Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon, or most of the characters that appear in this work. The poem is "Ulalume" by Edgar A. Poe, and the chapter titles come from "The Song of Everlasting Sorrow" by Po Chu-i.

Chapter 6: The Feathered Coat

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said: "Sadly this star I mistrust--
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:
Oh, hasten! - oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly! - let us fly! - for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust--
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust--
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

The path Davis and Ken chose led first through a forest afire with autumn colors, but as the trail sloped upward, the trees' colors faded to brown, and then to grey and dead-looking as they climbed higher. They eventually reached a pine forest that was veiled in color-sapping mist like something out of a Hasegawa Tohaku painting.

"This is getting creepy," Davis said.

"No kidding."

As the dark, still, and silent trees passed them, fading into view for a minute only to vanish in the fog behind them, they maintained a silence of their own, as though they sensed that to attract undue attention in this place was dangerous.

And then the trees came to an abrupt stop at the top of a cliff. The path ended at the feet of a statue of a lion with the head of a beautiful woman and eagle wings.

"Dude, it looks kind of like Nefertimon."

"It's a sphinx," Ken said.

"I guess we have to turn back," Davis said.

Ken shook his head. "I think there's something we need to do..."

"You are correct, human." The voice sounded like it came from the chest of the motionless statue. Neither Ken nor Davis was much surprised by this.

"Okay, what?" Davis asked.

"Answer one riddle. If you answer correctly, I will help you on your quest. Answer incorrectly, and I will kill you both."

Davis looked confused. "Why?"

"Because I feel like it," the sphinx responded impatiently. "I'm a demon; what do you expect?"

"Well how do we know you won't kill us anyway if we get it right?"

Ken answered. "Underworld monsters are incapable of breaking their promises."

"You've had dealings with us before?" the sphinx asked.

"Yes." He looked at Davis. "Maybe we should turn back."

"You may find that difficult," the sphinx said.

They turned around to find that the path had disappeared and the fog was thicker than ever.

"So few travelers come to play with me, I'm afraid if you decline I will be very upset."

Ken turned back, looking weary. "Do we each get one guess, or do we have to agree on a guess?"

"I will give you each one guess."

"And we both get to live if one of us guesses correctly?"

"Yes, and you will both die if neither of you guesses correctly."

Ken glanced at Davis, who nodded. He looked back at the sphinx. "What is your riddle?"

"My house has three doors and no windows. One door is red, one is yellow, and one is green. One is locked. One is rigged so that when you turn the doorknob a pit full of poisonous snakes opens beneath you. The red door is next to the green door. The door on the right is not locked. Oh, and one has a doorknob with an electric current that will kill you if you touch it. How will you enter my house?"

"Uh...I'd like to use my fifty/fifty," Davis joked.

The sphinx broke her illusion of complete motionlessness in order to turn her head slightly and give Davis a withering look. Then she shifted her gaze back to Ken. "You will guess first."

"The riddle is impossible. None of the doors open safely. Unless the electric door is the locked one, and even then you haven't given enough information to figure out the solution."

"Haven't I?"

Ken sighed. He was usually good at these kinds of riddles, he could see the clues laid out in his mind; but this one seemed truly impossible. But he still had a 33 percent chance with a random guess. "The green door," he guessed. The color green was associated with life, and was a sacred color in the religions of ancient Mesoamerica, which he knew from his previous visits had a strong influence in the Underworld.

"Are you sure?"

He nodded. "That's the answer."

"Wrong!"

He felt his heart sink with disappointment. But now Davis had half a chance to guess the right door. Ken went over the riddle in his head again, trying to deduce the correct answer in hopes that he could give Davis a hint.

"Can you repeat the question?" Davis requested.

The sphinx indulged him. Her low voice held anticipation. She believed she had already won. "So tell me, human," she said after repeating the riddle, "how would you get into my house?"

After a long pause, Davis shrugged. "Honestly, I'd just knock." The sphinx stared at him. "You didn't say any of the doors would kill me for knocking, and then whatever door you opened I'd know was safe. Besides, there's no way I'd just walk into your house without asking, right?"

She looked at Ken. "Can't argue with that logic. You could learn a lot from this one." She opened a stone box that had been hidden beneath her paws. From it she took two cloaks of white swan feathers. "No human has ever solved my riddle; though, admittedly, few have ever tried. Take these. Find ruins of a stone temple in the swamp, leave the cloaks there. If you steal them, I will track you down and kill you. A path will lead from the temple to Gruesomon's castle. It is very, very dangerous. See that you keep to the path; your lives depend on it. And try not to cross Gruesomon."

"Thanks," Davis said as he took one of the cloaks. "Hey, do you know where we can find Phytomon and Xylomon?"

"I don't know where Xylomon is these days, but you'll find Phytomon in Gruesomon's castle."

"Thank you," Ken said, still in a daze at Davis's amazing luck.

They put on the cloaks, and felt their bodies stretch, squeeze, and contort. It wasn't exactly a pleasant sensation, but not painful either. They looked at each other and realized they'd been transformed into swans. Davis tried to say something, but it came out as a squeaking honk. He waddled to the edge of the cliff, spread out his wings, and leaped off. He fell for a few seconds before he could get the position of his wings quite right, then he began to soar. He gave his wings an experimental flap, and felt the air rush through his feathers and a surge of energy lifting him upward and forward into the air.

Ken inched cautiously to the edge of the cliff. He looked over, craning his long neck to see below, where a dense canopy of grey-green trees pressed against the cliff base. Closing his eyes and remembering everything he'd learned about the physics of bird flight in school, he hopped off the rock. He spread his wings and flapped frantically, trying to push the rapidly-approaching ground away, and then he was flying, though his movements were rather jerky, graceless, and frenzied.

Davis flew around to join him. Ken thought he might have been showing off. He tried to smile, but the hard beak he now had in place of a mouth prevented that expression.

In a few minutes, both swans were soaring gracefully over forests, hills, and lakes. Too soon they spotted the temple ruins, a structure of grey stone blocks and pillars at the edge of a lily pad-covered lake. The two swan-boys circled around, then landed gingerly in the lake. They waddled into the ruins, then magically shed their swan cloaks and returned to human form.

"I wonder if that's what if feels like to digivolve," Davis said.

"Maybe." Ken found a stone box like the one the sphinx had, where he reluctantly placed the swan cloak. He would miss flying.

Davis did the same. He smiled sadly. "It was fun while it lasted. And just think of the look on everyone's faces when we tell them what we did!"

Ken smiled back and nodded. "Yeah."

They found the path the sphinx had told them about, and followed into a dim forest. Mushrooms grew from the trees. Fireflies occasionally flashed in the bushes. Forest smells pervaded the air.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Ken remarked.

"You have a bad feeling about everything," Davis claimed. "Come on. I bet we can make it to the castle before the others do."