Is this the fulfilment of her dream?
In the dream she didn't even know I was there. But in reality, she needs me.
It made him feel good.
"Dammit, Mack, what's going on there? We're not connected yet."
"Maybe it took some of them longer to get up from Ralph's than they expected," said Mack. "It's not that long since I started drawing the hearts."
"What is this, a bad cellphone system?" said Titania. "Can you hear me now? Can you hear me effing now?"
"Please," said Mack. "Don't get angry."
"You're right," she said.
The slugdragon circled at a distance, reconnoitering. Mack sidled around her, as she pointed at each pillar in turn. "I'm not filling up, Mack. This is going to be a short fight if he's got you to draw on and I don't have anybody."
"I can't, Mack, and you know why," she said. And then: "Oh, praise the Lord. They finished it."
Immediately Titania pointed at each pillar, but this time she sang a low note as she did it, and the pillars began to glow.
"Oh, he sees that," she murmured—on the note. "He knows now. Watch out, Mack. Stand up for me."
Mack could hardly think about the dragon, because he was watching the pillars. They were starting to move, sliding around the circle. Clockwise.
"I thought you said counterclockwise," said Mack.
"If the circle moved the same on both sides," said Titania impatiently, "there wouldn't be any friction, now, would there?"
"Silly me," murmured Mack.
"You do know that I love you, don't you, Mack?"
"What are you doing, kissing my ass goodbye?" he said.
"Here he comes, the son-of-a-bitch!"
The flying slug swooped down at them and a talon caught Mack a glancing blow. But it tore open his chest diagonally from waist to shoulder. Mack screamed with the pain and dropped to his knees.
"Stand up, Mack!" she cried. "He can't do that again, he can't afford to weaken you!"
"Once was enough," Mack whispered. "God help me!"
"I can't help you!" she said. "I've got to get this circle moving!"
Mack tore off his shirt to see the wound. It was deep in places—the skin gaped wide. But it hadn't opened his belly. His guts were still safely inside. "Just a flesh wound," he said.
"Well, ain't you brave."
"We'll see what you think when I poop my pants," said Mack. "He's coming back."
"I'm getting stronger, Mack. It's working. You'll see."
The dragon swooped down again, but this time a bright yellow Cadillac suddenly rose straight up from a point inside the circle and smacked into the slug and threw it off course. A moment later, before the Caddy could come back to earth, it blew up into smithereens.
A thousand golf balls were pelting them.
"Damn," she said. "You got a lot of strength in you, baby. Those should have been ping-pong balls."
"Ain't I cool," said Mack, nursing a welt that was rising on his head where a golf ball had smacked him.
"Let me out of this cage," shouted Puck. "She needs me, don't you understand? She thinks I'm his slave, but I'm not, I love her! She's the love of my life! I'd never hurt her! Let me out!"
Ceese knelt by the cage. "I don't even know how," he said.
"Tear it open. Get back in there where you're a giant and rip this sucker open with your teeth!"
"No," Ceese said.
All of a sudden the globe began to roll. It wasn't magic. Puck was moving it like a hamster, running inside the ball and making it move across the floor toward the kitchen.
"You're not getting out of here!"
"Try and stop me!"
Ceese stopped him.
Puck stared at Ceese's foot, which was holding the cage in place.
"Police brutality!" shouted Puck.
"Oh, shut up, nobody's hurting you."
"Rodney King!"
"Nobody can hear you, Puck. And even if they could, they can't even see this house."
"She needs me!"
"She needs you here, with me," said Ceese.
Puck reared back and let out such a piercing scream that one of the panes blew out of the window. It gave Ceese such a pain in his ears that he picked up the globe and ran back to the back of the house, intending to duck it in the toilet or stick it in the shower.
"Damn," said Puck. "What is this, the Village People's dressing room?"
"I'm getting dressed," said Ceese. "But before I do..."
Ceese took one of the leather jackets—the one that was still dripping from having been ducked in water—and wrapped it completely around the globe.
From inside it, Ceese could hear Puck's muffled voice. "It's dark."
Ceese shook the wet jacket.
"It's raining," said Puck.
The chopper swooped in low over the fairy circle. When it was exactly in the middle, a big dollop of red splashed down in the direct center of the circle, spattering everyone with it.
"What is it, paint?" called someone.
"Shut up and keep dancing!" cried Grand.
"It's blood," said Ebby.
"Keep dancing, sweetie," said Ura Lee.
Then, to Ura Lee's amazement, her feet were no longer touching the ground. Still dancing, she rose into the air and the circle began to move even faster.
The chopper returned, but this time as it passed, the red paint peeled off the pavement—and off everybody it had hit—and formed itself back into a ball of paint... or blood, or whatever it was...
which then rose straight up and splashed right across the windshield of the chopper.
The helicopter immediately veered upward and away.
"Blinded him. Good," said Ura Lee.
"What's that chopper doing?" asked Ebby.
"That ain't no chopper, sweetie," said Ura Lee. "It's the devil. And that paint—that was Mack and Yolanda, over in Fairyland, doing something bad to him and making him go away."
"Not for long," said Ebby. "He's coming back."
"Dance faster."
And she did.
The chopper came in close again, and seemed to be heading straight for the flying, dancing, spinning fairy circle. But at the last moment, what looked like a giant frog's tongue shot up from beyond the overpass and stuck to the chopper and flung it away.
"That was close," said Ura Lee.
"It was cool," said Ebby.
That happened a couple more times before the LAPD cruiser slowly coasted along the bridge and slid in under the fairy circle. Ura Lee looked down at the officers who got out of the car and thought it was rather charming the way they took off their caps and scratched their heads and spent a long time discussing whether they dared to report what they were seeing.
Suddenly the metal pipe that made up the guardrail on the overpass tore loose from the concrete and flew upward.
It hit Sondra Brown and knocked her out of the circle. She dropped like a rock onto the road below.
"Oh God help her!" cried Ura Lee. The prayer was echoed by many others.
Whatever God might be doing about Sondra Brown, the guardrail pipe was now standing on end in the middle of the circle, poised to strike at another of them.
And where Sondra had been, it took a moment for the two whose hands she had been holding to get together and close up the gap. During that moment, the circle slowed down noticeably, and sank a little toward the ground, and the tingling that gave them such pleasure as they danced began to fade.
The pipe struck again. This time Ura Lee thought it was aiming at her. But of course it couldn't aim at all—the circle was moving too fast. It hit Ebby DeVries and she flew out from the circle, over Olympic Avenue, and dropped down out of sight.
"Oh, God," cried Ura Lee. "Not Ebby!"
The cop car suddenly sprang into action. The lights came on, the engine gunned, and the cops began to run back toward it, trying to get the doors open.
The car rose up in the exact center of the circle and the guardrail wrapped itself around the car, coiled itself like a snake.
"This is getting fun," said Titania.
But now Mack and Titania were in the air, too, and Mack looked out frantically to see where the dragon was flying now.
Only when a huge tree suddenly rose up into the air in the center of the circle did Mack realize that the dragonslug had stopped flying and had slipped in under the wall of flying pillars. It was now directly underneath them, holding a huge tree in its talons.