Pick one.

Light, then, to guide him through the eternal day.

This one, the glow of a storefront office that advertised daily employment, led to that one, the eyes of a panel truck, which pointed to that one, the neon of a barbecue lunch counter.

And on and on, and faster and faster, as beautiful and terrible as the Fair Lady's kiss, which he had known once, as well.

All your hungers there to sate

All your thirsts to slake

Look what you've been given,

You can't see what she'll take.

"THE FAIR LADY"

The sound of the spinning wheel in the next room is constant,and has been for a timeless time when the Fair Lady puts down Her knitting and removes Her feet from the fire. The liderc,which has been chewing on its goose leg, looks up. The midwife stops her song, which she sings to her own newborn babe that she killed, and she also looks up. The nora, which has been playing with its genitals in the corner, hobbles over as well.

"The Wolf is on the scent, " She announces. "And the Dove is taking to the air."

"What shall we do. Mistress?" says the liderc, in a voice that sounds like the hiss and pop of the fire in which the Fair Lady has been roasting Her feet.

"Well, you must get onto the track of the Wolf and sour the trail. You may let him follow you back here if you wish,but don't let him catch you or you'll be eaten."

"Yes, Mistress," and it leaves through the door.

"You," She continues to the nora, "must see to it that the Wolf is kept busy with other things. Go fetch me its cub."

"Yes, Mistress," and the nora leaves through the window.

"What about me. Mistress?" says the midwife.

"You must sing a song to catch a Dove by the wing."

"Yes, Mistress. Of what shall I sing?"

"Sing of cages that look like feather beds, and blood that smells like apple blossoms."

"Yes, Mistress. How loud shall I sing?"

"Sing so loud the nests shake in their trees, but not so loud the wolves howl in the hills."

"Yes, Mistress. How long shall I sing?"

"Sing until the snow falls up from the ground, but stop before the first note reaches your ear."

"Yes, Mistress," says the midwife, and she puts her face near the fireplace flue and begins to sing.

Keep them hounds off my trail,

And them jailers off my back.

Get these bracelets off of me,

A little rain to hide my track.

"HIDE MY TRACK"

He was very comfortable, except that something was jabbing him in the back of the head. He was warm,cuddled up in a blanket tucked all the way up to his chin, but a cool breeze was blowing against his face. He shifted, trying to move his head away from whatever was poking him, and remembered that he'd been hit; then he sat up, struggling to get his gun out of the holster he was half sitting on.

"Sit still!" hissed Madam Moria. "Do you think this is easy?"

Stepovich ignored her, twisting to stare wildly around him. He shook his head, trying to clear it of fogs, but the mist swirling and eddying around the coach and in through the open windows was real. So was the good calfskin upholstery under him, and the bright brass catches and handles and trims of the coach, and the brocaded lining of the coach's ceiling.ceiling.Aed coach blanket was tucked around him,with a large M embroidered in one corner. Nothing remained of the small park carriage he had jumped into. Nothing.

There was a small window facing forward, with a leather cover flap undone, and through it he could get a glimpse of the Coachman up on his box. Stepovich swayed with a sudden wooziness that was only part pain. He gripped the sill of the open window beside him, thrust his head out. Forward, he could see the dim shapes of dark horses, four perhaps,shrouded in fog. Around the coach, nothing. He could see no buildings, no lampposts, no parking meters, nothing. Stepovich had a sensation of movement, but it was a nasty, queasy sort of movement,as if the coach wobbled forward on wheels of Jell-O.There O. Theresound of hooves hitting pavement, no sound of wheels on asphalt. No normal sound at all,only the wind and Madam Moria's muttering, and other voices, giggling and gibbering at the very limits of Stepovich's hearing. "Stop the coach!" Stepovich roared, but the fog gulped his voice down whole, reducing his command to a pitiful plea.

"We're nearly there," Madam Moria said comfortingly.

"Nearly where?" Stepovich demanded. She ignored him, and went on with her muttering as she fingered something he could not see, for all the world like an old woman telling her rosary beads. He reached up to feel the lump on the back of his head.Wethead. Wet lump. It made him feel sick. Serve her right if he puked all over both of them. He knew he should be taking control of the situation; a good cop would have this situation completely under control.control.Heed the strap on his holster, but Madam Moria shot him a fierce glare.

"Cold iron and steel, oh, yes, fool, that would be a great help to us! Do you want to fall through completely? No? Then sit still!" The wind had fingered some of her hair free of her shawl and the black strands whipped across her face, veiling her brown eyes and high cheeks. Stepovich stared at the snap of command in her voice. He had heard it before. It was the obey-me-or-die voice of a commander in a life or death situation. Something in him bowed to it instinctively.

"Where are we going?" he whispered.

"I don't know. Back. Following the threads, back to before. She was hiding him."

"Who?" he asked helplessly.

"The worm. Hush. If She hears us. She'll cut the thread, and there'll be no following it forward nor back. There'll only be the mist and the Coachman."

"Trust me," said the Coachman, the first word she'd spoken, and folktales and violins shimmered in his voice, and Stepovich did. But Madam Moria laughed, the laugh of a skeptical old woman. "Trust you? Trust you right down the neck of a bottle!" Stepovich glanced at her blind but focused eyes and then away, clenching his fists. Good Christ, what the hell was happening to him?

He leaned forward to the window again. Mist and fog and clammy air, no more than that. Or was that glimpsed bit of facade, bared by the mist for only an instant, the decorated cornice of the old Masonic temple? If so, he knew where he was; but just as suddenly as it had come, his brief sense of orientation was swept away. They'd torn down the old Masonic temple six years back. The gooseneck street lamps that he could glimpse now had been gone since he was twenty-three. He remembered coming home from one of his attempts at a college education to find them gone.

Understanding broke over him like a cold wave and he refused it, clinging instead to his own reality. "Almost there, mistress," said the Coachman, and he leaned stiffly down and peered in to speak to them.He them.Hetop hat now, and a black wool greatcoat,but his face had not changed, not one line or hair of difference, except that now he smiled at Stepovich and his teeth were very white. Somehow that was the worst of all, and Stepovich felt his reasoning throwback its head and howl at the moon. Instead he turned back to his window and gripped the edge of it like a drowning man clutches at flotsam.

The mist was thinning around them, tattering away like cobwebs. Warmth suddenly filled the air and the sun broke through like a woman's smile; trees lined the suburban street of turn-of-the-century Victorian-style houses, children played and laughed, but Stepovich felt as if he saw it all through a dirty plateglass window. There was an echo of distance to the bark of the terrier chasing the ball a small boy threw,and neither child nor dog turned their heads to watch the horse-drawn coach pass. Big elms lined the street.Tstreet.The hadn't seen elms that size since the Dutch elm epidemic of '63 had left the suburbs near treelesstreeless. Then wasn't bothering with the street,either, hell, he wasn't even on the sidewalk; he was taking it across the lawns, through sprinklers that didn't wet them, down to an empty lot, overgrown with deep grass, littered with pop cans that weren't aluminum, and presided over by a live oak.