«I guess they're kind of touchy,» I said, rising to my feet and falling again.

Then I felt the wind swirling about us, ten times stronger than it had been earlier. I tried again to get to my feet and was again knocked down. I glanced back at the stone, saw that the roiling had subsided, that another lightning bolt might not be imminent. Instead, a faint outline hung there, of a silver key. I crawled nearer to Graymalk. The wind increased in intensity. Somewhere, a voice came chanting, «Ia! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Wood with a Thousand Young!»

«What's happening?» she wailed.

«Someone opened a gate to provide means for expressing disapproval of your remark,» I suggested. «That's done now, but the door hasn't swung shut yet. That's what I think.»

She leaned against me, back arched, ears flat, fur risen. The wind, stronger still, was pushing against us now, near to the point of irresistibility. I began to slide across the ground in the direction of the gate, dragging her with me.

«I've a feeling it'll close too late!» she cried. «We're going through!»

She turned then and leaped upon me, clinging with all four paws to my neck. Her claws were very sharp.

«We mustn't separate!» she said.

«Agreed!» I choked, as I began sliding faster.

I was able to gather my feet beneath me as we moved. Rather than being pushed through, willy-nilly, some measure of grace might provide a survival edge.

It was easy to stop thinking of it as a rock wall that we were approaching, for there were obvious depths to it, though no clear features presented, and the image of the key had already faded. What lay beyond, I'd no idea; that we were going to go through, I'd no doubt. Better a little dignity then… .

Straightening my legs, I leaped forward. Into the breach. Into the mist… .

… Into the silence. Immediately, as we passed through, the sounds of wind and rainfall ceased. We did not come to rest upon a hard surface, or any other surface. We were suspended in a place of pearl gray light, or, if we fell, there was no sensation of falling. My legs were still extended, forward and back, as if I were leaping a fence, and while misty eddies and currents, faint as high clouds, played about us, my sense of motion was paradoxical; that is, by turning my head in any direction, I could create the feeling of pursuing a different vector.

I did turn my head to the rear in time to see the rectangle fade behind us, paling stones and grass within it. Dotted about the place where it had been, as well as about ourselves, droplets of rain and a few leaves and strands of grass hung in the air. Or perhaps we were all falling together, or rising, depending on…

Graymalk gave a little wail, then looked about. I felt her relax after that, then she said, «It is important that we not be parted here.»

«You know where we are?» I asked.

«Yes. I'm sure I will land on my feet, but I don't know about you. Let me move around onto your back. We'll both be more comfortable that way.»

She worked her way about my neck then, finally settling into a position behind my shoulders. She did retract her claws as she settled.

«Where,» I said, «are we?»

«I see now that something tried to help me as we were being swept forward,» she said. «This is not of a piece with the lightning stroke. But the way was opened and he seized it as a means of rescue. Possibly there is even more to it than that.»

«I'm afraid I don't understand you,» I told her.

«We are between our place and the Dreamworld now,» she said.

«You have been here before?»

«Yes, but not right here recently.»

«It feels as if we could drift here forever.»

«I suppose that we could.»

«So how do we go ahead, or go back?»

«My memories of this part are all scattered. If we do not like where we find ourselves, we withdraw and try again. I will try it now. Call to me if anything too unnatural occurs.»

With that, she grew silent, and while I waited for whatever sequel was to ensue I thought back over the events which had brought us to this place. It struck me as odd that her mere disparaging mention of the Elders had not only been heard, but that whichever had taken umbrage thereby had been strong enough to do something about it. True, the power was rising in this, a most powerful time, but I wondered at such profligacy with it when there must have been multitudes of better uses to which it might be put, unless it were simply another instance of that famous inscrutability which I sometimes think is to be better understood as childishness. Then a possibility struck sparks deep within my mind, but I had to let it go, unexamined, as alterations began about me.

There came a brightening from overhead, nothing as patent as a single light source, but an increasing contrast to the darker area below my feet. I said nothing about it to Graymalk, for I had resolved not to address her, barring emergencies, until she spoke. But I studied that light. There was something familiar about it, from driftings off and awakenings perhaps… .

Then I realized it to be an outline, as on a map, of a continent or island, perhaps two or more, hanging there, as in a skiey distance, overhead. This did peculiar things to my orientation, and I struggled to alter my physical relationship to it. I moved my legs and twisted, trying to turn my body so as to look downward rather than up at it.

It was almost too easy, for there followed an immediate turning. The view became clearer, the land masses larger, as we seemed to drift nearer, topographical features resolving themselves against a field of blue, wispy swirls of cloud hung above prominences, along coasts, a pair of large islands surmounted by great peaks between the two greater masses, to the west, if what seemed upward along the vertical axes were indeed north. No reason that it should be, of course, nor, for that matter, that it shouldn't.

Graymalk began to mutter then, in a flat, affectless tone, «… To the west of the Southern Sea lie the Basalt Pillars, beyond them the city of Cathuria. East, the coast is green and home to fishers' towns. South, from the black towers of Dylath-Leen is the land of white fungi where the houses are brown and have no windows; beneath the waters there, on still days, one can see the avenue of crippled sphinxes leading to the dome of the great sunken temple. To the north again, one may behold the charnel gardens of Zura, place of unattained pleasures, the templed terraces of Zak, the double headlands of crystal at the harbor of Sona-Nyl, the spires of Thalarion… .»

As she spoke we came even nearer, and my attention was taken from spot to spot along the coasts of that sea, those features somehow magnified across the distances, so that I beheld things with the vision of dreaming; though a part of me was baffled by this arcane phenomenon, yet another accepted with a feeling more of memory than discovery.

«… Dylath-Leen,» she mused, «where the wide-mouthed traders with the strange turbans come for their slaves and gold, anchoring black galleys whose stench only the smoking of thagweed can kill, paying with rubies, departing with the powerful oar strokes of invisible rowers. Southwest then to Thran of the sloping alabaster walls, unjoined, and its cloud-catching towers all white and gold, there by the River Shai, wharves all of marble…»

«And there lies the granite-walled city of Hlanith, on the shores of the Cerenerian Sea. Its wharves are of oak, its houses peaked and gabled…»

«There, the perfumed jungle of Kled,» she went on, "where lost, ivory palaces sleep undisturbed, once home to monarchs of a forgotten kingdom.

«… And up the Oukranos River from the Cerenerian Sea slope the jasper terraces of Kiran, where the king of Ilek-Vad comes once a year in a golden palanquin, to pray to the god of the river in the seven-towered temple whence music drifts whenever moonlight falls upon it.»