I didn’t see any wildlife in this forest. Most of the trees were hardwoods and Dutch Elm disease had obviously never made it through these stands nor had the trees been forested. It was clearly an old growth forest with 90% of the trunks over six foot wide and a hundred feet high. The only time I’d ever seen anything that rivaled this forest were the giant redwoods in California.
“We have to hurry,” Murph said. “Morgenstern can track us.”
“Who or what is Morgenstern?” I panted trying to keep up. He hauled me onto my toes by my elbows as I started to fall.
“Julian’s mount. It’s not really any kind of horse but a demon. He breeds them.”
We splashed across a creek and the water was icy numb on my ankles. I nearly slipped on mossy rocks and he complained, grumbling under his breath.
“Can’t change too much too quickly this close to Amber,” he muttered. “We should go back to New York.” He looked up at the sky and said, “more green in the sky and a haze.” Through the patches in the crown of trees I saw the sky shift slightly towards green.
We climbed the muddy bank and the stones changed from quartz to a whitish gray and the soil to a sandy loam. Next, the trees shifted to oaks and maples, smaller second growth with underbrush. I detoured around poison ivy and squirrels chattered noisily at our running feet. The air smelled different and the sky lightened even more so that it looked vaguely familiar. Murphy grunted and stopped. “Are you doing that?” he demanded.
“What?” I said defensively.
“Changing the sky. It looks like this is Chessaria.” He set me down on a stump and ran forward a few feet into the underbrush to disappear into a thicket. I could see bright sunlight through the trunks but nothing of him and realized the end of the forest was ahead.
It took an effort but I managed to get to my feet and bull my way through the dense brush and emerge onto the banks of a road bumping into Murphy. We stared down a cobblestone lane that was being used by men that resembled farmers the world over only these men were driving carts pulled by a goat-like creature. Goats with huge horns and spotted, solid colored and dappled. They bleated as they passed us and stared with those eerie devilish eyes that freaked me out. And I hated those beards, these things pissed on them too from the smell.
One little man in red leather apron and blue denim stopped and asked if we wanted a ride into town. He looked so much like Gollum I almost glanced around for Gandulf and the rest of the gang.
Murphy nodded and literally threw me into the back of the cart telling the driver he’d pay him triple if he made the goat run. Before I could say anything, we were galloping down the lane at a good clip, bypassing the other drivers with a shout of ‘ware!’ I held on for dear life, this thing had no springs or roll bar and the only padding under me was my own fat. I had been told before I had no ‘ass-it-all.’
After a few yards, I was ready to get out and walk, complaining bitterly but was ignored by both Murphy and our Kamikaze driver.
“What village is it ahead?” Murphy asked.
Gollum snorted. “Village? Pence is more of a spit hole on the road. Nearest city is Inac, two days down the highway. My name is Znnc.”
“Bless you,” I said to the sneezing sound and Murphy slapped me.
“His name is Zinc, spelled Znnc. I am a morph.”
The sneezer stared at us. Turning his head in a move that more closely resembled an owl than a human. “I can see that,” he sneered. “We’re not provincials, we’ve seen your kind before. Him, that’s another tale. What is he?” He pointed to me with his whip, made of what looked like stiff pig tail bristles.
“What does he look like?” Murphy asked curious.
“Amberite. Or...something more.”
“Does that concern you?”
“Their last war spilled over here. We don’t need or want any of your messes. We lost enough of our youngsters to your King Eric,” Zinc snapped.
“We are returning home,” Murphy said. “As fast and as straight as the Road can take us. Not to Amber but his shadow world.” He gestured to me.
“Fork up ahead. Take the right and it’ll cut off a hundred leagues and the changes are simpler.”
“To where?”
“You’re looking for blue skies and green grass, oak and maples, blue lakes and silver birds that fly among the clouds?”
“Yes,” my guardian said.
“Go that way, there are no safeguards on that route.”
“But what are the dangers we may find there?” Murphy snarled.
