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  "No way in hell I'm getting inside your collar!" shouted Puck.

  "Where then?"

  "Your jacket pocket."

  "What if you get big real fast?" said Ceese. "I don't want to have to replace this jacket, it's real leather."

  "Now it's mesh," said Puck.

  Sure enough, the birds and squirrels and who knew what other creatures had pecked and torn holes all over the leather. Tiny ones, but holes all the same. Ceese realized his neck must look like that, too.

  Mack called out. "Yo Yo says to go slow, and hold on to vines and roots the whole way. Plants don't obey Oberon the way animals do. Especially trees. Very stubborn. They won't let go of us."

  Then he added, "Nobody ever called a tree a pushover."

  "Maybe it's turning over a new leaf," said Ceese.

  a child getting a piggyback ride.

  "That shirt's going to rip, you get any bigger," said Ceese helpfully.

  Puck was out of his pocket now, holding on to his shoulders. And by the time they reached the bottom, Puck was as heavy as the slightly overweight older man that he was, while Ceese was just a normal-sized LAPD cop.

  Also, Puck and Yolanda were stark naked.

  "Our clothes didn't grow back to normal size," Puck explained. "Oberon's sense of humor."

  "But my clothes shrank back to normal size with me," said Ceese.

  "No way did Oberon make up this place in the split second when he realized we were imprisoning him," said Yolanda. "Not with all these complicated traps. He was already plotting this. I think we got him just in time."

  Puck smiled wickedly. "Well, that's my beloved master. Mayhem with a dirty twist."

  "I was counting on Ceese still being a giant when we got to the grove."

  "Maybe he will be, when we go up the other side," said Mack.

  "If there's any chance my clothes will get exploded when I get bigger, I'm taking them off down here," said Ceese.

  Since nobody offered him any guarantees, he took off everything except his underwear. Then he jumped over the water, with Puck holding his hand. Mack brought Yolanda over the water, too.

  By ten feet up the cliff on the other side, Ceese's underwear had burst open. He was growing again. And the two fairies were shrinking. Only there weren't any pockets this time.

  "You're sweaty and you stink," said Puck.

  "You want a bath," said Ceese, "we got running water down there."

  "I was just saying: Wear some cologne."

  "I do."

  "What, eau de pig sty?"

  "It just said 'toilet water.' "

  Puck laughed—well, chirped, his voice being very high by now.

  Of course, to a naked guy—even a giant—any size cat was plenty dangerous. Those claws.

  Those teeth. Ceese's scrotum shriveled. "What if he goes for my dick?" asked Ceese.

  "Then ten thousand women will mourn!" shouted Puck. "Let's get a move on!"

  "It's not fair that Mack gets clothes and I don't," said Ceese.

  "What are you, six?" asked Puck.

  Ceese didn't bother answering. The birds were really going at him now, and with no leather jacket to protect him the branches were almost as bad.

  They were at the edge of the clearing.

  The two lanterns were still there.

  "There I am!" shouted Puck.

  "Wait!" cried Yolanda. "Let me at least look for traps."

  In reply, Ceese handed Puck to Mack and crawled into the clearing.

  The panther leapt.

  Ceese swatted it away. It struck a tree trunk and dropped in a heap at the base.

  Ceese reached out for the nearest floating lantern. It shied away from his hand. When he tried for the other one, it did the same.

  "All right, Miss Fairy Queen, what do I do now? Keep playing this game till I die of old age?"

  "Be patient," said Yolanda. "When I say the counterword, they'll stop evading you. But the moment I say it, you have to get them both at once. One can't be opened without the other. That's the way Oberon thinks. He'd make sure we can't figure out which soul is mine and then leave Puck imprisoned. So if I get free, Puck gets free, and then my darling husband will try to make Puck do something."

  Puck just stood there and grinned.

  Ceese asked him, "You couldn't just tell us what will happen, could you?"

  "Of course he can't," said Yolanda. "He is not his own fairy. Don't worry. Now be ready, because as soon as I say the counter-word, we have to move very quickly."

