Lovely, I thought. We were going to be going on a super special quest with vague directions for who knows what purpose.

"So what about that creepy little girl?" I asked. "She could be anywhere in the woods, lurking and waiting for someone else to turn into guinea pigs."

Presto sighed. "I don't know what to tell you, Mike. I haven't the slightest idea how to look for her. We'll just have to keep an eye out."

"What creep?" Dianna asked.

Presto translated my guinea pig talk to her and everyone else. It put all of them on edge. Even the unicorn was nickering in dismay.

"That's not good," said Hank. "For all we know, that girl might have followed you back here, or followed Eric for that matter."

"I'd like to see Eric as a hamster," Diana laughed.

Hank frowned. "The point is, we don't know. And until we do, we all need to sleep in shifts."

"You mean, business as usual?" Bobby joked.

Hank wasn't in a joking mood. He just frowned. "This is different. High alert, guys."

I suddenly heard a loud noise that reminded me of a person blowing through a bicycle handlebar. "What's that noise?" I said.

"It's just a Unibou," Presto muttered.

"A what?"

"We've been trying to catch that thing for weeks now," Bobby complained. "It always gets away."

Diana laughed. "I think you'd have better luck if you hunted it without your trusty steed."

The unicorn whiffled indignantly.

"But that's the only way I can find it!"

"What's a Unibou?" I repeated.

Presto sighed. "A one horned caribou. If we ever could catch that thing, we wouldn't have to worry about food for a month!"

"Does it have a unicorn horn on its head? Or is it more like an antler?"

"You'd have to see it."

I shook my head and sighed. "I'm hungry."

"We've got fish, a little rabbit meat, and rations. What would you like?"

I thought about it for a moment. "Would eating rabbit meat make me a cannibal?"

Presto snickered at the comment, but nobody else understood it, so they acted like I didn't say anything.

"You're going to make it sick," said Bobby. "Guinea pigs eat carrots, celery and lettuce."

"And what makes you the guinea pig expert?" Presto asked.

"Yeah, really," I oinked. "Maybe guinea pigs like a bit of meat every once and awhile."

Presto rolled his eyes, but didn't say anything.

"I used to own one," said Bobby. "Mine really liked Idaho Russet potatoes."

"We don't have any of those things," said Hank.

"Just hand me a piece of meat," I said, but my voice apparently was something only dogs could hear.

Sheila pointed at the bushes. "There's plenty of wild onions."

Bobby frowned. "Onions are fatal to guinea pigs."

"Technically they're scallions."

"It doesn't matter. They can't have garlic, either."

I sighed, staring into the young wizard's eyes. "Ahem! Presto, sir! Do I have a say in what I have for dinner, or do I not?"

Presto groaned. "Mike. I'm trying really hard. But you've got to face the facts. You're a guinea pig right now. I know you want rabbit meat, but I kind of think that's a bad idea. You seem to be a hundred percent guinea pig. Chances are, if you don't go vegetarian quick, you'll more than likely end up throwing up, or worse."

"But you don't know I'll throw up. You're just assuming that because I have been turned into a guinea pig, that I have to eat guinea pig food."

"I agree, but I don't think we should take risks. You don't want to be dead before you return to your human form. There's lots of grass around here. Why don't you try nibbling on some of that?"

I stuck out my tongue, which was a source of amusement to everyone but me. "That's a good way to get parasites."

Sheila pulled out a folded piece of cloth. "I actually found some potatoes the other day."

She handed one to me, and I greedily devoured it. Despite it being uncooked, my animal taste buds found it delicious.

Shortly after, well, about an hour later, since we didn't have a stove or a microwave, everyone else's dinner was prepared and eaten, and we got ready for bed.

Okay, not bed, but sleep, at any rate.

"There's row upon row of empty houses down in that village," Sheila complained. "Why can't we spend the night there?"

"It's not safe," said Hank. "Even if we knew for a fact that the owners weren't going to return, that little girl with the ring could be waiting for us. We might go to bed and wake up as someone's ham dinner."

Sheila shuddered. "I don't even want to think about what that would do to my baby!"

And so we spent another night in the woods.

It turned out to be the best sleep I've had since I arrived to that hostile, forbidding place, mostly because I was sleeping on Emily's chest instead of on the ground.

That was great until near dawn, when `Em decided to roll over, nearly crushing me to death.

I let out a loud shrilly squeal, waking both Emily and Presto and Diana, the latter having been previously asleep in each other's arms.

After apologizing profusely to the couple, I said, "Presto, you're a wizard, right?"

"...sort of," he said with disconcerting caution. "Why?"

"I was wondering if, in lieu of that ambiguous quest, you could possibly use a spell and turn me back into a human."

"I'm not a miracle worker," he frowned. "I could try, but it might make things worse."

"I'm on a vegetarian diet and in danger of being crushed to death by a little girl. How worse can it get?"

Presto shook his head. "For starters, what's to say I don't mess up and what I do makes your original transformation irreversible?"

"You're still going by a theory that it can be reversed."

Presto sighed. "Fine. But you asked for it. Let's go outside the camp to do this. I'm not sure if it's completely safe."

As we neared the edge of the camp, a freckled face popped out of the air, the body attached to it concealed by her invisibility cloak. "Where are you going, Presto?"

"Uh," he stammered. "We're going to do a little experiment with magic. You know how that goes."

She rolled her eyes and nodded. "I still have welts from that wasp incident."

I gulped. "Wasp?"

"I warned you," Presto muttered. "You should rest, Sheila."

"I'm tired of resting. That's all I do anymore."

"I'm sorry. I..."

"It's all right. I don't want to get stung anyway."

She vanished.

He carried me far into the woods, setting me down on a clear patch of dirt. Diana, who had also been tailing us, hid behind a nearby tree, watching us like Presto were about to play with nitroglycerin.

Presto took off his hat, waving his fingers above it. "I'm not sure how this is going to work. Normally stuff just comes out of this thing. Let's see...`Gort klaatu barada ba nikku...'"

The hat made a fizzing sound.

"Have you seen Evil Dead?" I asked.

"What?"

"I said Evil Dead."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"That quote..."

"I got it from The Day the Earth Stood Still, but it apparently doesn't work for stuff like this. Let me try something else."

He cleared his throat. "Deepest magic that governs the land, transform this guinea pig back into a man!"

The air around me seemed to shimmer for a moment, then I felt spasms of pain as my body shifted and stretched in odd directions.

For a few moments, my body appeared to get larger and larger, but then it stopped, and I cried out in pain as something burst its way out of my skull.

My teeth also seemed to be stretching out, doubling my pain exponentially.

Instead of losing my fur coat, it grew thicker.

Courser.

Darker.

Presto stared at me in disbelief. "But that doesn't even rhyme with man!"

The pain now lowered to a dull throb, allowing me to think clearly about the situation.

I had long ears and what seemed to be antlers.

Buckteeth.

Buck. Teeth.

But the horns...

I wiped my face in my paws. "What did you do?" I moaned.

"Um, I think I turned you into a jackelope."

Diana stepped out of her place of hiding, staring at me with curiosity.

"Well," she said in a hopeful tone. "At least no one will want to roll over you now."

I sighed, slumping flat on the forest floor.