The Talisman Read online

  "But that ain't the only reason she come here, was it?"

  "No," Jack said in a low voice. "I think . . . she came here to die." His voice rose impossibly on the last word, making a squeak like an unoiled hinge.

  "Maybe," Speedy said, looking at Jack steadily. "And maybe you here to save her. Her . . . and a woman just like her."

  "Who?" Jack said through numb lips. He knew who. He didn't know her name, but he knew who.

  "The Queen," Speedy said. "Her name is Laura DeLoessian, and she is the Queen of the Territories."

  2

  "Help me," Speedy grunted. "Catch ole Silver Lady right under the tail. You be takin' liberties with the Lady, but I guess she ain't gonna mind if you're helpin me get her back where she belong."

  "Is that what you call her? Silver Lady?"

  "Yeah bob," Speedy said, grinning, showing perhaps a dozen teeth, top and bottom. "All carousel horses is named, don't you know that? Catch on. Travellin Jack!"

  Jack reached under the white horse's wooden tail and locked his fingers together. Grunting, Speedy wrapped his big brown hands around the Lady's forelegs. Together they carried the wooden horse over to the canted dish of the carousel, the pole pointing down, its far end sinister with layers of Quaker State oil.

  "Little to the left . . ." Speedy gasped. "Yeah . . . now peg her, Travellin Jack! Peg her down good!"

  They seated the pole and then stood back, Jack panting, Speedy grinning and gasping wheezily. The black man armed sweat from his brow and then turned his grin on Jack.

  "My, ain't we cool?"

  "If you say so," Jack answered, smiling.

  "I say so! Oh yes!" Speedy reached into his back pocket and pulled out the dark green pint bottle. He unscrewed the cap, drank--and for a moment Jack felt a weird certainty: he could see through Speedy. Speedy had become transparent, as ghostly as one of the spirits on the Topper show, which they showed on one of the indy stations out in L.A. Speedy was disappearing. Disappearing, Jack thought, or going someplace else? But that was another nutty thought; it made no sense at all.

  Then Speedy was as solid as ever. It had just been a trick his eyes had played, a momentary--

  No. No it wasn't. For just a second he almost wasn't here!

  --hallucination.

  Speedy was looking shrewdly at him. He started to hold the bottle out to Jack, then shook his head a little. He recapped it instead, and then slid it into his back pocket again. He turned to study the Silver Lady, back in her place on the carousel, now needing only to have her post bolted securely into place. He was smiling. "We just as cool as we can be, Travellin Jack."

  "Speedy--"

  "All of em is named," Speedy said, walking slowly around the canted dish of the carousel, his footfalls echoing in the high building. Overhead, in the shadowy crisscross of the beams, a few barnswallows cooed softly. Jack followed him. "Silver Lady . . . Midnight . . . this here roan is Scout . . . this mare's Ella Speed."

  The black man threw back his head and sang, startling the barnswallows into flight:

  " 'Ella Speed was havin her lovin fun . . . let me tell you what old Bill Martin done. . . .' Hoo! Look at em fly!" He laughed . . . but when he turned to Jack, he was serious again. "You like to take a shot at savin your mother's life, Jack? Hers, and the life of that other woman I tole you about?"

  "I . . ." . . . don't know how, he meant to say, but a voice inside--a voice which came from that same previously locked room from which the memory of the two men and the attempted kidnapping had come that morning--rose up powerfully: You do know! You might need Speedy to get you started, but you do know, Jack. You do.

  He knew that voice so very well. It was his father's voice.

  "I will if you tell me how," he said, his voice rising and falling unevenly.

  Speedy crossed to the room's far wall--a great circular shape made of narrow slatted boards, painted with a primitive but wildly energetic mural of dashing horses. To Jack, the wall looked like the pull-down lid of his father's rolltop desk (and that desk had been in Morgan Sloat's office the last time Jack and his mother had been there, he suddenly remembered--the thought brought a thin, milky anger with it).

