Chapter 27 - The Fate of the Exiled (what became of Princess Evie)

The trek around the city wall was long, hard, and hot. The sun reflected off the wall. It dazzled them and hurt their eyes. It burnt their faces. The heat made them sweat and wish that they had brought more water. Sometimes coloured spots danced before them, but it was just their poor eyes playing tricks on them. Soon even Barney was reconsidering how much he cared that poor people were being forced out of the city by a greedy King. He was even wondering why he had been so worried about Evie. He’d only known her one day. Maybe she was a horrible person who would not appreciate a heroic rescue involving days of roasting and blisters, and possible encounters with vicious trees and poison thorns.

The wall all looked the same. It made it hard to judge where they were. In the distance there was the forest, looking deceptively innocent, like a kitten that has just been ferociously attacking a mouse and taking enormous pleasure in eating it, before lying down for a quick snooze. The mill was in silent motion, too far away for the sound to travel. They followed the wall for two days. The city was surprisingly large, considering its sole export was shoes. At night, they slept in the open, their heads on piles of spare clothing.

On the third day, the forest drew nearer and began to look menacing. Barney was sure he could hear vines slithering. Several times he noticed the woodmen, which seemed to have been frightened off by the forest last time, following him. He was frightened. He knew Celia was too, because she kept reminding them of the plan. Over and over, every few minutes, she reminded them to have the knives ready when they entered the forest. She walked very close to Sammy. Barney could not help feeling a little annoyed. Even though, if he really thought about it, Celia was a little annoying. People who are never wrong get a little tiresome after a while. Sammy did not seem to mind Celia invading his personal space. Barney suspected that he had been deliberately prolonging their mission in search of the shoe. He also suspected that Sammy was a little frightened of the forest too. After all, he had been attacked and poisoned by psychopathic vines and had nearly died. Sammy was not one to admit fear though.
By mid-afternoon, the forest had closed in to within a few metres of the wall. It was cold, now, in the shade of the twisted trees. The light was taking on the strange green quality again. They began to imagine the trees were whispering. Celia produced a strong length of rope from the big bag, and tied it about their waists to prevent separation. They all took out their knives and held them at the ready. They continued into the depths of the forest, sliding as close to the wall as possible.
As darkness fell, the undergrowth grew thicker. Vines clung to the smooth wall, dark green against the gold. Thorns the size of Celia’s nose, but sharper, protruded from tendrils as thick as her arm. They dripped luminescent blue, and seemed to have eaten into the solid metal of the wall, clinging like the jaws of a pitbull on a tasty leg.

Our intrepid travellers paused to confer. The way forward did not look pleasant. The undergrowth was waist-high and rustling ominously, and a net of vines criss-crossed the path. However, a heroic rescue is less heroic if incomplete. And so they decided to continue.

Sammy severed the nearest vine with his shiny, new, sharp, sharp knife.
It split with a satisfying thunk. Sammy stood still. A hissing, slithering sound was coming from the trees. It was getting louder.

Suddenly, all the vines across the path, all the vines on the wall, burst into motion. More rushed out of the trees, closing off the path behind them, snaking up behind them and over their heads. The more they struggled, the more they hacked at with their knives, the faster and more violently the vines came, until they were caged. The sides were thick and solid, with only a few places where the strange green light came through. The walls ran with poison. Barney, Sammy, and Evie huddled together in the middle of the cage, avoiding the blue fluid.

Suddenly, the cage was yanked sideways. As the cage lurched, they were thrown roughly to the side, falling over, and the poison splattered on them.
The luminous liquid burnt like acid where the droplets landed. Red blotches appeared on skin. Barney’s whole face was covered with it, when a huge glob splashed down from the roof of the cage. He shrieked in agony. Screamed and screamed until his voice ran out, and all he could do was moan and try to wash his face with tears. The pain subsided slightly when the warm, salty tears cut through the poison on his cheeks, but every time he felt a little better, another splash would fall on him. And so he moaned and cried, curled on the floor of a cage of poisoned thorns, and thought his mission was a complete failure.

Sammy curled protectively over Celia, shielding her from the rain of poison. His intentions were good, as they always were, but his weight pressed her into the floor of the cage, and the shark-tooth sharp thorns cut into her, leaking poison into her blood. She writhed and screamed. She convulsed uncontrollably, and frothed at the mouth. She fainted.

Sammy shook her. He was hardly affected at all by the poison. His recent brush with death appeared to have helped build up an immunity to it. He lifted Celia and sat her on his knee, away from the thorns. She whimpered, and he whispered to her that everything would be alright; he would make sure of it. He was having trouble believing his own words though. If only Barney would stop making that awful noise, maybe he could think up a plan.

Plans had never been Sammy’s strong suit. He was more of an action person. Bellow, and charge, that was his motto. It didn’t appear suited to this particular situation, though; he had tried it. He thought his hardest, until his brain began to hurt. Celia, who always made the plans, was incapacitated, as was Barney, who would be second choice of plan-maker out of the three. But although Sammy was not particularly good at plans, he was never one to lie back and watch while people were pulled through forests in cages of poisoned thorns, by psychopathic trees.
Just as his brain felt like it was about to explode from all the thinking, it came to him: he was almost a God. Surely he must have some special powers, even though his strength seemed to have deserted him after his last trek in the forest. He closed his eyes, and concentrated very hard, imagining the poison being sucked back into the thorns, and the thorns receding into the vines, the vines unwinding, so the cage no longer surrounded them.

The cage stopped moving. There was a slurping noise, then a rustling. Sammy kept his eyes closed for a few moments, just to be on the safe side. Then he opened them.
The cage was gone, it was true. Barney had stopped moaning and seemed to feel fine. Celia’s eyelids fluttered, and the slight blue tinge that had invaded her cheeks disappeared. When she looked up at him and smiled, Sammy almost burst with happiness. He had saved them all with his excellent plan. And then he looked up.
Twenty sharpened sticks were pointed at him. One had a red shoe with a sharpened stiletto heel on the end. Sammy reached for his knife.

An arrow whizzed past his hand, out of nowhere, severing his belt. Fortunately, his new pants were perfectly fitted and did not need a belt. He peered into the trees in the direction the arrow had come from. Not a leaf stirred. He put his hands up. Even at full strength, he had been killed in a fight with only seventeen men. Here were twenty, and an unspecified number of invisible archers. So Sammy, for the first time in his life, surrendered. He was feeling a little woozy from exercising his Godliness anyway.

People melted out of the trees. Not actually out of them, but from between them. Ten, twelve, twenty. But they weren’t people exactly. They were human height, slender, delicate, but seemed somehow translucent, which explained how they had blended in so well with the forest. Their clothes seemed woven from leaves, plant fibres, and small twigs. Each carried a bow with a perfectly taut string, and a quiver full of terrifyingly sharp arrows. Elves.

Sammy was suddenly very glad he had decided to go quietly. He did not like elves. They were sneaky.

The elves closed in. They were in a circle, arrows trained on Sammy and Barney. Mostly on Sammy, who, even at mortal size and swaying with the exertion of using his godly powers, was still more threatening than Barney. Celia still lay at Sammy’s feet.
If Sammy had realised what the elves intended, he would have drained his last drop of power, spent all his strength, and given up his life to prevent it. If Barney had realised, he would have thrown himself in their path, called up the woodmen he had spent his whole life in fear of, and destroyed them. But they did not realise, and the elves had picked up Celia and carried her away before her friends could move.
Sammy and Barney started to chase them, but the men with the pointed sticks barred their way. Sammy bellowed ferociously and waved his dagger, but had no strength left to call on his Godly powers. Barney bellowed too, and tried to draw his sharp new knife, but found he had lost it in all the commotion. And so Celia was taken away by the elves, and Barney and Sammy were herded in the opposite direction by a group of ragged men with sharp sticks.

The place they were taken was a clearing, with rustling trees around it, and a great many poison vines. There were huts built from old branches, and vine cages hanging empty in the trees. And there, in front of the central hut, stood Princess Evie, in a crowd of bedraggled, rough, and frightening people.

Chapter 26 - A Cunning Plan is Formed

Barney kept to the shadows. He was good at that. The sun had disappeared so all that remained was a purple tinge in the sky to the west. He could hear the sounds of the city as it prepared for the night. Guards in white uniforms marched purposefully to their posts on the corners of the streets. Order had to be maintained. Every time Barney heard the crisp slaps of their triple-reinforced, steel-trimmed, midnight-black boots (well-polished), his heart raced and he pressed himself into the wall and thought invisible. He followed the trail of progressively large shoe stores into the city centre.

At first, there were small, family stores, with homes above them. From the windows came smells of dinners cooking, and sounds of families – “DINNER!” “Harry stole my rabbit!” “It doesn’t have tentacles, Simon. It’s a piano.”

These streets led to boutiques, where shoes were custom-made. These were just closing, and the streets were full of well-dressed middle-aged people locking doors and exchanging polite goodnights. He had to wait until the guards were distracted by business people insisting on their stores being watched closely, before he could slip past – “You see, I have a very valuable order half-finished...”

After the boutiques, he found himself back in the centre of the city, where the enormous stores were still open. They never closed, and the citizens shopped tirelessly all day and night. Owners and workers of other stores came at night, to buy or just see the competition. It was loud and busy. Barney slipped in with the crowd and thought inconspicuous thoughts. He floated through the crowd to the store he had last seen Celia and Sammy.

It was a truly gigantic building. Not as large as the palace, of course, but larger than any building Barney had been inside. Golden light flooded out of the windows. It looked warm and inviting. Everyone inside was smiling. Even the doorman was smiling, although he looked like he was working hard at it. He waved Barney through, grinning widely and artificially. Barney walked across the foyer, admiring the fine stone floor and walls. Marble, he thought. Well-polished. There was a map on the far wall, depicting the many departments of the store. Barney examined it. Women’s, special occasion – that looked promising. 4th floor, back right section. Barney started up the stairs.

