Paul, the MC for the main stage, looked as worried as Giles felt. He swept a hand through his thinning hair, muttered, “I hope you know what you’re doing, son,” and walked reluctantly onstage to introduce Giles.

A crowd this size! Giles knew the Planners were watching by now, they had to be. If Tiffany didn’t protect him, he might be lost by this time tomorrow. His stomach performed quivering flips.

As part of his introduction Paul told a quick story; he had to. MC’s at the old festival used to take ten minutes introducing each act because it was another way to unofficially audition for a paid gig: something about each act would “remind” you of a story. Now the unlucky MC rushed through the required story fast.

“Hi-everyone-that-reminds-me-of-a-story-once-upon-a-time,” Paul gabbled, “there were three, um, uh, cats. They all went to town in search of, uh, milk but the Dread Goblin had hidden it away but they found a cow, milked her and they lived happily ever after.”

Paul’s lips quivered; he probably wished he hadn’t mentioned a “Dread Goblin.”

“Right, yeah, well I won’t make you wait any longer, here’s the teller you’re all waiting for, the surprise hit of this year’s festival, Mister Giles Hammond!”

Frightened as he was, Giles was thrilled by the roar of the crowd. What performer wouldn’t be?

He hoped Tiffany would be in the front row cheering but he didn’t see her in the sea of faces. Maybe she would appear again in the story.

What did humanity really know about the demons? They had appeared when the sky broke into Chaos, some as helpers, some as tricksters and tormenters, most as bored observers, like the blond demon – like the blond demon in the courthouse who had filed her nails while Giles had nearly been sentenced to death by injection of sleepy dark. Tiffany had been the most consistently helpful – or had she? As he took his place center stage, he couldn’t think of a single concrete thing she’d done.

His knowledge of her was as sure and empty as the placid confidence of the judges when Tiffany had glamoured them.

With that gut-wrenching thought he realized that the applause had finished. He must speak before the silence became meaningful.

“Well thank you,” he said, his heartiness too booming. “I’m going to pick up right where I left off last night,” he started. “You remember Robby the reporter had just gotten thrown into the sky but landed on solid rock and a body fell on top of him. Whisper to your neighbors anything they forgot.” The audience chuckled, still on his side for the moment.

His heart skipped as he spotted Killington in the fourth row, the egg-shaped head and walrus moustache tilted, eyes appraising him with chilling interest. But when he opened his mouth the words came and he lived the story, with little control over where it went.

For a few seconds he was still observer enough to see that he wasn’t picking up where he left off at all. He was telling the story of the girl who watched the Chaos open and saw something beyond it…

“We get to swim every day and we got the greatest pool in the world,” he started. “It’s warm, awesome trees around it and so minerally you can float on it, looking up at the Chaos, and you don’t sink under.”

He hoped the confused audience would recognize the “voice” of the girl which had ended the last part: the girl who had said, “The Chaos parted for a nano, and know what I saw? You came through from the sky and we all got squished. Maybe I’m … dead.”

He managed to force a few words into the narrative: “It was warm the day the stranger fell on top of me.” But he knew those weren’t the words which had been coming.

That was all he could do. Helpless, he disappeared into the story…

It’s always warm anyway. I splashed Jeffy, he started coming after me.

The Chaos wasn’t any different: lots of wild clouds, winds that must make heck-of noise, lightning zapping everything and lots of other stuff that you can’t really make into anything, you know what I mean, right?

So just ordinary Chaos. The trees by the pool don’t stick up into the Chaos, not quite, so they’re still as anything.

Suddenly I saw this guy standing in the shade at the edge of the pool. “Hey, where’d you come from?” I called. He was a total stranger.

He looked right, left, tried to, I dunno, slink back into the shade a little deeper. I should’ve known something was wrong. But big mouth old me, I swam up to the edge of the pool. “C’mon, I see you. Who are ya? How’d you get here?”

A couple of Moms looked over to see who I was talking to. “Hey, um, kid,” he said real quiet. “I’m supposed to be invisible.” He looked like he knew how nuts that sounded. “Nobody should be able to see me. Important assignment. Government, uh, secret agent.”

He didn’t sound like any spy, he sounded like a guy who runs a grocery store. “You don’t sound like a spy,” I told him. Moms and Dads all were looking at me now and bing, I got that they couldn’t see him. So I acted like I was making up a song. “You don’ look like a spy-y-y-y-y, But you c’n spy on me-e-e-e-e…”

I shook my head like, hey these lyrics suck. Moms and Dads were still looking at me so I stuck in a little gold, the way I can do. Then they all looked away with that she’s-such-a-weirdo smile that makes me want to strangle them.

I looked back at my stranger. He looked safe enough. If he wasn’t, hey, I’d holler and twenty Moms and Dads would chase him. Where could he run on Cloud Rock, up onto the little hill above the pool? Into the one building with the snack buffet? Or he could jump off into the Chaos, ha!

He had a dithery kind of look, like he wasn’t sure how to stand. “Thanks, lil fellah,” he said, and tried a smile.

