Free Immortal Lycanthropes by Hal Johnson, Teagan White Page A

course, the skates slipped from the rings, and Myron fell down on the platform with a terrific clatter. His stick rolled into the pit. Everything had to stop while the men came from behind various trapdoors and arras and hoisted Myron up again. They gave him a new stick. After a brief discussion, they started to poke Myron with goads. When, tentatively, he unhooked one skate and stepped forward, it was not from the prodding; it was simply that he felt too ridiculous hanging upside down and doing nothing. So he took another step away from the platform, and he was looking down into the pit.
    It was maybe twenty feet deep, and the bottom was bristling with long, cruel spikes.
    “This is stupid,” Myron announced. “If I fall in, I won’t even die. It’ll just hurt a lot.”
    “We have in our employ,” Sukumarika said from the platform, “an immortal vole who will come while you are pinned by spikes and eat your jugular.”
    The young man began to advance again, more slowly now. Myron tried sidestepping, to circle around him, perhaps, and reach the far platform. He brandished his stick, he hoped threateningly, although waving it affected his balance, and he almost went over backwards again.
    “What,” said Myron, “has a hundred eyes but cannot see?”
    “A potato,” said Sukumarika.
    “What,” said Myron, “is a vole?”
    “A field mouse,” said Sukumarika.
    Myron groaned. He’d thought he’d catch her with that one. The young man came closer, ring by ring. Myron realized he’d need to do something clever, or he was going to die. Or if he couldn’t do something clever, he should at least do something different.
    “Try this one. Off to see—”
    “Stop riddling, Myron,” Sukumarika shouted from behind him. “It doesn’t matter if you stump me now. It’s too late; the riddling is over.”
    “I’m not talking to you, lady.” In his fear and adrenaline, he could not remember her name. “I’m talking to this guy.” He pointed his stick at the young man, who batted it away with his own. They were close enough that their staves could touch. “Hey you, you never bested me in a riddle contest. So riddle me this:
     
Off to see what I could find
Through heather and hollow I roam;
All that I found I left behind,
What I found not, I brought home.”
     
    The young man was busy twirling his staff around in a complicated and frankly intimidating pattern.
    “Hey, I’m talking to you,” Myron called. “‘All that I found I left behind, what I found not I brought home.’ What is it?”
    The other stopped. “Wait. Say it again,” he said.
    Myron repeated the rhyme, while stepping forward a ring.
    “‘What I found not I brought home,’” the young man muttered to himself. “I know I know this one.”
    Myron then wrapped his legs around each other, such that both feet were in the same ring, facing different ways.
    “Oh, I know! Ticks! The answer is ticks.”
    But holding his stick like a baseball bat, Myron hit the fellow in the shins. A scraping noise, and the man’s boots slid back, free of the rings, and he fell through the air. Myron looked away before he hit the spikes. There was no sound. Slowly and very carefully, Myron turned back to the platform. Those same men helped him down. His heart was beating very fast, and he was more terrified than he cared to let on.
    The men began to untie Myron’s boots. Sukumarika stood in front of him, her lips pursed with displeasure. “I killed him,” Myron said. His eyes were tearing up.
    Sukumarika silently pointed behind him. Myron looked over his shoulder and saw that the man he had fought was caught in a net that had sprung up, halfway down the pit and well above the spikes. He was clambering across the net like a spider.
    Myron was relieved. “Will you tell me where Arthur is?” he asked.
    “We don’t have to tell you anything. You’re lucky to be alive.” She was walking him back to the elevator.
    “Will you tell me why I’m a dead