The segments of its body slid from side to side, it hissed like a leaky pressure cooker, and steaming slaver marked its trail from the fiction of paint. Rather than slowing, its speed seemed to increase.
My left hand jerked forward of its own volition and a series of words rose unbidden to my lips. I spoke them just as the creature crossed the interface I had been unable to pierce earlier, rearing as it upset a vacant table and bunching its members as if about to spring.
“A Bandersnatch!” someone cried.
“A frumious Bandersnatch! “ Humpty corrected.
As I spoke the final word and performed the ultimate gesture, the image of the Logrus swam before my inner vision. The dark creature, having just extended its foremost talons, suddenly drew them back, clutched with them against the upper left quadrant of its breast, rolled its eyes, emitted a soft moaning sound, exhaled heavily, collapsed, fell to the floor, and rolled over onto its back, its many feet extended upward into the air.
The Cat’s grin appeared above the creature. The mouth moved.
“A dead frumious Bandersnatch,” it stated.
The grin drifted toward me, the rest of the Cat occurring about it like an afterthought.
“That was a cardiac arrest spell, wasn’t it?” it inquired.
“I guess so,” I said. “It was sort of a reflex. Yeah, I remember now. I did still have that spell hanging around. “
“I thought so,” it observed. “I was sure that there was magic involved in this party.”
The image of the Logrus which had appeared to me during the spell’s operation had also served the purpose of switching on a small light in the musty attic of my mind. Sorcery. Of course.
I-Merlin, son of Corwin-am a sorcerer, of a variety seldom encountered in the areas I have frequented in recent years. Lucas Raynard-also known as Prince Rinaldo of Kashfa-is himself a sorcerer, albeit of a style different than my own. And the Cat, who seemed somewhat sophisticated in these matters, could well have been correct in assessing our situation as the interior of a spell. Such a location is one of the few environments where my sensitivity and training would do little to inform me as to the nature of my predicament. This, because my faculties would also be caught up in the manifestation and subject to ‘its forces, if the thing were at all self-consistent. It struck me as something similar to color blindness. I could think of no way of telling for certain what was going on, without outside help.
As I mused over these matters, the King’s horses and men arrived beyond the swinging doors at the front of the place. The men entered and fastened lines upon the carcass of the Bandersnatch. The horses dragged the thing off. Humpty had climbed down to visit the rest room while this was going on. Upon his return he discovered that he was unable to achieve his former position atop- the barstool. He shouted to the King’s men to give him a hand, but they were busy guiding the defunct Bandersnatch among tables and they ignored him.
Luke strolled up, smiling.
“So that was a Bandersnatch,” he observed. “I’d always wondered what they were like. Now, if we could just get a Jabberwock to stop by-“
“Sh!” cautioned the Cat. “It must be off in the mural somewhere, and likely it’s been listening. Don’t stir it up! It may come whiffling through the tulgey wood after your ass. Remember the jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Don’t go looking for troub-“
The Cat cast a quick glance toward the wall and phased into and out of existence several times in quick succession. Ignoring this, Luke remarked, “I was just thinking of the Tenniel illustration.”
The Cat materialized at the far end of the bar, downed the Hatter’s drink, and said, “I hear the burbling, and eyes of flame are drifting to the left.”
I glanced at the mural, and I, too, saw the fiery eyes and heard a peculiar sound.
“It could be any of a number of things,” Luke remarked.
The Cat moved to a rack behind the bar and reached high up on the wall to where a strange weapon hung, shimmering and shifting in shadow. He lowered the thing and slid it along the bar; it came to rest before Luke.