"Oh," she said. With a flick of her wrist she released a small ball of orange plasma. The wood pile burst into flames. "There."

"Why didn't you just do that ten minutes ago?" Frederick asked.

"I felt like a little sit down and some quiet," Phoebe replied. "Sorry."

The rest of this story can be found on my Patreon and is for subscribers only. There will be another story for non-subscribers in two weeks. If you want access to more stories and puzzling adventures subscribe on my Patreon for as little as $1 a month.

Lester And James Distract A Wolf

"So what are we doing again?" Lester asked, twitching the wrist of his right hand, uncomfortably grasping a short sword, to swish the blade about a bit in the air.

"We're a distraction," James said. His sword remained still, his eyes searching the forest path intently.

"Okay," Lester said. Lester hadn't felt proper misery now for quite some time. Panic, confusion, fear, awkwardness, guilt and even terror, all yes; misery, not so much. He didn't even really know how to express his misery because the reasons for it would either sound stupid or selfish or both.

Since James had found his own form in the Undone; since they had escaped, all three of them, into this charming little shadow kingdom; since they had set out into the woods in the hope of picking up a trade route back to Bridgetown, Lester's misery had grown.

Was Lester miserable about James now not being a mouse? It was true that the lanky, intense individual that had replaced the sarcastic, emotionally complex little rodent was a bit of a system shock. Someone's physical shape should not play such a huge part in how one related to them, Lester felt. Yet here was James, now not a cheeky mouse, instead a charismatic and intelligent man approaching a distinguished middle age.

The transformation appeared to demand that people took James more seriously, not to mention the man's kind and lovely wife. Rebecca had known the man James for longer than the mouse James. From the first moment they had been together Lester knew that Rebecca would never have viewed her husband's rodent form as anything more than a horrible affliction. Lester had never known James as a man and so had always thought of him as a mouse with amnesia.

The amnesia was another thing that had put Lester off kilter. A mouse could have amnesia and it was possible for an observer not to take the whole thing terribly seriously. After all what important memories could a mouse have? When the mouse was a man, the pain of forgetting written in the lines on his face, you were forced to confront your own flippancy.

None of this was a recipe for much more than confusion and a period of necessary adjustment, of course. The problem was the misery and sense of loss that accompanied the confusion. Lester realised that whilst he and James had both been bewildered, both seeking things that appeared impossible to find, that their bond had formed organically, without either one of them noticing. In a world where the finding of a clue to the location of a brother, or a memory that might help upon the road to a mislaid daughter, was a task of gargantuan proportions the funny young man in the pinstripe flannel suit and the amnesiac mouse had each other.

James had gone with Lester on an amazing journey, through some of the strangest places in Faerie, they had seen the ruins of a sorcerer's palace, the edge of the Undone and the colourful stalls of the market at the centre of everything. James's journey had restored to him many (although still not all) of his memories, his daughter, his wife and his physical form. Lester had managed to harvest an elliptical letter and a bottle of potion he had used up to escape the Undone.

Lester knew that his quest was ongoing, and probably a worthwhile endeavour, but when he compared his progress to James's the results were not encouraging. Still, Lester felt incredibly selfish for resenting his companion's progress and feeling the blank, empty helplessness of his current empty-handedness.

Even trying his hardest to put all this aside Lester still felt that he was losing the best friend he had ever had, before he'd even ever really had a chance to tell this friend how he felt. He couldn't help but gain the impression that James believed that they were companions because of circumstance and not because of friendship. As James now had a family to think about, and some handy opposable thumbs, it became more and more apparent that Lester was somewhat of a third wheel in any situation James might find himself in.

That was difficult and caused a sadness that Lester couldn't just squash down out of the way.

"You know," Lester said, filling the empty, silent air with a distracting burble of noise. "Things have happened pretty quickly today. I'm not even sure that I know what we're standing here for."

"I just said," James repeated, absently, "we're a distraction."

"Yes," Lester said. "I got that. I just don't know what we're a distraction from, or indeed what it is we're supposed to be distracting. It has something to do with a wizard. I remember the wizard, and you, you were talking to a mouse."

"Yes," James said. "Gargantuus Redstorm, who lives in the wall just yonder, told us that he was the member of a tribe that gathered intelligence for Silas Strumpkin, a wizard who lives in that house over there." James pointed at the house just visible along the path about fifty feet away. "Wizard Strumpkin is currently engaged in commune with the weave, trying to gain some information paid for by a noble in the next shadow. A rival noble has sent a lupine mercenary to kill Strumpkin whilst he is vulnerable. Gargantuus and his tribe are not able to warn Silas and so we are here to defeat the mercenary before it can get to the wizard."

"Right," Lester said. He took a look down at the lumpen, poorly forged metal rod in his hand. A poorly constructed melange of sword and mace. He had never held a weapon before now, he wasn't sure that this was the weapon to start with. Also, how was he supposed to be of any use fighting a wolf? There were more questions. 'Why?' seemed to be one of the most pertinent, so he asked it.

