INDIGO: Mellow out, bro. You'll get your cloak back.

  GUILLERMO: Right—covered with raven shit. [He storms out, banging down the ladder. The PLAYERS follow, 1 at a time.]

  LUDI: [Calling after them.] Hey. Wait, everybody. We still haven't decided what we're going to do about the Midsummer Night performance. Have we? [Exits.]

  Only PIPPA and EBEN linger. They look down at the cloak containing the motionless TEX.

  PIPPA: All Witches are good Witches.

  EBEN Mmm... [Going down the ladder.] Call if you need anything. [Exits.]

  PIPPA: [Carefully unwrapping the bird, she speaks softly to herself.] We all need something, Eben. All we need is—

  The stage goes dark.

  PICKUP CITY

  Dark.

  All Tex understood right away was that everything was dark.

  A peculiar darkness, though: purplish, full of unfamiliar flavors of pain. He tried to lift a hand to his face, to verify that his eyes were open, but the only thing that came was a sort of dry, feathery flutter. He felt trapped; he croaked for air. And the pain in his upper body intensified.

  Then came a change. Motion: the world jostling him about. Giant hands raised him up. The heavy fabric in which he was swathed, like a baby, fell aside. And Tex found himself looking up through a scrim of smoke-filled light into the vast, all-mothering face of—

  "Brruppah!" his strange voice squonked out—

  Pippa Rede, the Welfare Witch.

  "Shh, there, there," she said. "It's okay, little bird."

  Tex was startled first by her words and then by the rushing memory of what they meant: his transformation, his passage through the air, his fight with Guillermo.

  "I know you didn't come here by accident, little bird," she was cooing to him. Sounding birdlike, rather, herself. She cradled him gingerly, though with convincing authority, spreading his weight evenly between her two hands, avoiding any pressure against his battered wings and rib cage. "I know you're the special bird of Morrigan, Goddess of War, and I know you came here trying to tell us something."

  "Fwwokkggng ahhy," croaked Tex.

  Pippa nodded—heavy on the empathy. Clearly, she was clueless. "They wanted to take you to a shelter. But I stopped them. I know you can heal yourself. And I want to make an offering of contrition to the Lady, to apologize for the way we received you."

  Think nothing of it, Tex wanted to tell her. Just give me a spoonful of children's Tylenol.

  Pippa gathered him up. She arranged the folds of what Tex now understood to be Guillermo's ridiculous Wizard cloak—one of its gold lame stars was a finger-width from his eyeball—so that he was nicely cushioned, then she bustled him out to her battered Toyota wagon. The Toyota chuttered to life and bumped down the long driveway onto Route 1. Tex closed his bird eyes, nuzzled his beak down into his neck feathers.

  When he opened them again, the Toyota had come to a halt, and Pippa was lifting him out through the driver's side door. He knew without looking where he was.

  She had brought him home to Pickup City.

  From Pickup City—which was not a real city nor even a town, but a long-established squatter's camp outside of Glassport—you could hear the traffic grumbling by on the highway that lay beyond a wild hedge of lilac, black locust, and bittersweet. You could smell produce rotting in the Dumpsters behind the I.G.A. On Sundays, then again on Thursdays, when there was a soup kitchen, you could hear the digitally sampled bells bong through P.A. speakers at the Church of Mankind's Destiny Among the Stars (Rev. Hobart Banebook, Pastor). But unless there was an unusual easterly wind, or a party out of control, as long as you hung out in Pickup City you could not be seen nor heard from the church, the grocery store, the highway 01, or anyplace else. You would, for practical purposes, have fallen through the cracks of the civilized world. And therein lay Pickup City's whole raison d'etre.

