Off to Seek a Wizard... -12- Uncanny Valley by Erin Halfelven

"Put on some clothes!" I suddenly shrieked. I know, it surprised me, too.

Ken, I might as well call him that, turned and dived head first into the burrow I had noticed and Chuck the Marmot followed. Ken was babbling, something about not expecting company, and Chuck was whistling like a teakettle and at the same time yelping, "I'll help, I'll help!"

I stood there, the mud on my body nearly dry and beginning to itch. I felt a sense of wonder, I had scared both of them with my noise. Realizing that caused the onset of a bad case of the giggles. I kept brushing at the drying mud while making snorting noises. Finally, I simply burst out Laughing Out Loud, though I didn't Roll on the Floor of the forest since I was already filthy enough.

I examined the pool when I had got control of my breathing. The exit end seemed to be best for my purpose since the water flowing out would carry away the mud and grit I intended to wash off. Before climbing into the natural bathtub made by the rocks, though, I decided I would try to scape even more of the dried stuff off my hide and looked around for an appropriate shaped stick.

Seeing a flat board about a foot long and two inches wide, I thought it might do even if it was a bit big. I bent to pick this object up when a sudden noise and a whoosh of wind caused me to sit down suddenly. One of the local giant birds had landed right in front of me, one foot on my chosen board.

"Mine!" said the bird in a very loud and bird-like voice.

I tried to creep backward because the bird was taller than I was. It had a black beak more than a foot long, a black head and neck, a white belly and shoulders and dark royal green wings and other parts. It looked at me with one eye and then the other and repeated. "Mine, it is!"

"Okay, okay," I said. "You can have it!" I kept backing up, using hands and heels to propel me while I scooted on my butt.

The bird picked up the board and examined it the way it had looked at me, first one eye then the other. Then it held the piece of wood toward me and said, "Trade, will you?"

"I don't have anything to trade!" I squealed. The bird was seriously freaking me out, I hadn't noticed before but the board came to a kind of point at one end; the end toward me, of course. As if a six-foot bird with a foot-long beak wasn't scary enough.

The bird turned the wood around in its mouth and examined it again, one eye at a time then dropped it next to the pond. "Yours, then, it's junk," it said and with a whoosh of fuss and feathers, it disappeared upward.

"I almost crapped on myself," I whispered.

About that time, after the bird had already left, Ken came rushing out of the burrow, carrying of all things, a speargun! He brandished this weapon upward and yelled, "Get out of here, Maggie, we don't want any of your trades!"

Then he looked at me and both his blue eyes and his dimple twinkled. "Are you all right, Princess?"

"Only my daddy calls me Princess," I said crossly. "What the heck are you wearing now?" I asked.

"It's all I could find that would fit me," he said apologetically. "Pretend it's a kilt." What it was was a woman's plaid business skirt, entirely too slim and short to pass as any sort of kilt. Also, it was pink, black and electric green, but at least it covered up the Uncanny Valley of Ken's crotch.

Chuck came out of the burrow behind Ken. He had a gaudy gold necklace with an oversize ankh charm around his thick neck and a pink Dodgers baseball hat perched on his wide flat head. "Is this okay, Your Highness?" he asked.

He looked like the furriest pimp you ever have seen and I lost it. I really did Roll on the Floor Laughing My Ass Off and almost immediately fell into the pond which was full of the coldest water east of Half Moon Bay.