Barney’s first guess was wrong. Sammy and Celia had finished examining all the shoes in that section several hours before, and had moved on, via women’s formal, and were now resting in the comfortable chairs in the women’s casual – indoor section. It didn’t take Barney too long to find them though, following the logical progression through women’s shoes. When he found them, Sammy was sleeping peacefully with his head on Celia’s shoulder. She was holding his hand. Barney felt a slight pang of jealousy, but then remembered his mission.

“They took her away! They just took her! They were taking people away, and she tried to stop them, and they took her too, and I got away. We have to save her!” Barney said in a rush. Celia looked at him sleepily. Sammy did not stir.

“Let’s go!” Barney cried. Celia shook Sammy gently. He mumbled and opened his eyes slightly.

“What happened? Who’s in trouble?” Celia asked.
“Evie!”
“Who’s Evie?” mumbled Sammy, still half-asleep.
“The girl who was with us today. She’s a princess. The guards took her, and a whole lot of other people, and made them leave by the back door of the city. They tried to make me go too, but I escaped. We have to save them!”
“You escaped guards?” Sammy sounded sceptical.
“I saw them!” Barney insisted, louder than he had intended. Heads turned. He lowered his voice. “I saw them! And one grabbed me, but I escaped.”

Something in his voice must have told his friends he was telling the truth, because they leapt into action. Sammy yawned widely, stretched and stood up. Celia followed his example, suggesting retiring to an inn to formulate a plan.

Immediately upon finding an inn, they set about making a plan. This mostly fell to Celia, because Barney was quickly descending into a state of panic that was decidedly not conducive to cunning plan formation, and Sammy, for all his strength and bravery was, it must be admitted, slightly lacking in the cunning plan department. Celia’s plan was this:

Wait until morning. Buy food and clothing for an expedition into the wilderness beyond the city limits. Include in the shopping some large knives, or at the very least shoes with stiletto heels. Leave the city by the main entrance, because the back gate apparently could not be opened except by the guards. Follow the wall around to the back gate, staying out of the forest as far as possible. Search for the princess.

That was as far as she could get, having a very poor supply of information. In simple terms, they were going to take the ‘guess and hope’ approach. Nobody argued though. By the time Celia got to the end of the plan Sammy was asleep and Barney was sniffling to himself.

And so, the following morning, as soon as they woke up, the three friends went to buy supplies. They bought bread, cheese, apples, large canteens of water, and several sharp knives. These items went, along with spare clothing, into a large bag that Sammy was made to carry, because he was the biggest. Thus prepared, they began their mission.

Chapter 25 - Barney Encounters a Princess

Princess Evie was a little strange. Her whole family thought so, when they could be bothered. Mostly they didn’t bother, though. Even in a royal family, the youngest of twelve rarely gets any attention. She didn’t mind this, though. She was perfectly content with herself, which was what made her strange. Her whole family, the whole city, it seemed were obsessed with bettering themselves. And not only that, but bettering others. Education, culture, cuisine, endless beauty treatments, and of course a vast variety of shoes. While her family learned, and preened, and changed their shoes, Princess Evie would wander vaguely past them, singing to herself.
And so it came to be that Princess Evie was wandering the streets of the City of Shoes, daydreaming and singing quietly to herself, a song she had just made up. Sometimes when she was daydreaming, Evie forgot to look where she was going, but it didn’t matter because people usually got out of her way, and she walked very slowly, so it didn’t hurt if she crashed into a building. Today, however, someone else was not looking where he was going.

Barney had been thinking. He was thinking about how pretty Celia looked, how much he had enjoyed sending logs to their destruction, and why Sammy was mad at him. Sammy had not spoken to him for four days, since accusing him of stealing a letter. As if he would touch paper. Barney shuddered at the thought. He was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he had not even seen the girl in the ball gown and bare feet until he walked into her. It was a gentle collision. Their bodies met with the force of a weakling hitting a pillow. The expression of surprise from both parties was not exclamatory. The girl let out a gentle “Oh.” Barney turned red and stammered an apology. Close personal contact was not something he was used to. And they each went on their way.

But Barney’s omnipotent fate would not leave the encounter at that.

Barney, Celia, and a somewhat surly Sammy had left the mill that morning. They had not stayed their full two weeks, due to Sammy’s insistence that he was better, and the mill owner’s constant yelling. Not to mention the curious phenomenon of workers not returning from their days of felling in the forest. They had put on their clean clothes, breakfasted, and taken the little money they had earned, and set off.
There was a long wait outside the city gates, but they had at last been begrudgingly permitted entry. Once inside, they had begun their search for the perfect shoe to replace the one that Barney had so inconsiderately lost. This was more difficult than they had expected. For a city that consisted almost solely of shoe shops, producing and selling upwards of 50,000 pairs of shoes a day, there were surprisingly few sparkly, high heeled ones like the missing one. They were also handicapped by Sammy’s occasional balance problems, and total refusal to speak to Barney. Barney was the only person to have actually seen the shoe, and was needed to identify an appropriate replacement. Every time Sammy saw a shoe he thought might be right, he had to suggest it to Celia, who relayed it to Barney. So far, none of his picks had been anything like the shoe Barney had described. He was starting to think Sammy did not know what “high-heeled and sparkly” meant.

It was not long before Barney once more encountered the girl. It is bad enough to walk into someone once. The second time in one day is awkward. The third is amusing. But four times in one day? There are larger forces at work. Barney was, by this stage, monumentally embarrassed. The girl did not seem to be, though.
“We mustn’t fight it,” she said, and linked her arm through his.

Sammy seemed to defrost a bit after that. By mid-afternoon he was speaking to Barney once more. However, the shoe-hunting seemed to be going worse and worse. Sammy was now picking up shoes that did not look remotely like Barney’s description. How, Barney wondered, did you get ‘brown and sensible’ out of ‘high-heeled and sparkly’? But Barney didn’t dwell on it. He was relieved Sammy was speaking to him again, and had a strange floating feeling. It was almost like the world did not hate him today.
So, while Sammy smiled and pointed out shoes to Celia, Barney and Evie wandered behind them. Evie hummed cheerful songs and pointed out interesting things. It was a good afternoon. At some point, they became separated without really noticing. Barney just looked up and found his friends were no longer in from of him. For some reason, he did not really mind.

The city of shoes was not all opulence and riches. There were corners tucked away where poorer people lived, and less successful shoemakers sold misshapen boots from roadside stalls. But these places were small and well-hidden. The King did not like poor people. He did not like ugliness, dirtiness, bad smells, or things that were broken. And so he got rid of them. Officials in gold-trimmed uniforms politely shepherded those citizens too poor to pay the considerable taxes, out a small and inconspicuous back exit from the city, avoiding physical contact for fear of soiling their well-pressed white suits. The poor people rarely protested. There had not been an uprising for year, because everyone was so used to the treatment. After an area had been cleansed of the poor, it was then cleansed of dirt, refurbished, and made into hotels for wealthy tourists.

The King was not an evil man, it must be understood, merely fastidious and greedy. He was kind to children and cats, and fair in his settlement of payment disputes. He just did not like mess.

Barney and Evie stumbled into one of the poor areas that day. They had somehow been separated from Sammy and Celia, who had last been seen heading into the back corner of the largest outlet shoe shop of the city. The sun was setting over the golden wall, and a rosy glow was cast over the city. Barney and Evie turned a corner and were shocked by the sight that met their eyes.

Evie, being the youngest of twelve, and the black sheep of the family, had never paid much attention to her father’s policies. She preferred to wander, daydream, and sing. When she saw the line of tired, ragged men and women being escorted out the back door, she did not believe it was her father’s doing, and first the first time asserted her rank upon people.
She rose up to her full height, lifted her chin, and thought royal thoughts. She straightened her back, and breathed deeply, and practiced her most snootily royal tone in her head. She marched over to the guards.
“Stop that, this instant! I command you to release these citizens, and allow them return to their homes!” She commanded.
Barney was very impressed. If he had secretly been marching people out the back gate of a city, he would have stopped and released them immediately. The guards ignored her.

Evie repeated her command: “I am Evie, twelfth child of the King, princess of the city and the lands around it. You will release those prisoners, or the King will hear of it!”

This time the guards laughed. “Threatening us with the King? This is the King’s doing. We are merely following orders. We should have you thrown in a dungeon for impersonating a royal person.” The head guard approached as he was speaking.
It is an awful thing to suddenly realise that your father is not who you thought he was. Evie felt an odd sinking feeling in her stomach. Her head filled with fuzz, and she could not think properly. She had always believed her father to be a good man, if a little preoccupied with shoes. To find out suddenly that he was keeping the city clean by turning poor and unsuccessful people out of their homes was a terrible shock.

Evie was so busy being shocked that she did not realise what the guards were about to do. Guards crept in.

All of a sudden, a guard stood on either side of Evie, and each clasped an arm in a firm grip. Another guard stood beside Barney. There were not enough guards to spare two for him, and they didn’t think he looked like much trouble.

They were wrong.

Barney was small and twisty, but his journey had strengthened him. The walking, the hard work at the mill, and the struggling against assailants on his doomed rescue mission had strengthened him physically. His experience in the forest of silence had reminded him that people were the least of his worries, and had strengthened his will. Barney fought.

He struck the man holding him, hard, with an elbow in the belly. The man “oofed”, and bent at the waist, but did not release Barney. Barney did it again. The guard wrapped both arms around him and lifted him from the ground. Barney kicked out with his feet, struggling. A lucky kick caught the guard in the side of the knee, and he dropped Barney, clutching at his knee and moaning. Barney stood up and ran after the group.

The guard was not completely useless, though. The King was a very particular man, and his employees were not chosen simply for their excellent grooming practices. He grabbed Barney by the leg, pulling him to the ground. His grip was tight. Barney could feel it cutting off the blood supply to his foot. He kicked out at the hand with his free leg, but missed, catching himself on the ankle-bone, sending a juddering pain up his leg. He thrashed about. The guard changed his hold, forcing Barney upright and shoving him forward. Barney’s leg collapsed under him. His position on the ground put him at the perfect height, as the guard bent over him. He brought his elbow up into the guard’s groin.