  Speedy pulled out a gigantic ring of keys, picked thoughtfully through them, found the one he wanted, and turned it in a padlock. He pulled the lock out of the hasp, clicked it shut, and dropped it into one of his breast pockets. Then he shoved the entire wall back on its track. Gorgeously bright sunlight poured in, making Jack narrow his eyes. Water ripples danced benignly across the ceiling. They were looking at the magnificent sea-view the riders of the Arcadia Funworld Carousel got each time Silver Lady and Midnight and Scout carried them past the east side of the round carousel building. A light sea-breeze pushed Jack's hair back from his forehead.

  "Best to have sunlight if we're gonna talk about this," Speedy said. "Come on over here, Travellin Jack, and I'll tell you what I can . . . which ain't all I know. God forbid you should ever have to get all of that."

  3

  Speedy talked in his soft voice--it was as mellow and soothing to Jack as leather that has been well broken in. Jack listened, sometimes frowning, sometimes gaping.

  "You know those things you call the Daydreams?"

  Jack nodded.

  "Those things ain't dreams, Travellin Jack. Not daydreams, not nightdreams, either. That place is a real place. Real enough, anyway. It's a lot different from here, but it's real."

  "Speedy, my mom says--"

  "Never mind that right now. She don't know about the Territories . . . but, in a way, she do know about them. Because your daddy, he knew. And this other man--"

  "Morgan Sloat?"

  "Yeah, I reckon. He knows too." Then, cryptically, Speedy added, "I know who he is over there, too. Don't I! Whooo!"

  "The picture in your office . . . not Africa?"

  "Not Africa."

  "Not a trick?"

  "Not a trick."

  "And my father went to this place?" he asked, but his heart already knew the answer--it was an answer that clarified too many things not to be true. But, true or not, Jack wasn't sure how much of it he wanted to believe. Magic lands? Sick queens? It made him uneasy. It made him uneasy about his mind. Hadn't his mother told him over and over again when he was small that he shouldn't confuse his Daydreaming with what was really real? She had been very stern about that, and she had frightened Jack a little. Perhaps, he thought now, she had been frightened herself. Could she have lived with Jack's father for so long and not known something? Jack didn't think so. Maybe, he thought, she didn't know very much . . . just enough to scare her.

  Going nuts. That's what she was talking about. People who couldn't tell the difference between real things and make-believe were going nuts.

  But his father had known a different truth, hadn't he? Yes. He and Morgan Sloat.

  They have magic like we have physics, right?

  "Your father went often, yes. And this other man, Groat--"

  "Sloat."

  "Yeah-bob! Him. He went, too. Only your dad, Jacky, he went to see and learn. The other fella, he just went to plunder him out a fortune."

  "Did Morgan Sloat kill my Uncle Tommy?" Jack asked.

  "Don't know nuthin bout that. You just listen to me, Travellin Jack. Because time is short. If you really think this fellow Sloat is gonna turn up here--"

  "He sounded awful mad," Jack said. Just thinking about Uncle Morgan showing up in Arcadia Beach made him feel nervous.

  "--then time is shorter than ever. Because maybe he wouldn't mind so bad if your mother died. And his Twinner is sure hopin that Queen Laura dies."

  "Twinner?"

  "There's people in this world have got Twinners in the Territories," Speedy said. "Not many, because there's a lot less people over there--maybe only one for every hundred thousand over here. But Twinners can go back and forth the easiest."

  "This Queen . . . she's my mother's . . . her Twinner?"

  "Yeah, seems like she is."


  "But my mother never--?"

  "No. She never has. No reason."

  "My father had a . . . a Twinner?"

  "Yes indeed he did. A fine man."

  Jack wet his lips--what a crazy conversation this was! Twinners and Territories! "When my father died over here, did his Twinner die over there?"

  "Yeah. Not zackly the same time, but almost."

  "Speedy?"

  "What?"

  "Have I got a Twinner? In the Territories?"

  And Speedy looked at him so seriously that Jack felt a deep chill go up his back. "Not you, son. There's only one of you. You special. And this fella Smoot--"

  "Sloat," Jack said, smiling a little.

  "--yeah, whatever, he knows it. That be one of the reasons he be coming up here soon. And one of the reasons you got to get movin."

  "Why?" Jack burst out. "What good can I do if it's cancer? If it's cancer and she's here instead of in some clinic, it's because there's no way, if she's here, see, it means--" The tears threatened again and he swallowed them back frantically. "It means it must be all through her."

