I woke under the rustling branches and bright moon of forested country. Scooping up my stuff, I looked about into the near abyssal blackness, but only faint wolf howls in the distance came back to me.

Not wanting to break my leg in a weasel hole, I fished out my flashlight which barely worked. But it gave me enough light to see leaves, and the fallen branches I gathered to make a campfire.

A campfire lighter that had journeyed with me across dozens of worlds lit the fire, and soon I was warmer and could see better as I cooked some dried rabbit and some chili in my extendable pot.

Still feeling a bit unnerved, I made a pointy stick barrier of spear like sticks lodged in the soft ground around my campsite. And I made a second barrier around where I intended to sleep.

?Smells mighty tasty.? A man in a rough, fur cloak said from across the fire and just beyond my barrier. In the dimness, I could barely see him, but I nodded, and stepped toward the fire inviting him to join me.

?Don?t mind if I do, stranger.? He said, and lifted a heavy log from beyond in the dark to use as a stool. He pointed out when I asked where another one was which I got. I deliberately picked a large one to show my strength for he seemed a large and forbidding man with a wild aspect to him.

Despite claiming to have just finished a really good meal, which he said with a peculiar emphasis, we shared the stew, and he offered, a bit grudgingly I thought, some goat cheese to add to it. I could see the similarity between us despite his fairly primitive clothes for we both were large and quiet and at home in the wilds, but he seemed a bit of a moocher. Still there are much worse crimes than that.

?These woods frighten you?? He asked with a laugh as he finished out his bowl.

?Not much.? I replied truthfully, looking up from my spoonful of rabbit chili that I slowly ate, although the woods did seem unfriendly and the trees seemed to soak in the light of the campfire. It gets hard to frighten a verser after a while.

?I guess business must be picking up, another expansion is probably coming.? He said fishing for information I thought. Unfortunately, I did not know what he was talking about, and I did not totally trust him enough to ask for clarification.

So I shrugged.

?I mean with you here as well as me, unless there is more game in the woods, why we?d be having a problem, you and me.?

?So you?re a woodsman?? I asked doing a little fishing of my own.

He jumped up offended.

?I, I a woodsman? I don?t follow that cult, not I.? He stood seemingly taller than before with an odd line to his jaw. I studied him, and then reached out clairvoyantly and telekinetically to my backpack and my sword, a Roman style gladius.

?So what are you?? I put it to him.

?I, I am a wolf.? And he raised back his head and howled in a near-ear piercing song of destruction and hunger and loneliness. And his expansive stomach rippled in several spots.

Staring in horror, I saw what looked like faces pressed against the underside of his fur coat for he continued to transform now being a man-like wolf of near seven feet in height.

He looked down at his stomach, and he burped.

?Dinner. Right tasty. But I got to digest them some more.?

?Who?? I asked dry mouthed.

?Why, who else, children of course.? He looked befuddled at me, and I crouched to my feet, and swung a boot through the fire lofting burning logs into his face and all around him. My leap that followed through from the crouch landed on his chest while he still batted the flames aside, and the gladius sunk into his heart.

A black corrosion oozed out of him, and I yanked out my blade before it could be damaged.

Ordinarily, I seek confirmation before I attack, but I felt influences both bane and boon upon me. Love and hatred joined into one, and I killed the wolf with no doubt that I did the right thing.

His stinking body lay amidst the burning brands which I rapidly snuffed or tossed back to the fire by force of will and quick fingers. Then I took the blade and sliced open the wolf.

Out popped two children. Alive and somewhat hysterical, but after rolling the wolf into the dark, and whipping out some more food, some emergency rations they calmed down enough to introduce themselves and tell me their story.

Becky and Kevin Chance were from Chicago, Illinois and they had run away from their parents in a ratty mall turned discounter?s paradise, and they found a broken mirror in the back of some store. The mirror healed under their eyes, and they touched it, and now they were here.

They had run from witches, and avoided the troll under the bridge by going into the Verboten Forreste, and they met a nice man, sort-of, who then changed to a wolf and swallowed them.

