memories of Jerry Bledsoe, and Jerry Bledsoe’s wife. Jerry
Bledsoe, whom he had killed, and Nita Bledsoe, who should
have been Lily Cavanaugh . . . Lily, who had slapped him so hard his nose bled the one time when, drunk, he had tried to touch her.
Fire sang out—green-blue fire spanning out from the cheap-
jack barrel of the tin key. It arrowed out at the Talisman, struck it, spread over it, turning it into a burning sun. Every color was there for a moment . . . for a moment every world was there. Then it was gone.
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The Talisman swallowed the fire from Morgan’s key.
Ate it whole.
Darkness came back. Jack’s feet slid out from under him
and he sat down with a thud on Speedy Parker’s limply
splayed calves. Speedy made a grunting noise and twitched.
There was a two-second lag when everything held
static . . . and then fire suddenly blew back out of the Talisman in a flood. Jack’s eyes opened wide in spite of his frantic, tortured thought
(it’ll blind you! Jack! it’ll)
and the altered geography of Point Venuti was lit up as if
the God of All Universes had bent forward to snap a picture.
Jack saw the Agincourt, slumped and half-destroyed; he saw
the collapsed Highlands that were now the Lowlands; he saw
Richard on his back; he saw Speedy lying on his belly with
his face turned to one side. Speedy was smiling.
Then Morgan Sloat was driven backward and enveloped in
a field of fire from his own key—fire that had been absorbed inside the Talisman as the flashes of light from Sunlight Gardener’s telescopic sight had been absorbed—and which was
returned to him a thousandfold.
A hole opened between the worlds—a hole the size of the
tunnel leading into Oatley—and Jack saw Sloat, his handsome brown suit burning, one skeletal, tallowy hand still clutching the key, driven through that hole. Sloat’s eyes were boiling in their sockets, but they were wide . . . they were aware.
And as he passed, Jack saw him change—saw the cloak
appear like the wings of a bat that has swooped through the flame of a torch, saw his burning boots, his burning hair. Saw the key become a thing like a miniature lightning-rod.
Saw . . . daylight!
8
It came back in a flood. Jack rolled away from it on the snowy beach, dazzled. In his ears—ears deep inside his head—he
heard Morgan Sloat’s dying scream as he was driven back
through all the worlds that were, into oblivion.
“Jack?” Richard was sitting up woozily, holding his head.
“Jack, what happened? I think I fell down the stadium steps.”
Speedy was twitching in the snow, and now he did a sort of
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girl’s pushup and looked toward Jack. His eyes were ex-
hausted . . . but his face was clear of blemishes.
“Good job, Jack,” he said, and grinned. “Good—” He fell
partway forward again, panting.
Rainbow, Jack thought woozily. He stood up and then fell down again. Freezing snow coated his face and then began to melt like tears. He pushed himself to his knees, then stood up again. The field of his vision was filled with spots . . . but he saw the enormous burned swatch in the snow where Morgan
had stood. It tailed away like a teardrop.
“Rainbow!” Jack Sawyer shouted, and raised his hands to the sky, weeping and laughing. “Rainbow! Rainbow!”
He went to the Talisman, and picked it up, still weeping.
He took it to Richard Sloat, who had been Rushton; to
Speedy Parker, who was what he was.
He healed them.
Rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
46
Another Journey
1
He healed them, but he was never able to recall exactly how that had gone, or any of the specific details—for a while the Talisman had blazed and sung in his hands, and he had the
vaguest possible memory of its fire’s actually seeming to flow out over them until they glowed in a bath of light. That was all he could bring back.
At the end of it, the glorious light in the Talisman
faded . . . faded . . . went out.
Jack, thinking of his mother, uttered a hoarse, wailing cry.
Speedy staggered over to him through the melting snow
and put an arm around Jack’s shoulders.
“It be back, Travellin Jack,” Speedy said. He smiled, but he looked twice as tired as Jack. Speedy had been healed . . . but
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he was still not well. This world is killing him, Jack thought dimly. At least, it’s killing the part of him that’s Speedy Parker. The Talisman healed him . . . but he is still dying.
“You did for it,” Speedy said, “and you wanna believe that it’s gonna do for you. Don’t worry. Come on over here, Jack.
Come on over to where your frien’ be layin.”
Jack did. Richard was sleeping in the melting snow. That
horrid loose flap of skin was gone, but there was a long white streak of scalp showing in his hair now—a streak of scalp
from which no hair would ever grow.
“Take his han’.”
“Why? What for?”
“We’re gonna flip.”
Jack looked at Speedy questioningly, but Speedy offered
no explanation. He only nodded, as if to say Yes; you heard me right.
Well, Jack thought, I trusted him this far—
He reached down and took Richard’s hand. Speedy held
Jack’s other hand.
With hardly a tug at all, the three of them went over.
2
It was as Jack had intuited—the figure standing beside him over here, on this black sand that was stitched everywhere by Morgan of Orris’s dragging foot, looked hale and hearty and healthy.
Jack stared with awe—and some unease—at this stranger
who looked a bit like Speedy Parker’s younger brother.
“Speedy—Mr. Parkus, I mean—what are you—”
“You boys need rest,” Parkus said. “You for sure, this other young squire even more. He came closer to dying than anyone will ever know but himself . . . and I don’t think he’s the type to do much admitting, even to himself.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “You got that right.”
“He’ll rest better over here,” Parkus told Jack, and struck off up the beach, away from the castle, carrying Richard. Jack stumbled along as best he could, but gradually found himself falling behind. He was quickly out of breath, his legs rubbery.
His head ached with reaction from the final battle—shock
hangover, he supposed.
“Why . . . where . . .” That was all he could pant. He held
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the Talisman against his chest. It was dull now, its exterior sooty and opaque and uninteresting.
“Just up a little way,” Parkus said. “You and your friend
don’t want to rest where he was, do you?”
And, exhausted as he was, Jack shook his head.
Parkus glanced back over his shoulder, then looked sadly
at Jack.
“It stinks of his evil back there,” he said, “and it stinks of your world, Jack.
“To me, they smell too much alike for comfort.”
He set off again, Richard in his arms.
3
Forty yards up the beach he stopped. Here the black sand had moderated to a lighter color—not white, but a medium gray.
Parkus set Richard down gently. Jack sprawled beside him.
The sand was warm—blessedly warm. No snow here.
Parkus sat beside him, cross-legged.
“You’re going to have a sleep now,” he said. “Might be to-
morrow before you wake up. Won’t anybody bother you, if so.
Take a look.”
Parkus waved his arm toward the place where Point Venuti
had been in the American Territories. Jack first saw the black castle, one entire side of it crumbled and burst, as if there had been a tremendous explosion inside. Now the castle looked
almost pedestrian. Its menace was burnt out, its illicit treasure borne away. It was only stones piled up in patterns.
Looking farther, Jack saw that the earthquake had not been
so violent over here—and there had been less to destroy. He saw a few overturned huts that looked as if they had been
built mostly of driftwood; he saw a number of burst coaches that might or might not have been Cadillacs back in the
American Territories; here and there he could see a fallen, shaggy body.
“Those who were here and survived have now gone,”
Parkus said. “They know what has happened, they know Orris
is dead, and they’ll not trouble you more. The evil that was here has gone. Do you know that? Can you feel it?”
“Yes,” Jack whispered. “But . . . Mr. Parkus . . . you’re
not . . . not . . .”
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“Going? Yes. Very soon. You and your friend are going to
have a good sleep, but you and I must have a bit of a talk first.