  All through her. Yes. That was another truth his heart knew: the truth of her accelerating weight-loss, the truth of the brown shadows under her eyes. All through her, but please God, hey, God, please, man, she's my mother--

  "I mean," he finished in a thick voice, "what good is that Daydream place going to do?"

  "I think we had enough jaw-chin for now," Speedy said. "Just believe this here, Travellin Jack: I'd never tell you you ought to go if you couldn't do her some good."

  "But--"

  "Get quiet, Travellin Jack. Can't talk no more till I show you some of what I mean. Wouldn't do no good. Come on."

  Speedy put an arm around Jack's shoulders and led him around the carousel dish. They went out the door together and walked down one of the amusement park's deserted byways. On their left was the Demon Dodgem Cars building, now boarded and shuttered. On their right was a series of booths: Pitch Til U Win, Famous Pier Pizza & Dough-Boys, the Rimfire Shooting Gallery, also boarded up (faded wild animals pranced across the boards--lions and tigers and bears, o my).

  They reached the wide main street, which was called Boardwalk Avenue in vague imitation of Atlantic City--Arcadia Funworld had a pier, but no real boardwalk. The arcade building was now a hundred yards down to their left and the arch marking the entrance to Arcadia Funworld about two hundred yards down to their right. Jack could hear the steady, grinding thunder of the breaking waves, the lonely cries of the gulls.

  He looked at Speedy, meaning to ask him what now, what next, could he mean any of it or was it a cruel joke . . . but he said none of those things. Speedy was holding out the green glass bottle.

  "That--" Jack began.

  "Takes you there," Speedy said. "Lot of people who visit over there don't need nothin like this, but you ain't been there in a while, have you, Jacky?"

  "No." When had he last closed his eyes in this world and opened them in the magic world of the Daydreams, that world with its rich, vital smells and its deep, transparent sky? Last year? No. Further back than that . . . California . . . after his father had died. He would have been about . . .

  Jack's eyes widened. Nine years old? That long? Three years?

  It was frightening to think how quietly, how unobtrusively, those dreams, sometimes sweet, sometimes darkly unsettling, had slipped away--as if a large part of his imagination had died painlessly and unannounced.

  He took the bottle from Speedy quickly, almost dropping it. He felt a little panicky. Some of the Daydreams had been disturbing, yes, and his mother's carefully worded admonitions not to mix up reality and make-believe (in other words don't go crazy, Jacky, ole kid ole sock, okay?) had been a little scary, yes, but he discovered now that he didn't want to lose that world after all.

  He looked in Speedy's eyes and thought: He knows it, too. Everything I just thought, he knows. Who are you, Speedy?

  "When you ain't been there for a while, you kinda forget how to get there on your own hook," Speedy said. He nodded at the bottle. "That's why I got me some magic juice. This stuff is special." Speedy spoke this last in tones that were almost reverential.

  "Is it from there? The Territories?"

  "Nope. They got some magic right here, Travellin Jack. Not much, but a little. This here magic juice come from California."

  Jack looked at him doubtfully.

  "Go on. Have you a little sip and see if you don't go travellin." Speedy grinned. "Drink enough of that, you can go just about anyplace you want. You're lookin at one who knows."

  "Jeez, Speedy, but--" He began to feel afraid. His mouth had gone dry, the sun seemed much too bright, and he could feel his pulsebeat speeding up in his temples. There was a coppery taste under his tongue and Jack thought: That's how his "magic juice" will taste--horrible.

  "If you get scared and want to come back, have another sip," Speedy said.

  "It'll come with me? The bottle? You promise?" The thought of getting stuck there, in that mystical other place, while his mother was sick and Sloat-beset back here, was awful.

  "I promise."

  "Okay." Jack brought the bottle to his lips . . . and then let it fall away a little. The smell was awful--sharp and rancid. "I don't want to, Speedy," he whispered.

  Lester Parker looked at him, and his lips were smiling, but there was no smile in his eyes--they were stern. Uncompromising. Frightening. Jack thought of black eyes: eye of gull, eye of vortex. Terror swept through him.

  He held the bottle out to Speedy. "Can't you take it back?" he asked, and his voice came out in a strengthless whisper. "Please?"

