tail whacked up a storm of forest detritus. His expression looked inordinately pleased.

    Lynn shivered again. Chilled by uncanny experience, and also by her soaked shoe and pants cuff, she looked about, as if expecting

the woods to be somehow momentously different.They were not.

    May sunlight slashed the trunks of the birch trees like knife cuts limned in gold; the catbird's mate sang at her nesting, and two squirrels ran scolding in a territorial squabble through the bursting leafy crowns overhead.

    It did not seem a day for miniature men and bright wishes. Neither did it seem any more appropriate a time for a twelve-year-old boy to lie dying.

    Lynn cursed. Whatever had befallen her, be it illness, hallucination, or stark raving madness, she had an obligation, now that Grail was found. She must hurry on to the hospital to lend her support to Ann.

    That moment, ridiculously, she recalled she'd neglected to bring a leash. Grail seemed to need none, creature of obscure contradictions that he was. For the first time in his miserable life, he came when called. Apparently content for once to follow, he frisked at Lynn's heels all the way back to the house. More surprising, he stepped meekly into his pen at her bidding; and once there, lay down, nose on tail, to fall asleep. He looked like an old string mop, stiff-curled as if dried in ocher paint.

    Lynn left him. Inside the house, her intent bent exclusively on the logistics entailed in joining Ann quickly at the hospital. Shoes, one muddy, one damp; dirty jeans, oil-stained anorak; all flew off her into a heap. She wanted a shower, but settled with splashing cold water on her face. Too pressed to fuss over details, she snatched khaki slacks, a silk blouse, and a tailored jacket from the closet. She had dress for success down to reflex, and her thoughts she held firmly to practicality, until the first cog slipped in her regimen.

    She realized she'd left the shoes that went best with the jacket in the city. Her desperate self-control fled.

    Frowning, frantic not to think, and still barefoot, she dug her makeup case out of the bathroom and parked in front of the mirror. Trivia refused its role; would not keep her preoccupied.

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