"Chewie," Han said as he looked around, "I got a feeling we're not on Tatooine anymore."
The wookiee snarled suspiciously as they took in the sight of large bees flying around in circles overhead, and on the ground, books were piled in haphazard stacks that somehow stood erect and towered over both man and wookiee. Shorter stacks were piled close to the ground and others stood up in rows like dominoes waiting to be knocked down. Han had no idea what to make of it, he came to one stack and reached for the book on the top to try and get an idea what they were dealing with, and as soon as he tried to grab it, something shot up out of the top.
He jumped back and found himself face to face with a large, fat, green, caterpillar like creature with multiple arms, dressed in a purple cap and vest and spectacles sitting way too far down from his eyes, who asked in a borderline snooty tone, "And what do you think you're doing?"
"What...or..." Han tried to ask but was too stunned to be coherent, he tried again, "who are you?"
"Hmph!" the creature snorted, "I am the Bookworm, the owner of these books, what were you hoping to find, pilfering through my collection?"
"Uh..." Han wasn't even sure how to answer, he said the first thing that popped into his mind, "Some information maybe."
"Harumph!" the bookworm replied skeptically, "Well, I'm afraid you won't find much in these, they've been laying in the sun too long and have overcooked. However, if you have something of interest to me, I may be able to dig up a tasty little morsel for you."
"Uh...something of interest?" Han squinted in confusion.
"Do you have an itinerant clause?" the bookworm inquired.
"Uh, no."
"A dangling participle?"
"Nope."
"A purple fiddlewacker?"
"A..." Han blinked and did a double take as his eyes doubled in size, "what?"
"An idiosyncrasy perhaps?" the bookworm continued, ignoring his question.
"No," Han shook his head, feeling all the more confused.
"Huh! Then what good are you?" the bookworm asked before disappearing back down into the pile of books.
Han was starting to get a strange feeling and he inched back towards the wookiee and told him, "Chewie, I think we better get out of here. This seems like a good place to lose your mind."
Chewbacca grunted something in response and the two of them headed back the way they came.
"I say we head back to the last isle and try again," Han said as he pulled the map out of his vest pocket.
Chewie lightly slapped him on the arm and pointed towards the other path. Han looked back that way, and then at the wookiee, and asked in disbelief, "Seriously? You want to see more?"
The growling remark told Han Solo he wasn't getting out of this one.
"Okay, fine," he said as he pocketed the map again, "how could it get any worse around here?"
They put the seafront behind them and followed the sandy trail, turned a corner and found themselves in a swampy area. The sand turned to grass and dirt and formed a narrow path curving around a green swamp. There was little more than muck and mire around here, a large dogwood tree rested beside the swamp, a hollowed log lay to the side of the path, cattail plants grew along the edge of the swamp. The whole atmosphere was borderline gloomy, and Han looked around, half expecting something to drop down on them.
"This looks even weirder," he commented as he stepped back and felt something brush against him, then he heard something that about made him jump. He spun on his heel and saw the cattails were all bending at the reeds and they were meowing in some form of synchronization. Just as Han started to think that was the weirdest thing he'd ever seen, a loud deafening bark nearly made him jump out of his skin. He and Chewie jolted around and saw a face had formed in the dogwood tree of a large canine who moved his head forward, and tried to lunge at them with every bark, after a few times it withdrew back into the tree and became one with it again and quieted down.
"Apparently everything around here is very literal," Han observed.
They walked along the grassy path and continued on their way, both suspiciously eying the tree for any further signs of life or movement, but there were none.
The two of them rounded a corner and came to another part of the isle that was very different from the rest.
It was sunny here, blue skies, just a few white clouds, and they appeared to be in some kind of garden. All around them everything was very bright and colorful, and unusual. To Han's left tomatoes grew on vines in bunches, and unless he was seeing things, every single one of them had a little smiling face on them. To his right there was a wooden table in front of an assortment of snapdragon plants which all looked like huge mouths flaring sharp teeth just waiting to bite. Beyond the tomatoes was a lettuce patch, hundreds of perfectly round heads of lettuce that for some reason were all a light blue. A stone wall at the back cut off the garden from whatever lay beyond it with two doors in the middle, and on the right side of the wall were tall yellow flowers that also appeared to have smiling faces.
