Ogg was smart caveman.

He was always picked to lead barter when the Cavemen met with the Rivermen every full moon to trade. The Cavemen did not like the Rivermen, who were clean and lived inside fancy things called huts. Rivermen looked down on Caveman, but Cavemen always came on top on full-moon, because Cavemen had Ogg. Ogg was smart.

One time, a big rock fell and blocked half the entrance to the cave. It was so big, not even Brooto, the strongest of the Cavemen, with arms like trunks, could nudge the rock. A joint effort was needed. Unfortunately, Cavemen were not very good when it came to cooperation.

They pushed but the rock didn’t move. They pushed for half an hour until Ogg came and told them that if they want the rock to move, they should all try pushing it in the same direction and not against each other. It took them half an hour more of pushing against each other to admit Ogg was right, and another half hour to decide to which direction they should push the rock. However, all this complicated thinking got the cavemen incredibly confused, and they accidentally pushed the rock deeper into the cave — until Ogg corrected them.

Ogg was smart caveman.

Another time Ogg saw pretty Oola trudging along the mountain path burdened with wood for the night fire. Ogg really liked Oola and didn’t want to see her work hard. He cut two lengths of thick vine and rolled them into two thick rings. He tied Oola’s wood with a rope and put a ring on each end of the bundle. Now the bundle of firewood rolled along the path on the rings of vine and Oola smiled at him, which made him very happy.

But when they reached the cave, the Seer saw Ogg’s complex invention and shouted, ‘Evil magic! Evil magic!’ and had the other cavemen scuttle the contraption, which, for the brief moment it existed, Ogg named Thing That Rolls And Can Carry Other Things, Too.

Ogg was not upset at all about the destruction of his invention. He had a good feeling that in the future someone might invent something similar again. Hopefully they will find a better name for it. Also, Ogg fashioned it primarily because he hypothesized Oola would repay his kindness behind a tree when no one looked. Ogg was smart caveman.

And when Ooob With The Red Hair swore to everyone that eating ten Fire Peppers in one sitting made him fart flames, Ogg proved to them that Ooob With The Red Hair was lying by repeating the experiment.

Maybe that time Ogg was not so smart cavemen.

But he was still, everyone agreed, the best barterer among the Cavemen, and so it was he who now stood at the front of their group, on the edge of the forest between the cave and the river, waiting for the Rivermen to come with goods to trade. What’s more, Ogg was the only one among them who could subtract and add and all that magic.

But today something wasn’t right. The Cavemen waited and waited but no Rivermen came. The sun had rose and passed its zenith and began to sink but not a single Rivermen walked out of the forest.

‘I hope they’re alright,’ said Ogg.

‘Why?’ said Gloob, picking his nose. ‘S’only Rivermen. Fish-lovers can go wash in their precious river till their skin falls off for all I care.’

‘It can happen!’ nodded Ooob. ‘Once, swear on me mother, I bathed so long my —’

‘Shut up, Ooob,’ said Ogg, unconsciously scratching his bum. ‘Let’s give them a little more time.’

They waited and waited. The air had turned chilly and the sun orange like in the night fire. Later still, when the sun touched the mountains of the valley, they heard footsteps coming down the path that led back to their cave.

‘What’s taking so long?’ said the old Seer, coming toward them. He had come squinting at the sun and obviously did not notice there were only Cavemen present.

‘The Rivermen have not come, Seer,’ said Ogg. ‘Hi, shouldn’t you have known that?’

The Seer looked at Ogg with arrows in his eyes. ‘I knew the Rivermen have not come!’ he proclaimed to everyone, and then fell into a short silence. ‘I… I was referring to you! Yes, I meant what’s taking you so long to realize the Rivermen will not be coming, and return to the cave?’

The Seer was smart, too.

‘But, Seer…’ said Ogg, ‘shouldn’t you have known the answer to that question, too?’

Ogg was smarter.

‘Bu-but — I… er…’ the Seer stammered. ‘Well, I can’t appear to be all knowing all the time — it makes people uncomfortable (Ha!). And because of that, I will now keep quiet and wait alongside you, pretending that I have no idea what’s going to happen.’

