In the Milky Way Galaxy is a strange world called Earth that has won the ‘Most Confusing Civilization’ award every year for the last twenty. Every year on Earth, buildings get taller, computers get smaller and lawyers are produced in record numbers (despite numerous intergalactic laws against the practice). These things are considered progress. Earth is home to over seven billion people, most of who don’t get along with each other. Nations are judged great only if they can completely destroy at least one neighboring country. Bonus points are awarded if they can reduce entire cities to radioactive dust.

Civilized beings avoid Earth.

There are equally strange worlds in the Milky Way. Not far from Earth is the world of Other Place, a land of magic and mystery. Many intelligent races on Other Place are found nowhere else, for which most people are grateful. Earth and Other Place share the dubious distinction of having lots of people who hate one another. In place of the tanks and nuclear weapons Earth favors, Other Place natives employ magic wands, terrible beasts, golems of frightening strength and an astounding number of lawyers (more proof that anti-lawyer laws are not being sufficiently enforced).

Other Place contains countless powerful individuals. Ruthless kings command armies in the thousands and pious holy men call upon their God for aid. Cunning wizards bend and twist energy to their needs, while mighty heroes battle hordes of enemies single handedly and win. Merchant princes fight just as fiercely using gold instead of swords and spells, and mad scientists perform experiments too insane to be imagined. Every so often a person is born destined to do great deeds. This sounds exciting, but usually consists of the poor fool trying desperately not to be killed. For better or for worse, these are the people who control the fate of nations.

But for every one of these great people who are the stuff of legends, there are thousands more with no power at all. Commoners, peasants, the little people, call them what you will, but when mighty deeds are being performed, they’re the ones most likely to get crushed underfoot. They long to be left alone, for kings to be content with wine and tournaments, for holy men to lead prayers and not crusades, and for wizards to build their stone towers and stay in them. Let merchant princes count their vast fortunes and mad scientists stay far away. Commoners want nothing to do with them. For these people a boring life is a beautiful one, and they understand more than most the meaning of the Chinese curse, ‘may you live in interesting times.’

Needless to say, few get their wish. This includes Sandra Sower.


“Keep walking,” Sandra told herself. “Almost there.”

Sandra trudged in the dark through ankle deep snow, trying very hard not to slip as she worked her way around a boulder on the trail. She’d been walking for a long time, and the boulders, pitfalls and fallen trees blocking the trail made her journey that much longer. Luckily she was young and in good health. This trip would have killed the older women in her town.

Sandra was twenty years old, tall and slender, her muscles strong from years of hard work. Her brown hair was bundled under a fur hat and wool scarf, and her brown eyes barely showed at all. She wore a long skirt and blouse, both gray, coat, mittens, felt boots, and wool wrappings tightly wound around both legs. A gray cloak covered her back and head.

She had little besides these clothes. Sandra carried an empty wicker basket and an equally empty purse. She considered dumping them to lighten her load, but her peasant upbringing wouldn’t allow such waste. Of more use, she had a bundle of dry sticks for kindling tied to her back, a steel knife strapped to her leg and a lit torch in her right hand.

The land around her was bleak and cold. The Raushtad Mountains were not a healthy place to travel through during summer and infinitely worse in winter. Such high mountains blocked out the sun for most of the day, providing even fewer sunlit hours than normal. The few trails going through the mountains were narrow and poorly maintained, crowded on both sides by tall evergreen trees. Cold wind whipped between the mountains and could blow snow into drifts as high as a wagon.

Sandra was currently traveling toward two nameless peaks and the valley between them. She was tempted to stop for the night and avoid the chance she might trip on a rock or branch buried under the snow, but continued in spite of the risk. She’d already lost eight days to detours around closed trails and digging her way through deep snow. Every delay put her people in peril.

“Just a bit farther.”

There was another reason she kept moving. People in the last inhabited valley she’d traveled through had told her she was close to her destination. If they were right, the man she needed to find was only a few miles away. With luck she could reach him by morning and beg for help…and for food.

