BOOK TWO

TALES OF AUTUMN

1866—OUTSIDE THE BONE ORCHARD

They begin climbing The Hill along a dirt track that will one day be known as University Avenue, but which for now is just more nameless mud soup. The going is hard yet Mr. Sunshine forges ahead—carrying a bright lantern he did not have with him when they set out from the Ithaca Hotel—still oddly unimpeded by the condition of the road. And Ezra, several decades from being a spritely youth, keeps close at Mr. Sunshine’s heels, driven by an indescribable compulsion that first bloomed in him when he was invited on this night trek.

Their conversation is appropriately strange. Sometimes Mr. Sunshine asks question about Ithaca or the planned University, sometimes he speaks knowledgeably about them, and sometimes—this is surely the strangest thing of all—he will, after Ezra answers a query, nod and then add an extra fact or two as if he had known more than Cornell all along. And some of his comments are hopelessly beyond comprehension.

One such comment pops out as they come upon the gates to the City Ceme­tery. Gazing farther up the road, beyond the glow of his lantern, Mr. Sunshine says: “The Black Knight will live near here, in a Black House. Hmm, wonder what I can do with him?”

Turning his attention to the Cemetery, he continues by asking: “What’s this place called?”

“I don’t know that there is an official name,” replies Ezra. “Though it’s often referred to as The Bone Orchard. A nickname of sorts.”

“Bone Orchard,” Mr. Sunshine rolls the words on his tongue, testing their feel. “Bone Orchard, nice idea, but a bit of a bumpy mouthful, don’t you think? It could be shorter.”

Cornell shrugs. “People will call it what they will.”

“People can change their habits,” Mr. Sunshine says, “over time. I like cemeteries, though; I’ve had some good Stories involving them. You don’t mind if we walk through The . . . Boneyard, do you?”

Again, the feeling of compulsion at the request.

“Not at all, sir,” Ezra answers. “Not at all.”

THE FIRST WEEK

I.

Monday, 5:50 A.M.

George cracked an eyelid at the first light of dawn. Still half asleep, wrapped snugly in a wool blanket against the morning chill, he was filled with a sudden elation, as if he had just embarked on some grand adventure. In a sense he had—he was due to teach his first class at 10:10 this ­morning—but there was something more, something that his waking half could not quite grasp.

A sparrow sat on his bedroom windowsill, peeping in at him, perhaps hoping for a bit of bread. George smiled at the bird, then glanced at the kite which was propped against a chair just to the right of the window . . . and again he felt that strange elation.

Something’s coming, the part of him that was still sleeping thought. Something’s going to happen.

School’s going to happen, his waking half replied, and promptly rolled over to get another hour’s rest.

Outside the wind stirred briefly, startling the sparrow into song.

II.

Monday, 6:30 A.M.

The delivery crew for the Cornell Daily Sun had already been on the job for nearly an hour. The masthead almanac for that first day of classes looked like this:

Weather

Miraculously

Warm and Dry;

Enjoy It

While It Lasts

The lead-off for the Sun’s SUPER-EXPANDED EDITORIAL PAGE read:

Wanted—One (1) No-Spill Dragon

IT MIGHT SEEM APPROPRIATE on this first day of instruction for the Sun to offer some words of encouragement to newcomers just beginning their studies at Cornell. We at the Sun pride ourselves on freshness and originality, however, and since every variety of encouragement has already been offered umpteen times in the past, this year we’ve decided not to bother. Besides, a Sun poll taken only last week reveals that the Big Issue on everyone’s mind—first year students included—has nothing to do with academics. Rather it concerns the raising of the legal drinking age from nineteen to twenty-one, effective this December first. The Questions: Is there life without the weekend bar scene? Will Collegetown survive? Will we, the under-twenty-one crowd, survive without a good round of doubles to buck us up after a failed prelim?

There can be no doubt but that lack-of-alcohol crises will occur. All we can do is try our best to avoid emotions-shattering situations and occurrences wherever possible. Case in point: the annual Green Dragon Parade. As returning Cornellians will know, this is a mid-March event in which a gigantic Dragon, constructed by the incoming class of the Architecture school, is taken on a circuitous tour of Central Campus and then burned to ashes on the Arts Quad. This traditional event, first dreamed up by Willard Straight ’01, has been carried out faithfully and flawlessly every year—until last spring, when the oversized beast collapsed in on itself before getting ten feet from its starting point. Filled with shame, the Architects descended on the Collegetown bars to drown their sorrows. One favored hangout, the Fevre Dream Tavern, reported its entire stock of liquor depleted more than an hour before last call. The booze did its job, it seems; there were a number of disturbances of the peace reported, but no suicides. The Archies were too numbed to think of gorgehopping.

But this year, a retreat to the bars won’t be possible. With pub owners increasingly vigilant for fake I.D., defeated Architects and the like will find themselves out of luck. As a public service, therefore, the Sun is asking those concerned to already start thinking ahead to March. We need a few good women and men who can build a real dragon, one that will stand tall and not collapse or fall over until it’s supposed to. And while we’re on the subject, let’s everybody study hard, pass those prelims, and put some style into those term papers. In the end we at the Sun are sure we’ll all find that Diet Coke goes down just as smoothly as a Manhattan—when it’s a victory celebration.

III.

Monday, 8:05 A.M.

Fujiko screamed as her alarm clock went off, and the exquisite anguish of a Southern Comfort hangover settled around her head like a vise. She groped around in the semi-darkness for a weapon, came up with a hockey stick—her ex-boyfriend had left it to her as a remembrance—and reduced the clock to its component parts with one good swipe.

After sluggishly pulling on a bathrobe and pawing through three drawers to find a towel, she stepped into the hall—and screamed again, as the sudden light nearly blinded her. Across the hall Z.Z. Top wandered out of his own room, clad in yellow swim trunks and extra-dark Wayfarer glasses. His foot struck a copy of the Sun that had been thrust halfway under his door, scattering it in a flurry of newsprint. He paid it no mind.

“Good morning,” Fujiko fumbled out, just to be polite.

“Bullshit,” replied the Top.

They entered the bathroom together, Fujiko ignoring, as was Risley custom, the sign on the door that said MEN. The only shower was in use (a steady chorus of Sex Pistols tunes competed with the sound of flowing water), and Preacher sat cross-legged on the floor, waiting his turn. Woodstock, the newly-installed Bohemian Minister of Impetuousness, lay flat out in a semidaze alongside the row of sinks.

“Jesus,” Woodstock moaned. Another victim.

“Which?” the Top inquired, joining him on the floor.

“Bacardi one fifty-one,” said Woodstock. “Backgammon for flaming shots.”

“I’m going to throw up,” Fujiko announced. She staggered into a toilet stall and began to do just that.

“Who’s in the shower?” asked the Top.

“Jim Taber and Ben Hull,” Preacher told him. “Both of them a lot more lively than this Bohemian this morning, sounds like.”

“It’s your choice of breakfast cereal,” suggested Woodstock.

“What about the tub? Anybody using that?”

“There’s a lemon tree in the tub,” Woodstock informed him. As if to prove the truth of his words, he produced a sickly-looking lemon from his bathrobe pocket and began sucking on it.

“A lemon tree,” the Top repeated. “How did—”

Preacher raised an eyebrow. “You really want to know?”

“No. Fuck it. Hey, anybody got a beer?”

IV.

Monday, 11:15 A.M.

“Heaven, did you say?”

“—Gannett Medical Clinic, donated by the Gannett Foundation in honor of Frank E. Gannett, class of eighteen ninety-eight. Its main function is the prevention of unwanted human pregnancies . . .”

Luther, Blackjack, and a ragtag group of mongrels and Purebreds new to the University followed after a silver-furred tabby named Sable, who served as their tour guide. Already they had made their way up to the Agriculture Quad, across Fall Creek to North Campus, down and around Fraternity Row to the West Campus dorms, and up again through Collegetown. Now they padded along Central Avenue, headed back toward the Arts Quad.

Sable dutifully reeled off the facts and dates concerning each building they passed, not really caring how much of it penetrated. In truth the dogs in the tour group did not pay much attention to what the puss was saying, preferring to either gape at their surroundings or talk among themselves. Only Blackjack remained attentive. He busily studied Sable, who earlier had informed him quite candidly that she would soon be going into heat.

“. . . on our right is the Olin Hall of Engineering, financed by a gift from Franklin W. Olin, class of eighteen ninety-six. It opened in October of nineteen forty-two . . .”

“Yes, Heaven,” Luther responded to the mongrel beside him. “That is what this is. It has to be; it smells like Heaven, and besides, Blackjack and I traveled too far for it not to be.”

“I don’t mean to argue with you, friend,” said the mongrel, whose name was Denmark, “but I traveled a long way to get here too. Only I didn’t come for angels, I came for knowledge. This is a learning-place, you see; special, but surely not Heaven. You must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.”

“You must have taken the wrong turn,” Luther insisted.

“Och, but I heard it was a learnin’-place too,” said Nessa, a Scottish Terrier bitch. “They’ve got a series of Questions, they do, that one has to answer. I suppose that means it’s like Heaven, in a manner of speakin’—the answerin’ of big Questions has a certain divine ring to it.”

“Questions?” asked Luther.

“. . . this huge building coming up on our left,” said Sable in the background, “is Willard Straight Hall, opened in November of nineteen twenty-five, and dedicated to Willard Dickerman Straight of the class of nineteen oh one. The building is home to a number of human student organizations, and one of the University dining halls is located here. Dogs are not permitted in the dining area, and it isn’t a good place to beg for scraps anyway . . .”

“They got Five Questions,” said Joshua, another mongrel. “The dogs who run this place, that is. And before you go talking about ‘divine rings,’ you’d best check out exactly what those Questions are. The fourth one’s a long way from being Godly, for some of us.”

“The Fourth Question?” Luther repeated. “I don’t understand any of this. This is Heaven. It’s got to be.”

“Wait until the Convocation on Friday. Wait and see if you still feel the same way after that.”

“. . . we now angle to the right, and as we do you can clearly see Sage Chapel just ahead of us. Humans gather in this edifice on Sunday mornings to waste time . . .”

Sable led them between Sage Chapel and the Campus Store, toward a strange encampment behind the Day Hall administration building. Ducking out of the way of a pimply-faced Freshman who was in a big hurry to get somewhere, Sable purposefully brushed against Blackjack, stirring him. She was not in heat—not yet, not yet—but Blackjack might have tried something anyway if Luther had not broken off from his debate with Joshua and turned to them.

“Hey,” said Luther to Sable, studying the haphazard collection of trenches and barbed wire just ahead of them. “What’s that?”

“They call it Hooterville.”

“Hooterville?” Luther could not help but be pleased by the sight of it. The trenches and scattered sandbag lean-tos had a desolate quality to them that reminded him of the burned-out buildings back home. “What’s a Hooterville?”

“It’s part of an ongoing protest,” Sable explained. “Protesters are human beings who complain about the way things are so that other human beings can get annoyed and kill them without feeling too badly about it. Eventually the cause of justice is supposed to be served by this.”

“Oh,” said Luther, without the slightest understanding. He paused to look at a sign at the edge of the encampment, made of warped plywood and painted with human words he could not read:

WELCOME TO HOOTERVILLE!

One of the last bastions of sanity in a world of crazed conservatism.

We, the members of the Blue Zebra Hooter Patrol, Cornell’s only benign terrorist organization, believe in the principle of thought provocation through non-violent confrontation.

To this end, we as a group provide a continual thorn-in-the-side to the Cornell administration, thus encouraging both the University staff and the student body to daily question the status quo.

This Week’s Major Issues:

1) Divestment from all companies doing business in racist South Africa.

2) Affirmative action and increased minority admissions.

3) Self-defense training for baby seals. (It can be done.)

GET IN GEAR AND THINK!!!

V.

Monday, 11:20 A.M.

“Kind of lets you know you’re at Cornell, doesn’t it?” observed Z.Z. Top.

“Can’t imagine it being anywhere else,” George agreed, taking another bite of his sandwich. The two sat with their backs against a cement bunker, surrounded by the gentle devastation of Hooterville. Fantasy Dreadlock, the leader of the Blue Zebras and a former Bohemian, had designed the encampment to represent all the world’s ugliness, while at the same time symbolizing the struggle to hold on and eventually set things right again. Three separate trenches gouged their way across what had once been green lawn and gravel walkway; blunted barbed wire was strewn around more or less at random. Set on a slight rise at the center of the camp was a spring-loaded cannon that aimed straight up, and which was capable at a moment’s notice of filling the air with propaganda leaflets or whatever else came to mind. Scattered throughout the area were the Blue Zebras, in their distinctive blue-and-white-striped jumpsuits, and with them other prominent members of the Cornell community: Joe Scandal, Resident Housing Director of the Africana dorm, Ujamaa, took lunch with Fantasy herself; the treasurer of Gay People At Cornell (GayPAC) argued heatedly with Brian Garroway and one of the heads of Cornellians for Christ, while Aurora watched from the far side of a trench; the editorial staff of the Sun played stud poker in the shade of a sandbag wall. At the fringe of the encampment stood two officers of the Cornell Safety Division—watchdogs guarding against an unlikely peasant revolt—drinking coffee and exchanging jokes with the Zebras.

The creation of Hooterville, a year and a half ago, had initially been approved by the administration during a period of student unrest. At the time it had seemed a small enough concession to appease a number of people; those in charge of the decision had also seen nothing wrong with concentrating the campus radicals in an area where they could be watched. The one thing no one in power had counted on, of course, was that it would last so long. Since its inception, however, Hooterville—not to mention the Zebras—had in some way figured into over three-quarters of the demonstrations, debates, and rallies on campus. And the Blue Zebras not only supported protests, they looked for them. Earnestly. Where the Bohemians preached the gospel of unorthodoxy, Fantasy and her Zebras spread the good word about conflict and dissent—much to the administration’s chagrin.

To date, none of the many attempts to remove Hooterville had been even partially successful. The original permit for the encampment had included no expiration date, a critical oversight. The site could not be condemned as a fire hazard because it contained no flammable materials other than the plywood sign; likewise, since the installation of a sanitary outhouse (the cement bunker), there were no qualms from the Health Department. A final clincher against administrative interference had come from a Sixties-alumnus-turned-corporation-owner, who had offered the University a five-million-dollar grant on condition that the ’Ville be left unmolested; this same alumnus had also posted a five-thousand-dollar bond against eventual relandscaping needed to fill in the trenches, should that ever become necessary.

“Pretty,” Z.Z. Top observed, startling George out of his reverie. He had begun to drift, daydreaming about the political significance of Hooterville. When the Top saw the confused look on his face, he pointed across the trenches at Aurora.

“Oh,” said George. “She’s pretty enough.”

“What’s she like to talk to? You know her, right?”

“I know her. She’s nice. Good person.”

“Thought she might be,” the Top admitted, and caught George totally off guard by adding: “You ought to steal her away from that guy she’s with.”

“Pardon?”

“Well if you don’t mind my saying, I’ve seen the two of them around before, last year, and they just don’t strike me as the peaches and cream couple of the century.”

“What are you getting at?” George asked. He thought of Wax, at the McDonald’s down on The Commons. “You’re saying Aurora and Brian don’t look like a good match?”

“Only a hunch. He has that look, you know, that Mr. Overbearing–type face. Not quite Hitler Youth but you catch my drift. And I know, I know, the lady looks pretty happy from here, but maybe if she got tight with an alternative sort of guy, a kind of left-wing fiction writer, say . . .”

“All right, Top.” George scrutinized him carefully. “Who signed you up as matchmaker?”

Z.Z. Top studied the sky. “Oh . . . Lion-Heart might have told some of us to keep an eye and an ear open for you.”

This brought another laugh. “That’s perfect!” George said good-naturedly. “Just what I need: the bunch of you running around trying to fix me up.”

“Don’t knock it, George. You could do lots worse. Romeo didn’t even have one Bohemian on his side, and look what happened to him.”

“I know that. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it, either. It’s just that I don’t think it’s going to happen for me that way.”

“Could be,” the Top said honestly. “Lot of people, you can’t put the fix in, they just have to wait till the penny drops on its own. But there’s no sin in looking around while you wait.”

“I’m looking,” George said. “Finding—that’s the problem.”

Without warning the cannon at the center of the encampment fired, spraying an amazing shower of white roses into the air. They fell in a twenty-five-foot circle, startling a number of the Blue Zebras and getting a jump out of Fantasy Dreadlock, who had ordered no such barrage.

The Top was laughing. “Oh man, George, oh man. Speak of the fucking devil, baby.”

One of the roses had landed squarely in George’s lap, as if precisely aimed. Tied to the stern of the rose with a thread—a scarlet thread—was a small note. Against all decent laws of probability, the outside of the note was addressed TO THE DAYDREAMER. Within were three more words: I LOVE YOU. The note was not signed.

“This is impossible.” George said matter-of-factly. “This can’t be especially for me.” Not even the wind could have carried the rose from the cannon to him with certainty.

Somewhere near, a dog began to bark.

VI.

Monday, 11:25 A.M.

“Luther!” called Blackjack. “Luther, what the hell’s gotten into you? Luther!”

Luther, transfixed and barking like a hound close on a trail, made no reply. He bounded past the plywood sign into Hooterville proper, drawn on by a tantalizing smell the breeze had brought him.

“Luther!”

The head of Cornellians for Christ was very nearly bowled over as the mongrel brushed past him. Luther paused briefly to sniff at Aurora’s legs, then dove into a trench, tripping up no less than three Blue Zebras as he charged along its length. He came up again near the cement bunker, downwind of George and the Top.

George, who had begun to stand up, was knocked back on his ass and pinned against the bunker as the dog leapt into his arms. If it had been an attack, George’s career as a writer—and a human being—might have ended right there. But Luther intended only the greatest affection, and in demonstrating this he licked George’s face like a Tootsie Pop holding great secrets at its center.

“Hi, dog,” Z.Z. Top said casually, as George went down under a barrage of slurps. The smell that had been ingrained in George and his clothing during a long Ithaca residence—the smell of hills and rain—sent Luther into a near frenzy.

“Whoah!” George protested, gasping for air. “Whoah, calm down! I can’t breathe, all right?”

He managed to pet the dog and shove it back a few paces in the same motion. As Luther began nipping affectionately at his hand, George scanned the encampment for a particular pair of eyes. Just before Luther’s arrival, he had been looking around to see who might have tossed the rose to him under cover of the cannon shot, and for a moment he thought he had seen a face peering at him from behind a pile of sandbags. But she was gone now, if she had ever been.

“Thanks a lot,” George said to the dog, trying to sound stern. But he could not help smiling: Luther’s front paws, jammed into his abdomen, were tickling him. At any rate the mongrel could not understand his words, and at the moment was too overjoyed to sense George’s disappointment. For George was permeated with the Heaven scent, and for a while, at least, Luther was convinced that he had made his first contact with a genuinely divine being, the canine equivalent of a cherub or ­seraph . . . or a saint.

VII.

Tuesday, 4:00 P.M.

Puck lay stretched out on the deck of a battleship as it moved off from the shore of Beebe Lake. It was a small battleship, only eight-and-a-half feet long, and its hull was high-impact plastic rather than steel, but it was still an impressive thing.

The battleship belonged to Hamlet, one of Puck’s best friends. Hamlet had spent weeks assembling the craft from an Aurora model kit, then modifying it and installing a generator so that it could actually be used rather than just looked at. The ship had a whopping top speed of three knots, and was sufficiently well armed to repel almost any animal threat, either swimming or flying. The ship’s name was Prospero, and Hamlet was quite rightfully proud of it.

“But what are you going to do when winter comes?” Puck asked as they steered toward Hamlet’s home, a small island in the middle of the lake. The island was overgrown with reeds and had no suitable area that could be used as a runway; Puck’s biplane was hidden among the brush on the lake shore.

“You mean when the lake freezes over?” Hamlet replied from the bridge, a partially covered area in mid-deck. “I hadn’t given it much thought. Guess I’ll have to dry dock her somehow. Or maybe I can put ski foils on her, turn her into an ice boat.”

“Probably skate her right over the dam and down the falls,” Puck said ominously.

“Where you’ll no doubt join me when your wings ice up. But at least I won’t have as long a drop.”

Hamlet began to pull the ship up alongside the island, but Puck sat up and said: “Hey, would you mind if we just floated around for a while?”

“Not at all,” said Hamlet, veering out toward the center of the lake. “If you trust me not to go over the falls by accident. Something on your mind?”

“Sort of.”

“Is it sort of about Zephyr?”

“Who else?”

“I take it you haven’t been too successful at trying to make up with her?”

“Well,” said Puck, “for a while it looked like I was making progress. Even though she’s still hooked on that George character . . .”

“George the human being?”

“George the blowhard,” Puck replied sullenly.

“There, there, my friend,” Hamlet cautioned. “A human being who happens to be on intimate terms with the wind is no one to trifle with.”

“So what if he’s a human being? Calling the wind is nothing so special. Hell, Zephyr can do it just as well as he can.”

“Yes,” Hamlet agreed. “And you trifled with her too, didn’t you?”

“We-e-ell . . . well look, regardless of how this whole problem got started, the point is she was finally coming around again, beginning to see the light about what a perfect couple we are.”

“What a perfect couple,” Hamlet repeated.

“That’s right: We were made for each other. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to. And Zephyr was just getting ready to forgive me for what happened when she found out that Saffron Dey is going with us on the Raid. Now she’s back to not speaking to me again.”

“Who let the news drop about Saffron?”

“I guess I did. How was I supposed to know that Zephyr would react that way? I never thought—”

“That’s been your problem all along, you know,” Hamlet interrupted him. “You’ve been suffering from a serious thinking shortage. I never understood what you saw in Saffron Dey in the first place.”

“I’ll give you two large and firm guesses.”

Hamlet nodded. “Granted,” he said, “that good cleavage doesn’t grow on trees, I still don’t see the sense in it. Zephyr’s shape isn’t as exaggerated as Saffron’s, but it’s a nice shape all the same. And lest you forget, my friend, Zephyr has a personality. Saffron’s is as shallow as the dimples on a golf ball.”

“That’s all true,” Puck admitted.

“Then why’d you do it?”

“Look, it’s not like Zephyr and I had a firm commitment . . .”

“That,” said Hamlet, “is one of the two dumbest statements made by males on this planet, be they sprite or human.”

“I had urges, all right?”

“And that takes care of the other.”

Puck twiddled his thumbs self-consciously, not sure what to say next. “By the way,” Hamlet went on, “what in God’s name possessed you to invite Saffron on the Raid, especially when you were trying to patch things up with Zephyr?”

“I didn’t invite her. She’s Cobweb’s date, officially. I guess he liked what he saw when he was watching us go at it in the display case.”

“Did you try telling Zephyr that?”

“She didn’t believe me.”

“Hmm. I guess that’s not surprising, is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” Puck said gloomily. “But what am I supposed to do, Hamlet? I don’t want her to go on hating me forever.”

“I doubt she hates you. Oh, she’s not too pleased with you right now, obviously. And as to whether she’ll ever trust you again, well, that’s a toss-up . . . I’m afraid I don’t have any simple solution for you, Puck. The consequences of chauvinism, as they say, aren’t easy to undo.”

“And there’s nothing I can do?”

“Nothing honest I can think of offhand. You could always try using another series of lies to repair the damage from the first series, but that usually has mixed results. I’d say your best bet is just to keep on being nice to her and pray that things work out. Or chuck her and go after a different sprite entirely.”

“I can’t do that, Hamlet.”

“Well then, I guess you’ll have to depend on Fate to see you through. Who knows, maybe—”

He broke off as there was a sudden splash in the water off to their right. It was followed by three others, as unseen objects plunked into the lake.

“What is it?” said Hamlet, preparing for evasive action.

“There.” Puck pointed. “On the shore.”

Four young boys, humans, stood on the shore, approximately twenty yards away from the battleship. They were throwing rocks, and as Puck watched them, one produced a slingshot from his back pocket.

“How’d they spot us?” Puck wondered aloud.

“Children are good at noticing things that others would ignore,” Hamlet reminded him. “And this boat isn’t tiny, either. I’ve had trouble a few times before. Hang on.”

The battleship’s starboard side faced the boys. Now Hamlet accelerated and began to turn toward them.

“Wait a minute,” said Puck. “Shouldn’t we be retreating?”

“Not to worry,” Hamlet replied, throwing a switch. A panel opened near the bow and a catapult-like contraption rose up to the level of the deck.

“Holy shitmoley!” cried the smallest of the boys. “It’s comin’ for us! It’s comin’ for us!”

“Shut up, Mikey,” suggested the slingshot wielder. He took careful aim and fired a shot that passed right above the catapult and thudded clumsily off the outer shell of the bridge.

Puck stared at the rock, which weighed nearly as much as he did.

“This is one of those times,” he said, “when I almost wish I weren’t invisible.”

“What makes you think they’d stop if they could see us?” asked Hamlet. “Have you ever seen what they do to chipmunks? Now, pray for good aim!”

He threw another switch, and the catapult lobbed an egg-shaped object into the air. In fact it was an egg, one that had been drained of its yolk and refilled. It flew in a high arc and burst on the forehead of the smallest boy— Mikey—who proceeded to scream as if mortally wounded.

“Hamlet!” Puck cried. “What was in that—”

“Child repellent,” Hamlet told him. “Don’t worry, the effects are temporary.”

Mikey began to swipe at his head now, staggering blindly back and forth and wailing pitifully. The other children ceased their rock barrage and gathered around to see if he would drop dead, or what.

“Care for some tea?” Hamlet asked, bringing the ship around and heading once more toward his island home. “Macduff got me a really special blend. Says he liberated it from one of the dorms. It’s part Earl Grey and part Colombian Red.”

“Sounds good,” said Puck. “Who knows, maybe it’ll give me some inspiration about what I should do.”

“Just give it time,” Hamlet advised him. “Women have a way of coming around.”

“Uh-huh. Now who’s being chauvinistic?”

Hamlet laughed.

“Realistic, Puck,” he said. “Just realistic. And besides, my fellow chauvinist, I didn’t say that men were any more sensible in handling their emotions, did I?”

VIII.

Wednesday, 12:10 P.M.

“Check her out, partner.”

Preacher looked across the Arts Quad at the woman Ragnarok pointed out. Blond, medium height, with a Tri-Pi blazer.

“Decent,” Preacher granted him. “Plastic, but decent. But you can keep right on dreaming, cuz.”

“Why?”

“That flash on her wrist. Even if it’s costume jewelry, it cost. And you see how the bottom of her ear winks every time the wind blows her hair back? That look like a diamond earring to you?”

“So she comes from money. So what?”

“So what is what’s she need you for? Must be a whole line of nice white fraternity boys just waiting for a chance at her. You’re nothing new, except you drive a bike instead of a Porsche, and you don’t have a tie on. She’ll probably figure that’s ’cause you don’t have money, and poor, my friend, is a very old story. Now if a man came along who could offer her a real change of pace . . .”

“They have black people in the Greek system too,” Ragnarok informed him. “And Hispanics, and Asians, and Saudi Arabians.” Ragnarok smiled. “You’re nothing special either, Preach.”

Preacher smiled back. “Well that’s true,” he said, “but I guess I wouldn’t be going after that particular chick anyway.”

“Oh, of course not.”

“I mean it. Why don’t you check her letters one more time before she gets away?”

Ragnarok shook his head, puzzled. “What’s wrong with Tri-Pi?”

“Oh, nothing. Sweet little sorority, the Pis. But why don’t you rummage around in that steel trap mind of yours and see if you can’t remember who their brother fraternity is?”

“Brother frat . . . Oh! Oh, shit.”

“That’s right,” said Preacher. “Good old Rho Alpha Tau.”

“The Rat Frat. Shit.”

“Not just that,” Preacher continued. “Now that I think about it, I remember her from around the dance clubs. Guess who she goes highstepping with on Saturday nights?”

“The Chief Rat?” Ragnarok made a wild guess. “Jack Baron?”

“The man himself. Still think she’s cute?”

“Miles Walker!” a shrill voice called out to them. “Miles Walker and Charlie Hyatt! Hey there!”

Both men turned, knowing already from the sound of the voice whom it belonged to. Ginny Porterhouse, an Orientation Counselor of truly enormous proportions, jounced up to them like a tugboat coming into port over stormy water. She pulled a much smaller woman in tow.

“Miles, how nice to see you!” She swept Preacher into a clumsy embrace before he could duck away. Ragnarok was quicker, escaping with a mere handshake. Both Bohemians were, as usual, impressed by her display of affection—for though they knew from experience and observation that she had no real patience with weird cases like the Bohemes, Ginny always managed to act civilly toward them. For a brief period.

Ginny’s charge for the day was a diminutive Asian lugging a huge shoulder bag, which looked as though it might tip her over at any time. Still, Preacher could see in her eyes that she was strong, and perhaps Ragnarok saw it too, for they both began to care for her—or at least lust after her in a friendly manner—at the same moment.

“Ginny P.!” Preacher burst out. “How’s it goin’?”

“Oh, we’re having a wonderful time today,” Ginny replied in her most matronly tone. “Boys, I want you to meet Jinsei. Jinsei’s a transfer student from Penn State, but before that she was born in mainland China, of all places!”

“No shit?” Preacher said, winking discreetly at Jinsei. “And here I had you pegged for an Australian.”

“Jinsei,” Ginny continued doggedly, “this is Miles Walker and his friend Charlie Hyatt.”

“Hi,” said Ragnarok. “We’re from mainland America.”

“The low-rent district,” Preacher added. “Say, are you sure you’ve never been in Sydney?”

Jinsei smiled bemusedly at both of them. “Actually,” she said, “I grew up in Pittsburgh.”

“Yeah?” Preacher turned to Ginny. “Here’s your chance to take some serious English lessons, Gin. Bet she could cure that California accent of yours in no time.”

“I’m sure,” Ginny said. She took a not-too-obvious glance at her watch. “Well my, look at the time. And we have a really busy schedule today . . .”

“Don’t let us hold you up,” said Preacher.

“I don’t think we could if we tried,” Ragnarok pointed out.

“Nice meeting you both,” Jinsei said pleasantly, following as Ginny began to walk away. Preacher and Ragnarok bowed deeply to her.

A moment or two passed. Then Ragnarok called out. “Hey! Hey!” Both women, already some distance away, looked back.

“Don’t believe a word she tells you!” Ragnarok shouted cheerfully to Jinsei. “She doesn’t know the first thing about life at Cornell!”

“She doesn’t even go to this school!” Preacher added. “She’s an Ithaca College spy!”

Ginny dropped all pretense and glared at them. Jinsei favored them with another smile, catching both their hearts.

“She likes you,” Preacher observed.

“She likes you,” Ragnarok replied.

“So what do we do, cuz?”

“Guess we take turns falling for her,” said Ragnarok. He spoke jokingly, but as it turned out, he was more right than he knew.

IX.

Wednesday, 6:15 P.M.

The bus bearing the Cornellians for Christ to their first fall picnic arrived at Taughannock Park shortly before sunset. It pulled up by the shore of Cayuga Lake, where an assortment of tables, a wooden shelter, and a ready-made bonfire were waiting. The Christers—as they were popularly known, like it or not (though the Sun was careful to use a different nickname)—piled out onto the grass and, after getting dinner started, chose up sides for frisbee football.

Aurora passed on the game, and while Brian and Michael Krist flipped steaks over a charcoal fire, she crossed Route 89 in search of Taughannock Falls. A footpath led her alongside a wide stream, and she paused frequently along the bank. The water seemed alive; from time to time the Falls would dry up to a mere trickle and the stream would suffer with it, but not this season. It roared, turbulent and jubilant, but for all its ferocity, the melody it made as it crashed over the stones in its bed struck Aurora as distinctly feminine. So did the song the wind pushed through the trees.

All this was part of a delightfully unorthodox world view that would have pleased her father to no end, had he known about it. For despite the cross that hung above her breast, and all the dogma that went with it, she had always thought of God as being female (or rather, Female). The image that came to her mind when she bothered to conjure one was of a not-quite-old, not-quite-matronly woman with the universe set out before her like a floor plan on a drafting table. It was a romantic conception, one Aurora could never have explained, much less justified, to Brian and the other Christers. So she simply believed in it, quietly and to herself.

Across the stream at one point she spotted a peculiar fall of logs that, combined with the oncoming darkness, gave the illusion of a cottage. It reminded her of a scene from George’s book, in which the White Rose Knight and his Squire stopped for the evening at a cabin in an enchanted forest. The beautiful occupant of the cabin turned into a grizzly bear with the rising of the moon, and the Knight was very nearly torn in half before effecting his escape. Aurora didn’t know about that part, but the earlier descriptions of the forest and homestead very much caught her fancy. It would be nice to live in a magic wood, she thought, with an occasional wandering Knight for company.

I just don’t want you to wake up thirty years from now and realize that your chance to have more of a life has gone by.

More than once in the past two weeks Aurora had given thought to her father’s words on the morning of her leaving. Far from unraveling the meaning of everything he had said, she had nonetheless begun to understand the basic gist of it, in particular his fear of Brian Garroway and how Brian might influence her. Walter had made no mention of her boyfriend, but no mention was necessary.

Her feelings about this were varied. Above all she was touched that her father should care so much for her, for she knew that at the very root it was love rather than selfishness that motivated him. Oh, no doubt Walter dreamed of having a norm-breaker for a daughter, but the concern in his voice on that last morning had been more than that of a man losing a dream.

She was also amused at this further confirmation of her world view. God was supposed to be omniscient, but Aurora had never met a man with any talent for mind-reading. Her father had apparently decided that, since she showed no outward signs of radicalism, her capacity and desire to be “different” had somehow vanished. Here Walter was dead wrong. True, she had grown up peacefully enough, with little show of rebellion or deviation. Aurora did not bother with such displays; while she had a certain admiration for those who made argument their daily bread, she herself avoided confrontation except when absolutely necessary, and kept more to herself than most people ever realized. But her dreams were vast.

If Aurora could have stepped inside the world of George’s book she would have done so in a moment. Why not? Cross the magic stream and enter a world of enchantment. And if a dragon or two had to be faced, then that was a worthwhile price of admission. But in real life there were other things, stronger even than dragons, to keep you from crossing that stream. Love, for instance.

Aurora loved Brian Garroway. Someone knowing the full scope of her dreams might not have understood this, but love kept its own secrets. To Walter Smith, Brian’s bad points seemed all too obvious: impatience, his inflexible sense of law, general intolerance. Closer in, Aurora saw good as well. She had been witness to scenes Walt would never know: impatient Brian spending an entire Sunday afternoon on an elaborate funeral and burial service when his younger sister’s pet rabbit had died; law-abiding Brian running countless red lights on the way to the hospital when the same younger sister fractured her ankle skating; intolerant Brian walking a mile to a friend’s house to apologize when he realized he’d been too hasty in an argument. Such moments were touchstones to her, keys to really seeing Brian as opposed to just judging him.

And of course he loved her too, however poorly he sometimes demonstrated that love. This was perhaps the strongest compulsion of all; true love is hard to turn away, especially first love, even if the cost is high.

I don’t want you to feel that loss . . .

She would think the whole thing over yet. Carefully. She still had time to think. Not much time, for Brian would be proposing officially to her before long, but hopefully time enough. Time to weigh the good against the bad, time to balance what she would gain against what she would have to give up.

Aurora walked the rest of the way to the waterfall, stunned, as always, by her first glimpse of it, a hundred-foot silver cascade that turned the last rays of the sunset into a light show. She stood on a stone bridge and lost herself in the music of the flow. In its day Taughannock Falls had seen explorers, tourists, lovers, and, in 1903, a pistol duel. It whispered her a song of magic past, and magic yet to be.

X.

Friday, 5:30 A.M.

At an hour when no sane student or professor would wish to be awake—even the Sun deliverers had, after a week of classes, decided to sleep a bit later—better than a hundred dogs were gathered on the Arts Quad. Sergeant Slaughter, a Bulldog who served as mascot to the members of Cornell’s ROTC, had been padding about the campus since four in the morning, waking Purebreds and mongrels alike for the Dog’s Convocation.

They stood, sat, lay, rolled over, tussled in a rough semi-circle before Ezra Cornell’s statue: Pointers, Retrievers, Hounds, Shepherds, Terriers, Spaniels, the odd Toy Dog, other more exotic breeds, and a tight knot of mongrels who clustered at the far edge of the crowd, watching defiantly for any sign of condescension from the Purebreds. Luther, Blackjack at his side, looked anxiously for his sire as well, but Moses was nowhere to be found.

As they waited for the ceremony to begin, Joshua and Denmark argued fervently with a Collie bitch named Bucklette.

“Explain to me again,” Denmark said, “how the Fourth Question is supposed to be ‘perfectly acceptable.’”

“It is,” Bucklette insisted. “You dogs”—here Joshua bristled—“just don’t understand the educational process.”

“I guess I don’t,” Joshua agreed. “How about teaching it to me?”

“Look,” said Bucklette, “it’s not as if you were the only ones who had a right to be upset—if there was anything to be upset about. The Fourth Question implies prejudice against everybody.”

“It implies prejudice against you. Maybe. Me, it doesn’t even consider.”

“Well then that’s all the more to the point. The Fourth Question is an absolutely marvelous example of reverse cogitation.”

“Reverse cogitation,” Denmark repeated.

“Reverse cogitation?” Joshua queried.

“Yes, yes! Here, let me give you another example. Suppose a dog came up to you and asked, ‘What’s the best way of losing your left foreleg?’”

“My leg?” replied Denmark. “I guess any way would be pretty horrible.”

“It’s a stupid question,” Joshua added.

