Miss Foley, Will’s arm around her, took a last trembling breath and grew strangely quiet.

Jim was staring deep into those cold mirrors, looking for sharks that could not be seen.

“Miss Foley,” he said, “what did she look like?”

Miss Foley’s voice was pale but calm.

“The fact is… she looked like myself, many, many years ago.

“I’ll go home now,” she said.

“Miss Foley, we’ll—”

“No. Stay. I’m just fine. Have fun, boys. Enjoy.”

And she walked slowly away, alone, down the midway.

Somewhere a vast animal made water. Ammonia made the wind turn ancient as it passed.

“I’m leaving!” said Will.

“Will,” said Jim. “We’re staying until sundown, boy, dark sundown, and figure it all. You chicken?”

“No,” murmured Will. “But… anybody want to dive back in that maze?”

Jim gazed fiercely deep into the bottomless sea, where now only the pure light glanced back at itself, help up emptiness upon emptiness beyond emptiness before their eyes.

“Nobody.” Jim let his heart beat twice. “…I guess.”

A bad thing happened at sunset.

Jim vanished.

Through noon and after noon, they had screamed up half the rides, knocked over dirty milk-bottles, smashed kewpie-doll winning plates, smelling, listening, looking their way through the autumn crowd trampling the leafy sawdust.

And then quite suddenly Jim was gone.

And Will, not asking anyone but himself, absolutely silent certain-sure, walked steadily through the late crowd as the sky was turning plum colored until he came to the maze and paid his dime and stepped up inside and called softly just one time:

“…Jim…”

And Jim was there, half in, half out of the cold glass tides like someone abandoned on a seashore when a close friend has gone far out, and there is wonder if he will ever come back. Jim stood as if he had not moved so much as an eyelash in five minutes, staring, his mouth half-open, waiting for the next wave to come in and show him more.

“Jim! Get outa there!”

“Will…” Jim sighed faintly. “Let me be.”

“Like heck!” With one leap, Will grabbed Jim’s belt and hauled. Shuffling backward, Jim did not seem to know he was being dragged from the maze, for he kept protesting in awe at some unseen wonder: “Oh, Will, oh, Willy, Will, oh, Willy…”

“Jim, you nut. I’m taking you home!”

“What? What? What?”

They were in cold air. The sky was darker than plums now, with a few clouds burning late sun-fire above. The sun-fire flamed on Jim’s feverish cheeks, his open lips, his wide and terribly rich green shining eyes.

“Jim, what’d you see in there? The same as Miss Foley?”

“What, what?

“I’m gonna bust your nose! Come on!” He hustled, pulled, shoved, half carried this fever, this elation, unstruggling friend.

“Can’t tell you, Will, wouldn’t believe, can’t tell you, in there, oh, in there, in there…”

“Shut up!” Will socked his arm. “Scare heck outa me, just like she scared us. Bugs! It’s almost suppertime. Folks’ll think we’re dead and buried!”

They were striding now, slashing the autumn grass with their shoes, beyond the tents in the hay-smelling, leaf-mould fields, Will glaring at town, Jim staring back at the high now-darkening banners as the last of the sun hid under the earth.

“Will, we got to come back. Tonight—”

“Okay, come back alone.”

Jim stopped.

“You wouldn’t let me come alone. You’re always going to be around, aren’t you, Will? To protect me?”

“Look who needs protection.” Will laughed and then did not laugh again, for Jim was looking at him, the last wild light dying in his mouth, and caught in the thin hollows of his nostrils and in his suddenly deep-set eyes.

“You’ll always be with me, huh, Will?”

Jim simply breathed warm upon him and his blood stirred with the old, the familiar answers: yes, yes, you know it, yes, yes.

And turning together, they stumbled over a clanking dark mound of leather bag.

They stood for a long moment over the huge leather bag.

Almost secretively, Will kicked it. It made the sound of iron indigestion.

