{ Yes I live and continue to write. xD Sorry it's just one chapter right now, I do have the writing bug so hopefully I'll get a few more up today. Oh and 13 points to whoever can notice the slight cameo I threw in. ;P }

Ch18 The Junkyard

What she saw was an utterly desolate landscape, a desert whose only
features were heaps and scraps of junk. There was nothing to do here, nothing. With no one in sight it was a place where you would soon forget your own name.

Cara sighed, it was more depressing to be here then she thought it would be, *No time for feeling down. I have to get Niki.*

Her first step she took landed on a small pile of rags. The rags moved, suddenly, beneath her foot causing her to jump back.
"Watch who you're stepping on dearie," said an old woman's voice.

"I'm terribly sorry," Cara apologized instinctively without knowing whom or what she was addressing. She was a bit shocked as an old bent goblin woman walked out from a pile of junk and looked at her. Cara looked around as it dawned on her that other mounds of garbage were in reality (if anything here was reality) loads on the backs of other people, who were moving very slowly across the moonscape. She spotted the painted chair from the ballroom not far away, surmounting a pile that someone had collected.

The woman eyed her curiously, "And what are you doing here?" she asked in a Yiddish accent.

"I was trying to find my way out of here. Could you maybe tell me how to get out of this trash heap?" Cara asked as nice as she could.

"It is not a trash heap!" the old woman shouted, "It's orange peels, it's coffee grounds, it's wisdom!"

Cara looked around again, "I'm sorry but it still looks like a trash heap to me." Cara decided to try her best to be polite and change the subject, "May I ask who you are?"

"I am Marjory, the one in charge of this 'trash heap' as you call it," she said sounding annoyed. "If you want help you best find someone else, I'm much to busy to deal with an odd thing like you."

Cara sighed as she watched her leave and leaned against a pile of junk, of course the pile answered, "'Ere! Git orf my back!" said an old woman's voice.
"Sorry," Cara said, instinctively standing up to get off the woman.
A section of the rags stood up and Cara saw that the pile of junk she'd leaned on was actually stacked up on the bent back of this little old goblin woman.

The junk woman's puckered face was staring crossly at her from beneath a load of bent and battered metal objects, discarded clothes, chipped crockery, and broken furniture that she bore. "Why don't you look where you're going, young woman?"
"I'm sorry I was looking I just forgot," Cara answered, not sure how to admit she'd forgotten that these goblins were among the junk.
"Then where are you going? You can't look where you're going if you don't know where you're going."
"I'm trying to get to the castle to find my sister."
The junk woman sniffed. "Doubt you'd get there dearie."

Cara thought that they could have argued the point, but she knew politeness would serve her better. She looked around and said, "I'm searching for the gates right now. Do you know were they are?"
The junk woman chuckled, mollified. "Well, of course you was, dearie. We'se all searching for something, ain't we? But yer got to have sharp eyes if yer going to find anything. Now me, I found lots of things." And she glanced upward, indicating the burden of junk piled up on her back.
Cara looked harder at the woman's rubbish trove and found it curiously interested her. "Why," she exclaimed, "so you have!"
The junk woman grunted with satisfaction.
"There's a cookie tin," Cara observed, "and a colander, and some pieces of candle ..."
"Oh, yes." The junk woman was nodding. "It's hard to find classy stuff like this nowadays."
"I suppose so." Cara looked past the old woman. Occasionally a pile of junk would arise on the back of someone who wandered across to try the pickings in another mound. All of them were heading, desultorily, in the same direction, as though making for home at the end of the day.
"But don't you worry, dearie," the junk woman said in a caring voice. "I'll give you a few things, to get you started. How's that?"

"Oh, thank you." Cara said uncertainly, why was it the junk woman had become like a grandmother to her now? Something was not right but she couldn't put her finger on it.

The junk woman had started to trudge along in the same direction as the others. Cara walked along beside her unable to shake the uneasy feeling she had. As she went, the old woman rummaged with one hand among the pile of junk on her back, feeling for something. Cara watched her anxiously; fearing that the whole load could come crashing down around her if she pulled out one item.
Eventually the junk woman said, "Ha," and extracted what she wanted.
She handed it to Cara; it was Erik her Phantom of the Opera doll.
Cara smiled with childish joy. "Erik!" she cried, hugging him. "Thank you," she told the junk woman, "Thank you." It was as though she were again the little girl being given the doll by her mother.
"That's what you was looking for, ain't it?" the old woman asked, kindly.
Cara nodded eagerly, clasping Erik to her. "Yes. I'd forgotten." She
sighed, and gave the doll a kiss.
"Now," the junk woman said, "why don't you go in there and see if there's anything else you'd like?" She was pointing to a sort of tent they had come to, as colorless as the rest of nowhere. The woman bent down and pulled back a flap of the tent.

Cara took a step forward the stopped abruptly, something was wrong; she shook her head, "No."

The junk woman looked concernedly at her and asked her, in a concerned voice, "What's the matter, dearie?"

"It's wrong," Cara said looking at the tent as if it was a deadly creature about to strike or a prison she was being lead to, at that thought she suddenly realized the truth of what was happening, "It's all junk."

Looking around her with new eyes she saw it was all fabricated from pieces of scrap, everything was rubbish, relics. She looked at her doll, yes this too all her things the whole place was a garbage heap, a dead shrine to a spirit that had fled. If she went into the tent, into the room within it would be a prison and she was her own jailer. And so she had the key to release herself, to go and do the thing that mattered.

"I don't need this. I need to save Niki, to protect her," she said dropping Erik and running from the confused face of the old woman. Of course the woman had tried to trap her as she herself was trapped by the thought that her possessions were what was most important, but that wasn't so at least not for her there was something much more important then that, she kept running unsure of where she was going but knowing that she had to get to Niki.

Suddenly Cara tripped on what could have been a piece of a table and fell rolling down a hill of junk, she covered her face to try and protect herself from whatever may be sticking out of the hill. As she fell she felt herself hit things, what she did not know, but as she fell it seemed the hill was smoothing out then strangely enough as if she was floating before she landed. She stayed still for a moment then stood up, she looked around to see nothing she was in a black place but could see clearly.

"What on earth?" she asked the air.

"You do like to fall don't you?" a voice asked, a voice she recognized.

"Morgana?"