Before long, he came to a junction. The tunnel he was in ended, and he could either go left or right. A few dozen yards down the right hand tunnel, a man sat, huddled with his head between his knees, and his back against the trunk of one of the trees that lined the way.
Cautiously, Hyden walk toward the man, while Talon flew further down the right hand passage to explore it. Hyden called out, but there was no response. When he moved closer, Hyden got a strange feeling in his gut. He nudged the man’s shoulder with his boot, and wasn’t too surprised when the skeleton fell over, with a rattling thrump of dusty bones.
Through Talon’s eyes, he saw that the right and left hand tunnels were identical mirror images of each other. Each went on straight for a ways, than ended in a T-junction, just like the first tunnel had. He decided that he would turn right at each intersection he came to, that way he could find his way back to the skeleton, by making left hand turns on his way back. To his great surprise though, when he turned his second right, the skeleton was there ahead of him, laid over exactly as his boot had left it.
Hyden pondered this for a while, and then sent Talon back to the first junction. When the bird flew left at the corner, there he was, coming right back at Hyden, again from the right hand corner of the other end of the passage. This was unexpected, and confusing. Hyden decided to go left then. There was no surprise when he made his second left hand turn, and saw the toppled skeleton laying there ahead of him. Talon came flapping down, landed on his shoulder, let out a frustrated squawk, and then started preening himself, while Hyden pondered their dilemma further.
While he was standing there, with his chin in his hand, he heard a chirping giggle from the trees nearby. Again, he heard the sound. He looked around and spotted a couple of tree squirrels peeking over a root at the edge of the thorny wall. A few other squirrels scampered along the limbs as they went about their business, but they didn’t seem to notice him. The two squirrels by the tree trunk though, were watching him intently, and giggling.
“You think it’s funny, then?” Hyden asked lightheartedly. He didn’t expect a response, and was shocked when he heard the squirrels plainly speaking to each other. Sure, he had communicated with animals, but it wasn’t a very verbal sort of communication. This was something altogether different. The squirrels were articulate.
“Can he hear us?” one squirrel asked the other.
“He can, I think!” the other replied.
“That’s far better than most that come here.”
“Is there a way beyond this, this…” Hyden indicated the tree-formed passage, but didn’t know what to call it. “…beyond this, this loop?”
“My, my, my, this one might just do,” a squirrel passing by on a limb overhead said to the others.
“He didn’t ask for a way out!” one of the squirrels by the root nodded reverently. “He asked for a way forward. That’s a start.”
“He asked for a way beyond, is what he did,” the squirrel beside him corrected. “A wise word ‘beyond.’ A wise question to ask, not a foolish one.”
“I’m here!” Hyden snapped. “You talk about me as if I’m not, or as if I couldn’t hear you. You’re awfully rude squirrels. You should know that I have friends that love to eat squirrels.” The last was said lightly, but the possible threat caught the little creatures’ full attention.
“Your friends may eat careless squirrels,” one of them replied, indignantly. “But we’re not careless.”
“Not careless at all,” the other added.
“Careless or not, it’s rude to talk about someone as if they weren’t there,” Hyden scolded. “Now that you’re talking to me, instead of about me, would you please answer my question?”
“No,” one of the squirrels answered simply. “You already know the answer to the question that you asked.”
“Use your head, and ask the proper question,” the other one told him. “We will only answer one.”
Hyden made a face at the squirrels, because he knew they were correct. Of course, there was a way out of the loop. The right question became obvious then, but Hyden thought it through before asking it.
“What is the way to get beyond this place?”
“Follow your heart!” a squirrel giggled from the trees.
“Follow your familiar!” another added.