Orson Card - Magic Street

"Oh, shut up, you girly-man," said Madeline Tucker.

"Yes, it's dangerous," said Yolanda.

"Could we, like, die?" asked Kim Hiatt.

"You're mortals," said Yolanda. "Hasn't it dawned on you that you're going to die someday, no matter what?"

That was such a stupid thing to say. Mack looked at Ceese for help.

Ceese stepped in front of her. "It's dangerous," he said firmly. "But not as dangerous as not stopping him. Yes, you're putting your lives at risk. But if you don't do it, then the wishes he releases in the months and years to come will put your families at risk. And what he does with his pony—his slave—that will put the whole human race at risk. So we're the army. We're the special forces. If we succeed in our mission, then the whole world is safe and they won't even know the battle was fought.

And if we fail, then those of us who die are merely the first of many, many thousands. We're like the people on that airplane that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11 instead of blowing up the Capitol."

"They all dead," pointed out Grand.

"And they was trapped in a plane," said Willie Joe Danes. "They had no choice."

"They had the choice to sit there and do nothing and let even more people die," said Ceese. "We got the same choice. But that's why Yolanda White here wanted to make sure you understood just what's at stake, before you agree to be in the fairy circle. Because whoever's in it, they can't change their minds and run away. You got to see it through. And no shame if you say you can't do it! No shame in that! Just be truthful with yourself."

Fifteen minutes later, only five of the adults from Baldwin Hills had left, and a dozen more had arrived, so there were seventy-seven now who would form the circle. Some were young adults, some were quite old. Yolanda assured them that physical strength didn't matter. "It's the fire in your hearts that I need," she said. "That good old mob spirit you showed last night."

Mack and Ceese, who would not be part of the circle, watched as Yolanda led the volunteers to the open ground around the drainpipe and had them join hands in a huge circle. She stood at the drainpipe, watching them, assessing them. Then she slowly began to walk around the drainpipe, pointing at each person in turn. Without taking a step or moving in any way, each person was slid an inch or two until they were all exactly the same distance from the drainpipe and exactly the same distance from each other.

She walked around the circle then, kissing each of them firmly but brusquely on the lips.

Mack watched from the brow of the hill, and as she made the circle he said to Ceese, "You see it? You see how each one she kissed, they got a little spark of light above their heads?"

"No, I don't," said Ceese.

"Well, it's there."

"What I been thinking," said Ceese, "is how to get the LAPD to back off long enough for this fairy circle to do its job."

"Think of anything?"

"It's coming to me," said Ceese.

"You as scared as I am?" asked Mack.

"If I had brains enough to get scared, would I be a cop?"

"I don't want Miz Smitcher to get hurt. Or your mom. Or any of them."

"You didn't bring danger to this neighborhood," said Ceese. "You part of the solution, man, not the cause of the problem."

"I feel them inside me," Mack said. "All their dreams. All so... wistful. And hungry. Or angry.

And filled with love. So mixed up."

"When all this is done," said Ceese, "maybe they'll all have their own dreams back again, and you'll be free of them. Free to be just Mack Street again."

"Whoever the hell that is," said Mack.

BREAKING GLASS

They left Grand Harrison and Miz Smitcher in charge of the fairy circle with a plan that sounded so crazy to Ceese that it would be a miracle if anything worked.

Only a few watchers would wander onto the bridge, waiting for Mack's signal. And this was the weirdest part: They had no idea what it would be. "The one time I wrote something," said Mack, "the words came through, but about ten times as big and along the sides of the overpass. All the other stuff I left, it sort of got transformed. All I can tell you is, look for a change. It might even be a natural change. But there are seventeen pillars, so look for seventeen... things."

And then what?

"Then form a circle. Seventeen of you right on top of the markers, the others arrange yourselves in between. And the rest I don't know."

Yolanda knew. "You'll feel it," she said. "You'll know when I'm in the circle."

"But you won't be in the circle," Ophelia objected, sensibly.

"I will, but on the other side. You'll see. Or... not see, but feel. And when that happens, you start moving. Counterclockwise. Which means, if you're facing into the circle, to your right."

"We all know what counterclockwise means," said Moses Jones.

"Except for those that don't and are too embarrassed to ask," said Yolanda with a toothy smile.

"But we don't know the dance," said Miz Smitcher.

"In a fairy circle," said Yolanda, "the dance dances you."

The other part of the plan was Ceese's own contribution. "Six dozen black people, even nicely dressed black people, if you start blocking the road, LAPD will be called and you will be dispersed.

But if you're carrying signs, then you're black activists. Protestors. Got to treat you differently. Find out your grievances. A couple of you carry video cameras—prominently. The LAPD has great respect for video cameras."

"Signs saying what?" asked Grand Harrison.

That was farther than Ceese had planned. "Something that would make sense to demonstrate about in Century City."

" 'Down with Fox'?" somebody suggested.

"Don't forget that there's a big MGM building there now, too."

" 'Not enough black actors in movies.' "

"Yeah," said Miz Smitcher dryly. "How about the stereotype of blacks with signs, having a demonstration."

"Can we sing 'We Shall Overcome'?" asked Ebby DeVries. "I always wanted to march and sing that."

"No," said Sondra Brown. "That song is sacred. You don't sing it for some... act."

"You sing it to change the world, sistah, and that what we doing," said Cooky Peabody, sounding as ebonic as she knew how. A dialect she pretty much learned from television.

To Ceese it didn't matter. He left it up to Grand and Miz Smitcher and—why not?—democracy to make the decision, while he would drive his patrol car down to the gateway between worlds. First, though, he watched Mack get on the motorcycle behind... his wife. Man, that stuck in Ceese's craw, even to think it. Wife. Mack marries a hoochie mama on a bike before he's eighteen and Ceese doesn't even have a steady girl at thirty.

All right, she wasn't a hoochie mama. She was queen of the fairies and Mack was supposedly some excrescence from the king of the fairies. To Ceese he was still a kid who had no business being that free and familiar with such a voluptuous body.

Ceese stood beside his patrol car watching them ride off on the bike. That's when Miz Smitcher came up to him. "Didn't so much as invite us to the wedding," she said.

"I don't think it really counts as a wedding. Near as I can tell, it was reconnaissance."

"Now that's a word for it I've never heard before. 'Hey, baby, how about a little reconnaissance.' "

Ceese chuckled.

She leaned close to him. "Ceese, give me your weapon," she said softly.

"Are you crazy?" he said. "A cop doesn't give his gun to anybody."

"You can't take it in there with you, right? Into Fairyland? I just got a feeling, Ceese. You know I'm not crazy. I got a feeling that gun's going to be needed somewhere other than locked in the trunk of your patrol car here in Baldwin Hills. You dig?"

"I can't believe I heard you say 'you dig.' "