Chapter 2 - Dewey Decimal

“This thicket has to end eventually,” came a one-tone voice on one side of interlaced bracken fronds.

“Sure… after the… nettles… tax… half our… skin,” complained another from the same place.

A knotty pole of wood slashed the woven bracken. A candlelight sliver struck a patch of clear earth on the other side. Honeydew wriggled through the wall behind her whacking stick. Burs ran in zigzag lines and bunched like grapes across her robe; they seemed to irritate the golden-lily eyes with a bloodshot tint. Mr. Grey pushed the edges of the bracken tear gently wider, and followed her into the clearing with his candle-stick. He carried no burs. Instead he wore, over his head and shoulders, a cloak of ivy; the climbing kind.

Mr. Grey examined the tangle of plants enclosing them. The same tangle they’d plumbed for many tocks. He pinched his chin, then walked to a thin-looking barrier of rushes. As he parted them with the dirt-end of his candle-stick, he said, “You know, I haven’t noticed a clause in the visa applications regarding plant allergens. I might suggest it to Mr. York when we’re back in Starharbor.”

He broke through the rushes and stepped into another tiny plot of clear ground. Honeydew prowled in behind. She said, “I should hold our visa from now on.”

“To what purpose?”

“You’re careful. But I’m a fiercer protector, we both know. Any beast could be prowling behind the next weed.”

Honeydew cleaved at a Queen-Anne’s-Lace barrier. She gained only a fresh supply of that plant’s burs. Her stick thudded like it had struck dirt. One of the baby-skin-bark trees hid behind the flowering screen. They’d find no passage that way.

Mr. Grey pushed a clinging vine from his brow. “I believe that’s against King’s Law. The prime signatory on the document the proper holder,” He stepped to a thinner part of the thicket. He stopped when he saw ivy; the poison kind. He searched for a better route.

“I’m this vacation’s leader,” said Honeydew. She plucked one of Queen Anne’s burrs and flicked it back at that royal plant. “By decisions-made and ends-forwarded.”

“Don’t we each pull our weight when the time calls? No need to classify a ‘leader’.”

“Tom led before. The wrong way. Now I can take the… it’s like a steam swan,” said Honeydew with a stick-swish to emphasize the idea. “You remember our ride? How clumsy. Each trying to handle one side. Think of it that way. I’ve got a license for picking routes.” Honeydew swung a sideways slash out at another barrier, this one Cobbler’s Pegs. Behind it, she found another wide trunk.

Mr. Grey set his violin coffin on a thick, soft root. He held the candle flame to a patch of brambles. The light lay like melted butter over clusters of anvil-shaped berries. He plucked a fruit but didn’t swallow it. Mr. Grey said, “I also think it’s safest in the coffin. It’s a fragile swatch. A shame if it got stained in this overgrowth. Or if a thorn tore it from a pocket.”

Honeydew had reached for the coffin when Mr. Grey said the visa was snugly inside. She stopped, however, at Mr. Grey’s description; the tiny cloth, stained or torn. She shuffled around the coffin, like an old dog around a sleeping kitten, and walked next to him. Honeydew folded her arms at Mr. Grey and the fruits. He shrugged, so she snatched an ironberry from the bramble and bit. The anvil popped with a juicy spray between her teeth. After a few chews she spit.

“No good,” said Honeydew with a bitter grimace. “Tastes like blood-beans.”

“It did seem too easy.”

“If you’re the leader, point the way, Captain Grey.”

“I’m not-” Mr. Grey stopped and let the argument slide. “This way looks clear of nettles, burs, and ivy at any rate.” Mr. Grey reached back, grabbed his coffin up with his suitcase, and pushed through the bramble with the torch. Honeydew followed.

After a short, bushy rustle of their own, they came out into another bubble of breathing-room in the tangled thicket. More walls of rushes, brambles, bracken, nettles, ivy (climbing), ivy and oak and sumac (poisonous), beggarticks and cockleburs and puncturevines, and every other strain of thorned, prickly, ill-begotten shrubs and weeds and vines, closed in. Only the less-penetrable trees or, rarer yet, an occasional thumbtack of moonlight shining from another clearing, interrupted the weave.

