It's unadvisable to delegate your tasks to those who abhor you. They will most likely make you fail. Mad Tome wrongly concluded that those living in its pages would obey it. On the contrary, bereft of their homes, they conspired against it from day one.

Take this enormous puppy, for example. Tail high and ears alert, it pranced around the patch of thistle and chewed on one of the purple flowers, blatantly neglecting Mad Tome's instructions and spying on the boy instead.

Rusty lay sprawled on the turf. It smelled fresh and spicy. With a groan he propped himself up on his elbows, reeling. It took him a moment to remember who he was.

"Rusty," he said, testing his voice. "That sounds familiar. It's my name, right? I think it is. No, wait...my name is Russell. Russell Jagoda. Rusty is my nickname. I must have hit my head pretty hard." He absentmindedly touched the grass and gazed up at the giant flowers. "Is this a prehistoric wood or something?" Blades as tall as trees hung with globules of dew. At the nudge of his foot one of them quivered, slid, and burst over his head, drenching him in the process.

"Cool!" He licked off the water. "I was thirsty anyway."

He pulled himself up. Above him fragrant flowers formed a canopy of colors. Shafts of sunlight pierced through the greenish haze, and the air smelled so enticing, Rusty's thoughts muddled and his nose took over.

"It smells like Grandma's jam..." he said to himself. "I wonder what I'm doing here. We were at the duck pond waiting for Bells, right? But what happened after?" Nobody answered, but somebody looked at him. Rusty sensed eyes on his back and twisted around.

By a thistle of epic proportions sat a puppy of equally epic proportions. Soft curly fur covered it from a sniffing nose to a wagging tail. Its large round eyes blinked in friendly curiosity.

They stared at each other for a second, then the puppy pounced on a stick and pushed it with a paw toward Rusty, its tongue lolling.

"Wow, you're big!" said Rusty. "Want to play? Is that what you want?"

The puppy yelped delightedly and said, "Please pardon me if this looks silly, but I absolutely have to have at least one good catching game before I do anything serious. If you don't mind. It's been too long, and I'm itching for a bit of exercise." It crouched, waiting.

Rusty grinned. "You talk? Wait. The donkey talked too. The donkey I found...Dapple." His stomach turned. "I remember! We got into this book, this, what's its name..." He snapped his fingers. "Mad Tome! That's it. Bells? Guys? Where is everyone? How did I get here?"

His words drifted off.

The puppy watched him, one ear twitching.

Rusty clenched and unclenched his hands. "We were in this desert with the donkey, and then Mad Tome threw us here, right? But where is everyone? Come on, guys, it's not funny anymore." He ambled around, calling his friends' names. But the more he did it, the more he was certain that he was alone.

He plopped down by the puppy and scratched its huge paw. "I guess it's only me. Hey, do you have any idea why I'm here?"

"I'm pretty sure I do," obliged the puppy. "You must have angered Mad Tome and it sent you here for punishment." It stuck its nose so close to Rusty's face, he thought he'd suffocate in puppy breath. "I've been instructed to make you suffer. Well," it explained, prompted by Rusty's horrified expression, "I'm not going to do that. I promised someone else to keep you untouched. Although, I must confess, I'm tempted to bite you myself."

"Bite me?" croaked Rusty. "Why would you want to bite me?"

As adorable as the puppy was, its two gigantic rows of teeth at close distance looked like they could snap him in two.

Rusty drew back and bumped into a stalk of grass. It shook with indignation. He spun around. "What was that?"

"Oh, that's just grass," yapped the puppy. "It's upset at you."

"Upset at me? Why?"

"Why?" The puppy sized Rusty up and down. "You pushed it!"

"Oh." Rusty scratched his head, confounded. "That was an accident. I didn't mean to. I mean, there is grass everywhere!"

"Doesn't matter," said the puppy. "You need to apologize to it."

"Apologize?" Rusty stared. "To grass?"

"Silly badling," swished the grass.

At this the puppy barked at the grass, and the grass slapped it on the head. The thistle clapped its spiky leaves, urging on the spectacle.

"Look at this," said one flower to another. "They're fighting again."

"How childish." The other flower shook its head and doused Rusty with dewdrops.

"Right," said Rusty. "They're all nuts here. I need to go find Bells and the guys." He resolutely stalked around the thistle, only to be picked up by the puppy and placed back to where he began.

