As the giant doors closed behind Aldwyn, Skylar, Gilbert, and the remwalker, the light cast from the moon quickly disappeared, leaving only the flickering glow from the torches on the wall to guide them forward. Elzzup was leading the way, waddling ahead without so much as a glance back at his guests.
Drops were falling from above, landing on Aldwyn’s fur, but he couldn’t make out the source in the dark.
“What is that?” Aldwyn asked.
“Feels like some kind of dew,” Gilbert replied.
Upon passing the next torch, Aldwyn was able to see more clearly overhead.
“That’s not water, Gilbert,” he said. “That’s bat drool!”
Hundreds of cave bats hung from the ceiling, with mouths open and goo dripping from their fangs. Aldwyn shook his fur but the slime wouldn’t come off that easily.
The tunnel sloped downward, and the temperature cooled as they descended. Dark eyes glared out from every corner. It was impossible to tell what each creature was, but the sound of growling stomachs made Aldwyn less than eager to find out.
“Don’t worry about them,” Elzzup said. “They don’t feed until after midnight.”
The familiars hurried, and it wasn’t long before they were entering a cavern large enough to house a small city. Rising up from the ground were limestone stalagmites that had been hollowed out and carved into a series of buildings connected by rope bridges. Even more dramatic were the stalactites that hung from the cave ceiling. Both top and bottom seemed to be inhabited. Together, the structures from above and below formed a castle of unfathomable beauty.
“You said something about a game,” Aldwyn remarked. “When can we start?”
“How can you be so sure that the game hasn’t already begun?” Elzzup asked.
Aldwyn hated to be toyed with, but they were at the mercy of the possum’s whims. Elzzup walked through the castle door and closed it before the others had a chance to enter behind him.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Skylar asked. “Let us in.”
“I will only open it after you answer me this. When is a door not a door?” Elzzup called out from inside.
“When it’s in pieces!” Gilbert shouted. “Which is exactly what it’s going to be if you don’t open it right now.”
A mocking snicker could be heard from the other side.
“Gilbert, I’ve never seen you lose your temper like that,” Aldwyn said.
“I’m not myself on an empty stomach,” Gilbert replied.
“Fitting, given the possum’s riddle,” Skylar said. “When is a door not itself?”
“When it’s hungry?” Gilbert asked.
“What else could a door be used for?” Skylar asked. “You can put legs on it and make it a table.” She addressed Elzzup through the closed door. “When it’s a table.”
This time only silence greeted them.
“You must understand who you’re dealing with here,” the remwalker said. “Most animals view the world right side up. But a possum like Elzzup looks at things differently. Upside down is the norm.”
“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I sure could use some brain food right now,” Gilbert said. “Any chance I could find a jar of fruit flies around here?”
“That’s it, Gilbert,” Aldwyn said.
“Really? Fruit flies?” the tree frog replied.
“No,” Aldwyn said. “A jar.” He turned to the door. “A door is not a door when it is ajar.”
There was a long pause. Then the door opened, wide enough for them all to enter.
Inside the stalagmite palace, the floor was made not from stone tiles but interlocking puzzle pieces.
“Being a possum has little to do with my fondness for puzzles,” Elzzup said. “I traveled to this world just as you did, on a dreaming rug. I came alongside my loyal. We were Beyonders, bored by the routine of life in Vastia. Here things changed every day, every hour. We agreed that we would stay here forever. But then she changed her mind. I refused to go back with her, to the dull land you call home. After time, though, even the randomness of the Dreamworld became predictable. So now I entertain myself by toying with those passing through. Folks like you.”
Elzzup scurried ahead and darted around a corner. By the time the familiars and the remwalker caught up, the possum was gone. The group kept moving forward until they reached a large room with a hole at its top. What appeared to be sunlight streamed in. Not far from Aldwyn, the rays struck a prism, splitting into five beams of multicolored light. Each sliver of color shined down a different darkened passageway.
Suddenly Elzzup spoke.
“You’ll have to do a better job of keeping up. Otherwise you’re going to get left behind. Now if you hope to find me, let the sun guide you.”
