Sepwise and Andrew emerged from the forest into a large, densely populated area of forest. It was very picturesque and crammed full of interesting, botanically extraordinary vegetation, but it was too much exactly the same as the last five miles of terrain to be entirely what Sepwise was looking for.
‘I thought you said this route would lead us to a great plain?’ he said to Andrew.
‘Well, it should have done,’ said Andrew, confused. He looked at the map, then back at the trees. He checked over to the left, just in case there was a large meadow hiding over there, but he was disappointed.
‘Don’t say anything,’ said Sepwise, holding his hand up, ‘let me guess. Are we - and you understand this is just a complete stab in the dark, a wild guess in a million - lost by any chance?’
Andrew nodded woefully.
‘In the name of Safariz!’ exclaimed the scientist. ‘We have a perfectly good map, we’re perfectly intelligent men, yet every... single... time... we end up getting lost! I mean, how do we do it? How do you do it?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Andrew apologetically. ‘Anyway, I’m no worse a navigator than you.’
‘That’s besides the point,’ whined Sepwise. ‘Oh, come on, let’s just keep walking.’
They continued onwards through the trees.
<=> <=> <=>
‘Ah,’ said Liandra, watching them from her monitor in the throne room, ‘this is excellent news. Soon they shall be mine.’
‘Why?’ asked Trussuk, impressed at Liandra’s magic eye and its ability to see into the far distance.
‘They are ensnared,’ she explained. ‘In the Plain of the Invisible Trees.’
Trussuk considered this for a moment. Surely that was impossible?
‘No, it’s not impossible,’ said the Queen. ‘I simply render a small section of the forest invisible. To the unknowing observer it thus has the appearance of a grassy plain. A crude and simple ploy, admittedly, but nonetheless effective.’
For a few moments the captives let this sink in. They stared in deferent confusion at Liandra and at the screen.
‘I feel I should point out,’ said Trussuk gently, ‘that those trees aren't in fact invisible. In case you weren’t aware of that fact.’
Liandra looked at him despairingly. ‘I haven't switched it on yet,’ she said. ‘Impetuous fool.’ She turned away and removed a small box from a compartment in her throne's arm. It featured a switch and nothing else. It didn't seem to be connected to anything. ‘This device,’ she explained, ‘controls the state of the plain. With the switch in this position the trees are in the visible state. But flick it across and they vanish instantaneously.’ She clicked her fingers to illustrate the immediacy of the effect.
‘Hang on,’ said Armoro, ‘even if you could do that, which you can’t, surely you would see where the tree trunks stick out through the ground? There would be lots of small circular holes in the grass.’
‘Yes, there are some fairly complex issues surrounding that, none of which we have time to discuss,’ said Liandra. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to.’ She turned back to the monitor and flicked the switch.
<=> <=> <=>
‘I just don’t ever want to talk about it,’ moaned Sepwise as he collapsed against a large oat tree. ‘It’s just too embarrassing to even think about.’
‘Oh, it’s not all that bad,’ consoled Andrew. ‘We defeated the monstrous red devil-beast, remember?’
‘Oh, yes, that’s right,’ shouted Sepwise. ‘And how did we do that? By chopping down a tree that by some unreasonable fluke landed on its head! Not exactly likely to become the stuff of folklore, is it?’
‘Perhaps not, but it’s certainly unique.’
‘Unique? Unique? Don’t you understand? We don’t need unique! We need bravery, we need discovery, we need something legendary to happen; something that we can sing songs of to our grandchildren. That’s what adventuring is about. Adventuring is not about getting repeatedly lost on a strange island and being interviewed by market researchers.’ He reached forward, grabbed the map out of Andrew’s hands, scrumpled it up and threw it carelessly upwards, where it caught on the upper reaches of a large bush.
Andrew decided against any further response and settled for just sitting down on the undergrowth. It would be less painful that way.
‘You know,’ moaned Sepwise, ‘I hate the forest. It’s the trees that really get me down. Take away all the trees, and I could really like forests. A bit.’ He rolled away from the oat tree, spread out on the undergrowth, closed his eyes and sighed. Perhaps if he hoped and wished hard enough he could make all his problems simply vanish; melt away into nothingness like ice warming in water.
