There weren't many options open; the sound of an old diamondtip needle being dragged acroos the 1962 RCA-Stereo Sound release Long-Playing "All But Young: Songs for the Middle Years". sung by Rosemary Clooney, made a stark scraping sound over the PA and they knew the alarm was being sounded. Faintly they heard the sounds of scores of pairs of matched Birkenstocks pounding down the stairwell far behind them.

"Quick!!! The Tarsal tunnel to the Soul!!! It's our only way out, the tall stranger snapped. The Flutterby artist stared at them, an amused glimmer in his eyes and an amusing string of spittle swinging from his pearly teeth.

The stranger opened his utility belt and pulled out four round fat capsules. Biting into them in quick succession, he heaved them into the hallway through the cell door as far back as he could, where they rolled and bounced letting out streams of colorful smoke -- blue, orange, green and yellow. She looked at him with one perfect eyebrow raised, and he answered before she had time to say anything.

"They're Taylor Effect bombs," he explained rapidly. "They make people think they're in tune with their ancient ethnic roots and harmonizing with the universe at the same time." "But that's oxymornic!!!" she protested. "Shhhh -- it's a fragile delusion and we don't have time to lose setting it up twice!!!" he snapped.

He grabbed the drooling artist by the shoulder and shook him.

"Tunnel entrance!!! WHERE?!"

The Coyote artist grinned crookedly, and pointed to the strange blueish vapor vortex that filled the back corner of his cell, the corner they had avoided looking at because they thought it was the latrine.

He stepped forward and grabbed the loony artist by one arm, hooisted him to his feet and with a single motion bent and lifted him him over one shoulder. He turned and grabbed the lovely Keepmistress by an elbow, and steered the clump of them across the room and with a single stride stepped with them into the center of the Vortex. The crackling that filled their ears was deafening, the walls vanished and spin into ethereal streaks of spiralling blue lines, and the faint sounds of imminent pursuit faded into a sound reminiscent of the Beatles imitating a speaking tube to the engine room; throbbing peremated their cells and tissues, and they could no longer tell ther upper ends from their lower. Albert Coyote didn't notice the difference in that particular respect, but the others found it distinctly disorienting, and they were grabbing for leather as blind as a pair of bats when they contacted something extremely solid with a thud that made them feel as though their ribs had been driven through their shoulders and their nerves screamed in protest....

...in the moonlit summer night on the grassy untended slopes of the hill below the NYCTS. Faintly, down near where the hill reached the river and the road, they made out two round shadows cavorting down the slope with a large dark rectangle between them. Gradually, the peace of a summer night replaced the violence of their journey and they slowly regained their sense of place.

"The grove! Quick!!!"

Half staggering, half skipping,m they followed the twin rolypoly shadows down to the edge of the road and across it to the river bank, tore through undergrowth, ducked branches, stepped loudly on twigs, and tore through brambles until exhausted and dizzy with exhertion they broke into the clearing. The Capuchin, thrilled that something familiar was in view, leapt with a shriek to the ground and ran across th eclearing to a low-lying branch where the kestrel had just come down shrieking protestations at the rude treatment she had been subjected to, and after exchanging a few telling though highly dissimilar noises the two of them turned as one and lunged for the camouflaged shrubbery-pit that held the powerful Indian's silent form.

The music still waved across the late summer night, the frailing reaching high across the misting meadows and the dull bodhran rhythms tumbling out across the grasslands surrounding the Tavern, whent he deep burble of the mighty motorcycle was again heard at the doorway, pulling up in a slow and gracious stop in the gravel parking lot.

Spaw and Bert were the first to turn around and gape as the travelers, accomnpanied by the battered, drollong but still smiling form of "Toepicker" Coyote Flutterby, two gleeful dwarves and two indignant pets, appeared in the doorway.

"My God, man!!! What happened to you!!!?? Where have you been? What have you been doing!!!?"

The stranger and the Keepmistress looked at each other for only a brief second, but what passed between them then would take a year to describe., And so, without a moment's pause, they turned and replied in perfect unison, as though from some long-practiced choral routine:

"Not much. You?"