Sandra stumbled in the snow. Cursing her bad luck, she struggled to her feet and brushed off her skirt. She pulled the scarf off her mouth and ate some of the snow. Despite the cold, she was overheating in her warm clothes and from the heat generated by walking. The snow cooled her down.

Exhausted, Sandra stopped marching and caught her breath. She was in the shadow cast by a tall and foreboding granite peak. The trail was bracketed by pine trees as tall as church steeples and without branches for the first forty feet. That was unfortunate, since she could have broken off low branches for firewood. The sky overhead was clear and stars twinkled around a full moon. Moonlight reflected off the snow and provided enough light to travel by. She could probably get by without her torch, but fire was good for warding off hungry animals.

“Hi there!” a rough voice said behind her. Sandra spun around and came face to face with a werewolf. Taller than her and bulging with muscles, the werewolf had a luxurious coat of gold fur that almost sparkled under the light of her torch. The monster stepped out of a grove of trees behind her and had both clawed hands outstretched, its mouth open revealing long teeth dripping with drool.

Sandra screamed. She stumbled away from it and swung her torch in front of her. The werewolf backed away and lowered its arms, its eyes opening wide in surprise.

“Hey, wait a minute!” the werewolf protested. It looked confused for a moment before slapping itself across the muzzle. “Ah man, I did it again! I’m sorry. I keep forgetting what I look like this time of the month.”

Sandra stopped screaming. “What?”

The werewolf backed up and raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m really sorry. This has been going on for so long you’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now. Smiling doesn’t look friendly when you’ve got teeth like these!”

Sandra kept her distance but stopped threatening the werewolf with her torch. Storytellers told many tales about young women meeting werewolves at night, and none of those stories ended well for the women involved. But the monster was talking, and that was a good sign. Once she managed to stop staring at those terrible jaws, she noticed something odd about it.

“You’re wearing pants?” she asked. Sure enough, the werewolf was wearing leather pants with an opening for its tail.

“Yeah, I kind of have to,” the werewolf said sheepishly. “One time I changed back before I got home in the morning. Let me tell you, really embarrassing! I made these pants so there wouldn’t be more mistakes like that. I overheat in them, but it beats streaking the whole town again.”

Some werewolves were ravenous monsters, but Sandra had heard that not all were dangerous. Cautiously, she asked, “You weren’t born a werewolf, were you?”

The werewolf shook its head. “I got bit a year ago, and the next full moon this happened. It’s been a big adjustment, but my family’s been real supportive. Oh hey, where are my manners? The name’s Keith Sunter. Pleased to meet you.”

Sandra gingerly shook the werewolf’s hand while keeping her torch at the ready. Silver was what really hurt werewolves, but she hoped fire would hold it back if it got aggressive. She didn’t bother drawing her knife.

Keith the werewolf didn’t seem to notice the suspicious looks she gave him. “Surprised to see anyone out this late. I come out here so I can be alone. Can’t scare anyone if there’s no one around. Hey, I don’t think I’ve seen you in these parts before.”

“I’m passing through.”

“Tough time to be traveling,” Keith said. “My family would love to help if you need a place to spend the night. Lots of things going on at home you might like. Say, we’re having a tent revival this week if you’re interested.”

“Uh, it’s really not a good time for that.”

“Never a bad time to have the Good Lord in your life,” Keith countered.

Sandra stammered, trying to find a way to end this conversation. “I appreciate the offer, it’s just I’m in a real hurry. I need to find a man named Doctor Alberto Moratrayas.”

Keith smiled, baring teeth that could rip a man in half. His ears perked up and his tail wagged. “That’s easy! The doc lives in my town.”

“He does? Where’s the town?” she demanded.

Keith pointed a clawed finger up the trail. “Follow the trail for the next two miles until it comes to a valley. There’s a town there called Refuge and a castle called Fortress X. The doc lives up there.”

“Thank you! You don’t know how much you’ve helped me,” Sandra cried. She shook the werewolf’s hand again and headed up the road.

“Safe trip!” Keith called after her. His tail wagged as he watched her trudge through the snow. “What a sweet girl.”