  "I'm ready," said Ceese.

  Then she slumped to her knees and her voice also became audible as the scream lowered in pitch and faded to a sigh.

  Ceese reached out both hands at once and snatched at the lanterns. They held still. He caught them.

  Kneeling in the grass, he got his thumbnails under the lantern roofs and tried to pry them off at exactly the same moment. "Somebody needs to bring pop-top technology to Fairyland," he said.

  "Just break them. Crush them," whispered Yolanda, exhausted for the moment by the word she had uttered. "You can't hurt us. That's our most immortal part inside that glass."

  "How can one part be more immortal than another?" grumbled Ceese as he pried.

  "Immortaler," said Puck, correcting him like an English teacher. "Do what the lady said."

  Still kneeling in the grass, Ceese pinched both lanterns between thumb and forefinger and crushed them.

  With a sharp crack and a crunch of shards of glass rubbing together, the lanterns exploded.

  Two tiny lights arose from the lanterns' wreckage between Ceese's fingers.

  There must have been a thousand birds waiting in the trees. And now they all swooped out and down, darting for the lights.

  Mack moved just as quickly. Holding Puck in one hand and Yolanda in the other, he thrust their tiny bodies toward the hovering lights.

  As they neared each other, they became like magnets. The lights crossed each other's path and caught the bodies of the fairies in midair.

  There was an explosion of light.

  The birds veered and now were circling the clearing, around and around, like a whirlpool of black feathers. But as they flew, their colors changed, brightened. Suddenly there were as many red and blue and yellow birds as black and brown, and among them were fantastically colored parrots, and their calls changed from harsh caws to musical sounds.

  The leaves on the trees changed, too, from the colors of autumn to a thousand different shades of green, and many of the trees burst out in blossoms.

  In the middle of the clearing, Yolanda stood, normal size again, with her head bowed and her arms folded across her chest. Then, as she raised her head, moth wings unfolded from her back, thin and bright as a stained-glass window. She opened her eyes and looked at the birds. Then she opened her arms, opened her hands, and the birds rose up again into the green-covered branches and sang now in unison, like an avian Tabernacle Choir. The Fairy Queen opened her mouth and joined in the song, her voice rising rich and beautiful like the warm sun rising on a crisp morning.

  Mack took a step toward her. She smiled.

  Then she whirled toward the strong and tall young black-winged manfairy that Puck had just become. With a quick movement of her hand and a brief "Sorry, doll," she shrank him down and her finger hooked him toward her as surely as if she had just lassoed him. As he approached, he shrank, until he was grasped in her hollow fist, the way a child holds a firefly.

  "Give me a film canister," she said.

  Mack had them in his pockets.

  She held the open canister under the heel of her fist and then blew into the top. In a moment she had the lid on.

  She blew another puff of air onto the film canister, and it became a small cage made of golden wire, beautifully woven.

  Inside, Puck leaned against the wires, cursing at her.

  Another puff of air and his voice went silent.

  Then she turned to Ceese and offered him the golden cage that contained Puck. "Obe
ron is free now," she said. "And Puck is his slave. He must have known I'd have no choice but to do this."

  "If Oberon is awake," said Mack, "we don't have much time."

  "Take it," she said to Ceese. "Take him back to the house. Don't let him out of your sight. I don't want anybody stealing him and trying to control him like the poor fairies that gave rise to those genie-in-a-bottle stories."

  Ceese took the cage, looking at the raging fairy whose wings fluttered madly as he ran around and around inside the cage, treating the walls and ceiling of the spherical cage as if they were all floor and there were no up and down.

  "Be gentle with him," said Titania. "I owe him so much. And when this is over, he will be free.

  Not just from that cage, but from Oberon as well. His own man again. A free fairy." And softly, tenderly, she leaned toward the cage. "You have my word on it, you nasty, beautiful fairy boy." She looked up into Ceese's face. "Get going. The animals should leave you alone now, but you want to be out of Fairyland before the dragon comes."