“No dangers for a morph,” the gnome snapped and dumped us both out the back before galloping off. Murphy changed into a hairy beast before my eyes and attacked the ground with claws and horns leaving parallel gouges in the dirt. He turned his gargoyle shaped head towards me and his eyes were blazing red.
“Way cool, dude,” I admired.
“Climb on my back, master,” he growled in a deep basso. Hesitantly, I slid my leg around his waist and felt cold stone, hard muscles that I couldn’t dent with any force. From his shoulder blades, wings emerged and those felt wiry, tough as leather hide with pulsing veins between the membranes, more like the wings of a bat than a bird.
“This doesn’t mean we’re dating,” I said nervously as I gripped his waist with both thighs.
He leaped into the air and tucked his clawed hands around my calves as his wings beat in slow, measured thrusts. We were airborne, within seconds high above the road and I saw the little weasel galloping away from us.
“You breathe fire or anything?” I asked, thinking it would serve the righteous goat herder if we toasted his buns. Murphy didn’t reply but flapped on. Back down the road where we’d exited the woods, a squad of soldiers burst out. I didn’t recognize the uniforms but they weren’t the same species as the hobbit. They saw us and pointed, I tried to tell Murphy we’d been spotted in a panic as they leveled weapons on us. Murphy’s answer to the barrage of arrows was to bank and spiral higher, well out of their range.
His style of flight was more like that of a condor, soaring on thermals and not actively beating wing strokes like that of a hawk.
“Now would be a good time to leave this shade, Raven,” he growled and the sky burned yellow, the ground under us turned sere and dusty. I found it hard to breathe as smoke from active volcanoes puffed bilious smoke below us. “Where is this, Raven?” he shouted and ducked a fireball of ash and steam.
I concentrated and changed the sand below to black, fine grained and shiny. Added a beach and green palm trees and red leilani flowers to the side of the mountain. Turquoise seas with white breakers and dolphins leaping below our shadows. Fat goats climbing the slopes---enough with the goats already! I shouted and thought of long-tailed birds of Paradise, parrots and monkeys. Murphy landed on one of a set of islands in the Hawaiian chain and dumped me on my ass in warm black sand inches from the surf line. I whacked a crab away from me and dug my fingers deep until water tickled my palms.
“Will they follow us?” I asked, digging at my belly which felt wet. I peeked under the bandage and blanched. What I thought was wet from ocean was red and sticky. Blood. Seeing my own blood was almost as bad as seeing my insides come out. Nausea assailed me.
“Murph---.”
“I know, Raven,” he said morphing back into the gray man I thought I knew so well. “I can smell you.”
“That’s kinda gross. Is it bad?” He squatted next to me and inspected the holes in my gut.
“Not too bad. You tore a stitch or two open. Couple of band-aids and you’ll be good as new. Where are we?”
I looked around, recognized the beach, the shape of the coastline and the volcano spewing lava. “Hawaii. Island of Oahu. We’re on Koanaloa Beach, smack dab between two active moving rivers of lava. I always wanted to surf here.”
“Any homes nearby we can reach for help?”
“Not that we can walk to.” I pointed straight ahead. “Out there is nothing but the Pacific ocean, back up is the Volcano crater. To the right is a half mile wide stream of lava, to the left a quarter mile river. We’re stuck between a rock and a hot plate.”
He didn’t laugh at my lame pun nor ask if I could tread water. Swimming out to sea and around the exiting lava flows wasn’t an option either. Since neither of us carried a cell phone, we couldn’t call for a helicopter extraction, either. “Why don’t you just fly me out of here, Murph? You can just change back to the gargoyle thing, right?”
“No,” he said. “It requires energy to morph and I used much carrying you and shifting through shadows so they cannot track us. Also, if I morph again here, they can home in on the energy signature and find me.”
“Well, then. I’ll just change the scenery to somewhere else on the island,” I said. As I attempted to alter the ground under my butt to sandy loam, it rose up and smacked me in the face. I vaguely heard Murphy’s cry of surprise and then nothing.