Keith continued down the road in the direction Sandra had come from. Whistling cheerfully to himself, he set out for another night of exploring the forest around his hometown. Minutes later his keen hearing picked up the sound of men coming up the road. Smiling, he introduced himself.

“Hi there! My name’s—” Wham! A steel mace came down on Keith’s head and knocked him out. He hit the ground in front of his attacker.

“Is it alive?” a man asked.

“Of course it is,” another replied. “Mace isn’t silver, and that’s what kills werewolves. We just stunned it. Anybody got silver on them?”

There was a pause as the men went through their pockets. One of them offered, “I got a lead fishing weight.”

The group’s leader bit back a harsh and well-deserved stream of insults, instead saying, “It’s not the same thing. We’ll have to leave the werewolf. It ain’t who we’re after, anyway.”


Not far ahead, Sandra hurried through the snow. She climbed up a rise in the trail and came onto the top of a hill. She could see light ahead of her. The air was heavy with the scent of wood smoke and cooking food. Food! Sandra’s stomach grumbled at the smell, but she pushed on. She forced her way through a cluster of pine trees growing around a wide river, and then stopped to take in the sight before her.

Filling the valley ahead of her was a prosperous town of perhaps two thousand people, far larger than Sun Valley. The houses were made of granite and were well built. Smoke poured from chimneys and light issued from glass windows. Outside the town were empty fields and orchards harvested long ago, and beyond those were brick lined terraces cut into the mountains and filled with more barren cropland. Sandra saw people walking through cobblestone streets, all of them well fed and happy like she used to be.

Scattered around the town were stranger things that showed all too clearly that this town was the possession of Doctor Moratrayas. An ornate clock tower thirty feet tall dominated the center of town, its four faces showing the time as 7:19. Most cities didn’t have such an extravagance, much less a town this size. At each street corner stood a steel post with a street sign and a black orb on top. Sandra saw five black boxes scattered across the town, big enough to fit a man inside and attached to the ground by thick cables. The boxes hummed and occasionally sparked. Something flew over her head, buzzing as it headed for a castle dug into the side of a mountain.

Sandra walked into the town. People saw her and waved. Some wished her a good day. They laughed and smiled at each other. She’d been away from home and a normal life for so long that this felt alien.

“You look lost, young lady,” a plump, prosperous man said to her. He looked like he was in his fifties and wore warm fur clothing.

“Actually, I think I’m right where I need to be. Does a man named Doctor Alberto Moratrayas live here? I was told he might be in the castle.”

The man nodded. “He lives here, all right. I’ll take you to him.”

The man smiled and led her through the streets. Seeing so many warm homes with cooking fires burning in them made her want to ask (correction, beg) for something to eat. Sandra had abandoned her pride a month ago and no longer minded asking for help. But any delay was too much when she was this close to her goal. Food could wait.

Sandra pointed at a six-inch diameter black tube running through the snow and connecting to a house. “What’s that for?”

“Those tubes pump hot water to our homes,” the man explained.

Still staring at it, she asked, “But how?”

The man shrugged. “I don’t know how it works. None of us do. The doctor put them in and fixes them when they break. He keeps saying it’s not magic, but if there’s a difference, I don’t know what it is.”

They approached one of the large black boxes, and to Sandra’s amazement the box turned to face her as she walked by. “I’m almost afraid to ask what that does.”

“No idea, but my dog got a nasty shock when he peed on it. I’d keep my distance if I were you.”

“Do you know the doctor? I mean, have you met him, talked with him?” she asked. She didn’t know much about Moratrayas and needed all the advice she could get.

“I’ve spoken to him, but no one truly knows the doctor,” the man said. “What goes on in his mind is a mystery. We live well and he’s a better ruler than any of us had before coming here, so we ignore the little things.”

“Little things like what?” she asked.

On cue, the highest tower on the castle roared like a dragon. Something as big as a wine barrel flew from the tower so fast Sandra didn’t get a good look at it except that it was shiny. It slammed into the opposite mountain and created a deafening boom that echoed through the valley.

