But another moment of truth soon arrived, and Randall took advantage of this one. He walked over to the water that had pooled on the floor from Grysh's wringing, then yanked off his loincloth.
“I can see his loins!” said one of the zombies.
Throwing all modesty aside, Randall crouched down and soaked up most of the water with the cloth. Then he stood back up and prepared for his attack.
“Oh no!” gasped the zombie foreman. “He's twisting his wet loincloth! He'll be able to snap it at us!”
“We've got to shamble away!” shouted another zombie.
The zombies started the lengthy process of turning around so they could retreat. Randall rushed forward and snapped his cloth at the foreman.
“Ow! Stop it!”
Randall snapped it again.
“Stop it, you unfeeling monster! We're leaving!”
“And don't try this again!” Randall ordered. “I'm more than willing to twist my loincloth at a moment's notice!”
Seven minutes and fifty-four seconds after they'd arrived, the zombies were gone. Randall wrung out his loincloth, then put it back on.
“You've done very well,” said Grysh. “How would you like to be my personal servant?”
“Nah.”
“Fine. Now, away with you! Your quest awaits!”
“What about Sir William?”
“He stays here. That's my assurance that you'll return.”
“You'd be more assured of my return if Sir William was along to make sure I didn't get killed.”
“You don't need him. This is your journey, Randall. The princess and the knight will be here when you return. Bring me the Necklace of Power and the other reagents! Now, go!”
She snapped her fingers. Randall vanished.
“He's a good kid,” said Grysh.
Demon Baby nodded his agreement. “So, you think he'll find the necklace? I've never even heard of it before.”
“Of course you haven't. It doesn't exist. I just want to see what he'll do.”
Chapter 9
The Last Single-Digit Chapter Number
RANDALL WAS not ordinarily one to wallow in the negative, but as he walked across the seemingly endless expanse of desert, he decided to do a mental rundown of the bad things in his life at the moment.
He was hot and thirsty. The only liquid for miles was the sweat that had pooled in his shoes. He was lost. All directions looked the same, and he had no idea which way he was supposed to be traveling. He was hungry. He was tired. The loincloth was going to give him a major tan line.
Time passed....
* * * *
RANDALL HAD been wandering for two days, and was growing less and less cheerful about the whole affair. He walked in a daze, eyes glazed over, muttering incoherent things to himself like “Call me Ishmael.” He lacked the materials for a decent sand castle. Even the mirages he saw weren't any good.
Time passed....
* * * *
RANDALL HAD lost it.
“Yondah lies da castle of mah faddah,” he said, over and over, the accent getting worse each time he spoke.
Then he collapsed.
“Person...?”
“Yondah ... yondah ... yondah...”
“Person, please sit up.” It was a high-pitched, tinny voice. “Person, you can't give up.”
“...yondah ... yondah ... burma shave...”
“Just open your eyes,” begged the voice.
Randall opened one as a compromise. There was nobody there. “Don't tell me I expended all that energy for nothing,” he warned.
“Over here. By your ear.”
Randall turned his head. Nobody there.
“No, no, the other ear.”
Randall turned again. Nobody there.
“Sorry, I was moving over to the first ear to save you some trouble. Now I'm behind your head.”
“Not going to look behind my head. You can forget it.”
“I'll move around to your nose. Don't inhale, please.”
“Don't have the strength.”
A tiny beetle-like creature, about the size of a dvorkin (which is about the size of a fully-grown spugglet's tooth), flew in front of his face. “Hi,” it said.
“Okay, I've seen you,” Randall told it. “Could I please die now?”
“I don't want you to die. You're my friend.”
“I've never even met you before.”
“You're still my friend. I love you.”
“Kind of free with the ol’ affection there, aren't you?”
“I can't help it. My heart is just full of love.”
“Well, my heart is full of sand. I can't go any more. I've been walking for three days. My chest hair is all burnt off, and I was very fond of what little I had.”
“But I can help you!”
“If you flew into my mouth and let me eat you, I could probably get another ten feet of walking in.”
“Please, get up. If you follow me, I can take you someplace beautiful where people will be ever so nice to you!”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Beautiful by any standards, or beautiful by the standards of a little bug who's already decided that it loves me?”
“Well, my standards. I guess I'm easily pleased, but still, it has to be better than dying at the edge of the desert.”
“The edge?”
“Relatively speaking. It's a big desert.”
“Wouldn't happen to be a Necklace of Power lying around here, would there?”
“No. Just sand.”
“Figures.”
Using all the force he could muster, Randall got back to his feet. “Follow me,” said the beetle, flying a couple feet ahead of him. “It's not far ... relatively speaking...”
Time passed....
* * * *
THE BUG finished with its life story. It had been born one day, flew around the desert for a while, then found Randall.
“How much further?” Randall asked.
“We're almost there.”
“I don't see anything worth not dying for.”
“Six more steps.”
Randall took six more steps.
“I'm sorry,” said the bug. “I meant miles.”
Time passed....
* * * *
“I HATE everybody,” said Randall.
Time passed....
* * * *
“HOW MUCH further?” asked Randall. Or he thought he asked it. His thoughts and his voice were getting confused.
“Six more steps.”
“I'd hate to have to splat you, bug.”
“I mean it. Six more steps.”
Randall stopped. “Bug, I can see that there's nothing around for at least a thousand more steps. And I'm not talking dinky little crippled baby steps, I'm talking huge there's-a-big-dragon-ready-to-torch-my-tail steps.”
“No, no, six more steps, I promise.”
“Bug, apparently you have some distorted view of what exactly is entailed in taking a step.” He took one step forward. “That there, what I just did, is a step. Six of those will place me in a location that looks suspiciously like it contains more of the sand that I've been walking on for three days. Now, perhaps where you come from the definition of step has been altered in such a way that six of them would result in my being transported to a location that contains something besides the aforementioned sand, but in the world that I have grown to call home, six steps aren't going to do squat!”
“You don't trust me?”
“I trust that you've entered the magical Wonder World where the concept of steps has been drastically mutated into this freakish distortion of the laws of reality, where the alien life forms that possess legs stretching across two hundred of what any non-misshapen human would refer to as a ‘step’ roam freely across the desert without worrying about shriveling up into a withered corpse because there's nothing to drink but sand!”
“I still love you, you know.”
Randall dropped to his knees. “I quit. You hear me? No more steps. No more.”
“Please don't die. Please? Please, please, please? Just a little bit further. That's all I ask.”