Unicorn U.
Author: Esther M. Friesner
Date: 1992-01-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Humor; Fiction
Publisher: Ace

PROLOGUE

The Four rode down the cold, black street, past the staring fronts of closed shops, past blowing trash and battered cars. They rode as they had always ridden, in silence, the frosty fall air shattered by the jingle of their horses’ iron trappings, the clatter of adamantine-shod hooves.

War rode first, as was his right. His was the only mount who seemed to relish the journey for the journey’s sake. In all the centuries since the Four had first set boot to stirrup, War had always come first and the rest fell naturally into ordered ranks behind him. Cold steel and the acrid tang of gunpowder blew from the nostrils of his steed, and flames streaked from the unholy creature’s eyes as man and mount raced eagerly on to conquer any crumb of earthly ground not yet consecrated to their rule by bloodshed.

Famine followed War, though her raddle-boned mare looked ready to drop with every staggering step. The beast’s eyes rolled whitely in its head; its tongue hung dark and bloated from a dry, papery muzzle that showed the shape of the skull beneath. As for the mare’s rider, she rode close-mouthed, shriveled lips pressed tightly together, sunken cheeks caved in more deeply here and there where the teeth had rotted away. She pressed a small, swollen bundle to her hollow chest and sometimes, when the pace (lagged, she would gaze at the awful secret the gray swaddlings held and smile bitterly. War rode at a gallop, Famine at a halting trot, yet the distance between them was never great and seldom varied.

Next came Pestilence, a welter of boils and running sores, blackly swollen buboes and skin every unhealthy shade and texture. Stench dropped from him like rain, and any mortal thing unlucky enough to be near when that gruesome cavalcade rode by sickened visibly when he passed, though by ancient choice the Four maintained the strictest invisibility. His horse was scabbed and spavined, yet the mottled gray gelding ran at a steady canter, too sick to reach full gallop, too desperate to outrun the thousand ills besetting it to dare slow down.

Last of all, yet first by right of ultimate victory, Death rode her pale horse after. She was no skeleton, as most simple-minded mortals had limned her, no gaunt and mocking specter. She was a lady, highborn and holy, a virgin whose lips had lighted on every brow but whose body and self maintained their secrets. Proudly she rode, skin all the shifting shades of the world’s populace, face now hawk-nosed and pale, now almond-eyed and golden, now smiling full-lipped and ebon-skinned. Her gown was the stark white of bleached linen cerements, and it flowed from her generously rounded form like a moonlit river that ends in the darkest sea. Slow and stately, the pace of her ghostly stallion, yet even at a walk he could cover all the earth in a single stride if he so chose.

The Four rode on. They rode through the streets of the sleeping city above the Hudson River as they had ridden through Rome and Paris, London and New York. Always before the road had made no difference, the cities and towns they favored being all the same to them. Before this night, they had ridden because they were the Four, and the Four must ride.

This night was different. This night they rode with a purpose all their own, towards a goal that would be the death-groan of a world and more than a world.

War rode first, and so was first to turn his steed sharply from the road, down the dingy alleyway. The others followed, but it was Death who came first to the battered black steel door. War made a stirrup of his hands to help her dismount. Famine, her handmaid, crouched beside the door with a raptor’s eyes, her bundle at her breast, the trail of saliva from her flaking lips slick and shiny in the moonlight. Pestilence laid himself down, a barely living bridge of bones for Death to walk upon. All this Death took with neither pride nor thanks, as her due.

Death stared at the black door, then raised her iron riding crop and struck it seven times. Each blow was echoless except the last, and that echo of itself contained the rumble of tanks and gun-carriages, the mewl of starving babes, the moans of the death-cheated dying and the final creak and slam of the coffin lid coming down. Then silence.

Death waited. She was very good at waiting. War chafed, curses bubbling over his lips, Famine keened, Pestilence groaned.

but Death stood silent, keeping watch out of eyes that were by turns blue and brown, black and green, the color of new violets and the filmy cast of moldering leaves. At last her wait came to an end. The door opened.

“It’s all right,” Death said to the face only she could see lurking behind the black door. “We’re with the band.”

The Four tethered their steeds to the Dipsy Dumpster in the alley and went in. For once, Famine came last, shifting her bundle awkwardly from arm to arm. An edge of the gray swaddlings came undone and something metallic clanged on the asphalt. Grumbling, she picked up the rusty kazoo and shoved it back in with the dented cavalry trumpet, the mouse-gnawed tambourine, and the miniature glockenspiel that was missing several keys.

“Why I always gotta be the fuckin’ roadie,” she muttered as the great door slammed shut behind her.

1 IVY BELEAGUERED

They say that your first year of college is something you look back on with fond memories. That’s assuming you’re alive to remember it. By the time Christmas vacation humped itself around during my first year at Princeton, Higher Education and I stood in the following relationship:

ME = BUTTERFLY

COLLEGE = WINDSHIELD OF MACK TRUCK GOING NINETY MILES PER HOUR

Did I mention that the butterfly also had the flu? Stupid me. Maybe if I’d paid more attention to details like that I wouldn’t have been flunking Organic Chemistry. Still, things could be worse. . . .

“Repent! ”

A copy of the New York Daily News rattled in my face as I took the last turn on the stairwell leading up to my dorm room. I got a nasty smear of newsprint down the center of my nose. No need to knock the paper aside to see who was lurking in the shadows ready to ram salvation down my throat: I knew.

“Hi, Willie. Drop dead,” I said, shouldering onward, upward, and past him.

This turned out to be easier said than done. Wilmot Smoot, boy bigot, had been on my case since September, when he found out who my mother was. Every day, rain or shine, he found a way to remind me that there was a cozy little rent-controlled condo in Hell reserved for Mom and me. Usually a merry greeting and an invitation to pat a piranha were enough to let him feel he’d done his job and could go find some other hapless slob to beat over the head with God.

Christmas changed all that. The festive holiday season was almost upon us. Something about large quantities of tinsel and mechanical storefront Santas must have affected this yahoo’s glands. Suddenly he had staying power.

“Turn back!” he shouted, weaseling his way past me up the stairs and again positioning himself between me and my room. He shook his copy of the Daily News like a banner. “While it is still not too late, retreat from the edge of the pit that has been dug for you! The abyss yawns—!”

“That’s ’cause you probably bored it to death,” said a voice from further up the winding steps. My roommate, Phil Avery, is an O.K. guy, but I never thought I’d be this glad to see him. He’s a shoo-in for the varsity football team next year, if they’ve got a position like Left Godzilla Forward, Official Scare-the-Crap-Out-of-the-Other-Team Center or Prepare-to-Meet-Thy End, provided that he promises not to eat more than two quarterbacks per game. Remember William “the Refrigerator” Perry? Now imagine what he’d look like if he’d been a big fella and you’ve got a pretty good picture of Phil.

When Phil's hands, each one capable of juicing a coconut, fell on Willie's shoulders, I expected the little twerp to start cheeping like a hamster sucked up into an Electrolux, then to run away, fast. I still wasn’t giving enough credit to Christmas. Any holiday capable of making my mom spend good cash-money sending Deadly Ninja Throwing Fruitcakes to Great-granduncle Pondscum and his lovely wife. Rover, is a force with which to reckon.

Willie twisted out of Phil’s grip and confronted him bravely. “Woe unto ye, ye nation of vipers!” he bawled right up into his face. Pound for pound, Phil does have the heft of some smaller Third World countries, including the livestock, but he doesn't take kindly to being called a nation. He also doesn’t like snakes.

“What did you say, friend?” Phil’s grip reasserted itself on Willie’s shoulders, this time hard enough to make him drop the Daily News. I thought I saw the poor dweeb’s hands go white as Phil's fingers cut off all blood circulation from the maximus deltoideus on down.

(We pre-med students know neat stuff like that—you know, fancy names for all the different parts of the body. However, if we pre-meds do not start doing better in Organic Chem, we can kiss our collective gluteus maximus a nice healthy ave atque vale.)

Willie was pale, but Willie was not shaken. “Save yourself!” he gibbered. "Deliver your soul from the doom that awaits that thrice-lost creature!” He tried to point at me, but his arms were too weak to lift. All he managed was one trembly finger that looked like bad macaroni.

Phil looked from Willie’s farina-like face to me. “Tim, you thrice-lost?” he asked.

“Gee, Toto, I don’t think I’m in Brooklyn anymore, but that’s cool with me,” I replied, picking up the News and pretending to read it.

“O.K. Just checking.” He looked back down at Willie. “We been studying the Defenestration of Prague in my history course. Want me to demonstrate, or should I just throw you out a window instead?”

I never got to find out how high Willie would’ve bounced. We all heard another set of footsteps on the stairs right then and Phil just let the little moop go, with a gentle shove to encourage him along. Momentum is a wonderful thing. Phil and I were innocently back in our room, with the door shut, by the time we heard Willie impact on whoever was coming up the stairs.

“Kev D’Oyley,” Phil announced gleefully, cupping his ear to the door to catch the sounds of creative cussing and subsidiary violence. “That dumb geek ran into Kev D’Oyley! Jesus, now he really is dead meat!” Kevin D’Oyley was Phil’s twin, only white and with a temper you could sharpen knives on. I think having a last name that conjures up visions of lacy little things added to it, made it worse. I almost felt sorry for Willie.

Then I looked over the much-rumpled issue of the Daily News I’d rescued, and all my sympathy went to hell in a handbasket.

How appropriate.

“Oh, wow! That got the funnies in there?” Phil yanked the paper from my hands and riffled through eagerly. He settled down on our lone rump-sprung arm chair and commenced guffawing over Garfield, For Better or for Worse, Cathy, and—

“Hey, Tim! They got your mother’s strip in here! When’d that happen?”

“I dunno. Couple months ago, I guess.” Funny, as soon as Phil mentioned Mom’s comic strip, the freeze set in. It was weird: He sounded excited and happy and interested about the strip being carried in a new paper, while I talked about it with the same enthusiasm a Victorian lady would show if she had to have a boil lanced in public.

I don’t need Ingratitude Lecture #306. I know that I owe my presence at Princeton to the sudden income upswing our family’s been enjoying ever since Mom’s strip made it big-time. I’ve still got my reasons for being sour on it.

My reasons are not Wilmot Smoot’s, need I say. The fact that the main character in Mom’s strip is a devil doesn’t bug me at all, although I do believe that if you play old tapes of Mr. Ed backwards you can hear satanic messages that are straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

Naaaahhh, just fooling.

Mister Mephisto is syndicated, merchandised, and soon-to-be-animated. It may not do too well in some of the more tightly cinched Bible Belt towns, but the big city markets can’t get enough of that wacky little demon and the mortal man he’s been trying to capture since the Middle Ages. In the latest installment, Mister Mephisto has been doing his damnedest (of course) to louse up his quarry’s love life. All this makes me go back to my room and play a battered old copy of the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil album over and over and over and . . .

Phil threw down the paper and smacked himself in the forehead. “Shit! I got English in ten minutes.” He dove for the stack of books on his bed and trotted out of our room. Needless to say, I got out of his path. Alone at last, I dug out the pile of mail I’d brought home in my plastic portfolio and settled down to sort through it.

No letter from T’ing. I was getting used to that. Everyone says how once you get to college, you start to lose all your high-school friends. Only thing was, I believed that T’ing and I were more than just friends. T’ing Hau Kaplan, once the lovely and aloof object of my junior-year crush, she and I had ended our senior year at Glenwood High as an officially recognized “couple.” There weren’t many people who knew all the adventures that linked us up tighter than any swapping of class rings, and some of those who did know weren’t exactly what your man-in-the-street would call “people.” Not unless your man-in-the-street had a nodding acquaintance with banshees, elves, hobs, banniks, gnomes, luchorpans, and the odd barbarian ghost.

Way odd, but because he was T’ing’s own ancestral spirit, I always made allowances for Yang.

T’ing and I had the kind of summer they used to make Annette Funicello movies about, only a lot drier. It’s hard to find really bitchen surf when you live in Flatbush, Brooklyn. The number of neighborhood kids named “Moondoggie” is pretty pitiful, too. I thought that summer was going to last forever. When fall came, T’ing went north to Vassar, I headed south to Princeton, but we promised we’d write. We did, for about a couple of months. Then it was just me, sending off one letter after another and getting nothing back but air. Finally I stopped writing, too, but that didn’t mean I had wised up enough to stop hoping. There’s a word for guys like me.

“Jerk,” I said, which is how we pronounce the word romantic in Brooklynese. I continued to flip through the mail.

A letter from Mom. I opened it. As usual, more gleeful chirrupings about how happy they were, how they were counting the days until the wedding, how much everyone in the family was crazy about him, how he was the best thing that had ever happened to her . . . and why hadn’t I written or called since October? Why hadn’t I come home for Thanksgiving? Surely I couldn’t have had that much schoolwork? When could they expect me for Christmas?

I tossed it.

A letter from him. I didn’t even bother opening it before I tossed it.

The letter hit the wastebasket and yelled “OW!” then floated up out of the trash and back to my hands. “You could at least read me first,” it said in a sulky voice.

That’s one of the disadvantages of having a wizard as good as in the family: It’s not junk mail until he says it’s junk mail.

“Neat trick,” I told the letter. “What if my roommate’d been here?”

The letter straightened out some of its wrinkles and held itself proudly, for recycled paper. “I would have slipped myself under your pillow and waited until you came to bed to address you.”

“No, no, you’ve got it backwards: People address letters The letter crinkled itself up at me in a way that just had to be the stationery equivalent of holding one’s nose at a really pewy pun. Okay, if it didn’t have a sense of humor, I could play it that way. “I don’t like being told what I’ve got to read,” I informed it. “I think I’m going to take you downstairs to the bathroom, put you in the sink, and set fire to you. How do you like that?”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“I could always use the urinal instead. ...”

“Censorship!” the letter shrieked. “Repression! Help, guards ho! My First Amendment rights are about to be grossly violated! To arms, to arms, every Middlesex village and farm!” It was pretty wordy, but letters are like that.

It began to wiggle around in my hands, finally tearing itself loose and taking to the air. Vip! It folded itself in half the long way. Zim! Zam! Two triangles folded themselves down at one end.

Unghhhh! Urrrrr! Two more lengthwise folds, made a lot harder to bring off by the extra thicknesses of paper inside the envelope and—ta-daaaahhhh!—a paper airplane hovered between me and the door.

A killer paper airplane. “Have at thee!” it shouted, and went for my eyes. I threw one arm over them and flailed at it with the other. “So, dog of a swine, you are now at my mercy,” the letter chortled. I peeked, and it made another swoop at my face. Its pointed nose nicked the top of my right ear. I tried backhanding it aside and got a nasty paper-cut across the knuckles. The letter bayed its triumph. It had tasted blood; there would be no reasoning with it now. “A pox on both your Zip Codes!” it snarled, and commenced pummeling me about the ears until I felt as if I were in the middle of a gang war in the Carlsbad Caverns between two bunches of rival bats.

“All right! All right! I’ll read you!” I cried, swatting away desperately.

The fluttery assault ceased. “You will?” The letter now sounded more treacly-sweet than an overripe Southern belle. The folds in the paper airplane undid themselves as delicately as a blossoming flower, and Dr. Faustus’ letter settled gently into my hands.

Yeah, you heard right: Dr. Faustus. As in Faust. That Faust. The Faust. As in he sold his soul pre-rock V roll. As in the reason I don’t find Mister Mephisto as big a laugh-riot as, say, Prince Valiant. As in “I know he’s a four-hundred-year-old wizard whose soul is still waiting to be claimed by a Prince of Hell, Tim, but I love him and we’re going to get married, so don’t use that tone of voice to me, I am still your mother, young man!”

Never let it be said that my mom had to rely on the Personals column to get a date.

The letter said about what I’d expected. After all we’d been through, Faustus didn’t see why I was giving him and Mom the silent treatment. For her sake, he was letting her think that I really did have too much school work to write or phone, but he knew there was something more than that afoot. What, exactly? He hadn’t a clue, and after you’ve sold your soul to acquire all worldly knowledge and one snotty kid’s motivations are beyond' you, it rankles. That made him get shirty with me. When you’ve joined forces to save the world from an onslaught of genuine, authentic, honest-to-gorgon monsters, you figure on some little spark of team spirit carrying over into normal life, he said.

Normal life? Who was he kidding?

“Really, Timothy, you are not being fair to him,” the letter said.

“Oh, fold up. Now he’s sending me letters that can read my mind?” I was feeling disgusted enough with Faustus’ tricks never to bother checking my mail again.

The envelope tittered. “Of course. I have ESP: Extra Sensory Postage.” Now that I had it out to read, the wizard’s love-note was speaking in two voices—envelope and sheet—both equally obnoxious.

“Fine. So I’m not being fair to him. What’s it to you if I’m not? I did what I said: I read you. Now can I toss you in the garbage where you belong?”

The envelope took its fate nobly, only suggesting that I carry it to a recycling center for the good of the planet. You could tell it had been around. The letter itself had led a more protected life. It got all snivelly, begging me to save it, wheedling for me to think of how valuable a real autographed letter from the pen of Dr. Iohannes Faustus would be.

“Yeah,” I sneered. “Tell me how much they’d pay for the signature of a legendary medieval wizard who uses Bart Simpson notepaper!”

I held the sheet by two comers, prepared to tear it to shreds. Its protests faded to an inky whimper. Once having delivered its message, it was helpless and it knew it. I wondered if it was going to scream and whether I was going to enjoy it a whole lot or only a lot.

“Hold it right there, you miserable goat-booger!”

A dark, weathered hand ripped the letter from my fingers. A familiar face adorned with the weird, geometrically shaved hair and moustache of a Mongol warrior breathed the odor of sour mare’s milk into mine. It was pretty stunning, as stenches go, but it had heavy competition from the companion aromas of sweaty wool, rancid tallow, and wet dog that swept in after it. Some people just never need to have calling cards printed up:

Yang was back.

2 THEORY OF RELATIVITY

“—but enough about me,” said Yang as he finished chewing and swallowing the last morsel of Faustus’ letter. As soon as I’d told him that it hadn’t come from T’ing Hau, he lost all interest in it except as lunch. I didn’t say a word. I hadn’t wanted the letter anyhow, and just because a man’s dead doesn’t mean he’s not still entitled to the Minimum Daily Adult requirement of fiber in his diet.

While he was enjoying his scratch-pad snack, Yang brought me up to speed on the reason for this uninvited, undesired, and generally unsanitary visit: He was worried about T’ing.

“She’s not much, as Honored Descendants go, but she’s all I got,” he told me, working a last scrap of paper out from between his teeth with the tip of a Bic pen. The combination of blue ink on yellow teeth made a very pretty bread-mold green. “Got a temper bad enough to neuter a bull yak, and less fat on her bones than a skeleton.”

Yang spoke with authority when it came to skeletons. He had made so many of them, in his lifetime.

“She’s also not much of a correspondent,” I mumbled. “I haven’t heard anything from her since the end of October.” “Yeah?” Yang had conquered the arm chair for his personal use and there he sprawled, but for some reason my words made him sit up straight and put his booted feet back on the floor. “When, end of October?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s hard to put a date on when something stops happening. Before Halloween, I guess. I sent her a cute card with Linus on it, talking about the Great Pumpkin, and she never sent me one back.”

Yang screwed up his face, which really pushed the edge of the Ugly envelope. “If my Esteemed Granddaughter shares Yang’s incredibly good taste in art, she should have sent you the same damned card back! Among my people, do you know what we did to men who sent pictures of suggestive vegetables to virgins?” “Look, the Great Pumpkin is just an imaginary—”

“They usually are.” Yang spat. “The Withered Greenbean is probably more like it. When I find her, if she tells me that it was your shameless flaunting of gourds that caused her to run away, then I will spit your worthless entrails upon my lance and drag you all the way to Coney Island!”

“Run away?” I echoed. All of a sudden, the fate of my entrails was a secondary matter. “T’ing’s run away?”

“Did I not say that?” Yang, terrible in his wrath, slammed the armrests with his fists. Our poor old chair was never intended to take that kind of abuse—Yang was one of the meatier breed of phantoms—and collapsed in a cloud of dust, splinters, and stuffing on the floor.

“No, you did not say that, O Wretched Excuse for the Fruit of My Loins. ” The dust settled, and out of the gray haze emerged the figure of a small, stately woman clad head to foot in the gaudiest garb any Mongol, male or female, ever wore. Patterns clashed like mounted horsemen. Colors shrieked and seized each other by the throat. The lady carried enough gold on her person to be the wreck of a pirate ship, yet her tiny frame showed no sign of strain under such a heavy load.

Maybe being dead helped, but I wasn’t going to discuss the possibility of her and me co-authoring Drop Dead: Feel Great! We had never met, but her words and reputation left no doubt in my mind. Here was one lady who did not bear fools gladly. Except for Yang. She’d borne him just fine.

She was his mother, Jadwiga the Implacable, a Russian princess who had been carried off by Yang’s father, Joti of the Bad Judgment. Early on in their Meaningful Relationship she decided that galloping around on horseback, taking anything she liked, burning the rest, and slicing open anyone who objected sure beat the heck out of ikons, so she stayed. Yang once told me that when Joti demanded a piece of the action, Jadwiga—by now leader of her own troop, the Cerise Horde—gave him a piece of his own liver to chew on. Of course Yang is not your most reliable source. I’ve learned that a little Mom ’n’ Pop mayhem in the family was his people’s status-equivalent to us getting a home computer.

Now Jadwiga swept the debris of my demolished armchair aside, bent over, and daintily seized Yang’s left ear between thumb and forefinger. Hauling him upright, she shook him lustily enough to make his teeth play the percussion intro to Bolero, then let him go and turned to me.

“You must excuse my noxious and possibly contagious son. He always manages to deliver all information except the most vital. My Joti was like that, too.” She wiped a stray tear away with a l inger heavy with rubies. “He told me he loved me, he told me he would make me absolute Queen of the Steppe, he told me he would make me bear him as many strong sons as he felt like, lie told me I was the only woman for him. He did not mention his other fifty-six wives.”

“Must have been an oversight,” I suggested. Jadwiga’s eyes Hashed a warning—the lady had a low b.s. tolerance—so I quickly explained, “The moment he set eyes on you, he probably forgot all about them.” It was the best I could do to assuage someone who didn’t like playing fifty-seventh fiddle. It flopped.

“You think I am a stupid woman,” Jadwiga remarked evenly. “That is a mistake.” Her upper lip curled into a quizzical expression. I’ve seen Mom look just like that when she’s trying to decide whether we’ll have rice or potatoes for dinner. I’d bet Jadwiga was trying to decide whether to lop my head off or try the old standby of tying each of my limbs to a wild horse and yelling whatever Mongols yell instead of giddyup!

I lucked out; she needed me alive. “I have heard much of you, Timothy Alfred Desmond,” Jadwiga said. “This low and contemptible child of mine informs me that you are a good fighter, but that you are also a wise man. For your wisdom I will spare you. Insult my intelligence again, and the bloodiest, most perverse, and highly instructive thing that Yang could invent to do to you will seem like a pleasure-cruise on the Volga. Is that understood?”

“To the letter.” I bowed. I’m not the bowing type, but Jadwiga the Implacable had a way of silently extorting the most courtly gestures of respect. Some quality about the lady made all neighboring survival instincts kick in real fast.

“Good. Then we can deal well with each other.” She paced back and forth, her ghostly gold and gems catching cold December sunlight as it streamed in the windows. “Being wise, you have gathered why we are here: T’ing is gone. We were not aware of her disappearance at once. When she went to this Vassar place, she urged my son not to follow. There was a strict no-ancestral-spirits rule at the school, she told him. Of course the camel-brain believed her. ”

“Motherrrr ...” Yang slouched against the far wall and scowled at Jadwiga. Being a mother, she was an expert at ignoring his snit.

“Time passed,” she went on. “The girl promised to come home for a family banquet. My son was very excited at the prospect. As a dutiful descendant, T’ing Hau would be expected to offer her honored ancestor a share of the feast. Yang could hardly contain himself at the thought. He bounced around the Kaplan apartment like a puppy until I was ashamed to admit he was my kin. More ashamed than usual.”

“Big fat hairy thing! I show some enthusiasm—that’s a crime?” Yang appealed to me. “Besides, I always wanted to taste cranberry sauce, see if maybe it’d go good with stewed dog.” Sotto voce he confided, “Anything to kill the taste.”

“/ heard that!” Jadwiga enraged was a sight to curdle 30-weight motor oil. “And what was wrong with my recipe for stewed dog? Some people liked it! Some people couldn’t get enough of it! Some people begged me to make it whenever it was my turn to cook!” “That’s because her other recipes tasted even worse,” Yang whispered. Lucky for him his mother was still ranting so loudly over the first insult that she didn’t hear him.

I decided that we could cut short this episode of All in the Family and get the conversation back on track. “Please, ma’am, are you telling me that T’ing was supposed to come home for Thanksgiving, only she didn’t?”

“Exactly! Ah, you are brilliant, Timothy Alfred Desmond! Your mother must be very proud of you. Behold! You even know enough to stand up straight so that you will not grow up to be a hunchback. I will wager that you don’t talk back to your dear mother, either, do you? No, of course you don’t. There, you see, Yang? This is what a good son is like! Why can’t you be more like him?”

Yang uttered a low, warning growl and fingered the hilt of his sword. At the moment, the main reason he couldn’t be more like me was that he was dead and I wasn’t, but if Jadwiga yanked his chain a few more times, that condition was subject to change without notice.

“Hey, Yang’s a good guy,” I hastened to point out. “Strong as an ox, smart as a whip, neat as a pin—you name it. And loyal? Most ancestral spirits, they find a descendant’s turned up missing, they’ll just shrug it off and go look for a new one; not Yang! Why, I bet the second he learned T’ing was gone, he went straight to work, running down clues, following leads, checking out every possibility until the trail led you to me for information. Am I right?”

Yang hung his head. Jadwiga showed off a mouthful of small, vicious teeth. “Almost,” she mewed.

“When she did not come home for the banquet, I went up to find her at her school,” Yang said, none too clearly. He kept swallowing words, as if trying to bury them. “She was there. And she was not there.”

“Huh?” I asked incisively.

“She did not know me!" Sorrow contorted Yang’s face, sorrow and fear. “I found her in her room, studying her books. I stood before her and told her to feed those accursed volumes to the Great Serpent and come home before all the cranberry sauce was gone. She didn’t look up from her books. I thought she was ignoring me.”

“That’s a toughie,” I murmured.

“I put my hands over the page, and still she read! I shouted at her, and she didn’t hear! Then, finally, she looked up. ...” Yang’s voice strangled itself down to a miserable whisper. “She looked through me as if I weren’t there.”

This was serious. “Are you sure?” I asked. “Maybe she was teasing you.”

Yang twisted the end of one of his many trailing braids. “I am sure. I wish I weren’t. When I saw her eyes, I recognized that look. You could put her down in the middle of the Leeside and she would think she was still in her own room.”

Jadwiga made a choking sound and boxed Yang’s ears. “Is this how I raised you? To say—to say—to say the L-word in front of respectable people?” She cast her eyes around the room. “Where do you keep your ashes?”

“We’re all out. Why?” I asked.

“So that I may scrub out this vile cub’s mouth with them, that next time he remembers to mind his tongue!”

You couldn’t blame her for getting upset; not, that is, unless you didn’t know what the Leeside is and what it means to beings like Yang and Jadwiga. Try getting a bunch of Soviet gulag alumni to go back to the oi' tundra for a reunion. Ask a state penitentiary parolee to pop back into the joint for a voluntary stay. Convince someone who’s just escaped from an eternity of boring after-dinner speeches to listen to them all over again on tape, coffee not provided, and maybe then you’ll understand.

Jadwiga shuddered at the thought of the Leeside. “All the centuries we were kept penned up there by the Guardians, I vowed that if I ever escaped, I would never hear the name of that horrible place again. And what had we done to deserve such imprisonment?”

“Nothing,” I said. Except be magical, I thought. Except belong to the realm of beings who can’t be neatly classified, assigned a Social Security number and an IRS file, and told to find a nice, stable place in American society. Magic makes Americans nervous, or haven’t you noticed? It’s been an embarrassment to us ever since we screwed up big during the Salem witchcraft trials. Fairy tales are just for kids ... or “weirdos.” If you come to this country from a land where they still put out the occasional saucer of milk for the wee folk, or wear a bit of turquoise around the neck to keep the monsters away, you’re "quaint.” You’re "amusing.” You have "an appealingly childish simplicity." But you're not treated like an adult or a real American.

No one likes to be laughed at. No one likes being patronized. It doesn’t cost much, to give up believing, especially when you’re a new immigrant who’s desperate to be accepted and who’ll do anything to avoid the number one American sin: Being different.

But where do they go, the beings who came along with the immigrants as surely as if they’d been packed away in the luggage? You can’t have a bunch of brownies and boggarts, phoukas and giants, ogres and changelings and Norns, oh my, running around loose in this country. Not when no one wants them. So the Leeside happened, and into its gray, dreary, cold lands went all the legends, all the creatures of myth and dreams.

Yang put his arm around his mother’s shoulders. “Chin up, woman! We’re out, now; that’s what counts. And we’re gonna get my Honored Granddaughter back, too.”

I was still fairly confused. “Look, Yang, when you said T’ing's gone, run away, you just mean that in the figurative sense?” “Huh?” the Mongol inquired.

“Figurative. You know, opposite of literal?”

“Ha? You mean like me?” He pounded his chest proudly. “Yang the Magnificently Illiteral, those effete Ch’in scholars used to call me. Then I cut their spleens out.”

“No, no, no. I mean, like, when someone gives you a real nasty answer for no reason and you say ‘Well, you don’t have to bite my head off,’ it doesn’t really mean . . .” My voice trailed away. From the bemused look on Yang’s face, I gathered that when he mentioned biting folk’s heads off, he was a man of his word. I
iricd again. “I mean, when you said T’ing ran away, did you mean that because she can’t see you any more it’s as if she ran away?” The Mongol snorted. “When Yang says ‘The yak crapped on the carpet,’ he does not meal ‘almost’! That time I went to fetch her to the banquet, her eyes were gone. She had become like most of these lard-bottomed blindworms who refuse to see Yang in all his splendor. She, my own descendant! So I went to get Mother.” “As was right,” Jadwiga maintained. "All those centuries, no word, but when there’s trouble—”

“Yeah, Ma, I love you too, shut up. So when we returned to Ting's school cell the next day, she was gone,” Yang finished. "Really gone.”

“Gone? You’re sure?” I had a nasty, chill feeling.

Yang spat. The man was a walking encyclopedia of rude body functions. “Sure. We waited many days, weeks. She did not return. Other women came in, but my Revered Descendant did not. Her cellmate has big breasts.”

“Just so long as it wasn’t a total loss,” I said under my breath. “Could you learn anything about what happened to T’ing from the police?”

“What police?” Yang asked.

“What police?” I repeated. “The police her parents and the school must’ve called! You don’t have a girl missing for weeks and not call in the cops.” Yang’s lovely face remained blank, so I went on to say, “Did you overhear her parents say anything when they showed up? Any theories about where she could be?”

"Her parents never came,” Yang said.

I was flabbergasted. Mrs. Kaplan was one of those mothers who constantly told her children to make their own choices. Funny thing, the choices always turned out to be just what she wanted, too. T’ing Hau was not her natural daughter—not unless one of the Twelve Lost Tribes of Israel somehow wound up on ponyback, terrorizing most of Asia—but that didn't keep Mrs. Kaplan from overseeing T’ing’s life just as carefully as her biological daughter, Daniela’s. Daniela was now safely married, after a swiftly clotheslined attempt at a career in hairstyling. There was no earthly way Mrs. Kaplan was going to let T’ing slip her Ivy League leash without flying to the scene of the crime and raising purple hell.

“It is as if nothing is wrong,” Yang went on. “I left Mother at the school and went back to Brooklyn. When I arrived, T’ing’s parents were talking about the nice chat they had shared yesterday when they called her at school!”

“We were there when they called,” Jadwiga said. “I heard the telephone ring until the big-breasted roommate answered. She said, ‘T’ing, it’s for you,’ and hung up.”

“Still, I heard them act as if they had spoken with her.” Yang shook his head. “They are not worried. Her roommate is not worried. No one at her school is worried. We are the only ones who see that she is gone.”

“That is so.” Jadwiga backed up her son. “In all the days we waited for her, I heard her roommate speak to the empty air many times, as if T’ing herself were there to listen.”

“People do not just vanish.” Yang was adamant. “Not without my help. I thought that you would know something. I figured maybe the reason my Honored Granddaughter was going around like a poleaxed chicken was because she was finally going insane. Not enough sex will do that to a woman.” Yang grinned. “That’s why we came to see you, to see if she was here and if you got lucky. ”

How flattering. Didn’t I just wish.

I nibbled my lower lip. “You’re right, Yang,” I said. “People don’t just vanish. Or if they do, they leave more of a vacancy behind them than T'ing’s done. Wait.” I left the room. I came back holding it.

“Where did you get that gimcrack?” Jadwiga demanded scornfully. “Off a dead eunuch?”

I couldn’t blame the woman; she was a connoisseur of swords in her day, and I’d be the first to admit that my blade was gaudy, glitzy, and lacked that certain fatal sincerity which a more practical length of honed and whetted steel possesses. I held my sword up and twisted it back and forth in the watery sunshine. Light struck the shaft of faceted crystal that formed the blade’s spine. Rainbows leaped across the walls. I ran my thumb down the edge and found it dull. No warrior in his right mind would carry a sword like that into battle.

Good thing I wasn’t a warrior, then. I was only the Grand and Puissant Champion of the Fey.

3 THE SHADOW OVER FLATBUSH

I took my last final exam in a haze of worry about T’ing. My luck, it was Organic Chem, and the only way you could say I aced it is if you’re counting that card as lowest in the pack. So Mrs. Kaplan might have to be satisfied with T’ing keeping company with a former pre-med student. She’d adjust. She’d scream a lot, but she’d adjust.

Yang and Jadwiga were waiting for me as soon as I set foot outside the exam room. They were raring to go and didn’t want to listen when I insisted on going back to my room to pick up a few silly little things like clean underwear, a toothbrush, a razor, and money.

Oh yeah, and the combination sword/magic wand that made me what I am today.

Princeton’s a college town, which means the natives are pretty used to a higher-than-normal Weirdity Index. Behind those cool Gothic facades and about a block over from the yuppified shopping nirvana of Nassau Street you can find such fine old traditions going on as the annual Assault on the Clapper. The Freshman class is honor-bound to steal the clapper out of the bell atop the original college building, Nassau Hall, before the first day of school because supposedly they can’t start classes if the bell doesn’t ring. The Administration’s done what they can to put the kibosh on that bit of high jinks—costs being what they are, they can’t afford to have anyone weasel out of paying tuition by busting his or her neck while climbing the roof of old Nassau—but it happens anyhow.

And did I mention that Nude Winter Olympics? Just a rumor. Sure it is.

All of which goes to explain why I could walk down the main drag of a busy town accompanied by two refugees from the cast of Make Mine Massacre! with a crystal-spined sword sticking out of my backpack and no one even blinked.

Of course, not everyone could see Yang, Jadwiga, and the sword. It takes a certain something to see the Leeside escapees as they are, and not everyone’s got it. You can open your mind like a thirsty flower to the rain, or you can tuck it up tight as a dust-dry seedpod with nothing rattling around inside but old ideas and timeworn certainties. There’s no room in the same skull for Babbitt and Ali Baba.

Kevin D’Oyley saw us. That big hunk of buffalo jerky occasionally lowered himself to speak to me—a nonathlete and ergo a gormless geek—because I roomed with a real man like Phil Avery. Rolling his two hundred fifty pounds of steel-banded muscle and brain to a stop in front of us, he said, “Yo, Desmond, buggin’ out early?”

I allowed as how, shucks, I shore ’nuff was. There was a little snow still clinging to the sidewalk, so I kicked that in lieu of a manure pile.

I kicked too hard. The sword fell out of my backpack and Kevin was on it like pastrami on rye. “Here,” he said, handing me back a weapon that was the union of a hero’s blade and a wand cut of pure elfin magic. “You dropped your ski pole.”

But of course. What else would someone like Kevin see? What the eye picks up is sent straight to the brain, where you either hear Hey! Whoa! Behold the blade of, like, really high enchantment and stuff, you know? or Jesus Christ, that looks like a freakin’ sword with one of them New Age crystals up its wazoo. Ah, heck, everyone knows there ain’t no such thing, so it’s gotta be something else, or I’m nuts, and if I’m nuts there’s a fifty-fifty chance I’ll lose the football scholarship, so .. .

“Gonna hit the slopes over break?” Kevin asked.

“No, I’m heading home.”

“Yuh? Wherezat?”

“Brooklyn.” I was going to check out the Kaplan household first for clues about T’ing, since it was on my way, and there was also . . . someone I wanted to see in New York City. Someone I had to see. “But I’m planning on a quick trip up north to see a friend of mine at Vassar. ”

Now why did I say that? Kev couldn’t care less about where I was really going—he was just making conversation—so why tell him the whole game plan? I guess because I had to tell somebody—some other fully human being, I mean. Could be that some part of me was scared of pulling the same stunt as T’ing and just vanishing without anyone knowing I was really gone.

Also because vanishing into the faerie realms sort of runs in my family. On my first foray into the Leeside, it was like one of those Brady Bunch made-for-TV family reunion flicks. You know, “Jan Gets Trench Mouth for Christmas.” The Leeside took my great-uncle Seamus Desmond, and as far as I know, it’s still got him, but he’s happy there, so that’s okay.

The Leeside took my dad.

The Leeside meant diddley-squat to Kevin D’Oyley, but something else I’d said sure raised his interest. “Vassar, huh?” His brown eyes began to bubble and steam like a couple of lustful chocolate puddings. Dorothy Parker’s old bon mot about how if all the girls at the Yale Prom were laid end to end she wouldn’t be at all surprised clearly applied as well to Vassar, in his mind. He licked his chops like the wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood” and asked, “She got a friend?”

“What is that to you, hulking oaf?” Yang put himself between Kev and me, braids aquiver with indignation. (The Mongol did not sport just two, mind you, but enough plaits to coif Milli, Vanilli, and the guys who really did the singing.) “The bigbreasted roommate of my Honored Granddaughter is off-limits to you and your paltry excuse for sexual prowess. Those udders are mine!”

“Oh, hi, sir,” said Kev, extending his hand politely. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you standing there with Tim. And this must be Mrs. Desmond.” He smiled at Jadwiga, who was chewing a wad of something better left unidentified. It was scary, seeing how fast the presence of (supposed) parents turned one Princeton freshman from the Love Machine to Freddie Bartholomew. “Gosh, it was super of you to drive down from New York to get Tim. My folks just told me to take AMTRAK to Wilmington and they’d meet me at the station.” He checked his watch. “Uh-oh. Gotta go. Have a good vacation, Tim!” He chugged off up Nassau Street.

“ What was all that horsecrap?” Yang wanted to know, glaring at Kev’s retreating back.

“That,” I said wearily, “was proof that you’re still visible to someone besides me. Only Kev saw you as my parents because that was the most logical interpretation his mind could put on what his eyes were telling it. He’s not equipped to see the real you. Or hear what you really said to him, thank God.”

“What a loss.” Yang shook his head. “My intestines bleed copiously for him. To be denied sight of the authentic Yang, Razer of Cities—! Yang, Bane of Milk-fed Civilizations—! Yang, Delight of Underrated Courtesans—! It is too sad. How can he live like that? I will go put him out of his misery.” He drew his sword and started after Kevin. Fortunately Jadwiga was right there to grab a handful of her little boy’s braids and jerk him back.

We had a pretty uneventful train trip to New York. Lucky for me and my wallet, Yang and Jadwiga chose to make themselves invisible, after the manner of more responsible ghosts, so that I didn’t have to pay train fares for them. When we arrived at Penn Station, they remanifested.

And a darned good thing, too. As we were walking through the vast station to the subway, we ran into one of New York’s typical Good Will Ambassadors.

“Hey, man, spare change?”

If you’ve ever lived in New York—not just Manhattan, but any of the five boroughs—you quickly pick up a way of walking that’s good for shunting aside most of the types you don’t want to deal with—panhandlers, petitioners, plain crazies, religion guerrillas. You set your jaw, tighten your fists, square your shoulders, avert your eyes, and stride on by like you’re late for an appointment with the Holy Grail. It usually works.

There are always exceptions.

“Hey, man I’m talkin’ to you!” The guy latched onto the sleeve of my denim jacket and forced me to look at him. He was pretty grubby, but he didn’t look sick or anything. I could smell plenty of sweat on him, not too much alcohol. Drugs? I couldn’t tell. Just one more happy urban dweller taking his attitude out for an airing.

“I don’t have any spare change,” I said, trying to twist loose and get away.

“Don’t got any. Kid don’t got any!” That seemed to tickle him. He jerked on my sleeve hard enough to make me stagger a couple of steps. “Where you going, kid, you don’t got any change?” He thrust his nose up against mine and it was definitely not a moment to cherish.

“Uh . . . Yang?” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. I slued my eyes from side to side as far as I could, but I didn’t see him. Jadwiga was there, though.

“Yang has gone to fetch us food,” she said serenely. “Hot dogs. Let him, the ungrateful whelp. He will learn that this Nathan-person is not half so famous a dog-cooker as me, his own mother!”

“Who you talkin’ to, little man?” my new pal asked. He threw one arm around my neck in a counterfeit hug, just in case any policemen happened by. It wasn’t easy, with my bulky backpack, but he was one of these determined sorts. Squirm as I might, the man was strong, and when he jammed his other hand into his jacket pocket, I got a crawly feeling that he wasn’t holding onto a pack of chewing gum in there. I stopped squirming fast.

“No one,” I squeaked.

“HA!” Jadwiga’s contemptuous laugh reverberated through the station. Hands on hips, she planted herself in front of me and my shadow. “No one, am I? This is how you talk to me, after all I have done for you?”

“Done . . . for . . . me?” I managed. The man’s arm yanked itself tighter around my neck.

“I said who you talkin’ to?” he snarled. No use lying. “Her.”

I pointed to Jadwiga, who was now marching up and down, ranting maternally.

“Who gave birth to Yang, hey?” she demanded. “Twenty-six hours of labor! You think that’s easy, in the saddle? While sacking a provincial capital? For that alone, you owe me, boy! Yang told me about how he saved your miserable life at least forty-seven times, how he taught you everything you know about using a sword, how he refrained from employing your guts to tether horses when you did not treat our Revered Descendant, T’ing Hau, in the proper manner!” In a more confidential tone she added, “You think a girl wants to stay a virgin that long? Or are you just dead?”

Not yet. But I was working on it.

I stole a glance at the man holding onto me. What was he seeing Jadwiga as, I wondered? A bag lady? A radical feminist? A refugee from Bellevue, New York’s private gateway to the Land of Oz?

“Holy shit,” he said, eyes going as big as golf balls. “Lookit all that fuckin’ gold.”

Great. Eight million stories in the Naked City and we run into the only shakedown artist with enough poetry in him to see Jadwiga as she really was, wearable treasures and all. And if you think the sight of her barbaric splendor was going to touch some chord of answering beauty in his soul and transform him on the spot, you must be from way out of town.

He lunged for the earrings first. Jadwiga screamed. I knew it for a battle cry—rough translation from the original Mongol being, “ Prepare to lose the ability to father children! ”—but to him it just sounded like another helpless victim about to be plucked quick, before the cops could come. When the earrings tore free, he stuffed them in his pockets, and hooked a couple of her glittering necklaces on his second pass.

Jadwiga’s hand dropped to the gorgeously jeweled scabbard at her belt. Spirits can kill, and not just in “Don’t Drive Drunk” ads. If she skewered this guy, odds were good that when the police finally showed up, either they wouldn’t be able to see her at all or she’d look like some little old Refusenik lady just off the jet from Moscow. Guess who’d get nailed for Murder One?

I didn’t have time for a homicide rap. While Yang’s mother mixed it up with the punk, I dropped my backpack and yanked out my sword.

“Stand back, Jadwiga. Don’t do a thing.” I leveled the point of the blade at the man. Its crystal core blazed coldly, small swirls of blue and green energy snaking up from the hilt. Jadwiga sensed the sword’s power and forgot about going for her dagger. She tried to obey me by moving away from her attacker, but he had a hermetic grip on those thick gold chains and he wasn’t about to let go-

“Don’t try it, man,” he sneered at me, raising one eyebrow at my sword. He must have seen it in its true shape, too, but it didn’t impress him. He just needed one hand to hold onto Jadwiga’s jewelry. The other dove into his pocket and came out carrying something nasty, brutish, and snub-nosed. He aimed it at Jadwiga’s heart.

Yeah, I know; she was dead already. All that meant was that the bullet would go right through her. No big deal, right? Unless you happened to be the innocent bystander who was solid enough to stop it. I don’t like gambling with other people’s money or lives.

I let the sword fall slowly to my side. “Let her go and you can keep the earrings.”

His coarse laugh was just a little louder than Jadwiga’s outraged squawk. He kept the gun where it was. “I get to keep it all,” he said. He gave the necklaces another pull, expecting them to snap loose like the thin gold links he was used to plundering. Jadwiga made a sound like a cat trying to hawk up a grapefruit-sized hairball and scowled black death at him, but he was too frustrated by the stubborn jewelry to pay attention to much else. “Come on, bitch, take ’em off yourself. Fast!” He sounded nervous, which was reasonable. We could all hear the rising tide of frantic voices filling the station. Someone had noticed what was going on and had called the cops. I caught the echo of swiftly approaching footsteps just as he said, “I’ll give you three to do it. One ...” Gloorp!

Or maybe it was Glurp! I don’t know. I never had to pin a name to the sound of two hot dogs with everything on them being shoved into a man’s ears before.

“Miserable fornicator with cockroaches! Unhand my mother!” Yang followed up his character analysis with a boot to the man’s behind. He stumbled, pawing at the weiner antennae protruding from his ears, and I used the flat of my sword in a nice two-handed tennis stroke to serve him right into the arms of the police.

We got Jadwiga’s earrings back, along with a lecture on how dangerous it was to struggle with muggers. “Especially when this is the best thing you’ve got to defend yourself with,” one of the policemen said, his hand closing around the unsheathed blade of my sword.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry, sir,” I said. “It didn’t feel sharp the last time I—” “That’s O.K., kid, these paper-cuts are funny things.” The policeman grinned, wrapping his bleeding palm in a handkerchief. “Who’s that a poster of, anyhow?”

“Kierkegaard.” My off-the-wall answer threw the police enough of a curve so that they didn’t bother asking for confirming ID when I gave them a false name for their arrest report. I made myself a promise that I’d even up the scales of Justice in later life by never shirking jury duty, but for the time being, I did what I had to. Like I said, I didn't have time for anything but finding T’ing.

4 I'LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS

We got to Brooklyn without any further complications. Yang and Jadwiga told me that they were going back to the Kaplans’, just in case any new information had turned up. It was a mighty slim chance, but we couldn’t afford to overlook anything. They promised to come back for me first thing in the morning. My former plan to do it myself was overruled.

“A warrior needs his rest,” said Yang, lamming me one on the back as he and his mother left me in front of my apartment door.

I’d forgotten my house key back at Princeton. It doesn’t take much paperback Freud to see how my subconscious was working. I stood there like an idiot for a while, staring at the door and trying to work up enough willpower to ring the bell. I hadn’t counted on being here. I had even partially worked up a great excuse for why I was going to spend Christmas break at school, a really durable excuse that might carry over for Spring-break use, too. And when freshman year ended, I’d planned to be ready with a summer job somewhere far away. If I could come up with all those evasive tactics, I figured that skipping the wedding would be a cinch.

Things were different, now. I had to come home. If we were going to find T’ing, the answer might lie just a few blocks from where I stood, in a comed-beef-and-kraut palace called Feidel-stein’s Delicatessen. There was also the matter of mustering some additional help for the search, and locating the folk I wanted meant having a New York City-vicinity base of operations.

“Base of operations?” What a name for the place I once called home! I rang the bell.

Dr. Faustus answered the door, accompanied by Bungay, his amber-eyed kitten familiar. “Hello, Tim,” he said solemnly.

“ ’Lo,” I mumbled, walking past him and heading for the living room. It took me a second to get my bearings and find it. No, it hadn’t done a magical disappearing act like T’ing; it just wasn’t in the same place as the living room in our old apartment. Since

Mister Mephisto took off, we’d moved to classier digs in the same neighborhood. I don’t know why I say “we”; no one asked me. Mom wrote in September, the week after school started, to tell me it was a done deal, and to send me my new key. Now you can have your own room, and I have a real studio, and there’s even a guest bedroom. Isn’t that wonderful? It was all John’s idea.

Why wasn’t I surprised? Every second word out of Mom’s mouth was one of his ideas. “John,” she called him. Calling him “Iohannes” would probably be too strong a reminder that she was living with a four-hundred-year-old wizard.

I sat down on our new sofa and threw my backpack on the floor. It just missed Bungay, who flew up into the air in a ball of bright orange spits and hisses. Faustus came over and took the chair farthest from me.

“It’s good to see you, Tim,” he said, reaching for his pipe. “Your mother will be very happy you came home for vacation early. ”

“I’m not staying,” I shot back at him. “Tomorrow I’m out of here.”

The only reaction that got from Faustus was a sigh. He crammed brandy-flavored tobacco into his pipe and struck a match to it before replying, “You will then do your mother the courtesy of lying. She is in Manhattan at the moment, meeting with her agent about a Mister Mephisto animated Halloween special. When she returns, I will tell her that your arrival is a surprise, as is the party we will host tonight to celebrate your return. Then, if you choose to run away in the morning, I will let her know that you were invited to join some schoolfriends on a short skiing holiday before Christmas.”

He took a deep drag and released clouds of dove-shaped smoke. “I will see to it that there are reports of a suitably immobilizing blizzard for wherever you and your friends are ostensibly staying so that there shall be no question of your being with us for the holiday, and the roads will not clear until it is time for you to return directly to school. She will be disappointed, but not heartbroken.”

“Just like that?” I swung my feet onto the coffee table. “That’s all it takes to dispose of me? A couple of convenient lies and a trumped-up blizzard?”

“I do not wish to dispose of you. It’s your choice. The blizzard will only exist in the newspapers your mother sees and the broadcasts she hears. No one else will suffer for it. You may run away, if that’s what you want.” The smoke-doves fluttered their wings around the wizard’s head. “Or you could stay and be welcome.”

“No, thanks. ” I dug my hands under my armpits and turtled my head down into my jacket collar. “And you can forget about that party. ”

Faustus stood up and tucked his still-burning pipe into the back pocket of his pants. All trace of tobacco smoke vanished from the air. Mom was strict about no smoking in the house, but she would have no complaints about her darling John when she came home. “We will have the party,” the wizard maintained. “And you will be grateful for it.”

“Don’t bet your familiar on it.”

His eyes had a hard, sharp look like the edges of the crystal wand embedded in my sword. There was power there, too. “Not to me,” he said. “I don’t expect you to be grateful to me. But you will be thankful for the trouble I’ll save you, once you see who I’ve invited. I know why you’ve come home, Tim.”

His tranquil, omniscient air poked me where it hurt and set off a miniature explosion. “How do you know? Who told you? What business is it of yours?”

“Stop shouting.” I thought Faustus had the iciest blood this side of a garter snake to keep his cool like that. I didn’t know the difference between calmness and resignation. “Even I don’t have enough power to patch a broken lease if the neighbors complain about the noise.” He consulted his watch. “Your mother will not be home for another two hours. Come with me.”

I followed him into one of the bedrooms. It was pretty small, so I gathered it wasn’t where they slept, and none of my things were in it. The only bit of furniture close to being a bed was the ratty convertible couch I used to sleep on in our old place. The walls were lined with bookcases and tables bearing a twinkly assortment of laboratory glassware. When I tried to steal a peek into the pages of a musty parchment volume left open on a rickety wooden chair, Faustus slammed it shut and snatched it away. Drapes like thick wine stains blocked out all natural light. One shadeless brass lamp shone starkly over the cluster of half-melted beeswax candles huddled beside it. The little stuffed crocodile hanging from the ceiling was wearing a propeller beanie and a custom-made set of Groucho glasses, plastic nose and fuzzy black eyebrows included. I wondered how Wilmot Smoot would react to someone who obviously conjured up the direst denizens of the infernal regions for the sole purpose of making them sit on whoopee cushions.

“This Mom’s studio?” I asked archly.

The wizard’s eyes stayed sad, even though his lips quirked up. “Your mother needs light to draw by more than she needs props to sketch. A drafting board and art supplies would help, too. No; this is my study, as I am sure you have guessed. This way, please.”

The crystal ball wasn’t shrouded in white silk or black velvet, the better for him to unveil it dramatically. It wasn’t even very big, about the size of an orange. He kept it swathed in plastic bubble-wrap inside a My Little Pony lunch box.

“So you’ve been spying on me,” I said.

“Not on you.” He balanced the crystal ball on his palm as trickles of iridescent color swam over the surface. “Not at first,” he added.

“Right. You just happened to dial a wrong number on that thing and got me.”

This time there was no smile on his lips. “I know how you feel about me. I don’t understand why, but I have accepted it. My years have taught me the futility of fighting to change a mind set in its course. You chose to shut me out, for whatever reason; I could bear it. But you have also chosen to punish me by punishing your mother, and I love her too much to permit that.”

He rolled the crystal ball back and forth, from fingertips to wrist. “When you went to school and the silence began, I thought it was on account of the normal settling-in process. I remember how it was back at Heidelberg . . . well, that’s unimportant. I would have left you alone, but your mother worried. She wouldn’t believe my assurances that it was all part of the natural period of adjustment to college life. That was the only reason I called upon the visions of the crystal, so that I could show her hard evidence to prove my words and set her mind at rest.”

The rolling crystal paused, balancing on the pad of his forefinger, and began to spin. Shining ribbons of light twirled off into the air and landed at random points around the room, little scarves of brightness that clothed whatever they touched with a clinging glow, then melted away like October frost.

One came for me.

“What are you doing, Faustus?” I took a swipe at the floating tissue of light. My hand passed through it and it wafted up again, seeking my face. I felt like a fool for having left my sword out in the living room. “Get it away from me, dammit!”

“It won’t harm you.” The wizard’s voice seemed to come from very far away. “You must let it make you see what I saw when I used the crystal to find you.”

I refused, using everything I had except words to make that point clear. Ducking, dodging, flapping "my arms like a chicken, huffing and puffing—nothing I did made a difference. The shining scarf trailed up and over and through every blow I dealt, countering each turn and sidestep I made, seeping up like smoke between my interlaced fingers to settle at last over my eyes. I cried out, but it captured the sound and flung it back into my ears. It felt like a jellyfish was slithering across my eyes. I kept them squeezed shut, and the light wedged its way in between my eyelids, forcing them open, forcing me to see.

Oh, what I saw!

First there was the cold. I floated in it over a world gone the dead-white of scraped bone. The sky was scummed over with thick, curdy clouds that hung low and oppressive across all the sky. Below me, houses huddled in drifts of snow so deep that only their roofs poked through the crust, snow so thick and firmly packed that even from on high I could see that there would be no chance of any shovel tunneling through to link one family with its neighbors. I imagined what it must be like inside those darkened houses as loneliness, isolation, hunger, despair, and the bitter, bitter cold gradually wrapped themselves around the imprisoned people and began to squeeze.

The earth turned under me and I saw that it was the same everywhere. Jungles and plains, deserts and forests were all one under the ashy shroud. The cities thrust their towers like broken icicles above the snow and only succeeded in reaching the unforgiving gloom of the sky. The few people I saw who were free of the snow’s grasp stumbled across the world’s icy skin, fleeing strange packs of beasts—wolves and jackals together, tigers and lithe spotted cats hunting in the company of coyotes grown bold—who did not seem to feel the weather. Those men that they caught, they tore.

And those who escaped and lived long enough to find another human soul? That was worse to see. Instead of cries of joy and glad embraces, there were growls more fierce than anything the mad packs ever uttered, and the dim flash of steel. Blood blackened on the snow. Sometimes the earth shook, and huge crevasses split the ice to swallow up the newly dead or cast up the old frozen corpses.

Once a great wind blew out of the north, slicing through the clouds to a clean night sky. Only there was no moon. It didn’t hide behind the shadow of the earth; it had simply been clawed to desolate hunks of rock. A great serpent was coiled around the largest fragment, its fangs agape to devour what remained. More wolf packs hunted the sky, and horses with manes of stars fled shrieking before them. One by one they were brought down, throats pierced, backs broken, their glory extinguished. The black night was streaked with blacker blood, a river of absolute lightlessness that ran where the Milky Way had once blazed.

Smothering gloom above me, bleak lifelessness below, I shared the middle air with the whimpering, screaming, praying, sobbing, hopeless and helpless deaths of every breathing being on my dying world. The last darkness of all crashed down over me, and I welcomed it.

I awoke with cold water trickling down the sides of my face and a clammy washcloth on my forehead. Faustus knelt beside me, searching my face with the same detached interest a scholar shows while riffling through a reference book. I guess he found the listing he was after, because all he remarked was, “Good. Then you have seen it, too.”

He took the washcloth off my face and started out of the room without another word. I was groggy, but mad enough to scramble up and catch him by the elbow before he was out the door.

“Hold it right there! What was that all about? You don’t put me through a little slice of hell and then just walk. If that’s what you saw in your crystal when you were trying to check up on me, I’ve got a right to know what it means.”

“Means?” The wizard’s eyes were mild. “No more and no less than it is; and it is world’s end. They, too, have gotten free.” “They? They who? Free from where? From what? You’re exaggerating, right? World’s end—not like those wackos who go around in the comic strips with sandwich boards saying ‘Prepare to meet thy doom’—you don’t mean that!" I forced myself to laugh.

“Look, I’m sorry if I haven’t been the model son lately,” I went on frantically. “College is tougher than I thought. I’m edgy. My Organic Chemistry grade is in the toilet, and it’s taking my big-shot plans to be a doctor down the pipe with it. I’m looking for someone to blame and you were handy, O.K.? If what you’re trying to tell me is stop being such a little prick and shape up, because we never know whether we’re gonna be around tomorrow to say we’re sorry, I got the message. I’ll lighten up. I’ll make Mom happy and hang around for Christmas—”

“You won’t,” said Faustus. “You must find T’ing. Soon.”

So he did know. There was a dreadful urgency in his voice that I didn’t like at all. “World’s end,” I repeated. This time my mouth was dry. “You tried to contact me with the crystal and got a doomsday vision instead and now T’ing’s gone. You think there’s a connection?”

Faustus nodded. Whatever our feelings for each other, I realized he was a good man to have on my side. If only he wasn’t—

We both heard the key turn in the lock at the same time. “Hello, dear, I’m home!” Mom’s quick, light footsteps clicked over the kitchen linoleum and hushed across the living room carpet as she searched room to room for Faustus. “Come on out and pour me a nice glass of sherry before I singe yours ears off with what I really think of independent animation production companies and the horses they rode in on.”

I stepped out of Faustus’ study and said, “Watch your language, lady, there’s children present.” Next thing I knew, I was being smothered against a smart blue wool suit, with a double dose of Youth Dew perfume overwhelming my nostrils.

After we got Mom to let me breathe, Faustus told her about the little surprise party he’d arranged to celebrate my early arrival home for the holidays. “Just a few old friends,” he said.

The bathroom door burst open. A small, stocky creature covered head to foot with thick brown hair bustled out, rubbing his hands together.

“Party? Someone is mentioning party? Ha! Is good. Plenty bubble bath, plenty hot water, everybody in the tub, you scrub my back, I scrub yours. Hey, I scrub yours anyway, no problem. How many guests? Never mind! Plenty! This means we get that Jacuzzi after all, ha?”

His name’s Ilya Mikulovich. He’s a bannik, one of the Russian household sprites whose special province is the bathhouse— bathroom, in this case—and he’d attached himself to Mom ever since his escape from the Leeside. Mom’s mostly of Russian-American blood, you see, and domestic spirits are very ethnocentric.

Mom is very fond of Ilya. She patted him on his thatchy head and kindly informed him that this party was going to be strictly dry.

Banniks can be great philosophers. “Is no bath?” Ilya shrugged. “Is okay! I adjust. I survive. Bath, no bath, is not end of world.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

5 THE OLD, FAMILIAR FACES

I can't say that Faustus’ party was a success by any standard, because ordinary standards just can’t apply to a bash where the first guest through the door is a blond, curly-haired vampire who plonks down a magnum of something colored a deep, rich red and says, “You said it was B.Y.O.B., yes?”

“Not at all, Yaroslav.” Faustus stepped into the role of the perfect host with as much aplomb as if he were stepping into his old sorcerer’s robes. He made an all-encompassing gesture of munificence as he steered the vampire towards one of the well-laden refreshment tables. “See, we have a full bar.”

“I do not drink . . . wine.” The vampire inclined his head ever so slightly. “Got any Orangina?”

As I sat on the sofa, watching the guests arrive, I couldn’t admit it in so many words, but it felt kind of nice to be home. Yes, our apartment was fast filling up with a variety of critters you wouldn’t expect to see outside of fairy tales, bad dreams, educational television specials on comparative mythology, and really classy attacks of delirium tremens, but it could have been worse.

You want proof? Okay. Case in point: Within a few days, most of my fellow freshmen would likely be in the midst of a holiday gathering vaguely similar to this. There’d be the requisite number of cubic female relatives who always descend on you, shrieking about how much you’ve grown while simultaneously trying to pinch and gouge raw, dripping chunks off your cheeks. I think there’s an obscure law somewhere on the books that says any blood relation who ever saw you before your were fully house-broken has the right to maim your face.

Then there’s the advice. No matter what subject bores you to the point of lunacy, there will be one elderly male relative present who knows everything about it, is sure you want him to share this knowledge in detail, and is convinced that you must not merely be given the facts of the matter, but be drilled in forming the one correct opinion based on those facts. Guess whose opinion that is? Guess what your skin’s worth if you disagree.

Did I mention sex? That’s the subject that all relatives present at the party, male and female alike, will team up on. They take it in relays, so that you’re never more than three seconds away from another prying question or insightful analysis concerning your love life. For instance, take the simple question: “Are you seeing someone?”

“Uh . . . yeah.” you say.

Good; a boy needs to sow his wild oats!

Bad; you don’t know what kind of tramps are around.

Whaddaya mean, bad? It’s great! At least it means the boy’s normal.

Who made you the big expert on what's “normal” these days? You could still get God knows what hideous diseases.

I’m expert enough to know his ma wouldn’t mind having a grandchild some day!

Oh, yes! Right! As if there weren’t enough teenage pregnancies already, now you’re going to have this poor baby playing right into the hands of some cheap little conniving slut who’ll get herself pregnant just to trap him into marriage! Darling, you listen to me and you stay away from these college girls; they’re all the same.