The struggled had lasted less than five minutes, but as Barney crawled out from under the moaning guard, the gate swung shut with a loud clang, and an air of finality. The back door of the city was less fancy than the front, smaller but solider, made of some sort of thick metal. Barney limped over to it. It was perfectly smooth. There was no way to open it. And Evie was on the other side. Barney hit the gate as hard as he could, but all it did was hurt his hand. The guard behind him had stopped whimpering and was getting up. Barney limped away as fast as he could, back into the city.

Chapter 24 - Out of the Forest

Time melted. Time itself did not melt, because that would cause chaos and disaster for all the worlds in all the universes in existence, and I would not be able to tell the story of Barney’s great escape because I would not exist due to an unfortunate incident in which I fell back in time and killed my own great-great-grandmother. What I really mean was that it became difficult to judge the time due to having their having lost their watches in the City of Thieves. Also, it was dark and the forest all looked the same. They walked around in circles for a long time, attacked from all sides by brambles and rogue branches. Finally, they stumbled upon a thin trail. The trees became less active. The forest grew lighter, although the light still maintained that mysterious green quality that had been present earlier.

It was sunrise when they stumbled at last from the forest. Pink morning light sparkled brilliantly off the magnificent golden palace, glittering in a thousand diamond windows. The city was just awakening, and was quiet and still, but for the sleepy movements of a few dedicated workers trying to beat the rush. A great wall of gold bricks encircled the city, three times the height of a man, and much more dazzling. Barney could just make out a shining road that lead to a pair of ruby gates in the east wall. He did not understand how they had believed the City of Thieves to be this place. The City of Shoes was so rich, so prosperous, so beautiful that it could not be mistaken. They had made it.

Unfortunately, the city was much further away than it appeared. Among Barney’s many failings was an inability to judge distance. He had assumed the palace to be only ten floors high, twelve in the towers, with an area not larger than six or seven of Farmer Johnson’s fields. In reality, it was thirty floors, not including the basements, and thirty-five in the towers. It sprawled over the space a medium-sized town would normally occupy, and was centred upon a courtyard of truly fantastic dimensions. It was also a very long way away.

So it was with resignation and nausea brought on by poisoned brambles that they set off once more. The feeling of elation that had struck them as they emerged from the forest quickly ebbed, and they were left exhausted and suddenly very aware of their bedraggled appearance. The land that edged the forest was unpleasantly brown and muddy. Acres upon acres of desolate tree stumps spread before them. In the distance to the left, a sawmill growled furiously.

Elfin left them there, marching with renewed vigour towards his true calling at the mill. His experience in the forest had only increased his yearning to spend the remainder of his life cutting down trees.

The rest trudged tiredly in the direction of the ruby gates. The poison from the bramble barbs was only now making its effects realised. Sammy, who had suffered the worst, felt his muscles twitching disconcertingly as he walked. Agony seared through his body, the pain radiating in from his scratches. But he walked on, pretending it did not hurt. People who were resurrected by the Gods after being stabbed in the back during a brawl with seventeen armed assailants did not succumb to bramble scratches.

It took them hours to reach the gates. Sun was well past halfway on its journey across the sky when they arrived at the diamond road. It was busy around the gates. Travellers arrived in rich carriages (cars were strictly forbidden on the diamond road, for fear of leaving rubber traces), and left in expensive-looking shoes. Merchants came and went, only the wealthiest and most attractively attired allowed through the gates. Hundreds of people bustled and milled around before the gates, hoping for the privilege of being admitted. Only one area was clear. Nobody stood near Barney, Sammy and Celia. Even the poorest of the merchants who were turned away skirted around them. They were struck by the sudden, horrifying realisation that they would never be let in. No guard would allow into the diamond city a giant in a ripped, bloodied shirt, who was swaying slightly and had a odd, contorted expression of unspoken pain, a twisted young man covered in mud, and a girl wearing a crown made of leaves.

And so, after standing dazedly before the gates of their long-awaited destination for a few moments, they turned away in despair and began the long trek back towards the forest, and the saw-mill.

When they reached the saw-mill, darkness was falling. The mill was enormous. Huge logs lay on conveyor-belts that rumbled as they fed them slowly onto screaming circular saws. A man shouted orders and waved his arms as several workers operated various machines for lifting, sorting, and transporting wood. An enormous truck was being loaded with logs for transport. Sawdust was pouring into another from something that appeared to be part vacuum cleaner and part wood-chipper. The whole scene was noisy, busy, and just a little unpleasant. A haze of exhaust rose in a cloud above it.

The office was constructed out of rough-hewn wood. Obviously no time had been wasted on it. It was not large, and there was no glass in the windows. Surprising really, considering the amount of forest that had been cleared. They must have made a considerable profit out of the clearance, but clearly none of it had gone towards improving the appearance of the business – or, from the look of the sleeping quarters just beyond, into the living conditions of the employees. That did not occur to our heroes at that moment though, because Sammy had just collapsed at Celia’s feet.

A man responded to her cries for help, eventually. He wandered out of the office, apparently unconcerned that a young man was lying unmoving immediately outside his place of work.

“Hello,” he said placidly, “How may I help you?”

Being untrained, and therefore ill-equipped to cope with unconscious young men lying outside his office door, he had decided to ignore the young man and hope that he was just having a snooze while he waited to apply for employment. It could happen, he told himself firmly, turning to Celia. He had decided to pretend Barney was not their either, because Barney was giving off a distinctly unpleasant odour.

“Something’s wrong with Sammy,” Celia said, with a slight hysterical giggle. She slapped herself mentally. This was no time to stop being sensible. But all she could do was say, “make him better, make him better, make him better!” over and over, until the office-worker began to regret his decision to speak only to her.

Barney stepped in then, showing his deeply hidden competence in times of crisis. “He was poisoned by the brambles in the forest,” he told the man. “Do you have an antidote or something? I think he is dangerously ill.”

The office man dithered quietly for a moment, deciding whether to listen to the smelly one or to continue to focus on the girl, who was at least normal looking, if a little unstable. Sammy moaned and began thrashing violently. The office man made up his mind. He retreated into his office and closed the door.

At this, Barney kicked up such a fuss that it drew the attention of the foreman of the work crew, who stopped ordering people about and came over to see why someone was climbing in the office window, yelling at the top of his lungs.

The foreman was an exceptionally competent man. He took over immediately, telling Celia and Barney to step back. He produced a vial of green fluid from his pocket. Kneeling on the thrashing Sammy, one knee on his chest, the other on his left arm, holding him down, the foreman forced open Sammy’s jaws and emptied the contents of the vial into his mouth. Sammy stopped moving and lay limp on the dirt. Celia hiccupped back a sob.

It took all three of them, plus the office man, who was persuaded to leave the office and attend to them under threat of firing, to manoeuvre the unmoving Sammy into a bunk in the sleeping-quarters. They had to stop for a rest three times on the way. They lay him, now an unnerving shade of turquoise, on the closest bed to the door. Barney couldn’t help noticing that very few of the beds looked like they were used frequently: the ones at the back of the room were draped in what appeared to be mosquito netting but turned out to be spider-webs. Sammy was covered with a blanket, and the others herded back to the office.

For three days, Sammy lay in silence. The blue-green faded from his skin. He seemed somehow smaller. He stirred on the fourth day, but no-one rejoiced, because there was no-one there to notice. From the moment of stirring, he recovered remarkably quickly. In seconds, he was awake. In minutes, standing up, stretching, walking a few steps. Waves of tiredness hit him like a line of trucks, but he fought them off and ventured outside. Bright light hurt his eyes and sent stars dancing across his vision. The sky was unnaturally blue, and the sounds were unnaturally loud. He saw Barney gleefully operating the machine that fed logs into the saw, and an unexpected burst of joy hit him. He really was quite fond of the boy. From a distance. He waved, but Barney did not see him. He made his way slowly to the office, stopping every few steps to rest.

Inside the office, Celia sat at the desk. She was clean and pretty. Her curls tumbled glossily over her face as she bent over something she was reading. It warmed Sammy’s exhausted heart to see her. A smile made its way onto his face, uninvited. He stood in the doorway for a moment, just looking. He would have to write her that letter sometime.

“Celia,” he said.

Celia jumped. Then she shrieked and tore across the room, throwing her arms around him with a force that sent him stumbling. She hugged him enthusiastically, then disentangled herself, looking a little embarrassed.

“Good to see you out of bed,” she told him. “Are you feeling better, then?”

“Yes,” he said unnecessarily. He wobbled slightly. Celia made him sit down, even though he didn’t want to. She went back to her work, one eye on him all the time.

Sammy had a bit of a snooze then, just for a few minutes.

He awoke to a strange silence. The machines had been turned off. The sky was dark in the windows, and the lamps had been lit to glow brilliantly. Unfortunately, although they were very bright, the light did not spread far, so the room was a pattern of light and dark, full of shadows and dark figures in silhouette. The buzz of chatter filled the room. Eventually, the buzz thinned and he could make out individual voices. A small, bent figure talked excitedly about his day of cutting logs. Sammy had never seen Barney so happy. There was Elfin, looming over the group and agreeing in an exclamatory fashion with everything a smaller man who yelled a lot said. And there was Celia, telling the group excitedly about how Sammy had got up today, how he was nearly better. He smiled to himself. She really was lovely. He stood up and made his way over to the group.

The next day, Barney and Celia had to work again, to pay for Sammy’s cure; for their board; for their food; and for clean clothes. They would have to stay for two weeks to pay for it, they were told. That did not make much sense to Barney, who for all his faults was not deficient in intelligence. Surely if they were only staying the extra week to pay for their food and board, if they didn’t stay the extra week, they would not need to pay for it. It seemed as though the mill was having trouble finding people to work. Certainly, everyday fewer workers returned from the forest. One day a whole tractor disappeared. But Barney was enjoying getting his revenge by feeding trees to saws, and Celia was insistent about Sammy needing his rest. Barney did not want Celia to be mad at him, so he said nothing, and they went about their work.

Sammy was looking a little peaky, actually. No-one liked to say anything, but he seemed shorter, somehow. Less muscular. Almost normal sized. If by normal sized you mean a normal sized professional rugby player. His torn and bloodied clothes had been replaced with a set belonging to an ex-worker who had failed to return from the forest one day. They were greenish grey and not magnificent at all, but his clothes were beyond repair. He tucked his dagger into a rope about his waist.