  See, the place was a secret. Not that much of a secret, perhaps. Every old hippie, young slacker, down-and-out lobsterman, wannabe dharma bum and horny teenager in the midcoast area seemed to know about it. But a secret, for sure, from Reverend Banebook, whose church had bought the acreage off the Presbyterians in the Christian equivalent of a Going Out of Business Sale, and who apparently had never gotten around to fully exploring the grounds. Over a span of two decades, Pickup City had evolved from a dumping ground for rusted appliances to a parking spot for high school kids, then a summer camp for boat-trash, and ultimately into a marvel of low-cost, ground-up, alternative housing. Its residents came and went, but the structures they built were still (approximately) standing. There were:

  (2) yurts

  (1) tipi, insulated with straw

  (1) 8 x 8-foot "cube house," from plans in the

  July 1974 Popular Science

  (3) shacks of varied style, built of wood salvaged from the dump

  (2) trailers

  (1) geodesic dome (intact) covered with asphalt shingles

  (1) geodesic dome (coming apart) covered with Plexiglas tiles

  and Pippa's own current residence: (1) nylon "LightHouse" ordered as a kit

  from Ukiah, California

  which—with its approximately Japanese-style footbridge over the drainage ditch, its crescent-shaped Moon Garden, its reverse-osmosis water filter and its world-class collection of wind chimes, bird feeders, cow bells, dream catchers, and anything else that you could dangle from the limbs of the scrubby little trees—was where Pippa and Tex were headed. Pippa walked swiftly—dark clouds had blown in, and the wind threw flecks of rain at them—but paused when she came to the footbridge.

  "Lady," she murmured, fast and low like saying grace at a family dinner, "please open this portal that we may cross, then shut it again against any who would harm us."

  Cool, thought Tex. Have to tell Molly about that.

  Pippa bustled on. Tex could hear the stream gurgling energetically below.

  Crossing the waters, he thought.

  Pippa turned up a path to what you might have called her backyard: a muddy, clear-cut, weed-grown patch that recalled what all of Pickup City had looked like, circa 20 years ago. By now the rest of the site had been so thoroughly trampled-on, lived-in, built-up and planted-over that this weedy plot was a genuine relic—a haven of despoilment. In the middle of it, Pippa had made her sanctuary.

  It did not, at a glance, seem an overtly magical place. There were no standing stones, no pentagram blazed in the earth, no eerie sigils carved into tree trunks. All you could see, really, was a 9-foot ring where the soil was bermed up and planted with creeping thyme (so there would be a nice place to sit), inside which the grass was worn down by regular foot traffic. Slightly off-center, to the north—the direction of the I.G.A.—was a fat beech stump, chainsaw-smooth on top: this was the altar. Golden moneywort grew around the base of it and a tuft of yellow sedge sprang from a hole in the wood. The only magical tool in evidence today was a Smith & Hawken 3-tine hand-fork, propped against the beech stump as though it had been forgotten there.

  "Mommy!"

  Tex caught a blurry motion-shot of hair, flying in the wind, as wild and parchment-white as the stems of brome-grass at the end of winter. The girl's feet whickered through the undergrowth, heedlessly, as she rushed into the Witch's circle. She arrived as Pippa was laying Tex on the beech stump, tucking Guillermo's robe up around him. He saw Winterbelle's eyes, a startling shade of blue, peering down at him.

  "Mommy," she said very seriously. "Is he real?"

  "Of course he's real," said Pippa. Then, frowning, "How do you know it's a he?"

  "Oh—you can tell," said Winterbelle. Her lips pouted up and her eyes contracted; she was pondering. She could not have been older than 6 or 7. She wore a leotard and a cape, like a tiny comic-book superheroine.

  "Come on, sweetie. Let's go inside and leave him alone. He's probably frightened of us, and he needs some time to get better."

  Winterbelle held her ground. "He doesn't look real," she said.

  Tex had an unpleasant feeling of being transparent, or naked. In a way he was both. He turned away from the girl's sharp eyes; he looked out across the homey enclave of Pickup City. Someone was pulling his laundry down from a line, hurrying to beat the coming rain. Someone else was dangling a line into the swollen rain-ditch, fishing for god knows what. Out on the highway, you could hear the world grumbling by.

  "Well, I'm going inside," said Pippa. "I want to make some nice brownies."

  "Ick," said Winterbelle. "Brownies are ugly furry goblins. I'll stay and watch over the bird."

  Pippa fretted about this for a moment. "Okay," she said at last. "Come in if it starts to pour. Or at least get under something." She started away, then called over her shoulder, "And don't let his feet touch the ground."

  "What feet?" said Winterbelle. "All I see is claws."

