The adventure begins

Disclaimer: Some of the characters are mine. Coraline and her friends belong to Neil Gaiman and to LAIKA studios.

"Well, wow; I just tell you what – wow!" Coraline whispered, as the doorway behind her and Cat closed down and became just an ordinary green hill once again. "The Beldam's domain was never anything like that."

And indeed, this portion of the other world was indeed quite different from Coraline's previous visits to the Beldam's domain. Whereas back there everything had been a copy of the Pink Palaces, if only down in different detail (sometimes very different detail), now, Coraline and Cat stood in a forest – a real forest, one that most definitely was not on the grounds of the Pink Palaces.

"Cat, where are we?" Coraline muttered, as she just stood there, looking around.

"In the other world. Again," the feline said glumly, as it too looked around, but noticed what Coraline missed. "Just look up at the sky, if you don't believe me."

Coraline did believe her friend, but she looked up in the sky all the same – and just stared. "...Is it just me?" she said after a pause, "or is there the sun, the moon and the stars all at the same time?"

"This is the other world," Cat replied, apparently unimpressed by Coraline's keen observation skills. "There is no time here as it is back on the other side of the door."

"What do you mean, no time?"

"Exactly that. There is no day or night, no change of the seasons, none of that business, you know?"

"Really?"

"Mmm-hmm, you can assume that that is one of the perks of this place, but I, for one, never felt exactly comfortable being in a place where I never knew when I was. I mean, if I stay here long enough, I begin to feel like a fly stuck in slowly drying-out tree sap, and then I just get out of here and go back to our place, never mind what season it is back there."

"Really?" Coraline said with a frown, sadly listening to her friend with only one ear. "Are you sure that it's not these whispers that get you out of here instead?"

"Those? Those whispers are always here – the grasses whisper to breezes, the breezes whisper to springs, and to whom those springs babble, I care not. Just ignore them as I do, and follow the path."

"What path?"

"The one we're walking upon, of course!"

Coraline looked down and stared once again. She was doing it a lot lately, she knew, but honestly...

"This is like Oz!" she finally said, as realized just what was lying under their feet. "Only instead of yellow bricks, we have silverweed cinquefoil instead!"

"Is that what it's called?" Cat replied, uninterested. "Personally, I never cared how one kind of weed was different from another."

"Except for catnip?"

"Never!" Cat's fur sparkled from indignation, "never ever say that name in vain! You insult all the cats in the world by doing otherwise!"

"All right, all right! You win!" Coraline said, almost laughing despite herself. "Now stop hissing!"

Cats do not blink in confusion (and do not get confused in the first place), but Coraline's friend certainly tried to do so. "That's not my hissing," he said slowly.

Just as meticulously, the two friends turned in the direction from which the hissing was coming from in the first place, and saw the rising head of a snake, preparing to strike. The reptile was probably longer than Coraline and Wybie combined, covered in scales the colour of sunset, and with eyes the colour of bright gold.

Coraline and Cat, however, not intended to stick around long enough to appreciate the reptile's physical beauty, and instead whirled around and ran as fast as they could, lest the titanic animal would be able to take a bite out of them after all. They ran and ran, and when they finally stopped... it was hopeless – they were lost.

"It's hopeless – we're lost," Coraline said after a brief pause, once the two of them stopped running and tried to catch their breath. "We shall never find Wybie now."

"We're only partially searching for Wybie," Cat countered. "That Ashira creature suggested that we seek out the Lady of the Summer, yes?"

"Your point being?"

""I'm not a dog," Cat said both apologetically and haughtily, as only a cat could. "I cannot track Wybie or his companion around here, whether on silverweed or not. We were kind of flying by ear by then, and-"

"Stop," Coraline said with a sigh. "This is just as it was before, when the Beldam made all your paths go flat or something – you just weren't as smart or slick as you supposed yourself to be, so, how about you got over yourself, and we figure our way now?"

"Never ever suggest to a cat that he or she may not be as great as they think they are," Cat replied, gruffly. "In fact, I forgive you only because we're friends and you're not going to bring up that incident ever again-" He paused. "You know, it's a funny thing because I thought that you have said earlier that the Beldam's gone or something?"

