The crowd laughed.
"Will!" called a woman.
"Willy!" called another.
"Yoohoo!" A gentleman in a beard.
"Come on, William!" A boy.
The crowd laughed more, jostled elbows.
Charles Halloway called. They called. Charles Halloway cried to the hills. They cried to the hills.
"Will! Willy! William!"
A shadow shuttled and wove in the mirrors.
The Witch broke out chandeliers of sweat.
"There!"
The crowd stopped calling.
As did Charles Halloway, choked on the name of his son now, and silent.
For Will stood in the entrance of the Maze, like the wax figure that he almost was.
"Will," called his father, softly.
The sound of this chimed the sweat off the Witch.
Will moved, unseeing, through the crowd.
And handing the rifle down like a cane for the boy to grasp, his father drew him up onto the stand.
"Here's my good left hand!" announced the father.
Will neither saw nor heard the crowd sound forth a solid and offensive applause.
Mr. Dark had not moved, though Charles Halloway could see him, during all this, lighting and setting off cannon crackers in his head; but each, one by one, fizzled and died. Mr. Dark could not guess what they were up to. For that matter, Charles Halloway did not know or guess. It was as if he had written this play for himself, over the years, in the library, nights, torn up the play after memorizing it, and now forgotten what he had set forth to remember. He was relying on secret discoveries of self, moment by moment, playing by ear, no! heart and soul! And ... now?!
The brightness of his teeth seemed to strike the Witch blinder! Impossible! She flung one hand to her glasses, her sewn eyelids!
"Closer, everyone!" called Will's father.
The crowd gathered in. The platform was an island. The sea was people.
"Watch the bull's-eye targeteer!"
The Witch melted in her rags.
The Illustrated Man looked left, found no pleasure in the Skeleton, who simply looked thinner; found no pleasure looking right to a Dwarf who blandly dwelt in squashed idiot madness.
"The bullet, please!" Will's father said, amiably.
The thousand illustrations on his jerking horseflesh frame did not hear, so why should Mr. Dark?
"If you please," said Charles Halloway. "The bullet? So I may knock that flea off the old Gypsy's wart!"