Kid, you listen to her and when you’re my age, you’ll regret it, you mark my words.

This is a good time to tell them that you only had two study dates with the girl in question, at which point the first pair of relatives moves off muttering darkly. See? You call that normal? and clearing the runway for the next set of incoming sexual inquisitors.

Whereas all I had to worry about at my Welcome Home party was getting the blood drained from my body, tripping over a motley assortment of the Little People, and trying to get some punch before my phouka buddy, Donahue, drank it all. Since the phouka’d shown up in his horse shape and was sucking up liquid like a sump pump, it was an odds-on bet we’d all go thirsty that night. Except Yaroslav.

“Oh, dear,” Mom said, checking out the way the buffet was evaporating. “Not everyone’s here yet and we’re running low on food already. I called for some more cold cuts almost an hour ago. I should’ve gone to get them myself instead of asking for delivery. Tim, will you see if we’ve got anything else in the kitchen we could put out?”

“Uh-uh.” I folded my arms. “No way am I going in that kitchen. Not with her in there, running things.”

A queenly voice boomed from the kitchen door, “And what is wrong with how we are running things?” A towering, magnificent woman wearing a “Kiss Me, I’m Probably a Latinized Version of an Originally Etruscan Myth” apron condescended to join us. Her every air was regal, even the way she wagged the pink plastic ladle under my nose. Some might call her Junoesque, but they’d have the wrong lady. Vesta, goddess of the hearth and home, didn’t like being mistaken for her kid sister.

“The kitchen is our realm,” she reminded me.

“I know, but the kitchen is our kitchen,” I struck back. “You had no right to throw that cleaver at me before, when I came in for the hors d’oeuvre tray.”

“It was not a cleaver; it was only a butcher knife. You men are such infants. As for the tray, it was not yet ready to go out. Haste has ruined plenty of perfectly good food before this, but we are not going to permit it to ruin any of ours.” Vesta lifted her chin and gave me a long, cold look down the full length of her impressive Roman nose. “Nolle crustum Spamum nostrum tocare," she intoned.

“Say what?”

“I think she said that you were not supposed to touch her Spam pizza,” said Jadwiga, appearing at the goddess’s elbow with a big, gooey slice of the protected morsel in hand. She took another mouthful and added, through mozzarella and meat, “Damn good advice. This stuff tastes like jackal spew.”

I hustled Jadwiga out of Vesta’s reach while Mom threw herself between the ladies. It was no easy task, placating a furious, red-faced goddess screaming bloody murder, but I had faith in my mother’s powers to make things all better. (Not that Jadwiga couldn’t take care of herself; I just didn’t want her settling anyone’s hash by turning them into a portion of same.)

“Gee, I didn’t realize you knew Latin,” I said, making chitchat like mad to cover the spate of foul language the virgin hearth-goddess was pouring out after us.

“You don’t know much about me, period,” Yang’s mother replied. “What you do know, you hesitate to believe.”

“Well, what I do know about you, I heard from Yang,” I admitted.

“Ha! No wonder. My son is good—and if you tell him I said that, I’ll string your eyeballs on gold wire and use them for earrings—but he is, how you say, a little bit of a fibber.”

A little bit of a fibber? Yang, the man who according to no other source but himself had single-handedly scorched seven-tenths of Greater Asia, conquered Japan, given it back to the Japanese because sushi made him barf, worn down the legs and thickened the bodies of fourscore purebred Arabian stallions to Shetland pony size by the sheer weight of plunder with which he’d laden them? Yang, who assured everyone who asked him (or didn’t) that he never met a woman who didn’t beg him to sire many sons upon her unworthy body, a little bit of a fibber?

Holy crow, this woman really must love him!

“I was a princess of the royal house of Kiev,” Jadwiga said proudly. “A minor branch of the family, yet undeniably of the same blood. My father saw to it that I was well educated. Greek and Latin were the basics. Yes, what Yang has told you about me is true.”

“Well, I’m glad to get the chance to meet you, after all this time.” I was a little puzzled, though. “How come you never showed up with Yang before? Just because he didn’t invite you? Frankly, you don’t seem like the sort of lady who’d wait for an invitation.”

“You are indeed wise. Also dead right.” Jadwiga had a pert, sweet smile when she wasn’t trying to score points off a person. I guess you don’t get to be called “the Implacable” if you show off your dimples too much. Then she spoke on, and instead of the simple words of a Mongol rider, I heard the scholarly, learned speech of a true Russian princess:

“Timothy, you have walked the web-paths of the Fey and the ways of the Mythological Continuum long enough to know that there are laws whose rule even I can not gainsay. Your family has always been able to dwell harmoniously with otherworldly folk. The gift to see us as we are is not given to many in this strange land; we cherish those who do possess it as our friends and allies. Therefore”—she took a deep breath—“therefore you will understand when I tell you that before this, I was not free to come to you. There was no connection between us. I am only a ghost.”

“What’s Yang, then?”

“He is an ancestral spirit. As such, he was within his rights to manifest himself to T’ing, last and strongest tie in his direct bloodline, when he squeezed through the hole in the”—she forced herself to say the name—“ in the Leeside barrier. I do not share my son’s elevated status. Though T’ing shares my blood, blood itself is not all-powerful or all-determining for my folk. I was a Mongol by adoption, not birth, a Kievan princess. The ways of the Rus are not the ways of the Eastern peoples. Among my people, there is pride in one’s ancestors but no comparably powerful links of coexistence between the living and the dead.”

I saw her point. Yang counted as one of the domestic spirits, even if he was a pig. She counted as—

“—nothing. I am as much T’ing’s ancestor as Yang, but because my people’s tradition did not make as much of ancestral spirits, I could only watch as my son reclaimed his rightful place in the Outside world.”

She spoke as if it were all a matter of indifference to her, but I could tell it was otherwise. To be a Leeside captive all those ages—plain ghosts are part of those embarrassingly un-American folk beliefs, too, you know—and then to be free, only to discover she had no haven on the Outside, no hearth where the bowl of milk waited for her, no simple shrine where a burning stick of incense said You are not forgotten. Even her own son found a refuge that she could not share. I imagined her wandering in the night and the rain, a regal specter too proud to let any see that even the long dead have a heart that knows how to break.

“You have a place in this world, too, Jadwiga,” I told her, wanting to bring her lonely spirit nearer to one hearth, at least. "With us.”

She brushed off my words. "You are kind as well as wise, Timothy, but you are still a child. Do you think I haven’t grown accustomed to my solitude? I have borne worse. I have seen my children die, so many fine sons! And because I lived the life I chose to live, I was even denied the freedom to mourn for them. To be the rider, the leader that I was, I must show no weakness. I could not weep or wail like a common woman for my loss.” She laughed when she saw the extremely awkward look that must have crossed my face when she mentioned her dead sons. "Did Yang tell you he killed all his brothers? Bah, this is getting out of hand, all these silly little lies when he knows very well it was the plague that took most of them. He only does it to puff up his reputation. I’ll have to have a few words with that boy.”

Her mirth died. “If we have time for that. My place in the Outside, which you think is so important, is of no significance now. It is what my new freedom means, which is of vital importance. Listen to me, spirit friend! The balance has slipped.

The laws which kept me alone have broken. Forces walk whose sheer existence shatters every rule. If I am here with my son at last, it is only because this crumbling of rule and restriction is the weak foreshadowing of a greater destruction.”

I recalled the vision I'd had in Faustus’ crystal ball, and my skin went damp and cold. World’s end. That again. And while I stood here, brunching with Munchkins, T’ing Hau was somewhere out in the midst of it.

I was keen enough to know I had to do something, and stupid enough to think that doing anything was the answer.

“Excuse me, Jadwiga.” I said, leaving her to find my mother. “Mom, what you said about having the extra food delivered— you’re right; they’re never going to get here. I’ll just run down to the deli and grab whatever we need.”

I saw the pained look cross her face. Years back, my father had walked out the door, saying he was just going to pick up some cold cuts and the newspaper. He never came back, and after most of the hurting stopped. Mom assumed that he was dead; so did the law, in time. Neither she nor the authorities ever found out what had really happened to him.

I did . . . sort of.

I learned he’d been drawn into the cold Leeside lands in the time before that small, slowly-widening hole allowed the denizens to escape, one by one. It’s always been easy for mortals to enter the Leeside, and easier for some who have the special dreams. He had been their hero, protecting the tiniest, most helpless sprites from their more monstrous fellow captives. He began by saving one magical life; he stayed because there were so many more to ward and rescue. The sword came to him because swords always find the hero they deserve, and the name—Great Hem—because he had left his old self—Timothy Ahem Desmond—behind.

And by the time he realized that the little ones he shielded had all gotten away into the Outside world, he knew it was too late for him to follow. Time runs at a different rate, Outside and Leeside. How could he come back to the wife and son he’d left—was it really that long ago?—when all he had to excuse his absence was a fairy tale? He couldn’t face that. Every hero encounters one challenge he lacks the heart to meet. So he stayed.

I found him there, in Faustus’ old cottage, of all places, but as for what happened after ... I know he wanted to come back with me, back to the Outside, back to Mom. Hell, we were even heading back together when it happened. What? I can’t say.

Something that stopped him, something that took him away to a farther place than the Leeside, something that was still the ghost of a half-remembered dream to me. There were no clear memories.

How could I tell Mom about what really became of Dad when I wasn’t even sure myself?

“Look, Mom, I’ll be right back, I promise.” I patted her hand, bringing both of us back to now.

The haunted look left her. “I know. I just don’t want you dashing off without a list. When you get there, just tell them to cancel the phone order from before, all right?”

She took my hand and led me into the small, airy room that was her studio. Most of the apartment was furnished in an eclectic mix of traditional, fake antique, real antique, and unclassifiable pieces, but the studio was unadorned high-tech, black and white, plastic and steel. She didn’t even use multicolored pushpins. The one splash of color I saw was a Sunday strip of Mister Mephisto. The inks, though, remained anonymous, all the shades in identical black plastic bottles in a neat row across the top of her drafting board. A crisply typed white label around each neck was the only clue to the brilliance sealed inside. I thought of the wild, bizarre, fabulously hued paintings she used to do, before, and money or no money, I felt sad.

She could have saved herself the trouble it took to write out that list. I didn’t need cold cuts from the deli; if I was going to find T’ing, I needed cosmic answers.

Lucky for me, Feidelstein’s carried both.

6 I VANT TO BE ALONE

Ah, Feidelstein’s Kosher Delicatessen! Where the prices are reasonable, the corned beef is lean, and the massed heroes of every human culture sit around the Back Room grousing about the portions. Feidelstein’s, where you can enlist the services of Siegfried or Cuchulain, Jason or Sir Lancelot, if you’ve got the right connections, the Mythological Continuum permits, and you speak to them ver-ry slow-ly in words of one syl-la-ble, Feidelstein’s, where occasionally you can spot the champion of some earthly nation long since disbanded, its people enslaved and assimilated, its name forgotten, its sagas dust. They are no more, the folk who once believed in him and sang the songs and told their children the stories of his prowess, but he is still there. The old legends they wove around him promised he would return, and so he waits for the ancient prophecies to be fulfilled so that he can go back and lead his people to their Golden Age. But where are the prophecies? Where are the people? He is the last, alone. Still he waits. Sometimes that’s the bravest thing left for any hero to do.

He figures he might as well have a bite to eat while he’s waiting.

When you are about to barge into a major nexus of legendary powers, you want to enter as an equal, so you bet I found a way to bring my crystal sword without upsetting Mom. It fit like a charm inside a paper bag full of deposit soda cans, clanging around unnoticed. Sure, it was clumsy, toting that sack, but it was the only way I could think of to smuggle along my blade. Wouldn’t the great heroes remember who I was if I came without it? I’d had business with the Back Room not so long ago, but when you’re dealing with entities whose whole history consists of being repeatedly hit on the head with heavy objects, hard, helmet optional, it pays to pack a few mnemonic aids.

I didn’t pack the bannik. He just showed up while I was waiting for the traffic light on the corner to change.

“What are you doing here, Ilya?” I asked.

The bannik tried to assume a nonchalant pose, hands in pockets, whistling. It was immaterial to him that he lacked tune, pockets, or even clothes. “What? What? What I’m doing? This is a question! Is no more free country? You got maybe rule says I can’t be on public street?”

I sighed. This was like talking to an irate haystack. “Mom sent you, right?”

Banniks should never play poker. Those liquid eyes broadcast his guilt on all available cable channels, including HBO. “Is favor. You saved me, once, so now I look out for you. Also, your mamma worries. Is no good, worry. Worry, get wrinkles, forget to bathe, muck up house, pfui! You like your nice mama be pfui?" “I’m only going to the deli, for God’s sake.”

“Is good.” Ilya set hands on hips. “Me, too.”

Banniks can be stubborn. They have to be. As guardians of the bathhouse, their employment and delight is to encourage frequent immersions by the family members they serve. You think this is easy in the middle of a Russian winter? Yes, stubbornness helps. I decided what-the-hell and made no more objections.

We crossed the street together. As we continued on down the next block, I remarked, “Last I saw of you, Ilya, you were heading for Feidelstein’s, too, for good. Some old Russian hero we rousted out of the Back Room—what was his name?— anyway, you were going to serve him and the others. I come home, you’re back taking care of Mom. What gives?”

The shaggy sprite grew uneasy. “Your mamma, she is glad to see Ilya again. New home, new bathroom, all kinds new soap, bubblies to put in water, smell nice, she needs me! This is for you to be sticking in nose?”

“Only when I smell something fishy.” I hushed up for a minute or so while a skinny lady asked if she could pet my adorable sheepdog. After she’d scratched Ilya behind the ears and gone on her way, I resumed: “You still haven’t answered my question.” “Voof!” said Ilya. He panted, grinned, lifted his leg against a lamppost, and refused to continue our conversation.

Talk proved to be unnecessary once we reached Feidelstein’s. I dropped the sack at my feet, oblivious of the unholy clangor it made, careless of any damage my sword might have taken in the fall.

CLOSED

That’s what the flimsy cardboard sign on the door said. That was it; that was all. Someone had taken a piece of a corrugated box, a black crayon, and scribbled out the one-word message in a hurry. Judging from the water stains and shabby edges, it had been hanging there for a long time. It seemed miraculous that any passing wind hadn’t blown it away, to say nothing of its surviving the attentions of Local 947 of our neighborhood Vandals, Punks, and Street Scum Union.

I tugged at a corner of the sign experimentally, just to see how it was attached to the door. It bobbled like a fishing float, neither nail nor tape nor tack nor staples nor glue holding it in place. I grabbed the sign and tore it down. The cardboard turned into a runny mess of brown slime in my fingers. A new sign, freshly weathered and identical to the old, materialized in its place. No shock there; I told you Feidelstein’s was special.

Ilya edged up to me and shyly pulled my sleeve. “Is to leave it be, okay? Tear down sign, is no good. Even if it not come back every time you rip up, big deal. Feidelstein’s still stays locked up tighter than a commissar’s tea caddy. ”

I didn’t need him to tell me that; I had eyes. The door where the sign hung was shielded by a heavy steel rolldown shutter, the deli windows covered over with thick wooden boards. The canvas awning and the neon sign with the name of the establishment were both gone. I guess Mom forgot to mention that she was patronizing a different deli these days.

“You knew,” I stated, staring at Ilya. “You knew!”

“Mnyah.” The bannik shrugged and tried to sidestep the issue. “You say you are going out for cold cuts, who knows you coming here? Is maybe only deli in all of Brooklyn, ha? Not on your bath salts, Buster! Come, we go two blocks down, find deli your mamma ordered meat from, get what you need. This is all their fault, they not deliver, make you go through all this fuss, ptoo! I spit on the milk of their liverwurst! You go in, give them nice fat slice of mind, maybe get them to throw in extra pickles, go home, your nice mamma not worry anymore—”

His wheedling ended in a yelp when I jerked away from him, rifled the sack of empty cans, pulled out my blade and let its edge do the talking right at his eye-level. Any passer-by who took the trouble to look would probably only see a fed-up dog owner threatening his contrary pet with a stick.

“Tell me,” I gritted. “Everything. When it happened. Why. Who did it. What became of the heroes. All.”

Ilya’s story, when I separated the words from the incoherent blubbering, was not much. He knew less than I’d thought, and he wasn’t the sort to lie to anyone.

“You think is easy, serving great hero of Russian people? ‘Bathe,’ I tell him. ‘Then you don’t feel so melancholy, okay?’ But is no good; even wet, he stays mournful. Is tradition! Still, I try. I even get Kipnis to put in bathtub. You remember Kipnis, yes?”

Remember Ben Kipnis? I’d sooner forget the Maine, the ladies, the Red River Valley, and the Alamo. In the days when I still thought Feidelstein’s was just another New York deli, I’d viewed Ben Kipnis as just another grouchy counterman, slicer of bologna, purveyor of coleslaw to the gentry. The man looked like a lizard, only with half the personality. You’d never guess a man like that spent the greater portion of his days catering to the dietary whims of legends. Where was he now?

“Is good guy, Kipnis,” Ilya went on. “Puts in tub in Back Room, behind folding screen in comer no one uses, gets hot water, tells me, ‘You can get some of the stink off this crowd, I give you all the borscht you can eat.’ Things looking up, yes?” The bannik’s face brightened for a second, then fell.

“But is no. This I can sense, even before it happens. Something is not right in Back Room. All the time, feeling like something breathing down my neck; something hungry. I look around, check under bathtub, move screen, but nothing. Imagination, I tell myself! When I ask heroes if they notice anything strange, they laugh.”

“Ilya, that crowd wouldn’t notice Godzilla unless he swiped a pickle off their plates.”

“No, this is untruth. Kipnis always gives extra pickles.” The bannik slumped down onto his hams, back resting against the barred door of Feidelstein’s. “So life is going on. All is rosy, heroes are starting to catch on to what bathtub is for, no more using it when they get too lazy to find men’s room. One day, I am even hearing Siegfried telling me to take piece of his dragon-hoarded gold, go buy super colossal humongous family economy size of afterbath splash cologne.”

“Siegfried asked you to get that?” This really was peculiar. “The way I remember Siegfried, he was the hero with a fighting chance to defeat Yang in a reek-off. How Brunnhilde ever put up with him—”

“She was Valkyrie,” Ilya reminded me.

“Oh, right. When you’ve spent that much time inhaling horse-smell and flying in low over corpse-strewn battlefields, I guess your nose burns out a few olfactory bulbs or something. I don’t think that boy ever washed his clothes from the day he killed the dragon Fafnir. You know what stale dragon-blood smells like?”

“Who you think you are telling?” Ilya rolled his eyes. “Now you know why I am being so grateful he wants to try smelling like something human, for change. Siegfried is never bathe!” The little bannik’s brow creased. “I think it is Siegfried. He is wearing Siegfried’s clothes—ghah!—and has voice same ...”

“Didn’t you see his face?”

“What, through front of iron helmet?” Ilya looked at me like I was nuts. “What am I looking like, Super-bannik, got X-ray eyes, leaping tall shower stalls in single bound?”

“I see,” was all I said. I didn’t like what I was hearing at all.

Ilya continued: “So I am taking money, buying nice stuff for after bath, but when I am coming back”—his voice broke—“is like this. All locked, all dark, all deserted. I stand outside, I call. No one comes. Is October, cold. I wait in the dark; long, long time, I wait. Enough! When I am getting tired of pounding on steel shutters, on boarded windows, I decide to go home.”

“You did right, Ilya,” I told him, patting his head. “In fact, that sounds like a darned good idea for both of us, right now. Come on, I’ll buy you a potato knish.” I put the sword back in its sack and bent down to recapture the few empty soda cans that had rolled away when I’d first drawn steel.

As Ilya and I walked away from Feidelstein’s, in search of Mom’s new salami-mine, I thought I picked up some mysterious movement out of the comer of one eye. I twisted my head around sharply and got the impression I’d seen two human-sized figures dash into Feidelstein’s Kosher Delicatessen. The fact that they were wearing floor-length gray robes with the cowls pulled well over their faces was pretty small potatoes on the oddity scale when compared to the fact that they had just run right through a solid steel shutter and a locked door without so much as fluttering the permanently affixed closed sign.

“Did you see that?” I asked Ilya.

“I see nothing. What?”

“I’m not sure. ...” When I tried describing what I’d seen, he looked openly skeptical. I hoisted my bundle and stared at the deli until he grew impatient.

“What, you are thinking banniks have market cornered on imagination? Come! Come! We stay out much longer, your mamma worries more.”

I didn’t want that. I’d been prepared to charge into Feidelstein’s and pump Ben Kipnis for anything he or his heroic visitors might know about T’ing’s vanishment and Faustus’ vision. I’d even been ready to act immediately on any information they might give me, although that might mean taking off at once without so much as a phone call home to tell Mom I’d be back when I could.

Like father, like son. How much comfort would my mother get from that old saying? Not much. When I stopped to think about what I’d almost done, I wasn’t too proud of myself.

Fortunately, I’d been saved from hurting her, but what had saved me? I didn’t know. My head ached as I tried to sort out all possible connections between Feidelstein’s lockup, Jadwiga’s words of bindings broken and laws shattered, T’ing, Faustus, and the pair of hooded phantoms I could’ve sworn were solid flesh.

Better to take care of present business, the more trivial the better. I needed some distraction. I footed it down to the other deli and back home again fast enough to satisfy even the bannik’s urgings. Speed and efficiency should have been the only things on my mind; they weren’t. I caught sight of the two robed figures again, while deep in an argument with the counterman. (It was a religious discussion. I said Jesus Christ, this corned beef s fat, and he said Go to hell.) At one point I glanced out at the street, and there they were. They even cast reflections in a giant jar of pickles in the window, but then they melted away as completely as any dawn-scared ghost.

Coming back to the apartment, Ilya grew concerned over the way I kept stopping every few steps and looking abruptly over my shoulder. He must have thought I was crazy, or at any rate that I needed a nice hot bath. Like a good household sprite, he munched his knish and kept his own counsel. I didn’t see my two mysterious followers again.

Not right away.

“Mom! We’re back!” I shoved the sack of still-unredeemed deposit cans (and no-deposit, no-return sword) into the hall coat closet on the sly, then toted the deli order into the dining room. From what I could hear, Vesta was still ruling the kitchen at the top of her classical lungs, and I was steering clear.

Mom had the whole house prettied up for Christmas, which I like, except when she goes into overdrive and isn’t happy until every flat surface in the house is bristling with evergreens, glittering with ornaments, thick with poinsettias, and a hardworking son doesn’t have where to set down a mighty heavy bag of assorted edibles.

“Not there, Tim! You’re squashing the tinsel garland!” Mom threw her body over the threatened centerpiece. “Oh! Not there either! You’ll knock over my miniature Christmas tree. Ooooh! For goodness’ sake, didn’t you see the candles? Do you want to set the house on fire? No, no, no, don’t unpack the meat on that table, sweetheart; you’ll get grease all over the fake snow.”

I didn’t feel like being patient. “Well, then, where do you want me to put—?”

“Don’t worry yerself all of a swivet, m’dear. I’ll just be takin’ that wee bindle from yer own gracious hands.”

The bag was whisked from my keeping, and just like that, her melodious voice made me realize how much I’d missed her: A flash of silky, golden hair, a dazzle of sea-colored eyes, the glimpse of a lovely, laughing face, the creamy glow of fairskinned, graceful limbs . . .

The delicate perfume of dead fish. Many, many, very dead dead fish.

My banshee was back. There was gonna be trouble.

7 HEY NAH, HEY NAH, MY BANSHEE'S BACK

“Sure, and ’tis long it’s been since last I saw ye, Tim,” said Teleri, her voice so soft and sweet that I found myself leaning forward to catch every sound she uttered as if they were drops of honey. We sat on the love seat in the living room while the rest of the party went on without us.

“Yeah, too long,” I agreed. “You wouldn’t think I’d miss someone whose one job’s to let me know when I’m about to die, but I did.”

“Get along wi’ ye, now!” Too much time spent in Brooklyn, and Teleri had picked up the unbansheelike habit of dishing out serious noogies whenever provoked. She had hard knuckles, as my poor shoulder learned. “And whose fault was that, ye great laggard?”

“I thought you’d be too busy. You had your career—”

“A pox on the trifling, trumpery, tuppenny-ha’penny excuse fer a slow an’ doleful death as ye’re calling a career!”

I phrased my response with caution. Teleri had come into my life with a temper and the magical means at her disposal to put some teeth behind it. Also claws, fangs, stingers, tusks, talons, and inch-long fingernails when she was so moved.

“Am I to assume that you’re not exactly ... ah ... in love with the entertainment industry any more?”

She spat. What is it with these mythic types? Hasn’t anyone ever taught them that there are other means of self-expression than high-speed saliva launches?

“Th’ Leeside take all th’ fine, puffed-up gombeenmen as call their loathsome selfs producers an’ directors both! May th’ yawnin’ desolation of bleak Annwn claim ’em, body, soul, an’ BMW! May they never be knowin’ th’ meanin’ o’ peace, nor joy, nor tax exemption!”

Two massively muscled arms elbowed their way in between Teleri and me from behind. “What the doll is trying to convey to you, my fine young cutting from the Nassau ivy vine, is that due to aesthetic short-sightedness bordering upon the designation ‘legally blind’ on the part of the New York City theatrical establishment, my client and I are presently at liberty to seek more gainful and artistically fulfilling employment elsewhere.” Master Runyon leaned on the back of the love seat and interjected his opinions as cavalierly as he’d inserted himself.

“No work, huh?” I asked Teleri. She just seethed and glowered at Master Runyon.

When I originally met the luchorpan Master Runyon, he’d been following the traditional trade of his kind by running a shoe-repair shop off Times Square. One of the first things the short, bald, barrel-chested sprite told me was that if I ever called him a “leprechaun,” after the corrupt British mangling of the word, he would use his golden cobbler’s hammer to teach me manners. Since then, however, he had found a new calling as a theatrical agent, exclusive representative of the dulcet pipes of Teleri of Limerick.

Now it seemed that his new career-path left much to be desired. My banshee’s expression could have curdled Crisco.

Master Runyon didn’t appear to care how non grata his persona was with Teleri. He vaulted over the love seat one-handed, with the ease natural to someone with all that upper-body strength. You don’t spend countless eons swinging a hammer without some results. Teleri pulled her skirt away from him in a pointed manner. I just sat there feeling uncomfortable. When two of the Fey decide to have a fight, any mortal near enough to become the battleground had better have an up-to-date Last Will and Testament ready.

“It’s—it’s nice to see you again, too. Master Runyon,” I said, hoping to keep things civil.

“And might I likewise ditto that sentiment, Tim,” Master Runyon riposted. “Had I not chanced to overhear when and what I did, your deservedly high opinion of me might have undergone some serious torpedo-work, thanks to the misinformation which this loquacious doll has been so generously dispersing.”

“The cheek!” Teleri snorted. “Is it a liar ye’d make me? Then just ye be tellin’ Tim how many’s the jobs ye’ve managed t’ procure me in the past year!”

Master Runyon raised his eyebrows, then turned from Teleri to confide in me: “In this respect, the doll speaks truth. I have been singularly unlucky in causing her to make any significant inroads among the powers that be both on, off, and off-off Broadway. This failing, however, must not be assigned solely to yours truly.” “Isn’t that just like the brash gall of himself!” Teleri had begun ihe conversation at a rolling boil, and was rapidly escalating to lotal meltdown. “Blame me, will he?”

Still speaking as if Teleri weren’t there. Master Runyon said, “A good agent does what he can with what he has got in his mitts. A great agent does what he can in spite of the quality of merchandise he has got to tout. We can neither one of us deny—being men of the world and more than a little versed in the various sorts of dolls who so succulently share the aforesaid planet with us—that the divine Miss T. is a canary par excellence. Her vocal talents are without peer, both as to technical execution and sentimental interpretation, to say nothing of being backed up by as superb a pair of lungs as it has been my privilege to observe.” "Yyyyyeah,” I said hesitantly, not sure where all this was leading, and most unwilling to wind up in some dead-end alley of Teleri's rage, led there by Master Runyon’s facile gift of the gab. “Yep, what you said; she sure can sing.”

“There!” Teleri smacked Master Runyon’s steel-sinewed upper arm in triumph. “The lad bears out what I’ve been sayin’ all along. All the talent such as I’ve got, and ye were incapable of findin’ me honest work as a simple an’ unassumin’ legend o’ th’ Broadway musical stage!”

“Doll, in the gale generated by your nimble jaws, you have overlooked the several star-tums I procured for you.”

“In shows that had the lifespans o’ mayflies wi’ th’ grippe!” Teleri countered.

A sigh rippled from the luchorpan’s chest. “What can I say? What, indeed, beyond the fact that yon doll now wallowing in self-righteousness is not permitting me to finish my explications.” “Finish and be damned t’ ye,” Teleri growled.

“Sincere thanks for all kind wishes received, and may you enjoy the same, in spades.” Master Runyon linked his hands on one knee. “Yes, Tim, it is as you so astutely observed: Miss Teleri has a voice to make strong men weep. I put it to you that the doll is likewise possessed of another quality which has been known to evoke the identical lachrymose reaction in mortal stalwarts—a quality which she can not control nor eradicate, a quality which necessitated some extremely agile footwork on the part of her designated agent (that is to say, myself) so as to obtain her any employment whatsoever, a quality—”

Teleri’s slim hand closed at the thick nape of Master Runyon’s neck. To my slack-mouthed horror and admiration, I saw her lift the luchorpan bodily from the love seat and hold him suspended by the scruff a full foot-and-a-half above the cushions. “Either ye’ll say it out plain, smart-like, else th’ next words out o’ that blarney-spoutin’ mouth o’ yers’ll be yer last.”

“You smell like a herring,” Master Runyon blurted. “In fact, you smell like seven generations of Lower East Side pushcart herring in August. There! Are you happy?”

Well, some people do burst into loud, gusty sobs when they’re happy.

We tried to comfort her. The damage was done, but at least everything was out in the open. “It really isn’t your fault, Teleri,” I said, hugging her. “It’s genetics.” Weird genetics, but with the same inescapable results as the tamer kind. “Nixie blood, remember? And—and didn’t you once tell me how your family was connected with the Salmon of Wisdom?”

“Aye, that’s so.” She gulped back another sob. “Th’ great an’ learned Salmon o’ Wisdom as swims th’ River Shannon. Oh, when I was a mortal girl, not a speck o’ this mattered. But when me true love died fightin’ th’ devil Cromwell—a hot hell take him!—and I drowned meself for pure grief, the moment I became a banshee every touch o’ magical doin’s me kinfolk’d ever known broke out upon me like a fearsome rash, and it’s helpless with th’ itchin’ of it I’ve been ever since.”

“It would not be so bad were the doll able to predict when this rather malodorous token of her heritage might divulge itself, ” said Master Runyon. “To our mutual sorrow and inconvenience, sometimes she smells like a hake, sometimes she does not, willy-nilly. When she was yet merely the hired warbler for Luggage King commercials, we could safely make it through a studio session taping one such spot at a time if we scheduled it immediately after she had been broadcasting eau de bluefish to the four winds. There is an invariable period of respite hard upon the heels of each noisome episode.” He shrugged his brawny shoulders. “The Broadway stage admits of no such selective appearances.”

“Woe!” wailed the banshee, though this time her keening was self-directed. “ ’Tis unfair I’ve been t’ ye, good Master Runyon.” “Unfair, as you say, doll, and past the eyebrows. Now that you have decided to take your leave of the stage, I think it not inopportune to reveal that what few shows did acquire your sterling talents were, to no small extent, backed by my own judicious investments in the production.”

Teleri’s eyes went tender as she regarded her agent. “Would ye be meanin’, me darlin’ luchorpan, that ye played th’ role o’ angel too?”

“That, in its strictly Broadway parlance. Although I am, like yourself, Irish, I have had quite a sufficiency of harp music dinned into my ears over the ages.”

I nudged Master Runyon. “You backed shows for her and never told?”

“And why not?” He showed me his upturned palms. “The doll grew cranky when she was not working, yet her luck at auditions never did run smooth, due to the innate, odoriferous handicap which we have already jawed over. If not for my fiscal encouragement of the musical comedy versions of such nascent boffolas as On the Waterfront and Anna Christie, the poor frail might never have worked at all.” He winked. “A pot o’ gold has its uses, my friend.”

“On the Waterfront as a musical comedy?”

“I grant you that the choreography for the meat-hook ballet needed work,” Master Runyon admitted. “I would have gladly backed a stage production of The Little Mermaid as well, were it not for some tedious legal problems with an obscure animation studio on the Coast. One tries.”

Teleri seized Master Runyon’s hands and pressed them to her bosom. The luchorpan didn’t seem to mind. “In the doleful depths o’ me broken heart, I’ve sought to fix th’ fault on any but meself, may th’ shame o’ it never leave me. It’s truth ye’re speakin’, and nary a doubt o’ that.” She sniveled noisily. “I stink.”

“Aw, now, Teleri, buck up.” I couldn’t stand to see her cry. I also couldn’t stand to see Master Runyon having all the fun. Teleri and I were at least friends, definitely comrades-in-arms, and there’d been times she’d tried to make our relationship an even warmer one. If I’d held her at arm’s length, it was because I’d been very young and not a little scared. When you try to imagine how your first time’s going to be, most normal guys don’t figure on learning the ropes from a supernatural female with several centuries of experience behind her. Thinking about trying it with an ordinary girl is frightening enough.

Of course I was older, now. College-age. Princeton, even. Back when she was still writing to me, T’ing let me in on the old tradition at her school which stated that if a virgin ever graduated from Vassar, the big stone eagle on top of Main building would fly away. There are two life-sized statues of tigers outside Nassau Hall, and I’d hate to be the one personally responsible for one of them getting up and taking a little stroll when I got my diploma, if you get my drift.

I think you do.

I put both arms around Teleri, squeezing Master Runyon out like a greased cantaloupe seed. “Screw Broadway. You’ve still got what it takes to make it in show business. I read somewhere that Clark Gable had breath that’d peel the bark off trees. When you’re in the movies, stench is no object!”

“And how were ye proposin’ I’m t’ make so fine a mark in the cinema?” Teleri’s golden brows lifted. “ ’Tis Hollywood ye intend me fer, else I’m a grogan.”

“Sure, I mean Hollywood. You’d be swell. You’d be great. You could have the whole world—”

“In yer hat,” my banshee snarled. “Ye’ve no cause t’ be teasin’ a poor, sorrowful banshee like this when ye know ’tis flat impossible. We’re free o’ th’ cursed Leeside, but th’ pull o’ th’ wicked craythur still holds us nigh t’ the point where we all broke out.”

“Teleri, you were never one of the Leeside captives. You—” “I’m one o’ th’ race o’ magic, fer all that!” she snapped. “Though first I came t’ this benighted country well after th’ Leeside’d been broached, still I must submit to th’ rules an’ laws which bind all spirits o’ similar nature to linger near. Hollywood? In yer dreams! ”

“Well, how far from the original breakout point can you go?” I asked.

“Newark.” I didn’t blame her for sounding despondent. “Newark,” I repeated. I’m no geography whiz, but I do have a fuzzy picture of the United States Eastern seaboard in my mind, complete with rough estimates of intercity mileage. “Newark? That’s all?”

“Sure, an’ that’s what I told ye.” Teleri scowled. I jumped up from the love seat, sending Master Runyon rolling into the banshee’s lap. “Yang! Yang!” I shouted. “Hey, anybody here see Yang?”

“He’s in the bathroom,” said Donahue, around a mouthful of potato salad. “Paying homage at the porcelain manger.”

Jadwiga heard my cry and Donahue’s reply. No longer the refined, well-bred Kievan princess, she blitzed the bathroom and hauled her pasty-faced offspring before me. I could count the drops of sweat on the Mongol’s forehead like rosary beads, but he was smiling.

Showing his teeth, anyhow.

“Yang, tell Teleri where you’ve been in the past few months,”

I directed.

“Okay. First I plundered—”

“Not that. Start just before Thanksgiving, when you went to bring T’ing home for the feast.”

Yang told all, and Jadwiga backed him up. Teleri’s eyes widened as they spoke of the trek up to Poughkeepsie and down to Princeton.

“But that’s impossible!” she maintained. “ ’Tis purely out o’ th’ question. Was there no pull at yer heels when ye’d traveled some small distance from this city?”

Yang tugged the end of his moustache thoughtfully. “You know, woman, you’re right. Coupla months before this big family banquet, I decided to go check up on my Honored Granddaughter, whether she liked it or not. Soon as I hit the Bronx, though— whoa!”

“Like a great tether was holdin’ ye back?”

“More like a fucking big rock got rammed into my nuts. Made me feel like giving up sex for forty-five whole minutes! Didn’t happen the next time I tried to see T’ing, though. I wonder how come?”

I looked at Jadwiga and recalled what she’d said of crumbling rules. “There was nothing to keep him from coming as far south as Princeton, either,” I said. Teleri looked horrified.

Master Runyon voiced the thought that hit all of us at once: “It would appear that all is not as it should be. Setting aside the marked advantage my client and I now may share insofar as attempting to take Tinseltown by storm, this turn of events is not one which I greet with unmixed enthusiasm.”

“Something’s amiss,” Teleri said quietly. “Something in the fabric o’ th’ world entire’s frightfully wrong.”

“More than any of us know,” I agreed, and told them all about T’ing, and Faustus’s crystal, and what I’d found when I went to Feidelstein’s.

When I was done, we sat in silence so deep and tangible that Mom came over to ask what was wrong.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t give me that story, Tim,” she said. For the first time since my return, a little of the old Mom showed through. Under all that soft, smooshy, oh-I’m-in-love melting expression on her face was the tough, level-headed, survival-oriented mother who’d raised me since Dad went away.

Faustus came to join her. “If the boy says it’s nothing, we should believe him, my dear,” he said.

“You keep out of this!” The bright, steely edge in Mom’s voice nearly made me gasp for joy. Since Faustus’ arrival, she hadn’t had to take care of herself anymore and I was beginning to worry she’d forgotten how to do it. “Tim is my son, and after eighteen years I ought to know when he’s hiding something. And I don’t need any cheesy old crystal ball to tell me, either!”

“Yes, dear,” said Faustus meekly.

I didn’t get to enjoy his capitulation. With one household male knocked into shape, Mom turned on me. “Well? I’m waiting. And save the fast talk. With an apartment full of guests like these, I have heard quite enough fairy tales for one day. ”

She was my mother. She had almost lost her mind when the domestic sprites first left the Leeside and a bannik appeared to claim her as his chosen master. She had lain in an enchanted sleep under the curse of a mighty witch. She had awakened to the love of a four-hundred-year-old wizard whose soul was forfeit if the contract-holding demon ever got around to lodging his claim on it. Hell, she used to manage a McDonald’s! She could take it.

I told her everything.

8 THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

“Go ahead,” my mother said. Her voice echoed eerily through the dark passageway where a cluster of battered garbage cans were our only witnesses. “Knock.” She nodded at the grim, black steel door.

I shifted my sword from hand to hand, hoping that if I stalled long enough, Mom would get fed up and go home. I should have known better. I’d heard what she said to Faustus when he suggested that home was the place she ought to stay to begin with. It wasn’t pretty.

Neither was this place. All her life, Mom had been devoted to (lie ideal of keeping me out of trouble, jail, and anywhere that looked like prime mugging territory. Now she had not only insisted I come to a lonely, dimly lit, semi-subterranean corridor between two apartment buildings, she had announced she was coming with me.

“It’s about time I met the people my own son has been hanging out with,” she said.

“Mom, it’s not like we were slashing tires or spray-painting graffiti on toy poodles.” My protests cut no ice with her.

“Are you going to knock, or am I going to do it for you?” Without waiting for an answer, she snatched the sword from my hands and rapped sharply on the black door with the tip.

“Mommmmmm!” I tried to retrieve my mark of office. It was going to look humiliating enough to have the Grand and Puissant Champion of the Fey paying a call with a chaperone, but it would look immeasurably worse if, when the door opened, said Champion didn’t even have his weapon in hand. Of course I took it away from him; children shouldn’t play with sharp objects. Tell me that that little phrase wasn’t running through my head! “Give it back to me before you bust it!”

“ ‘Bust it’? Did I hear you say ‘bust it’?” Mom pursed her lips. "Do you have anything to tell me about the grade you’ll be getting in Freshman English, or should I brace myself for the surprise?” “C’mon, Mom, I’m not gonna get any bad grade on account of grammar. If we don’t find out what’s behind all these weird goings-on, grammar’s going to be the last thing on anyone’s mind.” I made another swipe for the blade.

“Don’t grab, Tim; it’s rude.” Mom handed over the crystal-spined sword. She gave the door a hard look. “How long should we wait before we try again?”

“No one’s home,” I said swiftly. “Let’s go.”

“I am not budging from this spot.” Mom folded her arms across her chest and nodded in the direction from which we’d entered the odd, covered-over little alley. “The others are waiting, too. You knock this time.”

“I could knock for you,” said a voice from the end of the passageway that led to the back of the building. Mom and I had come in from the end that gave on the street; that was where we’d left the rest of our company, Teleri and Yang and the others. This voice didn’t belong to any of them. A shadow detached itself from the row of garbage cans, a shadow wearing lots and lots of black leather and blue steel. A sharp sliver of the same hungry metal glittered in its hand.

This would be a great place to drag out a long, suspenseful bit about how my heart pounded faster, my hands sweated, the mysterious stranger came closer and closer, step by step, inch by inch, his maniacal laughter rising slowly to homicidal pitch, Mom screamed . . .

Chuck that. It was only Neil Fitzsimmons. Why should I give the big jerk any more of a buildup than he deserves? Especially when the supposedly lethal piece of steel he was toting turned out to be a slide rule.

“Oh, good evening, Mrs. Desmond,” he said, saluting her with the instrument of mathematical destruction. Neil had changed drastically since the last time we’d hung out together. Used to be that the most cordial thing he ever said to a lady—any lady, mothers of friends included—was “Yo! Wanna get nasty?” He hung out with a Glenwood High gang called the Rawbone Kings, only heading home when he absolutely had to, because any beatings Neil dished out on the street were the pale twin of the thrashings his old man gave him.

“Hello, Neil,” my mother replied, as if she always held polite conversations in such surroundings. “How is your father? I’ve been meaning to call him—”

“He’s just fine, thanks,” Neil said. “Been doing real well in the A. A. meetings, got a promotion at work and a raise. I almost killed him last month, though.” (That sounded more like the Neil I knew.)

“Is that so, dear?” (I looked around for the butler to bring in the tea and crumpets, but all I saw was a fat black rat.) “How did that happen?”

“Dean’s List.” Neil grinned. “The shock coulda been too much for him. I mean, like me getting into Brooklyn College wasn’t enough of a kick in the head.”

“I’m sure that your father always expected you to do well, Neil.” Mom gave me a narrow stare. “Did you hear that, Timothy? Neil is on the Dean’s List.”

Beautiful. Now Mom was holding Neil Fitzsimmons up as an example to me.

Neil caught sight of the sword. He was more than a little familiar with it, so he knew its unsheathed presence could only mean one thing:

“Trouble?”

“You could say that.”

“I’ll bet, or you wouldn’t be calling on—” He stopped, and gave Mom a searching look.

“It’s all right, dear,” she assured him. “This isn’t the sort of place I usually frequent. Tim has told me exactly who and what is behind this door. By the way, what brings you down here? Tim, you didn’t call him?”

I shook my head no.

Neil looked sheepish. “I got—I have a date. She’s expecting me.” He toed a stray tin can shyly and blushed from the collar of his leather jacket up to the roots of his hair. Then he showed us the small, black velvet jewelry box and popped the lid.

“My, my, isn’t that nice.” Mom made the appropriate cooing sounds over Neil’s offering for his lady fair. “Whoever your girlfriend is, I’m sure she’ll be very pleased with such a thoughtful gift.”

I looked in the box and howled. “An ID bracelet? Mom, unless things have changed way drastic, Neil’s girlfriend is Eleziane, Princess Royal of the Fey. Her father’s the elfin lord Palamon, and the only thing he’s got more of than bad taste is good jewelry. We are talking serious sapphires, rubies the size of baseballs, a family that uses their smaller emeralds when they run out of kitty litter, and he’s giving her an ID bracelet? Holy crow, it’s not even gold.”

“Silverplate,” Neil said between clenched teeth.

“Jesus, Neil, no one gives ID bracelets any more!”

“Somebody make it your business, Desmond?” Some of the old Rawbone King venom seeped back into Neil’s eyes.

“I think it’s a very nice gift, and it’s terribly impolite of you to make any disparaging comments about it, Timothy. You apologize.”

Oh, I knew it’d been a mistake to bring Mom along! The end of the world at our throats, but by God, she was going to make sure we had read up on Emily Post’s Guide to Armageddon first. Well, what could I do? I apologized. “Sorry I said anything about the bracelet, Neil.”

“Sorry you’re such a dickhead, Desmond,” Neil replied sotto voce.

My mother went on to seize any scrap of control she hadn’t already wrestled away from me. “Now boys, it’s clear we all have business with the—the Fey, was it, Tim?” I gave her the on-the-nose sign. “We can either stand here all night arguing, or one of us can knock loud enough to be heard. Tim’s not about to do it, so if you wouldn’t mind, Neil . . . ?”

“Sure, Mrs. Desmond. Eleziane and I have to make the seven o’clock show, anyhow.” Neil stepped up to the door like Casey to the fateful home plate. He tried, I’ll give him that. He pounded at the steel door with one fist, then both. All he got were mocking echoes. I stepped back into the batter’s box to try my luck, first with my bare hand, then with the sword. Zilch. I kicked the door. I got a sore toe. I recalled how once Teleri had purchased our entrance with her own blood, but I’d learned later that a lot of that was window-dressing for my benefit. The Fey are such hams!

“Do you think ... do you think that something might have happened to your friends?” Mom asked. “All this talk of disappearances ...” She didn’t want to say any more. If you don’t say a thing, it has less chance of being true, right?

“Open up!” Neil bellowed at the door. He didn’t know about what had happened to T’ing, but he caught a whiff of my anxiety, and snapped. “Open this goddam door!”

Five minutes of steady pounding, and still no answer. Neil was panting, frightened, angry. At the end of his rope, he stepped back and threw his slide rule at it. It bounced off. Then he flung the jewelry box, with a last, despairing cry.

The box came open when it hit, and the contents struck the steel door with a ping! fainter than a dying lady bug’s final hiccup as the ID bracelet ricocheted away.

“Ohhh, a present? For me?” The door was wide open, and Eleziane, Princess Royal of the Fey, was on that crummy silverplate bracelet like a bear on a bonbon. It never even came near to hitting the ground. She flung her arms around Neil for a neck-snapping kiss. After a while, she recalled that mortals need oxygen, so she released him from the lip-lock. Only then did she deign to notice Mom and me.

“How lovely! Visitors!” She clapped her hands together gaily and tossed her golden curls. Kittenishness was not Eleziane’s normal style. Had her father’s influence finally gotten to the girl who had always been so sensible, plain-spoken, and clear-headed (for an elf)? “You must come in.” She was gushing. Gushing elves are a very bad sign.

We had to come in, all of us. Eleziane went and fetched the rest of our party, still waiting in the street for news. Dissuading her was impossible, even when I outlined all the violations of High Court elfin etiquette that Yang might commit, some just by being there. She ushered us all through the gateway and clanged the black steel door shut behind.

Neil was her date, but as Grand and Puissant Champion of the Fey I outranked him, so Eleziane walked beside me as she led us deeper into the secret kingdom. When she was just a child, I had saved her life, although some of the details of that rescue remained foggy for me. Being an elf, she aged differently, so that in the two years since our first meeting she had gone from little girl to lovely woman. Her beauty was fascinating in itself, made even more so by the aura of unearthly glamour clinging to her every movement. I was so entranced by the sight of her that it took Eleziane several attempts to make me understand that she’d been asking me a question.

“I said who were those other two, Tim?”

“Huh? Wha—? What other two?”

“The other two who were waiting with your friends. I counted noses as everyone went through the gateway—it would be awful if you went out with fewer than you came in with—and I numbered you, Neil, Teleri, Master Runyon, Yang, his mother, your mother—by the way, the two of them are talking about how neither one of you ever writes—and that’s all.”

“That’s all there should be.” My mother had made Faustus stay home. Whatever I thought of him, I wished he were with us to have some sort of mitigating influence on Mom. He wasn’t, and anyhow, he was only one, so who—?

“But you said you’d left the rest of your group waiting on the sidewalk. When I went to summon them, there were two others. Tall? Quiet? Wearing—”

“Hooded robes,” I finished. Now I was really awake, and not all the glamour of Faerie could lull me again.

“Yes, that’s them. When I waved for everyone to follow me, they didn’t. Why not?”

I had too much else to tell Eleziane to bother explaining yet another mystery. “They’re allergic,” I said.

“To what?”

“That depends. What’s your father up to these days?”

There are many ways to enter the reclaimed realms of Faerie, many the web paths of the Fey that lead you out again, but there is one ineluctable rule governing the whole of that hidden land: You have to say hello to Daddy.

I wasn’t kidding about the allergy thing. There’s something about Eleziane’s father, Lord Palamon, that makes me break out in hives. When you are lord of a magical nation, practically immortal (unless you take too many naps in a Falling Ogres zone), and have the power to conjure up whatever suits your mania of the moment, then you’ve got the potential to make whimsy a lethal weapon. As we marched on, I began to feel the first ripples of apprehension in my stomach. What would be his fad du jour this time? More important, would it be something we could survive without bodily harm, mental strain, or debilitating nausea?

The route to Lord Palamon’s court seemed longer than I recalled, though I wasted no time worrying about that. Time is not the only thing that is measured at a different rate in Faerie. The web paths of the Fey lie under the earth, but they obey no human geography. Astrophysicists who slaver at the thought of discovering galactic wormholes would quark themselves to death if they knew that the phenomenon they seek lies right beneath their feet. What’s more, the roads through Faerie are subject to change in distance as well as destination.

Great. At last a place where a guy can get totally lost and the lady he’s with can’t nag him to ask directions at the next gas station because it won’t do any good. The only downside is, without a native guide, you can stay lost among the Fey forever. “Wasn’t there a forest around here?” I asked Eleziane.

“Oh, Daddy got tired of it and had it moved.” She raised her eyes to the extraordinary glowing “sky” above us. “Thank goodness. If I’d had to hang around that stupid gazing pool any longer, I can just see the headlines: ‘Elf Slays Six, Self.’ And if I ever do find out who gave Daddy that copy of Lord of the Rings, I’ll cut off his balrog.”

It appeared that Lord Palamon’s previous obsession was still a vivid memory for his daughter. At our initial meeting, kitsch had been Lord Palamon’s favored hobbyhorse, coupled with a se-quined, ermined, glaring, bedizened and bedight conspicuous consumerism to make Liberace roll over in his grave, then sit up and beg for the recipe. I didn’t think it could get any worse, until I returned to Faerie and found that His Elfin Nibs had commanded a sweeping reform, due to an overdose of earthly high-fantasy books. His hapless subjects were compelled to alter their appearance to fit the Tolkien mold, and spent their days singing in sun-dappled dells or gliding majestically through twilit woodland glades, whether or not glade-gliding turned them on. Eleziane, as befit her station, was Galadrieled into submission and forced to run a sylvan fortunetelling stand, at Daddy’s royal behest.

All of which proved that Lord Palamon was capable of anything, if not closely watched. What would he have wrought this time?

I searched each passing snatch of scenery for a clue. I found none. A heavy mist lay over the realm, a gray miasma whose reek was disturbingly familiar. Too familiar. I smelled stale tobacco, sour beer, unwashed laundry, and the legendary graveyard of styrofoam fast-food containers, many with their ancestral layers of grease still intact.

If this was Faerie, why did it smell like a frat house?

“Ah, there you are, my pet!” A long, fragile white hand extended itself from between the billows of smelly smoke. Still out of sight, I heard Lord Palamon’s voice break into a racking cough a moment before his red-eyed, haggard face showed itself through the fog.

If his latest craze was looking like hell, he was doing a bang-up job of it. A cigarette hung like a leech from the corner of his mouth. Ragged jeans sagged on his meatless hips, staying up by willpower alone. His ordinarily pale elfin complexion had turned the mottled, predominantly gray color of dryer lint, and the underlying bones of his face poked through like a collection of Sheffield steel cutlery. There was some writing on his rumpled T-shirt, but the smog was too heavy to let me read it.

Then Lord Palamon fanned the thick air aside with a copy of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style and the shirt’s message was plain to see:

FUTURE FAMOUS FANTASY AUTHOR

Oh boy.

9 WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW

I put down the manuscript and looked up into Lord Palamon’s expectantly smiling face. What little chin the elfin ruler had was wobbling with poorly concealed eagerness to hear my opinion of his latest work.

“It’s—it’s—”

“Yes, yes? Spit it out, old thing. Be brutal. I can take it, what?”

“Well, it’s-—” I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I was addressing a being with the magical oomph to turn me into a maggot. “It’s got a lot of promise.”

“And—? Go on, dear boy, do. We’re all among friends here, ain’t we?” The way Lord Palamon showed those horsey teeth, I wished I’d brought him some sugar lumps to sweeten what I had to say.

“Yes, for pity’s sake, say something to assuage that royal fool so that we can proceed with the real business of this meeting.” The elderly elf seated to my right was Lord Hogbane, Palamon’s long-suffering aide, and the true governing force of Faerie. “Or meeting it was before he turned it into a cursed writers’ workshop. ” Wrinkled as a dried pea, he drummed his twiggy fingers on the council table and poked me in the ribs until I spoke up.

“And—and—”

“Keep the day job,” Mom said. While I’d been floundering for the right words to tell Lord Palamon that his scribblings were bilge with a layer of glitter on top, she had picked up the discarded manuscript, skimmed it, and delivered our death sentence in one easy breath.

Lord Palamon’s eyes and mouth became tiny slits while his nostrils flared enough to make up the difference. “Madam, mother of our Grand and Puissant Champion you may be, but nowhere do I recall it being written that parturition was a qualification for literary criticism.”

“That’s all right,” Mom assured him. “This isn’t literature.”

The elfin lord’s expression remained flinty. “That will be quite enough unsolicited and uneducated commentary. We have yet to hear from the rest of the workshop.”

Lord Hogbane moaned and put his head down on the table. There were an even dozen elves present in the council chamber, plus my delegation from the surface world. In front of each of Lord Palamon’s advisors was a pile of thickly printed, annotated typing paper. It had been the wont of the Elfin High Court to keep their records and official documents on parchment scrolls and in gorgeously calligraphed books bound in rare leathers and sealed with clasps of gold, so this sudden deluge of xerographic sheets, onionskin, and bond was a dead giveaway that this was no common council session.

A weedy junior member of the board stood up. “Um, I liked it. I thought the part about the young farm boy turning out to be the prophesied hero was very original.” He sat down and drank a lot of water.

The next elf in the hot seat praised his lord’s unique use of the trial-by-enchanted-sword to reveal the hero’s identity, followed by a female councilor who could not say enough about how adorable she found the small, furry, talking animal who became the hero’s mascot. She then roused the elf next to her from a sound sleep so that he might rhapsodize over Lord Palamon’s authentic use of thee, thou, and thine, forsooth, in the dialogue. An especially unctuous member of the board said, “May we hope that this is just the first of a planned trilogy?” thus proving what a small step it is from brownie to brown-noser. One after another, the lords and ladies of Elfland rose to say that Lord Palamon was hot stuff.

“It was the single best thing any being, mortal or Fey, has ever written, is now writing, or will ever write,” Lord Hogbane droned wearily. “Now can we get on to something useful? These good folk have come a long way for our aid.”

Lord Palamon ignored his elder statesman’s plea. “There!” he shot at Mom. “You see?” He looked smug.

“I know what I see,” she replied, and waved at the walls of the council chamber.

Lord Palamon collapsed across his manuscript, whimpering.

“That wasn’t nice, Mom.”

“Did I tell him to use his rejection slips for wallpaper?” Mom inquired innocently. “Such a big room, too.”

“I say, do forgive the outburst.” Lord Palamon recovered himself enough to tear a handy rejection slip free from the wall, and used it to blow his nose. “All for Art, don’tcha know. One puts one’s heart into it, one opens the vein, drains the lifeblood, heaves the guts, shiny and smoking, out into the light for all to see, and what d’you get for your pains, eh what?” He calmly stood up from the council table and put his bony fist through the wall. “Sweet sod all, that’s what!”

“Tsk. For a moment, I thought he was going to make sense and stop wasting our time.” Mom lowered her voice so only I could hear. “That part where he mentioned heaving your guts, well, I just assumed he was referring to the effect his writing had on—” “Madam, if you’ve anything to say, you might have the backbone to say it aloud.” Lord Palamon removed his fist from the wall, which promptly healed itself.

With a perfectly straight face, Mom said, “Your Majesty, I’m afraid you’ve misinterpreted my earlier comments on your work. Have you ever given any thought to writing nonfiction?”

“Eh? How’s that?”

“The better to serve your misdirected and deliberately sabotaged genius,” Mom replied. I stared at her calm, unwavering expression and on the spot resolved never to bet against her in any big-money poker games.

Lord Palamon leaned out over the table, the better to catch every honeyed word. Honeyed, did I say? Hey, Lord Palamon was lucky to escape without diabetes. Mom told him that her initial criticism of his writing referred to the inaptly chosen genre, not the work per se. I watched his face glaze over, dumbstruck, as he heard her swear that he had a wonderful grasp of language, that his car for dialogue was both charming and true to life, that his sense of place was above reproach, that other authors needs must look to their laurels—or just save the bother and put a bullet through their royalty statements—when Lord Palamon took the field in characterization.

“You see,” she wound up, “the component elements of Your Majesty’s work are like the unassembled parts of a Pegasus—” “Oh, I say! Jolly dee of you to say so, milady.” A faint flush of healthy blood circulation washed up beneath the elf-lord’s Serious Author’s Pallor. “Frightfully—”

“However, when you put them all together, you wind up with a crippled musk ox.”

“And mighty good eating those are!” Yang shouted from his place way, way, way down at the other end of the table.

You know, I don’t think I ever admired my mother as much as I did in the next few minutes. While Lord Palamon was still reeling from her last jab, she took the ball and ran with it. By the time she was done, she had him convinced that the reason he would never make his mark writing fantasy was the fact that his stuff was just too extraordinary for mere mortal readers to appreciate, coupled with the conspiracy of evil editors (doubtless in the pay of some foreign power) who were so envious of his talent that they would never give it the chance to see print.

“Why do you think there’s so much garbage on the shelves these days, anyway?” she asked. “Oh, you might force yourself to chum out that brand of retread swill, but would you be happyl Would you be being true to your god-given gifts? Would you honestly want to attend professional meetings and consort with the kind of people who can write that sort of slop? You might as well face it: You’re too good for them.” If Lord Palamon were eating out of her hand any more intently, he’d have sucked the skin right off her palm.

“Dear lady!” Lord Palamon vaulted from his chair to kneel in humble adoration at Mom’s feet. “What you have said is my opinion, spot-on. Yet, you say that were I to turn my pen to nonfiction, I might circumvent the buggers?”

Mom raised her hands, palm outward, thumbs extended and touching to form a you-oughta-be-in-pictures frame. “Palamon: One Elf s Story," was all she said.

Instants later we were in the midst of the most lavish banquet-barbecue-beer bash in subterranean history.

From her place of honor, Mom turned to me and confided, “If one more elf kisses my hand, I’ll croak. Their breath smells like peppermint, gardenias, and M&M’s.”

“They’re just grateful,” I replied over a roasted haunch of don’t-ask-what. “This is the first decent meal many of them have had in ages, without having to sneak around. When Lord Palamon plays the starving artist, everyone plays.”

I never knew my own mother had a wicked smirk like that. She gazed out at the frolicking Fair Folk and said, “Lillian Jean Desmond, Lifesaver of the Elves . . . No, that sounds like I’m a hard candy. Still, it has rather a pretty ring to it. Not bad for a helpless old lady, hm?”

“Who called you helpless?”

“You didn’t have to.” Mom fingered the garland of roses at her neck. “I’m not thick enough to need it spelled out, which is good, because you never write. I’m not saying you always thought of me that way; just lately.”

She wasn’t talking lightly anymore, and I didn’t think I wanted to hear what she had to say. “Mom, I never—”

She held up one finger for silence. “Remember how I reacted when Ilya first showed up?”

I did. Like most folk who aren’t expecting to find a stumpy, shaggy Russian sprite claiming squatter’s rights to their bathrooms, Mom thought she’d lost her mind. I remembered how she wandered around our apartment stunned, and how I’d pitied her.

All of a sudden I knew that she hadn’t been too stunned to notice that pity.

“Then there was the witch’s curse,” she went on, speaking softly. “I was just like Sleeping Beauty, wasn’t I, waiting to be awakened with a kiss, unable to do a thing to help myself? Do you remember that, too?”

How could I forget? The witch’s price for lifting the spell was for someone else to take it upon himself. When Faustus and I both made the gallant move at the same time, we overloaded the spell’s circuits and shattered it. Mom was free. I remembered thinking that now she really owed me one for being willing to take her place in eternal slumber. She owed me big.

Had that, too, been so easy for her to see?

Mom plucked a petal from a rose the color of sunrise and brushed it absently over her lower lip. “I’m a success now, Tim. I’ve never been a success before, so I don’t know how long it’s supposed to last. I don’t even want to figure out how many times I’d have to multiply my old McDonald’s manager’s salary to equal Mister Mephisto's annual earnings. All those years of struggling to give you what you needed, and at last I can give you what you want. I wish I knew what that was. My painting’s on hold because—well, like I said, the good times don’t go on forever, so I’m getting what I can while I can. John—Iohannes—has encouraged me. Someone who didn’t know better might think that if he weren’t there, I wouldn’t be able to carry on doing the strip.” She let the petal fall. “I’ve never seen you read a single installment of Mister Mephisto. I have seen you looking at my old paintings as if you’d lost something in them and you could use that magic sword, magic wand, magic whatever-it-is to call it back.” “Mom, I did read—” I didn’t have the chance to finish that lie. “All that time after your father vanished,” she said, “all that time, I did my best to be strong for you—for both of us—never asking for help. Then these past two years, I finally needed someone else to be strong for me. Whether you liked it or not, it was you.” Her eyes met mine. “Why should the price for that be your respect? Why was needing your help a sin too big for you to ever forgive me for it?”

I didn’t answer. I rose from my place and stumbled away; she let me go. It was sheer luck that I ran into Lord Palamon in the festive crowd—any diversion would have been a welcome one.

“Ha! There you are, Timmy old blister!” Already the Supreme Seigneur of the Elvenfolk had swapped his ink-stained wretch-wear for a crisp white linen suit and matching straw Panama. Mom had also informed him that nonfiction, properly milked, paid better. “Beastly good of you to hunt me up like this, save me the trouble of running you to earth, don’tcha know.”

