"Tell me what she's doing in my dreams."

"Maybe she's not doing anything," said Puck. "Maybe she doesn't even know you're having her dreams."

Something occurred to Mack. "What do you have to do with my dreams?"

"Think of me as being an appreciative audience. Front-row seat."

"You see my dreams?"

"I see you dreaming," said Puck.

"You have anything to do with the way they sometimes come true?"

"I don't have the power to make wishes come true."

"That wasn't what I asked."

Puck sent the cue ball into the eight ball with such force that it struck the back of a corner pocket and flew straight back out, zipped across the table, and dropped into the opposite corner pocket.

"That is such crap," said Mack. "Why is that even fun, when you can make it go wherever you want?"

"I'm trying to entertain you," said Puck. He snapped his fingers, and the balls all flew up as if the pockets were spitting them out. They hit the table and rolled back into a triangle at the opposite end from where they had been before the break.

"Is it working?" Puck broke again. The balls flew around the table and, when they finally came to rest, they were back in their original order, except that the cue ball was where the eight ball had been, in the midst of the triangle, and the eight ball was now in the cue ball's position on the opposite dot.

"How long were you doing this before I got here?" asked Mack.

"None of this stuff was here until you slid into the yard a few minutes ago," said Puck. "When you're not around, I just hang on a hook in the closet like your pants."

"You're the one who makes them come true," said Mack. "The dreams, I mean."

"Am not," said Puck. "He is."

"But you... you bend them."

Puck shrugged. "Believe what you want."

"What does her dream mean? And mine?"

"Can't tell you less I know what the dreams are."

"You know all my dreams."

"I know the dreams that come from other people's wishes," said Puck. "But I don't see her dreams, nor yours either. Weren't wishes anyway, right?"

Mack knew that if he told Puck the dreams, there was a danger he'd meddle with them or make something out of them. At the same time, Mack had to know what that business was with the flying slug, and who it was sitting beside him in his own plunge through the flash flood in the canyon. He finally decided to tell him Yo Yo's dream, but not his own. It made him feel disloyal and hypocritical.

Puck listened with interest and, Mack suspected, amusement. He was silent for a good long while after Mack finished telling the dream. "What a dangerous girl she is," he finally said.

"Dangerous to who?" said Mack.

"She can't do anything without you," said Puck.

"That's what the dream means?"

Puck smiled. "It's the truth, whether the dream means anything or not."

"She's the one gave me a ride."

"Tell you what," said Puck. "I'll tell you the absolute truth. If you stay with her and help her, you'll have a thrilling time, but you'll end up dead."

"Of course, you'll end up dead anyway," said Puck. "Being mortal and therefore built to break."

"You got broke up pretty bad a few years ago, as I remember."

"Never let yourself get pecked and picked up and dropped by birds when you're about an inch and a half high."

"If it comes up, I'll keep that in mind."

"Did I ever thank you for finding me?" asked Puck.

"No," said Mack. "But I never expected you to."

"Good thing, cause I'm not going to. You did me no favor."

"You called out to me, man. That's the only way I found you."

"Did not," said Puck. "That would be pathetic."

"You called my name and I heard your voice come from the bushes and that's how I found you."

A smile crossed his face. "Well, isn't that sweet."

"What's sweet?"

The smile left his face. "It wasn't me who called you."

"Who, then?"

"Must have been the Queen."

"The one in that floating mason jar?"

"She's the only Queen," said Puck. "All others are sloppy imitations, not worthy of the name."

"Titania. Mab."

"Only fools and mortals would try to contain her in a name," said Puck. "She is my lady."

"Not according to Shakespeare," said Mack. "You were Oberon's buddy and you put that potion in her eyes so she fell in love with the ass-faced guy."

"Ass-faced." Puck got a real kick out of that. In the midst of a great heaving laugh, he broke again. This time the balls bounced all over and every single one of them came to rest flush against one of the sides, so the middle of the table was completely clear.

Puck proceeded to hit the balls in numerical order, putting each one into a pocket without touching any of the other balls.

"Wasn't Shakespeare right?" asked Mack.

"Shakespeare knew about me and making mortals fall in love," said Puck. "Had nothing to do with a potion, but he never forgave me for getting him married to Anne Hathaway. She was seven years older than him and her eyes were cocked. And for three years I had him so silly with love for her that he thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world. She was pregnant when he married her, but what nobody knows is that he had to beg her to marry him."

"She didn't want him?"

"She thought he was making fun of her."

"So what happened when the potion wore off in three years?" asked Mack.

"It wasn't a potion, I told you. And it didn't wear off. I got tired of it. It wasn't amusing anymore.

So I set him free."

"He woke up one morning and—"

"It wasn't morning. He had just come home from a day's work at his father's glove shop and she was putting the twins to bed and he swept her up in a fond embrace and kissed her all over her face, and right in the middle of that I gave him back to himself." Puck sighed. "He didn't get the joke. I don't like assholes who got no sense of humor."

"You're such a bastard," said Mack.

"You'd know."

"I'm an abandoned child," said Mack. "But I didn't mean that kind of bastard anyway."

Puck smiled maliciously. "I amuse myself by watching a perpetual TV series called 'Messing with the Mortals.' I'm the host."

"What did he do?"

"To me? What could he do? And as for Anne Hathaway, Will was such a nice boy. He couldn't stand to be with her—she repulsed him physically, and he was filled with loathing for how he had been used. Very resentful. But there was no getting out of the marriage—in those days you just had to hope for a dose of smallpox or a bad childbirth to get you out of an unpleasant coupling—and besides, he knew it wasn't her fault, so why should he punish her for loving the only man who had ever wooed her?"

"You so understanding."

"Freud and Jung and you, masters of the mind."

"So Will Shakestaffe got himself taken on as a substitute in a traveling company that had a lead actor die suddenly, so they had to reshuffle all the roles. He showed them some of the sonnets he had written for his beloved wife and they mocked him for being such a bad writer—and it's true, nobody does their best poems when the love is artificial. The only one he ever allowed to be published was the one that punned on Anne's last name—'hate away' for 'Hathaway.' So he had to show them he was a good writer by rewriting some speeches and adding lines to his own bit parts. It really pissed off the big boys in the company, because he was getting laughs and tears for tiny parts, but the audience loved his rewrites and the partners weren't stupid. They had him rewrite the leading actors'

speeches, too, until they had some plays that were more Shakespeare than the original writers' work.

And they nicknamed him Shake-scene."

"So they accepted him."

"He hated the nickname," said Puck. "And they wouldn't even look at his first complete script.