The girl was gone.

Standing over me was a man -- at least, I first took him to be a man. He was entirely naked, his body smeared with thoat fat. A tangled mass of hair topped an angular head. He spat upon me, then began to sing; it was meaningless gibber.

It was then that I saw he had long, powerful legs, the knees of which were flexed, as if he was ready to spring at a moment's notice. An ample tail provide support for his tilted posture.

I attempted to rise, but the wound in my chest permitted little motion. I sank back, in agony. I could tell, however, that I suffered no fatal wound. I would recover, in time.

For now, I was simply at the mercy of this odd creature.

"Who are you?" I asked, wondering if it had speech.

The lunatic cackled insanely.

"I am Tur!" he shouted, then began hopping about on those mighty legs. Did every creature in this forest sak so prodigiously?

Ripping a branch from a tree, he dealt me a terrific blow to the head.

"Tur the Malevolent!" he screamed, and struck again.

"Tur the Kind!" he added; another blow missed as I rolled to the left.

"Tur the Blasphemer!" That one got me in the neck.

"Tur is Tur is Tur!" he cried, underscoring each point with the thick of the branch.

I couldn't argue with his reasoning, though the blows he used for emphasis left me wanting.

A dozen fellows of similar appearance and disposition emerged from the woods and bundled me in heavy rope. They carted me off through the undergrowth, each arguing loudly that he, in fact, was Tur. At one point they dropped me and a general melee ensued, presumably to determine the true Tur.

After one man had been brained and another crippled, the matter still could not be settled.

But the lunatics eventually resumed their march. I was alternately dragged by my feet or hair, and sometimes carried aloft. We traveled some short distance to the shore of a lake. Entering a wooden boat, we crossed the short distance to an island, where there stood a village comprised of simple huts made from mud and straw.

At the center of the village I was subjected to the most minute of examinations by the inhabitants.

"Good cranial development," said one man, flatulating loudly as he quite somberly measured the circumference of my head.

They picked at my harness, and weapons, and hair. A haggard old woman pinched my nose.

One simpleton hefted my short-sword and proceeded to lop off his own toe. No one paid any attention to his screams, except a man who picked up the stub and flung it into the trees. A mangy calot, half-starved, bounded after the morsel.

They bustled me into a hut, heaving me to the ground. I lay there, testing the strength of the rope that bound me. I could not break free.

As my eyes became accustomed to the dim interior, I saw that I was not alone. The girl of the woods lay in a corner, similarly bound. I maneuvered close to her, and saw that she was barely conscious.

In fact, she was quite ill, drenched in sweat. She gasped for breath in quick gulps. An area of her chest was enflamed -- and I recalled the plant-creature's darting thistle.

"Poison," I thought.

Recognizing me, she made no effort to keep her distance. The ropes bound her quite as securely as I; she couldn't have moved far had she wanted to.

It was also clear that the sickness made her too miserable to care whether I was near.

"I know you think of me as an enemy," I said. "I assure you again that I am a friend. It matters not that you believe me. But know, red woman, that I will do whatever I can to make your lot easier. We will escape this asylum. Tardos Mors, Prince of Helium, swears it."

There was a weak sound in her throat. The girl burned with fever. I wasn't sure that she'd even heard my pledge.

As darkness fell upon the village, the howling of predators sounded all about us. A zitidar squeeled, quite distant and eerie. I thought that it had perhaps become mired in some marshy swamp of this evil wood.

The scream of a banth seemed close, though, which caused a commotion among our captors for a short time. One entered the hut and asked if it had been I that growled. I told him that it was my stomach.

"I am hungry," I said.

"Stop it immediately," ordered the lunatic. "Tur demands it."

I recognized him as the one who'd originally discovered me. He backed slowly from the hut, watching me warily.

The intervals of silence were as unnerving as the great roars of the night-stalkers. During those lulls, the lunatics wept and cried, shouted and sang, laughed and screamed in terror. The sounds within the village were more terrible than those without.

A fire was built in the village center. The light that reached us cast dancing shadows upon the walls of the hut.

My heart went out to the girl, who listened keenly to the macabre chorus when she wasn't in the clutches of delirium. I wrestled with guilt for being unable to comfort her in any way.

So what that she had tried to kill me? I was a prince of Helium, and this was a red girl -- alone, and feverish, in a land of enemies.

She strained a bit to reach the pouch at her side, but was unsuccessful. I crept closer, gently so as not to frighten her, and managed to work it free from its thong. I placed the pouch in her hand, which seemed to soothe her, somehow.

