With a sharp crack and a crunch of shards of glass rubbing together, the lanterns exploded.
Two tiny lights arose from the lanterns' wreckage between Ceese's fingers.
There must have been a thousand birds waiting in the trees. And now they all swooped out and down, darting for the lights.
Mack moved just as quickly. Holding Puck in one hand and Yolanda in the other, he thrust their tiny bodies toward the hovering lights.
As they neared each other, they became like magnets. The lights crossed each other's path and caught the bodies of the fairies in midair.
There was an explosion of light.
The birds veered and now were circling the clearing, around and around, like a whirlpool of black feathers. But as they flew, their colors changed, brightened. Suddenly there were as many red and blue and yellow birds as black and brown, and among them were fantastically colored parrots, and their calls changed from harsh caws to musical sounds.
The leaves on the trees changed, too, from the colors of autumn to a thousand different shades of green, and many of the trees burst out in blossoms.
In the middle of the clearing, Yolanda stood, normal size again, with her head bowed and her arms folded across her chest. Then, as she raised her head, moth wings unfolded from her back, thin and bright as a stained-glass window. She opened her eyes and looked at the birds. Then she opened her arms, opened her hands, and the birds rose up again into the green-covered branches and sang now in unison, like an avian Tabernacle Choir. The Fairy Queen opened her mouth and joined in the song, her voice rising rich and beautiful like the warm sun rising on a crisp morning.
Mack took a step toward her. She smiled.
Then she whirled toward the strong and tall young black-winged manfairy that Puck had just become. With a quick movement of her hand and a brief "Sorry, doll," she shrank him down and her finger hooked him toward her as surely as if she had just lassoed him. As he approached, he shrank, until he was grasped in her hollow fist, the way a child holds a firefly.
"Give me a film canister," she said.
Mack had them in his pockets.
She held the open canister under the heel of her fist and then blew into the top. In a moment she had the lid on.
She blew another puff of air onto the film canister, and it became a small cage made of golden wire, beautifully woven.
Inside, Puck leaned against the wires, cursing at her.
Another puff of air and his voice went silent.
Then she turned to Ceese and offered him the golden cage that contained Puck. "Oberon is free now," she said. "And Puck is his slave. He must have known I'd have no choice but to do this."
"If Oberon is awake," said Mack, "we don't have much time."
"Take it," she said to Ceese. "Take him back to the house. Don't let him out of your sight. I don't want anybody stealing him and trying to control him like the poor fairies that gave rise to those genie-in-a-bottle stories."
Ceese took the cage, looking at the raging fairy whose wings fluttered madly as he ran around and around inside the cage, treating the walls and ceiling of the spherical cage as if they were all floor and there were no up and down.
"Be gentle with him," said Titania. "I owe him so much. And when this is over, he will be free.
Not just from that cage, but from Oberon as well. His own man again. A free fairy." And softly, tenderly, she leaned toward the cage. "You have my word on it, you nasty, beautiful fairy boy." She looked up into Ceese's face. "Get going. The animals should leave you alone now, but you want to be out of Fairyland before the dragon comes."
"Good idea," said Ceese.
As he neared the place where the brick path began, he stopped one last time to look around over the beautiful green of springtime in Fairyland. He knew that he would probably never see this land again. Nor would he ever be so tall, or see so far.
When he looked south, toward where Cloverdale climbed the mountain in his home world, he saw a hot red shaft of light shoot upward, surrounded by smoke.
And in the shaft a huge black snaky thing began to writhe upward. Even at this distance, Ceese could see how the creature's slimy skin shone in many colors, like a slick of oil on a puddle.
Two great wings unfolded, shaped like enormous bat wings, but webbed like the wings of a dragonfly. They kept unfolding until they extended to an impossible span.
And two red eyes opened and blinked.
From the cage in Ceese's hand, a tiny high voice cried out. "Here, Master! I'm here! She went that way! She's over there! Head for the temple of Pan! Set me free to help you!"
Ceese dropped to his knees and closed his fist over the golden cage. Then he crawled onto the brick path until he was small enough to stand up and walk.
He strode across the patio and opened the back door. The golden cage now was the size of a grapefruit in his hand. Inside the lacework of golden wires, Puck hung by his hands from the wires, his body racked with great sobs. "God help me!" he cried, again and again. "I hate him! I hate him!" And then, more softly, "Beloved master, beautiful king."
Chapter 23
SLUG
As soon as Ceese left the clearing, bearing away Puck in his golden cage, Titania flung her arms around Mack and clung to him. "He's coming," she whispered. "I can feel him rising."
"We've got to go," Mack said. "It's a good long run."
"You forget that I'm in my power now." She kissed him. "I'm so afraid."
"There's a chance that we'll lose?"
"If he wins today, I'll win tomorrow. No, I'm afraid that if I win, he won't love me anymore. You won't love me anymore."
"But he does," she said. "The only reason you don't love me is you're upset because you think I betrayed Puck. You're so good and pure, Mack. But if you were a little more wicked and selfish like me, you'd realize that Puck was a tool that Oberon could have used against me. Now he can't."
"I understand that," said Mack.
"With your mind," said Titania. "But in here"—she touched his chest—"you would never be able to do such a thing. So loyal and true. Fly with me, Mack Street."
"I can't fly."
"But I can." In a quick, sudden movement she swung herself around behind him, gripped him across his chest and under his arms, then wrapped her legs around him. All the while, she was beating her wings, so she weighed nothing. Less than nothing: Under her wings they both rose from the ground.
In a moment they were above the clearing. She took one soaring circle. No birds came near them. Mack could see the glorious spring forest spreading in all directions. Only now did he realize that in all his wanderings, he had never seen spring. Perhaps there was no spring when Titania wasn't free in this world.
Not so far away, smoke was rising from a gap in the hills—the place where the drainpipe rose in the other world.
"He's coming up now," said Titania. "Away we go."
He was surprised at how fast she flew. Like a dragonfly, not a moth. She could hover in one place, then dart like a rocket. He could feel the muscles flexing in her chest and arms as they balanced and responded to the exertions of her wing muscles. As womanly as this fairy queen might be, she was also a magnificent creature, overwhelmingly strong.
"So the pixie dust thing is just a myth," said Mack.
She laughed. "J. M. Barrie knew boys. But he didn't know fairies. Not like Shakespeare. He glimpsed Puck once, and one of my daughters. He thought the sparks of light were fairy dust. He had no idea what was going on."
"What was going on?"
"Oberon's first attempt to make you," said Titania. "Using Puck as the father. And no humans at all. It didn't work."
"How many tries?"
"Four. Five counting you. The last two could have done it, but they were never able to connect with the people around them. Never able to catch the dreams. It takes a village to raise a changeling."