"Oh, no, no, no, no, no," someone murmured.
Charles Halloway touched Will's arm.
Will stopped saying "Oh, no, no, no." He, too, in the last few moments, had thought the same as his father, of the toted corpse, the strewn bone-meal, the mineral-enriched hills of grass....
Now there was only the empty chair and the last particles of mica, the radiant motes of peculiar dirt crusting the straps. And the freaks, who had been toting the baroque dump, now fled to shadows.
We made them run, thought Will, but something made them drop it!
No, not something. Someone.
Will flexed his eyes.
The carousel, deserted, empty, traveled on its way through its own special time, forward.
But between the fallen chair and the carousel, standing alone, was that a freak? No ...
"Jim!"
Dad knocked his elbow and Will shut up.
Jim, he thought.
And where, now, was Mr. Dark?
Somewhere. For he had started the carousel, hadn't he? Yes! To draw them, to draw Jim, and--what else? Right now there was no time, for--
Jim turned from the spilled chair, turned and walked slowly toward the free, free ride.
He was going where he had always known he must go. Like a weather vane in wild seasons he had tremored this way, wandered that, hesitated upon bright horizons and warm directions, only at last now to tilt and, half sleepwalking, tremble about in the bright brass pull and summer march of music. He could not look away.
Another step, and then another, toward the merry-go-round, there went Jim.
"Go get him, Will," said his father.
Will went.
Jim raised his right hand.
The brass poles flashed by into the future, pulling the flesh like syrup, stretching the bones like taffy, the sun-metal color burning Jim's cheeks, flinting his eyes.
Jim reached. The brass poles flick-knocked his fingernails, tinkling their own small tune.
"Jim!"
The brass poles chopped by in a yellow sunrise at night.
The music leaped in a clear fountain, high.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Jim opened his mouth with the same cry:
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!"
"Jim!" cried Will, running.
Jim's palm slapped one brass pole. The pole whipped on.