"We ought to get the stocking off," I said. "If it starts to swell..."

She hiked up her skirt and unfastened a garter, pushing the stocking down. I managed to work it down over the ankle and once it was off, there could be no doubt that the ankle was badly hurt. It was inflamed and there was some swelling.

"Kathy," I said, "I don't know what to do. If you have some idea..."

"It's probably not so bad," she said, "although it hurts. In a day or two it should be better. We have the car for shelter. Even if it won't run, it will be a place to stay."

"There might be someone who could help," I said. "I don't know what to do. If we had a bandage. I could rip up my shirt, but it should be an elastic ..."

"Someone to help? In a place like this!"

"It's worth a try," I said. "It's not all ghouls and goblins. Perhaps not even many of them. They are out-of-date. There would be others ..."

She nodded. "Perhaps you're right. That idea of using the car for shelter doesn't .cover everything. We'll need food and water, too. But maybe we're getting scared too soon. Maybe I can walk."

"Who's getting scared?" I asked.

"Don't try to kid me," said Kathy, sharply. "You know we're in a jam. We know nothing about this place. We're foreigners. We have no right to be here."

"We didn't ask to come here."

"But that makes no difference, Horton."

And I don't suppose it did. Someone apparently wanted us to be here. Someone had brought us here.

Thinking about it, I grew a little cold. Not for myself-or, at least, I don't think for myself. h.e.l.l, I could face anything. After rattlesnakes, sea serpent, and werewolves, there was nothing that could faze me. But it wasn't fair for Kathy to be dragged into it.

"Look," I said, "If I got you in the car, you could lock the doors and I could take a short, fast look around." She nodded. "If you'd help me."

I didn't help her. I simply picked her up and put her in the car. I eased her into the seat and reached across her to lock the opposite door.

"Roll up the window," I told her, "and lock the door. Yell if something shows up. I won't be far away."

She started to roll up the window, then rolled it down again, reaching down to the floor of the car. She came up with the baseball bat and stuck it through the window.

"Here, take this," she said.

I felt a little foolish going down the path with the bat in hand. But it made a good heft in my fist and it might be handy.

Where the path curved to go around the big oak I stopped and looked back. She was staring through the windshield and I waved at her and went on down the path.

The ground pitched sharply. Below me the forest closed in, dense and heavy. There was no breeze and the trees stood up motionless, the greenness of their leaves glinting in the sun of late afternoon.

I went on down the road and at a place where it twisted again to dodge another tree, I found the signpost. It was old and weather-beaten, but the legend still was clear. TO THE INN, it said, with an arrow pointing.

Back at the car, I told her, "I don't know what kind of inn, but it might be better than just staying here. There might be someone who could doctor up the ankle. At least we could get some cold water or some hot water-which is it you use to help a sprain?"

"I don't know," she said, "and I don't like the idea of an inn, but I suppose we can't stay sitting here. We have to get an idea of what is going on, what we should expect."

"I didn't like the idea of an inn any better than she did-I didn't like anything that was going on; but what she said was right. We couldn't stay huddled on that hilltop and wait for whatever was about to happen.

So I got her out and perched her on the hood while I locked the door and pocketed the key. Then I picked her up and started down the hill.

"You forgot the bat," she said.

"There was no way to carry it."

"I could have carried it."

"More than likely we won't need it," I told her and went on down the road, picking my way as carefully as I could so I wouldn't stumble.

Just below the signpost, the road twisted again to make its way around a ma.s.sive heap of boulders and as I rounded the boulders, there on the distant ridge was the castle. I stopped dead when I saw it, shocked into immobility by the unexpectedness of the sight.

Take all the beautiful, fancy, romantic, colorful paintings of castles that you have ever seen and roll them all together, combining all their good points. Forget everything you have ever read about a castle as a dirty, smelly, unsanitary, drafty habitation and subst.i.tute instead the castle of the fairy tale, King Arthur's Camelot, Walt Disney's castles. Do all of this and you might get some slight idea of what that castle looked like.

It was the stuff of dreams; it was the old romanticism and the chivalry come across the years. It sat upon the distant ridgetop in its gleaming whiteness, and the multicolored pennants mounted on its spires and turrets rippled in the air. It was such a perfect structure that one knew instinctively that there never could be another one quite like it.

"Horton," Kathy said, "will you put me down. I'd like to sit awhile and simply look at it. Did you know it was there all the time and you never said a word ..."