As Mr. Grey and Honeydew entered this clearing - alike to each they’d entered before - neither was more or less dressed in burs or ivy. Both wished for a break in the long, wooded night. Both felt just as hopeless lost in the undergrowth maze. Both were hungry.

“We’ve been here before,” said Honeydew with a groansome click. She shook her bur-tangled hair. “I recognize that tree. We’re going in circles!”

Mr. Grey pondered the growth around them; the ivy vines clinging to his shoulders gave him an old, wise look. “But the plants don’t show signs of passage. And look,” he added, holding his lighted stick lower, “the soil has no tracks.”

“But the trees look alike.”

“Our only experience is with poetrees. Not much in the arboreal way back in Starharbor.”

“Meaning?”

“Nothing particular. Only that, well, they look similar to me too. But I’d say they’re different trees, than the ones you’re thinking of, when we get down to it.”

“Maybe it’s an enchanted forest? Maybe someone’s playing a tune and a trick. The plants might move over our tracks.”

“Well…” Mr. Grey’s monotone sounded doubtful.

“Okay, fine. That’s absurd,” said Honeydew. She swished her stick through the rushes. “We might as well be circling.”

“What we should do is stop for a moment. Consider the circumstances.” Mr. Grey set his violin and suitcase down and stuck the bottom of his stick in the dirt. He held his hands up to the flame for warmth.

Honeydew plucked at the sticky plant pods on her robe. “You’re the one pushing us forward.” She sighed, set her own suitcase down, and prodded at the leaves and branches. Tocks passed; they stretched lungs and limbs in tired silence.

“Could we burn our way out?” suggested Honeydew after a moment’s thinking. “No, forget that. It’s too verdant, and too much risk. If I only had something sharper than this stick. A knife or a hatchet.”

“King’s law-” began Mr. Grey.

“Not a weapon then. An ice skate might work.”

“We could call for help.”

“Bet not. No one else’s fool enough to enter this tangle.”

“It has to end sometime.” Mr. Grey breathed determinedly through his nose. “We’ll just try to go straightmost.”

Honeydew nodded, but looked glumly at the weed walls. Mr. Grey untangled his anchor shawl from the ivy drapes. While folding it for his suitcase, he noticed not one bur sticking on the ship-weight wrap. He held it to Honeydew and said, “You could try wearing this. The fabric seems resistant to the grabbers and stickers.”

Honey gave a noncommittal click. “Forget it,” she said.

“Are you sure? Wouldn’t you rather be less laden with burs?”

“I’d rather not be in this to start with. But we’re here, and I’m coated. It’s no use now. Thanks but no thanks.”

Mr. Grey re-entangled the shawl with the gathered ivy coat. “Well like I said, we’ll just persevere. It has to end eventually.”

“I guess so.”

Honeydew lifted her suitcase and prodded the walls with her stick. Mr. Grey noticed her heart didn’t seem to be in the act. He considered going back on his earlier thought; letting her carry the visa. After all, did it matter who held it as long as they stuck together? But in the end, he thought it better keeping the cloth - their proof of identity, their passport through the Odormoats - safe in his coffin. Instead, Mr. Grey decided to inspire by example. He ignored the hunger in stomach, and the cold, and the woods’ close darkness, and stepped through the thin-looking wall of hedge.

Mr. Grey entered the next clearing; an ivy overgrown statue enchanted with existence. He found it occupied. There stood two ghosts. Mr. Grey saw they were ghosts - despite their wearing cardigan-style robes, as any non-ghost might - by their trademark ghostly translucence, like a shadow on the water.

The ghosts picked at a bramble as they gathered anvil-shaped berries. They didn’t notice Mr. Grey or the light of his candle. Honeydew entered quietly behind. The hairs on her neck stood pointed. Mr. Grey cleared his throat and said, “Pardon, hello.”

The ghosts, a man and woman, spun. The man yelled, “Evil Stepmothers! What a start.”

---

A swinging chair groaned as Mr. Grey leaned into it. He watched the ghosts swinging soundlessly across from him on the treehouse porch. Mr. Grey said, “Kind of you to guide us from that nest, Mr. McDourr, Mrs. McDourr. We’ve been lost since we arrived.”