"Gargantuus knows that Silas has recorded a spell of transportation in his book of spells. If the wizard awakes from his trance alive and in good humour Gargantuus will persude him to send us back to Bridgetown."

"So all we have to do is kill a wolf to save a wizard and we go back to where we started from?" Lester said. "Done much wolf killing, have you?"

James shook his head.

"Almost none that I can remember," he replied. "We're not really supposed to kill it, we're just supposed to keep it busy until Rebecca can kill it with an arrow."

"Oh, okay," Lester nodded. "And what happens if the wolf comes from the other direction?"

"Then she'll be in the ideal position to kill it before it ever sees her or us," James said, his tone was beginning to gain an edge of annoyance. "You weren't listening at all back there, were you?"

"Not really," Lester admitted, allowing a little ire to leak out in his tone. "I'm tired, and afraid. I'm pretty hungry and... if I'm entirely honest... I was busy wondering why a mouse was called Gigantuus."

"It's a mouse thing," James said. "I discovered this when I was one. Mice think of themselves as the biggest creatures in the world. Anything bigger than them is, to them, just as big as them. So they like to call themselves big, tough names, to recognize their awesome stature and whatnot. They're mostly a species of proud warriors."

"I see, they always struck me as a little nervous," Lester said.

"They're very proud of their flight reflex. They have almost no voluntary control over it," James explained. "I had more because I wasn't born a mouse. Regular rats and mice will run automatically in the face of overwhelming odds without even really being aware that they're doing it. They call it 'saviour ghosting', well, they do when they get away intact."

"Wow," Lester said. "There's quite a lot going on with those mice then. I never knew."

Silence fell, which was not a good thing for Lester as his mind was instantly alerted at his failure to actually admit what was really troubling him when he had said 'if I'm entirely honest'. Worse Lester had realised that he had given James a hard time about not being entirely honest when he himself had been too confused to be honest on several recent occasions.

Lester had made a decision to improve his honesty and was now failing miserably to speak up and be direct about things. Lester didn't feel comfortable with the notion that emotions could be difficult, they were going to happen no matter how complex or inconvenient they were going to be, but that didn't make them any simpler. Lester was in danger of becoming wreathed in sadness again. He had to talk or his feelings would overwhelm him.

"So, you're glad... to be a person again?" Lester asked. If he brought up a topic of conversation that put James's transformation on the table maybe he would find a way to say the difficult things.

"It's definitely an advantage," James replied. "If I could just get my memory, my daughter and my home back then I would feel a lot better still."

"Yes," Lester said. "That would be nice. Having everything sorted out would be nice."

James looked over at Lester, the clear, grey-green human eyes in James's human face were far more expressive than the small dark eyes of the mouse he had been. Lester found human James too human to deal with. Adding guilt to the misery Lester realised that his sense of loss came with the realisation that he was no longer the most important person in the duo. He was a drifter looking for an elusive brother. James... well, James was some kind of important.

Someone had robbed James of his memories and put him into a faraway shadow not far from the edge of the Undone. Someone had turned James into a mouse and dispersed his wife. Someone had wanted James hidden away and imprisoned. Whatever James's full story was it was a story that mattered a great deal to several powerful people.

What about Lester and Chester Topping? Chester was so important that he had been forced to hide himself from everyone, including his twin brother. All Lester was trying to do was find him. Lester was not important. Lester was just Lester.

"If I can do anything to help you find Chester, when I have the power to do so, then I will, of course," James said quietly.

There was no time to respond to that. Lester saw a movement on the path, not far from where they stood. It looked as if the mercenary had arrived.

Lester looked pointedly at the approaching figure, James turned to look in the direction Lester was indicating.

"Just concentrate on staying safe," James said. "Try to knock him back, give Rebecca a clear shot."

Lester nodded. The sudden tension in his stomach made him completely unable to feel sadness, or inadequacy, or guilt. Lester shifted his grip on his wonky sword. He wondered if he could get used to this sort of thing, like a knight.

About sixty seconds later Lester had firmly decided that, no, he was never going to make a knight. The wolf was being kept back but this was mostly due to a lunatic ferocity he was managing to exhibit in his sword waving antics. The adrenaline flooding his system prevented him from looking over to see if James was doing any better but, regardless, a few seconds later the whole thing was over when an arrow in the chest put down the ravening lupine mercenary.

"Remind me to avoid being a decoy again," James said, leaning over and putting his hands on his knees, exhausted.

"Same here," Lester replied.

They got about a minute to gather themselves together before Rebecca joined them on the path and the three of them went back towards the wizard's house. Once James had talked once more with Gargantuus, and the three of them had shown that the mercenary had been thwarted, they went back to the house with their rodent companion.

After a few hours Silas Strumpkin came out of his trance and, upon being told by Gargantuus of the bravery of the three strangers was happy to make them a portal to transport them into the Patchwork Market. So James, Lester and Rebecca stepped through the portal back to their destination, but what happened to them when they got there is a story for another time.