"You're not going anywhere," said the puppy, and this time its large eyes didn't have any friendliness in them. "You're staying here."

"Hey!" cried Rusty, brandishing his fists. "Let me go!"

"I thought you liked animals," said the puppy.

Rusty knotted his brow. "How do you know?"

"Dapple told me. Would you like to become a puppy?"

"Why would I want to be a puppy?"

"Why not?" The puppy bristled, and for a second it changed into a cunning beast. "Look at me. I'm cute and soft and fluffy, am I not?"

Rusty swallowed, backing off. "Sure thing. Nice puppy, nice little puppy..."

"Well, if you like me so much, what's wrong with being a puppy?" It advanced, sniffing the air with a dangerous determination.

"Nothing, nothing at all," stammered Rusty, feeling behind him for the treacherous grass stalks that shifted and squirmed. "I didn't say there was anything wrong with being a puppy. I love puppies. My grandma delivers puppies. She walks dogs, too, all kinds of dogs, and I help her. I wash them and feed them and clean their paws with a wet towel and..." He gulped.

"Do you?" asked the puppy dreamily.

"Totally," said Rusty, starting to grin. "I cut up raw pieces of meat, so tender and juicy, and I feed them right off my hand."

The puppy rolled up its eyes. "Tell me more."

"Right." Rusty tromped into the thistle and stifled a cry from brushing against its thorns. "I scratch behind their ears and part their fur and pick their fleas and...and..."

The puppy growled. "Fleas? I don't have any fleas."

"Sorry, sorry. I said the wrong thing. Good puppy, nice puppy..."

"Go on, badling," said the puppy demandingly.

Rusty frowned. "Wait. Dapple called me a badling too, and the grass. What does it—"

A shrill whistle cut him off.

The puppy flattened its ears and tucked its tail.

"What was that?" asked Rusty.

"Quiet," and the puppy was upon him, snarling in his face, "or I will bite you, and you will replace me, want it or not."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rusty tried wiggling out, but the puppy overwhelmed him with its weight.

The whistle trilled impatiently over the flowers.

"You better go to her," said the thistle, speaking up for the first time.

"I could do it right here, right now," said the puppy, "and be free. Free of you and of all these flippant flowers that talk gibberish from morning till night. I'm sick of you, if you must know."

"Oh, are you?" The cluster of flowers, so peaceful and aromatic, suddenly started beating on the puppy with all the ferocity of carnivorous plants deprived of dinner.

Rusty wisely used the ensuing commotion to his advantage and tore off into the greenery without looking back.

"I'll never pet another puppy again," he promised himself, climbing over monstrous roots. "Forget it. That thing was scary. I wonder what book this is. I'm sure it's one nutty story."

A series of whistles erupted behind him, and Rusty sprinted, running blindly, until he slammed into something spongy. Panicking, he tumbled to the ground, hands over his face in the desperate attempt to hide from this new menace.

When nothing sniffed him or licked him or talked to him, he opened one eye.

"It's a mushroom!" he said.

And it was, a fleshy leg crowned with a big brown cap. Elegant gills fanned out from its center like spokes of a bike wheel. It smelled pungent and earthy, and Rusty patiently waited for it to speak, searching for eyes or for a mouth.

When it did talk, it talked from above, first coughing and then saying nasally, "Who are you?"

Rusty drew himself up and craned his neck, but the mushroom's cap came to his nose and even when he stood on tiptoe, he couldn't see where the voice came from.

"If only I was a little bit taller," he sighed.

Whatever it was that was talking to him uttered a little cough. "What do you mean? It is wrong," it announced.

"What is wrong?" asked Rusty.

"You said the wrong line. That's not what you ought to say. You ought to say, 'I hardly know.'"

Rusty scratched his head. "I'm not sure I understand?"

"Wrong again!" said whatever sat on the mushroom.

There was a shuffling noise, and suddenly Rusty was staring into a pair of blue eyes on a face so velvety smooth and violet-blue and inhuman, he knew immediately who it was, and it gave him comfort.

But we shall leave Rusty to his conversation and get back to Bells and Peacock and Grand, who have been deposited into a tale so desolate and wretched, it didn't promise anything good apart from what Mad Tome already predicted—plenty of unsightly and messy bloodletting.