It does no good to hide these things. Best just to come out and say it: we failed to publish last week and the week before that. That would be two weeks in all.
 
We are proud to say that our readers bore those difficult days with magnificent stoicism, even, in many cases, outright silence. And although the torrent of outraged protest--had there been one--was perversely gratifying, we could not but feel we had let the side down.
 
But as you will see we had little choice, and toward that understanding we offer the following narrative in mitigation.
 
In brief we spent the past two weeks moving our offices, or, more accurately, chasing our offices, inasmuch as one of hurricane Isabel's more salient effects was the sudden relocation of Chez W to a new part of the city. This came as a surprise. For a few giddy moments your W Team was whirling through the skies of Washington like a Frisbee, spinning faster than a White House Press Secretary.
 
Unfortunately those few moments of exhilaration were capped by tragedy. For we descended squarely upon a noted National Security Adviser who through miscalculation or mischance had chosen that moment to come under our rapidly narrowing shadow.
 
Immediately upon touchdown we sped too late to the rescue, for a goodly portion of the luckless civil servant was now permanently fused with our basement. Her only visible residua were the red and white stripey stockings bunched about her little brown legs and tiny brown toes, which were even now curling back in rigor--giving what remained the appearance of candy canes stuck to the front porch.
 
But the ruby slippers were the biggest problem.
 
Hardly had the coroner pronounced the victim Most Sincerely Dead, when the sky darkened and over our heads there suddenly appeared a thick bilious green cloud, from within the cumulus depths of which we could hear loud clanking noises. These were followed by the abrupt issuance of a rope, down which shinnied a funereally clothed figure who upon alighting was revealed to be Tom DeLay, known to us variously as the Bugman, the Exterminator and the Terror of Sugarland, Texas.
 
The ex machina Congressman's dramatic manifestation was hardly more strange than his attire, which flaunted a raven black claw hammer coat and a wide-brimmed black parson's hat.
 
Facing us in arctic silence, the legendary legislator pointed a gnarled and warty finger at Mrs. Feeny's feet, and demanded possession of the crimson footwear that the old lady had slipped on in a moment of distraction.
 
As the faithful reader will know, demanding anything of Mrs. Feeny is usually not the most efficacious approach to complete satisfaction. In terms marvelous for their clarity, the old wombat encouraged the Majority Whip to seek his slippers in a location where one would not ordinarily expect to find them.
 
She also suggested several new uses to which they might be put.
 
Mr. DeLay, not the man for disappointment, took her reply with exceeding ill grace and added threat to demand. In turn the resolute crone responded with increasingly inventive suggestions, and for a few warm moments that is how the conversation grew.
 
When his fulmination had peaked, the irascible lawmaker did the Dance of the Mad Ministers: laying a finger alongside his nose, whirling first on one leg, then the other, then stomping each foot like an amok sumo.
 
So terrifying was this display that we made to flee, lock, stock and Feeny. But before we could do so a phalanx of Flying Furry Monkey Men scooped us up in their fuzzy arms and bore us away into the sky until we were landed in the courtyard of a gray and dingy castle in the mountains.
 
Immediately upon arrival, the Flying Furry Monkey Men brought us before the king: a Tin Lion stuffed with Straw. This was a creature more outlandish than imposing, for his metal skin was pitted with rust and badly jointed, and his stuffing leaked from every aperture. What was more he appeared wholly without pity, valor or wit, and, amazingly, seemed not to miss these attributes.
 
The king was attended by nine magistrates who, though they had appointed him to this high office, now appeared to have little or no interest in the results of their work, preferring instead to wrangle endlessly among themselves over abstruse points of philosophy and esoteric readings of the law.
 
In addition to the distracted jurists the royal court comprised a body of 535 privileged individuals approximately divided into two groups: the one without compassion and the other without courage.
 
Chief among the former was the still furious Mr. DeLay, who now joined the king in demanding the slippers. It seems the scarlet pumps were powerful talismans that the now expired Security Advisor had stolen from the warrior Baron, Von Rum-Tum, who had stolen them from the Tin Lion Stuffed with Straw, who had himself stolen them from someone else, and so on and so on, down a chain of arguable provenance.
 
When Feeny again refused to part with the contested casuals, the king flew into a wonderful rage, accusing her of sabot-age, and immediately doing the Dance of the Mad Ministers. Soon the entire court was doing the Dance, wildly whirling and stomping until the very floor shook with the force of their bludgeoning feet. And the walls--which only then did we notice were built of stones with tiny faces open-mouthed in screaming terror--began to fall away, and we could see the open sky, darkened by thousands of Flying Furry Monkey Men issuing from the top of a black tower in the midst of the rubble.
 
Each of these creatures bore an infernal device intended to wreak havoc on some unsuspecting populace somewhere in the world.
 
And they were flying off in all directions.
 
In a frantic effort to save ourselves we fled down the one hallway that had not yet crumbled. The passage was narrow, and our ears rang with the screaming of the stones we sped past. In the distance we saw a light we at first thought to be an exit, but which turned out to be the tall and imposing figure of a beautiful crowned woman clad in a flowing white robe, carrying a large book in one arm, and in the other a lamp by which to read it.
 
The lamp was flickering.
 
She looked down at us and asked where we were going. We told her we wanted like anything to get the heck out of there, and did she know our way home?
 
She smiled and said, "of course. You can go home any time you like. You always could. You have only to use the Words of Power--but you must use them earnestly." Then bending over, she whispered into Feeny's ear. After which Feeny smiled and told us the Words, and we said them together as Feeny clicked her heels:
 
"The land of the free and the home of the brave.
"The land of the free and the home of the brave.
"The land of the free and the home of the brave!"
 
On the third repetition everything around us shimmered and was instantly replaced by our own familiar walls. And then we understood that we had always been home.
 
And that it had not been a dream.