Out of Their Minds

She started to roll up the window, then rolled it down again, reaching down to the floor of the car. She came up with the baseball bat and stuck it through the window.

"Here, take this," she said.

I felt a little foolish going down the path with the bat in hand. But it made a good heft in my fist and it might be handy.

Where the path curved to go around the big oak I stopped and looked back. She was staring through the windshield and I waved at her and went on down the path.

The ground pitched sharply. Below me the forest closed in, dense and heavy. There was no breeze and the trees stood up motionless, the gree

I went on down the road and at a place where it twisted again to dodge another tree, I found the signpost. It was old and weather-beaten, but the legend still was clear. TO THE INN, it said, with an arrow pointing.

Back at the car, I told her, "I don't know what kind of i

"I don't know," she said, "and I don't like the idea of an i

"I didn't like the idea of an i

So I got her out and perched her on the hood while I locked the door and pocketed the key. Then I picked her up and started down the hill.

"You forgot the bat," she said.

"There was no way to carry it."

"I could have carried it."

"More than likely we won't need it," I told her and went on down the road, picking my way as carefully as I could so I wouldn't stumble.

Just below the signpost, the road twisted again to make its way around a massive heap of boulders and as I rounded the boulders, there on the distant ridge was the castle. I stopped dead when I saw it, shocked into immobility by the unexpectedness of the sight.

Take all the beautiful, fancy, romantic, colorful paintings of castles that you have ever seen and roll them all together, combining all their good points. Forget everything you have ever read about a castle as a dirty, smelly, unsanitary, drafty habitation and substitute instead the castle of the fairy tale, King Arthur's Camelot, Walt Disney's castles. Do all of this and you might get some slight idea of what that castle looked like.

It was the stuff of dreams; it was the old romanticism and the chivalry come across the years. It sat upon the distant ridgetop in its gleaming whiteness, and the multicolored pe

"Horton," Kathy said, "will you put me down. I'd like to sit awhile and simply look at it. Did you know it was there all the time and you never said a word…"

"I didn't know it was there," I told her. "I came back when I saw the sign about the i

"We could go to the castle, maybe," she said. "Not the i

"We could try," I said. "There must be a road."

I put her down upon the ground and sat down beside her.

"I think the ankle may be getting better," she said. "I think that I could manage even if I had to walk a ways."

I took a look at it and shook my head. It was red and shiny and had swollen quite a lot.

"When I was a little girl," she said, "I thought castles were shining and romantic things. Then I took a couple of courses on the society of medieval days and I learned the truth about them. But here is a shining castle with all its pe

"It's the kind of place," I said, "that you thought about, the kind of castle that you and a million other little girls formed within their romantic little minds."

And it wasn't only castles, I reminded myself. Here in this land resided all the fantasies that mankind had developed through the centuries. Here, somewhere Huckleberry Fi

And what was the purpose of it, or did there have to be a purpose? Evolution was often a blind sort of operation, appearing on the surface to be of no great purpose. And humans, perhaps, should not attempt to find the purpose here, for humans were too entirely human to conceive, much less understand, any ma

But this was a world, I told myself, that was a part of the human mind. All things, all creatures, all ideas in this world or this dimension or this other place were the products of the human mind. This was, in all likelihood, an extension of the human mind, a place that took the thought the human mind had formed and used that thought as raw material by which a new world and a new evolutionary process had been fabricated.

"I could sit here all day," said Kathy, "and keep on looking at the castle, but I suppose that we should start if we ever are to get there. I don't think I can walk; do you mind a lot?"

"There was a time in Korea," I told her, "during a retreat, when my cameraman got it in the thigh and I had to carry him. We had stayed behind a bit too long and…"

She laughed at me happily. "He was much bigger," I told her, "and much less lovable and most dirty and profane. He showed no gratitude."

"I promise you my gratitude," she said. "It is so wonderful."

"Wonderful?" I asked, "with a busted ankle and in a place like this.."

"But the castle 1" she cried. "I never thought I'd see a castle like that—the kind of castle I used to dream about."

"There is one thing," I said. "I'll say it once and I'll not mention it again. I am sorry, Kathy."

"Sorry? Because I got a busted ankle?"

"No, not that," I said. "Sorry that you're here at all. I shouldn't have let you mix into this. I never should have let you get the envelope. I never should have phoned you from that little place—from Woodman."

She crinkled up her face. "But there was nothing else that you could do. By the time you phoned, I had read the paper and I was involved. That was why you called."

"They might not have touched you, but once we were in the car, heading east for Washington…"

"Horton, pick me up," she said, "and let's be on our way. If we're late getting to the castle, they may not let us in."

"All right," I said. "The castle."

I got up and stooped to lift her, but as I did the brush rattled to one side of the path and a bear stepped out. He was walking upright and wore a pair of red shorts with white polka dots on them, held up by a single suspender looped across a shoulder. He carried a club across the other shoulder and he gri

Kathy shrank back against me, but she didn't scream, although she had every right to, for this bear, despite his grin, had a look of disrepute about him.

Out of the brush behind him stepped a wolf, who carried no club and also tried to smile at us, but his smile was less engaging and somehow sinister. After the wolf came a fox and all three of them stood there in a row, gri

"Mr. Bear," I said, "and Mr. Wolf and Br'er Fox. How are you today?"

I tried to keep my voice light and even, but I doubt that I succeeded, for I didn't like these three. I wished most earnestly I'd brought along the ball bat