The House on the Edge of the Undone

Lester did not remember what turn of events had drawn him to the point where he was running down a hill with a mouse in his pocket and an unconscious gnome slung over his shoulder. He had come a long way since entering the Patchwork Market looking for information about his brother. Had any of his journey been in a direction that could be described as 'correct'?

The mysterious man in the top hat appeared to have confidence that every crazy step that Lester took was a step closer to Chester. This was borne out by the discovery of a letter and a small bottle of potion in the House of Mirth, both apparently left behind by Lester's missing twin. Now there was this diversion with the unconscious gnome, the little girl and the mermaid with legs.

Life hadn't been boring for quite some time. Lester missed boring, a lot.

Behind the fleeing party there was the sound of cracking stone, followed by an unearthly howl that seemed to rattle the very living rock of the mountains around them. Receiving an additional boost of adrenaline, Lester pumped his legs harder trying to sprint even faster to catch up with Eos carrying Rachel in front of him.

"Careful!" James cried out from Lester's pocket. "I'm trying to keep this potion bottle in one piece for you. You need to be less hasty and more steady!"

"You want the monster to catch us?" Lester replied. "I'm trying to keep us alive."

"We haven't even seen this monster," James said. "It could be a rabbit with a sore throat and overdeveloped vocal cords."

"And the noise of cracking rock?" Lester asked.

"Just keep running, gently," James said.

So Lester kept running. He could hear the thudding sound of enormous footsteps start up the track behind him. Rachel, clinging on round Eos's neck as the mermaid sprinted down the path ahead, took a moment to look up at what was following them. From his position Lester could see her face drain of colour as her gaze took in the full horror of what was bearing down on them.

"Note to self," Lester muttered, "don't look back."

"Life was so much simpler when I had my pumpkin," James wailed. "Then I only had a giant bat to deal with, not memories, or mysterious monsters, or random quests to find lost brothers of people I don't even know."

"This way!" Eos called from the path up ahead. She suddenly broke to the left and started down a thinner trail in between two shelves of rock. Lester followed and saw what Eos was running towards, the narrow mouth of a split in the mountain side a short distance ahead.

"We can't go there!" he shouted. "We'll get trapped."

"We can't stay on the mountainside," Eos threw back. "We'll get eaten."

Without pausing to discuss the matter further Eos put Rachel down on the floor and urged her to clamber in between the two jagged walls of rock into the darkness beyond. After Rachel had slipped through Eos followed. Lester unshouldered the, still unconscious, gnome and passed him through to Eos. Finally Lester himself turned sideways to slip between the two edges of the split.

He had to concede that beyond this threshold they would be safe from any monster larger than Lester himself. As he tried to push his chest into the tiny sliver of empty space his ribs jammed, even when Lester inhaled he found he could not move any further.

"I'm stuck!" he cried out. The thudding of their pursuer's footsteps was getting louder and louder down the mountain path. Lester was having to try very hard not to turn his head to assess how bad a situation he was in. All he knew was that this was one piece of information he could definitely do with out.

"Push harder," Eos told him. Lester couldn't help but note a frosty edge to her tone, she was probably still sore about the whole keeping her enslaved in the tank thing. He was really going to have to find a way to apologise for that.

Lester kept pushing and straining but his shoulders were just a little too wide to step through the rock, he couldn't fit. The footsteps of the monster pursuing them closed the distance even further. As the last few feet of space between Lester and the pursuer disappeared, not even really thinking any more, Lester turned to look up into two bright crimson eyes with slitted pupils staring out of a dark leathery face. Long, taloned fingers reaching out to grab at him.

And then the mountain rock, and everything else, melted.

For just a fraction of a second it was as if Lester was caught up in giant cloud, in an endless sky, then everything came back to normal except that Lester had popped through the slim crag and fell in a heap on the other side of the cave entrance.

The monster that Lester and James had inadvertently freed from its imprisonment some way below the structure where they had arrived in this shadow realm waved its forearm through the gap. Really not much more of itself would fit through, however. The small party retreated back into the cave passage away from the frustrated snarling of the thwarted monster.

The light from the crack filtered down into the upper reaches of the cave but it didn't last for long. The cave did broaden but they had no light to find their way around in the dark.

"We'll just have to feel our way along one wall," Eos said.

"Um, I think I may have a better suggestion," said James from Lester's pocket.

Lester reached into his pocket and withdrew the vial of potion from the House of Mirth. It glowed with an intense white-yellow light.

"Well," he said. "That's unexpected."

"But useful," Eos said. "Come on, let's see if we can find a path through this place."

Eos lead the way down through the caves, after a while they could hear the sound of running water and the walls began to run with moisture.

"I can feel the flow of water, just by touching it," Eos explained, "come on, I think I can find us a way out of here."

So they continued to pick their way through narrow dark passages, the atmosphere was both oppressive and claustrophobic. Along the way Rachel became quite upset.

"I should never have made that wish back in the Skull Garden," she complained. "Then we wouldn't be lost wandering around in caves under a mountain."

"Hey, no," James replied. "Don't be upset. If you hadn't got us out of the garden I would never have remembered anything about who I used to be, and you wouldn't know anything about the world beyond the great Skull Rock."