Wilson, the Mr. of the McDourrs, held his insubstantial spine erect, smoothed out a wrinkle in the window-shutter pattern of his see-through robe, and twisted a curl in his mustache. In a tone commendable to Mr. Grey’s ear, he said, “Mr. Grey, it may be that trolls crush your bones and tan your skin, it is possible that goblins pilfer your purse, and you will find it extraordinarily likely to encounter conniving elves with designs upon your heart or mind. Let it not be said, however, that Wilson McDourr and Anna McDourr have ever treated a lost stranger discourteously. The McDourrs, sir, are a courteous clan.”

“Will be a courteous clan, Sweets,” added Anna McDourr, with a posh dusting of her rocking-chair-pattern robe. “Are a courteous pair, I hope. But where clans go, only some tale may tell if we will be.”

“Will be then, of course, Love. Now Mr. Grey; to what cause are we indebted for the joy of your disorientation?”

Mr. Grey made a long, mechanical hinging motion of the jaw; a yawn. He said, “That’s… hmmm. Where to begin?” He looked sideways at Honeydew. She sat beside him, motionless in her swinging chair. She seemed unwilling to engage with the conversation, or the McDourrs. She fixed her eyes on the barren tea-table between their circle of seats, or on the crooked sapling-posts supporting the porch, or on the suitcase beside her, or on the backs of her hands; but never on the McDourrs. Having no support, Mr. Grey stopped to think. He ruminated on the view beyond the porch’s rail of fleshy wood.

Mr. Grey, Honeydew, and the weightless ghosts sat in their wicker chairs; in a hollow recess of a towering, crooked archtree; far, far above the rest of the forest’s canopy. They’d ascended a long, curving, steep stairway of pillowy steps attached with big iron nails to the trunk. Honeydew had looked for apples among the lower branches as they climbed, but all the near ones had been picked bare. As they stepped higher, The Old Wind’s breezes blew harder, until they reached the canopy and passed from her typical haunt. Now, far away below, an endless sea of leaves shivered - like coins atop a running dragon engine - under a cold crescent moon. The big leaves of the big tree moved in The Wind with a bassy, wave-ish sound, and big owls hooed like whales.

Mr. Grey had known worse places for pondering. The McDourrs let Mr. Grey think for many moments, beside the gently crashing leaves of the moonlit forest sea. Both Anna and Wilson did, however, put in an occasional impatient shuffle. They threw meaningful glances at their own pile of spectral packing bags, which sat by a screen door leading into the trunk.

After many tocks, Mr. Grey said, “The main reason we’re in Dreamland is; we’re searching for someone. Her name is Jodee Coats.”

“Miss Coats?” Mrs. McDourr started, and sent her chair swooping back.

“You know her?”

“Know her! Husband, did we not speak with such another misplaced soul? But a short eon past?”

“We certainly did,” said Mr. McDourr, with a wag of his head. “And if this lost soul and your lost soul both walk this moat in a robe like a dragon engine, with a potted alwayslush tucked under her arm, then by-my-bald-head, they’re the same!” He touched the top of his tonsured head softly, as if placing himself under oath.

“That’s wonderful news,” said Mr. Grey with inward excitement. He turned a blank face to Honeydew. “If they saw her not long ago, and she was lost, we can’t be far behind.”

Honeydew still sat hunched up. She did look at Mr. Grey, and said, “True about the time. But her being lost doesn’t make your job easier.”

Before Mr. Grey could say anything, Wilson spoke. “It is always thus, at ‘once upon a time…’. Everyone is astray at the beginning. They find themselves eventually.”

Mr. Grey suppressed another yawn and said, “That is a weight gone. We’ll catch her soon, I think.”

Mrs. McDourr hissed a word of shame. Mr. McDourr jumped to his feet and pointed a spectral finger at Mr. Grey. He said, “You daren’t go a-hunting for young girls, daren’t you!?”

“Ms. Coats, sir… Her influence… She’s not from here, you understand?”

“She seemed a fine, ‘riding hood’ sort to me,” said Anna McDourr. She pursed her lips, a look made macabre by the grinning skull visible behind her translucent skin.

“Dear, dear,” said Wilson in a soothing tone. “Let us not involve ourselves in affairs of which we may not recognize all the circumstances. Though I do say, sir,” he added, turning to Mr. Grey, “that yours is a remarkably unhappy-sounding manner of adventure.”