“That would be a good example,” the man said, unperturbed by the display. No one else on the street seemed to care, either. “We find it best not to ask what he’s doing. When we do ask, if we’re lucky he won’t say.”

Sandra hesitated before asking, “And if you’re not lucky?”

“He spends hours trying to explain it to us, and nobody understands him.”

“I guess that happens a lot with mad scientists.”

The man stopped in his tracks. “Don’t call him that. Ever.”

“I…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude to him or you or oh God, is that an insult with him?”

“Something like that. Call him doctor or sir.”

The man led her to a set of granite steps leading up to the castle. There had to be a thousand steps, wide enough for ten men to go up at once and swept clean of snow. At the top of the stairs was a castle.

Sandra had only seen castles in books before now. They were tall and bright and pretty, with soaring towers and pointy rooftops flying pennants. This castle was dark and ugly. It seemed to have grown out of the mountain, a squat thing with dirty walls and narrow windows. Its towers were thick and short. Its gate was closed and made of wood bound with iron bands. What little light came from the dark castle was tinged green.

“Here we are,” the man said. “You’re lucky he’s in. Sometimes he’s gone for weeks at a time doing God only knows what. He’ll see you if you can get up the stairs.”

“If I can get up the stairs? What’s that mean?” Sandra asked.

“You’ll see for yourself.”

That didn’t sound good. “I know you’ve already helped me, but could you introduce me? It would look better if I show up with someone he knows than if I come alone.”

“Not a chance,” the man said firmly. “We don’t go to the castle unless we’re invited. The doctor doesn’t have many rules, but he was clear on that point. He said it’s not always safe up there with his experiments, and we believe him.”

“But—”

The man sighed. “I can tell this is important to you, but I can’t help. For your good and mine, you’ll have to do on your own.”

The man tipped his hat to her and headed back to the town, leaving Sandra alone at the foot of the stairs. She looked up at the gate high above her and shuddered. Something about the way the man had spoke made her think going up those stairs would be a lot harder than it looked.

Sandra hesitated. Up in that castle was Doctor Moratrayas. He was a mad scientist, regardless of what he liked to be called, and stories about him circulated even in places as isolated as Sun Valley. Rumor was he built life from metal and stone, fearsome things small as a cat or as big as an ox.

Moratrayas was said to be far more frightening than his creations. Ill-mannered, vicious, possibly insane, the doctor had a reputation as a man who seldom started fights but always ended them, usually in the most violent way possible. Sandra should be doing everything in her power to avoid him, and that’s what she wanted most of all. But there was a chance, be it however so slim, that his power could save her people, so she went on.

“Great. I’m heading to a big scary castle with a mad scientist to ask for help,” Sandra said as she started up the stairs. She talked to herself a lot, more so since she began her long trip alone through the mountains. “Jennet Foster gets to go ask the great hero Julius Craton for help, the little minx. I’m probably going to get dropped into a vat of acid while she’s looking for a genuine hero…who’s tall and handsome and single and brave and courteous and loyal and single and I’m stuck here!”

Sandra waved her arms toward the castle. “I’m heading toward a mad scientist’s castle! There are lots of stories about what happens to young girls that meet mad scientists. They don’t end well for the girls. Come to think of it, just about all the girls in stories end up in trouble. I bet that wouldn’t happen if there were more women storytellers.”

She grumbled and kept climbing the staircase. “This is mother’s fault. ‘We need help’, she says. ‘I’m sending you because I trust you’, she says. Who does she send her oldest daughter to get? Doctor Alberto ‘the mad tailor’ Moratrayas. I’m going after a super scary mad scientist who beats up ogres for a hobby. Thanks a lot, mom!”

Still fuming over the injustice of it all, Sandra climbed the stairs in silence for the next few seconds. Tired, hungry and upset, it took her longer than normal to notice she wasn’t getting any closer to the castle.

“What the…hey!” Sandra looked down and saw the stairs she was climbing moving down toward the town. The stairs moved so smoothly and silently she barely noticed she was actually going backwards. She ran up the stairs, but they sped up so she still wasn’t making any progress. Sandra collapsed in exhaustion and was carried smoothly back to the bottom.

