Free Immortal Lycanthropes by Hal Johnson, Teagan White

from the brazen head. “Which is lighter,” spoke the head, its bronze lips opening and closing upon the hinge, “a pound of alabaster or a pound of raven feathers?”
    Myron puffed himself up. This was easier than he’d feared. “No problem. They’re both the same weight: a pound is always a pound.”
    “Incorrect. Alabaster is white; raven feathers are black. Alabaster is therefore lighter. He has failed the first test. Now he struggles for his life in the Upside-down Chamber. Take him away.”
    “What? No fair!” Sukumarika was bringing out her bag. “Don’t I get to ask you one? You have to answer my riddle, smarty.”
    From the head came a puff of air that might have been a sigh. “Very well,” it boomed. “Ask your question also.”
    Myron cleared his throat. He began: “Thirty white horses upon a red—”
    “Teeth,” said the head. “Take him away.” And the bag went on him.
    Myron kept shouting riddles from inside the bag as unseen hands bore him away. “I don’t bite a man unless he bites me—”
    “An onion,” Sukumarika said.
    “The longer I stand, the shorter—”
    “A candle.”
    “Um. What have I got in my pocket?”
    “Nineteen dollars and a card from the Illuminati. We went through your pants.”
    “Oh. What kind of animal am I?”
    “Trivia facts are not riddles.”
    “But I just wanted to know,” said Myron.
    When he was unbagged he was in yet another white room. From the ceiling hung dozens of metal rings. He was on a small platform in front of a wide, yawning pit.
    Maybe the web of silver won’t kill me,
Myron thought.
Maybe I’m a starfish.
He had forgotten that starfish are not mammals, and that he was not bound for the silver web. Out loud, Myron said, “I don’t want to face the silver web”; but of course he was not going to. For this was the Upside-down Chamber. And so he was hoisted up, turned topsy-turvy, and the U-shaped hooks on his feet slid into the ceiling’s metal rings. For the first time Myron saw the men who had been carrying him; huge, burly men with angry faces. Sukumarika was right underneath him, and he grabbed her head for balance. She disentangled herself from him and stepped away, but now her hair stuck out at crazy angles.
    “Stop that,” she said, trying to smooth her ’do.
    “Why are you doing this?” Myron said. He was willing himself vainly to turn into an orangutan, so that he could swing away across the rings.
    “Every time I tried to explain, you kept interrupting with questions.” Sukumarika handed him a stout stick, about five feet long.
    “I won’t interrupt now. I’m really scared.”
    “Our ways are ancient, passed down from the times of the Emperor Asoka. We do not need to explain them to you.”
    “So I might as well interrupt, then. Who’s Hanusa?”
    “Look before you, Myron.” Sukumarika pointed across the room. Some thirty yards away, across the pit, on another small platform, a young man wearing identical skates was standing. He was probably only seventeen or eighteen, but to a high school freshman he looked like a grownup. He turned his back on Myron, reached up, grabbed two rings, and pulled himself up so he could hook his feet in the rings. When he let go with his hands, he was hanging upside down, facing forward. He reached down and picked up a staff that had been lying there. The U on the skates was shaped with the mouth forward, toward the toe, so he had to slide his skate backwards, out of the ring, and then forward, to the next ring, in order to advance. He was now out from over the platform, above the pit.
    “The pit is filled with spikes,” said Sukumarika.
    “I’m getting a headache, I think I should get down now,” Myron said. Just then, the young man started to run forward. Running must have been very difficult, since he was hanging upside down by hooks on his feet over a spiked pit, but he was good at it. Myron was so startled by the sudden advance, he instinctively flinched backwards. Of