It's okay! You can do it. One more step. Come on. Just-- don't-- look down--

I open my eyes and fall, six hundred feet, fingers clutching helplessly at the rope ladder as the tropical birds scream and scream--

Huh.

I'm getting sensory input, but it's hard to piece things together. I seem to be horizontal. I finished falling, then? And the rope ladder is tangled all in my legs. Was it cut down? Was that why I fell? ... No, it's not the ladder, it's much too soft. Some kind of blanket. And there's this brightness hitting me directly in the eyes.

What's that, brain?

That's sunlight. You're awake.

Oh? That sounds nice.

No it isn't. You're on vacation. Go back to sleep.

But in my dreams, I keep *dying*!

You're terribly clumsy, aren't you?

I'm giving up on this conversation. After a moment I successfully determine which directions gravity favors as up and down, and I swing my legs out of the bed. My lamp is broken on the floor-- I think I must have knocked it off the table during an especially grisly dream death-- but otherwise the room is dusty and neat. I really must have been trying to sleep all vacation, wasn't I?

There are fiery letters scrolling along the west wall: What can Miracleman do for you today? They start to fade as soon as I'm finished reading them. Christ. Will the interdimensional wizards cease at nothing? Not even spam mail?

Take me off your mailing list, I direct at the question mark just before it disappears. Now. I find my bag on the floor, the only clean object in the room-- the auto-cleaning function I installed on the canvas cover last month seems to have really paid off-- and root around in it until I find the Dust-O-Matic (patent pending), one of my oldest and most useful toys. I set it to "kill" and push it off into the air.

It hovers for a few seconds, then starts snapping around. A nebula of dust is raised into the air. I cough, and shut my eyes, and when I open them again the DOM shudders and freezes in mid-stroke. It makes a terrible grinding sound, and flops to the floor.

Well, shit. It looks like I've got to replace it. I'm covered in grit, and my room is only half-cleaned, but it's not as though I was going to get any more sleep today.

I'll take a shower. Hopefully the bathroom isn't covered in mildew. And then out to find a replacement cleaning machine. Do they even make that catalogue any more? What was it called? Penny's Marvelous Mechanisms?

"Fine. Curse lifted. Powers restored with the condition that they can never be used against me. And I mean they can't. They won't function against me. Neener."

I cough, uncomfortable. "I, uh...don't recall your Carpenters LP collection..."

Liar.

A good day shopping, if not for business. Jilly wasn't at the Goblin Market - no big surprise on New Year's Eve - but I left her a message and a sample Instalgolem(TM). Also have a brilliant idea for a potion that cleans, disinfects, and exorcises which I jot in my notebook.

At one of the clothing stalls I find a fantastic forest green lace and velvet sheath dress that fits perfectly; also a black pillbox hat which needs only a flower or pin to be complete. Now all I have to do is go home, fix myself up and head over to DX Machina's.

Oops! Better find a gift for the host. I suppose this ancient bottle of whiskey will do - it's certainly priced like an impressive gift.

I break the surface and try to remember how to work the eyes. They're new, but I had a pair once before--I just can't remember. The ears, too. They don't seem to have any moving parts at all. I stretch my new mouth open wide and waggle my new tongue between my new teeth, but I can't taste the air. Maybe it's not working.

I realize then that I'm moving, trudging through the silt and towards the riverbank. So something works. The eyes, too, they work automatically, which is convenient. I turn my head or swivel the eyeballs within their sockets, and I see things. Stars, lots of them, swirling and spinning. Trees and city lights and people on a green lawn, huddled under blankets.

The eyes are working, but the ears are getting nothing but static. Crackles and booms and hisses, like a warped record on a turntable. I remember records. I have a sudden need to hear something--anything--by Johnny Cash.

The static snaps and pops along with the showering stars, and I realize they aren't stars, they're fireworks, and the ears are working after all. I walk up the riverbank towards a couple who are sitting snuggled under a blanket. Now to find out if the mouth is working.

"Excuse me," I say, and it sounds like a rockslide. I pitch my voice up a few octaves and try again. "Excuse me. Is today the Fourth of July?"

The woman glances at my face, looks down and then back at my face. "It's New Year's," she says.

"Ah," I say. "Thank you."

As I walk away I realize I am cold, and then I realize I am naked. So. Clothes would be the first order of business, then.

I wake up and things are different...

Hmm.

I may have overslept. I look at Paul. He's still sleeping. Look at the clock. Hmm. Not too late...

Wait...

That can't be the year, can it?

I'm so enamored with this walking thing (I have vague memories of same, but I don't remember it being so much fun) that by the time I think of stopping, I'm lost. I'm deep in the forest, the . . . Greenwood. The names are coming back. The woman said it was New Year's: I should have asked what year.

I'm still cold, but oddly it does not bother me. I notice it, but I don't shiver, and my teeth don't chatter, which is lucky because I suspect they might give off sparks. I notice that I'm leaving deep footprints in the pine needles.

