Short Fiction - Dialogue With Snakes pg 9[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] But Al looked surprised, very surprised. "I left her almost three hours ago, and she's not back?" "Well, Alan. Well, well, well," said Sally, fixing him with a steady eye and a crooked grin, "You're so concerned. How sweet." "Shush, Sal," said Khala. "This might be serious." Sally pursed her lips. "Who knows?" Khala shrugged. "No one's seen her?" Al said, looking around for anyone else to ask. "If she'd been down by the site, we'd have seen her come up. We've been here all evening. You can't get to the motel without passing us." Khala frowned. "You're not going back out there, are you?" Al looked at his feet, then shrugged. "Khala, what do you want me to do? Just forget and hope she makes it back?" "Thank you, Mr. Sensitive," said Sally, laughing. "It sounds like you're really worried. Kit got your tongue?" "Sally -" Al said, then stopped. She was trying to be clever, and succeeding in being cruel. It wasn't worth rising to her. "I'm going back down there. You two check with everyone else. She could have come back, maybe, another way." Sally clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes. Khala lifted herself lightly out of her chair. "Come on," said Khala, "Don't want any tragedies on this trip, do we?" Al ignored all implications, now that it looked like the two women were mobilized, and ran back toward the Forest.  He returned in fifteen minutes, swinging Kit's purse by its strap, the note clutched in one fist. The entire group had been roused and was out in the front of the motel, waiting for news. One thing he could always say for Khala: if she set out to do something, she didn't go halfway. No one had seen Kit, but Al wasn't surprised any more. He felt like he was floating, unable to touch the earth. Kit had been distant, not there. Something was different. She had put on a good act, but she was different. What was it? What had changed? They woke the driver who had turned in early, possibly so that he would be up in time for Atrauk breakfast, and piled on to the bus. "Where's the other end of the trail?" said Al, hanging over the driver's shoulder as they climbed the stairs into the bus. The older man, swayed more by the insistence of the group as a belief in the mission, shook his head. "There is no other end. Haven't you been paying attention to the legend? No one goes through." "Kit did. She was nowhere in sight down the path. I found her purse. She's going through. I know." "You know more than me then," said the driver, but kicked the engine into life anyway. "I'll take you to the other side of the woods. As far as I'm concerned, your little friend's having a bit of a joke at your expense." "Of course," said Sally. "Shut up," said Al. "If you only do one pleasant thing in your life, Sally, why not make it tonight?" They got out of the bus on the grassy field that marked the other extremity of the Endless Forest - kind of a funny place to be, Al thought, beyond something that was supposed to go on forever. The area was quiet and empty, nothing to suggest people ever came here. No wonder. If no one ever traversed the path, there was hardly any need for a welcoming committee on the other side. Time passed. After the initial panic, most of the company was feeling the lateness of the hour, and stayed on the bus to drift to sleep in seats that were as familiar as the dark of the night. back to jenstuff
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