Gene Deere narrowed his eyes and half turned his head, going through the motions of propriety. Then he decided not to worry about it, which is definitely what Tex would have recommended.

  "Are you hungry?" said Ludi.

  "Sure," said the girl. "I mean, look—I'm not a pitiful waif or anything. You don't have to feed me out of guilt. But sure, I'm definitely hungry. I've been out since like daybreak."

  Ludi turned to Gene. "What have you got?" she asked.

  "At the house?" He looked perplexed.

  The girl told Ludi, "My name's Thistle, by the way. Thistle Herne." She stuck her hand out and Ludi shook it. Then the girl pointed to the raven. "That's Jack."

  "Herne?" said Gene. "You wouldn't be related to—"

  "Jack?" said Ludi.

  "I'm not related to anybody," said the girl quickly. "In fact, I'm living under the name of Sanders now. I've got ID to prove it." She reached for a pocket that was not there, then seemed to recall that she had no clothes on.

  "Ah," said Gene. "Well..." He motioned toward the trail, raising his eyebrows, as though inquiring whether the ladies were ready to go.

  "I should get dressed," said Thistle. She walked around the edge of the pool. Her clothes, strung on the branches of the yew tree, consisted of baggy cutoffs, a T-shirt with a bunch of frogs and the legend AMPHIBIAN ARGYLE, and a pair of hiking boots, sans socks. "Let's go, Jack," she said.

  "You've got a pet raven?" said Gene.

  "Sure," said Thistle.

  The bird squonked. It agitated its wings, but didn't move from its branch.

  "Actually he belongs to these people I'm kind of staying with. Or actually, he doesn't really belong to anybody. He just kind of hangs out there."

  They headed off, over the rocks. Ludi looked back to be sure the bear was tagging along. Tex followed close behind Thistle, breathing her agreeable girl smell. Then—

  RRRRRWWWAAAAA

  —screamed the raven. The bear's heart opened and filled with blood and almost forgot to pump it out again. Suddenly there were black wings everywhere, batting the bear's eyes, hammering his ears. Claws ripped down through the flesh over his scalp, laying open deep gouges, The pain felt like fire.

  The little bear had no idea how to defend himself. The raven seemed to be everywhere at once, pummeling and scratching and gouging with its beak. Probably it could not really have killed a bear cub. But it was giving it a good shot. The best little Tex could do was rear up on his hind legs, flail his arms around, and let out a hearty bellow.

  That scared off the raven for a few seconds. Tex bellowed again, and Ludi's voice called, "What's happening? Tex, sweetie, where are you?"

  "He's here," said Thistle. "Jack is—Jack! Stop it! Here, somebody help."

  Now the raven was back. Plunging for the eyes now.

  "You fucker," he yelled at the bird in his silent, imaginary ghost-voice. "I'll get you for this."

  OH, YOU WILL?

  said the raven. The Raven, rather. And it flew straight at the little bear's head. It taunted: GET ME, THEN.

  The little bear lowered its head, barely in time. The claws tore at his ear.

  "So," said Tex. "It's you."

  Thistle had torn her T-shirt off and was beating the air with it, trying to drive the Raven away. Plucky little thing, thought Tex.

  YES

  said the Raven. OF COURSE IT'S ME. THIS IS MY DOMAIN, IS IT NOT?

  The bird swerved out of range of Thistle's T-shirt. It dove briefly and tore at the girl's hair, but this was not a serious attack. More like the Raven was trying to make a point.

  Tex said, "Looks like you've done a little redecorating."

  The Raven said,

  YOU'VE MADE A FEW CHANGES YOURSELF. I CAN'T SAY I APPROVE OF YOUR CHOICE OF BODIES.

  "What choice?" said Tex. "I got eaten. Then I got reborn, or some such thing. Don't ask me."

  The bird went back to its perch on the yew tree. It gave Tex the evil eyeball, though he got the impression it was thinking things over.

  Ludi was tugging at the bear's skin. "Come on," she whispered. "Let's go, let's get away from it." Then she stooped to look at the bear more closely. "Oh, look what a mess you are."

  The Raven got her from behind, snagging her hair and yanking it hard.

  Ludi screamed. She struck out at the bird, but just missed.

