Affretz sat up and rubbed his eyes. Was something wrong? He couldn’t hear Deedee talking.
There was nothing much to see but the wagon, the sinister forest, and the horses. He was about to call out when he heard Archels’s voice.
“How could we let him get away? I wanted to find out what dragon steak tastes like?”
“Well, to judge by this dragon,” Alain answered, “It probably tastes a lot like chicken.”
His brothers stepped out onto the path, sliding swords back into their scabbards. “What’s new?” asked Affretz. “Did you all go off and leave me sleeping while something exciting was going on?”
“You looked as if you needed your sleep,” Alain said. “It wasn’t all that exciting. Just a little purple dragon. Deedee wasn’t afraid of it for a second.”
“Where is she?” asked Archels.
“Didn’t she go with you?” Affretz demanded.
After Alain and Archels explained the situation, they all called for their companion. When there was no answer, the brothers drew their swords again.
“I knew there had to be some kind of fiend behind all this,” said Alain. “You can tell it’s that kind of forest, just by looking at it.”
“We didn’t pass any fiends on our way from the south,” said Archels. “Maybe if we keep going north, we’ll find the fiend.”
“Let’s hurry,” said Affretz. Even if Deedee was able to talk for hours on end without getting tired, she was still not the sort of person you liked to think of in the clutches of a fiend.
The princes rode north, but before they got very far, they found the path broke into three narrower paths. “Which way do you suppose the fiend is on?” asked Archels.
“Well, there are three paths and three of us,” Alain replied. “Shout if you see Deedee or any fiends.”
Alain took the path to the right. Not very far along it, he heard a whimper. He didn’t think it sounded like Deedee, but since he’d never heard her whimper, he couldn’t be sure. He hurried toward the sound.
In a small clearing, the whimper came out again, not from Deedee but from a huge red and blue flower. The color of each petal shifted and they were ruffled by the breeze.
The flower was surrounded, as if imprisoned, by tall black trees, their long sharp branches reaching in at the flower. The trees seemed to lean in and the flower trembled.
“No, you don’t!” shouted the prince, jumping into the circle.
A wind in the trees seemed to be whispering “Ssssstay back! Thissss was hard work.”
Alain knew how hard it was for trees to move: they must really hate the flower. He swung his sword, lopping off half a dozen branches.
“Ha! There, fiend! Now try to….”
“Fallallop,” said the flower, as it swallowed him.
“We tried to sssstop you,” said the trees, waving their shortened limbs.
Archels took the path to the center. Not fr north of the path, it broke into two other paths. On the branch to the left, he saw a giant striped spider, twice as tall as the prince, completely still. One leg was raised as if to strike Archels down, but it waited and watched.
Archels did not charge right in. He glanced up the other path, and saw a smaller creature, half woman and half wolf. It too did not move, waiting and watching the prince.
“Ah,,” said the prince to himself. “Anyone would think a hero smart enough and strong enough to get this fae would naturally attack the big monster first, to get it out of the way. So this is a trick, and that wolfwoman is the real dangerous fiend.”
No one moved. “But maybe,” he thought, “They expected a smart prince would figure out the trick. In that case, the spider is the REAL fiend.”
Archels looked from one creature to the other. They stood waiting.
Archels nodded. “But no one could have predicted that the strongest prince in the world would come up this path. I can pull down one of these tall trees and knock both monsters down before I go on.”
Dozens of light brown trees, much prettier than any he’d seen so far, grew between the two paths. Archels picked out a good tall one, and threw his arms around it to lift it free.
“Oh!” His hands sank into the bark. No matter how hard he pulled, his fingers would not come free. A sound of crying, as if from far away, came to his ears.
Archels looked up among the leaves. Of course! These were the Wailing Trees he’d read about. This brown stuff was not their bark at all. Wailing trees produced a thick sap, the color of amber, which hardened so fast that some authors called it amber grease. A thick heavy dollop landed on his head.
What made matters worse was that, from this angle, he could see that neither the spider nor the wolf-woman would ever move again. They had been alive once, but now the sun highlighted a thin, solid coat of amber grease on each, showing they were now nothing but fierce statues. The prince twisted and pulled, but his arms sank deeper into the soft brown ooze.
Affretz, having taken the wagon and all three horses with him, was not moving as fast as his brothers. His path did not take long to bring him to something strange.
A very tall and extremely ugly man was trying to fight with a fat purple dragon which kept hissing steam. The man had only a wooden club, and wore no armor. Looking up at the sounds from the path, the man bellowed, “Awake, are you? How about lending me a hand here?”
Affretz started forward, but stopped after three steps. “You have to be careful in a haunted forest,” he thought. “Just because this man looks like me doesn’t mean he’s right.”
As he thought this, the big man jumped to the side, striking the dragon on the head and kicking the pale purple belly at the same time. “Talk back to me, will you?” The man jumped away from another cloud of steam and struck the dragon again. “You’ll be getting no supper tonight!”
The dragon was far too slow and entirely too small to fight back in any useful way. Affretz frowned. The man didn’t NEED any help fighting. “You just think it would be fun for me to beat up on that dragon!”
The thought angered him so much, he drew his sword. “Hey, that’s pretty,” said the man. “Did you steal that from a prince?”
“I AM a prince!” Affretz replied, running forward.
“No fair!” shouted the big man. “Princes are supposed to be good-looking!”
“I’ll teach you what princes are supposed to be,” snarled Affretz.
His foe swung that club up to knock away Affretz’s sword. This took the big man’s attention away from the dragon. Hot steam billowed along the backs of the huge legs.
“No fair!” the big man roared again. He stuck out one long bare foot so he could kick the dragon with the other, and Affretz jumped up to land on the long white, ogreish toes.
“Yeow!” The ogre-like man dropped his club and ran off up the path. Affretz started after him, but something jerked him back.
The purple dragon’s mouth was clamped around the prince’s right boot.
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