Kevin, looking rather mischievous, decided to show me some magic. He willed a branch into glowing, and then he waved it at me. His slightly older sister rebuked him, but I shrugged.

Kevin apologized saying the light had hurt the wolf. Then Becky said she could do something magic as well. She could hear the birds talk if she touched her teeth with her tongue.

About this time, the wind rose, and the trees creaked with their branches shuddering in menace, or so it seemed to the children. So I laughingly told the trees to back off.

Instead the branches started moving against the wind, and coming toward us all.

I considered my fire, but I did not want to start a general forest fire even as the children crouched behind me in fear.

Giving them one more warning did little but inspire something that sounded like laughter. So I called to mind the example of Christ and the fig tree, and I pointed at the closest one, and spoke a curse.

It felt like a shudder ran through the earth, and I saw the tree wilt, and then crack open with a greenish fire consuming it from the inside until only ash remained. Shocked at the efficacy of the miracle, I bowed to give thanks, yet keeping my eyes open for new threats. By this time, all the trees had bent back their limbs, and frozen in position.

Kevin and Becky started laughing a bit that the trees were now afraid of them. But then they stopped, for we could all feel alien thoughts and feeling impinging on our minds.

Fear, terror, Woodsman, go away, Prophet, go away! echoed in our brains. So I stopped the fire with the kids help, and we made for the edge of the forrest by a wide and easy path that closed in behind us. The Verboten Forreste wanted us gone with all its vicious little heart.

I might have stayed to get answers, but I had two pre-teens to take care of.

Just beyond the forest, I could see a road that led down into a valley to my left, across a stone bridge and into a small hamlet. To my right, I saw a twinkling and happy looking hut on top of a hill, but already I mistrusted the appearance of kindness in this dark land.

Reminded of such a thing, I cast a spell in subterfuge to see the true appearance of the kids and their spirits. Neither were saints to be sure, but they were kindly humans, and not monsters in disguise I discovered with gladness.

We set out toward the village. On the way, I discovered some bones much gnawed upon, and a very nice quality axe. It fit my hand well, so I took it up.

Nothing bothered us at the bridge, and so we came to the wooden walled town which had its gates closed against us. I asked for the opening due to some kids needing rest, and I cajoled and offered money, but to no help. The guard was not going to open the gate, not at night.

?Fine, I?ll just set up a tent out here.?

?You can?t.? The guard replied to which I asked him how he was going to stop me. That shut him up since he had no intention of coming outside the wall.

My tent went up quickly, and the two went to bed, and thence to sleep in five minutes while I pondered things by another smaller campfire by the roadside near the town.

I got out my notebook, and sketched out a spell, and then another. First we needed to find the gate, then verify that it was the right one, control it, and open it. Two hours later, and I needed a new notebook, but I had my spells, plus some variants for other situations.

?That won?t do.? The man on horseback said from behind his thick cloak, and under his tall hat. I leapt up, and spun around looking for ambushers, and finding none. Sword still in hand, I turned back to face the man, if that was what he really was.

?I?ve killed once tonight.?

?Silence.? He barked and waved a gauntleted in leather hand. A ball of brilliant light was created and sped toward me. With telekinesis and magic I sent it back to him which he reversed, and so we stood there trying to shove this beauteous ball of energy back and forth. Then he sagged, and it smacked into him knocking him off his horse.

I vaulted over the horse, and came down in a gymnasts? landing next to him with my sword over his body, but by the time I came out of the splits, he had regained his feet, and drew a longsword.

?Hold.? He cried as I advanced. So I stopped, and looked under the horse to check on my tent.

?I apologize for my tone. I guess I?m used to dealing with less demanding and impatient heroes than you versers.?

?I?m an American, so sue me. And you are???

?I am the wizard who is to aid you in your Quest by giving you information in accordance with the general rules of such things.?

Remembering another wizard who had compelled me, I asked what would happen if I did not.

?Suffering and lamentations for many would continue. But no doubt, the Land would reward you well. Verser, you must not give up. Or be satisfied with merely saving these two. There are many that suffer. This land needs to be purified. I have no means to compel you, other than your conscience. Have you no feelings, man??