‘Oh,’ said Andrew suddenly. ‘How peculiar.’ He shook Sepwise by the shoulder. ‘You should look.’
‘What now?’ snapped Sepwise. ‘Can’t you see I’m trying to doze?’ He opened his eyes and saw. He didn’t believe what he saw, but he saw it nonetheless.
‘Oh,’ he repeated. ‘Oh. Where are all the trees?’
<=> <=> <=>
Liandra stood up triumphantly. ‘Aha!’ she exclaimed. She turned to Armoro. ‘And you dared to doubt me? Now they are mine.’ She gave a brief laugh and left the room theatrically.
‘Well, I’ll give her this much,’ said Trussuk, ‘she’s consistently inventive.’
‘Agreed,’ agreed Armoro. ‘And it most certainly doesn’t bode well at all.’
<=> <=> <=>
Sepwise and Andrew gawped at one another. Neither had a clue what to do next. This wasn’t a scenario the Four Foundations of Fruition had prepared them for. The thick forest had disappeared for miles around them, replaced instead by an expansive plain carpeted entirely with a thick, lush, uninterrupted baize of green grass.
He continued gawping for a while longer. He was searching for a word to describe what he was seeing. Inexplicable was the best he could come up with.
Eventually, he came to the conclusion that it was probably best not to worry about it too much, accept the fact that they had somehow found the plain they had sought, and continue to follow the map. He looked around for it and finally spotted it apparently floating in mid-air, about five feet off the ground.
‘That’s curious,’ said Andrew.
‘You’re not wrong there,’ said Sepwise standing up. He edged over towards the levitating chart. Before he reached it, however, he brushed against the edges of the bush into which he had earlier tossed it.
‘Oh, there seems to be a bush here,’ he said, trying to free his tunic from the brambly shrub.
‘Where?’ asked Andrew, unable to see anything.
‘Just here,’ said Sepwise. ‘I’m caught up in it, and the map is impaled on the top of it. Can’t actually see it, though.’
‘Ah, good,’ said Andrew. He always liked a straightforward explanation for things.
Sepwise disentangled himself from the bush and reached over gingerly. The map had sustained a bit of damage, notably a large rip down the middle, but it was still readable.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘let’s get out of here. Invisible shrubbery - this can only be the work of the darkest sorcery.’
‘Okay,’ said Andrew, glad to be told what to do.
Sepwise started towards the edge of the plain but halted immediately and rather abruptly.
‘Ouch,’ he said, rubbing his nose. ‘That hurt.’
‘What did?’ asked Andrew.
‘I walked into something. I think it was a tree. It felt like a tree. Doesn’t look like a tree though.’
‘Why, what does it look like?’
‘Air,’ replied the red-nosed alchemist. ‘I suppose we should just walk around it.’ He reached out carefully with his arms until he could feel the rough bark of the trunk, and edged his way around. He got to the other side, smiled triumphantly at Andrew, turned round, tripped over a log and fell into a patch of stinging nettles.
‘Aaaarrrggghh!’ he yelled, jumping up quicker than the retraction of a tape measure.
‘What is it?’ asked Andrew hurriedly.
‘Stinging nettles,’ said Sepwise, scratching himself all over. ‘Oh, Safariz, I can’t stand it. Eeuurghh.’
‘Nasty,’ said Andrew. ‘Hope I don’t fall into any.’
‘You won’t as long as you stay exactly where you are,’ advised Sepwise. ‘Wherever we are, whatever this is, we are in serious peril.’
‘But it’s just a forest.’
‘Don’t be daft, it’s clearly not just a forest,’ replied Sepwise. ‘It’s invisible.’
Andrew looked ahead of him. He found that if he turned his head sideways and squinted his eyes, so that the merest fraction of his pupils were exposed to the light of the day, he could just about, but only very faintly, the images hardly registering on his retina, see a complete lack of trees.
He was sorely tempted to march arrogantly across the plain, just to prove to Sepwise there were no trees or bushes or logs or stinging nettles or anything between them and the edge of the clearing, but the sight of the small red bumps appearing on Sepwise’s normally blemish-free face put a swift end to that idea. He settled for sitting cross-legged on the grass instead.
‘What now?’ he asked.
‘We wait, I suppose,’ said Sepwise, leaning cautiously against a transparent oat.
‘What for?’
‘Whatever comes along.’