  The girl started to hum. Tex got the idea that she was killing time. Sure enough, after a minute or two—long enough to be sure her mother was going to stay put indoors—she slid her hands under Guillermo's cloak, and (no more gently than was strictly called for) she snatched Tex up and held him tight against her chest and made away with him.

  He could not see where they were going. He was aware of Winterbelle's feet moving first through tall grass and then onto a path. She started to run, joggling him roughly. From the steady gurgle of water, Tex gathered that she was following the stream. Suddenly she stooped, ducked under something and came into a place that was dim and quiet and green.

  "Ari?" she said, in a cautious voice. "Ari—are you up there?"

  Tex twitched his head free. Winterbelle was standing beneath a large hemlock, whose bottom limbs drooped low all around them, making a sort of cave. The stream ran close by the roots of the tree and disappeared into a metal culvert, set in an embankment built up of huge chunks of granite. At the top of the embankment stood the church: a plain, white-clapboard building with tall windows. A single Gothic-arched panel of stained glass was set into the rear wall, the altar end, under the eaves.

  Lots of altars around here, Tex reflected. Rival gods. Could be a problem.

  From up in the tree came a scuffling sound. Needles and bark-scrapings rained onto them. Then something—a fast-moving animal-shape—took flight from a thick limb two heads off the ground.

  "Aaiiiyyyaaa!" the flying creature shouted. It landed with a thump close to Winterbelle. She giggled.

  "Ari," she said. "Come see what I've got. It's a raven and I think he's under a spell."

  The creature drew slowly nearer, with the natural wariness of an untamed thing. Only when it was very close could Tex make out that it was a boy, or something like a boy. He had long tangly dark hair and pale brown skin and deep umber, somewhat slanted eyes. His ears and mouth and hands were large, and his limbs were bony. He wore clothes that he might conceivably have made himself—scraps of mismatched fabric badly stitched together, unraveling in places, with flaps dangling loose. If he was a boy, he would be about 10 years old. If he was an elf, which looked about equally probable, he could be ancient.

  "Now don't be afraid of Ari, little raven," Winterbelle whispered, assuagingly. She held Tex up so that he and the wild boylike thing could get a look at one another. "He's only like this because his mother is, I mean, totally crazy—she's a friend of my mom's—and he's grown up around wolves. He thinks he's normal."

  Tex laughed—which came out quonk quonk quonk, not much like human laughter. But the boy Ari stopped where he was, his slanted eyes opened wide, and he smiled. He reached out with a hand stained yellow with hemlock resin and touched Tex on the cranium, pressing one fingertip lightly against the thin layer of bone above the eyes. There must have been a nerve ending there, because Tex registered the touch as a sudden intense tingling. He fluffed his wings, squirming a little in Winterbelle's grasp.

  "Something is protecting him," the boy said. His voice was musical. It sounded joyful and sad, at once. "Put him down."

  Winterbelle hesitated. "My mom said—"

  The boy nodded. He removed his finger from Tex's forehead. The tingling stopped. The boy aimed a long finger at the stream.

  "Put him in the water."

  Winterbelle squinted her eyes, assessing this. "Well, she did say not to let him touch the ground."

  Damn, thought Tex. Smoked out by a technicality. Typical fairy-tale twist.

  Winterbelle kneeled by the stream.

  "The cloth," said the boy. "Keep that dry."

  She unwrapped Tex and lowered him to the water.

  What now? he wondered.

  Freezing cold. The water must run straight down from the mountains, he thought. Or seep out the icy ground. The shock of being immersed in it was so great that he writhed and let out a purely autonomic raven-cry—

  "Wwrronnk!"

  —and Winterbelle shrieked, too, and pulled away from him. He dropped. His head went under. And when he came sputtering up

  "A snake!" screamed Winterbelle. Not in fear. Her little face bursting with delight.

  "Don't touch him," Ari said, gravely.

  Tex twisted and slapped the water with—what was this? A tail? A reptile's long sinuous body? Water entered his throat and he spat it out with an angry, sibilant exhalation.

  "Don't worry," said the boy, holding Winterbelle by the arm, drawing her back a little. "Just wait."

  Tex felt horrible. Was he doomed now to spend all eternity as a goddamned snake!

  "Down," said Ari.

