In the corridors between worlds, Jasmine Miyazuki Rainbow Bear walked forward until she reached the ice demon whose name was Rrrrr.

Even in all his hatefulness, there was something “saddy” about him as he clawed at his son Grrrr. Jasmine wanted with all her gentle heart a world where people who loved each other could find each other, could be together like Yako and Popster.

But this mean monster had to lose his son.

There were crimson letters on the wall and they writhed like birthing spirits. Words came loose and danced in the thick air. She could see many places.

Somewhere lost in the corridors the old curandera squatted on the earth and dug in her toes as her teacher had taught her to do, ready to help her. In their home, Hiyako wove her tales of wind and RJ made solid his dreams on the drafting board he had built with his father. They smiled at her, as through old-fashioned rippling glass.

In the room inside his story, Giles stared in wonder at his bleeding knuckles. Killington lay on the floor at his feet, blood soaking into the corporate carpet. He sensed the audience, a living breathing presence, happy that the younger demon had found his love but wanting more. He also sensed Jasmine, like a colorful pebble at the bottom of a running stream.

The two burly guards stood with slack jaws, clumsy hands dangling at their sides. They saw nothing: their boss had collapsed and even Jerry was blurry and vague as he tried to walk into another story.

But Tiffany stared straight at Jasmine, seeing her clearly across miles and maybe years. With careful, deliberate movement, she peeled off her gloves and raised silver hands with golden palms for Jasmine to see.

Jasmine raised her small perfect hands in answer.

Tiffany whispered to Giles, “Speak aloud whatever words she sends to you.” Giles blinked, nodded.

Jasmine read aloud the words she saw floating in curling red letters. “The beloved, long mourned as lost … is found at last.” The words didn’t say anything about blue sky so she added that: And the sky is blue again!

Giles, head tilted as he strained to hear, told the story he’d been given. “In a healed world with blue sky, beloved ones mourned as lost are found at last.”

The crimson blood letters flew apart, scattering like blossoms on a day of wind. The jewel-lighted corridors stretched thinner and thinner as words went out into the world…

For a magic, hopeful instant, it seemed everything would be fixed.

Grrrr walked free and became Jerry of old, clumsy and awkwardly shy, but daisy-eyed with love. Dilyéhé took his hand and they walked into a world where he never fell and broke his head. They came down from a mountain top together, had children as the years rolled slowly by, and put a ketchup-red and mustard-yellow climbing set in their yard. But that world blurred, tilted sideways, spilling Jerry back into that hateful meeting room.

Carmen Pilar Ortega, lost for so long in the endless corridors, heard all at once a steady voice. Grandbanks! How long had he been calling to her? Well silly her, time had no meaning here and he was a hundred years and more ago. But she heard him at last, calling her to a place she had always longed to go. But when she tried to hear him more clearly, she spilled into another empty passage and his voice was gone.

The ice demon surged to shaggy lumpy feet, wheezing like dust inside a vacuum cleaner. Claws raised, ready to grab, to steal, to get his Grrrr back at any cost, he blocked the healing of the world.

Giles groaned. Why had he thought gentle Jasmine could save everything?

She’d come so close.

But of course the demon could not be ignored. Of course the answer couldn’t come as smoothly as that.

The story around him was only a thin cloak of dream. He felt the reactions of the audience who watched, who listened. Through them he felt the reactions of people everywhere. And yes, they wanted their blue sky back, so badly they could cry for the desire.

But they couldn’t be satisfied with “she said it and it was so.”

Giles would have to make some sacrifice himself before they would believe in an ending where the world was healed and restored. And until they believed, it could not be so.

Jerry stood like a child in the corner, unable to walk away. Killington, calm as radioactive mist, walked slowly towards them all. The guards, not knowing what else to do, walked with him to back up his play.

Giles felt a touch. Tiffany, gloved again, blinking as the vision of Jasmine was lost, placed a trembling hand on his elbow. What an effort it was for her to touch him, even gloved, without reaching through him for Mary!

Her body shook as she controlled herself and still her power loomed like thunderclouds.

Killington stretched out a stocky arm, muttering, “What do you know of a father’s feelings, eh?” Ghostly beside Jerry, stood Dilyéhé, old and young at once, longing and desperate, wanting off the endless loop.

Giles shook his head in frustration. If he stood now on a stage telling about this, he must have escaped, must have fixed things. If only he could see what had happened so he could make it happen now!

Jerry had patted him on the back just before he walked onto the stage, he remembered that too. Jerry would make it. Had he been alone or had Dilyéhé been with him?

Tiffany had not been there but someone else had…

His mother, Mary Hammond, had stood there, real as a sharply colored video and yet transparent, a ghost with a desperately sad face.

She looked uncertain and unhappy, as if she were a character in a story where something terrible had just happened.

A thought came to him and he batted it away.

The thought returned. He refused to look at it. He couldn’t do that, he couldn’t.

His heart hammered as he thought of the sacrifice that might truly save the day.