By their nature, the stones did not get around much, but they had compensated by evolving a great pride of place. Black basalt they were, striped with travertine, an outcropping of the world spirit?fashioned plumb, square, and true?and stacked perhaps at the pleasure of a backwoods warlord to keep the cows out of his celery and the neighboring feoffers out of his wives.

Harry Pease has heard the call of the Fata Morgana, Lady of the Wild Things?a goddess, ancient and dispossessed. A late vocation from a religion long forgotten: this Harry decided to keep to himself. It all began when Marcus Hanrahan called to say there was beer in the refrigerator and the pigs were waiting. He and the wife and the Hanrahan kids, whose pets the pigs had been, would be at the mall...

The Queen of Heaven, Orange Virgin, Fata Morgana, etc., etc. shuddered as the first pig died. On the Other Side, the strain of the sacred pig was breeding true again. And she had not known. How and when does a pig know it is holy and dressed in the raiment of joy? A new pig, a pig of the ancient line, not yet self-aware until the revelation of the final, fatal flash?the pig and its killer knotted in their mutual innocence. "One gets out of touch... I am explaining myself. This is all wrong."

Biff Bangtree backed out of the buttery, his pockets full of doughnuts. Biff Bangtree was not yet his name, since Morgana had neglected to call him anything. That he have a name was not a vital component of their lovemaking.

At the tip of an eyelash a tear formed, glistened, and fell to the empty channel far below. The tear caught Morgana quite by surprise. Tears have their own reasons. She observed its downward spinning through the mist, the tear?s coiling descent a path that circled in against itself. The mechanics of its fall changed it from a tear to a sphere, turning the crystal pearl over and over in its flight, examining it as if for flaws.

Joyce Gladstone, librarian, at an age when the obituaries were the first item turned to in the paper, avoided that page, apprehensive lest her interest precipitate another vanload of books. Sometimes the thought of Harry Pease and his collection of Popular Mechanics and Playboy magazines stalked her nights, interrupting her blameless sleep. She dreaded finding Harry's name listed among the newly dead.

"You have an admirable facility for understatement, goddess. What you have just witnessed and cannot remember is the end of everything and a new beginning?the Big Bang. Yearnings, struggles, joys: all the paradigms, apotheoses, covetousness, sloth, envy, etc., along with dandelions, cabbages, butterflies?the hotel reservations and weekend painting projects of a googolplex of individuals are over, caput, finis?sucked through the eye of Eternity?s needle, pushed out backwards on the other end, and here you are. Simple, really."

Home from her cosmic tęte-ŕ-tęte, the Fata Morgana addresses Sarabande, Superintendent of plantings and the Herbarium. "Sarabande, I know this is becoming tedious for all of us, but you are not the Sarabande to whom I last spoke, are you? I mean you are truly beautiful and there is that in the curve of your mouth and the shape of your ear, the very turn of your hair?the way it exposes the notch, that tiny irregularity at your widow's peak when you tie it back like that. You are Sarabande?" Kneeling in the fresh spring mud of the greensward, Sarabande ruins her gown?"...the one to whom you spoke was my great-great-great-grandmother."

In the cellars of the Queen three stone heads grace the capital of a buried pendentive. The heads are malign at first glance, a dead craftsman?s nightsweats and horrors: vaguely a Cow, a Goat, and a Manticore. Mineral deposits have whitened the Goat?s tongue and striped his head so that his tongue appears to have paused in the fastidious licking of an ice cream cone. The Goat?s dead eyes are rolled back, hollow stone pupils positioned to stare up the kilt of any passing visitor. In former times he had been out-of-doors and his gaze was heavenward, away from the temptations of the earth and the flesh.

Pen Harrington has disappeared into the cellars of overnight radio, a lover of night nurses and truck-stop waitresses. To those up top in the sunshine who might think of him the consensus is that the best thing about Pen Harrington is Prince?big, loving, gentle and not too bright. Where Pen goes, Prince goes, and preferably by car. Prince sits in the passenger's seat giant and yellow, and mostly Labrador retriever. Prince sleeps and dreams of a cow stuck in a wall. The stone head looks down and nods wisely. It has a secret. "I know who you are," says the Cow. Prince raises a leg. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. I am a sphinx. Cleopatra loved me."

