trace her way southward toward home.

And at that moment the full impact of her predicament came home with
stunning force.

She was utterly and completely lost! Whether the trail to Sephar was to
the east or west of where she now stood was as unknown to her as the
opposite side of Uda, the moon. True her goal lay to the north; but
unless she could locate the original path Jotan had followed, she might
spend the rest of her life picking a way through the towering mountains
and endless plains between.

Surging panic cut her legs from under her and she dropped into a sitting
position on a fallen log and buried her face in her hands. For a long
time she sat thus, fighting back her tears, trying to think logically.
But what use was logic in this tangled wilderness of growing things?

Still, she told herself, she could not sit there forever, an unresisting
morsel for the first meat-eater to come along. She stood up, brushed
away an accumulation of leaves, thorns and dirt from her tunic, and
struck resolutely out toward the east, pushing her way slowly through
the walls of plant life everywhere about her.

Monkeys raced and chattered among the branches overhead and disturbed
rodents and the crawling things that infest the rotting jungle floor
fled from her path. After a dozen yards she was bathed in perspiration
and her skin seemed to crawl with the dampness.

If only she could find some sort of pathway that would allow her to make
progress without battling this ocean of pulpy, slimy vegetation--a
footing solid enough to prevent sinking to her ankles with every step.
Three different times she narrowly avoided treading on snakes--small,
brightly colored reptiles whose bite would have meant a lingering death;
and once she nearly collapsed with fright when a looping vine caught her
about the neck unexpectedly and she thought it the folds of a python.

And then, after an hour of this, she stumbled unexpectedly into an
elephant path, its powdery surface marked by the passage of numerous
other animals. Unfortunately for her purpose it ran almost east and west
instead of north and after following it into the east for the better
part of two hours, it began gradually to veer southward, taking her
further and further from the caves of her father.

Her only hope was that sooner or later she would come upon an
intersecting trail that would lead northward. The thought of leaving the
narrow strip of open ground and plunging back int