"Will we live there forever?"

"On and off. It's where I come from and I like it. You will, too. People there leave you alone. I want to do a lot of traveling with you, Walter, but sooner or later I think we'll always go back there."

"What happened to my mother?"

He laughed again. "Just what I expected would happen. On the road, I've already heard the story three times how that good queen saved her only child from the evil dwarf Rumpelstiltskin by guessing his name.

"Come on, it's time to go."

The dream must have lasted no more than twenty minutes. I looked at the clock beside the bed in sleepy wonder. Maris wasn't there because she'd decided to stay at her place and work on my birthday present.

I had to talk to her about this. I decided to wait awhile and let my head clear before calling. Luckily she didn't mind late night calls, unlike me, who strongly believed they meant bad news was about to arrive.

What a dream! I could still smell the damp pine forest and see the sun reflect yellow off the red apples. My "father" wore old leather boots that came to points at the toe. He had a beard, but it was trimmed close and was a deep, tree-bark brown. He was handsome and about thirty years old. The only thing that made him different was his size. He was a midget. He walked with a kind of strutting lurch that was both comic and distressing. To judge from the way these small people walk, one would think the world is a boat on a stormy sea: The only way to keep one's balance is to walk like a swinging pendulum.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember or see other things from the dream, but it was no use. It had all slipped back into the mind's dark a few minutes ago.

Orlando was asleep on my arm, but suddenly lifted his head and looked around; his inevitable sign that the phone was going to ring. I even started getting up before it happened because his alarm was so dependable. I was a foot away when it did ring. I

"Hello?"

"You finally had that dream. Now we can begin."

"Excuse me? Who is this?"

"What was my name in your dream?"

"Who is this?"

"Okay, we'll do it slowly. What was my name when we got to Vienna that time? Not my real name, but the one I took. Come on, Walter, I'm giving you a big hint. In Russia I was Melchior, right? Last time I was Kaspar, so what's left? What was my name when we came into Vienna the first time? It wasn't Rumpelstiltskin!"

He laughed, and I knew that sound so well.

"Where are you?"

"In Vienna!" He laughed again. "Watching you and your new girlfriend. You're still such a horny little boy, aren't you? I told you not to do that. You get into trouble every time, but you insist on doing it. What am I going to do with you? Magic and the mundane don't mix! Listen to your father. You want to have magical powers? Fine, but you can't have them and fuck the girls too. That isn't allowed.

"Look at what that mixing has done to your friends. Nick Sylvian and Venasque are dead. Your other pals in California just lost everything in an earthquake . . . You even disturb the dead! How about that poor fellow in the coffin that broke open when you flew back here.

"Venasque didn't tell you, but you know why he had that stroke? Because of you. That last dream in the motel room? Blew right out of your head and burned his brain! Remember the doctor asking if he'd touched some live wire or electrical source? It was you, Walter; you're the live wire.

"How many lives are you going to go through before you realize you can't mix with them anymore? Once you turn my corner, you can't go back. You could have been an ocean, but now you're not enough spit to fill a mouth.

"It was so good in Russia. I thought maybe if we stayed there you'd learn something – see that our way together is so much better than yours with any woman. But no, you've got to touch them, don't you? Worse, you gotta touch them and then fall in love with them.

"Stubborn. I've got to say that for you. I drive you mad in one life, then push you out the window in another, but still you don't learn.

"So I bring you back and bring you back . . . But you go out and make the same mistakes!"

"What magic? I have no magic."

"That's right, it's going away fast. But that's your own doing. Still, you could talk our language with the old girls in the cemetery. Then you saw that woman fall down the escalator before it happened. Hey, you even brought up a sea serpent!

"All that magic I gave you is a lot for a normal little boy to handle, but I believed in you, Walter! I wanted to give you everything your mother never would have.

"That's one thing I didn't tell you. Maybe it's time I did.

"You know why I took you away from her? I loved you, there's no question about that, and I'd do it again anytime. The years we spent together were the happiest I ever had. I admit it. My own boy." He started crying – long, hoarse weeping, cut with big drags for air in between. It went on for some time. I was holding the receiver so tightly that my hand began to cramp. I switched hands. "Do you remember the time you brought me the stone? The first time you used the magic? You brought that big piece of granite and turned it into a diamond right in front of me. You said that was how big your love was for me. My God, I love you. I would have loved you for the rest of time if you hadn't been so fucking human!

"Everything I taught you, everything I gave you would have made any intelligent person fall down on his knees and kiss my feet. But not you. You're just like your mother, you little shit! Selfish and weak. So pleased with yourself. Mr. Movie Star.

"I'll tell you why I took you. Because she promised to love me if I gave her what she wanted. 'Make me queen and I'll love you for the rest of my life.' That's what she said – not fuck, love. Why do you think I helped in the first place? Why do you think I gave her all the magic I had? She was so convincing. 'I don't care if you can't do it. Who needs that? It only makes people sad. Love isn't touch – it's the mind.' She made me believe her eyes and not think about what was really going on in that rat-filled head of hers.

"My mistake. She couldn't love people – only things. You think she loved your father? He was king, that was the only thing she loved about him.

"When you were born I saw a glimmer of something in her, maybe love, maybe not. But I knew that was how I'd win. Even if she didn't love her child, just the object that had come out of her body had value. And I took that object. I made you love me more than you ever would have loved her.

"The best part was sometimes I'd go back to her in her dreams, sometimes with you next to me. You were such a lovely child. We'd show her what she was missing."

I hung up. The phone rang again immediately, but something told me it wasn't him this time. It absolutely was not him. I picked it up.

"Walker, please come over right now. I started bleeding a few minutes ago and it's not stopping. Please come now. I'm scared."

I drove down the Gьrtel at eighty miles an hour, running red lights the whole way. It was two in the morning and the streets were empty, but there were several near-misses that sent my heart into the back seat. I fishtailed left on Jцrgerstrasse and flew up that narrow winding street, hoping no one would get in my way. At Wattgasse a patrol car appeared and we raced along for several blocks before I realized they might do something professional like shoot me. I pulled over, jumped out, and ran back to tell them what was going on.

Viennese police are notoriously unpleasant and fascistic, but the look on my face and the words that came zooming out must have convinced them I wasn't bullshitting. They said to follow them.