  Speedy made no reply. He did not remind Jack that his mother was dying, or that Morgan Sloat was coming. He didn't call Jack a coward, although he had never in his life felt so much like a coward, not even the time he had backed away from the high board at Camp Accomac and some of the other kids had booed him. Speedy merely turned around and whistled at a cloud.

  Now loneliness joined the terror, sweeping helplessly through him. Speedy had turned away from him; Speedy had shown him his back.

  "Okay," Jack said suddenly. "Okay, if it's what you need me to do."

  He raised the bottle again, and before he could have any second or third thoughts, he drank.

  The taste was worse than anything he had anticipated. He had had wine before, had even developed some taste for it (he especially liked the dry white wines his mother served with sole or snapper or swordfish), and this was something like wine . . . but at the same time it was a dreadful mockery of all the wines he had drunk before. The taste was high and sweet and rotten, not the taste of lively grapes but of dead grapes that had not lived well.

  As his mouth flooded with that horrible sweet-purple taste, he could actually see those grapes--dull, dusty, obese and nasty, crawling up a dirty stucco wall in a thick, syrupy sunlight that was silent except for the stupid buzz of many flies.

  He swallowed and thin fire printed a snail-trail down his throat.

  He closed his eyes, grimacing, his gorge threatening to rise. He did not vomit, although he believed that if he had eaten any breakfast he would have done.

  "Speedy--"

  He opened his eyes, and further words died in his throat. He forgot about the need to sick up that horrible parody of wine. He forgot about his mother, and Uncle Morgan, and his father, and almost everything else.

  Speedy was gone. The graceful arcs of the roller coaster against the sky were gone. Boardwalk Avenue was gone.

  He was someplace else now. He was--

  "In the Territories," Jack whispered, his entire body crawling with a mad mixture of terror and exhilaration. He could feel the hair stirring on the nape of his neck, could feel a goofed-up grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. "Speedy, I'm here, my God, I'm here in the Territories! I--"

  But wonder overcame him. He clapped a hand over his mouth and slowly turned in a complete circle, looking at this place to which Speedy's "magi
c juice" had brought him.

  4

  The ocean was still there, but now it was a darker, richer blue--the truest indigo Jack had ever seen. For a moment he stood transfixed, the sea-breeze blowing in his hair, looking at the horizon-line where that indigo ocean met a sky the color of faded denim.

  That horizon-line showed a faint but unmistakable curve.

  He shook his head, frowning, and turned the other way. Sea-grass, high and wild and tangled, ran down from the headland where the round carousel building had been only a minute ago. The arcade pier was also gone; where it had been, a wild tumble of granite blocks ran down to the ocean. The waves struck the lowest of these and ran into ancient cracks and channels with great hollow boomings. Foam as thick as whipped cream jumped into the clear air and was blown away by the wind.

  Abruptly Jack seized his left cheek with his left thumb and forefinger. He pinched hard. His eyes watered, but nothing changed.

  "It's real," he whispered, and another wave boomed onto the headland, raising white curds of foam.

  Jack suddenly realized that Boardwalk Avenue was still here . . . after a fashion. A rutted cart-track ran from the top of the headland--where Boardwalk Avenue had ended at the entrance to the arcade in what his mind persisted in thinking of as "the real world"--down to where he was standing and then on to the north, just as Boardwalk Avenue ran north, becoming Arcadia Avenue after it passed under the arch at the border of Funworld. Sea-grass grew up along the center of this track, but it had a bent and matted look that made Jack think that the track was still used, at least once in a while.

  He started north, still holding the green bottle in his right hand. It occurred to him that somewhere, in another world, Speedy was holding the cap that went on this bottle.

  Did I disappear right in front of him? I suppose I must have. Jeez!

  About forty paces along the track, he came upon a tangle of blackberry bushes. Clustered amid the thorns were the fattest, darkest, most lush-looking blackberries he had ever seen. Jack's stomach, apparently over the indignity of the "magic juice," made a loud goinging sound.

  Blackberries? In September?

  Never mind. After all that had happened today (and it was not yet ten o'clock), sticking at blackberries in September seemed a little bit like refusing to take an aspirin after one has swallowed a doorknob.