Ogg nodded solemnly. ‘You are indeed wise, Seer. But I don’t think it would be smart to stay and wait here any longer.’

‘Aight,’ said Ooob With The Red Hair. ‘Let’s head back, then.’

Ogg remained put. ‘No. We can’t all head back either.’

Gloob turned. His uni-brow was furrowed in deep, deep thought. ‘We can’t stay… but we can’t go?’

Ogg sighed slowly. ‘You can go back, but I intend to find out what’s happened to the Rivermen. I’m going into the forest.’

A loud ruckus erupted all around Ogg.

‘Stars in the sky, ’e’s nuts!’

‘But it’s forbidden, Ogg!’

‘We have a pact with the Rivermen, Ogg! You can’t just walk into their forest.’

‘Don’t go, Ogg!’ said Ooob With The Red Hair. ‘I swear on my life, I once saw their shaman cast a spell that turned an intruder to a hedgehog with infinite diarrhea!’

The Seer grabbed Ogg’s shoulders and looked at him very seriously. ‘Go, Ogg. You must!’ he said, shaking Ogg. ‘Don’t come back until you find the Rivermen.’

‘But, Seer!’

‘Someone fetch water! Seer’s ill in the head!’

‘No, Seer, tell him —’

‘Diarrhea from a hedgehog, in every color of the rainbow, diarrhea from the butt —’

The Seer raised his arms for silence. ‘It’s alright, men. No harm shall befall our Ogg,’ he boomed, then gazed up at the sky mysteriously . ‘I have seen it.’

A great wave of relief spread across the group. Ogg shook his head and sighed internally.

‘But, Ogg,’ said Ogoolo. ‘You can’t just go like that, not without explaining yourself.’

‘Yeah,’ nodded Gloob, curling his tongue over the upper lip and wiping at snot drippings. ‘I want to know, too.’

‘Tell it, Ogg!’

Ogg stared at the tree line, contemplating. ‘Why would the Rivermen miss a trade day?’ he asked. There was no answer for a long moment so Ogg, thinking that maybe the group of Cavemen that came with him had left, turned around to look.

They were still there, all fifteen of them, scratching chins and heads and furrowing eyebrows and uni-brows and eating the dirt beneath their fingernails (the Seer, too, looked rather ponderous).

Orlo’s face lit up. ‘A pack o’ bears passed by and ated them!’

‘A rock fell on their heads and smashed their skulls in!’

Gaaboosh raised a finger in epiphany. ‘The river overflowed and swept them all away!’

‘Oh, that’s a smart’un!’

‘Good one, Gaaboosh!’

Ogg sighed yet again. ‘Bears don’t roam in packs, the Rivermen don’t live in a cave with rocks to fall on their heads, and the river overflows only after it rained a lot and for at least two days.’

‘So tell us, then, Ogg,’ said Ooob With The Red Hair. ‘Tell us what happened to them, why do you have to go?’

‘And tell it pretty-like!’ said Gloob.

‘Well, I don’t know exactly what happened to the Rivermen,’ said Ogg. ‘But if they couldn’t even spare a runner to come tell us to pack and go, it must be serious and potentially dangerous. We live only a quarter day’s walk from the river, and whatever’s going on there today may climb to the cave tomorrow. We should find out what’s happening so we’re forewarned and prepared for whatever it is.’

‘Forewarned?’ asked Orlo. ‘Is that like that time Borbo ate five bowls of Brown Bean so we ’ad ’im sleep outside the cave?’

Ogg nodded uncertainly. ‘Uh… yes, precisely.’

‘Now, now, everyone,’ said the Seer, ‘it’s getting late and we ought to start heading back. Let’s say our goodbyes — er, good lucks to Ogg with as little dawdle, lest he loses heart and comes back to the cave. Come now.’ A blissful relief on his face as though he had been relieved of a nasty hemorrhoid, the Seer spun around and began hiking up the path.

Ogg nodded to everyone. ‘Go, friends. I’ll see you back at at the cave.’

The Seer’s cough rolled down the path. Ogg turned and began striding toward the tree line. As he walked he felt a warmth on the back of his neck and knew the Cavemen were still there, staring at him. Only when he looked over his shoulder and nodded at them did they start to trickle back up the path one after another.