Lester waited for James to say something about the family connection but it appeared as if James had nothing further to say on the matter. After setting a monster loose last time they had argued on the point Lester decided to let the matter slide this time.

The trek through the dark, wet caves was laborious and tiring but it was, at least, uneventful. A few hours later on they emerged from the caves by a small brook. The daylight was fading, the magnificent panorama of the eyrie was replaced with the murky expanse of a marshy forest made up of slim, twisted trees placed sparsely throughout a green-yellow floor saturated with water. Visible in the distance, no more than quarter of a mile away, were stone walls surrounding a tall house.

"I suppose we'd better see if anyone is at home," Lester said and the party began to make their way towards the structure.

The walk through the caves had been arduous and all of those party members who were on foot were hungry and tired. The dark shape of the lonely forest house was not particularly reassuring. The view into the distance was obscured by a light mist that grew thicker as they walked. By the time they reached the gate before the path leading up to the house the light was very poor indeed.

"I hope that whoever lives here is in an understanding mood," Eos said.

"It doesn't look, to me, as if anyone does live here, not any more," Lester said as he opened the gate, it stuck, squealing and complaining as he pushed it on its hinges, the noise supported his argument.

"Look," Rachel said, pointing over to the right side of the house. "Is that a ghost?"

They all looked at where Rachel was pointing. There was something, a slow moving blob of white light drifting across the grounds floating about a foot over the sodden turf.

"I don't know what that is," Lester said. "James? Any memories regarding odd, floating balls in swamps?"

"Ignis Fatuus?" James said. "From the Latin 'foolish lights' also known as Jack o' Lanterns or Will o' the wisps. Although usually they look more like lantern flames, and they tend to appear as if they're a lot further away."

"I met a Jack o'Lantern once," Lester said. "I was walking through a forest and I bumped into one coming in the opposite direction. I shared some soup with him. Turns out that they use their lanterns to light sparks in the eyes of baby animals, that's why they travel so far off the path, and why they appear to move so erratically. That's not a Jack o' Lantern."

"So what lit the spark in my eyes?" Rachel asked. "Was it one of those things?"

"Folk have their own fire," Lester said. "At least that's what the Jack o' Lantern said when I asked him. He seemed to think that this was a political compromise of some sort. He didn't go into it."

"But that isn't one?" Eos asked.

"Not like the one I saw," Lester said. "The light of a Jack o' Lantern is like a lantern flame because, well, it is."

"It's getting dark," James said. "We'd better check to see if anyone is home."

Lester knocked on the door of the house, and pulled at a bell cord hanging to the right of the door. Nothing appeared to happen. Lester tried the handle on the door. The door was unlocked and it swung slowly and silently inwards revealing the house beyond.

"I don't like this," Lester said. "Remember the last time we found ourselves in an apparently abandoned house? I spent a long time believing I was a duke at a masked ball. Don't want to go through that again."

"There are worse things," Eos said, making her way past him and into the house. "At least there was a buffet there."

"She has a point," James said. "Free food is always a bonus."

"Well, alright then," Lester said, following Eos into the house. "As long as we're throwing caution to the winds."

Inside the house was dark and smelled faintly of damp, not damp enough for it to appear unsafe for an overnight stay but definitely enough to put concern into the mind of an owner about the possibility of their residence eventually falling over into a swamp.

The floor was mostly bare boards covered over by the occasional rug. It was evident that no one had set foot inside the house for quite some time. Downstairs there was a large drawing room, a dining room and an expansive kitchen. Upstairs were three bedrooms and a bathroom.

Lester lost no time putting the gnome down gently on a bed in one of the bedrooms, a twin room that he imagined he would share with James over night. The beds all had bare mattresses, no blankets or pillows but they seemed sturdy enough and were better than the floor.

The gnome allowed to rest Lester returned to the kitchen where he quickly found a glass flask in which to decant his mysterious potion.

"Well, that's one thing taken care of, anyway," Lester pronounced happily.

"Why are so many dwelling places we visit apparently abandoned?" James asked. "I'm detecting a theme."

Before Lester could think of a plausible answer to the question the glowing blob from the garden came drifting through the wall, slowly moving through the kitchen apparently unaware of its surroundings. When the blob was a couple of feet past the wall and floating over the kitchen counter about seven inches from the surface a second blob joined it from a slightly different angle and began a lazy journey from one corner of the kitchen to the other.

"What do you think those things are?" Lester asked. "I've never seen or heard of anything like it in my life."

"I don't know," James said. "And I think that troubles me. Part of me seems to think that I had read about almost every known thing in the Faerie realm. It's not just that I don't remember this, it's that I've never heard of it."

"Should we be worried?" asked Eos, standing at the door.

"I'm not sure," James replied. "Where's Rachel?"

"I put her to bed," Eos said. "She was very tired. I found a small quilt slung over a chair in the drawing room. She'll be nice and warm."

