It was not going well for Janus. He hadn’t been run through yet, but the giant pig had slammed him against the mossy rock several times, not to mention kicked him like a horse with its hind legs. A few of his ribs were broken and his entire body was covered with bruises. Even with his heightened sense of awareness dulling the pain, he was starting to hurt everywhere, especially in his hands. More importantly, the Trance, as he now thought of it, was weakening as the fight dragged on. Likewise, the voice in his head that seemed to come from source of the Trance's power was getting fainter and fainter.

“A tree,” was the last thing it said before going completely silent.

A tree? I can’t just pick up a tree and start beating the pig with it, can I?

As Janus looked at a nearby pine and wondered how he would even get his arms around all those needles, something clicked.

It just meant, climb a tree. Yeah, that should work.

Mustering the last drops of the Trance’s power, Janus dodged the pig’s charge and made a beeline for the nearest tree with limbs thick enough to support his weight. He scrambled up the branches with surprising dexterity given that the Trance had left him until he was definitely out of the animal’s reach.

“Ha! Let’s see you try to get me up here you stupid pig!” Janus laughed. He wondered where all this bluster was coming from given how beat up he was, but he decided to go along with it. “Too bad for you that you've got no thumbs,” he added, wiggling his free left thumb at the animal in triumph.

His triumph was short-lived though. The pig trotted back almost out of sight, then came flying toward the tree at an impossible speed. At the last second, it shifted so it hit the tree with its side instead of its head, shaking Janus’s branch so much he nearly fell. He could hear the trunk starting to crack after just that one impact. As it went back for another charge, Janus started to panic. It was really that powerful—it would knock over the tree with another few hits and he would wind up impaled on those tusks. How had he managed to survive as long as he had against that thing anyway?

But before he had time to worry about it anymore, the pig just…stopped. Its head swayed back and forth, as if it was unsure where it was. At length, it spotted the moss-covered rock and the woman, the so-called Dame Fortune who was now standing beneath the rock with her mandolin on her back again. It was suddenly livid again and charged, not at the tree, but at her.

“Bruno, what—“ she started. “Oh, blast.” She pulled the instrument off her back to start playing, but it was no use—the pig was too close and it would be impossible for her to run and hold her instrument at the same time in that robe.

Dame Fortune cursed and pulled the veil off her face as she ran with her skirts in her hand, revealing an attractive woman with aquiline features and shoulder-length tresses of blonde hair. Janus thought she looked like the description of Guinevere from the poems of his homeland, but with an air of gallantry, as if she had demanded a seat for herself at the Round Table.

Dame Fortune was quick on her feet and the pig seemed to have lost some of its monstrous speed of a moment ago, but it was still gaining on her. She climbed back on top of the mossy rock and the pig stopped in its tracks to keep from shattering its tusks. The rock was just high enough that the pig couldn’t immediately reach her, but Janus could tell it would be able to knock her off if it tried pushing.

The pig stopped, as if considering its next move. The Dame tried to move her fingers toward her instrument, but before she could the pig squealed furiously as if it was about to be attacked and started moving toward the rock.

The Dame's hand stopped and she looked around frantically. “Where is Bruno? Where?” she murmured through gritted teeth, sounding much less ephemeral than the last time she had spoken.

Janus wasn’t sure what to do, if anything. This Dame Fortune had almost gotten him killed, but he still wanted to help her, though without getting himself killed for nothing in the reason.

“Hey! Pig!” Janus shouted. “Where are you going? Weren’t we having a fight?”

The pig ignored him, keeping its eyes fixed on the Dame. She kept trying to move her fingers toward the strings of her instrument, but every time she did, the pig squealed and advanced as if she were about to attack it. For now, they were at an impasse, but it wasn't going to last long.

Holding himself steady on a higher branch, Janus pulled off his left sandal and chucked it at the pig. It hit the pig right on its side, but there was still no reaction.

Janus climbed from limb to limb until he reached a branch that was as close to the pig as he could get. Unlike the sandal, this got its attention. Janus sensed the animal shift slightly toward him and away from the Dame, which was good. If he could distract it, the Dame could do whatever the pig was afraid of her doing with her instrument and maybe they could both get away. Janus had considered climbing the other way and running off, but it was never a real option. He had agreed to this test when he and Felix entered the forest, and the fact that she had lost control of the giant pig that was apparently part of the test wasn't her fault. She probably wouldn’t even be dealing with the thing in the first place if it wasn’t for them.

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“Lady,” Janus began, trying to keep his voice low enough not to spook the pig. “Is this part of the test?”

“No,” the Dame answered through gritted teeth.

“If I distract it, can you do something about the pig?”

"Yes.”

"Before I do, you’ve got to agree to let me and the other boy in your school.”

The Dame hesitated for a moment.

"Fine.”

Janus dropped out of the tree. He managed to shift his weight at just the right moment so that he rolled onto the ground. It hurt, but he managed to break into a run and dove onto the pig’s back.