Another riddle. Aldwyn knew that choosing the right path would require careful thinking. He looked before him and saw that a picture was painted above the archway to each corridor. A beam of red light stretched beneath a picture of a horse. A beam of orange beneath one of a mother and child. Yellow to a tree. Purple to a king. And blue to a lion and tiger.
“This is impossible,” Gilbert cried. “The light goes in every direction!”
“Maybe we should be focused on the different colors,” Aldwyn said. “Sunlight is orange, so perhaps that’s the path we should take.”
“I always thought the sun was yellow,” Gilbert said.
“And neither of you is taking into account the time of day,” the remwalker added. “At sunset, the light is red, or even purple.”
“Well, trees need sunlight to live,” Gilbert said. “So that’s another check for yellow. Puzzle solved.”
He started hopping toward the corridor. The moment Gilbert crossed beneath the archway, a bed of spikes came hurtling down. Aldwyn used his telekinesis to tug Gilbert out of the way, just a split second before the tree frog would have been impaled in fifty different places.
“Puzzles never really were my thing,” Gilbert said.
“The next time we might not be so lucky,” Aldwyn said.
“Maybe Gilbert was onto something by thinking about the pictures,” Skylar said. “Horse, mother and child, tree, king—”
“Wait,” Aldwyn interrupted. “Does that child look like a girl or boy?”
“A boy,” Skylar answered. “Why?”
“Because that would make him the woman’s son,” Aldwyn said.
Gilbert and Skylar nodded, and they all followed the orange light to the passageway. No spikes came rushing down from above. The group continued up a staircase that led to a room at the peak of the stalactites. Elzzup was standing beside a pedestal with a delighted look on his face.
“Well done,” the possum said. “You’ve already made it farther than most.”
Aldwyn and his companions walked closer.
“How many of these puzzles will we have to solve before you let us out of here?” Aldwyn asked.
“Just two more,” Elzzup replied. “Now look above you.”
The familiars and remwalker turned their gaze upward. The ceiling was cone shaped, its highest point directly above the pedestal, hundreds of feet in the air.
“Your next challenge is to determine the precise height of this room, but you will only have one tool to help you find your answer.” Elzzup gestured to a knife resting atop the pedestal. “This five-inch knife.”
The possum stepped back, leaving the group to ponder.
“Skylar, you can measure the distance,” Gilbert suggested. “Or, Aldwyn, you can use your telekinesis to move the knife five inches at a time.”
“It would be impossible to get an accurate reading,” Aldwyn replied. “We’d be guessing in the end, and never get the answer right.”
“There’s a mathematical way to solve this,” Skylar said. “Measure the distance from the center point of the room to the outer wall, then the distance along the wall from the bottom point to the top. If you square that distance and then subtract the square distance of the previous measurement, and then you take the square root of that, you’ll have your answer.”
Aldwyn and Gilbert just stared at her.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” the tree frog said.
“What? It’s simple trigonometry,” Skylar replied.
“We’re still relying on the accuracy of those measurements,” Aldwyn said. “If one is even the slightest bit off, we’ll fail.”
They appeared stumped. Elzzup grinned, observing from nearby.
“I think you may be using this tool in the wrong way,” the remwalker said. She walked over to the pedestal and picked up the knife in her hand. “It’s not really meant for measuring anything.”
The remwalker took a few steps toward Elzzup and put the knife to the possum’s throat.
“Why don’t you just tell us the answer,” she threatened. “Or I could make you.”
“Excellent,” Elzzup said, clapping his hands. “Let’s move on, shall we?”
The remwalker lowered the knife and Elzzup continued to the other side of the room. Aldwyn and the others followed.
“I guess when math fails, there’s always stabbing,” Gilbert said.
“I’m not sure that’s the lesson to take away from that,” Skylar replied.
“This is the final room within my castle,” Elzzup said, coming to a chamber with three separate pathways leading onward. “Should you solve this last riddle, you will be free. All you must do is choose the correct pathway. There’s only one way out that won’t end in death. So choose wisely.”
