[Firefoot]

"...My side hurts so badly I can't go on. You'd just have to leave me here, and I'd die anyway."

"Now that's-" nonsense, Sondo started to say, but he was cut short as Bingo downed the entire contents of the bottle. Idiot!

"Bingo!" he cried. "Even if it was medicine, you ought not to have taken the whole thing! Even medicines can become poisonous if you take too much, and if it wasn't medicine...!"

Bingo shrugged. "It's done now." Sondo could think of nothing to say to that, and, at any rate, Bingo seemed to be suffering no ill effects as yet. As much as anything he was annoyed that he had had no true say in the verdict, but of course he could not say this out loud. He was concerned as well for his friend, and Bingo’s actions seemed extremely foolhardy. He figured Bingo was much more likely to die as a result of drinking so much of that.. stuff as he was because they left him behind. Why ever would they do that?

He turned to face Sassy, who was still laying atop the ridge, watching the whole affair. He glared at her for a moment, for it had been she that had been the final push for Bingo to open the bottle, because she had seen whatever Bingo had seen. However, he gave no word of the reason for the glare and left her to puzzle it out for herself.

He knelt and picked up the scrap of cloth that Sassy had let fall. "It wasn't a ghost, at any rate," he grumbled. "Ghosts don't wear clothes." The fact that it was actually a living being was more disconcerting than the illusion of ghost, though - what were they doing here? He scowled at the cloth and stuck it in his pocket.

"Let's eat breakfast and get out of here," he said, his snappish mood evident in his voice. "I don't want to spend another night in the forest." He dug out some food from a pack, leaving the others to get their own. He ate his own meal in silence, and the others let him, sensing his dark mood.

Some foul adventure this was! Shipwreck, mutiny, attacks, injuries, evil trees, ghosts... It wasn’t fair. Didn’t he ever have any good luck? All he had wanted was an adventure, like in tales. Was that so much to ask?

He stood up abruptly. The rest of them seemed about finished eating. “Come on,” he said resignedly. “Maybe if we go on enough we’ll find someway out of this curséd ravine.” He didn’t like this option one bit, but it seemed the only one they had. Suddenly, he heard some noise behind him and spun about.

“Are you sure that is such a wise way to go? The deeper you go into the forest, the more your peril grows,” said a kindly voice. The man that stepped out from among the trees was fairly tall (to Sondo’s eyes, anyway; it might not seem so amongst the Big Folk) and glad in a grey cloak and blue hat. He looked quite old, with a long grey beard and a staff. There was something about him Sondo thought he should recognize, though he knew he had never seen him before. And though he seemed friendly, Sondo was instantly suspicious for several reasons: clearly, this was Bingo’s “ghost,” and why had he been lurking around them? Closer to Sondo’s heart, however, was the sharp memory it brought up: Hey, Sondo? Are you sure you’ve covered all your options? This recollection brought Sondo’s hand to the hilt of his knife. “Who are you?” Sondo demanded. “And what do you want with us?”

“I have come to help you,” the man said. “And I should think that such an adventurous lad such as yourself would know my name.”

Sondo scowled, refusing to play along with this man’s games. “And how do we know this isn’t a trick?”