"I didn't know it was there," I told her. "I came back when I saw the sign about the inn."

"We could go to the castle, maybe," she said. "Not the inn."

"We could try," I said. "There must be a road."

I put her down upon the ground and sat down beside her.

"I think the ankle may be getting better," she said. "I think that I could manage even if I had to walk a ways."

I took a look at it and shook my head. It was red and shiny and had swollen quite a lot.

"When I was a little girl," she said, "I thought castles were shining and romantic things. Then I took a couple of courses on the society of medieval days and I learned the truth about them. But here is a shining castle with all its pennons flying and . .."

"It's the kind of place," I said, "that you thought about, the kind of castle that you and a million other little girls formed within their romantic little minds."

And it wasn't only castles, I reminded myself. Here in this land resided all the fantasies that mankind had developed through the centuries. Here, somewhere Huckleberry Finn floated on his raft down a never-ending river. Somewhere in this world Red Riding Hood went tripping down a woodland path. Somewhere Mr. Magoo blundered along on his near-blind course through a series of illogical circ.u.mstances.

And what was the purpose of it, or did there have to be a purpose? Evolution was often a blind sort of operation, appearing on the surface to be of no great purpose. And humans, perhaps, should not attempt to find the purpose here, for humans were too entirely human to conceive, much less understand, any manner of existence other than their own. Exactly as the dinosaurs would have been incapable of accepting the idea (if dinosaurs ever had ideas) of the human intelligence which was to follow them.

But this was a world, I told myself, that was a part of the human mind. All things, all creatures, all ideas in this world or this dimension or this other place were the products of the human mind. This was, in all likelihood, an extension of the human mind, a place that took the thought the human mind had formed and used that thought as raw material by which a new world and a new evolutionary process had been fabricated.

"I could sit here all day," said Kathy, "and keep on looking at the castle, but I suppose that we should start if we ever are to get there. I don't think I can walk; do you mind a lot?"

"There was a time in Korea," I told her, "during a retreat, when my cameraman got it in the thigh and I had to carry him. We had stayed behind a bit too long and ..."

She laughed at me happily. "He was much bigger," I told her, "and much less lovable and most dirty and profane. He showed no grat.i.tude."

"I promise you my grat.i.tude," she said. "It is so wonderful."

"Wonderful?" I asked, "with a busted ankle and in a place like this . .."

"But the castle 1" she cried. "I never thought I'd see a castle like that-the kind of castle I used to dream about."

"There is one thing," I said. "I'll say it once and I'll not mention it again. I am sorry, Kathy."

"Sorry? Because I got a busted ankle?"

"No, not that," I said. "Sorry that you're here at all. I shouldn't have let you mix into this. I never should have let you get the envelope. I never should have phoned you from that little place-from Woodman."

She crinkled up her face. "But there was nothing else that you could do. By the time you phoned, I had read the paper and I was involved. That was why you called."

"They might not have touched you, but once we were in the car, heading east for Washington ..."

"Horton, pick me up," she said, "and let's be on our way. If we're late getting to the castle, they may not let us in."

"All right," I said. "The castle."

I got up and stooped to lift her, but as I did the brush rattled to one side of the path and a bear stepped out. He was walking upright and wore a pair of red shorts with white polka dots on them, held up by a single suspender looped across a shoulder. He carried a club across the other shoulder and he grinned most engagingly at us.

Kathy shrank back against me, but she didn't scream, although she had every right to, for this bear, despite his grin, had a look of disrepute about him.

Out of the brush behind him stepped a wolf, who carried no club and also tried to smile at us, but his smile was less engaging and somehow sinister. After the wolf came a fox and all three of them stood there in a row, grinning at us in right good fellowship.

"Mr. Bear," I said, "and Mr. Wolf and Br'er Fox. How are you today?"

I tried to keep my voice light and even, but I doubt that I succeeded, for I didn't like these three. I wished most earnestly I'd brought along the ball bat Mr. Bear made a little bow. "We are gratified," he said, "that you recognize us. And it is most fortunate we meet I take it that the two of you are new to these environs."

"We have just arrived," said Kathy.

"Well, then," said Mr. Bear, "it is good we are well met. For we have been searching for a partner in a goodly undertaking."

"There is a chicken roost," said Br'er Fox, "that needs some looking into."

"I am sorry," I told them. "Maybe later on. Miss Adams has sprained her ankle and I must get her somewhere for medical attention."

