travel. But we cannot say exactly what he feels about it.
We think, ourselves, that he wants you to continue, that
he wants us to urge you on. Perhaps he feels that you will
find the place where he dwells and will liberate him.”
“Possibly,” I said.
“We know the place is dark. It is cold and there are
things crawling on a blue floor, crawling all around him so
that he does not have a moment’s peace. That is the sum
of our impression.”
“I will watch for it,” I said. “Now, I must be going.”
Without a word, they leaped over the chasm, fell
through the mists until their wings buoyed them up, then
soared, beyond me, and were gone, making chattering
noises like dice rattled on a felt table.
I went down, past the entrance to the inside of the
mountain out of which I had come earlier. I walked for
another day and reached the tree-shrouded floor of the
valley, where the air smelled of pine and of flowers.
Waiting for me there was a creature much like a wolf,
with a hugely swollen head and a mouth full of long teeth.
Eyes like chips of iron, gray and unperturbed.
“I’ll guide you through the valley,” it said, scratching
paws in the earth. “I know it, and I can give you a look at
every hole there is.”
“Fine,” I said.
“First, you must change yourself. Assume my form so
that we can go more easily.”
I had forgotten that the gossamer body analogue which
I had assumed for my journey through Child’s mental
landscape was not the only shell I could use to contain my
psychic energy. There was nothing essential about a hu-
manoid form, for that psychic energy could take any form
that I wished. Gently, I released the surface tension of the
current, permitted my human body to shimmer and dissi-
pate. I flowed, settled, grew lower and sleeker until I was
a double for the wolf that waited for me.
I snuffled, scratched at the earth with razored claws and
saw the dirt runnel before me. In this new body, I had a
sense of power which I had never experienced before, a
new perspective on the world about me. It seemed as if, I
had been born to lycanthropy.
“Let’s go,” I said.
The wolf turned and loped away between the thick
trees, his big paws scattering dry, brown pine needles
which carpeted the forest floor. They rained over me as I
hurried to follow his example.
As I ran, my breath steamed in the cold air, and my
massive lungs heaved within my chest at the strenuous pace
we set.
The ground flashed under me. Flimsy brush parted
before me and closed, quivering, behind. To either side,
small animals ran, chittering and whimpering with their
fear. It was a completely structured reality, and it had
made me the king of beasts in this part of the woods. I
felt a burgeoning excitement at my omnipotence and my
superiority over these lesser creatures. And while I sa-
vored this heady attitude, I never once realized the danger
that was reaching cold fingers around me.
I enjoyed the muscular rhythm I had never known
either as a man or spirit, closed the gap on the wolf,
reached it by the time we broke through the pines into a
grassy field. We ran side by side, easy, smoothly, sure of
ourselves.
The journey had begun in earnest
III
We prowled the depths of the woods, sniffing through
the underbrush for the scent of Child, the odor of his
mental essence. There were times when I forgot every-
thing but my powerful shoulders, my claws and my teeth,
the keen powers of my black nostrils.
We rooted through the dark cavelets along the valley
walls which opened on the floor of the forest, seeking
into their darkest recesses, where our eyes refused to be
totally blinded. We overturned old, rotting lop in the
woods, seeking burrows through which the entrance to
Child’s prison might be found. We padded through the
foaming cascade of a waterfall which issued from the valley
rim a thousand feet above, searching the subterranean