“Exactly. And you answer it by attacking the foolishness of the idea behind the question—like the idea of prejudice. That’s reverse cogitation.”

“It’s still stupid,” observed Joshua. “How can you . . .”

And so on. Luther paid little attention to what was said, although the argument, and the general tension between the mongrels and Purebreds, disturbed him. It had been a long week of discovery, and despite the joy he had felt on encountering George, he had seen a great many other things that shook his faith in what they had found. Blackjack, sensing this, had begun gently to prod him in the direction of reality.

“Luther . . .” he said now.

“This is Heaven,” Luther responded automatically. “Moses is here, and sooner or later we’re going to find him and everything will be all right.”

“I like it here,” the Manx confessed. “The air’s cleaner and I don’t go hungry half as often as I did back in the City. Good scavenging, good hunting. But would it be so awful if it wasn’t exactly what we’d come for?”

Luther did not answer, and shortly Blackjack gave up . . . for now.

At quarter of six there was a sudden hush, a stilling of thoughts. An Old English Sheepdog had entered the Quad, led by a pair of Doberman Pinschers. For a moment Luther tensed, unavoidably reminded of Cerberus and Dragon. But these Dobermans did not move in tandem; one of them was attempting to walk and lick his balls at the same time, while the other panted at each bitch he passed. The Sheepdog was even less threatening. With his eyes totally hidden under a veil of fur, he allowed his mouth to hang open and followed the Dobermans blindly, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings.

“Well,” said the Sheepdog, as they came to a halt in front of the statue of Ezra Cornell, “have we left yet?”

“Yes sir,” replied one of the Dobermans. “We’re there.”

“Really? Jolly good!” He faced a stand of bushes and proudly began: “Welcome, one and all! My name—”

While the Dobermans were busy reorienting the Sheepdog toward the crowd, Luther asked, “Who is that?”

A mongrel bitch—a quite elegant dog, really—named Lace told him, “That’s the Head. The boss-stud of education.”

“Our leader in the pursuit of higher knowledge,” Denmark added with a touch of derision.

The Collie bitch snorted, and Lace gave her a sharp glance.

“You got a problem, sister? Something we can do for you?”

But the Collie made no reply. A moment later the Sheepdog began to address them again: “Welcome, one and all! My name is Excalibur, Excalibur the Third, and I am your Dean of Studies.”

The crowd howled and barked its approval. The Purebreds did, that is, except for the St. Bernard, Gallant, who tried to maintain an air of decorum and merely gazed respectfully at the Dean. The mongrels too were silent, but their expressions held only reproach. Meanwhile, at the very front of the ranks, there was an intermittent flounce of tail and ears—Skippy the Beagle, leaping for joy.

“Now,” Dean Excalibur continued as the noise died down, “before we get on to the matter of the Questions, I think it only fitting that we introduce some of the members of our staff. Yes? Yes.” He turned to face the base of Ezra’s statue. “Are the, uh, cats here?”

“Yes sir,” said one of the Dobermans, turning the Dean around again. “Just a moment.” He gave three short barks, and a group of seven cats padded into view. They all appeared quite bored.

“For those of you who are new to this place,” said Dean Excalibur, when the Doberman nudged him to go on, “these noble felines serve as our official interpreters and orientation counselors. I’m sure you’ll find that they’re a jolly good bunch of fellows, once you get to know them.”

One of the cats, a Siamese, stretched and yawned.

“As for the dogs on our staff—our canine philosophers, as we call them—we have at least one to assist you with each of the Questions you will seek to answer. Why, I was just talking to one of them the other day, Smooth I think his name is—”

“Ruff, sir,” prompted the Doberman who had been licking himself.

“Yes, yes, Ruff, of course. Jolly good fellow, as I’m sure you’ll agree when you get to know him. Well, well, we’d better get on to the business at hand, eh? The Questions. Is Yoda here?”

“Wog, sir. His name is Wog.”

“Yes, yes, Wog. Wog, come forward!”

Wog was an Affenpinscher, a small dark-coated dog with a flattened face that would have looked at home on a monkey—that was, indeed, where the breed name had come from. Wog stood a mere nine inches at the shoulder, and did not appear to be the sort of animal who would be entrusted with any authority. Nonetheless he bore himself with dignity as he advanced to stand beside Excalibur, fixed his beady eyes upon the crowd, and yapped once for attention.

“Listen now,” Wog began. “Listen to the tale of what was, and what came to be . . .”

A moth chose that moment to flutter past the Affenpinscher’s face. Wog snapped it up, crunched it briefly between his teeth, and spat it back out again.

“Listen,” he repeated, directing at least part of the thought at the moth’s remains. “Just listen, and be made knowledgeable . . . a long time ago, in a distant land on a far shore in a really, really hard-to-find country, there lived a dog named Sapientia Stultitia, or ‘Double S’ as he is often referred to. We know not to what breed Double S belonged, but it is said that he was strong and pure-blooded . . .”

One of the mongrels began to growl. Luther saw that it was Joshua.

“. . . Now Double S was a good dog, but he was constantly plagued by cats, most of whom had no respect for him or any others of his race. In that age a great enmity existed between canines and felines, far worse than any imagined difficulties of today, and cats used the knowledge they gained from the Masters to practice torment and deceit . . .”

The cats, including Blackjack, listened passively to this. The sins of their ancestors held no interest or pain of guilt for them.

“. . . so it came to pass that Double S recognized the need for some sort of education, some grasping of fundamental and philosophical truths among dogs, if only to put them on an equal footing with their persecutors. In his own words: ‘I would found a system by which any dog can learn to match wits with any feline.’ To this end, Double S created The Five Questions.”

The Affenpinscher paused for emphasis, then went on:

“This, then, is the purpose for our gathering here today. To inaugurate the annual search for the fabled Answers, a search in which all are invited to participate. And let all be reminded that, as Double S so wisely pointed out, the search shall purely prove as valuable, or more so, than that which is sought, that in the seeking there is as much to be gained as in the finding . . .”

“Oh yea, oh yea,” cried Dean Excalibur, inspired by the telling. “Verily, verily. And now, Wog, The Questions. The Questions.”

“The Five Questions of Ultimate Wisdom,” quoth Wog, and as he listed them he accented the first word of each:

“Question One: What is the true nature of the Divine?

“Question Two: What is the meaning of life?

“Question Three: What is the meaning of love?

“Question Four: Which is the superior breed of canine?

“Question Five: What is the best dog food?”

As tradition dictated, Wog gave the entire list without pause, regardless of the crowd’s reaction. Upon the uttering of the Fourth the mongrels set up a great howling that belied their small number.

“Rebellion?” Dean Excalibur cried fearfully. “Rebellion?”

Gallant the St. Bernard looked upon the mongrels with sympathy, though he wished they would find a less vocal way of making their displeasure known; Sergeant Slaughter and his troop of attack Bulldogs and Boxers tensed, ready for trouble; Bucklette the Collie watched the Bulldogs and Boxers anxiously, wishing they’d go ahead and do something instead of just standing there; the other Purebreds ranged in reaction from embarrassment to annoyance. Blackjack, like all the cats, kept a carefully neutral expression, while Luther was quite openly flabbergasted.

“Now, now,” said Excalibur timidly, trying to restore some semblance of order. “Let’s try to be calm and collected about this . . .”

But if anything, the howling grew louder and more angry. Over in Sibley Hall, a very sleepy-eyed janitor paused in the midst of his first morning chores and glanced nervously toward a nearby window, convinced that a monster had gotten loose and begun rampaging on the Arts Quad.

XI.

Sunday, 11:40 P.M.

The Kay-Fung Specialized Animal Research Lab was located at the far eastern fringe of the campus. Bordered on three sides by the Cornell Plantations, it stood secluded and peaceful, knowing little official business at this time of night. Oh, it had its share of unofficial visitors—when the weather was warm, students with free time would come to make love among the darkened groves of the Plantations, or to drink and watch the stars. But the building itself closed down more or less around nightfall, at least until mid-semester when some of the more involved research projects began demanding round-the-clock attention. With the setting of the sun, the lab was left empty, except for the animals.

And tonight, the sprites.

Not ten feet from where two post-graduates ground eagerly against each other in the dark, their academic worries momentarily forgotten, a model biplane lay hidden in the underbrush. Farther along, at the foundation of the lab building, a metal grating had been broken and pried away, uncovering a six-inch-square ventilation shaft. Too small for any human being to even consider entering, the vent led, with many turnings and off-branchings, to an underground storage room where a delivery of animals was being held before dispersal to various research departments. Even now at that far terminus, a second metal grating was weakening under the assault of two tiny sledgehammers.

“Aye, that’s it!” a voice encouraged above the chittering of various animals. “Aye, laddies, get your backs into it. Get your backs into it, I say!”

Twists of metal flew outward; the entire grating loosened in its frame. Impatient, two pairs of hands dropped two hammers, and two shoulders slammed hard against the grill. The grating gave way altogether and fell out, followed by two sprites. Fortunately the drop was only about half a foot.

“Shit,” Puck said, pushing himself up on bruised arms.

“Very astute comment,” said Hamlet, rubbing his own sores. They looked up to see Macduff shaking his head at them from the lip of the vent opening.

“Aye,” he told them. “That’s too much back, lads.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said a fourth voice. “I think they look kind of cute, all rough and tumbled like that.”

Saffron Dey moved into view beside Macduff. She wore a woven maple leaf safari outfit that put a minimal strain on the imagination; even with Cobweb holding her closely from behind, Saffron looked inviting enough up there to make Puck’s heart (and not just his heart, oh no) waver one last time. It was a moment he remembered often after her death.

Then Cobweb squeezed some or other portion of Saffron’s anatomy to get her attention and Macduff said, “Now, now, let’s have none of that. We have business. Here, let’s have a light.”

Someone farther back in the vent shaft handed forward a softly glowing piece of quartz hung on a short chain. Macduff rubbed the stone and its glow increased until the full interior of the storage room was visible to them. It was a square, cinderblock-walled space, recently converted. The walls were lined with shelves that held row upon row of tagged cages (the vent opened above one of the highest shelves, which was partially empty). The single door, opposite the wall with the vent, was metal, with three different locks. As if in explanation of the precautions, a sign warned:

RECENT ACTS OF VANDALISM HAVE FORCED CORNELL’S ANIMAL RESEARCH DEPARTMENT TO RESORT TO EXTREME SECURITY MEASURES. ANYONE FOUND TAMPERING WITH THESE ANIMALS WITHOUT PROPER AUTHORIZATION WILL BE SEVERELY PUNISHED.

“Recent acts of vandalism,” Macduff chuckled, leaping down onto the shelf beside Puck and Hamlet. “Sure an’ that’s us, lads.” To those still up in the vent he called: “Come on, sluggards! It’s not as if we’ve got all of forever!”

Quickly the other sprites lowered themselves down, all of them armed with swords, some bearing tools as well: first Saffron; then Cobweb; then Cobweb’s three brothers, Moth, Mustardseed, and Moonshine; adventureseekers and Macduff-associates Lennox, Ross, Angus, Caith, and Men­teith; animal-handler Jaquenetta; and her apprentices, Rosaline, Maria, and Catherine.

“Well now,” said Macduff, when the last sprite was out. “Any questions before we begin?”

“I’ve got one,” Hamlet volunteered. “Seems I remember the last couple times we did this we were on the first floor. Now that they’ve moved all this into the basement, how are we going to get the animals out? Herd them through the vent?”

“Some,” Macduff agreed. “Some. And then there’s the door, lad. Sure an’ you don’t mind barebackin’ on a rabbit up a flight of stairs?”

“That door over there? What, you’re going to blow the locks off with cherry bombs?”

“Anythin’ more?” Macduff asked, tired of the discussion.

“Just a word of caution,” Jaquenetta spoke up. “I know most of you have done this before, but I want to remind you: unless you’re trained in animal control, don’t free anything that’s bigger than you. Stick to frogs and small rodents.”

“Aye,” nodded Macduff. “Well said, well spoken. And now . . . let’s to it!”

With a shout the sprites set to work, scattering to various corners of the room, lowering themselves to various levels on the shelves. The first cage that Puck stopped at contained guinea pigs, earmarked for use in a Freshman Biology class. It put him in mind of one of the main arguments against Lab Animal Freedom Raids, the argument that, released in the wild, the typical lab animal would die of starvation or exposure very quickly. The counter-argument, of course, was that the animal would die even more quickly—and perhaps more painfully—if given a live dissection in front of an auditorium full of undergraduates.

“Hey-ya!” Puck cried, knocking free the cage latch. He opened the gate, and the guinea pigs, sleepy and sluggish at first, began filing out onto the shelf. Puck reached out and stroked one of them as it passed him, using the low-level telepathy that all sprites possessed. All he got was a mindless repetition of Mother-mother-mother-mother—Guinea pigs were not known for great intelligence; perhaps they did have deeper thoughts, but these were beyond Puck’s ability to read.

Caith and Ross were hip-deep in white mice. The mice’s surface thoughts had nothing to do with Mother; rather they contemplated cheese, treadmills, and sex, pretty much in that order. So preoccupied were they with these notions that a number of them walked right off the edge of the shelf, plummeting.

“So,” said Caith, trying to prevent the rodents from high-diving en masse, “how are we going to get all these guys out of here?”

“Through the vent, I guess,” Ross replied. “Maybe Jaquenetta can play pied piper, or something. Or we can get them all pissing mad at Macduff and let him run on ahead . . .”

Jaquenetta was busy with things other than piping at the moment. At floor level she had found a cage of kittens, and was trying to decide what to do with them. Cats, even newborn, were extremely dangerous and unpredictable. They could see sprites, but due to their practical nature they invariably perceived them as something else—as rodents, leaves in the wind, mere shadows—anything but as tiny magical beings, the existence of which would defy feline logic. Given this, no sprite could hope to control them, no matter how skilled at animal-training. The cat would either see the sprite as a threat and attack, or completely ignore it.

But these kittens, according to the tag on their cage, had been reserved for neurological experiments, and Jaquenetta was not sure she could leave them to such a fate. While she ran over the pros and cons in her mind, the other sprites continued the task of releasing the less dangerous animals. Menteith used a firecracker to blow the latch on a glass case, then laughed as a cascade of frogs tumbled out, catching Angus in the avalanche.

“Ya fookin’ ass!” Angus sputtered, fighting his way out of a pile of amphibians.

On one of the highest shelves, Cobweb was showing off for Saffron Dey. To be quite frank about it, since she had already taken a fancy to him it was pretty much inevitable that he would wind up having his way with her by the end of the night—whatever way that might be—but Cobweb believed in hedging his bets to the fullest. With an eye toward impressing her, he engaged in a series of daring somersaults, bouncing perilously close to the shelf’s edge, then springing back and raising cage latches with his feet.

“That’s really amazing how you do that,” Saffron said vapidly at some point or other, “but why don’t you save some energy for later on? Who knows, you might need it for something . . .”

She winked at him; Lennox, close enough to overhear her words, grimaced at the absolute lack of subtlety.

“Whoo-pee!” Cobweb cried victoriously. Gerbils milled all about them, but still he managed another series of somersaults. He bounded back, back, back, coming to rest beside a particularly large cage. Macduff still had his glowing chip of quartz, which shined brighter than ever, but he was far below them and the contents of the cage were hidden in shadow. Not even bothering to check the tag, Cobweb high-kicked the latch, keeping his eyes glued to Saffron.

“You,” he said. “You are the most beautiful—”

A huge rat, a brown Norwegian rat of the sort known to strip the bones of human children, shot out of the cage like a furry bullet, sinking its teeth into Cobweb and ripping off his arm before he realized what was happening. At first he did not even cry out, merely stared at the bloody stump that was his shoulder, frozen in shock.

Then he saw the rat’s eyes, its teeth, and the biggest scream of his life, his death scream, welled up in his throat, and in his extremity he could make out the rat’s thoughts clearly.

I Thresh, thought-said the rat. Thresh ends you.

“THRESH!” Cobweb shrieked mindlessly, as the rat tore his chest open. Saffron also shrieked, but she did not think to draw her sword or to run to Cobweb’s rescue—not that he was very rescuable anymore.

“THRESH!” Cobweb shrieked again, his last. Angus looked up, Puck looked up, they all looked up in time to see Cobweb topple off the shelf. Halfway down he was dead, and in the nature of sprites, he faded—his body evaporated into nothingness, his clothes turned to grey rags that continued to seesaw downward. His pinsword struck the ground with an insignificant pinging sound.

“Aye, Lord!” Macduff croaked. “What’s this, now—”

“No!” Saffron cried out from above. More rats swarmed from the cage, and two of them rushed at her. One of these fell dead instantly, struck by needles from three crossbows—Puck, Hamlet, and Mustardseed each carried one—but the other rat stayed far enough back from the edge that they could not get a bead on him. Somehow, above the din of all the animals, they heard the unmistakable hiss of Saffron’s sword being drawn, but what happened after that they could not tell, for they had problems of their own.

Heedless of the distance to the floor, the other rats—nine of them, including Thresh—leaped from the shelf. One died of a crossbow wound in mid-air, and two more landed badly and were unable to move, but the other six scattered, looking for blood and a way out. Two of them bore down Mustardseed before he could reload his bow; he was dead in seconds.

After Mustardseed faded, only five sprites remained at floor level—Jaquenetta, her three apprentices, and Angus. Of those still up on the shelves, only Puck and Hamlet had long-range weapons. The rest hurried down as quickly as they could. Lennox went too fast, landed hard, and fractured his leg. A rat spotted him and moved in for the kill.

“Not bleedin’ likely, you bastard!” Lennox cried, whipping out his sword and skewering the creature as it leaped for him. It twitched once and fell dead. “How do you like that?”

With those words he collapsed in a faint. Two frogs hopped over his prone form, croaking contentedly, oblivious to the battle around them.

“Aye, ye bastard!” Macduff jumped down onto a rat’s back, driving his sword into the base of its skull like a spear. “That’s for Cobweb!”

“And this is for Mustardseed!” cried Angus, not five feet away, as he swung one of the sledgehammers at another rat. It staggered back, stunned, then shot forward and tore a chunk of flesh from Angus’ leg. As it opened its mouth for another bite Ross and Caith hit it from both sides, taking it down.

Two more rats advanced on Jaquenetta. Without hesitating she opened the kittens’ cage door. Help me, she thought-pleaded with the first kit to emerge, a black shorthair. The kitten’s purely logical brain caught this thought, interpreting it as a sudden hunger pang; the cat shoved past the shadow at the cage door and ran toward the rats.

The rats continued on fearlessly, knocking the kitten over and beginning to tear into it.

“Oh, Lord,” Jaquenetta murmured, drawing her sword. But before she could go to the kitten’s aid, each rat was struck down by a crossbow shot from above.

Puck scanned the floor carefully, saw no more live rats among the milling sprites and lab animals, and turned his attention to the shelf where Cobweb had lost his life.

“Saffron.” Speaking her name, Puck shouldered his bow, drew his sword, and clambered up to the high shelf as quickly as he could.

Saffron Dey lay in a pool of her own blood. She had not faded and was therefore not dead, but death did not look far away. The rat lay beside her, Saffron’s pinsword buried firmly in its heart. She had killed it, but suffered badly in return.

“Jesus and Troilus.” Puck knelt beside her. With one hand he stroked her forehead, expecting to see her fade without ever regaining consciousness. But as he touched her, she opened her eyes, and all of a sudden Puck was afraid. Saffron began to laugh from a badly torn throat.

At the same moment, Hamlet was anxiously climbing upwards in pursuit of the last rat. Thresh had somehow eluded them and was headed up again, scrabbling from shelf to shelf toward the vent opening and escape.

“Saffron?” Puck whispered, leaning close to her. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused, as if she were seeing not him but Something Else.

“Still alive,” she said, laughing that unnerving laugh. “He’s still alive.”

“Who is?”

“They buried him,” Saffron continued, not hearing. “Buried him in The Boneyard. But they couldn’t kill him. Wounded. That’s all they could do.”

“The Boneyard? Saffron, what are you saying? What about The Bone—” Puck cut off as Saffron suddenly grabbed his arm, gripping it with amazing strength. She stopped looking at Something Else and focused her gaze on him, and he tried to pull away, because what he saw in her eyes terrified him.

“Pandora’s Box is going to open soon,” she told him, not letting him go. “They trapped him, but he’s going to get out. He’s going to get out.” Her grip tightened until Puck felt sure his forearm would be crushed. “And once he’s out, once he gets free, he’s going to eat you all right up, right up, RIGHT UP!”

“Got you now, you son of a bitch,” Hamlet said, steadying his aim. The rat was directly under the vent, and Hamlet was at last at a good angle. He fired, thinking to pierce it through the heart, but the rat moved at the same moment and was struck in the flank instead. It paused, half in and half out of the opening, then pushed itself in with one last great shove of its haunches. An instant later it was gone.

Saffron stiffened, tightening her grip still more for one excruciating moment. Then she faded, leaving Puck shaking beside a pile of dead leaves, the remains of her clothing.

Pandora’s Box is going to open.

Soon.

Half a mile away, the Tower Chimes tolled midnight.

A KISS IN THE DARK

The Fevre Dream Tavern took its name from a novel about vampires on the Mississippi, and its politics from somewhere about a thousand miles left of center. The most militantly liberal territory in already liberal Collegetown, it served as a natural haven for the Bohemians and the Blue Zebras on their nights out. The music was often live and the drinks usually half-price; they could ask no more.

Stephen George found himself in the ’Dream one night about two weeks into the semester, sipping a Slow Comfortable Screw that had been mixed by an expert hand, and feeling strangely elated. The featured band was Benny Profane and the V-necks, who specialized in mismatched covers; clad in a white alligator-hide vest that showed off his biceps to maximum effect, Benny opened the show with a reggae version of “Stand by Your Man.” Following this he stepped back from the mike and gave the spotlight to Stencil One-Note, the electric guitarist, who turned the fuzz control on his amp up to maximum and burned off the Canadian national anthem in three-quarter time. This received a rousing round of applause.

To George’s left, through an open archway, was the pool room. Here Preacher and Fantasy Dreadlock played Eight Ball against Ragnarok and Fujiko, under the learned kibitzing of half a dozen spectators. Fujiko and Ragnarok were up by one game, but this promised to change as Fuji got further along in a row of White Russians and lost more and more of her motor control. Meanwhile, back in the barroom proper, Myoko, Aphrodite (the Bohemian Minister of Love), and Panhandle (the Bohemian Minister of Unbridled Lust) gathered around a table to watch Lion-Heart play a game of Devil’s Advocate with Woodstock. Technically, Z.Z. Top was also at the table, but he had slumped so far down in his chair as to become invisible.

“. . . now take this crap about the Space Defense Initiative,” Woodstock was saying. “The Star Wars thing, with the laser satellites and all. That’s scary shit. That dick’s gonna get us all nuked, pushing it too far . . .”

“Dick?” Lion-Heart asked innocently. Cinched around one arm was a cloth band adorned with pink elephants, the traditional symbol of the Advocate. “What dick?”

“Reagan, of course.”

Lion-Heart smiled. “That dick, my friend,” he pointed out, “is a publicly elected dick. Twice over. And last time around he got every state except Minnesota, which isn’t exactly the voice of the nation, if you know what I mean. He must have had some brains to get all those people over on his side, don’t you think?”

“Reagan has no brains,” Woodstock insisted. “The man’s senile.”

“So you say. But what about the Democrats, eh? They’re the ones who picked Walter Mondale to run against him. So they must be getting a little old in the head too, right?”

“Geraldine Ferraro wasn’t a bad choice,” Myoko offered.

Lion-Heart raised his eyebrows in mock horror, secretly squeezing her hand under the table. “She’s from Queens.”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” demanded Woodstock.

“Maybe if we could have had some sort of guarantee,” Aphrodite suggested, “that Mondale would drop dead right after he got elected, so Gerry would have taken over . . .”

“Reagan’s going to drop dead soon,” Panhandle predicted cheerfully. “The Zero Factor’ll kill his ass any day now. That’s the real reason he got reelected: he hadn’t died in office yet.”

Myoko considered this. “Does it count as Zero Factor,” she asked, “if Washington gets bombed before Air Force One can lift him out of there?”

“That’s the Ground Zero Factor,” replied Panhandle.

“Hey,” said Woodstock, “let’s try to keep this discussion on a mature level, OK?”

Feeling a sudden thirst, Aphrodite got up from the table at this point and headed for the bar. Though the temperature inside the Fevre Dream was quite warm, she still wore her longcoat, a garment covered entirely in red Velcro—when Aphrodite hugged someone, they stayed hugged.

“Hey, storyteller,” she said, taking the stool next to George and ordering a Bloody Mary from Stainless Marley, the bartender.

George smiled at her. “Long time no see. How goes it?”

“Oh, average. Panhandle’s falling all over himself tonight trying to seduce me, as usual.”

“Yeah? Planning to take him up on it?”

“Are you kidding? Look at what he wears, George.” Panhandle’s longcoat was transparent vinyl, slick as grease. “Nothing to grip,” Aphrodite said, indicating her own Velcro-clad arms. “Think I’d trust a man like that?”

“You could always knit him a sweater.”

“Hmm . . .” Her drink arrived and she took a long swallow. “And you?”

“Doing good,” George said, bouncing a little on his stool, nervous energy in his legs. “I mean, I don’t know, feels like something’s in the wind. Can’t really explain it, but these past couple weeks I’ve had the damnedest feeling of . . . of waiting for something.” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“So what’s this I hear,” asked Aphrodite, “about you and a secret admirer?”

“What, has the Top been blabbing about that business with the rose?”

“Yes, but don’t go hit him for it, he’s too drunk to feel anything just now. Has she gotten in touch with you yet?”

“Don’t know that it’s a she, necessarily. Hell, I don’t even know that it’s not just a coincidence.”

“No such thing,” Aphrodite assured him. Then: “Oh my, looks like Lust is calling me.”

“Huh?” George looked around. Benny Profane had retaken the mike and was belting out a punk rendition of “Heartbreak Hotel.” Panhandle stood on the dance floor, sans longcoat, beckoning Aphrodite to come slam dance.

“Hmm, maybe there’s hope for the boy yet,” she said. She set what was left of her drink on the bar in front of George. “Be a dear and finish that for me, would you? We’ll have to trade love stories the next time we bump into each other.”

Giving his shoulder an affectionate squeeze, she headed off to dance.

George spent five minutes on the Bloody Mary; he had barely drained the last drops when all activity in the Tavern came to an abrupt halt. It was an odd moment, difficult to recall in detail later. Such is the nature of genuinely magical events—drunken, disjointed bits of time that could never survive if clearly remembered.

Seconds beforehand, Stainless Marley had come down to the end of the bar, bearing a pen in one hand and a copy of The Knight of the White Roses in the other.

“Hey George,” Stainless began to say, “you got to do me a favor. I got this lady up in Dryden, and she doesn’t believe—”

The front door of the Tavern swung open in silence, a silence so loud it drowned out every sound in the barroom. Stainless’ words trailed off to nothing; Benny Profane cut off in the middle of shouting how he was so lonely he could die; Woodstock, caught in the heart of some clinching argument, shut up as if struck; other conversations died similarly, even in the pool room, and all eyes, all gazes were drawn to one spot.

Calliope moved in the doorway, more a vision than a person. She was wrapped in a diaphanous white gown that might have been cut and woven from a dream, and a breeze played through her long hair, holding it at just the perfect angle to the light, making it seem alive. Her lips were set just right; her skin glowed. The word beautiful, at that instant, would not have been sufficient to describe her.

“Jesus,” Woodstock whispered. “Look at her.”

Lion-Heart alone resisted the temptation; his lips were pressed firmly against Myoko’s, and he clung to her for dear life. The other men and women in the Fevre Dream surrendered their hearts without a struggle; Stainless Marley swayed on his feet, and in the archway to the pool room Ragnarok and Fujiko had to lean against each other for support.

“George . . .” Stainless breathed. For the vision had locked her own gaze on someone. A perfectly formed hand let go the knob of the front door, which eased shut; Calliope began to glide across the room, weaving among tables where the frozen statues of bar patrons dared not reach out for her. And George, sure at the last that she came for him, stood to meet her, seeing finally what it was he had been waiting for.

Closer and closer, George stretched out a hand toward her, wondering if she would ever reach him, wondering if she did whether she would be real or a phantom that his fingers would pass through like smoke. But she did reach him, solid flesh and bone clasped his hand, she came closer still, and as he leaned in to kiss her it all seemed quite natural, quite ordinary, most wonderful. He was caught up in her magic, and when their lips met and every light in the Tavern went out simultaneously, that too seemed natural, as if it were just another stage direction in some script that had been written for this moment.

“What the fuck?” cried Z.Z. Top, rising from stupor and thinking himself blind. “What the fuck is happening here!?”

In George’s perception, that one kiss in the dark stretched out for minutes, hours, days—an uncertain span of time in paradise. When at last Calliope drew back her head, she whispered three words to him, a promise of more to come. Then, somehow, before the lights came back on, she disentangled herself from him, vanished. Again, George was never certain later exactly how it had happened—it was so memorable, and yet so difficult to remember—but it might have been that she simply evaporated in his arms, just melted away. Though of course that was impossible.

“What the fuck?” the Top continued to shout. “What the fuck?”

MAKING FLIPPY-FLOPPY

I.

One of the prevailing myths about Cornell and other liberal universities is that they contain no virgins, or an insignificant number. Of course an informal visual check—for an experienced observer can spot a virgin by the way he or she laces his/her shoes—will quickly demonstrate how inaccurate this assumption is. Even simple logic should be enough to disprove it, for if virginity were really so rare, why would there be so much concern about it? Yet despite the fact that Cornellians are supposed to be bursting with logic, on any given night at least thirty percent of the student body goes to bed convinced that everyone is getting laid but them.

Which is not to say that, as abstinence goes, Cornell can ever hope to hold a candle to Oral Roberts University. But a night on which a majority of the population had sex would be an unusual night indeed, and a night on which almost everybody did would be nothing short of miraculous.

These, then, are the mechanics of a miracle: even as George locked lips with Calliope in the Fevre Dream, two tanker trucks were colliding head-on on a highway just north of Ithaca. One of the trucks belonged to a scientific research group and contained a thousand gallons of an experimental human pheromone; the other was an industrial tanker carrying one of the primary chemical ingredients used in feminine hygiene spray. In the aftermath of the accident, fumes from both substances mixed to form an invisible cloud that was swept southward by the wind, lowering moral standards, raising erections, and hardening nipples wherever it went. At approximately eleven-thirty it passed over North Campus; by midnight the Entrepot student store had sold out every condom in stock, and those customers who had come too late were forced to improvise. Rubber gloves became a hot item about five minutes before closing time.

The wind kept up, and the cloud moved on through West Campus and down to Ithaca proper, sparking more sexual abandon. It was a providence-ordained night for making love or just fucking cheerfully, and more is the pity that no statistics were collected; Masters and Johnson would have paid handsomely for the data. Yet it must remain an irony that, while a full detailing of the night’s adventures would fill volumes, the most intense encounter of the evening had nothing to do with the pheromone cloud. The honor fell to a certain fiction writer who lived alone in a gaudy yellow house on Stewart Avenue, and who, tonight, needed no help from stray chemicals in the atmosphere.

Stephen Titus George had finally lucked out.

II.

Home before midnight, George found himself contemplating, not sur­prisingly, lust, and more specifically the difficulties involved in writing about it. He had pushed all thoughts about the “Fevre Dream woman” to the back of his mind—but not really—deciding that it would be best to wait until she sought him out again. As he rooted around in his cupboards and refrigerator for a snack, he concentrated instead on the inadequacies of the English language. The particular problem he had in mind, which had cropped up in the first draft of an aborted novel called Venus Envy, was epitomized by the word fuck—bumpy, arrogant little four-letter bastard, impossible to use with any degree of subtlety or elegance (and the phrase make love came with its own problems, implying an emotion that was not always there). Things got even worse if you wanted to describe in detail what went on between two partners, for English also had a glut of stupid words for the sexual anatomy. Breasts was sort of OK-sounding, but just about everything else was either coldly scientific—penis, clitoris, buttocks—or straight out of a Brooklyn cab driver’s mouth. Like cock; George had never understood how any author could write the word cock with a straight face. “But it’s supposed to sound silly, didn’t you know that?” Aphrodite had explained to him once. “It’s one of the most ridiculous-looking things on God’s earth.” All fine and true, that, but George hadn’t bothered to point out to her that there were about six million equally silly euphemisms for the female genitalia.

“Yes,” George said to himself, cramming two cherry Pop-Tarts into the toaster, “yes, right, but I wonder what her name is.”

Of course it’s impossible to forget about a beautiful woman who has just recently kissed you in the dark, especially when she happens to be the most beautiful woman in the world. Calliope came crowding back to the fore of George’s thoughts, despite all efforts. Anyway, who really cared if you couldn’t write seriously about sex? Venus Envy had been laid aside unfinished, but he still had his other projects, no need to even think about Venus, and what the hell was her name? George was aching to find out, and not just about that.

He had taken a carton of milk out of the fridge and set it on the table. Nice half-gallon carton, with a grinning cow on the side. “I don’t know what it is,” George told the cow. “It’s like I won the lottery somehow, only I don’t remember signing up for it, and I never checked to see if my numbers took the jackpot, and I’m not even sure what’s in the jackpot. All I know is that it’s on its way.”

He got himself a glass and filled it halfway with milk. Sipping anxiously, he began to pace up and down, and that was when he noticed the draft from the living room. He stopped pacing. Through the living room door, he could make out a figure standing in the dark by an open window, a window he had closed and locked not ten minutes ago.

George did not bother asking who was there, despite an enormous temptation; he knew well enough who it was. Hadn’t he been expecting her? She began to move forward into the light, looking just as alluring as she had in the Fevre Dream, more so, because now she wore nothing except a funny silver whistle that hung between her breasts. Beautiful breasts, beautiful face. The other stuff was beautiful too.

With a click, the Pop-Tarts peeped up out of the toaster to see what was going on. George, his eyes riveted on Calliope, reached out to set his glass back on the table. He set it on thin air instead, and it fell to the floor and shattered, spraying milk everywhere; George didn’t notice.

“So,” he said (the last words out of his mouth before his tongue found other employment), “this is kind of interesting.”

Then they were drawing together again, and once more George found himself wondering if they would ever reach each other, and also whether she would evaporate after the first kiss as she had in the Fevre Dream (for it had happened). And lastly he wondered what would come after the first kiss, if anything did.

They did reach each other.

Calliope remained solid in his arms.

What came after that was more magic.

III.

Puck lived in the high rafters of Barton Hall, in a connected series of hanging birdhouses that he and Cobweb had set in place some years earlier. A trapdoor no bigger than a playing card gave access to a concealed hangar on the roof. It was here that Zephyr found him, sitting in the moonlight at the edge of a narrow runway, staring off in the general direction of the Plantations. She landed her glider most carefully—other than the runway the roof was set at a treacherous slant—and having secured it in the hangar came out to sit beside Puck. For a long while they did not speak.

“The funerals were well done,” Puck finally said, breaking the silence. “I liked Hobart’s eulogy for Cobweb.”

“He’s given a lot of eulogies in his time,” was all Zephyr could think to reply. “During the War against Rasferret, sprites were dying by the hundreds.”

“But that was over a century ago.” Puck spoke tonelessly, looking always into the distance. “He hasn’t lost his touch.”

Because sprites leave no body when they die, there is of course no burial, and funerals are solemn gatherings of the bereaved without the open or closed coffin found at human funerals. Custom also holds that except in time of great emergency, when other matters press for ­attention—such as during the War—each of the departed must be given an individual ceremony. Thus the gatherings in memory of Cobweb, Mustardseed, and Saffron Dey had been held consecutively rather than jointly, and by the end of the third funeral the nerves of all involved were frazzled. And when, as a parting remark, Saffron Dey’s brother Laertes had commented insultingly about Puck’s relationship to her, a duel had sprung up before anyone could intervene. Puck now had a scar on his cheek where Laertes’ sword point had grazed it; Laertes himself would be limping for some time to come.

“You still mad at me?” Puck asked now. “About Saffron?”

Zephyr nodded, regretfully. “I don’t want to be, especially after . . . after all that’s happened, but I am. What you did to me hasn’t changed.”

Puck also nodded, still not looking at her. “I guess I can’t blame you for that. But why are you here, then? Shouldn’t you be following that George guy around or something?”

“George isn’t any of my business anymore.” It was Zephyr’s turn to gaze into the distance. “He’s kind of occupied tonight.”

“Finally found himself a human lover, eh?”

“Maybe. There’s something . . . something strange there. I haven’t actually seen her.”

“Then how do you know about it?”

“The wind. The wind’s been whispering the news all night.” She sniffed. “Something strange in the wind, too.”

Silence descended and began to draw out again. Zephyr forced herself to go on with the business she had come here for.

“I’ve been talking to Hobart,” she said.

“Really? What about?”

“Things. He told me a story, a story about what he and Grandma Zee did one time when they had their worst fight ever. This thing they did, it saved their marriage.”

Puck nodded. “Tell me.”

“Suppose,” said Zephyr, “that there were these two sprites. Suppose that one of them was very angry at the other for something he’d done, and at the same time he was very depressed, upset, maybe a little angry in his own right. Not a very romantic couple, right?”

“No. Not very.”

“But there might be a second couple, almost exactly like the first, really the same, only strangers.”

At last he did look at her. “Strangers?”