“Or you could have summoned him to your side by magic,” Lord Hogbane grumbled at his lord’s elbow. “You do remember magic, Your Majesty? Pesky little thing in the genes, causes the ability to do nigh onto anything that crosses your mind?”

“Haw! That’s a good ’un, Hoggy, old sport.” Lord Palamon slammed the venerable elf between the shoulder blades. “Want anything, magic it up, that’s your answer to it all, ain’t it? Where’s the challenge in it, that’s what I want to know! Simple thing, really, to slap a spell on those perishing editor chappies, make ’em buy up all my stuff like it was gourmet choccies at half price, eh? And why didn’t I do just that?” He shoved me forward. “Tel! him, young feller-me-lad. ”

“It would be cheating,” I said.

“It would also have been cruelty to dumb animals.” Lord Hogbane snorted, the better to underscore his uniformly low opinion of mortals. With a nose that size, the resulting sound was reminiscent of an alpenhom’s deep-throated note. “Fine, then. Your Majesty is, as always, right.”

“’Course I am.” Lord Palamon snapped his fingers, and a boutonniere appeared. He tucked it into his lapel, apparently indifferent to the fact that its centerpiece was a live Venus flytrap. “Glad that’s ticked off all right and proper. To business now, Timmy! Walk this way, what?”

I opened my mouth, but Lord Hogbane intervened. “We know, we know. If you could walk that way, you wouldn’t need the cornstarch.”

“I was only going to say that I should call the rest of my company together to tell Lord Palamon about what’s happening on the surface world.”

“Hear me out, mortal boy,” the elder elf said wearily. “Your world and ours are not so distanced as you dream. As for your friends, you are their leader. You can tell them all they need to know of this conference, afterward. The truth of things is that the smaller an audience our Supreme Seigneur has for his quirks and posturings, the more likely you are to get some sense out of him. Come.”

I cast one last look over my shoulder. The others were having too good a time at the party to bother them, and I was in no hurry to face Mom again. I followed Lord Palamon’s lead, and Hogbane brought up the rear.

In the random ways of Elfland real estate, a palace was abruptly there to welcome us. In keeping with Lord Palamon’s recent stint at suffering for his Art, every room in the rambling structure was furnished as a rat-infested garret. As we passed through each chamber, Lord Palamon whisked away the old image to make way for the new. Musty straw pallets became plump-pillowed sofas and fine antique armchairs, naked windows were swathed in rich, colorful draperies, bare floors sprouted Oriental silk carpets and fleecy rugs, gimp-legged wooden tables gained marble tops and hand-rubbed ball-and-claw feet, chipped earthenware platters bearing a pitiable crust of stale bread changed to Sevres breakfast sets with steaming croissants and imported Swiss conserves. One rat who didn’t get out of our path fast enough was transformed into a very peevish Yorkshire terrier whose petit-point collar bore the name “Bennetton.” The little bastard bit me.

At last we reached a room deep in the palace’s heart. As he opened the door. Lord Palamon said, “Sheer serendipity, your coming by to see us like this. I shall be frank, dear boy: If not for the agonies I was going through with the old cacoethes scribendi—writer’s itch, don’tcha know? Classical education and all that rot—I’d have been the one to call upon you. This sort of thing’s right up your Grand and Puissant alley, after all, eh what? Either that, or we need a really good plumber, and you know how hard it is to get one of those blighters.”

He bowed me into the room. There were no windows, but a twitch of the elf-lord’s fingers, and a glowing ball of light suspended itself from the ceiling. Stone was all around. Lord Palamon made no attempt to conceal or decorate it. This was either a prison cell or close enough for jazz. Then I saw what it was the cell contained, and I wished Lord Palamon had built his walls thicker and set them with iron spikes.

Can we talk snake?

I don’t just mean your run-of-the-mill hisser; I mean snake as in big snake. No, make that Big Snake, with about a thousand exclamation points to show how hard I was trying not to scream. And for all of you stand-up comedy fans who are dying to yell. “How big was it, Tim?” let me tell you that it filled nearly all available floor space in that cell with writhing, shifting, slithering, flexing coils of pure muscle.

“Hogbane! I say, Hoggy, look there!” Lord Palamon jumped and pointed to a small wafer of metal attached to the snake’s body. It flashed for a moment in the light before another slide of the coils hid it from view. “That was Number Five-oh-nine! Make a note, make a note. Oh, I say, this is exciting!”

Lord Hogbane produced a thin notebook and duly made an entry. I asked him what it was all about. “Sector Five-oh-nine has been sighted,” he replied. “It was last seen some two months ago and this is the first repetition since. Other sectors have shown themselves at least four times within the same time frame. We are attempting to interpret what this data means.”

“What data?”

“On the migration and reappearance of the distinct sectors of the Serpent’s body. We’ve taken the scientific liberty of tagging various points on the beast’s anatomy and have teams of round-the-hourglass observers catalogue their departures and returns to this location.” He indicated a gilded oblong box affixed to one comer of the ceiling; the elvish analogue of a security camera, I gathered. “There are some of us here with a healthy interest in the sciences, you know. Just because we’re all elves doesn’t mean we’re totally pixilated.” He scowled at the twisting scales. “Stupid thing has no business being here, but if we can’t get it back where it belongs, at least we can advance the cause of supernatural knowledge while we wait for you to do something about it.”

“Me? Where do I come in?” I held up my sword. “You want me to chop its head off or something?”

Lord Hogbane’s sere lips were the embodiment of pure sarcasm. “By the time you found its head, boy, your grandchildren’s grandchildren would be dust, and if by some perverse miracle you could decapitate it, the Mythological Continuum would crumple up like a chewing-gum wrapper and bounce into the cosmic gutter, taking us with it.”

“Oh, bother the Mythological Continuum!” Lord Palamon exclaimed. “Where was the bally Mythological Whatzis when that larruping great worm manifested itself in my rumpus room without so much as a beg-pardon-is-this-where-I-queue-for-the-Knights-bridge-omnibus?”

“It’s not supposed to be here?” I asked.

“I believe I just said that,” Lord Hogbane replied.

“Now, Hoggy, it’s got every right to be here, just no call whatsoever to be so visible about it. Huh! Where’d we all be if it weren't here, I should like to know? Drifting through ruddy great deep space, clinging to some piddling little shard of the world, encountering all manner of alien wogs with bloody huge heads, bald as eggshells, and tentacles, and telepathy, and a nameless lust for our womenfolk, and—” A dangerously inspired look came into the elf-lord’s eyes as he added, “I say, Timmy, d’you think you could ask your dear mater whether I might consider a sideline writing science fiction?”

I turned to Lord Hogbane for help. “What is that thing?” “The binder of the world,” he returned, voice flat, eyes dull. "The mighty Midgard Serpent who was placed, invisible, at his post to hold the earth secure.”

“He’s not invisible now.” I always did know how to state the obvious.

“No, and that is the first warning. First visible, then audible, then free, and the loosing of the Serpent carries only one meaning for us all.”

I could guess. “World’s end?”

“Very good,” said Lord Hogbane dryly. “Now will you keep your winnings, or would you like to try for the dinette set with matching luggage, too?”

10 FROM ELFLAND TO GUESS WHERE?

“No,” said Eleziane. “I won’t. I absolutely refuse.”

“Here now, my gel, don’t make your poor old pater beg, what?” Lord Palamon put on his most winning manner, but it left his daughter cold.

“No way.” Arms folded, nose in the air, Eleziane was the picture of unshakable noncompliance. “I know you, Daddy. ‘Try one little vision, just for me,’ you say, and the next thing I know. I’m back in that lousy woodland glade with a bunch of pastel bunny rabbits for company. ”

Lord Palamon threw his hands up in despair. “I give up. Bags I yield. If the pretty moppet will not trust her own flesh-and-bee, then of what use are all the kingdoms and treasures of the earth? I shall withdraw me yet awhile to bemoan a parent’s thankless lot. I shall hie me unto the hills, there to pour sackcloth on my head. I shall take the veil. I shall—”

“All right, all right, give me the stinking basin already and let’s get this over with!” Fed up past the scuppers, Eleziane stormed across the great hall to snatch a huge, solid gold bowl from the hands of the bosomy nymph who bore it. The Princess Royal of the Fey threw it to the floor with no more ceremony than if it had been a garbage can lid, and shouted, “Well? Where’s the water? You expect me to have a vision in this glorified Frisbee, I need it full of water.” She kicked the basin.

“Someone is spoiled,” Mom said, tight-lipped.

Lord Palamon coughed into his hand. “Only child. Half-sister knocking about the place, yes, although much older, no true companion for the nipper. Mother dead. Cares of office kept me from supervising the chit’s upbringing as much as I’d’ve liked. Proud spirit. Awfully decent sort, by and large. Occasional lapses. At least she don’t mollock about with illicit substances.”

“Spoiled rottenMom elucidated, and went to take care of things.

“Yow!” Eleziane screeched. “Not the point, not the point! Grab the lobe if you’ve got to grab anything! You’ll pull it all out of shape! I’ll need plastic surgery! Oooohhhh, owwwww, let go of my ear, you miserable old cow!”

I could have told her that this was not the way to bring my mother around. “What was that you called me?” Mom gave Eleziane’s ear another shake.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—Daaaaaddyyyyyy! ”

“Oh, I say! Madam, I must protest in the most strenuous language. ” Lord Palamon flapped his hands at Mom as she hauled a thrashing Eleziane up and down the length of the hall. “Let her go, can’t you? There’s a dear old thing.”

“I’ll let her go,” Mom panted, “if you’ll guarantee that she does not use her magic td retaliate once I free her. I only—stop that squirming, young lady!—meant to give her a pinch. She pulled away and I was scared to let go because—you’re only making this worse on yourself, Eleziane—because heaven knows what your daughter would’ve done to me, and I’ve had quite enough nasty spells cast on me in the past year, thank you.”

Lord Palamon laid hand to heart. “Madam, you have my solemn word.” Mom let go. Eleziane fell into a crouch, growling and glowering, words of power already on her lips along with a few flecks of foam, but her father uttered a warning “Tchah!” and the elfin princess subsided.

By this time, the servants had filled the golden basin to the brim with water. A subdued but still smoldering Eleziane slouched over to gaze into its depths, muttering aloud of the unbelievable size of the child-abuse suit she was going slap Mom with once we returned to the surface world.

“I’d hate to be hanging since you were a child, young lady,” Mom called after her. “Don’t play the fading flower with me. And don’t mutter! You sound like you’ve got a mouth full of potatoes, and it isn’t at all attractive.”

“Uh, Mrs. Desmond, did you have to do that?” Neil Fitzsimmons was there to defend his lady-love, although his chivalrous zeal was a little blunted by having to chastise someone without the use of tire chains. Mom just gave him one of those looks.

Eleziane knelt by the basin and stretched her arms out over the surface. A reverent hush enclosed the great hall of Lord Palamon’s palace, broken only by the gentle lapping of the captive water and Yang’s intermittent belches.

“Yorkshire terrier,” he explained in what he considered to be a whisper. “Repeats on me like a catapult.”

“Shhhh!” Teleri dispensed another of her nuclear noogies. “Let th’ lass be. Tis tryin’t’ find yer own precious T’ing, she is. The world’s been cornin’ all unhinged, and that poor, lost child’s been swept up in bad doings somehow or else.”

I stood beside Eleziane, looking over her shoulder as she scanned the basin. I recognized it as a leftover prop from her enforced stint as a woodland elf seeress. A pinpoint of light like a distant star twinkled in the middle of the water. The glassy surface began to ripple, as if the light were a pebble tossed into the pool. Shades and shadows dimpled the surface, flakes of a greater picture that was gradually forming.

I think I saw her before Eleziane did. Maybe because I wanted to see her so badly, maybe not. She was wearing a gold- and red-spangled halter-top with matching spandex pants cropped off below the knee. White flowers frothed over her straight black hair so thickly that I imagined their fragrance blew up at me from the vision. She had a microphone in her hand, and although what I saw in the basin was silent, I could tell that she was singing. Her teeth flashed; she tossed her hair, scattering the flowers, and danced like a wild thing.

The seeing pulled away to encompass a greater scope. T’ing’s image was drawn down, smaller and smaller, into the very middle of the basin.

Now we could see where she was and with whom. Hot lights sliced dazzling reflections from the naked chrome of the drum set, caught flashes of glittering pink and purple from the electric guitars. A mirror ball spun overhead, throwing off a thousand sparkles into the dark. I couldn’t see much of the other performers, only that T’ing wasn’t the lead singer. The band’s name was printed on the front of the bass drum—matte black in plain block letters: CODA.

Their stage was primitive—there were even thick velvet drapes at the back, like in some old school auditorium—but the audience didn’t seem to care. I could just make out the faces of the people with seats right up against the edge of the apron. Slack-jawed joy, hollow-eyed ecstasy, and a burning inside that showed. I felt myself hungering to hear the sound that had reached into them dagger-deep.

“Hey! There she is!” Yang slugged my upper arm in exactly the spot where I’d gotten all my booster shots as a kid. “My woman!

See? The one with the Tabun Bogdos that’d stop a charging lie-camel!” He was pointing at a girl in the front row.

“Tabun Bogdo: A peak of extraordinary proportions in the Altai Range of northwestern Mongolia,” said the learned Jadwiga for I he benefit of all of us who were looking at Yang as if he were loonier than the norm. She peered into the basin, too. “Hmph! That is T’ing’s roommate, right enough.”

“T’ing’s—?” I couldn’t believe it.

“Behold, she is even wearing a Vassar sweatshirt.”

“And when I think of how cruelly the wench is stretching out the V and the R, it makes me want to—” Yang’s sentiments were drowned in a puddle of his own slobber.

“Then T’ing’s in Poughkeepsie!” I cried. “She must be. She sent me their school calendar at the start of the year, and they haven’t let out for winter recess yet. If her roommate’s watching her perform anywhere, it’s gotta be near the college. Her roommate—” I paused. “That’s weird. Her roommate’s sitting down in front, watching T’ing sing with a rock band, and it’s like she’s seeing a stranger.”

“Did we not say so?” Jadwiga dragged her son away from the basin before he could lick the water.

“Boy, talk about hiding in plain sight,” I said.

Teleri stole to my side and slipped her hand around my elbow. “Dread and dole, I feel, and a cold wind blowin’. Woe and alack the day!”

“Aw, c’mon, Teleri,” Neil said. “Poughkeepsie’s not that bad.” “ ’Tis worse than the wind that licks its way round the raths o’ heroes. It’s wolves I sense that stalk the snowdrifts, and birds o’ ill omen flying low to count the slain.” Her shoulders shook and she buried her face against me. I put my arms around her, then caught a glimpse of Mom deliberately turning away to speak to Lord Palamon.

It was decided: We would all go to Poughkeepsie and find T’ing. The elf-lord placed the web paths of his kingdom at our disposal. I mustered our company in the great hall and tried to settle one major piece of unfinished business before we left. “Mom, you can go home now.”

She just smiled. “I don’t think so, Tim.”

“But Faustus—John will worry.”

“There’s no question in your mind that John can take care of himself, is there?”

“Suppose he needs you? Suppose the demon who owns his soul shows up while you’re gone?”

“Suppose he does. What could I do about it? Offer him a cut of my Mister Mephisto income if he’ll go away and leave us alone?”

I got mad. “Well, if you can’t be any help to Faustus in a pinch, what good are you going to do us? You heard about the Midgard Serpent, and that’s just a hint of what we might be up against. Teleri and Master Runyon and Eleziane are creatures of magic with powers that can serve us well. Yang and Jadwiga and Neil are battle-tried fighters. I’m—”

“—Grand and Puissant Champion of the Fey. You’ve been telling me that at intervals. All right, Tim, you’ve made it quite clear that the proper place for the helpless princess is up in her tower with the dragon on guard. You don’t have to take me with you.” She turned and left without a word of farewell.

I was feeling mighty small when Teleri suggested we get going. My banshee looked better than I’d hoped in the disguise Lord Palamon’s magic had procured for her. So did we all.

“If I sit down in these trousers, you can kiss my manhood goodbye,” Yang groused.

“They’re not trousers, they’re jeans, and no one wants to kiss your manhood anything,” his mother informed him.

The one-man Mongol horde continued to gripe about his new wardrobe. Twisting his neck at an unnatural angle, he whined, “What is Milli Vanilli and why do I have to have it written on my tunic?”

“Your tunic is a T-shirt, and Milli Vanilli is a secret code meaning ‘Stand back, lest the radiance of my ethereal beauty cause you to be stricken voiceless,’ ” I provided.

“Not bad,” Yang opined. “Should say ‘incredible radiance of my stupendously ethereal beauty,’ but beggars can’t be anything but compost.”

We thanked Lord Palamon for his help, wished him well on his new writing career, and fell into line behind Eleziane. The Princess Royal of the Fey was as much in T’ing Hau’s debt as in mine for her life. She wouldn’t hear of being excluded, and we were more than glad to have her. Anyone can walk the web paths of the Fey, but it takes an expert guide to lead you where and when you want to come out. I’ve mentioned how time and space both bend when passed through the prism of Faerie. They’re true, all those old tales of youths who think they’ve spent a day among the Fair Folk but who emerge to find a century’s flown by in the mortal world. If we didn’t want to arrive at Vassar as a handful of dust, we needed Eleziane.

Where Eleziane went, Neil was bound to go. As we set forth, he managed to drop back enough to walk beside me. “Desmond . . . what you said to your ma before, about me being a fighter . . . you mean that?”

“This, from the guy who once offered to feed me my own looseleaf binder? Not necessarily through my mouth, as I recall.” “That’s ancient history. The kind of fight we may be in for this lime’s a hell of a lot more than a schoolyard bashing.”

“You afraid?”

“Nahhhhh. Not of fighting, if it’s with these guys to back me up.” Neil jerked his thumb at the others, who were marching behind us. “I just—I just—well, you know how we faced the monsters that escaped from the Leeside?” I nodded. “Eleziane told me how her folks burst out of the Leeside because they were in a hurry to escape the monsters. Now I’m trying to imagine what could’ve been left in the Leeside bad enough to make the monsters want to get out of there. And I can’t. I just can’t get my mind around an idea that unthinkable. That’s worse than being scared.” “Try not to think about it, then. We need you with us. You want to give your dad a call when we come out in Poughkeepsie so he doesn’t worry about where you are?”

Neil laughed. “There’s another thought that never would’ve fit in my mind a year ago. Imagine that, my old man caring where I go and who I’m with. And he does care, now. That’s another one I owe you, Desmond.”

“You don’t owe me a thing. So, want to call?”

“No, thanks. I asked your mom to give him a message for me. She promised she’d come up with some excuse that . . .’’He saw my expression when he mentioned Mom, and let the rest of the sentence drop away.

We came out under a big sycamore tree in the middle of the Vassar College campus. In our jeans and T-shirts, we could all pass for students or, in Yang’s case, tenured faculty. There was snow on the ground and curses in the air when we all simultaneously realized that Lord Palamon had sent us out on our great and glorious mission without overcoats. Fortunately, Eleziane’s allowance of enchantments was quickly spent on rustling up matching leather jackets for all hands.

“Oh, swell. Now we look like a biker gang,” I said.

“Bikers can be perfectly nice people, depending on the club.”

Mom stepped out from behind the sycamore, hands tucked under the collar of her goosedown coat. Unlike the rest of us, she had come prepared.

“Mom, you said you weren’t coming!” I wailed.

“No, dear, I said you didn’t have to take me with you; and you didn’t. I hid until you were ready to go; then I sneaked after you. It’s all right.” She checked her purse. “I have train fare back to New York if you insist on getting rid of me.”

Should I? I weighed how badly I’d felt after I’d sent her away before—thought I’d sent her away, I mean—against the unknown dangers we’d be facing. Why did she want to come along? Why would anyone in his right mind choose to sign up with us? We were on our way to try to stop the end of the world. The end of the world . . . Most people would shrug and say that there was nothing they could do to prevent it and go back to watching soap operas. That would have been the easy thing for her to do, the smart thing, the comfortable thing.

I looked at her. She waited patiently for my decision. Then I looked at Teleri. It had felt good to have my arms around her, before. An experience worth repeating and expanding upon, in fact, but if my mom were there . . . Any wandering ideas I might’ve had about getting a little closer to my banshee packed their suitcases and hopped a commuter flight out of town.

“Never mind, Tim.” Mom’s eyes blinked rapidly. “I understand.” She turned and walked away.

Then I recalled the way she’d handled Eleziane, doing what had to be done to jerk the Princess of the Fey out of her tantrum. She knew that the elfin lady had the ability to send her enemies sliding down the food chain, but that didn’t stop her. She saw what needed to be done and she did it with as much courage and as little regard for personal safety as the best of warriors. She was brave, resourceful, strong, self-motivated . . .

“Mom!” I yelled, running after her. “Hey, Mom, wait for me!” The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would’ve approved.

11 THE SOUND OF MUSIC

As we tramped after our quarry through the halls of Main building at Vassar, I remarked, “When you talked about biker gangs, Mom, I thought you were only kidding.”

“What’s the matter, don’t you like the way I look?” Mom turned so that I could get the full clout of the disguise she’d requested from Eleziane. Like the rest of us, she wore a black leather jacket, jeans, and a T-shirt. The only trouble was, it looked a little too natural. Even worse, it didn’t look as dumb as it should’ve on someone her age.

You know what I mean if you’ve ever seen a refugee from Midlife Crisisland trying to barge back into his or her salad days by way of the clothing department. At least with face-lifts, hair implants, and butt-tucks you only look as if you want to trim ten years at most, which can be done tastefully and without coming off like a total asshole. But when people from my mother’s generation start trying to dress on the cutting edge, it shaves the extra years too close and raw. The next step is they start dating some bimbo of either sex who by rights should be selling them lawn-mowing services or Girl Scout cookies. I never heard of one case where death held off calling for someone just because he switched to tighter pants and looser morals, but there are plenty of folks out there who try it, and they’re way old enough to know better. They look desperate, silly, and scared.

Not my mother, though. She wasn’t trying to prove anything with that outfit, yet the freaky thing was that on her, it worked. I'he James Dean look suited her and bothered the hell out of me. Had she been joking about bikers? Who had she been when she was just plain Lillian Jean? She was only in her forties now— eighteen hadn’t been all that long ago. How many dreams had she cherished then, how many secrets was she still holding? It never seemed important for me to know before, and right at the moment was not the time to ask her anything.

“You look fine, Mom,” I said, a little dubiously. I couldn’t help it.

“I promise you, Tim, I won’t say anything to embarrass you in front of T’ing’s roommate.” Mom linked arms with Yang. “She won’t even see me. You go to her on your own.” She nodded at the glass door. “We’ll wait here.” She took up a position leaning against the wall opposite, and everyone else followed suit.

Almost.

“No! I wanna go!” Yang tried pulling away from Mom. “If she is in there—my woman!—I must go to her. She has lived too long without the attentions of Yang, the Maidens’ Bonanza. It is inhumane to allow her to endure one minute more deprived of guaranteed erotic frenzy.”

“Sit,” said my mother, yanking him down onto a nearby bench.

“Stay,” said Jadwiga, sitting beside him and applying a hammerlock to make sure there would be No Bad Mongols.

“Go ahead in there, Tim,” Mom said when they had Yang sufficiently subjugated.

“In there” was the college snack bar. Our luck and Jadwiga’s eyes had both been keen. Our sycamore touchdown point was right across from Main building, which turned out to be the nexus of Vassar’s nonacademic life. Hang out in a building that holds the student mailboxes, the ride-board, the bookshop, the snack bar I already mentioned, and the college store, and you’ll see the whole school pass by eventually. Jadwiga spotted our girl as she ducked in for a caffeine transfusion.

I didn’t have much trouble striking up a conversation with her. I banked on her knowing who I was from T’ing, back in the happier days when school was just starting and our sweet summer was something she’d be glad to share with her new friends.

“Oh, yeah! T’ing talks about you all the time.” She offered het hand and invited me to sit down at her table. “I’m Denise Vanderhoek.”

“I know,” I lied. “She wrote me all about you. Even stuck in a photo.”

“A photo?” Denise frowned. “I don’t remember T’ing having a picture of me.”

“One of the two of you together.” The words came easily. “Taken just before Thanksgiving.”

The crease between Denise’s auburn brows deepened until it rivaled her cleavage. (I have to admit, Yang wasn’t kidding about those Tankton Yobbos, or whatever he called them. That, and she was a redhead, too, and I still had to keep my mind on business. Talk about trying to maintain your cool under fire.) “Before Thanksgiving? I don’t think I remember. ...”

Which was exactly what I’d been hoping. Yang and Jadwiga told me how they’d invisibly observed Denise acting as if T’ing were in the room When she wasn’t. If her sense was that scrambled, chances were that the same otherworldly force at work would leave her memory of those days pretty fuzzy, too.

“You wouldn’t want to remember this shot,” I said, turning on (lie old blarney. “It wasn’t much of a photo, but enough for me to pick you out of the crowd in here. Boy, talk about luck! Maybe you can tell me where T’ing is. I came up from Princeton to surprise her, but no one was in the room. She have a class now, or a final exam or something?”

“Nnnnoooo.” Denise chewed her plastic coffee-stirrer. “I think—I think she went home for Christmas already.” A sigh heaved her chest up and out and down, leaving me in a really bad way. “Wish my flight were sooner. I’m stuck here for two more days.”

“Boring, huh?” I asked casually, selecting my bait with care. “The worst.”

“Nothing doing on campus?”

“Not just before winter break.”

“How about in town?”

“Get real. This is Poughkeepsie.”

“Oh.” I slipped the bait onto the hook and dangled it above the stream. “That's too bad. I mean, my folks are away right now, skiing in Vermont. They don’t expect us to get together for the holidays until day after tomorrow. Things were so dull at my school, even Poughkeepsie sounded good.”

“I’ll bet.” She giggled. “Well, maybe you can catch up with Ting in New York.”

“Right,” I deadpanned. “T’ing ever tell you anything about her mother?”

“Ohhhhh.” Dawn broke over Vanderhoek. “Oh, yeah, right, I sec what you mean. Not a chance. Gee, I’m sorry.”

It was my turn to sigh. Slowly I lowered the hook to the surface of the water, watching the darting shadows beneath the current. “I might as well go on back to Brooklyn, anyhow. I mean, at least I could go into the city, check out some of the dance clubs before my folks get home. Mrs. Kaplan won’t let T’ing come, but it beats hanging around the dead zone, Princeton or Poughkeepsie, so bored you want to—”

Denise touched my hand. “You do clubs?”

“So how do you like the United States, Yang?” Denise asked her partner as we seated ourselves around one of the back tables at Tandava, Poughkeepsie’s newest, hottest, and only dance club.

“Urgurf,” said Yang. The Mongol warrior was still too shellshocked to regain the gift of speech, thank God. He knew he’d died, but up until now he never dreamed he’d get this close to heaven.

“Is this the first time you’ve been away from Taiwan?”

“Glarkh. Mrooz.”

“Does Princeton have a good Computer Science department?”

“Roog.”

“You know, I know this sounds silly, but I think you’ve got the cutest accent.”

“La, but it’s all the gold o’ Erin’s high kings I’d be givin’t’ see what he shows the poor colleen when she asks if he carries a pocket protector,” Teleri whispered to me. Her laughter warmed my ear as she snuggled closer. She was my date, a more fortunate fix-up than Yang and Denise. Neil and Eleziane made the third couple at our table.

Neil nudged me. “You think your mom’s okay?”

“She’s with Jadwiga and Master Runyon. Fort Knox is in more danger. ”

“I don’t mean danger, I mean cold.”

“Hey, the woman who spent the best years of her life making me put on an extra sweater knows enough to mind her own body heat. We couldn’t all come in here; it’d look suspicious. You four can pass for the Princeton friends who gave me this joy ride to Poughkeepsie, but no way would anyone swallow that we managed to pack three more people into a car.”

“Good trick Eleziane could cough up the car, then.” Neil gave his sweetie a sick-puppy stare, but she was too busy enthusiastically telling Denise about how God had told her that she must go forth and bear Billy Idol’s young. “Huh! Elf groupies, just what every hard rocker needs.” He shrugged, then said, “They could’ve come inside, taken another table, made like they don’t know us.”

“Look, Neil, you know what ‘conspicuous’ means? Yang was once human, on a technicality, and banshees and elf-maidens look near enough like mortals to pass, but Master Runyon’s a luch-orpan. If he came in here, anyone Fey-sighted would say something, and anyone Fey-blind would see him as a midget version of Telly Savalas. Either way, he'd draw attention. And Mom and Jadwiga may look pretty cool in leather, but they’re still too old to blend in with this crowd.”

Neil was unconvinced. “It looked like snow out there.”

“Come on, man! You think they’re dumb enough to hang around outside? There’s a McDonald’s down the block—it’ll be like Old Home Week to Mom. Besides, someone had to mind my sword—I’m not risking our cover by carrying that in here until we’ve cased the setup—and Eleziane can call them if they’re needed.”

Neil was quiet awhile. Then he said, “You’re really hoping they’re not needed. ”

The canned music cut out into silence so complete I didn’t dare break it with a reply. The D.J. left his place at the console, the dancers cleared the floor. Tandava looked just as low-budget when seen firsthand as it had appeared in Eleziane’s pool. The building, hugging a slope in downtown Poughkeepsie, might have been a storefront church before the new management took it over. Nothing had been custom-made or built in. Even the lights and the mirror-ball looked so jury-rigged that I’d flat out refused to take a table under them.

And yet, I could smell success seeping out of every crack in the prefab dance floor. The place was packed, and not just because all other available Poughkeepsie night-life consists of catching a movie, having dinner, or seeing if it’s true what they say about Vassar girls. There were people seated at the better tables who had the clear, hard, glossy look that would let them slide into any hot New York club they liked. Slim, hungry women and spiny young men leaned into the music. If they could put their teeth through the rind of sound and suck it dry, they’d only give one of their glittery little pebble smiles and move on to the next victim.

“Awright, now!” The D.J. had his mike pressed so hard against his lips that I heard them rasp over the foam-rubber guard. “Now you’re gonna hear ’em! You waited, they wanted; you asked, they served: CODA!”

The velvet curtains veiling that ludicrous little stage split, and before I could ask myself what was behind the weird intro, there they were. Light drenched them and flooded back into my eyes. The beat drove hard, harder than any mix of drum and bass could ever make, even if you had amps the size of megaliths. Sound and light met in a wedge that jammed an axe-blade straight down the middle of my skull. For one terrifying breath, I couldn’t see; music cut away my eyes.

When the light came spilling back into my head, I wished it had a body so I could embrace it. My arm hurt, and my teeth, and my fingers. The teeth part was easy to figure out: They’d been clenched and ground until my jaw was sore. Looking down, I saw that Teleri had gripped my arm so hard that it was burning from the elbow up, freezing from the elbow down. I pried her away gently, then raised my hands. The houselights were down, the spots and specials on the stage flashing, but I could still see blood on the fingertips that had spasmed to clutch the underside of the table.

And CODA was still playing. Hell, this was just the vamp. Their drummer looked Indian, in spite of his smoldering red hair. His slumbrous brown eyes saw everything while looking at nothing. The world could run itself off the nearest cliff for all he cared. His disdain for earth and all its creatures was there for anyone to read in the curve of his lips, the tilt of his feathery eyebrows. Don’t bother me with tales of cosmic destruction, his hooded eyes said. Universes are like buses; there will be another one along any minute. His arms snaked and twined through the air above his drums, and seated as he was, he seemed to dance.

He was a sweetheart compared to the guy they had on bass guitar, another redhead. Even under the mellowest of amber spots, his skin looked parched-white as the most sun-beaten sand. Something about that thin, curving nose of his made me think of a hideously grown blood-drinking insect, but when I saw his hot, starved, envious eyes, I knew that the whole world didn’t have blood enough to leave him sated.

The keyboard player was Oriental, wearing his hair in that strange, antiquated style you sometimes see on porcelain statues of children: two braids tightly coiled into tiny, hard knots at the top of his head, the rest of his skull shaved clean. Like the drummer, his gaze took in everyone and everything in the club, but he wasn’t just there for the show. When his eyes hit mine, I felt as if a giant hand had scooped me up and plunked me down into one shiny metal pan of an old-fashioned balance scale and all the good things I should’ve done but hadn’t were going to be poured into the other. There was no doubt in my mind or his that I would come up wanting.

They didn’t just leave me cold, those CODA players, they left me naked and freezing, burning and afraid. First I forgot who I was and what right I even had to be alive, the next minute I saw myself as the smallest of specks on the least important of planets in a galaxy that didn’t rate so much as an afterthought from God. My hands were wet. I thought it was sweat. Then I turned my head to see Teleri weeping, the sleeve of my jacket streaked with the dark stain of her tears. If we mortals were worth less than nothing, of what eternal use were the small, homely, domestic spirits whose only purpose was to serve and comfort us? They were more insubstantial than the dreams of a dream.

No. A spark struck inside me, a little burst of indignation that blazed with a healthier flame against all the glacial fear that CODA's music could conjure from my soul. Part of it was rock-hard stubbornness—I will not be as worthless as you say!—and part was plain dumb defiance—Who are you, to judge us? Whatever kindled the flame, it was stronger than their glittering, icy, perfect sound. I hugged Teleri and whispered in her ear to save her tears for her regular bansheeing duties.

“Cut it out! You want me to think I’m going to die? Again? You know all the trouble you caused me last time.” I smiled as I dug a linty Kleenex out of my pocket. “Here. Blow.”

“Are ye deaf, then?” Teleri gulped. “Is the tune o’ th’ great Ending as nothing t’ ye?” The tissue lay unused in her hand.

I took it back and dried her eyes for her. “I was raised—well, I suppose you could call it Convenience Christian, love. Dad was Catholic, but he never paid much attention to it, and Mom’s Protestant in spite of her Russian Orthodox ancestors. She just took me to whatever church was nearest, and after she had to support us all the way, we hardly went at all except Easter and Christmas. But what I’m saying is that if there’s any kind of great Ending on the books, this gang doesn’t do it for me. For one thing, where’s their horses?”

“Horses?” Teleri shelved her sorrow long enough to ponder my sanity. At least she stopped crying.

“You know, like in the Book of Revelation? Horses, four; seals, seven. Huh! Sounds like a baseball score, but what the heck, it’s still Armageddon to me. The stars have to fall, the sun has to turn black, the Cubs have to win the Superbowl—stuff like that.”

My banshee scowled. “That’s not funny.”

“Maybe not.” I gave her cheeks a final dab. “But if laughter’s the only thing I’ve got to keep the night away, you can bet your last acorn-cap I’m going to laugh.”

“Whatever’s th’ use o’—?” she began. Just then Neil elbowed me hard.

“Look! There’s T’ing.”

Oh yes, there she was. She had a new outfit—skintight silvery blue from wrists and neck to ankles—but her feet were bare except for chain thongs thick with blue-white faceted stones. My instinct told me they weren’t fakes; she was dancing on a fortune. Clusters of matching diamonds novaed in her hair as she sang.

You know how it is with song lyrics—call it the Rule of Louie, Louie, if you will—how sometinies you can’t tell what you’re hearing but you’re sure it’s obscene? Well, the stuff I heard T’ing voicing up there would cause Congressional wives to throw their Junior Vigilante Vice Squad kits back in the garbage and go home to have their girdles adjusted. There was no way you could tell what she was singing; you knew heart and soul it was vile, yet there was no way you could ever prove it in a million years. Truly. Even if you had the printed lyrics in front of you, the words would slither and squirm out from under your very eyes, forming innocent phrases one moment, totally debauched suggestions the next. Suggestions? Make that step-by-step instructions.

I looked at the gloss-people at the other tables. They wanted her. They wanted CODA. I could feel their desire, a yearning so strong it made all their old, petty hungers blow away like blackened flakes of burned paper. I knew that if you told them they’d have to kill the one thing they loved best in all the world to buy another CODA song, they’d do it without question or pause. One guy who dressed like serious money and power was scribbling wildly on the back of a business card. It didn’t take genius to guess it was an offer for this band to kiss Poughkeepsie goodbye.

And all that, without the lead singer on stage yet.

He came on like a blizzard, a chill so deep that the cold preceeding him was springtime. That stage was his, he ruled it. Each step, each strut, conquered more territory, with no quarter given. When he tossed that mane of white-blond hair, the flecks of mirror-ball light spinning through the air crackled and arced, igniting with his power. A single flow of quicksilver fabric clung to his whole body, right up to the banded metal collar beneath his chin. The only skin on him you could see was his face, with a hawk’s golden eyes and the ghostly white shimmer of a snow-owl’s feathers.

The wolf walked with him. Huge gray paws padded across the stage while his master took up a mike and sang each note with dead precision. The beast’s black lip curled back to show white fangs, and he strained against the silver-gloved hand knotted in his ruff to keep him from leaping into the audience and tearing throats for the joy of it.

They played their set and left the stage. No tapering off, no pauses between numbers, just a square-cut block of music while they were there and the sword-blade falling to cut that all away with their silence and their absence. The audience sat stunned. I counted twenty pulse-beats before they woke enough to applaud. The crash of hands together and the harsh cries for more rocked the house. I think they knew it was useless—CODA would not be back—but they couldn't help themselves. If they didn’t let go like this, they’d do the wolf’s work for him. As it was, roaring and pounding the tables and clapping for CODA wasn’t enough. I caught sight of the Tandava bouncers wading across the floor to break up shouting matches that were rapidly becoming fist-fights.

I pushed my chair back. “Neil, Eleziane, make sure Denise gets back to Vassar. Yang, come with me.”

“Uh-uh.” Yang had his arm around Denise, who didn’t seem to mind. He started whispering in her ear; she tittered.

“I’ll be th’ one t’ come with ye fer what’s needed.” Teleri stood up beside me, her face set with a strong, quiet courage.

“No.” I made her sit down again. “I’m not confronting anyone yet. I’m just going to sneak backstage and see if I can catch T’ing alone. If she knows me—I doubt it, but I’ve got to try—then I’ll get her away. We’ll do better against them the more we know, and she’ll have plenty to tell us.”

“And if she doesn’t know you?” Eleziane asked.

“Then I’ll come right back and we’ll take it from there. This is just a little reconnaissance work—me and someone to watch my back. Yang can do it best—” I gave a quick look at him and Denise; they were too busy playing footsie, toesy, touchy-feely, grabby-gropey to pay attention, so I could risk saying out loud in front of her: “He’ll go invisible.”

“As can I!” Teleri protested.

“As can you,” I agreed. “But undetectable? For sure?”

She understood what I meant and blushed. “ ’Tis only a wee tinge o’ scent that’s not worth half th’ moither ye rude lummoxes make about it!”

“It’s a giveaway,” I countered, “and a hell of a handicap for a spy.”

“I could come with you,” Eleziane offered.

“You stay here and keep tabs on me,” I directed. “You can do that, can’t you, with your visions? Just in case Yang screws up and we’re discovered, I want you ready to call in reinforcements.”

The elfin princess nodded. “That’s wise. Yang, then. Only, how are you going to get that mule-headed goat to cooperate, especially when he seems to be doing so well with—?”

A smack like the impact of a side of beef hitting the deck of an oil-tanker echoed through the dance club. “I have never heard anything so loathsome, filthy, rotten, disgusting, and politically incorrect in my life! ” Denise screamed as she stood over Yang’s prone body. She rampaged out of Tandava without even waiting to be offered a ride home.

The Mongol picked himself up and spat out a tooth, rubbing his cheek philosophically. “What you want me to do, it’ll take long?” he asked me.

“I don’t know. Why?”

“I want to be out here when my woman returns to apologize and beg me to have sex with her. Why else?”

“Let her wait,” I counseled, steering him the way I wanted him to go. “Serve her right.”

Yang gave me a suspicious look. “Alla time you laugh at Yang and think I don’t know. Now all of a sudden you agree with me? Last man who jerked around with Yang’s head got his sent home gift-wrapped. Look me in the eye and say you believe she’ll come back to me!”

I raised my right hand in the Boy Scout sign. “I solemnly swear the time may soon come when Denise Vanderhoek will return to you willingly,” I said. And I meant it.

Who could tell? The way CODA’s music could chill a room, maybe it wouldn’t be so long before Hell did freeze over.

12 STAGE DOOR

“You didn’t have to do that to him,” I told Yang as we hid behind a dusty old scenery flat painted to look like the stable at Bethlehem. (I guess I’d been right about Tandava’s previous incarnation as a storefront church, complete with Sunday school and kiddie Christmas pageant.)

“He’s a bouncer,” the unrepentant Mongol replied. “I just wanted to see how high he’d bounce.”

“All right, forget it. No avoiding it, I guess, if I wanted to get backstage. Now make yourself invisible and scout down the hall.” One good thing about Yang—and I do mean only one—his military skills are unsurpassed. Give him a hill to take, an enemy position to scope out, a battle to be joined, and he’s there for you. Anything else is shore leave and if you leave your sheep out where his creative talents can get at them, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Following orders silently and well, Yang flickered out of sight. I assume he went down the hall, as directed, because within a fairly short time I heard him hiss in my ear, “There are two rooms with stars on them—one white, one black. I heard the wolf growling behind the black-starred door, so I passed through the other. T’ing is in there and she is alone.” His voice tightened. “She is crying.”

“Good job,” I said, forcing myself not to think about her tears. This wasn’t the time for that. “The hall—did you notice anyone there?”

“Clear.”

“And the room she’s in—how many entrances?”

“Just the door itself and two windows, but they’re barred. They lace a back alley.”

“Any closets? Any place someone could hide?” No one was going to pull any fast ones on me.

“You should ask me if I saw anyone hiding! You think Yang doesn’t know enough to check for lurkers?”

“Well, was anyone hiding in her room?”

“Stupid question! There is nowhere in there for anyone to hide. No closets, no piece of furniture big enough to conceal a good-sized dog. One chair, one table, one mirror with lights around it, one bed with no one under it. She was lying on it. I didn’t see any of the others.”

“How close is her room to theirs?”

“Several other rooms stand between those two, the ones with the stars. All are used for storage. The janitor’s closet is nearest.” “Did you check to see if her door was locked?” I was betting it was.

“It’s not.” Surprising.

“You’re sure?”

“As sure as I can be; I opened it.”

“What?”

“Turned the knob and opened it.” A small sound of badly pent-up anger and frustration tickled my cheek. “She picked up her head, looked right at the open door, let out this big wail, and carried on like someone had just killed her favorite horse.”

“She didn’t try to leave?”

I felt his breath xvhuf! over my skin. I never knew Yang could pack so much sarcasm into one exhalation. “She hollered for someone to stop taunting her and leave her alone, that’s what she did.”

“That’s strange. ...”

A hearty thump out of thin air knocked me against the scenery flat and almost toppled both of us over. “You wanna stand here all night with your finger up your nose, or you wanna go get my Honored Granddaughter the hell out of there?”

“It doesn’t sound right, the door unlocked, no one around to keep her in. If she’s so miserable, why doesn’t she just get up and go? I’ve got to think. ...”

“Think, ha? Maybe ponder? Reflect on all the sides of the question? I saw a whole lotta that. You get a big nest of Ch’in bureaucrats and you got heavy thinking till it’s coming out your nine most popular physical orifices. Shit, those silk-pantied geese were thinking right up to the minute I took out my sword and cut some throats. And you know what their last words were? ‘I think I see your point.’ You save T’ing first, think later.”

“Now, listen here—”

A utilitarian dagger appeared in midair and made encouraging motions at my own throat. “The door is unlocked, the hall is deserted, there is no one but my Honored Granddaughter in that room and she isn’t weeping for her health. Maybe she can’t see me, but maybe she can see you. You’re alive—for the moment. You want to keep it that way, don’t keep T’ing waiting.”

There was no arguing with him, especially since I was unarmed. I gave a mental shrug. Yang’s plan sounded worth a try. At worst, T’ing would be unable to see me, too, through whatever spell was holding her captive in an unlocked room. And at best? She’d see me, I’d grab her and we’d run like rabbits for the street, gather up the rest of the company later, and regroup to plan our next step against the band from hell.

I’m no optimist, though, so when the door to T’ing’s dressing room did prove to be as easily opened as Yang promised, I figured she’d just look up, look right through me, and go back to crying.

“Tim!" She was off the bed and in my arms before I could open my mouth. “Oh, Tim, Tim, how’d you know I was in trouble? God, I’m so glad to see you!” She backed that declaration up with enough kisses to leave my head spinning. “You don’t know what I’ve been through, what almost happened to—” The rest was lost in more kisses, and laughter that verged on the hysterical. We were both catching our breath when she looked puzzled and asked, “How did you know? How did you find me?”

“Uh . . . Yang—” I waited to see if the name rang a bell. “Yang told you? How did he know? I haven’t seen or heard from him since I went to Vassar. Actually, I told him not to come, but I assumed he’d piss on anybody’s wishes but his own.”

“/ like that!" came the inevitable squawk from the barbarian under discussion. He materialized with his chin digging deep into my shoulder. “If you weren’t my Revered Descendant, I would cause you to be sewn into a large sack with two dozen carp and a lemur! Yang does not piss on anyone’s wishes. Not when there are so many other more thought-provoking bodily secretions available.”

She never heard a word he said. She was looking right at him and not seeing one louse-ridden hair of his head.

I looked back at him. “No good.”

“What do you mean, Tim?” T’ing asked. “What’s no good? Is someone coming?” She stiffened like a headlight-startled deer and peered over my shoulder right into Yang’s eyes.

“It’s Yang,” I told her. “He’s here. Right here, behind me, in your face, only you’re not seeing him.”

She relaxed enough to smile. “That’s impossible. I’ve always seen him, even when I didn’t want to. Especially when I didn’t want to.”

“My Esteemed Heir lies like any one of a number of Chinese rugs I used to decorate the old home yurt.” Yang pounded his chest. “Every maiden is always glad to see Yang! Some just need to be reminded of how happy they are, that’s all.”

“Did you hear thatl” I asked T’ing.

“Hear what?”

“Yang just said something basically obnoxious and offensive.”

“And the sun rose in the east this morning. Look, Tim, I don’t see or hear anyone except you, but so what? You didn’t come here to test my sight and hearing. Get me out of this place!”

“Right, sure, no problem.” I took her hand and we headed for the door. Yang stalked ahead, still playing scout. Good thing T’ing had been stricken Fey-blind and deaf, because the Mongol came up with some curses that would have vaporized Carborundum.

It had to be the dopiest rescue on record. No dragons to overcome, no locked doors to breach, no guards to outwit, no electronic security devices to circumvent—not even another bouncer for Yang to practice his overhead smash on. I’ve played off-brand video games with more obstacles. We walked out of that room, down the hall, into the side-alley, and onto the street without let or hindrance, as the legal types would put it. It was like taking a stroll to the bathroom.

T’ing shivered with the cold—she was still in her stage outfit—so I gave her my jacket, which gallant gesture left me shivering with the cold. I spied the McDonald’s where Mom, Jadwiga, and Master Runyon were waiting, and urged T’ing to make a dash for it.

Mom looked up from her cheeseburger when we came in, and wasn’t at all pleased with what she saw. Her eyes traveled deliberately from my jacket on T’ing’s shoulders back to my own unprotected skin. I could tell that excuses of chivalry would make no nevermind to her. Sir Walter Raleigh’s mother must’ve felt the same way when she had to get those mud stains out of his velvet cape.

“Young man, do you want to catch your death?”

“Well, Mom, you see, I had to get T’ing out of there in a hurry and—”

“Do you want to catch your death?" Her voice rose up and thundered down like a tidal wave. The McDonald’s shook. Rows of wrapped burgers shot off the shelves. Packages of French fries exploded under the heat lamps. The milkshake machines spurted chocolate, vanilla, and the seasonal special eggnog flavor at impossible angles straight across the counter and onto the floor. Master Runyon and Jadwiga went on eating as if nothing was happening. “Do you?”

“Uh, no, but—”

“NO?” Mom laughed, and a stack of half-packed Happy Meal boxes burst into flames. Hordes of small, plastic toys skittered away into every comer. “Well, that’s too bad, Timothy Alfred Desmond, because your death is just what you’ve caught now.”

Mom pulled off her hair and face, tossing them away like empty styrofoam Big Mac boxes. She tore her female body open from the neck down and stepped out of it with the same brash, all-mastering step I’d last seen on the stage at Tandava. CODA’s lead singer showed me his teeth in a grimace too ravening to be called a smile.

The McDonald’s customers blew away on the wind that streamed from his frost-blond hair. The masks of Jadwiga and Master Runyon melted into pools of dingy color at the feet of the drummer and the keyboard player. They sprang for T’ing and Yang. The Mongol struggled in the drummer’s grip, even tried invisibility and dematerialization. No ploy worked. He was held firmly, first with two hands, then four, then eight. The bass guitarist stepped out from behind the crumbling counter and pinioned me.

“You want fries to go with that?” he sneered. His breath smelled like rotting meat.

The last of the illusion faded. We were in a dark room with stone walls and no windows, a lot like the place where Lord Palamon had kept the Midgard Serpent. Old wooden crates and cardboard boxes propped up the shadows. There was no overhead source of light, but a murky orange glow puddled up out of a rock-rimmed shaft in the middle of the floor. It looked like an abandoned well.

“Like a closer look?” my captor taunted, twisting my arms.

“Let him be, Set!” The lead singer waved an open hand at the bass player, and I felt him cringe. Then he let me go.

I was still rubbing feeling back into my hands when Blondie-boy swaggered near enough to set his nose an inch from mine. “Des-mond.” He stretched the name out long and slow. “Yes, I smell the sameness of the blood. I smelled it even when you sat there in the audience tonight, thinking yourself so wise, so safe from all detection. But the stink gave you away, boy.”

“What are you—?”

“Silence.” The same voice that belted out songs with chameleon words said that without shouting. Loud or low, the power it held was the same. My tongue thickened in my mouth, gagging me. I got another of his slim, wintry smiles.

“The magic, dwarf. You can’t play tag with the Leeside and hope to stay the same. You smell of it.” He snapped his fingers and the great, gray wolf padded out from behind one of the cobwebbed crates. The beast looked larger up close. His nose was bigger than both my fists together, the wet breath from his nostrils like the wind off a glacier when he sniffed my hand. I pulled away.

Blondie-boy laughed. “Don’t worry; Fenris wants to bite off someone else’s hand, not yours. I didn’t need his sense of smell to tell me you were out front. We got to know your scent very well, while we were still captives. Not yours exactly, but your kindred. And his sword.”

My father. Great Hem, as the Fair Folk named him, and their defender against all the horrors the Leeside held. I used to think that the worst of these were monsters like the minotaur, the ogres, the harpies, the frost-giants and the rest. Now I faced the breathing fact that there are some beings of the Mythological Continuum capable of giving an ogre the heebie-jeebies and putting a minotaur so off his feed he’ll only pick at those seven virgin youths and maidens.

The color of the light from below changed from orange to sickly green, casting every edge and plane of the lead singer’s face into high relief. Individual grains of face powder stood out over a base of theatrical makeup that could not fully hide the trace of a scar just under his right cheekbone. From a sword? From my father’s sword?

I recovered the use of my tongue enough to blurt out one question: “Who are you all?”

He flicked his fingers, and my mouth froze again, but it was out. Whether he would choose to answer . . .

The green light in the well-shaft watered away to palest blue that washed out gray over his skin. His mouth was a needle-track that quirked up briefly at the comers. “I’ve forgotten my manners—all that time on the road—forgive me, infant; I’ll amend that now. Set I think you know. ”

The bass guitarist gave me the finger. I heard a sharp crack, and an icicle long and thick as a horse’s leg plunged from the ceiling, missing him by a fraction of an inch. His pasty face went a shade past pale. The lead singer clicked his tongue.

“Set is not famous for his manners. It’s not polite to kill your brother, but when you follow that up by cutting him into tiny pieces and strewing them all over Egypt—! What did Osiris ever do to you? It didn’t work, though, did it, Set? Isis saw to that, and Horus had a few words for you when he grew up and learned what you’d done to his father. Tim Desmond here is also the son of a famous father. I’d watch him, if I were you.”

The guitarist started to say something, thought better of it, and slouched back into the dark. The singer waved at his drummer, who currently looked like a cross between the late great Buddy Rich and an octopus. “A child with your intelligence must have gathered by now that this associate of mine hails from India; Siva, lord of the dance, of wisdom, of change, of destruction. You’ll understand that I’m only interested in him in the latter capacity. That, and he plays a way cool set of skins.”

The keyboard player holding T’ing grunted. “Ah, yes!” The lead singer inclined his head in his direction.

“Yen-wang-yeh, I was getting to you.” He rolled his eyes in mock exasperation for my benefit and added, “Where he comes from, he is the premier judge of the dead. His predecessor was demoted for being too lenient and merciful; he doesn’t make that mistake. Let’s see, I think that’s all—”

His sudden giggle was the sound of shattering glass. “I’ll never make it big in rock ’n’ roll if I stay this modest! How could I lorget?” He bowed to me. “I am Loki: father of the Midgard Serpent and Fenris Wolf, sire of Hel who rules the dead, trickster, cheat, envier, deceiver, bringer of the final winter, the coming chaos, the twilight of the gods, Ragnarok, the end of all things.” A neat, small oblong of white pasteboard appeared at his fingertips. “And opening act for the end of the world in Manhattan next Tuesday. ”

13 NICE OF YOU TO DROP IN

It was almost a shame that Loki and I were enemies from the start or I could’ve told him that kicking off Armageddon in the middle of New York City while at the helm of a rock band was—well, it was kind of tacky. If you’re going to end the world, you should try for a little originality. I mean, a rock band? I’m a well-read person. I know that two fifths of all rock bands consist exclusively of (or are at least led by) vampires, two fifths are the Fair Folk, and the remaining four fifths are solid Satanists.

Yeah, I know, but fractions mean nothing to a Satanist vampire elf.

And New York, for pity’s sake? It’d been done. Part of me wanted to howl, “But Loki, everyone starts the Doomsday countdown in a major East Coast city—either that or L.A. How about some ethnic solidarity, huh? You’re Norse: Wipe out Minneapolis-St. Paul for starters.”

The other part of me was whimpering in a corner of my cage. “Yes, Desmond?” Loki said, as if he’d picked up my thoughts. “Is there something you wanted to tell me?” I shook my head.

"Oh, go on; speak. I give you leave to do so freely. It’s the least I can do for someone who trod the paths of illusion so willingly. You hardly needed any steering at all to bring you here.”

I cleared my throat to test whether Loki had given me back my voice, and found he was a doom-bringer of his word. “Steering? You didn’t—didn’t just zap us here from the McDonald’s?” “Zap,” Loki repeated. “I like the sound of that; but to waste such an evocative word on mere transportation?” He wiggled his fingers at me and made sounds like the transporter beam on Star Trek. “When I zap, it’s done at a much higher voltage. I didn’t need to zap you out of the McDonald’s. It was never there. Weaving mirages is child’s play for my multi-limbed brother. ” He gave Siva a Boy Scout salute.

There are some questions you don’t want to ask but you have to.

If this team could conjure up an illusion on that grand a scale just to lead me around by the nose, there was no reason to doubt they’d done the same for the rest of my company. “Where are they?” I didn’t know I could sound so shivery and small.

He cocked an eyebrow. “They?”

I lunged for him. Fenris met me halfway there, the wolf’s heavy head like a battering ram into the left side of my rib cage. I tumbled over the rocky floor, hearing T’ing call my name, and ended up flat on my belly with Set’s shiny black high-heeled boot in my face.

“Get up.” The boot toe twitched meaningfully. I hurt, but I wasn’t going to lie there and give Loki’s minion any excuse to cncourage me with a kick. As soon as I was standing again, Set’s skinny hand clutched me by the throat and shook. “Get this straight: We don’t have to tell you anything.” Again that charnel stench.

Loki chuckled. “Oh, but we do. Set. When chaos comes, I like to think that somewhere on this tottery globe a single human being will be watching us hoodwink and blind all the rest of them. I want him to know what we do and see us do it, but also to know beyond a doubt that he is impotent to interfere, or to give warning, or to change or challenge our smallest act. It will be all the sweeter if he anticipates what is to come, a sauce of prophetic vision to enhance the flavor of his helplessness. What kind of sound do you think he will make as the inarguable knowledge drives him insane? That’s the music I want to hear. ”

Set gave a sullen grunt. “How come?”

“I’m a people person.” A languorous yawn showed off Loki’s perfect teeth. “I think you asked where they were, Desmond?” He strolled over to a pile of musty wooden crates and without warning lashed out with a pivot-kick that blew them all to splinters and sawdust. Hands and feet bound with grotesque pink satin ribbons, my mother headed the line of Loki’s captives: Neil, Eleziane, Teleri, Jadwiga, Master Runyon—he hadn’t missed a one.

“Or did you have some other they in mind?”

“Mom!” I stretched out my hands to her, but Set planted himself right between us, and Fenris growled deep in his furry chest when I tried to dodge around him to reach her. She opened her mouth, straining to say something to me; no sound came out. Loki’s power over speech was one he delighted to flaunt. Judging by the flimsy bonds holding my friends and the way T’ing hadn’t even tried to escape her unguarded, unlocked dressing room earlier, he could control more than our words.

I was getting so angry, there was a good chance my rage would channel itself into tears of consternation if I didn’t try to do something. I took another step towards the row of prisoners, and was met by a crude wooden sickle that Set lay against my throat so that I could feel the bite of its inlaid obsidian teeth.

“You’re jumping the gun once more, Set,” Loki drawled. “Don’t make me speak to you about it again.”

“That so?” Set spat. “Who made you Lord of the Two Lands? This is the cub Great Hem spawned, and there’s his mother. Maybe you want to play cat-and-mouse with them, but I know how dangerous mothers and sons can be. If I want them both dead—”

A snicker of flame crisped the air under my chin, and Set leaped backwards, hollering and holding his hand. The wooden sickle was a collar of ashes around my neck, the obsidian teeth clattering over the cobbled floor.

“Set’s got a nasty, vicious, cruel temper,” Loki told me. “It’s his only good point.” He gestured at the other members of CODA as he named them. “Siva couldn’t care less about what I do to this world; that recommended him to my service right from the start. The power of indifference coupled with the ability to destroy everything utterly—who could ask for a more happy combination? And Yen-wang-yeh is perfect to complete our little troupe. As judge and king, he pairs omnipotence with a lawyer’s mind. You mortals don’t have a chance.”

I made myself laugh. “Who are you kidding? The four of you against all of us? Against every human being on earth?” I knew that when it came to Leeside creatures, numbers meant nothing, but my old contrary streak was clamoring for me to do something to take the wind out of Loki’s sails.

“I think the fact that we four are gods might make up for our lacking high-school diplomas or computer skills.” There was a brittle quality to Loki’s smile despite his offhanded reply. I’d stung him. “And who says all mortals will side with you? You’ve experienced what happens when we call the tune. Some of your folk have been dancing to our measure since before we got our act together. We’ll have help.”

“So will we,” I countered. “You were in the Leeside—” It made me feel good to see how naming that dread land caused even Loki to flinch. “You know you weren’t there alone.”

“If you mean that ragbag bundle of ogres and Saturday morning Japanimated nightmares, those cowards won’t get in our way. When they saw that they had the chance to escape from our presence to the Outside, they tore their own kindred to plump, bloody ribbons in their rush to get away. Even if they were a threat to us, why should they help you?”

“Not them,” I said. “The others.”

Loki set a finger to his pursed lips and frowned in thought. “Others?” The comers of his mouth trembled. They crept up by degrees. His lips split wide open in a guffaw that made the stockpiled boxes in that basement cell skitter over the stones. “You mean like this?” He pointed at Teleri, who scowled at him. “Like that?" A jab at Eleziane, who stuck out her tongue. “Like these?" Yang and Jadwiga were indicated with as much scorn as anyone ever packed into a single wave of the hand. Polite society doesn’t have the right words to describe their expressions. “Oh my. I am scared. See me quake and shudder. Domestic spirits against the full strength of the lords of destruction?” Harsh guitar chords from nowhere crashed down over us all as Loki tossed his mane and ripped off a hard-driving set of hits on his invisible instrument.

“What are they going to do to us?” he asked, grinning through a scraggly fall of platinum bangs. “Cobble our shoes until we cry uncle? Lap up the bowls of cream we wanted, just to make us cry? Houseclean us to death?”

“AAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHAAAAAHHH—!” That was the sound of an infuriated Yang tearing himself out of all four pairs of Siva’s arms and hurling himself at Loki. Fenris sprang to intercept him, but the Mongol had more experience in dealing with battlefield distractions than I had. He knotted both hands together and jammed one elbow straight into the wolf’s nose. "Bite that, you son of a bitch,” he said in a snarl to rival any Fenris ever uttered. He followed up the elbow with a double-fisted hammer blow right on top of the giant wolf’s skull. The startled beast yelped, jaws snapping shut on his own tongue. Yang wasted one moment too long on catching the retreating animal with a goal-kick just under the tail. “Where I come from, doggie, you’d be quiche!” he shouted after the scampering canine.

“ Yipe. ” That was the sound of Yang realizing that being quiche is subjective and one moment can mean the world when you’re fighting Loki.

The Norse godlet’s clever hands fell on the Mongol’s shoulders in a bond that held true. Yang was immobilized, though Loki left him the use of his tongue. “You shouldn’t have done that to Fenris,” he said. “You’ll apologize.”

“Not to some Chihuahua with a gland problem, I won’t.” If looks were poison, Yang’s right eye alone would’ve wiped out all the Eastern hemisphere and half of Milwaukee.

“Fenris is no mere beast.” Loki’s voice held the carefully subdued roar of a raging forest fire. “Like the Midgard Serpent, he is my blood, my child, my son. Don’t you know anything of familial affection, toad?”

“I know that if you let my mother, Jadwiga, there get her hands on you, for starters she’d take a real toad and stick it up your—!” “I see you don’t.” Loki’s fingers brushed Yang’s lips and left him mute. “I see I will have to show you.”

I thought he was just going to toss Yang back into Siva’s arms for safekeeping while he thought up some niggling bit of punishment. I didn’t know that Loki never needed time to think when it came to retribution, and his ideas on the subject were never small. The true horror of his intentions took a long time to reach my brain, and even then it took longer for my mind to accept what my eyes were seeing.

His grip clamped back on Yang’s shoulders. One hand tore one way, one another, appallingly slow. Like the time my roommate, Phil Avery, decided to show off his muscles and tear a Manhattan telephone book in half, Loki was rending Yang in pieces. There was no blood. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so terrifying if spirits could bleed. Tom flesh can be sewn, a bleeding wound stanched, but what Loki was doing to Yang was without hope of remedy.

