Orson Card - Magic Street

"And that's the pony you were talking about," said Mack.

"No, Mack," said Yo Yo. "That was you. Seventeen years ago. You the first thing he squeezed out. We could feel him breaking through like a mother hen watching her chicks jiggle their eggs and then peck a hole. But we couldn't stop him. Puck here couldn't even try—he's bound to Oberon by vows he can't break. All I could do was try to persuade Ceese here to kill you, and he was too strong for me. His love for you too strong."

"Now I just don't understand that saying," said Puck. "A piece of needlework? Or, like, when we call a woman a '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 telling me. What difference does it make? I think I'm a free man, you think I'm secretly Oberon. So what?"

"So you can do things that we need. We can use you," said Yo Yo, "to set up the old dragon and—"

"Kill him?" Mack whispered.

"No, but castration and stomach stapling seem appropriate," said Puck.

"Is he fat?" asked Ceese.

"No, I just want him to throw up every time he eats more than three little bites of a meal."

"We got to get out of the jugs," said Yo Yo. "And not just set free. Protected till our... souls are given back."

"Why should we free his soul?" asked Mack, thumbing at Puck.

Puck let out a long, loud fart. Fortunately odorless. In fact, knowing Puck, it probably wasn't a real fart.

"Don't, if you don't want to," said Yo Yo. "Just remember that without me, Puck would belong completely to Oberon. No more attempts to make it possible for you to avoid letting people hurt themselves."

"My head is spinning," said Grand. "I want to go home and go to bed."

"I didn't invite you," Puck said cheerfully. "Feel free to leave any time."

"What exactly is the plan?" asked Mack. "And what can we do to help?"

"Nothing," said Yo Yo. "It's too powerful for you. Thanks for all you did so far, but except for one tiny thing, we don't need you at all and don't intend to put you at risk."

"What's that one tiny thing?" asked Mack.

"Get us out of those jars."

"How?" asked Mack.

counterword. So we do need you to get that. You or somebody."

"Where do I learn this 'counterword'?" asked Mack.

"Oh, you already know it," said Yo Yo. "You just don't know that you know it. In fact, you think you don't know it. But you know it."

"So you do need me."

"Just a little bit. Then we're on our own."

"Okay," said Mack. "I'll help you find that password—"

"Counterword," said Puck with all the smugness of Alex Trebek.

"But you got to help us, too."

"We are helping you," said Yo Yo. "Once we get out of those jars and put back together properly, then we can go find Oberon's pony and shut him down. Put him out of business. Stuff the genie back into the bottle. So to speak."

"Won't he know you're out?"

"Well," said Yo Yo, "probably."

"So won't he come down on you the second you're free?"

"That's the other little thing we need."

"The counterword and something else."

"We need a distraction. We need—"

Grand Harrison interrupted her. "What you need is a fairy circle."

Yolanda looked at him like he was insane. "Do you know how many fairies it takes to make a decent circle?"

"But it's what you need, isn't it?" said Grand.

"We got no fairies to work with," said Puck. "Oberon keeps a tight rein on them. He only lets the ones he absolutely trusts to come out to... um... play. So we can't raise a circle."

"He lying?" Mack asked Yo Yo.

"Do you believe him?" asked Yo Yo in reply.