“Strangers. Never met. And one of these strangers, she might decide to take a trip some night, climb into her glider, say, and fly someplace ­private—like one of the river banks down in Fall Creek Gorge. Now if the other stranger happened to go there too, purely by coincidence, and they bumped into each other, that could turn out to be romantic, don’t you think? I mean, if they didn’t know each other beforehand, she wouldn’t have anything to be mad about. And if he was depressed, she might be able to cheer him up. They might even fall in love.”

Puck digested this.

“It might work,” he finally said.

“Oh, but there’s one other thing,” Zephyr added. “These two ­strangers—they’d have to be very careful to be faithful to one another. Not like those others. If one of them were to start cheating, it could be very bad luck.”

“Bad luck,” Puck repeated. “Right. But I don’t think there’d be any problem with cheating.”

“Of course not. Why would there be?”

“So.” Puck finally glanced at her. “Fall Creek Gorge, did you say?”

Zephyr shook her head. “I didn’t say anything. But those strangers . . .”

“Right. Those strangers . . . they’d better get flying.”

A moment later they were both preparing for takeoff.

IV.

“So what do you say, Luther?” Skippy prodded. “You gonna come down and chase bitches with us? Huh? Huh?”

“Good times, Luther,” Joshua added. “Don’t want to miss it.”

Luther lifted his hind leg and scratched his ear. “Maybe this time I’ll stay behind,” he said. “Thanks for the invitation, though.”

Six of them stood at the crest of Libe Slope—Luther, Joshua, Skippy, a mongrel named Ellison, a Bull Terrier named Highpoint, and a black Puli—looking down on West Campus. The Puli was a strange dog, with hair that grew out corded like hanks of dark yarn. They called him Rover Too-Bad.

“I an’ I t’ink you ought be comin’ with us, Luther,” Rover nudged him. “Lady Babylon, she be waitin’ down below. She one rude sister, that Lady.”

Lady Babylon had the most active heat cycle of any bitch in Ithaca. Nights she roamed outside the West Campus dorms, accompanied by others of her litter. On occasion their combined heat scent was strong enough to attract studs from a mile away; tonight the wind was blowing the wrong way to catch it on the Slope, but rumors alone were enough to send Skippy, for one, into a leaping frenzy.

“It’s tempting . . .” Luther admitted.

“You know what Rover really be t’inkin’, Luther? This ‘Heaven’ you want so bad—I an’ I be t’inkin’ maybe you find it. Down below. Lady Babylon, she show you Heaven.”

“Not that kind of Heaven, Rover. Besides, it would be over too quickly to make me feel much better.”

“Really?” said Highpoint. “I’d heard your kind can—”

He cut off abruptly as Luther turned on him, eyes narrowing. “My kind? What do you mean by that?”

“Nothing,” the Bull Terrier replied, nervous. “I just . . . I . . .”

Luther looked to Joshua and Ellison for some kind of support, but they had already started down the Slope, led by an impatient Skippy. Highpoint began to follow them.

“Wait a minute!” Luther cried. “Wait a minute! What did you mean by that?”

“Nothing! Nothing at all!”

“Babylon’s no Terrier, you know! You understand me? If you get her pregnant, the litter will be all mongrels! Understand? You’re not so far from me! Understand?”

“I didn’t mean anything like that!” Highpoint called back, a final protest. He broke and made for the bottom of the Slope at top speed.

“No,” Luther said, whining. “No, it can’t be . . .”

“What?” asked Rover, the only one to stay behind with him. “What ‘can’t’?”

“This is Heaven,” Luther insisted, for perhaps the last time. “There can’t be mange-thoughts here. We left all that behind when we got away from Dragon. So Highpoint can’t have been thinking that . . . not even the littlest bit . . .”

He growled deep in his throat, angry at something beyond his reach, and began to snap at his own tail.

“Luther! Luther, you stop that an’ listen to Rover! You want I an’ I go get Blackjack for you?”

With an effort, Luther brought his rage under control. Disappointment rushed in to replace it.

“Blackjack’s busy,” he said. “Busy with Sable. Could you just leave me alone, Rover? Go down and visit Lady Babylon with the others. I’ll be all right eventually.”

“You sure, dahg?”

“I’m sure. Go on, now.”

“OK fine good, Luther. But I an’ I be checkin’ you up after Babylon time. You be better.”

“I’ll try. Just get going.”

“Jus’ so. Jah love, Luther.”

Rover moved off down the Slope. Luther waited until he had vanished beneath the arch between Lyon and McFaddin Halls, then set to grapple with the terrible realization that was at last forcing itself on him.

We left all that behind . . . with Dragon.

And so they had. But if Raaq’s evil could even be here, in this place, no matter how much Luther wished to deny it . . .

The possibility was too much for him. He raised his head and howled, oldest of canine traditions, howling at the moon, though of course what you were really doing was howling at the sky. It was quite sensible; wherever you might be, there was always a lot of space in the sky, space enough for the loudest, most anguished howl to go up into. And of course it was very, very important for your anger and pain to have enough room as it was released outwards.

Otherwise it might fall back, and smother you.

V.

Elsewhere:

In one of the high bedrooms in Risley’s central tower, Lion-Heart and Myoko made perfect love to each other. Their coupling was echoed in some form or other in almost every room in the dorm. The building, as a point of information, was constructed of steel-reinforced concrete, one of the first such structures ever designed, and triply sturdy; yet still, it vibrated that night—ever so slightly—from the energy contained within its walls. This vibration was picked up by the crickets and night creepers in the area, sending them into a frenzy of chirping that was deafening to hear.

It was a night for first times, as well as old times. In the early morning hours after last call at the Fevre Dream, Aphrodite at last consented to Panhandle, and the two of them coupled with no small gymnastic prowess in the lower branches of a maple behind Rockefeller Hall. The tree barely survived.

Blackjack and Sable mated in a tussle of claws and fur; Nattie Hollister of the Ithaca Police Force made love to her husband and then collapsed from exhaustion; back on The Hill, Fraternity Row bumped and ground. Everywhere the same, everywhere different, and it was not until very late indeed that the last bit of energy had been expended and an aura of peace settled over the town.

Even then, not everyone slept.

VI.

George stood naked at his bedroom window peering out into the dark, heedless of any passerby who might see him from the street. He had little ego as far as his body was concerned, and it never would have occurred to him that a peeping Tom (or Tom-ette) might be interested. Besides which, precious few peeping Toms were still out and about at this hour; the moon was almost down, dawn could be no more than an hour away, and most activity worth peeping on had ceased.

The house was a shambles. George and Calliope’s lovemaking ­session—which would have set the readership of the Penthouse Forum on its collective ear, if written up and published—had ranged through every room in the place, leaving a trail of disorder and outright destruction. Furniture was moved or overturned; the love seat in the living room had collapsed on all four of its legs like a dead camel. The bathroom was awash in water, and the showerhead was still spraying full blast; in the hallway outside, a spiderweb of toilet paper hung from the overhead light. In the kitchen the refrigerator door hung open, various foodstuffs having been used for various interesting purposes; likewise the doors to the cupboards were thrown wide, and the bottle of Crisco Oil was empty. About the only thing undisturbed was George’s typewriter, a casual observer in the eye of the storm.

How long? George wondered to himself. How long were we at it?

At best guess he could only say that it had been a very long time, longer than he could ever credit to his own natural stamina, even should he want to be vain about it. It was as if some outside force had lent support to him, allowing him to go on and on with her for hours without pause. George remembered the old expression, I’ll jump your bones. He had not just jumped Calliope’s bones; he had partied on them, and she on his.

He looked at her, stretched out on the bed, apparently asleep. At last. And though love was done for the night, she still appeared as beautiful as when he had first laid eyes on her.

No, not beautiful. Perfect.

Yes, perfect. And that was what frightened him. For didn’t everyone, in some not-so-secret corner of their minds, have a fantasy of what the perfect physical type would look like? The fantasy was apt to change over time—before meeting his first Grey Lady, George’s idea of the ultimate had been a pale redhead—and was not nearly so reliable a criterion as personality when judging a lover. But was there anyone who didn’t quietly wish for both, good personality and the perfect type?

There was very little moonlight left, but George could see Calliope quite clearly. Every line, every detail, from the tone of her skin to the set of her mouth, was just right. Who had read his mind?

“Don’t worry about it,” Calliope advised him. By some strange trick she was no longer asleep on the bed, but behind him with her arms wrapped around his waist. “Just enjoy it.”

George shook his head, and leaned heavily against the windowsill. “This isn’t real.”

“What isn’t? Me?” She pressed tight against his back. “Tell me you don’t feel that.”

He did not respond, instead asking another question: “What’s the price?”

“The price?”

“I think you know what I mean.” He spoke softly, as of a matter that was of great importance but beyond his control. “You’re too good to be true. When we finally get our clothes back on, is the conversation going to be perfect, too?”

She kissed his neck. “We don’t have to get dressed for that.”

“We’ve read all the same books, haven’t we? And our likes and dislikes are almost exactly the same, just different enough to give us something to talk about. Somehow I know that’s true. I know your name, too. But when did you tell it to me?”

Calliope was breathing softly into his ear now. It took an effort to keep speaking.

“Tell me what the price is!” George insisted, gripping the windowsill so tightly that his fingers nearly snapped from the strain. “You look perfect, you are perfect, and you came out of nowhere. So what’s the bad news? Does Mephistopheles collect my soul in six months, or what?”

Calliope laughed. “You’re already in love with me, George,” she said to him, in a kindly tone and with no trace of vanity. “Why bother being so curious? Even if it meant your death, you couldn’t help your feelings. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” George whispered.

“But you still want to know more.”

“Will it mean my death? Is that the cost?”

“It might,” Calliope said seriously. “Oh, you won’t die on my account, though you might prefer it. We’ll be lovers for a time, and I’ll teach you a few things, and set a few other things in motion. When my job is done I’ll leave, without warning, and then you’ll want to die, but he won’t let you, not then.”

“He?”

“You’re caught, George. Caught in a Story, or a Daydream, you could say. Whether it ends happily or in a nightmare depends entirely on you.”

“Wait,” George said. “Wait, I don’t understand this part.”

“Don’t worry yourself,” Calliope told him, turning him around. “There’ll be plenty of time for understanding. The Story goes on for a long time yet. In some ways it hasn’t even really begun.”

“What are you, then?” he asked. “The Prologue?”

Calliope smiled. “That’s very close, George,” she said. “Very close.”

She drew him in, and together they brought in the sunrise.

TWO HOUSES

I.

On a bright morning some two weeks later, a Bohemian envoy composed of Lion-Heart, Myoko, and Z.Z. Top set out from Risley on a diplomatic mission up Fraternity Row. It was Sunday, and the members of the Society for Pre-Renaissance Mayhem were out on Risley’s front lawn in full battle armor, whacking each other with wooden swords and clubs; Lion-Heart saluted them as he came out.

“Nice day,” he said, saluting the sky as well.

“Great day to die,” the Top added; not five yards away, a sword-swinger went down under the combined assault of three clubbers. “Bet Myoko could kick all their asses, though.”

“Thank you, dear,” replied the Queen Grey Lady. She took Lion-Heart’s arm and they set off on their journey.

The nearest Greek House was of course Zeta Psi, just across the street. The Zetas’ lawn boasted a rusty Civil War cannon, a token of former hostilities between Zeta Psi and Risley. Two years ago, however, after the Bohemians declared eternal war on Rho Alpha Tau, an unofficial Risley-Zeta peace treaty had been negotiated.

“Where’re we going today, anyway?” asked the Top. “You got some beef to settle over at the Rat Frat?”

“There’s always a beef to settle with them,” Lion-Heart said darkly. “We’ve got other business today, though. This other frat wants to make us all honorary members.”

“Honorary members? Hell, Li, Bohemia can’t go Greek.”

“That’s what I thought at first. But this frat is special.”

“How special? Greek is Greek.”

“It’s Tolkien House,” said Lion-Heart.

Z.Z. Top did a double take. “They want us as brothers?”

“And sisters,” Lion-Heart replied, clasping Myoko’s hand. “I met one of their acting Presidents—they’ve got three instead of one—Friday night down at the New Wave. Fellow name of Shen Han. Interesting character; he was drinking a Tequila Sunset.”

“Sunrise,” Myoko corrected him.

“No, Sunset. Brandy instead of grenadine. Just offbeat enough, you know? I liked him.”

“But why do they want us to link up with them?” asked the Top.

“That’s what we’re going to find out, Tasteless. Main reason I brought you along is because I figured you’d get a kick out of it. Lord of the Rings still your favorite story?”

“I just reread it for the twelfth time last week.”

“Good, then. This should be fun.”

Tolkien House, so named because it took as its inspiration J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy world, was at once one of the most famous and least known of Cornell’s fraternities. Located far off the beaten track, the House was not generally open to visitors. That the Bohemians had been invited to become members en masse could only mean that something big was afoot; Lion-Heart had an idea or two what the something might be, but kept quiet about it.

They followed Thurston Avenue to its end, then left street and sidewalk behind and turned onto a dirt path leading into a thickly wooded area. Each of them had a sense of stepping into another world; the trees were especially tall, forming a thick canopy overhead that blocked out most of the sky. Not for nothing was Tolkien House known as the only Elvish Greek House.

They came upon it suddenly. The path led inwards for perhaps forty yards and opened without warning into a clearing. The fraternity stood revealed before them like some great stone fortress out of time. It was huge, seeming to strain the boundaries of the clearing; in some places the surrounding trees crept within five feet of the House. At either end of the building, which was roughly rectangular in shape, sat a squat tower, the names chiseled into blocks in their foundations: MINAS ANOR on the right, MINAS ITHIL on the left.

“Too much,” breathed the Top, finding it hard to take in.

“Funny, though,” Myoko said, a little less dazzled. “There are no cars parked out front. Is it legal for a fraternity not to have cars?”

Lion-Heart smiled. “Maybe they have a stable.”

The main entrance was a great arched doorway, the double doors made of iron-banded oak. TOLKIEN HOUSE, read the inscription on the keystone, GIFT OF A LADY. And below that, in some strange language: Pedo mellon a minno.

Myoko again: “Don’t rich women usually endow sororities?”

“Maybe she was funky,” Lion-Heart suggested. He turned to the Top. “What’s that ‘Pedo mellon’ stuff?”

“It’s Elvish,” Z.Z. Top explained. “Tolkien invented a lot of fantasy languages, you see. He was what you call a philologist, and—”

Lion-Heart held up a hand to cut him off. “Can you translate it?”

“Sure. It’s a password-type thing. ‘Say “friend” and enter.’”

“Friend,” said Lion-Heart, reaching for one of the heavy iron knockers. The doors swung inward before he could touch them, revealing a dim grey-stoned corridor within. No one waited inside; the doors had apparently opened themselves.

“Invisible butler,” Lion-Heart commented. “I like it.”

They stepped inside, none of them being terribly surprised when the doors closed unaided behind them. They found themselves in a shallow alcove; a stuffed thrush eyed them from atop a coat rack. Left of the coat rack another door was set into the wall, and above it a plaque which read: ENTRY HALL AND MICHEL DELVING MATHOM-HOLE.

“Mathom-Hole?” Lion-Heart queried.

“It’s a kind of museum,” explained Z.Z. Top. “Run by hobbits.”

“Hobbits?”

“Little people with hairy feet. They eat and smoke a lot, but they’re cool.”

Nodding, Lion-Heart reached for the doorknob, but again the door opened itself before he could touch it. Beyond was a large space. Shen Han’s voice boomed from within.

“Welcome to Middle-earth,” he said.

II.

The Presidents of Tolkien House were three: Shen Han, Amos Noldorin, and Lucius DeRond. Each had on a simple robe, and in token of their office each wore a ring set with a single gem: Shen Han’s bore a ruby, Noldorin’s a white opal, and Lucius’ a sapphire. They awaited their guests in the west end of the “Mathom-Hole,” which was actually a huge central hall with a great arched skylight. Sunlight from above reflected off dozens of display cases, each of them containing objects from Tolkien’s epic. These objects were all meticulously labeled and their history given, with one exception: lying on a pedestal at the exact center of the hall was a seamless glass case, and within it a broad, shining spearhead. It was not identified.

“Thank you for coming,” Shen Han greeted them, striding forward with the other two Presidents at his side. He shook hands with Lion-Heart and made introductions all around. “I hope before you leave we can convince you to throw in with us.”

“We’ll definitely have to see about that,” Lion-Heart replied. He looked around the hall admiringly. “Impressive.”

“It’s nothing,” Shen Han assured him. “There are other things in the House that you’ll barely be able to believe. We’ll have one of the brothers give you the Grand Tour later.”

“Who built this?” asked Myoko, gazing in wonder at the skylight, which would have served well as the hull of a glass-bottomed frigate.

“The Lady built it,” Noldorin answered.

“The Lady?”

“That’s the only name we have for her,” Shen Han explained. “The House Founder has always been anonymous. In a way it fits; magic dies with no mystery, and magic is what we’re all about. All that’s known for sure is that she loved Tolkien’s work, favored the University . . . and had enough money to make dreams happen.”

“How long ago was the House founded?” inquired the Top.

“They laid the first stones in thirty-six,” Lucius responded. “But the finishing touches stretched on into the mid-Fifties.”

“That can’t be,” Z.Z. insisted.

“Oh?”

“The Lord of the Rings wasn’t published until nineteen fifty-five, and that was over in England . . . not even The Hobbit was in print until the late Thirties. How could your Lady model a House on a set of books that didn’t exist yet?”

Shen Han only smiled. “Like I said: no mystery, no magic. Would any of you care for drinks?”

Sunlight flashed on silver as Noldorin raised his ring-hand. Somewhere near an unseen chime sounded; in answer, a chubby man no more than four feet tall came scurrying into view.

“Ori here is the House butler,” Shen Han introduced him. “He’ll take your orders.”

Ori bowed low to the Bohemians, and Myoko had to suppress a giggle. The fellow wore a colorful pointed cap, and sported a well-kept beard of incredible length.

“I’ll take some Midori,” Lion-Heart told him. “In a shot glass.”

“The same,” said Myoko.

“Black Label Light,” the Top requested, “with a twist of lemon.”

“As you wish,” Shen Han said. “The usual for us, Ori. And you can bring the drinks to . . . well, where shall we entertain our guests?”

“The Wood,” Noldorin suggested.

“The Wood,” Lucius echoed.

“Lothlórien,” explained Shen Han, in answer to Myoko’s curious expression. “In Tolkien it was a great Elven forest.”

“Where is it?” Z.Z. Top asked. “Out back?”

“Oh no,” Shen Han replied. “We do have a fairly extensive woodland surrounding the House—to make it seem more remote, you understand. But it wouldn’t do to have Lothlórien outside; it might rain when we wanted to have a party.”

“You’re not saying it’s inside?”

Again Shen Han smiled. While Ori hurried away to get the drinks, he lifted a ring-adorned hand and pointed to a nearby door.

“The elevator,” he told them, “is that way.”

III.

Lion-Heart had seen a good many elevators in his day, with all manner of interior decor, but this was his very first encounter with one that utilized stone. The inside walls were sheathed in black, mirror-like obsidian, and the door was a thick slab that slid open and shut God knew how. The control buttons were translucent, genuine-looking jewels. Altogether it had a decidedly unelevator-like appearance, which he supposed made sense in this place.

The stone box carried them downwards, until Lion-Heart felt certain they were deep underground. How there could be a forest . . . but he would have to wait and see.

“Khazad-dûm sub-cellars,” Shen Han announced as the elevator smoothed to a halt and the slab-door slid open. He took an oil lantern from a stand just outside and lit it; when the elevator door closed again behind them, they found themselves in a pool of light surrounded by blackness. Smooth stone floor stretched off as far as the eye could see in all directions, with no sign of wall or ceiling; even the elevator shaft was no more than a square stone column rising out of sight above them.

“This has ceased to be real,” pronounced the Top, his mind imagining an impossibly large space around them. One thing sure, this was no ordinary basement.

Shen Han offered him another smile. “The cessation of reality has barely begun. This way, please.”

“How do you know what the right direction is?” Z.Z. Top asked, as they were led into the darkness. “Shouldn’t you get something more powerful than that lamp? We don’t want to get lost.”

“We know the way,” Noldorin assured him. “More light, less mystery.”

“Mmm. I understand . . . if we could see better, it’d spoil the illusion.”

“Or terrify you,” Lucius suggested.

Even as he spoke, Lion-Heart drew in his breath. Before them the floor abruptly dropped away, as into a chasm, and only a slender, railless bridge of stone continued on.

“No way,” the Top protested, his maximum level of suspension of disbelief reached. The light of the lantern revealed no bottom to the gap in front of them, but he knew that it was impossible—impossible—for an actual canyon to have been excavated down here. “What is it really, six feet deep?”

His question went unanswered. “Take care not to fall in,” was all Shen Han would say, as he led them single file over the bridge. For the briefest of instants Z.Z. Top was tempted to make the ultimate test and leap over the side. There could be no real danger . . . but then Z.Z. heard a sound like wind moaning beneath him, and his courage faltered.

At the far end of the bridge they found a short corridor, and at the end of that a pair of stone doors that Shen Han thrust open with the help of Noldorin. The Bohemians passed through and found that they had just stepped out of a hillside into a wooded glade.

A light breeze was blowing, and above them hung a night sky full of stars.

IV.

“A dome,” Lion-Heart said, penetrating this illusion immediately, though not through any flaw in its quality. “Like the Hayden Planetarium, underground and bigger.” He turned to Shen Han. “How far can I walk down here before the sky touches the ground?”

“You could experiment and find out,” Shen Han replied. “But why do it? It’s a paradise here, if you let it be. We have complete control over the climate: we can make it colder, warmer, more or less windy, we can weave a fog, conjure up a meteor storm for a light show, even make it rain if the mood strikes us.”

“Can you make a sunrise?”

“Starshine is more peaceful.”

“I’ll bet,” put in the Top. “And a day sky wouldn’t seem so realistic, would it? Where are the projectors at?”

“Do you really want to spend so much time asking unimportant questions?” came the reply.

Lion-Heart laid a hand on Z.Z. Top’s shoulder. “No,” he said for both of them. “You’re right, a little mystery will be good for us.”

Shen Han nodded respectfully, dousing the lantern at the same moment. Here there was no need for it; night sky or no, Lothlórien had enough light—light from unknown and best-left-unquestioned sources—to see one’s surroundings. Real trees grew in the forest, beautiful trees with pale grey bark and golden flower blossoms among their leaves; how they were sustained in this odd witchlight was yet another mystery.

The Bohemians were given a brief tour. Lion-Heart guessed that this brevity was due in part to the fact that, whether or not Shen Han wanted to discuss it, the underground paradise had a fairly limited area; enough room for relaxation, but not enough for an extended hike. The three Presidents each pointed out their favorite features of the forest: a fountain formed of uncut stone, with a tiny brook leading away from it; a giant mushroom that would have been more at home with Lewis Carroll than Tolkien; an Enchanted Circle of bright stones. Through it all there was a sound of almost-singing in the air, as if a chorus were being hummed in the background by creatures that could not quite be seen.

At the last the tour group came into a clearing surrounded by a tall hedge. The brook from the fountain ran through here, and beside it stood a water-filled silver basin set into a low pedestal. The basin and pedestal were central to the clearing, and no doubt intended to be the main attraction, but most of the attention was stolen from them by a tall figure leaning against a hedge across the brook.

“What the hell is that?” the Top burst out.

“That,” Shen Han replied, sounding sheepish for a change, “is the Rubbermaid. Our mascot, sort of.”

“That thing is from Tolkien?” Myoko asked doubtfully.

“Not fucking likely,” Z.Z. Top answered her. “Unless he wrote a porno novel that nobody knows about.”

The Rubbermaid did look like something out of a blue novel or movie, not very Tolkienish at all. A tall, pale mannequin with dark hair and a frighteningly exaggerated bust-line, it was garbed in black leather in the manner of a dominatrix. Its plastic arms were outstretched, and gloved hands offered a bowl that contained something the Bohemians could not see from where they stood.

“Where’d you get this?” inquired the Top, hopping over the brook and approaching the mannequin. “And more important, why? I’d really like to know, unless it’s another one of your mysteries.”

“No mystery,” Lucius responded. “Despite all our magic we’re still a fraternity in the end, and we share a certain bond with the other Houses. Do you remember the controversy last year, with that group that called itself PUGS?”

“People for the Undermining of the Greek System,” Myoko said. “I remember them.”

“Then,” Lucius continued, “you’ll recall PUGS’ main platform: they thought the evils of the fraternity-sorority system outweighed the good. One of the main charges against the fraternities was that they promoted sexism . . .”

“And they do,” Lion-Heart pointed out. “But then so does the rest of the world, more or less. No one’s pure.”

“Not even the Bohemians,” Myoko suggested.

“Not even the Kennedys,” the Top added, scratching his nose.

“. . . Well,” Lucius pushed onward, “be that as it may, maybe you can understand that we felt a bit left out. All the frats were getting blasted without any distinctions, but as far as we could tell Tolkien House didn’t have so much as one nude pin-up on the walls. So to save face, we went and had the Rubbermaid custom-designed for us.”

“Very Bohemian of you.”

“But not Tolkienian,” commented Z.Z. Top, taking something from the bowl the Rubbermaid offered. There was a tear of foil packaging and he shook out a lubricated latex tube with a grinning face inscribed at one end. “‘Mr. Happy,’” Top quoted the advertising jingle, “‘the only condom with a smile to call its own.’ Tolkien would have crucified you guys.”

Shen Han shrugged. “Eventually we’ll get rid of it. For the time being, though, the Rubbermaid’s become quite a conversation piece.”

“This whole place is a conversation piece,” Lion-Heart said. “And now that we’ve seen Lothlórien, how about telling us what you want?”

“We’ve told you already,” said Shen Han, a touch nervously. “We want you as members . . .”

“If the rest of the House is anything like this forest, here,” Lion-Heart replied, “there’s no chance you’d be giving away a blanket membership to a group like the Bohemians. Not without some other string attached.” He spread his arms, as if to gather in earth, greenery, and projected sky. “This is too pretty. Share it with the wrong people and they might ruin it. So what’s the extra hook?”

Shen Han considered for a moment, then turned to Noldorin. “Show him,” he said.

Nodding, Noldorin stepped up to the pedestal that held the silver basin. He gestured to the Bohemian King to come forward, and Lion-Heart did so. Staring into the water he saw that the bottom of the basin was dark, reflecting the stars above.

“Watch closely,” Noldorin told him. “And be careful that you don’t touch the water.”

With that he gestured at the basin with his ring-hand. The stars in the basin vanished, to be replaced by various scenes of Ithaca and the Cornell campus. Though he knew them to be some sort of mechanical projection, Lion-Heart was still impressed, for unlike a series of slides, the images faded smoothly from one to the other. After a time Risley appeared in the water, and this image gave way to a face that Lion-Heart knew well. He burst out laughing; for the face was Fujiko’s, and the reason behind the offer of membership suddenly clear.

“Which one of you is in love with her?” Lion-Heart asked. He looked at Noldorin, saw something in his expression. “You?”

Very slowly, Noldorin nodded. He tried not to blush; that would have been unbecoming for a fraternity President.

“Well, she’s unattached,” said Lion-Heart. “Not that I can promise you anything more than an introduction, and you can have that free if you want it. Are you sure you want to make such an uneven trade?”

“We’re sure,” Noldorin replied. “It’s the spirit of it.”

“All right then,” said Lion-Heart. “I guess Bohemia’s going to be honorary Greek—or whatever this place is.”

Noldorin smiled broadly and reached out to shake Lion-Heart’s hand. As he did, the image in the basin shifted yet again; now it showed an outside view of Tolkien House itself, a treetop-level view that looked beyond the surrounding wood tract and revealed, just barely, the rooftop of another nearby Greek House. It was really just a glimpse, but all the same Lion-Heart recognized that rooftop, and froze. His good humor of a moment ago drained away.

“What’s wrong?” Noldorin asked, concerned.

Lion-Heart looked at him with a deadly seriousness. “You have neighbors.”

“What?”

“We have two neighbors on adjoining property,” Shen Han spoke up. “Carl Sagan and Rho Alpha Tau.”

“Trust me,” said the Top, “he’s not talking about Carl.”

“You’re worried about our relationship with Rho Alpha Tau?” asked Noldorin of Lion-Heart. “Is that it?”

“Let’s say I’m curious what you think about them.”

Noldorin shrugged. “The distance between the two Houses could be wider,” he said. “And if the ground opened up and swallowed them I don’t suppose we’d hold a wake.”

“What is it you want us to say?” Shen Han inquired. “The Rat Frat’s reputation is an embarrassment for the whole system. No one loves them.”

“No one but Tri-Pi sorority,” Z.Z. Top corrected him. “Isn’t that a fucking shame?”

“It’s a shame, but we don’t share Tri-Pi’s enthusiasm,” Noldorin insisted. “Do you want us to swear to that?”

Lion-Heart stared up at the stars in silence for a long moment before answering.

“Sometimes I speak too quickly,” he said. “I have one more question I have to ask before we can seal the bargain. You may be insulted by it, but I need to know . . . and I’ll be able to tell if you lie to me.”

“Go ahead,” Noldorin prompted him, nodding.

“Has there ever been a rape here?”

“A rape?” Shen Han exclaimed.

“Yes, a rape,” Lion-Heart repeated. “It’s this funny thing that happens at fraternity parties sometimes. A woman gets so drunk that she barely knows what’s going on, and she winds up in bed with some brother who knows exactly what’s going on. Maybe a string of brothers; maybe they planned it that way in the first place. Am I coming through clearly?”

“Any of our brothers,” said Noldorin, “who were involved in something like that would be permanently expelled from the House. But it’s never happened here, and we don’t expect it to. Our brothers have never needed to get their partners drunk.”

Lion-Heart studied his face carefully as he spoke, nodding at the conclusion; there was no dishonesty to be found in Noldorin’s expression.

“Tell me,” asked Lucius, who had said nothing for a long time, “did something happen to one of your people? Something involving Rho Alpha Tau?”

“Yes,” the Bohemian King said softly. “Something happened to a very dear friend.”

He looked over at the Rubbermaid, reconsidering it.

“Can you do me a favor?” he asked them. “Can you get rid of that thing before we have our first big party together? It ruins the atmosphere in here.”

“It’ll be done as you wish,” Shen Han promised him.

“You’ll join with us, then?” asked Noldorin.

Lion-Heart nodded. A moment later he managed a smile. “Well, where’s that butler of yours? Might as well do this right and toast each other.”

Ori the dwarf appeared as if on cue, bearing their drinks: Midori for Lion-Heart and Myoko, beer with lemon for Z.Z. Top, and Tequila Sunsets for the three Presidents. These were passed round, lengthy and eloquent toasts made, and friendships begun between the Bohemians and the Tol­kienians. Yet through it all, Lion-Heart never stopped thinking about his archenemies, the brothers of the Rat Frat.

V.

Despite the jokes it had to endure at the hands of its many detractors, Rho Alpha Tau’s name was not as foolishly chosen as might first seem. It must be pointed out that the Greek rho is written as P—thus the letters spelled PAT, not RAT. This being made clear, it should come as no surprise that one of the founders of the House was a not-very-modest Anglo-Saxon named Patrick Baron, whose father had made a small fortune in the coal mining industry. Rich and conservative in a bad way, Baron became the fraternity’s first president and set the tone of the House leadership for decades to come.

Rho Alpha Tau came into being in the last days of the McCarthy Era; Red-baiting was a popular pastime for the early brothers. But it was the Sixties, decade of civil and social rights, that saw the first real tarnishes to Rho Alpha Tau’s image. The bad word began to spread after a series of incidents in the latter half of the decade, including the infamous Martin Luther King party. The party, a very exclusive affair to which only verbal invitations were given, was held shortly after King’s assassination. Guests were encouraged to bring chains, hubcaps, and other appropriate items to the celebration; the highlight of the evening was the Costume Contest, at which fraternity Vice-President Ted Pulaski appeared in blackface, wearing a bloodstained shirt. This proved too tasteless for a good many of the brothers; seven of them quit the House during the following week. Yet none of these seven would stand witness to what had happened, and though word did get out about the party, nothing was ever proven.

In spring of the following year, Cornell made national headlines when a group of militant black students staged a takeover of Willard Straight Hall during Parents’ Weekend. The Straight Takeover of ’69 was to become legendary, though it need not have been; in the beginning, at least, it was no more serious than numerous other takeovers that occurred throughout the Sixties and early Seventies.

The blacks moved in at 5:30 A.M. on Saturday morning, evicting those visiting parents who had been put up at the Straight for the Weekend. At 9:30 A.M., the course of history was changed when Ted Pulaski (now PAT President) led a commando force of twenty-five Rho Alpha Tau brothers into the Straight through a side window, intending to recapture the building. They were not successful; Pulaski was ejected bodily out the same window through which he had entered. Thereafter the Cornell Safety Division tightened security around the building, but rumors began to spread that members of several white fraternities, including the Rho Alphas, were planning a second assault, this time with rifles. The threat never materialized, but that night the blacks, no longer trusting the campus police (if they ever had), imported guns of their own into the Straight to protect themselves. Though the incident was resolved without bloodshed, this additional element of the guns assured nationwide media coverage, and helped the story pass on into local myth. Years later “the Straight Takeover” remained a campus catch-phrase, though not everyone knew the details of what had taken place; nor was Rho Alpha Tau’s role in the events ever quite forgotten.

Certainly it was well remembered in the first few years after the Takeover. When the newly christened Africana Center was gutted by fire in April 1970, many blacks suspected arson, and at least one carried his suspicions a step further. On a moonless night a few weeks later, Ray Avriel Stanner ’72 crept up on Rho Alpha Tau after midnight with a ladder and a bucket of paint. Working quickly and quietly, he added an extra leg to the ‘P’ above the front porch of the House. Like the Rho Alpha’s commando raid on the Straight, this simple act changed history.

Stanner was spotted by two brothers halfway down the ladder. They sounded a call to arms; Stanner ditched his paint and ran for it, pursued by an angry mob. Flying down Thurston Avenue he was saved by the timely appearance of a cocky young Ithacop named Samuel Doubleday. Doubleday, a white man with no college education, didn’t know exactly what he thought of black people, but he did know that he didn’t like lynchings on his beat. Not one for long speeches, he dispersed the angry brothers by emptying his revolver into the air. Stanner later faced charges for vandalism, but he graduated Cornell with honors, and Rho Alpha Tau was known ever after as “the Rat Frat.” The nickname did not fade with time, for the House never ceased to deserve it.

And so it happened that, two years prior to the alliance between Tolkien House and the Bohemians, a Grey Lady named Pearl wound up drunk at a Rho Alpha Tau after-hours party. She didn’t realize which fraternity she had come to; that night she had been at a dozen parties up and down the Row, looking for a Sigma Alpha Epsilon brother named Jim Richland. Instead she met Jack Baron, second son of Patrick Baron, who led her—already drunk—to the House bar, and with a well-practiced charm coaxed her through three Kamikazis. When Pearl woke up in the morning, crashed out on the Rho Alpha’s back lawn with a paralyzing hangover, she could not remember who or how many of the brothers had been with her, but what memories she did have were almost more than she could live with.

Two weeks later Pearl left the Bohemians, and a week after that the University; Jim Richland, who would eventually take the name Panhandle, went looking for Jack Baron and got a black eye for his trouble; an investigation by the Inter-Fraternity Council into the events of the after-hours party turned up no witnesses; and Lion-Heart, infuriated by the Council’s helplessness, swore an oath of vengeance against Jack Baron and the brothers of the Rat Frat.

For two years the Bohemian King had sought the overthrow of the House; yet in the end he played no part in the matter. The very same day that he toasted Shen Han, Noldorin, and Lucius in the garden of Lothlórien, the downfall of Rho Alpha Tau was set in motion. Ragnarok, not Lion-Heart, was its instrument, and it began, ironically enough, on the steps of Willard Straight Hall, shortly before midnight.

JINSEI AND THE BLACK KNIGHT

I.

Evening came to that well-hilled part of the World, but in an even loftier place, in Mr. Sunshine’s Library, it remained as bright and Saturday-­afternoonish as always. The breeze still smelled pleasantly of laurel; the lowing of cattle and the distant lyre-chords continued to accompany the clacking of the Typewriters.

The Storyteller had shoved over one of the Monkeys again, taken its place at the Typewriter devoted to “Fool on The Hill.” Calliope and George were already together; she had him well in hand. Now it was time to add another layer to the Tale, bring another Character to the fore.

Mr. Sunshine Typed:

Set Ragnarok up against Jack Baron.

Having Written this he paused briefly, then added:

Ragnarok’s trial is not George’s trial.

Almost immediately he shook his head at the redundancy. Obviously their trials were not the same. No need to waste Words—William Strunk, E. B. White, and the Chinese Emperor Shih Huang Ti had all been in agreement on that.

“I must be getting Old,” said Mr. Sunshine to the Monkey. The Monkey had no comment.

Obviously their trials were not the same; they were very different Characters. Yet just as a classic heroic tale needs a Saint, an unabashedly White-Hatted and periodically naive champion of romantic love, so too it isn’t quite complete without that other, more dubious, good guy: The Black Knight.

II.

The computer jockey’s name was Lenny Chiu, and he stood just over five feet in his black dress shoes. He wore no tuxedo—Jinsei had convinced him to go for a less formal and more comfortable style—but he carried himself regally, like a prince on his way to the palace ball. He perhaps had reason to feel special, for Jinsei had fished him out of a sea of seemingly cloned Engineering students with matching steel-rimmed glasses, no-nonsense work shirts, and multi-function programmable calculators. They were not steadies in any sense of the word, just dating; but if Jinsei did not give much thought to the possible future of their relationship, Lenny certainly did, and this added an extra spring to his step.