"Now that is too bad," said Mr. Bear, trying to look sympathetic. "A sprained ankle, I would think might be a painful burden for anyone to carry. And especially for milady, who is so beautiful."

"But there is this chicken roost," said Br'er Fox, "and with evening comin' on ..."

Mr. Bear rumbled throatily at him. "Br'er Fox, you have no soul. You have nothing but a stomach that is forever empty. The chicken roost, you see," he said to me, "is an adjunct to the castle and it is well guarded by a pack of hounds and various other carnivores and there is no hope for such as the three of us to gain entry to it. Which is a crying shame, for those hens have grown overfat and would make toothsome eating. We had thought, perhaps, that if we could enlist a human we might sit down and work out a plan that had some promise of success. We have approached certain of them, but they are cowardly creatures, not to be depended on. Harold Teen and Dagwood and a great many others of them and they all are hopeless. We have a luxurious den not very far from here where we could sit down and evolve a plan. There would be a comfortable pallet for milady and one of us could go and fetch Old Meg with potions for the injured ankle."

"No, thank you," Kathy said. "We are going to the castle."

"You may be too late," said Br'er Fox. "They are over-meticulous with the closing of the gate."

"We 'must hurry, then," said Kathy.

I stooped to pick her up, but Mr. Bear reached out a paw and stopped me. "Surely," he said, "you are not about to dismiss with so little thought this matter of the chickens. You like chickens, do you not?"

"Of course he likes them," said the wolf, who had not spoken until now. "Man is as confirmed a carnivore as any of us."

"But finicky," said Br'er Fox.

"Finicky," said Mr. Bear, aghast. "Those are the plumpest hens these old eyes have ever seen. They'd be finger-licking good and surely there could be no one who would want to pa.s.s them by."

"Some other time," I told them, "I'd view your proposition with overwhelming interest, but as of the moment we must be getting on."

"Some other time, perhaps," Mr. Bear said, bleakly.

"Yes, some other time," I said. "Please look me up again."

"When you are hungrier," Mr. Wolf suggested.

"That might make a difference," I admitted.

I lifted Kathy and held her cradled in my arms. For a moment I wasn't sure they would let us go, but they stepped aside and I went down the path.

Kathy shivered. "What terrible creatures," she said. "Standing there and grinning at us. Thinking we would join in their chicken thievery."

I wanted to look back, to be sure they are still there and not stalking along behind us. But I didn't dare to look, for it would have made them think I was afraid of them. I was afraid of them, but that made it all the more important that I not show it.

Kathy put her arms around my neck and hung on with her head against my shoulder. It was much more satisfactory, I told myself, carrying her than that benighted, foul-mouthed cameraman. And, besides, she didn't weigh as much.

By now the path had led off the fairly open ridgetop into deep and stately woods and only on occasion could I see the castle through some accidental woodland vista and then only portions of it. The sun was falling close to the western horizon and the depths of the woods were filled with smoky twilight and in their shaded recesses I became aware of many furtive stirrings.

The path forked and became two and there was another signpost, with two pointing arrows this time, one pointing to the castle, the other to the inn. But just a few yards down the path leading to the castle a ma.s.sive iron gate barred any further progress, and stretching out on either side of it was a high fence of heavy steel mesh, with barbed wire on top of it. A gaily striped kiosk stood to one side of the gate and a man-at-arms leaned against it with a halberd held very sloppily. I walked up to the gate and had to kick it to attract his attention.

"Ye be late," he growled. "The gate is closed at sunset and the dragons are let loose. It would be-worth your life to go a furlong down that road."

He came to the gate and peered closer at us.

"You have a damsel with you. Is she hi distress?"

"Her ankle's hurt," I said. "She cannot walk."

He sn.i.g.g.e.red. "If such be the case," he said, "it might be arranged to provide escort for the damsel."

"For both of us," said Kathy, sharply.

He wagged his head in mock sadness. "I stretch the point to let one past. I cannot stretch for both."

"Someday," I said, "it will not be a point but your neck that will be stretched."

"Begone!" he shouted, angrily. "Begone and take your s.l.u.t along. At the km, the witch will mutter spells to mend the ankle."

"Let's get out of here," said Kathy, frightened.

"My friend," I said to the man-at-arms, "I shall make a point, when I am less enc.u.mbered, of coming back and raising lumps on you."