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 humanoid 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 dissipate. 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 savored 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 everything 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 chambers beyond that wet curtain, finding nothing. If there was a place with a blue floor where Child lay encircled by undescribed creatures of a malignant nature, it was nowhere within this valley. Neither was there a doorway into the conscious mind, no exit from this place where I found myself trapped. The journey was not to have a swift conclusion.
For some reason, I was glad for the extension. There was a strong reluctance to part with the form I had taken, to return to the world and be, again, a man.
It was snowing outside as the wolf led me across the last expanse of open fields before the impenetrable wall of mist which separated this part of the analogue world from the next. Big white flakes clung to our coats and frosted us, kicked up in clouds as we pranced forward toward the distant veil of fog.
We were sidetracked by the scampering of a covey of quail-like animals off to our left. My lupine friend broke into a wild, breathtaking run, teeth bared ferociously, lips drawn back, slobber falling from his wide mouth.
I followed, feeling the wind and snow and scenting the flesh of small creatures.
I saw him leap: muscles taut. I saw him land: a spring's coils jammed together.
The air reverberated with the dying squeal of his prey.
In that instant, as the agony of death pierced the air and the pride of a successful hunt shook me, I was more wolf than man, and the danger began to grow more imminent.
I stepped next to him and snuffled at his catch, watched him rend the flesh. Blood fountained up as an artery was struck, spurted crimson across his dark snout, stained his teeth, dotted the snow around us. It steamed in the cold air, this blood, and it had a smell uniquely its own.
I howled.
We tore at the animal together, and he kept his eyes on me for a long while, cold gray eyes that did not disclose the thoughts behind them. When we were done, our noses red and the snow around us sodden, I did not feel disgusted, but rather invigorated.
We turned back to our original pursuit and gained the shifting walls of mists through which I would have to pass.
'I want to return,' I growled.
'So?' His breath reeked.
'May I return?'
'For what purpose?'
'To join your pack.'
'That is most unwise. That is foolish, and you know it, and you must journey. Be gone.'
Then he turned and loped away, head hunched between his rugged shoulders, eating up yards in a single bounding leap.
Looking up at the even gray of the sky, I felt a hollow longing within me, and I pawed the snow away from the earth, dug the ground into a crosshatch of runnels. I wiped my bloodied snout in the snow and lapped the stained whiteness. I wanted to remain here forever, without regard to my true heritage and nature, to bound after the disappearing wolf and follow him to his pack. In the night hours, there would be deep dens in hidden caves to sleep in warmth and to climb upon some sleek and lovely female with gray eyes and a shiny black snout. During the daylight hours, there would be prowling in the fields and in the sparsely treed grounds before the thickness of the forests themselves. There would be blood and camaraderie, running together, killing together, defying the leaden skies with my fellows
Yet there was some nagging reason why I should go beyond the mists to the next segment of this landscape, though I could not remember what it was. I stepped through the mists, tensed, but found no danger, only cool wetness. I growled deep in my throat and broke through to the other side.
The journey continued.
In the new section of the subconscious universe, there was a taste of Ireland: stony ground, rolling hills so low that one could be seen beyond the other, the smell of the sea, flat areas of land marshy with the backwash of the tidelands. Waiting for me by a column of limestone that stood like a proscenium pillar without benefit of its stage, was a centaur. His head was ringed with golden curls which fell to his shoulders and framed a face of striking masculinity: broad forehead above deep black eyes that spoke of perserverance and a strong will, high aristocratic cheekbones, a proud Roman nose, a blocky chin. His shoulders were brawny, his arms rippling with muscles that seemed to possess a will and intent of their own. From the middle of his flat belly on down, he was a black stallion of formidable proportions, the lines of a thoroughbred in his long legs.
'My name is Kasostrous, and you may call me Kas,' he said.
'Call me Simeon,' I growled, my voice a tangled hiss of barely understandable guttural syllables.
'You must now acquire the form of the centaur,' Kas said, leaving the limestone thrust and ambling toward me.
His hooves clacked on the stony ground, sent sparks up once or twice. His long, flashing length of tail whipped in the breeze, tossed from side to side with lazy power.
'I like wolfhood,' I said, pawing the ground, my nails whispering on the dew-damp rock. I continued to stroke, sharpening them for later kills.
'You like it too well,' Kas said. 'That is the trouble.'
