The Talisman

Single-natured. Me. I’m single-natured. I had a Twinner, but he died. Not just in the Territories world, but in all worlds but this one. I know that – I feel that. My dad knew it, too. I think that’s why he called me Travelling Jack. When I’m here, I’m not there. When I’m there, I’m not here. And Richard, neither are you !’
    Richard stared at him, speechless.
    ‘You don’t remember; you were mostly in Freakout City while I was talking to Anders. But he said Morgan of Orris had a boy-child. Rushton. Do you know what he was?’
    ‘Yes,’ Richard whispered. He was still unable to pull his eyes away from Jack’s. ‘He was my Twinner.’
    ‘That’s right. The little boy died, Anders said. The Talisman is single-natured. We’re single-natured. Your father isn’t. I’ve seen Morgan of Orris in that other world, and he’s like your father, but he’s not your father. He couldn’t go into the black hotel, Richard. He can’t now. But he knew you were single-natured, just as he knows I am. He’d like me dead. He needs you on his side.
    ‘Because then, if he decided he did want the Talisman, he could always send you in to get it, couldn’t he?’
    Richard began to tremble.
    ‘Never mind,’ Jack said grimly. ‘He won’t have to worry about it. We’re going to bring it out, but he’s not going to have it.’
    ‘Jack, I don’t think I can go into that place,’ Richard said, but he spoke in a low, strengthless whisper, and Jack, who was already walking on, didn’t hear him.
    Richard trotted to catch up.
    12
    Conversation lapsed. Noon came and went. The woods had become very silent, and twice Jack had seen trees with strange, gnarly trunks and tangled roots growing quite close to the tracks. He did not much like the looks of these trees. They looked familiar.
    Richard, staring at the ties as they disappeared beneath his feet, at last stumbled and fell over, hitting his head. After that, Jack piggybacked him again.
    ‘There, Jack!’ Richard called, after what seemed an eternity.
    Up ahead, the tracks disappeared into an old car-barn. The doors hung open on a shadowy darkness that looked dull and moth-eaten. Beyond the car-barn (which might once have been as pleasant as Richard had said, but which only looked spooky to Jack now) was a highway – 101, Jack guessed.
    Beyond that, the ocean – he could hear the pounding waves.
    ‘I guess we’re here,’ he said in a dry voice.
    ‘Almost,’ Richard said. ‘Point Venuti’s a mile or so down the road. God, I wish we didn’t have to go there, Jack . . . Jack? Where are you going?’
    But Jack didn’t look around. He stepped off the tracks, detoured around one of those strange-looking trees (this one not even shrub-high), and headed for the road. High grasses and weeds brushed his road-battered jeans. Something inside the trolley-barn – Morgan Sloat’s private train-station of yore – moved with a nasty slithering bump, but Jack didn’t even look toward it.
    He reached the road, crossed it, and walked to the edge.
    13
    Near the middle of December in the year 1981, a boy named Jack Sawyer stood where the water and the land came together, hands in the pockets of his jeans, looking out at the steady Pacific. He was twelve years old and extraordinarily beautiful for his age. His brown hair was long – probably too long – but the sea-breeze swept it back from a fine, clear brow. He stood thinking of his mother, who was dying, and of friends, both absent and present, and worlds within worlds, turning in their courses.
    I’ve come the distance , he thought, and shivered. Coast to coast with Travelling Jack Sawyer . His eyes abruptly filled with tears. He breathed deeply of the salt. Here he was – and the Talisman was close by.
    ‘Jack!’
    Jack didn’t look at him at first; his gaze was held by the Pacific, by the sunlight gleaming gold on top of the waves. He was here; he had made it. He –
    ‘ Jack! ’ Richard struck his shoulder, bringing him out of his daze.
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘Look!’ Richard was gaping, pointing at something down the road, in the direction in which Point Venuti presumably lay. ‘Look there!’
    Jack looked. He understood Richard’s surprise, but he felt none himself – or no more than he had felt when Richard had told him the name of the motel where he and his father had stayed in Point Venuti. No, not much surprise, but –
    But it was damned good to see his mother again.
    Her face was twenty feet high, and