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Ahab sat up, immediately aware of the pain in his back. He arched it with a  loud popping sound, grunting slightly because it felt half-good half-bad. “This is what you get for being forty,” he muttered. It took a moment for him to realize that it hurt because he had just crashed through a dense canopy of wide, dripping-wet leaves. There was a large hole through the roof of branches, probably the path his body had taken when he fell…

“Right. The fool kid and the book. ‘I didn’t do it!’ ha, you did it this time, buster.”

Ahab stood up on shaky legs. He put a calloused on the scratchy bark of a thick tree to steady himself. Then he looked around to get his bearings. He was standing in a soft, round pile of long grasses set in the middle of a tiny clearing. The trunks of great plants and trees surrounded him, so closely-packed together that it was like looking at a wall of foliage glistening with dew and sparkling with big, bright pink and white flowers. If Ehud had been there, he probably would have picked a bouquet of the magenta blossoms.

But it wasn’t Ehud there, it was Ahab. And the man was confused — but not for long. “So it was the book… a sort of portal, I suppose. That’s the best way I can explain it, and no bother wondering about it. I’m here anyway. Well, I guess I had better start moving. This looks like a nest, and those look like some bones. Not a five-star inn, I take it.”

Ahab stepped gingerly out of the grassy pile, for while he was big and tall, exercise and practice had made him stealthy. He put a hand on the hilt of his sword and started off down a wide path made in the tangle of branches and plants.

“I hope I don’t run into the body that made this track,” he murmured as he observed the long, deep scrapes on several trees, the humongous piles of droppings and the footprints in it. While he knew he was totally capable of fending for himself, he would rather not do it just then. His back was still sorting itself out.

On he tramped, not sure where he was going. “I suppose I had better look for a way out of here, someplace safe, somewhere away from this beast. But I must still be in the castle.” He had deduced this once the jungle thinned out a bit and he could see the sky — through a thick film dimming the sun’s light. A clear roof of some sort. And as he kept walking, he suddenly emerged out of some wide bushes onto an overgrown, stone path that winded its way through the jungle. Weeds grew in the cracks between the stones, and ferns trailed across it in no set direction.

Ahab looked at it critically, wondering if there might be a booby trap of some sort on it… he picked up a long, sturdy branch and commenced to tread the trail, jabbing at each stone as he went. “The path must lead to some sort of exit,” he thought. He would have kept going on like this for some time, uninterrupted, had he not come across the girl when he turned a bend in the trail.

The girl — standing in the middle of the rumble-tumble path, her ax set up as a splint on her leg, her hair filled with twigs and leaves. They stood several yards apart, taking in the sight of each other. Ahab thought of going in the other direction so he could avoid her, but that meant going past the large creature’s rampage again. No, he would go on. He tapped his way to her, and she watched him with one eyebrow raised.

“Are you blind or something?” she asked.

Ahab looked her straight in the eye. “Not too much. I can still see your impudent little face.”

The girl drew herself up to her full height, which was about to Ahab’s armpit. She stared at him definitely, and he stared back at her. Finally, he decided he didn’t want to stand there any longer looking dumb, and so he attempted a smile. “I am going on my way. Feel free to follow, and feel free to leave.”

Then he trodded off, listening carefully for the clump of her feet on the stone; either coming his way, or the opposite. He felt slightly sorry for her. She seemed like a resilient girl — making that splint was a genius move. He decided he might assist her if she followed him; but only if she proved not to be a nuisance.