The Talisman

“I slapped you. That’s what you’re supposed to do with hysterical people.”

“I wasn’t hysterical! I’ve never been hysterical in my l—” Richard broke off and jumped to his feet, looking around wildly. “The wolf! We have to look out for the wolf, Jack! If we can get over the fence he won’t be able to get us!”

He would have gone sprinting off into the darkness right then, making for a cyclone fence which was now in another world, if Jack hadn’t grabbed him and held him back.

“The wolf is gone, Richard.”

“Huh?”

“We made it.”

“What are you talking about—”

“The Territories, Richard! We’re in the Territories! We flipped over!” And you almost pulled my damn arm out of its socket, you unbeliever, Jack thought, rubbing his throbbing shoulder. The next time I try to haul someone across, I’m going to find myself a real little kid, one who still believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

“That’s ridiculous,” Richard said slowly. “There’s no such thing as the Territories, Jack.”

“If there isn’t,” Jack said grimly, “then how come that great big white wolf isn’t biting your ass? Or your own damn headmaster?”

Richard looked at Jack, opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. He looked around, this time with a bit more attention (at least Jack hoped so). Jack did the same, enjoying the warmth and the clarity of the air as he did so. Morgan and his crowd of snake-pit crazies might come bursting through at any second, but for now it was impossible not to luxuriate in the pure animal joy of being back here again.

They were in a field. High, yellowish grass with bearded heads—not wheat, but something like wheat; some edible grain, anyway—stretched off into the night in every direction. The warm breeze rippled it in mysterious but rather lovely waves. To the right was a wooden building standing on a slight knoll, a lamp mounted on a pole in front of it. A yellow flame almost too bright to look at burned clearly inside the lamp’s glass globe. Jack saw that the building was octagonal. The two boys had come into the Territories on the outermost edge of the circle of light that lamp threw—and there was something on the far side of the circle, something metallic that threw back the lamplight in broken glimmers. Jack squinted at the faint, silvery glow . . . and then understood. What he felt was not so much wonder as a sense of fulfilled expection. It was as if two very large jigsaw-puzzle pieces, one in the American Territories and one over here, had just come neatly together.

Those were railroad tracks. And although it was impossible to tell direction in the darkness, Jack thought he knew in which direction those tracks would travel:

West.

2

“Come on,” Jack said.

“I don’t want to go up there,” Richard said.

“Why not?”

“Too much crazy stuff going on.” Richard wet his lips. “Could be anything up there in that building. Dogs. Crazy people.” He wet his lips again. “Bugs.”

“I told you, we’re in the Territories now. The craziness has all blown away—it’s clean here. Hell, Richard, can’t you smell it?”

“There are no such things as Territories,” Richard said thinly.

“Look around you.”

“No,” Richard said. His voice was thinner than ever, the voice of an infuriatingly stubborn child.

Jack snatched up a handful of the heavily bearded grass. “Look at this!”

Richard turned his head.

Jack had to actively restrain an urge to shake him.

Instead of doing that, he tossed the grass away, counted mentally to ten, and then started up the hill. He looked down and saw that he was now wearing something like leather chaps. Richard was dressed in much the same way, and he had a red bandanna around his neck that looked like something out of a Frederic Remington painting. Jack reached up to his own neck and felt a similar bandanna. He ran his hands down along his body and discovered that Myles P. Kiger’s wonderfully warm coat was now something very like a Mexican serape. I bet I look like an advertisement for Taco Bell, he thought, and grinned.

An expression of utter panic came over Richard’s face when Jack started up the hill, leaving him alone at the bottom.

“Where are you going?”

Jack looked at Richard and came back. He put his hands on Richard’s shoulders and looked soberly into Richard’s eyes.

“We can’t stay here,” he said. “Some of them must have seen us flip. It may be that they can’t come right after us, or it may be that they can. I don’t know. I know as much about the laws governing all of this as a kid of five knows about magnetism—and all a kid of five knows on the subject is that sometimes magnets attract and sometimes they repel. But for the time being, that’s all I have to know. We have to get out of here. End of story.”

“I’m dreaming all this, I know I am.”

Jack nodded toward the ramshackle wooden building. “You can come or you can stay here. If you want to stay here, I’ll come back for you after I check the place out.”

“None of this is happening,” Richard said. His naked, glassesless eyes were wide and flat and somehow dusty.