  "Leave them alone!" Tex demanded.

  The Raven said,

  MAKE ME.

  "Fucking right I will," said Tex. "Now you listen to me."

  And this time,

  Somebody

  did.

  HOME (2)

  And he soared.

  Up and up, spiraling sunwise, like an eagle. The great black wings were his again.

  Tex was in the raven, and the raven was Tex, and the Raven was gone. At least gone from the explicate plane: unseen and silent.

  Down below, farther and farther, the little bear and the three freaked-out humans. Watching him fly away. Their mouths open, closing; but their words lost in a whir of wind, flutter of leaves, distant crash of waves, unceasing roar of sunshine.

  There are times, thought Tex, when it feels damn good to be dead.

  Then he thought twice about it and cocked up a wing and spiraled down again. Moonwise, like a hawk. He thought, One last look. Give them something to think about. It was the raven in him, the Trickster.

  The little bear saw him coming but looked merely befuddled about it. He was an ordinary bear now; as ordinary as he would ever get. The girl Thistle looked up next and gave him the finger. Ludi grabbed baby Tex up in her anns, getting more blood on her shirt. She was Magnificent.

  With an unearthly qqqwwwrrraaawrll—startling only to a nonraven—Tex coasted over the dark water to the fallen yew tree. His impulsive act had acquired a certain meaning ; as it progressed. Not an infrequent phenomenon, he supposed. He took a perch on one of the branches that had twisted and snapped when the tree crashed down. Jesse said to Tex once that it takes weeks, even months, for a tree to die. If you cut one down, you have to keep its spirit propitiated for a long time. Tex looked over the yew tree, split violently through the trunk, and he could imagine the injured spirit trapped in there, as it eased down into oblivion.

  With his beak, he grabbed a twig whose wood was still semigreen and pliable. A shriveled cluster of berries clung to their stem. The twig flexed resiliently; Tex could feel the woody tissue being crushed as he bit through it. Then he threw himself back into flight—that exhilarating moment when the kinetic energy of his body was transferred to the cushion of air—and turned east toward Dublin.

  The Linear Bee rocked gently at its mooring, pressed by a sea breeze that had arisen as the afternoon sun warmed the land, drawing the ocean air inward. The acute raven eyes spotted Molly, laid out on the flying bridge, possibly sunbathing.

  "Honey," he cried in an almost-human voice. "I'm home!"

  Molly did not stir. As Tex spiraled lower, he saw that her eyes were closed; she was evidently in one of her trances. He landed on the railing and from there hopped down onto Molly's leg. His weight (about 5 pounds, he guessed) barely made her twitch. He deposited the yew twig in the middle of her stomach.

  Then he hopped off her, onto the deck of the Bee. As soon as he touched it, he became himself again. That is, if the concept of self still had any definite meaning. He was an immaterial, graying, bearded, thirsty, and cranked-up dead hippie.

  Stroking Molly's long brown hair, he said, "Wake up, Raven, I've got a bunch of stuff to tell you."

  Then, lifting and twirling the yew twig:

  "And I've brought company

  for dinner."

  for a time Molly almost let go,

  * * *

  let Ludi slip away. She had watched her confront Gene, question him about Tex's pendant, visit the Saab, and walk through the forest. She had seen the mama bear killed and the little bear born and then saved from the dangerous raven. She had watched Thistle rise from the Well. She had watched Gene and Ludi lock horns until it was clear that they were about evenly matched; except Molly would have bet on the feminine contestant as having the greater staying power. Now she wanted to go home to the Bee. She wanted to hang out in her own space and to go through the motions of some comforting ritual, like cooking dinner. Still, she hung on.

  She was waiting for something.

  She did not know what.

  Back at the bungalow Ludi fed some Wheat Thins mushed up with water and nondairy creamer to Tex the bear, while Gene and Thistle surveyed the contents of the refrigerator. Out of the meager selection on offer, Thistle chose leftover beans & rice from Salazar's Genuine Home-Cooked Mexican Food, a take-out trailer parked at varying locations up and down Route 1. The air blowing out of the microwave smelled pretty good to her. It smelled like a number of things, not just the stuff from Salazar's. She wondered if Gene had ever cleaned it.

