Stage right, Wolf and Leander were in the process of unbinding various members of the Gothmen who’d been caught by the Binder. Pelham Longfellow had made it understood that anyone who had been bound could now be healed, and so members of the audience started walking—or hobbling, or crawling, or whatever they could manage—up onto the stage with the help of Lexy, Dora Wright and Nurse Underwood. Madame Valentin was healed just in time to recapture her snakes, who had been summoned here this night by dark magic, but were now a bit tired and just wanted to go home.

Effie Truelove, meanwhile, was spinning and spinning and spinning, right in the center of the stage, connected to the Flow and providing power for all the others to use. She had turned herself into an extremely powerful magical battery, cosmically dancing for the good of all. She had never felt happier or more whole.

The music swept everybody up. Members of the audience stood and moved their chairs aside and began dancing in whatever style they knew—there were crazed tarantellas, jigs, cancans, cha-chas and all sorts of other dances—as bits of stray magic, particles from the Flow and glitter from the orbit of Miss Dora Wright rained down on them. At some point Terrence Deer-Hart entered the Grand Lecture Theater. He looked dazed, confused. He had found a flowery bandana from somewhere and tied it around his head. He joined hands with the math teacher from the Mrs. Joyful School and let himself get swept up in the great happiness that was life as they danced a sort of hippy mazurka.

“Peace, man,” was all he could manage to say to her.

“Yeah, dude,” she said back, perhaps thinking he was joking.

Dora Wright danced with Laurel Wilde, Nurse Underwood danced with Dill Hammer and poor Claude Twelvetrees danced alone. That is, until the librarian from Special Collections found the math teacher from the Mrs. Joyful School, and they fell in love instantly. That left Claude dancing with Terrence, who asked him if he wanted to go out afterward for a bean burger and some hot yoga.

The Free Cats League members had been released, and led by Mirabelle and Malvasia, they danced a cat cancan on the stage that was more accomplished than the human version, but no less odd. The Luminiferous Ether, the Bermuda Triangle and the Northern Lights bade each other farewell for another year and went their separate ways. The yeti got a lift back to the Andes with the Bermuda Triangle. At last the weather started to ease, although it still snowed, as it would now until the Turning of the Year.

25

HAVE YOU JUST SAVED the world again?” asked Orwell Bookend as he drove Effie home. Cait was looking after baby Luna, and had no idea of everything that she’d missed.

“Not just me,” said Effie. “We all did it. Even you helped.”

“Me? I doubt it. How?”