“That’s a lousy trick!” she shouted at the castle. If anyone heard her, they didn’t reply. It didn’t take long to figure out what was going on. Wizards used tamed griffins or unicorns to guard their estates from intruders. But Moratrayas was a mad scientist. He’d build some crazy thing made of steel and bottled lightning to keep people away. Angry, she shouted, “Maybe that keeps salesmen out, but you need way better than that for me!”

Sandra studied the moving stairs. They sank into the ground at the base of the staircase. The stairs were motionless when she wasn’t on them, but if she climbed higher than the third stair they went backwards. The moving stairs were a different color than the ones farther up the staircase. It looked like she’d have to get past fifty feet of moving stairs before she could go on.
The sides of the staircase were polished smooth, leaving nothing to grip if she tried to climb around the stairs. To either side of the staircase was a huge drop off. Sandra was a good climber, her getting through the mountains proved that, but a climb this difficult required tools and rope she didn’t have.

“Can’t go around, can’t go under, can’t climb up,” she mused. “So, what does that leave?” Sandra snapped her fingers. “Got it!”

She pulled out the knife strapped to her leg and poked around the edge of the moving stairs. There was a slight gap at the base of the steps, which she would have seen earlier if there was better lighting. The thin knife fit in the gap, but no matter how far she pushed, the knife didn’t press against anything. It went in up to the hilt and she still didn’t feel any resistance.

“Come on, there’s got to be something here I can cut.” She pressed the knife in as hard as she could, but it didn’t budge. Suddenly an idea came to her. Sandra left the knife in place and climbed the stairs. One step, two steps, three steps, and like magic the stairs began their descent, but this time there was a thud followed by a whirring noise. The stairs lurched and stopped. Sandra climbed higher. Four steps, five steps, six steps. The stairs made a grinding sound, but with the knife jammed in they couldn’t go down.

“Got you!” she said with a smile. Defeating the moving stairs meant leaving her knife behind to keep them jammed. Being close to poverty her whole life made Sandra hate waste in any form, but if losing her knife was the price she paid to save her town then she could live with it.

“That wasn’t so bad,” she said as she continued onwards. Once she was past the moving stairs she heard the grinding and whirring stop. Apparently the good doctor wasn’t going to waste time on a trap that was already defeated. “Yeah, that wasn’t so bad. If Moratrayas fights ogres and wins then he’s got to have a lot meaner tricks up his sleeve than that.”

Sandra continued up more cautiously. She didn’t see anyone by the castle, but if the moving stairs had turned off then someone was watching her, probably Moratrayas. With his first trap disabled he’d likely spring another. That trap was at the bottom of the stairs. If she were placing these obstacles, Sandra would put the next one near the middle.

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be bothered,” she said aloud. “Maybe he’s doing something dangerous, and if I break his concentration he’ll screw it up. Or he might be with a lady lab ‘assistant’. I’ve heard about them. Yeah, that’d be great. I break in his house, asking for help, and he’s alone with a pretty girl whose chest measurements are bigger than her IQ. That’s a great way to make a good first impression.”

The next trap announced its presence with a whirring noise and a clank-clank. Huge pincers two feet across lifted up from the left of the staircase to menace Sandra. She backed away and the pincers came closer. The contraption was made of brass and what looked like polished obsidian, and contained glass panels with some strange glowing green fluid moving inside. The pincers hung off an arm made of the same mismatched materials. The pincers snapped open and closed, clank-clank.

Sandra was much closer to the castle now. She shouted, “Doctor Moratrayas! I need to talk to you! It’s very important! Please turn this thing off!”

Clank-clank. The pincers snapped again. The arm extended and carried the whirring menace closer. If Moratrayas heard her he wasn’t answering. “Fine,” she said. “We do this the hard way.”

Sandra didn’t approach the pincers, fearful of how much damage it could do if it grabbed her. The arm carrying it was long enough to reach the entire width of the stairs and a height of at least twenty steps above her. That was a lot of space to cover for just one weapon, and it moved slowly.

