'What's that supposed to mean?' I asked, staring up at him with my flint eyes, hoping to strike terror in him. I failed.
'You have fallen into the danger of identifying too closely with the analogue you permit your psychic energy to assume. Though such energy is malleable, the surface tension can grow stronger with time, sap the will to return to any other analogue, any other shape. Too long a time as a wolf, and you will find yourself trapped not only in the form, but in the character of the creature.'
'Nonsense.' But the word was said without conviction and in such a guttural rumble that it only reinforced what Kas said.
'You disprove your own words.'
'I'm an esper,' I said.
'So?'
'I understand these things.'
'You do not grasp the difference of this subconscious universe,' he said. 'There is a certain thing about it which will trap you-you especially, given your past and your mental condition.'
I pawed the earth. 'Help me grasp it,' I said at last, doubtful. I did not want to have to believe what he was saying. I only wanted to be free to run and tear flesh and mount the sleek females in the dark shadows of the dens.
'Child's mental landscape is peopled only with creatures from legends and mythology. He read extensively in those areas from the moment he could understand language, and he viewed hundreds of senso-tapes on the subject. It interested him, because he thought he might find a purpose even stronger than the one which was connected with the Christian mythos: the Second Coming which he believed was himself.'
'But this wolf does not take the form of a mythological creature,' I argued with my wolf-mouth.
'There is a Tibetan legend which tells of monks transformed to wolves. They were men who loved luxury and betrayed the true intentions of their religion. They indulged in women and in drink, in jewels and in food, and all that was pretty and satisfying to the senses. Their god came to them after they had defiled mere children in a brothel contaminated with all manners of evil. In the disguise of demons, their god offered them immortality for their souls. It was a test to see if they were completely depraved, or whether there was still some minim of decency within them. But all nine of the monks eagerly grasped the straw of endless life at the sacrifice of nirvana, of eternal life on another plane. And so he gave them immortality and crushed their souls. But he gave them immortality as wolves, as vicious reeking creatures hated and feared by all, creatures who could no longer know a woman's form but must run in dank dens, creatures unable to make or appreciate the taste of wine or of a succulently prepared roast.'
'And you want me now to be a centaur.'
'Yes. The oftener you change, the less chance you have to be absorbed by any one particular mythical prototype.
And you, seeking some purpose beyond your human one, are ripe for such an end as threatens you now.'
'I can withstand the pressure.'
'You can't,' Kas said. He shook golden curls but of his eyes. 'You especially. All your life, just like Child, you have relied heavily upon a mythological ill-logic to justify your existence.'
'Christian mythos,' I corrected, wondering why I was still trying to defend it.
'These are of the same level of value as the Christian one. One will snare you as easily as the other. In all of them, you will find the same simplicity and attractive lack of complication as you found in Christianity's legends.
And you will never leave this place.'
I thought, for the first time, of Melinda. I had been forcing her and everything else out of my mind, refusing to acknowledge her no-nonsense interviews in that other world, her quick wit, and her supple and willing body.
Now they all rose and crowded into my consciousness at the same moment, almost overwhelming me.
In time, as we stood there on the rolling earth under the flat sky, listening to the sea, Kas said, 'Will you?'
'What?'
'Change?'
'I guess? guess so.'
'Soon, then.'
I hesitated.
'Soon.'
And I changed.
Together, we started off across the hilly land, galloping under the steel blue of looming thunderhead clouds. My own golden hair streamed behind me. My tail rode straight out behind, fluttering in the fingers of the seatinged air.
If anything, this was better than the form of a wolf, carried more of a sense of freedom and delight.
Child was not to be found here, either. We searched everywhere, including the flat white beach where the surf curled. We trotted through the shushing foam of the sea, kicking up shells and sending crabs in frantic flight. We left our hoofprints in the sucking mud of the moors, in the rich black earth of the grasslands, in the sand by the ocean.
Sure-footed, we climbed the few small peaks and surveyed this sector of the world, looked for caves and came back down again. In time, when it was apparent there was no blue-floored room and no exit to Child's conscious mind, we reached the curtain of mist to another climate, another segment of the fractured reality that constituted Child's mind.
I was forced to say goodbye to Kas the centaur, though I longed to stay here and enjoy the horseman form a while longer. He lectured me about disassociating from my centaur form upon leaving this plane, and I listened and made my promises.
In the next landscape, I returned to my human analogue, though shedding the horseman form was painful and filled me with a sad need to feel my hooves striking stone.
There was no life here to imitate, so I did not have to worry about becoming inextricably meshed with a myth figure. This was the land of the broken black mountains which jagged up in slabs as big as houses, some even larger than that, like a world of broken crockery and shattered bottles. The sunlight was discolored by the refracting stone and became a depressing brown. The air was flat, as if it had been bottled for a long while, and no breeze moved in it. There were no sounds, no movements.
The sky was an even, ugly yellow, like dark mustard, and not a single cloud marked its expanse.
I walked forward.
The onyx rocks were smooth and cold against my bare feet.
As I scrabbled up the terrain, my fingers squeaked on the shiny surfaces. Those sounds seemed unendurably long in the ghostly silence. I did not like this place at all, wanted out of it as fast as I could move to the next veil of mist. But it was here that I found Child, found the place where he was trapped in his own madness
IV
As I made my way over the ebony land, I reached a chasm in the shattered rocks, perhaps a thousand yards long and three yards wide at the top, narrowing to two feet at the bottom. Down there, some three hundred feet below, a soft blue light glowed. It seemed to be the gentle blue of shallow water, but even this slight color branded my eyes in contrast to the sameness of the terrain I had been struggling across for some minutes.
I called down, listened to the flat echo, but received no answer. If this was the place where Child waited, bound by his own insanity, circled by unnamed demons, he was unable to speak.
I swung over the jagged edge, looked to the bottom, then grew wings like those I had seen on the batlike creatures of the mountain. I descended gently, pulled the wings in and absorbed them as the way grew too narrow to glide. I dropped the last few feet onto the blue floor, found it was made of ice.
To the right, the rock wall cut off three feet above the ice, and the passage this created seemed to go on for
