"Cmon, Mike, what dihhe say?"

Kill the creature and she'll be restored, I thought. It had a certain compelling quality in terms of dream logic. But my stomach turned at the thought of inflicting pain on such a friendly, helpless animal. Death by stabbing is neither quick nor painless, especially if you don't know how to do it right. Even if this were a dream, I didn't want to live with guilt and blood on my hands. I hate dreams like that.

"He...wants me to hurt you."

I threw the knife into the lake. "You see any lions yet?"

She stared at me in puzzlement. "Why I see lion, Mikey? This id notta zoo!"

"We're in Narnia," I said. "Aren't we?"

I had to explain the lion joke.

The monster giggled and said, "Oh yeah! I dib thee a lion!"

I gawked at her. "Really?"

The creature gave me a mischievous lopsided grin. "Kid-ding."

Great. I frowned.

"I hungry. Where food?"

I stared at the cliffs surrounding the lake and sighed. "I don't know, monster. I think we'll have to go hungry for a long, long time."

The crater lake had sheer walls. I and the monster had to walk for what seemed like hours before we could find a way through.

All the while, the creature screamed and cried about being hungry and tired.

Eventually I just told it to shut up, and that I was hungry too.

"You never teh me shaddap," she pouted.

"Sorry," I said. "But finding Emily is more important than food, even if I could find some."

She didn't understand, so I had to make it clearer. "No one's going to give us any food. We're going to have to eat whatever we can find whenever we can find it. We might have to eat bugs."

With a shrug, she picked up a scorpion and ate it. It seemed completely natural for a beast like her to do that sort of thing.

"Good," I said. "Just don't let them sting you."

"I won't."

I still saw no sign of the girl's body anywhere. The thought of her soul leaving her body and entering this thing occurred to me, but I pushed the thought away.

I figured climbing the rim would give me a better vantage point to find the body, so I climbed over piles of rocks and boulders, scrambling up one pillar of rock to another, until I stood at the very top, squinting at the land below, hopping down a few shelves and back up to get a better look.

I wasn't an eagle. Although I could see a fair bit, I couldn't see everything. No unconscious pasty white child bodies within my field of vision, unless they were under the lake. On my opposite side, outside the crater, I could see forests. Miles and miles of trees. Not a single sign of civilization. I figured I'd worry about that later, returning my attention to the search of the crater.

I'd seen a few other areas on foot, so I knew she wasn't in those places, but there were still some unexplored areas down at the other ends. Desperate to find my charge, I decided to go the whole circuit around the lake to make sure.

I climbed down, searching for the next handy cliff, then the next.

"How much longer?" the monster moaned.

"I don't know. You can stop and rest if you want. I have to find Emily. I'd rather starve to death than leave here without knowing she's all right."

"I right here," the monster said. "I Emily."

"I know, I know. But I want to find the other Emily. She can't swim. She'll die if I don't find her."

"She aweady dead," said the monster. "When rowa coasta go boom, I go unda wawah. I not breathe!" She pantomimed choking. "An-den, an-den, funny fish." She waggled her fingers in the air mysteriously. "Bright light. And den, I feel fun-nee all ovah. My face." She touched the sides of her head. "My ear. An-den boom." She waved to the crater.

So she encountered a "funny fish" that glowed and made her into a monster. As compelling as the explanation was, I wasn't about to accept a magical explanation from a doppelganger, so I kept going. "Like I said, you can rest awhile while I look around. I'll come back for you."

By the time I had reached the opposite end and reached the spot that faced the roller coaster car across the river, it was dark. My feet felt frostbitten and cold from fording the shallows at the end of the lake, my arms ached from scaling the tall rocks, my stomach gurgled from lack of food, and it looked to be a cold freezing night ahead of us.

I heard the creature let out a ghastly cry, moaning something about being afraid of the dark. In a yell, I asked the creature where it was and if it could come over. I could barely see my hands in front of my face, but I waved my arms and called her over.

All of a sudden, I heard a tremendous splash, like a boulder had fallen off of something and dropped in the lake, then I heard the sound of someone splashing through ankle deep water.

The next moment, I felt the creature breathing down my neck.

"How did you get here!" I gasped.

"I get strooong." she said. "I move rollah coda easy!"

I guessed she had somehow used the roller coaster car to cross the river, though I wasn't sure how until the following morning.

"I cold."

The creature shivered, pressing close to my body for warmth.

Being exhausted, I made myself as comfortable as I could on the rocks, curling up in the monster's arms. I know that sounds...weird, but I did sort of make friends with it, and the monster didn't mind.

With the first rays of dawn, I awoke with my body aching all over.

At last I finished circling the lake, scowling at the wall of collapsed rubble that blocked our way home.

I turned and walked away from there with a sigh of resignation. I figured if this creature was not, in fact, my girl under a magical curse, Emily had either learned how to swim and gotten lost, or her dead body lay in the bottom of the lake.

I had looked in the water. I'd practically drowned checking to see if a body was hidden within its depths. But with the sunrise of a new day, I knew it was too late. If she hadn't swam out, she was gone.

My next order of business, therefore, was to get my immediate needs taken care of, and later search the surrounding countryside for kidnappers or lost girls.

As I pondered this, I witnessed a sight that gave me pause.

Out on the water, I saw the car that I had ridden in, stacked neatly on top of two other submerged cars.

The loud splash. The wading sound. I didn't want to believe it, but I didn't know what else to think.

I pointed. "Did you move those cars?"

She nodded. "Jusda top `un. I strong now!" She flexed a splotchy green muscle. Then she munched a scorpion.

"Let's find some real food," I said.

"Yipee!" said the monster. "I wanna piz-zah and pan-cake."

"Which way should we go?"

She pointed to a cliff a few yards away. "I t'iink I see smoke."