The Talisman

Jack and Speedy with his thin gaze, and then turned up the Alhambra’s main walk. The top of his head could barely be descried over the tops of the thick box hedges.
    The sound of the big front door opening and closing was clearly audible, and Jack was struck by a terrible sense of this place’s autumn desolation. Wide, deserted streets. The long beach with its empty dunes of sugar-sand. The empty amusement park, with the roller-coaster cars standing on a siding under canvas tarps and all the booths padlocked. It came to him that his mother had brought him to a place very like the end of the world.
    Speedy cocked his head back and sang in his true and mellow voice, ‘Well I’ve laid around . . . and played around . . . this old town too long . . . summer’s almost gone, yes, and winter’s coming on . . . winter’s coming on, and I feel like . . . I got to travel on—’
    He broke off and looked at Jack.
    ‘You feel like you got to travel, ole Travellin Jack?’
    Flagging terror stole through his bones.
    ‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘If it will help. Help her. Can I help her, Speedy?’
    ‘You can,’ Speedy said gravely.
    ‘But—’
    ‘Oh, there’s a whole string of buts,’ Speedy said. ‘Whole trainload of buts, travellin Jack. I don’t promise you no cakewalk. I don’t promise you success. Don’t promise that you’ll come back alive, or if you do, that you’ll come back with your mind still bolted together.
    ‘You gonna have to do a lot of your ramblin in the Territories, because the Territories is a whole lot smaller. You notice that?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Figured you would. Because you sure did get a whole mess down the road, didn’t you?’
    Now an earlier question recurred to Jack, and although it was off the subject, he had to know. ‘Did I disappear, Speedy? Did you see me disappear?’
    ‘You went,’ Speedy said, and clapped his hands once, sharply, ‘just like that .’
    Jack felt a slow, unwilling grin stretch his mouth . . . and Speedy grinned back.
    ‘I’d like to do it sometime in Mr Balgo’s computer class,’ Jack said, and Speedy cackled like a child. Jack joined him – and the laughter felt good, almost as good as those blackberries had tasted.
    After a few moments Speedy sobered and said, ‘There’s a reason you got to be in the Territories, Jack. There’s somethin you got to git. It’s a mighty powerful somethin.’
    ‘And it’s over there?’
    ‘Yeah-bob.’
    ‘It can help my mother?’
    ‘Her . . . and the other.’
    ‘The Queen?’
    Speedy nodded.
    ‘What is it? Where is it? When do I—’
    ‘Hold it! Stop!’ Speedy held up a hand. His lips were smiling, but his eyes were grave, almost sorrowing. ‘One thing at a time. And, Jack, I can’t tell you what I don’t know . . . or what I’m not allowed to tell.’
    ‘Not allowed?’ Jack asked bewildered. ‘Who—’
    ‘There you go again,’ Speedy said. ‘Now listen, travellin Jack. You got to leave as soon as you can, before that man Bloat can show up an bottle you up—’
    ‘Sloat.’
    ‘Yeah, him. You got to get out before he comes.’
    ‘But he’ll bug my mother,’ Jack said, wondering why he was saying it – because it was true, or because it was an excuse to avoid the trip that Speedy was setting before him, like a meal that might be poisoned. ‘You don’t know him! He—’
    ‘I know him,’ Speedy said quietly. ‘I know him of old, Travellin Jack. And he knows me. He’s got my marks on him. They’re hidden – but they’re on him. Your momma can take care of herself. At least, she’s gonna have to, for a while. Because you got to go.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘West,’ Speedy said. ‘From this ocean to the other.’
    ‘ What? ’ Jack cried, appalled by the thought of such distance. And then he thought of an ad he’d seen on TV not three nights ago – a man picking up goodies at a deli buffet some thirty-five thousand feet in the air, just as cool as a cucumber. Jack had flown from one coast to another with his mother a good two dozen times, and was always secretly delighted by the fact that when you flew from New York to L.A. you could have sixteen hours of daylight. It was like cheating time. And it was easy.
    ‘Can I fly?’ he asked Speedy.
    ‘No!’ Speedy almost yelled, his eyes widening in consternation. He gripped Jack’s shoulder with one strong hand. ‘Don’t you let nuthin git you up in the sky! You dassn’t! If you happened to flip over into the Territories