The ocean waves slam against the so­lid­i­fied wall of magma.

You’re go­ing to get wet. There’s no way around it.

You thought you could wait for low tide, but it’s the wrong time of year, and there’s only so long you can wait, any­way.

Last time you tried walk­ing on wa­ter, you fell in af­ter trip­ping over a jump­ing fish, and it’s hardly an ex­pe­ri­ence you wish to re­peat–you al­most shat­tered your skull upon the rocks.

That was when you de­cided to come back later. It’s later now, but things don’t look any bet­ter.

You take a ten­ta­tive step in. Then an­other.

The wa­ter rushes over your feet. You ought to have re­moved your shoes, but you did­n’t, so now they’re all wet. And your socks.

You be­gin to step around the wall. You’re a lit­tle con­cerned that the wa­ter may be vi­o­lent enough to slam your head into it any­way, and are un­sure whether it is bet­ter to stick close to the wall, or as far away as pos­si­ble–one way, you could be forced into it be­fore you could stop it; the other, you might gain mo­men­tum be­fore hit­ting it, but maybe would be able to stop your­self in time–then again, you prob­a­bly would­n’t.

You set­tle for stay­ing close.

You grab onto the stone as you creep your way around the wall, to the other side.

To the cave.

You must find the door. You just hope you read the map right.

You prob­a­bly have, you re­flect, as some­one walks by next to you.

They’re not on wa­ter. They’re walk­ing on the rocks, side­ways, as if the wall were a floor.

“Evening,” he says.

“Af­ter­noo–” you be­gin, but a wave pounds into you and salt­wa­ter gets all into your eyes and mouth.

It cer­tainly is not yet evening.

Fi­nally, you reach the lit­tle mini beach–can’t be more than ten feet wide and deep. Solid land. Well, sand, at least.

You are not sure where the door could be, and wish you were a bit faster at get­ting around the wall. You could have fol­lowed the other guy.

You look around. Per­haps it is a hole in the wall? Per­haps a sign that il­lu­mi­nates un­der the full moon? A por­tal in­di­cated by glow­ing sym­bols?

Then again, you re­al­ize, there could be a sim­ple hard­wood door, com­plete with a fancy han­dle.

You re­al­ize this, as just such a door is star­ing you right in the face.

You shrug, and pull it open, only to come face to face with–

“Hello!”

You jump back in shock, falling into the sand.

The jovial man laughs at you.

“What fun. Are you go­ing to dance?”

“Dance? I don’t–”

“Yes, dance. I think you’d do bet­ter jug­gling, but that would no doubt get old in sec­onds. One can only drop an ob­ject so many times be­fore the au­di­ence knows what to ex­pect.”

You’re ac­tu­ally a fairly good jug­gler.

“The au­di­ence? I thought this was a li­brary.”

“Our li­brary, our rules. Come in, come in, they’re wait­ing. I’ll help you dance, don’t worry.”

You don’t worry. You’re too con­fused to worry.

He pushes you onto a stage, and then sig­nals you to be­gin.

Be­gin what, ex­actly?

“The Fa­ther is hav­ing some trou­ble warm­ing up, it ap­pears,” an­nounces the jovial man, as if de­scrib­ing a sport match. “He’s only got five sec­onds un­til the first en­cour­age­ment ap­pears, so he’d best hurry. Ah, here goes–”

A hun­dred tiny cracks sound. At first, you’re not sure what changed, but then–

OUCH! A bee sting. An­other! You try to run away; you try to duck and dodge; but it’s no good.

“It ap­pears Mr. Fa­ther is not al­ler­gic to bee stings, which bodes well for his sur­vival. Re­mem­ber, those with bee al­ler­gies have a near-one-hun­dred-per­cent death rate in the first ten min­utes!”

You won­der why he calls you “Mr. Fa­ther.”

“We must won­der why he does­n’t use magic. Is he per­haps sav­ing his strength, bid­ing through all the stings, know­ing a harsher chal­lenge awaits?”

No. You just never thought of us­ing magic.

You try to fry a bee.

On the one hand, it worked. It lit up into a lit­tle flame, and its ashes fell to the ground.

On the other, you fried one bee. On­ly ninety-nine more to go–if your es­ti­mate of one hun­dred is cor­rect, and you have a feel­ing it’s a might bit off.

“A small dis­play of magic by The Fa­ther, but he seems to lack con­trol. One is forced to won­der what he was go­ing for. If he’s go­ing to use that much power, why not fry them all? He cooked that one well past well-done, ren­der­ing it en­tirely use­less as an in­gre­di­ent in our fa­mous Bee Salad.”

You get a lit­tle fed up.

“A lit­tle” may be a lit­tle un­der­state­ment.

You think they’ll need to find more bees for their sal­ads.

And a new stage for their games.

Come to think of it, a new room, too.