Takshaka carried the jewels down into his kingdom, the world of the Nagas, the dreamsnakes.

"What happens next, Des?" I asked her.

"Your mission, Scribble Utanka, should you wish to accept it, is to journey through into the jasmine valley of the dreamsnakes, armed only with a ball hammer, some snakeweed juice, and a forked branch, and to retrieve those earrings. Do you accept this task, oh great warrior, Scribble Utanka?"

"I'm not sure..."

The rest of the Riders were laughing by now, but I was taking it straight.

"Just do it, brother," said Desdemona.

"I don't think I can," I replied. "The Cat says that you can die in a Yellow... for real."

Then she leaned over to kiss me.

Sister kissed me and I felt some petals falling on me, inside the van, falling, falling, inside my head, from some unimagined Vurt.

Flowers were falling.

Jasmine flowers were falling, as I sipped at God's juices, riding this chariot towards Takshaka, with the best set of lips in town locked tight to mine, her tongue going in, like a feather it was. That good.

Don't let me lose her.

What?

What did I just think?

"Let's ride this beauty," chanted the Beetle, so I didn't get a chance to question my doubts. We rolled the beauty into port, a Rusholme Garden port, behind the flats, each of us listening to the rust deposits settling, for a few moments, as we contemplated the pleasures to come, the saffron-drenched pleasures.

Rust was falling.

Drenched pleasures. These would be mine tonight, in all of their various guises.

Beetle broke the mood, "Let's do it! Inside!" he shouted, snatching the feather out of Desdemona's hand. "Let's do it! Let's do the Yellow! Come on!"

We made an easy, snakeless flight up the stairways, into the pad, which welcomed us with a show of lights. Now Brid was slumped on the settee, slow-gazing at a three week old copy of the Game Cat. Beetle was standing by the window, stroking the saffron feather. He charged up the flights real good with Vaz, and then he fed it to our mouths, each of our mouths in turn, finishing with his own last of all.

I felt the opening credits roll and then the pad went morphic and my last thought was; this is beautiful and I want more of it, I want it forever. Then the Yellow kicked in...

The fearless famous four of us are swimming in this lake of spices, getting ourselves marinaded, getting ourselves painted in yellow.

It surely is the sweetest colour. It was giving us flavours, flavours of the feast to come. Things we'd never tasted.

The living room was amber lit, with flowers of gold falling off the wallpaper, so many thousands of them that they made a carpet of petals on the floor. There was a hole in the carpet. And although we all knew that falling through a yellow door was bad, still we fell through it anyway.

!!!!!WARNING!!!!!

Shit! What was that?

I was walking through a palace of gold, my three companions at my side. In my hands, a ball hammer drenched in snakeweed, only known antidote to the dreamsnake bite. The other three were loaded up the same, and we were warriors in, bad world, and I felt full up of hunger and blood.

Everything was shining yellow, shining with the smell of saffron, in the world of the Nagas.

Game Cat tells us that the Nagas are a fabulous race of snakes. They are powerful and dangerous and usually appear in the form of ordinary snakes, but sometimes as mythic giants, long twisting forms of violet and green. Sometimes they turn into human shapes, just to fool us. The king of the Nagas is called Takshaka. Sometimes the Nagas get caught in the human world, and this makes them very angry, because they cannot stand the light of our world. We call these exiles the dreamsnakes.

!!!!!WARNING!!!!!

What was that? I was getting voices. Maybe I was getting the Haunting?

Please, my Lord, don't let this be a Vurt. Let this pleasure be real.

Having entered the limitless world of the dreaming snakes, we found it to be full of admirable establishments for games, both large and small, and crowded with hundreds of porticoes, turrets, palaces, and temples.

All this beauty; not a snake to be seen. Only their soft slitherings in the yellow shadows, invisible. My left ankle was tingling, like it had a message for me, a message I had long since forgotten.

WARNING. YOU ARE NOW INSIDE A METAVURT.

"Did you hear that? Anyone?" I asked.

"Hear what?" said Desdemona.

"That voice."

"Heard nothing."

"Come on, you two," said the Beetle. "Less of the billy-cooing. Let's hammer some snakes!"

We stalked that gilded world, with our weapons of steel and weed, and our fear and our sweat. Bridget started to sing her song, a tingling hymn of praise to the unseen Naga snakes. They were smothered in pride by the song from Brid's lips. But they would not return the earrings, and the snakes remained in the shadows, entwining.

A jasmine powder was dropping on us, from the palace's ceiling, but I was getting voices. . .

WARNING! YOU ARE NOW IN A METAVURT, RUNG TWO. THIS IS EXTREMELY UNWISE, AND SHOULD BE VACATED FORTHWITH. THANK YOU. THIS HAS BEEN A PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING.

"You heard that," I said. "Didn't you?"

"What's up, love?" asked Des.

"That voice! Listen to it! Can't you hear it! We're in a Metavurt!"

"Don't be silly now."

And as she said it, she held my hand in her own. Her fingers were soft and long, with sharpened nails, that dug in, just slightly, just enough.

"Okay, lovebirds. Enough words," announced the Beetle. "Here come the fuckers!"

And the snakes came, unravelling from the shadows, from the golden shadows, all violets and greens, giving a shine to the world, a poisonous shine. They were coming in hundreds, but so tightly knotted, it would take more than a human span to count them.

I tried to run. I think I tried to run.

But something held me back; this could only be perfect.

Takshaka the King rose up, his great head all mutilated and bleeding. He seemed to be made out of smoke, not flesh, a snake of smoke.

YOU ARE REALLY GETTING ON MY WICK! PLEASE VACATE THIS METALEVEL IMMEDIATELY.

Beetle let loose the first blow, swinging his ball hammer down in a hard graph, the muscles in his arms standing out like plague swellings. The head of a young snake caught the blow, and then cracked open, so that the weed could get through, dripping sap into the system, until the snake split apart, and there was snake juice everywhere, all over the warriors. But it looked so good, that splatter, we all just had to join in, bringing hammers down on the heads of snakes, dodging the fangs, revelling in the juice that was pouring over us, like a marinade of rain.

We hit that first line of snakes like a flesh hammer, and it all seemed so easy, so very easy for a Yellow, so maybe Yellows aren't all they're cracked up to be. Or maybe I was dreaming all this. Maybe I getting the Haunting again, seeing the dirt through the glass.

No matter.

Some dreamsnakes died that night, let me tell you.

Of course we did well, we did good, we did it like warriors, like heroes. We didn't get Takshaka, King Snake, but we hammered some bad fucker cronies. And we got those earrings back, and delivered.

The Beetle was draped all over with snakeskin, layers of it, stuff he had flayed with his own hands. He had a snakehead pinned to his jacket, a personal souvenir of the victory.

"That was some theatre, Des!" he said. "Thanks for finding it."

"No trouble, Bee," my sister answered.

We were all slumped out; Brid fast asleep on the couch, me in my favourite armchair, Desdemona on the rug by the fire. Only the Beetle was lively; he was pacing the room like a jammed-up panther, looking for something to eat.