"Good," James said. "I think we should all sleep, not for too long, then we should try to find our way back onto a more civilized path. The sooner we can get back to Bridgetown the better."

"Why are we going to Bridgetown?" Lester asked. "We spent enough time leaving it."

"Bridgetown is a market where you can buy anything, Lester," James said. "If we want answers to our questions then, well, maybe they won't be there in the market, but something that will help us to buy an answer most certainly will be."

"Seems logical," Lester said. "Well, then, I suppose we had better all get some sleep."

Lester, James and Eos climbed the stairs. Eos went into the bedroom where Rachel was, she said goodnight to Lester, although Lester got the impression that she mostly did it because she wanted to say goodnight to James and couldn't ignore the owner of the pocket James travelled in. Still, things had seemed to thaw out a little between them. Maybe there was a hope for friendship yet.

With that small candle of hope burning in his chest Lester lay down on the second bed in his own room and closed his eyes. He wasn't even aware that he had fallen asleep when he felt himself jerked awake again. Eos was shaking at his shoulder.

"Lester!" she said. "Wake up! Lester! Something is very wrong here."

Not entirely awake Lester tried to remember where he was and what he was doing.

"Eos," he said. "You have legs, no tail, neat trick."

"It's not a trick, it's an enchantment, I have a ring," Eos said. "Look, listen, that's not important, what's important is that I found a small chest, a jewellery box, in my room. I was just looking through it, there were some pretty things inside.

"Oh," Lester said. "That's nice. Anything saleable?"

"No, Lester," Eos was irritable, this was not unusual. "We can't sell any of it. Even if it was worth anything, it disappeared, while I was looking at it, it turned to mist, sparkly mist and just... it was like it was evaporating."

"Oh dear," Lester said, still not quite with it. "That's not good, unless it was a dream, could you have been dreaming?"

"I don't think I was, I mean, I don't remember closing my eyes," Eos said. It was clear that Lester's question had forced her to re-examine her own thoughts.

"The Undone!" cried the gnome, sitting bolt upright in his bed. "We're close to the Undone! We have to leave! I have to leave!"

Lester and Eos looked over at the suddenly mobile gnome.

"What's the Undone?" Lester asked. He had hoped for the longest time that at some point he would feel comfortable that he could handle the pace at which things progressed, he still hadn't got there even though it often appeared as if the moment that he should know everything he needed to know was just a little further away.

"No time!" the gnome shouted. "We have to run, right now!"

"What's all the noise?" mumbled a bleary eyed Rachel, coming through the door into the room.

"We have to go!" the gnome said, scrambling off the bed and grasping Rachel's hand. "We have to go before the Undone gets us."

Not waiting for his ranting to sink in he pulled Rachel after him, racing out of the room and down the house's main stairs.

"Hold on!" Lester said, swinging his own legs out of bed to give chase. "I think we need a little more to go on."

The gnome wasn't listening he was down the stairs and over to the front door of the little house. He flung the door open and plunged out into the grey mist that surrounded the house.

"Oh this is bad," he was muttering as he pulled Rachel after him down the garden path, "this is very, very bad."

Lester and Eos came running after the gnome in the garden they nearly caught him but as Lester's hand brushed the fabric of the little sprite's tunic he registered what was now surrounding him. Night had never fallen in the garden of the little house. Instead it was enveloped in a permanent misty twilight through which drifted the lazily undulating forms of the luminescent blobs, not just a couple now, more like thirty or forty.

"What's happening?" Eos asked, her voice as awed as Lester felt.

"This is it," the gnome said. "The precursor to the Undone. We have to leave before we fall into it. If we fall into the Undone we'll never come out again."

The gnome resumed his journey back to the garden gate. Lester could see trees in the distance, where the forest resumed. The house now appeared to be part of a different world, a world of mist and glowing blobs, trapped in permanent twilight.

"Come on," Lester said to Eos, "we can't afford to wait around."

The mermaid didn't argue, the four of them half-walked, half-ran from the misty area towards the more solid shape of the twisted, shadowy tree trunks.

"It looks like we've had a narrow escape," Lester said. "What do you think James?"

Lester looked down to his right pocket but it was empty.

"James?" Lester said. "Oh."

He stopped dead. Eos took a couple more steps after the gnome before stopping and turning.

"What is it?" she asked.

"I think James crawled out of my pocket to get some sleep," Lester said. "He's not here. He must still be in the house."

Lester turned back to look at the house, it didn't really look like a real house any more, it looked like a sketch done in light pencil, an impression rather than an actual thing.

"I have to get him," Lester said. "You go on, I'll get him and catch you up."

Eos opened her mouth as if to object but Lester wasn't going to give her a chance. He ran back towards the house and in through the front door, not stopping till he was back at the bedroom.

He found James in the furthest corner of a shelf in the bedside table. Lester reached in and picked the sleeping mouse up.

"Huh," James said, waking up, "whassamatter."

"The gnome woke up," Lester said, carrying James carefully as he jogged down the stairs. "We have to move, we're in trouble."

"Oh, no," James complained. "What kind of trouble?"