“Why,” said Will, “that belongs to the lightning-rod salesman!”

Jim slipped his hand through the leather mouth and hefted forth a metal shaft clustered with chimeras, Chinese dragons all fang, eyeball and moss-green armour, all cross and crescent; every symbol around the world that made men safe, or seemed to, clung there, greaving the boys’ hands with odd weight and meaning.

“Storm never came. But he went.”

“Where? And why did he leave his bag?”

They both looked to the carnival where dusk colored the canvas billows. Shadows ran coolly out to engulf them. People in cars honked home in tired commotions. Boys on skeleton bikes whistled dogs after. Soon night would own the midway while shadows rode the ferris wheel up to cloud the stars.

“People,” said Jim, “don’t leave their whole life lying around. This is everything that old man owned. Something important—” Jim breathed soft fire—“made him forget. So he just walked off and left this here.”

“What? What’s so important you forget everything?”

“Why—” Jim examined his friend, curiously, twilight in his face—“no one can tell you. You find it yourself. Mysteries and mysteries. Storm salesman. Storm salesman’s bag. If we don’t look now, we might never know.”

“Jim, in ten minutes—”

“Sure! Midway’ll be dark. Everyone home for dinner. Just us alone. But won’t it feel great? Just us! And here we go, back in!”

Passing the Mirror Maze, they saw two armies—a billion Jims, a billion Wills—collide, melt, vanish. And like those armies, so vanished the real army of people.

They boys stood alone among the encampments of dusk thinking of all the boys in town sitting down to warm food in bright rooms.

The red-lettered sign said: OUT OF ORDER! KEEP OFF!

“Sign’s been up all day. I don’t believe signs,” said Jim.

They peered in at the merry-go-round which lay under a dry rattle and roar of wind-tumbled oak trees. Its horses, goats, antelopes, zebras, speared through their spines with brass javelins, hung contorted as in a death rictus, asking mercy with their fright-colored eyes, seeking revenge with their panic-colored teeth.

“Don’t look broke to me.”

Jim ambled across the clanking chain, leaped to a turntable surface vast as the moon, among the frantic but forever spelled beasts.

“Jim!”

“Will, this is the only ride we haven’t looked at. So…”

Jim swayed. The lunatic carousel world stirred atilt with his lean bulk. He strolled through brass forests amidst animal rousts. He swung astride a plum-dusk stallion.

“Ho, boy, git!”

A man rose from machinery darkness.

“Jim!”

Reaching out from the shadows among the calliope tubes and moon-skinned drums the man hoisted Jim yelling out on the air.

“Help, Will, help!”

Will leaped through the animals.

The man smiled easily, welcomed him handily, swung him high beside Jim. They stared down at bright flame-red hair, bright flame-blue eyes, and rippling biceps.

“Out of order,” said the man. “Can’t you read?”

“Put them down,” said a gentle voice.

Hung high, Jim and Will glanced over at a second man standing tall beyond the chains.

“Down,” he said again.

And they were carried through the brass forest of wild but uncomplaining brutes and set in the dust.

“We were—” said Will.

“Curious?” This second man was tall as a lamp post. His pale face, lunar pockmarks denting it, cast light on those who stood below. His vest was the color of fresh blood. His eyes-brows, his hair, his suit were licorice black, and the sun-yellow gem which stared from the tie-pin thrust in his cravat was the same unblinking shade and bright crystal as his eyes. But in this instant, swiftly, and with utter clearness, it was the suit which fascinated Will. For it seemed woven of boar-bramble, clock-spring hair, bristle, and a sort of ever-trembling, ever-glistening dark hemp. The suit caught light and stirred like a bed of black tweed-thorns, interminably itching, covering the man’s long body with motion so it seemed he should excruciate, cry out, and tear the clothes free. Yet here he stood, moon-calm, inhabiting his itch-weed suit and watching Jim’s mouth with his yellow eyes. He never looked once at Will.