While his friends worked, Sammy took a piece of paper and a pen from the office, and set to work. Soon he was concentrating so hard his tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth. He wrote:

Deerest Celia
I love u a lot. Wil u mary me. I mite not get to bee a God but if u mary me i wil not keer abowt that. I wil bee the hapiest man ever. Wen u smile it makes me worm inside. U ar the prettyest girl i hav ever seen, even tho i lived with the Gods and there was serving girls. U ar very smart and allways no wat to do wen there ar things on fire or we ar lost. I think we shud have a wedding lik jo’s only nicer and u can weer a pretty dress. We can find a little howse and hav flowers in the gardin. We wil live happily ever after. I love u mor than i can say. U make me want to rite poetry but i don’t know how. Please love me back and mary me.
Love Sammy.

He put the pen down, brain exhausted. Now all he had to do was give it to Celia. He would just have a rest first. He lay in his bunk and closed his eyes.
While he slept, a rogue gust of wind swept through the building. The letter fluttered off the table and floated gently away.

Chapter 23 - Sammy versus the Forest of Silence

One of the benefits of being a demigod was that, along with a great many other more obvious and magnificent traits, Sammy possessed both excellent night-vision and better than average balance. Consequently, he returned to his starting point much cleaner, and much more quickly than Barney and Elfin had. By the time he got back, his eyes had adjusted so much to the dark that he could make out a small side tunnel leaving the main tunnel just after the eel vat he had managed to avoid falling into with a well-timed leap. Since there appeared to be no other way his friends could have been taken, he turned down it. It was a medium sized tunnel, but it seemed very small to Sammy, who had to hunch over to fit. He was glad when he came to the thick dungeon door at the end. He slammed his fist into the metal, sending the door flying. It looked magnificent, but was a rather silly thing to do, because if his true love had been imprisoned, the door would have landed on her and crushed her. Also, the door was unlocked anyway. But part of being heroic is looking magnificent, and he felt sure that if there had, in fact, been bad guys in the room, they would have all fainted in terror.

Finding the dungeon empty, he pulled the only other door in the room off its hinges and flung it aside. He marched into the tunnel. This, too, was rather cramped and smelly. He wretched slightly, and shook a rat off his leg. He would have liked some light, but with unusual acuity he foresaw that there was a distinct possibility of a fireball if he lit a torch in the stench. He held his breath and continued to run as fast as he could in the small space.

Finally, with great relief, he saw the light at the end of the tunnel. He sped up.
When he finally burst out of the tunnel, he was in a clearing. Trees and other plant-life were gathered a few metres away. The forest was unnaturally thick, huge trees much too close together. Sammy paused for a moment, pondering his next move. It was not immediately obvious where Celia and Barney had been taken. However, as you may have gathered by this point, Sammy was not much given to pondering. “CELIA! WHERE ARE YOU?” He bellowed with impressive volume. The trees turned to look.

The trouble with people as magnificent and heroic as Sammy is that they often do not realise they should be frightened. This was one of those times. A particularly nasty bramble leaped at him. If it had had a voice, it would have snarled. It bit his leg, tearing his already ragged breeches. Sammy pulled it up by the roots and ripped it to pieces. He looked at his hands. They were covered in tiny scratches, each with a slender line of blue in it. It was quite pretty he thought, wiping his hands on his shirt so the blue poison would come out. It was quite painful, but not as bad as being stabbed. “CELIA!” He bellowed again.

The brambles became ferociously angry at this cavalier reaction to their poison, and surged forward as one. They surrounded him, attacking his legs in the manner of several hundred small dogs with very sharp teeth. Sammy pushed through them towards the dark forest, kicking out and uprooting a bramble bush every few seconds. More surged in to replace them, and they became less like a pack of small dogs, and more like a see full of swimming needles. One of them reached through the rip in his breeches, and made a deep painful scratch down his leg. He lost his temper.
“GET OUT OF MY WAY!” He yelled, unleashing the full power of his voice on the brambles. His voice rumbled and reverberated across the land. The brambles hurriedly retreated. The thick forest split in two, trees gliding left and right, leaving a bare trail ahead of him. On the other side of the forest, a river suddenly changed course, as a mountain range slowly rumbled to the right. In his palace in the clouds, Rufus Pegasus, God, sighed in exasperation.

Sammy was utterly astonished when the trees moved for him. He gaped like a fish for several seconds, before quickly coming to terms with his omnipotence. He loped off down the cleared path, calling desperately for Celia. She did not answer. Eventually, he came across a large, hairy, and perplexed man, who was standing vaguely in Sammy’s path, looking lost. He looked a bit frightened when Sammy came running up to him, especially when Sammy tackled him to the ground and held him there.

“What did you do with her?” Sammy growled.
“What do you m-mean?” stammered Elfin. He had only just been recovering from the attack of the trees, and beginning to think about forming a plan, and now he was being attacked by someone so powerful the very trees were afraid of him.
“What have you done with her, you evil, kidnapping fiend?” Sammy pressed his hand down on Elfin’s throat.
“I didn’t kidnap anyone!” Elfin gasped. He was short of breath due to a combination of terror and the hand on his throat. “We were rescuing Celia! But th-the trees...”
“Oh.” Sammy removed his hand and helped the perplexed man up. “Do you know where she is?”
“The trees - they got her. Took her...” Elfin massaged his throat and waved his hand vaguely in the direction Celia had been carried off.
Sammy plunged into the woods in that direction, and the trees parted smartly for him.
“Wait!” cried Elfin, and hurried after the man. It seemed safest, now he was not being throttled.

The trees did not stay frightened for long. The power that moved them was old, far older than the Gods themselves, and evil. It was rooted in the very veins of the earth, where the demons had sprung from when they had wreaked havoc upon the earth, before the Gods had risen and defeated them. It would not be held back by some young half God for long. The forest closed in behind them.

They went for the weakest point, roots hacking at Elfin’s legs, vines winding about his body. Sammy had to keep turning around and freeing him, ripping the plants off with superhuman strength. The tenth time he did this, an enormous low branch swung round and thudded into him, sweeping both men off their feet. Before they could stand, dozens of vines and roots grew over them, holding them to the ground. Sammy could only struggle feebly under vines as thick as his legs, and Elfin could not move at all. A big tree bent over them. Sammy couldn’t remember what kind. He wished he’s paid more attention in lessons. He couldn’t remember anything about them having teeth. It was the second most terrifying experience of his life. He consoled himself with the thought that he would never again have to climb down a solid wall in the dark.

A girl screamed then, from quite near. The tree paused. Celia! Sammy mustered all of his strength, and wrenched himself from the vines. He freed Elfin, and ran towards the screaming, crashing through vines that were slung through the branches like spider-webs. The desperate strength that had gripped him earlier, when he had been faced with the wall, gripped him now. She was very close. He ripped up a tree with a trunk as round as a dinner-plate, and tossed it aside. He burst into the clearing.

There was no-one in it.

Another scream reached his ears. “No!” she was crying, “No, please!” Sammy changed direction and hurtled through the trees. Elfin trailed exhaustedly through the wreckage he left in his wake.

When Sammy hurled himself into the clearing where the screams were coming from, an astonishing sight met his eyes. A tree so enormous it could have been hollowed out to make a sizable house stood in the centre of the clearing. It had twisted itself forward so its leaves formed a dark canopy, but greenish light filtered in around it. Several sturdy, black boughs had grown or knotted themselves into a chair. A throne, realised Sammy. And in that chair sat Celia.

She didn’t look like she wanted to be there. Her dress had somehow been replaced by a shimmering green shift that seemed to change colour every time you looked at it. It seemed almost silver at first, before moving through grey-green and pale green to darker shades. A wreath of silver leaves encircled her head like a crown. She was screaming and struggling, but vines wound around her arms and legs, holding her to the throne. Sammy ran to her.

It was difficult to get her free. The great tree objected, and kept swinging its branches between them, blocking Sammy’s view of her. He had to bellow a lot and hack at it with his sword, which he had forgotten he had until Celia pointed it out. From the corner of his eyes, he could see the trees moving in. With one last jab of the sword, and a final yell of “FREE HER!” that had thundered twice as loudly through the forest, and caused twenty captured princesses to be suddenly released from their towers, Celia’s bindings came loose. Sammy took her in his arms and carried her free of the throne-tree.

Sammy held her close, never wanting to let her go.
“I love you! I love you so much it hurts! I can’t live without you. I was so terrified for you. Come on, we have to go before they get us. We can go to the City of Shoes and get married, and live in a little white house with a thatched roof, and have our own little shop, and you can have babies, and we’ll live happily ever after. I don’t care about being a God, as long as I have you. Oh, I’m so glad you aren’t dead! I love you, Celia!”
“We have to find Barney,” said Celia.

Sammy was a bit disappointed. After all, he had just climbed down a wall in the dark for her. He had hoped she would be a bit more enthusiastic than that. But, maybe she was just in shock, and would be more excited about his plan later. At any rate, she didn’t fight him off when he took her hand. They set off to find Barney, moving in the general direction that Elfin was pointing.

It was even harder leaving the clearing than it had been getting there. The plants did not seem to want Celia to go. They kept grabbing at her, so Sammy had to fight them off with his sword, with Elfin hacking away with Sammy’s spare knife on the other side, apologising profusely whenever he missed and accidently got Sammy’s arm. The brambles had caught up from their congregation by the tunnel entrance, and bit at their legs with poisoned thorns. Celia had trouble with that bit, because her shoes had disappeared and she shrieked in pain every time a thorn touched her. Sammy picked her up and put her on his back. The plants kept trying to pull her off, but she clung like a limpet and almost strangled him.

Slowly, but surely, they cut a path through the forest. They trees closed in behind them. It was hard to know if they were heading in the right direction to find Barney, because it was dreadfully dark, and the trees kept moving. Elfin insisted that he had a reliable sense of direction though, and they had no choice but to trust him.

