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  "Yeah, well, someone screams about every twelve seconds here, man, and it's usually me."

  "Have to check it out," I said.

  "No, you really don't," Christopher argued.

  Senna spoke. I was surprised to hear her voice. She'd been silent for a long time. "It could be dangerous, David. And you have enough to deal with."

  I felt the others holding their breath. Waiting to see. Would I snap to attention, say, "Yes, ma'am. Senna, sir!"

  The scream came again. Closer. Definitely female. It sounded young. Panicked.

  "You can all wait here," I said. "I'll be right back."

  Ha. That would put them all in a dilemma. They wanted me to disregard Senna. But this time they agreed with her. At least Christopher and Jalil did.

  "I'll go with you," April said.

  We started down the last of the hill, down toward the no-longer-totally-benign woods. This was dumb, part of me knew that. But the day hadn't yet come when I could turn away from someone screaming for help.

  I flashed on the men, the rows and rows of them, the thousands of them who right at this moment were buried up to their necks, their heads used as living cobblestones in Hel's monstrous world.

  They had cried for help, too. Were still crying for help.

  We had walked across their heads, scuffed and scarred their tattered scalps, caught our heels in their hair. I hadn't rushed to save them.

  I stopped. We were inside the first rows of trees. It smel ed wonderful. Guilt stabbed at me. Those men. Those poor men.

  Save who you can, David, I told myself. Do what you can. You couldn't kill Hel, couldn't change her, couldn't save her victims. Do what you can.

  Be a man when you can, I sneered. Be a man when the odds aren't too long, when the risk isn't too great. Story of your life, isn't it, David?

  I heard pounding steps. Maybe hooves, but not horses, not that heavy. Maybe this wasn't so safe. Danger didn't always announce itself with quite Hel's flair for the dramatic or Nidhoggr's sheer power.

  I heard a less mysterious sound. The others, joining me and April. I smiled to myself. Can't trust me, and yet you can't avoid fol owing me, can you? Well, that's okay. That's okay.

  "Aaail!"

  The scream was practically beside us. I whirled. Saw nothing.

  No, there had been something. A flitting trace of luminescent green.

  And then, yes, hooves! The first one burst into view, flashes of furry, muscular haunches in uncertain moonlight. A horse? Small for a horse, short. Too small.

  I gripped the sword. Friend or foe?

  It was gone. Fast. Too fast, too agile to be a horse. It moved like a deer almost. And something was wrong with it, something that had left only a faint impression on my night-beguiled retinas.

  Something off.

  Christopher whispered, "Can we not go ten minutes without some weirdness?"

  A flash of green. So fast.

  Then a bigger animal bursting from behind a tree, maybe a hundred feet away. Another coming in from the right. The two of them were vectoring in on the green light. And now a third. A scream came from the green creature, the blur.

  Three against one. Not hard to guess what side I was on.

  They were laughing. Laughing like drunken frat boys at a kegger.

  The green thing shot toward us, stopped so suddenly you'd have thought the deceleration would leave her unconscious. And it was a definite she.

  She stopped, wary, jumpy, almost vibrating with energy. She was between us, using us as a screen. Hiding behind us.

  She was green. Not a little green, a lot green. I could see the color because she glowed like a paper candle lantern. Like she was filled with neon gas. She glowed the green of a spring leaf.

  Her skin, her face. Her hair was a darker green, like the same leaf in late summer. Her eyes, I didn't see them at first, couldn't because they darted this way and that, but when they paused for a microsecond they were yellow. Sunflower yellow.

  She wasn't naked. But what she wore was a purely symbolic cover. She was no more than four feet tall. But a definite young woman, not a girl.

  With a thunder of hooves and a spray of sweat, two creatures skidded to a halt in front of us.

  "What the . . ."

  They were a little smaller than me, the height of a short man.

  And if you looked only at the muscular, slightly pigeon-chested torso, they were men. Men with arms too slender for their chests, with narrow shoulders. Their chest, their shoulders were hairy. Not animal hairy but Sean Connery hairy.

