He was someplace else now. He was -
'In the Territories,' Jack whispered, his entire body crawling with a mad mixture of terror and exhilaration. He could feel the hair stirring on the nape of his neck, could feel a goofed-up grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. 'Speedy, I'm here, my God, I'm here in the Territories! I - '
But wonder overcame him. He clapped a hand over his mouth and slowly turned in a complete circle, looking at this place to which Speedy's 'magic juice' had brought him.
4
The ocean was still there, but now it was a darker, richer blue - the truest indigo Jack had ever seen. For a moment he stood transfixed, the sea-breeze blowing in his hair, looking at the horizon-line where that indigo ocean met a sky the color of faded denim.
That horizon-line showed a faint but unmistakable curve.
He shook his head, frowning, and turned the other way. Sea-grass, high and wild and tangled, ran down from the headland where the round carousel building had been only a minute ago. The arcade pier was also gone; where it had been, a wild tumble of granite blocks ran down to the ocean. The waves struck the lowest of these and ran into ancient cracks and channels with great hollow boomings. Foam as thick as whipped cream jumped into the clear air and was blown away by the wind.
Abruptly Jack seized his left cheek with his left thumb and forefinger. He pinched hard. His eyes watered, but nothing changed.
'It's real,' he whispered, and another wave boomed onto the headland, raising white curds of foam.
Jack suddenly realized that Boardwalk Avenue was still here . . . after a fashion. A rutted cart-track ran from the top of the headland - where Boardwalk Avenue had ended at the entrance to the arcade in what his mind persisted in thinking of as 'the real world' - down to where he was standing and then on to the north, just as Boardwalk Avenue ran north, becoming Arcadia Avenue after it passed under the arch at the border of Funworld. Sea-grass grew up along the center of this track, but it had a bent and matted look that made Jack think that the track was still used, at least once in a while.
He started north, still holding the green bottle in his right hand. It occurred to him that somewhere, in another world, Speedy was holding the cap that went on this bottle.
Did I disappear right in front of him? I suppose I must have. Jeez!
About forty paces along the track, he came upon a tangle of blackberry bushes. Clustered amid the thorns were the fattest, darkest, most lush-looking blackberries he had ever seen. Jack's stomach, apparently over the indignity of the 'magic juice,' made a loud goinging sound.
Blackberries? In September?
Never mind. After all that had happened today (and it was not yet ten o'clock), sticking at blackberries in September seemed a little bit like refusing to take an aspirin after one has swallowed a doorknob.
Jack reached in, picked a handful of berries, and tossed them into his mouth. They were amazingly sweet, amazingly good. Smiling (his lips had taken on a definite bluish cast), thinking it quite possible that he had lost his mind, he picked another handful of berries . . . and then a third. He had never tasted anything so fine - although, he thought later, it was not just the berries themselves; part of it was the incredible clarity of the air.
He got a couple of scratches while picking a fourth helping - it was as if the bushes were telling him to lay off, enough was enough, already. He sucked at the deepest of the scratches, on the fleshy pad below the thumb, and then headed north along the twin ruts again, moving slowly, trying to look everywhere at once.
He paused a little way from the blackberry tangles to look up at the sun, which seemed somehow smaller and yet more fiery. Did it have a faint orange cast, like in those old medieval pictures? Jack thought perhaps it did. And -
A cry, as rusty and unpleasant as an old nail being pulled slowly out of a board, suddenly arose on his right, scattering his thoughts. Jack turned toward it, his shoulders going up, his eyes widening.
It was a gull - and its size was mind-boggling, almost unbelievable (but there it was, as solid as stone, as real as houses). It was, in fact, the size of an eagle. Its smooth white bullet-head cocked to one side. Its fishhook of a beak opened and closed. It fluttered great wings, rippling the sea-grass around it.
And then, seemingly without fear, it began to hop toward Jack.
Faintly, Jack heard the clear, brazen note of many horns blown together in a simple flourish, and for no reason at all he thought of his mother.