But how to locate McCavity? How could such a magnificence remain hidden? She seemed so mysterious a force — larger than life, though not larger than Maharajah.

What-the-Dickens longed to give her Maharajah’s tooth. He could picture how it would happen. She would accept it, shyly tucking her furry chin into her breast. All at once, she would understand how devoted he was. She would let him be her pet, and their life together would begin. Perhaps she would wear the tooth on a string around her neck as a sign of his devotion.

Company. An end to loneliness. Bliss.

But where was she?

While he waited for inspiration — something like the shooting star, but this time something he could decipher — he might as well locate a string, too. So he could string the tiger tooth on it. Where did they keep string around here?

He thought back on his adventures since birth: the tin cabin in which he’d started his life. The appearance of McCavity and her human. The family of rust-throated grissets. The old woman in her bed —

— and then he remembered the pile of books on the floor. It had been tied with cord.

I can go back there and take a length of that, he thought.

So the skibberee made his way across the road. Luckily, there was little nighttime traffic, so he avoided becoming roadkill.

He picked out a path through a meadow. Then he clumped up the slope of an old apple orchard let lapse into gnarly uselessness. In time — but still in the middle of the night, not the daytime yet — he got back to the ramshackle house from where he’d set out.

He stood at the base of the chimneystack and looked up all the way to the top. He felt exhausted even before he started.

Then he remembered the hovering. Could he launch himself? Could he use these flimsy attachments as wings? Could he slip the surly bonds of earth and leap tall buildings in a single bound?

He said, “Here goes nothing,” really hoping it would turn out to be something.

And it did. Not something exactly elegant. It wasn’t ballet in the air. But it was flying.

Luckily, his sense of direction was better than the mama grisset’s. He achieved the old woman’s windowsill and peered in. The window was open a few inches, so he stooped low and entered.

The feisty battle-ax was snoring softly. A half bottle of gin stood on the bedside table. Beside the gin bottle was a drinking glass, and in the glass a set of dentures hung suspended in water.

What-the-Dickens forgot about his hope for a piece of string. What a treasure to behold! Rank upon rank of gorgeous, full-grown pearly-browns! They were hooked and latched together somehow, a dental fringe hinged in the back and hovering slightly opened, like the smile of the Cheshire Cat without the Cat.

“I want those teeth,” said What-the-Dickens.

“Eh? Whazzat?” mumbled the old woman, waking.

“The teeth,” said What-the-Dickens, in transports. “May I have them?”

“I give nuzzing for nuzzing,” said the old woman. Her words came out mushy and mumbly at first. “Who’s speaking? Is that the voice of God? What do you want my false choppers for, God? You’ve already taken my real ones home to your bosom. Can’t you leave me the spares?”

“I want the teeth,” said What-the-Dickens.

“Give me a sign that it’s God, and we’ll talk,” said the old woman. “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. Darn, my glasses are still on the mantelpiece. Where’s that family of mine?” She took her cane and stamped it on the floor. “Hey! God is chatting me up, or some agent of heaven, but how can I tell without my specs? Someone! Yoo-hoo! Darlings! Layabouts and slugabeds! Rise and shine!”

“Shh,” he said. “You’ll wake them up.”

“So they should sleep when I’m having a vision?” she snapped. “Where are you, anyway?”

What-the-Dickens hovered behind her headboard, where he could be heard but not seen. “May I have your teeth, since you’ve abandoned them?”

“I use them in the morning to worry my oatmeal mush to death,” she replied. “Then I take them out of my mouth and scare my grandson. I’m not giving them up for love nor money. How much are you offering?”

“Money?” The skibberee didn’t know about money yet, and he wasn’t that sure about love, either.

“Cold hard cash. What’s your best offer? Look, angel visitor, make yourself seen, or at least hand me my glasses, will you?”

What-the-Dickens fell silent. If he stayed quiet, maybe she’d fall asleep again. Then he could snatch the dentures. A far better present for McCavity than a tiger molar. No?

“Where’d you go?” she said suddenly. “Invisible guest, where are you?”

He stayed as still as he could.

“You’ve gone,” she concluded, sinking back against her pillow. “Gone, gone. It was all my imagination. I was dreaming of companionship, like in the old days before I began to terrify my relatives with the force of my character. But they insist on sleeping all night long, every single night of the year, and what do they bring me for company? Nothing but books!”

