“How will you get down?” he said, apparently more concerned with her safety now than with the oldest game in the world.
“I’ll find a way when the time comes,” Candy said. “First I’m going to find this stupid ball.”
“We’re coming in!” he said again.
“Wait!” she told him. “You just stay there.
“Forget the future
Forget the past,
Life is over:
Breathe jour last.”
As he sang he pushed the door, slowly, as though this was some game.
Candy didn’t have time to cross to the pyramid and put the ball in the cup. If she wasted those three or four seconds then Shape would be through the door and tearing out her throat, no doubt of it.
She had no choice: she had to play the game.
She took a deep breath and threw the ball. It wasn’t a good throw. The ball hit the edge of the cup instead of landing in it, and for several seconds it circled the rim, threatening to topple out.
“
“
Shape let out a sound that was as far from human as any throat that was fashioned like his could make: a profound din that rose from a hiss to the noise of a creature tormented to the edge of madness. As he loosed this unearthly sound, he pushed open the door, threw Candy aside and reached for the ball so as to snatch it out of the cup.
But the tower was having none of that. Some process beyond Candy’s comprehension had begun with that simple throw of hers. An invisible force was in the air, and it pitched Shape back, its power sufficient to carry him out through the door.
Outside, Candy heard Mischief and his brothers whooping like a pack of ecstatic dogs. Though they couldn’t possibly see what she’d done, they knew she’d succeeded. Nor was it hard for Candy to understand
She retreated a step, then another, her eyes fixed on the ball, cup, and pyramid.
And then, to her astonishment, the pyramid began to
It was just before noon in Minnesota; even with a thin cloud layer covering the sun, the day was still bright. But the light that now began to spill through the hieroglyphics on the spinning pyramid was brighter still. They were brilliant streams, pouring out in all directions.
She heard a soft, almost mournful, noise from Mendelson Shape. She glanced over at him. He was staring at the device with all the malice, all the intent to do harm, drained from his face. He was apparently resigned to whatever happened next. He could do nothing about the phenomenon except watch it.
“Now look what you’ve done,” he said, very, very softly.
“What exactly
She didn’t have any fear of turning her back on him now. At least until this miraculous process was over, it seemed, he was pacified.
She went to the door and stepped out, over the hole she’d made, to stand on the platform and see what she, and the game of ball and cup, had brought into being.
The first thing she noticed was the blossom-cloud. It was no longer moving slowly, responding to the gentle dictates of the wind. It was moving speedily overhead, like an immense golden wheel with the tower in which she stood as its axis.
She stood and admired the sight for a few moments, amazed at it. Then she looked down at the John brothers, who had turned their faces from the tower and were all looking out across the wide expanse of open prairie.
And yet, there was something out there that John Mischief and his siblings wanted to see. Mischief was cupping his hands over his eyes as he stared into the faraway.
Candy could feel the light from the pyramid like a physical presence, pressing against her back. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. In fact, it was quite pleasurable. She imagined that she could sense the power of the light passing through her body, lending her its strength. She seemed to feel it being carried through her veins, spilling out of her pores and out on her breath. It was just a trick her mind was playing, she suspected. But then, perhaps not. Today she couldn’t be certain of anything.
Behind her, Mendelson Shape let out a plaintive moan, and a moment later, eight throats loosed a chorus of shouts from below.
“What is it?” she called down to them.
“Look, lady! Look!”
She looked, following the brothers’ collective gaze, and all that she’d seen today—all, in fact, that she’d ever seen in her life up to this extraordinary moment—became a kind of overture: and the astonishments began.