of his cage. 'In you go,' I said encouragingly.
Green Terror looked at me menacingly and didn't move.
Thunder rumbled again, louder, closer, sharper. The sky had gone
jaundice, the ugliest color I have ever seen. Wind-devils began to
pick jerkily at our clothes and whirl away the flattened candy
wrappers and cotton-candy cones that littered the area.
'Come on, come on,' I urged and poked him easily with the blunt-
tipped rods we were given to herd them with.
Green Terror roared ear-splittingly, and one paw lashed out with
blinding speed. The hardwood pole was jerked from my hands and
splintered as if it had been a greenwood twig. The tiger was on his
feet now, and there was murder in his eyes.
'Look,' I said shakily. 'One of you will have to go get Mr.
Indrasil, that's all. We can't wait around.'
As if to punctuate my words, thunder cracked louder, the clapping
of mammoth hands.
Kelly Nixon and Mike McGregor flipped for it; I was excluded
because of my previous run-in with Mr. Indrasil. Kelly drew the
task, threw us a wordless glance that said he would prefer facing
the storm and then started off.
He was gone almost ten minutes. The wind was picking up
velocity now, and twilight was darkening into a weird six o'clock
night. I was scared, and am not afraid to admit it. That rushing,
featureless sky, the deserted circus grounds, the sharp, tugging
wind-vortices all that makes a memory that will stay with me
always, undimmed.
And Green Terror would not budge into his breezeway.
Kelly Nixon came rushing back, his eyes wide. 'I pounded on his
door for 'most five minutes!' He gasped. 'Couldn't raise him!'
We looked at each other, at a loss. Green Terror was a big
investment for the circus. He couldn't just be left in the open. I
turned bewilderedly, looking for Chips, Mr. Farnum, or anybody
who could tell me what to do. But everyone was gone. The tiger
was our responsibility. I considered trying to load the cage bodily
into the trailer, but I wasn't going to get my fingers in that cage.
'Well, we've just got to go and get him,' I said. 'The three of us.
Come on.' And we ran toward Mr. Indrasil's trailer through the
gloom of coming night.
We pounded on his door until he must have thought all the demons
of hell were after him. Thankfully, it finally jerked open. Mr.
Indrasil swayed and stared down at us, his mad eyes rimmed and
oversheened with drink. He smelled like a distillery.
'Damn you, leave me alone,' he snarled.
'Mr. Indrasil --' I had to shout over the rising whine of the wind. It
was like no storm I had ever heard of or read about, out there. It
was like the end of the world .
'You,' he gritted softly. He reached down and gathered my shirt
up in a knot. 'I'm going to teach you a lesson you'll never forget.'
He glared at Kelly and Mike, cowering back in the moving storm
shadows. 'Get out!'
