"The panther," said Mack.
"Panther?"
"The one guarding the lamps."
"Ah," said Puck. "Lamps."
"They just hanging there in the air."
"Oh, they got something holding them up," said Puck.
"Duh," said Mack. "Magic, of course."
"So if you come close, this panther..."
"You never gone there?" said Mack. "You never saw that dead man? With a donkey head?"
Puck chuckled and shook his head. "Once she loves you, you never forget, you never give up."
"He ain't trying no more," said Mack. "Whatever it is he was trying to do."
"He was trying to set her free."
"Set who free?"
"The queen."
"I don't know what you talking about. I got to go home now."
"Why you pretending you don't want to know?"
"Cause whatever I ask, you don't tell me nothing. But when I don't ask, you full of information."
"She's the most beautiful woman who ever lived," said Puck. "But her soul's been captured and locked in a glass cage."
"The queen."
"The Queen of the Fairies," said Puck.
"And the dead guy with the donkey head, he was in love with her."
"Shakespeare, that asshole, he never understood anything. About love or magic. Always had to
'improve' the story." Puck winked. "He couldn't take a joke."
"You don't like Shakespeare?" asked Mack.
"Nobody likes Shakespeare. They just pretend they do so they look smart."
"I like Shakespeare," said Mack.
"You never read Shakespeare in your life."
"Some college students, they put on a play for us. I liked it."
"Yeah, yeah, cause they told you to like it. And cause they didn't put on Othello with some white dude with his face painted black."
"So it was Shakespeare locked a queen's soul in a lantern in the woods?"
"No," said Puck scornfully. "Shakespeare wouldn't have the power to pick his own nose, he come up against the queen."
"Himself," said Puck. "If you think I saying his name in this place, you crazy."
"What about the queen. What's her name?"
"She has so many. Mab, some call her, and that's closer to her true name. But also Titania.
Shakespeare knew those names but he didn't think she was the same person."
"So why don't you go out into the woods and set her free? Guy can make a whole house disappear from the street, you got to be more powerful than a panther."
"How far off the ground was that lantern?" asked Puck.
Mack held his hand out, about shoulder high.
Puck laughed bitterly. "So he didn't shrink you."
"Shrink me?"
"I step off the bricks into the woods, I shrink down to fairy size. Small enough to ride a butterfly.
Only they's no flying across that ravine. You think you had a hard time climbing down and up again?
Crossing that water? How hard you think it be, you this high." He held up his hand, his thumb and fingers about four inches apart.
"You? That tall?"
"In those woods."
"And you can't do anything about it?"
"That my natural size," said Puck. "When I'm home."
"Is that home for you, in there?"
"It's part of home. A corner of home."
"So what's it called?"
"Faerie," said Puck. "Fairyland."
"Not Middle-earth, then," said Mack. "Not Narnia?"
"Made-up bullshit, that stuff," said Puck. "There's no lion in that place, making people be good.
There's just power, and those who got more of it and those who got less."
"And in that place, you're little." get me if I try to fly. I can't get in to set her free."
"But I could," said Mack. "I'm tall enough."
"But you scared of that panther."
"Only a little," said Mack. "What I'm scared of is dying."
"Same thing."
"Don't care how," said Mack. "Just don't want to do it. Panther no worse than any other way."
"What did she look like?"
"If it was her, and you not just shitting me, then she was this little bit of light bouncing around inside the glass. Bright, though."
"Couldn't look right at her, could you."
"Burned a spot in my eye, didn't wear off till morning. Saw her in my sleep."
"Ah," said Puck. "You had her dream?"
Mack shook his head. "Not like that. I just dreamed about that point of light."
"Ah," said Puck, clearly disappointed.
"So who's the other one?" asked Mack.
"Other one?"
"Two lanterns, two lights. One of them might be this queen, but who's the other?"
"A prisoner of love," said Puck, and then he started singing it.
When grownups started singing old rock songs, the conversation was over. Mack had his pants on, and he better get home.
"You going to set her free?" asked Puck.
"You get me a can of panther repellent and a big stick, I get that glass open."
"Is that a lie or a promise?"
"If she's really in one of those jars."
"That's a good point," said Puck. "What if you open the wrong one."
"I told you."
"You told me nothing. You always tell me nothing."
"I told you it was Queen Mab in that jar."
"That's probably just another lie."
"I don't lie," said Puck. "These days, I don't even spin." He demonstrated how slowly he moved when he tried to turn himself around.
Mack didn't wait to watch. He headed out of the bedroom and out of the house. When he reached the sidewalk, he turned around to look, and the Skinny House was gone.
Mack reached down into his pants pocket and found the five-dollar bill he carried around in case of emergencies. Like having a magic wand. You have a five-dollar bill and you want a drink or some candy or a bus ride, then you got it. Small magic, but magic just the same.
Puck's magic—now, that was big time. But it seemed to Mack that maybe Puck wasn't the one did that magic. He didn't seem all that powerful. Couldn't make Mack do anything. Maybe he was trapped in that house the way that fairy queen was trapped in the lantern in the woods.
If he wasn't lying about what those lanterns were about. Had he really been there and seen the lights? Was he really so small and flightless that he couldn't get to either lantern? When Mack was telling the story, Puck nodded his head like he knew all about it, but then from his questions it seemed like he'd never been there, had no idea what it took to get there from here.
Puck hadn't even known that Mack would have pants in the closet. And did each one of those pairs of pants have his five-dollar bill in the pocket? If he was ever running short of money, could he come back here and get another Lincoln from the extra pants? Or would they be gone if he ever came back?
Mack turned away from the house and looked up the street and then took a step forward, then back, until he saw the house come into view again through the corner of his eye.
Had to make sure the house wasn't gone for good. What if he wanted to go back? Had to make sure he could.
Then he turned and ran home in the predawn light. A few cars out and running. Dr. Marvin heading out to put big tits into some woman or liposuck the fat out. Mack waved at him, and Dr.
Marvin waved back.
Miz Smitcher was standing by her car when Mack jogged up to the house. Mack remembered that she was covering the early shift this week.
"Where you been?" she asked.
"Don't scare me like that, Mack Street," she said softly. "You all I got."
My mother lives in this neighborhood, Miz Smitcher. Did you know that? Did you keep that from me? You lying to me all my life, or you didn't know?
Out loud, Mack said, "I didn't mean to. I won't do it again."
"Until the next time you don't mean to but it just happens."
Mack hung his head, showing his shame.
She touched the back of his head. Not rubbing his hair, like Mr. Christmas did. Just touching him. Laying her big nurse hand on his head like she laid it on her patients at the hospital. Felt good.
Felt like a promise that everything going to turn out okay.
She took her hand away and his head felt cold without it.
"I be home late tonight, kind of working half a double," said Miz Smitcher.