But the Nevernever is a big place, and not to mix metaphors, but there are plenty of fish in that sea. There are literally countless beings of far less metaphysical significance, and it really isn’t terribly difficult to get one of them to do your bidding by invoking its Name.

(People have Names, too. Sort of. Mortals have this nasty habit of constantly reassessing their personal identity, their values, their beliefs, and it makes it a far more slippery business to use a mortal’s Name against them.)

I know a few Names. I invoked this one as lightly and gently as I could in an effort to be polite.

It didn’t take me long, maybe a dozen repetitions of the Name before the entity it summoned appeared. A basketball-sized globe of blue light dived out of the snow overhead and hurtled down the alley toward my face.

I stood steady as it came on. Even with relatively minor summonings, you never let them see you flinch.

The globe snapped to an instant halt about a foot away from the doughnut, and I could just make out the luminous shape of the tiny humanoid figure within. Tiny, but not nearly so tiny as the last time I had seen him. Hell’s bells, he must have been twice as tall as the last time we’d spoken.

“Toot-toot,” I said, nodding to the pixie.

Toot snapped to attention, piping, “My lord!” The pixie looked like an athletically slender youth, dressed in armor made of discarded trash. His helmet had been made from the cap to a three-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, and tufts of his fine lavender hair drifted all around its rim. He wore a breastplate made from what looked like a carefully reshaped bottle of Pepto-Bismol, and carried a box knife sheathed in orange plastic on a rubber-band strap over one shoulder. Rough lettering on the box knife’s case, written in what looked like black nail polish, proclaimed, Pizza or Death! A long nail, its base carefully wrapped in layers of athletic adhesive tape, was sheathed in the hexagonal plastic casing of a ballpoint pen at his side. He must have lifted the boots from a Ken doll, or maybe a vintage GI Joe.

“You’ve grown,” I said, bemused.

“Yes, my lord,” Toot-toot barked.

I arched an eyebrow. “Is that the box knife I gave you?”

“Yes, my lord!” he shrilled. “This is my box knife! There are many who like it, but this one is mine!” Toot’s words were crisply precise, and I realized that he was imitating the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket. I throttled the sudden smile trying to fight its way onto my face. It looked like he was taking it seriously, and I didn’t want to crush his tiny feelings.

What the hell. I could play along. “At ease, soldier.”

“My lord!” he said. He saluted by slapping the heel of his hand against his forehead and then buzzed a quick circle around the doughnut, staring at it intently. “That,” he declared, in a voice much more like his usual one, “is a doughnut. Is it my doughnut, Harry?”