?What is this place?? I asked ignoring his insults.

?A place where a king a long time ago, for power and life gave his kingdom into the hands of the Dark Poet. A fairy tale kingdom that takes children from other lands as sacrifices to keep its hold on power. And these children become the rats that swarm, and the soulless servants of the Poet unless they escape or master the Land, and few do, few do indeed.?

?Well then, this seems an appropriate place for me. Tell me how to find this Dark Poet.?

The wizard sketched out a map for me, and agreed to come with me and the two children as I dared the castle. But first, I would have to brave three challenges.

The first was the impassable Verboten Forreste. It had been planted by the Poet, and it served as a redoubt for wolf men, and other even more unseemly creatures. And all the forces of the forrest would come to contest our passage.

So, since, I am a sledgehammer, I thought to avoid slipping through the forrest, or fighting my way through. Instead, I waited until morning, and then marched into town with the children following me, and the Wizard enchanting any guard who raised a staff to pummel me.

Upon reaching, the center of town, I saw a beaten down and fearful populace. They chose accommodation because they thought they had to. Weakness makes appeasement of evil to be wisdom.

So I told the people that I wanted to hire them for a day?s work, and that I was too busy and lordly to explain it to them. They were peasants, and they could take my money, or face my wrath.

Only a few gold coins sufficed to buy three hundred people?s labor for a day.

Then I took them out, and set them to gathering brush. And then, I had them put it in line along the edge of the forest.

About this time, the peasants began to be frightened for they could see my aim. I sent the Wizard out to remind them of their promise, and the penalties attached to oath-breaking in this world.

The young girl told me as I asked that none but her and her brother had come into the forest in the last two weeks that was not evil. And the birds after telling her that also told her when a strong, steady wind would come.

So we lit the brushfires, and as commanded, the peasants began to toss burning branches at the forrest. The trees fought back. They shrieked, and moaned terrible threats while a good singer led the peasants in a song about being warm by the fireplace. Then the trees started tossing branches back.

But the branches coming back were easily dodged, and did little damage in the open field. Not so for the flaming branches, the peasants hurled. I just stood there, occasionally using my telekinesis to rescue some fellow about to be beaned on the noggin, but that?s it.

Soon, a wildfire bloomed, and then it raced eastward.

Through the night the fire burned, and as morning light pierced the tent walls, the Verboten Forest shrieked its evil last.

The next morning, the peasants stared at the battlefield, and I could see some realize that they had lived in fear for so long when a little work might have rescued them. I left them arguing about how to divvy up the new land.

We walked across the smoking ashes of the forest, now made clean by the purifying fire, and after five miles, we came to our next challenge. A stone bridge over a rushing mountain stream, and underneath it hid a horrendous troll.

No goats were around, and watching his extremely long arms flash out to snag a fly with inhuman speed and accuracy made me respect his combative skills.

He hid under the bridge because long exposure to the sun would crack his skin, and he would evaporate.

So we traveled down the stream a mite, and I borrowed the girl?s mirror. And then we aimed it so that the reflection of the sun landed on the troll.

He screamed, he cursed, but eventually he was forced to run for it, and the sun caught him in the open as a cloud dissipated, and he evaporated.

The passage over the bridge went well, but we stopped to do as the boy suggested. We put up signs explaining the troll?s demise, even as we warned people to double-check just to be safe.

The third block showed a continual thunderstorm which threw wicked jabs of lightning onto a torn landscape.

No doubt, if we walked out there, we would all be struck by lightning.

Well, I figured what the only thing to do was. I lifted myself by telekinesis, and at near ground level, I flew into the storm. And promptly, I was hit by several bolts of lightning, and since I did not offer a conductor?s path to the ground, it did very little to me, at all.

After passing through, I started to use TK to grab the others, and help them through. Or at least that was my plan, and then I wondered.

This is a faerie tale kingdom. Maybe, each person should have, and would have only one chance to really use magic to help. The girl had helped me twice already, once by magic, and once by mundane means which meant I probably had the same upcoming for the boy.

