Free Woodlock by Steve Shilstone Page A

dweg best friend Kar’s voice sounded clearly in my head. I whirled around looking for her.
    â€œI didn’t hear that. I thought it,” I muttered. “The black rock, eh?”
    Truth, the imagined voice of Kar had suggested returning to the mysterious rocky outcropping. I had no better idea of my own. I believed so such to aid me that the thought had been planted some magical how by Shendra Nenas. The belief offered me a sort of a comfort. I left the clearing with no delay and moved with a swiftness through the green and pink and gray of the enchanting Woods.
    Such a great black steep rocky obsidian mound tower in the midst of the Woods Beyond the Wood, I thought. Why have I never heard tell of it in any of the Gwer drollek tales? Does it disappear from history? Is it…
    I stopped in my tracks, frozen so such like the lavender witch, the Babba Ja Harick, was at times.
    â€¦part of MY task?
    A true lightning bolt of possibility struck me. I stayed frozen to allow the bolt to melt and seep twining about the coils of my mind. I stood there, one highboot raised, for a goodly span of time on the slope rising up to the massive black rock.
    I’ll examine it. I’ll circle it. I’ll look for fractures, for fissures, for hidden tunnels!
    I put my highboot down and commenced to stride slowly up the slope, tapping my chonka in a meditative manner. I reached the great wall of black gleaming rock. I placed a hand on it.
    â€œI have never heard of you,” I said. “Why?”
    Keeping close to the rock face, I circled to the right, scuffing a path in the mud red dirt. I wedged my hands into fractures, looking for levers to spring hidden doors. No levers. No doors. I pushed on bumps and knobs. I tapped on bulging seams. Nothing happened, though the silence seemed eerie. I moved slowly, carefully, pushing, tapping, kicking. I rested from time to time to ease the strain of so such concentration. My eyes fairly burned. I snacked on likely leaves and massaged lightly with my fingertips all around my eyes. Work and rest, work and rest, for the full length of day I inched my way around the great black tower of a rock. When the sun sank low, I arrived back where the scuff path of my highboots began. I drooped to sit, my back against the wall.
    â€œAnother day wasted,” I groaned. “Lackwit. Things will be as they aren’t. Such will be so.”
    I almost gave up right then and right there, but I didn’t. I firmed my jaw.
    â€œThe week is not over,” I said. “There are four more days.”
    Too exhausted to move, I vowed to return in the morning to the woodlock’s clearing and to hide in the back of her cave until she appeared. She would appear. She had to! It was her home. So such determined and satisfied, I curled down to sleep.

Chapter Twenty-Nine
    The Next Day
    Morning found me up early and wading down the slope through swirls of low mist. I headed for the woodlock’s clearing. I hoped to surprise her there. So such was one of my hopes. Another of my hopes featured Shendra Nenas appearing with more clues. My fondest hope concerned my task, whatever it was. I yearned so such for it to be successfully completed and have me safely back by the Well of Shells in my own when before another sunsink. At the base of the slope I reentered the Woods, which seemed even more enchanted and strange to me in the low swirling mists. Pink tufts of flowers fairly floated on the fog. I crept straightaway to the place of the woodlock’s clearing. There I hid behind the fattest of its border bushes. The clearing appeared so such the same as it had on the previous day.
    She hasn’t returned? I asked myself.
    A weight of disappointment gathered in my legs. I stepped into the clearing. Pink slab marble table. Lantern. Washing tub. Gold cord. No tunic. I walked beneath the cord and into the cave. Silver fringed red carpet, finely woven. And something else beyond it! The weight of