Sign of chaos

«I don't suppose you'd know-» I began.

«I saw him come in and I saw you come in later,» said the Cat, smirking. «And even for this place your arrivals were somewhat… unusual - leading me to conclude that at least one of you is associated with magic.»

I nodded.

«Your own comings and goings might give one pause,» I observed.

«I keep my paws to myself,» he replied. «Which is more than Luke can say.»

«What do you mean?»

«He's caught in a contagious trap.»

«How does it work?» I asked.

But he was gone again, and this time the grin went too.

Contagious trap? That seemed to indicate that the problem was Luke's, and that I had been sucked into it in some fashion. This felt right, though it still gave me no idea as to what the problem was or what I might do about it.

I reached for my tankard. If I couldn't solve my problem, I might as well enjoy it. As I took a slow sip I became aware of a strange pair of pale, burning eyes gazing into my own. I hadn't noticed them before, and the thing that made them strange was that they occupied a shadowy comer of the mural across the room from me that, and the fact that they were,moving, drifting slowly to my left.

It was kind of fascinating, when I lost sight of the eyes but was still able to follow whatever it was from the swaying of grasses as it passed into the area toward which I had been headed earlier. And far, far off to my right beyond Luke - I now detected a slim gentleman in a dark jacket, palette and brush in hand, who was slowly extending the mural. I took another sip and returned my attention to the progress of whatever it was that had moved from flat reality to 3-D. A gunmetal snout protruded from between a rock and a shrub; the pale eyes blazed above it; blue saliva dripped from the dark muzzle and steamed upon the ground. It was either quite short or very crouched, and I couldn't make up my mind whether it was the entire crowd of us that it was studying or me in particular. I leaned to one side and caught Humpty by the belt or the necktie, whichever it was, just as he was about to slump to the side…

«Excuse me,» I said. «Could you tell me what sort of creature that is?»

I pointed just as it emerged - many-legged, long-tailed, dark-scaled, undulating, and fast. Its claws were red, and it raised its tail as it raced toward us.

Humpty's bleary eyes moved toward my own, drifted past.

«I am not here, sir,» he began, «to remedy your zoological ignore - My God! It's-»

It flashed across the distance, approaching rapidly. Would it reach a spot shortly where its cunning would become a treadmill operation - or had that effect only applied to me on trying to get away from this place?

The segments of its body slid from side to side, it hissed like a leaky pressure cooker, and steaming slaver marked its trail from the fiction of paint. Rather than slowing, its speed seemed to increase.

My left hand jerked forward of its own volition and a series of words rose unbidden to my lips. I spoke them just as the creature crossed the interface I had been unable to pierce earlier, rearing as it upset a vacant table and bunching its members as if about to spring.

«A Bandersnatch!» someone cried.

«A frumious Bandersnatch!» Humpty corrected.

As I spoke the final word and performed the ultimate gesture, the image of the Logrus swam before my inner vision. The dark creature, having just extended its foremost talons, suddenly drew them back, clutched with them against the upper left quadrant of its breast, rolled its eyes, emitted a soft moaning sound, exhaled heavily, collapsed, fell to the floor, and rolled over onto its back, its many feet extended upward into the air.

The Cat's grin appeared above the creature. The mouth moved.

«A dead frumious Bandersnatch,» it stated.

The grin drifted toward me, the rest of the Cat occurring about it like an afterthought.

«That was a cardiac arrest spell, wasn't it?» it inquired.

«I guess so,» I said. «It was sort of a reflex. Yeah, I remember now. I did still have that spell hanging around.»

«I thought so,» it observed. «I was sure that there was magic involved in this party.»

The image of the Logrus which had appeared to me during the spell's operation had also served the purpose of switching on a small light in the musty attic of my mind. Sorcery. Of course.