The Mongol’s image pulsed with a desperate light that flared and dimmed with each successive rip of Loki’s hands. His mouth gaped in a voiceless scream, only to be tom apart under the Deceiver’s talons. Each scrap of what had once been T’ing’s ancestral spirit blew about the room like wilting petals. The fading image of a severed finger wafted past my eyes, and captive in the dying fragment was Yang’s whole self in miniature. If a ghost can be made of countless smaller phantoms, I saw the proof of it then.

I also saw Jadwiga. She collapsed to her knees, hands clawing at a throat that would not let her scream. Her neck was corded with the effort to force out some sound, however small. As if the two signs of grief were chained together, her tears refused to flow so long as there could be no shrieks, sobs, or moans to accompany them.

Loki laughed when he saw her agony. With a showy flourish of the hand, he restored her voice in time to let us all be deafened by the shrillness of her loss. The last echo of Jadwiga’s mindless howl was still cupped by the dark ceiling overhead when she collapsed among the scattered remnants of her son.

“Tsk.” Loki shook his head. “Clear all that away to its proper place, will you, Siva? If you’ve got a free hand.” He hummed a strongly rhythmic tune while the Destroyer used his many arms to gather what was left of Yang and tipped the fragments down the glowing well-shaft.

“Forgetting something?” Loki nodded at Jadwiga’s limp body. Expressionless as always, Siva scooped her up too and carried her to the lip of the pit.

“Stop!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

Loki pretended surprise. “Tidying up, of course. If it shocks you this much. I’d hate to see what your room looks like. Mrs. Desmond, is he—go ahead, Siva, there’s plenty more left to do—is your son a neat little boy?”

Mom’s aghast “No!" burst from her lips as Siva dropped Jadwiga down the same way Yang’s remains had gone. Loki chose to take it as reply, not reaction.

“No? Well, perhaps I can teach him better, too. You saw what a good job I did instructing his friend.”

I threw myself at the edge of the shaft and peered over the side. The light below shifted shades, casting watery reflections of purple and orange and bronze over my skin. “Where is she?” I demanded.

“Down the rabbit hole, Alice,” Loki replied with a snicker. “On a one-way ticket to Wonderland.”

I shaded my eyes against the lights and only saw more of them. “What is that down there? Another gateway to the Leeside?” “That would be silly.” Loki caught me by the back of my shirt and hauled me away from the well. Eye to eye he told me, “I’m not in the habit of consigning my foes to situations they can get out of. The Leeside’s breached, or have you forgotten? There was a tiny hole that grew with each successive being bold enough to force his way out. It stretched and stretched until it was large enough to release the petty home-sprites, then those lame excuses for monsters, and finally the grandest creation that the Mythological Continuum could hold—!” Shouting like a sideshow barker, lie grew so excited that he tossed me aside, the better to fling his arms high to embrace an unseen spotlight.

“Me.” He made us a coy curtsey.

“We do owe our domestic brethren this much,” he went on. “That without their brave, pioneering efforts, we might never have discovered our way to freedom. Or, having come across it on our own, I know we would have found it too small and thought of it no more.” He crossed the room to stroke Teleri’s long, blond hair. “How can I ever thank you?”

“By findin’ a death that’ll fit ye, and that dead quick!” my banshee shot at him. The godlet giggled.

“Ingrate.” He tugged the pink ribbon from her wrists. “And after I gave you your voice back. Oh, Set? Since she’s going your way, would you mind taking this lady and dropping her off?”

With a squall of outrage, Teleri was slung over Set’s shoulder. I moved to stand between him and the well-shaft, but Fenris had recovered from Yang’s assault and was there to see that I did not interfere. Something hard climbed from my chest to my throat as I watched him pitch her headfirst into the well.

Eleziane was served the same way, and Neil, and Master Runyon. Loki made a big deal of ceremoniously untying their bonds and restoring their voices. “Where you’re going, you’re bound to find some fascinating conversationalists,” he told them. Each of them used his or her reclaimed voice to aim some mighty scabrous words at Loki just before Set or Siva dropped them into the many-colored depths. Each time the colors from below shifted. Soon there was only Mom and me left. T’ing remained too, but I had a feeling she was never intended for deposit down the well.

“Who’s next?” Set asked.

“I am.” T'ing tried to step forward, but Yen-wang-yeh was too accomplished a judge not to know that the smallest loophole can open wide enough for any prey to escape.

“You, darling?” Loki looked up from where he lounged atop the largest wooden crate in the room. “I thought we had that all agreed. Why volunteer to go somewhere you know isn’t at all pleasant? You stay with us. We need you. What’s CODA without its chick singer? Just a bunch of lonely young mythics waiting for the world to go by. ” He vaulted lightly to the floor and chucked her under the chin. “Tell you what: Just stick with the act until it’s time for our Christmas gig, okay? You’re just what we need to open in New York.”

“‘Open in New York.’” Set snorted out an ugly-sounding clutch of nasal giggles. “That’s a good one, man! ‘What we need to open in New York.’ Oh! Oh, wow!”

“Set, you’re an ass,” said Loki, and suddenly there was a red-furred donkey standing in Set’s place. It twitched its ears and belted out a deeply pained hee-hanh! “Now where was I?” The Norse godlet chewed his thumb.

“You were telling me how that’s not the Leeside,” I supplied. I don’t know what I was hoping to gain by stalling—like most power-drunk jerks, Loki loved to hear himself talk—but there’s a private, sacred part of my heart that still believes the Seventh Cavalry will show up if you can hold on long enough. “So what is it?”

“Hm? Oh, you’ll find out when you get there.” I’d gambled wrong. Loki looked bored with this part of the game. “Siva, Set’s occupied. Take care of him, will you?”

The Indian lord of change obeyed his nominal boss, first reabsorbing his extra pairs of arms. I guess I didn’t look worth the effort. I dodged around the lip of the well, but I was trading footwork with a being whose dance could destroy the cosmos. I backed off from the pit and he came around it after me. The only shelter in that darkened room was between the boxes, so that’s where I darted. Siva pursued.

Frantically I dashed up and back between the rows of crates, searching for an escape. There was a door somewhere in this room—there had to be. Hadn’t Loki himself claimed we’d walked in here of our own will, led by an illusion? Yang might be able to walk through walls, but T’ing and I—

The tears hit my hand before I was aware I was crying. I flicked them away angrily. “He’s not dead,” I gritted. “He can’t be dead, ’cause he was dead already. ” No good; my guts knew there were worse endings than death, and Loki was familiar with them all. Siva sprang out from behind a coffin-shaped crate, but I doubled back and eluded him. I couldn’t spare the time to mourn for Yang just yet. I had to find that door.

I knew Loki still held T’ing and Mom, but if I were going to help them, I’d do it better free. Once I scrambled up on top of some of the boxes, only to find Loki there, waiting for me. “Boo.” That tiny puff of breath knocked me backwards, nearly into Siva’s grasp. I tucked and rolled with the fall, sprawled into another mammoth crate, and took off. A sharp left and Loki stood in front of me. I backtracked, chased by his laughter, and found Fcnris crouched and ready for me. A right turn and a leap over a tumble of smaller boxes, and there was Set. He caved in the side of a crate with his bare hand and pried out a two-by-four. I didn’t stick around to help him with batting practice. I could hear Mom’s voice and T’ing’s, both shouting for me to run, to get away, to watch out.

Good advice. Knees and elbows pumping, I took three fast rights in a row and broke from the boxy maze into open ground. The half-light was trickier than Loki himself, but it couldn’t hide the beautiful, beautiful shape of the door. I tackled the handle like it was a lifeline—and yes, it was. The most wholehearted thanksgiving prayer I ever uttered came to my lips when I gave a yank and discovered there was neither latch nor lock. The door swept open, letting in a gust of pure, sweet air—

—and the goddam Seventh Cavalry.

I counted fifteen horses, a chuck wagon, and the ghost of John Wayne trampling over me before I lost consciousness.

14 THE ART OF THE DEAL

“Ssshhh! I think he’s waking up now.”

I couldn’t place the voice. It was female, too old to be T’ing’s, even too old for Mom. Soft hands cradled my face. They smelled of lilac talcum powder. Automatically I reached up to touch them and felt the wrinkles and the crepey texture of age. I opened my eyes.

“Ach! You see? Just as I said, all better.” Even upside-down, she was remarkable. My head rested in her lap, so my first impression of her was topsy-turvy, but even so, unforgettable. White hair that had never been rinsed blue crisscrossed the top of her head in a pair of old-fashioned braids. Tobacco-colored eyes as ageless as she was aged twinkled down at me from a round, pink-cheeked face. My sight swam a little and I groaned.

“Tim, what hurts, baby?” Mom’s face shoved hers aside as she dragged me out of the old lady’s lap. I saw T’ing squatting beside her, anxious. Yen-wang-yeh stood a little ways off, content to keep watch over his charge, satisfied that she wasn’t going anywhere.

“I’m fine, Mom, honest.” I tried to push away and got another wave of dizziness for my trouble. “Jeez, what the hell happened to me?” I sat up, holding onto my head in case it decided to roll off.

“Poor baby.” Loki loomed above us, lip curled. “All the pain of a hangover and none of the pleasure, mmm?”

“What did you do to me?” I was ready to kill, when I got my health back.

“I was trying to pop you down the shaft.” Loki sulked like a spoiled child. “What happened to you was none of my doing. You have my guest to thank for that. ”

His outstretched hand indicated the little old lady who had been holding me when I woke. I felt it was impossible and I said so.

“I’m afraid it’s not, dear,” the old woman replied. “I couldn’t let you go.”

I stared at her, wishing for eyes capable of piercing the many disguises mythics could assume. She looked harmless; benevolent! Of course, so had the matronly member of the Three— Noms, Fates, whatever men called them, the Three were above the power of names to control—and she had thought nothing of taking a person’s life-thread and knitting it into a sweater, then unraveling it all the way. Whoever this woman was, she returned my look steadily. Her eyes asked for forgiveness, but gave no clue to her identity.

“Oh, believe her, Desmond,” Loki said. “She really didn’t have a choice. She hasn’t had one since—Well, why don’t you explain to him, dear lady? I don’t think he’s ever believed a word I say.”

“Why should he?” my mother snapped. “You’re a liar, a cheat, and a bully. ”

“Mom—”

“Don’t worry, Tim, I’m not afraid of him. What can he do to me worse than what he’s got planned?” Mom pulled herself across the floor a little nearer to me and glared up at Loki. T’ing crept closer too, until I found myself embraced on three sides by the women.

“She’s not afraid,” Loki repeated. “Isn’t that nice?”

The old lady reached across me to take Mom’s hand. “Don’t defy him. You don’t know his kind the way I do. The small hearth-spirits of the Leeside have souls that yearn to warm themselves at the home-fires of mortals, and the monsters of the Leeside have hearts that quest to test their mettle against the bravest humans they can find, but the mythics of world’s end the Leeside holds—or held—all that they are is pure, cold mind. They follow ideas for their own sake, for the sake of satisfying curiosity at any price. Feelings are never allowed to get in the way. If there are consequences to the heart and soul, that stem from their incessant burrowing, they don’t care, so long as they gain more facts to gather dust with all those they piled up before. ”

“What’s wrong with knowledge?” Loki wanted to know.

“Knowledge without heart? Knowledge without soul?” The old woman’s eye weighed him and found him wanting as she said, “Let us tear the wings from this fly just to see how it lives afterwards—if it lives. Let us take these infants from their mothers and forbid anyone to speak to them so that we can discover whether the first word they pronounce will be Greek or Egyptian or Hebrew or an even older tongue—if they do not die for lack of loving first. Let us fill the veins of this twin child with poison and learn what effect it has upon her sister as well as herself—if we do not balk at cutting them both open later, to confirm our noble studies.”

To my astonishment, Loki shrank back at the old woman’s words. His slim fingers wiped drops of sweat from his brow and he took several deep breaths before he found his old cocksure demeanor again. “You’ve got me confused with amateurs,” he told her. “I don’t twiddle around with a hundred trivial experiments: Just one. And oh, dear lady, once I know the answer to how mankind copes with Doomsday, just imagine how well received my monograph on the subject will be!”

“Who’s going to be around to read it?” T’ing sniped.

“Well, you won’t, that’s for sure,” Loki returned casually. “You, however”—he addressed the old woman—“you should f ind it most illuminating, and fine reading material with which to while away the dull, dreary remainder of eternity.”

I had to know. “Who are you?” I asked the old woman. “Why, darling, don’t you remember?” Mom broke in. “She always used to rave about what a beautiful baby you were whenever we stopped in for a sandwich. She gave you your first slice of salami.”

“And he put it on his head like a yarmulke.” The old woman beamed at me. “Such a sweet baby boy! So creative!”

“He’s going to Princeton now, did you know?” Mom bragged over my head.

The old woman laid a hand to her generous bosom. “Know! Better you should ask me what don’t I know. Princeton? Tsk-tsk. Did you ever? A fine boy, so good to his mamma, so polite every lime he came into the store. My brother Ben told me—”

“Mrs. Feidelstein?” I gasped.

She shrugged. “Who else? You can call me Sonia, dear.”

The hell I would. “Ben Kipnis, he’s your brother?”

“There’s not much family resemblance, I admit.” She primped the back of her hair. “Poor Ben! A face like nine miles of bad road after twelve weeks of bad weather, but a good heart. I told Sam we couldn’t leave the place in better hands when we took our little vacation. And could we use it! I’ll tell you the truth, this being a (iuardian of the Balance is no picnic. Always someone’s got a complaint. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. A job like this I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, believe me. The pay is nothing to gripe about, although if we didn’t run the deli on the side, I hate to think where we’d be. And with the way wholesale meat prices are going—!”

If I wouldn’t have been flat on my behind to start with, I would’ve sat down hard then and there. It was enough of a shock when I learned that Feidelstein’s Kosher Delicatessen was haven to the heroes of the Mythological Continuum, but I always figured it was one of those arcane phenomena that took over a place without the awareness of the mundane residents. You have to be special to find the gateway to other worlds, don’t you? Above all, you have to be young.

“Ach, Timmy, I thought better of you,” Mrs. Feidelstein said sadly. “Such a snob!”

“Are you reading my mind?”

“What else is there to read down here? And me without my glasses. Dr. Hershkowitz, he tells me I have to wear bifocals. Bifocals! That’s for old people. And you know how everyone treats you if they think you’re old.” She gave me a significant look. Then her aspect softened. “There, there, boychik. You can’t help thinking the way you’re taught is right. Old people, what do we know? Our minds are closed, our dreams are done, the visions that can lift us free from this dirty little ball of earth are for the young.” Her eyes twinkled. “Hasn’t that always been the way?”

I don’t know how she did it, but suddenly the cellar around me vanished and I was standing on a starlit plain. A campfire burned in the middle of the vast and empty land, beneath the sparse shelter of a lonesome grove of trees. As I drew nearer to the beckoning flames, I heard a voice rising and falling. In the circle of firelight, a clan had gathered. The young hunters clutched their crudely chipped and dearly valued tools of flint, the young mothers held their babies to their furry breasts, the children snuggled close to their kin and rubbed their paws across drowsy eyes, but refused to sleep.

And the voice went on, with the gentle, hypnotic swell of the sea beneath words that were few and crude and unfamiliar to me. Hands knotted with arthritis gestured to add meaning to what the voice was trying to convey. I saw how the threadbare pelt running up the arms was frosted with the sign of age. The working mouth held few teeth, and those few were brown and broken. Was the speaker man or woman? The answer mattered less than knowing when this old one had last brought food or fuel to the clan’s fire.

There are other ways to buy your continued scrap of meat or mouthful of grubbed-up root than by hunting or harvesting the wilderness. Even in these early times, men found the need to nourish more than the animal belly.

A furiously signing paw shot up without warning against the night sky and closed around a single star. The pure light burned without trace of smoke or soot or ash for a moment in the old one’s cupped fingers, and all the clan drew nearer, warming themselves at a new brightness that not even the winter could take away.

“That’s how it was.” Mrs. Feidelstein spoke, and the vision shattered. “By campfires and hearthsides and even beside the big black iron stove, we kept the old tales alive. Then, all of a sudden some smart-mouth decides it’s stylish to laugh at what went before. Stories? Who needs them? Unsophisticated rubbish! It smacks of superstition! This is America; banish what’s not new enough! We have to pay attention to what is real, what is relevant! Tradition? A nice show-tune, but otherwise—mnyah. I blame central heating. So old folk are useless as old tales. Watching reruns of Wheel of Fortune, that’s relevant. Making faces and yelling at the screen and wiggling your fingers at it when the picture goes out, that’s real.”

“Look, Mrs. Feidelstein—”

“Sonia, please.”

“Okay, Sonia. I’m sorry for saying—for thinking what I did. I’m only now realizing how sorry. That thing with the Seventh Cavalry running over me, you reached into my mind and lifted the idea?”

“It’s not something I like to do a lot. Such a strain!”

“But why did you do it at all? Why are you helping Loki? What happened to the deli? Please, I have to know.”

Loki took hold of the nape of my neck and hoisted me up like a mama cat with an overweight kitten. “Knowledge for the sake of knowledge? You know her feelings on that subject, boy. ”

“Let him go.” There’s nothing fiercer looking than an angry grandma. Mrs. Feidelstein rose up from the floor like a thunder-head and thwacked Loki upside the head. “Cossack!”

Loki didn’t obey. He stood there leering at her, holding me in one hand and rubbing his head with the other, and said, “Do that again and your brother gets what I gave the barbarian. On living llesh the results are far more spectacular, if you don’t mind messes.”

Mrs. Feidelstein choked on a cry. “You wouldn’t threaten Ben like that if my Sam was here!”

“Both the Guardians in the same room with me? I think not. I wouldn’t like those odds at all. In spite of your past incompetence, I confess you are formidable opponents. However, your judgment in hiring assistants wants work.”

“Hey, blondie, if you mean me, up yours with gun and camera!” Speaking of judgment, I could have used some. Twisting in the wind at the end of Loki’s arm wasn’t the best place from which to launch an offensive.

I lucked out. My nerve only amused him. “Who’s talking about you, squirt? You’re sweep-up man after the elephants in the rankings of cosmic Happy Helpers.”

“I’d show you who’s sweeping up what if I had—”

“This?” My sword blinked into his free hand, its central crystal shaft flowing with the reflected colors from the well. “Oops,” said Loki, and pitched it into the abyss with dead accuracy. “Now you don’t even have your broom.” He dropped me. “When I spoke of assistants, I was referring to the soon-to-be-late Benjamin Kip-nis.”

I regret to say I didn’t manage to land on my feet. As she and Mom were helping me back up, Mrs. Feidelstein said, “I came back from vacation early. We were down in Miami Beach and Sam wanted to finish up the pinochle tourney at the Fontainebleu Hotel, so he said gai gezinta he it—” She picked up my mental query and translated, “Go in good health. My health didn’t stay so good once I got back and found out what had happened.”

“We’d escaped,” Loki said with commendable brevity. “Fenris first. He did his part by provoking several fights among the heroes in the Back Room. That’s the thing about heroes—they adore bashing heads, even if it’s just each other’s. Ben tried to restore order. The rest of us slipped out, in the confusion, and vanquished all those petty sword-swingers. It was almost too easy.” He blew invisible filing-dust from his fingernails.

“When I came back to l;latbush, the deli was boarded up. Before I could go in and see what was what, those momzers came out and told me what they’d done.”

Loki looked too self-satisfied to be trusted. “And showed you some proof of it?” I asked.

“The worm has his suspicions, I see.” Loki shot me two daggers and one tactical nuclear warhead with his eyes. He uncurled his fingers and displayed a much-worn wallet. “Will two major credit cards and a New York City driver’s license do?” “Ben would never go anywhere without his wallet!” Mrs. Feidelstein cried. “What choice did I have, after seeing that? I had to do what they demanded.”

“And a wonderful help she has been.” Loki flipped the wallet shut and tucked it back into a pocket of invisibility. “For example, we could never have constructed this gateway without her expertise. It doesn’t lead to the Leeside—why bother, since that’s wide open these days? No, when we send our enemies off, it’s to that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.” A wrinkle of thought flexed itself between his brows momentarily. “Not until they find out what the fuck ‘bourn’ means, anyway. I find it adds a certain spice to the disposal, knowing that they’re alive to experience all the joys of my daughter Hel’s realm. The dead grow jaded so quickly, but put the living into the underworld and their reactions are so much more satisfying to the true artist.” He offered the crook of his arm to my mother. “Ladies first.” No, you don’t!

Loki looked down his long, pinched nose at me. “It’s not polite to be so pushy, Desmond. You’ll get your turn.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

I did!

Blinding flashes of rainbow light and billows of impenetrable smoke are hokey ways to make an entrance, but they’re sure-fire attention-getters. A spray of gold and silver sparks spurted up from the center of the blast, and Faustus stepped out of the asphyxiating clouds in full wizardly fig. Crackling worms of tame fire crawled all over his black gown and classic conical magician’s cap, outlining the supernatural sigils in sorcerous neon. The hunk of rock crystal atop his staff emitted thin beams of ruby light like an otherworldly laser. Behind him came two crook-backed, shambling figures, faces concealed deep in the cowls of their robes.

“Aa-oo-gah!” one groaned.

“Cheeble, cheeble, cheeble,” the other squeaked.

Good Lord, CODA was under attack by giant, mutant, killer hamsters, and one of them had brought along a Klaxon horn! Maybe if that had been the case, we’d have had a chance.

The wizard flung a fireball at Loki. It made a pathetic splorsh when it hit. The godlet scraped dribbly bits of failed spell from his eyes and signaled his minions. Yen-wang-yeh drew an exotically shaped sword. Siva’s full complement of arms unfolded like the tendrils of a vine, each bearing a different weapon. Loki blew a stream of frosted air into his waiting hand. The crystals melded into a blue-white electric guitar. He used it like a high-tech tennis racquet to lob a rapid series of blistering fireballs right back at Faustus.

The wizard deflected Loki’s volley with his staff, until the air of that dingy room was thick with pyrotechnic foul-balls. His hooded assistants split up to take on Loki’s partners, but their combat techniques were erratic, to be kind.

Aa-oo-gah went one-on-one with Siva well enough. A riffle of small pasteboard rectangles shot from his sleeves, confusing the Lord of the Dance. I saw one as it fluttered to the floor: the ace of hearts. While Siva wasted wild swings with all eight weapons on that little card-trick, Aa-oo-gah produced a thick, heavy, torpedoshaped item from his robe and swatted his multi-armed foe a staggering blow across the small of the back. Siva turned, no longer quite so detached and philosophical. I almost wished I knew Sanskrit, because some of his words sounded juicy enough to make their own gravy.

He got another clop, this one across the mouth. Siva tumbled, weapons scattering. “This the kind of language you use in front of respectable women?” Aa-oo-gah called him sternly to account. “You try that again, and I’ll give you so that you remember!” I actually saw Siva cringe under those words. It was awe-inspiring.

I wish I could’ve said the same for Cheeble. His twofold method of combat consisted of a) strategic withdrawal and b) running away like crazy. Yen-wang-yeh’s toothy sword kept trying to take a chunk out of his swiftly retreating opponent, but you can’t catch the wind. The two of them crisscrossed the room at a lively trot, often getting in the way of some of Loki’s finer line-drives at Faustus.

Recognition struck me about the same time a deflected fireball singed away half of Loki’s hair. “Those are the guys who’ve been following me!” I exclaimed. “Look! See those robes? Took me a while, ’cause it’s so dark in here, but I know them now. Ever since I saw the closed-up deli, they’ve been on my tail. I think I even saw one of them duck inside, through the steel shutter.”

“That’s impossible,” Mrs. Feidelstein stated decisively. “To break in a place with the kind of seals on it that I saw on the store, that would take—” She stopped. Her eyes opened wide. She clapped her hands to her face. “Oy!” she cried. “Sameleh, is that you?”

Aa-oo-gah stole a minute from whupping Siva’s ass to wave at her.

“But if that’s my Sam, then who—?” She stared at Cheeble—no easy task, as fast as he-was moving.

Loki heard. “She’s wise! Yen-wang-yeh, take him! Better late than never.” Before his “guest” could put the classic two and two together, he ducked out of his blaze-ball match with Faustus, snatched up my mother, pitched her over his shoulder, and ran for the well.

I got there first. Even without my sword, I wasn’t going to stand still for this.

“Get out of my way, short-stuff,” Loki snarled.

“Make me,” I countered.

A rush of dazzling brilliance like a slice of lightning slammed into my face. I clawed at the demonic afterimages drinking the sight from my eyes and felt the rim of the well press against my calves. A short, sharp punch to the center of my chest was all it took to send me over the brink.

From high, high above me I heard a scream. The air compacted in the shaft with the force of a distant explosion. Then a wind from the blackness caught me and whirled me away until there was nothing but silence and endless night.

15 BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

“Tim?”

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, John.”

“ ‘John’? Come on, man, give me a break.”

“All right, then: Faustus. I’ve been wandering for some time. May I sit down?”

I shrugged. “It’s a free afterlife.” I heard footsteps, gravel crunching, then the muted groan of someone with an older set of bones slowly lowering his body into—what? sitting? squatting?— I couldn’t tell. I couldn't see a thing.

I was sitting on the bare ground, right where the whirlwind had dumped me. I could feel cool stone under my hands, big chunks and tiny broken bits and even smaller particles like sand, but I couldn’t see them. The air felt damp on my face, like the breath of the winter sea. Then a hand found my cheek, and roughened fingertips made me pull away.

“I was only trying to see if that cut needed attention.”

First I blurted, “I’m bleeding?” I never heard it said that the dead need Band-Aids. Loki hadn’t been lying about us entering the underworld alive; surprise, surprise. Then a less encouraging revelation hit me. “You can see a cut on me?”

“Why, yes. Not a bad one, though. If you’ll just turn your head this way, I can—”

“I can’t.”

“What?”

“If you want me to turn my head any way, you’d better give me a push in the right direction. I can’t see you. I can’t see at all. When I first landed here, I thought it was just the place. I’ve been sitting tight, waiting for my eyes to get used to the dark, but I guess they’re as used to it as they’re gonna get, huh?”

Faustus’ strong hand grasped my chin and forced it up. His breath smelled of coffee, his unseen beard and moustache of pipe tobacco. I put my hands out instinctively and touched the thick silk weave of his robes, my fingertips picking out the rich, raised embroidery of the magical symbols.

“Sit still,” he directed tersely. “Let me have a good look at you.” I heard something hiss and felt a small flare of warmth near my face, but as for the source— “You don’t see the match either?” He sounded worried.

“A match?” I had to laugh. “What happened to setting your lingers on fire freestyle, like any normal sorcerer?”

He misunderstood, thinking I really felt like laughing from the heart, not just as a sop to throw my fears. “Only you could say ‘normal’ and ‘sorcerer’ in the same breath.” He chuckled; then he must have seen my face, because the laughter died abruptly. “You can see nothing?”

“The last thing I saw was this sheet of light behind Loki.” “Oh.” He let the conversation drop.

That was too sudden for me. I've learned that there are silences that mean more than twenty dictionaries’ worth of words. I groped for his arm and got hold of his wrist. I dug my fingers into his flesh and demanded, “What do you know about it?”

More silence. The accompanying darkness made it even harder to bear. I was alone in a world where scent and touch brought little news, and taste could not help tell me anything. In the vacuum, my thoughts turned inward, feared what they might find, and twisted round on themselves again. My mouth went sour and coppery. “I said, what do you know about it!” Hearing the strident, piteous whine of my own voice scared me even more.

“I know why a wizard’s hat and a dunce’s cap are shaped the same,” Faustus replied heavily. His touch withdrew. “This is all my fault.”

I could feel my face working its way into a grimace of disbelief, and yet I had to believe what I knew for the truth. “You blinded me.”

"Not on purpose!” Part of me was glad not to be able to see the tormented look that must have accompanied such anguished words. “Tim, I would never turn my powers against you. It was an accident. I wasn’t—When I saw Loki seize Lillian, I wasn't sane. There are some spells revealed by the study of sorcery that come with the caution never to use them. They cost the spellcaster too dearly, and those adepts whose studies take them that far have grown wise enough to take all warnings seriously.”

“You didn’t,” I stated.

“I told you, I was mad. They say all lovers are, a little.”

I winced. Bad enough, his speaking my mother’s name with so much intimate tenderness, but using that word—lovers—! Oh, I knew. I’m not stupid, and I didn’t used to be blind, but you know how it is: If you close your eyes, the bad thing’s not really there. If you’re real good at playing pretend, it doesn’t have to hurt.

“So not guilty by reason of insanity.” I couldn’t help sounding bitter. “Make me feel better. Tell me that your mega-spell worked and Loki’s just a little pile of ashes for Mrs. Feidelstein to sweep into the trash can.”

Again the silence.

I broke it before it could close in on me again. “Didn’t work?” “I don’t know why, but it didn’t. I was watching you, you know. That was how I knew when I must come and try to save you. ”

“Nice try.”

“I did my best. It was insufficient.” I could picture him sitting up straighter beside me. “Perhaps I should have moved faster, not waited so long, but I never saw what seemed the perfect time to strike. From the time Lillian left home, I followed her—your travels in my crystal ball. Not all the time, to be sure—”

“Imagine my relief. Here’s a word of advice, Faustus: Next time you’re spying on me, change the channel as soon as you see me go into the men’s room. Deal?”

It could have been my imagination, but the climate cooled a few degrees as he replied, “I have some discretion. No one has had reason to complain of my manners.”

“Glory be, another miracle!” My laughter rang hollow. “All those ages you spent holed up in the Leeside, cowering inside that quaint ’n’ picturesque Old World-y cottage of yours, I bet you didn’t get many chances to trot out the old Emily Post etiquette guides.” I turned my sightless eyes in the direction I had last heard his voice. “Maybe you should go back there. I think you might have left the gas on and the water running.”

For a time, all I heard was a faraway wind blowing over open land. Then Faustus said, “So this is what it took to make you speak your mind.” A pause, and then: “How badly do you hate me?”

Without thinking, I responded, “I didn’t say that!” It was stupid. Some things you don’t have to say; they come through loud and clear on their own. Faustus hadn’t been alive this long without finding that out time after time.

“All right,” he said calmly. “We’ll leave it as you say: You don’t hate me. Maybe some part of you recalls that we were allies, once. You just don’t want me around, particularly not anywhere even vaguely near Lil—your mother. Judging from our present situation, you might get your wish, although you know what they say.”

“Sure. Don’t wish for your heart’s desire, you just might get it. Big risk.”

“Bigger than you know.” Faustus was dead serious.

“Oh yeah, right, like I’m going to be sorry if I wish for my eyesight back and I get it!” I screamed so loud that my neck muscles grew taut. “Like if I wished T’ing were safe, or I was out of here, or you were long gone, or—or my dad was still here so Mom wouldn’t be making an ass of herself over someone even Hell doesn’t want!”

There were no echoes. The words only seemed to repeat themselves endlessly in my ears once it was too late to call them back again.

“Ah, yes,” said Faustus. Stone ground over stone as the gravel shifted under his movement. I next heard his voice from higher up. “That negligent contract holder of mine. Punctuality is not a demonic virtue. I confess, I am surprised. His original intent was to let me live on, virtually immortal, until I should grow thoroughly jaded with the round of mortal life. I was supposed to be the one to hunt him down, begging him to take my weary soul. There were times when I almost ... but always, always there was something new to catch my eye and keep me faithful to this world.”

I heard him pacing back and forth near me, the gravel going chok-chok-chok under his feet. “For a while I imagined that the demon was toying with me, that he might reappear at any time. I did not want to die, or to lose my soul—not yet—and since his initial scheme to bore me into surrendering both life and soul had failed, I feared he might change the rules of the game. That was why I fled into the Leeside. Oh, I made a few excursions into the Outside world—easy for any mortal to do, knowing how—but I never seemed to get any farther than the Back Room at Feidel-stein's. We had many interesting talks, Mr. Feidelstein and I.”

“Like I care,” I said.

“Maybe you should,” said a new voice, and a hand fell on my head. More rustling of heavy cloth sounded in my ears, and a smell so out-of-place I had to sniff-sniff-sniff and ask, “That’s— that’s not—Is that a salami I smell?”

Someone took my hand and let it close around an object thick as a young birch tree trunk, slick with succulent grease, and giving off an aroma that went right to my stomach and made it growl like a spring-awakened grizzly. This wasn’t just one of your modest two- or three-pounders; this was a salami on the heroic scale, a kosher sausage fit for the mighty men of eld, a salami big enough to sustain an entire mythos of its own.

This was one heck of a hunk of meat.

“Yes,” said Mr. Feidelstein as I ran my hands over the titanic sausage’s full dimensions. “It is the very same.”

“Same as what?” I asked.

“What he gave Siva a clop in the head with,” Ben Kipnis’ voice broke in. “What else?”

“You belted the Lord of Destruction with a freakin’ salamiT' “It is a very big freaking salami,” Mr. Feidelstein returned. I could tell just by his voice that he said that with a straight face. “It worked, nul”

“If it worked so well, what are you and Ben doing here? The last time I saw you”—the last time I saw anything, damn it!—“you were with Faustus. And before that, you were following me. How come? What gives?”

I heard a mixture of sighs, mutterings, and the susurrus of three sumptuous robes brushing back and forth over the stones and against each other. Then came an exhalation of breath and a heartfelt, “Ow!” accompanied by popping sounds and the complaint, “My knees! Sam, you know I got bad knees. How come I gotta be the one to get down? Can’t the kid get up? He’s not crippled. I—”

“Ben, this whole mess is lying on your doorstep like a dead mackerel.” Mr. Feidelstein was unyielding. “The least you can do is tell him.”

I felt Ben’s groan and another of those little gusts near my ear. “Okay, okay, all right already! Kid, I’ll tell you the whole megillah, but pay attention, okay?”

“By process of elimination, I’m all ears.” I was getting fed up with the way these three old farts knew something I didn’t and were being so close-mouthed about spreading it around.

“A smart kid, huh? All right; My sister Sonia is a worrywart. If you accept that, we’re halfway home. She raised me, okay? That’s something a woman never gets over, mothering a kid, even if she’s not his mother. After that, just try making a clean break of it, even for five minutes. She’s right there, on top of you, watching, looking both ways at street crossings, wiping your nose for—”

“Ben ...” Mr. Feidelstein didn’t sound pleased.

“Get off my back, Sam! I’m telling him. What’s the big rush? We’re not going anywhere.”

A minor scuffle ensued, in the course of which I heard Ben squawk and felt a trifling spray of gravel kicked up in my face. Then came the repeat noise of a body settling itself beside me—a different body—and Mr. Feidelstein took up the story.

“Like Ben says, my Sonia was ... a little overprotective. She got him the job at the deli. She said it was so we could take our first vacation in—don’t ask. Really it was so that she could keep tabs on her baby brother. Right, Ben?”

“Don’t ask me,” came the distant grumble. “Who am I?”

Mr. Feidelstein clicked his tongue over Ben’s sulkiness. I bet he was shaking his head too. “The vacation was wonderful.”

“It must’ve been,” I agreed. “Ben ran the deli for—what?— over a year? Most people take two weeks off. ”

“Tim, when you have been working for one year, you get two weeks off. If you work straight through for two years, no one hollers if you take a month in the country. Considering how long Sonia and I were on duty, guarding the Balance, minding the health of the Mythological Continuum, making sure the clientele in the Back Room got their corned beef just the way they liked it—”

“You were entitled to a year off,”I concluded for him.

“At least. But all good things must end. Miami is a nice town, but I confess, I found it harder and harder to keep from thinking about the business. Sonia, God bless her, she wanted me to rest, play a little cards, take my mind off. But behind the cool, steely-eyed exterior of the best pinochle player in this or any other universe was plain Sam Feidelstein who wanted to know how things were going back on Flatbush Avenue.”

“They were going fine!” Ben yelled. “And if you would’ve trusted me, they'd still be fine!” He subsided into incoherent muttering, with the occasional “. . . dead mackerel on my doorstep; ha\" thrown in.

“Sonia was heading back home before me,” Sam said. “She insisted that I stay on, so I did it to please her, but I couldn’t sit still without knowing that everything was okay with the shop. A man doesn’t want his wife to come back from a nice vacation and get stuck cleaning up a ganzeh hegdish.”

Ben came out of his pout long enough to translate: “A big mess. So tell the kid what you did, Einstein!”

“I told you to come down to Miami and tell me how things were going, that’s all. What’s the big deal?”

“Ah, but how he tells me!” Ben’s voice was suddenly loud in the ear Mr. Feidelstein wasn’t using. “Could he send a telegram? Could he pick up a telephone? Could he maybe fax me? Noooooo! He has to use magic! Who’d you think you were impressing, Sam? This is me, your brother-in-law Ben, remember? You don’t have to prove to me that you’re a big-shmeer Guardian of the Balance and Mr. Hot Shot of the Mythological Continuum. A nice phone call would’ve done it. You could’ve even reversed the charges. Instead, there I am, working my tail off behind the counter in his shop, running the slicer so Siegfried—that German putz—should have the pastrami lean enough, he should choke on it, when all of a sudden—POW!”

I cupped my hand over a badly ringing ear and echoed, “’Pow’?”

“The pastrami blows up. I could’ve cut off a finger from it, but does he care? Not so long as he can appear to me in a blazing mystic vision out of the heart of the brisket and say”—he dropped his voice into a sepulchral register—“ ‘Benjamin, commmmmme to me!’ ”

Mr. Feidelstein made a loud sound of bottomless exasperation. “You should be writing fantasy books, Ben. Better that than leave you loose in the real world where a smart person thinks to leave a note saying where he’s gone and remembers to take his wallet with him!”

“A note for who? The mice? You never told me Sonia was coming back. You just said, ‘Benjamin, commmmmme to—’” “You forgot your wallet?” I interrupted.

“What, it’s like I left home without American Express travelers’ checks or something? As soon as I got this person-to-pastrami call from Sam, I figure something big is wrong. Who knows how long I’ll be gone? So I tell the boys in the Back Room they should go take a little time off, I fix them some sandwiches so they shouldn’t gripe too much, I lock up the cash, I put away the merchandise so it shouldn’t spoil, and I take the shortcut.” “What shortcut?”

“You think maybe you’re the only one the Fair Folk let on the web paths? Especially one they use as much as the Florida route.” Ben snorted. “If you knew how many elves hit Fort Lauderdale during Spring Break, you’d drop dead. I don’t need money for plane fare, I don’t need it for a rent-a-car, and I know once I meet up with Sam, Mr. Big Cheese Balance Guardian would cut my hand off before he’d let me pick up the restaurant check. So who needs a wallet?”

“Loki did,” I said. “To prove to your sister he had you.” “You’re telling me?” Ben gave a heartfelt sigh. “Well, he’s got us all, now. When Sam and I came back from Miami and couldn’t find Sonia, we knew something was wrong. I was the one who suggested we try having you help us.”

“Oh wow, thanks so much. You only gave me the paranoid fantasy of the century.”

Sarcasm was to Ben as water was to a duck’s back. “Don’t mention it. We didn’t want to look pushy, so we followed you around and waited. It was the least we could do. You think I forgot what you did for me when we had that—uh—little mishap with the Leeside monsters?”

“If that was a little mishap, what’s this? A momentary unpleasantness?”

“Kid, look, I know you're bitter. You’re so bitter, I want to spit you out and dump a truck load of sugar on you, okay? Gee, thank God we didn’t come right up and ask you for help! We would’ve got our heads bitten off or something.”

“I know I’ve been saying this an awful lot,” I told him, “but what the hell, one mo’ time: Why me?”

“Why not?” Ben shrugged.

Mr. Feidelstein had a little more to say on the question. “Because you are one of the few Outside humans in this disenchanted land who has accepted your heritage, and all the magics great and small that come with it. You have the Fey-sight, and the wand they gave you as their Grand and Puissant Champion was only a symbol for what was already in you. How the wand united with the sword, I don’t know—none of us knows everything. That was why, when the chance presented itself, Ben and I joined with Faustus to attack Loki and his gang. Through his crystal we could finally see where Sonia was, and through our powers we could save you all.”

“What’s this our powers, Sam?” Ben asked. “Who died and made me a Guardian?”

“Shh, I’m being polite, you shouldn’t feel left out.”

“Believe me, I could’ve stood to be left out of that rumpus. Did you get a load of the sword that crazy Chinese guy was chasing me with? I don’t need that kind of aggravation.”

Mr. Feidelstein ignored Ben’s bellyaching. To me, he said, “We hoped that by entering in disguise, in the wizard’s retinue, we could keep our true strength hidden until we were close enough to Loki to use it.”

“Didn’t work out, did it,” I stated. “Some strength.”

“None of us has the strength to accomplish everything alone.” It was the mildest of rebukes. “Even my Sonia, who has the gift to take images from the minds of others and make them real, she needs me to be the sword and shield that let her use her talent in peace. She is the dreamer, I am the fighter, Tim.”

“And a darned good hand with the Salami of Death you are, Mr. F,” I said.

“What’d I tell you?” Ben remarked. “A wise guy.”

“Well, excuse me for saying what I think, but the only fighting I saw him doing involved cold cuts.”

“Ha!” Ben leaped to his brother-in-law’s defense. “That’s all you know about it. This wizard here’s not the only one who knows how to play with fire. The same time Faustus launched his big one, Sam was aiming something similar at the same target.” The zeal in his voice cut off as a nasty realization came home to roost. “Of course, maybe it would’ve been better if they’d talked it over first. One spell hits another midway there, no advance planning, and you know what you get?”

“Pow?” I suggested.

“POW!” Ben amended. “And while the two of them were stunned by the backflash, Loki got his men to throw all of us in the pit.”

“Thank you, Ben,” Mr. Feidelstein said drily. “I’m sure Tim has every confidence in us now.”

“Who says Mrs. F is the only mind reader?” I commented, making it bite.

“There, Tim,” Faustus said. “What happened to you wasn’t my fault. I’d die before letting harm come to you. I’d give my own eyes to you, if I could. Can’t you see that?”

Some minor imp of cruelty took over my mind and made me say, “I don’t see much of anything anymore.”

None of us spoke for a long time, after that. I was growing more comfortable with the quiet. Just knowing I had companions made it easier to bear, even if I wasn’t all that crazy about their specific company. That thought touched off another in my mind.

“Hey,” I said. “We gonna sit here forever, waiting for the demons, or could we maybe get off our butts and try to find everyone else?”

“Everyone else?” Mr. Feidelstein repeated.

“You know, everyone. Like Mom and Teleri and Master Runyon and the others that Loki ditched down here before us.” This time I could feel the silence.

“You want to tell him?” Ben asked.

“I’ll do it,” Mr. Feidelstein replied.

I did my best not to scream when I demanded, “Tell me what?” “Here, Tim.” Mr. Feidelstein took my hands and set them around a familiar object. My fingers recognized the shape of my sword’s hilt before my mind grasped the idea. “We were lucky to have it fall into the same underworld as we did.”

“Luckier we found it for you,” Ben added.

“What do you mean, same underworld?”

“Later. First you must know, you hold the last hope of magic we four possess down here. Oh, I admit I feel a trace of my old powers, but nothing to brag about.” Mr. Feidelstein sounded really depressed.

I let my fingers glide carefully over the surface of my sword. They tingled when they touched the crystal spine.

“Do you feel it, Tim?” Mr. Feidelstein asked. “The enchantment it holds is more potent here. Sword and wand are both magics from the hidden realm of Faerie. They thrive best beneath the surface of the mundane world. My powers belonged to the Outside. Here they are gone, while yours are stronger than ever.” “How strong?” I asked.

“Strong enough that you can command the old spells. Your wishes can be real. Is that strength enough?”

Was it? Was it ever!

The words were out of my mouth before I could listen to another shred of Mr. Feidelstein’s advice.

When the sight came back to my eyes I saw that Faustus was, as I’d wished, the hell out of there.

16 FAMILY TREE

“Nice going, kid,” said Ben Kipnis. “Now you've got one left.”

I was still too drunk with the heady sensation of sweet, sweet     sight returned to do more than vaguely ask, “One what?”

“ ‘One what?’ ” the deli man mimicked, wearing a crooked smile. “Get a load of him, Sam! ‘One what’ he asks!”

“Maybe he asks because he doesn't know.” Mr. Feidelstein wasn’t smiling. “One wish, Tim.”

“Huh?”

“Kids!” Ben threw his hands in the air. “I’ve seen concrete that wasn’t this thick.”

“I thought you knew.” Mr. Feidelstein spoke kindly to me as he laid one hand on my shoulder. “If you didn’t, then at least you won’t have to live knowing you spent two of your three wishes in haste, and wasted one of those on senseless evil.”

“Evil? Me? What are you talking about?” I held up my sword so that the thin, misty light of the place twinkled down the crystal spine and came away striped with glory. “I’m one of the good guys, remember?”

“A regular hero,” Ben sneered. Coming from him, knowing the heroes of the ages up close and personal like he did, it was the    i lowest of insults.

“Look,” I objected. “When you gave me my sword back, you said that down here it had the power to make my wishes real.” “That’s right,” said Mr. Feidelstein. “But we never expected you to use them so fast, at least not until we’d had the chance to remind you that with wishes, it’s always only three.”

“Come on, that’s for fairy tales,” I scoffed.

“So now Mr. Go-to-school-with-minotaurs is turning into a realist!” When it came to scoffing, Ben Kipnis left the rest of us sucking dust.

“Three,” Mr. Feidelstein reiterated. “More power granted to any being, Fey or mortal, would pull down the Balance and tear (he fabric of the Continuum. Three wishes have always been enough before.”

“Nice wishes,” Ben chimed in. “And a nice spectacle you made of yourself, swinging that thing around blind, nearly chopping off my head, and yelling at poor lohannes, ‘If you really want to give me your eyes, I wish you’d do it and get the hell out of my sight!’ ”

My mouth fell open. “You don’t mean—? But that wasn’t a wish!”

“No,” Ben agreed. “It was two wishes. Eyes count for one, getting the hell out of your sight—once you got your sight back, of course—counts for—”

“Rut I didn’t mean it!”

“So who says magic gives a hang about sincerity? It just does what it’s got to do. What with all the enchanted princesses it’s got to put to sleep and wake up, and all the frogs it’s got to turn into princes, and all the rabbits it’s got to yank outa hats, and the Federal budget to balance, magic’s supposed to know when there’s a yutz at the helm, too?”

I was devastated. The sword, once a welcome weight in my hand, now fell to my side. I saw a lonesome yew tree a short distance off with an outcropping of rock beneath its drooping blue-green branches. I needed to sit down, but I’d had enough of doing that on the bare earth. Now that I had my vision back, I could see just how grim and desolate the terrain around us was. I trudged towards the tree, yearning for whatever comfort I could take from its sheltering branches. Ben and Mr. Feidelstein came after.

There was room on the rock for us all, so we sat there like a row of buzzards on a log. Every time I tried to speak, my throat closed up on me. Each breath I took was hoarse and rasping as I struggled to keep-down the tears. What have I done? kept running through my mind. What have I done? Finally I managed to pull myself together long enough to blurt out, “If we find him, can I use the third wish to heal him?”

“You could,” Mr. Feidelstein answered slowly.

“Sam, what’re you telling the kid?” Ben’s agitation transformed his normally lizardlike face. Now he looked like a gecko that had been dropped on a griddle. “You want to spend eternity down here? This isn’t even one of the classier underworlds! If we gotta be trapped forever, I say we at least wait until we hit the Elysian fields.”

I turned to Mr. Feidelstein. “What does he mean?”

The old man sighed. “You’ve seen much of the Continuum, child. You have walked with the heroes of many different peoples, even some whose folk have long since gone into the shades of forgetfulness. Knowing the multiplicity of human dreams and lives above the earth, can you honestly believe that there is only one haven for all after dreams and lives alike enter the long sleep?”

“There’s tons of underworlds, kid,” Ben explained. “Why not? There’s room. Those shifting colors you saw down the well-shaft? They were the changing auras of each one of them passing by.” “I thought there was just one Hell.” I scratched my head and scanned the mist-hung scenery. “Are you sure?"

“Kid, we could sit here swapping eschatologies until the cows come home—which is really a pretty good possibility if we’re where I think we are—but you want that or you want out?” Ben had this wonderful gift for cutting neatly to the bone, no bad quality in a successful deli man.

Mr. Feidelstein was more inclined to elaborate. “Men have always feared what begins where life ends. Somehow, knowing what awaits them is a source of comfort, even if the afterworld they expect is a place of harsh judgment as well as final serenity. That certainty is not taken from them after death; that would be cruel.”

“But who could take—?”

“Hey, can the philosophy, okay?” Ben pulled his cowled robe off over his head. “Whew! A person could sweat to death in one of those things. Hope I never get stuck being a Guardian. Or else they better change the official uniform.”

I recalled the different colors I had seen shining out of the well-shaft as Loki dropped each of my companions in. “They could be anywhere,” I muttered. “And Faustus—”

“The hell out of your sight,” Ben reminded me unnecessarily. “Which kind of leaves it wide open.” He sniffed the air. “Whaddaya say, Sam? I think it’s Annwn, but what do I know? You’re the pro. Got any ideas?”

“If it is Annwn,” Mr. Feidelstein said, “we should find the sea. Then, if we can get a ship and reach the Isles, we stand a chance of getting reliable directions.”

They were talking like two old geezers in search of a men’s room dithering over the map of a mega-mall. Directions? The only reason you ask directions is when you want to get someplace, and the only place you’d want to get from Hell is out. That couldn’t be, and I said so.

“Shows what you know,” Ben sniffed.

“Facilis descensus Averni,” Mr. Feidelstein provided.

“What he said, kid. Going to Hell is easy; just check out how the stock market’s doing if you don’t buy that. Used to be, people kept barging into the underworld so much, the authorities thought about putting up toll gates. And where there’s a way in—” “There’s a way out!” I concluded joyfully.

“Sam, give the kid a shiny new dime. You got it. Only thing is, not every underworld’s as easy to escape as some. The trick is to find our way to one that is, uh, escapee-friendly.”

“Can we do that?” I asked. “Just go from one underworld to the other? No one will try to stop us?”

Ben looked ill at ease and said nothing, only giving Mr. Feidelstein an appealing look. The older man was equal to the unspoken plea. “If any do try to stop us, we will do w'hat must be done, even if that means a fight. Ben and I are no longer such valuable allies as we might have been once, but we’ll do our best not to let you down.” He thumped the gargantuan salami against the palm of his hand meaningfully. “As for passing from one underworld to the next, the passage itself is not the hard part. On the surface world, as one people gave way before the coming of a newer folk, so too their beliefs gave ground little by little. There were times when the two cultures overlapped and blended. As above, so below. The underworlds reflect those moments in the borderlands that lie between each territory.”

“The hard part's knowing which path to take while you’re in the borderlands,” Ben said. “Trust me, you do not want to hang a wrong turn and wind up in kur-nu-gi-a. When those Sumerians called their underworld the land of no return, they weren’t talking deposit bottles. But what the hey! We’ll cross that bridge over the flaming gulf of doom when we come to it.” He stood. “Ready?” “For anything,” I said.

Mr. Feidelstein was kind enough to hold my sword while Ben held my head. “Done?”

I wiped my streaming eyes. “I—I think so.” The smell of my own vomit on the sweet, green grass made me shudder.

Ben mistook it for another attack coming on. He drew back out of harm’s way automatically and exclaimed, “Boy, when you get seasick, you do it up brown. I mean green.”

I sat down, waiting for the cold sweat on my forehead to dry. “Some Isles of the Blest,” I remarked bitterly.

“It’s the Isles that’re blest, not the sea you have to cross to reach them. So it’s not Central Park lake. Very few of the dead who sail here get seasick.” Ben helped me stand. “And before you start crabbing again, let me remind you that this is the one spot in all Annwn where we’re likely to find someone to put us on the right path out of all the underworlds.”

We set out as soon as I was feeling better. I couldn’t deny that the Isles of the Blest was a superior place to be, even if the usual entrance requirement was death. However, I’d seen enough of the other parts of Annwn to decide that the whole setup wasn’t for me. Only the creme de la creme of corpses—the wise, the good, the truly heroic—made it to the Isles; the ordinary schmoes wound up in a dim, dingy land that looked a lot like earth, only with all the surprises plucked out and all the mediocrity amped up to the max. You know, eternal November in Cleveland. If I wasn’t good enough to make it to the Isles, I wasn’t risking winding up there.

The Isles, though . . . man! My senses were ravished by the colors, the smells, the sounds. Heck, I could even taste the sweetness of a thousand flowers on the air. Sometimes we walked through meadows, sometimes through forests where I caught sight of deer, white and red and gold, slipping between the silvery tree trunks like ghosts. The birdsong pierced my ears and went right to my heart with its beauty.

Where the trees ended, we came out in a golden field full of people. This wasn’t as wild as the meadows, but a place of neatly clipped grass prettily sprinkled with dew. A crowd had gathered at the far end, clustering around a modest stand of ash trees. They were dressed in the most sumptuous clothes—robes, tunics, breeches, and cloaks all seemingly woven from star-spun thread and dipped in dye-vats of molten jewels. I checked out my grubby jeans and T-shirt and looked around for a hole to crawl into.

Before I could fold up and die from apparel envy, a tall, white-robed figure separated Ijimself from the throng and came rushing across the grass towards us with open arms.

“Oh, praise Pryderi you’ve come!” He tried to clasp both my hands, only pulling back at the last instant before slicing his own open on my unsheathed blade. “Hum. Treacherous thing, that. Still, no harm done. You will want to avoid a nasty accident with it in future, I’m sure. I’ve a nice bit of a scabbard lying around the place I could let you have at cost, if you’re interested.”

I’d heard the British called a nation of shopkeepers, but I had no idea it went that far back in history and that far on beyond the grave.

“I think, sir, you may have mistaken us for someone else,” Mr. Feidelstein said diplomatically.

Our one-man welcoming committee pulled a lock of snowy hair out of his face and stroked an equally silvered beard. “Hum. Not sure what you mean. This is the Great Hunter, isn’t it?” He pointed to me. “And you two are his weapons’ bearers.” He scoped out Mr. Feidelstein and Ben at close quarters, then added, "Where are you hiding them? Can’t dislodge the monster from its perch perilous if you haven’t brought a halfway decent supply of arrows. I mean, you can’t intend to go shinnying up the tree with that sword between your teeth, eh? For one thing, it’s too big—or your mouth’s too small, your choice—and for another, the beast would knock you down with one slash of its fearsome paw before you got near enough to use a blade. Nice blade, though. I rather like the effect of the crystal in it. Mystic, or just for show?” Without waiting for my answer, he took the salami away from Mr. Feidelstein and shook it. “No arrows in there,” he remarked sadly.

“Not unless the government meat inspectors are really sleeping on the job,” Ben said, snatching it back.

“Oh dear.” The white-robed man was very disappointed. “Now we’ll have to go back and wait some more. You’d think the Great Hunter would take a job-summons seriously. The messenger we sent after him when we first discovered the monster came back to tell us that the Great Hunter said he’d be along directly, but you know what that means to him. I thought we ought to sign up a truebom Briton as Great Hunter, not one of those over-the-water chaps. We’re all brothers under the tartan, but still—! They don’t even try to approach punctuality as anything but a joke, these Irish. Hum! Not as if we’re always breaking down his door-curtain with monsters to be overthrown. And when he does show up, victory assured to his mighty arm, any normal Great Hunter would at least try to put on a cheery countenance for the public. It’s not as if he can lose the battle, or any of us can be killed on a permanent basis if the affray gets out of hand. Still, people like to see a hero smile as he fares forth, carnage ho. Gives the bards a nice humanizing note to slip into the story after. You know: ‘Bran the mighty strode he forth, smiling at Death.’ What do we get instead? ‘Lo, the Great Hunter came he unto battle, moping like a cat with a hairball.’ ”

“Are you a bard, sir?” Mr. Feidelstein got the question in quick as a greased weasel.

“I?” Much self-abnegating laughter and waving of the hands. "No, no, no. Dear me, all this blather about some people’s lack of manners and I forget my own. So pleased to meet you all, even if you aren’t the Great Hunter. I am Turmeric the Druid.”

Manners be damned, I had to ask. “Turmeric?”

He reddened. “My mother was not a well woman, and she gave me to understand—repeatedly—that it had been a difficult birth. She was also chieftainess in her own right, so the name, hum, stuck.”

I patted him on the back. It was impossible not to feel sympathy for someone who looked so much like Santa Claus and had gone through life with a name that was its own portable Hell. “I’m not the guy you sent for, but I do have a sword and some experience with monsters. I could take a look at it for you, see if there’s anything I can do.”

“Oh, would you?” He was so grateful, it was touching.

“No problem.”

As we crossed the field behind a much-relieved Turmeric, Mr. Feidelstein tapped me on the arm and whispered, “Be careful, Tim. You heard what the Druid said. The monster can’t kill any of the people of the Isles, including this Great Hunter. They seem to die, but return to life soon after. That won’t work for you.”

“If they can’t really be killed, why are they so upset about this monster in the first place? They could just leave it alone, and if it kills one of them, so what?”

“There you have it. The monster is mere entertainment for them. They can hunt or quest or stage battles to the death without lasting consequences. Any one of them could face the beast, but it’s more diverting to pretend they need a hero to rescue them.” “Oh. Well, I just said I’d have a look at it. I’m not getting near the critter. ”

We reached the ash trees and Turmeric shouldered a path for us through the crowd. The folk of the Isles had ringed the tallest tree in the grove and were craning their heads back, peering up into the branches. Something was definitely up there. I could hear the branches creaking and see handfuls of leaves shaken loose. The growling chilled my blood.

Turmeric took charge, cupping his hands to his mouth, clearing his throat, and shouting, “Hum. Halloo the tree! It’s no good your continuing to skulk up there. Our champion has arrived. Your end is in sight. Prepare to meet your doom. Don’t make him do anything he’ll be sorry for. Bad enough he’s got to slay you. Are you coming down or is he coming up there after you?”

The branches shook some more, and then a horrid, shrill cackling rang out from the crown of the ash tree. “Coming up after me? Why, you big windbag, Timmy couldn’t even make it to the top of the jungle gym!” A veritable deluge of leaves pelted the upturned faces of the crowd, and the monster jumped nimbly to the ground.

“Mom?”

“Hello, darling.” She brushed a few additional leaves from her hair before smothering me in a hug.

“The sword! The sword! Mom, for gosh sakes, mind the sword!” I wriggled, trying to keep her from cutting herself on my blade, although Turmeric looked as if he wouldn’t have minded that turn of events.

I guess when you’ve gone to the trouble of treeing a monster and setting up the whole help-save-us scenario, with a special surprise guest-hero showing up to make it a quest to remember, but then the hero and the monster spoil the whole thing, you’d be pissed too.

“Hum,” the Druid said between tight lips. “Cozy. Obviously a conspiracy. You are all monsters. I venture to say that even that object is a monster.” He pointed a finger at the innocent salami. “In its dormant phase, I’ll be bound. Well, your monstrous days are over. Behold! Yonder comes the Great Hunter—not before time—to strive against you and slay you all. Back, there. Back, please.” He made chivying motions at the rest of the gorgeously clad throng. “Didn’t you hear me? The Great Hunter comes, and lor once he’s not moping too badly. Give him room, please, room. He’s a busy man and he’s got a deal of slaying to do. Hum! Halloo the Great Hunter. This way, if you don’t mind. Over here. Come along, smartly now. There’s more of them than we thought, but (hat shouldn’t bother a man of your—”

“Tim?” the Great Hunter said, barely above a whisper. Then: “Lillian?” He let his bow, his quiver, and his golden sword fall to the grass as my mother ran into his arms.

“Oh, bugger,” said Turmeric.

17 TILL DEATH DO US PART

“Here,” said Mr. Feidelstein, nudging me. “Let me borrow the sword a minute.”

I handed it over without looking at him, my eyes fixed on the woodland into which my parents had gone wandering. Funny, I thought it was only the idea of Mom and Faustus being—you know—together that could bother me. That's my father, I kept telling myself. It’s okay. It’s got to be okay. But thinking about what might be happening in there among the golden-leafed trees wasn’t okay at all; it was creepy.

He’s my father, but he’s dead.

“Here,” said Mr. Feidelstein again, and he pressed something round and greasy into my hand. I looked down at a thick hunk of salami.

“What are you doing?” My voice hadn’t sounded so shrill since it broke.

Mr. Feidelstein looked up at me over the wounded form of the great salami. “Lunch,” he said.

“Some mustard would hit the spot right now,” Ben added around a mouthful. He turned to the Druid Turmeric. “Have you any Gray Poupon?”

“Are you clean off your head or what?” Turmeric replied. His scorn for Ben’s attempt at wit didn’t stand in the way of his wolfing down a gobbet of sausage the size of a guinea pig.

I snapped out of my disturbing daydreams. “Hey! Hey, that's my sword you’re using on that salami!” I grabbed it back.

“We needed a knife,” Mr. Feidelstein explained, trying to soothe me. “We tried using Turmeric’s sickle, but it was dull.”

“It was not!” A Druid taking umbrage is a fearsome sight, God wot. “You just lacked the proper wrist action. I tried to show you how to do it, but you refused. Blame the equipment, never yourself! Hardly the best example to set before a growing boy. ” He wiped the last traces of grease from his lips with the hem of his sleeve. “Ah, delicious. Grand change from nectar, if I do say it myself. Now, you all just sit tight, and I’ll scare up the scabbard I promised you. At cost, mind! And if you’ll include a wee morsel more of that dormant monster’s corpse, I’ll see if I can’t throw in a matching belt to sweeten the pot.” He scuttled away without giving any of us a chance to say a thing, which was business as usual with Turmeric.

“I hope that old twaddler remembers to bring back those directions he promised us, too,” Ben remarked.

“He will, now that you’ve showed him that you have something he wants.” I indicated the much-edited salami. “You shouldn’t have cut off so much of it. Now what will you use to protect yourselves with as you go through the other underworlds?” “What’s that?” Ben jerked a thumb at my sword. “Coleslaw?” I shook my head vehemently. “I’m sorry, I can’t let you have this. It was a gift, a trust from the Fey. How could I be sure you’d get it back to me?”

My words took Mr. Feidelstein by surprise. “Tim, what are you saying? You can’t mean for us to go on ahead without you.” “You’ll be all right, even without your magic. Look, I’ll even use my last wish on this thing to guarantee you get out okay and kick Loki’s ass in the bargain. Just give me a sec to phrase it properly and—” .

“That’s not it, son.”

“What is it, then? Faustus? Hey, maybe you’ll find him; then you can bring him out, too. And the others. Listen, when you find Teleri—I’m trusting you to do this for me—tell her she’s a free agent. No more worrying about Timothy Alfred Desmond for a good long time.” I cocked my head, studying his woebegone expression. “Cheer up, huh? After all the stuff you’ve probably seen as a Guardian, you shouldn’t be afraid of a little grand tour of the underworld.”

“I didn’t mean Ben and I were afraid; I meant you can’t stay here. Can’t,” he repeated for emphasis.

