Let the globes of light keep their secret, and let the panther go hungry for another while.

Having seen the sources of the light he saw from the path, there was no reason for him to remain here. He started back.

The moment he left the clearing, though, he was plunged into darkness. If it had been twilight before, now it was night, and without the bobbing lantern light ahead of him to guide him, he had to feel his way through the dark like a blind man.

Somewhere ahead of him was a ravine, its sides so steep that he had clung to vines and roots in order to climb. And at the bottom, a torrent that could sweep him away if he misjudged in the darkness and failed to jump all the way across.

"I'm not getting home tonight," Mack said out loud.

Behind him, he heard the deep rumble of a big cat, purring.

He stopped, held still.

A warm sleek-furred body pressed close against him as it slid past, then turned and rubbed itself again on his legs.

A tongue lapped at his hand.

He didn't think this was the way that cats treated their prey.

Mack took another step toward the ravine. Suddenly the cat was in front of him, blocking his way. And instead of a purr, there was a fierce, short growl.

I'm in Narnia, thought Mack. Only it's a black boy's Narnia, so instead of a golden lion there's a black panther. And instead of entering through the back of a wardrobe in England, I got here through the back door and patio of an invisible house on a street in Baldwin Hills.

So what was the deal here? Guys like C. S. Lewis and what's-his-name who wrote Alice in Wonderland, were they reporting things they really experienced? Or things they dreamed? Or were they imagining it, but it happened that in the real world the things they imagined really did come true?

Or is all this happening because I read their books and so my own mind is finding ways to make their fantasy stories turn real? Or am I crazy and cold dreams are nothing but the ugly nightmares of a wacked out bastard boy whose mind was broken as he lay covered with ants in a grocery bag by a drainpipe at the bottom of Hahn Park?

Either this panther was a black Aslan or a black White Rabbit or... or something. Whatever. The main thing was, it only growled when Mack walked in this direction. Or when Mack tried to walk toward the lanterns. And it was dark. Night. Mack had eaten supper, such as it was. The leftover chili. So it's not like he had a compelling reason to go home, except that Miz Smitcher would worry about him, and there was nothing he could do about that, she'd worry a lot worse and a lot longer and to less effect if he pissed off this panther and ended up lying in the woods with claw marks on his clothing and maggots eating his dead flesh.

So he lay down where he was standing. The ground was soft and yielding. He could hear the breathing of the panther near him. He could see nothing at all. Not even the lights in the clearing, now that he was down below the level of the underbrush. If there were snakes or other fearsome beasts near him, he'd never know it; the rustlings and stirrings he heard were bound to be small creatures of the night, but they were none of his business and he hoped they'd feel the same about him.

Lying there, in the minutes before sleep overtook him, Mack thought about Mr. Christmas and all he'd said. He knew Mack's mother. Could that be true? A woman somewhere nearby. In the neighborhood. Was it possible? She gave birth, and everybody forgot she had even been pregnant? If that was so, then Mack really was home here. Or rather, there in Baldwin Hills, since right now "here" was a dark magical wood with a panther lurking nearby.

And what was that business with the hockey stick and the puck that appeared in midair and fell to the floor in the kitchen of Mr. Christmas's Skinny House?

It was the house, answering his question about Mr. Christmas's identity, just as he had asked.

Puck. There was a character named Puck. Mack had heard the name, or read it somewhere.

Vaguely the memory came to him: It was a character in Shakespeare. Mack had never read Shakespeare, but somewhere in his schooling, somebody had told or read him the story of someone named Puck. A fairy named Puck. Mr. Christmas was a fairy, like he said, only not what guys meant when they called an effeminate kid a fairy. More like an elf. A tall black old elf with a rasta do. Only when Mack had walked into the woods and looked back at him, he had turned back into something more like himself, and what Mack had seen was the fairy, tall and lithe, his hair a halo around his head, his clothes clingy and... green. They had been green.

It was a play, now he remembered. A group of college students came to their elementary school and put on a play that started with the queen of the fairies falling in love with a guy with a donkey head, and then a bunch of stupid guys acting out a play about a boy and girl who fall in love and then kill themselves because one of them was torn by a lion or... or something.

That's all this is. I'm asleep somewhere and dreaming that play they put on for us when I was in fifth grade.

Only he knew that he wasn't dreaming, that he was very much awake.

Until, a moment later, he wasn't.

Chapter 9

CAPTIVE QUEEN

Mack awoke in the first light of morning, cold and covered with dew, but not uncomfortable, not even shivering except one quick spasm when he first bounded to his feet.

Only when he was standing did he realize that the panther had slept close to him all night, and from the sudden chill of evaporating sweat he knew that the beast had been pressed up close to his back. Now it lazily rose up and stretched and padded away from him, back toward the clearing where two lanterns hung suspended in the air.

Mack wasn't interested in going back there now. Miz Smitcher would worry and he didn't want her to be unhappy or worried, though truth to tell she probably wasn't, since she was bound to assume he had spent the night in somebody's house.

Alone now—for the panther felt to him like more than an animal—Mack did as his body required, stepping right out of his pants in order to empty his bladder and then squat down to hold on to a sapling trunk while he emptied his bowels. It had been a long time since he'd done it outdoors, but his body was so healthy and worked so naturally that his turd came out dry and he didn't even need to wipe himself, though he scooped up some old leaves and made a pass at his butt just to be sure.

Then he stood up and took a step and then snatched back at the sapling, because his foot didn't find the ground, it hung out in the air, and he realized that the trees and saplings here leaned out over the ravine or grew up from inside it. He had slept on the edge of a cliff last night, the cat between him and death, and the turd he laid had fallen down into nothing.

It knocked the breath out of him, but not the sense—he knew as he slid down toward the water that he had to stop himself or he'd be caught up in the current and battered to death against the banks and stony bottom of the stream, if he didn't drown first.

He caught a tough root growing right at the water's edge, as his legs went into the water. It was so cold, right up to his waist, that it knocked the breath out of him all over again—not that he'd had even a moment to catch it after the fall—and the shock was so great he almost lost his grip.

But he held on, and even though the water tore at him and held him out almost horizontal in the water, he was able to get a leg up into the roots of another tree and then climb up out of the water.

He sat on the bank, still without his trousers, trembling with the cold of the water and the pain and bruises of the fall and the fear of having come so near death.