She promised to make me a new body; that was part of the bargain. I didn't think what that might mean. The materials she had to work with are not . . . ideal. In some ways they will be an improvement, stronger, more durable, less vulnerable to the elements. In some ways I suspect they will be an inconvenience.

I stop near a clearing. The distant fireworks have stopped, and the Greenwood at night is dense with furtive movement, rustling of leaves and crackle of underbrush and whisper of breath. There is something--there are some things--nearby.

I look out over the clearing, and the new eyes pick out clean white reflecting moonlight, small rib cages and skulls and leg bones and tails. As I try to identify the animal, a pair of eyes skulks out from beneath the boughs of a spruce and advances, followed by others. Are there wolves in the Greenwood? I recall stories . . . but these are dogs. The Well-Behaved.

They seem not to notice me. I wonder if basalt and micah and agate and whatever else this new body is composed of give off any scent at all, or if the scent I give off is simply too confusing for the Well-Behaved to take notice of.

The dogs move to the edge of the clearing, but none of them enter, none but the last. She is an elderly creature, a short-haired mix of bull mastiff and German Shepherd, by her looks. She moves slowly, and I can hear the bellows of her lungs from here. She steps gingerly into the clearing, picking her way over the bones, and then she throws back her head and howls.

The others raise their voices with her, but stay beyond the circle of moonlight. They are like her shadows, though they are not of the same breed, from what little I can see. She soaks up the moonlight, almost glowing, and her howls become lustier, while beyond her the shadow dogs seem to fade into the darkness, their voices receding along with their shapes. Soon the bitch is alone in the clearing, her voice the only one raised in supplication, and then she too falls silent and collapses in a heap. The moonglow gives her fur a gray and mangy look, and I realize she is dead.

This is the legendary graveyard of the Well-Behaved, then, the place where the creatures who spend their lives in service to the people of Dogtown come to find their rest. It seems a lonely end, and yet the clearing is dense with the remains of those who have marked the way, and I think that the bitch must be content now. I hope so.

In a strange way I feel more connected now to this world which I used to know, which I hope I can call home again. I back slowly away from the clearing, showing respect, and then resume wandering through the Greenwood looking for a way out and possibly some pants.

After a good hotdog, I'm feeling much less annoyed with Miracleman. He did do me a favour, after all, even if I didn't really want to borrow Hector. This place is very different to my old home. For example, my power is much greater here, and although I haven't tested the telepathy, the levitation is going well.

Very handy for eating and reading at the same time.

Now- just where does one go to find a good party in this place? I don't like the look of The Prancing Pony, but I overheard someone talking about "DX Machina's place", and that sounds worth going to. Now- I can't find it on the map, so it'll have to be 'ask a local'. A dangerous policy, but it seems worth trying.

Out in the street, everyone is huddled in their warm winter coats. I step up to the nearest person, despite the fact that they could be anyone (or anything), and ask, "Which way to DX's?"

Psst, Penny... The party isn't at DX's house. It's at DX's bar, Milo's, corner of Andre and Machunado in the Old Quarter.

Why in all the blessed gods and goddesses names did I set the alarm? What was I thinking?

Oh, yeah, I wasn't, and I forgot to turn the alarm off. NightOwl arrived and was actually good as gold for a couple of hours as I worked. Of course, he was in the kitchen annoying Achmed the whole time, so I didn't notice. At least, not until I heard some really horrifying Arabic, the kind Achmed should hope his mother doesn't find out he knows.

"Bob, leave Achmed alone!" I yelled. "He's not interested in you!"

"Don't call me Bob!"

Stupid, over-sensitive ... "I am NOT calling you NightOwl! It's dumb! Though not as dumb as that NightHawk thing you tried to talk me into. NightVulture, NightLeech, that'd work. Want me to call you NightLeech?"

So he appears in the doorway, lounging in that annoying boneless way that he either stole from James Marsters or JM stole from him. I prefer not to ask. "You could call me what you did last night," he grins. He's actually using his own accent for a change, that faint Irish curl that wanders up and down my spine.

And I should know better than to ask. "I--don't remember ..."

He strolls closer. Behind him, Achmed sighs and closes the door to the kitchen. "Something about 'lord' and 'god,' I was a little distracted myself."

"I was not talking to you."

"Well, there wasn't anyone else there, you must have been talking to me."

"Stop trying to do DeNiro."

And he's right behind me, reaching over to hit save on the computer, then closing it down. "Rather do you."

Which lead to one thing and then another, and now I'm listening to some perkier-than-thou DJ creature working at WSS, The Voice of Sang Sacre, announcing the weather. Partly cloudy, with chance of frogs. Bloody plagues.

"Can I kill him?" asks a familiar voice from under the pillow on the other side of the bed.

"Daytime, you can't go out."

"I'm willing to wait."

"Sorry. The job of holiday DJ is one of the more obscure circles of hell, he's already being punished. Tell me why you're here and not at home."

"Nope. We can talk about the bloodier side of Sears later. I want breakfast."

I don't even have to look to know he's staring at my neck. Note to self: remember the iron supplements.