Jinsei, dressed simply in a clean white jumpsuit that reflected the moonlight, thought only of having fun. Since the first week when Ginny Porterhouse had introduced her to the campus—an introduction that included Ragnarok and Preacher—her workload had been without respite. Tonight represented her first real chance to just relax and enjoy herself, and she planned to do so. Walking hand in hand with the wind ruffling her hair, Jinsei too felt a touch regal—though Princess was not quite the title she would have chosen. A Lady of the Court, perhaps.

The royal function she and Lenny had chosen to honor with their presence was the semi-annual Cornell Asian-Americans United (CAAU) Dance, which had got going at half past ten and was now in full swing. Inside Willard Straight Hall’s Memorial Room, Adult Eastern—a good band, if no match for Benny Profane—played to an enthusiastic audience: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Western Orientals in pressed tuxedos and long cotton dresses. The Bohemians were there too, of course, accompanying the Grey Ladies and making as much of a scene as possible. Lion-Heart and Myoko calmly ruled the dance floor; Z.Z. Top threw toast at the band; Preacher discussed Third World politics and any-world sex with a Taiwanese exchange student; Woodstock got drunker than a fish and made a general nuisance of himself.

Jinsei and her date walked up the steps of the Straight together, laughing, and at that same moment the front doors of the building swung outward. A cake-slice of music slipped through the opening, and with it three brothers of the Rat Frat, Rho Alpha President Jack Baron leading the pack. At his side was Bill Chaney, the House Treasurer, and directly behind him, Bobby Shelton, a lineman for the Big Red football team who weighed in the neighborhood of two hundred and thirty pounds. Shelton was in the process of demolishing an apple he’d smuggled out of Oakenshields late-night dining; so intent was the football player on this bit of food that he very nearly ignored the Asian couple and kept to his own business.

Then Jinsei’s laugh drew Bobby’s attention and almost as a reflex he launched the apple—now little more than a core—through the air with a flick of his wrist. It struck Lenny Chiu hard in the side of the head, stunning him and sending his glasses spinning away.

Even then a full-blown incident might have been avoided, if Lenny had done the sensible and unsatisfying thing and kept walking. But Jinsei’s presence made that a hard choice, besides which Lenny Chiu had more courage in him than might be expected of a brain. He stooped down and sealed his own doom by retrieving the apple core instead of his glasses, turning on Shelton with an anger that his small frame could not quite hope to live up to.

“You apologize,” he demanded. “Now.”

Bobby Shelton chose his response with care.

“You go fuck yourself,” came the reply. And as an afterthought: “Chink.”

Lenny brought his arm up and winged the apple core back at Bobby. The return throw was not as strong, but just as accurate as the opener. The core flew on a direct bead for Shelton’s face . . . and then the football player’s right hand snatched it out of the air, no more than two inches from his nose. Pass intercepted.

And still events might have gone no further. As President of the House, Jack Baron maintained absolute authority over his brethren; a single word would have been sufficient to call Shelton off. Later he would wonder at length why he did not do this, what passing lunacy or compulsion kept him from giving the word of command that would bring Bobby Shelton to heel as effectively as a leash. Instead he watched in silence while the football player closed his fist around the apple core, crushing it. There was almost no flesh left on the fruit, yet so strong was his grip that juice ran from the cracks between his fingers. Lenny Chiu saw this and his courage wavered.

Smiling, Bobby Shelton glanced briefly at Jack, double-checking that he had free rein; Rho Alpha Tau’s President made no motion to stop him. Shelton’s attention returned to Lenny.

“You’re all done,” he said.

III.

“Did you say pool?” Ragnarok shouted above the din. Adult Eastern’s lead guitarist was tearing through a high-volume solo, and what room she left for other noise was mostly filled by Z.Z. Top, arguing with the Dance Organizer about whether bringing his burro onto the dance floor constituted a safety hazard or not.

“Pool,” Panhandle agreed, stepping closer around a press of Grey Ladies. He held up a shiny bit of metal. “Key to the game room upstairs. You look kind of bored, figure a rack or two of Eight Ball’d be just the thing.”

“Dollar a game?”

“Sounds fair.”

“You’re my man,” Ragnarok said.

They elbowed their way to the exit. After the clamor of the Memorial Room, the Straight Lobby seemed almost church-quiet.

“So tell me the truth,” Panhandle asked, “How come you never dance at these things?”

“Just not my kind of excitement,” the Black Knight told him. They turned right, toward the steps up to the game room, but all at once Ragnarok stopped and cocked his head. Adjusting his sunglasses on his head, he stared across the Lobby at the front door.

“What?” Panhandle said.

IV.

“This man is hurtin’ for certain,” Bill Chaney observed wryly.

Lenny Chiu was down on the ground, for the third, but unfortunately not last, time. Though hurt indeed, he didn’t look that bad; Bobby Shelton had been careful to keep his punches below the neckline and above the waist, so the only visible damage was a scrape on the heel of Lenny’s hand, where he had skinned himself falling. Now Jinsei leaned over him, trying to see how bad off he really was and at the same time convince him to stay down.

“Better listen to her,” Shelton advised, as Lenny shrugged Jinsei’s arm away and started struggling to his feet again. “Aren’t you people supposed to be smart? Don’t push your luck with me.”

Lenny made it all the way up and launched himself at the football player, arms pinwheeling. One wild swing actually got through, a clip on the side of the Rat brother’s head, and then Shelton lost control of his temper and hit Lenny three times. The computer jockey crumpled—this time for keeps—blood running from his lip and nose.

Now it was Jinsei’s turn to run forward, shouting something like “Stop it! Stop it, you leave him alone you—”; Chaney caught her, holding her back easily, laughing, but still she managed to turn her head toward Jack Baron and scream “Stop it!” At last some of Jack’s sense returned to him. He remembered where they were, how easy it would be for one or more of the revelers at the dance to step outside for some fresh air, how easy it would be for a Sun reporter to get downwind and escalate this into an Inter-Fraternity Council–sponsored nightmare. Things had already gotten ridiculously out of hand.

“Bobby,” he said. But for once Shelton was not of a mind to rein in immediately.

“Son of a bitch tagged me, Jack,” Shelton replied, rubbing the side of his head, trying to shake off a buzzing noise that had settled in his left ear. He gave Lenny a not-too-gentle nudge with his foot. “Come on, asshole. Get up again. I want one more round with you.”

“Bobby!” Jack Baron repeated impatiently. But then several things happened in rapid succession.

Shelton, still ignoring Jack’s word of command, bent down and grabbed Lenny by the collar. As if aggravated by the motion, the buzzing in his ear grew louder, changing to a roar . . . and now he was not the only one who heard it. Jack Baron froze at the sound, his veins filling up with ice; Bill Chaney let go of Jinsei and turned toward the source of the noise. Jinsei took the chance to run once more to Lenny’s aid, and that was when the doors of the Straight crashed open, vomiting forth a black-garbed demon on a motorcycle. With the bike’s throttle wide open Ragnarok sideswiped Chaney, then flew off the edge of the steps, landing safely at the bottom on two wheels. He swung the cycle around in a controlled skid, braking and bringing it to a halt no more than ten feet from the locked doors of the Campus Store.

Eyes wide, Shelton stood back up, forgetting all about Lenny with the appearance of this new enemy. He spent a brief moment sizing Ragnarok up, the lesser evolved part of his brain clicking over twice and throwing all circuits into the red. Then he charged.

“Here I come!” he bellowed, springing down the steps and stampeding with more enthusiasm than he’d ever shown on a football field. Ragnarok dropped the motorcycle’s kickstand and cut the engine in one motion. Perfectly calm, he stepped off the bike, removed the black mace from the side rack. Readied himself. Then Bobby Shelton was on him, eyes blazing, arms raised to deflect an overhead swing.

“Here you go,” Ragnarok whispered, coming from below, driving the head of the mace end-on into Shelton’s lower abdomen. The football player’s stomach muscles were rock hard, but even rock will yield to the force of a jackhammer; he doubled over, all the air going out of him in a whoosh. Ragnarok disentangled his arm and stepped forward, aiming a wide-arc swing at the back of Bobby’s right knee. Once, twice he struck, and on the second blow the leg gave and Shelton fell, crashing to earth with all the grace of a collapsing mountain.

Now Bill Chaney came on, easier meat by far. Ragnarok stood motionless and gave him two free swings, neither of which seemed to have any effect. Then the Bohemian Minister of Defense took his turn, not even bothering to use the mace; he decked Chaney with an old-fashioned right cross instead. Chaney did not go down like a collapsed mountain; he went down like a duck at a Coney Island shooting gallery, splat, flat, just like that.

Jack Baron had not moved. He remained on the front steps of the Straight—where Jinsei also still stood, looking at Ragnarok with complete shock on her face—mustering all the cool he had in him. There were two down, one to go, but the president of Rho Alpha Tau did not intend to be that one.

“Why don’t you come over here, Jack?” Ragnarok called to him, his voice emotionless, almost dead. “Show me your best move.”

“No,” Jack said, forcing a cold smile. “I don’t think so. You’d have a bit too much advantage with that club you’re holding.”

Ragnarok gestured at Lenny, who was sitting up, bloody. “How much advantage did Shelton have on him, Jack? How many pounds? Seventy-five? A hundred?”

“Yes, well, be that as it may, if you intend to beat me to death, you’ll have to do it without provocation.”

This brought a soft chuckle. “Oh, you’re good Jack, you really are. Sound innocent even with your hand stuck in the cookie jar. Maybe that’s why Lion-Heart never managed to get even for Pearl—it’s not in him to fight down and dirty, even against a born dirty-fighter. But you’ve never really gone up against me before, have you?”

“I’m thrilled to finally see what I’ve been missing.”

“Oh, you aren’t thrilled,” Ragnarok said seriously. “You’re scared shitless. It’s taking everything you’ve got not to shake. And the thing that’s bothering you the most is that you can’t read me at all.” He adjusted his sunglasses. “The shades have got you going, too. You’re wondering what the fuck’s going on behind them, wondering how the fuck I can see. Most of all you’re wondering exactly where I’m looking right now. That’s got your balls up.”

“And you said I was good,” came the reply.

“You are good. I just laid out two of your brothers without a sweat, and inside that head of yours you’re figuring I’m probably going to do the same to you, but you’ve managed not to panic.”

“You’re not that frightening.”

Ragnarok pivoted suddenly, lashing out with a boot. Chaney gave a cry and flopped over, clutching his side.

“Might have sprung a rib there.” mused Ragnarok. He turned back to Jack. “You sure you’re not frightened?”

The Rho Alpha Tau President made no reply, but his cool was slipping away visibly. Next to him Jinsei made a strange sound in her throat.

“You should be frightened,” Ragnarok continued, beginning to walk closer as he spoke. “My old man sold his soul to the Devil, you know that? Bet you didn’t. Sold his soul, sold a good piece of mine in the bargain. You ought to be frightened, Jack. Because I know the Devil, and I know where you live.”

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”

“Gets dark up there at night, up around Fraternity Row,” answered Ragnarok. He stood now at the foot of the Straight steps, smiling like a pallbearer. “They’ve got streetlamps and all, but streetlamps have a peculiar way of breaking. On a dark stretch of road, cloudy night, a white man dressed in black would be nearly invisible if he kept his head down. You might not ever see him coming.

“But it might not even be you he’s coming for. Cars have a way of breaking down too, just like streetlamps—especially those fancy cars fraternity boys drive. Boom, one night your Porsche just won’t start, no way to pick up your girlfriend, so she walks over to the House to meet you instead, and now she’s on that dark stretch of road, all alone . . .”

His voice was calm, matter-of-fact, full of genuine threat. Jack’s cool drained off entirely.

“You shut up!” he told Ragnarok, trying to back his words with real fury, but terror undercut it. “You shut up with that talk! If anything ever happens to Alison . . .”

Ragnarok nodded sympathetically. “It’s different, isn’t it? When it’s someone you know, maybe even care about, instead of just some drunk chick at a shagging. When it’s you and yours on the block instead of a stranger up against someone twice his size. When you don’t have control.”

He set his foot on the lowest step, and Jack flinched, convinced now that Ragnarok meant to club him down, worse.

“Stay away from me! You stay away, there’s people right inside there, some of them could come out any time now.”

“No one’s come out for a while,” Ragnarok observed, rising another step. “Who knows, maybe they really like the band. Or maybe someone’s detouring them.”

“What about out here?” Jack countered, backing up. “It’s not so late, people go by all the time . . .”

“I know. Do you see them?”

He looked around, and he did see them, a small group, maybe four or five, watching from a safe distance.

“Hey!” he shouted, almost shrieked. “Hey, don’t just stand there! Call Public Safety! Call Safety, goddamnit!”

“Twelve patrol cars loaded with Ithacops,” Ragnarok assured him, “couldn’t keep me from breaking your jaw if I moved fast enough.”

Jinsei’s voice, soft but urgent: “No. Stop.”

Jack looked around at the swinging doors, too late to dive inside to safety, for Ragnarok had him backed up against the side of the building now. The mace came up slowly, head pressing firmly against Jack Baron’s Adam’s apple, pinning him.

“The big surprise,” said Ragnarok. “is I’m not going to put a scratch on you. All I want is your jacket.”

“My what?” Strained; he was having trouble breathing.

“A trade. Pride for pride. Your House jacket for his bruises.”

Jinsei again, close at Ragnarok’s side, imploring: “Lenny’s hurt. This won’t help him.”

Ragnarok did not ease off. “Your jacket. Now.”

“All right!” Jack caved in. “All right, fine, here, take it!” And he was struggling out of the Rho Alpha Tau blazer, Ragnarok drawing back the mace to let him do it.

“Good,” the Bohemian said, when the blazer lay at his feet.

Shorn, a touch of bravado returned to Jack Baron: “Aren’t you going to make me apologize now? Grovel?”

“Not worth the trouble. But when you get home and start thinking about all the ways you want to get even with me, remember how you felt a minute ago. You can feel that way again. With cause.”

And Ragnarok stepped back, letting Jack hurry past, only sticking his foot out at the last moment. The Chief Rat tripped, stumbled, rolled down the steps, bruising an elbow and tearing up the sleeve of the silk shirt he was wearing.

“You bastard,” he whispered, pulling himself up.

“That’s just right,” replied Ragnarok. “Now take your people and get the fuck out of here.”

He did as he was told, levering Shelton to his feet, helping up Chaney. With the action over, the knot of spectators dissolved, going their various ways, but Ragnarok did not take his eyes off the Rat brothers, not when Jinsei laid a hand on his arm, not even when Z.Z. Top at last came out to see what was happening. In his heart of hearts, the Minister of Defense, the Black Knight of Bohemia, tended a flame of perfect hatred for the retreating trio.

But even more than that, he hated himself.

SLEEPTALKING

I.

In her high-security single in Balch Hall (nicknamed the Nunnery for its standing as one of the last all-female dorms on campus), Aurora Borealis Smith lay deep in dream. It was a pleasant vision, no trace of nightmare; in it, she lived the life of a tree spirit in the enchanted wood of Stephen George’s book. She danced among oak and maple, flew up above the highest branches on invisible wings, watched the sun set over a long pond not unlike Beebe Lake . . . and on the far bank, a storybook knight in shining armor flew a kite in the evening breeze.

“Why not go over and introduce yourself to him?” suggested Walter Smith, who was a tall willow in the dream. “He looks like an open-minded sort of fellow. Not so stubborn as some.”

“Oh, Daddy . . .” Aurora turned over in her sleep, unconsciously bumping the night table beside her bed. A torn envelope fluttered over the edge, and with it the folded card that had come inside. The card was silvery and imprinted on the outer cover were the words:

AN INVITATION . . .

These two words written in some odd flowing script, and so too the continuation on the inside:

The Lady of Tolkien House

Invites You to

A Hallowe’en Revel

Ten O’Clock, Hallowe’en Night

Dress Casual or

Come as Your Favorite Elf

+ + + + +

No RSVP Required;

Bring a Guest

An Enchantment Promised for All

At the bottom was an imprint of a white rose.

Earlier in the evening Aurora had shown the invitation to Brian, discussed it with him. He had been mostly negative, reminding her that the Cornell Christers would likely have a Halloween outing planned.

“Besides, I don’t know that a fraternity party is the sort of thing we’d enjoy,” Brian had told her.

“We have lots of friends in Houses,” Aurora protested. “And anyway, Tolkien House is supposed to be something special. Didn’t you ever hear of it?”

“I guess not. But ‘The Lady of Tolkien House?’ You sure this isn’t some kind of joke? It is still a little bit early to be sending out Halloween invitations.”

“I don’t think it’s a joke,” said Aurora, studying the card. “Don’t you think it’s too pretty for a prank?”

“But who would have sent it? We don’t know anyone in Tolkien House, do we? . . .”

So it had gone, back and forth for nearly half an hour. At the end Brian had stepped out of the argument by reminding her again that it was still a ways to go until Halloween, and they could decide what they were doing later. Aurora knew from experience that by the time “later” rolled around Brian would probably have made other plans for the both of them, but this time, she thought, she would insist on having her way no matter what.

An Enchantment Promised for All . . .

In the dream, the sun sank completely, vanishing behind a lone hill on the horizon. The knight began reeling in his kite.

“Yes ma’am,” commented Walter the Willow, “fellow like that might know the rule of give and take. No sense fighting over little things.”

“But who is he?” Aurora asked.

“Why don’t you go ask him? Maybe he’s waiting for someone to go ask him.”

“Oh, Daddy . . .” Aurora repeated. But even as she spoke she was rising into the air, catching the wind and skimming above the surface of the pond, hurrying to catch up to the knight.

II.

Hobart was alone in the Clock Tower, drinking. He had gone down into the drop-shaft, where slowly descending weights had originally driven the gears of the Clock before its connection to an electric motor. Sitting on a ledge with his legs dangling over a dark gulf—a safety cord tied around his waist to prevent him from tumbling into oblivion in a stupor—he took long draughts from a thimble mug. The drink was a special mixture of alcohol, hash oil, and various magic herbs; used properly, in liberal amounts, it brought about visions, often visions of lost friends or loved ones. Hobart did not make a regular habit of it, considering himself too old for such artificial fancies, but once in a very long while he put aside his maturity and indulged.

Shortly after draining the mug, Hobart’s head began to nod. His snore drowned out the sound of a thimble as it slipped from his grasp and fell into the gulf, striking the side of the drop-shaft twice before hitting bottom. Drifting into dream, he was filled with a pleasant expectation, thinking to see his wife Zee—who had met with a fatal accident some five years ago—or perhaps Jenny McGraw, shrunk down to sprite size through the magic of hallucination.

But this time, at first, there was no vision at all, only darkness, and the disembodied voice of his granddaughter Zephyr, asking: What’s so bad about The Boneyard? What’s in there?

His own voice, answering: Nightmares. Old nightmares.

Then the sounds of rain and thunder, a storm in full fury, and underneath a babble that was just barely intelligible. More voices, these from the distant past.

Rats! I see rats over behind those stones!

Get those crossbows reloaded! Mercutio, you others, start lowering the box!

Hobart! . . . Hobart, watch out, the seal is broken!

“No,” Hobart whispered. Now a scene was materializing around him. He stood in The Boneyard, his back up against a tombstone. It was dark, raining, but for all that he could clearly see the second stone off to his left, a plain white marble square carved with a single word:

PANDORA

“’Fraid I got some bad news for you, Hobart,” said a long-deceased but well-remembered figure from Hobart’s youth, stepping out of the gloom. “Got a warning for you, too.”

“Julius,” Hobart said, recognizing him. Then he shook his head. “No. You can’t be here, Julius.”

“Why not?” the figure inquired. “I’m dead, ain’t I? Over a century now, longer than that Jenny McGraw, even. You wouldn’t have been surprised to see her, would you?”

“Not here,” insisted Hobart. “I don’t want to talk to you in this place.”

“This place. You just want to forget about The Boneyard, don’t you? Fine. Only you can’t, not yet. Maybe never.”

“The War’s ended, Julius. For a long time. There’s nothing here that concerns me.”

“So am I, ended,” Julius replied. “Long time. But a little magic drink, and voom: I’m back, even if it’s only in your head. Magic can bring back a lot of things, Hobart. Especially if they were never really gone to begin with.”

Shaking his head: “No. No.”

“We never killed him, Hobart.”

“No, Julius.”

“We put him in the ground, you and I and the others, but we never actually killed him.”

“The box, Julius,” Hobart hissed. “No air. No food. No water. After a century—”

“More than a century, Hobart. But the past doesn’t always bury so easy. He still had a lot of power when we put him down the hole.” Julius grinned in a way that made Hobart shiver. “I ought to know that better than anybody.”

“He can not still be alive. I won’t accept that.”

“Then how is it you keep warning your granddaughter away from here, eh? ’Fraid a bad memory might get her?”

“There are rats . . .”

“Sure. But that ain’t what scares you, Hobart, and you know it.”

Hobart opened his mouth to protest, but at that moment the ground shook. There was a booming sound as if the earth had been struck from below. Heart skittering, hand drifting to his sword hilt, he turned and saw that the white square had tilted up some, the dirt beneath it bulging upward.

“He’s going to get out,” Julius continued. “He’s going to be let out, commissioned, by a higher Power than you or I. And he hasn’t forgotten you, Hobart.”

“I’m old!” Hobart protested, still clutching his sword. “Isn’t it enough that I faced him once when I was young? Why twice in one lifetime?”

“Why ask me?” Julius countered. “I never was one for answering the big questions, you know, and I surely never bent Fate’s ear. I didn’t even have the fortune to survive the first time around.”

A twinge of guilt: “Julius. Please . . .”

“Beware the Ides of March, Hobart,” said Julius, turning away. “And before. Even the Big People are going to suffer, this time.”

He disappeared, swallowed once more by the gloom.

“Wait! Julius, wait!”

Hobart broke into a run, but there was no catching him, and when at last the sprite gave up the chase and looked around he had gone nowhere. The white marble square was still just off to his left, levered up further. Any moment now, Hobart told himself, it will flip over entirely, and a silver-bound box will burst up out of the earth. And then the box will open . . .

The vision was a long time fading.

RAGNAROK’S DREAM

I.

“How do I thank you?” Jinsei said later. They were on North Campus outside Low-Rise Eight, the International Living Center. Lenny Chiu, immensely shamed and unwilling to have himself checked out at Gannett Health Clinic, had already gone inside to clean up the blood.

“You don’t want to thank me,” Ragnarok told her. “What I did tonight doesn’t deserve thanks.”

“You saved Lenny from an even worse beating.”

“By beating the shit out of two other people and terrorizing a third. Great rescue.”

“But they deserved it,” Jinsei argued. “They—”

“They ought to have been arrested,” said Ragnarok. “All I did was give them a lesson in what real bullying is all about. Maybe in a way that’s rough justice, but I’ll tell you a secret: it wasn’t justice I was thinking about when I dropped Shelton. I was thinking about how good it felt to make the son of a bitch’s stomach cave in.”

“Maybe,” she suggested, “maybe it’s not so bad to enjoy hurting those kind of people.”

“Really? Except for the ‘maybe,’ I’ll bet that’s exactly what Bobby Shelton would say about what he did to your friend.”

Silence. Ragnarok gave a little nod, raised his foot to kick-start the bike.

She stopped him with another question: “What did that mean, about your father selling his soul to the Devil?”

Ragnarok stared at the ground for a long moment. “It means,” he replied, “that I’ve got no right to go feeling self-righteous about Jack Baron. Do you know what a Georgia bedsheet salesman is?”

Jinsei shook her head.

“It’s not important,” said Ragnarok, after another pause. “Listen, you want me to see you home?”

“This is home,” she replied, nodding at the Living Center.

“You’d better go in, then. Your friend could probably use some company.”

“I think Lenny wants to be alone. He must be really ashamed about what happened. You know . . . that someone else had to—”

Ragnarok nodded. “He’s not going to call the cops, is he?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Right,” said Ragnarok. “It doesn’t end then, you see? What I did to Jack and Shelton won’t mean a thing by this time tomorrow. They’re a hell of a lot more scared of being busted by the Inter-Fraternity Council than they are of me.”

“I’ll talk to Lenny about it,” Jinsei promised.

“You do that.”

He dropped his foot, kicked the engine to life; Jinsei touched his arm.

“Who cheers you up?” she asked him.

“What?” Ragnarok looked at her, and for the first time noticed that she was crying.

“You say Lenny could use some company,” she said. “But don’t tell me you don’t feel bad about what happened tonight.”

“I feel bad that I enjoyed it. But I wasn’t shocked by what the Rats pulled, if that’s what you mean; hell, don’t get thinking you’re safe from rednecks here just because they teach Marx over in the Government department.”

Crying more heavily now, Jinsei made no reply, only lowered her head. Without thinking, Ragnarok reached out to brush her cheek. He caught himself in the middle of the gesture, but then to his great surprise Jinsei abruptly leaned forward; with Ragnarok sitting astride the motorcycle, his head was at the same level as hers, and his mouth.

“Hey—” Ragnarok said, as she drew in to him. Jinsei did not hesitate; her lips met his, and after a dazed moment he kissed back.

By the light of a scythe-blade moon, they embraced.

II.

He would not take her home with him.

When at last they disentangled from each other, Ragnarok insisted that Jinsei go back into the dorm, though she wanted badly to stay with him. He knew that she would not like the house he lived in—no one ever did—nor did he want to take her over to Risley, where he might have to face the Top or some other Bohemian who had heard about his run-in with the Rho Alphas. Besides which, he was unworthy of her company, or anyone else’s, tonight. Only later, when he realized he had fallen in love with her, did Ragnarok regret not bringing Jinsei along.

Riding home, he took the motorcycle up to seventy-five and kept it there. Twice he nearly lost control of the bike; once he avoided a head-on collision with a van by mere inches. Each of these near misses left him more numb than shaken, and he would not slow down until his house was in sight.

Ragnarok lived in a ready-to-be-condemned Saltine box on University Avenue, just below The Boneyard. Being entirely self-supporting he could not afford the dorms—not Risley, in any case—and slumlord Denman Halfast the Fourth had given him a rare bargain. This was not due to any latent generosity on Halfast’s part, but reflected the fact that in the past five years, no other student had been willing to rent the place, what with its lack of hot water, substandard wiring and insulation, and thriving roach colony. In addition to the low rent—and here lay the main attraction—Ragnarok had gotten Halfast to agree to let him redecorate the house in any fashion he desired.

And so the house was black: walls, ceilings, floors, the few sticks of furniture, even the ancient commode, which had been stained a dark jet. Thick ebony drapes—scrounged from the Salvation Army downtown—shut out all external light, and the interior lamps were of low wattage, specially shaded to cast a yellowish-brown glow. All together, these redecorations created a style that Preacher had dubbed Early American Funeral Parlor; but more to the point, they created an atmosphere in which the only white thing was Ragnarok himself. With even his sheets and underclothes dyed black, there need be no worry that he would start awake some night, bleary-eyed, and imagine a phantom in the room with him.

There was a small shed beside the house made of rotting wooden boards, splintered and brown, and it was here that Ragnarok parked the motorcycle on returning from North Campus. He padlocked the shed door, glancing up at the silent Boneyard as he always did, then went around to the front of the house.

The lock on the front door was broken. Halfast had promised several times to have it fixed, but as Ragnarok had never once pressed him on the matter, he was taking his time about calling a locksmith. The present method for opening the door was to jiggle the knob furiously until it popped; Ragnarok did so now, passing within and closing the door again behind him. He kept the lights off, finding his way through the living room—which was also the bedroom and study—by memory. He did not even turn on the overhead in the bathroom, where he went to splash cold water on his face. Since he had removed the mirror on the medicine cabinet there was nothing to see anyway, other than the roaches.

After washing up, he went back to the living room/bedroom and undressed. A light at this point would have revealed two scars on Rag­narok’s body: a thin line running all the way across his chest, and a more jagged indentation on his left shoulder. He stripped down quickly, then donned the dark, long-sleeved robe that served as his bedclothes. He lay down on the creaky bed, drawing covers like a swatch of starless midnight up to his chin.

People are going to think you’re a vampire, Rag, Myoko had told him, the one time she’d paid a visit; Fujiko had thought the house too creepy to even enter. Ragnarok did not care what people thought of his living quarters, or of him, so long as he could keep his nightmares to a minimum.

Tonight the dreams would not stay away, though. He closed his eyes

and he is back in North Carolina, a young boy named Charlie, a carpenter’s son living in the West End of Griffin’s Rest township. It is his birthday, he is six and stands alone in the living room while his father clears dinner. In his hands is his last unopened present, a long narrow box wrapped in brown paper. He holds it up to his ear and shakes it, hears nothing but a thump, and dreaming thinks: dead serpents, dead serpents.

An eyeblink and the box is open, paper strewn on the floor, Charlie studying himself in the tall standing mirror that graces one corner of the room. The costume which is his present makes him look like a small ghost, a ghost with a peaked hood and a red circle above his heart, a red circle enclosing a red flame. His father Drew is beside him, a larger ghost; Drew lays a hand on the back of his neck, a dream-hand made of lead.

“Don’t you go showing it to anybody unless I say it’s OK, partner,” his father warns him.

“All right, Daddy,” he says.

“I love you, Charlie.”

“I love you too, Daddy,” he says

and he is running across the highway that leads north out of town, running to catch the dark boy who is just now vaulting the cemetery fence. Charlie is older; his friends Scott Noble and James Earl join him in the chase. Together they are fast, faster than the dark; they enter the cemetery themselves barely twenty strides behind him.

Charlie is fastest of all. He races ahead, leaping over graves. All the tombstones bear his mother’s name. He runs, Scott and James Earl yell for him to slow down, wait, wait, but he is intent on the quarry and leaves them behind. Now it is a race of two instead of four.

The ground slopes down to a stream. The dark splashes halfway across and trips over a stone. Charlie cries his triumph: “Got you, partner, got you now!” He charges into the stream and the dark rises up, rises and turns, and Charlie ducks back easily to avoid the swinging fist. He laughs and sees the blade and victory turns to terror as he realizes it is not a swing, but a cut. Fire brands his chest

and he is in his father’s study, watching Drew Hyatt at his desk from an impossible angle, a dream-perspective. The desk is stacked with a mountain of books and pamphlets; muttering to himself, Drew tends a gin bottle with one hand and a well-thumbed tract with the other. RAGNAROK IS COMING, reads the title. Being a comparison of the Norse Apocalypse and the decline of the Aryan races in modern North America, by Dr. Hiram Venable.

“It’s here somewhere,” Drew says, clutching the tract. He sets down the bottle, makes a note with a hand that never quite stops shaking. The stack of notes is tall, almost as tall as the stack of pamphlets. The perspective swings around and it is possible to read what he has written on the top sheet, an endless repetition of one phrase: “Her only tears are dry tears.”

“It’s here somewhere,” Drew repeats

and now it is night, Charlie running again through a wide field, this time chasing not a dark boy but a girl with strawberry blond tresses. “Lisbeth,” he calls, and she laughs and keeps moving, but not so fast, she wants him to catch up. He smells the tobacco all around them, feels the wetness of the leaves as they brush against his legs. They have been hosed down just in case; you can’t trust a fire after all, you have to be careful of stray sparks.

“Lisbeth,” he calls again, and as she stops and turns to face him he also sees, on the periphery of his vision, the cross flare light. The Ghouls in their white robes gather around it in a circle, their outlines flickering and indistinct.

“Here I am, Charlie,” Lisbeth says, smiling. Her cotton blouse is unbuttoned at the top, a locket shines against her throat. Charlie reaches out to touch her

and razors cut his hands, the cross still burns on the horizon of his awareness but he is in the living room once more, the mirror stands shattered before him.

“You had it coming to you, partner.” His father’s voice, behind him. “You were asking for it.”

Blood runs in his eye from another cut. His shoulder is the worst, though; a jagged shard of quicksilver has punched a hole in the muscle.

“You had it coming,” his father repeats. “Gordon-Small. A nigger lumber company. You shame me. You shame me.”

Charlie reaches up with his right hand, yanks the mirror shard from his shoulder. The pain is indescribable; little slivers remain in the wound, biting. Charlie stares at the shard in his hand, tiny reflecting dagger. Fury threatens to choke him, but still he speaks the words: “I love you, Daddy. I always loved you.”

“You shame me,” Drew Hyatt says.

The burning cross.

His father’s blood, hot on his fists.

STEPHEN GEORGE AND THE DRAGON

I.

Some three days later found George busy at his typewriter. He had a short story in the works, a story inspired by one of the tombstones he’d seen on that late August walk in The Boneyard, now nearly two months in the past. It was the tale of Harold Lazarus, a plumber who had died unrepentant. As punishment for his numerous sins, he had been transformed into the shape of a gargoyle and set to work fixing the leaky pipes in the darkest pits of Hell—a literally endless job, seeing as Hell was the sewage nexus of the universe. Lazarus’ one consolation was the absence of his wife, the nagging nexus of the universe. Yet her death approached, and Lazarus’ desperate attempts to scare her into accepting salvation—he tapped out warnings of the torments of Hell in Morse Code on the leaky pipes, which echoed all the way up to earth and the Lazarus family commode, and, incidentally, to billions of other commodes throughout creation—formed the basis of the story. The working title was Porcelain Messiah; George figured the Harvard Lampoon would take it, if no one else.

Calliope puttered around in the kitchen, out of sight but continually making just enough noise—or so it seemed—that she remained tantalizingly on the edge of George’s thoughts. Not that he ever stopped thinking about her, anyway. Every night since that first when she’d appeared at the Fevre Dream had been filled with their lovemaking, and every day with his writing—except when he had to teach, a grudging chore now. He remembered once believing that requited love might spell the end of his creativity, but the truth was that Calliope inspired him more than loneliness ever had. Her origin, the reason for her coming to him, were still mysteries.

She had the radio on in the kitchen, and a squeaky-voiced announcer—no doubt an Ithaca College student on a work-study program—recited the major news items of the day: President Botha of South Africa had reiterated that there would be no end to white minority rule; Nancy Reagan had bought still another set of china for the White House; and at O’Hare Airport, FAA investigators were unable to account for the appearance of a two-headed cow which had wandered onto a runway and into the path of an accelerating 747.

As George finished a page and set a new sheet in the roller, Calliope appeared at the kitchen door, cloaked in her silver-threaded robe and bearing a big package wrapped in brown paper.

“This came in the mail today,” she said, setting the package down on the coffee table next to his typewriter. “And this.” She handed him a creamcolored envelope. George stared at it.

“The mailman hasn’t been by yet this morning,” he reminded her, not really expecting any sort of explanation. He did not get one.

“Well,” was all Calliope would say, and she shrugged, smiling. For whether the mailman had been here yet or not, both packages were properly stamped, postmarked only yesterday afternoon, and if that defied logic then Calliope cared little. And while she smiled at him, looking more beautiful than any metaphor could suitably describe, George discovered that he didn’t much care, either.

“Fine,” he finally said. He opened the envelope first, drawing out a silvery card identical to the one Aurora Smith had recently received.

An Enchantment Promised for All . . .

Like Aurora, George had to wonder who in Tolkien House would think to invite him to a Halloween party, for though he had heard of the place, he had never been there, or to any other fraternity for that matter, during his entire time at Cornell. But there were a few other things about the card that caught George’s eye especially where Aurora would have noticed nothing unusual, such as the imprint of the white rose, or the first few words of the invitation itself. The Lady of Tolkien House, it said. This did not bother George, as it had Brian Garroway, because of the notion of a woman sending invitations to a frat party, but rather because for some reason “Lady” made him immediately think of Calliope.

“You . . .” he began awkwardly, glancing up at her.

“I?” Calliope queried, raising an eyebrow and smiling wider than before, as if at some private amusement.

“It’s stupid,” said George, almost in warning. Then he stumbled on: “Do you know any . . . any other people at Cornell? What I mean is, you haven’t been to Ithaca before, have you?”

“I’ve never come to The Hill for anyone’s sake but yours, George,” Calliope assured him. It took him a minute to realize that this did not answer his question, but by that time the Lady had retreated to the kitchen. George turned his attention to the big brown-paper-wrapped package; faintly he heard a metallic clink and a hiss of igniting gas as Calliope set the tea kettle on to boil.

He somehow did not expect to find a return address on the package; when he did, he was not surprised to see it had been badly smudged, so that only the city of origin—Chicago—could be made out. Glancing again at the date and the P.M. on the postmark, George thought that it must have been shipped express, and one hell of an express at that to get all the way from Illinois to New York ahead of even the mailman. The delivery address was similarly question-raising: TO THE PATRON SAINT OF DAYDREAMS, Ithaca, N.Y. 14850. No street number, but it had found him anyway, and though “Patron Saint of Daydreams” kicked modesty to hell and gone, George saw how it might be applied to him, by a fan if not by a critic. But how had the not-yet-arrived mailman known whom to deliver it to?

“Screw it,” George muttered, deciding to work out the paradoxes later. He tore away the brown paper, and numerous layers of newspaper that he found beneath it. When the last sheet had been torn off and tossed carelessly to the floor, he was left holding a dark wooden box, with a silver latch and silver hinges and a single word inlaid in ivory letters on the box’s lid:

PANDORA

“Right,” said George. Not touching the latch, he held the box up by his ear and shook it. It made no sound; the contents either filled the box entirely or were well padded. He reread the word on the lid.

