Then, incredibly, they had stopped, and solid earth jarred upward against his soles.

“We are come.” The witch-girl smiled back at him over her shoulder. Then her brows knit in concern. “Art thou well?”

“Oh, most excellent! Or I will be, soon.” Father Al swung his leg over the broomstick and tottered up to her. “A singular experience, maiden, and one I’ll value till the end of my days! I thank thee greatly!” He turned, looking about him for a change of subject. “Now. Where shall I find the High Warlock?”

“Oh, within.” The girl pointed at the cottage. “Or if he is not, surely his wife will know when he may return. Shall I make thee acquainted with them?”

“Dost thou know them, then?” Father Al asked in surprise.

“Indeed; most all the witchfolk do.” She dismounted, picked up her broomstick, and led him toward the house. “They are gentle souls, and most modest; one would scarcely think that they were numbered ‘mongst the Powers of the land.” They were almost to the door, which was flanked by two flowering bushes. “Their bairns, though, are somewhat mischiev…”

“Hold!” one of the bushes barked. “Who seeks to pass? ”

Father Al swung round to the bush in astonishment. Then, remembering what the girl had been saying, he realized one of the children was probably hiding inside the leaves, playing a prank. “Good morn,” he said, bowing. “I am Father Aloysius Uwell, come hither to call upon the High Warlock and his family.”

“Come hither, then, that I may best examine thee,” the voice demanded. Rather deep voice, for a child; but the witch-girl was giggling behind him, so Father Al abided by his earlier guess—one of the children. And important to play along with the prank, therefore—nothing endears one to a parent like being cordial to the child. He sighed, and stepped closer to the bush.

“Why dost thou linger?” the voice barked. “Come hither to me now, I say!”

It was coming from behind him.

Father Al turned about, reassessing the situation—there were at least two children involved. “Why, so I do—if thou wilt hold thy place.”

The girl giggled again.

“Am I to blame if thine eyes art so beclouded that thou mistakest quite my place of biding?” The voice was coming out of a bush a little to Father Al’s left, farther from the house. “Come now, I say!”

Father Al sighed, and stepped toward the bush.

“Nay, here!” the voice cried from another bush, farther off to his left. “Besotted shave-pate, canst thou not tell my bearing?”

“I would, if I could see thee,” Father Al muttered, and ambled patiently toward the new bush. Giggling, the girl moved with him.

“Nay, hither!” the voice commanded again, from yet another bush, off to his right and farther from the house. “Wilt thou come, I say!”

About then, Father Al began to get suspicious. The voice was plainly leading them away from the house, and he began to think this was no childish prank, but the work of some guardian who didn’t trust strangers. “Nay, I’ll go no farther! I’ve come where thou hast said, not once, but several times! If thou dost wish that I should move another step, now show thyself, that I may see which way to step!”

“As thou wilt have it,” the voice grumbled; and, suddenly, the form of a broad and portly man rose up and came around the bush. Its head was shaven in the tonsure, and it wore a brown monk’s robe with a small yellow-handled screwdriver in the breast pocket.

Father Al stared.

The girl burst into a peal of laughter.

“Dost thou not know me, fellow?” the monk demanded. “Wilt thou not kneel to the Abbot of thine own Order?”

“Nay, that will I not,” Father Al muttered. Father Cotterson had said the Abbot was on his way back to the monastery, half a kingdom away—what would he be doing here, near a High Warlock’s house, at that? Father Al’s suspicions deepened, especially since he recognized an element out of folklore. So he began to whistle loudly, untied his rope belt, and took off his cassock. The witch-girl gasped and averted her eyes; then she looked back at him, staring.

“Friar!” the Abbot cried, scandalized. “Dost thou disrobe before a woman?!! ?… And what manner of garb is it thou wearest beneath?”

“Why, this?” Father Al sang, improvising a Gregorian chant. “ ‘Tis nought but the coverall all Cathodeans wear, which warms me in winter, and never doth tear.” He went back to whistling, turning his cassock inside-out.

The Abbot’s voice took on a definite tone of menace. “What dost thou mean by this turning of thy coat? Dost thou seek to signify that thou’It side with the King against me?”

Interesting; Father Al hadn’t known the old Church-State conflict was cropping up here. “Why, nay. It means only that…” (he put the monk’s robe on again, wrong side out, and wrapped it about him) “…that I wish to see things as they truly are.”

And before his eyes, the form of the abbot wavered, thinned, and faded, leaving only a stocky, two-foot-high man with a pug-nosed, berry-brown face, large eyes, brown jerkin, green hose, green cap with a red feather, and a smoldering expression. “Who ha’ told thee, priest?” he growled. His gaze shifted to the witch-girl. “Not thou, surely! The witch-folk ever were my friends!”

The girl shook her head, opening her lips to answer, but Father Al forestalled her. “Nay, hobgoblin. ‘Tis books have taught me, that to dispel glamour, one hath but to whistle or sing, and turn thy coat.”

“Thou’rt remarkably schooled in elfin ways, for one who follows the Crucified one,” the elf said, with grudging respect. “Indeed, I thought that thee and thy fellows scarce did acknowledge our existence!”

“Nor did I.” In fact, Father Al felt rather dizzy—in spite of what Yorick had told him; he was frantically trying to reevaluate all his fundamental assumptions. “Yet did tales of thee and thy kind all fascinate me, so that I strove to learn all that I could, of worlds other than the one I knew.”

“ ‘Worlds?’ ” The elf’s pointed ears pricked up. “Strange turn of phrase; what priest would think that any world existed, but this one about us?”

Somehow, Father Al was sure he’d made a slip. “In Philosophic’s far realms…”

“There is not one word said of things like me, that do defy all reason,” the elf snapped. “Tell me, priest—what is a star?”

“Why, a great, hot ball of gas, that doth…” Father Al caught himself. “Uh, dost thou see, there is writing of seven spheres of crystal that surround the Earth…”

“ ‘Earth?’ Strange term, when thou most assuredly dost mean ‘world.’ Nay, thou didst speak thy true thought at the first, surprised to hear such a question from one like me—and, I doubt not, thou couldst tell me also of other worlds, that do swing about the stars, and heavenly cars that sail between them. Is it not so? I charge thee, priest, to answer truly, by thy cloth—dost thou not believe a lie to be a sin? ”

“Why, so I do,” Father Al admitted, “and therefore must I needs acknowledge the truth whereof thou speakest; I could indeed tell thee of such wonders. But…”

“And didst thou not ride hither in just such a car, from such another world?” The elf watched him keenly.

Father Al stared at him.

The elf waited.

“Indeed I did.” Father Al’s brows pulled down. “How would an elf know of such matters? Hast thy High Warlock told thee of them?”

It was the elf’s turn to be taken aback. “Nay, what knowest thou of Rod Gallowglass?”

“That he is, to thee, indeed a puissant warlock—though he would deny it, had he any honesty within him—and doth come, as I do, from a world beyond the sky. Indeed, he doth serve the same Government of Many Stars that governs me, and came, as I did, in a ship that sails the void between the stars.”

“ ‘Tis even as thou sayest, including his denial of his powers.” The elf regarded him narrowly. “Dost thou know him, then?”

“We never have met,” Father Al evaded. “Now, since that I have told thee what thou didst wish to know, wilt thou not oblige me in return, and say to me how it can be that elves exist?”