I started across the bar toward Luke’s sprawled form. The Caterpillar was disassembling his hookah, and I saw that his mushroom was tilted at an odd angle. The White Rabbit beat it down a hole to the rear, and I head Humpty muttering curses as he swayed atop the bar stool he had just succeeded in mounting.

I saluted the gentleman with the palette as I approached.

“Sorry to disturb you,” I said. “But believe me, this is for the better.”

I raised Luke’s limp form and slung him over my shoulder. A flock of playing cards flew by me. I dew away from them in their rapid passage.

“Goodness! It’s frightened the Jabberwock!” the man remarked, looking past me.

“What has?” I asked, not really certain that I wished to know.

“That,” he answered, gesturing toward the front of the bar.

I looked and I staggered back and I didn’t blame the Jabberwock a bit.

It was a twelve-foot Fire Angel that had just entered russet-colored, with wings like stained-glass windows and, along with intimations of mortality, it brought me recollections of a praying mantis, with a spiked collar and thornlike claws protruding through its short fur at every suggestion of an angle. One of these, in fact, caught on and unhinged a swinging door as it came inside. It was a Chaos beast — rare, deadly, and, highly intelligent. I hadn’t seen one in years, and I’d no desire to see one now; also, I’d no doubt that I was the reason it was here. For a moment I regretted having wasted my cardiac arrest spell on a mere Bandersnatch — until I recalled that Fire Angels have three hearts. I glanced quickly about as it spied me, gave voice to a brief hunting wail, and advanced.

“I’d like to have had some time to speak with you,” I told the artist. “I like your work. Unfortunately — ”

“I understand.”

“So long.”

“Good luck.”

I stepped down into the rabbit hole and ran, bent far forward because of the low overhead.