"What," asked Ceese.
"Take my hand and look up the street. Don't look toward the houses at all. Stand right... right there."
Ceese obeyed.
"Now, when I pull you, you just follow, but don't look where we're going." When he could see that Ceese was following orders, Mack stepped off the sidewalk and headed toward Skinny House.
He half expected to feel Ceese's hand vanish from his, or to have the grass just be the grass between the two visible houses.
But no, Skinny House loomed, and Ceese's hand stayed in Mack's, and in a moment they were standing on the front porch and Ceese was looking back and forth between the neighboring houses and touching the door and the walls, saying, "Good Lord."
"Ceese, I know the Lord got nothing to do with this, and I'm pretty sure that it ain't good."
Chapter 10
WORD Mack and Ceese stood on the back porch of Skinny House, looking at the orange trees and the rusty barbecue and the umbrella-style clothesline.
"We're standing on the back porch of an invisible house, and you still don't believe me?" said Mack.
"Well, there wasn't a fridge in the kitchen, either," said Ceese.
"Because it was your mama's fridge. It was probably all your mama's stuff. I showed you the pants. I showed you the claw marks and the bloodstains. I showed you the five-dollar bills I took out of all the pockets."
"That doesn't prove anything. Lots of people got more five-dollar bills than that."
"But not me," said Mack.
"Miz Smitcher didn't up your allowance?"
"Ceese, you gave me the original five dollars."
Ceese hooted. "That was three years ago!"
"I don't spend much."
"Mack, I believe you, of course I do. But it takes getting used to."
"What's to get used to? Either it's in front of your face or it isn't. This is, so you got to believe it."
"And if it isn't in front of my face?"
"Then you got to have faith."
"When you have faith in something a lot of other people believe, then you a member of the church," said Ceese. "When you have faith in something nobody believes, then you a complete wacko."
"Well, I believe it and so do you, so between us, we half a wacko each."
"And you been keeping secrets like this your whole life?"
"Nothing like this. I only found this place yesterday."
"And there was a man in the house."
"I call him Mr. Christmas." For right now, Mack wasn't interested in bringing Puck's real name into the conversation. He had a feeling that might make things too strange for Ceese.
"Cause he looks like Santa Claus?"
"Well, then, the name 'Mr. Christmas' make perfect sense. I always think of Bob Marley at Christmastime."
"I wish I knew where he was," said Mack. "He could explain things to you a lot better than me.
Except that he lies all the time."
"All the time?"
"No. He tells the truth just enough to keep you from knowing what's what."
"Well, then, I can't wait to meet him. I don't have half enough liars in my life."
"Come on out into the woods with me. Just a little way," said Mack.
"Why?"
"For one thing, so you can see that I'm not making it up."
"I really do believe you now, Mack. I really do."
"You scared of the woods?"
"I'm scared of that panther. He likes you fine, but I don't want to test to see if my pistol can kill a magic cat. Besides, a cop shooting a Black Panther is such a stereotype."
"Ha ha," said Mack. "It ain't that kind of panther, and you no kind of cop at all, yet."
"I don't even have a gun yet," said Ceese.
"Then why you worried about whether you can shoot a panther?"
"Thinking ahead."
Mack took him by the hand and dragged him to the edge of the patio. But the cement didn't turn to brick under their feet, and when they stepped off into the grass they squished rotting oranges, which was fine for Ceese, wearing shoes as he was, but pretty icky for Mack, whose feet were bare.
"I guess I don't have permission to enter Fairyland," said Ceese.
"Then why were you able to get into the house?"
"Maybe halfway is as far as I can go."
"No, let's try getting you in sideways."
They tried crossing the patio with Ceese's eyes closed, and with Ceese walking backward, but there was no woods and no brick path and finally it occurred to Mack that maybe the problem wasn't Ceese.
Where Puck had turned small and slender and green-clad, Ceese had changed in an entirely different way. It was as if the house had shrunk behind him. Ceese was at least twice as tall as the house, and he looked massively strong, with hands that could crush boulders.
Now I know where all those stories about giants come from, thought Mack. Giants are just regular people, when they come into Fairyland.
Except Ceese can't get in. And what about me? I'm regular people, and I'm just the same size I always am.
"Mack!"
The voice was faint and small, and for a moment Mack thought it was Ceese calling him. But no, Ceese was looking off in another direction and anyway, a man that big couldn't possibly make a sound that thin and high.
Mack looked around him there in the woods, and finally found what he was looking for. Down among the fallen leaves, the grass, the moss, the mushrooms, with butterflies soaring overhead, was Puck. Not the big man with the rasta do, but the slender green-clad fairy he had glimpsed last evening on the porch of Skinny House.
He looked dead. Though he must have been alive a moment ago to call to him. Maybe it took the last of his strength. Maybe his last breath.
Puck was bloody, and his wings were torn. His chest looked crushed. One leg was bent at a terrible angle where there wasn't supposed to be a knee.
Mack gently scooped him up and started carrying him toward the house.
Trouble was, Puck grew larger in his hands. Heavier. More like his human Rastafarian self. Too big for Mack to carry safely.
At first he tried to carry him over his shoulder, but that worked for only a few steps before Mack collapsed under the weight of him. Then he got his hands under the man's armpits and dragged him. But it was hard work. His shoes kept snagging on stones and roots. Mack's heart was beating so fast he could hear it pounding in his ears. He had to stop and rest. And in the meantime, he knew Puck was still bleeding and probably dying even deader with every jostle and every minute of delay.
If only Ceese could enter the forest of Fairyland, he could pick Puck up like a baby and carry him.
And then it dawned on Mack why it was Ceese couldn't get in.
"What?"
"Mr. Christmas is in there, hurt bad, and I can't drag him out."
"Well I can't get in."
"I think maybe the reason you can't is that the passageway into Fairyland isn't tall enough for you."
"I'm not all that tall," said Ceese.
"In Fairyland you are. I saw you from inside the woods, and you're a giant, Ceese."
Ceese laughed at that—he wasn't all that tall a man, just average—but soon he was doing as Mack suggested, crawling on hands and knees while holding on to Mack's ankle and looking off to the side, and whether all of that was needed or it was just the crawling, he made it onto the brick path—which was no pleasure, on his knees like that—and then onto the mossy path.
"Open your eyes," said Mack.
Ceese did, and he truly was a giant, looking down at Mack like he was a Cabbage Patch doll.
And there, two strides away, was a grown black man in a rasta do, just like Mack described him.
"How come I'm a full-grown giant and he's not a tiny fairy, this far into the woods?"
"How do you know you're full-grown?" asked Mack.
He didn't, and he wasn't. In the two strides it took him to reach Mr. Christmas, Ceese grew so tall that his head was in the branches of the trees and he had to kneel back down just to see the path.