“The hell I can’t!” I was on my feet in a fighter’s crouch. “Why should I leave? Who’ll stop me from staying? You don’t understand. This is the one place of all where my family can be together again, the way we were supposed to be before the Leeside stole my father! Where were you when that happened, Mr. Feidelstein? You’re the Guardian. Why didn’t you guard both sides of that border? All the years he was in there, fighting to defend the creatures you were supposed to be watching over, when Mom and I thought he’d just up and left us, where were you?"

The sags and wrinkles around Mr. Feidelstein’s bright blue eyes slowly filled with tears. “There will be a reckoning for all things,” he said hoarsely. “I know that my account is wanting in more ways than this.”

“Ah, hey, Sam, no!” Ben flung an arm around his brother-in-law and gave me the vinegar eye. “Look, you little brat, so okay, maybe Sam and Sonia couldn’t do it all. Maybe they’re still human. You wanna try forgiving them for that? Nah, don’t bother saying any more. I know what’s coming: It’s not faaaaay-yerrrrrrr! No, it’s not fair. Tough. Tell me how fair war is, or disease, or when a baby’s born without something as simple and basic as a working body because Mommy and Daddy dropped acid or drank till they puked or—Oh, the hell with it. Sam and Sonia couldn’t watch out for everyone in their charge all the time. You want omniscience, you’re standing in the wrong line.”

His words smarted, but I wasn’t going to back down. “I’m not leaving,” I said. “That’s final.”

“No, Tim.” My father’s voice was as warm and substantial as the hands he rested on my shoulders. I turned to look at him. We had last met in the Leeside, but when I came back into the Outside world, he was gone and I was left with only the haziest recollections of our time together and how he had slipped away. That, and a sword with a shining crystal heart.

Now, gazing into his eyes, the memories all came back to me. How he gave them to me, I don’t know; I do know that they weren’t the first of his gifts.

There had been a beast—not one of the mythic Creatures, but a true monster of human spawning, a child-stealer who didn’t stop at theft. I had fought with it for the life of the changeling Eleziane, and for all the other children it had destroyed before her. The Leeside transformed it, giving its body the same hideous shape as its soul. But talons and fangs are more than mere decoration; they can rend and tear human flesh until the life leaks away. The healing powers of the Fey are legendary, yet the finest tailor cannot make a whole garment out of tatters. The monster had torn me so much and so deeply that even Eleziane’s craft could not heal me. Her childish voice now echoed in my ears:

I can piece together the fabric, but I cannot weave the web for the piecing.

And another voice, dimly heard as my life ebbed:

I can give you your web, my lady.

I blinked hard, repeatedly. The pure light of the Isles had gone all starry, and when I touched my face it was wet.

My father pulled me to his chest, and not for the first time I heard him say, “What you truly give for love, you never can regret.” Mom came up behind me and stretched her arms around us both. I could smell the musty tang of fallen leaves in her hair as she laid her head against mine and said, “We must go.” If you can hear a heart break, I heard it then, in her voice.

"I won’t. ” I dug in for a fight, and even though I knew how Ben would scoff to hear it, I said, “It’s not fair!”

"It’s not,” Mom agreed. “But it is so. Please, Tim.”

“She knows where I was, all the lost years,” my father said. “I told her. That part is settled between us.”

I lifted my head to meet his eyes. “She knows? And she understands? It’s all right?”

“It’s all right, even if I don’t understand it,” Mom said. “Not fully. There’s a part of me that still hurts, even after my mind accepted what happened. That part will never really let me say that any of what he did was all right. Yet I do think I understand enough to set him free.”

“Set him—?”

“Of guilt,” she said.

“Of yearning too dearly for what might have been.” He joined his voice to hers.

Gently I made my parents release me. If she could let him go, could I become his jailor? Standing alone, looking at them, I realized that even with him dead and her wed again, to another, I would always hold them in heart and mind and spirit just as I saw ihcm now, crowned with the golden leaves and jeweled light of the Isles of the Blest.

I looked at the sword in my hand. The steel of it wasn’t me. It was his legacy, even as the flesh and blood and life he had given me was a gift gladly given. The crystal core, though—that was (ruly mine. Edged steel—lusterless, ugly—to protect a heart of beauty too easily destroyed . . . And steel would always take its sacrifice.

It wasn’t for me, the steel. Not yet. Maybe some day, when I found that something I was willing to protect and defend— strongly, willingly, without question, to the death even when my life was sweetest—maybe then I would feel the sad power of steel mold itself to my hand. I looked into the heart of the crystal. A wrinkled, red-faced, lustily yowling thing too repulsive for the most changeling-hungry elf to bother snatching looked back, and in its eyes I saw a rainbow of sweet light that outshone the crystal’s own splendor.

I lowered the sword. Some day . . . But this was now. “Kneel.” Ben’s whisper was in my ear. “Go on. I know later on you’ll think it looked pretty loony, but sometimes going for the big gesture helps us get through the rough parts. Why do you think people watch opera?”

So I knelt and did what I knew I must: I offered my father back the sword he had given me, hilt-first to his hand. It did look pretty loony—I was trying to re-create a scene out of the Liz Taylor version of Ivanhoe or something—but Ben was right; it helped. I felt much better as I got up, and when my father took me back into his embrace, I knew that no day would pass but I would feel those arms around me—not as leash or tether or chain, but as a cloak made from the sun.

We parted, torn between knowing that this embrace must end and accepting that it would be the last. I couldn’t tell you which of us acted more awkward afterwards. Then Dad cleared his throat, studied the sword up close and said, “Wait a minute, Tim, you’ve given me more than what’s mine here. I can only claim the blade; the crystal’s yours.”

“Well, sure it is, but ...” I chewed a finger in puzzlement while Dad tilted the sword this way and that.

“Stuck?” he observed. Ben Kipnis decided it was his business, too. He gave the blade the once-over and opined, “Tighter than a size-twelve woman and a five-course lunch in a size-six girdle.” Mom slugged him.

“Hum. Halloo the Great Hunter’s son! Here I am, and when you see the treat I’ve got in store for that sword of yours, you’ll—you’ll—” For what was probably the first time in his afterlife, Turmeric ran out of words and steam at the same time. He had come rolling towards us over the sward, a gorgeously bejeweled scabbard and matching belt flapping from his hand, but when he saw my father in possession of the blade he said, “Beg your pardon, Great Hunter, but what’s all this, eh?”

“The sword’s not mine,” I told him. “The crystal wand inside it is.”

“Oh.” Turmeric’s lower lip stuck out. He looked at the belt and scabbard he’d brought—they were pretty spectacular—then at my father, who already owned a belt and scabbard easily the equal of the Druid’s proposed merchandise. “Deal’s off, then, is it? Hum. I’m not one to complain, but I do think that if you had this in mind from the start, you might have spared me the dash to my pavilion to fetch back this trumpery gewgaw. Not as if my health’s at stake, but still, common courtesy, some people, hardly what I’d call manners, not the done—”

“Here!” Ben grabbed the salami from Sam’s hands and thrust it into Turmeric’s. “That’s all yours if you can get the crystal out of the steel.”

I tapped Ben to get his attention and said sotto voce, “Him? Aren’t you kind of assuming too much?”

“Kid, these are the Isles of the Blest,” Ben replied. “Home of I he brave, the good, and the wise. No one’s here without one of those qualities going for him, and my money says that Turmeric was nobody’s hero and nobody’s Mr. Nice Guy. If he had a kind bone in his body, he’d shut up already and let a person think.” “I heard that.” Turmeric’s lofty brow beetled. “However, in view of this—hum—token of your respect for my great and arcane knowledge”—he hefted the salami triumphantly—“I shall put that same hard-won mystic learning at your service.” He set the salami on the ground, placed one protective foot on it, stretched forth his arms, and intoned, “Bring unto me the blade.”

We brought unto him the blade, he spoke unto it a series of outlandish syllables that sounded like someone running a wolverine through a car wash, he made unto it various passes with a free hand which left little contrails of sparklies in the air, and the whole ihing blew up unto his face.

I was the first to hack my way through the thick mass of pink, peppermint-scented smoke and find Turmeric. “The subjunctive,” he groaned. “I know I should have invoked the subjunctive, but I always have such trouble with that mood. I thought surely no one was going to mind my substituting the preterite. It just goes to show you, one never knows. Does one?” He smiled at me, hope large in his eyes.

I had other concerns than rebuilding a dead man’s self-esteem. In the backflash of Turmeric’s imperfectly conjugated spell, the salami had acquired four legs, a tail, a toothy snout, the backfin of a dimetrodon, and the disposition of a buzz saw. This would have been a really good time to have a sword to hand.

“Where is it?” I gasped, glancing all around as the salami closed in on us, on vengeance bent. “Where’s the sword?”

“Oh, I like that!" Seated as he was, Turmeric planted his hands on his hips. “Not a word of comfort? Not an offer of a hand up? Hum! And here I thought you were the one who didn’t care if he ever saw the wretched blade again. Some people just can’t make their minds up, and it’s always been the ruin of ’em. Don’t I know it! There we were, the wickerman all ready, six weeks of hard labor to build, what with the osier crop having gone to Annwn in a handbasket—only we hadn’t the wherewithal to make any handbaskets, of course—and my blessed chief decides, out of a clear blue sky, that we should just haul the sacrificial victims overland and pop ’em all in the bog instead of burning them alive. Well! That put everyone’s schedule into a pretty pickle, wouldn’t you know, to say nothing of the feelings of the chosen offerings. There you are, all set to meet the demands of the gods by burning, only then you’ve got drowning in mucky water staring you in the face instead. And after some of the maidens had been working so hard on their gowns for the occasion, and you know what peat bogs do to hem-embroidery. It’s slish-slush, slish-slush over the mire until you reach the part of the bog deep enough to do the job in proper, and by that time you might as well never have set needle to cloth for all anyone can see of your handiwork. But no consideration! Some people just have no—”

Dad’s golden sword came slicing down out of the fog to lop off the animate salami’s head just as I was getting ready to enjoy watching it do its worst to the chatty Druid.

“Now,” I said. “If it’s not too much trouble—”

“Not at all, dear lad, not at all,” Turmeric assured me, still in a flutter from his narrow escape.

“—the sword?”

“Oh. Ah. Now, where—?” The pastel mist began to lift as he crawled around on all fours, patting the grass. “Ha! Yes, here we are, one sword, good as new. I’ll just slip it into this nice scabbard for you, shall I? Not a word of payment! My compliments.” He passed it to Dad, who girded it on beside his golden weapon. “And the wand?” I proceeded.

“The wha—? The wand, did you say?”

“Yes, the wand. The crystal wand that was embedded in the sword. That’s the part I get back. Where is the wand?”

“Ahee. Urg. Hum. The wand. Crystal, as it were. Was.” Turmeric’s white moustaches parted in a sickly smile. “Tricky thing, crystal.”

A wind heavy with apple blossom tore away the last of the pink fog. I stared in shock at the hundred shards of shattered crystal scattered like giant dew drops over the grass.

18 STYX AND STONES

"Yes, Tim dear, I know he was an imbecile, but he did give us directions.”

“Directions from an imbecile,” I pointed out. “Mom, think about it!”

Mom just kept on walking. “I know you’re angry, dear,” she said as her long, easy stride ate up the huge, barren distances. “Turmeric did make a mistake, and it was a nasty one, but there’s no reason to take for granted that a man’s sense of direction is off merely because his magic’s skewed.” Visibly satisfied with this pronouncement, she added, “It could happen to anyone.”

I gave up on trying to make Mom see reason. Instead, I dropped back a pace to walk beside Mr. Feidelstein and demand, “Did you hear what she called it? A ‘mistake’! The one lousy bit of enchantment we’ve got left to get us back to the surface world is now in a zillion pieces—give or take a billion—in this pouch right here, and she calls it a ‘mistake’!” I shook the aforementioned pouch to back up my point. The crystal pieces tinkled against each other like windowpane glass.

“Nonsense, Tim. It only sounds like a couple of hundred bits in (here.” Mr. Feidelstein didn’t turn out to be the partisan I’d hoped lor. “There is so little call for magic in the Isles of the Blest,” he said. “Poor Turmeric was out of practice, that’s all. He was embarrassed enough without us refusing his directions too. There is never any need to humiliate another human being.”

“You’re worried about the feelings of a dead Druid when it’s even odds we won’t see the sunlight again. Or if we do, when will that be? Time runs differently among the Fey than it does in the real world. When you visit Faerie, you could think it’s been a week and when you come out again—zam!—you’re a handful of dust and a footnote in some twenty-fifth century anthropology paper: Homo Nintendoensis. Does time work like that here, in the underworld?”

“Hmmm, I see your point. Oh dear, it’s been such a long time since I had to study the Temporal Equivalency tables, but if I can recall anything, it’s that the Isles of the Blest tend to run on Faerie Standard Time, whereas all other underworlds are fairly close to the surface way of reckoning the hours. Now I wonder, is there a socio-geographic-cultural caveat attached? Where we come out is just as important as when. I wouldn’t want us to find an underworld exit to the surface, only to have us emerge somewhere too far from our desired destination.”

“You mean like if we found a way out of Hades, we could come out in modem Greece?”

“An excellently apt example. And escape from the Isles of the Blest could leave us stranded in Great Britain or Ireland. The possibility might exist. I’ll try to remember. Tsk, tsk, tsk, so many years, so many years . . .’’He clasped his hands behind his back and fell into a scholarly pace while he mulled the problem.

“Kid!” Ben hailed me. “Hey, kid, come here.” I let Mr. Feidelstein march on after Mom and pulled over to the side of the dusty, nondescript path we all trod, so that Ben might catch up to me. “Whoa, thanks. I’m not used to all this exercise.” He was breathing fairly hard, although he wasn’t anywhere near as old or as overweight as his brother-in-law. I didn’t like the look of his complexion—too white, with an omninous undertint of yellow— and I said so. “What’s the big deal?” He showed me a devil-may-care grin.“If I drop dead down here, I’m already in the right place, yeah? Save Sam and Sonia the expense of burying me and save myself the time and aggravation of traveling to get where I’m going.”

“What if you’re supposed to go to heaven?” I asked.

Ben wheezed with amusement. “Get him! You think I’m good enough for heaven? A b’ruch auf dein kopf! ”

“What?”

“A blessing on your head, boychik. Take two, they’re small.” “But how come what I said’s so funny? Why don’t you think you’re good enough for heaven?”

A few more raspy chuckles shook Ben’s scrawny shoulders. “What good would thinking it do if I’m not? This way, I avoid disappointment. And believe me, this kind of letdown’s a lulu!” “Sure, when you’re doing it to yourself. You know what Mr. Feidelstein said about these underworlds: They’re what the people who created them expected to find after death. They made them for themselves. So how come they couldn’t expect something better?”

“Because most people are no damn good, they know it, and some of them are honest enough to admit it out loud.” Ben narrowed his eyes shrewdly. “Kid, the way you’ve been acting, do you think you’re worthy of heaven?”

“Maybe not,” I admitted.

“Ah-ha!”

“But the way I’m going to act can be different, if I make it so. Sorry, Ben, I can’t resign myself to accepting a place like this as all I’ll ever deserve. I can choose. I can change. I can try.” Ben’s hand closed on my shoulder, and for a moment I felt him rest his full weight on me as we walked. Then he recovered enough strength to stand on his own and say, “Pretty tough talk for a kid whose Organic Chem grade’s in the toilet.”

“Very funny.”

“Nah, come on, I’m just pulling your leg. You’ll do fine. You’ve got what it takes, kid. You’re a fighter.”

“A fighter with no sword. Super. And as for my wand—” I dangled the pouch and heard the chiming of the shards inside like the knell for my own funeral. “This is not the way I wanted to spend Christmas vacation.”

“Gimme.” Ben took the pouch and weighed it in his palm, cocking an ear to the musical sounds the broken bits of crystal made. “So all that talk about giving it your all, not letting the bastards grind you down, onward and upward, win one for the Clipper—it was just talk? I tell you Excelsiorl, you think packing material? You really believe you can change things or what?” “Sure, I believe. I—”

“Making the cut for heaven’s a big thing, but you say you’re gonna try it. How come you can’t do the same for something as little-bitty as making a go with this?” He tossed the bag in the air and caught it.

“Ben, the wand is broken “Wait.” He stuck his other hand in his pants’ pocket. “Take.” lie pressed something small, brown, lumpy, sweet-smelling, and covered with lint into my hand. “Go on, eat it.”

“What is it?” Suspicious? Me?

Ben rolled his eyes, exasperated. “It’s arsenic; arsenic with crisped rice like Nestle’s makes. Look, here I got a whole bar of it in case I want to poison all of Des Moines.” He showed me the Nestle’s Crunch bar he had pulled out of his pocket as well. “What I’m trying to tell you is, nibble the broken piece and the whole bar, they’ll taste the same. If you pick off the lint, I mean. It doesn’t stop being chocolate just because it’s broken, and maybe your wand doesn’t stop being able to do magic just because it’s cracked up like that. On the other hand, maybe it’s garbage. But how’re you gonna know until you try?”

I turned the morsel of candy back and forth between my fingers, thinking it over. “Chocolate Zen,” I said. “Not bad.” I took back the pouch and insisted Ben take back the lump of Crunch bar for meditation purposes. Tentatively I reached into the bag and pulled out one bit of shattered crystal.

A gentle glow kindled in my hand. Overjoyed, I brought the fragment nearer to my face. I saw my own eyes reflected along the largest intact facet of the shard, then watched entranced as they changed into other eyes; my father’s eyes. Tim? Son, is that you? Words caressed my mind.

“It’s me, Dad,” I murmured.

But how—?

“The wand—the pieces—I just took one out of the pouch and it did this.” An awful thought hit me. “I haven’t—this isn’t holding you captive somehow, is it?”

The answer came: No. I could breathe again. I don’t sense any evil to this enchantment. I am still in the Isles of the Blest. And I am with you, too.

“Always, Dad.”

Always. The vision dimmed, then died, but the shard held its glow. I pocketed it with care and reached into the pouch for another.

“Hold it right there, kid!” Ben Kipnis seized my wrist. “Don’t pull a potato-chip move on those pieces! You know, start with one, go through the whole damn bag and before you know it, they’re all gone? I got a feeling that Turmeric’s boo-boo busted up the wand into its component shots of power. If that’s how it works, some of those pieces won’t do squat—you fired ’em off already; they’re empties—and some are live ammo. You’re gonna want to exercise a little discretion with how you use them.”

“Good idea. ” I pulled the rawhide drawstrings tight and wound them around my hand. First, though, I slipped a tiny sliver out, and when I felt its warmth in my palm and knew it was one of the “live” ones, I whopped Ben hard on the back with it.

“Hey! What’s the big idea?” he bellowed. I showed him the spindle of crystal, which was just losing its full light.

“You didn’t look so good,” I said.

“So for that, you wallop me one?”

“I used that shard to make you better. You know, give your system a jolt.”

“I want to feel better, I go to the doctor; I want a jolt, I take a look at his bill.” He snatched the spent shard from my hand and shook it at me. “You dumb kid, after all I tell you, you throw away a usable bit of magic? For what, dear Lord, for what?”

With a secret smile, I noted his improved color, renewed vigor, and easier breathing. “I’m still a teenager, Ben. I don’t need a reason. Rock ’n’ roll!" I played a nifty solo on air-guitar with pelvis accompaniment fit to make Loki gag with envy.

“Touched,” Ben mumbled, but he pocketed the bit of crystal that had restored his health. Soon he was marching at a rate that left the rest of us doing double-time to keep up.

We left the gray fields of Annwn and entered a region of smudgy skies and undulating hills covered with patches of sour-looking grass. In the distance I heard the sound of rushing water. The dry earth reared up suddenly ahead of us. Ben was the first to clamber to the top. He looked down, clapped his hands to his head, and moaned, “Oh boy!”

Seconds later, the rest of us were uttering similar exclamations of awe and hopelessness. The hillock we had crested was all sheer cliff on the other side, with a straight downward plunge of about fifty feet. The precipice ended at a wide beach, but no one was going to build any time-share condominiums on that waterfront property. Not unless the dead need more real estate than a six-by-three-foot plot.

The shore was thick with souls. They were smoke-colored and wore human shapes that grew muzzy near the edges, like raveled clothes. Back and forth they drifted along the strand, wringing their hands above their heads and making a horrible noise. Even from fifty feet up I got to hear, loud and clear, authentic gibbering. The sound made me feel as if I had swallowed twelve pounds of eyebrows.

“Could this be . . . ?” Mr. Feidelstein rested a finger on his trimly moustached upper lip. “Ben, my eyes aren’t so good. You see that big black river? Tell me if there’s a boat on it.”

“You bet, Sam.” Ben shaded his eyes, although the truth was that since we’d hit the underworld, wattage was kept turned down low except for the summer-bright Isles. “Yeah, there it is. Looks like an ocean liner.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ben. An ocean liner on the river?” “Some river! And I see what I see.”

I sidled up to Mr. Feidelstein. “Where are we?”

“Unless I miss my guess, we are on the border of Hades.” “The Greek Hell?”

“Calling it that is inaccurate. There is very little punishment meted out here, and that mostly in Tartarus, for the very evil. For the very virtuous, the Elysian fields await. Most of the souls that come here, however, are ordinary, and all they have to look forward to is—well, nothing.”

I made a face. “An eternity of nothing sounds pretty hellish to me.”

Mr. Feidelstein wasn’t in the mood for philosophical discussions, especially not with a mere freshman. All business, he announced, “That river is the Styx. We must find our way down to the shore and there wait for Charon, the ferryman of Hades, to arrive. That is the only way to cross to the kingdom of Hades itself. ”

“Charon, eh?” Ben winked at me behind Mr. Feidelstein’s back. “He’s the guy steering that liner I saw?”

“Ben, how many times must I tell you? There is no ocean liner! Charon is the oarsman of a very small ferryboat, that’s all. Didn’t you study the classics?”

“The classics were never very big in Canarsie.” Ben gave the cliff another glance. “Neither was mountaineering. What are we gonna do?”

I reached for my pouch, which I had tied through one of the belt-loops of my jeans. Ben saw, and stopped me. “Ixnay, kid—to quote the classics. You start dipping in there to solve every little problem that comes down the pike and when you really need extra help, you’ll be riding on empty.”

I let the pouch drop back to my side. “So what do you suggest? Knot bedsheets together?”

“We use the crystal.”

“But you said—!”

“Right, wiseguy.” He dug into his pocket and yanked out the spike-shaped crystal I’d used on him before. “Like you ever listen to anything I say.”

It’s not easy cutting handholds and footholds into a fifty-foot high cliff when all you’ve got is one make-do piton and you're starting from the top down, but Ben was determined. The earth was crumbly and easy to cut with the crystal. In spite of that—or because of it—I didn’t like to think of the little niches Ben carved giving way the moment any weight was put on them. He performed his excavations upside-down while Mr. Feidelstein and I held onto his feet. Mom offered to help. With true chivalry, we shooed her away as if she were an eight-year-old.

“If you won’t let me help hold him, at least let him take a breather and you can hold me while I carve some!” she suggested.

“It is too dangerous for you. I would never forgive myself if anything happened to a lady under my protection,” Mr. Feidelstein said solemnly.

I don’t think she had to call him a pompous old walrus that loudly as she stormed away. Women!

We were lying flat on our stomachs, holding onto Ben’s ankles, when he yelled, “Pull me up!” We did, and after he wiped the sweat from his forehead he announced, “Well, so much for that idea.” “What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

Ben scraped a pinch of earth off the crystal chisel and rubbed it between his fingers. “Feels like talcum powder. Maybe it is. The road to Hades is paved with cosmetics. You wanna find out the hard way if you can hang onto one of those weensy ledges and chop out maybe ninety more? Upside-down? I don’t.”

“Okay, there’s still one way we can get down.” I slapped the pouch. “And don’t try stopping me this time!”

“Tim,” said Mom. “Stop.”

“Not now, Mom,” I said. She was behind me somewhere, but I couldn’t be bothered to look at her. The knots I’d used to secure the pouch were good—too good—and I couldn’t make the danged thing let go of my belt-loop. “Frickin’, frackin’, scrumbugglin’ thongs,” I snarled. The thongs snarled better.

“Tim, dear, I really wish you and the others would pay some attention to me while I’m talking to you.”

Mr. Feidelstein and Ben were as much in the etiquette bad-boys’-book as I. The pair of them were gazing out over the water from the cliff’s head and arguing once more about the nature of the craft Ben had spotted. It was drawing nearer our side of the river, and I had to admit it looked pretty big for a one-man ferry.

“Gentlemen ...” There was a dangerous note in Mom’s voice. “If you are the same gentlemen who not two minutes ago were so adamant about protecting a lady?”

“Mom, come on, I’m busy.”

“There, you see?” said a voice marginally familiar to my ears. It was low, mellifluous, and beefy. “He’s busy. Can we go now?” “But I’m not even a virgin!” Mom protested.

“Oh, so long as you were a virgin once, it doesn’t matter. I’ve relaxed the rules about that, over the years. It was grow broadminded or starve.”

I jerked my head up. “Krito!”

The minotaur slowly swung his massive bull’s head towards me, being careful not to scratch Mom—whom he had slung over one shoulder—on his horns. “Yes?” Then the small, myopic eyes blinked and a smile of recognition split his dewy muzzle. “Tim!”

Soon thereafter, in a lair that stank of ancient bones, sour wine, and the principal ingredient of most political speeches, we were all celebrating our reunion. The last I'd seen of the minotaur, he’d been left at sixes and sevens by the Outside’s answers to the old Cretan labyrinth. Getting lost in the mall was one thing, but his venture into the New York City subway system left him a broken bovinoid.

“So I came down here,” he concluded. “You know what they say: Facilis descensus Averni. But you know that, because here you are.”

I explained the truth of our situation while Mom and the rest tried to sit comfortably on the lair floor without touching one of several human skulls left scattered about the place like throw pillows. “I see,” said the minotaur. He slapped his hands to his knees and surged to his feet. “Well, it’s never too late to pay old debts, that’s what I always say. a) One good turn deserves another; b) You once did me a good turn, ergo: c) Socrates is mortal. No, wait, that’s not it.”

Krito never had gotten the hang of syllogisms, but his knowledge of the local terrain was impeccable. It turned out that there was a perfectly usable path cut into the cliffs not far from the minotaur’s lair and it would set us down not two hundred feet from the ferry depot. He conducted us to the top of the slope and set our feet on the downward road with much fanfare. Thanks were given, and just before we started the descent, he swept Mom’s hand to his muzzle, licked it, and said, “My humblest apologies for having almost devoured you earlier, madam. I hope you’ll take it as a compliment. ”

“Ur,” said Mom. For some reason, she was the first one down the cliff road, and forty-nine yards up the beach before we even hit the sand.

She would have made the final yard for a touchdown, but she tripped over a poet.

That’s the sorry state of our beaches these days: Sometimes it’s medical waste, sometimes it’s oil slicks, sometimes it’s Homer.

19 OVER THE RIVER AND DOWN THE DRAIN

“Oh, I am sorry!” Mom attempted to untangle herself from the blind poet’s gloriously shining himation as the two of them lay sprawled on the gray sand. Of course at that point we didn’t know he was a poet, though his milky eyes left no doubt as to his sightlessness. We definitely didn’t know that Mom had just bowled over one of the keystones of Required Reading in her haste to escape even the memory of the minotaur.

“Not at all, not at all dear—” Homer’s fingers groped for her face. “—lady.” His hands wandered elsewhere. “Ah yes; beyond question, lady.”

The echoes of the slap he got sounded like a lightning strike on the dim-lit shore of the Styx. The report was loud enough to make the spirits cease their infernal gibbering.

“What are you doing to my mother?” I demanded, hurrying over to help extricate her from the thick folds of embroidered white wool. It wasn’t easy going. The massed phantoms got in my way at every step, creating a human fog-bank. It was spooky, parting the images of souls as if I were pulling back a set of curtains. They were cool to the touch, and clingy as cobwebs on my skin.

I got hold of Mom under the arms and hauled her up, where she stood wasting a perfectly bone-chilling scowl on a blind man.

“Your mother?” The poet patted the sand near him until he found his olivewood staff and used it to lever himself upright. Brushing grains from his spotless garment he said, “I did not realize that the woman had any male kindred nearby or I never would have done anything to which you might object. Certainly not out in the open. Sir, I apologize to you, whoever you may be. Homer of Ephesos has never been caught—er—known to trifle with the persons of respectably supervised women.”

I stood awestruck. That name combined with his blindness was more than coincidence. “Are you really Homer? The poet? The one who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey?"

“Wrote?” The venerable author bridled. “Do I look like a mere scribe?” He inflated his chest to heroic proportions. “Sing, goddess, the wrath of Peleus' son Achilles, a destroying wrath which brought upon the Achaeans myriad woes, and sent forth to Hades many valiant souls of heroes!" He coughed a few times and added, “If you think it would’ve come out anywhere near as good if I’d sat hunched over a scrap of papyrus, scratching out every third word and worrying myself hairless about whether it wasn’t better the way I had it down to begin with—Well, no offense, but you wouldn’t know great literature if it bit you in the epilogos."

“I didn't mean any offense,” I said, forgetting that he was the one who should have been continuing to apologize to Mom and me.

Mom had a better knack for keeping track of who was on the shit-list and who wasn’t.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” she railed at Homer. “You had no right to feel me up, and then you have the gall to apologize for it not to me, but to my son?"

It was as if she hadn’t spoken at all. Homer turned his blind eyes towards me and said, “No offense is taken, friend. All things are forgiven. May I be of service to you?”

I glanced at Mom. She had such a furious expression on her face that if there were any pigs in Hades, one look from her would reduce the poor porker to a side of sizzling bacon, extra crisp. I was pretty sure that the word “pig” was going through her mind repeatedly, and I could have sworn that the trailing edge of Homer’s himation was starting to smolder. We could either get out of there fast or witness the destruction of a prime part of Western Literature.

“Well, yes,” I said, gently steering Mom to one side. “We’re looking for a way out of Hades, preferably one that will take us to the surface world—”

“—but one that will permit us to come out to the west of the Hesperides and the great land beyond the ruins of lost Atlantis,” Mr. Feidelstein put in. “It’s as close to asking for North America as he’ll understand,” he whispered to me.

“Eh? Who else is there?” Homer demanded.

“My friends,” I said. “Mr. Feidelstein and Mr. Kipnis.” “Mis-tah Feidelstein!” Homer’s lips writhed around the alien syllables. “Mis-tah Kipnis! Olympian Zeus is merciful, when he so chooses to be, that he spared me from being bom in a time when the names of heroes bold enough to dare grim Hades’ kingdom are so—so—so dissonant. And you, sir? By what chaos of sound may I know you?”

Dead serious I replied, “I am Timoclides of Bruklinaea.” “Reprieved! Reprieved!” Homer’s mighty voice rang out. “Now there’s a name a man can get his teeth into. Proud was the spirit of fair Timoclides when first he did from Bruklinaea’s nectar-scented shore venture to brave the dismal realm of Hades’ keeping.”

“Hey, you wanna keep it down over there?” came a voice no less resonant than Ionian Homer’s. “Some of us are trying to figure out how to get the hell out of this dump!”

“Neil?” I quavered into the ghost-spawned mists of the Styx’s shore.

“Desmond? That you?” There was no mistaking him now. “Keep talking. We’ll follow your voice. And tell Homer to shut the fuck up, will ya? I hear about deep-greaved Achilles and his faggy friend Patroclus one more time. I’m gonna puke.” Yep, that was Neil, all right.

“Neil Fitzsimmons, you mind your language!” Mom shouted. “Even if Homer is a dirty old man with no more respect for women than a dead frog, he is your elder and he has written some very nice verses.”

“Written!” Homer bellowed, more affronted by charges of ink-stained-wretch-ism than by all the lecherous epithets in the world. “Oh, wickeder and more devious than Paris, Priam’s son, who treacherously slew wrathful Achilles by a coward’s ruse! In the extravagance of her evil she has brought shame both on herself and on all women who will come after her, even on one who is virtuous!”

Mom pushed me aside and brought her nose within one inch of (he great bard’s. “You know what, Porky? Even if you could see, you’d still be blind.”

Homer’s hand clenched around his olivewood staff. “Well did I recite: Therefore don’t you be gentle to your wife either. Madam, if your rightful lord has been lax in teaching you a modest woman’s proper place and your son lacks the liver for it, I am more than willing to amend that sorry state of affairs. Truly no woman’s education is complete without Homer.” He raised the staff ominously.

Mom ducked as it came down, grabbed the hem of his himation, and yanked. Not only did the move jerk him off his feet, but by a happy coincidence she’d managed to snag a key sector of the fabric, and by the same principle as governs spinning tops, she whipped the garment entirely off him. He whirled around in midair several times before hitting the sand stark naked.

I call it poetic justice. He was still spluttering some incredibly raw expletives as Neil chased the last of the intervening phantoms aside and joined our party. He was not alone. Robed and hooded, leaning on a staff that was twin to Homer’s own, Faustus came towards us.

Mom uttered a cry that was all gladness. She threw Homer’s plundered himation over the poet’s head and raced to greet the wizard. Then she saw what my ill-spent wish had done to him and her exclamation of joy became a mangled groan of deepest grief.

“Darling, darling, how could this have happened to you?” She ran her hands tenderly over his face, her fingertips stroking his eyes as if her love could bring back his sight with a touch. “Who did it?”

I stood immobile, waiting for him to tell her what I’d done, waiting to see my mother turn to me with a look that would be— hatred? contempt? bitterness?

Faustus groped for her hands and pressed them to his heart. “Sweetheart, it’s not that bad. In all my years of dabbling in magic, I ran the risk of worse consequences. By good fortune, I was tossed into this underworld where, as you see, I had the luck to encounter Neil. He’s been my eyes.”

“Also his fists.” Neil grinned. “We had kind of a run-in with this German guy, Goethe, who got real pissed when Faustus told him who he was and that the way Goethe told the story was all wrong. Some people just can’t take constructive criticism.”

“I know,” I said, with a backward glance at Homer, who was still trying to disencumber himself from his himation and get decent. “But how come there’s someone like Goethe over here? This is the Greek underworld.”

“You got me, Des.” Neil shrugged. “This side of the Styx is where they make us poets hang out so we don’t bug the regular guys over in Hades. The head man over the water, he figures everyone’s entitled to a peaceful afterlife, and I don’t gotta tell you how rough it is to get a writer to clam it, especially a poet. Maybe he gets the rejects from some of the other places. They go to heaven, they recite one of their greatest hits one time too many, some angel makes a stink, and next thing they know, someone’s kicked their tail-feathers all the way to Hades.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Mom objected.

“Oh, they don’t mind once they get here, Mrs. D,” Neil assured her. “Soon as they find out they’re with their own kind, they settle down fine. Ronsard told me they even got a writers’ workshop going, until Francois Villon showed up with a jug of really primo bootleg soma and they all got totally bombed and Siegfried Sassoon called Homer a Fascist and Emily Dickinson got in a ehicken-fight with Dorothy Parker and three guesses what Rudyard Kipling called Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot wouldn’t stop crying because he missed his damn cats.” He paused for breath.

While Neil was giving us this unrequested recitation, Homer managed to pull himself together and slink away down the strand. Faustus put his arms around Mom. “Who else is with you, my dear?” he asked.

I stepped forward to touch him. “I am.” My voice was nearly as insubstantial as one of the wandering ghosts.

“Tim, you’re all right!” There was unalloyed happiness in his voice. I felt my heart turn into a sour husk for shame.

“Iohannes, old friend!” Mr. Feidelstein was there to cover for me. He and Ben overwhelmed Faustus with their greetings so that he would not notice my silence.

I tried to find something to say, some reason to give him for why I’d done this unspeakable thing to him. All my reasons dwindled to the petty size of my unsharing soul. I slipped my hand into the pocket where I kept the piece of crystal holding my lather’s memory. Was it my imagination, or did the warmth fade from it, as if even so far off as the Isles of the Blest, Dad was seeing what I’d done and withdrawing from me? I took my hand out again and shivered.

“—to say nothing to Lillian.” I caught the whisper Faustus passed to Ben and Mr. Feidelstein, and my face blazed with a deeper remorse. “—heat of the moment. He will make it right, if he can.”

Make it right? The pouch of crystal shards was heavy at my side. Yes, I could make it right, but I knew that it would take more than Faustus’ sight regained for me to feel fully at home in my own skin again. Still, it was a start.

I ordered everyone to step aside, and undid the drawstrings. Strangely enough, this time they came untied with almost no effort. I fumbled in the pouch for a crystal sliver, felt the warmth of a “live” one, and touched the wizard’s closed eyes.

“Okay, open them.” He did. “Well?”

“I see”—he blinked—“I think I see—” He moved his head vaguely this way and that. “It’s so cloudy.”

I let the now-dark crystal drop back into the pouch and pulled out another, larger piece. Maybe size did count, in some things. More crystal, more magic, right? “Hold still. I’m going to try again.”

This time, Faustus said, “I can see everything clearly now, only—”

“Only what?”

“No, never mind. I can see, that’s enough.”

“Damn it, I want to know what’s wrong!”

He lowered his eyes. “Colors. I know there aren’t many of them in this place, but I see none.’”

A third shard gave him only the dimmest perception of color. Three more were needed to bring his vision back to the point where he could gaze into my mother’s eyes and see their every shade and sparkle. I could tell by the way he smiled at her that the enchantments of the spent crystals had done their work.

I could also see by the way he looked around the ghost-thick strand with an expression of complete bewilderment that things were still far from right. “Where are they?” he asked. “When Neil and I walked along this beach before, there were spirits—so many spirits! Has the ferryman arrived? Have they all fit aboard his craft this time?” He turned his eyes to the waters of the Styx, stared right at the growing outline of the approaching boat, and added, “But that’s impossible. Charon’s barque is nowhere in sight.”

“You are a greater wisher than you know', Tim,” Mr. Feidelstein whispered, so that only I could hear. “Your wish not only robbed him of common sight, but left him Fey-blind too.”

“I can fix that,” I said, digging more deeply into the pouch. Mr. Feidelstein’s hand stopped me.

“How many bits of your shattered power will it take, do you think? Plain sight took two, and color three, but Fey-sight calls for the healing of more than just the mundane senses. How many shards do you have that still contain enchantment? How many might we need before we escape this maze of underworlds? You could leave us all defenseless by this gesture.”

He was right. We needed however much or little magic remained to me. Eleziane was still missing, and Teleri, and Master Runyon.

Above us, somewhere in the waking world, T’ing was still CODA’s prisoner, Mrs. Feidelstein their hostage—unless the two of them had already served Loki’s purpose and had been—

No. No, I refused to think that. Even if it turned out to be so, I didn't dare let despair gain even a hairsbreadth hold on me or it would all be over. It takes more courage to enter a brightly lit house where you’re a stranger than a darkened room you already know. Sometimes you have to stop wavering over possibilities that might never happen and act to change things as they are.

I scooped a handful of fragments from the pouch and began touching them to Faustus’ eyes rapidly, one at a time. I shook Mr. Feidelstein off when he tried to intervene. Seven “live” ones and twelve duds later, Faustus gave a gasp of wonder that let me know beyond doubt his true sight had returned.

I poured the remaining bits of crystal back into the pouch as everyone clustered around the wizard to congratulate him on a total cure. “I take full responsibility,” I informed Mr. Feidelstein, who was the only one hanging back.

“Yes.” He smiled at me. “For once that is true.” He then called for our collective attention. “The directions that we had from the Druid Turmeric tell us to cross the Styx, traverse the kingdom of Hades, ford Lethe, continue into the realm of Mictlan, and there request further guidance since that was as far as his knowledge of these regions went. Does anyone here know any reason we ought not to follow his instructions?”

“I know one damned good reason we better do what whatzis-name told you,” Neil volunteered. “Eleziane’s over there.”

“Is she? How do you know?”

“When Loki’s gang stuffed us down the well, I grabbed her hand, man. No way was I gonna let her go anyplace without me. It made for a tight squeeze in the shaft, but we managed to keep falling, dammit. Then the well ended and we burst out way up there”—he pointed at the obscure aerial regions of Hades—“and we’re still dropping. But we’re up high enough so we could see both sides of the river. It was kinda cool, actually, if we didn’t stop to think how maybe we were going to splatter like a coupla rotten oranges when we hit. All of a sudden, this sharp wind comes up and splits us. Eleziane goes flying over to that side of the river, I land over here.”

“You’re a poet,” I reminded him. “That’s why you and she were separated.”

“Yeah, well sometimes being a poet really sucks,” Neil commented, revealing the deep and sensitive nature of his lyric soul.

“Then it’s settled; we cross.” Mr. Feidelstein led the way to the place where the phantoms appeared to cluster most thickly. As we elbowed our way through the press, we saw the hazy outline of a great wooden pier built well out over the Styx’s midnight waters.

“Kinda big for some dinky old ferry to tie up at, wouldn’t you say?” I remarked to Neil.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But I wouldn’t call that thing no ferry.”

Out of the creamy mists above the Styx’s shining current came the towering prow of the very ocean liner Ben had sworn he’d seen earlier on. At the ship’s bow stood a tall, skeletal figure dressed in a himation as black and dismal as Homer’s had been white and luminous. He also had a dyspeptic-looking parrot on his shoulder and a captain’s cap—“scrambled eggs” and all—perched at a rakish angle on his head.

As the gangplank hit the wharf with a sound like a cranky vampire slamming the door of his tomb, I checked out the name of Charon’s new craft:

TITANIC

Was this trip really necessary?

20 BOURN AGAIN

“Hold it right there, me bucko.” Charon’s oar-calloused palm thrust itself into my face. “There’s no way ye’ll be boardin’ the pride o’ the Styx without an’ unless ye’re payin’ tribute to the port authorities.” For good measure he added, “Arrrrrrh.”

The parrot squawked, “Obols are trumps, obols are trumps, rawk! ” and plopped on his shoulder.

I stood at the head of the gangplank, looked over my shoulder at my companions, and asked, “Do you know what he’s talking about?”

“Why, matey, is the speech of the briny too much for yer sun-strick brain?” Charon had an excellent mouthful of teeth and a distinct underbite, reminiscent of a piranha. Under the captain’s cap he was bald as a grape, with a complexion kind of like the Thomson’s green seedless variety. “ ’Tis the passage money I’ll be havin’ from ’ee, such as has been me rightful plunder—uh, that’s to say portion—since Cerberus was a pup.”

Faustus sidled up the gangplank to inform me, “He means cash, Tim, with which the dead souls who wish to cross the river Styx must pay their fares. The Greeks would place two oboloi—the smallest of coins—on the eyes of their dead to guarantee them safe passage. Those spirits who lacked the proper burial tribute were condemned to wander on the near shore forever. ”

“With all those poets?” I was appalled. “Talk about eternal torment.”

“Look’ee here, cully, it may be as I've eternity on me hands, but that won’t be meanin’ I’d like to spend it all wi’ the likes o’ ye. Now pay up or take leg bail, for there’s plenty o’ others besides ye what’s dyin’ to reach the farther shore.” He roared with bluff and hearty mariner’s merriment at his own quip.

All right, if those were the rules, I could play by them. I found my wallet and pulled out a dollar bill, which I handed over to Charon with a munificent flourish.

He used it to wipe the parrot poop off his shoulder and tossed it overboard.

“Hey!”

“Stow yer gab, ye mangy slubberdegullion. ’Tisn’t as if it were a yen-note, now were it?”

The next time someone tells me the American economy has gone to hell, I will believe him.

“Arrrrrh, don’t be workin’ yerself into a feery-fary, sonny-me-lad,” Charon said smoothly. “Ye can’t blame an old sea dog for merely tryin’ to do what’s his bounden duty. And if he makes himself a wee atomy o’ honest profit in the course o’ service to His Abysmal Majesty, Hades I—Zeus bless ’im and all what sails in ’im—will ye begrudge him that? Nowt but a tittle to be put aside towards the rose-covered cottage when the last sorry soul’s been ferried o'er the waves and all good sailors put in at last to Fiddler’s Green?”

“Uh, I guess not.”

“Then pay yer bloody passage coin, else stir yer shanks off me gangplank, ye pernicious landlubber! ”

We filed off double-quick as Charon hurled many a quaint and pithy nautical epithet at our retreating backs. On the pier again, we took counsel of each other. That is to say, we all stood around asking, “Now what?”

“It’s clear that paper money isn’t going to cut it,” Faustus said. “Charon has always dealt with hard coin and I fear he always will.”

“Even two pennies would do,” Mr. Feidelstein said. “It’s not the value of the coins, but the principle of the thing that matters to Hades’ ferryman.”

We all patted down our pockets, but came up empty-handed. Mom didn’t have her purse with her, which was where she carried all her money, and none of the guys had any cash except the folding kind.

“Look, when we left to find Sonia, you didn’t tell me to bring exact change for the bus, and you know how I hate lugging around a lot of coins. They wear out the inside of my pockets,” Ben told Mr. Feidelstein.

Neil took an assertive approach to our dilemma, striding back onto the beach, placing himself directly in front of every passing phantom, and demanding, “Yo! Lady! Spare change?” The ghosts must’ve all been New Yorkers. They looked right through him, then went one better by walking right through him. He came back to the pier much subdued.

Meanwhile, Charon was doing a brisk business in hustling the more affluent spirits aboard. I watched attentively as he collected their passage fees. Then I gave Mom an attention-getting nudge in the ribs. “Hey, look! It doesn’t have to be coins; it’s just gotta be hard valuables.”

Mom saw that I was telling the truth. A milky wraith floated up the gangplank and instead of removing two coins from its eyelids unfastened two small pearl earrings from its ears and pressed them into Charon’s avid paw. Mom’s eyes danced over our twelve hands. I could hear her running a mental tally of all jewelry, present and accounted for. Only Ben had nothing to contribute to our pooled resources. Neil and I both had our Glenwood High class rings, Mr. Feidelstein wore a plain gold wedding band, each of Faustus’ index fingers bore fat silver rings adorned with blazing carbuncles, and Mom herself had her wedding and engagement rings. I saw how her lower lip trembled when she gazed at them.

“You won’t have to give those up, Mom,” I promised her. “Mr. Feidelstein neither. I bet he’ll let us on for the two Glenwood High rings and just one of Faustus’.”

Okay, so I was wrong.

“Off with yer scurvy whim-whams!” Charon turned up his nose at our offer, even when Mom and Mr. Feidelstein—over my objections—volunteered to add their rings to the pot.

“But I just saw you let this one ghost aboard for a pair of earrings!”

“So ho! ” He closed one eye and pulled down the lower lid of Ihe other. “Try yer pettifoggeries and chop-logics on someone as was born yesterday. Coins, it be, else nowt!”

“Then how come you took the earrings?” I really don’t know when to quit.

Charon’s smile was wide, but that didn’t make it friendly. He placed a companionable hand on my shoulder and brought his face so near mine I could identify his favorite brand of chewing tobacco. “Hark’ee, boyo. It just so happens that I will, on occasion, allow a spirit or two free passage in exchange for a consideration that’s, ah, of artistical value. I’m somewhat the collector, that I am, and willing to give berth to them as has trinkets worthy o’ my discriminatin’ eye. Them pearls as ye saw—Have ye ever heard tell o’ the great Ae-gypty queen Cleopatra? Well, it’s told by them as knows to tell it how she dropped a wallopin’ grand pearl into a glass o’ vinegar and drank it down at tea-time once for show. ”

“If she drank the pearl, how could it still be in those earrings? How could there be two of them, for that matter?” I pointed out.

“Well, that’s just it, cully: Them couldn’t be it, nor it them, but that’s the bilge yon phantom tried to make old Captain Charon swallow, mizzentop to monkey rail!”

“You let her on just for telling a good lie? Hey, I can do that. Read my lips: No new taxes.”

Instead, Charon reached out and pinched my lips shut. “Belay the gibble-gab, jacky, and let a man finish. History’s as wicked a slut as ever robbed an honest sailor-man of his hard-earned pay. ’Tis more often the best stories that survive, not the truest. Yon pearls weren’t kith nor kin to the monstrous glob o’ oyster-spew as Cleopatra swilled, but they was the ones as her Eye-taly paramour, Marc Antony, gave her for a get-well gift when the proud jade fed old Nile’s fishies with gemmy vinegar, aye!” He chuckled over the many quirks of mortals, then asked, “Any o’ that slop yer tryin’ to foist off on me got so rich a heritage to it?”

Neil came forward. “One time me and the Rawbone Kings got really ripped and I swallowed my class ring. You don’t wanna know what I hadda go through to get it back. ”

“There ye’re right, me fine lobcock, an’ no mistake, arrrrrh.” This time he sicced the parrot on us.

“Any more bright ideas?” Neil sneered as he scraped off the traces of aerial bombardment. I had to admit that I had none. “Aw, shit. What’re we gonna do? Eleziane’s over there, I’m stuck here with a finger up my—Sorry, Mrs. Desmond, but I’m upset.”

“I know you are, dear.” Mom and Faustus were sitting with their legs dangling off the pier. “Come over here beside me and perhaps you’ll feel better if you talk about it.”

Neil did so, sulkily. As he lowered himself to the splintery planking, a roar of pain and rage tore from his throat, coupled with some words worth their weight in subsequent apologies to my mother. For the time being, however, Neil was doing a creditable sailor’s hornpipe all over the dock and making wild grabs at the seat of his pants. His cavorting stopped only when he withdrew a sliver from his jeans and held it up for inspection.

I whistled when I saw it. That wooden stinger was as long as Neil’s thumb. “Man, did that sucker do a job on you,” I commented. “You okay?”

“Mel Who cares about me?” Neil was aggrieved to the marrow, which was about as deep as that splinter must have penetrated.

“Well, I do, but since you’ve decided to be a moron—”

He flipped the sliver into the Styx and pulled something else out of his back pocket. It was a pasteboard rectangle no larger than a wallet-sized photograph. “Never mind me! What if that lousy hunk of wood would’ve jabbed a hole in this?”

I looked at the object, tried to think of something nice to say, and decided not to force myself, when all I really wanted to do was laugh in Neil’s face. “A baseball card?” I whinnied. “You were that worried over what might’ve happened to a friggin’ baseball card?”

Neil Fitzsimmons, former Rawbone King, gave me a beady look such as every fanatic of whatever stripe has always fixed upon all those not initiated into the Holy Mysteries. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said huffily. “This is not just any baseball card. This is a 1986 Donruss Jose Canseco rookie card.”

I opened my mouth to say something on the lines of “whoop-de-doo” when the very heavens were split from on high by a stentorian bellow of: “Did you say a 1986 Jose Canseco rookie card?”

“Donruss,” Neil clarified for Charon’s benefit.

The ferryman of Hades pushed himself back before he fell over the side of his own ship. Regaining his composure, he bawled, “Ahoy the dock! Stand by to be boarded!” He tootled a lilting air on a bosun’s whistle and six troll-like creatures barreled down the gangway to scoop us all up and bear us onto the Titanic.

“Beef tea at four, shuffleboard aft, casino opens once we be beyond the twelve ox-hide limit, and today’s feature film is Death lakes a Holiday. Our lovely an’ courteous cabin stewardesses be ready to see to yer every whim, arrrrrrh, that they be. Thank’ee kindly, sir”—this to Neil as he grudgingly handed over the precious card—“there be no tippin’, and have a happy v’yage.”

We saw no more of Captain Charon for the duration of the crossing. Mom and Faustus went aft to stare at the ship’s wake and make goo-goo eyes at each other, Ben and Mr. Feidelstein found a hot pinochle game going in the card room, and Neil and I decided to hit the casino.

I .et’s tell it right: Neil had the idea and he dragged me along for (he ride. I bet they’re still trying to holystone my heelmarks off the deck.

“Neil, you sure we won’t get in trouble for this?” I asked, eyeing the ranks of slot machines and craps tables askance. They were already besieged by clamorous hordes of sporting ghosts. “We’re still minors, under New York State law.”

Neil rapped his knuckles on the top of my head. “Anyone tell you lately we’re not in New York State anymore, man? C’mon, let’s have some good times!”

“With what? You saw how much American paper money’s worth down here.”

From the curtained cashier’s booth a pleasant, feminine voice chirped, “All play aboard is complimentary to our regular passengers, sir.”

A big old grin slapped itself across Neil’s mouth as he sashayed over to the booth. “No kidding?”

“Certainly not, sir. Play with the tokens you will find in the large baskets disposed at convenient intervals throughout the casino. All payoffs are in gold coin. This service is but one of many we offer to our guests. We do ask that you familiarize yourself with the house rules first and abide by them hereafter. ” A pale arm extended itself through the curtains and guided us to the gold-lettered plaque on the wall.

HOUSE RULES

1. DO NOT CREATE ANY UNDUE DISTURBANCE.

2. RESPECT THE RIGHTS OF OTHER PLAYERS.

3. JUDGMENTS OF CASINO PERSONNEL ARE FINAL.

4. DO NOT CHEAT.

5. YOU MUST BE DEAD TO PLAY.

6. THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING.

Neil had shoveled himself a basketful of tokens for the slot machines, when I reeled him in by the collar and pointed to the house rules emphatically.

“So who’s smoking?” he asked.

“Number five, Neil; read number five.”

“Jesus, Desmond, don’t be a total dork all your life! That’s just there for, you know, show. They don’t really care. Anyway, look around you. How much house muscle do you see?”

He was right. Apart from the mystery lady in the cashier’s booth, there were only two casino attendants—bouncy babes who’d been bom with “Have a nice day” stapled to their lips. Both of them were manning the craps tables, and it looked as if they had their hands full.

“A rule you can’t enforce is the same as no rule at all,” Neil concluded amiably. “Let’s hit the slots.”

We had picked out a pair of prime-looking machines and were about to play our first tokens when we heard a squeal of distress from the craps table. “Ooohhh, you naughty, naughty man!” the attendant exclaimed, making shame-on-you gestures with her two forefingers at the guilty party. “I saw you try to change your bet. You should know better than to break the house rules. You hoo! Tisiphone! Megaera! I caught one, girls!”

The curtains of the cashier’s booth ripped open and a naked woman with bat’s wings and a face to freeze naptha soared out over the casino. In her hand she whirled a lash made of live serpents. She was soon joined by the two casino attendants, who sprouted claws, slashed their uniforms to streamers, produced serpent-whips of their own, and took to the air with their sister. In unison the three Furies pounced upon the hapless ghost and beat him without mercy until the beset phantom raced shrieking from the casino with the trio in pursuit. We all heard the splash.

The ladies returned calmly to their former posts. The cashier was still naked, but the table attendants had picked up brand new uniforms somewhere. Neil and I exchanged a look. We dumped our unused tokens back into the common till without further ado.

“Oh, goodie!” said the Fury who had first raised the hue and cry. Her bright red-and-white name badge said Hi! i m alecto: “It always makes us so happy to see people abiding by the rules.” She primped her curls and giggled.

We opted for a no-holds-barred game of shuffleboard instead. After a measureless time, Charon’s ship arrived at its destination. Leaning against the forward rail, we saw a pier much like the one we had left behind and a gentle hill beyond it. At the summit stood a modest building with a Classic Greek fagade. Unlike modem versions of similar structures, the white marble pediment and friezes had been painted. Given the location, the colors of choice were earthy browns, moldy greens, and cyanotic blues.

“Please be sure to fill out your customs declaration before debarking,” said Alecto, passing out ink-pots, styluses, and rustly parchments.

“Hey, Desmond,” Neil called. “Where it says ‘Reason for arrival’ do we check off ‘business,’ ‘pleasure,’ or ‘recovery of dead wife’s soul through enchanted song’?”

Tisiphone was waiting for us at the foot of the gangplank with an ordinary-looking brown paper bag. She insisted that I take it.

“Because Alec told me what good boys you were in the casino,” she said.

I peeked inside and saw three prune Danish that looked old enough to have known Hamlet personally. “I don’t understand,” I protested.

“You will.” The Fury winked at me and pinched Neil on the butt as he went by.

He hardly felt it. There was someone waiting for him ashore. “Eleziane!” he shouted, and dashed down the pier to sweep his elfin lady-love back into his arms.

21 HARD KORE

By the time we reached Neil and Eleziane, they were just coming out of that hermetic lip-lock. “Oh, baby, am I ever glad to see you!” Neil crowed. “Jeez, for a sec I was scared we’d maybe have to get us a guide to this place and hunt you down.”

“Guide? Did you say guide?” A short, roly-poly little ghost hustled up to our group and rubbed its diaphanous hands together. “You like a guide?”

“No, thanks,” I said as kindly as I could. “We already found what we came for.” I winked at Neil’s love. “Right, Eleziane?” The elfin princess opened her eyes their widest, turned her mouth into a moist and tempting rosebud, and said in a spine-peeling baby-voice, “Eleziane? Who is Eleziane?” Her radiant eyes blinked over us a few times, but she never lost that lluff-for-brains expression. “And who are you?”

I folded my hands and solemnly said, “We represent the Lollipop Guild.”

Neil slugged me in the arm, but Eleziane just smiled a sweet, vapid, vacuous smile and said, “Isn’t that nice?”

“What’s the matter with her?” Neil appealed to us.

“Let me through,” said Faustus. “I’m a doctor.”

“I thought you were only a doctor of philosophy,” I remarked to him.

“What is so only about that?” He regarded me critically. “We find ourselves in one of the spirit-realms confronted with the ailment of a lady of the Fey. Tell me how much use a human medical doctor would be in these circumstances!”

I le did have a point. I bowed him over to Eleziane, who was telling anyone who would listen that they simply had to go trippety-tripping o’er the dells and leas to watch the cuddly little bunny rabbits romp and frolic through the asphodel, or else. Neil was holding his stomach, and there was a good chance Mom was going to jam her finger a little too far down her throat and really lose some long-ago lunch over the transformed elf’s saccharine antics.

“My dear, would you come with me a moment?” Dr. Faustus offered Eleziane his arm. She giggled, blushed, dimpled, laid a finger coyly to her chin, and went. While he examined her, the pudgy ghost who had joined our crew grew bold enough to renew his sales pitch.

“That lady is a friend? Not good, not good. These symptoms I see many, many times before. Hundreds! Thousands! Oh yes, she is gone, lost to you. I know all the signs. Why not forget your troubles? You are not dead. You are just tourists. Come with me, I show you all the best sights in Hades, maybe even sneak you in to one of King Minos’ court sessions. I have connections. What have you got to lose?”

I tried using the best huckster repellant known to man on him: “We have no money.”

“Money!” The small spirit was so annoyed by the very suggestion of payment that his cloudy features sharpened to the point where he looked just like a living man. Black of hair and eye, his curly locks bound back with a plain leather fillet, he folded his arms across the top of his bulging belly and snorted at me. “Hey! What do you think I am? A leech like old Charon (may his filthy parrot eat only beans and goat cheese!)? What is wrong with the world that you do not know a simple offer of hospitality when you see it?”

“Friend, I’m sorry, but where I.come from, when you get a native guide as persistent as you, he’s not doing it for love.” “Poo.” By now I had irked the ghost to the point where I could see every crease and wrinkle on his jowly red face and wine-veined bulb of a nose. “Where you are, people got to make a living! Here, living is no longer some big deal to us. Is this anything you ever thought of? In Hades, all we need is to keep from being bored to—no, past death. Moping around fields of asphodel, that is all right for some, but not for Iakinthos of Mykenae!” He thumped himself on the chest proudly.

After that I asked his pardon, he gave it graciously and we shook hands. A guide would be just the ticket, once we discovered what uncanny force had deep-fried Eleziane’s mind and left her with the personality of a lemon meringue pie.

Faustus was not doing too well on that assignment. He had called over Mr. Feidelstein for conferral; Mr. Feidelstein motioned for Ben to join them, and Mom and Neil included themselves in the invitation. Their concerned voices made a bee-like hum which served as a fine continuo backdrop against which Eleziane sang a ducky little ditty about how only she knew where the dewdrops went after they had kissed all the baby daffodils awake at dawn.

I beckoned Iakinthos into my confidence. “You said before you've seen these symptoms?”

“Oh yes, oh yes, many times.” He nodded eagerly. “Many, many, many, many—”

“So what do they mean?” I cut in.

“They mean she is lost to you,” he replied, still wearing his patented Official Guide’s smile. “So you might as well tell the rest of our friends to come back here and we can start our tour. Oh, I have so many interesting things to show you! Very historic! Very cultural! We will start with Tartarus, if you do not think that will be too much of a strain on the lady. We will visit Sisyphus. Oh, a terrible man, one who committed terrible crimes! Now he must push a huge rock uphill, and when it reaches the top)—boom!— down it rolls again always. Sometimes the authorities can be persuaded to allow tourists—properly accompanied tourists, that is—to take turns trying to push the rock for him.”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“What illegal? You think we are overrun with visitors here? Sisyphus gets plenty of time to do his task himself, oh yes. And if a tourist tries, it give the authorities something different to see, too, for a change.”

“Listen, Iakinthos, I will do twenty-four different kinds of card tricks for you and the authorities if it’ll get Eleziane back to normal. What did this to her?” And if there’s some force in Hades capable of turning a lady of the Fey into a tweet-head, I thought with an inner shudder, what’s to stop it from doing the same to any one of us?

“Ho, you ask an easy question! So simple to answer: Fruit.” Iakinthos beamed. “Now get your friends. I hear that today King Minos will be passing sentence on people who in their lifetimes set lire to sheep.”

The offer was tempting, if only to find out the legal term for sheep-igniting (pyrovicide? starting a baaaanfire without a li-n iise?) but business before pleasure. “How big was the watermelon that beaned her?” I asked.

“What beans? What melons?” Iakinthos spread his fubsy hands in all innocence.

“Well, it’d take one heck of a big piece of fruit falling from who knows how high up to cause a concussion severe enough to leave Eleziane like that.”

The little ghost chuckled. “Falling? Is this what you think? Oh, this is very funny! Not falling, the fruit; eating!”

And there it was; the awful, irrefutable, mythologically attested-to truth: Eat of the foods of the underworld and in the underworld you must remain. I recalled the myth of Demeter’s daughter Kore—Persephone, to some—who had been kidnapped by Hades himself. If you’re the King of the Dead, and you see a likely lady, you don’t have time to fool around with dinner and a movie. Besides, why bother asking your intended if she wants you or not when you’re used to dealing with people who don’t talk back? When Kore’s mother’s pleas finally won the girl’s release, it was discovered—too late—that she had eaten six seeds of a pomegranate while in the underworld. Therefore, she was forced to spend six months of every year in Hades’ company, only packing her divine bags and going Home To Mother in time for Spring Break.

I didn’t like thinking about Neil’s reaction when I told him that his lady had, as it were, condemned herself out of her own mouth; or into it, to be precise. Lord Palamon wasn’t going to be pleased either, and when the elf-lord had a hissy, someone else always wound up picking up—or being made a part of—the pieces. To delay the inevitable, I asked Iakinthos, “How—how many did she eat?”

“How many?” He thought about it. “One.”

