"No," said Sondra Brown. "That song is sacred. You don't sing it for some... act."

"You sing it to change the world, sistah, and that what we doing," said Cooky Peabody, sounding as ebonic as she knew how. A dialect she pretty much learned from television.

To Ceese it didn't matter. He left it up to Grand and Miz Smitcher and—why not?—democracy to make the decision, while he would drive his patrol car down to the gateway between worlds. First, though, he watched Mack get on the motorcycle behind... his wife. Man, that stuck in Ceese's craw, even to think it. Wife. Mack marries a hoochie mama on a bike before he's eighteen and Ceese doesn't even have a steady girl at thirty.

All right, she wasn't a hoochie mama. She was queen of the fairies and Mack was supposedly some excrescence from the king of the fairies. To Ceese he was still a kid who had no business being that free and familiar with such a voluptuous body.

Ceese stood beside his patrol car watching them ride off on the bike. That's when Miz Smitcher came up to him. "Didn't so much as invite us to the wedding," she said.

"I don't think it really counts as a wedding. Near as I can tell, it was reconnaissance."

"Now that's a word for it I've never heard before. 'Hey, baby, how about a little reconnaissance.' "

Ceese chuckled.

She leaned close to him. "Ceese, give me your weapon," she said softly.

"Are you crazy?" he said. "A cop doesn't give his gun to anybody."

"You can't take it in there with you, right? Into Fairyland? I just got a feeling, Ceese. You know I'm not crazy. I got a feeling that gun's going to be needed somewhere other than locked in the trunk of your patrol car here in Baldwin Hills. You dig?"

"I can't believe I heard you say 'you dig.' "

"I been listening to Ray Charles," she said.

"He used to say that?"

"I don't know. I just know that back when I started listening to Ray, we were all saying 'you dig.' "

"I used to look young, anyway," she said. "Give me the gun."

"If you shoot that thing, and somebody does ballistics on the bullet, they'll know it was my gun which got fired in a place where I wasn't."

"That happens, I stole it from you."

She looked determined.

"Ceese," she said. "I trusted you with my baby. Now you trust me with your gun. I won't ruin your life or kill anybody doesn't need killing."

He had her get inside the car and then took out the weapon, showed her how to work the safety, and then gave her extra ammo.

"Won't be much good against fairies," said Ceese. "Especially if they're really tiny."

"Just have a feeling," said Miz Smitcher. She put it all in her purse.

A few minutes later, Ceese was down near the bottom of Cloverdale, parking the patrol car between Snipes' and Chandresses'. Yolanda and Mack were already waiting for him. "What kept you? Stop to take a leak?" asked Mack. "We got a whole woods back there."

"Yeah," said Ceese, "but like you said, stuff you leave there might be anything on this side. I'd hate to leave a bag of marshmallows or a baby stroller in the middle of some road, just because I had to pee."

"Am I going to have to listen to two little boys making peepee jokes the whole way?" asked Yolanda.

Mack took both their hands and led them through the gateway into the house.

Puck was waiting inside with two plastic 35mm film canisters.

"Planning on taking pictures?" Ceese asked him.

"They're empty," said Puck. "And look—air holes."

"Air holes?"

"We're going to get real small once we get into Fairyland. Being without our souls the way we are," said Puck. "And every creature Oberon can assemble is going to come and try to kill us. If you're holding us in your hands, you can't slap them away. Or else you're going to get excited and crush us. So you let us go inside these film tubes and then put us in your pockets. Your safest pockets that we can't fall out of."

"And something else," said Puck. "When we're small, we can't hear big deep sounds. Talk really high, Ceese, or we won't understand you. And every now and then, shut up so you can hear if we're yelling something at you."

"Which pocket?" asked Yolanda. "Not your butt pocket, get it?"

"Got it," said Ceese.

"Good," said Mack. Then he broke up laughing, for reasons Ceese didn't bother to inquire about.

"You got your stuff? For the pillars?" Ceese asked Mack.

Mack patted his own pockets.

"And a knife?"

Mack shook his head. "In my dream I didn't have a knife."

"In your dream you were fighting a slug with wings, too, not the king of the fairies."

"Um," said Yolanda.

"What?"

"That's the form we imprisoned him in," she said. "It's one of the shapes he can wear, and it's the only one where he doesn't have really dextrous hands."

"Didn't want him to have hands. So what does he have?"

"Talons like a steam shovel," said Yolanda. "But we weren't thinking about fighting him in the flesh, when we did that."

"And wings," said Puck. "With little tiny fingers on them, like a bat. They can rip your cheek right off your face in combat. You couldn't tie your shoelaces with them, though."

"Wish it were the other way," said Ceese. "These other animals—what are they going to do to me?"

"Nothing much, the size you turn into in there."

"What about me?" asked Mack.

"They won't touch you, Mack. Have they ever?"

"Panther growled at me once."

"Boo hoo," said Puck.

"So all that time I kept a watch out for predators and scavengers and heat-seeking reptiles in the night, I had nothing to worry about?"

"They obey Oberon, and to their tiny little minds you are Oberon."

"You do smell like him," Yolanda added.

"That's good news," said Mack. "So what are we waiting for?"

"Courage," said Ceese.

"A heart," said Mack.

"A brain," said Puck, pointedly looking at Ceese. And when Mack laughed, this time Ceese got the reference.

Everybody went to the bathroom who needed to, which meant Ceese and Mack. Then they were ready to go.

When they got out on the back porch, not a thing was changed—not even blown by the wind.

But when they walked back onto the brick walkway, the forest was bedecked in the reds and golds of autumn.

"Toto, I think we're not in Southern California anymore," said Mack.

"Stop," said Yolanda.

Ceese looked at her. She was half the height she was before. And he was several feet taller, because he was looking down at Mack almost like Mack was a kid again. Yet he hadn't felt himself grow.

"They can smell us already," Yolanda said. "They're gathering. Have those film cans ready?

Mack, you hold mine and be ready to put me in. Please don't let any birds snatch it out of your fingers, all right? Or me, for that matter."

Mack looked up. So did Ceese. There were several birds hovering overhead. No, more than several—most of them were so high up they were hard to spot.

"This ain't going to be fun," said Puck. "In case you thought."

"Especially watch your eyes, Cecil Tucker," said Yolanda. "They like to go for the eyes. When they're fighting giants."

"I don't know the way," said Ceese. "I got to be able to see."

"Easy for you to say," said Ceese. "You're immortal."

"But I've been blind."

This wasn't the time for a story. They took another step. Still way too big to fit into a baby stroller, let alone a film canister.

"Hold my hand, baby," said Yolanda. "I don't want you to lose me."

"Hold my hand, too," said Puck.

"I'll just hold you," said Ceese, picking him up and tucking him like a football.

Another step. Another. Another.

Birds were swooping now, flitting by, close over their heads. And all around them, squirrels and other animals were coming to the edges of the path and chattering at them.