  "Good idea," said Ceese.

  As he neared the place where the brick path began, he stopped one last time to look around over the beautiful green of springtime in Fairyland. He knew that he would probably never see this land again. Nor would he ever be so tall, or see so far.

  When he looked south, toward where Cloverdale climbed the mountain in his home world, he saw a hot red shaft of light shoot upward, surrounded by smoke.

  And in the shaft a huge black snaky thing began to writhe upward. Even at this distance, Ceese could see how the creature's slimy skin shone in many colors, like a slick of oil on a puddle.

  Two great wings unfolded, shaped like enormous bat wings, but webbed like the wings of a dragonfly. They kept unfolding until they extended to an impossible span.

  And two red eyes opened and blinked.

  From the cage in Ceese's hand, a tiny high voice cried out. "Here, Master! I'm here! She went that way! She's over there! Head for the temple of Pan! Set me free to help you!"

  Ceese dropped to his knees and closed his fist over the golden cage. Then he crawled onto the brick path until he was small enough to stand up and walk.

  He strode across the patio and opened the back door. The golden cage now was the size of a grapefruit in his hand. Inside the lacework of golden wires, Puck hung by his hands from the wires, his body racked with great sobs. "God help me!" he cried, again and again. "I hate him! I hate him!" And then, more softly, "Beloved master, beautiful king."

  Chapter 23

  SLUG

  As soon as Ceese left the clearing, bearing away Puck in his golden cage, Titania flung her arms around Mack and clung to him. "He's coming," she whispered. "I can feel him rising."

  "We've got to go," Mack said. "It's a good long run."

  "You forget that I'm in my power now." She kissed him. "I'm so afraid."

  "There's a chance that we'll lose?"

  "If he wins today, I'll win tomorrow. No, I'm afraid that if I win, he won't love me anymore. You won't love me anymore."

  "But he does," she said. "The only reason you don't love me is you're upset because you think I betrayed Puck. You're so good and pure, Mack. But if you were a little more wicked and selfish like me, you'd realize that Puck was a tool that Oberon could have used against me. Now he can't."

  "I understand that," said Mack.

  "With your mind," said Titania. "But in here"—she touched his chest—"you would never be able to do such a thing. So loyal and true. Fly with me, Mack Street."

  "I can't fly."

  "But I can." In a quick, sudden movement she swung herself around behind him, gripped him across his chest and under his arms, then wrapped her legs around him. All the while, she was beating her wings, so she weighed nothing. Less than nothing: Under her wings they both rose from the ground.

  In a moment they were above the clearing. She took one soaring circle. No birds came near them. Mack could see the glorious spring forest spreading in all directions. Only now did he realize that in all his wanderings, he had never seen spring. Perhaps there was no spring when Titania wasn't free in this world.

  Not so far away, smoke was rising from a gap in the hills—the place where the drainpipe rose in the other world.

  "He's coming up now," said Titania. "Away we go."

  He was surprised at how fast she flew. Like a dragonfly, not a moth. She could hover in one place, then dart like a rocket. He could feel the muscles flexing in her chest and arms as they balanced and responded to the exertions of her wing muscles. As womanly as this fairy queen might be, she was also a magnificent creature, overwhelmingly strong.

  "So the pixie dust thing is just a myth," said Mack.

  She laughed. "J. M. Barrie knew boys. But he didn't know fairies. Not like Shakespeare. He glimpsed Puck once, and one of my daughters. He thought the sparks of light were fairy dust. He had no idea what was going on."

  "What was going on?"

  "Oberon's first attempt to make you," said Titania. "Using Puck as the father. And no humans at all. It didn't work."

  "How many tries?"

  "Four. Five counting you. The last two could have done it, but they were never able to connect with the people around them. Never able to catch the dreams. It takes a village to raise a changeling."

  "That's what humans never understand," said Titania. "They're so seduced by the material world, they think that's what's real. But all the things they touch and see and measure, they're just—wishes come true. The reality is the wishing. The desire. The only things that are real are beings who wish.