I hauled myself out of the water (no boobs yet so he still couldn’t tell I’m a girl) and into the shade of the trees, and slouched next to him. “Grown-ups always like this spot,” I whispered without looking at him. “I guess, cause you can’t see any of the Chaos from here. There’s shady trees, and the rock hill makes like a pair of arms holding the pool. I’m Doree, by the way.” A girl’s name but the chimp still didn’t get it.

“So, this Chaos,” he said. “What is it, lil fellah?”

That stumped me. I’d never ever thought about it, I guess. It just was, like workshop participants and the snack table and the conference building. I really looked up into it for the first time in ages. A shower of white and dark dots, a bulking shadow, lines going every which way. The usual clouds and lightning and stuff. “I don’t know. It’s just Chaos.”

The Chaos parted, just for a nano. It closed right back up but the stranger saw. He tried to grab a hold but there’s just, you know, smooth rock.

“Silly,” I said, “Nothing out there ever touches Cloud Rock. You just ignore the Chaos. Unless you jump off into it.”

He looked dizzy and pressed a hand to his low back. “Jump. Off. Into. It,” he mouthed.

I gave him a look. “C’mon, I’ll show you.” I walked out of the shade and he followed me like a dusty shadow.

I led him up the walkway towards the hot pools but the grownups were having some No Kids Allowed time. “Grrr,” I said, and left the walkway, climbed over smooth rocks and got us to the top of the hill. That’s the highest point in Cloud Rock.

The stranger tried to stand next to me but after two seconds, he sat down with a whump and looked hard at the red-brown rock under his legs.

On the other side of the hill, you can walk down for maybe twenty feet. Any further and you might slip and fall into the Chaos. No fences. The top of the hill is as far as I usually go. I’m sure not ready to jump into the stuff.

“That’s really all there is to see,” I told him. “The swimming pool, the rocks, the hot springs, the hill. And inside the center, of course.”

He looked dizzy-like around at our floating little mountain in the middle of the Chaos. “That’s all there is?” he gasped. “Just this, little piece of rock?” He clutched at smooth stone.

“Awright,” I crossed my arms. “You tell me about you now. C’mon. How come you don’t know anything about the Chaos? How come can’t nobody else see you? Huh?”

I squinted, even though Terri Lynn says that makes me look like a moron, and looked inside his head. I got a glimpse of endless horizons, a world to explore, no Chaos.

Wow, I just barely remembered that. A world where a little hill with a swimming pool and a hot springs and one building wasn’t everything.

I reached and picked a gnarled half-green lemon from the bush that grows just off the top of the hill. “Here, eat this,” I told him, “I bet it’ll help.” I thought at it and put some gold energy into it.

“Maybe I’d do better to just get out of here. Go back to my own time.” I caught the thoughts that went with that. How can I tell the Boss that I’ve been spotted? This is that Edge he sent me to find…

But he was already sniffing it. “Do I eat the outside, or...”

“Naw. Peel off the tough stuff, just eat the inside.”

I watched him until he ate the whole thing. He was thinking it was like a tasteless guava, whatever that is. As soon as he swallowed the last bite, he for sure got more solid but kinda confused: he asked me who I was again.

Like he’d even cared the first time. “I already told you, doof. My name’s Doree. But it’s short for Dorothea. Which, for your information, means ‘gift of God.’” I gave my head a toss and dared him to keep thinking I was a boy.

I heard Byll call up, “Doree, who is that lovely young man with you? I thought you were up there alone?” Byll likes lovely men, you know how.

I’d done the right thing: if he’d fallen off the edge, he’d have been whipped into the Chaos for sure. With the gold energy he was brought here solid and other people could see him.

But I was sad too: he wasn’t my secret any more.

“Oh, look a there,” I got all excited. “You can see the ground again!” I pointed up.

The stranger looked down, the stupe. “Not the rock, the ground,” I told him, real slow like you talk to an idiot. “Follow my fingers, see?”

He looked up at last, cringed like a baby and grabbed the bushes.

Then I looked up again and even I blinked.

See, the Chaos parts for a nano now and then and up there you see the ground rushing by cause we are on a rock in the clouds after all. And we’re tumbling, right? So sometimes the real ground is right over us and sometimes it slides down the side of our sky.

I’m used to all that, everybody is.

But this time the ground was big and I mean BIG. Like, you could see, I dunno, roads and rock walls, and canyons.

And getting closer.

Of course, you couldn’t feel anything, nothing touches Cloud Rock. But the land swelled and filled up the sky and I felt a thrill through my legs.

That stone sky came up like a great big flyswatter, smacked our sky like whap! and leaped away and around. Cheese, what if there was people there and they got squished? Except it almost looked like someone from the sky fell into Cloud Rock.

And get this. I could feel the rock under me thrumming, like never happens no matter how wild weird the Chaos gets. Were we all squished? Were we dead for real at last?

Parvey and Byll and Molly and even Tanya Honey was shouting and screaming. Hell, some people were screaming.

Bang, my knees hit the rock. Everything went all fuzzy. I said something about the Chaos parting and someone falling from the sky and all of us being dead, I don’t know. There was something warm and runny under my knees too. Maybe I peed?

Or maybe it was pools and pools of blood. I saw the stranger through this red haze like blood in the air and there was just one stranger, nobody fell from the sky.

Except he wasn’t the same stranger.

I fell over and hit my head. Plop.