We had one final meal together: bacon, thick slices of homemade bread, and an omelet made from goose eggs. When the meal was done, I buckled on Mr. Bowditch’s gunbelt one last time. Then I dropped to one knee and put my palm to my forehead.
“Nah, nah, Charlie, stand.” Her voice was still choked and furry but improving every day. Every hour, it seemed. I got to my feet. She held out her arms. I didn’t just hug her, I picked her up and swung her around, making her laugh. Then she knelt and fed my dog two scraps of bacon from her apron.
“Rayy,” she said, and hugged her. “I love you, Rayy.”
She walked halfway up the hill with me, toward the hanging vines that covered the entrance to the tunnel. Those vines were greening up now. My pack was heavy on my back, and the sledgehammer I swung from my right hand was heavier, but the sun on my face felt fine.
Dora gave me one final hug, and Radar one final pat. Tears stood in her eyes, but she was smiling. She could smile now. I walked the rest of the way on my own and saw another old friend was waiting for us, red against the growing green of the vines. Radar immediately went on her belly. The Snab leaped nimbly onto her back and looked up at me, antennae twitching.
I sat down next to them, slipped off my pack, and unbuckled the flap. “How are you doing, Sir Snab? Leg all healed up?”
Radar barked once.
“Good, that’s good. But this is as far as you go, right? The air of my world might not agree with you.”
Lying on top of the door knocker, wrapped in a Hillview High tee-shirt, was what Dora had called an ay-ye-yi, which I took to mean baby light. She was still having problems with consonants, but I thought that might improve in time. The baby light was a stub of candle inside a round of glass. I put my pack back on, tilted the glass sleeve, and lit the candle with a sulphur match.
“Come on, Rades. It’s time.”
She got to her feet. The Snab jumped down. It paused, took one more look at us with its solemn black eyes, then hopped off into the grass. I saw it for a moment longer because it was moving in the still air, and the poppies weren’t. Then it was gone.
I took a final look down the hill at Dora’s house, which seemed ever so much better—cozier—in the sunshine. Radar looked back, too. Dora waved from beneath her lines of hanging shoes. I waved back. Then I grabbed the sledgehammer and brushed aside the hanging vines, revealing the darkness beyond.
“Want to go home, girl?”
My dog led the way inside.
2
We reached the border between the worlds, and I felt the disorientation I remembered from my other trips. I staggered a little and the baby light went out, even though there was no draft. I told Radar to wait and took another match from one of the empty bullet-loops in Mr. Bowditch’s concho belt. I struck a light on rough stone and re-lit the candle. The giant bats fluttered and cheeped overhead, then settled. We went on.
When we came to the well with its spiral encirclement of narrow steps, I shielded the candle and looked up, hoping I wouldn’t see light filtering down from above. Light would mean someone had moved the boards and bundles of magazines I’d used as camouflage. That would not be good. I thought I did see very faint light, but that was probably okay. The camouflage hadn’t been perfect, after all.
Radar went up four or five steps, then looked back at me to see if I was coming. “Nah, nah, doggie, me first. I don’t want you in front of me when we get to the top.”
She obeyed, but very reluctantly. Dogs’ noses are at least forty times keener than those of humans. Maybe she could smell her old world up there, waiting. If so, it must have been an aggravating trip for her, because I had to keep stopping to rest. I was better, but not all better. Freed had told me to take it easy, and I was trying to follow the doctor’s orders.
When we made it to the top, I was relieved to see the final bundle of magazines, the one I’d balanced on my head like a load of wash, still in place. I stayed below it for at least a minute, probably more like two or three. Not just to rest this time. I had been eager to get home and still was, but now I was also scared. And a tiny bit homesick for what I’d left behind. In that world there had been a palace and a beautiful princess and deeds of derring-do. Maybe somewhere—off the coast of Seafront, perhaps—there were still mermaids, singing each to each. In the world below, I’d been a prince. In the one above, I’d have to write college applications and take out the trash.
Radar bumped her muzzle into the back of my knee and gave two sharp barks. Who says dogs can’t talk?