“And you’ve caught us at a poor juncture,” added his wife. “Right at the tail of a move. So much left to pack. We’re ill-arranged for hosting at this moment. And the night grows long.”

The ghosts stood. Another yawn from Mr. Grey didn’t sit them back down, so he stood also. He prepared for a courteous, though unhappy, exit down the tree stairs. Honeydew stood eagerly.

Just then, The Old Wind said, “Oh! Such a bothersome talk, so high in my air,” Her voice bellowed from far away over the silver sea of leaves, but with enough force still to reach their high perch. The whole huge tree rocked and groaned and writhed, and swung their seats for them if they would not. The Wind forced Mr. Grey and Honeydew, standing as they were, to brace on the plushy wooden rail.

Mr. and Mrs. McDourr shared an awkward eye. Anna said, “The Old Wind never complains so. Not around our tree.” She plucked at the rocking-chair collar of her robe.

“It’s a lovely house,” said Mr. Grey.

“This is a library, sir,” said Wilson, with a stately hand pressed partway through his incorporeal chest.

“Wilson,” said Anna with a note of reproach, “it does seem a shame to turn away strays. When the Wind’s in a temper. Without a fare-thee-well to set them a-going.”

Mr. Grey added, “Any leftovers, or even party snacks, we’d be grateful for.” Honeydew cast a longing eye down the crooked stair, but her stomach lent its voice to aid Mr. Grey.

Wilson huffed. “I shan’t say its filling, sir and madam,” he began, in what sounded like half-apology, half-pride, all-ghostly-wail.

“We’ll take anything you’ll give.”

“Well, a fellow must cut his coat according to his cloth. We have often gifted wandering spirits with a mean bowl of punch.”

“Do let’s stir up a batch, dear,” said Anna. “Give this pair a warm sip to travel by.”

“I am retrieving the pot this very tock, my love.”

Mr. Grey’s stomach expressed doubts on the nutritional value of the McDourr’s punch, particularly when Mr. Grey’s eyes saw the translucent pot Wilson grabbed. Mr. Grey’s feet, however, gladly took the excuse to stay longer. He returned to his swing at double the usual sitting speed; practically a collapse. Honeydew eased back into hers. She kept her muscles tense, her arms wearing their striations. Her knuckles - wrapped around the hazel-like stick of soft wood, blanched when Wilson doled their punch into individual cups. He used an incongruously corporeal spoon, which seemed to float unaided over the translucent pot on the coffee table.

The ghosts drank quietly from their cups. Honeydew only stared suspiciously at hers. Mr. Grey wanted to grab his fiddle and flavor the punch for her, but thought their host might take it rudely. He sipped from his cup; not enough for a real taste.

Mr. Grey felt a guest’s obligation to carry the dialogue. He said, “It’s a lovely library-tree. I’m surprised you’re giving up the view. Is it an HOA thing? The tree sticking out from nearby tree-homes?”

Mrs. McDourr’s eyes drooped. She shook her head and set her drink down. “I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Grey, Ms. Honeydew, that we love this old library.”

Wilson said, “This is - as you no doubt recognized upon ascending the long stair and beholding the broad copse - a dwelling of singular and spectacular kind.” He spread his spectral arms wide for emphasis, and spoke on with a solemn, whispery voice. “And the collection of knowledge within these ringed walls is, one may hazard, beyond that of many an enchantress’ tower or king’s castle.”

“But high, my dear,” said Anna with a short ghost-wail. “And a dangerous precipice. Wouldn’t you agree Mr. Grey, Ms. Honeydew?”

Mr. Grey nodded. Wilson said, “I do not dispute. I only set forth the case in its plainest language, to paint the most-comprehensible picture.”

“I know, Love. It only makes me moan that the wants of family and home should be crossed.” She turned with an explaining air to Mr. Grey. “You see, Mr. Grey, Ms. Honeydew, Mr. McDourr and I hope to begin a family.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Grey. He examined both the puff-chested specter of Wilson McDourr, and the complacent Anna rocking weightlessly in her chair. Honeydew kept her mouth tight, and her eyes fixed on the ladle floating in the translucent punch bowl. After a tock, Mr. Grey added, “Congratulations.”

“Thank you, Mr. Grey,” said Wilson, whose see-through chest took on roosterish proportions.