"Well..." Lester said but the sentence got no further. Lester stopped at the threshold of the house, foot waving above an empty bright white space where the ground had been only a minute before. "Ah," Lester said, looking up and about him.

Beyond the edge of the house was nothing but white in all directions. The house itself appeared to be melting away at the corners. Lester began to understand what it was the gnome had been worried about, but was the realisation too late?

In Which Saeed Visits The City of Sorrowblade

Life, Saeed considered, is filled with hard lessons. The hard lesson that had occasioned this consideration was thus: Do not take the terms of a deal with the Master of the Patchwork Market lightly. Saeed had believed that the restoration of Princess Butterstone's brother, in reasonable health, from his place of captivity would satisfy the deal he had made with Kalico.

The Master of the Market had told Saeed upon his return to the Master's Tower that the agreement was null and void. If Saeed wanted a market seal he would have to do one more job. When Saeed had objected Kalico pointed out the clause in their verbal agreement that required the matter be handled 'with discretion'. Saeed took a moment to reflect and came to the conclusion that the explosion and resultant damage to Sir Vaskorn's plaza, not to mention the confrontation between Vaskorn's mercenaries and the Market Watch that had followed, could hardly be described as 'discreet'.

Saeed's only options were to get angry about the matter or to accept his own shortcomings. A thief Saeed was, hot tempered he was not. So Saeed had, with unspoken sadness and frustration, accepted the master's ruling.

"I knew you had wisdom," Kalico grinned, as he sat behind his large flat desk. The Master of the Market was relaxed, he exercised power with an air of great assurance. He smiled like a shark and had eyes like a snake. Underneath it all, Saeed believed, there was a heart that was, if not good, at least ethical. "Maybe the sting of my harsh ruling will be lessened if I tell you the nature of the job I wish you to do."

"Perhaps," Saeed said, although he could not imagine it.

"What if I told you that yesterday's little disturbance was not the first time that Sir Vaskorn's activities have attracted unwelcome attention?" Kalico asked, his tone smooth and measured.

Saeed could not help but lean forward a little. He had not liked the giant knight one little bit. Sir Vaskorn was a bully, filled with rage, who frightened people into obedience. Any chance Saeed was given to undermine a man like that was a chance to do good in the name of his mother.

Kalico's smile neither grew nor did it falter.

"A wise boy and an excellent thief," Kalico said. "I shall not be able to cut too many deals to my advantage with this one."

Only then did Kalico's facial expression change, it grew darker, the grin disappeared as Kalico sat forward over his desk.

"Before the close of market on Duesday," Kalico said, "One of Vaskorn's men has been observed leaving the market upon a certain bridge to one of the darker far off shadows. The same knight returns upon the following Stockday accompanied by two talking wolves pulling a cart of treasure, the treasure goes onto Vaskorn's plaza. At that point I lose track of it.

"I have, of course, performed routine inspections of Vaskorn's plaza, as I do all pitches in the market, in order to assess the dues to be paid for the upkeep of the market as a whole. My watch have never found evidence of the chests or their contents upon the plaza.

"Aside from the possible dues evasion issue," Kalico said, a new darkness settling into his tone at the mention of 'dues evasion', "there are other matters at hand. For a start nobody knows what is in the chest, nobody knows where the chest comes from and nobody knows what happens to the chest or its contents after it disappears onto Vaskorn's plaza.

"As you have already observed all confrontations between Vaskorn's men and my watch have the potential to turn ugly. It would not be the right play for me to directly confront a dues paying merchant when I do not know what the outcome will be for the market or its other patrons. The Patchwork Market has long held a reputation as being not only the biggest and best market in the lands of Faerie but also a far safer place to bring your coin purse than many smaller establishments. A street war is not something that anyone wants.

"The particulars of market lore prevent me from hiring a retinue of intelligencers but they say nothing about how I choose to reclaim the debt of a thief that I have found causing a disturbance on the plazas. So you see, as much as I may wish to dispense you a seal and send you upon your way, right now I need your particular skills more than I need to be praised for my benevolent generosity.

"Besides, I think I would be right in saying that you are not overly displeased to be offered an opportunity to redress the power balance problem I have with one of my wealthiest patrons."

Saeed could feel the beginnings of a smile start upon his own lips. Kalico's judgement was stern but it could not be argued against.

"Indeed you would not be wrong, Master," Saeed said. "I would be happy to provide you with this service, but I cannot, a second time, allow you the opportunity of a loophole. I am as keen as anyone to see Vaskorn properly hemmed in, but I am more concerned about the progress of my journey towards my mother. If I cannot be assured that I will secure the seal by the performance of this latest task I will have to leave the market and find another road upon my journey. I am sure that, as this would mean that everybody loses, no one here wants this to be the case."

"You argue eloquently," Kalico said. "Be assured that if I find out where the chest comes from, what it contains and where the contents end up, I shall happily furnish you with the seal you require. Discretion in this matter is obviously vital. If Vaskorn catches you I don't have to tell you how badly things would go for you. I also have to inform you that I will not be able to vouch for you if he brings you to me. This matter cannot be sensibly resolved if Vaskorn knows what I have been up to."