  Their heads were something other than strictly human, although in overal shape they might have belonged to men. But the ears were pointed, elongated, and furry. Their hair started low down on their brow, leaving barely an inch between hairline and eyebrows.

  The eyes were without whites. The mouths were filled with large, flat teeth, like someone had moved all their molars to the front.

  They wore beards, wispy on the sides, more luxuriant coming right off the chin.

  And none of that was the strange thing about them. The strange thing was that from the waist down they had the bodies, the tails, the hind legs of animals. Deer? Horse? No, not quite. No, more like goats. Like large goats. One the color of putty, one almost black.

  Centaurs? I searched for the right word. No, centaurs were supposed to be half horse. And they'd have had four legs. These things ran on two hooved hind legs.

  "Jalil?" I whispered.

  "Got me, man," he said, shaking his head.

  "Satyrs," April said. "Like in Midsummer Night's Dream."

  "Saturns? Like the cars?"

  "Satyrs. Y-R-S."

  The satyrs grinned. One of them hefted a wineskin and shot a perfect stream of red wine into his upraised mouth. Both satyrs staggered a bit. Maybe just a result of balancing their ungainly bodies on two hooves. More likely a result of the wine.

  "Step aside, mortals, and let us claim our delectable prize, ha-ha!" the third satyr said, slurring like a sophomore trying to convince his parents he wasn't faced. The one who had come silently up behind us. "The nymph is ours, be so kind as to stand aside. Although when we are done . . . and we shall surely finish eventually ah-hah-hah-hah . . . you can have her in trade for this bright, red-haired wench of yours."

  The putty-colored creature in front of us leered at April, winked, and made a hip-pumping gesture.

  "Wine!" his black-furred companion roared suddenly. He tilted back his head and waited while his compatriot squirted a stream of red wine toward his mouth. Putty missed several times and wine sprayed all over the black satyr's face.

  "Now run away, mortals," the satyr behind me said. "Shoo!

  Shoo! The nymph is ours by right of conquest and you already have two lovelies of your own. Hurry off before we take them, too, ah-hah-hah. Ah, we'd make a night of it, eh? Eh, my brothers!"

  "A night! A night!"

  "Poems would be written, plays performed, ah-hah-hah, the romp of the satyrs! Come with me, lovelies, there's enough of me to satisfy all."

  I turned around. This satyr was a little bigger. His fur was a sandy brown.

  "I have a better idea: You guys walk away, leave the whatever, the nymph here, alone."

  Sandy blinked. In his left hand he held a pottery jar. He raised it to his lips and took a long drink. He belched. Started to say something and belched again instead. Then he said, "We have chased this nymph all through the night. We are randy from the hunt! Ha-ha! We will not be denied, mortal. Be wary." He shook his finger side to side, laughing all the while. "You are not so unlovely yourself. I may be so drunk I'll not care whether I consort with nymph or mortal woman or mortal fool, ah-hah-hah-hah! Turn around, mortal, and let me see if you'll do in place of the nymph.

  Hah-hah-hah!"

  Shouldn't bother me, it was just a dumb, drunken joke. Junior high stuff. Shouldn't make the adrenaline surge, shouldn't make my muscles tighten. Shouldn't. Did.

  I waited till the three satyrs stopped
laughing. Wait. Watch.

  Then I said, "I will stick this sword into your hearts."

  Chapter

  IV

  Sandy blinked again. He took another drink. He peered closely at me. "Are you not from around these parts, then? Is that the problem? Do you not know that a satyr may claim any nymph he can catch?"

  I glanced at the nymph. She was breathtakingly beautiful.

  Aside from being green. Her golden, bright eyes were fearful. And more than a little creepy.

  "Do you want to go with these guys?" I asked.

  "Of course she doesn't want to go with them," April exploded.

  "Does she want to be gang-raped in the woods? What kind of a question is that to even ask?"

  I opened my mouth to say something in my own defense but couldn't think of anything to say. I closed my mouth. I was distracted. Memories deeper than those of Hel. Memories and dreams, and memories of dreams, had squeezed the rage into my veins, the sick physical need to lash out.

