Magic Street Page 0,103

'piece,' only she does it for money so she's, you know, working when - "

"Shut up, Puck," said Yo Yo.

"What you're saying," said Mack, "is you want me to break you out of your little glass jars."

"Eventually," said Yo Yo. "But not you. You couldn't do it."

"I couldn't?" asked Mack.

"Impossible," said Puck.

"He lying, right?" Mack asked Yo Yo.

"Do you believe him?"

"No," said Mack.

"Then it doesn't matter if it's true or not, does it?" asked Yo Yo. "Look, Mack, I've tried to tell you several times. You are the part of him that he squeezed out first. You are Oberon."

"Bull," said Mack.

"That's why you can find where this house is hidden," said Ceese. "And why you don't change sizes going into Fairyland."

"I'm me," said Mack. "I don't have any memory of being Oberon. I got no powers."

"Excuse me," said Yo Yo. "You think seeing dreams ain't a power?"

"It's not a power if I can't control it," said Mack.

"But you did control it," said Ceese. "For a long time."

"You wander freely through Fairyland and nothing hurts you," said Yo Yo. "Puck goes twenty feet in and birds pick him up and damn near feed him to their babies."

"Because I'm Oberon."

"You're part of him," said Yo Yo.

"So I'm his spy?"

"No," said Yo Yo. "He probably can't use you for that. Like I said, you're not his pony - he'll see through the eyes and speak through the mouth and hear through the ears of whoever he's inside.

But you - he's about as conscious of you as a mortal normally is of his heartbeat."

"That's right. Under stress, you're more aware. Same with him. Sometimes he notices you but only when you're in trouble."

"I'm in trouble right now," said Mack. "Cause the only fairies I know keep telling me I'm their enemy."

"You're not our - " Yo Yo began.

"We're your enemy," said Puck, "but you're not ours."

"You're not our enemy," Yo Yo said forcefully, shutting Puck up.

"And if he feels like it, he can make me betray you."

"Hasn't yet, though, has he?" asked Yo Yo.

"I'm not some discarded piece of the king of the fairies," said Mack heatedly. "I'm not some appendix or tonsil, I'm me. I was raised by Miz Smitcher and Ceese here. I was trained up on the Bible and I try to be a decent man. I work at whatever I'm supposed to work on. I even work to oppose Oberon, and he doesn't stop me. He's not me, I'm not him."

"You're not the part of him that chooses," said Yo Yo, gently touching his arm to calm him. "See, Mack, here's what happened. He needed a changeling here to store up the power of all these people's wishes. So he sent you. It doesn't matter to him whether the wishes come true or not, except that if they do, he has Puck here assigned to make sure something ugly happens for Oberon's entertainment. That he likes - so when Puck comes back, if he does, Oberon will want a full report."

"So what am I, then? His gas tank?"

"No," said Yo Yo. "No, you're his conscience. That's the part he had to get rid of. That's the part that was stopping him from doing something truly hideous to us and to all the mortals. By taking every good thing out of his own heart, all his decency and honor and hope and joy and love, and putting them in you and shoving you out into the world, he left only pure ambition and pride and vengefulness and power-lust and violence there in his own heart."

"He decided to be evil," said Mack. "And I'm supposed to be all the good he threw away?"

"He would say, all the weakness and softness."

"I'm not weak," said Mack.

"That's his mistake," said Yo Yo. "That's our secret weapon. He thinks you're weak because he always managed to hide his kind heart under a mask of jokery and rages and malice. But it was there, and it kept him from utterly destroying people. Once you were... born, Mack, then there was no restraint on his will to evil. It could grow and grow. Bit by bit. Without you in his heart, he turned himself into the devil."

"Meaning that he is the real devil? Cause Puck lies?"

"He lies," said Yo Yo, "but it doesn't mean that whatever he says is the opposite of the truth, either. That would be just as sure a guide as telling you the truth in the first place."

"Yo Yo," said Mack. "The stuff you're