Pandora’s Box, he thought. It seemed rather small to contain all the evils that plagued humankind. But no, even if it were the genuine article—which he was not ready to discount at this point, seeing the odd way it had come to him—according to the old Greek legend it had already been opened, the evils loosed, Hope the only thing remaining inside. Being optimistic enough in his own right—and having Calliope living with him—George didn’t suppose he had much need for a box full of Hope. Perhaps he could give it to someone else who did, someone like Ragnarok, who’d been looking troubled just recently.

Inevitably thinking of the white marble square in The Boneyard—even the style of lettering on the box was the same—George sprung the latch and lifted the lid. Metal flashed within.

The figurine in the box did not look much like Hope, unless it were Hope as conceived by a chronic depressive: Hope with coiled body of silver, ivory fangs, jade scales inlaid on the wings and belly, eyes of what looked like sapphire. The only thing missing was a plume of flame to shoot out of its mouth.

A dragon. Someone had sent him a miniature wingéd dragon. He took it out of the box, surprised by its light weight, and set it on the coffee table. The thing must have been quite valuable, but this fact, as well as the craftsmanship that had gone into making it, was lost on George for the moment. For all its finery, it was also an ugly thing, as a monster ought to be, and those dark blue eyes held an undeniable malevolence. In fact it was as mean-looking as it could be, considering its size—barely a foot from tail to snout.

After trying to stare down the dragon for a full five minutes, George picked up Pandora’s Box again and checked to see if there was anything else inside—a subsidiary Hope, perhaps, or a note containing even a clue as to why it had been sent to him. There was nothing more.

“What the hell is this?” George said bemusedly, studying the dragon again. Just then Calliope returned from the kitchen, balancing a cup and saucer neatly in the palm of one hand.

“Tea,” the Lady announced.

“Hey,” George looked up. “Check out what I got.”

“Yes, I know,” she said calmly, as if she had looked inside the package herself before giving it to him. She set the tea cup in front of him. “Drink this. It’s not too hot.”

George glanced at the cup, then back at her. “Who do we know in Chicago?” he asked, accenting the second pronoun carefully.

“Mayor Daley?” Calliope suggested. “Maybe he liked one of your books and wanted to send you a present.”

“I don’t think Mayor Daley does much reading these days,” said George, and Calliope laughed and leaned across the coffee table to give him a quick kiss. He laughed too—what else could he do? He could not force a straight, sensible answer out of her if she didn’t want to give it, that he’d long since learned.

“Drink your tea,” Calliope repeated. George picked up the cup and sipped gingerly at it. She was right—it was not too hot.

“They couldn’t really fly, you know,” he said.

“What that?”

“Dragons. Aerodynamically unsound—a physics prof I know told me about it once.”

“Bumblebees are aerodynamically unsound,” Calliope pointed out. “And besides, the stories all say dragons could fly. Which would you rather believe?”

“Well . . .” He stroked the figurine. “A metal dragon couldn’t, anyway.”

“That might depend on what kind of wind he’s got behind him.”

Another sip; George felt suddenly light-headed, the taste of tea bitter on his tongue.

“Can you do magic?” he asked her next.

She smiled. “Magic? What makes you think of magic?”

“All this . . .” He tried to indicate dragon, box, party invitation and ‘Patron Saint of Daydreams’ with one gesture. “It’s too weird, Calliope.”

With a look of genuine compassion on her face, she reached out to stroke his cheek. “Poor George,” she said. “You have no idea what that word really means yet. But as for magic . . . I can’t do any more magic than you can.”

“That answer doesn’t say anything.”

“It says everything,” Calliope insisted. She gripped the hand that held the teacup, raising it to his lips and gently making him drink the rest down. When the last drop had been drained, cup was returned to saucer and pushed aside as Calliope locked gazes with him. There was an actual physical feeling of being held; George’s head had now passed from lightness to a rising tumble, yet Calliope’s eyes riveted him at the center of the spin.

“Tell me a story, storyteller,” she said.

“What story?”

“About the first time you called the wind. When you were a boy.”

“I was with my Uncle Erasmus,” George recalled the day as if hypnotized. “He’d managed to sell one of his sculptures—one of his real sculptures, not the concrete animals I told you about—and we went out kite-flying to celebrate. Huge multi-colored box kites, those were Erasmus’ favorite. We went out to Flushing Meadow Park, out by the big steel globe from the World’s Fair, only the wind wouldn’t blow. Hours we waited, from just before noon to near on dusk, talking about everything under the sun and then some. We wouldn’t give up and try it another day—it was like a point of honor.

“Finally the sun was going down, still not a rumor of a breeze, and my Uncle said ‘OK, George this wind isn’t going to cooperate on its own so we’re just going to have to figure out some way to twist its arm.’ I asked what way was that and he rolled up his sleeves, sat back, and thought it over.

“Now when Erasmus sets his mind to a problem he comes up with these bizarre solutions that usually work. He watched the sky for few minutes and then said to me: ‘You want to be a writer, right George?’

“‘More than anything,’ I told him.

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘imagine you were writing a story about two fellows who’d just spent a whole day waiting for the wind to blow. How would you end it? Would they finally get what they wanted, you think?’

“‘Well sure,’ I said (it was a couple years yet before the idea of a less-than-perfectly-happy ending even began to penetrate). ‘Of course they would.’

“‘Just like that.’

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘I suppose if it were the whole point of the story . . .’

“‘Yes?’ said Erasmus.

“‘. . . then I guess maybe they’d have to do something first.’

“‘Like what, George?’

“‘Oh, I don’t know . . . an Indian Wind Dance, maybe?’”

Calliope smiled. “An Indian Wind Dance?”

“Hey, I was twelve, OK?” He continued: “So right there Erasmus says ‘Great, let’s do it,’ like I actually have some idea what this dance is like.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do? Made something up on the spot. Wasn’t much—just turning in place really, with the kite held up in one hand, string in the other.”

“What happened when you tried it?”

“Nothing.” Now George smiled. “Not at first. We tried it, and there was still no wind, and so we tried it again, and again, and then . . .”

“And then?”

“. . . there was a crossover moment, a moment of control—who knows, maybe I just got dizzy—but it felt as if it really were a story, a story but still real life, and there was an ending to be chosen, and it seemed right that it should end with the wind blowing.”

“And it did.” A statement, not a question.

“It did,” George agreed. “And ever since . . . I don’t know, it’s like—”

“Like writing without paper,” Calliope suggested.

“Yes,” said George. “Yes, that’s just right.”

“Do you suppose,” she asked him now, “that it would work with something other than the wind?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.” He shrugged. “Guess it might depend on the circumstances.”

“Well then . . . what if your life depended on it, George?”

She blinked deliberately, releasing him, and George became aware once more of the room around him. His light-headedness had risen to a plane where the very color and dimension of the things around him had become malleable. The upholstery of the couch, originally brown, now wavered between dark red and fluorescent orange; the edges of the coffee table had become indistinct, as if it were no longer certain how much space it wanted to occupy. And as for the sunlight streaming in through the living room windows . . . God . . .

“You put something in my tea,” George realized, paranoia pouncing like a tiger that had been creeping up through the brush all this time. “What did you put in my tea, Calliope?”

“Something to expand your mind a little,” Calliope told him, herself remaining unchanged, distinct. “And to help you defend yourself.”

“Defend my . . . oh—oh, hey, no!”

With a click of claws and teeth, the dragon figurine had begun to uncoil. It pulled itself out straight, wings flapping, sapphire eyes flickering with some ignited inner spark. George shied back from it.

“What the fuck, Calliope!” he cried out. “What—”

“I told you when I first came to you,” she replied, calmly, “that I had a few things to teach you. Consider this a lesson.”

“Thanks, but I don’t think I want a lesson. Could you please—”

“Writing without paper, George. Just think about writing without paper and you’ll be fine, probably.”

She stood up.

“Wait a minute!” George commanded. “Don’t you go anywhere!”

“I’m already gone,” Calliope said. “See you after class.” Her form blurred and faded out; her robe, empty, dropped to the floor.

George did not even bother to marvel at the vanishing trick, but merely accepted the fact that he was on his own and turned his attention to the dragon, which was now drawing air into its mouth and expanding like a balloon.

“Good God,” George exclaimed, as the creature attained the size of a small dog and continued to grow. The dragon ceased to draw air and fixed its eyes on him with a hiss. It tensed as if to spring. George did not waste time gawking. Without thinking about it he brought his legs up hard against the underside of the coffee table, upending it. The dragon, the typewriter, and Pandora’s Box were catapulted into the air to land with a crash by the far end of the sofa. The coffee table itself flipped over and shriveled up like a deflated rubber raft, cycling through three shades of indigo before it evaporated altogether.

A weapon. He needed to find a weapon, quickly. While the dragon untangled itself from the wreckage of the typewriter and the manuscript pages of Porcelain Messiah hovered near the ceiling like giant moths, George made a hurried scan of the room. He saw nothing that might serve as a club or mace, nothing sharp—once upon a time he had actually had a replica of a Viking battle-ax hanging on the wall, but that had long since been sent to rust in a Tompkins County junkyard. Desperate, George’s eyes lighted on Calliope’s fallen robe, and, vaguely remembering an old fairy tale where a prince had used a fair maiden’s girdle to leash a monster, he dove for it.

The dragon came at him even as he snatched up the robe. George held the garment out to his side, waving it like a bullfighter’s cape in the hope that the beast might be distracted. But the dragon, borne on a whisper of silver wings (it didn’t seem to need a wind at its back after all), did not even hesitate; it ignored the robe and went straight for George’s chest. Only at the last moment did the storyteller swing the robe around to use as a shield.

Ivory fangs and claws parted the material easily; the dragon’s head poked through the hole in the robe, mouth open for a bite. George ducked back, at the same moment gripping the robe by the thick fold of the hem, using that as a garrote to wrap around the monster’s neck. Incredibly, it seemed to work; all at once the dragon began flapping its wings in reverse, jerking its head around and hissing as if it were really short of breath. It even seemed to shrink a bit. Suddenly overconfident, George yanked harder on the ends of the hem, willing it to constrict still more and choke the beast.

“That’s it! That’s got you, you—” George’s cry of victory was cut short as the dragon simultaneously spat smoke in his face and tore at his arm with one wildly swinging claw. Beneath the sudden pain the storyteller felt his grip loosen, and before he could lose it entirely he used the robe as a sling to hurl the monster into a corner. Then he staggered, eyes watering fiercely, arm bleeding from three deep gouges.

With a fresh whir of wings the dragon was up and moving again. George beat a hasty retreat into the kitchen, where multi-hued rays of sunlight streamed in through the window, every color in the spectrum being represented except the normal yellow-white of mid-morning. It would have been quite beautiful to stand and watch, really, had he the time.

“Oh burn in hell!” George cried, kicking open the refrigerator door and slamming the dragon a good one on the nose as it buzzed into the kitchen. The storyteller continued to back away, hurling utensils, spice jars, Hi-C cans—anything that came to hand—in his wake, none of it slowing the monster for more than a moment. Tossing one last juice can, George ducked into the rear hallway. Knowing he would never make it to the back door of the house (and not sure where he would run to if he got outside), George cut into the bedroom instead and tried to shut the door behind him. Close on his heels, the dragon got one claw and half a snout inside the room; two quick slams of the door convinced it to back off.

Door shut and latched—for whatever a two-bit latch was worth—George waited for the inevitable tear and splinter as the monster tried to claw through the very wood of the door itself. What he heard instead was even more ominous—a steady sucking noise as the dragon drew more air. It was expanding again. George suffered a sudden vision of a lion-sized dragon bursting through the door to drag him down with no further struggle possible.

Writing without paper. Think about writing without paper.

“All right!” cried George, abruptly angry. He pounded on the door himself a few times, for attention. “All right! You want to play, want to be a real live dragon, fine! I’m going to be the goddamned White Knight, we’ll see how you like that!”

To himself he said: This is a story, a fantasy; anything can happen. You will close your eyes. You will turn around, and you will open your eyes again. When you reopen them, there will be a sword on the bed.

He closed his eyes. He turned, and opened his eyes again.

The bed was breathing. Charcoal-grey coverlets bulged in and out with a steady rhythm. Both pillows had flattened themselves out against the headboard as if terrified of something, but he could see no weapon.

“Damn it!” George said. “I asked for a sword.”

His head felt light enough to float, but still he concentrated, growing more and more angry as the sword refused to appear. Then came a moment—a crossover moment—when all fear, all thought of the dragon vanished, leaving only a sharp fury at a story that was not turning out the way he wanted it to.

“There is a sword,” George said definitively, “on the bed.”

Wind gusted suddenly in the room. With a low ripping noise a seam opened in the coverlet, and a sword hilt—an ornate hilt with a white rose superimposed on a red cross on the pommel—forced its way up out of the mattress. It rose to a height of six inches above the surface of the bed, revealing a sharp blade beneath it, and stopped, waiting now to be drawn.

The dragon too stopped, stopped drawing air, and George did not wait any longer. With legs more muscular than those he had woken up with in the morning, he sprang onto the bed. Strong hands—warrior’s hands—grabbed the sword by the hilt and drew it free. The four-and-a-half-foot blade cast its own glow, multi-hued like the sunlight.

“All right,” George called, assuming a batter’s stance. “You can come in now.”

The bedroom door exploded off its hinges. The dragon, bigger than lion-size, came in trailing smoke like a locomotive. This time George stood firm when it tried to blind him, stood firm in the midst of the whirlwind that the monster’s now-huge wings created. His fear was gone, he was in control of the story, and nothing need bother him if he didn’t wish it to. He merely waited—not too long—as the dragon gathered itself for the attack.

“Come on,” George whispered, and the dragon pounced, mouth gaping wide, claws extended and locked to tear him apart. Still he did not falter, weapon ready, waiting, waiting one more second.

The dragon came in, screaming triumph. Even as it did, Stephen George brought up the sword in a perfect arc, slicing the air in two, and lopping off the beast’s head with an explosion of sparks that seemed to fill the world.

II.

He did not start awake. It was a calm awakening, with Calliope nestled in his arms, her eyes closed, her lips pursed in a smile and a gentle snore. Careful not to disturb her, George pulled free and got out of bed.

What had he been dreaming about? Already it was frustratingly vague, though the memory might jog free again in some future dream. Something about a Box . . . and being wounded. He glanced absently at his arm and noticed three white lines, like scratches that were nearly healed.

Shaking his head in confusion, George drew on his pants and went out to the kitchen to make breakfast. Through the door to the living room he caught a glimpse of his typewriter, sitting patiently on the coffee table. He had a story to finish today, he remembered, a story about a plumber in hell.

He was packing toast into the toaster when there came a knock at the front door. That did make him start; his arm jerked and sent a carton of orange juice tumbling to its doom.

Standing in a newly formed puddle, George shook his head once more, smiling, for of course there was nothing to get excited about. It was only the mailman, arrived at last.

THE HALLOWE’EN PARTY

I.

The first Ministers and Grey Ladies arrived at the Tolkien House Hallowe’en Revel shortly after 10:00 P.M. Turning their mounts over to attendants the Bohemians hurried inside, glad to get out of the weather, which threatened rain before long. Within, a string of fairy lights lit a path through the “Mathom” hall and back to the elevator, for of course the party was being held in the underground Garden of Lothlórien, where the starry sky remained free of clouds.

By eleven o’clock the Revel was in full swing, good cheer and alcohol flowing freely. Then at eleven-thirty the party skipped a beat with the arrival of Stephen George and Calliope. They wore costumes designed by the Lady herself, Prince Valiant for him, Little Bo Peep for her; a good many Bohemians and House brothers went to bed later dreaming of sheep.

Then midnight. Precisely at twelve o’clock, after much coaxing and arguing with her boyfriend, Aurora Smith entered Tolkien House—and that was when the real Revel began.

II.

“It’s just that I don’t see the point in us going to a party where I don’t know anybody,” Brian Garroway said, as the obsidian-lined elevator descended to the cellars.

Aurora adjusted a picnic basket on her arm—for she had come as Little Red Riding Hood—and asked him: “Didn’t you see those people who rode past us coming through the woods? Those were Bohemians.”

“I don’t know any Bohemians,” Brian informed her. Perhaps one of the things making him so testy was the outfit Aurora had thrown together for him at the last minute. A set of blue drapes had been converted to a cape, and a loaf of French bread thrust under Brian’s belt like a short sword. A hastily scribbled tag pinned to his collar explained: I AM THE EARL OF SANDWICH.

“Well,” said Aurora, “I can introduce you to a few. I met some in that course on Jonathan Swift I took last year.”

“Swift. It figures.”

In the sub-cellars, two dwarves waited just outside the elevator to receive them.

“Hi there!” Aurora beamed, stepping away from Brian. “Is this where . . .” She trailed off as she saw the zombie-like expressions on the dwarves’ faces. Both stared off into the distance as if paralyzed by some recent vision. Yet even as Aurora was about to wave a hand in front of one of their faces, they spoke.

“Follow the lights,” the first said, wistfully.

“Take care crossing the bridge,” added the second. Neither of them looked at her.

“Um-hum,” said Brian, examining each dwarf in turn. He had never touched drugs himself and never would, but he knew a heavy buzz when he saw one. “So what have you all been into?”

The first dwarf sighed a lover’s sigh. “The Lady . . .” he whispered, and said no more.

“Aurora,” Brian started in again, glancing sharply at her. “I’m really not sure—”

But she tugged impatiently at his arm, anxious to get to the party. “Come on,” she insisted, and began following the line of lanterns that lit a path across the otherwise pitch-black cellars.

“Aurora!” His voice was stern but she kept right on moving, forcing him to run after her; in fact he didn’t catch up until she had nearly reached the bridge.

“Aurora,” he asked her when he had pulled even with her again, “are you really certain we should be going to a party where even the door checkers are stoned?”

She ignored the question. “What’s this, now?” she said, as they came upon the chasm. The lanterns on the bridge were perched precariously to one side, leaving as much room for walking as possible.

“Aurora!” Brian grabbed her arm as she stepped onto the bridge. She turned on him suddenly, yanking her arm free and inadvertently kicking one of the fairy lamps into the gulf. It tumbled end over end, quickly blowing out, but not before they both saw it fall a frightening distance. If the unlit lantern struck bottom after that, they did not hear it.

“Jesus Christ,” Brian Garroway—not one to casually break the second commandment—said, peering into the chasm. “What the heck is this?”

Aurora took advantage of his distraction and got moving again. Brian followed after her—stepping carefully, to be sure—this time not catching her until she was across the bridge and beyond. There even Brian had to shut up momentarily, stunned by his first glimpse of the wonder that was the Garden of Lothlórien, home of the Revel.

III.

A great pavilion, a long, open tent of leaf-green canvas on grey ash posts, had been erected in a clearing among the trees, and within it a fully stocked bar, wood-finished in such a way as to suggest that it had just sprouted up out of the ground. Though the bar came equipped with all the modern conveniences—and all the best labels—everything had been carefully camouflaged so as not to detract from the atmosphere of the Garden. Of course some anachronisms were inevitable; Z.Z. Top, dressed head to toe in combat gear, sat playing Beer Hunter with a six-pack of Schlitz, one can of which had been given a good shaking-up.

Outside the pavilion, Bohemians mingled with House brothers mingled with Grey Ladies mingled with other miscellaneous guests. Some danced to the music of an impromptu band that played a cross between medieval minstrel tunes and jazz fusion; some just drank and talked. Wrapped in a Roman senator’s toga, Grey Lady Fujiko stood deep in conversation with Noldorin, the Tolkien House co-President who had granted an honorary House membership to all Bohemia in return for a chance to meet her. So far they seemed to be hitting it off pretty well, and throughout the Garden barely a couple could be seen who didn’t look either happy or too blitzed to care.

While Aurora studied the faces, Brian turned his gaze to the sky above. Like Lion-Heart before him, Brian penetrated the illusion immediately.

“A dome,” he said aloud, not unimpressed. “An underground dome.”

Another House President, Shen Han, passed near just then and overheard Brian’s words, but he did not respond, just as he had made little response to Lion-Heart’s questions. What could he have said? Of course the stars shining above the Garden were a projection, and Shen Han knew well the secret controls that could make them dim or brighten, knew too how to moderate the rest of Lothlórien’s climate: the wind, the fog—which now curled seductively around the guests’ ankles—the temperature. What he did not know was the actual mechanism employed, for neither he nor any other Tolkien brother had ever seen so much as a single machine or projector, though some had searched; wherever and whatever they were, they must have been of marvelous construction, for they never seemed to need maintenance or repair. In fact the House had pretty much maintained itself from the time it was first built, according to legend. But that was not the sort of legend guests were likely to appreciate, or believe.

“George!” Aurora called, spotting a familiar figure. Brian returned to earth; Shen Han passed on his way.

“Hey, slugger,” George greeted her, walking up. His Prince Valiant cape billowed behind him; unlike Brian’s, it did not look as if it belonged in a window. “What brings you here?”

“I got an invitation in the mail,” she explained. “From the Lady of Tolkien House.”

“The Lady?” said George, an uneasy expression crossing his face.

“Yes. And of course we couldn’t pass up a chance to see what this place is like.” She glanced at Brian. “Could we?”

“No,” Brian agreed. “No, of course not. How’s your new girlfriend doing, George?”

George’s expression went from uneasy to startled. “Where did you hear I had a girlfriend?”

“There was a paragraph on it in last Tuesday’s Sun. Something about a mystery lady who none of the photography staff have managed to get a picture of.”

“Really?” Aurora spoke up. “Can we meet her? Is she here?”

“She’s here,” said George, “Though at the moment she’s disappeared on me.”

“Disappeared?”

“It’s kind of odd, unless you’ve known her for a while. The fog swirled up really high for just an instant when we came into the Garden, and then she was gone. Like the Shadow. I’m sure she’ll turn up eventually, but in the meantime I guess it’s at least a partial blessing. Calliope has a funny effect on people whenever we’re out in public together.”

“The dwarves by the elevator . . .” Brian mused. George nodded.

“Right, the dwarves, that’s just what I’m talking about.”

“Well,” said Aurora, “we really will have to meet this . . . Calliope. If she shows up come find us. We’ll be here for a while.”

“Maybe not that long,” Brian tried to amend, but Aurora had already added a farewell and moved off to get a closer look at something interesting she’d spied among the trees. Once again Brian went to pursue her, his exasperation peaking; yet he had barely taken the first few steps after her when a leg thrust out to trip him, bringing him tumbling to the ground.

A wild cackle rang in Brian’s ears as he pushed himself up. Furious, he turned to look at the prone form of the Bohemian Woodstock, who lay beside him in the grass, a flagon of ale in one hand, a half-smoked joint in the other, both legs outstretched. Woodstock’s head was tilted way back and it looked as though he might laugh himself into a stroke.

“Very funny,” Brian said, rising to a crouch and brushing dirt off his pants. The word asshole rose to his lips but did not slip out. “You jerk,” he added instead.

“Huh?” Woodstock brought his laughter under control and tried to focus on Brian, as if he’d only just noticed him. “Jerk?”

“Glad you enjoyed my fall. I could have broken my neck . . . or yours.”

“Enjoyed?” Woodstock repeated. “You? . . . No.” Giggling, he jabbed a finger at a bare patch of ground behind Brian. “Little man . . . only this high.” He held his hands half a foot apart as a visual aid, spilling the contents of the flagon on himself. “Only this high, I swear.”

“Of course,” said Brian. And then, at the top of his lungs: “Aurora!”

She was nowhere to be seen. Leaving Woodstock behind in a fresh fit of laughter, Brian got up and headed down a path he thought she might have taken. Passing two House brothers and a trio of sorority sisters imported from Alpha Phi, he arrived in short order at the clearing that contained the Enchanted Circle, a wide ring of colored stones believed by the brothers to possess a special protective power. A woman lay within the ring, passed out from too much wine. A very pretty woman, Brian noted, but not his; nor was there anyone else in the clearing, conscious or unconscious, whom he could ask about Aurora. Nearly at his wit’s end, he caught a flicker of red out of the corner of his eye. Peering into a place at the clearing’s edge where the trees seemed to draw particularly close together, he saw it again, more clearly this time: a figure in a red cloak and hood, moving deeper into the wood. Brian called out but the figure did not turn.

Anxious not to lose her again, Brian padded across a thin carpet of fog and entered the trees. He did not pause to check his bearings, or keep track of landmarks; the idea of getting lost in an underground wood was ridiculous. But the trees grew closer together and before long the sky could no longer be seen through the branches. Ahead, the figure in red had all but vanished from Brian’s sight, as the fog rose higher, obscuring the view.

“Aurora!” he shouted. “Aurora, stop! Wait for me!”

She did not stop; she walked on, into a thick band of fog that completely engulfed her. Suddenly afraid, Brian thought to turn back, back to the pavilion where he might find a brother to help him navigate these impossible woods. But when he looked around, all directions had become the same, fog growing thicker in all quarters, and he realized that he did not know the way out.

IV.

“Puck, stop teasing him! Let’s go.”

“Just another minute, Zeph . . .” The sprite made another face at Woodstock, watched him roar with laughter and pound his fist against the ground. Puck was fascinated; only rarely had he actually been seen by one of the Big People, and even then a reaction such as this was most unusual.

“This is silly, Puck,” Zephyr reasoned with him from her hiding place behind a shrub. “What if he decides to step on you?”

“I’d be surprised if he could stand up,” Puck replied. But he had tired of the game, and so with a final nose-thumbing, he bade farewell to the Bohemian and rejoined Zephyr. “Where to now?” he asked her.

“Let’s go over to the Circle. Grandfather’s supposed to be telling stories.” Puck nodded agreement, and together they made their way along the same path that Brian Garroway had gone rushing down not long before. The two sprites were careful to keep well to the side of the trail, lest they be trampled by some other passing human. Little feet carried them at a slower pace, but in due course they came to the clearing and the ring of magic stones.

Aphrodite, the Bohemian Love-Minister, still lay unconscious within the Circle. Unafraid, a milling group of sprites clustered freely around her, some even using her as a giant sofa; one sprite stood calmly on Aphrodite’s neck, trimming locks of her hair for later use in weaving.

Puck and Zephyr mingled with the crowd. Unlike the humans, sprites wore no costumes on this holiday, for why should invisible, magical creatures bother to dress up as spirits and hobgoblins? Sifting through the faces Puck spotted Hamlet, garbed in his regular oak-leaf garment, pinsword at his side; he was chatting leisurely with Jaquenetta, the animal-handler who had been with them on the night of Cobweb’s and Saffron’s deaths. Farther off, near the edge of the Circle, Zephyr’s Grandfather Hobart and two other sprites were assembling a storyteller’s chair, a construction of Popsicle sticks and tongue depressors that resembled a lifeguard station.

“Hobart looks pretty happy,” Puck observed, watching the old sprite give orders to the younger two.

“This sort of thing always flatters him,” said Zephyr. “He’s Eldest, after all, and this gives him a chance to show off his history.”

“What story are you going to ask for?”

“I’m not sure. Something with butterflies in it, maybe.”

The last slat of the chair was set in place and Hobart hoisted up to his seat; hands were raised for silence. The crowd—grown quite large in number—quieted itself, all eyes turning to the storyteller.

“Ahem,” Hobart began, clearing his throat, unable to restrain a certain swell of pride in his voice, “I imagine I don’t need to introduce myself. You all know me, and I’ve met most of you at some time or other, though I might have a chore keeping certain names straight. As for this night—you will already have realized that my memory is less than perfect. Nevertheless I believe I can keep you entertained with that portion of the past that hasn’t yet slipped away from me. My only request is that you don’t ask for details of anything too personal.” His smile broadened. “Unless, of course, the details are about someone other than myself.”

This brought polite laughter. Hobart spread his hands and nodded in recognition.

“So . . .” he continued. “Let’s begin. What would you all like to hear about?”

The crowd exploded with noise, every one of several hundred voices shouting out something different. Hobart listened intently, here and there actually managing to make out one of the requests.

“Tell us about the Bell Tower!”

“Let’s have a Midsummer’s Eve love story!”

“Butterflies!” cried Zephyr. Hobart heard her voice above all the others, and nodded once more.

“Enough!” he said; the crowd fell silent once more.” My granddaughter has just asked to hear a tale about butterflies. This happens to be an amazing coincidence, because I was just now thinking about a sprite named Falstaff, who earned the title Captain Caterpillar when he—”

“Hobart!” a voice called out. Heads turned at the sound; such an interruption was a horrible breach of manners. Puck, for one, was not surprised to see Laertes, Saffron Dey’s brother, standing atop Aphrodite’s rib cage with a hand on the hilt of his sword.

“I want a death story,” Laertes said, heedless of the stares and whispered comments of the crowd.

“A death story?” Hobart replied, learning forward in his chair. “And what makes you think death is a more appropriate topic than butterflies?”

“I don’t care about butterflies. I’ve lost family this past season, and not just me. Now winter is coming on; I’ll wager death has a stronger hand then than anything that flies. Even the Big People”—he gestured at Aphrodite—“seem to realize that. Isn’t that why they call this the Feast of the Dead?”

“I’m not sure they do call it that,” said Hobart, “and we certainly don’t. There are worse terrors than cold weather, Laertes.”

“I don’t care. I want a death story.”

“You want a lesson in etiquette,” Puck spoke up from the crowd. Laertes scowled at him, his hand tightened on his sword hilt. From his chair, Hobart saw the draw coming.

“None of that!” the old sprite commanded, before Puck and Laertes could rush at each other; Hobart had not forgotten their duel at Saffron’s funeral. “You stop right now, or there’ll be no tales of any kind!”

“You see?” Puck said to his opponent. “You ruin it for everybody!”

Laertes looked across at Hobart. “Do I get my story, or not?”

“Yes, yes, all right! If you insist on behaving like a spoiled child, I’ll give you what you want to quiet you. Puck, put that weapon away!”

“Not just any death story,” Laertes added, as Puck reluctantly sheathed his sword.

“You have a particular one in mind, do you?”

“Yes. I want to hear about the War.”

Hobart paled. “The War . . .”

“Yes, why not?” said Laertes. “It’s the worst death story of all, isn’t it? Exactly what I’m in the mood for. So tell us the tale, the tale of the Great War. Tell us the tale of Rasferret the Grub.”

V.

Stephen George sat at the bar in the pavilion, sharing drinks with Lion-Heart and Shen Han.

“Sorry, George,” the Bohemian King said, sipping his usual Midori in a shot glass, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Neither do I,” said the Tolkienian President.

Lion-Heart finished the shot and called for another. “Understand, we should have invited you, and of course you’re welcome to stay now that you’re here, but . . .”

“But you didn’t send me the invitation,” George finished for him.

“What did you say the wording was?” Shen Han asked. “‘The Lady of Tolkien House’? Our standard invitation is from The Brothers of Tolkien House. We don’t even know anything about the Lady, except that she built this place.”

“I think I might know something about her,” George muttered.

They lapsed into a puzzled silence. Lion-Heart downed another Midori and glanced over at Shen Han, remembering something.

“Hey,” he said. “I wanted to thank you. I was over by Galadriel’s Mirror a few minutes ago, and I noticed the Rubbermaid is gone. You got rid of it, eh?”

Shen Han blinked. “I should have . . . I’m sorry, it must have slipped my mind. One of the others must have taken care of it. Noldorin, maybe.”

“No matter,” said Lion-Heart. “So long as it’s gone.”

“The Rubbermaid?” George queried. “What’s the Rubbermaid?”

“Just a bad joke,” Lion-Heart told him. “It’s not important. Tell us when you got this invitation.”

“I don’t know. Funny thing, but I can’t remember actually receiving it. I just know it was sitting next to my typewriter for the past couple weeks. I can’t—”

He stopped. Across the bar and out the other side of the pavilion, he saw a shepherdess’ crook beckoning to him from behind a tree. He stood up.

“George?”

“You’ll have to excuse me,” George said. “I’ve got to go talk to somebody.”

Shen Han looked around. “Who?”

“Little Bo Peep. Catch you guys later, OK?”

Nodding to both of them, George ducked around the bar and made for the tree. The crook vanished behind the trunk just before he reached it, reappearing from behind another tree some ten yards farther on.

“Right,” George said. “Here we go again.” He allowed himself to be led, following the elusive shepherdess on a merry chase. Where Brian Garroway had called out almost constantly for his lady to slow down, George did not even bother; Calliope knew what she was about, and never once had he seen her give up a game until she had finished it. No sense fighting the flow.

He blundered into an open glade, where the third House President, Lucius DeRond, sat astride an impossibly large mushroom, smoking a hookah. “This side of the ’shroom makes you grow shorter,” Lucius intoned, blowing smoke rings at the sky, “and this side makes you grow longer.” George asked him what the middle of the mushroom did, but did not wait for an answer; for the slender pink crook beckoned him anew.

Beyond the glade the trees grew denser, the fog thicker. Soon he was no longer following the crook at all, but rather the sound of soft footsteps that remained just ahead of him in the mist. Then even that faded. Lost in a world of swirling white—yet untroubled—George let his instinct guide him onward, confident that he had not been abandoned.

The trees parted once more, opening into another clearing. George sensed this rather than saw it; it had become impossible to see farther than the tip of his nose. He walked forward, feeling carefully ahead for any obstructions, and suddenly she was there. His hand brushed the back of what he took for Bo Peep’s bonnet; his arms went out to embrace her as she turned. She too reached out, gripping the hem of his cape as if to reassure herself of his identity. Then they were kissing, silently, and as the Lady’s fingers ran up and down his back in a deliriously wonderful way, it did not even occur to George to ask what had happened to her shepherdess’ crook.

VI.

“Rasferret the Grub . . .” Hobart began, his face grave. “Known also as Rasferret the Evil One, Rasferret the Destroyer. Precious few names you’ll find as feared as that one. Rasferret is our collective nightmare, our patron demon, still able to inspire terror after more than a century—though most of those who actually lived to see him did not live to tell about it. Just look at me, with the title of Eldest at an age that once would not have been considered remarkable. Back then, back when I was young and Julius was Eldest . . . in those days, old meant old. Rasferret’s War left us decimated, and changed in more ways than one.

“And what was he, this demon? Some say he was the offspring of one of our own people who had mated with a rat, though I myself cannot imagine such a union; some say he was a true sprite, but evil, who having wandered long paths and years gradually took on the shape of his sins. Whatever his origin, his appearance is easily imagined from one of the names he came to be known by, ‘The Grub’: small, loathsome, twisted creature, eyes shining with the blue glow that is the hottest part of a flame. Pure malice his only motive, he came from some distant place to wage War against us—and mark you, Laertes, he came not during cold winter, but at the dawn of spring.

“Some might wonder on first hearing this tale what threat such a creature could pose, so small and alone. But of course he was never alone; he had the rats as his allies from the very beginning. Nor were they ordinary rats. For Rasferret also had magic to wield, magic I believe he must have stolen—I cannot see him creating his own—and through magic he changed the rats, made them to stand on two legs and bear swords, clubs, crossbows. With an army of perhaps five hundred he began a gradual assault on The Hill, meaning to annihilate us.

“The first engagements were sneak attacks, Rasferret’s attempt to do as much harm as possible before being discovered. The rats would surround and surprise small groups of sprites in isolated areas, leaving no witnesses behind. My own brother was killed in just such a raid; for a long time we had no idea what had happened to him.

“Then came the day when Rasferret at last felt secure enough to operate in the open. A wedding was due to be held at twilight in a garden—not this Garden, of course, but one not distant from here—with over two hundred guests in attendance. No sooner had the last of them arrived and the ceremony begun than the entire army of rats swept in, the sunset at their backs. Rasferret did not fight alongside them—a coward, he always hung back from battle—but nevertheless he made his presence known. Among the sprites was an exceptionally bright fellow by the name of Touchstone, an inventor and tinkerer by trade. He escaped the carnage on the back of a grey squirrel, riding with all speed to a great hollowed-out tree stump where he had housed his latest creation.” Hobart’s eyes lit briefly on Puck. “It was a vehicle, a land vehicle with wide treads for locomotion, only now in his moment of need Touchstone used it as a battle wagon, returning to the garden as quickly as possible and overrunning the marauders, killing some and panicking the others into a rout. But then Rasferret sent a bit of his own soul into the heart of the machine, and all at once the vehicle took on a life of its own, running down sprites now before ramming itself into a tree and killing its driver. And that was how we became acquainted with the most terrible of Rasferret’s powers, the power of animation—”

VII.

The woman was not alive. Brian Garroway knew that even before he touched her, for the figure that stood facing him—the fog had thinned somewhat, and he could make out her contours if not her features—held far too rigid a posture to be flesh and blood. With open palm Brian reached out to touch her midriff, feeling first the textured springiness of leather and then a hardness beneath that could only be plastic. All at once the mystery was made clear.

He reached up to stroke the mannequin’s cheek, touched her coarse hair, wondering all the while how she had gotten here, out in this boondock fringe of the Garden that Brian had decided must be intended for hazing House pledges. As he puzzled over the matter his hand traced the curve of a bare plastic shoulder, down along the arm, into the swell of her left palm.

“You haven’t seen my girlfriend, have you?” Brian asked the Rubbermaid, part of him hoping there was no one around to hear him acting so foolishly. And that was when the mannequin’s fingers closed over his hand.

He jumped back, jerking his hand free; the Rubbermaid swayed in place but did not fall over. Brian flattened against the trunk of a tree, eyes cranked wide open.

Did not, could not, did not—

“Aurora!” Not a shout this time; a shriek. Brian’s feet found the good sense to run and he bolted away, braying a panic-stricken litany: “Aurora! Jesus! Auro-o-o-ora . . . !”

VIII.