"I understand," Saeed said. "As I will not be encumbered by either a weakened prince in a state of confusion or a requirement to make noise it shall be just as if I am not there at all."

"Let us hope for all our sakes that you are neither proud nor boastful," Kalico said.

By the following Duesday Saeed had been given a good three nights to consider the extent of his own arrogance. He had come to the conclusion that a little arrogance was required of a thief, therefore he could only hope that his own was not excessive.

Vaskorn's knight appeared before the noon bell, heading out along the bridge that the Market Watch had pointed out to him. The bridge lead out through the rainbow mists to a shadow called Sorrowblade. This was not a land that Saeed was keen to visit again once he had left this time.

A large city sprawled up the sides of a valley directly upon the far side of the bridge. The sky here was a strange reddish purple. Upon the horizon Saeed could make out the tall stacks of vast chimneys constructed from dark mud bricks.

The same bricks were used to build everything in Sorrowblade, the walls, the roads, the buildings. There was no sign of nature excepting small walled beds of black earth from which there sprung coils of sickly white creeping plants with no leaves. The wind that blew through the valley was warm and dry, it filled Saeed's nose and mouth, drying his throat and leaving a taste like baked bricks and vinegar.

The domain of Sorrowblade was a sad place indeed, buried in bricks and steeped in wickedness.

Thankfully the city streets were a natural home to shadows and the rooftops were high. Saeed did not find it a challenge to follow along behind Vaskorn's agent unseen. The citizens of Sorrowblade all appeared to be talking animals of the ferocious variety. Many were wolves but there were bears and foxes alongside tall rodentine men who obviously had ancenstry among rats, mice, ferrets and weasels. There were also a fair few of the more evolved lizard men living and working in the city.

Saeed recognised the way that the people of Sorrowblade were divided as being very similar to the social divisions of the souk in Afsana. Many of the wolves, bears and foxes were well dressed, they treated the rodents and lizards with contempt, shouting at them and ordering them about. Saeed couldn't help feeling a little sorry for some of them, particularly those who resembled white-furred mice who were not just smaller than their lupine and ursine fellows but also a good deal meeker. In much the same manner as the meek souk residents had been regularly bullied and abused by the palace guards of Afsana so these little fellows were the butt of cruel practical jokes or bore the brunt of horrible abuse from the ferocious bears and wolves.

Saeed followed Vaskorn's knight along a number of streets and over a gigantic square. In the centre of the square was an enormous statue of a jackal sitting upon a throne. The statue's eyes glowered down upon the throng of Sorrowblade citizenry with suspicion.

Vaskorn's knight headed into an alley and down a set of steps into a cellar building. At the door of the cellar the knight's identity was confirmed before he was allowed entry. After he had gone inside the door was locked behind the knight.

He moved from the shadows where he was standing back to the corner of the alleyway. Thankfully there was a low building, two stories high not far away from which he could look at the cellar in the alley and also the front of the same building. That way he would be able to see if the knight returned to continue his journey before evening. Saeed scaled a drainpipe at the side of the building and took up a position at the edge of the roof.

It didn't take long until Saeed began to feel that he was being watched. The entire oppressive atmosphere of Sorrowblade was enough to generate a certain level of paranoia but Saeed began to feel that this was not all there was to his feelings. He surveyed the rooftop and it did not take him long to spot a pair of sleek black cats regarding him with almost total disinterest from the opposite side of the roof.

Upon making eye contact one of the cats stood up, stretched and slunk over to sit beside Saeed on the roof ledge.

"Monkey two legs," the cat said. "Not often we see one of your kind on our streets, let alone within the kingdom of the cats."

"Apologies for my intrusion," Saeed said. "I was not aware that this vantage point belonged to anyone. I promise I will be no trouble and I will be gone soon."

"I am not overly concerned about your presence here, monkey two legs," the cat said. "I barely care enough even to be having this conversation with you. Still, you are strange in my world and I do have a little time for strange things. Would you care to tell me why you come to Sorrowblade? This city is so hostile to your people that you have to hide away in the Cat Kingdom lest you be savaged by a wolf or bear."

"There is another man here," Saeed said. "He comes from the Patchwork Market of Bridgetown and soon he will return there bearing a chest. I just wished to know where the chest came from, and now I do."

"Why do you care?" the cat asked. "What is in the chest?"

"I don't know, this is something else that I need to find out."

"That building is one that has a hot roof," the cat said. "It is not part of the Cat Kingdom. A mischief worker plies his trade inside those walls. A cat goes in, it never comes out."

"What does the mischief worker do?" asked Saeed.

"Works mischief," the cat said in a tone of voice that communicated just how stupid it considered Saeed to be. "All kinds, many kinds fatal. The mischief man has a book of monkey markings, even though he is descended from the play food. We stay away."

"Thank you," Saeed said. "That is very helpful."

"It was not intended to be helpful," the cat said. "And I do not care for your thanks, they are neither soft to sleep on, nor good to eat. I am bored now."

