The Barsoom Project

Step by careful step, they crossed that bridge. Those two feet of path began to feel like a tightrope. Snow Goose stopped them. “Wait. Stop now, and find your breathing.”

“What?” Bowles said cautiously.

“Your breathing.” She placed her hands about an inch below her navel. “Breathe down to here, to the center of your body. You will find the balance you will need.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Orson complained. “Center of my body?”

“Ignore the flesh,” she insisted. “Feel your way to the center. Steady your breathing and visualize, or you will not survive.”

“What I visualize,” Orson whimpered, “is getting chucked off this bridge, and controlling my breathing all the way to the bottom.”

The wind keened, sighed mockingly. Despite his uneasy balance, and the strangeness, and the fear he felt here on the edge of infinity, Max searched within himself, struggled to see something beneath the layers of clothing, the muscle,

(the fat) the organs and tissues,

(the fat) and down to the bones themselves, saw himself as a skeleton, standing on a two-foot bridge over the very pit of Hell, that damned wind whistling hollow through his bones.

When he found that place, curiously, he felt warmer, more relaxed. When he opened his eyes, there was less fear.

Her next words touched his ears as from across a gulf. “Now keep your breathing constant and smooth, and follow me.”

Max chose his steps with care. Once he stumbled, wavered, lost his balance, but his toe found purchase where there should have been only air.

(He reached his toe out again to test the “air” beyond the strip of bridge. He found solidity, but it was invisible. He decided not to trust it… but he felt better.)

The path began to widen. The group had just heaved a collective sigh of relief when Another terrible scream of rage.

Close, and from no discernible direction. Yarnall moved more quickly, trying to get them onto the widened path. It was almost six feet across here, and they began to walk in twos, Yarnall and Kevin in the front, war clubs facing off against the unknown. Kevin clutched at the bag around his neck, as if milking it for strength.

Behind him were Orson and Snow Goose, and behind them Max and Charlene.

The mist congealed and cleared again and showed him unreality, illusion. Max tried to blink it away:

It stood twenty feet tall. He would have called it a woman, because of the pendulous breasts only partially concealed by an eight-foot cascade of flowing black hair. But the face was a demon’s face, wild and inhuman, with brown teeth like chisels and eyes that closed to slits. With each breath, the entire wrinkled face expanded and contracted. Her arms, muscular and wide-spread, were tipped with evil hooked nails longer than the head of Max’s spear.

That wasn’t the worst. Not by a bunch. The creature had only one leg, and that leg came from, well, from the genitalia.

“What do you call someone with no arms and no legs, with a wooden stick up his backside?” Johnny asked quietly.

That thick, obscene leg flexed, and the creature stretched down. Hooked nails curled around a misted stalagmite. A quick convulsion of python muscles, and the great chunk of rock snapped off in its hand, a ten-foot limestone club that coruscated in the darkness like a wet fuse.

Snow Goose backed them up. “Paija!” she said urgently. “We’ve gotta go back to where the path is too narrow for her to follow, and get ready.”

“No argument here,” Max heard Yarnall mutter.

They backed up along the path. The Paija hissed venomously at them, Cerberus at the gates of Hades.

“Your amulets!” she cried.

Where did I put that? Max rooted around in his bag until he found his gift from Martin the Arctic Fox, an owl’s claw petrified almost into a knot. Snow Goose took it. She took Kevin’s leather pouch and poured a thin stream of black powder into the palm of her hand. Her round face crinkled happily. “Strength! Soot is stronger than fire.”

“I should be carrying Ajax cleanser,” Johnny Welsh said. “Stronger than soot.”

Trianna rubbed his shoulder. “Your bird worked when we needed it, Johnny.”

He abandoned his scowl and gave her a quick hug.

Each Adventurer made his contribution in turn, and the little pile grew. The woman-demon grew tired of waiting. She hopped a step closer along the stone bridge. The bridge groaned in distress.

“Hurry!” Snow Goose bit her lip, thinking quickly. “You spoke of the fiber in your backpacks. You said it had power, perhaps more power than the amulets. Quickly, take them off, stack them in a pile.”

Yarnall, Hebert, and Ollie shucked their backpacks and complied. They kept worried eyes on the she-thing and flapped their arms for balance, but moved as quickly as possible.

“The suspense is killing me,” Kevin said to Johnny as they shucked backpacks. “What do you call someone with no arms and no legs, with a wooden stick up the backside?”

“Pop.”

“Groan.”

Hippogryph added his backpack to the pile.

“What is that creature?” Bowles asked.