The Talisman

only sounds were the thrupthud of ballet dancers on pointe moving across the floor and harsh, agonized panting for breath. Jack had suddenly realized that these dancers were not just earning a living; they were killing themselves. Most of all he remembered their expressions – all that exhausted concentration, all that pain . . . but transcending the pain, or at least creeping around its edges, he had seen joy. Joy was unmistakably what that look was, and it had scared Jack because it had seemed inexplicable. What kind of person could get off by subjecting himself or herself to such steady, throbbing, excruciating pain?
    And pain that he was seeing here, he thought. Were they actual winged men, like the bird-people in the old Flash Gordon serials, or were the wings more in the Icarus and Daedalus line, something that you strapped on? Jack found that it didn’t really matter . . . at least, not to him.
    Joy.
    They live in a mystery, these people live in a mystery.
    It’s joy that holds them up.
    That was what mattered. It was joy that held them up, no matter if the wings grew out of their backs or were somehow held on with buckles and clamps. Because what he saw, even from this distance, was the same sort of effort he had seen in the loft on lower Wilshire that day. All that profligate investment of energy to effect a splendid, momentary reversal of natural law. That such a reversal should demand so much and last such a short time was terrible; that people would go for it anyway was both terrible and wonderful.
    And it’s all just a game , he thought, and suddenly felt sure of it. A game, or maybe not even that – maybe it was only practice for a game, the way that all the sweat and trembling exhaustion in the Wilshire loft that day had just been practice. Practice for a show that only a few people would probably care to attend and which would probably close quickly.
    Joy , he thought again, standing now, his face turned up to look at the flying men in the distance, the wind spilling his hair across his forehead. His time of innocence was fast approaching its end (and, if pressed, even Jack would have reluctantly agreed that he felt such an end approaching – a boy couldn’t go on the road for long, couldn’t go through many experiences such as the one he had gone through in Oatley, and expect to remain an innocent), but in those moments as he stood looking into the sky, innocence seemed to surround him; like the young fisherman during his brief moment of epiphany in the Elizabeth Bishop poem, everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow.
    Joy – damn, but that’s a cheerful little word.
    Feeling better than he had since all of this began – and only God knew just how long ago that had been – Jack set off along the Western Road again, his step light, his face wreathed in that same silly, splendid grin. Every now and then he looked back over his shoulder, and he was able to see the fliers for a very long time. The Territories air was so clear it almost seemed to magnify. And even after he could no longer see them, that feeling of joy remained, like a rainbow inside his head.
    7
    When the sun began to go down, Jack realized he was putting off his return to the other world – to the American Territories – and not just because of how terrible the magic juice tasted, either. He was putting it off because he didn’t want to leave here.
    A streamlet had flowed out of the grasslands (where small groves of trees had again begun to appear – billowy trees with oddly flat tops, like eucalyptus trees) and had hooked a right so that it flowed along beside the road. Farther off, to the right and ahead, was a huge body of water. It was so huge, in fact, that until the last hour or so Jack had thought it was a patch of sky that somehow had a slightly bluer color than the rest. But it wasn’t sky; it was a lake. A great lake , he thought, smiling at the pun. He guessed that in the other world that would be Lake Ontario.
    He felt good. He was headed in the right direction – maybe a little too far north, but he had no doubt that the Western Road would bend away from that direction soon enough. That feeling of almost manic joy – what he had defined as cheerfulness – had mellowed to a lovely sort of calm serenity, a feeling that seemed as clear as the Territories air. Only one thing marred his good feeling, and that was the memory
    ( six, is six, Jack was six )
    of Jerry Bledsoe. Why had his mind given him such a hard