  And their wishes become the causes of things. Wishes flow like rivers; causality bubbles up from the earth like springs. We fairies drink wishes like wine, and inside us they're digested and turned to reality. Brought to life. All this life!"

  "More to the right," Mack directed her. "That hill over there. You're heading for Cheviot Hills."

  "I never did get the grasp of LA. Too much asphalt. Tar smeared over the face of the earth."

  "On which you rode that motorcycle."

  "It was the closest I could come to flying like this. Only they would never let me ride naked."

  "So the dreams that I absorbed and stored—they're real."

  "Dreams are the stuff that life is made of," said Titania.

  "And what am I made of, then? Coming into the world after gestating only an hour?"

  "You're Oberon's wish. All his wishes for beauty and truth and life. For order and system, for kindness and love. Poured out into the body of a woman and allowed to grow in the form that she dreamed of."

  "So she really was my mother."

  "The mother of your shape. But Oberon was father and mother of your soul."

  "I thought I didn't have one."

  Titania laughed lightly, like music in the hurtling wind.

  "So," said Mack. "How are we going to fight him?"

  "I don't know," said Titania.

  That was not good news. "I thought you had a plan."

  "I have a plan to make me as strong as possible. And him a little weaker. But once you start hurling unformed causality around, you never quite know what's going to happen. I'll do some things.

  He'll do some things. The things we do will change the way things work. So we'll do different things.

  Until I'm strong enough to bind him."

  "What does it mean, to bind him?"

  "So it's all about you and him."

  "That's right. I draw power from the fairy circle. And he can't see it. He won't know they're there. At first, anyway."

  Mack thought about that. "What am I here for? Why didn't you send me back with Ceese?"

  No answer.

  "Yo Yo?"

  No answer.

  "Titania, tell me. I should know."

  "You're his fairy circle," she said. "The power he's been storing up for years. Storying up, so to speak."

  "So I'm on his side?"

  "In a way," she said. "But by having y
ou near me, he can't do anything really awful to me."

  Now he understood. "I'm your hostage."

  "It's a similar relationship. Except that normally, hostages don't get eaten."

  "You're going to eat me?"

  "No, silly. I love you. He wants to eat you. Or the dreams stored in you, I mean. He'd spit the rest of you back out."

  "So I'd live?"

  "It won't happen, so don't worry about it."

  "Why won't it happen?"

  "Because he knows that while he's eating the dreams out of you, I would reunite you with him.

  I'd restore the virtues he drove out of him."

  "And he doesn't want that?"

  "Suddenly he'd have a conscience again. He'd remember how much he loves me. It would completely ruin his side of this little war."

  "What would happen to me?"

  "What does that mean?"

  "I don't know," she said. "Like I told you, baby. I don't know how this will all come out. We just play with the causalities he gives us, and throw our own realities back at him."

  She settled lightly to the ground in the middle of the henge of seventeen columns. She unwrapped herself from Mack's body. "Time to do your art, baby."

  Mack set to work at once with a red magic marker, drawing a small heart on each column and moving quickly on.

  Word was exhausted at the end of his sermon. His listeners weren't—after all, it was still daylight when he finished, and they were all hoping that his healing touch would come into their lives, too. But he was finished because the invisible hand down his back had finally let him go. He had nothing left.

  He would have gone into Rev Theo's office to rest, but he remembered the use it had been put to so recently. He sat down in one of the folding chairs at the back of the sanctuary and closed his eyes.

  Whatever possessed him had spoken again. This time Word wasn't taken by surprise, and he was fatalistic about it. Either it would come or it wouldn't. Either he'd be given words to say, or he wouldn't.

  But by whom? He didn't like the sense that it was linked to Mack and Yolanda. What went on with them was not from God—he knew that much, at least. So why did the spirit only start working through him when the two of them emerged from their semi-holy tryst? Whatever spirit it was, it still worried him that it might not be the Holy Spirit of God.