Free Changeling (Illustrated) by Roger Zelazny

shuddered. He looked way from the lake and its denizens, sought the green line, located it, returned there. By then, his informant was out of sight.
    He tried to keep his eyes on the line as he continued, avoiding the sideshows as much as possible. It took an unexpected turn after a dozen paces, and he felt as if he were moving downhill for a time. Something like a red skateboard, bearing a large green scarab beetle, streaked by him. From time to time, he seemed to hear a chorus of voices singing something he could not distinguish.
    He walked down this branch, and a piece of the action to his right seemed to beckon after his gaze. This time, he resisted, only to discover that the green line curved in that direction. A side road grew there as he advanced, and it seemed to lead on toward a forest.
    The downhill sensation continued, and a breeze seemed to be blowing toward him. It smelled of leaf mold and earth and flowering things. He hurried, and the scene moved toward him at more than a reciprocal pace. The tiny storms began to diminish underfoot, the green line was widening . . . 
    Suddenly, he heard bird-notes. He reached out and touched a tree trunk. The green line lost itself amid grasses. The world widened into a single place of forest and glade. The stars went out overhead, to be replaced by blue sky and clouds, crisscrossed by leafy boughs. He looked behind him. There was no road—only, for a moment, what seemed a golden strand of webbing, tossed by the wind toward his right, gone.
    He began walking across the glade. Abruptly, he halted. He could wander lost for a long while if this were a sizable wood, and he had a feeling that it might be.
    He removed his jacket, as the day was pleasant enough, placed it upon the trunk of a fallen tree, hoisted himself up and sat upon it. Better to stay right where he was until some plan of action suggested itself. This spot might in some way be significant as the terminus of his peculiar journey.
    He opened the case to check on his guitar, which seemed intact. He raised it and began strumming upon it as he thought. It sounded all right, too.
    He might locate a tree that looked more climbable than the giants which surrounded him, he decided, and see whether he could spot a town or a road from higher up. He looked about, without breaking his rhythm. Yes. That appeared to be a good one, a few hundred meters right rear . . . He faced forward again and almost missed a beat.
    The tiny creature which cavorted before him looked exactly like what it was—a centaur colt. Its small hands moved in time with the rhythm, and it pranced.
    Fascinated, he turned his attention to what he was playing, switching to a more complicated righthand style. Softly, he began singing. His wristmark grew warm, throbbed. Shortly, two more of the small creatures emerged from the woods, to join the dancer. As a number of leaves blew by, as he felt they must—as he had half-consciously willed it—he caught these in the net of his playing and swirled them about the laughing child-faces, the rearing pony-bodies. He drew birds to spin after them, and a deer he had somehow known was present to join in the movements which were now taking on a pattern. The day seemed to darken, as he willed it—though it must only have been a cloud passing over the sun—to transform the spectacle into a twilit scene, which somehow struck him as most appropriate.
    He played tune after tune, and other creatures came to join in—bounding rabbits, racing squirrels—and somehow he knew that this was right and proper, exactly as it should be, in this place, with him playing, now . . . He felt as if he might go on forever, building walls of sound and toppling them, dancing in his heart, singing . . . 
    He did not become aware of the girl until sometime after her arrival. Slim and fair, clad in blue, she appeared beside a tree, far to the left of the clearing, and stood beneath it, unmoving, watching and listening.
    When he