The thing stops abruptly. I almost fall over it.
"This is the Wizard's gate," it intones.
I look around.
We're still in scrubby woodland - that feels like it's gone on forever - and there's nothing that looks like a gate anywhere, let alone across the muddy line the thing called a path.
"Really?" I ask. "This is it?"
It nods with a sly smile that tells me it's having fun at my expense.
"I don't see anything," I say.
"Really?" it asks. "That one is surrounded by the greenwood and they see nothing?"
There's a fallen tree to one side, conveniently located and arranged for parking my backside on the trunk-become-park-bench. I make use of it. I'm not quite ready to mutter the "I've had enough of you. You're an idiot," that I'm thinking. It's been leading me further and further away from the hotel but it's still the closest I have to help in this back of beyond.
"'Ere! What in the blazes you think you're doing?" a loud voice calls.
I can't be certain but I think it comes from the tree trunk. I don't have the energy to jump up and scream. If I'm honest, the world's still spinning a little and it takes too much energy to hold back the puke that's so desperate to leave my body.
"Sitting down and not throwing up," I mutter.
I point downwards and ask the thing, "Is this the wizard?"
"Do I look like a wizard, I ask you," says the voice.
"I wouldn't know. I've never met one," I reply.
"I should say not," the voice says and there's a sharp pain in my ankle. "Such disrespect for a wizard's domain." And again. "And his wife." And again. "You're nothing but a beast."
There's a fourth stabbing pain and I finally react, moving my foot from side to side to clear away whatever it is that's in the way. There's a sickening crunch and the thing looks at my foot in horror.
"What is it now?" I ask.
"That one... That one..."
"What, you bloody idiot? Spit it out!"
"That one killed the Wizard's Wife!"
It points at my ankle and I look down.
Crumpled against the tree trunk is what looks like a rag of brown, barely different from what remains of last year's leaves. Maybe a little different in texture.
"That?" I ask. "That was this wizard's wife?"
It's a scrap of nothing.
I lean over and pick it up between finger and thumb. The rag of brown is some kind of warty leather cloak with other, equally muddy brown miniature clothes hidden beneath, covering a stick-thin shape. It's smaller than a child's fashion doll and far less pretty to look at.
"What is it?"
"It isn't anything any more," my useless guide says sadly.
It takes the tiny mannequin from my fingers and cradles it gently, humming and muttering things I can't hear properly. The sounds I can hear don't seem like proper words I should be able to understand. Not exactly considerate behaviour.
Eventually it says to me, "The Wizard won't help you now."
"Why not?" I ask.
"That one is a beast," it hisses at me.