"A guy could starve to death around here," Han murmured to Chewie, "animals are one thing, but how the hell do you eat plants with a face on them?"
Chewbacca pointed out the obvious, that the lettuces didn't have any faces on them. Han was never big on the stuff but he guessed it'd do in a pinch. He crouched down by the lettuce patch and picked one that looked particularly riper than the others, and let out a high pitched yelp as he dropped it. The lettuce was as cold as a block of Hoth ice, the palms of his hands had turned bright pink from the brief contact with it.
"Oh I get it," he dryly said and laughed humorlessly, "Iceberg lettuce, ha-ha-ha..." Well, on the plus side you'd never die of thirst on this planet.
Chewbacca howled at something and pointed over to the table in front of the snapdragons. There was a small bluish green bottle resting on it with a label on it. Curiously, Han went over and picked up the bottle and read the label.
"It says 'Drink me'..." Han turned to the wookiee and dryly added, "gee that doesn't sound suspicious at all, does it?"
Chewbacca jabbed Han in the shoulder and pointed to the doors in the stone wall.
"You want to see what's back there?" Han asked in disbelief.
The wookiee snorted and nodded.
Han shook his head, "Not me, I'm not curious."
But Chewbacca was insistent, he all but shoved Han along towards the doors.
"Alright, alright, have it your way, we'll check it out," Han replied.
Chewie rumbled in response.
"I know we have to keep looking to find someone who can help us fix the Falcon, but somehow I seriously doubt we're going to find anyone like that around here."
He unlatched the doors and they walked through, and found a scene that was even more bizarre than the last.
There was a set of white stone steps leading up to what looked like a giant dejarik game board, except it looked different. There were black and white squares as far as the eye could see raising up into all kinds of hills, and on either side of the entrance, were two large statues, a red figure with a horse's head and a mounted base, and a white one of exact same details.
Han and Chewie had just started up the steps when they heard the sound of an animal whinnying, and they both stepped back as the statues seemed to come to life and jumped in front of them.
"Checkmate," the red horse told the newcomers, "Only chess pieces are allowed in Chessboard Land."
"That's right," the white horse added, "humans aren't allowed in and never will be, stay out!"
Han looked back and forth from one to the other and back again and could only conclude, "Huh?"
Chewbacca howled at the chessmen, drawing a remark from Han, "He's not a human, what about him?"
"Beasts aren't allowed in here either," the red horse answered.
"Especially not since the beast stole the isle's singing stone," the white horse added, "the red queen was to present it as a gift for the royal wedding, now without it she and the white queen are quarreling between giving a lump of coal or a rotten egg for the wedding gift."
"Ah..." Han felt even more confused, "a singing stone?"
Beside him, Chewbacca rumbled, and Han could only agree.
"Yeah, let's get out of here, Chewie, this is getting weirder all the time."
They turned and went back to the garden, the doors slamming shut behind him.
Han looked around and asked his friend, "So...what do you suppose happened to those five guards we met earlier?"
Chewbacca snorted and shrugged in answer.
"They can't get in there," Han stated the obvious, "And they're not here, but they came in this direction after you scared them off."
None of it made sense.
"Oh boy, Chewie," Han sighed, feeling exhausted already though he didn't know why, "our luck can't get much worse if it tries."
"You want to talk rotten luck, you stupid human?"
Han turned to Chewbacca and glared at him, "What did you say to me?"
"Not him, over here, you moron."
"Huh?" Han turned around but didn't see anyone there.
"I think I'm losing my mind," he warned his best friend. They walked along the garden cautiously and looked for any signs of life.
"Who said that?" Han asked.
"Down here! What're you looking around for?"