  It wasn't about the nymph, not to me. It was about finding a moment, feeling the balance tip between restraint and attack. I just needed the excuse.

  But April had her own needs, I guess. She stepped toward the boss satyr, the sandy-colored one. "We just escaped from Hel. You know Hel? Norse goddess of the Underworld? Well, we just came from her little amusement park, so if you drunken jerks think you're going to scare us, guess again."

  The three satyrs looked at one another, shrugged, and seemed confused as to what to do or say next.

  "Plus, this chick's a witch," Christopher said helpfully, jerking a thumb at Senna. "She can put the whim-wham on you dudes."

  "Whim-wham?" the black satyr echoed.

  Christopher nodded solemnly. "The whim-wham. The witch puts the whim-wham on you, well, how do I say this? You don't have any, shall we say, interest in nymphs anymore. None. Zero.

  You end up not being satyrs anymore. You end up being, like, you know, like monks if you see what I'm getting at here."

  Sandy stepped around to get a close took at Senna. Three sets of bleary, drunken satyr eyes peered solemnly at her.

  "The whim-wham," Christopher intoned solemnly. "She did it to me. Ever since then I'll be running through the woods, nice and drunk, I'l spot a nymph, and you know what? I fall asleep, man."

  Long silence. Dark looks at Senna. Pitying looks at Christopher.

  "This nymph is as ugly as an old crone," Sandy said. "I would not stoop to consorting with her. Come, brothers, let us go and leave this nymph for others with less refined tastes."

  The satyrs backed away cautiously till they were well back into the bushes, then turned and ran, almost as fast as the nymph herself had.

  April laughed. "Not bad, Christopher."

  He shrugged. "It's what you said once: These people believe any kind of b.s."

  "David!" April yelled.

  I turned, whipped the sword into a horizontal position, and caught the onrushing satyr about waist level.

  Galahad's sword was sharp. Not as sharp as Coo-Hatch steel, but sharp. The blade bit. My forward momentum met the satyr's opposite momentum. He was coming fast, too fast even to slow down.

  The blade sliced clean through. I felt the impact, then the sudden release of drag as the blade cleared.

  The top half of the satyr fell off, landed with a heavy plop on the ground. The bottom half kept running.

  No sprays of blood. No cries of pain.

  The nymph squealed, but whether it was delight or horror I couldn't tell.

  "You cut off my legs!" the sandy-colored satyr cried in outrage.

  "More than your legs," one of his companions remarked.

  "You're chopped in half. There goes your satyrhood!"

  "Stop gaping, go get my legs!"

  My first stunned thought was that the satyr was just taking a while to die. But the two uninjured satyrs were more puzzled than alarmed. And meanwhile the lower half of Sandy kept running. It slammed into a tree, fell down, and had some difficulty getting back up. No hands.

  When it fell I could see its insides. Even in the dim light I could see that they were wrong. No blood. No spilled intestines. There was a concavity that must have been a bisected stomach. But none of the messy goo of human organs.

  It was as if the satyr were a mere sketch. Like no one had filled in the details. A diagram used to show the protective effects of Pepcid AC.

  The two whole satyrs chased Sandy's lower half, all the while keeping a cautious eye on me.

  "All I wanted was a good time, a revel!" Sandy moaned. "How will I revel now with my better half gone?"

  Horrifying. But I was fighting the urge to gloat. You want to do me, bitch? Look at you now.

  I looked at the satyr and wiped my sword on my pants leg. He didn't see. I was irrelevant to him. He didn't care. I sheathed the sword.

  Chapter

  V

  "Let's go," I said.

  I had to grab Jalil's shoulder to shake him out of his fascination stall.

  We started walking, looking back frequently to watch the Three Stooges moments as the satyrs tried to marry up the running lower half with the complaining top half of their leader.

  The last we heard of them was Sandy calling for a fresh bottle, then crying pitifully that the wine was running straight out of him.

  I looked at the nymph, then looked away, feeling embarrassed.

  She was fascinating. Like meeting an alien or something. But it really wasn't possible to look at her without staring.