“We’re not expecting yet,” said Anna, but with such determined and conspicuous joy that she might have stated the opposite. “But when we are, our towering library-tree - though it has a splendid view - seems unsafe. You understand?”

“No educational facilities in the immediate vicinity either,” added Wilson. “The McDourrs, Anna and Myself, wish for our daughters and sons the best opportunities of education and society.”

Mr. Grey approached his next questions slowly. “Pardon the question, I hope it’s not rude to ask, but can ghosts-”

“Poltergeists, sir,” said Wilson, with a firm, patronizing, slow blink of his eyes. The spirits emphasized their point by fluttering the pages of an open book sitting near the door, without moving an eyelash.

Mr. Grey looked between the book and the McDourrs. “It’s still a shame to leave a library. So it seems to us. Honeydew and I are always playing catch-up-as-we-go wherever we travel. A day - even a few moments - to read up on the local culture would be a boon.” He looked to Honeydew to back him up. She nodded, once. Her eyes closely tracked the ladle, and she unconsciously mirrored its stirring with her hazel stick.

The ghosts seemed to miss Mr. Grey’s unsubtle hint. “How is it you have established yourself as the primary concern of these adventures, sir?” asked Wilson.

“It’s just one vacation. All Odormoat passage is covered by our visa.”

“Your visa!” the McDourrs said as one. The book fluttered with a projector sound at the ghosts’ astonishment. The Old Wind roared distantly at their commotion. The rocking chairs on Anna’s spectral robe seemed to creak with the noise of her real rocking in the swing seat. Honeydew tensed.

“You will, I hope, excuse our astonishment, my good sir,” said Mr. McDourr when the couple had got past their spectral show. “Not one among the travelers who we’ve lodged for a stretch of night has ever held, in their possession, a genuine visa.”

“Reallytruly?” asked Mr. Grey.

“One by one, or two by two, not any’s had their documents,” said Anna.

“That’s surprising. I’ve worked before on changes-of-address for Dreamland. But then, we’re far from Starharbor.”

“And you’ve retained hold on yours all this long way?” asked Mr. McDourr. He smiled and shook his head, as if to add, ‘not bad old sport’.

“We’ve kept it, or kept its twin,” said Mr. Grey. He glanced at Honeydew, then the ghosts. “It’s a cloth replacement from Wine Medo. Our original was lost.”

“Stolen,” Honeydew chimed in. She immediately pressed her mouth shut.

“True. Our original parchments were stolen. This one’s the same as far as legitimacy.”

“Parchment is preferable,” said Mr. McDourr. “A greater pleasure to flip. And it covers all travel, your visa? Both for you, Mr. Grey, and you, Ms. Honeydew?”

“Let’s not press them on identifying particulars, husband,” said Mrs. McDourr. “Now we know they’re folk of many lands, I’ve a single wish to hear their stories.”

“A magical proposal. Do give us your tall tales Mr. Grey, Ms. Honeydew. Soliloquize upon Wine Medo, and other Odormoats of note.”

The ghosts leaned creakily forward in their swinging seats. Mr. Grey rubbed an eye and looked out across the ocean of silvered woods. He said, “There hasn’t been much to tell I’m afraid. We’ve been to Wine Medo, and Glory Days, and seen some sights at both.”

“Oh, but do tell us how it compares,” pleaded Mrs. McDourr. “What’s your impression of Dreamland?”

“It’s- To be, perhaps, too strong; there’s a surprising lack of the king’s presence.”

“A truthful statement,” sighed Wilson.

“We were hoping to speak with a bouncer of the law.”

“Very few to be got, it grieves me to say. The Queen’s Law is the established kind in Dreamland. Not the king’s.”

“Queen’s law?” asked Mr. Grey. The archtree groaned in the Wind, and he swung back in his seat.

“And she’s an idler,” said Anna with a flick of the book pages.

“Now, my love,” said Wilson reprovingly. “Let us not make sweeping statements on the good and evil of Her Queenship.”

“The fact is, Mr. Grey,” said Anna in a gentler voice, “that the monarchy hasn’t turned smoothly over in dreamland. It’s a legal nightmare, and the result is; the country’s unsafe. Especially for a family.”

“Dear me,” said Mr. Grey in sympathetic monotone.