“Why, that’s great!” I shouted, grabbing him by the shoulders and hardly noticing that it was like sinking them into warm Jell-O. “That means she’s only got to stay here one lousy month of the year. Listen, her father’s royal too, and he’s got some otherworldly connections. Maybe he can strike a deal with Minos—you know, a little friendly finagling on the Old Kings’ network? Like, instead of having to spend a whole month in Hades, she could do community service and just drop in to talk to a parole officer? Or else she could—”

“Yes, that is right—one—I remember,” Iakinthos said, half to himself. “It was my cousin Patroklos who sold it to her. One pomegranate. ”

I wandered in a daze over to where Faustus and the rest were still trying to get sense out of Eleziane. “How many seeds in a pomegranate?” I asked, numb.

* * *

“King Minos will see you now,” said a tall, attenuated shade who still managed to seem livelier than most surface-world court officials.

“Come on, Eleziane,” Neil said, leading her by the hand. “We’re gonna get this fixed up right away.” I couldn’t be the one to open his eyes to the relative speed of most judicial systems. Let the boy have some hope!

King Minos’ chambers were in a building all their own, as were those of his fellow judges Aeacus and Rhadamanthys. Like every other structure we had seen since reaching the shores of Hades, these three courthouses were miniature versions of the Parthenon. There was a fairly large outer waiting area, where we sat on the bare floor among a gaggle of spirits anticipating the king’s pronouncement on their fate.

Iakinthos had come along for the ride, and while we kicked our heels, he filled the time with endless, multiple anecdotes about any person, place, or thing our eyes might stray to. It was a good thing he was dead, because by the time we were called we all wanted to kill him.

The ghostly secretary led us into a smaller chamber lit by seven huge bronze tripods, each as big around as a tractor wheel. Their bowls were chased with silver-gilt scenes in high relief of the more memorable torments reserved for souls condemned to the black gulf of Tartarus, their legs entwined with golden snakes whose glittering obsidian eyes seemed to follow our progress. Monstrous in size, awe-inspiring in majesty, crowned with an iron diadem, Minos sat naked upon a suitably titanic marble throne and glared at us with blood-red eyes.

“Wow,” Neil remarked for my ears alone. “Looks like a nudie Lincoln Memorial in here.”

“Approach, O mortals.” To my surprise, King Minos did not iliunder his words or call up any cosmic special effects to make his presence more spectacular. Why bother? He knew he was aweinspiring enough just the way he was. I remember thinking, Now liiere’s a guy with a great self-image.

By common consent, I had been named spokesman. Translated, this meant that I’d experienced the call of Nature, and while Iakinthos found me someplace to take care of business where I wouldn’t impact the subterranean environment, everybody else tagged me “it.” A public office is a public trust, even when it’s a shaft job, so I stepped up to the great monarch’s throne and told him everything.

I concluded by saying, “—and I know all about Kore and the six pomegranate seeds, but I don’t think it should count, because Eleziane isn’t mortal or a goddess—she’s an elf—and, well, it’s different for elves.”

“Is that so?” Minos’ brows dipped and rose like the gray crests of twin tidal waves. He motioned for Eleziane to approach the throne. She did so, skipping and trilling a rascally air about the naughty Moonbeam Boy and the winsome Starlight Girl in their enchanted cottage made of comet dust in back of the moon.

When a stomach the size of King Minos’ contracts in revulsion, it’s a sight not easily forgotten.

“Odd,” he said when he recovered his regal bearing. “Very odd.” He bent forward so that his hand rested, palm upward, on the floor.

She set one tiny foot upon the dread king’s fingertip, executed several mincing ballet steps and attitudes as she progressed to the palm proper, and finished in a sticky-sweet Dresden china shepherdess pose on his heart-line. He lifted her up until she was level with the arm of his throne, where she leaped lightly off and did three pirouettes and an arabesque. Then she fluttered down to sit, chin on steepled fingers, elbows on updrawn knees, eyelashes batting like hummingbird wings.

“So this is an elf,” King Minos said slowly, after swallowing his feelings.

“/ know why the rosebuds cry every time a little child says that there are no such things as unicorns,” Eleziane informed him. “Do you? ”

“Sentence suspended,” Minos gasped. “The pomegranate in question is hereby declared null and void. You are free to go. Do it quickly.” He plucked her from the arm of his throne as one might remove a cockroach from the family reunion potato salad. “Do it now!"

Eleziane showed him her dimples and blew kisses as she scampered kittenishly from his hand. “Oh, mercy me and goodness,” she exclaimed. “How very, very darling of you to let me go, for I have so many, many wonderful things to do. There are cobwebs to be hung from every mushroom cap, and they must all in turn be bespangled with the diamonds of the dew. What’s more, if I don’t teach the field mice how to minuet, whatever shall become of them, the precious little darlings? And oh! the jolly little sparrows must be fitted for their brave new bridles of spanking red leather such as only I can make from the skins of spiders vanquished in horrid, horrid battle. Then, when Jenny Wren pipes the tune, off we shall all fly in a cockleshell coach drawn high aloft by my fine, strapping sparrow-steeds. We shall soar above pink and yellow clouds of candy floss, and kiss the sun good morrow and not come down until old Mister Bluebird says that we have reached the land of butterflies. Oh, such times we shall have! By day, we shall borrow the butterflies’ own silken wings and tumble through the air in madcap revelry, and by night, we shall—”

She stopped, and the whisper of a frown creased her radiant brow. “Mister King, hasn’t your dear mamma ever told you that it’s ever so naughty rude to vomit like that when a lady is talking?”

The indisposed monarch’s spectral assistant hurried us out of Minos’ inner chamber. As we were being given the bum’s rush, I noticed that the golden serpents on the brazier legs had all turned green, and several of them were also making pitiful retching sounds.

lakinthos was waiting for us outside. “Is it all settled? Now you take tour?” he asked expectantly.

“No tour,” I told him. “Eleziane got cleared through customs and we’re getting the hell out of Hades while the getting’s good. If you want to be our guide to the nearest exit, I won’t say no.”

“But I will!"

She was at least as tall as Minos and, though she lacked that king’s brawny body, she was none the less imposing. lakinthos went from solid spirit to a crumpled-up, tattery ghost that flittered .iway cheeping in terror before her wrath. A black dress like a lagged storm cloud clung to her slender limbs, and an iron crown m i with hematite and onyx was on her head. The scepter in her hand was also made of iron, though a weird greenish light clung in iis surface and cast ghastly shades over her pale face from below.

I knew who this grim queen was, even without consulting a volume of Debrett’s guide to the peerage.

I knelt. I figured it would be a good opening move. Everyone rise look a cue from me. Everyone, I mean, except Eleziane, who was going on about making daisy chains for grumpy old Goodman Badger, and Neil, who was gazing up at Hades’ queen with the tongue-lolling wonderment of one who beholds the Promised Land.

I guess on a woman that size you should expect some fairly colossal upper-body development. It would take a Playboy foldout the size of the United Nations building to do justice to Persephone’s charms, but that was no reason for Neil to be making a bosom-bozo of himself.

“O Lady!” I saluted her. “We come from hearing the verdict of King Minos himself, who gave us leave to depart your fair realm with our friend.” I gestured at Eleziane, who was caroling the praises of the golden pollen scones and nectar trifle that buzzy Missy Bee served to the Wasp Cavalier when he came to call at Gallygashkin Grotto.

“Did he?” Persephone’s gray eyes flashed utter destruction in the direction of Minos’ court, and I felt my gut sink under the weighty realization that in Hades, too, there were the humdrum tribunals of infernal justice, and then there was the Supreme Court and we were looking at her. “And pray tell, what cause was given to keep a living being in my kingdom in the first place?”

“The lady Eleziane was supposed to remain in the kingdom of Hades because—”

“My kingdom!” Persephone boomed.

“Your kingdom, I mean. ” I was quick to say things her way and to revise my notion of Persephone’s character. I used to imagine her as the typical Eek-help-save-me damsel in distress, plucked from her girlish games to suffer a fate worse than Death—namely being the bride of Death’s supervising manager—until Mommy came to the rescue. Now I wondered whether it hadn’t happened otherwise. There was poor old Hades, enjoying a short Sunday drive through the countryside, when all of a sudden here came Persephone, as aggressive a little snip of adolescent hormones run amok as ever Zeus spawned. Ten-to-one she took a look, liked the idea of an older man as a change from all those fauns and satyrs, hitched a ride under some pretense, and hijacked the whole shebang—chariot, husband, and all.

I was ready to bet that when Demeter showed up to drag the oversexed minx home by the nose, Persephone grabbed a handful of pomegranate seeds and swallowed them on purpose, except for the handful she spat at Mommy. I could almost hear her as Demeter hauled her topside every spring: Awwww, Mommmmmm, you never let me have any fun!

“And since it is my kingdom, / make the rules!” Persephone bellowed. “If a mortal eats the food of the underworld, she stays! No exceptions!”

“Eleziane’s not mortal; she’s an elf!” I objected, not for the first time.

The elf under discussion went skipping up to Persephone’s titanic foot and began to twist her hair into corkscrew finger-curls, using the polished surface of the goddess’s big toe as a mirror. She was singing about bunnies again. This time they were gathering the peach blossoms to crown the Bunny Princess.

“You dare to tell Queen Kore what she already knows?” Demeter’s daughter lifted her lip at me. It was like watching a drawbridge go up. “It was I who found her, wandering the streets of this very city. She knew nothing of her past—not name, not land of origin, not even how she had come into my land while still living. The one thing she did know to tell me was that she was an elf, though what this meant she could not say either. ” The goddess turned smug. “I soon set her right on that score.”

Persephone—or Kore as she seemed to prefer—touched her wand to the ground before me, and a book appeared. As I took it up, she said, “I told my consort to fetch us something informative on the subject of elves.”

Wasn’t it, though. Between those harmless-looking covers was ihe whole sordid story of Wiki Woodelf, a nonsexist, nonviolent, ecologically conscious, politically correct critter who shared his feelings as readily as his acom-cup of sugar-free high-fiber low-fat ambrosia. He had a unicorn named Goldie. Bunnies figured heavily in the plot. I checked the cover and discovered it had been written hy my old high-school guidance counselor, Richard l/.uiin^i lie would.

"II (Ins is what you used lo reeducate Eleziane, it explains a lot,” I said. "But it still doesn’t make her mortal, so you can’t hold her here even if she did eat a whole pomegranate. If you’re so pioud of those rules you make, remember that the rule says ‘If any mu/ini eats the food of the underworld,’ not ‘If any elf.' ” Oh, I li.nl her on the ropes, now!

"Not anymore.” Kore pouted. “I can change the rules, too. Now it says that if any mortal or elf eats the food of the underworld, she stays. So there!”

I heard Neil groan. “Oh, Eleziane, baby, why’d you hafta do it? Why’d you hafta eat that fucking pomegranate?”

Kleziane’s huge eyes remained as empty as her head. “What’s a pomegranate?” she asked.

“You know, that big red fruit you chowed down on. Tough skin, bunch of dark red seeds inside, sort of this big?” Neil’s hands described a pomegranate the size of a honey dew melon.

“Oh.” Eleziane nodded. “I see. I think. I don’t believe little me could ever, ever eat anything as big as that. Not unless I shared it with Roly-Poly the squirrel and Chitter-Chatter the chipmunk. Why, the biggest thing my little tummy-wums could ever hold wouldn’t be much larger than this.” She wiggled her fingers as if tickling the air, then reached into a pocket of atmosphere— preferred catch-all of elves everywhere and much more convenient than a purse—and pulled out a pomegranate.

Neil grabbed the fruit from her. “Where’d you get this?”

“I don’t know. Please don’t shout. You might scare the happy hamsters who live in Harkaway House.”

I, in turn, grabbed the pomegranate from Neil and waved it at Eleziane, happy hamsters be damned. “Is this the same pomegranate you bought from Patroklos?”

“Oh, boo, hoo, hoo,” said Eleziane. She didn’t actually cry, she just said boo, hoo, hoo. It was creepy. “How do you expect me to remember?”

Using her iron scepter, Kore struck the pomegranate from my hand and caught in between her immense thumb and forefinger. Turning it slowly before her eyes, her expression darkened still further. “Patroklos,” she seethed. “Yes, that is the name of the one fruit vendor in all the town who carries these. But it is untouched.” She let it drop. Fortunately I was there to field it before it went splat on the pavement. “I thought you said you ate it?”

“La!” Eleziane touched her fingertips to her bosom and rolled her eyes at Hades’ queen. “I may have forgotten ever so much, but surely you don’t think I would ever eat any piece of fruit without washing it first, just the way Wiki Woodelf teaches us to do so as to remove all icky toxic pesticide residue. Why, washing one’s fruit is something any sensible elf would do even without Wiki’s good example.”

“But you don’t eat the rind of a pomegranate!” I cried. Then I noticed something. “Hey, this is damp. You did wash it! You were going to eat it, so you washed it, but something made you stop. What?” I sniffed the red fruit’s pebbly rind. There was a cloying, flowery smell clinging to it that made me dizzy. “Eleziane, where did you wash this fruit?”

The elfin princess shrugged. “I don’t know.” Then she clapped her hands together joyfully. “Let’s ask wise old Mister Hooty Owl!”

“Fuck wise old Mister Hooty Owl,” said Kore. “You, boy! Give me that!” She took the pomegranate back again and sniffed it for herself. Her eyes narrowed. “Lethe,” she pronounced.

A while later we were all standing on the rear terrace of Kore’s palace, gazing down at a sluggish gray river that meandered lazily all over the landscape as if it had forgotten where it was going. A host of phantoms approached the stream, all of them moving in a determined manner. By ranks they waited, and by turns each line knelt beside the waters, cupped their near-transparent hands and drank, then moved on. How differently they moved after that clrink! All sense of purpose seemed gone, and the ghosts floated vaguely along the shore until they reached a black marble footbridge crossing the gray river’s narrowest point. By ones and twos they drifted onto the bridge, but when they reached the midpoint of the span, they vanished.

Sometimes we saw a ghost come by who did not wait to drink from the river before crossing the bridge. These phantoms did not vanish halfway across, but made it to the other side. We watched them head off across the dusky fields until the ridge of a low hill hid them from sight. Inevitably, without exception, there came the sound of furious barking soon after each such departure, and the ghost came running back over the bridge. Some kept running, some took their places in the waiting lines of spirits who knelt and drank at the riverside. Every time we heard that insane growling and yapping, a nasty smile curved Kore’s lips.

"So that is l i the,” l)i Faustus mused. “The river of Hades where ghosts who will be reborn on earth drink to forget their former lives.”

“Looks like not all of them think that’s such a hot idea,” Ben i oinmrnted. “What’s over the bridge?”

" Ki-liirth. ” Kore clipped the word as if it were a dirty fingernail.

II my subjects find my rule so distasteful, they can go any time they like, but they shall take nothing with them! Let them learn the painful lessons of life all over again. It serves them right! Midway across that bridge is the unseen upward path that will throw them hack into the living world. It is a route open only to those ghosts who drink of Lethe’s waters, because they no longer have any memories to weigh them down. Much good may it do them! And if they try to leave my realm without Lethe’s forgetful waters in them, they cross the bridge seeking the road beyond, which eventually takes them to the surface world.” She had a malicious sneer that Loki would have appreciated. “They learn.”

Faustus touched my arm and whispered, “Cerberus. The three-headed hound of Hades who guards the dead. That is what we hear barking over that hill.”

“So you wanted to wash the fruit first and that was the water you used?” Neil was saying to Eleziane. It was like talking to a cement block covered with ribbons and lace.

“It must have been so,” Mr. Feidelstein averred. “As she raised the rind to her lips, a droplet of that stream touched her tongue and stole her memories. We are lucky that it also seems to have robbed her of recalling why she had that fruit so near her mouth in the first place.”

“Silly me,” said Eleziane and tittered.

“If she didn’t eat the pomegranate, she’s free to go,” I said to Kore. The Lady of Hades eyed me sourly, but she knew she was beaten.

“It is so. Go, then. Cross that bridge and see if you fare any better than my disloyal subjects.”

“Fair Queen,” Faustus said. “Is that the only road out of your realm?”

“It is not.” Kore clamped her mouth shut in a selfish, all-holding line.

“Will you not show us some other way we might go? Surely Your Majesty’s goodness and charity—”

“Never.” This lady was not a good loser. “Take yourselves and your friend and be gone!” She pointed her scepter melodramatically at the farther shore.

We were all halfway down the slope to the river Lethe when we heard Persephone yelling, “Halt! Wait, I command you! You aren’t going to leave me stuck holding onto this'. I want you all gone, and every speck of your belongings, so take your friend’s baggage too! Take that'." She flung the pomegranate. This time we let it go splat. “And that'." The book of Wiki the Woodelf came sailing after, but Kore had too good an arm and the volume sank without trace in the Lethe, thank God. “And this'.”

We heard a loud smack and a startled neighing. Hoofbeats pounded across marble, then drummed over the scrubby hillside. Strawberry-pink mane and tail streaming in the wind, dainty cloven hooves flying, pearly horn a lonely beacon against the underworld’s gloom, the unicorn came rampaging down the slope heading right for Eleziane.

“Goldie!” she cried happily, opening her arms wide to the lance-like horn that charged her heart.

22 DOCTOR, DOCTOR

Neil threw himself between Eleziane and the galloping unicorn’s deadly horn. It was a noble gesture. Too bad nobility couldn’t turn his skin to armor. I jammed my hand in my pouch, fumbling for a “live” shard of crystal even as I ran with as much noble stupidity to take my place between the charging beast and Neil, and Faustus sprinted after to stand in front of me. If the unicorn got up enough momentum, we had all the makings of a prime jerk-kabob.

I yanked shard after shard, all dark, all lacking the warming spark of magic. I was badly hampered in my search, because I’d stowed that paper bag full of fossilized Danish one of the Furies gave me in the same deerskin sack as the crystal pieces. In disgust, I pulled it out, threw it on the ground, and kept searching for a chip I could use. Meanwhile, Faustus raised his arms and began intoning a series of harsh, alien words, calling up the powers his arcane studies had given him. Blue fire arced between his fingers and leaped towards the beast, only to splatter away as harmlessly as so many raindrops.

“Goldie! Goldie!” Eleziane was sobbing now. She pulled Neil by the back of his shirt collar, trying to climb over him. She would have scaled each one of us between her and the unicorn if she could have. “Such bad, bad boys! You leave Goldie alone, or I will be so cross that all the tiny bluebells in Foxglove Valley will summon the brave little mole-warriors to defend us. And after you fall into the pits they will dig, all the bunnies will gather around the edge to teach you why violence is wrong, wrong, wrong. I hope you’ll listen, because if you don’t, all the bunnies will kick earth on top of you until you are allllll gone. I think filling an ecological niche is peachy-keen, don’t you? Won’t it be gobs and oodles of fun to help the tiny bluebells grow?”

The unicorn put on the brakes inches from Dr. Faustus’ chest, flared its nostrils, tossed its mane, and shouted, “Will you just bolt up about the sodding bunnies for five minutes, you unspeakable ninny!” The cloven hooves stamped the dry Lethe-side grasses to powder. “If I have to listen to that mush-mouthed drivel any longer, I will use this horn to spindle you like a paid-up bill. Are you listening to me, granola-for-brains?” Only the unicorn didn’t say “granola.”

We were stunned, no other word for it. The unicorn’s frosty white coat and bubble-gum-colored mane and tail made it look like it ought to have marshmallow cream running in its veins. Its honeyed eyes were hugely out of proportion to the rest of it, and it had flaxen eyelashes thick as scrub-brushes. Even the rosy tufts of tangled hair at the creature’s fetlocks seemed to have captured sugar crystals from the very air. These spangly bits of fur twinkled and sparkled gaily despite the lack of sunshine in Hades. Taken in sum, Goldie was a beast you’d expect to come prancing out of the gummy pages of Wiki Woodelf’s enchanted Land of Nausea.

Then the unicorn rattled off a litany of verbal abuse fit to melt a Marine drill-sergeant’s fillings. Wiki would have dropped dead, and a six-pack of the bunnies with him.

I stepped around Faustus. “Who are you?” I asked the beast.

Where did you come from?”

“Are you with Stupid?” Goldie countered, swinging her horn at Eleziane, who had lost interest in the unicorn and was now skipping gaily among the diaphanous spirits of the dead, telling them all about how the gallant hoppy-toad taught shy Lucinda lizard that feelings are good if you let them out and spread them around. A bunch of the shades she victimized let out a terrified shriek in unison, then formed a flying wedge and made a wild dash for the black marble bridge without bothering to sip Lethe. Over the hill. Cerberus went berserk chasing them back.

“Eleziane's our friend,” I confessed. “But she’s not stupid. She had an accident, that’s all. She got some Lethe water and forgot almost everything except that she was an elf. Queen Kore tried to teach her how an elf’s supposed to act by looking it up somewhere, only she picked the wrong manual for the job.”

“Tell me about it.” Goldie snorted. “If I ever get my horn on the drool-brain who wrote that abomination, I’ll give him some constructive criticism he won’t forget! Why do they always have to pick on us unicorns? Every cruddy ink-licker on or under the food, green earth does it sooner or later, damn them. I was minding my own business, taking a crap in the one comer of the Elysian fields where Madam Kore won’t have a fit if you offload the old oat-bag, when here comes one of the regal bitch’s flunkies with a length of iron rope and orders that I’m to come along with him back to the palace.” The unicorn tore a mouthful of grass from the riverbank, chewed it to a gooey, slimy wad, and spat it accurately right against the midmost pillar of the black marble bridge. “Screw that.”

“Iron rope?”

“Local specialty,” said Goldie, using her white, chisel-like teeth to rip up the makings of another spitball. “Looks like regular rope, but holds like iron, and you know how iron affects folks like me. Only thing that’ll control some of us enchanted whatzits. Hurts like a pisser. They’re not getting a halter of that on my neck again, no sir!” She launched the half-munched tussock, this time aiming for the palace up the hill behind us. It missed, but it’s the thought that counts.

“So I guess you told Queen Kore’s servant ‘Later,’ huh?” I asked.

“Way later, babe. Fat lot of good that did. When Queen Bertha Ballbuster gets an idea in her skull, she follows through on it before the poor thing dies from loneliness in there. What can I say? She had the muscle, I got the shaft.”

“We know how that feels,” Faustus commented.

By this time, all of my companions had gathered around Goldie and me to stare in wonder and listen in shock. The only absentees were Neil and Eleziane. She was trying to pluck the few scraggly flowers that grew beside the river. Frequent sprinklings with Lethe water had left those blossoms limp, ashy-stemmed, and crowned with lopsided blooms the color of soap-scum, as if the amnesia-inducing water their roots drank had made the flowers forget all they ever knew about growing tall, strong, and beautiful. Neil tagged after the elfin princess to make sure she didn’t fall into the river.

Goldie watched Eleziane’s tripping progress back and forth, up and down the bank. Outsized golden eyes can hold two and a half times the amount of sardonic amusement normal eyes can. “My mistress,” the unicorn sneered. “Once Kore had me wearing the iron necktie, she had her house-ghosts give me to your friend there before you could say spanakopita. And all because that friggin’ book said unicorns and elves go together like rotten meat and maggots. So now we’re stuck with each other.” Goldie lifted her tail and blew a mighty blast of scorn.

“You have to believe me; Eleziane really isn’t that bad when she’s normal.” I couldn’t let the unicorn persist in thinking of the elf-maiden as a total lint-brain.

“Normal or not, what does it matter?” Unicorns also do bitterness very well. “We are paired for life.”

“You and Eleziane? I thought unicorns only hung out with virgins.”

“Jealous, big boy?” Goldie could work more down-and-dirty implications into the simplest words than a dockside hooker. "Don’t worry, if I were single, you’d be the one for me.” She snorted at my body with less finesse and more enthusiasm than a pack of randy bloodhounds. “Ah, yes! A noble vintage of virginity! That was a prime year for not getting any, as I recall.” I turned bright red. Goldie didn’t believe in lowering her voice. Even if she had, we were all too close together for anyone to miss a word of her mortifying revelations. Faustus coughed into his fist and began an emest conversation with Mr. Feidelstein about the weather. Ben wrestled a laugh back down into his craw until it came out as a long, elaborate throat-clearing. Mom tried to maintain a neutral expression, but kept ping-ponging between pleasure that her baby boy was still Untouched and pity for my embarrassment. I gave sincere thanks that Neil was off sheepdog-ging his true love or I’d never hear the end of it.

“You know, Goldie, for a unicorn, you’re a pretty big horse’s ass,” I said.

“77m/” Mom was scandalized.

“How rude,” the unicorn replied, although she was laughing.

Sorry if I zapped your image, Toots. I’m just a little torked that I've got to spend eternity yoked to Polyanna Pixie. It’s not like the virginity thing; Queen Kore set a spell on us that’s like an invisible bond of iron rope between us. When that lady plays it by the book, by the book is stays.”

Mom stroked the beast’s strawberry mane. “Maybe it won’t be so bad once Eleziane’s cured. You’ll like her better, then.” “Yeah, that’s right!” I brightened. “We haven’t even tried to see il we can lift the spell of forgetfulness from her.”

"Oh, that’s the easy part.” Goldie’s flanks rippled. “Cure her? I can do that any time I want.”

Mom asked, “How?” and I asked, “Then why haven’t you done il?” at the same time.

I'hc unicorn yawned in our faces with breath that smelled of * milied violets. “My horn, of course. It cures most anything. Kind of boring, really. You spend the first twelve centuries of your life hoping for a challenge, then you finally settle down with the realization that life sucks. But I’m not bitter.”

“And the sun rises in the west,” I mumbled to myself. Aloud, I repeated my initial question.

“Why should I?” Goldie countered. “What’s in it for me?”

By this time, Eleziane had contrived to find enough of Hades’ miserable blossoms with which to make a shabby wreath for Goldie’s neck. The unicorn snapped at her peevishly when she tried to slip it on, but ended by permitting the liberty. “Wonderful,” Goldie grizzled.

I took the unicorn aside, motioning for the others to stay back. When we had gone a ways up the bank, I asked, “What do you want?” It was cards-on-the-table time.

“What do you mean?” Nothing registers suspicion better than an eye the size of an orange.

“You can cure Eleziane, but you won’t because there’s nothing in it for you. Fine, you’re a selfish creep, so that’s understandable. Let’s deal. For the cure to be worth your while, what do you want to be in it for you?”

The creature still eyed me askance. “Don’t taunt me, sugar-buns. The last virgin who taunted me ended up as celibate-on-a-stick.”

“This is an honest offer. Homy. We’re no common bunch of Hades-slummers, or didn’t you gather that from the magic Faustus and I were throwing at you when you charged Eleziane?”

“Magic? That was small potatoes.” The unicorn whinnied. “I doubt that if we ran the whole bunch of you through a wine-press we could squeeze out enough magic to change your mind. You could never give me what I want.”

“Try me.”

Goldie cocked her head. “I think you mean that.”

I met her look and held it. “I told you that Eleziane’s my friend. I owe her my life. If there’s anything I can do to help her now. I’ll do it.”

“So you do mean it.” The unicorn whickered. “I like your spirit, boy. I could use a friend like you myself. Very well. I'll level with you: I want to go home.”

“Hades isn’t your home?”

Goldie puffed strongly through her nostrils as if to blow that ridiculous idea clear to California. “Folk like me waste our time dolling up a dump like this? I don’t think so.”

“Why are you here, then?”

Goldie turned her head aside sheepishly, her translucent, shrimp-pink eyelids lowering. “I've been sick. I still am. There is no hope for me, no cure for any of the others who joined me in exile.”

“What others?”

“What do you care?” the unicorn snapped.

“Well, one of my crowd is a doctor. Maybe he could cure you.”

“A doctor?” Goldie echoed contemptuously. “A doctor? A DOCTOR?”

The clouded heights over Hades flashed with lightning. The Lethe boiled and churned with unaccustomed vigor. The earth beneath our feet trembled. Fissures opened along the river bank, gulping down and spitting up whole multitudes of spirits. I was flung from my feet against Goldie’s flank, but even the unicorn lost her footing and tumbled to the ground.

Yes? came a voice that was more like a voice-over. Lushly bearded and gowned in a gleaming white himation that left memories of Homer’s mantle seeming dingy by comparison, the figure of a venerable Greek flowed above the still-eddying Lethe. Who summons Aesclepius? You know how I hate to make house calls.

“Hi, quack,” Goldie greeted him.

Oh. It’s you. The god of healing didn’t look thrilled. Sleep with two sacred snakes and call me in the morning. The apparition began to dissolve.

“Not so fast. Doc,” the unicorn belled. “I didn't want to call you up—less I see of you, the better my memories will taste—but since it happened, tell the kid about my case, huh?”

A false call? Aesclepius was losing affection for Goldie by the nanosecond, and he hadn't started with a full tank of the stuff. I’ll have to charge you for it anyway, so / suppose it would do no harm to bill it as a consultation. Very well. He raised his right hand and pulled aside the horizon and gave us a vision of a new land.

At the time, I wondered whether the others saw it the same way I did. Perversely, I hoped they didn't. Some greedy comer of my heart beheld all the loveliness of that realm and ached to keep it all lor myself. The Isles of the Blest were an ailing shadow of this place.

The grass held a thousand stars, the trees whispered sweetness. Between the trunks—silver and sepia, gold and brown—I saw the labled creatures of old tales. I’d seen their like before—wasn’t I

Grand and Puissant Champion of the Fey, even if I was going to forfeit the security deposit on my wand?—but I had never seen their equal. When people speak of supernatural beings, it’s to give a shape to ideals they know they’ll never meet: Gryphons for majesty, unicorns for grace, dragons for wisdom, elves for beauty. The inhabitants of that land which Aesclepius revealed to us were the ideals our poor versions of gryphons, unicorns, dragons, and elves yearned to be.

I heard more than one moan of loss as the god of healing let the air fall back into its original place, cutting off the vision. “Home ...” Goldie’s breath stirred the short hairs behind my ears. You could hear the longing and the heartbreak in her voice.

That is where she came from, Aesclepius said dryly. She and the others who contracted the illness. He went on to tell us that they had been banished long ago, by our mortal reckoning of time, for fear of contagion. Though they were themselves immortal, they deeply felt each passing day that did not bring them back to their true home.

And so they came to me, of course, the god of healing said a trifle smugly. Then his smile crumbled. Alas, their affliction lay beyond my power to heal.

“You say ‘they’ and ‘their,’” I pointed out. “Where are the others?”

For his answer, Aesclepius pulled back another curtain of air to reveal the Elysian fields. They resembled the Isles of the Blest, only more poorly lit. The ghosts of the great and the good of antiquity passed in stately progress back and forth over the meadows. It looked very peaceful and very austere, and boring enough to make me want to go out and set fire to a sheep so that I’d wind up in Tartarus when I died. Even a little selective eternal torment would be better than that!

I couldn’t see anyone or anything remotely related to Goldie, though, and I didn’t mind saying it aloud.

“Shut up,” said the unicorn. “Watch the underbrush, upstage left.”

I did. Argue with Goldie and I bet you’d wind up with more holes than an ocarina. Dutifully I looked where she told me to, and my obedience was rewarded. The tall grasses parted and a swarm of plump infant fauns came tumbling out, playing the panpipes and gamboling for all they were worth. The fur covering their goatish lower bodies came in a cheery assortment of sherbet colors, which coordinated nicely with the hides of the covey of baby pegasoi they flushed. The small winged horses were just as cute and big-eyed and chubby-limbed as the fauns. They couldn’t make a move without being terminally adorable.

I heard everyone going “ooohhhh” and “aaaahhhhh” over the winsome beasties’ antics. Then, from the gray-green foliage of the lone olive tree in sight, a flock of amoretti came swooping out to join the merry fun. Plump and pink, with tiny, aerodynamically unsound wings, these miniature cupids were the heralds for the half-dozen pastel-coated preadolescent centaurs who leaped from hiding to foot it featly upon the jolly greensward, ho.

No one was going “ooohhhh” and “aaaahhhhh” anymore, though I did pick up some “urrrrrrgggggh” ’s.

“When I was thirteen I bought myself a two-pound box of Godiva chocolates,” Mom croaked in my ear. “I ate them all in one sitting. Godiva chocolates are the most delicious in the world, but too much—I wanted to throw up every delicious morsel. I feel like that right now.”

“Me too,” I comforted her. We weren’t the exceptions to the rule. Mr. Feidelstein and Ben both looked like liverwurst, while Faustus was visibly swaying on his feet. I could hear healthy yorking sounds and turned to see Neil crouched beside the Lethe make a deposit instead of a withdrawal. Eleziane was the only one who gazed with moist-lipped and vacant-eyed worship at the candy-colored, sugar-glazed refugees from A Nightmare on Sun-nyhrook Farm. Even the noble dead of classical times fled before them until the only thing left on the Elysian fields were a few battered laurel wreaths and the discarded armor of Achilles.

Mercifully, Aesclepius let the curtain fall. Until they are cured, here they must remain. He vanished.

“And if you think it hasn’t been tedious, you wouldn’t know monotony if it goosed your grandma,” Goldie put in. “The only laughs we’ve had since we got here was a short stint topside when they filmed Fantasia, but otherwise, nothing.”

“Come with us, Goldie,” I said. Tough or not, the unicorn’s plight had touched me. “I know we’ll be able to help you.” “Right. ” The unicorn curled her lip sarcastically. “Like I’ve got ;i choice. I’m bonded to Dippy the Wonder-Bimbo, remember?” I had had just about enough smart-mouth out of this beast. I had problems enough of my own without taking guff from an archetype with an attitude. “You think you’ve got troubles, baby? I’ve got to get us all out of this dump, lead the way through who knows how the hell many—many—well, Hells—and if I manage to get us all back to the surface, we’ve got to deal with the end of the world. With stopping the end of the world, I mean. Like I’ve really got any idea how I’m supposed to do that! Plus right now, on the dot, even as we speak, my girlfriend’s bouncing around in a spandex suit in front of a lot of strangers and singing duets with a toad named Loki and I don’t like that mental picture one . . . damn . . . hit!” I was shouting right into the creature's rose-petal nostrils by the time I was done.

“Oh, okay.” Goldie swished her tail by way of a unicorn shrug. “Since you asked nicely. ” She tossed her head and started walking for the black bridge. We all ran after her, except Neil who was still staggering from the impact of all that animated saccharine.

When we reached the bridge itself, she stopped and looked back at me. “You’re forgetting something.” She waved her nose at the brown paper bag I had pulled from my pouch and abandoned behind us on the grass.

“Aw, we don’t need that. It’s just got two or three slabs of stale Danish in it. I may get hungry, but I’m never going to get desperate enough to risk a tooth on those fossils.”

“Get it.”

“Look, Goldie—”

“I said get it. We’ll need it.”

“Do what Goldie says, Tim,” Mom prompted.

Growling, I complied. We crossed the black bridge and crested the hill beyond in no time and with no opposition. I was still muttering about my recent errand as we began our descent on the far side. “Makes about as much sense to haul this shit along as naming you ‘Goldie’ when there’s not one gold speck on—” “That was just the name of the unicorn in that accursed book,” Goldie said stiffly. “It is most certainly not my real name.”

“No? So what is—?” She uttered something very much under her breath. “What?"

“I said my name is Fluffy!” the tormented beast screamed. “And before you say one lousy word, in the language of my land, ‘Fluffy’ means ‘immortal shining spear of light that brings destruction unto her enemies,’ and anyone who makes fun of another’s name dies a sudden, brutal, vicious, bloody death, so you just better not—!”

I missed the rest of what she said. I was laughing so hard that when Cerberus sprang for my throat I almost missed my own slaughter.

23 TACO HELL

“Nice doggie,” I said.

“Grrrr,” said Cerberus. The center head, that is. The one on the right remained noncommittal and the one on the left wore a big, dopey, tongue-lolling, spit-dripping canine grin.

When you are about to have your jugular vein torn out of your throat as easily as a kid zips the peel off a banana, you acquire perspective. Time slows down and you notice details. I always thought Cerberus was just your ordinary three-headed dog the size of a brontosaurus, but as death closed in I had the leisure to observe that he was really just stegosaurus size. What's more, though his body was a lot like that of a brindled Great Dane, each head not only had its own personality but also appeared to belong to a different breed of pup. The neutral, right-side head was a bloodhound’s—handy when you have to track down a fugitive ghost. On the left we had a happy-go-lucky black and white mongrel, but the central head was strictly business and pure pit-bull.

“Help.” It came out of my soon-to-be-ventilated throat as a mousey peep.

Hooves flashed over my head. I heard Goldie—Fluffy, rather— trumpeting like a stag as she reared up to strike at the hellhound. Cerberus’ bloodhound head yawned in her face; the mongrel head lowered, whimpering, but the center head paid no attention to the belligerent unicorn at his flank. Gobbets of foam like cauliflowers dripped from his writhing lips. I could smell the reek of long-dead meat, though it was nowhere near so vile a charnel stench as Set’s remembered scent. I closed my eyes and counted my heartbeats, waiting for the last one.

“Bad dog! Bad dog!” Pebbles pattered down around my face. I opened my eyes to see Mom stooping to gather up another handful. She flung them at the dog’s shoulder and addressed him in her best no-nonsense voice. “Heel, sir! Heel, I say!”

It was the first time I ever saw a pit-bull laugh. The effect was like watching a bright red tunnel to nowhere open up less than a yard from your face. His tongue fell over me like a soggy crimson quilt, and I saw my reflection in one of his fangs.

Mom wasn’t the only one trying to help Fluffy save my bacon. Like a swarm of midges attacking an elephant, all my friends and comrades were doing their part to pull the huge dog’s attention from me. Eleziane stood a ways off making kissy sounds and imploring the pwecious puppie-wuppie to come bye-byes. Faustus was shooting off his magic fires again, though with as little effect as they’d had against the unicorn. I took time out from mourning my own imminent doom to feel sorry for the man—sell your soul for magic lore and it doesn’t work in the clinch? Some bargain! Ben and Mr. Feidelstein had somehow drummed up a spare piece of the old salami and were attempting to lure Cerberus away from me by wigwagging the linty tidbit.

The only one I didn’t see was Neil. Weird. Of all our company, the ex-Rawbone King should be doing the best in a nitty-gritty street fight. He wasn’t the kind to chicken out, so where—? Then I heard a string of curses getting louder and louder and louder, then retreating, then returning. Some of Mom’s pebbles smacked Cerberus’ middle head dead on the nose, making the beast turn up his snout momentarily. This gave me the chance to actually sit up and see that my good buddy Neil had leaped for and caught the monstrous hound’s tail. There he hung, kicking and biting and punching and swearing, as the massive extremity wagged back and forth, giving him a wild ride at the pendulum’s end.

“Now, Tim!” Fluffy’s anguished cry sounded loud in my ears. “Use them now!”

“Use—?”

“The sops, the sops!”

“Huh?” Cerberus had decided Mom’s pebbles were no threat and was bringing his central head back to finish me off.

“In the bag, asshole! In the bag!”

My mind snapped back before Cerberus’ jaws could do the same. The bag? Of course the bag! The bag that the Fury had given me on debarking Charon’s ship. Three stale Danish, three heads on the Pooch from Perdition—what could be fairer? All the old myths I could remember had the heroes who visited Hades bribing Cerberus with sops of bread and honey.

Drugged bread and honey.

“I don’t . . . think . . . this is going to . . . work,” I gasped to Fluffy as I struggled to pry the sticky pastries apart. “These don’t smell . . . like they’ve been soaked ... in anything but . . . sugar.” I got one free and pitched it at the bloodhound head. It snapped it out of the air and acted as if it had done me a favor.

“What do you want them soaked in?” Fluffy countered.

“You know . . . opium . . . laudanum . . . sleeping— come on, get off, you gooey bastard!—sleeping pills.” The second prune Danish released its hold on the third and I launched it at the mongrel head. The black and white mutt gobbled it down and wagged the communal tail so hard that Neil was whiplashed off. “Otherwise what’s gonna stop this son of a bitch from eating the sops first, me second?” I lobbed the last cake right down the pit-bull’s maw.

As if to prove the rightness of my words—big consolation—the three heads swallowed in unison, licked their chops, and brought their collective attention right back to me. A paw as big as an armchair pushed me down. The pit-bull head smiled, cold and ravenous.

Suddenly, the flicker of a different emotion crossed those yellow eyes. It was a dubious look, a fleeting misgiving, the phrase uh-oh translated into body language. The other heads wore similar expressions. The gigantic paw lifted from my chest. It was trembling. The mongrel head began to whine, and the other two look up the pathetic theme. With an abrupt, ear-piercing howl, Cerberus leaped over my supine body and thundered away over the fields of Hades, rump dragging. We could still hear his heart-rending yips, yelps, and ki-yi-yi’s as we passed into the cloudy regions between underworlds.

“Never underestimate the power of a prune Danish,” Fluffy sagely pronounced.

I was glad to be alive, but as with all gratitude, it was a short-lived feeling. Soon it gave way to impatience. We hadn’t gotten any sort of directions for escaping Hades, and as soon as we entered the borderlands we were confronted with a situation that made us all realize how badly we needed them.

“A fork in the road,” said Ben, “should only have two branches. Then a person can at least flip a coin.”

“No good here,” Neil said. “Not unless someone’s got a seven-sided nickel.”

“We don’t have any coins at all, remember?” Mom hadn’t forgotten the hard time we’d gotten boarding Charon’s vessel, even if the rest of us had.

The path before us splayed out into seven distinct subroutes. It looked like a giant’s rake. We went a few yards down each one of the lesser paths, hoping for a clue to tell us which would be our best bet. The leftmost one did seem to be the most distinctive. We only had to go a little ways along its dusty surface before it sloped upward into a cave from which a gust of fresh air blew.

“That must be the path leading to the surface world,” said Faustus. “It seems to be pointing in the right direction, though where on the surface world it emerges, I don't know.”

Ben volunteered to explore the upward route for us. He ducked into the cave only to come out shortly afterwards. “You go about fifty yards up that way and you can’t miss the smell of moussaka, pastitsio, dolmades, retsina, and baklava. If that road doesn’t bring us out in Greece, may these hands lose the ability to slice pastrami thin.”

We tried the far right-hand route. This too led to a cavern. We hadn’t penetrated the rocky tunnel far before we encountered a ghost. Orpheus, you bum, is that you? it demanded querulously. Well, it’s about time you came back, I must say! Now, this time you listen to what you’re told and don’t look back. I don't know why you had to look back in the first place, except you never could do anything right. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you did it on purpose. My mother warned me, and I should have listened. “Never marry a musician, Eurydike,” she said. “They’ll let you down every time." As soon as we get back to the surface, we’re going straight over to Mother’s house and invite her to come live with us. It’s the least we can do. Orpheus, are you listening to me? Orpheus, don’t you dare pretend you’re not there. I can hear you breathing!

We got out of there fast.

That left us with five paths. Neil suggested going straight up the center. We tried it, only to meet with a solid wall of brimstone stench and the yowls of souls in torment. The others held back, but I decided to press on. Honestly, it didn’t sound or smell much worse than the subway at rush hour. A little farther down the road I encountered a man crowned with a laurel wreath and draped in a pumice-colored toga.

What took you so long? he demanded when he saw me, squinting through the murk. I’ve been waiting for ages. Now listen, I’ve got some great ideas you can put in the sequel. First thing we do, we lose the whole idea of calling it “Inferno II”—too tame. And "Divine Comedy, the Next Generation” won’t fly, either. People are going to hear “Comedy” and when they find out Woody Allen, Steve Martin, Robin Williams aren’t in it, they get p.o.’ed and take their business elsewhere. We want a bigger market-share; we’ve got to move with the times, Danny-boy. How about “The Passion Pit" or “The Lusts of Abaddon”? See if we can’t get Beatrice to go along with a little soft-core action, just to spice it up for all those frustrated matrones out there. And ifBea won't play ball, let’s wait a while, sign Kirstie Alley, Julia Roberts, maybe even go for Streep for that part. I checked with the succubus union down in Dis, and they’re willing to stage an orgy for scale, with scales, but when we cut the movie deal I want creative control, just like what I didn’t get with the “Aeneid.” Hey, what can I say, Alighieri? You die, you learn. Now about my agent—

I got out of there faster.

Which left us with four paths yet untried. “We could flip two nickels,” Neil suggested. “If we had them.”

Just then, a breeze came wafting up along one of the two right-hand paths remaining. It was a hot breeze, redolent with burning spices. I sniffed it and my mouth began to water. Visions of nachos danced in my head.

“Do you smell what I smell?” I asked everyone.

Fluffy flared her nostrils. “Mictlan,” she announced. “No other underworld could carry the same aroma. During my exile in Hades, I filled the lonely days by studying the lore of other underworlds. Mictlan is the Aztec afterlife which consists of nine separate Hells, the last of which leads to oblivion.”

“If we want to reach the surface world, I doubt that will be the best way,” Mr. Feidelstein said.

We agreed with him on that and were about to pursue the other right-hand route when a new tang elbowed its way through the succulent scents of green chiles and unsweetened chocolate.

Dead fish.

“Teleri!” I shouted, and broke into a run. The others followed.

It was atop the grandest of all the pyramids in the first Hell of Mictlan that we were reunited with Teleri. The climb was agony on my calves, but the look on her face when we reached the top and called her name made it all worthwhile.

“ Tis a mercy ye found me up here, Tim, an’ no mistake,” my banshee said a little later, passing the tortilla chips and salsa. We were seated around a strange-looking stone table whose top was covered with disquieting dark stains. Eleziane and Neil completed our foursome, with Mom and the others placed at an identical rock buffet ten feet away. We all sat on folding stools upholstered with the pelts of spotted cats. The view we had of Mictlan was breathtaking, the service abominable.

“No mercy,” Fluffy said. “He just followed his nose.” The unicorn burst into horselaughs while Teleri gave her the needle-eye, followed by the cold shoulder.

Eleziane dipped her finger in the salsa, licked it clean, and emitted a rapid-fire series of oo-oo-oo-wasty-hot noises. Neil gazed into the depths of his beer and ignored her. None of the tall, silent, copper-skinned and turquoise-masked attendants at the summit asked for ID. This was therefore his third beer. His spirit wasn’t completely broken, but I could see the stress-cracks forming all over it, brought on by continuous exposure to a chronically ditsy girlfriend. When a man takes to playing tiddley-winks with tortilla chips instead of joining in polite conversation, you know he’s far gone.

“It was luck,” I admitted. “At first, when we were dumped into the underworlds, I never thought to get all of us back together. The best I hoped for was to get out, take care of business with Loki, and force him to rescue everyone. That’s if I could’ve beaten him.” I sighed. My hand was resting on the pouch that held what was left of my shattered wand. The odds of my overcoming Loki and his band had changed drastically since the last time I’d seen Teleri.

“Aye, luck,” she repeated, scooping up a mouthful of salsa and downing it as if it had no more bite than a teaspoon of cottage cheese. “We Irish are famous ones fer that quantity, t’ be sure.” Her smile died. “I’m hopin’ with all me heart that poor Master Runyon’s had a sufficiency o’ luck t' bear him company, wherever he may have landed.”

“Maybe we’ll be able to find him, too,” I suggested.

“How? ’Tis here I’ve bided since th’ time as first I fell into Mictlan. Nine Hells there be, each worse than the next, an’ all th’ reward ye may hope fer at th’ end's t’ be thrust into nothingness.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Fluffy snorted. “That's the official word, anyway.” She stuck her muzzle into Neil’s beer and swilled it down. He didn’t offer one word of protest. The brew tasted like armadillo piss, as he declared at the first swallow, but it was better than nothing. “I don’t trust officials. Not after seeing Queen Kore in action. Or Aesclepius. The minute someone tells you things are the way they are because that’s the way they are, I say ‘screw it.’ It’s all one big excuse. The truth’s more like: Things are the way they are because the way they are is the way that suits the people who says things are the way they are.”

“Huh?” I said.

Neil bopped me in the arm. “Shut up, dickhead; it’s Zen.”

“I say we try,” Fluffy concluded. “What can we lose?”

“One wrong turn and we’re in oblivion? I’d say that’s a pretty high-stakes gamble.” I slipped two fingers into the pouch, but all the shards I touched were cold. We were running low on aces, if we had any left at all, and I wasn’t much of a betting man.

“Nay, the beast’s right.” Teleri stood up, fists on the stone slab. “All I’ve done since falling here has been t’ wait. No more o’ that, say I! Together we are, an’ together we’ll find th’ way t’ save dear Runyon from whatever vile slough as has his own precious self. ” Listening to her, a funny thought struck me. Good. I could use some laughs. “Teleri, you sure do sound mighty hot to get Master Runyon back. Is he that great an agent?”

The banshee blushed. “That’s none o’ yer business, an’ ’tis longer ye’ll live if ye keep yer great crooked nose out o’ other folks’ affairs!” It was as I suspected: Teleri had developed a bit of a tender spot for the luchorpan.

“Okay, okay, we’ll get him back for you.” I stood up too, and announced, “Hey, everyone, we’re hitting the road.”

The attendants said nothing as we left the top of the pyramid and began the steep descent. Their plumed headdresses waved in the breeze as they clcared the tables. Teleri regarded their silent labor with a shudder.

“When first I came here, yon summit seemed th’ perfect haven,” she confided. “Aye, no sooner did I draw near th’ table but they came forth t’ offer me what poor refreshments ye saw.” “The chips and salsa?”

"Aye, an’ th’ beer besides, though ’tis as parlous woeful a tipple as ever passed th’ lips o’ Fey or mortal.”

“You should’ve ordered something else,” I joshed her.

She didn’t take it as a joke. “Didn’t I, just! Oh, mute they be, but didn’t they give me t’ understand as there was tastier victuals available t’ th’ discerning. So I asked fer some, an’ they bowed and used signs t’ tell me as ’twould be a wee wait t' prepare ’em.

In an’ out o’ yon stone hut as stands atop th' pyramid I saw them pass, bearin’ trays laden heavy wi’ delicacies whose aroma was fit t’ draw saliva from a stone. But never what I’d asked fer, never. More o’ that dog-water beer—that they’d fetch in a moment—an’ baskets o’ those com shingles wi’ all th’ red glop as I’d fancy, but never bite nor sup o’ anything more.”

Now I saw why Mictlan was truly one of the better Hells.

We reached the bottom of the pyramid and studied the traffic pattern of the spirits. Most of them were heading in one direction, so we fell into line and went with the flow. From the land of pyramids we entered a region of misty lagoons skirted by jungle-grown paths. The humid air was thick with raucous bird-cries, though we never saw a single flash of plumage. Beyond the lagoons came a sandless desert of parched earth and scrubby cactus. There was no sun, merely a glare overhead.

“I’m thirsty,” Mom said, and the words were no sooner out of her mouth than we saw a tin-roofed shack dispensing the local beer in white waxed paper cups. Any port in a storm, even if we did eat a couple more baskets of tortilla chips with salsa than was really healthy.

Sometimes we traveled up mountainsides, sometimes we trudged beside a gray and foaming sea. The ghosts with whom we traveled marched along stoically, paying no mind to the shifting natural beauties around them. Pretty soon we began to imitate them, keeping our eyes fixed on the path directly before us, greeting each new vista as if it were no more than a temporary inconvenience to our eyes.

And we really did drink too much beer.

We had entered a region of tropical rain forests and had pulled over to take a break at a roadside cafe called "Tfo Tezcatlipoca's.” Everyone took a seat at the counter, only there weren't enough places for us all. I was feeling a bit queasy. I was thirsty enough, but one more sip of Mictlan Lite and I was going to be sick. Recalling a big, comfortable-looking boulder I'd seen just outside the cafe, I went to rest on it and wait for the others.

Someone had beaten me to it.

“Hello, Tim,” said Faustus. It was the first time we’d been alone since before my wild wish had deprived him of his sight. A new feeling of unease hit me in the stomach, worse than all the beer-induced nausea I was already feeling. I turned to go back inside.

“Still mad at me?”

I stopped. Without looking at him I said, “You didn’t tell Mom who blinded you. What are you waiting for?”

“What makes you think I’m waiting?”

I looked around. “You’re not going to tell her? Not ever?” He shook his head. “Why?”

“I could ask you ‘Why not?’ ” he replied. “But that would be cheating, wouldn’t it?” He made some room beside him on the boulder. “Sit down.”

My feet felt like sacks of clay, but I obeyed him. Under the pale purple blossoms of a jacaranda tree, he leaned back and spoke to the past:

“I was twelve when my father died. That was centuries ago, but I haven’t forgotten. Some feelings settle in the marrow of your bones and never leave. It was hard for my mother to support us. I wasn’t the only child—there were six more besides myself, one an infant, and all of us hungry. There wasn’t a lot a woman could do in those times to bring in money. Handwork, yes, and if you were a countrywoman there was the farm to run, but we lived in the city. Father had a little cobbler’s shop. Sometimes people brought their old books to him for new covers to be sewn on at a cheaper rate than a regular bookbinder’s. He always let me read them through before he gave them back to their owners. Mother knew nothing of the cobbler’s trade. She sold Father’s tools and supplies and tried to rent out the shop itself while we continued to live in the room above it, but her tenants never had any qualms about cheating a lone woman, and she didn’t know how to seek justice.”

The wizard linked his hands behind his head and studied the patterns of the feathery leaves. “So she remarried. It was the only thing she could do, the only way she could see how to keep us all together and alive. My stepfather was not a bad man. He was a butcher by trade. He took us out of the old house, to his establishment. We never lacked for food, but the walls smelled of blood instead of books. I spent all the time I could away from home, applying myself to my lessons at the cathedral school. My masters saw promise in me and encouraged me. When they came in a body to my stepfather’s shop and told him that I must attend the university, his face glowed with as much pride as if I’d been his own child.”

“He loved you so much?”

Faustus nodded again. “I can name it love now. Then. I would have laughed the notion away. He never said so in words, but neither had my true father. Yet when it came time to pay the university fees and to outfit me for the journey, he was there. My feet wore smart new shoes while his remained in cracked leather.

I had all the books a rising young scholar could want while he went without the new cleavers and saws his trade required. The day I left, he took me aside and said, ‘Iohannes, write us. Tell us how you fare. Your mother, you know—she worries.’ I won’t forget how shamefaced he looked as he made that simple request of me. I knew then that the news he wanted was for himself as well as for her, but it was a hard thing for any man to ask of his son. It cost him more than I could know, that question.

“It cost me more than that when I replied, ‘Why should I bother writing to you? You can’t even read your own name.’ ”

Faustus stretched his legs out as far as they would reach, then settled them tailor-fashion underneath him. “His face reddened as if I’d slapped him. I had. He went back inside his butcher shop and didn’t come out again until I was gone. I rejoiced. I was a scholar, words were my weapons, and I felt my heart swell with pride to see how deep and true I could set my spear in another’s heart, even though I was still so young. That was when I truly lost my soul. The business later with the demon was pure formality.” I said nothing. In the air before my eyes I thought I saw the plain, honest face of Faustus’ stepfather. It could have been the wizard’s illusion or my own imagination. Did it matter which? All the ache that the young Faustus’ words had stabbed into that man’s spirit was mirrored in his eyes. Like the lowest sinners that the priest spoke of on Sundays, the butcher felt himself irretrievably condemned by one he had tried so hard to love.

“And what was his sin?” Faustus went on as if reading my mind. “That he was not my father. He had stolen my father’s place in my mother’s heart, in my brothers’ and sisters’ lives. He had turned my whole family into traitors, and traitors deserve the lowest circle of Hell. But I would be faithful, no matter what the cost. I would be noble, I would be true, I would be better than the lot of them. And so I was, and I paid for it in the end by forfeiting heaven.”

He looked me in the eye. “Knowing so little of love, I had no business in heaven, then. Knowing what I know now, I will not allow you to fall into my same Hell.”

I fixed my eyes on my lap. “What happened to your stepfather?”

“He died.” I heard Faustus’ joints snap a little as he shifted position on the rock. “He and my mother and all my kin except two married sisters. It was plague, I think. That part I don’t remember. I never did write to them, so it was old news by the time someone thought to pass it on to me.”

We sat there in silence a long while, until I felt sickeningly sweet breath at my ear and the nudge of a velvet muzzle.

“You gonna put down roots or what?” Fluffy inquired.

Back on the road, I tried to recall how many different areas we’d already passed through. I thought it was nine, but asked the others for confirmation. A tally on our fingers had us all agreeing that yes, we had gone through nine distinct regions, which could only mean that we were reaching the end of Mictlan.

“The end . . . and oblivion,” Mr. Feidelstein said.

“Or not. ” Fluffy wasn’t going to back down. The candy-maned unicorn took the lead and doubled the pace, eager to see her theory proved right.

There were fewer ghosts surrounding us on the path leading out of this last region. Maybe the Aztec shades weren’t in such a big hurry to be swept into nothingness. Maybe they just wanted to hang out and hoist one more brew for the road. We came to another of those nebulous boundaries that separated Hell from Hell and underworld from underworld. There was a roadside beer stand with a bunch of aluminum umbrella tables out in front. We passed it by, caught up in a lemming-like urge to forge ahead and lace whatever awaited us beyond the border.

In the mists, I drew level with Fluffy. “See anything ahead?” I asked.

“No . . . no . . . Wait! Yes, I think I see—I see—” The fog was growing brighter and thinner. The unicorn blinked her thickly lashed eyes repeatedly, strained forward, and broke away from me. I saw the tip of her cotton-candy tail vanish into one final patch of fog as she burst through to the other side.

Then I heard her scream.

24 VOID WHERE PROHIBITED

“There, there. Fluffy,” Mom said, stroking the unicorn’s mane until the poor creature stopped shaking. “You can open your eyes now. They’re gone.”

“Really?” Fluffy kept her eyelids pinched shut. Her whole hide quivered like gelatin. “You sure?” Mom promised her she was. Very slowly the unicorn dared to peek.

She saw bottles. I know, because that was what I saw, too. By the time the rest of us had come out of the borderland mists, a wall of plastic bottles had been built up around Fluffy by a horde of blank-eyed specters who kept reaching into the fake leather attache cases at their sides to pull out still more bottles. We came to the unhappy beast’s rescue, shouting and waving our arms. The ghosts gave us empty, uncomprehending looks and floated away.

Now Fluffy sniffed at one of the containers they had left behind. It had a picture of a skinny, smiling woman on the label. She was dressed in a scarlet evening gown with matching opera-length satin gloves and was in the middle of waxing a floor. I picked up the next bottle in line and saw the same woman, this time clad in a champagne lace cocktail dress while cleaning her oven. On the bottle next to that she was pumped into a pale pink string bikini so that she could swab out a toilet. Her wardrobe might change, but on every label illustrated she wore the same expression: the unbridled joy of Sir Galahad at last beholding the Holy Grail in the shiny floor, the sparkling oven, and the glorious toilet.

“What is this place?” I demanded, letting all three bottles drop and bounce.

“Hell,” said Fluffy.

“You’re going to have to be more specific than that,” I told her.

“Poor little Goldie.” Eleziane linked her arms around the unicorn’s neck. “Diddums nasty peoples bother Mummy’s pwe-cious baby oonicoms?”

“The name is Fluffy, you twit,” the unicorn growled.

Eleziane clucked. “Ohhhhh. Mustn’t be a mean ittoo oonicorns. No. Must be a nice ittoo oonicorns. Yes.”

Fluffy made hacking sounds, sides heaving. I caught her by the left ear and whispered, “She’s getting worse. Think you could maybe be persuaded to cure her on credit?”

“No way.” The unicorn was firm. “A deal’s a deal. I want to go home. You claim you’ve got the magic to help cure me and my friends back in Hades. When I see some proof of that, that’s when you’ll see her back to normal.”

There was no swaying her. I dropped the matter. Better to get our bearings and continue our search for the way out of the underworlds.

We were on a road, but it was a marked change from the beaten-earth pathways and stone-paved routes we’d taken before this. Our feet stood on solid linoleum tile, buffed to a blinding sheen. Instead of the uniform gloom of the other underworlds, our eyes were attacked by unforgiving whiteness, brightness, and spotlessness everywhere we turned, except for a multicolored, flashing area in the distance. It looked like a city. We decided it would be best to head that way for directions.

One thing this Hell had in common with the others, though: sameness. It didn’t take long for me to decide that badly lit monotony and high-wattage boredom were two of a kind. The road went on, always just as clean, always just as tedious. Once we saw a phalanx of ghosts marching towards us with grave determination. They were all wearing white button-down shirts and blouses, male and female versions of identical gray business suits, and swinging matching black attache cases of the same fake croc as the phantoms who had first confronted Fluffy. You could sec the light reflecting off their fixed smiles from miles off.

“It’s them!” Fluffy reared, terrified.

“Them who?” I foolishly asked. Shading my eyes against the glare I commented, “They look harmless.”

“Oh, what do you know about what counts as harmless down here? Run, run! It’s them, I tell you!” She bolted from the linoleum road and tried to race cross-country, but she hadn’t gotten all that far from Eleziane before the bonding spell kicked in like an invisible tether and reeled her back to us.

By that time, it was too late to heed the unicorn’s warning. “Good morning, sir, how are you today?” The first of the ipproaching mob singled me out for her special attention. Her eyes held all the human compassion of potato chips; her smile was so taut that I wondered when her teeth were going to shatter.

“I’m fine, thanks. Say, can you tell us how to get to—?”

“That’s wonderful, sir, just wonderful. And of course you know that the way to keep feeling fine is to eat a diet high in fiber, low in fat, and fortified with Gorgamine (TM). Yes, Gorgamine (TM)! The new, improved, miracle additive found only in Gorgabits (TM), the cereal for people who are smart enough to know that if they don’t eat it every day, they’re going to die in agony of cancer before their fortieth birthday. But don’t take my word for it.”

She slung her attache case up. Four sturdy legs unfolded automatically from one side as the lid sprang open and a recording played:

“People sure are stupid shits If they don’t eat Gorgabits.

Eat a bowlful every day;

Keep that cancer far away!”

The next thing I knew—don’t ask me how it happened—a tall, willowy blonde was draped all over me. “/ could do really fun things to the man who eats his Gorgabits (TM),” she breathed.

And don’t ask me how she managed to breathe “(TM),” either! She did it, that’s all.

I tried to peel her off, but she was worse than wet plastic wrap. Floundering in her embrace, I looked for rescue from my friends. Lots of luck. They were just as beset as I.

Mr. Feidelstein was being told by a gray-haired, fatherly figure that we can never be too sure about denture security, whiteness, and stench.

Ben was under attack by a plump, middle-aged lady wearing a dotted-swiss apron and carrying a loaded and primed apple pie. She was gently reminding him that after a certain age, irregularity can be a one-way ticket to the boneyard.

Faustus and Mom stood back to back like sword-partners, fending off a dual-pronged assault by an elegantly gowned lady in transparent white silk who kept lowering her voice and stage-whispering the phrase “feminine protection” and a dapper young man whose life had been changed as soon as he discovered a painless cure for hemorrhoids.

