The Disappearing Dwarf Read Online Free Page B

along an oaken walking stick, not so much for support along the trail as for warding off goblins or clobbering a possible troll. The trail wound in and out through clumps of moss-hung trees, seeming to take the long way around. Three times they came upon forks and decided on each occasion to follow that fork that steered them in the general direction of the tower. That seemed to work well twice.
    Some few minutes after following the third fork, however, they found themselves before an old stilted shanty with plank walls. Weedy mud had at one time plugged the chinks in the walls, but had long since fallen to bits. Little was left to keep the north wind out. A ruined porch with a stile railing slanted across the front, and on it sat a wizened woman who appeared to be so incredibly old that she was more a bag of dust and dry bones than flesh and blood. Her face was lined so deeply that it seemed to Jonathan that she could have profited as much as the walls of the shanty from an application of mud. She sat in the ruins of an armchair staring out through apparently sightless eyes. Jonathan didn’t like the look of her by half, nor of a bundle of what appeared to be dried bats that hung over the door. She was dressed in black. Faded lace hung in tatters round her collar and sleeves. A cat sat beneath her chair, idly batting at a long shred of lace that dangled in front of it.
    Jonathan and the Professor stood silently for a moment, both of them prepared to tiptoe off back down the path toward the fork where they’d gone astray. Ahab watched the cat, black as a moonless night, but didn’t mutter any sort of greeting. He seemed to like the look of it about as much as his master did. The cat wandered out from beneath the chair and hopped up onto the tilting porch railing, staring down placidly at the three of them. The old woman stirred and fingered the lace on her sleeve. She smiled slowly with her mouth, but her eyes didn’t move. Jonathan noticed with horror that she hadn’t any color in her eyes, that they were the same dead milky gray over all, like the belly of yesterday’s fish. It was as if they’d been drained over long years of their color and sight, and the old woman had faded like a lizard on a rock to become part of the general colorless murk of the swamp.
    She rose slowly and terribly from the chair, supporting herself on a curiously carved stick, dark with age and use. It looked certain for a moment that she was about to totter very slowly forward onto her face on the porch. She didn’t though; she simply continued to stare ahead of her.
    The Professor took his hat off even though she couldn’t appreciate it. He introduced himself and Jonathan politely. It was Jonathan’s idea to make off down the path, but he wasn’t about to go alone, and clearly this was just the sort of thing to fascinate the Professor. The old woman didn’t respond at all to the Professor’s pleasantries. She simply smiled for a moment more, then reached out one withered hand from the midst of the muff of ruined lace, pointed it shakily at the space between Jonathan and the Professor and said eerily, ‘So you’ve come.’
    ‘Some mistake.’ Jonathan looked at the Professor, then back at the old woman. ‘You’ve got the wrong party. We’re out on a picnic actually. On our way to the waterfall for a swim.’ He motioned to the Professor in a meaningful way. The old woman laughed, or at least tried to, but didn’t sound as if her heart were in it, as if she were approving of Jonathan’s sense of humor. She curled her finger slowly, inviting them up onto the porch, and, as if suddenly becoming animated, she jerked her head to the left and looked Jonathan full in the face, cackling with sudden brittle laughter.
    Jonathan was off down the path with Ahab at his heels. He could hear the Professor pounding along behind. With a shudder of horror he heard the screeching of the cat and cackling of the old woman mixed very clearly with what