He reached the very edge of the forest and looked back again. Only one Cavemen was still there.

‘Don’t worry, Ooob!’ shouted Ogg. ‘I’ll make it back before it’s completely dark! I’ll run like a tiger’s after my hide!’

Ooob nodded and turned around, downcast, like a curious child who has been driven away by a grownup. As he hiked up the path, he kept casting surreptitious glances at Ogg.

The forest was much thicker than it had appeared from the outside. Pungent scent of pine and spruce lay heavy in the air and tingled up Ogg’s nostrils and burned on his eyes. Brilliant shafts of sunlight punched between the trees in a slant and lit up pollens hanging in the still air.

As Ogg moved deeper and deeper into the forest, he became more and more certain that something was indeed not right. Forests, as far as he knew, were home to many animals — rabbits, foxes, deer, wolves, bears and a variety of birds, to name a few. But to Ogg the Rivermen’s forest seemed more silent than the pitch-black areas deep in the cave where not even insects dwelled. And to add to the eeriness, even the leaves and dry branches crunching beneath Ogg’s feet sounded oddly muffled through the thick, stuffy air. Ogg began to question his entering the forest alone. It might have been wiser if he had asked for company, even if it meant revealing his true concern.

Earlier, Ogg wasn’t lying when he explained himself to the cavemen, but he wasn’t being completely forthcoming, either. He really could not say for certain what kept the Rivermen, but he did have a fairly good guess: The Rivermen have been conquered by another, bigger tribe — perhaps one of the marauder tribes of the north, or the terrible Blackbone, the men-eaters to the south. Both could easily win over the Rivermen, who numbered about one hundred, let alone the fifty-strong Cavemen. Ogg did not tell this to the other Cavemen because he was positively sure they would overreact and do something really stupid. Last time the Blackbone roamed near these parts, the Cavemen had panicked and decided to block the entrance to the cave by collapsing a huge boulder on the entrance, sealing themselves helplessly inside. It took Ogg, who wisely remained on the sunny side, two whole days to devise a lever from stone, wood and rope capable of shifting the huge boulder and free the Cavemen (by nightfall the Seer had the lever burned for promoting earthquakes and being pure evil).

Further in, the trees were thicker and taller and grew even more densely together, and the forest floor started to climb and fall deeply like ripples in a pond. Ogg knew it was impossible, but he swore the air was getting thicker and thicker and resisting his movements more strongly with every ripple traversed. The ripples became deeper and longer, from the fourth onward practically becoming elongated hills, and when Ogg reached the sixth or seventh hill, he saw from its top a thin fog blanketing everything before him. By now moving through the air felt like walking with little weights dragging behind him, and Ogg, even though beginning to rethink his conquest theory, was pouring sweat.

One more hill, he told himself. If the Rivermen were there, then excellent. They could explain what’s keeping them and that would be it. One more hill and that’s it. Whatever’s going on here is not natural. This is — he never thought he’d hear himself say it — magic.

Climbing the last hill proved exceptionally difficult. The air was like soup that braised against his skin as he walked through it. He had to breathe through his mouth because his nostrils could not suck up the heavy air and would squeeze shut in the effort. But when he got to the top of the hill, the sight before him was so bewildering he instantly forgot about all that.

Ogg finally found the Rivermen, but they weren’t exactly in a condition to be asked questions.

They were all around, from the bottom of the hill on whose top Ogg stood with his mouth hanging open and all the way up the next hill. They were not moving — not not moving as in dead — not moving as in frozen stiff, stuck in mid-action. One Rivermen on the slope of the next hill actually hung suspended above the ground mid-tumble. The rest were running, some pulling women or children by the hand, many looking back over their shoulders, all of them looking horrified and pale.

Carefully and slowly, green eyes popped open, unblinking, Ogg approached the closest Rivermen, a woman climbing up the slope of his hill. In another setting she might’ve been quite attractive, but not like this. Like the other Rivermen, she, too, got stuck mid-sprint. A meandering vein bulged above her popped out right green eye, the left was almost shut, and her mouth was open unevenly, like a horse’s when it jerks his head from side to side, and revealed clenched teeth. A stream of spittle ran out the corner of the mouth and splashed against a very taught cheek. Ogg looked down, then snapped up in embarrassment, then looked down again.