Han looked down and saw a darker, rotten tomato laying on the ground, discarded from the vine of bright red cheerful tomatoes that actually giggled when the smuggler got too close to them. Han knelt down for a better look and asked, "You talked?"
The rotten fruit looked at him with a glaring expression, and when he spoke he was suddenly full of gnashing teeth as he yelled at the smuggler, "Ooooh, I talked! You're a real genius, aren't you?"
Han was about to respond when it dawned on him he was being insulted by a vegetable. He grabbed it and picked it up from the ground, despite its cantankerous protests, "Hey! What do you think you're doing? Get your hands off me, hey! Hands off, you! I got a lawyer you know, nyeh! There's kidnapping laws in this here kingdom! You're ugly and you smell bad, nyeh! Put me down before I juice all over you."
The smuggler looked at the rotten tomato and cynically inquired, "Does your mother know you talk like that?" He wasn't sure how or why, but he had a feeling it might come in handy to have this thing later on, so for the time being he tucked it away in his vest pocket, despite the tomato's screams of, "Where were you born, a barn? It's a pigsty back here, nyeh! All this stuff you got in here, what do you want to carry all this trash around for?"
"Chewie," Han turned to his friend, "let's get out of here."
Chewbacca nodded and grunted in agreement.
They left the garden and returned to the swamp to get back to the seafront so the map would work.
"I hope the other isles are better than this," Han told Chewbacca, "barking trees, talking tomatoes, whatever...that was," he gestured back to Chessboard land, "and this reeking swamp ooze."
"That's what you think!" a sharp voice cut through the air.
Oh no. Han looked around but he didn't see anyone.
"Who said that?" he asked.
"I did!"
They turned towards the voice and saw it appeared to be coming from a a curled stick in the swamp mud that appeared to have arms and a face and everything.
"That's not swamp ooze," the stick told them, "that's swamp sludge!"
Just as Han was about to ask what the difference was, they heard a yawning sigh and a more lethargic voice behind them respond, "He's right you know."
Han and Chewbacca turned and looked the other way but once again didn't see anyone. When the voice continued, they looked down and saw a face had formed in the large bump on top of the log, it addressed the two of them and added, "But he could be a little nicer telling you. He's not a very pleasant stick in the mud."
Han blinked a couple times before turning to the wookiee and asking, "Chewie...do you happen to remember if when we came here we got into some bad spores that might explain all this?"
Traveling to one end of the galaxy and the other, Han had seen all kinds of things, all kinds of things he couldn't explain, but inanimate objects that came to life and talked? There had to be some hallucinogenic explanation.
"Nobody asked you!" the stick yelled back at the bump, "Be quiet!"
The bump sighed and said, "Oh the trials of being a mere bump on a log. We've had this thing ever since childhood, mama liked me best."
"She did not!" the stick yelled back at him, "Just shut up!"
"You see how he is?" the bump asked.
Han and Chewie looked at each other and exchanged a similar expression. Han had an idea that things were about to get amusing. He reached in his vest and took out the rotten tomato who screamed, "Hey, what're you doing there? Watch the pulp, will you?" and put it down beside the bump on a log and suggested, "Why don't you give your brother a dose of his own medicine?"
The bump's face lit up and skinny little arms suddenly formed on either side of its head as he said, "Oh ho, old bump on a log's not so helpless anymore, is he? Take this!"
"Noooo!" the rotten tomato screamed, "Not into the swaaaaamp!"
The bump's scrawny arm wound up, and pitched the tomato clear over to the stick in the mud and splattered him with his own swamp ooze. The stick and the tomato, who also somehow suddenly sprouted little arms, dug handfuls of swamp ooze and hurled them at the bump on the log, until he cried out, "Okay, I give up! Geez, sorry!"
The stick in the mud huffed and replied, "Well I guess it isn't very pleasant having things thrown at you." With much difficulty he also choked out, "I'm sorry."
The two of them, tired out from the fighting, yawned and fell asleep, and the rotten tomato joined them.
"Weird," Han said in a half whisper. "Let's go."