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devils didn’t know how unhappy they were, and the only way to help them was to kill off every last one of them. So what do you need helping with, then?”
    “Well,” said Paul, “I told a doctor about how I talk to animals and pixies and such, and he gave me medicine for it so I’d stop talking to them.”
    “Ahhh,” said the Irishman, and he began to walk. “Does it make you happy, taking it?”
    “No. I was hoping it would make my mum happy, but it’s not. But she’s unhappy about so many other things.”
    “What else is she unhappy about?”
    So Paul told the Irishman about all that had transpired. At random times the Irishman interjected such thoughtful comments as “Tut-tut!” and “I should say!” and “Looks like it’s going to be one of those, eh?” which was how Paul would have known he was speaking to a genuine grown-up, had the whiskers not been a dead giveaway.
    “Well,” the Irishman said at last, once Paul had finished his recitation, “it’s fairly clear what needs to be done, eh?”
    “Is it?” said Paul, politely bewildered.
    “Isn’t it to you? If your mother is so upset about the loss of a baby daughter, then what’s the obvious answer?”
    Paul gave it a good deal of consideration. “To find her another?”
    “Exactly!” said the Irishman, who actually had figured that putting poison in the mother’s tea, or perhaps blowing her up, was the most elegant means with which to deal with the woman’s sorrow. But Paul’s suggestion seemed workable as well, plus it had the merit of not attracting the local constabulary.
    “Perhaps the Anyplace can help me!” Paul said with growing excitement. “It is the place where dreams are given substance. So if I can go there and dream of making my mother happy, perhaps I can return from there with the means to do so.”
    “What,” said the Irishman with genuine interest, “does your Anyplace look like? They vary, you know.”
    “Lately, my Anyplace looks much like my nursery, with my mother simply glowering at me or staring at an empty infant bed, and I’ve been unable to tread upon the more distant shores. I used to have a white tiger—fur white as snow—that stalked the Anyplace. He was mine and I his, and we moved through the jungle together while all others faded away from us in fear; but I haven’t seen him or the jungle for a very long time.”
    “There is a shop,” the Irishman said abruptly. He told Paul where it was, and I will not repeat it to you here, for it would be precipitous and possibly send far more people to the shop than its proprietor would care to handle. If you give it a great deal of consideration just before you go to sleep, perhaps you will find the location whispered to your nearly dreaming mind. Whether you can keep it with you upon waking is entirely your own problem, and best of luck to you.
    “If you have the stuff of it,” the Irishman said, “you will find what you need there.”
    “And what is it that I need?”
    “You will know it when you see it,” the Irishman said. “And if you do not see it, then you will never know it, and that’s the truth of it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to work.”
    “What work is that?”
    The Irishman turned the card around, and Paul read the words: THE ONLY MAN CAPT. HACK FEARED. Below that, in smaller but equally meticulous print, it said, HANDSHAKES, ONE QUID. PHOTOS, TWO QUID.
    “The proprietor’s name is Starkly,” said the Irishman. “Tell him the Irish pirate sent you. And tell him that the Irish pirate told him not to kill you.” He lowered his voice and added, a bit abashed, “Our killing days are long past us, truth to tell. Plus, there’s a depressing lack of boys trying to kill us, and without them having at us, it seems bullying to have at them. Being a pirate is one thing, but we don’t have to be bullies about it now, do we?”
    With that confession off his chest and feeling far better for it, the Irishman swaggered off,