A very firm boob had escaped her leather jerkin. He looked down yet again, and instinctively whipped his hand to squeeze it. He regretted it even before his hand reached the boob. Ogg was a gentle and considerate caveman who was often laughed at by other cavemen for saying silly things such as that women were just as smart as men, or that they had a right to decide who can squeeze their boobs and to not be raped. Ogg was a modern cavemen. And Ogg regretted it doubly when his hand collided with the boob and a jolt of pain jumped up his forearm from the knuckles. It felt like hitting a rock. Carefully, Ogg reached and touched the woman’s boob again.

It was hard and stiff, and would yield only when he pressed against it with all his might, like a log that’s been drenched in water. He lifted his hand and touched the spittle roping out of the woman’s skewed mouth. It was malleable, responding to his touch like sap from a tree, and when he retreated his finger, it drew a thin line of spittle that hung in the air.

A rustle of dry leaves. Ogg’s eyes shot away from the boob and swept the ditch. The fog seemed suddenly thicker and whirled like fine dirt in a lazy river. More leaves crunched, but softly, like they were trampled by padded feet that muffled the sound. His muscles tense with adrenaline, Ogg waited, eyes jumping everywhere.

Five silhouettes rose from over the crest of the next hill. They were thin, about half Ogg’s width, and had very big heads, and when they reached and stood on the crest, Ogg calculated that they were about as tall as kids.

One of them shouted a word unknown to Ogg and in a voice too high for people, and when they went over the crest and hopped down the slope, Ogg blinked frantically, thinking his eyes were smudged with dirt and made him see things that should not be, making him see little naked people completely covered in long, wavy hair from big feet to big, round heads with big, round eyes and huge ear-to-ear (though they had no discernible ears) mouths that were naturally crescent-shaped and permanently open, revealing a top and bottom row of triangular, sharp teeth behind thin lips, many of which missing, just like with cavemen kids, giving them a look that was somehow quite cute yet also disturbingly horrifying at the same time.

He rubbed his eyes strongly one last time, then another, and finally admitted that the furry people were real.

‘Koochoo Poo-chaak!’ one of the furry men shouted and raised its completely hairy arms in a joyous manner that reminded Ogg of the moment two years back when Moonch declared that he stumbled upon a freshly deceased woolly mammoth in the snow, a treasure that provided the Cavemen with sustenance for half a season.

God of the Mountain, thought Ogg. The furry people are going to munch on the Rivermen!

The little furry people spread out among the Rivermen. Ogg became petrified upon realizing a couple of them were heading straight for him. He had a mind to spin on the spot and dash as though direwolves were snapping at his haunches. But he couldn’t. Shock and fear had cemented his hips and legs in place as if he was plunged into one of the quickmud pits of the Sunny Swamp.

One of the furry men stopped next to a man who froze in mid-run with his legs relatively close together. A drop of sweat slid down Ogg’s temple and he began breathing really fast as the furry man did something completely impossible — it drew a line in the air and, as it did it, out the tip of its finger emerged a sort of smooth, totally black rope that was made of a single thick piece. The furry little thing snatched the rope out of the air and, to Ogg’s surprise, giggled to itself while tying the man’s legs together. ‘Hapooti! Hapooti!’ it called and the other furry men turned to him and started to chuckle. Their laughter rolled unnaturally long and had a pitch like a hyena’s.

Ogg blinked.

Another furry man went back to the foot of the next hill and stopped in front the man frozen in mid-tumble, whose face was about to hit the ground. It contemplated the man thoughtfully for a brief moment, reaching up into the hairs dropping from its face, possibly scratching its chin. Suddenly it took a single step forward, turned and squatted. When it rose, Ogg saw a vibrant-pink turd right on the spot the tumbling man’s face seemed destined to hit. The furry man pointed at it and shouted-laughed something in furry men tongue.