Poor Teleri was a natural target for another whispering woman who was armed with two aerosol spray deodorants, although she also soon attracted a man whose luminous teeth parted for a spiel about Reeknomor (TM) plastic food storage bags, “Your leftover seafood’s best friend!”

Eleziane and Neil had been cut out of the herd by a sextet of dead-cool dudes and nymphs who were making it abundantly clear that if you did not use Zitbegon (TM) pimple cream, you were never going to have sex ever, for as long as you lived, even if you walked naked across the deck of a troop transport.

I shoved aside my adhesive temptress just in time to stop Neil from buying twenty-three cases of Zitbegon (TM).

“Get out of here!” I shouted, windmilling my arms at the huckster ghosts. “Shoo! Scram! Hit the bricks—I mean, the lino! Off, go, leave! Better Business Bureau!”

That worked. As I watched, I saw the multiple sales-apparitions trickle back down into the attaches of their hosts. Ben’s apple-pie intestinal terrorist as well as Neil’s zit commandos all folded themselves up like road maps and were snapped shut inside the business-suited specters’ briefcases. The collapsible legs that had turned those cases into miniature platforms clicked back into their sides and the squadron moved on up the linoleum road seeking fresh meat.

“Am I glad that’s over,” Ben said, wiping sweat from his balding brow.

“Don't count your chickens before they’re deep-fried nuggets, honey.” Fluffy tossed her head in the direction we’d been marching. “Here comes another bunch.”

The unicorn was right. From where we stood, we could see one group after another of the same attache-wielding ghosts striding forth to intercept us on our way to the city. They apparently were spaced to meet us at ten-minute intervals, and the city showed no signs of running out of assault personnel. It was a sight to make the blood run cold, except I bet someone in those approaching mobs was selling new, improved, Corpuscle Cozy (TM).

“My kingdom for a remote-control channel-changer,” Ben groaned.

“I don’t think I can stand another attack.” Mom clung to Faustus. “I know they didn’t hurt us, but they made me feel so—so—inadequate. So insecure.” She lifted her eyes to his. "Dear, are you sure you wouldn’t like me better if I changed my hair color? Or switched mouthwashes ? Or tried Suk’n’Slim (TM), the new miracle diet drink that actually replaces all solid food until you’re so gorgeous no man would ever dream of leaving you unless he was insane?”

He grabbed Mom by the shoulders and shook her until her eyes were free of that cornered-animal look. She pressed one hand to her forehead. “Thanks. I’m—I’m better now.”

Faustus stared down the road at the approaching armies of galloping consumption. He looked grim. “None of us is strong enough to stand before them,” he stated. “For a time, perhaps, but not forever, and we lack the time to waste fighting them. Come here, everyone. I think there is a way to gain safe passage through their very ranks. Listen to me and repeat exactly what I say. ...”

Thus it was that we entered the great city shortly afterward, unopposed and unstopped by the walking dead, chanting our great and mighty defensive spell:

“We may already have won!

We may already have won!

Void where prohibited, Not sold in any store, We may already have won!”

In the city, we discovered that the rainbow flashing came from parsecs’-worth of neon tubing, advertising everything from beer to bunion removers. Somehow, every ad managed to convey the message that failure to obtain and use the product in question would result in social ostracism, illness, imprisonment, madness, and eventual suicide.

We also discovered Master Runyon. The Fey cobbler was seated on a bench in the central square of the city, hemmed in by a wall of cereal boxes. Every time one of the business-suited zombies tried to set up his or her living tableau of insinuation and intimidation near him, the plucky luchorpan would reach into one of the open boxes and fling handfuls of sugar-coated crunchy things.

“What do you mean, you have not yet purchased a box of Tosti Turtle Turds (TM) for your children?” he shouted. “Are you perchance unaware that nine out of seven rug-rats who were deprived of Tosti Turtle Turds (TM) at a tender age went on to become axe-murderers and/or Congressmen? Leave us to say nothing whatsoever about the deviant sexual practices they subsequently and most deviantly practiced! What is more, Tosti Turtle Turds (TM) are enriched with seventy-five essential vitamins and minerals in the pink marshmallow bits alone. Only a parent who desires to be dragged into court on extensive charges of child abuse and neglect would deny his or her precious ankle-biters the vital nutrition herein contained. If you do not at once and immediately haul your posterior to your favorite retail outlet and buy a year’s supply of Tosti Turtle Turds (TM), you will have no one but yourself to blame when your children decide they would rather live with their other parent when the divorce becomes final. Plus, if you act now, there is a free piece of previously chewed fruit gum available in specially marked boxes.”

The ghosts were usually gone before he got to the part about the pink marshmallow bits. They jogged out of the square gasping desperately for directions to any store selling Tosti Turtle Turds (TM).

Teleri broke down the cereal barricade and crushed Master Runyon to her bosom. “Thanks be t’ all th’ powers that we’ve found ye, dear Master Runyon!” she cried.

The luchorpan remained happily smothered in her embrace for a while, then most reluctantly disengaged himself and brushed cereal crumbs from both of their chests, taking especial care with hers. “Please, doll, you abash me before our companions. It is most encouraging to behold your many dear, familiar beezers once again.”

He cut us all an elegant bow. “My heartfelt and most sincere apologies for having been so strident upon your arrival. It was entirely a self-defense maneuver on my part, the best I could come up with short of belting any and all of yon hard-sell higglers in the cake-hole. What is sauce for the goose is probably too high in cholesterol for the gander, yet it was a gimmick that apparently sufficed. Still, I make no secret of the fact that I was growing fatigued keeping the aforesaid ballyhoo bombasters at a distance from my own personal zone of consumer vulnerability, and am therefore all the more transformed by ecstasy to rest these peepers upon you.”

He gave Teleri a look which left no doubt that there were some of us he was happier to see than others. I couldn’t fault him there. Master Runyon offered the banshee his arm. “Shall we show them our heels, doll?”

“Wi’ all me heart,” she replied.

We did so, departing the city under the same protective spell as we had used to enter it, and taking the one road out as fast and far as we could. Before too long, it entered another of those foggy borderlands.

“After sniffing eighty-nine separate kinds of air-freshener, even sulfur and brimstone would smell good.” Mom spoke for all of us when she said that.

Almost all of us. I noticed that Faustus was looking rather nervous. I wanted a word alone with him, but that was impossible on the road. Mom stuck with him always. In fact, I was surrounded by couples. There was Mom and Faustus, of course, and Neil and Eleziane. Ben and Mr. Feidelstein were bonded by their business association and their ties to Sonia. Now that Teleri and Master Runyon were reunited, only a fool wouldn’t see that theirs had become more than a purely professional relationship. I felt a passing pang of jealousy. Whose banshee was she, after all?

“Face it, you had your chance with her and you blew it. ” Fluffy rested her muzzle on my shoulder.

“You got that right,” I replied. I recalled the time when Teleri first had entered my life and then my sleeping bag. How had I reacted? Like any normal, inexperienced boy confronted by a centuries-old, stunningly gorgeous, buck-naked woman: I ducked and ran. Hard to do in a sleeping bag, but I found a way. Now it was too late.

“How did you know, Fluffy?” I asked. “Are you telepathic?”

“Nothing that fancy. I just added two and two—her looks, your virginity, and the way you’re shooting daggers at the luchorpan.”

“That’s three.”

“Don’t be bitter.”

We walked on in silence. The mists showed no signs of thinning. Could we have taken a wrong turn? I didn’t recall having to wander so long between underworlds before.

“Think we should backtrack?” I asked Fluffy.

“To consumer Hell? I’d sooner die.” The unicorn flicked her ears forward. “Hear that? Running water. We’re getting somewhere. There are lots of rivers down here, not just the Styx and Lethe.”

I perked up my own ears—figuratively—and caught the same familiar sound. “Is a river good?”

“One of the best natural boundary markers above and below the earth. We must be nearing a new underworld.”

She was right. Shortly later we were standing on the banks of a wide, black stream. We looked up and down the shore for a place to cross, but this region lacked the high civilization of Hades and provided no such span for travelers.

“We could ford it, I guess,” I suggested.

“Oh, riiiiight.” Fluffy always seemed to become her most sarcastic when vetoing my ideas. “And have all of you end up like my pwecious mistress? The most she’s got on her mind these days is dandruff.”

I studied the racing water. “Have we gone in a circle? Is this the Lethe again?”

The unicorn whinnied. “Baby boy, do you think the Greeks have the market cornered on amnesia? Any underworld that allows its dead a chance at rebirth is going to make pretty damned sure they don’t remember a thing about their past lives. Except whichever Hell services California. The underworld is crawling with rivers of Forgetfulness, and odds are this is just one of them.”

“Let’s not risk finding out the hard way,” Mr. Feidelstein counseled. “There must be a bridge along here somewhere. It’s just a matter of finding it.”

So we walked up the bank for what seemed like miles, but we found no bridge. The river flowed on forever, in places growing nearly narrow enough to jump across, but only nearly. We all began to tire, and we finally sat down to rest.

They sat in their own private groups of two, all the couples with me. Neil had grown resigned to Eleziane’s affliction and was listening patiently to her chirpy recounting of how wise old Mister Hooty Owl invited shy Lucinda Lizard out for dinner and a movie. Mom was napping, her head on Faustus’ shoulder. Ben produced a pack of pinochle cards he’d swiped from the Titanic and got a game going with his brother-in-law. Teleri had Master Runyon’s hairless head pillowed in her lap. She was softly singing him an old Irish air while she brushed invisible leaves from his face. I was the only one alone.

“Hey, lean on me.” Fluffy folded her legs gracefully under her and motioned for me to rest against her flank. Even the too-llowery perfume of her breath was a comfort. I stroked her velvet nose. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “You miss her.”

“Oh, I’m not jealous anymore,” I said. “I’m glad Teleri’s found someone.”

“I don’t mean her. I mean the one you really love.”

“You sure you’re not a mind reader?”

“Nothing to write home about. I pick up some stuff, though. Want to talk about it?"

I did. Fluffy listened. It had been too long, trying not to think about what T’ing was doing right now or what Loki had planned for her. Every time I said her name, it hurt. The helplessness hurt, and the yearning, and the anger.

“You know, Tim,” Fluffy whickered in my ear, “a unicorn’s not a bad ally to have on your side when you go up against those creeps.”

“You’ll do that? Fight with us, when it’s time?”

“I might be persuaded. We’ve already settled my price. You think you can meet it?”

I took the pouch from my belt and poured all the bits and pieces of the shattered crystal wand onto the ground between my feet. Some of them still glowed, but most were dead. I counted out the shards that still held living magic and found that I had just nine left, unless I included the sliver that still held my father’s face. Holding that, I could feel him near me, but even the warmth of his presence wasn’t enough to chase away the cold dread I felt for T’ing. I pocketed it separately, to keep it safe.

“Not much, is it?” I remarked to Fluffy.

“Pitiful,” she agreed. She nosed some of the pieces. “Is that all the magic you’ve got left?”

“Looks like. Will that be enough to cure you, do you think? You and your friends?”

“Depends. How much va-va-voom does one of those babies pack?”

I thought of Faustus and how I had to use not one, but many shards to restore his eyesight. I didn’t want to lie. “One shard per cure, minimum. Sometimes one per symptom. That’s why I was hoping we could use your horn’s magic on Eleziane. I don’t think she could stand living with herself if she were only partially healed.”

“Smart.” Fluffy approved. “The only thing worse than being a dip is knowing you’re a dip.”

I fingered the nine remaining crystal fragments. “There’s no way around it: There aren’t enough to take care of you and your friends and to send you all home after. ”

“Oh.” Fluffy blew at the few still-twinkling pieces. “Well then, screw my friends. Just take care of me and I’ll help you. Deal?” “Are you sure you’re a unicorn?” I demanded.

“Why, because I’m looking out for Number One? I may be legendary, but I’m not stupid. You want my help or not?” Seeing me hesitate, she added, “Look, you don’t have to like me; we just have to work together. You know you need me on your side once we’re out of here. If you’re a virgin, I’m betting this T’ing Hau lady of yours is another. If she is, she’s had it. There’s power in symbols, and she’s a walking symbol of innocence. The destruction of innocence adds power to evil. Don’t think that idea hasn’t crossed Loki’s mind, or why did he seek her out?”

“Hey, T’ing’s not the only virgin in New York!” I protested. I even sounded convinced of it myself.

“No, but she’s one of the few who has the gift for seeing things beyond the real world. Imagination. The Fey-sight. She knows there’s something more to life than what’s inside her own sweet skin. Those kind of people are hard to lead astray. You can’t stir them up as easily as most, turn them against their fellow-mortals just by pointing a finger and saying, ‘But they have to die; they're different! ’ ” Fluffy whipped a stray strand of mane out of her eyes. “Once Loki pulls the hand-brake on world’s end, the fewer folk like T’ing around to stand in his way, the better he’ll like it.” She was right, and we both knew it. I put the dead shards back into the pouch on my belt and slipped the nine active ones into my other pants pocket, separate from the one holding my father’s memory. “All right,” I said. “Deal. I use the crystals to fix you up and send you home, however many it takes. In return, when we get out of here, we fight CODA together.” I looked across the river. “If we get out of here.”

We all walked on. More time passed, and the river remained unchanged, unbridged, unfordable. Faustus tried to conjure a span for us, but his powers were insufficient to the task. I whispered to Fluffy that maybe I should use one of the nine shards to build a bridge, only to be met with an emphatic no. She was taking no chances on my being caught short when it was time to put my magic at her service.

“Maybe it’s not a river of Forgetfulness,” Mom ventured. “There are other kinds down here, aren’t there?”

“None of them pleasant,” Mr. Feidelstein said.

“I’d still be willing to test it.”

“Absolutely not.” Mr. Feidelstein was adamant, but Mom’s idea had kindled our imaginations. Why not test the waters? Not by full immersion; just by a touch. We might be trapped on this side of the river forever, held back by water as hazardless as lemonade. Mom continued to insist that she be the one to try it, with Neil, Teleri, Master Runyon, and me chiming in our own self-nominations.

No one noticed Faustus edging towards the river until it was too late. By the time Mom saw him, he was in a crouch, ready to jump, and when she shouted his name he was already airborne. He had good legs, but the river was wide. He wasn’t going to make it. We closed our eyes and waited for the splash.

All we heard was the rush of water, and a faint jingling like tiny bells.

“Do not fear,” said an alien voice. “He is safe.”

I opened my eyes and saw Faustus dangling from a long, iron staff held over the river by a tall, shaven-headed man. His Oriental features were composed, serene, benevolent. His saffron robes revealed the travel-hardened feet of a pilgrim. At the end of his staff, seven golden rings struck sweet chimings from one another. He swept the staff over dry land so that Faustus could drop off, then waved it back out over the river.

“I am Jizo,” he said, and led us all across the newly minted bridge of gold.

25 PIECEWORK

“She is here,” said Jizo, holding out the great pearl he carried in his left hand. By the light of that mystic gem, we looked down the narrow alleyway and saw the hunched shape of a weeping woman.

“And she asked for us?” I tried to see the lady’s face, to confirm what I already knew. There was only one of our original company still left unaccounted for—only one we might still hope to see again, at any rate, since Yang’s utter destruction—and that was Jadwiga.

“You are not the one she asks for,” Jizo replied.

“Then why did you bring us here? Why did you come after us at all?”

Jizo smiled. “Because that is what I do.”

“Who are you?”

“I have told you; I am Jizo.”

“That’s your name; that’s what you’re called.” I tried to see what lay behind that expression of perfect peace. “Who are you?” I repeated.

Jizo did not answer, but held the pearl higher so that I could look nowhere except at the weeping woman.

“Think that’s her, kid?” Ben was with me, trying to get a good look at the lady in question. The alley ran between two houses with roughcast yellow walls, and ended blind. Curved blue roof-tiles overhung the passageway, casting more shadows in the already thick gloom of the city Jizo named Feng-tu. Besides the shadows, the woman’s face was further obscured by a ragged mantle pulled over her head.

“Who else could it be?” I stepped into the alley. “Jadwiga?”

She wept on and did not answer. I knelt beside her, trying to make her reveal herself, but she turned away and pulled the mantle tighter around her. Her sobs tore the air until the shadows around her ran with tears.

“I have seen much pain,” Jizo said. “Pain is the world’s way.

This one is no longer of the world, yet still she suffers. From Feng-tu, the Great Wheel spins to bring souls back into the world. They drink the Broth of Oblivion, which the Lady Meng herself prepares, and are taken back at their proper hour. This one’s hour of rebirth has not come; she does not belong here, yet here she stays. For her, I do not know if that hour ever will arrive. The world’s illusion wears many masks and two truths: That there is pain, and that there may be comfort.” He lowered the pearl and looked at me. "Here there are many things to be set right, and only one way.”

He was right. I stood. “Can the spirits of the dead be destroyed entirely?” I asked.

“That is not the question,” he replied.

“You are something much more than mortal, Jizo. What, you won’t tell us. I don’t know why. I don’t even know the right questions to ask you.”

“Not knowing, you know.” He was smiling, a gentle smile like spring sunshine.

“I want to help her. Show me how.”

“To show requires two: One to show, one to see.”

“Don’t worry; I’ll see whatever you show me.”

His smile remained unchanged. My confidence was nothing to him. Whatever I promised, whatever promises I later broke or neglected to remember, it would make no difference to him. His actions were his own, free of the world at last. We could follow, or not, as our own natures led us.

He raised his iron staff, and the golden rings jingled. The air chilled. The sounds from the many streets of Feng-tu muted until we were all encased in a globe of perfect peace. Tiny flakes of snow filled the dark. We all looked up in wonder and cupped our hands.

The snowflakes spiraled down, pouring themselves into our hands so that not a single one touched the ground. The weeping woman looked up, and the mantle fell back from her face letting us see what we had already guessed. The snow drifted into Jadwiga’s lap and glowed.

Not snow. He was there, in the smallest flake as in the largest. All the miniscule scraps and tatters into which Loki had tom Yang’s very spirit were fluttering down among us. I could see his ugly, moustached face staring up at me from every single glittering white particle I had trapped between my hands. The white flakes lost shape and color on contact with living skin, even the living spirit-skin of Jadwiga’s mantle. The hundred, the thousand images of Yang melted into one and began to trickle out between my fingers. I heard Jadwiga’s wail of loss renewed, and saw how all of us struggled as one to hold on to what we had each managed to capture of our friend.

Jizo blew a breath over the shining surface of the great pearl and all the melted flakes of Yang’s self froze into icy starbursts, hard as glass in our hands. They were perfect; they were maimed. From each seven-beamed crystalline star a single ray was broken.

Jizo drew a circle in the dust around him. We knew without being told what we must do. We set our treasures down in the ring at his feet—even Jadwiga rose from her place to add her star to the rest—and we waited.

He said nothing. The great pearl shone its calm, all-healing light of consolation over us and over the starry, scattered pieces of our lost companion. I looked to Jizo’s face for some hint of who should act, what should be done, and found only the flickering passage of a hundred, a thousand masks of all the other bright beings who come to us in our times of loss and let us glimpse the light.

A thousand masks, one truth: That always, at the last, the light will come. Sometimes it is brought to us; sometimes we must be the ones to kindle it.

I felt in my pocket for the nine remaining shards of crystal. I thought I recalled a time when someone told me that the wand was only a symbol, that what made me different and gave me the right to wield the powers of change was what I already held within me. The symbol was broken, as other things are broken to be destroyed.

But some things are broken to be shared.

I gave a shard to each of the others. Mom went first, kneeling to fit hers in its place, completing her star. “Yang was always polite to me,” she said. “For Yang. I know what a strain that must have been on him.”

Faustus went next: “He was as much a scholar as I, only preferring to read men instead of books.” He fitted his shard into place. “Too bad he always insisted on opening them and breaking the spines.”

“It is my humble opinion that the world will not clap its headlamps on another guy such as Yang any time in the near future,” Master Runyon said, performing his part in the ceremony. “Not if the world keeps itself out of back alleys, gin joints, and a certain variety of sporting establishment. ”

“He ate like a pig,” said Ben, completing his star.

“True, but he was a relief from picky eaters,” Mr. Feidelstein responded, doing the same. “And he never asked for extra pickles.”

“No, he just took them,” Ben said.

Eleziane stared at the frozen image before her, deeply puzzled and mightily disturbed by her puzzlement. “I think—I think I know this man,” she said in something approximating her normal voice. “I think . . . I’m trying to remember . . She clutched her shard and shivered, alone in the dark.

“He was ever direct,” Teleri said. “Plain-spoken, aye. Most particularly when he’d be courtin’ a lady.”

“Yeah,” I put in, remembering. “What was that he always used to say to you? ‘Let’s have lunch and sex’?”

“At least he was gentleman enough t’ be offerin’ a lady a wee morsel beforehand.” Teleri frowned at me as she completed her star. “Even if th’ great swine would be avoidin’ th’ slight formality o’ pickin’ up th’ check after.”

“He sure knew his way around women,” Neil said, fitting his sliver into place. Teleri gave him a vicious noogie. “And he wasn’t a snob. You know what he said: ‘When Yang pillages, everybody pillages! ’ ”

“Who was he?” Eleziane’s question rose in a hopeless wail. “I know this man, I do, but I can’t . . . Oh. I swear I know him, and it hurts! It hurts so!” Her tears were falling, slipping over the bright facets of the crystal shard, coruscating over the surface of the broken star.

“He was my son.” Jadwiga stood tall, though she was only a little woman. Her eyes were dry. “The world made him what he was when others saw him. Very few knew his heart. I came to his father as a captive. So it was that I could see the captive Yang held inside himself—a different soul. Where we lived, how we had to act to survive—all these wrapped themselves around him like the layers a silkworm spins. They harden, but what is within remains as bright, as beautiful. Some things are too tender to bear being brought out into the wind and the rain, the harsh light of day, but they are there. Only those who loved him, as I did, knew the soul of my son. Believe what you like of Yang. I give you the truth.” A clear burst of white light leaped from the star as she joined her shard to its shining body.

That left only Eleziane. The elfin princess was still crying and trying to jam the crystal spear into place beside the other rays of her star. It clunked and clattered, but would not bond. “I know him! He’s here”—she pressed her fists to her temples—“and here”—she doubled over as she folded them to her breast—“but I can’t say . . . I don’t know how . . . Oh, take it away! Take it away!” She flung the shard at my feet and collapsed, sobbing.

I picked it up and would have tried to join it to my own star, but Jizo stopped me with a movement of his iron staff. “This is hers.” The golden rings jingled, and the shard floated from my hand and slipped back into Eleziane’s own, so gently that when she saw it there again she was startled out of her tears.

“Will you help me?” she asked him, her voice little more than a whimper. “Will you let me remember him?” She held the splinter up to catch the light of Jizo’s pearl.

“That’s not his job.” Fluffy stepped into the circle of the great pearl’s light. “So this is it, eh?” She gave me a hard stare and swung her muzzle at the ring of stars. “The last bits of magic you’ve got, and you give them up without a kick. For what?” She snuffled at the image of Yang within my broken star. “He doesn’t look like much. From what the rest of these doo-dahs have been saying, he doesn’t sound like much either. Except her, of course”—she nodded at Jadwiga—“and she’s his mother. You’re gonna get a real unprejudiced opinion about him out of her. I’ll bet. What’s it all for ? He was dead already.”

“He was—he is worse than dead now, unless we try this,” I said. “If it means you won’t help us against Loki because I gave away the last of my magic, okay. We’ll manage without you. There’s nothing in it for you anymore. Go back to Hades.” Fluffy arched her neck and brought her horn down by degrees until it was pointing at my throat. She pawed the ground and sweetly asked, “Who do you think you are, little boy, to tell a unicorn where to go?” Having put me in my place, she lifted her head and snorted in my face.

“Go anywhere you want, then. This was a mistake. It won’t work—it can’t! If our memories of Yang are needed to bring him back, Eleziane can’t add her share, and if we must each complete the star that holds those memories, I can’t. There were only nine shards left, and there are ten of us. I should’ve thought of that before I gave them away. Either way, we’ve lost.” I turned to Jizo. “I’m sorry.”

“Do you know what your problem is. Toots?” Fluffy remarked.

With a master fencer’s skill, she slipped her horn into my other pants’ pocket and ripped it wide open. A glowing sliver of crystal tumbled into the dirt. “Your problem is, you suck at math.”

I retrieved the shard and held it up to the pearl’s light. My father’s eyes met mine. “But this is his,” I murmured. “All I have left . . I looked away from the shining facets to the faces of my friends. “Must I—?”

No one said a word. No one tried, by word or look, to sway me. Their faces held no threat, no pressure or persuasion, no hint that they disapproved or were disappointed in me. Not even Jadwiga tried to move me. I knew that whatever I decided, she would accept it. There would be no recriminations after; not from them. Knowing that, I think, was worse than any words they might have said.

“He was courageous,” I began. “A fighter because he had to be a fighter, but a good fighter, a true hero, because he chose to be. He was loyal. I was honored to stand beside him in battle. He loved. He might never have known the words to get it across, but he did love us, in his way.” I touched my father’s shard to Yang’s star and saw rock and ice meld into a seamless join. “And he is loved.”

The nine stars at Jizo’s feet glowed with extraordinary light. Only Eleziane’s remained dim, like a shaded candle.

“Please!” she begged. “Oh, please, can’t one of you tell me who he is? You remember. Give me the words to use!” The bit of crystal in her hand was beginning to burn with a blood-tinged light, feeding on her pain.

“We can’t.” Mom sounded ready to cry herself.

“It’s not the words he needs, but the memories,” Mr. Feidelstein explained. “We can’t give you that.”

“Must it come from her?” Faustus appealed to Jizo. “Couldn’t we do as she asks, lend her a memory?”

“You can do that,” Jizo replied, but he never said it would work and my heart told me it would not.

“Eleziane . . .” I took the crystal from her. Her fingertips looked frostbitten.

“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m so sorry. ...”

Jadwiga knelt to embrace her. “There, little one, do not think of it anymore.” But Eleziane’s ragged voice kept gasping for forgiveness.

I brought the shard to Fluffy. “Well, I guess we get to take care of you after all. I don’t know whether this’ll have power enough to cure you, but it should do something. Maybe tone down that sick pink color of your mane and tail—”

“Who died and made you a critic?” With a short, sharp swing of her head, the unicorn knocked the crystal from my palm. Daintily she walked over to where it lay, lipped it up, and brought it back to Eleziane. “Mmgropp,” she said.

Eleziane just stared.

“Mmgropp\" Fluffy insisted, and pawed at the elfin princess’s knee. Eleziane seemed to catch on and settled her legs so that when the unicorn dropped the crystal, it fell safely into her lap. “Boy you really are dense, aren’t you?” Fluffy said cheerfully. “And I’m sick of it. Fasten your IQ, Einstein, we’re in for a bumpy ride.” Without any further ceremony, the unicorn touched her horn to Eleziane’s brow.

Something went toink! I thought I saw the ghostly image of a lightbulb appear over Eleziane’s head, incandesce, and disappear. Fluffy sent me a big conspiratorial wink with those impossible eyelashes. “Showmanship.” She flashed her teeth. “Don’t make myths without it.”

I mouthed at her, Did it work?

The unicorn mouthed back, Up yours, just as the full effect of her touch set the elfin princess’s memory free.

“Oh. sweet powers!” Eleziane clapped one hand to her forehead and with the other pointed at the sole broken star remaining in the ring. “I know him, now! Euw. This is the big jerk who kept trying to put the moves on me!” Yang’s face leered goatishly out at her. “He always made it sound like he was doing me the favor of my life. When I told him I’d rather sleep with a constipated jackass, he offered to quit eating so much roughage. Oh, ugh, now I remember—boy, do I ever!—this is Yang! Yuck.” And she threw the sliver of crystal at the star.

It struck home, and at the instant of contact all ten of the now-healed stars soared up to crash together in an explosion of pure radiance that washed Jizo’s image from our eyes and left us temporarily blinded.

“What do you mean, ‘Yuck,’ woman?” Out of the darkness, an old, familiar voice. “If you have been too stupid to appreciate Yang’s incomparable erotic skills, it’s all your own fault. But I forgive you. Want a second chance? I’ll force myself. Come here!”

I heard Eleziane’s shriek and a healthy wallop being doled out before my eyes cleared. Vision restored, I saw Yang flat on his behind, rubbing his cheek, with the elfin princess standing over him ready to apply a swift and terrible knee to whichever portion of the Mongol’s body might profit from it most.

Things were back to normal at last.

Then I saw what lay on the ground where Jizo had stood. My hand fell to my belt, but the pouch was gone. All the pieces of magic-spent crystal had vanished. Instead—whole again, alive again—the wand of the Grand and Puissant Champion of the Fey flared with a cool, strong light, waiting for my grasp.

Later, as we departed Feng-tu by the Gate of Demons, I asked Fluffy why she had given Eleziane back her memory.

The unicorn looked very wise and solemn, her golden eyes holding more secret magic than any mortal could ever hope to know.

“What the fuck,” she said, and switched her tail. “I felt like it. ” “You know I don’t believe you,” I told her.

“Big deal. I don’t need your belief. What I need is for you to keep that wacko Mongol the hell away from me. If he tries to sneak up and milk me one more time, just so he can make koumiss, I’m gonna split his weasely skull.”

I made a face. “I thought you could only make koumiss from fermented mare’s milk.”

“So what am I? Butch?” Abruptly, Fluffy’s voice lost its abrasive edge. “Tim . . . hold up your wand.” I did, and in the heart of the glittering facets I saw once more the land that was the unicorn’s home. A grotto overhung with dainty white- and purple-flowering vines stood beside a pool of tranquil waters green as bottle-glass. In the dappled sunlight, a small creature laid its white, horned head on its baby-furred shoulder and bleated piteously for one who did not come.

I let the vision go, lowered the wand. “Yours?”

“No, I always break my chops trying to get home to someone else’s foal. When I gave Elsie Elf the big mental jump-start, did you need one too?”

I pulled off the road. Since I had had my wand restored, we’d all been relying on its powers to guide us to the surface. The crystal tugged like a dowsing rod, I interpreted its motions, and everyone followed, so when I stopped, we all stopped.

“What’s going on?” Ben wanted to know. We were in another of the obscure in-between places, though this one lacked the milky fogs of all the others. A river ran alongside the road, and on the opposite shore we could see a sandy desert with a thin strip of green on the far horizon. Good eyesight could just make out palm trees in the distance, and the gleaming white flanks of pyramids, their summits capped with gold. A simple stone bridge stood not too far upstream, ready to bear us over.

“There’s no reason for Fluffy to come with us any further,” I announced. “She’s done more for us than she had to—curing Eleziane, making it possible for Yang to return—and it’s about time she got something back. Faustus, Eleziane, Mr. Feidelstein, I don’t know how strong your magic is or even if you’ve got any left worth mentioning, but I want you to help me. She has to be changed back to her proper shape. Maybe together, with the wand as our focus, we can do it.”

“De-cutesify a unicorn?” Ben shrugged. “Eh, worth a try. And if it works?”

I thought of the foal alone, waiting. “Then she goes home.” To her, I added, “You can get back there under your own steam, can’t you? Just in case the transformation takes all our power?”

“You bet your sweet croup I can!”

“Okay, then.” I motioned everyone to come as near as possible, but Mr. Feidelstein held them back.

“Have you ever heard the old saw about how a camel is a horse created by committee?” he asked. “Don’t risk finding out what a committee might make of a unicorn, Tim. Use your own magic only. If they are not enough, then we will join you.”

“All right,” I said, somewhat dubiously. “Trust me. Fluffy?” “Will you respect me in the morning?” the unicorn shot back. I led her a judicious distance farther up the bank, just in case the magic I was calling on was of the more explosive, pyrotechnic variety. I didn’t want any of the others caught by the blast, especially not Yang. A singed Mongol is not a happy Mongol. Holding the wand in both hands, I aimed it at Fluffy, and said, "Now concentrate on what you used to look like.” I closed my eyes and bent all my will to summoning and aiming whatever enchantments I might use to transform the unicorn.

You always close your eyes when you're concentrating, everyone knows that. And when you concentrate really hard, so that there’s only room for one thought in your mind, some people like to joke that they can smell wood burning.

I smelled something else. My whole body tensed and tingled with the magic surging up, rushing into the crystal wand. Any moment, and I would have enough power contained to let fly across the abyss of air. Oh, but that smell—! Dead meat, rotten, stinking in the sun. A smell of corruption too potent to ignore.

And then the unicorn’s bellowed war-cry, wrenching my eyelids open in time to see Set on the arch of the stone bridge, the spear just leaving his hand, flying for my heart.

Something sharp struck my chest, I fell back, and the magic soared wild.

26 READY, SET, GO

“You lop-eared, yellow-tusked, fork-tailed son of a bitch\ That was my magic you just made him spill! Just wait until I get my hooves on you!”

Fluffy’s snowy underbelly heaved and shook over me. I wasn’t dead yet, but I could’ve told Set to watch out for the unicorn’s hooves. She’d used them on me already, to knock me out of the path of the spear, and they didn’t exactly dispense love-taps.

Set didn’t waste words. A second spear appeared in his hand just as Fluffy charged the bridge and bit deep into the dust between her forefeet. The vibrating shaft struck the unicorn’s belly hard as she galloped over it, throwing her off her stride, sending her stumbling. Set laughed and bounded onto the bridge’s stone railing, hands clawing new weapons out of the sky.

“Loki’s a fool, dropping you down here, figuring that’s that,” he sneered. “I know better. I came after, when the others left for the city. Straight down the well to find you, one by one, finish you. Now I see you’ve saved me the trouble of the hunt. Here you are, together, so that I can dispose of you all at once. Some vermin take more killing than others, but I know all the ways.”

He was dressed the same as we’d last seen him in the basement of Tandava, ready to rock ’n’ roll with CODA, playing bass for the world’s end. But now, as he delighted in his own promises of death for us, he changed. Sheer pleated linen kilted from his waist, bound with a thickly gemmed gold girdle. A pectoral of lapis, turquoise, jade, and camelian armored his chest, and as I watched, I saw his sickly white human face elongate into the bizarre, spindly snout of some unknown, unnamable beast, his cars clipped square, a forked tail springing from beneath his kilt, his skin and hair blending to the rough, red pelt of a savage desert jackass.

“Keep the look, reptile; it’s you,” Fluffy growled, renewing her charge.

I was damned if I’d let her take him alone. I grabbed for my wand. It was cold in my hands. All the power I’d called up had burst from it and was gone. Still—I hefted it thoughtfully—even unmagicked, it could do some good. Or some harm. Better to go out fighting.

“Haaaaiiiiiyyyyyaaaarrrrrggggh!” came the sentiment from behind me, rapidly progressing to in front of me. Sword licking the air, Yang was way ahead of me. Attacking Set was an idea whose time had come, and everyone was jumping on the bandwagon. I counted Yang, Jadwiga, Teleri, Master Runyon, Neil, and Faust zipping past before I managed to scramble to my feet and join the stampede.

“Fools.” Set’s inhuman face twisted with glee. The stonetoothed sickle glimmered in his grasp again, cutting the air.

Fluffy was the first to reach him. She galloped up the steep incline of the bridge and was met with a vicious slash of the sickle. Blood spattered her hide as the black teeth bit deeply into her shoulder. She reared and wheeled away, screaming.

“Stinking shithead! This is how you treat a horse as fine as thatl" Yang’s blood was up, and so was his sword. No memory of the Mongol would be complete without at least one piece of serious edged steel, so he had returned to us fully armed. Not for long. Set’s weapon was wood and stone, but stone quarried from no earthly source. The sickle fell, and reaped the blade. Yang stared at the stub left in his hand for just an instant before his warrior’s instinct for swift, strategic retreat kicked in and raced him out of harm’s way.

Set’s braying laugh was cut short by an outraged yowl. The grim god’s hand tightened on the sickle as his other fist scrubbed stinging sand from his eyes. “Take that,” Neil snarled, crouching for another handful to fling. Teleri liked his style, and soon the pair of them had worked their way to positions up- and down-river of the bridge, where they set up a crossfire of flying dirt.

It was a good idea, but only a minor nuisance, which did not hamper Set for long. His eyes blazed, and whirlwinds sprang up around him, spinning the sand away.

A headlong charge against a better-armed enemy was not everyone’s preferred method of combat. Faustus walked up to just beyond the reach of Set’s deadly sickle, wearing his dignity and knowledge with as much quiet mastery as he ever wore his wizard’s robes. There were fires at his fingertips, though he did not send them. He had learned how little true strength his magicks had in the underworlds. Prudently he kept that knowledge from our enemy, letting Set see the fires, fear them perhaps, and be made uneasy by their presence without knowing how little harm they could do him. The ploy worked. I saw how Set’s gaze affixed itself to the wizard’s blazing hands and how a nervous twitch crept over his mangy skin.

“Run, Set,” Faustus commanded. “You know you’ve chosen a poor battleground. Why do you hold that bridge? Because you know that if we cross it into the land beyond, we will be safe from you. That is the one underworld where you dare not go. The truth is that you do not even dare to linger near its borders. He will come for you soon, O Set, from his murdered father’s kingdom which stands at your back. Do you think it will take him long to catch your charnel stench so near Osiris’ realm? Horus the falcon is a hunter! He roams the lands of his father, Osiris, seeking you. As you killed his father—took your own brother’s blood!—so Horus will kill you. Run, Set! Already you have tarried here too long. Even now I see the falcon’s wings.” And he pointed back over Set’s shoulder, into the green land far beyond the desert.

Held by the wizard’s low, hypnotic voice, Set’s hideous head turned almost helplessly to look where Faustus gestured. As he did so, Faustus made a second gesture—terse, urgent—to my mother. As quickly and quietly as she could, she stole forward to where Set’s spears still stood quivering in the sand. There was a brief, dry sucking noise as she pulled one free and tossed it to Faustus, who cocked back his arm and threw.

Set spun around, laughing, and sliced the thick wooden shaft in two with one blow of his sickle. "Mortal, who do you think you are to try to frighten me with your cricket-song? And then to try for my blood? You must learn.” Balanced on the bridge rail, he conjured a weighted throwing-club to his hand and sent it tumbling end over end to strike Faustus’ arm above the elbow with bone-crunching impact. The wizard moaned and fell. “That is how the lord Set deals with insects,” the monster sneered. “They are crushed.”

Jadwiga was there to take up the club and hurl it at its master with murderous force. A backhand slash of the sickle knocked it into the river. Once more the parched air filled with the crackle of Set’s gloating. A leather sling was his next weapon, and a hail of sharp black stones pummeled us all without mercy. We ran out of range, Mom and I first dashing in to help drag Faustus away. The monster on the bridge cackled and turned the sickle into an electric guitar. Harsh chords scraped and twanged in our ears as Set duck-walked the parapet.

“What can we do?” Mom asked, cradling Faustus to her. “If he can call up weapons like that, what’s to stop him from summoning arrows next time, or knives?”

“Nothing.” Mr. Feidelstein’s mouth was tight. “Nothing at all.” Master Runyon had his golden cobbler’s hammer in his hand. He smacked the weighty head against the palm rhythmically. “I regret that my weapon of choice and tradition is not one that lends itself to other than close-quarters fighting, else I would have made a braver showing of myself. As it was, I was compelled to retreat without even making an attempt upon rearranging yonder plug-ugly’s loathsome mug.”

“There, me dear, ye’d have done it were ye able,” Teleri consoled him.

“And what of me?” Eleziane cried indignantly. She held her cupped hands before her and watched them fill and empty with weak fires such as Faustus conjured. “As soon as I saw him, I tried to use my elfin powers against him. Nothing! Nothing! Only this palsied glowworm light.”

“Don’t—don’t disdain it, Your Highness,” Faustus managed to say around his pain. “We may yet find a use for our enfeebled powers, you and I.” He whispered intently to her and Mom, also indicating that Mr. Feidelstein and Ben join them, but when the rest of us tried to learn what he was saying, Set’s voice drowned it out.

“Keeping secrets? Now without my leave!” True to my mother’s fearful prediction, a slim throwing-knife now winked in the creature’s hand. It arrowed through the air and nicked poor Fluffy’s fetlock. The unicorn stamped and whinnied, hurt and enraged.

“What, you’re gonna sit there talking while that bat-turd carves up prime horseflesh?” Yang bawled. Braids snapping like pennants in his wake, the Mongol strode to where Set’s second spear still stood embedded in the sand, wrenched it loose, and with a wild shout vaulted one-handed over Fluffy’s rump to land with a thud on the unicorn’s back.

Fluffy reared, pawing the air. “Who in hell invited you on board, dirtbag?” she trumpeted.

“Flattery will get you made into lunchmeat.” Yang gave her a light thwack in the ribs with both heels. “Shut up, beautiful, and run,” he directed. “I’m gonna turn that horse-sticking bastard into the biggest fucking lollipop you ever saw.” Before the startled unicorn could mount any more objections, Yang clamped his legs tightly to her barrel and wrapped a handful of strawberry mane around his left wrist. Brandishing the spear, he raised a war-cry that caused three of the distant palm trees to shed their fronds, the white fagade of one of the pyramids to fracture and peel away to the rough-dressed stone beneath, and the gold cap of another to turn silver, then tarnish.

It also panicked Fluffy so badly, she bolted. “He’ll get himself killed all over again,” I wailed as I watched him turn her head towards Set and loose a second yell, his way of gunning his steed into overdrive.

“Yes, but this time it will be for something important!” Jadwiga declared proudly. “This time it will be for a horse!” She got a running start, caught up with Fluffy before the unicorn hit full throttle, and performed a sideways mounting vault up behind her son. It was a breathtaking maneuver, especially in those robes. She had no spear, so she undid her belt and cracked it through the air like a whip.

“Mercy on us all, the whole family’s stark mad,” Teleri breathed.

“Question not their sanity, doll,” Master Runyon panted, sprinting after Yang. “Those suckers know how to go out with a bang.” A gloriously loony Erse ululation streamed from the luchorpan’s throat as he whirled his hammer overhead.

“He’s given us our chance,” Faustus said to his chosen confidants.

I didn’t bother to try hearing what they were up to. Yang’s madness was contagious. Neil grabbed hold of the throwing-knife that had wounded Fluffy and was running with the rest. Teleri had the battle-light in her eyes.

“ ’Twas once before I let me true love march off to die in war wi’out me,” she shouted. “ ’Tis damned I’ll be if I let it happen so again!” She dashed after Master Runyon, and as she ran, I heard her begin to sing—a weird, nerve-skinning song full of banshee magic—but like all magic in the underworlds, it lost most of its effect. Magic craves belief, no matter what her creatures claim, and the dead have little of that. Magic kindles itself out of the hope for change, and only the strongest souls still cling to hope after life has gone.

I believed, though. I believed we were all going to get ourselves turned into a pattern of sticky little splats all over the sand. It was only a question of when Set got tired of toying with us. The smart thing to do would be to run away now, while he was busy dealing with Yang and Jadwiga. They were almost upon him, Yang riding low over the unicorn’s neck, couching the spear like a lance. Fluffy lowered her head to make it a two-pronged charge. An evil grin slimed over Set’s inhuman snout. He lost the guitar and let the sunlight of Osiris’ realm shimmer on the barrel of a .357 Magnum.

“Feeling lucky?” he mewed, taking aim.

A gun? Oh yes, I’m sure, just that: a gun. I saw what I saw, and then I only saw red.

I don’t know what possessed me. All those yowls of It’s not faaaaay-yerrrrr that I’d ever set up in my life jerked inward into a hard lump at the pit of my stomach. And it wasn’t fair, it was not! Plain courage, strength, and power of heart should stand for something in a fight. Oh, I know it seldom does, anymore. Hardware judges combat in the real world, armories deliver the verdict instead of men. But here, too? Here, where legends let us believe that we can triumph because of what we are, not because of how many deadly toys we own? Was there no place left where rightness and spirit could still hope to matter against the cold engines of war? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair!

Bile rose from that smoldering coal of rage in my belly, filling my blood with fire. I had the wand up before I realized it, shouldered the way a little boy will place a tree-branch he’s pretending is a rifle. All right, you want to see who’s got the better toy? I sighted down the length of the crystal shaft and found Set’s eye.

Magic stuttered from the wand’s tip, tracing thin paths through the air. My aim was poor, too low, but the first barrage struck Set in the upper chest, made him drop the gun. The animal he had become jerked its head towards me, snarling and foaming at the mouth. A gesture, and a small, round shield like an infant sun spun up to deflect all future volleys. Just as well. The power was subsiding within me, but it had done its work.

A moment’s distraction scored against your enemy is worth gold. While Set’s attention was still on me, the others reached him. Yang’s spear took him in the ribs, Fluffy’s horn in the neck. Black blood gouted as Jadwiga’s lash caught him across the eyes and Master Runyon’s hammer smashed his legs under him. By the time Neil and Teleri gained the bridge, the god was swaying drunkenly on the parapet. The former Rawbone King looked at Set, looked at the knife, shrugged off the temptation to overkill, and joined Teleri in giving him one good, hearty, old-fashioned shove off the bridge and into the river. He splashed high and sank deep. There were no bubbles.

Dusting off her hands melodramatically—no one should allow banshees to watch so damned many Saturday morning cartoons— Teleri announced, “That’ll be that.”

The shrieked hunting-cry of a raptor thwarted of its prey blasted the self-satisfied smile from her face. Bronze wings darkened the sky as the gigantic man-faced falcon alighted on the sand, the pressure of its grip fusing the grains to glass between its claws. “WHERE IS SET?” it demanded. “WHERE IS MY UNCLE?” No one else seemed about to speak, so I cleared my throat and took charge. You know my personal philosophy: What the hell! “Uh—He’s dead. If he can die, I mean. Anyway, he’s gone.” “WHAT?” The man-headed falcon raised a claw with talons the size of scythes. “THEN WHY WAS I SUMMONED, IF YOU DEALT WITH HIM YOURSELVES?”

“No one summoned you,” I protested.

Then Faustus stepped forward and bowed his head. “We did, O Horus. But we did so without knowing that our own companions were equal to the task of destroying your ancient enemy. That was our error. We should have had faith in them, warriors and great magicians all.” He gazed at me so proudly, I felt it to the heart, and it left me feeling warm all over.

Still, I had to know: “How did you people manage to call up the five-hundred-pound canary?” I whispered to Faustus. “Your magic doesn’t—”

My question was swallowed up by Horus’ own: “HOW DID YOU OVERCOME HIM, O MORTALS?”

The ball was back in my court. “We—um—we sort of gave him a shove. Into the river.” Rather needlessly, I pointed and added, “That river.”

“IN THE RIVER?” Horus’ component parts switched places, so that we were now confronting a falcon-headed man. “WITHOUT EVEN FILING AN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT? THIS IS MY FATHER OSIRIS’ REALM. IF I TOLD YOU HOW MANY SOULS WE HAVE TO PROCESS DAILY, IT’D MAKE YOUR TAIL-FEATHERS FALL OFF. AND EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM HAS TO HAVE HIS HEART WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE OF TRUTH, OR HE GETS DEVOURED BY AMEMAIT. EVER GET A LOOK AT AME-MAIT? PART LION, PART HIPPO, PART CROCODILE— TALK ABOUT YOUR ENDANGERED SPECIES! ALL THOSE

SOULS, ONE AT A TIME, WITH INDIGESTION BREAKS FOR POOR OLD AMEMAIT. DON’T EVEN MENTION THE VETERINARY BILLS AROUND DAD! IF SET HADN’T KILLED HIM ALREADY, THIS’D DO THE JOB. ALL THOSE SOULS, ONE BY ONE, NOT EVEN THE HOPE OF EVER GETTING THE OPERATION COMPUTERIZED, AND SOMETIMES A HOLD-UP FOR WEEKS WHEN AMEMAIT GETS THE COLIC.”

“Look, we didn’t know. Anyway, what’s that got to do with the river?"

“OH, NOTHING.” Horus’ beak clattered peevishly. “ONLY THAT THIS IS THE VERY RIVER THAT EFU RA, THE DEAD SUN, TRAVELS EVERY NIGHT IN THE EVENING BOAT ON HIS WAY BACK TO THE GATE OF DAWN. BUT DON’T LET THAT CONCERN YOU. LET HIM RUN THE BOAT INTO MY UNCLE SET’S BODY, WHY DON’T YOU. LET THE WHOLE EVENING BOAT TIP RIGHT OVER! LET THE TERRIBLE SERPENT APEP DEVOUR THE SUN HIMSELF! NEVER YOU MIND. YOU JUST GO RIGHT ON TURNING IN FALSE ALARMS TO SUMMON ME—AS IF I HAVEN’T GOT BETTER THINGS TO DO”—(To illustrate his point, here the young god launched a beam of strange energies at Fluffy, immediately healing the unicorn’s wounds. “Well, if that don’t leave Dr. Kildare sucking air,” she was heard to remark.)—“AND USING OUR RIVER AS A CATCHALL FOR EVERY SCRAP OF YOUR POST-COSMIC-BATTLE LITTER. I NEVER SAW THE LIKE. WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE, NUTS?”

“No, sir,” I quavered. “We’re tourists.”

“OH.” Some time later, all forgiven, the lord Horus bundled us onto the great Evening Boat of the Sun and waved us bon voyage as we set sail back to the land of the living.

“I think he’s relieved to see us go,” said Mom.

“I know he is,” I replied, folding up the biodegradable litter-bags he had pressed upon us all as a farewell gift.

As the Evening Boat sailed on, I cast one last backward glance over the gunwales and said to Faustus, “You never told me; how did you summon Horus?”

The wizard looked a bit embarrassed. “We dug a Horus’ Eye pattern in the sand and called on what powers we had. Nothing but that contemptible glowworm fire, really, but when we had conjured up as much as our hands could hold and poured it into the pattern ...”

He directed my gaze to the sky. From its base near the stone bridge, a beam of magic-struck light still arose to cast the falcon-headed god’s symbol sharp and clear against the clouds.

“I got the idea from reading Batman comics,” Faustus confessed.

I was still teasing him about that as the boat slipped into the river Acheron and over the border of Hell.

27 THREE, TWO, ONE-CONTRACT!

“Have they gone yet?” Faustus hissed from under the tarpaulin.

“Not yet,” I said out of the comer of my mouth. “Lie still. Are you sure he’s the one?” I used only my eyes to indicate one of the four uniformed demons who had boarded the prow of the Evening Boat.

“Do you think I could forget him?” The wizard’s face was the color of bone. “After so long avoiding him, after so long with him ignoring me? And now, when I am finally needed on earth—when I have at last found the one thing to sweeten the endless days of living—to stumble into him like this!”

“Stay cool,” I counseled, tucking the tarp more snugly around him. “Make believe you’re cargo. I’ll even sit on you so they won’t lift the cloth.” I saw Mom’s anxious look and waved her off as far from Faustus as possible to prevent her from inadvertently giving the whole show away. “You sit tight, I’ll sit light,” I promised the wizard. "I don’t want anything to happen to you if I can help it.”

“Really?” I wish I could have held onto the joy I saw in his face.

“Really.” It felt good to be able to smile back at him with my whole heart. “Hey, it’s a big boat. Maybe he won’t notice you.”

The chances for that looked good. The four demons did indeed have other fish to fry. All of them were presently putting Efu Ra, the dead sun, through their own personal brand of merry hell.

“Now then, sir, anything to declare?” asked the demon Faustus had singled out as the source of his fear.

Efu Ra shook his ram’s head so hard that the solar disc atop his homs rattled. “Every night Our celestial barque passes through your miserable territory, and every night you trouble Us with the same piddling questions. We have told you a sufficient thousand-thousand times, and yet ten thousand times ten thousand more: We are Efu Ra. the dead sun and We journey to Our glorious rebirth and transformation into the form of Khepera, the sacred scarab who daily pushes Our renewed self over the eastern horizon at the Gates of Dawn! Beyond this, We have nothing more to declare.” “Yes, sir," the demon said levelly. “As you say, sir. Hmm ...” He referred to the wad of papers attached to the clipboard he carried. “Sorry, sir, no mention of it in the forms you’ve already filed with us.. Still, no fear. A few routine questions should set us right soon enough, eh? Now, this Khepera-person—is that an admitted alias, sir, which you have assumed for professional reasons? A stage-name, perhaps? Or does it refer to another individual entirely and, if so, will he be traveling with you in the capacity of a minor, a dependent, or an autonomous associate bearing his own documents?”

“We have told you!” Efu Ra banged the butt of his staff heartily on the deck of the Evening Boat. “We are the sacred scarab Khepera, just as We are Ra-Atum and Ra-Harakhte and Haroeris and Harmakhis and Behdety and Aten and—!”

“May I see your passport, sir?” the demon interrupted.

Efu Ra turned his back on him, but one of the deity’s attendants presented a small papyrus scroll. The demon consulted this, then said, “I’m very sorry, sir, but I don’t see those names listed here. And, if you don’t mind my saying so, this really isn’t a very accurate likeness of you, sir; not at all. For one thing, this shows a falcon-headed man wearing a snake-encircled solar disc, whereas you, sir, more precisely bring to mind a ram and your solar disc is entirely serpent-free, if I may so observe. As for any resemblance to a scarab—”

“Now look”—Efu Ra rounded on the fiend—“every time We have to enter this sulfurous tourist trap, We explain precisely who We are to you infant-nightmares. We are tired of it. We shall decree a new route for the Evening Boat, and deprive your crook-homed master of at least one victim for his toll-hungry jackals. Yea, We shall take Our river-traffic elsewhere, even if it does mean sharing the passage of the waters with that runagate sea dog Charon!”

“Yes, sir.” The demon remained infuriatingly unruffled. “Tried that once, as I believe I heard tell, didn’t you, sir?” He rolled up the papyrus and handed it back to the dead sun’s flunky. “Foghorn on the Titanic’s a bit on the loud side, ain’t it? Or was that mere idle rumor as said how high you jumped?”

The solar disc crowning Efu Ra’s horns was beginning to smoke. “He tried to run Us down, the rum-soaked blackguard! He dared to claim that We were not showing proper running lights!”

“Yes, sir. Anything to declare, sir?”

“What is your name, wretch?” Efu Ra was so angry that I could feel my skin tanning even at that distance. “In the morning We shall write a nasty letter to your master concerning your unbridled and inexcusable insolence. If you will permit Us to have a morning?”

Sarcasm meant little to the officious fiend. “Yes, sir. As you please, sir. Just doing my job, sir. The name is Mephistopheles.” He noticed another of Efu Ra’s servants busily inscribing it on a wax tablet and peered over the man’s shoulder to say, “No, no, sir; there’s two falcons and only one horned viper the way I spell it. Oh, and the open mouth comes after the owl but under the running water. Right, that’s it. ” He smiled up at the steaming god. “Spell it with the wrong glyphs and our Complaint Department might never get it into the correct file. Couldn’t have that, could we, sir? Always pleased to hear from members of the public. Now, as for what you’ve got to declare—”

Efu Ra retired aft in a solar snit and pretended not to notice as the demons of Hell’s Customs Department swarmed all over his craft. They turned up a number of scarabs, which they attempted to classify as agricultural pests and confiscate. Beaten, the dead sun clapped his hands and his attendants commenced intensive bribery maneuvers. The four fiends pocketed a pharaoh’s ransom in gold and jewels and continued their investigations, adding to their take-home pay every time they encountered something even vaguely questionable aboard the Evening Boat. Two of them had just homed in on the god’s protective serpent, Mehen, and were discussing whether or not to place the animal in quarantine, when Mephistopheles and his friend ambled in our direction.

“Hello, what’s this?” Mephistopheles viewed us slowly, the keen, hungry light of speculation creeping into his yellow eyes. “I don’t recall your craft ever having been cleared as a commercial passenger vessel, sir.”

“See if We ever do Horns another favor,” Efu Ra grumbled from the tiller.

I shifted my seat and prayed that Faustus would keep up the good work of imitating a bale of dry goods under me. Mephistopheles had a face that was Valentine-heart red, eyes like two scoops of earwax, and a series of warts that served him in place of other facial features. His lips so closely resembled slabs of uncooked liver that I expected him to smell of sizzling bacon and onions. Instead, his personal fragrance was eau de August outhouse, and strong enough to knock down a four-story building. The labors of Hercules, Augean stables included, were nothing compared to facing that repulsive, reeky demon and trying to keep the nothing -to-declare-honest-sir smile on my face.

Mephistopheles set his clipboard down on the rail between us and twitched his pimple of a nose at me. “A bit young to be traveling in cosmic realms, ain’t you, sir?”

“Oh, that’s okay,” I assured him. “I’m with my mom.” I waved at her and she managed to rally one sickly smile for the fiend.

Mephistopheles thumbed back the visor of his official Inspector’s cap and gave my mother a lingering ogle full of carnal appreciation. “Hmmm, not bad.” He turned to his pal. “Figure as we might classify her as a pet, pop her into quarantine for a bit as well, Harry?”

“Dunno.” Harry was eying Eleziane, Jadwiga, and Teleri by turns with the same ravenous intensity, so his indecision was purely for show. “Them’s females. I think as how the official paperwork lists ’em as toys, not pets. Not like they’re properly trainable, y’know. Mind you, there’s a high duty on imported toys.”

“Don’t look at Us,” Efu Ra snorted from the stem. “We are merely performing cartage at the request of Our cousin. They are none of Ours and We categorically refuse to pay any tariffs.”

“Right, then.” Mephistopheles’ leer lit up his face like a Vegas slot-machine hitting the jackpot. “They’re confiscated. Get ’em onto the dock.”

Jadwiga and the other ladies said nothing the whole time their commercial status was being discussed, but I saw their mouths begin to compress. By the time Mephistopheles gave the order to unship, there wasn’t a lip visible among them. We were tied up at a long pier where a ramshackle warehouse bore the weatherbeaten sign, port o’ hell. The soot-stained doors of the decrepit building opened at the demon’s command and ten brawny, green-skinned hellions came lumbering out to obey.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, love,” said Teleri, taking Master Runyon’s gold hammer from his belt and holding it at the ready.

“Here, boy.” Eleziane motioned with her hand, and the serpent Mehen slithered into her arms with puppy-like exuberance and allowed his massive head to be aimed at the demons like a fanged fire hose.

“I’ll bring it right back just as soon as I’m done with it, dear.” Mom patted Efu Ra's one hand as she removed the heavy ankh he carried in the other.

In her place on the aft deck, Fluffy picked up the belligerent vibrations and began to shift her weight from hoof to hoof. With the calm efficiency of a combat-ripened horsewoman, Jadwiga covered the space between herself and the unicorn in three strides and swung herself up. A touch of the knees brought them near enough to Efu Ra for Jadwiga to relieve him of his staff, which she held like a pole-arm. She moved her narrow gaze from one demon’s skull to the next, meaningly.

“Hey, Ma!” Yang yelled cheerfully. “Remember, they’re bureaucrats. No prisoners!”

“Oh dear.” Mephistopheles clicked his tongue as he surveyed the battle-ready women. “This is all very irregular.” He glanced at his mold-colored minions. Despite their bulging muscles, they were paralyzed by the sight of baggage that was prepared to fight back.

“I’m not touchin’ a one of ’em,” the foremost among them declared. “Not till I know we’re gettin’ double pay for hazardous duty. ”

“Now, really—” Mephistopheles began.

The black-collar worker was adamant. “An’ what’s more, ain’t none of us stirrin’ tusks nor tail till we gets another look at the union regs, ’cause even with double pay I ain’t sure as we has to risk our skins foolin’ about with live ones, an’ that’s final. ” He led his men back into the warehouse, singing “Joe Hill.”

“Unions,” Mephisto grouched. Then he shrugged. “Oh well, no sense dickering. I think we can give you a temporary clearance.” He set his foot on the gunwale and gave Efu Ra a two-fingered salute. The dead sun responded with one finger alone.

The other demons had already debarked, groaning under the weight of the treasure chests they had extorted from the Egyptian deity. I felt the river current begin to rise beneath our keel, and I breathed a sigh of relief to think that soon we would reach the Gates of Dawn and have our choice of being set down anywhere in the wide world that the sun shone.

“Whoops!” Mephistopheles clapped his hand to his cheek. “Silly me. I’ll be forgetting my own horns, next.” He jumped back into the boat and reached for his clipboard. A sudden lift of the river knocked it from the rail. He bent to pick it up.

“Well, well, well,” he said. Strong hands seized the edge of the tarpaulin and yanked hard, without warning. I flew up a few inches and landed again on Faustus’ back, only this time, the wizard was left on hands and knees in full view. Mephistopheles tossed the tarp overboard and lay down on his belly before Faustus, batting his eyelashes coyly. Knees bent, ankles crossed, chin on fists, the fiend simpered, “Hello, sailor. Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

He riffled through the stack of rumpled onionskin on his clipboard, and tore free from the middle an incongruous, thick parchment covered with black Gothic lettering except at the bottom where there was a line written in dark, disturbing red. His grimy talon stabbed the blood-writ name right through the first u in “Faustus.” He smiled.

“Why, yes; it seems I do.”

28 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

“I feel like I’m spending my whole life going to law courts, lately,” I complained to Yang as we walked the streets of Hell, heading for the building which housed the supreme tribunal of the infernal regions.

“Hey, I feel the same way about brothels,” the Mongol replied. “Except I like that. ”

“Look, you fellows, I’m not any happier about this than you are,” Mephistopheles butted in. The demon was in a pet and had been so ever since we had all insisted on debarking along with Faustus. The way he kept looking at us uneasily out of the comer of his eye made me suspect that there might be other things at work besides a simple dislike of extending diabolical hospitality to unannounced guests.

Somehow, we were a danger to him, and I was going to find out why.

“We can make you very happy,” I reminded him. “Just hand over that contract and I’ll file it under R for ‘ripped up and in the river. ’ ”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Hmph!” The fiend gave Faustus’ leash an ill-humored tug. He had the wizard clapped in a spiked leather dog-collar at the end of a heavy chain. “Well, you won’t have it. He’s mine, and Mephistopheles doesn’t let go of his property without a fight.”

“For someone that possessive, you didn’t exactly move mountains trying to get ahold of him before this. Why?”

The demon didn’t have a complexion suitable for registering blushes, but he did turn evasive rather swiftly. “Ahem. None of your business. Go home, why don’t you? It’s not at all difficult to reach from here, especially if your destination happens to be Washington, D.C. Our people are constantly on the move, going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it, so we’ve got some quite excellent travel agencies. I put them entirely at your disposal, with my compliments. I have no claim whatsoever upon your souls—at present—so why linger where you’re not wanted? Just name the place you want to be and I’ll ship off the lot of you, posthaste, no charge, no port tax, tipping forbidden.” He lowered his voice provocatively and added, “I’ll even throw in, at no additional charge, a round-trip ticket to Hawaii.”

“Meals included?” Neil asked.

Eleziane thwacked him.

“Sheep?” Yang wanted to know.

