Tiffany lay slumped against the door, knees folded under her, chest rising and falling.

Crying so that he could barely see, Giles drifted into the breakdown lane and pumped gently on the brakes so that the car slowed to a stop beside the empty freeway.

The morning light was magical but the Chaos was more harshly wild than it had ever been. Once, with Tiffany whispering to him, he’d thought he understood what was up there. The memory returned of Euclid squishing all the universe into a dimensionless point and then that point stretching leftwards to the beginnings of time and rightwards to the far-distant End.

And then Euclid had pulled that line, which was all of the universe through all of time, into an infinite vertical sheet and he, Giles, had almost understood…

The engine still hummed and Giles left it running, not sure but what he might need to drive away again in a tearing hurry.

He couldn’t see through the blur of tears but he let his hand steal over and felt a smooth but firm muscled thigh and the bottom edge of a short dress.

He’d pulled Tiffany back with him from another story line, another reality. She’d gone through some portal with Jasmine and then come back with him from that other place. She was asleep beside him, riding home with him from their journey to New Mexico.

Like a man greeting the dawn with bleary eyes and a headache after a drunk night, Giles stared into the Chaos, fiercely missing the serene and dramatic blue sky and clouds and the god-presence of the sun. The engine thrummed, Tiffany slept (exhausted? enchanted?) beside him and Giles stumbled through confused, aching longings.

She was in Melanie’s spot and all the feelings about Melanie came pouring out again. He hadn’t let himself love since then. He’d poured his grief into a glut of performances and into that unofficial audition which finally let him shine through but he hadn’t fallen in love. Oh, he’d imagined sweet things like RJ and Hiyako welcoming him into their bed – even that had been more of an absolution from loving parents than a sexual fantasy. In fact, when this mysterious, powerful being who now slept beside him, when she had washed him with her fascination, he’d felt forgiven for betraying Melanie as much as anything.

And now, here she was. In a car with him, sweetly asleep beside him like Melanie had slept on long trips as he took the night shift driving. And here he sat, lost in grief, with no idea what to do. Should he keep driving and let her sleep? Should he wake her up and ask her what to do? Did she even know what the big picture was, what the plan was?

Could she love him as desperately as he could come to love her?

He had already accepted that it was his mother, Mary, that Tiffany loved. But Mary was gone. Tiffany had kissed him once (and then taken off her glove to touch his heart with the hand that had killed Mary).

There she was in Melanie’s little spot. Well, not really, this was a different car, an impersonal, groomed and shampooed rental, not their comfortably disheveled old Toyota. But she was there, in the same position, vulnerable in sleep and he, Giles, was afraid to wake her up.

Would she smile at him like Melanie would have on waking up and seeing him competent behind the wheel? Would she suggest a stop for a latte and a bagel? Would she even suggest a stop for something terribly British like tea and crumpets, whatever crumpets actually were? Or would she freeze him with her power, keeping him at heel like a master with a well-trained hunting hound?

Right now, he couldn’t bear the thought of that. So leaving a thread of hope dangling, he took the car out of park, drifted into slow motion and accelerated gently back onto the freeway. At least he was sure where to go now.

He shivered as he thought about the Festival, about Killington and about what he now understood about him. The “key” that he’d discovered in the control room.

But with Tiffany back in his world, he could face the festival and what waited for him there.

***

Jasmine was disappointed in Giles.

She had followed the old woman (Mrs. Bryn? Mrs. Benz?) down from the Red Rock mountain to her home. Giles had called the old woman’s house a “hogan” in his story, and so Jasmine expected a heap of earth with a door, or a round log cabin with a gunny-sack roof.

But the house was a modern house, small, once nice and now with peeling paint. Giles had called it a hogan but he hadn’t known what a hogan really was. Jasmine felt sad and let down. Giles should have known better.

In the deepening evening gloom they walked past the ancient rusting climbing set with the ketchup and mustard paint peeling in sharp gleaming flakes. Jasmine was getting tired and where many kids would get cranky, she just got calmer and more accepting. She didn’t really want to go into the house but she didn’t want to stay outside either. She was totally ready to be home. She missed Yako and Popster sharp and sweet, like popsicles on a summer day.

She followed the old woman into her modern home.