”No time. It’s the next few minutes or nothing. Three people we got to worry about—”
”The freaks!”
”Three people, Will. Number one, Jim, number two, Mr. Cooger frying in his Electric Chair. Niunber three, Mr. Dark and his skinful of souls. Save one, kick the other two to hell and gone. Then I think the freaks go, too. You ready, Will?”
Will eyed the door, the tents, the dark, the sky with new light paling it.
”God bless the moon.”
Hands tight together, they stepped out the door.
As if to greet them, the wind flung up and down all the tent canvases in a great prehistoric thunder-kite display of leprous wings.
51
They ran in urine smell of shadow, they ran in clean ice smell of moon.
The calliope steam-throb whispered, tatted, trilled.
The music! thought Will, is it running backward or forward?
”Which way?” Dad whispered.
”Through here!” Will pointed.
A hundred yards off, beyond a foothill of tents, there was a flare of blue light, sparks jumped up and fell away, then dark again.
Mr. Electrico! Thought Will. They’re trying to move him, sure! Get him to the merry-go-round, kill or cure! And if they cure him, then, oh gosh, then, it’s angry him and angry Illustrated Man against just Dad and me! And Jim? Well, where was Jim? This way one day, that way the next, and … tonight? Whose side would he wind up on? Ours! Old friend Jim! Ours, of course! But Will trembled. Did friends last forever, then? For eternity, could they be counted to a warm, round, and handsome sum?
Will glanced left.
The Dwarf stood half enfolded by tent flaps, waiting motionless.
”Dad, look,” cried Will, softly. “And there—the Skeleton.”
Further over, the tall man, the man all marble bone and Egyptian papyrus stood like a dead tree.
”The freaks—why don’t they stop us?”
”Scared.”
”Of us?!”
Will’s father crouched and squinted out from around an empty cage.
”They’re walking wounded, anyway. They saw what happened to the Witch. That’s the only answer. Look at them.”
And there they stood, like uprights, like tent poles spotted all through the meadow grounds, hiding in shadow, waiting. For what? Will swallowed, hard. Maybe not hiding at all, but spread out for the running fight to come. At the right time, Mr. Dark would yell and they”d just circle in. But the time wasn’t right. Mr. Dark was busy. When he”d done what must be done, then he”d give that yell. So? So, thought Will, we got to see he never yells at all.
Will’s feet slithered in the grass.
Will’s father moved ahead.
The freaks watched with moon-glass eyes as they passed.
The calliope changed. It whistled sadly, sweetly, around a curve of tents, around a riverflow of darkness.
It’s going ahead! thought Will. Yes! It was going backward. But now it stopped and started again, and this time forward! What’s Mr. Dark up to?
”Jim!” Will burst out.
”Sh!” Dad shook him.
But the name had tumbled from his mouth only because he heard the calliope summing the golden years ahead, felt Jim isolate somewhere, pulled by warm gravities, swung by sunrise notes, wondering what it could be like to stand sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years tall, and then, oh then, nineteen and, most incredible! —twenty! The great wind of time blew in the brass pipes, a fine, a jolly, a summer tune, promising everything and even Will, hearing, began to run toward the music that grew up like a peach tree full of sun-ripe fruit—
No! he thought.
And instead made his feet step to his own fear, jump to his own tune, a hum cramped back by throat, held fast by lungs, which shook the bones of his head and drowned the calliope away.
”There,” said Dad softly.
And between the tents, ahead, in transit, they saw a grotesque parade. Like a dark sultan in a palanquin, a half-familiar figure rode a chair borne on the shoulders of assorted sizes and shapes of darkness.
At Dad’s cry, the parade jolted, then broke into a run!
”Mr. Electrico!” said Will.
They’re taking him to the carousel!
The parade vanished.
A tent lay between them.