In the second before the pig started bucking, Janus marveled at his own dexterity, given that just a moment ago he had been on his last legs. And this was all Janus himself—whatever had been powering the Trance, it had completely run out now.

The pig’s hair was almost sharp, but Janus clung to it with all his strength. In a second, he heard the Dame start to play but that was enough to divert its attention even from Janus and it charged at the mossy rock and knocked her to the ground. Janus fell off the animal’s back in the process and completely lost track of what was happening as he rolled across the underbrush. His head was swimming as he got to his feet, ready to run at the pig again, but before he could the Dame managed to get ahold of her instrument again and started playing over the pig’s squeals. At least he heard the notes, but they sounded lower pitched and seemed to be coming from the wrong direction.

“Is that…Felix?”

Janus got to his feet and his vision came back into focus around Felix, who was peeking from behind a tree about twenty yards away and staring intently at the huge pig as he played. He was repeating the Dame’s song from when they entered the forest, but with a lower register.

In spite of his attempt to hide, the pig noticed Felix and immediately turned its attention to him. It seemed to really hate music, or at least it hated that song, and it shuddered as if it had been directly attacked. Disregarding the Dame and Janus completely, it charged toward the tree. Janus expected Felix to run, but he stayed stock still.

Before the pig got halfway to him, it suddenly stumbled, its enormous body twisting at the neck as its body hit the dirt.

It took a moment for Janus to realize that the animal was caught by its own tusk, which had bored into the wood of a tree that was several feet in front of the one where Felix was hiding. He had no idea how the pig had managed to get lost on its way to the tree, but Janus wasn’t about to question such a stroke of good luck

The pig squealed in frustration and pain as it righted itself and tried to pull itself free. Janus realized with a twinge of panic that it would probably be out in a second. But before it could, the Dame rushed over, holding up the skirts of her robe with both hands and gripping a studded leather collar in her teeth. She wrapped the band around the pig’s neck as it thrashed and squealed beneath her, grunting as she fastened the buckle. Suddenly, the animal stopped moving and its body sunk into the forest floor with its head still angled upward where the tusk was caught.

It’s over, Janus thought. He started laughing.

“We won!” Janus whooped. “You have to let us in now, right?”

The Dame was on her knees breathing heavily. She clearly heard Janus’s question, but she didn’t answer as she got to her feet and composed her clothes and hair.

“Where is Bruno?” she asked Felix, who had come into the open. He looked oddly sheepish considering he had just passed the test and should be able to enter the Bard’s Guild after all, something he had considered hopeless just that morning.

“If Bruno is the big guy, I knocked him out,” Felix answered, not meeting the Dame’s eyes. “He’s…fine, I suppose. He’s breathing.”

The blows the pig landed on Felix had caught up with him and he clutched his side where the pig had slammed him. On top of that, there seemed to be an extra layer of fatigue showing on his eyes, which were drooping as if fighting off sleep

“You fought too?” Janus asked.

“No, not really. He was, I don’t know, dreaming or something. I just hit him with my lute on the off chance he was controlling the pig with magic.” Felix limped toward a tree stump near the mossy rock and sat down.

“Was he? Controlling it, I mean?” Felix asked the Dame

“More or less,” the Dame said. The moment Felix had said this Bruno person was just knocked out, her posture relaxed ever so slightly. She put her thumb on her chin and bit her lip as if deciding what step to take next.

“Was that you playing before?” Janus asked Felix, getting to his feet unsteadily. He hadn’t realized how exhausted and beat up the fight with the pig had left him, but now that it was over it hit him all at once. “Was the song really enchanted?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Felix answered, looking at the Dame, or at least where she had been a second ago. Janus only saw the train of her robe disappear into the woods in the direction Felix had come from.

“Well boys, I’d say you both passed,” said a man’s voice Janus didn't recognize. It seemed to be coming from all directions at once.

“Who’s there?” Felix responded with a flinch, looking quickly from side to side to find its source.

“I am Yew,” the voice answered. When Janus focused, it sounded like it came from the tree, like a whisper on the wind. “You’re pretty good at playing songs that don’t belong to you, Felix of Castilia.”

Felix scowled. “If you're accusing me of something, do it to my face.”

From all around them, particles of sparkling dust gathered together into the outline of a tall man with a cap pulled down over his eyes.

"No can do. I’m not really there, you know.”

“This is...more magic? Like the song and the boar?" Felix asked, clutching his palms into fists. He looked nervous, like he expected someone to appear from behind a bush to arrest them at any moment.

“Close enough,” the sparkling figure said. “I’m sure you both have a lot of questions. Why don’t you come meet me in the flesh? You can find me in the tower.”

With that, the sparkling dust faded, and the two boys, having escaped any life-changing or life-threatening perils for the time, collapsed onto the forest floor with relief