After hours and hours of traipsing around the forest, when it must have been night-time, but they couldn’t tell because no light came through the trees, they reached a dip in the land. They could only tell it was a dip because they went to step forward, and for a horrible second, the ground wasn’t where it was meant to be. They came to the horrid realisation that the plants were not the only things they had to beware of in the forest. They moved more cautiously, Sammy feeling the way with his sword, then viciously swinging it at the plants ahead of them.

A whimper crept through the trees to their ears, followed by a sniffle. Someone was quietly weeping. Barney! Alive! They were all very relieved, although Sammy rather wished Celia wasn’t quite so pleased. It made him feel a bit hard done by that he had done all the heroic rescuing and she was still more excited about knowing Barney was alive than she had been about seeing him. And he was such a wimp! All he would do was cry and slow them down. But all the same, Sammy was glad he wasn’t dead. You get used to people when they tag along on your mission from the Gods.

“Help?” came Barney’s rather whiny voice, pathetically, from somewhere up a tree. His rescuers felt their way further down the hill. To their right, through a thick hanging of spider-web vines, hung Barney. He was almost entirely wrapped in vines, so he could not move, and hung upside down from one of the upper branches of the tree. The branch drooped ominously under his weight. He looked very difficult to get down, especially because Sammy was the only one who could see him properly, and the painful brambles kept snapping at their feet.

Neither he nor Sammy knew it, but that day, Sammy had that day postponed Barney’s fate, which was why Barney was hanging uncomfortably from a tree, instead of being digested by a large Sycamore. First, the trees had moved aside for Sammy, and had been briefly distracted from their task. Then, they had had to move again, to close in on him as he raced after Celia. And, by saving Celia, Sammy had truly postponed Barney’s fate, because Celia was fated to save Barney. And that is what she did.

The tree Barney hung from was tall but slender, and would not hold Sammy’s weight. Elfin was a poor tree climber at the best of times, but he had no hope when all the branches were moving, and anyway, he was nearly as heavy as Sammy. So it was decided that it would be Celia who would climb the tree. Sammy was a bit loath to let her do it, having just expended a lot of effort to save her, but Celia turned out to be quite stubborn, so he boosted her into the branches. She wore his belt, knotted about her waist because even on the first hole it was much too large, with his golden dagger in it. He hadn’t let Elfin use that one – he had made him use the spare one from his boot. Celia climbed easily up the tree, dancing between branches. Sammy concentrated all his Godly powers on not letting it eat her. When she reached Barney, she lay flat along the branch, which creaked worryingly. With one quick slash of the golden dagger, Barney was free. He thudded painfully through the tree, hitting every branch on the way. Celia sheathed the dagger and climbed gracefully from the tree.

Chapter 22 - Barney, Elfin and Celia in the hands of dastardly criminals (not to mention some very nasty trees)

Having three captives presented difficulties for the bad guys. They had received no instructions for the event of any rescuers actually finding their hideout. They had tied up the large hairy one, who had struggled, and the small twisty one, who had cried. The bound pair were outside the door of the hide-out (the guards didn’t like to call it a dungeon – dungeon is such a depressing word), because the smell of the dung they had been wading through was powerful enough to kill a man at ten paces, if he had a particularly sensitive nose. The room was small and enclosed, and they had strict instructions to bring the girl in alive. They waited.

At length, another group of men arrived. There were five of them, and they all spoke in sinister foreign accents and had scars that ran across their faces, marring one eye, and hair that did not move when they shook their heads. One of them made an extremely exclamatory remark when hit by the omnipotent smell of Barney and Elfin. Celia felt a bit better. At least these were proper bad guys. She could see a pamphlet entitled “50 ways to make a bomb from two pieces of tinfoil and a rubber mouse” poking out of the pocket of the closest one’s ripped coat. It gave her a warm, smug feeling to know she warranted proper bad guys, even though she wasn’t sure why. Five of them, even! One of them kicked Barney as he went past. Celia glared. It had been nice of Barney to attempt to save her. It wasn’t his fault he was incompetent. He had been born like that.

The new gang were just one step down the food chain from the man himself, the ultimate evil guy. They did not know his master-plan. They did not know his name. They did not need to know. Their job satisfaction was derived entirely from doing things like beating people up, swearing, and kidnapping girls. They blindfolded, gagged and bound Celia. They didn’t really need to. It was unlikely she could escape from them, and they weren’t going anywhere that people would hear her scream. They just liked tying people up. It was one of their favourite parts of the job. One of them tossed her on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and they headed off. Barney and Elfin were marched in front of the group, occasionally poked with a sharp stick, and constantly ridiculed in sinister foreign accents.

The bad guys led their captives from the dungeon – they called it a dungeon, being of a less sensitive nature than the guards – through a door on the opposite wall.
The tunnel it led to was dark and narrow. In the confined space the smell made them lightheaded. It seemed to go on forever.

During that day, Elfin unknowingly achieved his dream. The first half, which involved leaving the city of his birth. It would have been miraculous indeed for him to find himself employed as a lumberjack so soon after setting out on his journey. While travelling dejectedly through the cramped and odorous tunnel at the behest of darstardly criminals, they passed beneath the city walls. However, this did nothing to raise the spirits of any of the party, because it was too dark in the tunnel to see the sign announcing "You are now leaving .... Good luck". The name of the city was smudged. They had used a defective sign where it didn't matter.

After hours of trudging through the dark, the tunnel seemed to get larger. Barney felt as though he was walking uphill, he was so tired. He didn't realise it, but he really was walking uphill. After a long ascent, the party turned a corner and emerged. Barney immediately turned around and attempted to return to the tunnels.
They were in a forest. It wasn't just any forest, either. The trees were enormous, gnarled monsters, which bent and twisted to catch their prey. Leaves blocked the sky, and the light that filtered through was greenish and eerie. It was very, very quiet. Barney knew at that moment, that his fate was upon him. Today, he would be killed by a tree. And he would die covered in dung.

Things began to go badly for the criminals as soon as they entered the silent forest. Even dastardly people become frightened sometimes. The head criminal had to be quite firm about carrying on. Secretly he was quivering inside, but you do not get to being nearly the evilest man in the world without some impressive acting ability. So he shouted and waved his favourite knife until the rest of the criminals began to march. They marched quickly and tensely, shoving Barney and Elfin roughly, so they stumbled over roots that twined sneakily across the ground. The noise of the group was quite terrific in the silence of the forest.

There were no other creatures in the forest. The trees have eaten them, thought Barney. That thought was not as irrational as it sounds. Some of the trees had enormous teeth. The patterns on the trunks formed eyes that followed them. Barney saw an enormous oak move to follow them. Oaks truly hated him. He brushed the thought aside as imaginary - he had become better at that on his journey. But this wasn't imaginary. It was his fate catching up with him.

The criminal bringing up the rear glanced behind them. The entrance to the tunnel had disappeared. The trees closed in behind them, silently waiting, biding their time. He lost his head and ran. It turned out that it was also his fate to be killed by a tree. A large, red-barked tree slowly but fluidly extended a root. The man tripped. Scrambling to him feet, he tried to run, but was going in the wrong direction. It is never a good idea to run towards evil trees that want to eat you. But by this time, panic had overtaken him completely, and his only thought was to get back into the tunnel. The oak twined its root about his leg, and pulled sharply. There was a loud crack. The man screamed in pain and fell, clutching his leg. A vine slithered from the branches of the closest tree and wrapped around his arm. Another caught his other arm. They stretched him in every direction until he was sure his limbs would rip off. A root snaked over his stomach and around his waist. It squeezed. Another crept over his chest, holding him on the ground. He struggled and screamed and invoked demons. He had momentarily forgotten that the last of the demons had been imprisoned by the Gods many centuries ago, and could not have saved him even if it had wanted to. Then a thorny vine slid around his neck like a noose, and he stopped screaming, too frightened to stir. And the brambles made their move.
Brambles are the worst of the plants in the Forest of Silence. They are ornery and malicious. Jealous of the raw power held by the oaks, and the sneakiness and intelligence of the vines, they vent their fury with poisoned thorns. The man hardly had time to see them coming, thin branches angular and spiky, a strange blue fluid dripping from their thorns. They pounced violently, and tore the skin from his body with their bite. He remembered how to scream when the poison touched him, and his voice ripped the air in agony. The noose pulled tight around his neck, and he drooped in silence.

His comrades had not seen all of this. The head criminal had seen the tree trip him, and immediately given the order to hurry on. They crashed through the forest now, trying to ignore the screaming, and the silent movement of the plants around them. The forest grew darker still, as though the trees had extended their leaves overhead, to blind them. The screams died out, but that did nothing to reassure them. Elfin made several exclamatory remarks about what he would like to do to the trees if only he had an axe. A small tree very deliberately slapped him across the face with a whippy branch much like his schoolteacher's cane. He stopped making exclamatory remarks. The head criminal kept yelling at them to hurry up, and that didn't help at all. The trees followed the sound and closed in behind them. They three remaining henchmen panicked, and ran off in different directions. Celia was dropped heavily on the ground, and her blindfold fell off. She did not panic. Her sensible nature told her clearly that this could not be happening, because trees did not uproot themselves and chase people. This was obviously a very uncomfortable dream. And so there were four people in the forest of silence. One head criminal, who was nearly the evilest man in the world, and was pretending he had meant for this to happen. One angry ex-shoemaker, who had always known there was a reason he wanted to pursue a career in cutting down trees. One bewildered girl, who thought she was dreaming. And one terrified young man who was currently sitting on the ground, crying and trembling, while the trees closed in.

Shrieks rent the air from somewhere to their left. The head criminal’s courage gave out at this, and he had a sudden surge of regret at how he had lived his life. If only... he thought, if only Rose Walters had not broken his heart by running off with another man, so many years ago. Maybe then he would be having a nice, comfortable life as a bank manager, instead of being attacked by trees while carrying out the orders of a vile, cruel, evil genius, who would not even tell him why he was kidnapping people. The moment passed. It had been great fun. He abandoned his prisoners to their respective fates, and ran.