“How many battles all told? That question has no answer. Three weeks the War lasted, and in all that time I doubt if a minute passed without some skirmish taking place somewhere on The Hill. Our losses mounted hourly, while Rasferret’s army continued to grow in size; for there were always more rats to be recruited. New troops issued regularly from The Boneyard, where Rasferret had set up his main camp.”

Zephyr nodded understanding, remembering her grandfather’s many cautions about that place—nor had she forgotten the rats that had attacked her and Puck. Meanwhile Laertes, who had gradually moved up through the crowd to stand directly before Hobart’s chair, asked impatiently: “But what about the Big People? Surely they must have noticed something unusual, with such a large conflict going on right beneath their noses.”

“And why do you assume that?” Hobart responded. “Understand me, Laertes, I respect human beings and love them dearly, but I’m told that on occasion they don’t even notice their own wars. Oh, it’s true enough they were aware of some of the damage—their newspapers were full of vandalism stories—but for the most part I doubt their minds could have accepted the truth of what was going on. Therefore they didn’t see it.”

“But surely Rasferret saw them,” Laertes protested. “And with an army of rats, and this animation power . . .”

“No,” said Hobart, obviously troubled. “No, he never once directly attacked any of the Big People. Naturally I’ve wondered at that myself, but I can’t claim to know the reason. Perhaps his magic wasn’t strong enough, perhaps he simply feared to risk it . . . to be certain you would have to ask Rasferret personally, and I’m relieved to say that’s not possible.”

Laertes nodded. “His downfall . . . tell me about it.”

“We got lucky,” Hobart explained. “That is the simple truth of it. We had a plan, of course, but all plans, all but the most certain, have luck to thank for their success. The strategy was born in desperation; at the end of three weeks’ fighting our numbers had sunk so low that we knew any more losses would finish us. Hecate, who was great-grandmother to Macduff, there”—Macduff nodded with grim pride—“led the larger of two contingents on an assault against The Boneyard. Her task was to stage a planned retreat at a given time in order to draw away as many of the rats as possible. Then a second, smaller group, led by Eldest Julius, would sneak in and attempt to kill Rasferret, in the hope that without their leader, the rats would return to their natural state and disband. Hecate did well for her part, achieving the desired goal with minimum casualties; but of that second group, I alone survive to tell the tale.”

“You killed him, then?”

Hobart hesitated only the briefest instant. “Of course we killed him. You wouldn’t be here, making such a nuisance of yourself, Laertes, if we hadn’t.”

“But how? How did Rasferret meet his end?”

Another, oh-so-brief hesitation. “Julius killed him. Ran him through with a magic sword.” Hobart touched a place below his left breastbone. “Right here. The Grub crumbled to dust and blew away on the wind.”

Laertes’ eyes narrowed. “Julius struck the killing blow? But then how did he die? You said you were the only survivor.”

“The rats killed him, obviously. Don’t get the idea that Rasferret sent his entire army after Hecate. We still had a good fight on our hands.”

“So the rats didn’t disband, as you’d hoped.”

“They did, but not immediately.”

Laertes shook his head. “What about this business with the magic sword? And the crumbling to dust? I never heard that part of the story before. My Granduncle Claudius told me—”

“Claudius?” Hobart burst out, red-faced. “My dear fellow, Claudius was even younger than I at the time, he fought in Hecate’s contingent, and further I don’t recall ever giving him the details of what happened in The Boneyard. It’s no wonder he’s got his facts wrong.”

Macduff had moved up to stand beside Laertes now. “Aye, laddie,” he said to the young sprite, “and since ye’ve got it all straight at last, how’s about movin’ yerself over so as to make way for more cheerful tales? I’m sure Hobart’s grown tired o’ tellin’ this one.”

“Just one more thing,” insisted Laertes, pushing his luck. “How do you know it won’t happen again some day?”

“I imagine,” Hobart told him, “that if Rasferret were capable of returning from the grave, he would have done so by now.”

“But there might come another like him,” Laertes suggested. “A second Grub, wandering in search of a War to wage.”

“No,” said Hobart firmly.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m Eldest now, and while I may not be half as old as Julius was, I’m over a hundred years your senior, with that much more experience. Which makes it my prerogative to be optimistic.” He nodded dismissively at Laertes, then focused his eyes on the rest of the crowd.

“Now . . . I believe we were talking about butterflies . . .”

IX.

“Auro-o-o-ra! . . .”

The shriek echoed through the clearing where the man and woman lay together in the grass. Like a broken enchantment the fog lifted all at once, and as the woman raised her head she saw clearly for the first time whom it was she embraced.

“George!?”

“Aurora? . . . What—”

“Oh my,” she said, rebuttoning the top buttons of her blouse. “Oh my.” She sprang to her feet and was gone into the woods, but not without a backward glance or two.

“What?” George repeated, sitting up. He heard a laugh behind him and turned to see Calliope reclining against a tree, shepherdess’ crook held loosely in one hand. From the other she dangled a picnic basket.

“It’s hers,” Calliope said, setting the basket on the ground. “She dropped it in the fog just before the two of you bumped into each other.”

“You saw us?”

Calliope nodded. “Very exciting. Another minute and you would have had her costume off. Now that would have been interesting.”

“I thought she was you,” George said. “I don’t understand how I couldn’t tell . . .”

“You were an English major, weren’t you? Remember Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale?”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

George struggled slowly to his feet. “Are you angry about this?”

Ignoring the question, she reached out to stroke his chin. “Did you enjoy it, George?”

“I . . .”

“The truth. I’m honestly curious.”

“I thought she was you.”

“Which means?”

“It was perfect. I mean . . . not that anything really happened.”

“Oh, George, it’s not how much you do, it’s what you feel while you’re doing it. You know that. But do you know the real truth?”

“No, What?”

“The real truth is that whoever you love will be just like me, and not just in the fog. Understand?”

“No.”

“You will . . .” The Lady moved in closer. “She’s really a very good person, that blond girl. A lot more to her than you’d first think.”

“She’s in love with someone else,” George said. “So am I.”

“Mmm . . . of course.”

“You’re going to leave me soon, aren’t you?”

“Soon,” Calliope agreed. “But not today, and not tomorrow—there’s still a good number of things to be done.” She began kissing his fingers, one by one, and with her foot lightly nudged the picnic basket. “Let’s see what we can find to eat, shall we?”

THE ROMANCE OF THE BONE

I.

The Revel began to break up a little over an hour before dawn. The sprites crept out through the secret exits that they had dug years ago, when Tolkien House was new. The Bohemians took the more conventional route, back over the Khazad-dûm bridge, where safety lines had been rigged to prevent anyone from pitching over the side in a drunken stupor.

Outside a thunderstorm was winding itself down. Z.Z. Top stepped out into a lightning flash that lit up the front lawn in flickering white; smiling, he turned face up into the rain and saluted the sky with his last Schlitz.

“Very nice,” he said. “Very pretty.”

Others drifted out: Lion-Heart, Myoko, Panhandle, a shorter-haired Aphrodite, many more. Aurora Smith and Brian Garroway had long since taken their leave, but George and Calliope did not come out till very near the end. A flash of lightning revealed the Lady’s face for the barest instant, rooting three House brothers to the ground where they stood; they had to be literally dragged in out of the rain.

Last to go were Jinsei and Preacher, who walked out into the wet supporting Ragnarok between them. Preacher was costumed as an unlikely Miles Standish, Jinsei as a cat; her tiny cardboard ears wilted quickly in the rain.

Ragnarok, dressed only as himself, had gotten so deep into the bottle tonight that he’d nearly come out the other side, and on his way to the door he’d thrown up on his trenchcoat. They’d wrapped him in Preacher’s longcoat now, which led to a bad moment when, during another lightning flash, Ragnarok looked down at himself and realized he was wearing white.

“Shit! Oh shit what the fuck—”

He fought them. Jinsei took a good elbowing to the side of the head and staggered away, nearly falling. Without her support Ragnarok slumped halfway to his knees, but Preacher caught him up, holding him in a bear hug from behind so that he could not turn and punch.

“You get off me!” Ragnarok bellowed, jerking like a fish in a net. “I’m not, not—”

“It’s me, Rag,” Preacher said softly, speaking right into his ear. The fish paused in his struggles.

“Huh? Whu—Preacher? Preach?”

“It’s only my coat, Rag. You got that all right? It’s only my coat.”

“Whuh . . . this your coat, Preach?”

The fight went out of him like a departing spirit. He slumped all the way now, and as dead weight Preacher had a hard time keeping him from falling flat out in the mud. Fortunately Shen Han appeared at that moment; two brothers trailing at his heels.

“We’ll take him,” Shen Han offered. “We can put him up for the night in one of the spare rooms.”

Preacher nodded, handing Ragnarok over to the brothers, who picked him up by his arms and legs and bore him back into the House. Preacher turned his attention to Jinsei, who was gingerly rubbing the side of her face.

“You hurt?” he asked.

“No,” Jinsei replied, watching the retreating form of Ragnarok with something like pity. “No, not badly. Is he always like this?”

“Does he always get drunk at parties, you mean?”

“Does he always invite women to parties and then get drunk?”

Preacher shook his head. “Hardly ever seen him drink before. And as far as it goes, he talks a lot about women but it’s a rare day he actually asks one out. He must like you.”

“He barely said a word to me all night.”

“Yeah, well, that figures, actually. See, Ragnarok’s got this big disagreement problem with himself between what he wants and what he thinks he deserves. Has to do with where he comes from.”

“Where is he from? I mean I know somewhere down South, but not what city, or anything like what his parents do.”

“He didn’t tell you about his growing up?”

“No. Not really.”

“Then I don’t know if I ought to.” He was looking at her in the gloom between lightning flashes, trying to decide if something he’d seen in her expression was real or imagined. Hesitantly: “Hey listen, you need a lift home?”

Jinsei smiled, remembering a similar offer. “I think I’d rather go on foot than ride a motorcycle in this weather. Thanks anyway.”

“Motorcycle, hell,” said Preacher. He pointed off to their left, where one of the brothers was leading a white stallion around the corner of the House. “That’s my transport. Name’s Calvin, Calvin Coolidge.”

“Are you sure he’s safe with all the lightning?”

“Safe as walking, if we’re careful.” As if to demonstrate, another flash lit up the sky; Calvin did not twitch so much as an ear at it or the accompanying thunder. “You see? He’s steady under fire.”

Smiling broadly now, Jinsei said: “Maybe you should go and get your coat back. That Pilgrim outfit doesn’t look very waterproof.”

“Don’t worry it. I don’t get cold easy.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not drunk too, are you?”

The Bohemian shook his head. “Don’t touch alcohol,” he said seriously. “Don’t touch tobacco, either, or dope. And that, pretty lady, is why they call me Preacher.”

He gave Jinsei a wink that brought her smile back; his hand brushed hers and in that moment he knew he had not been imagining things.

“All right then,” Jinsei said, and Preacher took her home.

II.

Luther had not been idle these past weeks. Forced at last to admit that this place he and Blackjack had come to was something less than Heaven, he had decided to bury his regret in canine academia; he had taken on The Five Questions of Ultimate Wisdom. Choosing to start with the First—What is the nature of the Divine?—he had inquired after the canine philosopher assigned to the subject, the local God-expert.

There were two. Blackjack had come along to meet them, though the Manx soon lost his patience with the whole business. The philosophers were a Cocker Spaniel named Cashmere and a Greyhound named Estrogen. They were both chained to a dead tree on North Campus, beyond Fuertes Observatory; it was said a boy came to feed them every evening at dusk. They were quite insane.

“We’re waiting for a fellow by the name of Dogot,” Cashmere had said in greeting. “Have you seen him by any chance?” Thus began one of the most bizarre conversations Luther had ever been party to. Estrogen pointed out that nothing is better than complete happiness; but, he added, one must concede that even a dry milk bone is better than nothing, especially if you’re hungry. It followed through transitivity that a dry milk bone is better than complete happiness, which served as conclusive proof of God’s existence, for how could such an odd state of affairs arise purely by chance?

No wonder, really, that Blackjack had stomped off in disgust barely fifteen minutes after they first arrived.

This morning of November first, All Saints’ Day, Luther figured he would give The Questions another chance. Alone this time, following directions given to him by Rover Too-Bad, he checked a number of possible locations in search of the canine philosopher in charge of the meaning of life. The philosopher was an Irish Setter, lanky and red-haired, and hence his name: Ruff. As the thunderstorm passed on to elsewhere and the sun peeked over the horizon, Luther caught Ruff’s scent and tracked him to the face of Libe Slope.

He was perched midway down the Slope in a peculiar position: reared up on his hind legs, front paws in the air, nose tilted toward the clouds, long ears flapping in the breeze that meandered up from town, back warming in the rising sun. The Setter’s eyes were closed, his attitude almost prayerful, and indeed, the litany of thoughts going through his head as Luther approached was very much like a prayer-chant: “Oh sun Oh sky Oh clouds Oh wind Oh grass Oh trees Oh hill Oh milkbone Oh bitch-in-heat Oh life is grand . . . Oh sun Oh sky Oh clouds . . .”

Luther came up to him slowly, not wanting to disturb him and a little afraid at the same time. Love, passionate love, as humans think of that emotion, is a rare occurrence among dogkind, yet Luther had heard that this Ruff had been in love not once but several times. One notorious incident, involving a Chow who had eventually run off with a Mastiff, had supposedly driven him a little mad . . . which left Luther to wonder if there were any sane philosophers on this Hill.

“. . . Oh trees Oh hill Oh milkbone Oh bitch-in-heat Oh—”

The Setter stopped abruptly as Luther came upwind of him. Ruff cracked an eyelid, studied the mongrel curiously.

“Name?” he asked, bluntly.

“I’m Luther,” said Luther. “Are you—”

“Ruff!” Opening both eyes now, the Setter dropped to all fours and barked a cheerful greeting. “Well, well, Luther, so we finally meet.”

“Finally?” Luther cocked his head. “You’ve heard of me?”

Another happy bark; Ruff would have laughed, if he could.

“Heard of you? Heard of you? Oh hell . . . I’ve been telling your damn story for the past month and a half.”

III.

“I can’t eat watermelon,” Preacher said, tossing more wood into the fire. Outside the sun was coming up, but they were still damp and chill. “Nor fried chicken, either. Put me on a desert island with a watermelon patch and a chicken coop and I guess I’d starve to death.”

“You’re that afraid of the stereotype?” asked Jinsei.

“My father was afraid of the stereotype. Me, I’m afraid of what my father taught me to be afraid of.”

Cowcliffes, one of three large rooms that opened off the main hallway of Risley’s first floor, was deserted but for the two of them. They stretched out on sofa cushions around an open hearth; Calvin Coolidge had been hitched to a radiator out in the hall, where he made breakfast of the memos on the Risley Committee bulletin board.

“He’s a wealthy man, my father,” Preacher continued. “Nothing to hold a candle to Lion-Heart’s folks, but still. And there are almost no role models for that situation. Even though he’s not first generation—the money in the family goes back to a Madame C. J. Walker who made her fortune in hair care—he never really learned how to handle being rich and black at the same time. Books and movies aren’t exactly full of helpful examples, know what I mean? So he’s always been kind of offstep, and I inherited a lot from him.”

Jinsei traced the lines of his palm with a finger. “How did you come to meet Ragnarok?”

“That—that was one of my Dad’s ‘notions.’ We started taking in ­boarders—mostly white—around the time I was ten. Didn’t need the extra income at all, you understand, my father just thought it was a great idea, giving shelter like that. Ragnarok was the last of them. He came up from North Carolina so broke he couldn’t even pay what little rent we were asking, but my father didn’t care, that made it even better, he took Rag in and practically adopted him. Even helped him get the scholarship to Cornell, and if you knew how Rag feels about charity, you’d understand how amazing that is.”

“Why did he come up from North Carolina broke?” Jinsei pressed the subject gently. “Why didn’t his own father help him pay for college?”

Preacher didn’t answer, just stared at the fire. She tried another tack: “Did you hear what happened in front of the Straight the night of the CAAU party?”

“Can’t say as I did.”

She told him. Preacher looked grim but not surprised. “Jack Baron . . . that son of a bitch, he’s got a very hard fall waiting for him one of these days. Almost too bad Ragnarok didn’t let him have it.”

“I know it’s personal,” Jinsei went on, “but I’d really like to know what Ragnarok meant about his father selling his soul to the Devil. He wouldn’t tell me, just said something about a ‘Georgia bedsheet salesman.’ I thought about that, and it almost sounds as if he was saying . . . well, that he was saying his father was . . .”

“Klansman,” Preacher finished for her, at the same time coming to a decision. “Klan Ghoul, rank and file member.” He squeezed her hand. “It’s all right, talking about the Klan isn’t one of my taboos. Ku Klux, you know that’s from the Greek word for circle?”

“But I thought the Klan didn’t exist anymore.”

“Oh hell, sure it does, Lady. They may not have a goddamn five-­million-person membership like they did in the Twenties, but I’ll be stone dead surprised if they ever totally disappear. You walk out of this dorm right now, a twenty-mile hike’d take you to the door of an active klavern.”

“That’s . . . very hard to believe.”

“Lots of things are hard to believe, lady . . .”

IV.

“Did you really come here in search of Heaven?” Ruff asked, making his way south along the face of the Slope. Luther kept pace with him.

“I know it must sound silly,” the mongrel replied, “but I really hoped—”

“It doesn’t sound silly at all,” the Setter interrupted him. “Not to these shaggy ears. I think it’s marvelous. It’s got all the right ingredients for an epic: courage, determination, nobility, a strong sense of pathos—”

“An epic?”

“Hmm, well . . . the story about your travels going around now isn’t quite of epic proportions, but give it time and some more embellishment and you’ll be amazed. A dog scenting after Heaven! You’re the stuff that legends are made of, Luther.”

“Legends? But wait, I didn’t come looking for Heaven so I could be famous.”

“Doesn’t matter. Most of the famous canines in history had no special wish for recognition. Rather, it was their desire, their obsession over something other than fame that made them famous. The tragic love of Rufus and Juliet; Spot driving the pack rats out of the temple; Dog Quixote tilting at fire hydrants; The Romance of the Bone . . .”

“I don’t know any of those stories,” Luther said. “What’s the last one again?”

“The Romance of the Bone,” Ruff repeated. “An epic’s epic, really: in addition to standing well on its own it serves as an allegory for almost every story ever told.”

“Can you tell it to me?”

“Not now. It’s very long—it takes three days to tell from beginning to end, and because of that there’s a ritual to the telling. It’s an event, really. Who knows, maybe later in the year . . . but for today I can at least tell you something about it. The hero of the story is called Everydog, and he is in search of his lost love, the Bone—Wait! Hold up a second!”

They were at the far end of the Slope now, beneath Willard Straight Hall by the loading dock for Oakenshields Dining. A delivery truck with a chrome rooster for a hood ornament had backed up to the dock, and a fat man was offloading a stack of bloodstained white boxes. Even with the wind blowing in the wrong direction it was not hard to guess what they contained.

“Time for brunch,” Ruff announced, licking his chops.

Luther looked at the fat man. “Will he give us scraps?”

Again, Ruff would have laughed if he could. Instead, leaving Luther to gape at his actions, the philosopher sprang forward, charging up to the dock. He took the trucker by surprise; barreling between the human’s legs he caught him off balance, sending him sprawling, then hurled himself at the stack of boxes. The top one tottered free and broke open, spilling uncooked chicken halves across the dock.

“Jay-sus!” exclaimed the fat man, thinking at first that a low-flying whirlwind had struck him. It was only when Ruff had grabbed a chicken between his teeth and trampled back over the fellow—squashing a pudgy nose beneath a damp paw—that he realized what was afoot.

“Oh fowl,” chanted the Setter as he raced back to Luther, while a steady gush of human profanities flooded the dock behind him. “Oh fearless chicken thief Oh thundering heart Oh drool Oh brunch Oh life is so grand—”

V.

Sitting in front of the fire while the sky brightened outside, Preacher told Jinsei what he knew about Ragnarok’s childhood—not all that much, for Ragnarok had never been one to open himself up, even to the closest of friends. Preacher told her about Ragnarok’s father, Drew Hyatt; about the loss of Drew’s wife to bone cancer when his son was only two; about his slow descent into a lonely and hateful obsession as his son came of age. Most of all, he told her about the Klan, an organization that was dangerous not, as Jinsei had always thought, because of its embodiment of an almost mythological evil, but dangerous, rather, because the evil it embodied lay tooth and jowl with human nature.

“And Ragnarok was quite the little Klanster at first, when he was growing up. You figure it’d have to be like the Boy Scouts with a few extras tossed in. Cross-burning must beat hell out of merit badges, especially for a kid.”

“How could he break out of that?” Jinsei asked. “Being raised that way. He changed, I know he changed, but how?”

“Don’t really know.” Preacher shrugged. “Could be something big happened to help shake him up, but knowing the way he is now, I always figured it was just like that old saying, you can’t keep a good man down. Sooner or later I guess he was bound to shake it off, you know, unless it killed him first. ’Course he’s still one of the most violent people I’m likely ever to know personally, but more than once I’ve been glad to have him on my side in a fight.”

“You’re not the only one.”

“Right. You understand, though, that’s one thing he’s never made peace with himself on, and I suppose he’d go through torture before he ever admitted there was the least bit of good in him. Kind of a strange fellow to be best friends with sometimes, I have to admit.”

Jinsei made no response to this.

“What’re you thinking?” Preacher asked, after a moment.

In answer, she resumed tracing the lines of his palm with a finger.

“Problem,” she said.

Preacher nodded, closing his hand over hers. “Problem,” he agreed.

VI.

The Irish Setter tore into his purloined chicken. Luther looked on enviously but received no offer to join in; though a good dog, Ruff let nothing come between him and his food.

“The Romance of the Bone,” he began, “is the epic tale of Everydog’s search for his lost Bone. Not a dry bone, not a bleached bone, but a Bone”—he ripped the drumstick free of the chicken carcass—“meaty and brown, crunchy with marrow, delicious on the tongue.”

Trying hard not to drool, Luther asked: “That’s his love, a Bone?”

“Well, it’s a symbol. Everything in The Romance of the Bone is symbolic: the Bone isn’t actually a lover, it symbolizes love. Though of course if you wanted to, you could make it symbolize almost anything that a dog would desire enough to go on a quest for. It could be love; it could be knowledge; it could even be the glories of Heaven itself. Desire, obsession, that’s what the Bone really symbolizes, beyond all else.”

“And does Everydog find it in the end?”

“Eventually. First there are trials, of course, dozens of enemies trying to keep him from his goal, all of them allegorical: he faces other dogs named Doubt, Fear, and Indecision, for example, a swarm of hornets called Rabies, a wild boar named Distemper. But at the last Everydog reaches the Ivory Butcher Shop where his Bone awaits him . . .”

“And they live happily ever after?”

“For a minute. He finds the Bone, picks it up, savors it, and then, having tasted its splendor, wakes to find that the entire quest has been a dream.”

“What!?” said Luther.” But that’s such a cheat!”

“Not at all,” Ruff told him. “It’s a wonderful story.”

“I bet Everydog wouldn’t think so. Going through all that trouble, finally getting the Bone, and then having to wake up. That must have been terrible for him.”

“That would depend on how he looked at it. What about you and your quest to find Heaven? Do you feel terrible that you didn’t find it?”

“Of course I do! All the miles we walked, nearly getting killed by a pack of Purebreds—no offense—and now it turns out that we didn’t even get away from the prejudice—”

“You look at it the wrong way, then,” Ruff told him. “I first heard your story from Denmark, and I thought to myself, what a shame, but also, how wonderful. I retold the tale to some other dogs who came to me for entertainment, and they were amused, or stunned, or saddened, but they enjoyed it, every one of them.”

“But what does that have to do with my feelings about it? What do I care if some stranger enjoys hearing about me?”

“Luther, Luther . . . the lesson of Everydog . . . the meaning of life . . .”

“Is what?”

“It’s all a story,” the Setter exclaimed. “The whole world: Oh sun Oh sky Oh wind Oh trees Oh dogs and cats, it’s all a story, a grand entertainment.”

“An entertainment for who?”

“For God, silly. For God, for His Kennel, for Raaq, maybe.”

Luther’s eyes narrowed. “Raaq is entertained by torture and death . . .”

“And you think God isn’t? You think He can’t appreciate tragedy and horror? Life, with all its miseries and joys, is a story—or rather a Story—with God as the listener, and we mortals as the plot. Doesn’t it make sense? And doesn’t it explain why we can’t keep the Bone for more than a moment, why the dream has to end so another can begin? Who could enjoy a Story where everyone was perfectly happy?”

“Crazy,” said Luther, after this speech. “I was right, you philosophers are all crazy. I pity you, if that’s what you think of God.”

For a third time, Ruff would have laughed if he could.

“Pity me?” he said, crunching a chicken bone contentedly. “No, don’t waste pity on me. The lesson of Everydog, the meaning of life, whether you believe it or not . . . it holds me up, elevates me. In the most terrible of times, with everything turned against me, I can marvel at the knowledge that my struggle is part of the Story. And I still suffer, that’s part of the Story too, but the suffering is balanced by wonder . . . and my times of happiness become even more wondrous.

“No, don’t pity me. Pity those who can’t understand The Romance of the Bone, can’t see the purpose behind the up-and-down plot of their lives . . . pity yourself, if you can’t, other dogs if they can’t, or cats, or sparrows, or Oh the beasts of the field, or even the Masters.

“Yes . . . even the Masters.”

VII.

“How bad is it,” Jinsei asked, “if I’m attracted to you?”

“About as bad as if I’m attracted to you,” said Preacher. “Not so bad for us. But for Rag . . .”

“You think he’d take it really badly.”

“Well hell, I’m no Psychology major, never had the bullshit tolerance to handle Freud, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Rag talks a blue streak about women sometimes. But with Rag, the real way you know he wants something bad is, some part of him takes over and busts ass to make sure he doesn’t get it. With you, first he steps in and saves the day from Jack Baron and his Rat buddies, it gets looking like you’re more than just a little grateful, then tonight—last night—he asks you out and then gets drunk for the first time in a year, goes out of his way to be an asshole—”

“But I don’t want him,” Jinsei said. “Not as more than a friend. Maybe I thought I wanted more, that night with Jack . . . but I think it was just needing somebody at the time. I was more upset that night than I’d ever been before about anything, and Ragnarok was there. Before that night, though, when I first met the two of you, that day with Ginny Porterhouse—you’re the one I thought about afterwards, not Ragnarok.”

Preacher grinned. “Well well . . .”

“Don’t,” Jinsei stopped him, when it sounded as if he might make a joke. “Please don’t. I know he’s a good friend, and I don’t want to see him hurt either, so if you think this would be a bad idea then fine. But don’t make light of it.”

“Fair.” The grin took a step back; Preacher appeared to think it over, but his fingers were already twining and untwining in her hair, long before he spoke. “Discretion,” he finally said, “discretion, I’m not so bad at that game. How about you?”

She leaned forward and kissed him, lightly, trying it out. She had wiped most of the cat-makeup off her face a while ago, but the faint impression of felinity that remained had an effect that was, well, not very conducive to further rational discussion. Jinsei drew back a little and they shifted position, Preacher’s hand dropping from her hair to her back, stroking, one of her hands coming up to touch his face.

It was during the second, longer kiss that they realized they were not alone. A Greek tragician with a demonic sense of timing could not have arranged it better: Jinsei’s gasp as she noticed Ragnarok standing in the Cowcliffes’ archway, the suitably guilty expression of shock on Preacher’s face as he too looked around, Ragnarok’s usual lack of any identifiable expression, dark lenses, as always, hiding his eyes. The Black Knight held Preacher’s longcoat in one hand, half outstretched like an offering, the tightness with which he gripped it the only clue to his feelings.

That he should be up and about at all, rather than crashed out at Tolkien House with several unconscious hours and a bad hangover still ahead of him, was miracle enough. That he should have come and found them, and at just this particular moment, was almost too much to accept. Jinsei and Preacher were frozen in place, speechless, all too aware of their hands on each other. Ragnarok was likewise unmoving, though he did sway a little on his feet, his body’s bout with the alcohol far from over. He stared at them, and they back at him, for what might have been a full minute or more.

Then a door slammed somewhere and the tableau was broken. Preacher’s longcoat dropped to the floor; Ragnarok’s fist, empty, opened and closed twice. Then he was gone down the hall, something out of sight of the two lovers making a tremendous crash as it was knocked over. The slam of the front door as it was thrust open, not quite hard enough to break the glass; the hiss as it eased closed again. The gunning of a motorcycle, which had somehow not been heard in its approach.

After that, silence.

ALL-NIGHTER

I.

November passed quickly. A busy month for a University—many long tales could be told about what transpired between All Saints’ Day and Thanksgiving, but a summary should suffice: George and Calliope’s love affair continued while Preacher and Jinsei’s blossomed; Hobart the sprite grappled with constant nightmares about The Boneyard while Luther the mongrel struggled against despair; Blackjack ate well and was in general one of the most content individuals in Ithaca.

Ragnarok became the scarcest Bohemian on The Hill. Following the tableau in Cowcliffes, he spoke to no other Minister or Grey Lady for weeks; there were scattered sightings of him, brief glimpses of a black-clad figure dodging quickly through the between-class throngs, but no contact. Lion-Heart posted sentries at a number of auditoriums where Ragnarok was due to attend lecture, but he either came in disguise or skipped entirely. Preacher and Jinsei’s efforts to see him were similarly in vain.

The last Thursday of the month drew on, and those Cornellians who could manage it departed for a holiday at home with family and friends. Among those who remained on The Hill, though, were two people who had pressing business with each other, though they did not know it.

Mr. Sunshine did a lot of spare Typing that Thanksgiving weekend.

II.

“But why can’t I come with you?” George asked, as Calliope packed her duffel bag.

“Oh, George . . . don’t look so frightened. This isn’t it. I’ll be back in two nights, and I’m sure you can survive that long without me.”

“I just thought we’d spend Thanksgiving together, is all. Mashed potatoes, Cornish game hens . . . ”

She smiled. “No turkey?”

“I hate turkey. You know that. You know everything about me, and nine times out of ten you feel the same way. Look, how can I be sure . . . I mean, you said it would hurt me when you finally left, make me feel like dying, and if you were to just take off for keeps now after telling me you’d be back, I . . .”

“I swear to you, George, I will come back this time.” She faced him, took the silver whistle from about her neck and pressed it into his hand. “Here, wear this. It’s good luck, and you can be sure I wouldn’t leave without it even if I were planning to sneak out on you.”

George absorbed this, then slipped the chain over his head and clutched the whistle tight in his fist, a gesture that would become compulsive over the next few weeks. “All right,” he said, “all right. But what am I going to do all by myself tomorrow night?”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll find something,” Calliope said. She kissed him on the tip of his nose. “Or something will find you.”

And that was how George came to be shopping alone in Egan’s Suresave Grocers the next morning, where he bumped into Aurora Smith. Actually she spotted him first; it was the first she’d seen of him since Halloween night, and so embarrassing was the memory of what had happened that she very nearly snuck by without saying hello. But George was in rare form that Thanksgiving morn: with two jars of Vlasic pickles, a gallon jug of milk, an impulsively selected slab of feta cheese, and a huge frozen bird balanced in his arms—he had not thought to get a grocery cart for himself—he cut an amusing figure, and when one of the pickle jars slipped with a crash to the floor and George yelled “Shit!” Aurora could not help but laugh.

“Vinegar splashes all over my new sneakers,” George said to her by way of greeting, “and you get cracking up over it. Thanks a lot.”

“Sorry, but you’re hopeless, George!” She held her sides and struggled to gain control of herself. “Why don’t you get a cart for all that?”

“Too practical. How you be, lady?”

When a fresh wave of giggles had subsided, Aurora told him: “Pretty good, really. Say, that’s a funny-looking turkey.”

“It’s a goose,” George explained. “They were all out of Cornish game hens.”

“Having a quiet Thanksgiving with your girlfriend?”

“Alone, actually, Calliope took off for a couple days. Some kind of private business to take care of.”

“Well that’s not right,” Aurora said. She paused as if to consider, and just then the milk jug began to slip from George’s grasp. “Here, I’ll carry that,” Aurora offered, and grabbed it, only to have the other Vlasic pickle jar tumble to earth and shatter.

Now they both got laughing. An obviously displeased grocery boy appeared from behind a stack of three-liter Coke bottles and gave them the evil eye; the fellow seemed so upset over the broken pickle jars that George took pity on him, offering him the feta. “Protein,” the storyteller said. “You won’t be so pale.”

Later, outside in the parking lot, their respective purchases packed carefully in non-slip grocery bags, Aurora and George lingered and talked for a few moments.

“So how come you aren’t back home in Montana for Thanksgiving?” George asked her.

“Wisconsin,” she corrected. “I was supposed to go back yesterday, but when Brian and I got to the airport there’d been some sort of a computer mixup. The reservation desk only had one ticket for us, and every flight between now and Sunday was booked solid. I made Brian go by himself.”

“You miss going home?”

“Well . . . Christmas will be here soon enough. My father seemed kind of upset when I called to say I wouldn’t be coming. He’s been wanting to talk to me about something since August, but we’ve never gotten the chance . . . Listen, would you like to come up to Balch tonight and have dinner with me? I can pick you up; I’ve got Brian’s car.”

“Can I bring my goose?” George asked. “Not to insult your turkey, or anything, but I wanted something greasy.”

“Tell you what: you give me the goose, I’ll put it in the oven right next to my turkey. We’ll have leftovers for the next month.”

“You’ve got a deal.”

“Good then,” she said. “You want a lift home right now?”

“Sure thing.”

She led the way to Brian Garroway’s car, which—though George did not recognize the make—was a very practical-looking vehicle; it was brown, and probably got great gas mileage. They stowed their groceries in the back trunk and Aurora had wandered around to the driver’s side to let herself in when a thought seemed to strike her.

“Oh hey . . .” she told him, “we won’t be eating alone tonight. My friend Cathy Reinigen stayed up too, so she’ll be with us.”

“Fine,” said George. Aurora’s tone was innocent enough, yet for some reason he was reminded for the first time of their intimacy in the Garden, and Calliope’s question after: Did you enjoy it?

Hiding a sudden blush, he climbed into the car beside her and they drove off.

III.

Catherine Anne Reinigen turned out to be a real trip and a half, to use a Bohemian expression. They ate dinner in her room, a cavernous double with an immaculately clean white carpet. The door was plastered with a collection of tracts, Bible passages, and religious artifacts—George was frankly surprised not to see the finger bone of St. John taped up beside the memo board. Every inch of space on the wall above Catherine’s bed was likewise filled, and featured a series of pen-and-ink drawings of the Holy Saviour. An amazing variety of representations was displayed: the traditional Western Jesus with long hair and beard, Jesus as a black man, Jesus in a three-piece suit handing out Bibles to stockbrokers on Wall Street, a hippie Jesus playing electric guitar alongside Jimi Hendrix, Jesus sitting in the backseat of a Brooklyn cab, Jesus’ face framed by a television screen, an American Gothic–style portrait of Jesus standing in front of a farmhouse with a hoe in his hand and Mary Magdalene at his side, and—this one George found particularly interesting—Jesus as a Teamster.

“So where do you get your inspiration?” Cathy Reinigen asked him during dinner. This was a not untypical question for someone first meeting him, and George gave his not untypical response: he made something up on the spur of the moment.

“Roses,” he told her. “Every morning I have a half dozen fresh-cut white roses brought to my house. Of course when I was younger I couldn’t afford roses, so I kept a window box full of poppies instead, but I’ve moved up since then.”

“Roses? What do you do with roses?”

“Sniff them, naturally. Your olfactory cortex—your smelling center—is located just off the Dinsmore lobe in the right hemisphere of your brain, which is where all creative thinking takes place. You studied this in Bio, didn’t you? The idea is if you stimulate the old olfactory, it sort of gives a jump start to the Dinsmore lobe, and all at once you’re coming up with story ideas faster than you can write them down. Now I know how strange that must sound, but it’s documented fact; Hemingway did African violets three times a day, except when he was boxing.”

“That’s amazing.”

“That’s reality,” said George, keeping a poker face. He took a side-glance at Aurora and saw from her smug expression that she wasn’t buying any of it, but she seemed amused by the tale, which was just as good.

“So tell me,” Cathy went on. “Your latest novel, The Knight of the White Roses . . . is that title an allusion to—”

George nodded. “Clever. You found me out.”

“Well,” Cathy smiled, feeling enlightened. “I guess that just shows how limited critical analysis really is. I never would have figured that out in a classroom.”

“That’s why I don’t trust English teachers,” George confided. “Did you read the book?”

“The Knight? Yes, that one I read. It’s a shame my roommate isn’t here—she was going to eat with us, but she’s out on a date—and she’s in love with every one of your novels.”

“What did you think of the one you read?”

“Me? . . . I . . . that is to say . . .” She hesitated, as if groping for a polite response.

“She thought it was great,” Aurora spoke up. “She told me so. It got her Dunsmore lobe all excited.”

“Dinsmore,” George corrected.

“No, no,” Aurora recorrected. “Dunsmore. That’s the lobe in the left hemisphere that enjoys the story. You must have learned about it in Bio; it’s due south of the optic cortex. If you stimulate it with enough good literature your nose starts to grow longer.”

“Oh yeah,” George said. “Now I remember.”

“I liked your novel,” Cathy inserted, glancing confusedly at the both of them. “It’s just that I was sort of . . . disappointed in the way you handled a few of the characters.”

“Like who?” George asked seriously.

“Well, for example, Abbot Mattachine.”

“But the Abbot was a good Joe. I thought the way I had him save the Knight from the tax collectors was pretty nifty.”