The furry men turned and immediately burst in a cacophony of rolling laughters interspersed with gasps for air that sounded like quick frog croaks. Ogg felt both relieved and horrified — relieved that the furry men were revealed to be simple mischief makers, and still horrified because they were so different than him and had god-like powers. He could flee now, while the furry men were rolling on the ground and holding their bellies, but, since he learned their intentions were not fatal to him, decided not to take the risk for fear of being discovered and remain frozen in his spot up the slope until the furry men have their fun and leave.

Next, one of the two furry men heading in Ogg’s direction broke off and went to a couple of men running side-by-side. Again, Ogg saw magic as the furry man, with naught but a pushing finger, rotated one man to face the other, and then rotated the second to face the first. The two Rivermen still remained in mid-sprint, and Ogg had a thought that when time returns to normal, they’ll run smack dead into each other.

‘Choop-e Kee-shlook!’ said the furry man who had tied a Rivermen’s legs earlier (and had tied several more legs since) in a sort of way Ogg interpreted as ‘Brilliant!’

And apparently it wasn’t alone in thinking that, because a moment later the fourth furry man took the hand of a woman that held her male partner’s hand from behind as they ran, clasped it tightly around the man’s deer-hide skirt, clenched the man’s hand around the lacing at the back of the woman’s jerkin, and turned them both opposite to one another, so when they become animated again, they’ll tear each other’s clothes.

And then Ogg noticed the fifth furry man was almost upon him and he solidified.

Skipping up the slope, one big eye yellow, the other pink, wearing the huge and permanent toothy smile, the furry man looked, if possible, even more mischievous than its companions.

It stopped right between Ogg and the gorgeous woman next to him. Ogg didn’t have to feign a terrified face as the furry men stared straight into his eyes, which he had just shot toward the ditch. Ogg held his breath, and he could hear the furry man’s breaths hissing through its sharp, triangular teeth with a tiny slurping of spit, and see its thin, hairy chest heave up and down beneath its huge head. A thick forked tongue slithered from a gap in its mouth where two teeth were missing, and it took Ogg all that he had to keep his rigid performance.

The little furry man turned to the woman and Ogg heard him purr a long, ‘Aaaaaa.’

Ogg reckoned it was safe enough and swiveled his eyes back to the furry thing. When he saw it, he understood.

The furry thing was staring at the escaped boob, which was precisely level with his face, his whole attention devoted to it, and Ogg wondered if perhaps he had more in common with the furry men than he’d first thought. Ogg stared, too.

The furry little man reached its furry little hands up toward the boob, its ever-open eyes even more open and revering. When its fingers, which were completely covered in hair, touched the boob, the boob yielded as though everything was normal.

‘Ooo… ooo…’ awed the little furry thing. Ogg wanted to awe and ooo, too, but he knew that was the one thing he could not do. He wanted to ooo even more when the little furry hand caressed the side of the boob, felt like screaming when it started to squeeze gently on the supple, perfect skin, wanted to plant his lips and suck on the pink nipple as it twirled and sprung under the hairy finger’s slow circles. Ogg wanted to explode, the animal inside him waking. He didn’t realize his mouth was slobbering at the sides, or that the heart in his chest was pounding wildly, and only when he tore his gaze away from the boob did he realize that the furry man, though still fondling the boob, was staring dead at him with its big pink and yellow eyes.

They stared at each other. The furry man’s hissing and slurping maniacal breaths became louder and louder, the prongs of the tongue poking out its gap with every exhale, and its hairs started to rise like a mountain cat’s as its eyes jumped more and more madly on Ogg’s face.

Ogg blinked.

‘KREEEEEEKK!!!’ shouted the furry man in the most terrifying and impish screech Ogg had ever heard. Ogg jumped out of his petrification in such a panic he slipped and nearly tumbled down the slope. The suddenness of Ogg’s jolt put a look on the furry man’s face that was even more distraught, and its hairs sprang outward as though repelled by its body, making it puffy and voluminous. ‘KRRREEEE —’

In all the horror and confusion and shock, Ogg bonked a lightning-fast fist on top the furry man’s head, which swiveled for a moment atop a rubbery neck before dropping below the shoulders and pulling the rest of the body after it to a roll down the slope.