Barney was curled in a ball, with his eyes shut, holding his head. If it had been light enough, the others could have seen clean trails through the dirt on his face, where his tears ran. He whimpered and moaned and sobbed until Celia wanted to shake him. She couldn’t though, because she was still tied up. So he kept crying. These trees were not like the tree that had captured him in the garden when he was young. They were not like the oak on the way home from school. There were no woodmen in these trees. He was sure now that the woodmen were good, and he had been doing them a great injustice all these years. Something was wrong with the trees in this forest. Something so terrible that even the woodmen had been frightened away.
Elfin untied Celia. It was a difficult process, because his hands were tied behind his back, and he had to use his teeth. But eventually, her hands were free. The trees had stopped closing in. They seemed to be watching in amusement, at these creatures who thought they could escape. Celia untied her feet, and then Elfin’s hands. She tried to persuade Barney to get up, first cajoling, and then sternly ordering him. Nothing worked. Barney would not move. Elfin picked him up. There were advantages to being large.

The trees sprung to action. A vine extended from where it rested in a tree, and draped itself casually but immovably about Celia’s waist. It lifted her gently, and carried her deep amongst the trees passing her carefully to the next vine in. If she hadn’t been so terrified (for by this time, she had realised it was not a dream), she would have noticed that she was being passed deliberately above the brambles. But she didn’t.

A line of trees glided gracefully across Elfin’s path. They formed a perfect circle around him, and a thick vine lifted Barney from his shoulders, and swung him away in the opposite direction to Celia. Elfin watched his friends sail away, and angrily tried to bash his way through the wall of greenery that surrounded him. It just closed in tighter.

Chapter 21 - Sammy Visits the Gods and Embarks on a Rescue mission

The good thing about being half god is that you get a second chance. Gods, of course, are omnipotent and immortal, and humans are not. Therefore, a demi-god either lives a long long life, at least twice as long as a human, or dies and comes back to life for a second chance. So Sammy was not all that worried when the world around him faded to black. Angry, yes. He felt it was very unsportsmanlike to stab someone in the back. But he knew he wasn't permanently dead, so it didn't seem worthwhile being too worried about what would happen. He just let death take over, and closed his eyes so he didn't have to look at the blood.

When Samueus Rufus Pegasus stopped moving, his murderer stood with one foot on his back and raised his fists in the air. The crowd cheered. A little half-heartedly, to be admitted, as they had all wanted the glory and did not like seeing someone else triumph. But soon, they recovered themselves and found celebratory ale in the nearby buildings. The murderer, an unpleasant, burly man with a permanent glare and much scarring, began to drag his magnificent kill away. The giant was younger than he had thought, and quite a handsome specimen. He was considering having it stuffed. In the end, the giant was too heavy to be dragged by one man, but no-one would help him. The murderer wasn't in anyone's gang, because no-one really likes someone who stabs people in the back. So the body would have to stay where it was until the crowd cleared and he could move it in a cart, or cut it up or something. So he sat on the body of Sameus Rufus Pegasus, and took a mug of ale.

Sammy had left his body. It didn't seem like he had though. When he looked down, he could see it. He was lying in bed. The bed was soft and warm and hung with gold curtains. He pushed back the curtain and looked out. The room was shiny and clean, with a golden sofa and a dressing table with a large mirror. He almost leapt out of bed right then. He hadn't had a mirror for a long time. Looking in the mirror was something Sammy liked nearly as much as bellowing and being heroic. But he didn't move. The bed was blissfully comfortable. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, a beautiful serving girl stood beside the bed. She held a plate of juicy grapes and fed them to him one at a time. Sammy smiled.

The door slammed open. "Get up, boy! That's enough lazing in bed!" Sameus Rufus Pegasus's father burst into the room. "I'm a busy God, you know! Don't waste my time!" He liked to bellow too. Sammy got up. He thought it was a bit tough to be out of bed this soon after dying, but didn't like to say so, in case his father decided he didn't deserve his second chance, and let him die properly. His back didn't hurt at all. He felt it. There was no hole. He was all healed up. He stood straight and tall in front of his father.

Sammy's father was even bigger than Sammy. The ground thundered and shook as he walked, and the whole castle moved. Underneath the clouds the castle was built on, rain fell. When angered, he was a truly terrifying specimen. And he was not happy with his son.
"FIGHTING IN THE STREETS! PIRATES! BEASTS OF THE EASTERN REACHES! COMPOSING SILLY LOVE POEMS IN YOUR HEAD! YOU HAVE NOT HONOURED YOUR MISSION! YOUR SECOND CHANCE IS A PRIVILEDGE! DO NOT WASTE IT! FIND THE SHOE!"
He went on and on. It crossed Sammy's mind that it was slightly worrying that his father knew he had been composing poems for Celia in his head (Barney wasn't the only one that had decided to win Celia's love with a letter). He would have to watch what he thought from now on. And go back and find that stupid sparkly shoe, wherever it was. But what about his friends? He had lost sight of them in the fight, and they couldn't survive on their own. Barney was so useless, and Celia was a girl. He put on an expession of contriteness and nodded every now and then as his father bellowed:
"STABBED IN THE BACK! NEVER HAVE I HAD A CHILD DIE THIS WAY! ASHAMED OF YOU! TEMPTED TO TAKE AWAY YOUR SECOND CHANCE!"

Sammy did get his second chance though, as he had always known he would. He had a short time left with the Gods, and then would return to his body, which would recover immediately, returning to immaculate condition, or better. So he made the most of it.

He ate grapes and lay in bed and got up and looked in the mirror. He bathed and washed his hair, and brushed his golden locks in front of the mirror. He looked very handsome, he thought, as he admired his reflection. Celia would not be able to resist him. No, no, he was not meant to be thinking about her. He must find the sparkling shoe so he could spend eternity in a golden castle in the clouds with beautiful serving girls that fed him grapes.

Sammy's murderer had had a lot to drink. He must have had more than he realised though, because two things happened in quick succession. First was the appearance of two large multi-coloured water monsters in the middle of the square. None of the other revellers seemed to think anything of it, or even notice anything unusual. There must have been something funny in his ale that was making him see things. Secondly, and more worrying, the murdered body he sat on was beginning to move. Just slightly, the chest was rising and falling. He leapt up, reaching for his dagger. His hand had not even touched the hilt when he was thrown violently from his perch. The giant was rising from the dead! The murderer screamed and ran away like the coward he was. The drunken crowd parted in shock as the body jumped to its feet and began to chase the murderer. They could not believe their eyes and simply stood, rooted to the ground in shock.
When a demigod gets a second chance, they come back bigger, stronger, and more beautiful than before - one step closer to the Gods. You would think it would be the other way around, because they have been killed and that should make them weak. But that is just how it is. So Sammy rising from the dead was a magnificent spectacle. Where he had been thought a giant before, he was now a particularly large giant. Where he had been strong enough to fight off ten armed men with his bare hands, he could now fight off twenty. If he had been handsome before, he was breath-taking now. He seemed to glow. The square fell silent.

The murderer had not noticed Sammy's beauty. He was too busy running away. It is very frightening to see someone one has murdered rise from the dead. His head was spinning with thoughts of Gods revenging themselves upon him, of ghosts, of monsters, and zombies. He ran as fast as he could, and of course did what all extremely frightened people do when running away - he fell over.

Sammy reached him in two seconds. He lifted his killer from the ground with one hand and held him at arm’s length. He shook him and glared. The murderer whimpered. "Where are my friends?" growled Sammy.

At length, Sammy got a vague direction out of the man, who sneakily did not tell him about the street he had seen the girl taken down, but told him the street the multicoloured water monsters had turned down. Sammy dropped him and loped off in the direction indicated to rescue his friends from the water monsters (deducing that any situation involving monsters or suchlike would also involve Barney). The murderer went home to change his trousers.

Sameus Rufus Pegasus had every intention of doing what his father had told him. He was going to forget all his distractions, stop fighting in the street, ignore damsels in distress, and return to the mission assigned him. He would find the shoe. Just as soon as he was sure Celia was alright. And Barney, he supposed. He should really save him too. But mostly Celia.

The sky was darkening as evening approached, although it was difficult to tell this in the alleyway. The buildings on either side shadowed the street so much that it was permanently chilly and never quite light. The rickety buildings seemed to trap the smell, concentrating it until it was almost solid. Sammy forced himself to continue down the street. A skinny animal that may or may not have been a cat chewed on a dead rat. It looked up and snarled as Sammy ran past. It had unexpectedly large teeth.

A few minutes later, something colourful caught Sammy's eye through the half-open door of one of the buildings. By that I mean that he saw it and it seemed odd, not that a colourful animal leaped out and grabbed it, or someone in colourful clothing was doing a spot of fishing out the door and Sammy ended up with a hook in his eye. Anyway, something colourful caught his eye and he pulled up short. He turned around and went to investigate.

The door was not open far, but Sammy didn't bother with things like squeezing through sideways. He pulled it off its hinges. This was fun. He like his new strength. Pulling doors off their hinges was nearly as fun as bellowing. He would have liked a good bellow just then. When he stepped through the empty doorframe, he saw piles of coloured cloth in the dark, dirty room. He picked up one pile. It was a multicoloured water monster costume. Next to it was a trapdoor, wide open, which he narrowly avoided falling down.

Sammy dipped a foot into the hole. There were no stairs. He searched for something to drop down it. He settled on ripping the foot off one of the water monster costumes. It didn't make a noise when it landed. He found a chair instead. That made a noise when it hit the pile. It sounded like an avalanche hitting an assortment of heavy duty machinery. Sammy deduced that there had been a pile of junk beneath the trapdoor, and now there wasn't. It didn't sound too far down. Not more than five German Shepherds lined up nose to tail. There was nothing for it. He swung down into the hole, momentarily forgetting his paralysing fear of heights in his determination to rescue his friends.

