"What did you mean," said Mack, "when you said 'leased with option'?"
"Didn't mean a thing," said Puck.
"You always mean something. Usually about six things."
"He means," said Yo Yo, "that if something happens to these bodies while we using them, then our option's up."
"You die?" asked Mack.
"Not the part of us in those glass jugs," said Yo Yo. "Just the part of us that can move around on its own. Be like living in a wheelchair after that."
"Worse," said Puck. "Be like living as a human."
"So you're not completely immortal," said Mack. "Just partly immortal."
"And that's why Puck couldn't tell you the truth," said Yo Yo. "He's under strict orders. He can never tell a mortal the truth unless he's sure he won't be believed."
"That's not true," said Puck. He grinned.
"Shut up, Puckster," said Yo Yo.
"We got a situation," said Ceese, "and you got a situation. Not the same situation, but they got the same cause. Your husband, your master, the king of the fairies, whatever he is, he's got himself a pony, right? And doing that made all those wishes come true tonight. So to solve your problem, and our problem, what can we do?"
"Nothing," said Puck. "We are absolutely helpless. Go home. Cry into your pillows until your dreams come true."
"He's so funny," said Mack to Grand. "Always joking. You know how Puck is."
"Mack," said Yo Yo. "The thing is, it's a fight you can't fight. You already did all you could. For years you did it, deflecting his power so they never finished their dreams. That was good work, but now it's done. He's got his power out in the world."
"Oberon's pony isn't doing this stuff," said Yo Yo. "In your neighborhood, I mean."
"Who is, then?"
"Puck," said Yo Yo.
Puck elaborately curled himself into a fetal position as if he feared being struck by stones.
"This isn't funny, Puck," said Mack. "You did this?"
"It's in my nature," said Puck.
"That's true enough," said Yo Yo. "He can't help being a trickster. But also he has Oberon's direct command to find these twists. The thing is, Puck can't tell you because it would be the truth, but he's also deflecting them. He can't stop it from happening, but... well, for instance, Ophelia and her husband could have been entwined in a love embrace under the HOLLYWOOD sign. Or halfway to Catalina. And Sherita—it didn't have to be a boy her family knew about, it could have been some rich boy in Beverly Hills or Palos Verdes, and how would you have found her then?"
"So he was helping," said Mack skeptically.
"As best he could," said Yo Yo.
Puck ducked his head in a show of modesty.
"He does what he can," said Yo Yo. "Here's the thing. What he can do, what I can do, it isn't much. The part of us he locked up, it includes most of our powers except persuasion and... pony riding. And the way it works is, we can't get that part out. Because this part of us, the wandering part, the curious part, is walking around free. It makes it so we aren't hungry enough to force anything.
"But him," she went on, "we pushed him all the way under. Didn't divide him. So to do anything he has to squeeze it out of his captivity. Get some part of him to the surface of the earth. But that part is never completely separated from him. He's not divided like we are." She sighed. "Took him a long time, but the force of his wandering part was so great that it worked its way through a channel to the surface of the earth."
"And that's the pony you were talking about," said Mack.
"No, Mack," said Yo Yo. "That was you. Seventeen years ago. You the first thing he squeezed out. We could feel him breaking through like a mother hen watching her chicks jiggle their eggs and then peck a hole. But we couldn't stop him. Puck here couldn't even try—he's bound to Oberon by vows he can't break. All I could do was try to persuade Ceese here to kill you, and he was too strong for me. His love for you too strong."
"Now I just don't understand that saying," said Puck. "A piece of needlework? Or, like, when we call a woman a 'piece,' only she does it for money so she's, you know, working when—"
"Shut up, Puck," said Yo Yo.
"What you're saying," said Mack, "is you want me to break you out of your little glass jars."
"Eventually," said Yo Yo. "But not you. You couldn't do it."
"I couldn't?" asked Mack.
"Impossible," said Puck.
"He lying, right?" Mack asked Yo Yo.
"Do you believe him?"
"No," said Mack.
"Then it doesn't matter if it's true or not, does it?" asked Yo Yo. "Look, Mack, I've tried to tell you several times. You are the part of him that he squeezed out first. You are Oberon."
"Bull," said Mack.
"That's why you can find where this house is hidden," said Ceese. "And why you don't change sizes going into Fairyland."
"I'm me," said Mack. "I don't have any memory of being Oberon. I got no powers."
"Excuse me," said Yo Yo. "You think seeing dreams ain't a power?"
"It's not a power if I can't control it," said Mack.
"But you did control it," said Ceese. "For a long time."
"You wander freely through Fairyland and nothing hurts you," said Yo Yo. "Puck goes twenty feet in and birds pick him up and damn near feed him to their babies."
"Because I'm Oberon."
"You're part of him," said Yo Yo.
"So I'm his spy?"
"No," said Yo Yo. "He probably can't use you for that. Like I said, you're not his pony—he'll see through the eyes and speak through the mouth and hear through the ears of whoever he's inside.
But you—he's about as conscious of you as a mortal normally is of his heartbeat."
"That's right. Under stress, you're more aware. Same with him. Sometimes he notices you but only when you're in trouble."
"I'm in trouble right now," said Mack. "Cause the only fairies I know keep telling me I'm their enemy."
"You're not our—" Yo Yo began.
"We're your enemy," said Puck, "but you're not ours."
"You're not our enemy," Yo Yo said forcefully, shutting Puck up.
"And if he feels like it, he can make me betray you."
"Hasn't yet, though, has he?" asked Yo Yo.
"I'm not some discarded piece of the king of the fairies," said Mack heatedly. "I'm not some appendix or tonsil, I'm me. I was raised by Miz Smitcher and Ceese here. I was trained up on the Bible and I try to be a decent man. I work at whatever I'm supposed to work on. I even work to oppose Oberon, and he doesn't stop me. He's not me, I'm not him."
"You're not the part of him that chooses," said Yo Yo, gently touching his arm to calm him. "See, Mack, here's what happened. He needed a changeling here to store up the power of all these people's wishes. So he sent you. It doesn't matter to him whether the wishes come true or not, except that if they do, he has Puck here assigned to make sure something ugly happens for Oberon's entertainment. That he likes—so when Puck comes back, if he does, Oberon will want a full report."
"So what am I, then? His gas tank?"
"No," said Yo Yo. "No, you're his conscience. That's the part he had to get rid of. That's the part that was stopping him from doing something truly hideous to us and to all the mortals. By taking every good thing out of his own heart, all his decency and honor and hope and joy and love, and putting them in you and shoving you out into the world, he left only pure ambition and pride and vengefulness and power-lust and violence there in his own heart."
"He decided to be evil," said Mack. "And I'm supposed to be all the good he threw away?"