“There was that business with him and the choirboys, though . . .”

George shrugged. “Lots of abbots had business with choirboys. Even a fantasy novel has to touch base with reality once in a while.”

Cathy Reinigen cleared her throat. “It’s not that I’m a moralist-­reconstructionalist,” she said, borrowing a phrase from a long-ago freshman seminar. “And I certainly wouldn’t want to infringe on your notions of realism by insisting that characters should always be properly punished; real people get away with crimes every day. It’s just that to me, the very best stories are those where the author gets a strong moral message through no matter what actually happens to the characters in the end. Do you understand?”

George nodded. “The big problem with messages like that,” he told her, “is that you can make them clear as a bell, in letters ten feet high, impossible to miss, and readers still don’t get the point. Shakespeare was a kick-ass storyteller, but look what’s happened to Romeo and Juliet. Almost everyone forgets that the play was a tragedy. Tragedy, that means Fate doesn’t like you, but nine times out of ten it’s you who makes the final screwup. These days we call a lovesick man a ‘Romeo’; you’d have to be pretty sick, though, to really want to be Romeo. He was a punk kid; in the story he kills two people in a passion and he’s directly responsible for the death of a third. In the last scene he kills himself over the loss of a woman who isn’t even dead, and then she wakes up and follows his example. The double suicide is the unforgivable part; it’s not touching, it’s dumb. They gave up hope, and that means it’s not even a love story, it’s an immaturity story.”

“Mature people despair,” Aurora suggested.

“Never completely,” George insisted. “Mature people make mistakes, they have breakdowns, they lose, but they never stop looking for the chink in the wall of Fate. The only time they suicide is to save another life; other­wise it’s just quitting. That’s a children’s escape.”

“But Romeo and Juliet loved each other so deeply—” Cathy began.

“If that were true,” said George, “they both would have come out of the tomb alive. Even Juliet’s real death wouldn’t have broken Romeo permanently. Hell, do you think Abbot Mattachine would have cashed it in over the death of one choirboy, when there were so many others in the world?”

“Well now that,” Cathy Reinigen said, beginning to look annoyed, “that is an entirely different case.”

“Oh, but it isn’t,” George insisted. “That’s the other thing you’ve got wrong . . .”

They argued back and forth about it for some minutes more without resolving anything until Aurora tactfully changed the subject. No matter, it had been enough; Mr. Sunshine must surely have overheard them, for what happened later in the evening seemed a most amazing coincidence, the ever-moving wall of Fate bending itself to get George and Aurora alone again, unchaperoned.

IV.

A thick fog—another reminiscence of Lothlórien, but cold and damp, as genuine November fogs tend to be—rose up to cover The Hill shortly after nightfall. Some time after that three figures emerged from a door beneath the Balch Arch. Following dessert Aurora had suggested, much to George’s surprise, that they all go down to the Fevre Dream in Collegetown for a beer. Even more to his surprise, Cathy Reinigen agreed wholeheartedly with the idea, offering to pay for the pitcher.

They crossed Fall Creek Bridge and meandered through the Arts Quad where the statues of Ezra Cornell and Andrew White kept their vigil, patiently awaiting midnight when perchance a passing virgin would free them to take a brief stretch. George and the two women were several hours too early to make the test, but George saluted Ezra all the same.

Then they were passing between Olin and Uris Libraries, both dimmed for the holiday. There in the shadows beneath the great Clock Tower stood two figures, holding hands. The fog parted fortuitously just then, and a chance ray of moonlight revealed that the figures were, in fact, two men.

“That is disgusting,” Cathy Reinigen pronounced, when they were safely out of earshot. Aurora remembered her mother’s first, and only, visit to Cornell; George, usually a bear for argument, let the moment pass. Though it didn’t, really.

As the trio drew nearer to Collegetown, an astonishing number of same-sex couples began materializing out of the fog, most of them extremely taken with each other. Aurora noted this with interest; George stared openly (for he always stared at everything); but Cathy Reinigen took it as a personal affront, as if the law of averages had conspired to set up a visual gauntlet for the express purpose of making her uncomfortable. Which was close enough.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all,” Cathy said, as they reached the Fevre Dream and spied two women necking in the front seat of a parked van. It was the sixth lesbian couple they had come across in less than ten minutes. George admired them greatly, for they were content in and of themselves, but his contemplation of them was interrupted by a blurred form that came bursting out of the bar. It was the Bohemian Love-Minister Aphrodite, and she had Panhandle slung over her shoulder like a war bride.

“Evening, George,” she greeted them, “everybody. Hey, hurry on in, drinks are seventy-five cents until nine o’clock.”

That said, she spun on her heel and rushed off down the block, still carrying the unconscious Panhandle.

“Well thank God for normal people,” said Cathy, morally vindicated. Still bracing herself against possible improprieties, she thrust open the front door of the Fevre Dream and stepped inside.

Smiling discreetly at each other, George and Aurora followed.

V.

Though the members of Ithaca’s gay community never understood why, the hand of Fate pointed in their direction that night. The town rednecks stayed home and bloated themselves on turkey and football. Among the Community, connections were made; the weak found courage, the lonely found companionship, and one and all found good fortune.

Over on East Hill, a seventeen-year-old football prodigy admitted to his parents during dinner that his unseen steady girlfriend was actually the team’s wide receiver, a fleet-footed beanpole named Jonathan. Now it so happened that the football prodigy’s father was a devotee of Lyndon LaRouche, and thus his first thought—actually more of a reflex—was to beat the living hell out of his son. But even as he rose out of his chair, a spoon clenched in one chubby fist, he lost his balance and pitched face first into a bowl of lumpy mashed potatoes. Inexplicably struck blind, the old man was carted off raving in an ambulance, and spent three sightless days as a guest in Tompkins County Hospital. Finally, at sunrise of the third day, he awoke from a deep slumber crying, “All right, all right!” Instantly his sight was restored. He went home, embraced his son, and thereafter did good works.

Down by the shores of Cayuga Lake, three men who had been infected by the AIDS virus were walking in Stewart Park when they heard a hidden lyre playing a distinctly Greek variation of a Calvinist hymn. At the sound the disease fled their bodies, entering into a nearby pack of squirrels who went mad and cast themselves into Cayuga’s waters. Likewise four thugs in pursuit of a lone lesbian had their bashing days brought to a premature end when a sewer gas explosion blew the roof off a (thankfully unoccupied) Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, showering the thugs with fire, brimstone, and extra-crispy wings.

This sort of thing went on throughout the night, and the only real disappointment came when a mysterious one-block power outage forced the early closing of Jenny’s New Wave, the gay bar downtown. But the problem was easily solved; their spirits undimmed, the patrons relocated to The Hill—to the Fevre Dream. And the upshot of that was that Cathy Reinigen spent a good deal of time hiding out in a locked stall in the women’s room, while George and Aurora, untroubled, took advantage of the bargain price on mixed drinks and got quietly trashed.

“Tell me why,” Aurora asked over her third Tequila Sunset (she had tried one at the Halloween party and fallen in love with them), “you don’t like Christians.”

“What makes you think I don’t like Christians?”

“Little things. The way you looked at the drawings on Cathy’s wall.”

“I loved those drawings,” George said truthfully. “Wish I had a book of them.”

“The way you act around Brian sometimes.”

“Well now, with Brian Garroway you’re talking about a two-way street. He’s got a way of acting around me.”

“I know.”

“With me,” George added, “what you’re basically dealing with is the Baskin-Robbins theory of Christianity.”

“The what?”

A low chuckle rumbled from an adjoining table, where a mountain of a man sat with five beer mugs arrayed in front of him like toy soldiers.

“The Baskin-Robbins theory,” the mountain said, speaking in a rich bass. “Thirty-one Flavors. Disliking mint chip doesn’t mean you boycott the entire store.”

“Exactly,” said George.

“Nonsense,” replied the mountain. “You are a storyteller, George, and all storytellers are liars and prejudiced. In your case the prejudice happens to be for outcasts, which puts you in a natural opposition to any organized religion. You also have delusions of godhood and don’t like anyone ridiculing your theories, most of which are romantic trash.”

“This,” George explained to Aurora, “is Rasputin.”

“The Queen of Hearts,” Rasputin added with a nod. “Tell me, has he fed you the one about Romeo and Juliet yet?”

Aurora smiled, charmed, as most people were, by Rasputin’s unabashed rudeness. “Yes,” she said, “he’s mentioned them.”

“No doubt you were discussing homosexuality. He has a writer’s fixation about that. George, you see those two dykes over there?” He jerked his thumb at a pair of women in checked flannel shirts who sat at the bar arguing with Stainless Marley.

“I see them.”

“Do you think they would make it out of your Shakespearean tomb alive?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“You see?” Rasputin looked triumphantly to Aurora. “He doesn’t even know the ladies in question, and already he’s granting them nobility and strength of character. What if I told you, George, that they were the two biggest neurotics in New York State, ready to fold their cards at the first sign of crisis?”

“Fuck that,” said George. “I like the way they smile at each other.”

“Naturally. Be truthful—you fantasized about lesbians in your adolescence. That’s the real story.”

“You’ve got me pegged, Raspy.”

“Hmmph . . . liar.”

“Christians can be outcasts,” Aurora spoke up.

Rasputin cocked an ear. “Beg pardon, my dear?”

“I said Christians can be outcasts, just as much as anybody else.” She fished beneath the collar of her blouse and brought out a tiny golden cross on a chain. “Do you have any idea how some people react when they see this? Unless you’re obviously wearing it just for fashion they get nervous; mention God as more than a concept and the conversation ends like someone pulled a plug.”

This brought another low chuckle. “That’s the spirit! Well spoken—take it from Rasputin, my dear, you keep talking like that and you’ll have him eating out of your hand in no time.”

With a final nod, Rasputin dismissed them and left the conversation as abruptly as he had entered it. Focusing his attention back on the rest of the room, he raised a beefy hand; at this signal five lithe choirboys in silk shirts appeared from various corners of the bar and replaced his beer mugs with slopping-full champagne glasses. It was strange.

“You have a point, you know,” George told Aurora, looking at the little cross. “But I promise I won’t pull the plug if you start talking more than concept. It’s just that I have a hard time believing God only wrote one Book. Hell, I’ve got three novels under my belt and I’m not even especially hot shit.”

“Oh, I’d say you’re at least warm shit,” Aurora said seriously (and seriously not intending any insult, no matter how it sounded). “As for God, I don’t claim to know if the Bible is all She wrote or not. In fact, there are a lot of things I don’t claim to know.”

“Then you’re not mint chip,” George pronounced, “and I can deal.” He raised his glass in a toast, then paused. “Did you say ‘She’?”

Aurora twitched her nose mischievously and sipped her Tequila Sunset. “Maybe,” she said. “Will you put me in one of your stories?”

“What kind of story?”

“A fantasy, like The Knight. You remember the woman in the enchanted forest?”

“The one who turned into a grizzly bear when the moon rose?”

“Yes,” Aurora said, “but never mind the grizzly bear part. That’s the kind of character I’d want, sort of off the beaten track.”

“Sort of outcast?”

“Maybe.” She toyed with her cross.

“You should keep wearing that,” George told her. He let one of his own hands stray to Calliope’s whistle.

“Who knows?” said Aurora. “I might get a bigger one.”

“Good. Can I ask you a personal question?”

She twitched her nose again. “If you promise to put me in a story.”

“It’s a deal.”

“OK, shoot.”

“How did you fall in love with Brian Garroway?” George asked. “He’s mint chip to the core, or at least he seems to be. I don’t see the attraction.”

Aurora first laughed, then fell silent, searching for words. It promised to be a long and difficult explanation, but she was spared by Rasputin, who chose that precise moment to vent a remarkable gout of wind. Big men as a rule cut big farts, but if flatulence were visible he would have literally been enveloped in a vapor cloud. Embarrassed, he tried to cover up his faux pas as best he could.

“Hmmph!” he grunted, pretending it had just been a noisy throat­clearing. “Hmmph!”

Holding her nose and grinning, Aurora glanced at him and then past him, her eyes fixing by chance on yet another pair of women at the bar. She gasped, and not from Rasputin’s scent.

“My God,” she whispered.

“My God what?”

“There.” George looked where Aurora pointed, recognizing Bijou, a female guitarist who had once played with Benny Profane, and with her a dark-haired woman he did not know.

“That’s Bijou,” he said. “Rock musician. I know her, if you want to be introduced.”

“No, no, not her. The other girl.”

“Bijou’s steady, probably. What about her?”

“That’s Cathy’s roommate.”

“Cathy Reinigen’s roommate?”

Aurora nodded. And then, out of nowhere, a smile bloomed on her face, stretched wide but not quite making it to a laugh.

“What?” said George.

“Oh my . . . I just realized.”

“Just realized what?”

“Her name,” Aurora said. She seemed to have trouble getting the words out, as if she actually were laughing.

“I don’t know her name,” said George.

“I know it.”

“You know it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what is it?”

The smile stretched so wide George feared it might snap and hit him in the eye. Aurora’s cheeks dimpled.

“Juliet,” she finally managed to say. “Her name is Juliet.”

“Hmmph!” grunted Rasputin.

VI.

Cathy Reinigen never did return from the bathroom. At some point she had simply evaporated; and it was funny, but George and Aurora felt no real compulsion to go looking for her. Instead, when Bijou and a few other free hands got up an impromptu rock jam at ten o’clock, they danced, and drank some more, and did not leave the bar until nearly closing time.

Outside the fog had tightened like a corset, and they were completely isolated as they walked back onto campus. It did not really surprise either of them when a horse trotted by out front of the Straight, for by that time they were past the point where anything could seem very odd. The filly walked right up to George, nuzzling his neck like an old acquaintance.

“She’s beautiful,” Aurora said, entranced. “Do you know her?”

“No, I don’t think we’ve met.” George’s first thought was that she must belong to one of the Bohemians, but she wore no saddle—and he did not recognize her coloring, grey-olive coat with a midnight-black mane.

“We should go for a ride,” Aurora suggested.

“Hmmm?” The storyteller was momentarily distracted; he had reached up to stroke the horse’s head and discovered the mane had an unsettlingly familiar feel to it.

“We should go for a ride,” repeated Aurora. She stepped up and patted the horse firmly. “That’d be all right with you, wouldn’t it, girl?”

The horse whinnied in what Aurora took to be the affirmative; George struggled to catch up.

“Did you say take a ride?” he asked.

“Sure did.” Aurora took a step back and then swung herself effortlessly onto the horse’s bare back.

“But this horse’s got no saddle,” George protested.

“It’s all right—I’ll show you how to bounce.”

“You’ll show me . . . you’re saying you know how to drive this animal?”

“Oh, come on, George,” said Aurora. “I’m from Wisconsin, for God’s sake.”

That seemed to settle things. She offered him a hand and he reached up to grab it, a few of the black mane-hairs still tangled between his fingers. As their palms contacted George felt a jolt, and like magic he was behind her on the horse, his arms locked around her waist.

The ride that followed seemed to take both forever and no time at all. They ranged far, perhaps as far as the eastern reaches of the Cornell Plantations and back, and George discovered through the rhythm of the horse and the woman that bareback was not such a terrible deal at all. They seemed to flow through the night, caught up in an enchantment that bore them along on hooves of ivory . . . it was a pleasant journey. More is the pity, then, that George could never remember later—nor could Aurora—just when and where they finished their ride and turned the horse loose again.

Nor could either of them remember—and this was the real mystery—how they came to be in the top of the Clock Tower. When the Chimesmaster shook them awake at quarter to seven the next morning they had no recollection of climbing the long stair (How had they gotten through the locked door at the bottom?). They did remember being there in the open belfry, the high point of a pinnacle that rose above a world wrapped in gauzy white. They remembered talking for what seemed an eternity, talking about love, and dream, and Christianity, and Abbot Mattachine, and a dozen other scattered topics. They even remembered things that could not have been, such as a little old man (truly little—he stood no more than six inches high) who seemed to watch them for a long time before being startled away when Aurora tried to speak to him.

And what else happened?

Did they kiss? Perhaps. Perhaps the fog rose up in the deepest part of the night, scaling the walls of the Tower, turning back the hands of the Clock to the last night in October. Perhaps they did kiss, reenacting the scene in the Garden, each knowing (and not knowing) that their arms held the wrong (and the right) partner.

Did they love? No, probably not . . . not yet. George’s heart still belonged to Calliope, and Aurora’s (however mismatched it might seem) to Brian Garroway. But even where there is not true love there can still be the possibility of love, and that possibility, the knowledge of it, lingers long.

How long did they embrace? Who could say? Time has little meaning in the fog, and even less in enchantment. All that is certain is that they talked for a time, and held each other for a time, and then a woman was shaking them awake with musician’s hands, to blink uncomfortably into the early sunlight.

The day after Thanksgiving had dawned clear and cold; autumn was rapidly approaching its end.

WINTER DRAWS NEAR

Calliope returned, as promised, and for a brief while longer George’s life resumed its normal pattern, however normal that might be. But in his heart of hearts he felt his time with her drawing short, and he loved her all the more intensely for that, knowing neither the day nor the hour when she would be taken away from him, and worse still, not knowing what would happen afterwards. Mornings he awoke to find a chill wind blowing across The Hill from the west, rattling windowpanes and hinting at the approach of something unpleasant.

Vanguard conservative William F. Buckley blew in on that wind one cloudy day. With a cold in his chest and a substantial lecturer’s fee in his pocket, he took the stage at Bailey Hall before a packed audience to give a two-hour talk. Naturally certain campus elements could not pass up this opportunity to infringe on the right of free speech; the front rows of the auditorium were packed with Cornell Marxists, and as Buckley approached the podium they set up a cry of “Fascist swine! Oink! Oink! Oink!” in no less than seven East Bloc languages. Bohemian King Lion-Heart was infuriated by this; he had paid good capitalist money for the privilege of hearing Buckley out and then disagreeing with him. He raised his fist in defiance, and the Bohemians, Grey Ladies, and Blue Zebras began a counter-chant: “Bill! Bill! Bill!” The Young Republicans and reporters for the right-wing Cornell Review chimed in, perhaps not realizing, in their own fury, just who they were jumping into bed with. After a rousing chorus of “God Bless America,” the Communists were at last cowed into quietude. Looking dazed but not unhappy, Buckley launched into a long address concerning the death of liberalism, the rise of the new right, and the tattooing of AIDS victims.

Wandering about the parking lot of Bailey after the end of the speech, Lion-Heart chanced to see Ragnarok driving off on his motorcycle. The King of Bohemia leaped to his horse and raced off in pursuit, nearly trampling Buckley, who stood among a press of admirers signing autographs. The chase was close at first—Ragnarok drove slowly, not noticing that he was being followed. Turning right on Tower Road, however, the Bohemian Minister of Defense glanced back over his shoulder, saw a purple-maned horse coming up fast, and gunned his throttle. Traffic forced him to slow up a moment later, but he made good his escape by doing a stunt-ride down the long stair that led behind and between Uris and Ives Halls. Lion-Heart tried to urge his horse into a full-gallop pursuit and wound up getting thrown for his trouble.

William Buckley wasn’t the only thing blowing in the wind as far as politics were concerned. Fueled by fresh bad news from Pretoria, the Blue Zebra Hooter Patrol stepped up protests against University stock holdings in companies doing business with South Africa. On the last day of classes they gathered what allies they could and met out front of the Straight to build a symbolic House of Cards. They hoped to attract as many spectators as they could, but there were two attendees they never counted on.

One was a seller of lightning rods with a Master’s Degree in Physics.

The other was Stephen Titus George, storyteller, kite-flyer, Patron Saint of Daydreams, and friend to the wind, who was about to earn his Master’s Degree in the art of Writing without Paper.

THE FOOL, THE WIND AND
THE LIGHTNING ROD SELLER

I.

Of course a certain number of scientists have to go mad, just to keep the tradition alive.

He was working on his Doctorate and he had a room of his own, which is an important thing for a man to have. Several levels beneath Clark Hall, the room was small, roughly cubical, and private. The door had three locks on it. Once upon a time he had been in ROTC, but even though he had quit the program the Army still loved him. The Army always loves Physics Majors; they build things.

He had built something, all right. He sat in a swivel chair in the late hours of the morning spinning slowly around, looking at the things in his room, especially the thing. Nearest the door, a yellow rain slicker hung on a plain wooden coatrack. Then there was his desk, and on top of it a number of interesting items: a computer that helped him count; a clutch of stuffed animals; his lightning rods, black iron straight and true; a leather satchel to carry them in; and, in a plastic bottle that might have once contained aspirin, his Gobstoppers.

He did not know where the Gobstoppers had come from, that memory had been misfiled somehow, though he suspected they were the gift of some woman, some Lady. He did know that they were wonderful. The Gobstoppers gave him dreams, wonderful dreams, and ideas; and they made him laugh, sometimes for very long periods. An irreplaceable treasure, he did not worry about running out of them, for the bottle never seemed to grow empty. He took them, and laughed, and had no fear.

He took one now. A smile bloomed on his lips and he reached out to pet one of the animals.

“Tigger,” he said, lifting the rag-stuffed toy out from between Pooh and Piglet. “Tigger, Tigger, Tigger.”

Holding it, still petting it, he spun round again in his chair, focusing on the red wagon, the child’s wagon, that occupied one bare corner of the room. Bolted onto the back of the wagon was a crude tail of twisted hemp; painted on its side in white paint was the one word “Eeyore.” Sitting inside the wagon was the thing he had built.

What the thing was exactly was hard to tell because it had been almost entirely covered by yellow and black stickers reading DANGER—RADIATION with the nuclear symbol stamped below the words. The thing was lumpy, halfway between a cylinder and a sphere, squat like a frog. A digital timer poked out of the sea of radiation stickers near the top.

“Tigger,” the Doctoral Candidate—who had visions of being a lightning rod salesman as well as a Physicist—said, putting Tigger in the wagon too. Then he put Piglet next to Tigger, but left Pooh on his desk, looking forlorn. He bent to the digital timer, fiddled with it.

Andy Warhol had said that there would come a day when everyone in America would be famous for fifteen minutes. But a Doctoral Candidate surely deserves more than the average mortal, so he gave himself a full hour, pressed a button to start the countdown.

He put on his rain slicker and a pair of yellow boots produced from a drawer, double-checked a flyer (RALLY OUTSIDE THE STRAIGHT, 11:30 A.M.) and gave Pooh a parting pat on the head.

“Gonna make it rain, Winnie,” he said. Then he slung his satchel full of lightning rods over his shoulder and, pulling the red wagon behind him, he walked out, not even bothering to lock the door as he marched off to collect his share of celebrity.

II.

The weather outside was cold, snow promised but not yet delivered. Actually, with the air still as a whisper it was not a bad day for an outdoor rally, though only a fool would think of kite-flying on such a morning.

The Blue Zebras had secured the main door of the Straight and set up a podium and microphone on the steps. They had put together an impressive selection of speakers and hoped to draw a respectable crowd even with final exams so close (like it or not, political consciousness on campus always tended to drop during the end-of-semester squeeze). But what most likely drew the largest number of semi-interested bystanders was not the list of speakers, or the informative pamphlets passed around before the start of the rally, but rather the House of Cards.

The Cards were oversized, three-foot-long playing cards cut from stout cardboard, and because of what they symbolized they were all black Aces or Eights, the Dead Man’s Hand. One of the Zebras who had done time in the Architecture School had designed the House to look shaky without actually being so. About eight feet high overall, it was topped by an extra-large ace of spades on which had been set a scale-model conference table surrounded by figures representing the Cornell Trustees voting on a stock resolution. Below the neck the figures were normal, but their heads had been replaced by various fruits and vegetables. A cabbage head led the vote.

“CORNELL’S INVESTMENT POLICY” read a cardboard plaque at the foot of the House. Higher up a small banner strung between two Eights shouted “DIVEST NOW!” Passersby both nodded and shook their heads at the structure, but most were intrigued enough to stay. A bipartisan crowd of nearly a hundred had gathered by the time eleven-thirty rolled around and Fantasy Dreadlock stepped to the mike. She studied the assembly, pleased at the variety she saw.

She opened her mouth to speak, but it was precisely then that the Doctoral Candidate trundled into view with his wagon, clutching a lightning rod in one hand and screaming that he was going to make it rain.

III.

At ten to noon George was once again on the Arts Quad between the two statues, assembling a kite, the same kite, in fact, that he had first flown on a late day in August while a St. Bernard watched him. The Bernard was nowhere to be seen this morning; Calliope was at George’s shoulder, though, and he wouldn’t have noticed the dog anyway.

They had risen early, Calliope announcing over breakfast that she wanted to see how George called the wind. And so they had climbed The Hill, first taking a long walk downtown, a rare event for the usually housebound couple. Calliope’s silver-threaded cloak had somehow sprouted a hood, partially hiding her face, though once she had caught the gaze of a passing biker. The fellow had gasped in awe and gone down in a crashing tumble of arms, legs, and Schwinn.

“Now like I said,” George told her, fitting the crosspieces into place, “the kites Uncle Erasmus and I had weren’t diamonds, they were box kites, huge rectangular things with tie-dyed cloth stretched on the frames. Erasmus said he loved box kites best because they looked like something that oughtn’t be able to fly at all . . .”

He went on, assembling and talking, caught up in the story of that childhood day, and he’d actually got the kite all together before realizing that Calliope was no longer beside him. Startled, he looked around, called her name, and found his gaze being drawn toward a press of people at the southwest corner of the Quad. Though it was the middle of a class period, a large body of frightened-looking people were outside and on the move, appearing along the asphalt between Olin and Uris Libraries, entering the Quad and crossing it to put some distance between themselves and whatever it was they left behind. An equally sizable group—curious rather than scared—moved in the opposite direction, trying to get a glimpse of what was up. Where the two groups came together they bottlenecked, became one struggling mob.

Calliope stood just at the fringe of the bottleneck. She allowed George to see her, smiled at him, winked, and melted into the mass of people.

“Hey,” George said. “Hey.”

He dropped the kite and went after her, hurrying but still catching a few bits and pieces from the refugees who streamed past him. Two men in Zeta Psi blazers blipped in and out of earshot, one insisting to the other: “. . . there’s no way, it can’t be, don’t worry . . . there’s no way . . .”

Into the press of the crowd, shouting her name now, while others around shouted to know what was going on, someone had a what in front of the Straight? The storyteller was buffeted back and forth, turning, disoriented, until all at once two things happened.

The first was that he broke through the bottleneck, found himself at the top of the slope looking down at the Straight, and more specifically at the Doctoral Candidate, who stood alone with his wagon inside a police cordon, while outside the cordon a diverse crowd of Cornellians tried to decide whether to run for the valleys or stay and watch.

The second was that Calliope was behind him, laying her hands lightly on his shoulders, making him start.

“God,” George said. “God, don’t ever do that.”

“Relax, George.” She touched his neck in a way he liked and he did relax, leaning back into her, one hand clutching the whistle around his neck. Her breath in his ear.

“What the hell, Calliope.” He watched the scene out front of the Straight, some part of his mind trying to understand it. “What the hell, I thought you said you wanted to see how I called the wind.”

“I do,” she assured him. She reached around from behind him, pressed an object into his hands. The kite. “I do, but here’s something more interesting.”

People continued to struggle in both directions, but now no one bumped into them. No one blocked their view, either. George kept looking down the slope.

“What’s happening here?” he asked.

In answer she produced another object, set it on his head. Cowboy hat.

“Looks like trouble in Dodge City,” Calliope said. “Town needs saving.”

“What . . .”

“Writing without paper,” she whispered, and kissed him twice. The first kiss was on the side of his neck, soft, electric. For the second he turned, caught it full on the lips, and after that he would have jumped from the Bell Tower if she’d asked him to.

Would it work . . .

I never tried. Depends on the circumstances.

“Writing without paper,” she whispered again, releasing him. “A lot of lives might depend on it, George.” She pointed down to the Straight, down at the Doctoral Candidate. “Trouble,” she said. “Fix it.”

“Sure.” He clutched the whistle in sudden fear. “You will wait here, won’t you? I mean . . .”

“I’ll be watching,” Calliope promised, truthfully. “Now you go on.”

A third kiss to send him on his way, just like that. And it did not seem at all absurd or surprising, not after living for months with this strangest and most beautiful Lady, to go trooping down into some sort of confrontation of which he knew nothing, looking and feeling like Wild Bill Hickok with a dragon kite in his hands. He held the kite in front of him like a shield, Calliope’s last kiss still playing on his lips, and people got out of his way, the taste of her on his tongue, hands of the Tower Clock inching toward high noon.

Writing without paper, George thought. Sure. Easy.

A few pebbles rattled beneath the soles of his sneakers, reminding him of spurs.

IV.

The police cordon gave the Doctoral Candidate and his red wagon a fifty-foot circle of breathing room so he wouldn’t get nervous. At the edge of this circle stood an assortment of Cornell Safety and Ithaca City Police, thirteen in all. There was also a police psychologist—whom the Doctoral Candidate refused to notice—but requests for a bomb specialist and a Special Weapons team had so far gone unanswered.

Despite the fact that the digital timer was clearly visible—00:20:22, it now read—and despite the obvious implication of the radiation stickers the Doctoral Candidate had plastered all over his invention, a surprising number of people had decided to hang out and see what happened. The Bohemians had gone so far as to throw together an Apocalypse Picnic on the grassy knoll above the Campus Store. Lion-Heart watched the action through a pair of opera glasses, sipped Midori from a shot glass, and arranged a chain bet as to whether they’d all be vaporized or not. Each Bohemian made one bet that they would, and another that they wouldn’t, the individual bets forming a chain. If they were all still alive in twenty-one minutes, they would pass a five-dollar bill around in a circle.

“Gonna make it rain!” the Doctoral Candidate screamed, shaking the lightning rod. “Make it rain fire, see if I don’t!”

He had been saying more or less the same thing, with little variation, for the past thirty minutes. He strutted about, sometimes getting a good distance away from his wagon and his digital toy, but in the hand that did not hold the lightning rod he clutched what looked suspiciously like a remote control transmitter, the button on it a traditional panic red. It was just a guess, since he had not bothered to explain his device or his motives, but it seemed likely that pressing the button would end the countdown prematurely, clicking the timer right to zero.

“We can’t just shoot him,” Doubleday said, sounding disappointed.

“Can’t reason with him, either,” sniffed the police psychologist. “Not if he won’t even listen to me.”

“God, God . . .” Nattie Hollister stood with them too. The Chief of Police and a member of the University administration made it a quintet. “What are the odds,” asked the Chief, “that it’s a real nuke?”

“Please,” the University official pooh-poohed, “this is an Ivy League institution. We don’t do nuclear weapons here.”

“Be hard to get the plutonium,” suggested Nattie Hollister. “Unless they’ve got some in one of the labs up here. But even without real atomics, a Bomb’s still got a high-explosive trigger, and hell, I’m sure the chemistry labs up here have the ingredients for—”

“But he’s Physics, not Chemistry, right?” said the Chief. He glanced at the University official. “That’s what you said.”

“Still . . .” said Hollister.

“. . . we might not have a nuclear explosion,” Doubleday concluded for her, “but we could still have a high explosion. Which would be bad.”

“Nineteen minutes.” The Chief of Police rubbed his palms together lightly. “Got to do something.”

“Cordon’s not far enough back,” Hollister observed. “If it’s any kind of explosive . . . ”

“Where’s the damn Bomb Squad?” Doubleday wanted to know.

“’Scuse me.”

“Huh?”

They all turned; a sixth fellow had joined them. He wore the uniform of Cornell ROTC and had peach fuzz on his chin.

“I can do this guy for you,” the ROTC offered.

The Chief of Police narrowed his eyes. “What’s that?”

The ROTC fingered a pin on his uniform. “Rifle team. Get me a gun and I can do this guy. Ever see Robert De Niro in The Deer Hunter?”

“Go home, bedwetter,” the Chief dismissed him. To the others he began: “Now I . . . hey! Hey, wait a minute!”

Someone had broken through the cordon. No, not broken through—George had simply walked through, while the Safety officers nearest him happened to be looking the wrong way. By the time they noticed him he was well into the circle and headed for the Doctoral Candidate.

“I’ll get him,” Doubleday said, fondling his nightstick.

“No,” ordered the Chief, feeling a sudden compulsion. “No, hold on . . .”

George kept walking, oddly confident, still feeling Calliope’s kiss. He no longer held the kite in front of him; he held it at his side, like a six-gun. Seeing the storyteller coming, the Doctoral Candidate broke off in mid-shout and turned to face him down.

“Howdy,” George said, feeling not the least foolish, somehow, as he adjusted his cowboy hat. “Where’re you from, stranger? Originally, I mean.”

The Doctoral Candidate flared his rain slicker and shook the tip of the lightning rod threateningly at George . . . but he did answer his question.

“Chicago,” he said. Piglet and Tigger watched from the wagon. “Illinois.”

The digital timer clicked over from 00:18:32 to 00:18:31. And the Tower Clock began to chime.

High noon.

V.

Lion-Heart adjusted his opera glasses, watching the play with interest. “What the hell are you up to, George?”

“Ten bucks says it’s interesting,” offered the Top.

“What’s your name?” George asked the Doctoral Candidate. The Candidate flared his rain slicker again.

“Christopher Robin,” he said.

George nodded, indicating the stuffed animals. “Where’s Pooh?”

“Pooh is home in bed,” Christopher Robin replied, beginning to sound impatient. “He has a social disease.”

“Sure he does. And what’s that thing you’re holding?”

The impatience backed off a bit. “It’s a lightning rod.” He shook the satchel. “I’m a seller of lightning rods.”

“Oh, Je-sus,” cried the police psychologist. “He’s read Bradbury! I hate it when they’ve read Bradbury!” The Chief of Police gave him a look.

“So what’s your name?” Christopher Robin asked George jabbing the lightning rod at him. “Eh?”

George smiled in sudden inspiration. “What if I told you I was A. A. Milne? You being Christopher Robin, you’d have to do what I said. I’d have written you.”

“No, you didn’t write me.” Sounding disturbed at the prospect.

“Are you sure? Would you bet everything you had on it . . . Christopher?”

“I don’t like you,” Christopher Robin warned. “And you’re no cowboy, either.”

“True enough. Maybe you’re not Christopher Robin, either.”

“Hey, you watch it!” Angry, and also afraid. This time it was the remote control box he shook threateningly. “Don’t mess, I’m nuclear, buddy!”

“Of course,” said George. “And you’re going to make it rain, right.”

To himself he thought: I am being glib, I am actually being glib with a potentially dangerous human being. And enjoying it. Maybe I’m as crazy as he is.

But he did not feel crazy, or afraid, what he felt was Calliope’s kiss, a lightness in his head, and a strong sense of control. Very much like the control he’d felt on the day of the box kites when he was a boy; not quite as strong a control as he had over a written story, but close, and getting closer.

Calliope, kissing him.

The timer, ticking over: 00:15:09.

Trouble. Fix it.

“Tell you what I am,” George continued. He had spied the House of Cards out the corner of his eye and his mind toyed with the possibilities of it. “What I am, Christopher, is a professional kite-flyer. Yes, it’s true. And if you don’t simmer down and start behaving right now, well, I’m just going to have to fly this kite of mine.”

“No.” A sliver of real panic.

“Yes.”

“You can’t.”

“Yes I can.”

“There’s no wind!” Jabbing, jabbing with the lightning rod. “You can’t fly a kite with no wind, that’s a rule!”

George looked sideways at the sky. Holding the kite in one hand and the spool of twine in the other, he turned in place. Once.

“The kite’ll fly,” he promised. “If you can make it rain, I can make the wind blow. Fair is fair.” He turned in place again.

“I hope someone’s videotaping this,” Lion-Heart said.

“Don’t you do it!” Christopher Robin’s thumb hovered over the red button on the box. “Don’t you dare fly that kite!”

“So what if he flies it?” Doubleday shook his head. “Can we please do something, Chief?”

And George turned in place a third time. “Put the box down,” he said.

“Oooooo, gonna make it rain, rain, rain—”

“Oh shit!” said Doubleday.

“Come on,” said George, and the wind did. It started as a whisper but immediately began to rise. One second, and the touch of the breeze caught the Doctoral Candidate’s breath in his throat, froze him with sudden fear, two seconds, stacks of undistributed Blue Zebra pamphlets began to scatter, three, the House of Cards shuddered, four, George’s cowboy hat tipped up, considered flying off, five, it did, six, the kite was straining against its string, seven, the wind was halfway to a gale.

“Magic!” Z.Z. Top shouted, laughing. “Fucking magic, George!”

“RAIN!” Christopher Robin bellowed. His thumb descended on the button; George gave the House of Cards an encouraging glance.

A Card near the top bent under the wind force, causing the mock Trustee meeting to keel over. The cabbage head rolled free of its body, dropped four feet to where the DIVEST NOW! banner snapped forward like a slingshot.

The cabbage flew, spinning, on a collision course.

It struck the Doctoral Candidate on the wrist.

The remote control box flew out of his hand, broke apart on the ground.

The timer continued to count, 00:13:59 to 00:13:58.

“No no no!” Christopher Robin cried, looking at the wreckage of his box. He felt a tug on his other hand; George had wrapped the kite string three full winds around the lightning rod and released it. The kite yanked it away, carried the metal rod up and over the top of the Campus Store, where it landed without injury among the Bohemians.

“Damn you!” said Christopher Robin. “You’re ruining it! You’re ruining my celebrity time!” He drew another lightning rod from the satchel, this one sharp at the end and bearing an uncomfortable similarity to a shish kebab skewer. “Ruining it!”