The four other furry men, grinning anxiously, ran to the foot of the hill where their friend lay open-eyed and breathing, though Ogg could not tell whether or not it was unconscious. They gave it a swift look and some examining pats, then aimed their eyes at Ogg and rose, hunched forward and ready to leap. Now they really did look like they were about to eat someone.

Ogg turned opposite to the furry men and set out in a dash along the middle of the slope. His legs felt wobbly and weak like he was down with fever, and he had a real fear they’d collapse under his weight, but by the time he had run past four or five trees, the fear caking them was shaken off — though Ogg was still slowed by the unnaturally heavy air through which he half swam.

He looked over his shoulder and saw the little furry men scuttling on their little feet without any discernible resistance. One’s forked tongue was out and flapping behind its cheek, another snapped its teeth frenziedly in what Ogg interpreted was a prelude for what’s to come. They were not gaining on him yet, but Ogg was becoming gravely concerned that that might soon change as his struggle against the air seemed to intensify every few bounds.

He heard a gurgling to his front which he quickly decided must belong to the river he knew cut through the Rivermen’s forest, though it was oddly low in pitch and sounded a little like stew being stirred, and he was struck with an idea and dashed toward the gurgling.

The muscles of his legs burned and his chest prickled as his knees tore up through the air in front of him. He had barely glimpsed the treetops straight in front and level with him when the ground suddenly dropped and he fell, though it wasn’t the falling Ogg was used to. The resistance that up until now had impeded him has become a cushion that slowed his fall considerably and almost certainly saved his life. He had plenty of time to admire to his front the forested valley stretching on between two mountain ranges with snowy peaks lit red by the sunset, or the wide river some ten man-lengths straight below him, the crystal-clear water in it oozing forward almost imperceptibly, and, as he spun around mid-air, the four furry men coming to a halt atop the escarpment from which he fell and eying the river concernedly. They looked immensely irked upon realizing Ogg was drifting away and out of their furry clutches.

Ogg put his trust in a simple and general rule: Things with a lot of hair hate water. This was true of many animals (and more than a few Cavemen), including, evidently, mischievous furry men that come out of mists.

Ogg balled up instinctively upon realizing he was a second away from plunging into the river, and then the most amazing thing happened: he felt his back dipping into the cool water and, a moment later, the river pushing him up and flying at a low angle with twinkling ropes of water tracing after him, like a pebble being skipped. As he flew, he straightened up and stuck the balls of his feet in the water, carving ducts that slowed him down until, seconds later, he found himself running casually atop the refreshingly cool surface of the water.

If he gets out of this alive and shares his adventures, thought Ogg, this part would definitely be one of the highlights, and would most likely be told around campfires long after his bones were dust. His brethren loved ridiculous tales of impossible and crazy things taking place, so undoubtedly a story about a man walking on water would be a great success, and will endure so long as there were cavemen to tell it.

As he skipped and ran on the water, he twisted back and looked to the escarpment and saw that the furry men had gone and disappeared. Although he wasn’t completely sure this was a good thing, Ogg allowed himself a little smile and a sigh.

Cool water slid between Ogg’s toes as he moderated his speed and his feet dipped a little deeper. The still river widened and smoothed out and the the dense wall of conifers bordering it began to thin out and yield to tall, green grasses. Suddenly with time to contemplate more mundane matters, Ogg realized that although the sun had turned a fiery orange, it had barely moved a hair’s width since he entered the Rivermen’s forest, which was pretty un-mundane now he thought of it. This — let alone the frozen people and walking on water bits — led him to believe he was moving through some sort of disturbance where time itself was being manipulated, slowed down almost to a halt, which begged the question: Who or what was the manipulator?

The first answer to come to Ogg’s mind was, obviously, that the furry men were the manipulators. First, not only were they themselves not affected by the disturbance, they could influence others who were. Second, they seemed genuinely thrilled but not amazed at the situation, as though skylarking people frozen in time was a treat they sometimes indulged in, a sort of escapade from their routine.

Of course, Ogg contemplated, it was not totally far-fetched to posit that the furry men were not the causers but a cause of the disturbance, a side-effect.