I wanted to reserve my own skills as some sort of trump card for the final ?poetry reading? as it were. The kind of reading where you tell someone?s future by reading their entrails. I?d be sure to make it rhyme.

So I asked for help, and the Wizard stepped forward with trepidation.

?It is my test.? He said severely and with a deep dignity, he walked out into the thunderstorm, and raised his wizard?s staff to the sky.

Lightning bolts began to pummel his ?lightning rod?, and I saw him stagger, not once, but thrice, until he regained his feet, and began to sing to the storm in a triumphant voice.

Full of glory, he beckoned us on as he sang the storm to its rest. Laughing we passed him, and he turned to follow us. Feeling a doom about, I turned back in time to see the earth swallow him up.

My magics did not send him free, and the storm looked to be rebuilding itself, so we pressed on sobered by the loss of our trusted guide.

As rain began again to generally fall from the sky, and not just in a blocking passage, we came to a door to a castle gatehouse.

I had hardly begun to ask the children for aid, when the boy whipped out a credit card.

He then began to jimmy with the door while his sister confided that Mom was a space cadet who always was locking herself out of cars and the house, and so her little brother had learned how to break into like, almost anything.

Within five minutes, we walked in, and crossed the moat while dark things writhed under the water. Once inside, the door behind us slammed shut, and all the doors in the Great Hall did so as well.

Fear flooded the room, but I laughed.

?Really now, you have to do better than that.? And a disgruntled Poet left off his song of fear. Instead, he conjured darkness, and eating things in the darkness.

The things in the moat rose into the air, and flew through high windows to darken the room, and chill the soul with their horrid cries.

The boy held out a stick, and it began to glow, and the shadow?s held back from him. But it was not enough. I could feel myself, and the girl weakening under the shadow?s steady and unnerving regard.

So, I asked the boy if that was the limit of his power.

?I can make wood glow. That?s it.?

I pointed out all the wood trimmings in the room, and asked him to make them all glow at one time. And before the shadows could flee, a brilliant light shown all about the Hall, and it began eating the Shadows. Within moments the Hall was empty, except for Light and us.

And then the doors on the far end of the hall slammed open, and a man in black armor and armed with a great sword walked out. I told the children to back away from me and the warrior. He asked me why I had messed up his beautiful art that he had made.

I snarled at him. Those with beautiful plans, who do not have to live with the consequences of their plans, are infuriating.

My attacks rained down on him, and then my spells fell all about him, and nothing hurt him as he chased me around the room. Until finally, I reached for the axe which was a pitiful weapon I should think. Its first blow severed the sword. By the fourth blow, all hope of his victory was gone.

?You have come to the end. Turn aside from your wickedness, and embrace mercy.? I begged him as he kneeled on the stone floor.

?No, and never.? He said, and then he thrust the broken sword into his own throat. Aghast, I backed up, and tried to shield the children?s eyes.

And then he was gone, leaving bit of dust in the air, and a pile on the stone floor. Suddenly, I realized a hideous truth?The Dark Poet is a verser, and I shall meet him somewhere else.

And then the floor cracked open, and the castle fell down all about us with no harm to any of us. The wizard rose out of the ground bearing a glass coffin.

Inside, a prince slept. Becky got all fluttery looking at him and exclaiming how cute he was, and wishing she was older.

“Come back when you are an adult, child. My older brother, the foolish boy who asked for long
years of life in exchange for his crown from the Dark Poet, he got his wish. Many years of life, sleeping in a deep sleep. Many times I have heard him cry out in his sleep that he wanted to do differently, but until now, I could not rescue him.

He and I can wait a few years for his queen to come back. We have already waited centuries.”

I thought the wizard was being a bit presumptuous, but then I looked with clear eyes at Becky, and I saw what the wizard saw. Some people are meant for each other.

Around us, in the ruins of the castle, birds landed bearing seeds, and the overcast sky was blowing away to reveal a bright, blue day.

And so we walked across the enlivening landscape, dealt with an ogre, and met a cat who made fast friends with the boy. Naturally, the cat could talk, and he started to give the boy apparently silly advice on how to deal with the bullies at school.