When he was hanging from the edge of the hole in the floor, with nothing but dark empty space beneath his feet, Sammy's fear of heights returned with a vengeance. He began to have difficulty breathing. He could not move to pull himself back up through the hole. He could not let go. The floorboard he clutched creaked ominously. Eventually, he recovered enough to reach out to the side with a foot. A bracket that had held the stairs in place jutted out from the wall. He rested his weight on it. It held. He shuffled his hands along the mouth of the trapdoor until he was next to the wall. His other foot found a bracket. He slid his hand from its white-knuckled grasp of the floorboards, and ran it along the wall until he found a hole. And so Sammy overcame his fear of heights in his desperation to save his true love, and crept down the wall like and extremely large slow-moving spider with four missing limbs.

When he reached the ground, or actually the top of the pile of collapsed stairs, Sammy released his terrified grip on the wall and slid down the pile. He sat for a moment, waiting for his legs to stop shaking enough to hold him up.

And so Sammy stood in the tunnel that Barney and Elfin had just spent several hours squelching in, and prepared to rescue his friends, realising suddenly that he had no idea where they were, who had them, or how to rescue them. He had no food, no water, and his clothes were covered in blood and full of holes. But those small problems are of little consequence to one as magnificent as Sammy, and he set out confidently down the tunnel.

Chapter 20 - Celia in the hands of three kidnappers

When the darkness had slipped over Celia she had kicked the person nearest with all her might. She rather thought she had broken her toe. It was quite painful. She couldn't even be sure that she had kicked the right person. The man carrying her was not limping and seemed to be impervious to pain. But it probably wasn't the guy she had kicked. She had felt herself change hands several times, as well as going down many new streets. She had no idea where she was, but she thought she might be inside now. The man carrying her had stopped to open a door before.

Celia didn't know it, but she had not been kidnapped as part of a game. The first kidnapper had been kidnapping her for that purpose, of course, but he was only a thug doing what his boss told him. His boss, was also just following orders, and had handed her off to another person, who was also just following orders. The whole system was horribly convoluted, and nobody knew who was working for who, and nobody knew why she had been kidnapped.
The only person who knew why Celia had been kidnapped was the evilest man in the history of evil men, and he had a foul and wicked plan to take over not just the throne, not just the world, but the universe on the heavens too. He wanted to control the fates and the weather and all the little people. He would be onmipotent. But his greed for power would be his undoing, as is so often the case in tales such as this.

He was unwilling to reveal his plan to anyone, because like anyone who has gone crazy with their yearning for power that does not belong to him, he had grown distrustful of those around him, friends, co-plotters and enemies alike. Actually, he had not grown to mistrust his friends. He had never had any of those. So he sat alone in the dark and plotted, and sents his minions on seemingly pointless missions that only ever involved picking things up and delivering them somewhere, without finding out why, or even what they were delivering. Celia was instrumental to his plan.

Currently, though, Celia was in a stone cellar with three of her kidnappers. They were surprisingly friendly, and one of them was very handsome indeed. And the cellar where she was... well, dungeon if she was completely honest... really wasn't too bad. It had a comfortable chair, and food and a chessboard. Celia didn't know how to play chess, but it was a nice thought. One of her guards had just suggested a nice sing-song when suddenly there was a rumble like a bulldozer crashing into a concrete wall and then falling off a cliff.

One of the kidnappers jumped up and ran to look. He came back grinning. "That was meant to happen," he assured her, "just the staircase collapsing. Nothing to worry about. Now, how about Twinkle Twinkle Little Car?" And the two of the kidnappers started a jolly sing-along. The other one just laughed evilly.

A few moments later there was another crashing, followed by a large amount of splashing, like a whale with a belly-ache. "Nothing to worry about," the handsome kidnapper reassured Celia, "just your rescuers falling in with the eels."

Celia was slightly concerned by this. Obviously Sammy had come to rescue her, like she knew he would, and had brought Barney along, which was never a good idea, because Barney's balance left something to be desired, and he was forever falling into things and panicking. Sammy would have to save him, and then it would be longer before they were together again. Although, Sammy was a little stupid, if she was honest, and that guard was very handsome and had a lovely singing voice.
Celia's captors were quite pleasant really. But they were just small fish. Not literal small fish, of course. A small fish would be quite incapable of carrying an ordinary sized young woman any distance at all. No, small fish in the sense that they were not proper criminals, just people doing a spot of work to make a bit of money. Their bosses were slightly larger fish, who worked for a larger fish again, who was in turn carrying out the orders of someone who was not a fish at all, but was extremely nasty. So they didn't really feel bad about kidnapping her. In fact, the handsome one with the nice singing voice thought she was rather pretty. He wished she would shut up about her fantastic friend Sameus Rufus Pegasus, who was apparently some kind of god, and quite prepared to smite them when he caught up. The girl seemed to have a very high opinion of him. When his comrades returned with the news that the people who had slipped into the vat of eels were not this enormous fighting machine, but were in fact a small and twisty boy and a large hairy man, he was quite relieved. He sniggered.

Celia, on the other hand, was not relieved when she heard the news that the people who had fallen into the vat of eels were a small twisty boy and a large hairy man, because it certainly meant Sammy wasn't coming. The large hairy man could not be Sammy, because although he was very large, the only appropriate adjectives for describing Sammy were 'magnificent' and 'fantastic' and 'marvellous' and 'godly'... She recovered herself. It was concerning that her rescuer was Barney. Barney was not a person you generally associated with heroic rescues. It was certain to go wrong, and then they would be in real trouble, because Barney tended to rub people the wrong way. She felt sure that once he was captured with her, her kidnappers would stop being so nice.

She was right of course. The rescue mission was failing spectacularly. After they had recovered from the collapsing-stairs fiasco, Barney and Elfin had not walked 30 steps before they found the vat of eels. Find here meaning fell into. Barney, being mostly afraid to leave his stones as a child had not learned to swim well. Most of the swimming holes near his home had been surrounded by forest, or at the very least shrubbery. So he was not much use. Elfin had also not learned to swim, as it was a skill that was not valued highly in cobblers, and he came from a family with so little shoe-making talent that all his capacity for learning was required to learn to make a shoe that didn't fall apart before the customer had paid for it. Failure to learn to swim in earlier childhood is a failure indeed, and this situation was a perfect illustration of the dangers of it.

After much flailing, sheer panic brought them to the edge of the vat. The walls were slippery, but eel-fear gave them wings. The adrenalin rush caused by falling into a vat of eels gave them wings. It didn't actually give them wings of course. That would require a vat of radioactive eels. Really it just made them very scared and helped them get to the edge of the vat and up the slimy walls at top-speed. Barney almost walked on water. An eel slimed against him and he decided that eels were definitely not his favourite animal. That would be something fluffy and nice, like bunnies.

So they escaped the second trap, wet and slimy, but not eaten by eels in remarkably little time and with remarkably little fuss. Several minutes later Elfin discovered a young eel eeling its way around in the water pooling in his shirt. There was much squealing and amusing jumping about. The eels were more horrifying now that they were out of the water. Also it is very unnerving to discover something swimming in your clothing, even if it isn't a nasty slimy eel. Even a small goldfish would be worrying. While Elfin was leaping about, squealing and attempting to remove the eel from his clothing, and Barney was leaping about, squealing, because he was beginning to feel slightly hysterical, the ground gave out beneath them, again. Actually, it didn't give out beneath them. What really happened was that they made the sudden and unexpected discovery that the path was only half as wide as they had thought it was. In other words, they fell off the edge. Off the edge was a short drop no more than Barney's height, into a sloppy, mud-filled ditch. At least they hoped it was mud. They kept telling themselves that anyway. It was extremely smelly, cold and unpleasant. The walls were unclimable. Barney and Elfin dejectedly began to squelch in the direction they assumed Celia had been taken. Just out of earshot, the kidnappers laughed evilly, and Celia tried not to cry.

They squelched along until they were exhausted, shivering, and surprisingly hungry, considering the stench. And then they squelched some more. It was slow going. The 'mud' was deep, in some places knee-deep, in others over Barney's waist. But they forced through it with admirable determination. Barney could feel the occasional creature move around his legs, and his mind filled with horrible images of blind, slimy mud-dwelling creatures with suckers and large teeth. But still they kept on. Hours later, or it might not have been hours - neither of them had a watch, and even if they had, it was pitch black in the underground mud ditch and even a glow in the dark watch would have been difficult to read, especially covered in gunk - they came to the deepest part yet. THe mud was over Barney's chest. "Come on!" Shouted Elfin joyously, "They are making it more difficult! We must be getting close!" He was beginnging to talk in a very exclamatory manner, trying to fool himself into not wishing he was back in his workshop making a poor quality pair of boots. So they pushed themselves, half swimming, through the mud, in a fashion that would have been very funny to watch, had anyone been able to see them. As it was, the kidnappers were chuckling to themselves as they imagined the scene. They knew that it wasn't mud. At last, they reached the end of the tunnel. And that it what it was. The end. It finished in a smooth, slimy, vertical wall with no door. They had spent hours in pursuit of the bad guys, and now they were up to their necks in poo at the very end of a dead end tunnel.

Barney and Elfin managed to struggle back up onto the path they had fallen off, eventually. They had to squelch back to a shallower part of the ditch, which took a really really long time, and then perform what was almost a comedy routine, attempting to regain the path. It involved Barney standing on Elfin's hairy shoulders and climbing up onto the path and then attempting to pull Elfin up. This was doomed from the start, because Barney was less than co-ordinated, and not very strong. There were several instances of falling back in the mud, and once Barney was completely submerged. He reminded himself of how grateful Celia would be, and how he would finally be worthy of her love. At last, entirely brownish grey with mud, he started back along the path. Elfin had to stay in the ditch, because Barney couldn't pull him out. In the end they had to go all the way back almost to the eel vat before a place was found where he could scramble out.

As Elfin scrambled out of the ditch, Barney's ears were met by a horrible sound. Someone was singing. It wasn't that horrible, he realised. Actually, whoever it was was quite a good singer. But that wasn't the point. It was horrible because it is never nice to hear someone singing happily when your true love is kidnapped, your best friend, hero and rival is missing, possibly dead, and you have just had stairs collapse with you on then, fallen into a vat of eels, and spent several hours in a ditch of mud that was possibly sewerage.

