“That music…” Jim murmured. “Calliope. Must be coming tonight!”

“Carnivals come at sunrise.”

“Yeah, but what about the licorice and cotton candy we smelled, close?”

And Will thought of the smells and the sounds flowing on the river of wind from beyond the darkening houses, Mr. Tetley listening by his wooden Indian friend, Mr. Crosetti with the single tear shining down his cheek, and the barber’s pole sliding its red tongue up and around forever out of nowhere and away to eternity.

Will’s teeth chattered.

“Let’s go home.”

“We are home!” cried Jim, surprised.

For, not knowing it, they had reached their separate houses and now moved up separate walks.

On his porch, Jim leaned over and called softly.

“Will. You’re not mad?”

“Heck, no.”

“We won’t go by that street, that house, the Theatre, again for a month. A year! I swear.”

“Sure, Jim, sure.”

They stood with their hands on the doorknobs of their houses, and Will looked up at Jim’s room where the lightning-rod glittered against the cold stars.

The storm was coming. The storm wasn’t coming.

No matter which, he was glad Jim had that grand contraption up there.

“Night!”

“Night.”

Their separate doors slammed.

Chapter 8

Will opened the door and shut it again. Quietly, this time.

“That’s better,” said his mother’s voice.

Framed through the hall door Will saw the only theatre he cared for now, the familiar stage where sat his father (home already! he and Jim must have run the long way round!) holding a book but reading the empty spaces. In a chair by the fire mother knitted and hummed like a tea-kettle.

He wanted to be near and not near them, he saw them close, he saw them far. Suddenly they were awfully small in too large a room in too big a town and much too huge a world. In this unlocked place they seemed at the mercy of anything that might break in from the night.