The cat turned and walked away to its companion. After a brief conversation the two of them hopped off the edge of the roof and retreated away from Saeed's position.

The afternoon wore on, the stalls in the square began to close up, a lizard man swept up in front of a stall that advertised itself as a barber's. Saeed assumed the lizard was not the barber, after all who would trust a barber with scales instead of hair? Satisfied that the knight was not going to leave that day and keen not to be caught in Sorrowblade after dark Saeed returned to the Patchwork Market to report his findings to Kalico.

The following Stockday Saeed was waiting by the Sorrowblade Bridge as the knight, accompanied by two wolves on their hind legs, dressed in relatively fine clothes and pulling a cart behind them, returned to Bridgetown.

By the time they arrived the evening bell had rung and the streets of the market were mostly dark and silent. A few of the plazas, particularly those that offered food, entertainment and lodgings (all gathered into the cosmopolitan quarter), were still operating. The knight and the wolves avoided these plazas, sticking instead to the mercantile plazas, all of which were closed for business.

They were even careful to avoid the all night tobacconist stands and appeared to be on a constant lookout for the watch.

Not needing to gain access to Vaskorn's basement area this time, and having already located his prize, Saeed skipped along the beams of the roof tops, only coming down when he needed to cross a bridge behind the knight and the wolves.

Before long they reached Vaskorn's plaza. Saeed took the opportunity to quickly circle the high walls of the area checking for weak spots. This time, the urgency of his mission having decreased as no one's life was on the line, Saeed found a small hole which allowed access for plumbing pipes, gas works and ventilation ducts. Vaskorn's plaza was well defended but it did take advantage of some things that could only be distributed through the market network.

Saeed squeezed through this hole and found himself in the rafters above the plaza, looking down upon the neatly cobbled streets of Vaskorn's domain.

The knight, wolves and their cargo were admitted via the main portcullis and crossed into the small square where Vaskorn and Kalico had confronted one another the previous Longday. A scaffold had been erected over the covered ramp that Prince Butterstone had blown apart, the stocks that Vaskorn had vandalised remained broken.

The knight crossed the square and entered the main building on the plaza via a stout wooden door. After a few minutes the knight returned with another man Saeed did not recognize. The man wore a long dark cloak made of a rich material. He also wore a broad brimmed hat topped with s single green feather stuck into a silk band that was held in place by a jewelled buckle at the front. The quality of the man's attire lead Saeed to believe he was royalty.

"I don't like doing this in the square," the man complained as they crossed to the cart. "It's too exposed."

"Unfortunately the basement rooms are not safe at present, after our accident with the detonating powder," the knight said.

"I hope that teaches you to be more careful with explosives in the future," the man said. "I always thought that Vaskorn was too cavalier in such matters."

"Indeed," the knight said. "Would you care to inspect the shipment?"

"Of course," the man said. "The second thing they teach you growing up in the House of Mossdark is never to trust a Sorrowblader, no offence," he said to the wolves with no hint of sincerity. The wolves didn't appear to be paying much attention anyway.

Vaskorn's knight took a key from a chain about his neck and opened up the chest a little way. A sliver of white-green light spilled out from inside. Before Saeed could get a good look at the contents the man in the cloak held up a hand.

"Not too far," he said. "You can still see the light of dragon crystals from an open plaza, even if you can't see the plaza."

Dragon crystals, Saeed noted. He didn't know what dragon crystals were, but he noted the name for Kalico anyway.

The man in the cloak squinted past the light into the chest and, after a few moments, waved for the chest to be closed. Once that was done he pulled a purse of coin from his cloak and handed it to Vaskorn's knight. Then he produced a stubby stout wooden wand and waved it vaguely in the air in front of the treasure wagon.

A glittering portal opened up in the square and the wolves, who seemed unimpressed by all of the proceedings, followed the man in the dark cloak through the portal which immediately began to shrink and close.

Panic gripped Saeed's heart. He had seen where the chest had come from and he had discovered what was inside. All he knew of where the crystals went was that a man in a dark cloak took them through a magical portal.

Vaskorn's knight was already halfway across the plaza, his back to the closing hole in reality behind him. Thankfully the void had to be big enough to allow a cart pulled by two large man-wolves to pass through it. Without thinking too hard on the decision Saeed jumped down from the rafters sped across the square and dove through the closing portal before it had quite disappeared.

Saeed landed roughly upon a cold stone floor in a broad passageway. There were no windows and it was both damp and cold. Saeed guessed he must be somewhere underground. Up ahead some distance he could see the back of the cart as the wolves pulled it onwards. Once they had delivered the cargo Saeed reasoned they must be allowed to return to Vaskorn's plaza. Only the chest disappeared from view.

Saeed's only option was to follow on behind and hope he could get through the second portal to return him on his way. In the meantime he had to find out who the man in the black cloak was and, if at all possible, what he was doing with chest after chest of dragon crystals. This he did, and returned to the market with news for Kalico, but the ins and outs of the situation are a tale for another day.