“When the story is complete, it must be allowed again to unravel.”

This timeless spirit had said so. Here in these timeless corridors, whose walls were laced with writing as madly close to readable as the Chaos was as madly close to sense, Giles found he knew much of the story of Carmen Pilar Ortega, the wise curandera.

She stood in the corridor now radiating solemn peace to them. She was as spritely and mischievous as she must have been in her youth in Mexico, as dusted with age and wisdom as when RJ and Hiyako had seen her.

The wise woman knelt and placed a hand on Tiffany’s heart. Giles walked forward and knelt to touch Tiffany comfortingly, but Carmen held up a hand and he stopped, guilty and angrily defensive.

He had touched her ungloved hand and the touch had killed him and sent his spirit to this place. He had ruined everything but Tiffany refused to tell him her plans. He flew blind, trying to weave too many crazy patches into one quilt.

But how could he be angry at Tiffany who knelt like little girl weeping the grief of utter loss, hunched in on herself so the knobs of her spine made a row of buttons down her back.

Between endlessly receding walls with their tight-written flowing red script, all knelt in tableau. Then the young old woman spoke. “I cannot tell you what you must do, my child. I never could. You were a bright fire and full of piss from the day I first found you.”

Her soft hand stroked the bumps of Tiffany’s back. “Your story should join the others. May I tell it? You at least,” she said to Giles and his heart sped, “must know, if nothing else.”

Tiffany’s voice came folded around sobs. “He knows much of it, what I told to dear Jasmine.”

“And now it is time for all to be told. No story can be known until it is spoken aloud. He knows only that of my story which I told to you. Now I will tell both to him and to you the part of my story which created you.”

The black head, shimmering in the diamond lights, nodded. Giles, understanding the way of stories, made himself comfortable against the dancing writing on the walls. Whether his eye caught a phrase here or there in the mass of text or simply that there was a magic about this place, he did indeed know all that Tiffany had told to Jasmine: that Cloud Rock had become a stone in the Kenmare Circle, that Mary Hammond had seen elf-sized Doree and thought her a faerie, that Doree had slipped into the passages and… somehow become Tiffany.

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“I found you in this place many ages ago, a lost and wandering little spirit.” Giles wondered if that was before or after the scene with RJ and Hiyako which he could now see so clearly. He found the half-lidded eyes regarding him with knowing amusement. Let the story unravel, they seemed to say.

To Tiffany, she continued, “You were tiny and cute and spitting fire, so I I knelt and asked where you had entered rather than trying to pick you up.”

“I’d have chomped your bloody head off,” the muffled voice said. The tears had stopped; she sounded like a child who wanted to laugh but wouldn’t let herself.

“You had also walked unscathed past the cave of the horned ones when the breathing wall vanished. Perhaps you escaped their notice by being so small. And there you stood, hands on your hips, looking up at me and daring me to do anything. So I squatted and listened as you told me your tale. And I told you my own, for we had endless time, enough to weave a scarf a thousand miles long, until at last you trusted me enough to ride on my shoulders for a while.

“For you see, I could not help you while you were an elf. So I ate a demon and gave birth to you as you are.”

Giles shook his head. Tiffany sat back on her thighs, silk dress sliding, and looked up at the mischievous face. “You bloody what?” she said in a small voice.

The curandera smiled a warm, secret smile, like Doree would have smiled at Jasmine. “I’ve told you how I became trapped in these corridors. I told you about the breathing section of wall, thinner every time I passed.

“But I have not told you of the day the rock wavered away to air and dissolved, a magician’s trick. And there was the cave of the horned ones. I walked quickly by, pretending not to see, ignoring them as I would ignore a man calling out, come here, cute little thing…

“Time after time I went back to that place and one time, there I saw you, staring straight at them and coming to no harm. I followed you quietly as you left that place, running my hands along these walls, feeling their weight, feeling the generations of tales crushed and tight and still, the story woven so tightly in the rocks that nothing could get it out. I won your trust, as you know.

“And then as you slept, I came back with you to the cave of the horned ones. Each of them a pestilence and a tornado swirling to get out. It is not good to notice them too much but this time I made bold. I walked up to the barrier and stared.

“One of them slithered and oozed its way over to me and stood with claws uplifted. His hands were golden and his palms silver and gold like liquid butter poured from them. I raised my hands as well. Our fingers touched and I felt the gold that he could weave, and we danced, that one and I. I never doubted that if my will slipped but for an instant, I would make him but meal. But I felt you upon my shoulder and for you I was strong.

“Then in an instant, his will slipped and he was mine. I took him into me. Oh, not in any horrible, bloody way. I’ve seen much blood and much death. He collapsed into a mist beneath my hands and I breathed him in. He was a cinnamon candy, a spiced mango.”

Giles could see only Tiffany’s midnight black hair gleaming in the gem lights. How was she reacting to this tale?

“The little you upon my shoulders stirred and yawned herself awake. And it was only a moment’s thought for me to decide what to do with you.”

Tiffany sat as still as a mill pond under deep stars, listening.