  While eating, Thistle cruised the racks of LP's and CD's to which a wall of the living room was devoted. She pulled out Tod Machover's opera Valis, based on the Philip K. Dick novel. One-handed, scarfing greasy food directly from the paper plate with her mouth, she dropped the album into the player.

  "Don't smudge that up," Gene said.

  Thistle poked buttons on the Carver preamp. She turned the old Mclntosh up to 6 and waited until the tubes glowed, then punched the player on shuffle.

  "Do you like Machover?" Gene asked her.

  "Not really," she said.

  "I don't either," said Gene. "But it's interesting. And you have to keep up, I think. Personally, I'm more attracted to the New Tonalists."

  Thistle shrugged. The music started off slight and midi-sounding and got loud and full very fast. Ludi felt left out of things, on the floor nursing the sleepy bear. Thistle discovered the inglenook and lay down on one of its built-in benches. By the time Gene went in to ask her whether she wanted anything to drink, she was asleep. She slept deeply, like a child, with one arm thrown up beside her head, the wrist pressed against the carved oak backrest.

  "Well," said Gene. "What now?"

  Ludi peeked in, then out. "Let her sleep, I guess. Then when she wakes up, give her a ride back to wherever she's been crashing."

  Gene's head popped up. He remembered: "Damn, the Rover. I left that back at Goddin."

  Ludi thought this over. "I could take you to get it," she said. "Only who would look after Tex?"

  "And her," said Gene. He stared down at Thistle as though she were some unstable chemical compound liable to change states unpredictably.

  "Maybe she doesn't need looking after," Ludi said.

  "Yeah. But maybe my house does. Who is she, is what I'd like to know."

  "She told you her name. What more do you need?"

  Gene gave her a look. Clearly he needed something besides that. He walked around his living room, picking things up, though he then did not appear to know exactly what to do with them. "This has been," he said, "the strangest day of my life."

  "Yeah, well—it could get stranger."

  He turned. His eyes were clear and sharp. His clothing was slightly askew; but that seemed in character, somehow. His Oxford-cloth cuffs were folded back so that you could see his wrists, which were almost abnormally thin. Ludi thought, He must get like zero upper-body exercise.

  "You seem so bright," Gene told her, out of nowhere. "And so ... normal. Sometimes. But then again, you seem like a creature from another planet."

  Ludi gave him what she hoped was a condescending smirk.

  "Hey, thanks," she said. "I was kind of hoping you'd notice." Which was true: because if a guy as straight as Gene Deere did not think she was weird, it was time to consider brain surgery.

  "Maybe I should lay down," said Gene.

  "Lie," said Ludi.

  He nodded, weakly. "Maybe you should just go. And I'll just figure something out about my car in the morning. And about the bear. Or no: Sefyn can figure out something about my car, and you can figure out something about the bear."

  "Sounds good to me," said Ludi. She looked down at Tex, who was snoring beside the sofa. "Well, hey—thanks for showing me around. It was very informative."

  "De nada,'' said Gene.

  Neither of them could think of a way to improve upon that, so Ludi walked out. It was starting to get dusky. The first spring peepers were singing back and forth. The air smelled so terrific—like the mountains, and everything growing, and negative ions, and wildflowers—and every breath made you feel so full, you could almost start shouting, just to release some of it.

  At the door of the Volkswagen, Ludi realized she did not know how to get home from here. On the other hand, she die did not want to go back and ask Gene for directions. That would spoil her otherwise flawless exit: Molly would not have approved. Anyway, she had the Atlas.

  Molly—still hanging in—was flattered to find herself popping up in Ludi's thoughts. (And it was true: she would not have approved.) She wondered how badly Ludi was going to get lost.

  INSURGENCE

  So badly, it was half a tank of gas later when she rolled into the parking area below her apartment. She was exhausted and mad at herself. And to put the icing on it, she couldn't find a place to park. The place was full of beaten-up vehicles, among which she recognized those of a couple of Street Players. And in the middle of everything, taking up at least 3 human-scale parking spots, sat an outrageous Eldorado gleaming with custom chromework. A pirate flag flew from the tallest of its several antennas.

  Climbing the stairs to her door, Ludi was ready (she thought) to face, to disapprove of, and if necessary, to evict whoever and whatever she found waiting in her living room. Even so, the scene alarmed her.