"She is," Coraline said, her mood deteriorating even further. "Several other hags – even uglier than she – came over to her and blasted her with some magic or other."

"Oh. And you know it how?"

"I saw it through the kitchen mirror, somehow," Coraline admitted. "Look, can we not talk about her anymore? She may have been crazier than a bag of hammered hamsters, but I never wanted her dead." A pause. "And I never really wanted her dead, either."

"That's because your heart is pure and true, even if a bit naive," Cat muttered, mostly to himself rather than to Coraline, but the girl half-heard anyways:

"What was that?"

"Nothing," Cat said quickly. "Come on, let's find someone friendly than the one we left behind to tell us where to go from here, okay?"

"Fine," Coraline said bemusedly, and the two walked-off, each still thinking his or hers own thoughts.

[Break]

The very-much-alive Beldam was standing before a very large, very old weeping willow tree with a very big hole in its' trunk.

"Sister, sister, owl-sister, I call upon your wisdom and knowledge for some advice!"

There was some noise from the depths of the tree, and a huge eagle owl, easily three meters in height, exited the willow, landing in front of the Beldam.

"Speak, hoo-hoo, your questions!" it said in a booming voice.

"I seek out my daughter, and her familiar," the Beldam said calmly. "Do you know where to they went, what goals they seek?"

"They seek the Lady of Summer, hoo-hoo, in hopes of rescuing their friend!"

"And where is that friend? And where is the gahonga that brought him here?"

"Your fellow hags have got them both – they will look after your daughter and her companion as well!"

"Oh they will, will they?" the Beldam clearly had opinions about that kind of help, but she was not about to share them with her interlocutor. "Perhaps, but I do think that my daughter still requires her mother's guidance – my aunts may not be exactly who she needs. Therefore, I believe I will ask you for assistance-"

"And what makes you think that you can ask for it, hooo?" the giant owl straightened up even taller and stretched its wings, easily 6 meters from tip to tip.

The Beldam paused, and seemed to grow taller and slimmer to a point where she towered slightly over the giant owl. The breezes, that were circulating around the willow stilled.

"By the blood and legacy of my 'mother', by her skull and bones, by her power over birds of the air, I can demand it," the Beldam said, and behind the buttonholes of her black button eyes, there was a glimmer of something white and cold, the colour of an unexpected hailstorm in summer.

It appeared that the whole world held its breath, and the giant owl seemed to shrink somewhat, as it expected to hear the ritual of command that would seal its' fate.

"So," the Beldam continued, returning to her average height and skin colour, "I believe that I can certainly ask for the service of one of your people in return for this." She reached into her satchel (that she had tied to her shovel) and produced not a component for a magical ritual, but a small book in a pre-WWII format with a picture of the albatross on it. "And I'll even pay for his or her service with this book."

"You can command but you barter, hooo?"

"I'm not my mother – I do things my way," the Beldam said simply, "and this is the usual way for the services of your people, yes?"

"The collection of poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," the giant owl cast a critical eye over the book. "Fiction too, I see – hooo!"

"Well, I don't require a particular member of your people," the Beldam said calmly. "All I need is a spare pair of eyes and ears to help me seek and reach my girl before my remaining aunts do."

"Remaining aunts, hoo-hoo?"

"My aunt Trillobia is no more – so sad, isn't it?" Black button eyes cannot express emotion, but a trick of the light put a twinkle into them that somehow belied the Beldam's words.

"Trillobia is dead, hooo-hooo!"

"Who's dead, who's dead, whee-whee?"

A small screech-owl looked out of the willow hole: "Who's dead, who's dead?!"

"Ah, and here are your assistant, hoo-oo!" the giant owl hooted.

"Looks kind of small and inexperienced," the Beldam was rather sceptical, even as she handed over the book over the giant owl, who eagerly took it with its' talons.

"I am fast, I am alert, I am a quick learner, and my cousin is working at Hogwarts! ™" the screech owl said excitedly.

"I see," the Beldam was still quite sceptical about the qualities of her new aide, but also unwilling to press the matter ever further for her own reasons. "Well then, let's go, Howlet."

"I have a name of my own! How cool is that!"

And off they went into the depths of the Other World, the Beldam and her new owl familiar.

To be continued...