She waved her cane in the air. The skibberee remembered his original goal. Looking about, he saw that the room was crowded with books. Books on the floor, books fallen under the bed, books on the mantelpiece, books on the dresser and on the seat of the rocker.

“They bring me presents. Fat comfort! Books! What good are books? Look at this tripe!” She lunged for a paperback volume and whipped it open, and stabbed a page with a bony finger. “‘At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all.’ This is supposed to cheer up an old sinner? I don’t think so. It’s all rubbish tied with a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, for crying out loud.”

She tossed the book aside. What-the-Dickens had to duck to avoid a concussion. “All alone, with nothing to do but read, read, read till the cows come home. And we haven’t even had any cows around here for years, not since we sold the back acres so the feds could put up that blasted highway cloverleaf.” She honked into a handkerchief. Her weeping was silly but her sorrow was real.

What-the-Dickens took advantage of her distress. Could he could get those dentures yet?

He trilled his wings and settled on the night table. While her shoulders were turned, he grabbed at the mighty teeth by their sticky artificial gums.

He was enthralled. Oh, what a jackpot!

“Gotcha,” she said, and snatched the teeth away from him with one hand, while she upended the glass of stinky water right over him with the other. “Oh, what a jackpot!”

Caged in a glass cylinder, and his wings too drenched even to flap. How embarrassing. How wet.

“I knew you were still around somewhere,” she said. She fit the teeth into her mouth. They seemed too big for her face and they broadened her smile into a leer. “So. The Angel of Death comes in on little cat feet, eh? Well, I’m gunning for a hundred and I’ve got some months to go yet. So listen up. I’m not leaving this vale of tears till I’ve had my cake and my birthday wish. And a decent present would be a welcome bonus. Anything but books.”

He couldn’t breathe. He pounded against the glass.

“Frantic little busybody, ain’t you?” she observed. She came close and her eyes, through the glass, were damp and milky and smart. “Somehow I thought they’d send somebody a bit more senior to carry me off. Well, not my problem. What’re you buzzing about in there for, fellow?”

“Let me out,” he said. “You’ve made a mistake. Or I’ve made a mistake. This is a mistake.” But could she hear him? He was behind glass, and she seemed deaf to his pleas.

“I am so lonely up here with nothing but books. You can be my pet,” she said decisively. She tapped a crooked finger with a long ragged nail against the side of the tumbler.

“Please,” he said. “I thought I wanted to be a pet. But I don’t. I can’t breathe in here.” He lurched this way and that, his webwings smacking the glass, his feet kicking at it. “Let me out. I don’t want your teeth anymore. I’ll leave you your string. Let me go. Please, old lady — please!”

“Stop fluttering so — you’re making me seasick. Maybe you’re bored?” she asked. “Here’s a book. I’ll put it next to you. I’ll turn pages on this book once a day. It’s only 567 pages. You’ll be occupied, and I’ll reach a hundred and the president will write me a letter.”

Her fingers fumbled, grabbing the crinkly cellophane slipcover over a hardcover volume from the public library. “The little ones will like to see this gorgeous moth,” she said, more to herself than to the skibberee. For a moment her voice was less theatrical, more internal. “I’ll call them up to see my catch, and they’ll come to visit their granny at last. What a stroke of luck for me! I’m too old and dull for them, but now I have this huge lovely insect as bait. I’ll tell them it was a present from Mother Nature. Maybe they’ll stay a while and keep me company. A moth who reads! Little ones will believe anything.”

She opened the book to the title page. One Hundred Years of Solitude. She stood the book open, two angled walls of white pages kept from riffing shut by the water glass set between them.

He backed away in horror. Since there was water on the nightstand, the drinking glass slid a quarter inch on its slickness.

Aha.

In just a moment, What-the-Dickens managed to push the drinking glass more than an inch off the rim of the bedside table. Hidden from her prying eyes by the opened novel, What-the-Dickens popped out of the overturned glass like a rabbit sneaking out of the false bottom of a magician’s hat.

He left her there, still giddy with glee at having trapped either the Fairy of Death or an oversized moth. He left her teeth there. He left the twine there.

What-the-Dickens reached the fresh air. He had no present for McCavity, but at least he’d escaped becoming a present himself.