  The air was heavy with hemp smoke. The Venetian blinds had been drawn shut. All the furniture was drawn into a sort of trapezoidal cluster in the center of the room. Indigo Jones was there, and Rainie Moss the gardener, and Sara Clump the electrician, plus—inescapably—Guillermo.

  But that was not all. Oh no. Beside them, and seeming to glow in the smoky gloom, was one of the whitest-skinned people Ludi had ever seen—the more so because

  a) he wore no shirt and was covered from the waist up (at least) with polychrome tattoos, chiefly of serpents and dragons, and

  b)he was sitting on the arm of a chair whose primary occupant was a large and very dark-skinned teenager, wearing a woven-reed Panama hat equipped with a small, solar-powered fan. In Ludi's apartment, where the only light came from an under-cabinet fluorescent in the kitchen, the fan was motionless.

  Both of these strangers looked a little older than the girl Thistle, but not much.

  Guillermo glanced up when Ludi slammed the door. "It's about time," he said. "Where've you been?"

  "Performing an emergency cesarean," she told him.

  He made a sour face. Like, Very funny. "Well, you've missed some pretty interesting discussion. We were just about to take a vote on going forward with our next action."

  Ludi walked into the kitchen, where she flipped on the bright overhead double-circline fixture, a semicool relic of the Other '60s, the one moms and dads had lived in. Most of the kitchen was of the same period: aquamarine refrigerator, speckled Formica countertops, and a wood-veneer breakfast bar with matching stools. In the slightly uncanny light of the low-watt bulbs, the whole thing glowed like a vision brought on by martinis and Frank Sinatra.

  "Good god," moaned Guillermo. "Couldn't you turn that down a little?"

  "It doesn't turn down," said Ludi. "It turns on."

  Very faintly, like a mosquito whine, Ludi could hear the clock radio in the bedroom playing Van Morrison, who had apparently chosen the WURS late-nite rock show to die on.

  "This is Saintstephen and Shadow," said Guillermo, pointing to the teenagers. He did not indicate which was who. The white one, whose hair also was devoid of pigmentation, gave her a cryptic hand-sign.

  "Peace with honor," he said. His voice was sticky with saliva.

  I feel, thought Ludi, as though I am standing upon the threshold of Hell.

  "Come, sit," said Indigo Jones. He motioned grandly to a place on the sofa that was occupied by Sara Clump. Evidently Sara was expected to relocate. Of course, she did not. She glared at Ludi as though it had been her idea.

  "You can sit here," said Rainie Moss, indicating a portion of her own chair into which a cat might have squeezed.

  Ludi looked at all of them, one at a time. "I seriously think," she said, "if I have to listen to 'Brown-Eyed Girl' one more time, I'm going to turn into a cantaloupe."

  "I hear you," said the kid with the Panama hat. When he looked at her, facing the kitchen, the fan on his hat-brim started very slowly to rotate.

  "I kind of like some of his later work with the Chieftains," said Rainie.

  "Give me a break," said the kid with tattoos. Ludi thought that for purposes of taxonomic convenience she would assign this one the name Saintstephen, and the other Shadow, though this seemed marginally racist.

  "Could I ask," she said, "what you all are doing in my living room at 1:30 in the morning?"

  "If you'd been here," said Guillermo, "we wouldn't have to run it all down again."

  "I don't want you to run anything down," said Ludi. "I want somebody to answer my question. Then I want you all to leave so that I can get some sleep."

  "Wo," said Indigo Jones, drawing back into the flattened cushions of the sofa. He had just lit a fresh Philly, at which he now stared as though unsure whether it was safe to become any higher.

  "Don't get mad at us, Ludi," said Sara Clump. "We're just doing what we ought to have been doing all along. We're trying to get serious about shutting Gulf Atlantic down."

  Ludi let out a breath that made a sound escaping her mouth like Oh, but she did not mean "Oh." She did not mean anything. Unless perhaps it was Please no more about Gulf Atlantic in one day. She sat down on a stool at the breakfast bar. "What goes into a martini?" she said.

  "Do you want to hear about it before we vote?" said Guillermo, gratingly. "Or do you just not care?"