After a quick consultation, it was decided that they would sneak up on the singer, tie him up, and force him to reveal Celia's whereabouts. Unfortunately, they had failed to take into account when making their plan that a) they had nothing to tie up the singer once they caught him, and b) it is very difficult to sneak up on someone while wearing wet, muddy clothes. Also that Elfin was huge and his sneaking was about twice as loud as anyone else walking normally or even trying to make a lot of noise. So the sneak up and tie up mission was unsuccessful. The kidnappers decided when they heard Barney and Elfin discussing the plan that the fun would have to end. And so, as the two would-be heroes crept up on the singing guard, the other two kidnappers crept up on them from behind and captured them with ropes

Chapter 19 - Barney on his own

Barney's captor kept a hand firmly over his mouth, and dragged him down a side street, and another and another, until Barney was so hopelessly lost that he would have been unable to find his friends even if he could get away. He struggled feebly, but it was no use. Without his rocks (which had all been used to pelt muggers the day before) he was nothing. He let the large hairy man carry him away.

When the jolting jog of the man carrying stopped, Barney opened his eyes. The street was surprisingly clean. Even the stench was less pungent, although there was still a definite unpleasant odour in the air. Barney rather thought that the cobbles had been swept. He was placed gently on the pavement. He was glad of that, because it is very uncomfortable to be carried on the shoulder of a fat man while he runs, and slightly nauseating. Barney's stomach spun.

"Well, get up boy!" The hairy man growled in an exclamatory manner. Barney got up. The man ushered him into a building. Yes, this part of town was definitely nicer. He was so relieved that he didn't even mind that the building was made of wood. He could see the woodmen in the walls, but they were calm and satisfied and felt almost... friendly. He sat at the table, and the hairy man followed him, checking the road furtively before shutting and bolting the door.

So Barney came to be in the house of Elfin the Shoemaker (although Barney privately thought that his parents had made a severe misjudgement when naming their son - he had never seen anyone less elfin). Elfin made him breakfast and a nice cup of tea and set about informing Barney that they had a mission.
Although Barney did not realise it, this was a huge step in determining his fate. His choice when he heard Elfin speak would determine his whole future. So he didn't listen very closely, because he had not eaten so well for so long that he thought the food deserved all is concentration.

Elfin told a sad story. He was a monumentally unsuccessful shoemaker, his fate determined by the failure of his ancestors so many years ago, when the city was first built. He came from generations of honest but incompetent shoemakers, and he was determined to overcome the past and get out of the city to achieve his true calling - to become a lumberjack. But he needed Barney's help. Barney and his friends, he said, had caused the most excitement the city had seen in years. And so he had decided to ask for their help, as they were obviously survivors. He had carried Barney off during the brawl to make him help. Obviously, he would have preferred the extremely large one, but that one had seemed busy.
The first step to Elfin's masterplan was to rescue Celia. He had seen the girl being captured and carried away in a sack, and in his experience that was never a good thing. So, number one, rescue Celia. Number two, find the giant who had been with Barney and Celia, because it was always an advantage to have a giant on your side when attempting to escape your fate (or indeed when attempting to escape a solidly-walled city. After that he was a little hazy on the details, because he was hoping that they would help him in that department. At this stage his plan involved spiked boots and climbing the wall.
Barney nodded and smiled. He had not really been listening, but he would like more food like this, so he agreed to help. There is a great advantage to being a good cook when you have just kidnapped someone in order to coerce them into helping you escape your like as an unsuccessful shoe-maker in a smelly and rough city.

So, as soon as Barney had finished his breakfast, Elfin got him up from the table and hurried him into his disguise. It wouldn't do for them to be recognised, because the people in the game that weren't good enough to capture the other two would certainly come after him. So Elfin presented Barney with a clever and cunning disguise. It was like nothing Barney had ever seen. Privately he doubted its ability to conceal him. Admittedly, it would disguise his identity very well, but there were definite question marks over the likelihood of his blending in while wearing it. It was large and brightly coloured. It puffed out around the waist like a giant pea, and there were little holes for his arms to come out. Another round section covered his head, with eyeholes and a small slit allowing him to breathe. Unfortunately, as is so often the case with such things, the holes were in entirely the wrong place, and while wearing it Barney could neither see nor hear. From the waist of the costume hung a large number of floppy legs, each a different colour. Barney was to walk through the city disguised as an Immense Multicoloured Water-monster.

Elfin completely failed to see the flaws in this plan. It was his first plan and he was terribly excited. So far it had gone brilliantly. The kidnapping had gone off without a hitch. Well, if he was really honest (which he always was, being an honest but unsuccessful shoe-maker), he had really intended to take all three. And he had not really wanted to have to kidnap anyone. But all in all it was going quite well. So he enthusiastically tied Barney into the costume and put on his matching one. They could definitely get through the city undetected now, he thought with satisfaction.

Barney only allowed himself to be forced into the ridiculous costume because by this time he had realised that his one true love was in vast danger, and he must save her. By saving her he would win her heart and they would get married and live in a stone castle on a rocky island in a lake and be happy forever. So he went along with the plan, because Elfin was difficult to argue with, and anyway, Barney didn't have a better idea. They stepped out into the street.

The plan was not well formed. They did not know where Celia was. Elfin had seen from the corner of his eye a sack being borne away on the shoulders of a man he did not recognise. He wasn't totally sure which street they had taken her down either, which was unfortunate because it meant they would have to start right back at the city square in the centre of the fighting and bloodshed.

And so they made their way to the city square. It was slow going because the disguises were so unwieldy, and Barney kept crashing into things because he could not see properly. But at last they reached the square. They stood in the middle and tried to remember which street Celia had been taken down. Surprisingly, they went completely undetected. A party was going on. There was much rejoicing and much drinking. Several smallish fights had broken out, no more than six or seven men in each one. They were celebrating the fall of the giant. And in celebrating every man in the city square had taken in at least enough liquor to not think it strange to see two Immense Multi-coloured Water Monsters in the middle of their city.

Barney and Elfin went down the street that Elfin had decided was the one Celia had been taken down. As they went further and further along it became obvious that this must have been where she had been taken. She had fought fiercely, because although she was usually extremely sensible, she was ferocious when angered. Bits of sack and drops of blood littered the cobbles. Barney discovered her hair ribbon on the ground a short way down a side street, and they turned down that. From that point Celia had managed to leave tiny clues at each turning. A shoe here, a lock of hair there. But at last the trail ended. Celia had run out of things to leave.

The trail ended in a street much like any other. It was cobbled. The buildings were old, and coated in soot and grime. The stench was horrific. Barney imagined rotting corpses inside every door. They were quite a distance from the centre of the city now. It was not so busy. In fact, there were very few people here at all. No one, actually. The only occupants of the street were two Immense Multi-coloured Water-Monsters.

A door was creaking to and fro in the breeze. Almost like it had been deliberately left open for them. Barney and Elfin, of course, did not even think that it might be a trap. They were both very new to this saving people business, and it didn't occur to them that kidnappers might actually go to some lengths to stop their captives from being saved. So the two Immense Multi-Coloured Water monsters opened the door.
It took some time to get through the door. The thick layer of dirt behind it, coupled with very rusted hinges made it difficult to move, although the wind seemed to have no problem. It didn't open quite wide enough for them to fit through, and they had to bunch up their legs and squeeze through sideways. But finally, they were in the room.

It was very dark in the room. They could not see a thing. "Celia?" cried Barney in an exclamatory manner, not stopping to think that calling out was the perfect way to get discovered and captured. There was no reply. Celia was not in the room. But wait... what was that? A shadow was becoming clearer as their eyes adjusted. A darker square against the wall. Yes, it was a trapdoor. And it was open. Barney crept towards it.

They were forced to abandon their magnificent disguises here. An Immense Multi-Coloured Water-Monster had enough difficulty fitting through a normal door. There was no way it would fit through a trapdoor so much time was wasted in removing the costume. There were a surprising number of buckles and ties holding it up. Barney was so excited by the prospect of finding Celia that his hands trembled as he undid them. He slithered out at last and walked over to the trapdoor.

Now, we all know what a stupid idea it is to follow the evil kidnappers through a trapdoor. It's like standing with a noose around your neck and saying, "hey, you know what would be funny? You should pull the chair out from under me!" That is, of course, if you are saying that to a psychopathic murdering fiend, and not a normal person, because a normal person would certainly refuse to pull the chair out, and completely ruin the simile. However, Bsrney had very little experience with kidnappers, and his judgement was mildly impaired by his concer for his friend. But we will say it was bravery, for the purpose of the story, because bravery is much more admired than stupidity.

So Barney then did something extremely brave. He looked down the trapdoor. It was dark. He thoughy there were stairs, but couldn't be entirely sure. Tentatively, he lowered a foot into the whole (just asking for it to be bitten off by a crocodile). It was not bitten off. It touched a step. Barney stepped down through the hole in the floor.

The steps were rickety. They were made of old wood, long abandoned by the source of Barney's tree-phobia. Unluckily, the woodmen had been replaced by a particularly nasty type of bug whose favourite thing to do was chew through wood until it was just strong enough to hold a single, medium sized man. Barney was not medium sized. It was the first time he had ever been grateful for being small and twisty. Elfin, on the other hand, as has been previously mentioned, was large and hairy. When he stepped onto the staircase, the entire structure collapsed with the sound of a bulldozer crashing into a concrete wall and then falling off a cliff. And they fell.

A great deal of time seemed to pass between the first horrible feeling of unease that came when the staircase began to sway, and the tears and screams of pain as they hit the ground. Actually, not the ground, because they landed on top of the collapsed staircase, but that's not the point. It was a long way down. After that great deal of time had passed, they found themselves lying in the dark on a broken staircase, testing various limbs for breaks. And then, miraculously unharmed, they rose and struggled down the pile to the floor.

The collapsing staircase was the first step in the kidnappers' cunning and dastardly plan. They couldn't help feeling a bit aggrieved that it hadn't hurt their pursuers. But really, once they thought about it, it was more fun this way. Now they could watch the small twisty person and the large hairy person fight their way through several more booby traps, and all to no avail. The head kidnapper laughed an evil laugh. They would never find her now.