Amanda and the Ercinee bird travelled for what seemed like hours through the Tanglewood tunnel. They must have covered at least twice the distance since leaving the Winsome Witch as Amanda had hiked between the witch and the faeries, and Amanda was growing tired. As tends to happen in these adventures, however, just as Amanda felt certain that she could not march one step further, the tunnel abruptly opened out into a small, round clearing, with a huge Tanglewood tree in its centre.

Amanda looked up but, the Tanglewood tree stretched up towards the sky, far above the peaks of the smaller trees which surrounded it, and Amanda could not see the giant tree's summit. Looking back down at the base of the tree, Amanda saw a low opening in the tree's trunk; a hole which stretched up from the ground to her waist height. A wooden sign was hung over the opening with engraved symbols which Amanda did not recognize carved into it.

script which Amanda cannot read

Amanda walked over to the tree. She inspected the openning. She couldn't see much inside the tree's dark interior, however, and the Ercinee bird did not seem inclined to go inside.

"Fly into the trunk then," Amanda said to the bird. "I want to see what's in there."

No sooner had Amanda spoken these words than a new sign shot down from the unseen heights of the tree and fastened itself in front of the first sign.

another sign which Amanda cannot read

The sudden and violent appearance of the new sign was a bit disconcerting, but Amanda couldn't read it any more than she could read the original sign, so she continued trying to coax the Ercinee to lead the way into the tree trunk. The bird resolutely refused to follow Amanda's bidding, however. Instead, it flew at the new sign and beat at it with its wings.

"What's the matter?" asked Amanda. "I cannot read that sign. Do you know what it says?"

The Ercinee's only answer was to squawk and beat at the sign once more, but Amanda's other travelling companions answered her.

"Lave thy birrrr," came the voices of the hidden tunnel dwellers. "Lave thy bir!"

"Lave my bir?" Amanda scratched her head and squinted at the sign. "bir" was the tunnel dwellers' pronunciation of "bird". The strange carvings on the sign in front of her were still largely unintelligible to her, but the last word did look sort of like "BIRD". Sort of.

"Lave my bird? Lave? Leave? Leave my bird? Leave my bird! Is that it?"

The Ercinee squawked in response, and the tunnel dwellers continued to chant, "Lave thy bir! Lave thy bir!"

"Why?" asked Amanda. "The Ercinee won't hurt you," she called up the tree. "This bird is my friend. It came to show me the way through the tunnel, since it's wings glow. It's not dangerous. It won't hurt you."

The only response from the unseen heights of the tree was another sign which shot down to cover the first two.

the third sign

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