A Darkness in My Soul

day and reached the tree-shrouded floor of the valley, where the air smelled of pine and of flowers.
        Waiting for me there was a creature much like a wolf, with a hugely swollen head and a mouth full of long teeth.
        Eyes like chips of iron, gray and unperturbed.
        "I'll guide you through the valley," it said, scratching paws in the earth. "I know it, and I can give you a look at every hole there is."
        "Fine," I said.
        "First, you must change yourself. Assume my form so that we can go more easily."
        I had forgotten that the gossamer body analogue which I had assumed for my journey through Child's mental landscape was not the only shell I could use to contain my psychic energy. There was nothing essential about a humanoid form, for that psychic energy could take any form that I wished. Gently, I released the surface tension of the current, permitted my human body to shimmer and dissipate. I flowed, settled, grew lower and sleeker until I was a double for the wolf that waited for me.
        I snuffled, scratched at the earth with razored claws and saw the dirt runnel before me. In this new body, I had a sense of power which I had never experienced before, a new perspective on the world about me. It seemed as if, I had been born to lycanthropy.
        "Let's go," I said.
        The wolf turned and loped away between the thick trees, his big paws scattering dry, brown pine needles which carpeted the forest floor. They rained over me as I hurried to follow his example.
        As I ran, my breath steamed in the cold air, and my massive lungs heaved within my chest at the strenuous pace we set.
        The ground flashed under me. Flimsy brush parted before me and closed, quivering, behind. To either side, small animals ran, chittering and whimpering with their fear. It was a completely structured reality, and it had made me the king of beasts in this part of the woods. I felt a burgeoning excitement at my omnipotence and my superiority over these lesser creatures. And while I savored this heady attitude, I never once realized the danger that was reaching cold fingers around me.
        I enjoyed the muscular rhythm I had never known either as a man or spirit, closed the gap on the wolf, reached it by the time we broke through the pines into a grassy field. We ran side by side, easy, smoothly, sure of ourselves.
        The journey had begun in earnest
        

    III
        
        We prowled the depths of the woods, sniffing through the underbrush for the scent of Child, the odor of his mental essence. There were times when I forgot everything but my powerful shoulders, my claws and my teeth, the keen powers of my black nostrils.
        We rooted through the dark cavelets along the valley walls which opened on the floor of the forest, seeking into their darkest recesses, where our eyes refused to be totally blinded. We overturned old, rotting lop in the woods, seeking burrows through which the entrance to Child's prison might be found. We padded through the foaming cascade of a waterfall which issued from the valley rim a thousand feet above, searching the subterranean chambers beyond that wet curtain, finding nothing. If there was a place with a blue floor where Child lay encircled by undescribed creatures of a malignant nature, it was nowhere within this valley. Neither was there a doorway into the conscious mind, no exit from this place where I found myself trapped. The journey was not to have a swift conclusion.
        For some reason, I was glad for the extension. There was a strong reluctance to part with the form I had taken, to return to the world and be, again, a man.
        It was snowing outside as the wolf led me across the last expanse of open fields before the impenetrable wall of mist which separated this part of the analogue world from the next. Big white flakes clung to our coats and frosted us, kicked up in clouds as we pranced forward toward the distant veil of fog.
        We were sidetracked by the scampering of a covey of quail-like animals off to our left. My lupine friend broke into a wild, breathtaking run, teeth bared ferociously, lips drawn back, slobber falling from his wide mouth.
        I followed, feeling the wind and snow and scenting the flesh of small creatures.
        I saw him leap: muscles taut. I saw him land: a spring's coils jammed together.
        The air reverberated with the dying squeal of his