Another question that begged his answer was why wasn’t he, Ogg, affected by the disturbance to the same extent everything else around him was? On that he ruminated for a minute, skipping and pirouetting on the water, before he came up with a possible explanation: if you enter the disturbance after it had begun, you will be affected only minutely, and if you wish not to be affected at all by it, the only thing you could do is leave its area of effect, which was what he ought to start giving serious thought to if he wished to get back to the cave before nightfall. Ogg was smart Caveman.

He remembered there was an old hunting trail running along the southeastern border of the forest — straight east from where Ogg was currently at — and continuing north and merging with the Cavemen’s path. The river was just skirting around a big grassy hill to the left, and Ogg reckoned it’d be wisest to land once the hill had been skirted and trek the rest of the way from there.

The hill tapered off to a green meadow with little yellow flowers and clusters of hardy-looking red bushes that grew among short outcrops of black stone. With great reluctance, Ogg twisted his body left, pushed down on the water with both feet and leapt to the riverbank of dark earth. He had strode not ten paces before noticing yet another oddity which made the day that much crazier.

Resting in the middle of the meadow was a huge, glistening ball that reflected its surroundings like standing water under a moonlight. Despite having enough adventures since high-noon to last him a lifetime, Ogg could not help himself. He paced toward the ball, cautiously, making as little sound as possible and keeping a watchful eye for little furry men who might spring on him from behind a bush.

If possible, as Ogg neared the reflective ball the air became even thicker. And he noticed yet another crazy sight: Although there was no wind whatsoever, the grasses and bushes were strongly bent toward the huge ball. And even crazier: Once Ogg was right in front of the thing, looking up, he realized that he himself was not reflected on the ball’s surface. Thick eddies hovered above and flared off the ball’s surface, warping the air around it like a flowing stream distorts the streambed.

Ogg reached out his arm. As it plunged through the swirling eddies, he felt a cozy heat sliding over the back his hand and running between his fingers like smoke from of a calm fire. It looked and felt very relaxing, but then his finger touched the surface of the mammoth-sized ball and the very fabric of the distortion shattered: time swept back to normal — wind billowed softly on the grasses and from the forest north rolled the chirping of birds — as ripples quick as lightning shot across the surface of the ball, making a terrible thunder the like of which Ogg has never heard, right before he was thrown back rolling onto the grass.

He sprang back up. The surface of the ball was no longer smooth, but rippling and whirling like the Great Eastern Lake in a storm and whipping out arm-long cyclones that shimmered in the sun.

The sound, Ogg thought. That loud bang will call the furry men straight here! He must flee the place immediately if he ever wished to see the cave again.

He whirled around and adrenaline immediately flooded his body. Four furry men were scuttling toward him from between gaps in the red bushes, blocking every possible escape, but Ogg cared little for them. Already, the fifth furry man, the one with one pink eye, one yellow, and now a noticeable bump on its head, was flying through the air, screaming through a mad, crescented, toothy grin, the thick stick in its hand already coming down, cutting Ogg’s vision in half, then striking Ogg’s head and exploding in white and red behind his eyes.

He could not move, could not speak, could not see. Darkness pressed on his eyes from all sides. He was lying wide-awake on what felt like a chilled slab of flat stone.

Suddenly he heard voices, the last voices he wished to hear, unnaturally pitched and hyena-like, getting closer and closer, stopping right on top of him, giggling forebodingly. To Ogg’s utter horror, their hairy hands reached out and touched his numb body. It felt odd, like he was feeling their paws and fingers through someone else.

An upside-down round furry head floated down from above and filled Ogg’s field of vision. It had one pink eye, one yellow, and a forked tongue that slithered out a hole in the wall of triangular teeth of its crescented mouth. ‘Yuooou meaaan!’ it said, pointing at the bump on its head, then at Ogg. ‘Yooou mieen…’

And then there was this weird ebb inside Ogg’s head and completely unrelated memories started to rush across his consciousness. His head jerked as what he could only describe as a ‘presence’ delve into his mind and poked around. The furry men’s devilish laugh was rising steadily, and all of a sudden was cut abruptly. For a second, Ogg lost all sense of being.

Then he woke up.