After our ten mile procession that stopped in several villages where the relieved people turned out to cheer the Sleeping Crown Prince, and the Princess, and the Clever Prince, and the Noble Woodsman (that would be me), and the Wizard, we came to a mirror in a glade near a road.

Through the mirror, we could see a shop. Antiques and such crowded uncomfortably atop each other, and laden with dust.

And beyond on the wall, a clock showing that ten seconds had passed for the Chance kids.

The kids and I stepped through.

And up swooped the shopkeeper with a sneer, and a harsh word about letting kids play in antique shops, and vague threats of making me pay full price for valuable objets d’ arte that looked like junk to me.

I sent the children away to their parents.

Something about him disturbed me, and so I spoke words of compulsion.

“Now who are you? What are you?”

He replied with an avidness, and an evil that shook me with horror and then rage. He was a collector of things valuable, and quite willing to trade children to the Dark Poet for them. He knew all along about the mirror.

Wrathfully, I told him to sign over his shop to me. With bitterness in his eyes, and with a shaking hand as he tried to fight my magic, the shopkeeper sold me his shop for one dollar.

But I was not done with him yet.

“Menes, menes, tekel, upharsin.” I spoke, and he fell over, quite mad, and trying to chew up the plastic flowers in a display case.

After he was taken away, I then set about cleansing the shop. First of malign influences, and then of dirt.

A gift of gold from the Wizard in the Tale Kingdom, and we greatly expanded the size of the shop. Added a restauraunt, and a number of child-friendly items.

And I kept in contact with the Chance kids until I found out that they were having to leave the city. Dad had lost his job.

So, I offered him management of the store as long as he listened to the advice of his son (who had a very smart and devious cat as a guidance counsellor). Bewildered and overjoyed, he accepted.

And I got to watch kids come in, wander the aisles, and some stopped, and saw a mirror in plain sight that never got sold. When they came back from the Kingdom of Magic an eyeblink later, they were wiser, kinder, stronger.

Content, I left the shop, and had my share of the profits donated to Ronald McDonald House.

In the wide world beyond, I found magics in small places. Ghosts in haunted mansions, and fortune tellers with the Sight, and rainmakers who had wonderfully good records of success, and so forth hiding almost in plain sight while the Establishment laughed at it all as mere fakery.

Years passed, and I learned magics from various teachers as I wandered, and then the message came by a passenger pigeon who found me, and landed on my shoulder inside a diner on Rt. 66.

“You are invited to the marriage of Prince Charming and Princess Rebecca Chance by her parents and the Wizard. RSVP.”

I smiled at the boggled customers. Paid my bill, walked out to my Harley, and booted it around toward Chicago, and the Shop, and the Mirror.

The wedding was grand, and afterwards, the Land suddenly glowed even more. For this is what the Land had been waiting for. The True King sat on the Throne, and his Queen sat on her Throne beside him, and the Chance parents looked on happily along with the Wizard and about two thousand of the locals.

During the party, I chanced on the brother who was looking well.

“Are you going to stay here?”

“I’ll visit, but no. I find Earth more interesting. I’ve got an idea…” And he sketched out a plan to revolutionize the computer industry. It would end with him taking out Microsoft which was not a bad thing at all.

“That’s going to be tough.” I said.

“Yeah. But Gates does have a serious problem.”

“What’s that?”

“He doesn’t have a cat with boots.” And the brother picked up his near-constant companion who merely looked terrifically smug, even for a cat.

At Midnight, the party ended, and I found myself atop a tall tower looking out over the friendly darkness spangled with campfires and windows lit below and stars and the moon above.

The Wizard walked up to me.

“And they lived happily ever after, Hero.”

“Good. I’m glad.”

“But you are restless. You want to find your home. I’ve sought a way to help you, and so has the Land. This is the best we have. A step or two in the right direction.”

He offered me a Ring with wishes, and a gate shining in the night to a another world which should be pretty close to mine.

Once there, I might find help. They could not be sure. But it was a surety that I would find those who needed my help.

So I stepped through the gate, and found by magic my Harley going with me. And so I rode off into the glimmering light, and into another world.

Tadeusz