Rocking back and forth, she tossed puffs of white powder from the pouch toward north, south, east and west. In low tones she chanted strange words:

"Gun-ju-le, chil-jilt; si-chi-zi, gun-ju-le; inzayu, ijanale!"

She was quiet then, very still. After a time, I worried that she had succumbed. I leaned close. To my relief, her breathing seemed more regular, though shallow.

"I still live," she whispered.

Then she rested.

At some point during the night, Tur brought us water and a half-roasted piece of meat. He eyed me suspiciously, not without a little apprehension. We remained bound, however, and availing ourselves of the fare proved difficult. In my case, it must have proved comical. I heard the girl chuckle weakly as I attempted to drink from the roughly molded bowl, face down, lying in the dirt.

I smiled, exaggerating my efforts to drink. It was a spectacle quite unbecoming a prince. But if it helped ease her suffering, no matter how briefly, my coutiers in Helium, at least, would be none the wiser.

With dripping chin, I propped myself up against a wall.

"You spoke earlier in a tongue I did not understand," I said to the girl. "What did it mean?"

She looked at me as if I was some unfathomable creature, distant and unheard of. Then she shrugged, as if realizing something she had forgotten.

"I asked Night to be good to me," she said in a tone that sounded of resignation. "To not let me die."

I looked around, listening to the jungle sounds and the murmurings of the villagers outside our hut. It seemed they planned not to sleep at all. I wondered if it was because they were mad, or afraid.

Sometimes they banged drums and blew primitive horns, presumably to keep the beasts at bay -- and I realized that fear alone kept them alert.

They, too, were asking the night to protect them.

"Your prayer must have been answered," I said. "You will not die."

"Perhaps. But I am still weak. Raven is not afraid of Night."

The comment made little more sense than the actions of our captors.

"Are your people near?" I asked.

She was quiet a long time.

"No," she finally said.

"Where are they?" I pressed.

"I often ask that question of Kliji-litzogue, the yellow lizard," said the girl.

"Yellow lizard?" Her words were beyond comprehension.

"My Spirit Guide," she answered, without answering. "Kliji- Litzogue says I am no longer in The World, that Usen, or perhaps an enemy of Usen, has sent me to one of the points of light in the sky. How this can be, Kliji-Litzogue will not say. He does say it will take much medicine for me ever to return to The World. But there are no izze-nantan here with the Power needed for the proper medicine. So how can it ever be made?"

She looked at me as if expecting an explanation. Of course, I had none.

“I have begun to collect the ingredients,” she said, nodding to the scalp of the green man she'd killed. “But I am an izze-nantan with the Power of Water -- not Direction. I am lost. A Human Being -- and lost!"

She eyed me carefully, and a thought seemed to strike her. Eagerness welled within her. Hope reached out to me.

"Are you an izze-nantan?" she asked. "Do the Directions listen to you? Perhaps you know of The World. In which Direction does it now make its home?”

"I know not what an 'izze-nantan' might be," I answered slowly. "But there are many worlds. I have seen them myself through the astronomers' instruments in my father's palace. Barsoom is but one. If you are from one of these, which is it?"

She shrugged her shapely shoulders, as if my question had no meaning. A spasm of coughing wracked her body before she could answer.

"The World is the land of my ancestors, and all their ancestors before them," she said, peaceful now. "The World is where Chigo-na-ay beats his merciless rays upon a scorched waste of sand, and yet which is more beautiful than words can describe, for all its emptiness. The World stretches from the cool rivers and snowy frost of the north, where majestic mountains touch the face of Yandestan, to endless plains and hot desert in the south, and encompasses all that is sacred in Usen's universe. It is the land of the Shis-Inday; the Human Beings, the Men of the Woods. It is my home and the home of my mother, Light-in-Eyes, and my father, Yellow Bear. It is the home that I know I shall never see again, and for which I weep every night beneath the eyes of Klego-na-ay's crazy cousins."

Somehow, I knew that she meant Thuria and Cluros -- the "cousins" of "Klego-na-ay." Poets have sometimes called those orbs of the night crazy. But never had their words imparted to me the ache that lived in the heart of this lone girl.

I moved closer.

“I am Tardos Mors, son of Moros Tar,” I said gently. “By what name do Yellow Bear and Light-in-Eyes call you?”

Her shoulders sank, and she strained against her bonds to move imperceptably nearer me. She looked to the scar that her knife had carved in my chest, and turned away. Had my arm been free, I'd have slipped it about her.

“The Green Ones called me Shis-Inday,” she said. “It is the name of my people, in The World. That name will serve as well as any other; for I am the only Human Being in this place.”