Wilson nodded. “You shall find King’s Law governs one setting, Queen’s Law another. Trolls demanding unsanctioned bridge tolls. Faeries conniving to steal your vigor. There is even, roaming through the forest, a fierce dragon.”

“Steam?”

“The other variety.”

“I see why you’d choose to move.”

“Not to suggest everything’s doom and gloom,” said Anna. “But we feel there’s more verdant pastures, for raising a family. Better frontiers.”

Mr. Grey touched his ticker through its pocket, drawing comfort. He glanced at Honeydew; she remained withdrawn. He said, “Do you think you could help by pointing us to the nearest migration office? King’s or Queen’s.”

Anna pulled on her twin braids of hair, and gave a banshee moan to match The Wind. “If only we knew!”

Wilson said, “There, there, my love. We shall discover our course, by and by. I’ve an omen that our fortunes are turning.”

Mr. Grey recognized it was a poor subject, and all fell silent. The tree creaked. The translucent pot of punch steamed. The moon’s shine struck right through the McDourrs, and glinted off the polished metal case of Mr. Grey’s ticker as he consulted it. He watched a few tocks go by on the ebony hands, then said, “Goodness, I didn’t realize it had gotten so late.”

“We have enjoyed each other’s company, my good sir and madam,” said Mr. McDourr. He chuckled and rubbed the arms of his swinging chair, as he felt a sudden spiritual vigor. Again, the poltergeist seemed to miss Mr. Grey’s point.

Honeydew watched Mr. Grey’s jaw loosen for another mechanical yawn. In an uncharacteristic, demure tone, she asked him, “Do you think it’s safe? Sleeping in this tree?”

“By all means do!” said Anna with sudden enthusiasm. Wilson looked to the portal in the soft wood wall; a light screen door, with an old enchanters’ hat styled into the crosswork lattice, and a horseshoe nailed above the threshold. It creaked torturously open.

---

“UGHHHHH! Such heavy steps. Such clamor in my high, high sky. Who shakes the boughs; my boughs! Who rattles the leaves; my leaves! WHO, WHO, WHOOOOO!”

The Old Wind howled outside the library-tree. She drew creaking groans from its huge limbs. Her fury against the canopy rocked the great trunk to and fro, like a dropped sail tossing its ship in a storm, while the leaves and littler limbs whipped like rigging.

Inside the tall tree, conditions were little better. Books tumbled from the recessed shelves which lined the maze of veiny tunnels wriggling through the solid trunk. The jerk and sway of the high tree threw tomes pell-mell from places where they’d long rested; sometimes with a birdlike flutter of parchment and leather; sometimes like bricks, when their pages were glued together by tree-sap.

Mr. Grey dropped like a stone, just in time to avoid one sap-glued book, ‘The Hound and the Snowfinch’, as it shot overhead. He stood and swayed to the floor’s tempo. He’d tried steadying himself on the grainy wall at first, but gave up when his hand came off sticky with sap. Now he plodded on his wobbly way; looking for a tockwork-crag-rhythm in his cadence; one hand wrapped around the soft candle-stick-staff; the other hand held rigid - fingers splayed, palm down - for balance. All the while he dodged barrages of library lore: crumbling biographies, stoat-leather bound collections of folk tales, ancient slate tablets of legendary enchanters erased by ages of tree sap, stolen scrolls from the Bubble of Antiquity’s tombs, incunabula in bottles, and binders upon binders up binders of old family photos. All these flew at Mr. Grey, with a thunder to match the heaviest parchmentwork-mine tunnel collapse.

Mr. Grey called out, far too loud for a library. “Mr. and Mrs. McDourr. Honeydew? Is anyone awake?”

Honeydew’s voice answered. “I’m here! Somewhere. There’s no sleeping right now.”

Mr. Grey swayed through the dark hall, leading the way with his candle, while The Wind shuddered the floor beneath him. After several steps and half-a-dozen books dodged, he said, “Are you sheltering on a shelf?” He glanced at the nearest hollow in the wood. The bookshelves were uncannily-shaped. They might have snugly fit a coffin, or a mummified corpse. He half-expected to find such remains lurking in each recess.

“Honeydew?” he called again after getting no response. He heard a dull thud, like a tome hitting the soft, flesh-like bark. Except that inside, the tree was firm, regular wood… Mr. Grey quickened his trot down the shifting hall. He raised his voice higher. “Honeydew, are you alright?”