Aldwyn stared at the three paths leading forward. He watched as a trio of chained beasts emerged. In the first pathway stood a spider the size of an elephant. Its rows upon rows of fangs were chomping hungrily at the air. In the second was a small, gentle-looking woodland raccoon. And in the third a sleeping black-tooth dragon.
“We’ve still got this knife,” the remwalker said, never having let the weapon go.
“And that raccoon seems nice,” Gilbert added.
“Remember what Kalstaff always said,” Skylar remarked. “Oft times, the friendliest-looking creatures are the ones that are most dangerous.”
“Only one way out won’t end in death,” Aldwyn repeated.
“I think it’s clear what choice we have to make,” Skylar said.
Gilbert nodded his head and started walking toward the raccoon.
“The black-tooth dragon,” Skylar continued.
Gilbert froze in his tracks.
“Are you kidding?” he asked. “Deadly poison dripping from its teeth. Without the Mountain Alchemist’s sleeping powder, that would be suicide.”
“We’ve defeated a dragon like this one before,” Skylar said. “I always prefer facing the enemy I know over those I don’t.”
“There has to be a certain answer,” Aldwyn said. “We can’t just go on intuition. It’s a trick. Something we’re not considering.”
“Maybe there’s a secret passageway out of here, or a trapdoor of some kind,” Skylar said.
They started searching the chamber, feeling the floor and walls for any inconsistencies. Once again, Elzzup watched, wringing his paws in anticipation.
“It doesn’t seem like there’s any other way out,” Aldwyn said. “Just these three paths, and the way we came in, of course.”
“What if that’s the answer?” Gilbert asked. “We don’t go forward. We go back.”
Aldwyn thought about it for a moment. It did make sense.
“There’s only one way out that won’t end in death,” Skylar said yet again. “Elzzup never said that it had to be one of these paths.”
The four of them turned their backs to the chained beasts and started for the chamber’s entrance, leaving Elzzup behind. They headed toward the cone-shaped room and found that instead of going back to where they’d been, the path led them straight out of the castle, through a passage that deposited them on the other side of the mountain. The stars of the night sky glimmered above them. Stranger still, Elzzup was already standing there.
“You proved yourselves quite up to the challenge of my games,” the possum said. “But I’ve always been a bit of a sore loser.”
Suddenly, the elephant spider, raccoon, and black-tooth dragon were standing behind him. The beasts began closing in on the familiars and the remwalker. Even though Aldwyn was feeling nervous, he wouldn’t show it.
“That’s the best you can do?” the street-smart cat asked.
“I can do whatever I want,” Elzzup replied, stroking his necklace. “With this cube, my powers are limitless.”
“Powerful enough to create something that even your necklace couldn’t destroy?” Aldwyn asked.
“If I wanted.”
“I don’t believe it,” Aldwyn said.
“Aldwyn, we’re trying to get rid of monsters, not make more of them,” Gilbert said.
Elzzup clutched the cube and another creature rose up from the ground, this one bigger, stronger, meaner, and uglier than the rest. Its arms were made of rock and mud, tentacles stretched from its mouth, and sharp horns protruded from its head.
“Do you doubt me now?” Elzzup asked boastfully.
“No,” Aldwyn said.
Just then, the beast lowered a huge, stomping foot atop the possum’s head, crushing him and the cube necklace instantly. There was no way the necklace could destroy the monster now. It turned to the spider, raccoon, and dragon, and as they fought one another, Aldwyn and his companions made a run for safety.
“Did you see what that thing did to Elzzup?” Gilbert asked, still shaken.
“I’ve heard of possums playing dead before, but that gives the saying a whole new meaning,” Skylar replied.
They looked back to see that the raccoon was the only one who was holding his own, having grown to ten times its size and burst into flames. The remwalker led them across the flatlands, and in the distance Aldwyn could see the reflective surface of the glass ball housing the Palace of Dreams and a flurry of snowflakes.
“That’s it,” Aldwyn said. “That’s where I saw the queen.”
He only hoped she was still there now and that she had the answers they had come looking for.