Wherein Pen Harrington and Prince meet the Fata Morgana at a bus stop. With none of his master?s inhibitions, Prince walks up to the goddess and sticks his nose between her legs. "Prince..." A low, happy glottal rumble as ears are scratched by the exciting, wonderful woman. More tail-thumping and the nose is firmly back in place. "...I knew introductions would be in order. Prince and I are going to be close. Very close. Call me Maggie."

There is a heterodyning squeal and Biff looks to the radio receiver. "This is today?s lesson, study it well. You will do daring things." The voice of the Fata Morgana is inside his head. An urgent baritone fills the room: "And now... Dolby Jenks, Space Ace, brought to you by Chocolate-flavored Ovaltine..."

The stones of the Fata Morgana?s castle are black basalt, striped with travertine?an outcropping of the world spirit. The stones get little satisfaction from the flickering, fluttering life dwelling in the spaces they define. Nor are they particularly quick-witted even by their own lights, and their thoughts, when they think at all, are particularly tedious, for not many decisions are required of them and they take the long view.

A chips and nachos conglomerate is introducing Pork-A-Dillos, a low-cholesterol fried pork rind product, the latest scientific breakthrough. Linda Winkelman, priestess-designate of the Fata Morgana, has been named project manager for the new product's test marketing; if it flies she will be in line to direct the national campaign.

Wherein the Manticore, indifferent to the guises of chopped liver and salmon with herbs, quests through a spectacle of glittering implements?steel, iron, tin and aluminum, quarts, gallons, missionary cauldrons, runcible spoons, shirers, boilers, broilers and basters, colanders, ewers, forcemeat forms, pâté molds, sieves, lids and ladles. Fluted tin forms braided like the innards of a mollusk?s abandoned husk await gelatin confections, larding needles languish for a loin of pork. A shelf of ceramic rabbits awaits their pâté masquerade.

Wherein a spinach quiche is mentioned and the Manticore becomes impaled: ?I say, are you stuck?? asks Biff Bangtree. He crouches to behold a creature made up of many other creatures: porcupine, man, lizard, eagle, scorpion. We likewise meet the Wise Child and the Destroyer?aspects of the Fata Morgana.

Wherein Biff, Morgana and the Manticore go prospecting for a priestess in peril. It is Christmas in New York, a time of tinseled windows and slush coming over the tops of transparent plastic rain boots. Linda Winkelman carries them in her gym bag all year long and even sensible one-inch heels are too much for them. A wide-bodied Checker cab spins into the taxi stand at the corner, trying to use the parking lane for an illegal turn to catch the light at 33rd Street. A spray of brown slush stipples Linda?s panty hose all the way to the knee.

Wherein Linda Winkelman meets El, the sky-demon: ?I got all dressed up for the Visitation. You are the instrument, the vehicle, if you catch my meaning, of a meeting of vast teleological implications. At this very moment, even as we speak, so to speak, the emanations of the demon-queen of Sumer and Babylon are invading your persona.? Her kidnapper toggles her head back and forth. ?Hotsy-totsy, Morgana. You in there? We?ve been expecting you.?

Wherein Harry Profitt Pease browses the refreshments table. This evening is the regular illustrated lecture?a slide show?at the Valiant Trust Memorial Institute Free Library. Harry turns to see a pig hop up on the window seat next to Alma Nightingale, claiming a warm depression vacated by Joyce Gladstone, the librarian. Harry stares. The pig is a spotted china with a tight brushy tip to her tail that hinted at purebred bloodlines. ?You wouldn?t have a cabbage left in your truck, would you?? the pig asks.

Wherein Harry and the Fata Morgana introduce themselves: ?You are a pig,? Harry observes. ?And you are a dirty old man. Don?t belabor the obvious.? The pig rummages in the truck?s glove box and, coming up with an archival Mars bar, settles herself comfortably in the passenger?s seat.

Wherein the Orange Virgin and El the sky demon confer in the sub-cellars of the Hotel Taft. The hotel cat carries in a still-twitching mouse and lays it at Morgana's feet. ?Someone at least remembers who I am. Pardon me, I must share this well-intentioned offering.? Morgana sits cross-legged, facing the cat with the mouse between them. ?To you it is religion, to the cat it is lunch, and religion will wait.? The Queen of Heaven bites the head off the mouse and hands the remains to the cat.