black White Rabbit or... or something. Whatever. The main thing was, it only growled when Mack walked in this direction. Or when Mack tried to walk toward the lanterns. And it was dark. Night. Mack had eaten supper, such as it was. The leftover chili. So it's not like he had a compelling reason to go home, except that Miz Smitcher would worry about him, and there was nothing he could do about that, she'd worry a lot worse and a lot longer and to less effect if he pissed off this panther and ended up lying in the woods with claw marks on his clothing and maggots eating his dead flesh.
So he lay down where he was standing. The ground was soft and yielding. He could hear the breathing of the panther near him. He could see nothing at all. Not even the lights in the clearing, now that he was down below the level of the underbrush. If there were snakes or other fearsome beasts near him, he'd never know it; the rustlings and stirrings he heard were bound to be small creatures of the night, but they were none of his business and he hoped they'd feel the same about him.
Lying there, in the minutes before sleep overtook him, Mack thought about Mr. Christmas and all he'd said. He knew Mack's mother. Could that be true? A woman somewhere nearby. In the neighborhood. Was it possible? She gave birth, and everybody forgot she had even been pregnant? If that was so, then Mack really was home here. Or rather, there in Baldwin Hills, since right now "here" was a dark magical wood with a panther lurking nearby.
And what was that business with the hockey stick and the puck that appeared in midair and fell to the floor in the kitchen of Mr. Christmas's Skinny House?
It was the house, answering his question about Mr. Christmas's identity, just as he had asked.
Puck. There was a character named Puck. Mack had heard the name, or read it somewhere.
Vaguely the memory came to him: It was a character in Shakespeare. Mack had never read Shakespeare, but somewhere in his schooling, somebody had told or read him the story of someone named Puck. A fairy named Puck. Mr. Christmas was a fairy, like he said, only not what guys meant when they called an effeminate kid a fairy. More like an elf. A tall black old elf with a rasta do. Only when Mack had walked into the woods and looked back at him, he had turned back into something more like himself, and what Mack had seen was the fairy, tall and lithe, his hair a halo around his head, his clothes clingy and... green. They had been green.
It was a play, now he remembered. A group of college students came to their elementary school and put on a play that started with the queen of the fairies falling in love with a guy with a donkey head, and then a bunch of stupid guys acting out a play about a boy and girl who fall in love and then kill themselves because one of them was torn by a lion or... or something.
That's all this is. I'm asleep somewhere and dreaming that play they put on for us when I was in fifth grade.
Only he knew that he wasn't dreaming, that he was very much awake.
Until, a moment later, he wasn't.
Chapter 9
CAPTIVE QUEEN
Mack awoke in the first light of morning, cold and covered with dew, but not uncomfortable, not even shivering except one quick spasm when he first bounded to his feet.
Only when he was standing did he realize that the panther had slept close to him all night, and from the sudden chill of evaporating sweat he knew that the beast had been pressed up close to his back. Now it lazily rose up and stretched and padded away from him, back toward the clearing where two lanterns hung suspended in the air.
Mack wasn't interested in going back there now. Miz Smitcher would worry and he didn't want her to be unhappy or worried, though truth to tell she probably wasn't, since she was bound to assume he had spent the night in somebody's house.
Alone now - for the panther felt to him like more than an animal - Mack did as his body required, stepping right out of his pants in order to empty his bladder and then squat down to hold on to a sapling trunk