"You're not…" Moot began.
"… intending to attack…" Pluckitt continued.
"… Mendelson Shape?" Slop went on.
"Not with
"Well—" said Mischief. "Unless somebody has a better idea?"
"He's twice our size!" said Sallow.
"Three times!" said Moot.
"He'll tear out our heart," said Slop.
"Well, we can't leave the lady Quackenbush undefended," Mischief replied.
"I vote we run," Moot said. "This is a lost cause, Mischief. At least if we get away now, the Key's safe with us. If we throw ourselves into the fray we're not just endangering our lives—"
"—which are
"—we're endangering the Key," Moot reasoned. "We can't afford to do that."
"Moot's right," said John Sallow. "We've got a chance to run. I vote we take it."
"Out of the question," Mischief remarked. "She's risking her life for us."
"As I observed," Sallow replied. "The creature's half mad."
"And as
So saying, Mischief set off running through the grass toward Mendelson, his little knife at the ready.
As he came within six or seven strides of his target, Shape sensed his presence and swung around, the swords whining through the air. His mouth was wide and foamy, as though he was working up an appetite as he approached the tower. The pupils of his eyes had gone to pinpricks, giving him an even more monstrous expression. His aim was poor. The blades missed the brothers by a foot or more, simply lopping off the feathery heads of the prairie grass.
Mischief just ducked down and doubled his speed, running at the enemy.
"Everybody—"he said. "Give the
Then he seemed to remember the absurdity of his enemy, and instead of backing away he came at them again with the swords. But the Johns were swift. Mischief darted under Shape's vast hand and pushed his little blade into Shape's thigh. The knife went in three or four inches and lodged there, blood spurting over Mischief's hand and arm. It was enough to make the monster let out a cry of rage and pain. He dropped the blades and clutched the wound, gritting his teeth as he pulled the knife out.
Inside the lighthouse, Candy had climbed fifteen steps when she heard Mendelson's shout. She carefully ascended another three, until she could see through a hole in the wall. She had quite a good view. She could see that Mischief was playing David to Shape's Goliath out there.
The sight gave her courage. Instead of advancing up the stairs tentatively, as she'd been doing, she picked up her speed. With every step she took, the whole structure rocked and groaned, but she reached the top of the flight without incident and found herself in a round room, perhaps eight or nine feet across.
She'd reached the top of the lighthouse. But now that she was actually
here, where was the light? It was just as she'd feared. If there'd ever
Then she recalled what Mischief had said, when she'd remarked that she couldn't even see a lamp up at the top of the tower. What was it exactly? He'd said something about
, she thought. The problem was that she had no idea how to play it.
And now, as if matters weren't bad enough, she heard the din of Shape beating down the lighthouse door; smashing it to smithereens in his fury. The noise reached a chaotic climax, followed by a few seconds of silence.
Then came the limping footfall of the monster himself, as he climbed the lighthouse stairs to find her.
7. LIGHT AND WATER
The sound of his voice, and the thump and drag of his limping step, froze Candy for a moment. This was like something from a nightmare: being hunted down by some hellish beast; some vile creature that wanted to eat her alive, limb by limb, finger by finger.
Very gingerly, she hauled her foot out of the hole and sought out a more reliable place to stand. She could still hear Shape in the tower behind her, calling out singsong threats to her as he climbed. It was some horrible little nursery song he was singing. The kind only a monster like Shape would have had sung to him in his cradle.
Doing her best to blot out the sound of Shape's obscene little lullaby, she scanned the landscape around the lighthouse.
"Mischief!" she yelled. "Where did you go?"
She only had to call once. Then he was there, racing toward the tower through the grass. There was blood on his hands, she saw. Had he wounded Shape? She dared hope so.
"Lady Candy? Are you all right?"
"I can't find any light up here, Mischief! I'm sorry."
"He's coming, lady!"
"I know, Mischief. Believe me: I know.
"What?"
"The oldest game, Candy.
"Yes! There's a cup!" she yelled back down to the brothers.
"Put the ball in it!" Mischief replied.
"What ball? There isn't any ball."
"There should be a ball."