Sandra walked casually to the left edge of the stairs. The pincers and arm followed. Once she and it were as far over as they both could get, she ran to the right end of the stairs as fast as she could and climbed up.

The whirring noise sped up until it sounded like a swarm of angry bees. Moving as fast as a running deer, the arm swung after her. The pincers opened wide, and before she could dodge they closed around her waist. Sandra struggled to pull them apart, but they wouldn’t budge. The arm and pincers lifted her effortlessly and set her back down where she’d started. The pincers opened and freed her, then waved in front of her face like a mother scolding a naughty child.

“That’s just rude!” she told it. The arm and pincers hung there and whirred away. Clank-clank. “I already heard that line tonight.”

Sandra tapped her hand against her wicker basket. “Too fast to go around, too strong to force back, so what does that leave?”

If she jammed the moving stairs, she might be able to do the same with this trap. But with what? The basket was too flimsy. The pincers would crush it and go after her again. She had a bundle of kindling. Unlike her knife it was replaceable, so losing it didn’t bother her. The bundle was tied together with a strip of leather. She remembered a fable that mentioned sticks together being stronger than if they were alone. Would that be strong enough so the pincers couldn’t break it?

Sandra pulled the bundle off her back and held it in front of her. The pincers waited patiently for her next attempt to get around them. Clank-clank. This time she headed straight for them. The whirring noise sped up again and the pincers opened wide. She jammed the bundle into the pincers and ran around it.

The pincers tried to close on the bundle and crush it. As Sandra ran by she heard the kindling snap and break, but there were so many sticks that when one broke there were others holding the pincers open. The arm swung left to right, then up and down. It slammed against the stairs and dislodged the broken bundle of kindling.

Sandra kept running. The arm swung around and grabbed for her again. She was up another fifteen steps when the pincers grabbed her by the ankles. She tripped and fell, dropping her torch. The pincers were built to grab a person around the waist or chest. Faced with something as small as Sandra’s feet, they couldn’t close tightly enough to get a good grip. She slipped through the pincers and scrambled up the stairs out of its reach.

Clank-clank. The arm retracted off the stairs, lowering it and the pincers from view, and the whirring noise died away. Her torch was still burning but had rolled down next to where the pincers had been. Retrieving it risked another attack, so she left it behind.

“I’m two for two!” Sandra shouted at the castle. “Can we stop this and talk?”

Again there was no answer. Sandra had met people who assumed she was as dumb as a stump because she was a woman. Could that be the reason she was getting so much trouble? After all, mad scientists had a reputation for being stubborn and proud. Frowning, Sandra asked, “Is this because I’m a girl? You’re supposed to be a genius. Aren’t you above that kind of thinking?”

There was a crackling noise from the castle, followed by a man’s booming voice. “Gender bias has nothing to do with your situation. You face the same tests as those before you. Should I show you favor because you are of the fairer sex?”

“You should hear me out! I don’t have time for this!” She stopped shouting and rubbed her eyes. Arguing with him might make him angry enough to refuse her. “I just, can we talk this over like adults?”

“Of course. I am nothing if not reasonable. You simply have to reach the castle and you will have my full attention. You’ve dealt with the first two obstacles. The third should prove no harder. To turn it off now would cheapen your achievement, and I have no desire to insult you in that fashion.”

Sandra stared at the castle and its unseen owner. “Oh yeah, putting me through all this is a real honor.”

She headed up again. The voice had said there was a third trap. It would probably be right in front of the door. Sandra wondered what else he would throw at her.

“Julius Craton wouldn’t test me,” she said bitterly. “Tibolt Broadbeard wouldn’t test me. Ask them for help and they say, ‘sure, we’d love to.’ I get sent to a man who sets lethal traps for visitors.”

The booming voice said, “None of my traps are lethal.”

“Not for you they’re not,” she muttered, and rubbed her side where the pincers had grabbed her.