“I’m… fine,” came her voice from some unknown distance along the twisting tunnels. “A book flew at me. Like it had its own mind. I got it with my stick.”

Mr. Grey stopped and leaned back with relief. Just in time, as a volume of ‘Fingerling the Fat and Fingerling the Slim’ came hurtling past his eyes. The Wind had struck the tree with another powerful blow. She yelled, “Stomp stomp stomp! Shout shout shout! Is this that fun for you? I’ll blow you away, you blackguard intruders!”

Mr. Grey tried calling loud enough for Honeydew to hear, but soft enough for the library. “I’m thinking even the desert glassstorm didn’t have this gale’s pitch.”

“We’ve got to get out,” said Honeydew. “You do hear the howling too, right?”

“You mean The Wind?”

“I sure hope it’s The Wind.”

Mr. Grey climbed across a forty-volume catalog of Wine Medo flowers piled on the floor ahead of him. He held his candle ahead, and picked the left path when he came to a fork in the tunnel. He said, “A shame she’s disorganizing all this writing. I was picking loads of tidbits about Dreamland, just since we got in.”

“Any treatise on tree-vein navigation?”

“No. I started on a catalog of local customs; given in short story form. Did you know-” He paused to duck a copy of ‘The Four Serfs’. “Did you know, there’s one about a lost farmhand who came here without a visa? And apparently they don’t issue them in Dreamland. He had to telecard friends back home. I think the farmhand was a prince, but that didn’t factor in the story.”

He heard another thwack of stick on book, and stumbled down another left fork trying to follow the sound. Honeydew called, “I’ll admit this place had decent reading. Didn’t sleep a wink, but I did find a tour pamphlet in the end table by my bed. There’s more in this dream forest than trees: tiny castles, wicker palaces, towns inside of heads.”

“Glad it’s not all woods and nettles.”

“If we find a way out.”

Mr. Grey stopped at an intersection of a half-dozen tunnels. He called out at the juncture, so that his voice echoed down each route. “It’s a strange place. Dreamland. People don’t seem to have anything resembling weapons.”

“Great,” came Honeydew’s voice - he couldn’t tell from which tunnel - followed by a sarcastic click.

“They just surrender. Sometimes that works, sometimes not. It seems like a lot of wanderers from other moats wind up in Dreamland. And it seems a lot stop existing shortly after.”

Mr. Grey listened for a moment; yowling Old Wind, creaking wood, book thunder; like a ship in a sea-storm. He leaned on his stick against a lurch in the floor, and watched a river of books tumble from one tunnel down another. He felt frustrated with the odd arrangement of the twisting, sticky-walled tunnels. And he felt frustrated with the ghosts; poltergeists, he remembered. He felt it wasn’t quite the host-some thing; leaving guests wandering alone in this hubbub.

Mr. Grey again sent his voice running through the tunnels. “Honeydew, do you think weightlessness makes it harder to hear?”

“Why?”

Mr. Grey had her voice’s origin narrowed down to one of three adjacent veins. He once more chose the left, and marched. He dodged another book missile, and then another, fluttering like bats against him down the tunnel.

After a tock, and another dodge, Mr. Grey heard Honeydew ask, “Mr. Grey, do you think this library’s haunted?”

“Not anymore. This is surely enough racket to wake the ghosts. How do we find each other? Or get our luggage? What a nest, this place.”

“I can’t hear you over that Wind’s whining!”

“We could go by sections. As long as it’s Dewey Decimal. What subjects do you see on the spines?”

“I can’t tell. All the books are scattered. You?”

“It’s the same.”

“What if she hits this tree with a real blow? Enough to throw us off our feet? Hey!” Mr. Grey heard, by the change in the echo’s volume, that Honeydew now addressed The Old Wind herself. “We’d get out of your stupid tree faster if you stopped making a mess of the place.”

The Old Wind’s howl of, “OH BE QUIET!” juddered the walls. Flecks of sap flew off the nearest and onto Mr. Grey. He fell against the hard-interior-wood side of the tunnel, and lacquered the back of his robe in the same sap. He brought a palm in a sheltering gesture around the candle.

Mr. Grey peeled himself from the wall. He abandoned any attempt at a library volume when he shouted, “Maybe one of us could leave a shiny pebble trail?”

