'I'll make you a deal.' A confident Smegden helped himself to another bite and continued speaking with his mouth full. 'If you don't like it, you can take a bite out of me.'
'Now that's a proposition I can wholeheartedly embrace.' Padding forward, Cezer put one paw on the fallen fruit to steady it and bit down tentatively with his strong jaws. As his friends looked on expectantly, he chewed a moment, then swallowed. When he looked back at them, he was smiling as broadly as his cat face would allow.
'Tastes like chicken!' he chortled delightedly, and dove without hesitation back into the elongated pod.
Soon they were all gorging themselves, quest and questions temporarily set aside as they wallowed in the unexpected flavors of the miraculous fruit. The one Cezer handily devoured without assistance did indeed taste like chicken. So did several of the other fruits from the same tree. But those from its neighbor possessed the flavor of fresh beef, while the fruit of the third had a distinctive whiff of fresh fish. By the time they decided they had had enough, not one among them retained a flat belly—Samm being the most prominently engorged of all. Though he had fought to restrain himself, it was in the nature of serpents to eat until they could hardly slither. As for the decidedly uncarnivorous Taj, he had ignored the meat-flavored fruit in favor of the many seeds readily available in the surrounding grass.
Thus most excellently stuffed, they left it to Oskar to consider what they should do next. 'We must take some seeds of these trees home with us,' he declared, following a resonant canine belch, 'and plant them in the yard of Master Evyndd's house. But that's for later. For now, for tonight, where can we sleep?'
Smegden gestured expansively—or as expansively as his diminutive arms would allow. 'Why not spend the night here, in the Grand Commons? It's what many animal folk do.' Turning, he indicated the lacy towers and spiraling buildings nearby. 'Though seemingly capacious, many of these structures are honeycombed with small rooms and chambers fit only for enchanted folk—and sometimes the likes of me. You lot would not be comfortable, squeezing your way through narrow corridors while enveloped in thick odors most strange and peculiar.' He trotted away from the base of the fresh fish tree.
'Here you can stretch out and be comfortable. There is plenty of room, the climate is ever amenable, and there is lots to eat. Your fellow animal folk will not bother you.' His tiny face wrinkled up in a grimace at the memory of an unpleasant smell. 'Who wants to sleep in a troll tenement, anyway?'
Cocoa eyed the florid paths, paved with flat-faceted purple gems. Overhead, a wry and tasteful assortment of branches scattered the stars while the energetic chatter of tree-dwelling animal folk began to fade with the deepening of night. The temperature had not changed since they had arrived on the beach outside the city wall. It all seemed so benign, so accommodating, that it made her nervous. She told their guide as much.
'Oh, piffle!' Putting tiny hands on bulging hips, Smegden let out a squeak of a sigh. 'Very well, then. I'll stay one night with you.' He did not try to hide his irritation. 'Will that put you at ease?'
'Substantially,' a relieved Cocoa agreed. Though he had said nothing, she could see that Cezer was silently pleased with the mouse's offer. Nor did any of her other companions offer an objection to their guide's continued presence among them.
It was something to see Smegden curl up, utterly unafraid, next to the coiled bulk of Samm, a traditional predator. But the powerful constrictor was stuffed like a striped sausage with pounds of meatfruit and was already asleep, digesting silently. Given the quantity of food the serpent had just ingested, Oskar was grateful that snakes did not snore. Choosing a suitable tree, he paced half a dozen circles before settling down at its base, nose to tail. Cezer went off a little by himself, as did Cocoa, while Taj sought a suitably cozy branch on which to spend the night.
Mamakitty settled herself down next to the disheveled dog who was their nominal leader. Oskar tried to ignore her unblinking gaze, but one might as well hope to slip-slide into another dimension as avoid the stare of a determined cat.
'All right.' He yawned, suddenly aware of how tired he really was. 'What is it now, Miss Worry- whiskers?'
'This Kingdom of Purple is a beautiful and benign place.'
'And that upsets you?' Dog or no, he could still raise a querulous eyebrow. Given the amount of gray fur attached to the flap of flesh in question, it was a gesture of some substance.
'No. If we're ever going to find the white light that we need to take back with us, this certainly does seem like the place—just as we were told long ago by that otherwise disagreeable Captain Covalt.'
'Then what's your problem?' He yawned impressively, the yawn passing as a quiver down the entire length of his body to finally conclude with a twitch of his short tail.
'There are questions we avoided in the course of our journey that we can no longer put off. Suppose we find it? How do we acquire it? We have no money, and if we did, it most likely wouldn't be good here. Assuming that we do manage to obtain it, how do we transport it home? How do you package light?'
'With a pouch made of moonbeams, maybe. How should I know?' Trying not to sound too cross, he let his head flop back down on his crossed forepaws. 'Can't we worry about it tomorrow?'
'That's what we've been doing for weeks. But I guess it will have to wait one day longer. Everyone else is already asleep.' Raising her head slightly, she searched out each remaining member of their exhausted little party. 'It's just that, so near to the goal we've fought so hard to reach, I find myself more fretful than ever.'
'Fine,' he told her. 'Fret all you want. But I'm not worrying about anything, including the future of the world, until tomorrow.' He managed a canine smile. 'That's an advantage we dogs have over cats
His last glimpse was of the affable Smegden, comfortably curled up in one of Samm's brawny coils, indifferent to the proximity of powerful, fanged jaws that on another occasion might have devoured him as easily as a whale would swallow an eel.
EIGHTEEN
Oskar felt as if he awoke only moments later. But though he did not know the duration of the local night, it seemed unlikely that it should vary much from what they had encountered in other kingdoms. Overhead, the amethyst-hued sun was shining with a clarity born of crystal. It was not the shimmering sunshine that had awakened him, however, nor any prodding or chiding from his companions.
It was the music.
And such music! It spilled forth from thousands of throats, all chorusing together, not one out of tune— throats capable not only of imitating and surpassing the songs of humankind but of reproducing almost any harmony imaginable.
There must have been ten thousand bird-folk awakening in the trees of the Grand Commons, and their joyous hymn to the morning was truly something to behold.
Birds of paradise trilled sensuously alongside dozens of smaller songbird-folk. Cranes and crows supplied percussion, while macaws and parrots counterfeited human voices as perfectly as if they had possessed hands instead of wings. The smaller birds provided woodwindlike accompaniment, while a rustling of raptors surged in counterpoint to the elegiac central motif.
Rolling onto his back on the soft grass and crunchy leaves, all four legs waving in the air, Oskar stretched and delighted in the majestic swell of music. Only after the magnificent overture to the sun had crescendoed and begun to fade, drifting away into the distance as soft as down from a newly fledged chick, did an exultant Taj glide down from his branch to greet his friends. He had been participating wholeheartedly in the concert.
'Did you hear it? Oh, did you hear, Oskar?' The jubilant canary hopped an ecstatic circle around an imaginary axis. 'Wasn't it splendid? Wasn't it glorious?'
A familiar voice interrupted from nearby. 'Doesn't this town let a visitor sleep?' Rising, a rested but exasperated Cezer stretched, digging his front claws purposefully into the ground, his chin scraping the grass