“Hey,” George said, and a gigantic Ace of Spades slapped the Doctoral Candidate in the head. He regained his balance and went for George with murder in his eye. But now the banner hit him, wrapped around his face, blinding him, turning him. With a last cry of “Ruining it!” he thrust forward with the lightning rod and impaled not George, but the thing in the wagon.

“Oh shit!” Doubleday had time to say again inaudible beneath the wind, but there was no explosion, only the puncturing of radiation stickers and the crumbling of papier-mâché. The lightning rod went in with silken smoothness, and as the top poked out the far side it dislodged the digital timer. Attached to nothing except itself, the timer tumbled to the ground, knocking itself silly. OH:PO:OH, it began flashing steadily.

The wind slacked off as Christopher Robin slid to the ground, bawling. “Ruined it,” he sobbed. “Ruined it.” The holes in his invention bled what appeared to be little amber beads; Piglet and Tigger were being buried.

Jelly beans, George thought, as three Safety officers pounced on Christopher Robin. No danger after all, just jelly beans. He tasted one. Hunny.

The Bohemians were on their feet and cheering; Z.Z. Top and Woodstock wrestled for possession of the lightning rod. The police, in particular the Chief, were eyeing George as if they wanted to arrest him or at least talk to him, but were afraid to try. Somewhere close a black-and-white mongrel dog was barking ecstatically. Everyone else, from the Blue Zebras to the police psychologist, looked as if someone had struck them over the head with a large board. Loaves and fishes would not have astounded them more.

“Well,” George said, feeling tired. He rescued Piglet from the jelly beans, then took Tigger too; no one interfered with him. Giving Christopher Robin a parting nod he turned and gazed back up the slope to where he had left Calliope. Among all the people he could not spot her.

“No problem.” He felt a little tickle of fear but that was all. He still had her reassurance, after all.

You can be sure I wouldn’t leave without it even if I were planning to sneak out on you . . .

Still searching for her, he reached up to his throat to touch the silver whistle she had given him.

His hand closed on empty air.

CALLIOPE EXITS

She did not even go back to the house to collect her things. Her duffel bag lay packed and ready at the foot of Ezra Cornell’s statue. The wind screamed as she slung the bag over her shoulder, but it did not touch so much as a single hair on her head.

“Poor George,” she whispered, crossing the Quad. “Poor George.”

By now he had discovered her disappearance; the Hurt was beginning. As always she felt a certain regret at this, but causing the Hurt was after all a large part of her Purpose. A long (but not infinite) string of broken hearts stretched out behind her, a similar (probably not infinite) string waited just ahead, that was the road on which she traveled, and her name was Lady Calliope.

One more thing to be done before she resigned this town to memory. Moving rapidly under a darkening sky, she passed through North Campus and up Fraternity Row, coming in no time to the fortress-like Tolkien House. She did not wish to be seen and was not; none of the brothers were in sight of the front entrance as the Lady swept in, doors swinging open before her.

She entered the Michel Delving Mathom-Hole, the great hall in which the House artifacts were stored. Neat rows of glass cases, each containing a weapon or some other item, all taken from Tolkien’s Rings trilogy. All but one. The odd-man-out was dead center in the hall, its case seamless and unlabeled.

It was a spearhead, some ten inches long and six wide, with a square socket for a shaft at its base. It had a long and mythic history, one that had never been chronicled by Tolkien or any other storyteller; for the past half century it had lain here, surrounded by a House that was itself drawn from myth.

Etched on the flat of the spearhead was a red-tinged cross, and beneath it the inscription:

FRACTOR DRACONIS.

The glass case sprang open at her touch. She grasped the spearhead incautiously; its edge defined sharpness, but it could not cut her unless she desired it to. She slipped it into the folds of her cloak and left the hall.

Down a corridor and into the obsidian elevator; she descended to the cellars. Not bothering to light a lamp, she made a beeline toward Lothlórien. Upon reaching the chasm she allowed herself a frivolity; breathing into her whistle, she scorned the stone bridge and treaded thin air across the gulf.

Through the stone doors, into the deserted Garden. A jeweled night sky glittered prettily above, but she headed for the part of the Garden where the trees grew thick and the sky could not be seen. Here she paused briefly to regard the Rubbermaid, which bided time beneath the branches of a dark oak.

“Soon,” Calliope told the mannequin. “Soon.”

She walked on, trees growing thicker and thicker, till all at once reality buckled. The trees thinned out again dramatically and she was no longer in the Garden at all but outside, halfway down The Hill, in The Boneyard. A few short yards ahead of her a plain white marble square lay flat against the ground, carved with a single word:

PANDORA

Selecting another oak tree, she brought out FRACTOR DRACONIS and threw it with a flick of her wrist, burying all but an inch of it in the wood. There it would remain until being drawn forth on the eve of the Ides of March.

The wind had died down a good deal. Snowflakes were falling now from a sky of leaden grey, but Calliope ignored them. For only a moment more she paused, looking up at the crest of The Hill, giving a final thought to the Fool whose real trial had not even begun.

“Best of luck, George,” she said, and blew town.

GEORGE IN HELL

I.

“No, no, no!”

George made his way through a yielding crowd, the wind easing off, easing off. Luther ran up to him barking and leaping on his leg; at first George ignored him.

How could she have retrieved the whistle from him? But no, that was a foolish question even for a fool. The real question was, could he still catch up with her? He did not think he could convince her to stay, if she had decided time had come round to leave, but maybe, if he could only catch her, he could still manage some sort of decent goodbye.

Thinking this, George ceased ignoring the dog and sought to enlist its aid. “I need to track somebody,” he explained to it. “A woman. A beautiful woman. She was up there by the Tower just a few moments ago. Do you understand?”

Luther did not, as a matter of fact, understand at all, though he realized through empathy that George wanted something from him, wanted it rather desperately. Literally overwhelmed by the miracle of the wind-summoning, Luther was all too willing to please, but uncertain what was required of him. He saw George gesturing urgently in the direction of the Clock Tower and concluded that the man wanted him to go that way.

“Good boy!” George cried, as the dog took off at a run. He did not know as he followed that the tracking job was an impossible task, for as with most other things, leaving a scent was optional with Calliope. In fact at that moment the last traces of her presence were being erased: back at the house the bed regained some of its springiness, forgetting the extra weight of the past few months; the bathroom mirror lost all memory of the Lady’s perfect image; no longer did the walls and ceilings recall the echo of her laughter, nor the floors the tread of her delicate feet. Her entire stay was, in sum, Removed.

Wholly unaware of this, George chased the dog up to the spot where Calliope had last stood—receiving more scattered applause and awed looks until he had got some distance from the Straight—and Luther, glancing back and seeing the hopeful determination on the man’s face, kept running on a more or less random course. For nearly half an hour they raced about in this way—it began to snow around the fifteen-minute mark—until somewhere in the vicinity of the Veterinary College Luther stumbled across, of all things, an abandoned soup bone, which he affectionately presented to George.

“WHAT!?” the storyteller cried, realizing his folly. “You brought me to a bone? You think I’m hungry?”

Luther was hurt by the venom of this reaction, but his distress could not match the Hurt that swelled in George. The enormity of his loss struck him like a hammer blow, driving him first to his knees and then flat out against the cold earth. Still not understanding but wanting to help, Luther came forward to lick George’s ear, which did nothing at all to ease the pounding of blood in the storyteller’s temples.

When my job is done I’ll leave, without warning, and then you’ll want to die . . .

That was just right; that was exactly right. In this weakest of moments George broke his own rule and despaired, though as Calliope had also foretold, he was not going to be allowed to surrender.

He went back to his house—yelling at the dog when it tried to follow him—and broke a large amount of furniture. This was no random act of destruction; George could sense Calliope’s Absence, and punished the chairs, tables, and other furnishings as conspirators. He took a special lingering delight in trashing the mirror in the bathroom, but did not touch the bed, surmising that he would have enough trouble trying to sleep tonight without tearing up the mattress.

When there was more debris than he could stand he went out again, neglecting to take a coat although an inch of snow now lay on the ground and more was coming down every minute. In a well of self-pity he descended The Hill to The Ithaca Commons, thinking he would never recover from this.

Yet George’s despair did not remain pure for very long. Even in Hell, common sense and optimism sometimes find a voice. As he entered The Commons he saw that the outdoor clock/thermometer read 25°, and a small rational segment of his addled brain spoke up. Not wise to be out in this wearing just a shirt, it said. All chest-beating aside, you don’t really want to die, do you? The rest of his brain ignored the question, but he had barely gone ten yards when his body was racked with chills—Aha! You can feel physical discomfort—that nearly doubled him over.

A poor man who happened to be gazing wistfully through a store window took note of George’s plight and went to help him. The poor man had on three overcoats one atop the other, all ragged, and he offered the outermost coat to George. The storyteller thought to run away at first, not wanting this act of kindness which infringed on his sense of abandonment, but the shivers were so bad he could barely stand up straight, much less run. Before he knew what was happening the poor man had draped the coat over his shoulders, saying: “There, there you go. Merry Christmas early, OK?”

The coat stank but it was warm, and at the feel of that warmth George’s hands betrayed him. He reached into his pockets, taking out all his money—better than three hundred dollars—and giving it to the poor man in a crumpled ball. His lips betrayed him, too. “Merry Christmas early,” they said.

The poor man’s face lit up like a sunburst, much to George’s chagrin.

“Oh Jesus,” he said, counting the bills. “Oh Jesus, are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” George muttered. Finding he had strength to move, he did so.

“Hey!” the poor man called after him. “Hey, can I at least buy you a beer or something?”

“No thanks!” George called back, desperate to escape.

“Well hey, you take care, OK? Can’t thank you enough for this . . . Merry Christmas!”

The last thing George heard him say was “Holy shit, Oral Roberts was right,” and then he rounded a corner and was free. But the poor man’s generosity had done its damage—try as he might, George could not return to his state of despair. Instead he paused by a plate glass window and was berated by his own reflection.

“You ass,” his reflection said. “What do you think you’re doing out here in the snow? Go home, have some tea. Break a few more things if you can’t help yourself. But cut the crap; frozen you’ll look even dumber than Romeo did.”

His sense of self-preservation restored, George could not ignore this advice. He remained more depressed than he had ever been in his life, but with a reluctant surge of optimism he began to suspect that he might learn to cope, after all.

Drawing the ratty, smelly coat tightly around himself, he headed back up The Hill to his house.

By way of The Boneyard.

II.

It was to see the stone that he went that way, the stone hand-hewn in memory of an infant child who had entered and left the world on the same day.

HERE LIES ALMA RENAT JESSOP

BORN APRIL 23, 1887

DIED APRIL 23, 1887

HER FATHER LOVED HER

What possessed him to come stand in ankle-deep snow and stare at this rock he could not say, not at first. Certainly Alma Jessop’s father must have suffered a great deal of pain, but it was not really analogous to George’s torment; one did not mourn a dead child and grieve over the loss of a lover in the same way. Although both might lead one down the path of despair . . .

April, she had died. April could still be a very cold month in Ithaca, though it was certainly not the best month for dying of exposure. A depressed person would have a better bet walking along the edge of one of the gorges and “accidentally” falling in. Of course the man Jessop had done neither; hand-making his daughter’s tombstone had probably kept him too occupied to even consider suicide.

Yes. That was it; that was the key. An act of creation in the face of loss. George was no carver of tombstones, but he could channel the Hurt into a story. Yes, how simple: A story about the perfect woman . . . and the Fool who fell in love with her. He could start writing as soon as he got home; like the bed, he had been careful not to harm his typewriter during the furniture-smashing rampage. Now it no longer mattered if he could not sleep tonight; he would write until plain exhaustion took him.

Heart aching but excited as well now, he turned from Alma Renat Jessop with new purpose. A book, another book, that was it: to ease the Hurt.

He meant to go straight home now, but his feet led him to the far north end of The Boneyard by force of habit. So preoccupied was he with thoughts of this Calliope-novel that he did not notice he was going the wrong way until he had gotten there, to a place where all the tombstones sagged or leaned away from a central point, like the petals of a grey flower.

“Ah, Pandora!” he exclaimed, after a moment’s disorientation. He called himself a dunce and a few other things, though now that he was here he could not resist taking a look at the stone. He bent down and brushed aside the snow where he thought it should be, but uncovered only bare earth. He straightened up, took a step back, and his foot found the stone, skidding on the surface of the slippery marble square. George’s balance went right out from under him, and after some half-hearted pinwheeling of his arms he fell over backwards.

Typical, he thought on the way down. Then his head struck the side of one of the sagging tombstones and he blacked out, his coat hanging open in front, snow continuing to fall on his prone form like ash.

Uncovered, the white marble square flashed its single word at the sky:

PANDORA

Beneath the frozen earth, something chuckled.

DEUS EX MACHINA

I.

Once again Mr. Sunshine sat at a Typewriter. There was still chaos in Chicago, but it was getting a little dull; time, maybe, to hand that Manuscript over to the Monkeys and move “Fool on The Hill” to his Desk. Right now, though, he was going to have to think quickly if he wanted the Fool’s Story to continue at all.

“George, George, George . . .” Mr. Sunshine shook his head. “What is your problem? I give you an extra shot of optimism to make sure you don’t get suicidal and instead you have an accident. Are you trying to ruin my Story?”

A sudden thought . . . Mr. Sunshine glanced suspiciously at the Monkey standing beside him. It did not glance back.

“I’ll deal with you later,” Mr. Sunshine promised. “But for the moment . . . we need a fast save here. Hades, Hades, Hades, what am I going to do?”

He started with what he knew best, reviewed the other major Plots in the Story, checked where the Characters were. And smiled.

“Of course,” he said. “Of course. Man—and Fool’s—best friend. Simple. I like that.”

Luther . . .

he began to Type.

II.

“I’m telling you, Blackjack, he made the wind blow, and I guess you could say the storm is his, too.”

“Luther, I am drowning in a snowbank. Stop talking nonsense and help me out.”

“It isn’t nonsense, Blackjack. It really happened. Oh, I wish you could have been there to help me understand what he was saying, afterwards. He seemed very disappointed in me.”

“I don’t care, Luther,” said the Manx, struggling against the white drift that lay piled up around him. “Help me.”

“Sure, Blackjack, I’ll help you. I just wish—”

A sudden gust of wind.

“Luther?”

“Oh no,” the mongrel cried. “No, that mustn’t happen.”

“What mustn’t happen?”

“He’s in trouble, Blackjack. I’ve got to go help him before it’s too late.”

“Help who? Luther, I’m in trouble too, remember?”

“You’ll get out all right, Blackjack. If you don’t I’ll be back to help you. But I’ve got to go, he’s freezing.”

“Luther! Luther!”

III.

George knew that he must be dead, or dying, for he floated in a formless void, and there before him rose the image of the woman he loved, the woman he had thought forever lost. If death meant being reunited with her, he decided, he would not resist its embrace.

“No,” Calliope said, reading his mind as she had always read his mind. “You can’t give up, George. Dying won’t get you what you want, or what you think you want.”

“I want you,” George told her, speaking through lips of ice. “I want to be with you.”

“But I’m not even real. I’m only a dream you had.”

“You are real. I touched you with my own hands. I made love to you.”

“You made love to a dream. Have I ever lied to you, George? Then remember what I told you: Whoever you love will be just like me. Any woman seen through love’s eyes is as perfect as you thought me to be.”

“No,” George said. “There’s no one like you.”

“They’re all like me, George, if you see with your heart. But some of them stay.”

“Why . . . why are you leaving me?”

“I told you, I’m a dream. Dreams have to end eventually.”

“Why did you come in the first place?”

“More reasons than you can know. In the end it’s all for the Story. That’s what you should be worrying about. Not about me, not about love. Love is just part of the Plot.”

Many more questions he had for her, and a goodbye to say, but now she began to drift toward him, arms outstretched.

One last kiss, he thought, blissfully. But it was a harsh kiss, alien and sloppy; the void turned over twice, depositing him in a cold graveyard with a dog licking his face.

“Whuh—” He tried to sit up, snow sliding off his coat, and pain shot him through. A good sign, perhaps, for pain signifies that flesh and bone are still hanging in there, fighting. His feet, though, he could not feel his feet, and the same was true of his fingers, though when he tried to flex them they moved, the knuckles giving a slight twinge.

“Warm,” George mumbled, his tongue not cooperating. “Need warm.” Luther actually understood this—or maybe it was only a lucky coincidence —and offered to share his own body warmth by leaping on George’s chest. The dog felt warm, all right, but even his slight weight was enough to push the storyteller back down, nearly smacking his head against the tombstone a second time.

My head . . . his skull throbbed; he felt the back of his scalp with the heel of his hand and discovered a crusty mess that must have been dried or frozen blood. Not good. Could he have suffered a concussion? The mere thought made him dangerously weary, and he realized he had to get out of this place quickly or remain until the spring thaw. He shoved the dog off him as gently as possible and somehow managed to stand, the muscles in his ankles giving a satisfactory scream.

Walking uphill out of The Boneyard was one of the hardest things George ever did. He seemed to stumble as often as take a step, and the tombstones arranged themselves in an obstacle course, conspiring to trip him up. On the positive side, however, the snow had stopped falling, while the wind came up behind him, helping him along. Luther helped him as well; twice George slipped and fell, and twice the dog nipped, butted, and barked at him until he struggled back to his feet and got going again.

A small eternity later he emerged onto the sidewalk on Stewart Avenue, head reeling. He heard a voice calling his name from the other side of the street and looked up, expecting to see yet another vision of Calliope. Instead he saw a blond Christian Princess, tiny cross clasped to her throat, her right hand resting briefly on the hood of a snow-covered Volkswagen. Concern creased her brow and she was very beautiful.

“Borealis,” George greeted her, finding her simpler first name too much of a chore to pronounce.

“George, are you all right?” she asked him. He looked like death. Noticing that he was swaying like a giddy flagpole, she stepped off the curb and began crossing over to help him; Luther, barking excitedly, rushed out to meet her in the middle of the street.

The silver Rolls came barreling at them from the left. The Greek behind the wheel—a frat boy but not a Rat boy—was more than a little wasted, driving on bald tires, and lacked the basic skill necessary to make an emergency stop even under better conditions. It should have ended in a manslaughter, but George saw the car bearing down out of the corner of his eye. In the brief second when he realized what was about to happen, he felt a surge of indignation and the same sense of control that he had had in front of the Straight.

“Uh-uh,” George said, and a whirlwind exploded up around the woman and the dog, obscuring them and the offending Rolls in a funnel of snow and ice. When this cleared, Aurora and Luther remained untouched where they had stood, but the Rolls lay on its roof some ten yards farther on, its driver scrunched upside-down and looking more than a bit startled.

A good trick, but it robbed George of the last of his strength. With a smile he collapsed once more, felt soft hands touch the back of his neck, and slept in darkness until the doctors over at Gannett Health Clinic thawed him out.

IV.

“Good,” said Mr. Sunshine, relaxing a bit. “Better, at any rate. If he can handle himself as well as he handles the air around him, there might be a decent Climax in this after all.”

He stood up, letting the Story carry itself for a while. Mr. Sunshine was decided—he would move this Manuscript to his Writing Desk in place of “Absolute Chaos.” But first he had to get something.

SETTING THINGS UP

I.

The nearest available vehicle, an Ithaca Sunshine Cab, took George up to Gannett. Though he came in as an unconscious human Popsicle, they soon revived him, and in no time at all he had regained sufficient strength to argue with his doctor. For in New York City, where George had grown up, a patient is discharged from the hospital as soon as he can walk, often within an hour or two of admittance; at Gannett, even though a head X-ray showed no skull fracture, they wanted to keep him overnight for observation. This was kind, thoughtful, and probably proper procedure as well, but in George’s present frame of mind it only seemed stupid.

“So you think it’s stupid, do you?” The doctor held up the tattered coat George had gotten from the poor man. “Is this all you were wearing in twenty-degree weather?”

Under a strong light the coat looked pitifully thin, and George got the point: he was not in a position to judge stupidity. Unfortunately, he was also not in a mood to spend a night in Gannett. He had as a roommate a pneumonia-struck graduate student who did nothing but stare catatonically at the latest Soldier of Fortune magazine, which made George decidedly nervous and got him wondering if he might just slip out through some window and escape.

About an hour after nightfall, however, his spirits took a sudden lift. Aurora Smith had entered the room, and though George did not recognize it as the source of his relief, for half an instant the sight of her made him forget Calliope. Oh, there was more to it than that, to be sure: she had ridden up with him in the patrol cab, cradling his wounded head in her lap, and though he did not remember this some part of him did; knowledge of the gentleness in her, that too helped him smile.

“Hello,” he greeted her, sitting up in bed. George was careful of his head, though in fact all pain had departed now, leaving not so much as a twinge. Likewise his frostbitten joints seemed miraculously renewed.

“Hello,” she said back, then hovered for a moment as she looked for a place to sit down. George gestured to the foot of the bed and Aurora settled there. “I’ve been waiting to see you for a while,” she told him. “They only just let me in.”

“Mmm,” George nodded. “I think they know about my money. If I die of unexpected complications I won’t be able to endow the University in my old age.”

“Oh George.”

“Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a hacksaw, would you? Or a getaway car?”

Aurora smiled and shook her head. “Neither one. Sorry. But are you sure you’re all right? You look—”

“Peachy.” He studied her. “You look like there’s something heavy on your mind.”

“There is,” she admitted, becoming more serious. “I’m afraid if I tell you, though, you might laugh at me . . . or you might not. I’m not sure which would be worse.”

“Guess we’ll have to see. Go ahead, I’m listening.”

Aurora struggled to get the words out: “I think . . . I think that we’ve been set up, George.”

“Set up? Set up how?” Despite his remarkable physical recovery, he felt emotionally drained and would not have thought it possible for anything else to shock him after the day’s events. He would have been wrong. What Aurora said next surprised him beyond all conception.

“I’m in love with you,” she told him. “And I think, very soon, it’s going to be mutual.”

II.

Mr. Sunshine walked down a long and cavernous hallway. He did not like this part of the Library; the Others were here, seated along the windowless walls, ancient figures that might have been carved of stone, but were not. A well-muscled blacksmith with lightning bolts rusting at his feet; a goat man bearing two horns on his head and a third in his hands for winding; a beardless patriarch and his wife; eight younger women with an empty ninth chair in their midst; many more. They were not Dead but they were not Alive, either, and Mr. Sunshine would have far preferred to watch an eclipse than to spend any unnecessary time in their company.

Unfortunately, the Refrigerator was here too, and Mr. Sunshine had never got around to moving it to a more congenial location. It stood at the far end of the hall, and upon reaching it and opening it Mr. Sunshine wondered, as always, whether the little light inside shined on in his absence or doused itself when the door was closed. He barely glanced at the contents of the cooler racks—Milk, Ambrosia, the Primordial Feta—going straight for the Ice Box. It was there that he found what he needed, a Toy he had kept frozen here for quite a long time.

The thing was a bird, a fierce white bird formed of ice and snow. Cold crystal rimed its wings, curved icicles served as talons; Mr. Sunshine brought it out, put life into it with a breath.

“Hello there,” he greeted it, as it perched on his hand, studying him with blank eyes. “Now listen carefully, I’m going to have you be a Messenger for me . . .”

Mr. Sunshine shut the Refrigerator door and got walking, bearing the Messenger away to another part of the Library where there was a window that opened on the World. On the way he taught it what he needed it to tell; he gave it a Message, and a job.

III.

“Brian Garroway asked me to marry him last night,” Aurora explained, sitting closer now; the grad student on the other bed remained catatonic. “I’ve always known he would ask me eventually; I was never sure what my answer would be.”

“You told him no,” George guessed.

“I thought to tell him no. And I will. Last night I chickened out, told him I needed time to think it over. It didn’t help any; he got upset that I even hesitated.”

“He was expecting a prompt yes.”

“He’s always expected it,” Aurora agreed. “I can’t say I ever gave him reason not to expect it. I think it may break his heart when I turn him down.”

“Too many broken hearts around,” George said. “I broke mine today, along with nearly breaking my head.”

“I know.”

“You know? How do you know?”

Aurora bit her lip. “Calliope told me.”

He sprang like a trap, gripped her arm. “You saw her?”

“In a dream!” she protested. “Only in a dream!”

“A dream?”

“I had two dreams,” Aurora told him. “One last night and one this afternoon, although I guess the second one was more like a vision. I don’t remember lying down to take a nap.

“Last night’s dream, that was just about you. You and I. I dreamed about the Halloween party, about Thanksgiving night, other times we’ve been together. And times we haven’t been: I kept seeing us eating breakfast back in my house in Wisconsin. My father was there too, laughing.”

“But what about Calliope?” George said, insistent.

“The vision . . . I don’t quite know how to describe it. I talked with her. She told me some things.”

“NO!” He practically exploded.

“George, I swear to you—”

“I mean no, there is absolutely no way I am ever going to go through that again. Calliope nearly drove me crazy with her secrets, with all the things she knew that I didn’t understand. And if she passed that on to you . . .”

“No, George, it’s not like that. I don’t understand most of what she said either, all this stuff about Stories, and Plots . . . only one thing I got clear. You have what I want, what Brian could never give me.”

“And what might that be?”

“Magic. I heard what happened in front of the Straight today. And just a while ago, in the street . . . your magic, George, your daydreams. I want a stake in that. And love.”

“But it doesn’t work that way,” George protested. “I’m flattered, but how can I just agree to fall in love with you?”

“Calliope said you’d ask that. But maybe it’s not a matter of agreement. Tell me, honestly, what are your feelings for me?”

“Well, I—” It seemed a simple enough question, but as George seriously examined his own heart, he got another big surprise.

“You see?” said Aurora, watching his eyes widen. “We’ve been set up. She did it, tangled us up somehow without letting us catch on.”

“All the more reason to reject it. Do you have any idea what she’s already done to me? I nearly let myself die today.”

“I don’t want to push you into love, George.” Aurora pleaded. “She . . . she told me . . .”

“Go ahead, say it.”

“She told me to ask you if you could even remember what she looked like.”

“What she looked like? Don’t be ridiculous, of course I—”

Another shock, the third and last, making the circuit complete. Four months. Calliope’s face had hovered within inches of his own, above, below, all around, until it seemed etched forever into memory. But now . . . now that he tried to recall it, the memory blurred like a running watercolor. Of course he had a general impression of her, could have described her easily enough. But as far as summoning up a distinct image of her in his mind—this he could not do, and it shook him.

“Her picture!” he cried suddenly. “I have her picture in my wallet. Over there!” He pointed to the closet where his clothes had been stored after his transfer into a white hospital robe. “Quick, check my left front pants pocket!”

Aurora did as he requested, retrieving the wallet and handing it to him. He searched through it frantically and came up with a photograph . . . of a sunlit tree.

“No!” George nearly screamed; the grad student stirred at last from his catatonia to glance over at the raving madman. “No, no, that’s not right at all! She was standing right there, right in front . . . ah, shit!” He tore the photo in half and hurled the pieces to the floor, disgusted. “Great! Just great! First I lose her, then my memory goes. What’s next?”

“Come home with me,” Aurora suggested, softly.

“To Balch?”

“To Wisconsin.”

“Wisconsin?”

“Brian was supposed to drive me home,” she explained, “but now I don’t suppose he’ll want to. I know you don’t own a car, but you could rent one pretty easily. Come home with me; we’ll have breakfast together, just like in my dream.”

“That’s crazy.”

Aurora nodded. “Scary, too. Especially since I don’t know what happens after. But she said it would be the right thing to do, and for some reason I trust her . . . even if she’s only a dream.”

George shook his head and moaned. “Oh man, oh man, when did I start living inside one of my own stories? Crazy, crazy, crazy . . .”

“It’s crazy, George. But will you do it?”

His answer was a long time coming, but this time neither of them were at all surprised.

“I’ll come. Do you really think I have a choice?”

IV.

The clouds had departed, and the air lay still once more. The Messenger came to a rough but not ungraceful landing in The Boneyard. It had flown a terribly long way in a terribly short time, but it had not tired; tired was not something it could be.

It came to earth in the center of the ring of leaning tombstones. And, having come to rest, bent immediately to tap its glacial beak against the ground, once, twice.

The earth tremor traveled outward from The Boneyard to a radius of about one mile, causing buildings to shudder, panicking animals, and making small objects dance with false life. Sneaking out of Gannett through a side exit, George and Aurora clutched each other in fear feeling personally threatened; nor were they just being paranoid.

It did not last long. Indeed, the earthquake ceased almost as quickly as it had begun. Collecting themselves, the man and woman stepped outside arm in arm and walked beneath the stars, filled with a new foreboding.

BEFORE THE STORM

I.

Ragnarok dropped by Risley on the twenty-first of December, the first true day of winter (and the last day of final exams). The campus had been emptying steadily over the past week, becoming almost completely deserted by now, and as the Bohemian Minister of Defense drove up to the dorm unannounced he would not have been surprised to find everyone gone. But it so happened that the Queen of the Grey Ladies had had a particularly late neuro-bio final, and she and Lion-Heart were out on the front lawn just saddling up to leave.

“Ragnarok!” Myoko cried happily as he drove into view.

Lion-Heart, remembering a certain tumble down a flight of steps, took a more restrained tone: “So, you’re back, eh?”

“Had some thinking to do,” Ragnarok said, killing the bike’s engine and dismounting.

“Had some moping to do, you mean,” Lion-Heart responded. “Almost two months’ worth, by my count. You could have at least dropped word once in a while that you were still alive.”

Ragnarok tried to shrug off this dig. “I could have, but I didn’t. So are you guys all that’s left, or is somebody else still around?”

“Now who might you be wondering about?” mused the Bohemian King. “The Top left days ago. Panhandle, Aphrodite, and Woodstock are gone too; I think they were going to check out Atlantic City. And Fujiko’s over at Tolkien House for the duration. That what you wanted to know?”

“Stop it,” Myoko warned. Then to Ragnarok she said: “Preacher moved downtown almost a week ago. He’ll be in Ithaca housewatching for a professor for most of vacation.”

“Is Jinsei staying with him?”

“I don’t know. I suppose she might be.”

Ragnarok nodded. “You have an address, or a phone number?”

“No,” said Myoko. “I’m really sorry. If you’d only come by a few days sooner . . .”

“Right.” He turned back toward his bike. “Guess I’ll have to do some searching around downtown.”

The Grey Queen caught his arm. “Wait,” she said. “Why don’t you come with us, instead? Lion-Heart and I rented a chalet up the Lake a bit, and I’m sure we’d both love to have you spend Christmas with us. Wouldn’t we, Li?”

“It’d be a trip and a half, I’m sure,” said Lion-Heart. “What the hell, Rag, she’s probably got a point. There’s bound to be tension at least for a while even if you do find Preacher. The chalet’s only about ten miles away; you come along and have a good Christmas, and Preacher’ll have a good Christmas, and then if you can’t wait you can always drive down and look for him after New Year’s.”

“I don’t know if I can wait even that long,” Ragnarok told him seriously. “I’ve been having these nightmares . . .”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” said Myoko, reaching out to stroke his hair, like a mother with a son. “You need some of Lion-Heart’s special eggnog. You’ll sleep just fine then, you’ll see.”

“No. No, I—”

“Look, Rag,” Lion-Heart interjected, “I don’t know if you heard the latest weather report, but the queen bitch of snowstorms is on its way down from Maine, right this minute. New Hampshire and Vermont are already getting buried, and the first dusting is due in Tompkins County in about twelve hours. Which is why we’ve really got to move it, because once the heavy stuff starts the roads are going to be locked up tight. You catch that? By sundown it won’t matter whether you’re in Ithaca or not, because if Preacher’s smart he won’t be leaving his house for days.”

“I’ve still got twelve hours . . .”

“Don’t be silly!” Myoko exclaimed. “If you don’t find him, then what? That place you live in doesn’t even have hot water, does it? Now how am I supposed to have a merry Christmas, knowing that one of my friends is freezing himself to death?”

By steady degrees they wore him down—Myoko’s arguments were the most convincing, because she kept stroking his hair—and at last he gave in, against his better judgment. Ragnarok’s dreams over the past week had left him with a very bad feeling.

“Don’t worry yourself so,” Myoko chided him. “You’ll see Preacher again soon enough, I promise.”

In a literal sense, of course, that was absolutely right.

II.

George hired a gleaming white Eldorado for the trip, and Aurora drove, as the storyteller had never troubled himself to get a license. They did not leave immediately, but having packed their things into the trunk took a leisurely cruise around The Hill. They ranged from one end of the campus to the other, marveling at familiar and unfamiliar sights alike, enjoying each other’s company throughout. Aurora switched on the radio as they were tooling along the fringes of the Cornell Plantations, and that was how they happened to catch the weather report.

“Oops,” Aurora said. “We’re going to have to move it if we don’t want to get caught in that.”

“No rush,” George assured her. “The storm won’t bother us.”

She looked at him, and he smiled. “You’re positive about that?” she asked.

“As sure as kites can fly,” he promised.

Just to play it safe, they struck west immediately, making one last pass through the heart of the campus. As they turned onto East Avenue, George laid a hand on Aurora’s shoulder.

“Stop the car,” he said.

She braked and brought the Eldorado to a halt right in front of Day Hall. “What is it?”

“Just want to wish a buddy of mine Merry Christmas. Over there.” He pointed. “That’s the dog that got me out of The Boneyard.”

Luther turned at the sound of the car door opening, and recognized the storyteller’s scent even before he saw his face. George intended only a meager offering of gratitude, but from the dog’s point of view it was quite a moment, for to him the Eldorado seemed nothing less than a chariot of white fire, reeking with the hills-and-rain smell of Heaven.

“Hey, hey, good to see you too!” George said, as the dog ran up to him, barking. He stepped out of the car and swept Luther up into his arms, at which point the mongrel nearly drowned him with sloppy licks.

“You’re right,” Aurora observed. “He is your buddy.”

An idea struck him, “Hey,” George asked, “do you think your parents would mind if we brought home an extra guest?”

“If they don’t mind you they won’t mind him. But what about his owner?”

“I don’t think he’s got one,” George said. “There’s no collar on him, and besides, he doesn’t act like he has an owner. Know what I mean?”

“No.” Aurora smiled. “But then I’m not a storyteller, so I’ll trust you. Go ahead, bring him along if he wants to come.”

George tapped Luther’s nose with a finger. “What about it, dude?” he asked. “Want to come to Wisconsin? It’s a long ride, but when you get there you’ll get to see about six billion cows.”

Once again Luther relied on empathy rather than actual comprehension, but this time the message was easy enough to fathom: the saint in whose arms he rested was offering to take him up to Heaven in the white chariot. Perhaps it would even be the real Heaven this time. Luther was acutely aware that he might be in for another disappointment, but he also remembered the summoning of the winds. If anyone could take Luther to Heaven, this man could.

Yet he could not forget about Blackjack. The Manx had been furious enough at being left to struggle out of that snowbank alone, nor had he believed Luther’s explanation later. To just take off now without at least saying goodbye would be terrible, but Luther knew he had no time to waste. Chariots of fire wait for no one—you must ride, or not.

“What do you say, guy?” George asked, setting Luther down on the ground. “My lady and I have to get going.”

In a quick decision that he later regretted—but all hard choices bring some regret—Luther leaped aboard the chariot and was suffused by the Heaven scent. George climbed in as well, slammed the door, and they were off.

Oh Blackjack, Blackjack, I hope you can forgive me . . .

But wait, there was something: As the car slowed to turn another corner, Luther spied a familiar Beagle through the Eldorado’s rear window.

“Skippy!” Luther called out mentally. “Skippy, look over here!”

“Hi, Luther!” Skippy replied, turning and racing alongside the car. “Hey, what are you doing in that thing? Huh? Huh?”

“Listen to me!” the mongrel said urgently. “I need you to take a message to Blackjack.”

“Why can’t you take it to him? You going somewhere, Luther? Huh? Huh? Where are you going? Huh? H—”

Running at top speed to keep pace with the car, Skippy suffered an abrupt face-first encounter with a mailbox. A resounding whap! marked the interruption of his curiosity.

“Listen to me!” Luther called back to the dazed Beagle as he receded into the distance. “Please get this! Tell Blackjack that I got invited to Heaven. Tell him I’ll come back. Tell him I promise to come back. Have you got that?”

But Skippy was too far and too befuddled to answer, if indeed he’d gotten it. Luther settled down in the back seat, already wondering if he’d made the wrong choice.

I’ll come back and see you, Blackjack. I promise.

III.

But of course reunions are notoriously chancy things. Often it seems as if the most likely meetings are those least desired; the unwelcome guest always comes back for seconds.

The storm struck Ithaca that night at quarter past ten, bringing misfortune as well as snow and ice. The Messenger found a perch in the high branches of a dark oak, the same oak into which a fair Lady’s hand had hurled an ancient spearhead.

Strengthened by the cold, the Messenger kept a tireless watch on a hole that the recent earth tremor had opened in the ground. The white marble square, unmoved for more than a century, had fallen into this hole and lay in pieces at the bottom, beside another long-undisturbed object.

The object was a box, a cube no more than half a foot to a side, composed of black iron. Once the box might have been used to safe-keep jewelry, coins, any number of harmless things. But someone had shut it up tight, sealing its seams and cracks most carefully, wrapping the whole with a special silver band that remained untarnished after decade upon decade of burial.

The packed soil had served as an effective warden for many years. Now the earth had opened, exposing Pandora’s Box to any and all who might happen by. The whirling snow would re-cover it, briefly, but all that really remained to be done was for some unlucky soul to break the seals and lift the hinged lid, unleashing the real storm.

It wasn’t long before someone did just that.