Candy didn't waste time telling Serpent to be more polite. She had only seconds to spare before Shape made an entrance into the round room, she knew. So she stopped talking and did as Mischief suggested, stepping over the hole she'd made in the platform and returning to look for the ball.
She listened as she scoured the room. To judge by the sound of his feet, Shape was close to the top of the stairs. Then—just as she was certain he was about to open the door—she heard the welcome sound of splintering timber, and her pursuer loosed a shout of alarm. His weight had apparently been too much for the staircase. She heard a series of crashes as broken portions of the steps fell away into the stairwell. A moment of silence followed, when she dared hope that perhaps Shape had fallen down the stairwell along with the broken stairs and was lying at the bottom of the flight. But instead of the distant moans she'd hoped to hear, there came an outburst of words in a language she had never heard before. She didn't need a translator to recognize them as curses.
She crossed to the door and glanced down, just to see what had happened. A large portion of the staircase—five or six stairs—had indeed collapsed under Mendelson Shape's weight. But he had somehow managed to avoid the full fall by jumping back down the stairs before they had collapsed beneath him. This left a sizeable gap for him to get across before he could continue his ascent. She was disappointed that he wasn't dead or comatose at the bottom, but this was better than nothing.
Looking up at her, he made horns of his forefinger and smallest finger, which he jabbed threateningly in Candy's direction. No doubt had he possessed the power to strike her dead on the spot, dead she would have been. But all he could do was curse and point, so she left him to it and went back to search for the missing ball.
As she did so, she heard Mischief yelling up at her from outside. Obviously he'd heard the din.
"I'm coming in, Lady Candy!"
She went to the outer door and called down to him.
"
"Forget the future
Forget the past,
Life is over:
Breathe jour last."
As he sang he pushed the door, slowly, as though this was some game.
Candy didn't have time to cross to the pyramid and put the ball in the cup. If she wasted those three or four seconds then Shape would be through the door and tearing out her throat, no doubt of it.
She had no choice: she had to play the game.
She took a deep breath and threw the ball. It wasn't a good throw. The ball hit the edge of the cup instead of landing in it, and for several seconds it circled the rim, threatening to topple out.
"
"
Shape let out a sound that was as far from human as any throat that was fashioned like his could make: a profound din that rose from a hiss to the noise of a creature tormented to the edge of madness. As he loosed this unearthly sound, he pushed open the door, threw Candy aside and reached for the ball so as to snatch it out of the cup.
But the tower was having none of that. Some process beyond Candy's comprehension had begun with that simple throw of hers. An invisible force was in the air, and it pitched Shape back, its power sufficient to carry him out through the door.
Outside, Candy heard Mischief and his brothers whooping like a pack of ecstatic dogs. Though they couldn't possibly see what she'd done, they knew she'd succeeded. Nor was it hard for Candy to understand
She retreated a step, then another, her eyes fixed on the ball, cup, and pyramid.
And then, to her astonishment, the pyramid began to
It was just before noon in Minnesota; even with a thin cloud layer covering the sun, the day was still bright. But the light that now began to spill through the hieroglyphics on the spinning pyramid was brighter still. They were brilliant streams, pouring out in all directions.
She heard a soft, almost mournful, noise from Mendelson Shape. She glanced over at him. He was staring at the device with all the malice, all the intent to do harm, drained from his face. He was apparently resigned to whatever happened next. He could do nothing about the phenomenon except watch it.
"Now look what you've done," he said, very, very softly.
"What exactly
She didn't have any fear of turning her back on him now. At least until this miraculous process was over, it seemed, he was pacified.
She went to the door and stepped out, over the hole she'd made, to stand on the platform and see what she, and the game of ball and cup, had brought into being.
The first thing she noticed was the blossom-cloud. It was no longer moving slowly, responding to the gentle dictates of the wind. It was moving speedily overhead, like an immense golden wheel with the tower in which she stood as its axis.
She stood and admired the sight for a few moments, amazed at it. Then she looked down at the John brothers, who had turned their faces from the tower and were all looking out across the wide expanse of open prairie. What were they looking at ? she wondered. She knew there was nothing out there for many miles, not so much as a house. For some reason, though the suburbs of Chickentown had spread in every other direction from the heart of the town, they had never spread northwest beyond Widow White's house. This was empty land; unused, unwanted.