“This bitter breeze would scatter them,” said Honeydew. Mr. Grey heard a hasty foot-patter mix with the general jumble of falling books. Honeydew continued at a high strain, “This is intolerable; she’s shaking my insides up!”

“Wind, I think-” began Mr. Grey. He stopped short to dodge a torso-sized tome; bound in sheepskin, bearing the title, ‘The Courageous Cobbler’ on the front in giant letters of gold. “Wind, we just need our suitcases and we’ll hurry off.”

But The Wind howled without pity against the archtree library. Books and sap flew like gulls and wave foam from rocks. Mr. Grey barely kept his feet on the quaking, creaking wood floor. He climbed into one of the sticky, hollow shelves, empty of books, with the thought of waiting out the Wind’s fury. He’d walk softer after she’d spent herself.

He was about to call out this plan to Honeydew, when her voice reached him with its own scheme. “I won’t be cooped a tock more. I found a window. Ugh! It’s still night… I’m going to try climbing. See if you can find it and follow!”

Before Mr. Grey could suggest a warning or counterplan, he heard, through the howl and the leather-thunder, the sharp snap of a windowpane bolt. Instantly the Old Wind’s howl turned primevally vicious; like baying in a deeper holt from some ancient wolf brood. The veiny tunnels billowed with a sudden flash-flood of air. Books whizzed past like lightning-burners. Syrup flew from the wall in snotty streams. Mr. Grey felt himself dragged from the crypt-like hollow despite all his clutching. When his candle stick arm was sucked into the corridor, the flame and its light winked out. A moment later, the Wind yanked Mr. Grey himself into her torrent.

Mr. Grey slid through the slimy, sticky, inky tunnels. He’d never experienced a sensation like it; to be simultaneously held back by the tree’s sap and flung forward by The Wind’s force; like a stone nail dragged against the grains of a wooden chalkboard. Books battered Mr. Grey ceaselessly through his unwilling ride; more than one struck painfully right over his old whirlpool-coliseum-dodgeball head wound. He couldn’t see these blows to know they were coming; the only forewarning was a brief, loud whistle sounding suddenly and sharply through the gale, just before impact. That, and the thunder of falling tomes, and Honeydew’s own distant yelling, were his only sensory indicators.

Just when Mr. Grey thought The Wind meant to toss them about until they became a pulpy, non-existing mush mixed with the disordered books, his eyes caught a lesser darkness. A tock passed, the light swelled. With a belch of air, Mr. Grey tumbled from a hole in the great trunk’s base. He sprawled between two huge, quivering roots of the archtree, on a patch of dirt where the leaves and needles had been blown away. Hundreds of books lay scattered over the earth.

He looked back to the dark tunnel, still spewing air and books. He stood up and stepped aside. A moment later a howling of greater pitch heralded Honeydew’s expulsion. She hurtled from the tree tunnel, rolled like a tumbleweed past many piles of books, found her footing, and slid to a stop. She rose - hair and robe frazzled - and stalked to Mr. Grey. She wore a bewildered look in her eyes, as though their oil had been shaken with water.

A moment later, Mr. Grey saw their suitcases and his violin coffin slide out as well. He walked casually - the gale from the hollow having receded - and retrieved their belongings. The Old Wind exited the archtree in a belch that churned up dust and leaves. “Good riddance!” she huffed. She whirled away into the silver sky, with a rustle of the lower canopy.

Mr. Grey turned to Honeydew and held up their luggage. He said, “At least we still have our stuff.”

Honeydew nodded absently, then shook her head. “I- I got mixed up there. Before the Wind. Something gave me the creeps.” She shook her head again, settled her eyes, straightened her hair and robe. “Glad our stuff’s safe. Though I lost my stick. And We’re still hungry. And it wasn’t a long rest, it’s still night.”

Mr. Grey shrugged. “It seems to always be night in Dreamland. But it’s a good moon for walking under.” He handed Honeydew her suitcase. He balanced his own suitcase and the violin coffin in each hand, and turned away from the archtree, toward the forest. “Think of all we learned. We’ve got a head start on local customs. We’ll catch Jodee in no time.”

They left the library, and set off, back into the woods; richer by an education, poorer by… Well, at least two sticks and a candle.