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“As much as we love one another, Gabychild?”

Seraphs are essentially creatures of love. They liked to think that they were the best sacraments in the universe of the Other’s love. Their most intense love was for their companions and their offspring, of course. But their love for others, of either gender, was also overwhelming. They were smart enough to make the proper distinctions, so jealousy was rare among them.

“You know the answer to that Maeviekid.”

“The Other’s love,”Michael laid out the party line, “is implacable. As we all know, the Other wants no one to get away from that love.Or even to think they have. That’s why we’re meeting tonight.”

“To tell us that we’re not demons?”M ac asked with a touch of bitterness.

“We have searched much of the cosmos, Mac, not all of it, mind you, but most of it.We have not found any bad angels. There may be such, but we have not discovered them.”

“It would be nice to be able to visit home again,Mac,”Maeve said sadly.

“We would have a grand party!”Gab y promised. “The best in many millennia.”

“We’ll have to think about it,”M ac said, ending the discussion. “And talk it over with the others.”

That was as far as they would get that night, about as far as Gaby had hoped, maybe a little more. The Shee did miss home and their old friends more than they were willing to admit. Progress had been made. The Other presumably would be pleased. The embraces at the end of the dinner were much more passionate than those at the beginning. Again, in the blink of an eye, the dining room was filled with dancing lights. As they left, Gaby scattered more of her love magic on the other diners. This All Hallows Eve would be a night that they would never forget.

Back on the street, they bid farewells.Mike and Gaby reabsorbed their surrogates into themselves. They would surely couple almost at once. Would the leaders of the Shee? Gaby hoped they would, but doubted it.

Then they heard cries from the dark and foggy Green. People were being attacked. Maeve and Mac darted into the Green. Gaby heard two splashes. Someone had been tossed into the pond. Mike and Gaby materialized at the edge of the trees, hidden by the fog. Two young thugs had been dumped into the pool and were shivering in the November cold. A handsome Irish couple was assuring the victims, two traumatized middle-aged Americans, that the two louts would never attack anyone again and indeed would never use drugs again.

Faerie magic.

“Well,”said Mike, “it looks like we’ve made a little progress, doesn’t it now? Aren’t they acting like Guardian Angels?”

“The Otherer will be pleased”,Gab y agreed piously.

Later, the two of them were dancing on the top of the Millennium Needle in O’Connell Street. Dancing was always a preliminary to lovemaking among the Seraphs. Gaby had an age-old reputation for dance of invitation.

“Well, we’re the answer to the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin,”Mike said as he overpowered her with his magic.

“Point of a needle,”Gab y corrected him before she succumbed completely.

LITERARY

Fantastics

The Lady in Grey

BY JANE LINDSKOLD

WILLIE

Sometimes, as now when he watched her pouring out the tea for himself and George Russell, Willie found it difficult to remember that he had only met his beloved Maud a few years before.

Meeting Maud had been the transforming experience of Willie’s life. From the day she had first come to his father’s house in Bedford Park, her beauty, her grace, her passionate involvement with Irish Nationalism had haunted Willie’s every waking hour—and many of his sweetest and most troubling dreams as well.

Willie had written poetry to Maud and for Maud, had dragged himself from literary seclusion into public life for her. Yet seeing Maud as he did this day, weighted down with sorrow, her apple blos- som loveliness nearly quenched by the unremitting darkness of her mourning attire,Willie felt he knew her as he never had before, and he knew, too, that he loved her as he never had when she was light prettiness surrounded by her birds