hardly threatening. Jon-Tom wondered how the place had
acquired its widespread onerous reputation. Mudge could
shed little light on the mystery, explaining only that rumor
insisted anyone who went into the place never came out
again, a pleasant thought to mull over as they hiked ever
deeper into the foggy terrain.
It was a sorry land, mostly gray stone occasionally
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Alan Dean Foster
stained red by iron. There were no trees, few bushes, a
little grass. The sky was a perpetual puffy, moist gray.
Fog and mist made them miserable, except for Mudge.
Nothing appeared to challenge their progress. A few mind-
less hoots and mournful howls were the only indications of
mobile inhabitants, and nothing ever came close to their
camps.
They marched onward into the heart of the Muddletup,
where none penetrated. As they moved ever deeper into
the Moors the landscape began to change, and not for the
better. The last stunted trees disappeared. Here, in a place
of eternal dampness and cloud cover, the fungi had taken
over.
Enormous mushrooms and toadstools dripped with mois-
ture as Jon-Tom and his companions walked beneath
spore-filled canopies. Some of the gnarled, ugly growths
had trunks as thick as junipers, while others thrust deli-
cate, semi-transparent stems toward the sodden sky. There
were no bright, cheerful colors to mitigate the depressing
scene, which was mostly brown and gray. Even the occa-
sional maroon or unwholesomely yellow specimen was a
relief from the monotonous parade of dullness.
Some of the flora was spotted, some striped. One