By the light of the moon

the air by a cyclone wind. She thought that she also
glimpsed a toothy portion of Wile E. Coyote's grinning visage, then
saw the merest scrap of a familiar blue-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt,
and another scrap there .
    No more than five or six seconds passed from the instant that
the tunnel folded upon itself until Dylan and Shepherd unfolded into the bathroom and appeared before Jilly as
whole and normal as ever they had been. Behind them, where the
tunnel had once churned with red light, there was now only an
ordinary wall.
    With obvious relief, Dylan exhaled a pent-up breath and said
something like, 'No gooey-bloody.'
    Shep declared, 'Shep is dirty.'
    Jilly said, 'You son of a bitch,' and punched Dylan in the
chest.
    She hadn't pulled the punch. The blow made a satisfying thwack , but Dylan was too big to be rocked off his feet as
Jilly had hoped he would be.
    'Hey!' Dylan protested.
    Head bowed, Shep said, 'Time to shower.'
    And Jilly repeated herself, 'You son of a bitch,' as she hit
Dylan again.
    'What's wrong with you?'
    'You said you weren't going in there,' she angrily reminded him,
and punched still harder.
    'Ow! Hey, I didn't intend to go.'
    'You went,' she accused, and she swung at him again.
    With one of his open hands as big as a catcher's mitt, he caught
her fist and held it, effectively ending her assault. 'I went,
yeah, okay, but I really didn't intend to go.'
    Shepherd remained patient but persistent: 'Shep is dirty. Time
to shower.'
    'You told me you wouldn't go,' Jilly said, 'but you went, and
left me here alone .'
    She didn't quite know how Dylan had gotten hold of her by both
wrists. Restraining her, he said, 'I came back, we both came back,
everything's all right.'
    'I couldn't know you'd come back. As far as I knew, you'd
never come back or you'd come back dead.'
    'I had to come back alive,' he assured her, 'so you'd have a
fair chance to kill me.'
    'Don't joke about this.' She tried to wrench loose of him but
couldn't. 'Let go of me, you bastard.'
    'Are you going to hit me again?'
    'If you don't let go of me, I'll tear you to pieces, I
swear.'
    'Time to shower.'
    Dylan released her, but he kept both hands raised as though he
expected that he would have to catch further punches. 'You're such
an angry person.'
    'Oh, you're damn right I'm an angry person.' She trembled with
anger, shook with fear. 'You said you wouldn't go in there, then
you went in there anyway, and I was alone .' She realized
that she was shaking more with relief than with either fury or
fear. 'Where the hell did you go?'
    'California,' Dylan said.
    'What do you mean "California"?'
    'California. Disneyland, Hollywood, Golden Gate Bridge. You
know, California?'
    'California,' said Shep. 'One hundred sixty-three thousand seven
hundred and seven square miles.'
    With a thick note of disbelief in her voice, Jilly said, 'You
went through the wall to California?'
    'Yeah. Why not? Where'd you think we went – Narnia? Oz?
Middle Earth? California's weirder than any of those places,
anyway.'
    Shep evidently knew a lot about his native state: 'Population,
approximately thirty-five million four hundred thousand.'
    'But I don't think we actually went through the wall,' Dylan
said, 'or through anything at all. Shep folded here to there.'
    'Highest point, Mount Whitney—'
    'Folded what to where?' Jilly asked.
    '—fourteen thousand four hundred ninety-four feet above
sea level.'
    As her anger settled and as relief brought with it a measure of
calm and clarity, Jilly realized that Dylan was exhilarated. A
little nervous, yes, and maybe a little fearful, too, but largely
exhilarated, almost boyishly exuberant.
    Dylan said, 'He folded reality maybe, space and time, one or
both, I don't know, but he folded here to there. What did you fold,
Shep? What exactly was it you folded?'
    'Lowest point,' said Shep, 'Death Valley—'
    'He'll probably be on this California thing for a while.'
    '—two hundred eighty-two feet below sea level.'
    'What did you fold, bro?'
    'State capital – Sacramento.'
    'Last night he folded stall one to stall four,' Dylan said, 'but
I didn't realize it at the time.'
    'Stall one to stall four?' Jilly frowned, working the pain out
of the hand with which she'd punched him. 'Right now Shep's making
more sense than you are.'
    'State bird – California valley quail.'
    'In the men's room. He folded toilet to toilet. He went in
number one and came out number four. I didn't tell you about it,
because I didn't realize what had