Jadwiga flicked her middle finger good and hard against the side of his skull. “Foolish boy!” she thundered. “How can you ask such a question of this fiend, especially at a time like this, when he has unjustly taken your comrade in arms captive?” She spat on one of Mephistopheles’ patent leather flamenco boots. “Any moron knows sheep are always extra.”

“Lady,” said Mephistopheles, wiping the toe of his spattered boot on the back of his customs-uniform trousers. “Lady, I will personally throw in a connoisseur’s selection of picked merinos, Romneys, karakuls, broadtails, Cotswolds, and pedigreed Wens-leydales if you will convince these people to get the Hell out and leave me in peace.”

Jadwiga scowled at him, then picked off the other boot with a well-aimed gob.

“We’re sticking to what we told you in the first place,” I said. “I’ve got reason to believe that you have no right to collect on Faustus’ soul, because the term of the original contract may have expired. I demand to have this case brought before the authorities.”

Mephistopheles ground his teeth. “You miserable snot, has it never occurred to that mouse-turd you call a brain that the authorities might not wish to see you?”

“Uh-uh, you can’t scare me.” I folded my arms across my chest. “I read The Devil and Daniel Webster, and I’m betting that if there’s one thing Hell’s got plenty of, it’s lawyers.”

“Have it your way,” the fiend snarled, and gave Faustus’ leash a harder than necessary vicious tug. Mom let out a small cry of sympathy and distress. She refused to be parted from Faustus, and had her arms around him most of the time, except when Mephistopheles got provoked enough to jerk the unlucky wizard out of her embrace. I saw the tears on Mom’s cheek and vowed that if I ever found myself in a position to do the demon an unkindness, I would make it a doozy.

Shortly after, in the beery darkness of the Next-to-the-Last Judgment Tavern, I demanded, “What are we doing in here? That’s the court building across the street!”

“So it is,” Mephistopheles agreed, lips twisted into a disturbing smile. He dipped his miniscule snout into a foaming stein to drown the sound of his snickers.

“Well, what are you up to? You can’t stall us forever. I said I want to see the authorities, and I—”

“You’ll see them soon enough.” The demon took another pull at his brew and chuckled evilly. “I can hardly wait.”

We were all seated at a fumed oak table near the big picture window fronting the tavern. The board’s aged surface had been liberally scored with the marks of generations of demons’ graffiti: ‘Gabriel Is A Blowhard,’ ‘Gluttony Eats It Raw,’ ‘Misery Loves Company,’ and inscribed within a crude heart, ‘Death + Taxes’. The establishment was deserted except for ourselves and the bartender, a bare-breasted female demon who looked like a tugboat. I got a feeling that there were no bouncers employed or needed in this place so long as she was around.

Beer for all had been poured, at Mephistopheles’ insistence. Fluffy was slurping hers out of a silver bowl etched with the names of the Underworld Cup Soccer Match winners of 4652 B.C. For obvious reasons, the Sodom Smashers had not gotten to keep the trophy. Even Faustus was given a measure of cooling brew. It was only out of deference to his comfort that I had agreed to this detour at all. Now it seemed I’d made a mistake. Mephistopheles looked likely to put down roots here sooner than take us to the courthouse.

I got up and approached the bartender. “There a phone in here?”

“You kidding?” She reached under the counter and slammed one down onto the bar in front of me. It was fire-engine red and shaped like four cheerleaders and a gaucho. I checked to see whether Mom was watching as I gingerly picked up the handset.

“Something’s wrong with the dial tone,” I told the barkeep.

“What?” She grabbed it from me and had a listen, though you hardly had to set the phone to your ear in order to hear the deep-throated, frenzied moaning coming out of the receiver. “Sounds good to me,” she said.

All right. I got the Operator by punching a button that was located I don’t like to remember where, and in a good, strong voice asked to be connected with the courthouse.

It worked like a charm. Not that I got the courthouse, but my action lifted Mephistopheles right out of his seat and had him snatching the phone from my hand before you could say Alexander Graham Bell.

“Are you mad?” he snapped.

“No, I’m just sick of waiting around for you. I want Faustus’ case reviewed, and I want it done now! You get us up in front of a judge, or—”

The tavern door swung open and slammed into the wall. A cacophony of bluff, oily voices flooded the damp interior of the bar like a tidal wave. Black judges’ gowns and sleek lawyers’ suits swirled around me. The glare from the layers of styling gel holding scores of hundred-dollar haircuts in place was dazzling. As in the consumer Hell from which we’d rescued Master Runyon, a shoal of attache cases battered my legs black and blue. Unlike their chintzy fake-croc cousins, these were the genuine article—brass fittings and rare leathers all the way.

Mephistopheles dragged me back to our table. “You wanted a judge?” A flourish of his hand described the crush at the bar. “Take your pick. This is where the real judicial work of Hell gets done, not in the courthouse.”

I stared at the demonic corps of legal eagles—though most of them looked closer kin to buzzards—and asked, “They’ll handle Faustus’ case here?”

“On the spot.” He sipped his beer. “All decisions final. Of course, when you plead your case, you might find it hard to make yourself heard above this racket. We had one fellow approach a judge in here asking for the correct time. Magistrate misheard him and the next thing he knew, he was stuck head-down in a flaming tomb with nothing but a bunch of simoniacs for company, and you know what poor conversationalists that lot can be. Here’s how.” He finished off the stein and snapped his fingers for a refill. “So, see any gavelman strikes your fancy?”

I slumped down in my seat. “I’ll wait until court’s back in session and see a judge then.”

“Got a bit of longish wait ahead of you, in that case. Holiday recess just kicked in. ’Tis the season, you know: Yuletide. Noel.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Christmas. Can’t get a damned thing done then. Too depressing.”

“It’s Christmas?” I squealed. “Already?”

Mephistopheles clapped his hands over his ears. “Sshhhh! No need to shout the—the C-word like that. There’s a female present”—he looked at the bartender—”I think. Have a little consideration. What’s the matter, anyhow? Ain’t got your shopping done?”

I hardly heard him. I was horrified. I’d lost all track of surface time since being dumped into the underworlds, but I’d never once thought that so many days had gone by. What was it that Loki had said to T’ing? Something about opening in New York, a Christmas gig. There was only one gig CODA ever meant to play, and that was the universal grand finale.

It was going to be T’ing’s farewell performance, too. That realization hit my brain with the force of a warhead, and blasted away all the large-scale, abstract concepts of world’s end. Something snapped inside me. I grabbed Mephistopheles by the collar and shook him until his piggy yellow eyes crossed. I don’t know what I was screaming in his face. Something about Loki and Siva and Yen-wang-yeh and the Fenris Wolf and the Midgard Serpent and CODA and why we needed Faustus with us to fight them and how he could have my soul later if he would just let us all go now and save T’ing—oh, and the rest of the world too, while we were at it. It took Mom, Teleri, Yang, Neil, and four tax attorneys to pull me off him.

By the time I stopped panting for breath and wasn’t wheezing any more, I noticed that the tavern had gone dead. The only sound was the drip of beer from the tap. The eyes of every demonic minion of the law were on me, waiting.

“Uh,” I remarked.

Mephistopheles picked himself up off the floor and brushed peanut shells from his uniform. “Boy,” he said coldly, “did you just now actually say what I believe we all heard you to say?”

“Uhhhhh,” I elaborated.

“End of the world, wasn’t it? The Last Days imminent? Cosmic doom upon us? Apocalypse now? Armageddon’s been put in the works—was that something like it?”

“Errrrr ... I guess so.”

His fist slammed down so hard that the solid oak tabletop split into kindling. “By a bunch of bloody foreigners?! ”

Hell wouldn’t have it.

29 THE RIFF-RIDERS

“Why me?” I said aloud. The words echoed through the dark. The unicorn’s hooves sounded hollow as they clopped along the web-path of the Fey we had chosen.

Fluffy looked at me over her left shoulder and replied, “Because you’re a virgin. Now, try holding on with your thighs and don’t pull my mane so much.”

“Virgin my eye. You let Yang ride you, and Jadwiga. If he’s a virgin, Casanova was a nun. And as for her—”

“I know, I know. But they’re dead. When I have to schlep around the living, it’s strictly Virgins Only.”

“Why? Tradition?”

“Naahhhh. Frustration just weighs less than guilt. And I told you to stop pulling my mane!”

“Sorry. I must be frustrated.” I grinned and she reached around to nip my shin. Hard.

When I stopped yelping, she said, “Check that address Mephistopheles gave you again. Are you sure it said Poughkeepsie?” “Trust me, I’m more surprised than you to be going back there.” Surprised wasn’t the word. The word had come down while we were still in Hell, just after Mephistopheles went to inform his superiors of Loki’s plan to jump-start Armageddon. When Faustus’ captor summoned me into the presence of the Joint Fiends of Staff and told me that they had a mission for me, I was slightly startled, but when they told me where I was going and who I was to pick up, I was flat-out flabbergasted. What was it about that city?

We came out of the web-path on a deserted side-street in downtown Poughkeepsie. It was almost midnight. Everywhere I looked, Christmas decorations twinkled. Their beauty was a sobering reminder that our time was running out. It had been the twenty-third of December when all of us—fey, mortal, and demon—emerged from the underworlds into the heart of New York City, and within moments it would be the twenty-fourth.

As Fluffy and I trotted through the nighted streets of Poughkeepsie, I couldn’t forget the circumstances that had brought us here. Even without closing my eyes, I could visualize us all as we had been scant minutes before, standing on that little concrete island in the middle of Herald Square. Across the street, the windows of Macy’s were all a-sparkle with tinsel and lights. Passers-by stopped to stare at the decorations.

No one gave us a second glance. It wasn’t that New Yorkers were used to seeing a motley crowd of humans, demons, banshees, luchorpans, elves, barbarian ghosts, and one cranky unicorn—even this close to Times Square and so late at night—but that among our several magicks we had managed to scare up enough spells of plausible disguisement to let us blend right in with the scene. I, for instance, was to all appearances a mounted policeman, with Fluffy as my steed. Yang and Jadwiga were posing as German tourists.

As our nominal commander—special appointment by the Joint Fiends—Mephistopheles’ first act was to dispatch his old coworker Harry on a quick newsstand foray.

“No question in my mind that those pagan blighters will make their move soon—solstice and all that—but it is imperative we know precisely what, where, and when.” He sounded as stuffy as a four-week cold and walked with an intolerable swagger. He’d have slapped his jodhpurs with a riding crop and adjusted his monocle if he’d been wearing either. He did say “Haw!” a lot, though.

Harry brought back a copy of the New York Times with an ad for a special, free, pre-holiday rock concert in Central Park on Christmas Eve day at noon.

Guess who was playing.

Mephistopheles read the ad aloud and lowered the newspaper. His eyes looked even smaller, if that were possible. “So it’s to be music they’ll use, is it?” A short, sarcastic laugh (“Haw!”) broke from his lips. “How droll. Doomsday brought about by subliminal messages in their songs, no doubt. Letting you mortals do all the dirty work for them, the shiftless buggers. It’s no more than what we expected from that lot. All these foreign demiurges are uniformly unreliable, lazy, and feckless. Mind you, they do make up for it with a certain native slyness and low cunning. ”

He sighed and shook his head. “I don't know what’s become of this country lately, letting any old legendary trash over the border these days, some of them with no more than one tattery myth to their names and that one’s just some threadbare ‘Why We Have Seasons’ folderol. Give ’em an inch, they’ll take a cosmos; next thing you know they’ve married your sister and are nipping Armageddon out from under you. Well, we’ll soon put paid to that.1 ”

He snapped his fingers and one of the twenty demons assigned to his command scampered forward. “Clootie Minor, you shall be in charge of fetching our equipment to the concert site. Clootie Major—?” Another fiend scuttled up. “Ah, there you are. Clootie Major, you shall supervise our mortal allies, keeping them out of sight of those bloody foreigners until such time as we are ready to strike.”

Eleziane stuck her hand up in the air. “If you want allies, I’ll bring you plenty. My father is Lord Palamon, Supreme Seigneur of the Elves. He’s supposed to be in charge of all the lesser sprites who escaped the Leeside. When your troops attack LokL’s, we could—”

“Dear child—” Mephistopheles wore a smile smarmy and condescending enough to make Miss America pull a flamethrower on the swimsuit-competition judges. “How very sweet of you to offer. No, thank you all the same. We have received our battle-plan from the lowest authority and I fear your pixie pals would only get in the way.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill. “Here, sweetheart. Go buy Cobweb and Peaseblossom and the rest a round of nectar, with my compliments.”

After Eleziane had rampaged off, plunging straight down through the sidewalk so that poor Neil couldn’t follow, Mephistopheles extracted the rolled-up bill from his nose and asked, “What is her problem?”

“ ’Tis lookin’ at it we are,” Teleri replied, staring at him. “Are ye daft, t’ be throwin’ away th’ proffered help o’ th’ Seeley Court? Lord Palamon’s normally about as much use as trousers on a snake, but them o’ us as owes him nominal allegiance are a grand fightin’ force when we’re riled, an’ no mistake.”

“Precious girl, I’m sure you’d be right if this were some cute little fairy story,” the demon said smoothly. “But it’s not. We are talking about averting the Apocalypse here—temporarily. You simply haven’t the necessary powers, magical or mental, to bring to bear upon the enemy. At best, we demons have planned to use you lot as a distraction—a purely minor role which you shouldn’t bollix too badly. But real combat? Haw!” He wagged a finger at her. “I’m only telling you this for your own good, love.”

Teleri hadn’t bitten anyone in a long time, but she made a sharp, bloody exception before she vanished in herring-scented dudgeon. Mephistopheles’ finger-holding howls were almost loud enough to smother the cruel laughter of his troops. Master Runyon lingered only long enough to lend the fiend a clean handkerchief with which to bind up his wound and to make the philosophical observation: “Dolls: Go figure!” Then he, too, disappeared.

“You’re not exactly hanging onto the rank and file, huh?” I remarked.

The demon gave me a dirty look. “I’m hanging onto one of them just fine,” he reminded me. He had Faustus’ leash slipped over his wrist, and he gave it a twitch. The wizard made a small, choking sound and Mom was there to stroke his neck where the dog-collar chafed it.

“Makes you feel big, doesn’t it?” I leaned over Fluffy’s neck to glare at Mephistopheles.

“Haven’t you got someplace to go, young man?” the fiend replied. “Or did I mishear the Joint Fiends when they gave you your assignment?”

“Oh, I’ll go. The journey to Poughkeepsie won’t take any time at all on the web-paths of the Fey. It’s a major route.”

“You never can tell. There might be cross-town traffic. Get along with you, there’s a good boy. Don’t let me keep you. Stand not upon the order of your going, but go. Ciao. Ta-ta. Toodles.” I ignored all of the demon’s attempts to be rid of me. I drew my wand and casually jabbed it at him like a pointer, making him jump. “You know, I think I’ve got you figured out,” I drawled. “You’re a relic, Mephisto; a flash in the infernal pan. Only a major has-been needs to act as self-important as you. Maybe you were big once, back when you first signed up Faustus, but then something happened. You lost the edge. Could be the new generation was too sharp and too fast for you to keep up with. Any time anyone compared your tired old tricks with their hot new ideas, you came in dead last. So you decided it was better not to compete at all. You faded into the background, by choice—a humdrum job in the bureaucracy of Hell, with no chance of anyone bringing up the glorious past, when you actually were somebody.”

“Lower your voice, for Cocytus’ sake.” Mephistopheles made frantic shushing motions with his paws. “Do you want them to hear?” He indicated the twenty fiends behind him. “Miserable young sprats have no concept of respect for age and experience. Hard enough getting the perishers to toe the line as is.”

“Think how much harder it's going to be when they find out why you signed up a soul and then let it go free for centuries.” It felt great to make the demon squirm. “If you left your safe little civil-service niche in Hell to bring him in, people would notice. People would say, ‘Oh, look, here come Mephistopheles with a soul. Isn’t that unusual. How long has it been since he last did that?’ You know they’d sit down and try to figure it out— especially the younger fiends—and once they counted up the decades, you would be one very embarrassed demon.”

“Fatally so,” Mephistopheles mumbled. “My employers—they arc not at all understanding about production slumps and soul-snagger’s block. That was why I sought to delay you as much as possible from having Faustus’ case reviewed in our courts.”

I took a wild stab and said, “Faustus was the last mortal you ever managed to snare, and the only reason you got him was because he was old and tired and afraid of death.”

“Who told you? I’ll tear out their spleen!” Bingo.

“Why bother? The cat’s out of the bag, spleen included. However—” I beckoned him into whispering distance. “Maybe we could work out a way to put the cat back in again.”

That was how I happened to be riding through the streets of Poughkeepsie at midnight, dressed as a New York City policeman, mounted on a unicorn, carrying a nightstick that was really the crystal wand of the Grand and Puissant Champion of the Fey, and holding in my pocket the parchment codicil to Faustus’ contract, with a demon’s own bloody signature on it authorizing me to accept transfer of the wizard's soul subsequent to and contingent upon the overthrow of CODA and the presentation of my affidavit to the lords of Hell saying that the whole smashingly successful campaign was all Mephistopheles’ doing.

Whew.

Which brought us to the black steel door in the alley.

“Dis mus’ be da place,” Fluffy announced.

“You sure?”

“Hey, you’re the one who gave me the address!”

I studied the portal. “Looks like the way into Lord Palamon’s realm.”

“Well, we’re really going to find out by gawping at it forever.

Do I have to do everything?" Fluffy tossed her mane and struck the door with her horn.

Aaa-ooo-gah!

“Jeez, what was that?” I exclaimed. The Klaxon-like bray had almost scared me out of my seat.

“I think it was —me,” the unicorn said hesitantly. She touched her horn to the door a second time, and again we heard that raucous sound. “Okay, who’s the wiseguy?” Fluffy demanded.

“Let me try,” I said, rapping four times at the door with my wand. This time we got the sounds of dogs barking, a rocket taking off, a rooster crowing, and a sputtering whoopie-cushion.

“That did it.” Fluffy pawed the ground, head lowered. “You ever watch any King Arthur movies?” She began backing up.

“Um . . . why do you ask?” My hand tightened convulsively in her mane.

“Because I am going to run straight at that frigging door and I would really appreciate it if you’d charge up that crystal elf-tickler and use it like a battering ram, thank you very much. Every little bit, etcetera.”

“Listen, Fluffy, you tried your horn on the door and it didn’t work, so maybe we could talk this”—the unicorn reared, whinnying, and threw herself full tilt at the door—“ooooooveeeerrrr?”

BLAM!

Or maybe it was more like crash-bang-shriek-ouch-wham-tinkle-tinkle-tinkle. What is the proper sound effect for a unicorn charging headlong through a black steel door that suddenly opens just when she reaches it? Which of course means she goes galloping on, unable to stop until she hits seventeen klieg lights, four amps, a mixer, six speakers, twelve empty equipment carrying cases, a state-of-the-art Professional Disk Composer, and Death.

I knew who she was on sight. You know how they say “She looked like creamed chipped Death on toast”? Well, this lady did for real. All of them were like that. I’d been sent to fetch the Four, and I can testify that no one ever had to ask any of the individual members of this quartet for a photo I.D. to tell them apart.

“Some people knock,” Death said to me, her features changing from gaunt and fair-skinned to plump and swarthy as I watched. The two of us sat amid the wreckage my unicorn had caused. Fluffy sprawled a bit further away, her head swaying drunkenly, a dismembered high-hat cymbal impaled on her horn.

“We tried, honest.” Death sniffed skeptically. I felt the damp chill of a hundred unopened tombs pulsing from her skin and tried to crab-walk as far from her as I could. “All we got when we pounded on the door were these weird sound effects.”

“That will be Famine’s idea of a little joke.” Death didn’t sound amused.

A big bruiser, barechested and dressed in camo pants, bit the top off a beer bottle and bawled, “Always said she had a sense of humor from hunger. Har!”

“Oh, stick a missile where the sun don’t shine, War,” said the scrawny tidbit in the comer. “If a lady can’t have a little fun on the job, fuck it. Find yourself another soundperson.” She wore a set of headphones that dwarfed her narrow skull, and was jimmying with a big synthesizer. When sweet reason didn’t work, she gave it a fierce kick.

I stood up slowly. “I guess—I guess we're at the right address. You must be the Four—the Four—” I looked around the darkened room. Over behind the drum set, four horses were tethered to a Coke machine. “Hey, there’s only three of you.”

“Pestilence is in the can,” said War, “trying to do something about his complexion.” He pulled a plastic squeeze-bottle from his bandoliers and squirted oil onto his biceps. Famine caught my eye, stuck her finger down her throat, and mimed gagging.

“Well?” Death was still seated on the floor. Now she looked Mediterranean. “Who does a lady have to kill to get a hand up around here?” You never saw me remember my manners so fast. Once she was on her feet, she took charge. “You speak as if you had some legitimate business with us, boy. That had better be the case.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I cleared my throat and explained things. Pestilence emerged from the john when I was almost through, his face a mosaic of popped pores, zit creams, zinc ointment, and moisturizers. Fortunately Famine had gotten my whole recitation down on tape and played it back to him so I didn’t have to repeat it.

Death’s eyes were glowing when I was done. “World’s end,” she breathed. “Through music. Except we must prevent it, fire fighting fire.” Her facial repertoire riffled through every Asian ethnic group in under a minute. “Oh, and we will.”

“A fuckin’ gig at last!” War did a double-fisted awriiiiight pose.

“Our big chance.” Pestilence got all starry-eyed until he developed conjunctivitis on one and a stye in the other.

“How much does it pay?” Famine wanted to know. War got her with a spitball, which she promptly devoured.

Shortly thereafter, Fluffy and I were back on the web-path, leading the Four to our rendezvous with Mephistopheles’ forces. Even though Famine rode last, we could hear her cursing and swearing all the way to the head of the procession as she urged her starveling mount to pull the wagon bearing the instruments and audio equipment.

“You didn’t tell them they’re not the ones who’re going to play?” Fluffy inquired softly.

“You want to do it?” I countered. “Or shall we let Mephistopheles field it on his own when it hits the fan?”

She offered to buy him a catcher’s mitt with pooper-scooper attachment then and there, and said no more about it.

“I dragged all this fuckin’-A junk all the way from Po’-fuckin’-keepsie for nothing?” Famine wailed.

“What do you mean, you didn’t bring us here to sing?” War dug his fingers into Mephistopheles’ throat and lifted the demon high against the clear blue wintry sky. It would have been a good time for one of the fiend’s retainers to come to his aid, but the twenty hellions assigned to Mephisto’s command were nowhere to be seen. The rest of us gathered around the little knoll overlooking Central Park’s Sheep Meadow to watch the fun.

“Ow ‘ee ‘ere—” the dangling demon gasped. “I agh ’ee aufo’i’ee ’oo ghomman’ ’oops, an’ agh I ’ay ’ohs.”

War dropped him. “Say what?”

“I said that I have the authority to command our troops, and what I say goes!” Mephistopheles made a big deal of brushing off the collection of fake combat ribbons decorating his pigeon-chest as he scowled at War’s simple garb and spectacular body.

“Then why summon us at all?” Death demanded. She had decided to run through her Violent Demises series and was currently a five-weeks’ drowned corpse of indeterminate race. Looking at her was enough to purge a python.

“It wasn’t my idea.” Mephistopheles paled a bit as he faced her down, but held his ground. “The Joint Fiends said for him to bring you.” He indicated me the same way a fastidious housewife might point out Kitty’s latest hairball.

“They wanted some cavalry backup,” I said. “Can you blame them?”

“They don’t—they don’t want us for our music?” Pestilence sniveled juicily onto the sleeve of his denim jacket.

Mephistopheles turned up his nose. “Well, really, what did you expect? Your little . . . hobby is all right for your own entertainment—something to while away the aeons until we do commence apocalypsing—but did you dream the authorities ever thought of it as a serious military resource?”

“They are using music.” Death’s long hand swept out over Sheep Meadow like the shadow of a scythe. The battlefield-to-be lay serene beneath a blanket of snow. And a stage. And enough sound equipment to blow down the walls of a thousand Jerichos. And a crowd of glassy-eyed spectators who were all wearing CODA T-shirts and waving black handkerchiefs as they waited for their idols to appear.

I heard Mr. Feidelstein sigh. "They’ve been busy.”

“Like cockroaches,” Ben Kipnis gritted. “Do you think they’ll have Sonia with them? And the kid’s girlfriend?”

“I don’t know.” The barely controlled anguish in the old Guardian’s voice nearly made me forget my own pain at the thought of T’ing’s fate. “But if they do, I swear that I will save her, even if I have to steal Death’s own steed to do it.”

Death did not overhear this threat to her property. She was still trying to get Mephistopheles to take her seriously as an artist as well as a craftsperson. “We know what they will do,” she said. “Even mortals have guessed at the all-sustaining properties of music. The harmony of nature, the dance of the hours, the rhythm of the night, the beat that goes on, the music of the spheres, the songs from the earth—and the Grand Finale that must come to all things. If they use music to bring about a world’s end that excludes us, we must fight back with the same weapons.”

“Well, of course we will.” Mephistopheles started to pat her hand, then wisely reconsidered. “The moment those philistines strike their first caterwauling chord, we shall counter with a sound whose overwhelming power is guaranteed to drive the tone-deaf blighters from the field in abject defeat. Clootie Minor, are you quite done setting us up yet?” he called into thin air.

“Ready as we’ll ever be, sir,” came the reply.

“Ah, excellent.”

Down in the meadow, shadows stood at noon. The little curtain at the back of the stage fluttered. A gigantic coil of snake’s body bulged out and retreated. The Midgard Serpent was counting the house.

Mephistopheles snapped his fingers and all of us mortals were suddenly clad in formal evening clothes, except for Faustus, who was still supporting your basic spiked dog-collar and travel-worn rags.

A wolf’s snout protruded from the curtain. Fenris padded out onto the stage. The crowd began to cheer.

Mephistopheles snapped his fingers a second time and was himself clapped into a spotless, eminently spiffy set of tails. Black diamond studs sparkled on his starched and pleated shirt-front.

Siva took his place on drums, closely followed by Yen-wang-yeh on keyboard. The cheering swelled.

“Showoffs,” Mephistopheles sneered. “But just wait until those fickle humans get their first taste of us." Another snap, and a thin, white, flexible wand appeared between his fingers.

I didn’t like where this was going.

Back on the stage, I saw the curtain tom aside entirely. Blasting glitter with his every move, Loki claimed his kingdom. His right hand stabbed his guitar at the sky, his left dragged T’ing Hau Kaplan after him.

“Places, everyone!” Mephistopheles caroled. I heard a lot of papers rustling, chairs scraping, and metal objects clashing, but all I saw were clouds and city scape.

I really didn’t like this.

Loki tossed a cordless mike to T’ing and gave her a boost to mount the slick white platform that occupied center stage. Though the sun was out and strong for mid-December, somehow a scarlet spotlight fell on her and made her silver-sequined costume bum. She stood there shaking while Siva laid down the rhythm and Yen-wang-yeh fell into the groove. Even without Set there to back up the beat on bass, their sound had power, and Loki hadn’t made his musical entrance yet.

A loud rasping reached my ears. The Midgard Serpent’s scales were dragging across the stage. Coil after coil humped itself around T’ing’s platform, cutting her off from the rest of the band. I recalled how Lord Hogbane had said that it was bad when the Serpent was visible, worse when you could hear it, and the next step after that would be the great monster breaking free.

Free, and T’ing so near.

Loki flipped up his guitar and teased a lowdown, dirty whine from the strings. The audience split the winter heavens with the ecstasy of welcoming their idol.

“Ready, gentlemen?” Mephistopheles raised his baton and brought it down sharply. The scrim of sky tumbled on cue, revealing twenty demons in matching black tuxedos, all seated in the prim rows and traditional sections of a classical orchestra, Maestro Mephistopheles conducting.

“You see?” He grinned fatuously at Death. “I told you we’d use music.” He gave the downbeat.

Da-da-da.-daaaaaahh!

We-were-all-screwed

30 RAGNAROK & ROLL

“Ah,” said Death, wiggling her forefinger in a snide parody of Mephistopheles’ orchestra-conducting efforts. “ ‘Eine Kleine Walpurgisnachtmusik.’ How sweet.”

“The fool,” Pestilence moaned, clutching his stomach, some of which came away in his hands. He glanced around furtively before shoving the segment of that wayward organ back under his jacket. “The miserable fool.”

War preferred the direct approach. Planting his feet wide, he produced an Uzi and had to be gang-tackled by Famine and Mr. Feidelstein before he could take out the whole strings section. “Violence never solved anything,” Mr. Feidelstein gasped. War pushed his scarlet headband out of his eyes and replied, “Works for me!” Then he had to get up and pry the Uzi away from Yang. Jadwiga wound up confiscating it and giving the both of them a couple of fed-up maternal smacks.

“Yeah, baby, that’s what I like!" War leered and made a grab for her. He wound up headfirst down the tuba.

“Stop that! Stop it at once!” A very irritated Mephistopheles rapped the podium for attention. The music dribbled away. “I don’t know what you Four are thinking by cutting the fool in this outrageous manner, but you are not helping our efforts at all. Wait for your cues! And as for you mortals”—his gaze rested by turns on me, Mom, Ben, Mr. Feidelstein, Neil, and Faustus—“and former mortals”—Yang and Jadwiga got the stink-eye—“you are a disgrace, an embarrassment, pathetic! My dear people, this may seem to be the smallest of musical soirees to you, but we are playing for the future of the world here! Avernus expects every fiend to do his duty. If you can’t be a help, at least don’t be a hindrance. I trust I’ve made myself clear?” He turned back to the orchestra and raised his baton. “Very good, fellas; now, from the top, ‘Black Sabbat Mater.’ And a-one, and a-two—”

The Pandemonium Pops were off again. I sat down in the snow in my tux next to Mom and Faustus. Fluffy had wandered away to paw out a few mouthfuls of grass. To quote the unicorn, “There are none so tone-deaf as will not hear. Kind of music that dodo’s playing couldn’t save your allowance, let alone the world, so I’ll save my breath. Trust me, he’ll soon find out it’s not working.”

Soon . . . but soon enough? I looked down at the stage in the meadow. The undulating bulk of the Midgard Serpent had grown thicker and bigger. Now I actually caught the sound of the beast hissing. T’ing was clutching her mike with both hands, teetering on silver spike-heels as she sang. I could hear her every word. It wasn’t any song that Loki was singing, nor the same tune CODA was playing.

“Help me,” she begged, and the words took on their own terrified melody as they passed through the amps and the speakers. “Please, for pity’s sake, save me. I’m their prisoner. They’ve got another hostage, too. She’s tied up under this platform, just below where I’m standing. The Serpent has the tip of his tail wrapped around her throat. They’re going to kill her and they’re going to kill me right here, while you watch. If you let them, you’re as bad as they, and Doomsday will come from your own hands. You’ll be monsters enough to bring it on yourselves without them doing a thing. But if you attack now, even without any weapons in your hands, they can’t stand against you. Listen to me! You don’t have to become what they’d make of you. You have the power to stop them, don’t you see? Set’s gone, and Siva and Yen-wang-yeh see your world, my world, as a great illusion. It wouldn’t take much to make them leave it alone! Loki’s the only truly evil one left among them, and even he can be beaten. You have to try! You have the power to save us, to save yourselves. Please, oh please, don’t just stand there, dancing and swaying, letting things happen to you! Help us, help us now, while you can! Save her, save us, save yourselves. ...”

Couldn’t they hear the words? Or did they, and did it make no difference?

I felt cold, chilled by more than the snow.

More snow was falling. It had come unasked, unexpected, out of a clear sky. The longer CODA played and Loki sang, the thicker the flakes fell, the stronger the gusts blew. The people never noticed and didn’t care.

“It begins,” said Mr. Feidelstein. His eyes turned to the thick clouds now rolling in and saw more in them than snow. “The

Fimbulwinter, the great cold that heralds the end of all. Wind-age, wolf-age, axe-age, sword-age, it’s coming.”

“It’s coming,” Jadwiga echoed, her gaze as unfocused as his, her vision taking her beyond the surface of the visible world, her words taking us along with her. “The world-bull stands in the ocean of stars, his hooves on the back of a giant crab, his horns upholding the earth. One horn is broken, and when the other breaks . . . The weight of snow and frozen hearts will be enough to break it.”

“More than enough,” said Yang. There was a queer, distant quality to his voice. “The great Serpent comes, his venom poisoning all life. Across the sky stand seven stars in the body of the Great Bear, seven watchmen to guard the two celestial horses that shine so brightly in the Small Bear’s tail. But when the world turns cold, the Wolf will come. The seven watchmen will themselves become seven dogs, seven wolves to kill the two horses. Then the world will end in blood and fire and flood.” “Flood,” said Mr. Feidelstein. “When the snow melts, then floods will sweep all away. The Persians told it so, and other peoples, too. Earthquakes and battles, famine and confusions to end the Fifth Sun the Aztecs saw. A snapping of the four ropes holding this world above the waters for the Cherokee. The sky to fall, and fire and water to engulf the earth, if the Irish foretold it truly. Look! See there, to the south! It comes!” He pointed wildly.

We looked, and the horizon was aflame. “What is it?” Mom gasped, her arms even more protectively around Faustus. “Fires through the snow? Oh, what can it be?”

“Fire and flood, quake and cold.” Mr. Feidelstein was transformed, his much-worn Guardian’s robes now shimmering around him, renewed by prophecy. “The world’s end Loki brings must have the giant Surt come from the south, bearing fire. Will that melt the snows of Fimbulwinter, bring the floods that other folk foresaw? Or will we kindle the final flame with our own hands? The sun roars up to swallow the earth, and the cold creeps in. Always, from the dead hearts of men, the cold.”

The band played on, the demons oblivious to the fact that they were fighting a losing battle. CODA held the people, tightened its grip around their souls. Siva played, dancing with his drums. He saw nothing of the destruction his dance would bring. To him we were another passing illusion, a mask among masks. Yen-wang-yeh jarred chords and melody from his keyboard, but his face retained the perfect judge’s impassivity. What were we to him? Only the breath of fantasy, the whimsy of the world.

And T’ing continued to cry out unheeded from her pedestal. The Midgard Serpent’s coils writhed higher around her now, like the waves of an incoming tide. They hid the platform completely; they rose to cover her to the knees, then to the waist, then to the chin. She threw the mike into the audience and screamed. No use. The spell of Loki’s song was too strong to let hope of human feeling escape. The crowd fought to gain possession of the mike as a souvenir, trampling one another without relief or mercy. Loki and his wolf-son Fenris both threw back their shaggy heads and howled their victory.

“No.”

The word was mine, but not mine alone.

“No.” Just that, slipping from my lips, and an echo of it at my side. I felt blunt fingers press my hand. I saw the tears of anger burning in the wizard’s eyes. “No,” he repeated. “I will not believe than men are so hollow, so cold, so easily lost. I will not let it be, no. Not even if it means the last losing of my soul.”

He leaped up and jerked his chain hard. The leash’s end was looped over part of Mephistopheles’ podium. Faustus’ rough tug toppled it, sent the pages of the score scattering.

“Why, you uppity little—” Mephistopheles’ opinion of Faustus was lost as the wizard seized the heavy links hanging from his collar, doubled up its considerable length, swung it like a lasso, and slammed the demon right in the temple with a flying loop of chain. Mephisto took five.

“All right!” Faustus sprang to the conductor’s place, still twirling his leash. “Now we’re going to play some real music!”

From twenty hellish throats that made it sound like twenty thousand, a roar of joy hit the heavens; “Yeah!” Pleated shirt-fronts were torn away, studs popping everywhere. Death spun on her toes and flashed a stark white twelve-string guitar into existence. War let out a rebel yell and smashed his fists down on a crimson drum-set that was there just in time to meet the sticks that sprouted from his hands. Pestilence had a sneezing fit, but managed to conjure up a bile-green bass guitar between spasms, though he did get snot all over the frets. Famine ran around like a crazy person, rooting through the packing cases and tossing spare instruments to the rebelling fiends.

“What—?” Mom gaped. Neil swept her up and swung her around, laughing. “It’s a real fight now, Mrs. D; it’s an even contest at last, it’s a—”

“Par-TAY!” Yang yelled. He lunged for a discarded oboe and charged the stage. “Don’t worry, Beloved Granddaughter!” he shouted. “Yang is on the way!”

“Without lacing up his dogskins again, I might add. He’ll catch his death some day.” Jadwiga shook her head over what a burden children could be, then laid hold of the Ultimate Weapon, a bassoon, and took off after her pride and joy.

Meantime, the music went on. The Four laid down some licks that had been centuries in rehearsal, and the demons came in strong. They were good improv men, give them that. But as they played, I heard CODA’s tune come sneaking up under theirs, infiltrating the sound, taking it over until you couldn’t tell where one stopped and the other began. On stage, Loki was laughing, and as his pirated sound swelled with the demons’ own efforts, the snow fell thicker and the Midgard Serpent’s hiss became a ravenous roar.

“Stop it! Stop it!” I shouted. “He’s stealing the music from us, he’s adding it to his own!”

Death cocked her head, fingers poised over the strings. A quick glance into the audience showed her I was telling it true. No one was looking at us. The spectators formed a wall of indifference so thick that when Yang and Jadwiga hit it, they bounced off, unable to fight through and reach the stage. Loki laughed louder and leaned over the Midgard Serpent’s twisting body to land beside T’ing on the platform.

I saw the silver dagger in his hand.

“Up,” said Fluffy, nudging me with her muzzle. “Maybe I can leap the crowd.”

I scrambled onto her back and drew my wand. It crackled in my hand, vibrating with the two waves of interweaving music. The unicorn bunched her haunches for the first jump, but I clutched a handful of mane and jerked her head back. “No,” I said. “Wait. First we must—”

“Wait my peachy rump!” Fluffy belled. “Don’t you see what’s happening? If he kills her now, in front of them all, and not one of them makes a move or a sound to stop him, you know what that means? It’s over! They’re lost!”

“And if we throw ourselves into the middle of it? They’ll still be spectators, nothing more. Watchers at world’s end, too cut off from being human to act for themselves. I can’t fight Loki for them, Fluffy. They have to do it on their own, and for that, they can’t just listen, they have to hear!"

I wheeled the unicorn around to the podium, where Faustus was still maniacally conducting with his chain. Dropping from Fluffy’s back, I shoved him at the unicorn’s side. “Up.” It was my turn to give that command. With linked hands I boosted him on. He looked down at me, bewildered. “Save them,” I said. “T’ing and Mrs. Feidelstein, when you can. You’ll know. You’ll hear it. Now ride!”

I slapped Fluffy’s rump and she bolted down the slope. Then I took my place at the podium, raised the wand, and searched my soul for a sound strong enough to break free of Loki’s spell. Somewhere there was a force that people could control to call up all their own best longings, their heroic moments. If it hid anywhere, it hid in music. Bach had heard the note that elevated man, and Beethoven too. Handel had reached down to lead us out of the mud to share it with us all. Then time had sent them and their soaring spirits back into the safe, tame haven of respectability. Even the fierce Romantics had grown toothless, fattened up and bought off, and what happened to them could happen to any music, even rock ’n’ roll. Rebellion and defiance both made gilded masks to lay over the face of a corpse.

But somewhere music lived. Somewhere it still held the old power to tear away the webs from our eyes and set a fire in our souls. I closed my eyes. “Let it come,” I whispered into the whirlwind of meaningless noise around me. “Let the true song come.” One ray of sunlight managed to slip through the Fimbul-winter clouds, touch the crystal, and send a rainbow of light and music surging through my bones.

“Everybody!" I yelled, bringing down the wand. “Let’s samba! ”

And we did.

Oh yes, we cut away from Loki’s sound and played our own. Silly? You just bet. Stuffy? That’ll be the day. Nothing pompous can survive in the thin, clear air of celebration for its own sake. The beat kicked in, driving hard as any rock line ever could, and harder still. Passion drove it, hit the blood, went right to the hips and deeper than the bone. It was a mongrel sound like rock ’n’ roll, child of a hundred unknown parents, born of a thousand gutters couplings, but it held on to the heart. You couldn’t listen to this sound in concert, not even if you stood up on your chair. You had to move to it, you had to dance!

Shoals of startling dreams dashed through the song, sunlight flooding your veins instead of ice-water, swirling multicolored skirts and churning legs with the slave-cuffs still biting into the flesh, and defiance in the face of every attempt to take this music that was dance and turn it fat and tame. Thrash rock struggled to be what this sound was, fought like a child throwing a tantrum. But the hot dance of a new world didn’t need to shout to make itself heard. It just slid under your skin and made you live it.

Not just the samba—so much more than that, so many beats to bring you home, and never anything less than joy bursting from the music—rumba and cha-cha, salsa and merengue and juba and mambo. The audience heard, and felt their bodies’ invasion. Pestilence plucked out a lively top line as War played plunky-funky counterpoint on a set of steel drums. Famine shrieked gaily as she led a conga line of demons down the hill, and Death brought up the rear, shaking the dried seeds of dormant life in a gourd painted green and gold, white and blue.

All that, in moments. Sound traveled at the speed of light, transformed, so that the crowd was dancing with us before Faustus and Fluffy reached their farthest edge. All the black handkerchiefs fluttered to the ground like dead moths, and the people let the music give them back their souls.

The unicorn cleared the crowd even as the crowd fell back, dancing. Yang and Jadwiga saw an opening and raced through. The snow stopped, the clouds parted, setting free the sun. Mr. Feidelstein let out an uncharacteristic yip and took to his heels, brandishing a wickedly pointed double-bass bow like a fencing foil.

“Holy cow, Sam, you wanna wait for me or what?” Ben picked up a clarinet and thundered after his brother-in-law. “Sonia, we’re coming!”

Loki’s face went from gloating to ghastly as he saw his dull and docile followers break out of the grave his sound had dug for them. Fenris howled—this time it had nothing to do with triumph—and backed into the Midgard Serpent’s ever-twisting bulk, cowering. As Faustus and Fluffy flew onto the stage, T’ing squirmed and kicked Loki somewhere to write home about. He folded, grunting. “Mrs. Feidelstein!” she shouted, dropping off the back of the platform and right into the thick of the Serpent’s coils. She had something sharp and silver in her hands.

The music was rocking under its own power now. Nothing could stop or silence it. I felt a stirring at my feet and saw Mephisto sitting up, one hand to his head. “Did you get the name of that music critic?” he asked groggily. “What’s going on?” His eyes widened in horror as the island tempo filled his ears. “Oh no.

I am not going to stand for this—this travesty!” He pulled a black cellular phone out of his starched shirt-front. “Hello, Abomination Central?”

Mom knocked the phone from his hand and grabbed the demon by the wrists. Hoisting him up, she swung him around to the rhythm of the sound, shaking her hips, smiling, and dragging him after her until the music’s spell caught him up in a net of ravished wonderment.

“Oh, my word, I mean, that is—” The poor fiend could hardly stammer an objection. Then, all of a sudden he didn’t want to object at all. “Yahooo!” His tails tore away to a beachcomber’s vivid rags. “Limbo lower now! And I ought to know!”

I pushed past him as he and Mom continued their unbridled gyrations. The music could take care of itself, but I had to reach the stage. Loki, like T’ing, had vanished within the Serpent’s coils, and Fenris with him. Faustus and Fluffy circled the platform uneasily, searching for a sign of where they’d gone. Mr. Feidelstein and Ben clambered onto the apron while I was still just halfway through the crowd. Yang and Jadwiga were already up there, belaboring Siva’s drums and reducing Yen-wang-yeh’s keyboard to plastic splinters and electronic spaghetti.

As I pulled myself over the edge of the stage, Loki’s backups were staring distastefully at the antics of the two crazed barbarians. I heard Siva say, “Illusion,” and saw Yen-wang-yeh nod solemn agreement. It was a whole lot more high-toned than Let’s blow thispop-stand, though the sentiment was the same. Together they rose, walking up the sky, Yang’s and Jadwiga’s blows passing through them as through mist. A fiery halo ringed them, and as it blended with the sun above the city, they danced away into the light.

“Cowards!” Yang bellowed, waving his broken oboe after them.

“Moron,” his mother said, and used her bassoon to slap-shot him off the stage.

My luck, she lammed him right into me. The two of us fell in a heap, but I had little time to waste hearing Yang’s excuses. I planted my foot on his back and boosted myself back onto the stage, deaf to his outraged roars. By this time, the platform was completely smothered by the Serpent. I searched the twisting scales in vain for a gap.

“It’s no use,” Faustus called. “We’ve ridden around and around it. There’s no way in.”

“There has to be!” Mr. Feidelstein cried. “My Sonia’s in there!”

“And Loki,” I added. “And Fenris, and—”

“—and when I get my hands on you. I’ll teach you! No one uses Yang, Despoiler of What Isn’t Nailed Down, for a footstool!” He hit me from behind, low and hard. I fell forward, into the Serpent’s coils. One huge scale slithered over my face, laying my cheek open, but then I was through. Harsh laughter met me. “Well, friend, and which one will it be?”

Under the platform, Loki stood with one foot on a coil of the Midgard Serpent, T’ing pinned with her back against another. She still had his silver dagger, but the Fenris Wolf had her. Its mammoth jaws dripped and slavered, its fangs a hand-span from her neck. The dagger had as much chance of stopping a beast that size as a bee-sting of killing a rhino.

Meantime, tied hand and foot to a third length of the Serpent’s body, Mrs. Feidelstein looked up at the second blade in Loki’s grasp. A surprisingly thin loop of snake was wound around her neck.

“It is his tail,” said Loki. “Midgard’s tail that’s holding her. Touch me, and a jab of my knife will startle the great Serpent so that his coils tense, and she strangles. Try to bring that little spear anywhere near me”—he nodded at the wand in my hand, which was seething with its own coruscating light—“and a word lets Fenris snap up the morsel he’s been coveting for so long.”

I swallowed hard. Somewhere outside, I could hear the faint echoes of music, and a little louder the confused voices of my friends, wondering where I had gone. I was alone. “Let them go,” I said. A stupid thing to say, but I couldn’t let it go unsaid.

“Certainly.” Loki’s teeth made a white, famished line in the gloom. “As a favor to you. But you mustn’t be greedy with favors. Only one goes free. Which? You choose.”

I looked at them—at T’ing, at Mrs. Feidelstein. If I attacked Loki, I could only save one of them before he had the other killed. If I chose who lived, it would be no worse. I wet my lips.

On the outside, the music was dying. Spatterings of applause reached my ears like rain. "Where is he?"—my mother’s voice, like a ghost— “Where is Tim?" And Faustus’: “In there."

“I’m waiting,” said Loki. He prodded the Serpent’s body with his toe. “Midgard rings the earth, tail in mouth. If this is his tail you see, do you wonder how near his head must be? His fanged mouth that drips poison potent enough to destroy a god? Make your choice, mortal. Soon Midgard may decide to shift, and when his head comes through . .

“—mean, you don’t know how to get in? Tim got in! You have to! What if he’s in danger? What if—?’’

"Lillian, we don’t know how he—”

“—have to save my son!’’

“And mine.”

“—never had any—”

“I tell you, if what my heart feels for him is any measure of truth, then Tim is my son, too!”

“Well?” Two balls of blue fire twinkled at Loki’s fingertips and he began to juggle them one-handed. “Choose.”

“I won’t,” I said. The fires went out. Beneath his shock of moon-white hair, Loki scowled.

“There is no choice,” I told him. “Just more of your games. I won’t play. I’ll fight. Maybe I’ll die. But I won't let you make another pawn of me.”

“Just like your cursed father,” the godlet snarled.

“Just like him.” I smiled.

“Then you are both fools.” And he thrust his blade at the twisting scales of the Midgard Serpent.

Metal clashed on metal. T’ing threw herself under Fenris’ lunging jaws to break the stroke of Loki’s dagger on her own.

“—inside!”

“Lillian, you can’t—!”

I dove to place myself between T’ing and the Wolf, the sounds of arguing voices from the other side a half-heard hum. Fenris barked and snapped. I belly-flopped over a suddenly rising coil of the Serpent’s body and only scored a trivial blow on the Wolf’s snout with my wand before spilling onto the bare floor between his paws.

“—tell me. At least I can—”

“—try.” Mom stepped through the platform wall and stood there, an unidentified length of steel tubing in one hand, stunned by her own audacity. “Right through the snake,” she marveled aloud. Then she saw Fenris and me. The next sound I heard was the beautifully musical k'thonnnng of metal pipe hitting a perfectly pitched tuning A off a monstrous wolf’s skull.

“Lillian!” Faustus was through the wall, still riding Fluffy. Fenris got a second bash, this time with the wizard’s chain leash. The Wolf tucked his tail between his legs and tore out of there.

“Sonia!” Mr. Feidelstein had followed Faustus. He was unarmed, but he was still a Guardian. The magic-damping influence of the underworlds no longer held him back. His whole body arced with the power to command and confine the creatures of myth and legend, the heroes and monsters of all tales and times. He rounded on Loki and raised his hands.

“Late!” Loki screamed. “You are too late!” He seized T’ing’s long, black hair and jerked her out of his way. She slid to the floor beside me, still holding tight to the silver dagger. Loki lifted his own blade, ready to finish the captive he still held bound.

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, you son of a bitch!” Fluffy reared, tipping Faustus backwards off her rump, and ran at Loki, horn down.

Loki saw bright death flying at him. Whatever magic a unicorn’s horn could hold, he seemed to know it and fear it to the depths of his being. “My son! My son, to me!" he screeched, and madness filled our world.

The stage shook. Mrs. Feidelstein’s bonds snapped and she was thrown into her husband’s arms. T’ing pitched against me and clung, her blade missing my already-wounded cheek by a hair. The tail of Midgard vanished; the Serpent’s head shot out and lanced between its father and the unicorn, dripping venom, hissing doom.

Fluffy’s shining horn went black and snapped between Mid-gard’s fangs like a stick of charcoal. A blast of poisoned breath overwhelmed the unicorn. She went down, forelegs buckling, hindquarters collapsing. A film of noxious green passed over the creamy coat, the silly pink mane and tail, the ridiculously long-lashed golden eyes. Her side heaved once, then she lay still.

“No.” This time it was a raw whisper that tore my throat.

“No!” T’ing’s was no whisper of defeat, but a vengeance-hungry shout of fury. “No!” She was on her feet, beneath the Serpent’s jaw, and the silver dagger in her hands flashed once as she pushed it to the hilt into the slit-pupilled eye. “No, no, no!” Up and down, again and again, she drove it deep. Her face was red, her mouth contorted into a grimace of unspeakable wrath and pain, and hot tears washed away the flying droplets of venom and the thick humors of the Serpent’s mangled eye.

The monster tossed its head, still living. Its maw gaped, ready to take her and her bravery at a single mouthful. It pulled back to strike.

I plunged the crystal wand into its other eye.

We sat on the edge of the stage and looked across the now-deserted Sheep Meadow, T’ing and I. The crowd had dispersed much earlier, everyone talking about what a great group CODA was and wishing each other a Merry Christmas. Purple shadows stained the chumed-up snow.

We didn’t talk much. Mom and the others were still under the platform. I didn’t want to know what they were doing to make Fluffy’s body presentable. Presentable for what? Any pet cemeteries on Long Island equipped to bury unicorns?

I thought about the Bright Realm that she wasn’t going to see anymore. I thought about her foal.

“I should feel better about this,” T’ing said. “But I don’t.”

“Join the club.” I tore another strip off the sheet of parchment and shredded it into confetti. Three-quarters of Faustus’ old contract was already scattered across Manhattan Island, with the rest to follow shortly. I should’ve felt better about that, too.

Neil came out from under the platform and sat beside me. “They got him locked up again,” he said.

“Who?”

“Loki. Mrs. Feidelstein handled it. They caught Fenris, too. The Leeside leak is sealed, and they put up all kinds of whatchamacallit detectors—occult thingies?—I don’t know, but anyone or anything tries sneaking out of there again and all kinds of cosmic buzzers go off and—”

“Great.” I popped a scrap of contract into my mouth and chewed it into a spitball. “Just great.” I let it fly.

Hooves clopped over the snow. The horseback shadows of the Four fell over us. “The others have gone back already,” said Death. “Your actions made Mephistopheles very happy, Tim, and your taste in music—Well, we’re going to see if a little reggae won’t liven up our act. Now it is our turn to say farewell.”

“Don’t let the barn door hit you in the—”

T’ing squeezed my arm and I shut up.

Ben Kipnis pushed aside the tarp covering the onstage platform just as they began to ride away. He carried a big brown paper bag over to the Four and handed it to Famine. “Pastrami sandwiches,” he said. “While Sam and Sonia went back to the deli to seal up the leak, I asked them to bring some back. You look like you could use some meat on your bones, girlie. Extra pickles, too.”

The Four were gone. The stillness was so complete that you could hear the shadows lengthening over the frosty ground. The specter of a star shone above the skyline.

“Oh, I say, are we late?”

I looked up and saw Lord Palamon’s goofy face. The elfin lord was wearing a tweed jacket with leather elbow-patches over a breastplate of gilded armor. He had matching greaves strapped on over his jeans and a paperback Roget’s Thesaurus jammed into his sword belt. Behind him stood Eleziane, Teleri, Master Runyon, and the massed might of the Seeley Court.

“Awfully sorry,” he said. “Eleziane did try to make me get a wiggle on, but I did so want to see whether I’d gotten any editorial responses in today’s mail. No delivery at all tomorrow, don’tcha know, deck the halls and so forth.” He quailed under my unforgiving stare, but got up enough gall to add, “Deuced lucky I waited. Sold my first story. Only paid in copies of the magazine, but still . . . More like an epic poem, actually. High literary value. Move over, Homer, and step down, Asimov. It seems there was this dragon—”

“It seems there was,” I repeated. “And it seems there was this unicorn.”

Faustus and Mom came out, along with the Feidelsteins. Faustus wasn’t wearing his collar anymore. Mephistopheles had taken that away at the same time he handed over the contract. He should have looked happier to be free.

They pulled the tarp back all the way and fastened it so that we could all see her. Framed by the white draperies, Fluffy lay composed, legs tucked to one side, head resting on her shoulder. The broken, blackened stub of her horn was an obscenity. Jadwiga stood behind her, face impassive, but Yang sprawled over her flank, howling the injustice of her death.

“Oh my.” Lord Palamon pressed a hand to his lips. He mounted the stage, the Seeley with him, and all knelt before the corpse. “Oh dear. The horn, I see. Well, that’s what did it. Oh yes, no question there. I speak from experience in these matters. AH magic gone when it broke, and magic’s what keeps these creatures alive. So dashed few sources of enchantment strong enough to equal the vital power of a unicorn’s horn, which is why we hear of so few cures for this condition. Pity. I suppose there was no way to replace—”

Whose idea was it at last? I think I remember T’ing whispering it to me, but I also believe there was Neil’s hand picking me up by the scruff of the neck, and Yang catching on right away—for once in his afterlife—and shoving me at the bier, and the Feidelsteins saying that if my powers were not enough they’d add their own, and Ben promising me the best corned beef sandwich I’d ever eat if it worked, and Mom and Faustus just looking at me, all that hope and all that faith in their eyes.

“Here.” Jadwiga’s ghostly hand steadied me as I knelt. She touched the shining crystal of the wand. “How many hearts this holds,” she said.

How many hearts . . . I set the power of them all against the unicorn’s bare brow.

Light. Magic. Love. Life.

Crystal bonded to bone. The veil of poison lifted from her skin. The cloying pink faded from her mane and tail. The too-sweet curves and pudgy bulges of her body melted into a shape of so much grace that I thought my heart would stop beating before it could comprehend it all.

She opened her golden eyes.

EPILOGUE

The storm had left the trees of McCosh Walk sheathed in ice, hung with a queen’s ransom of diamonds. Looking ahead, I wondered if Princeton in springtime would have anything to rival this sight. T’ing and I strolled beneath the crystal archway, holding hands. Winter break would soon be over and she would have to go back to Vassar, which was where Mrs. Kaplan thought she was now. It wouldn’t take her any time at all to get from here to there. As a parting gift, Eleziane had given her leave to use the web-paths of the Fey one last time.

She must have read my mind. “It’s hard to believe they’ve gone,” she said, kicking up a few sparkling chips of snow.

“Yeah, I know.” I could still feel Master Runyon’s sturdy handshake, and Teleri’s farewell kiss tingling on my cheek. I touched it, but my fingers only found the thin line of scar-tissue left after Aesclepius had healed the cut made by the Midgard Serpent’s scale. He’d had to work fast, to keep ahead of Fluffy. As soon as we hit Hades, the unicorn went on a healing binge. There were no more chubby cherubs or winsome-till-you-puke satyrs. The crystal horn had brought them back to their true shape and nature.

After that, of course, there was no further reason for them to stay. The Bright Realm beckoned, their true home. We all expected them to leave.

We didn’t expect them to take all the others along.

T’ing sighed. “What’re you thinking about?” I asked.

“Oh, just feeling sorry for Neil. He did love Eleziane.” She squeezed my hand more tightly.

“It couldn’t have worked out forever. He’d age, she wouldn’t.” It was hard, speaking reasonably about a matter of love. “He’ll get over it.” Neil’s face floated on the bitterly cold air before me, wearing the same look of naked loss as when Eleziane had stepped out of his arms that final time and through the gateway. “He’ll get over it,” I repeated, trying to convince myself.

“Uh-huh.” We walked on.

“That’s the Woodrow Wilson School over there,” I said, hoping that if I could play the campus tour-guide, we wouldn’t have to think about all that had been taken from us. “It’s famous for, uh, international studies and stuff. Better understanding between different nations, different peoples—”

“I’d like to see them try to understand him,” T’ing said, laughing wickedly. Then, more softly: “I hope he’s happy.” I knew who she meant.

“You hope that Yang is happy in the Bright Realm?” I sucked in a long draught of icy breath. “Better you should hope that there’s still a Bright Realm left standing when he’s through. He’s probably made a name for himself over there already: Yang, Terror of Smaller Dragons! Yang, Inflictor of Nervous Prostration Upon More Skittish Griffins! Yang—!”

“I miss him,” T’ing said.

“Me, too.”

We didn’t talk for some time after that. The Woodrow Wilson school wasn’t the fascinating bulwark of conversation I’d thought it would be. We paused in front of it briefly, then turned and walked back the way we’d come, under the frost-decked trees.

“Was it our fault?” T’ing asked the question that had been preying on my mind. “Did we drive them away, all the sprites and spirits, even the monsters too? We did it once before—not us personally, but you know what I mean—the Leeside exile to hold them because this is America and there’s no room for magic here. ” She dug her chin deeper into the plush collar of her winter coat. “Even the heroes are gone.”

Why should they stay? Mom called from Brooklyn to tell me that there was a video-rental store where Feidelstein’s Kosher Delicatessen had been. She discovered it when she went to order the cold cut platters for the wedding reception next month. The Back Room was closed for good, the warriors of legend gone the same way as the kobolds and the giants, the phoukas and the grogans, the menehune and the elves. The welcoming lands of the Bright Realm had relieved the Guardians of all further need to guard. Mr. and Mrs. Feidelstein had moved down to Miami for good, and Ben Kipnis was running a gourmet food shop on the Upper West Side where he was trying to perfect the low-fat, low-cholesterol, high-fiber, vitamin-enriched pastrami sandwich.

I stopped and put my arms around T’ing. “Yes, they’re gone,”

I said. “We’ve got to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and feeling guilty for something we may or may not have done to make this happen. They’re happy, now; happier than they could ever be in this world. Let’s just try being glad for them, and let them go.” “I am glad,” T’ing replied. The tears in her eyes were quickly blinked back. She sniffled.

“Give her a tissue, idiot.” A velvet muzzle brushed my ear. “Do I have to think of everything for you?”

“Fluffy!” T’ing and I both shrieked the unicorn’s name aloud for joy and flung ourselves on her neck.

“Hey! Take it easy, would you?” Her hooves clattered over the pavement as she backed up under our assault, but she sounded pleased. We pummeled her with questions about our Leeside friends who had crossed over into her domain, hardly waiting for one answer before we launched the next barrage of questions.

“Whoa, hold on there, get a grip!” Fluffy tossed her head. “If I give you the lowdown on everyone you know over there, you’ll both freeze your tails off in this weather before I’m half done.” “We’re sorry,” T’ing said, braiding a few strands of the unicorn’s flossy mane. In Fluffy’s true state it was not sugary pink, but radiant as a star. “It’s just—well, these are people we care about. We’ll never forget them, or what all of us shared. It’s hard to let go and pretend they never were. We miss them.”

Fluffy’s golden eyes softened. “They miss you, too, dear,” she said. “And they want to know when you’ll visit.”

“Visit?”

“Us?”

“The Bright Realm?”

“Impossible!”

“How?”

“Let’s go!”

“When?”

“Now!”

“Quiet!” Fluffy’s shout knocked loose a sprinkling of ice crystals from the branches. Blowing hard, she hunched her shoulders a few times and said, “Powers That Be, what a racket! No wonder I hate traveling with children. So, you want to visit now, did you say? Very well. Come.”

I laid my hand on her mane. “Where?”

“Why, there, of course.” Her crystal horn caught sunlight from the ice-bound trees and tossed it back as she gestured up the shimmering walkway. “Can’t you see it? There’s the door, plain as plain. I used it myself to come through, so I suppose it will do for you.”

And so we walked through an archway of light trapped in ice, frozen in crystal, until we saw the portal she meant, and through it glimpsed the Bright Realm’s beauties. It was a gap in the air no bigger than a human heart. Sense and sanity told me we could never fit through it. It was, in fact, the smallest of holes.

But sometimes the smallest of holes is just big enough if you believe.

Table of Contents

- PROLOGUE
- 1 IVY BELEAGUERED
- 2 THEORY OF RELATIVITY
- 3 THE SHADOW OVER FLATBUSH
- 4 I'LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
- 5 THE OLD, FAMILIAR FACES
- 6 I VANT TO BE ALONE
- 7 HEY NAH, HEY NAH, MY BANSHEE'S BACK
- 8 THE MOTHER OF INVENTION
- 9 WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW
- 10 FROM ELFLAND TO GUESS WHERE?
- 11 THE SOUND OF MUSIC
- 12 STAGE DOOR
- 13 NICE OF YOU TO DROP IN
- 14 THE ART OF THE DEAL
- 15 BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
- 16 FAMILY TREE
- 17 TILL DEATH DO US PART
- 18 STYX AND STONES
- 19 OVER THE RIVER AND DOWN THE DRAIN
- 20 BOURN AGAIN
- 21 HARD KORE
- 22 DOCTOR, DOCTOR
- 23 TACO HELL
- 24 VOID WHERE PROHIBITED
- 25 PIECEWORK
- 26 READY, SET, GO
- 27 THREE, TWO, ONE-CONTRACT!
- 28 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
- 29 THE RIFF-RIDERS
- 30 RAGNAROK & ROLL
- EPILOGUE