  —and Tex went under again. He felt himself filling up, bloating, and then his feet touched the gravelly bottom. Feet, he thought. That's progress. He lifted his head, broke out into open air again. And Winterbelle shouted:

  "A pig!"

  "A boar, actually," said Ari. "See the hair, and those tusks?"

  Tex shook his head violently. He snorted at them. He felt a nearly overwhelming desire to go to McDonald's.

  "What's next?" said Winterbelle.

  Ari bent down, looking Tex very closely in the eye. It struck Tex that there was something strangely familiar about this child's features. If he had not been conceived by Arthur Rackham, then he must belong to somebody Tex knew.

  "Get ready with the cloak," said Ari. "Get ready—now.''

  Tex floundered. Water covered his eyes, and the gravel bottom of the stream pressed itself into his belly. Everything hurt that could possibly hurt. He was simultaneously soaking wet and thirsty. Parched. Strangely, despite being underwater, he had no desire to breathe. Of course, he was dead.

  He heard some commotion up there, in the world of air & light et cetera, and out of sheer cussed curiosity he popped his head up. Long gray hairs, streaming with water, obscured his vision. But he could hear the children shouting, over his head.

  "Grab him!" yelled Ari.

  "By what?" said Winterbelle.

  "What do you think?"

  "Ahhh!" roared Tex. Small strong hands locked themselves on his hair, and he felt his head yanked back with the force of a construction crane.

  "He's not really that heavy, is he?" Winterbelle said.

  "Of course not," grunted Ari.

  They dragged Tex out of the water and scraped him over some sandy dirt and laid him to rest on a fat hemlock root. He was aware of the Wizard cloak wrapped tightly around him, binding his arms and legs into an all but immobile unit.

  "It's—" said Winterbelle, leaning over to stare at him. "It's an old hippie."

  "Yeah," said Ari. Making a show of being not impressed.

  Not that old, thought Tex. But he did not try to speak yet. He was still coming to grips with things. He was a human again, for starters. And the kids could see him.

  Ari struck a knightly pose: arms folded, legs planted firmly a shoulder width apart. He demanded: "Are you of the living, or of the dead?"

  And Tex smiled, because he realized whose child this was.

  "Is," he tried to say, though there was some problem with his throat. He swallowed—that ungodly thirst again— and started over. "Is your mother named Syzygy Prague?"

  Ari turned to Winterbelle. He lifted his head, cockily, "See? He knows my mother." As though this proved something. Back to Tex, stern again, he said, "First you have to answer my question."

  Definitely a take-no-prisoners attitude, here. But that was his mom all over.

  Tex said, "I knew you when you were just a pup. You peed on me, I think."

  Ari put on a disgusted look for Winterbelle's benefit. "Well, what's the difference, I guess. They're all a bunch of deadheads anyway."

  The two kids balanced themselves on tree roots, holding their arms out and moving in tiny steps. They were silent for a while: it was like a kid form of kinetic meditation. Tex tried to sit up, to get a better look at the situation. But as soon as he put pressure on his left leg, pain slammed up his spine like a jackhammer. He flopped onto his back. A prolonged moan—philosophical as much as physical—rose from his innermost depths.

  "Uh oh," said Ari.

  The kids came to stand on either side of him. Tex looked from one of them to the other.

  "You think you guys might be able to find me some kind of walking stick?" he said. "I've kind of got this—see, I've like broken my leg here. Please?"

  Ari shook his head. "That does it," he told Winterbelle. "We better let my mother handle this."

  He took the girl by the hand and firmly pulled her away.

  "What's the matter?" she said.

  Ari did not answer. He stooped down right where he stood and scrabbled around in the dirt and the fallen hemlock needles until he came up with a handful of moss. He pulled this back and forth between his fingers, shredding it into tiny green specks. Then he moved very slowly around Tex and around the big tree, sprinkling the moss as he went. And chanting:

  "Green of gravestones,

  Green of damp,

  Hold this specter

  Like a clamp.

  Moss that spreads

  Like melanoma,

  Draw him down

  Into a coma."

  "Hey, wait," protested Tex. But watching the boy go round & round, 3 times in all, was making him dizzy. "What is this shit, like melanoma? Where did you learn that?"

  Only by now he was only mumbling, and the kids had gone away.