  Christopher had no such qualms. He stared openly, with an expression of curiosity, incredulity, and frank appreciation. April tried to offer her a supporting arm but the nymph seemed not to notice.

  "You're free to go, miss," I said. I sounded like a cop releasing a suspect.

  "Those satyrs could come at us again," Jalil pointed out. He was managing to stare everywhere but at the little green woman.

  "Yeah, she needs to hang with us for a while, at least,"

  Christopher said. He tried and failed to suppress a smirk.

  April sighed, expelling the air through gritted teeth. It was a sigh loaded with harsh commentary on the three of us.

  "Do you have a name?" April asked the nymph. "Can you tell us your name?"

  No answer.

  "Ask her if she has any sisters. I'd like the whole set: blue, red, purple. A nymph six-pack. Do they come in orange?"

  "Christopher, shut up," April snapped. "She's lost and scared and alone, or aren't any of you capable of caring about that?"

  April bent over, bringing her face level with the nymph's weird and lovely eyes. "Can you tell me your name?"

  "I am called Idalia."

  She had an amazing voice. Or maybe it wasn't the voice but the way she used it. Like she was singing the words. Not that there was a melody, there wasn't, but like she was singing anyway.

  I realized I was smiling. Everyone was smiling. Even Senna showed some faint curving of her lips.

  "You're a nymph, huh?" I said.

  She blinked her eyes at me.

  "What else would she be? The satyrs said she was a nymph."

  April had decided she was the nymph's spokeswoman and protector. Probably a good idea.

  "What is the definition of a nymph?" Jalil wondered.

  Christopher laughed. "Oh, I'd say green, about four feet tall, and built like —"

  "Okay, that's it," April snapped.

  "Oh, get over it, April," Christopher shot back. "It's not like we're going to put the moves on her, she's four feet tall. I mean, yeah, she looks like she's twenty-one but she's the size of a kid. Jeez, what do you think I am? I can't make a harmless kid? She's older than we are."

  The nymph giggled. It was a sound like a stream chuckling over loose rocks. That's not a metaphor. That was the actual sound.

  "Good sir, and mortal, I have lived as long as Everworld, and longer still. I served the goddess Iris. And would still. But that is a tale for another time."

 
Christopher nodded. "Okay, she's over a thousand years old, which as far as I'm concerned means she can probably take a joke. And buy beer."

  "Well, glad to meet you, Idalia," I said. That didn't sound right so I added, "Ma'am."

  "You are well met, indeed," Idalia said.

  "Will you be okay if we leave you here? I mean, do you think those satyrs are gone?"

  "The satyrs are surely gone. They have long since forgotten about me and will return to drunkenly chasing shadows."

  "Cool. Then I guess we'll see you around. We have a mission, sort of."

  "A quest?"

  "Absolutely. A quest. We have to find Fairy Land."

  "And don't mention San Francisco," Christopher said.

  "Christopher, do you just look for ways to be offensive?" April demanded.

  Idalia cocked her head and peered curiously at me. It was absolutely as if she were made entirely of translucent green glass.

  Like looking at the sun through a spring leaf. You almost felt you should be able to see her insides, but you couldn't, of course.

  Maybe like the satyrs she didn't really have insides.

  "Do you know the way to Fairy Land?" she asked.

  Jalil answered for all of us. "Oddly enough, no. We'd be grateful for any help you can give us."

  "We were going to ask at the next gas station." Christopher.

  The nymph clapped her hands. "Then I will show you."

  "You don't have to do that," Jalil said.

  The nymph smiled at me. It was a thousand-ear-old smile. It was a smile women had been making for a lot longer than that.

  Then her smile wavered. She glanced at Senna. Nervous, like she'd seen something she didn't like.

  She moved suddenly. A green blur and she was before Jalil.

  Smiling at him. Jalil smiled back, aught himself. Met her gaze again and smiled again.

  Jalil is tall. Idalia is short. She comes up almost to my shoulder.

  On Jalil she reached his chest.

  Jalil was sort of bending over, bending his knees, slumping in a way he no doubt thought was subdue, bringing himself down to her level.

  "I can show you the way to Fairy Land," she said to Jalil.