Ten steps from the top of the stairs, Sandra heard a whirring noise. She dropped to her knees and prepared for the worst. A cylinder two feet wide and three feet tall rose up from the stair in front of her. Startled, she stepped back. The cylinder was made of brass and obsidian, just like the arm and pincers. Glass panels lit up with the now familiar green glow. A panel opened on the side of the cylinder, displaying row after row of white tipped darts.

“Hey!” Sandra ran back down the stairs while the trap fired darts at her. The cylinder shot them out faster than any man could throw. Most missed her or hit her basket. Two darts stuck in her cloak, damaging the material but nothing else. “You said nothing here was lethal!”

“The poison is merely paralytic,” the booming voice said.
Sandra pulled a dart from her cloak. “Poison? That’s not fair!”

The cylinder stopped firing once Sandra was fifteen steps away. Breathing hard, she studied the devise. It had fired at least twenty darts, but as she watched more darts slid into place in the panel. How many more were there? Maybe she could trick it into firing all its darts. But it only needed to hit her once to poison her and win. She didn’t like those odds.

Sandra plucked the darts out of her basket. They were stuck in good and it took some effort to pull them out. The darts didn’t hit with enough force to punch all the way through. It didn’t take much to stop them. She looked at the tiny holes in her cloak.

“I’m going to regret this.” Sandra took off her cloak and held it in front of her. Cautiously, she advanced on the cylinder. It began firing again once she was close enough. Darts flew out three a second and hit her thick cloak. Dozens of darts stuck halfway through the material. The cylinder ran out of darts, reloaded from some inner reserve and fired again. Sandra advanced steadily, keeping her entire body behind her cloak. She finally reached the cylinder and jammed her tattered cloak into the dart panel. The cylinder whirred in protest, but couldn’t fire or even sink back into the staircase.

“That’s three,” she said. “You owe me a cloak.”
Sandra climbed up the last few steps and approached the castle’s huge doors. She grabbed an enormous iron ring hanging from the doors and swung it hard. The boom it made echoed throughout the valley. She waited a moment, and when the doors remained closed she swung the ring again.

A small door opened to the left of the ring, and a man poked his head out. He was nothing to look at, with beady eyes, a pronounced chin and a nose like a hawk. The man wore a billowing cloak with a hood. He eyed her suspiciously before speaking.

“We’re not buying cookies.” He didn’t sound like the booming voice Sandra had heard earlier.

Puzzled, she said, “I’m not selling cookies.”

“We’re not buying candy, either.”

“Aren’t you supposed to open the door?” she asked.

The man shrugged. “I don’t have to. Seriously, we don’t want cookies, candy, tins of popcorn or peanut brittle. Mind you, a nice sponge cake would hit the spot right about now.”

Exasperated, Sandra demanded, “Why do you think I’d come all this way to sell you treats?”

“In the last four months only one other person has gotten this far, and she was a Girl Scout.”

Sandra pointed at the brass cylinder. “A Girl Scout got through that?”

“Surprised us, too. Apparently there was a quota she had to meet, and she wasn’t taking no for an answer. Doc was very upset by the whole thing.”

“I’m a little old to be a Girl Scout.”

The man shrugged. “Some folks advance slower than most.”

Sandra put her hands on her hips and scowled. “Listen to me very closely. I spent three weeks getting here, and let me tell you, it wasn’t fun. I got through your master’s traps, and it cost me a perfectly good knife and my only cloak. I really need to see him, because if I don’t a lot of people I care for are going to die. Please open the door.”

The man twisted his lips and looked to his left like he was considering her position. “Hmm, well, okay.”
The man closed the little door and slowly swung the larger one open. Light and warm air spilled out from inside the castle. Sandra saw the rest of the man she’d been speaking to. He was a foot shorter than she was and his right shoulder had a pronounced hunch.
Smiling, he shook her hand and beckoned for her to come inside.

“I’m Igor, professional lab assistant. Come on, the doc is waiting for you in the main hall. I can’t promise you’ll get what you want, but the doc will listen to you. He’s impressed. You beat the Girl Scout’s time by four minutes.”