Chapter the 31st
Ted Sloane the dark buildings in the alley that looked as desolate as unused warehouses. Looking up in the sky, Ted saw no moon and no stars. Even more disquieting, the alley ended abruptly at both ends and behind him and Amarilla with nothing at all beyond it as far as the mayor could see. The scene looked like a picture that somebody had clipped with a pair of scissors. Only the pink toy piano and the neon sign on a back door announcing : the Doubly Lost Lonely Hearts Night Club offered any light. Ted heard the distant sound of raucous voices from inside the door. He did not need the chill in the air to make him shiver.
“I guess we’re on our own here,” said the mayor with a lump in his throat.
“Looks like it,” said a grim-faced Amarilla.
“Should I pick up that toy piano for you?”
“Please, if you can.”
Ted feared that the piano might be magically glued to the alley, but it turned out to be as easy to pick it up as it should have been. Ted gingerly walked toward one edge of the alley to see if it really did come to as abrupt an end as he thought it did.
“Get back!” Amarilla warned.
Already, the mayor was feeling dizzy and he might have fallen over if Amarilla’s words hadn’t pulled him back when they did.
“I get the feeling that we are nowhere,” said Ted.
“Me too,” said Amarilla.
“You’re used to this kind of thing, aren’t you?” the mayor asked with a touch of suspicion.
“No,” Amarilla replied. “ I am used to a lot of things that people in your world aren’t, but this isn’t one of them. I’m used to being somewhere, even if the streets move around and keep me guessing as to where I am and where I’m going.”
“This Lonely Hearts Club seems to be the only place there is,” said the mayor. “Should we check it out?”
“I think we have to,” said Amarilla. “If there is a way to get away from this nowhere, where we are right now, this is it.”
With that, Ted stepped carefully to the back door into the Club, taking care to stay close to Amarilla. He slowly opened the door into what appeared, at first, to be a dark, empty space. Even with the door open, the sound of voices seemed to come from a distance. When his eyes became oriented to the place, however, Ted saw, or thought he saw, a dark night club with a few tables surrounded by customers. None of the people were talking or eating as they normally would in a night club. Instead, they spoke in hushed tones with worried and angry voices. Worse, many of the men and women and even children held spears in their hands. These people didn’t seem to account for the noise he and Amarilla were hearing from outside the night club. Most unnerving for Ted, he felt that he was looking at only a scrap of the night club. Like the alley, the night club seemed to have been chopped off in some mysterious way behind the handful of tables that he saw. Worst of all, the door he and Amarilla had just opened led them straight on to an empty stage in front of the customers.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” Ted whispered.
“Me neither,” Amarilla whispered back.
Hardly reassured, Ted escorted Amarilla on to the stage. The sudden thunderclap of loud applause that greeted them was enough to give the mayor a nervous breakdown. The scene filled out with a few more tables surrounded by customers. Nobody was dressed well and many were wearing rags. Those men and women and children who were not holding spears held rakes or hoes or other tools that were obviously poised to be used as weapons. Nobody showed any joy or eagerness as they clapped so that the applause hardly felt welcoming to the mayor. Not only were the tables empty of all food and beverages, but the tables were not even set. Never, not even in Milton, had Ted seen a nightclub look so much like a desert. A short elderly man jumped from his table and leaped up on the stage.
“Surely these are the ones we’ve all been waiting for!” the man cried.
The applause continued as if it were not going to stop.
“Should we bow?” Ted asked Amarilla in a low voice.
“We could, but I don’t recommend it.”
Although he felt awkward, Ted held his back straight and kept the pink toy piano tucked under his arm. The man who had just joined Ted and Amarilla on the state held up his free hand and his spear to ask for quiet.
“And now, our guest stars will hand over the lost drawings of the Lost City by Kevin the Illuminator!”
Ted’s heart sank when another round of tumultuous applause broke out.
“What drawings? Who is Kevin the Illuminator?” Ted asked Amarilla in alarm as they applause continued.
“They mean Kevin. You know him. He’s from Milton,” Amarilla replied to him. “I hear his drawings won top prizes at your school art exhibit.”
“Do you mean Kevin Rosskill?” asked the mayor, glad that he had fulfilled his civic duty of looking over the prize winning artworks when they were on display.
“I think that’s his last name,” said Amarilla.
“I take it we don’t have the drawings they think we do,” said the mayor nervously.
“We don’t,” Amarilla replied. “We will have to find out what has been going on here.”
The applause had died down and the audience sat quietly and expectantly.
“And now—the drawings!” announced the man on stage.
Ted looked over the people. Already, they were tightening their grip on their weapons.
“I’m afraid. . .” Ted began.
Amarilla stopped him by nicking him on the wrist. Then she turned to the crowd.
“Have you seen Kevin the Illuminator for yourselves?” Amarilla asked the crowd.
This question was greeted by ragged cries of “Yes.”
“Then why is he not here with you now?”
A troubled murmuring filled the nightclub and the announcer himself looked a little embarrassed.
“Well, it’s like this,” the announcer confided to Amarilla, “Just a piece of time ago, Kevin the Illuminator was standing in the central Town Square, holding the parchment of his incomplete drawings of our city. He had just promised to finish his drawings on the spot when he asked after certain friends of his who, unfortunately, had just been sacrificed to the Dark Lake.”
The mayor felt as if a wedge had been driven into his throat. Amarilla pursed her lips. Ted could not help but admire the way she retained her poise. He was sure that, if faced with this situation alone, he would have fallen to pieces. The murmuring throughout the nightclub grew louder.
“And what happened when Kevin was told that his friends had been sacrificed to the Dark Lake?” asked Amarilla.
“Kevin the Illuminator ripped up all the drawings and disappeared,” the announcer admitted. “That is why our Lost City is totally lost in the fragments.”
The grumbling among the people grew louder.
“And now you expect us to find the pieces torn up by Sir Kevin the Illuminator and give them back to you?” Amarilla asked with a steely determination astonishing in a girl her age.
“Why yes, of course,” said the announcer. “Surely you don’t mean to say that you don’t have the drawings that will bring out town back to life?”
“If we could get back to Milton,” said Ted, “I could get his drawings from the school.”
“Unfortunately,” said the announcer, “there is no way to get to any place from here until the drawings are brought back here and finished.”
“Then we’re stuck here?” the mayor asked in despair.
The announcer turned towards the crowd without answering the question.
“I regret to inform you,” said the announcer, “that our guests do not have any drawings of our city by Kevin the Illuminator.”
“Sacrifice them! Send them into the Dark Lake! The Dark Lake will devour us all!”
“This is place worse than Milton!” the mayor gasped. “You’d think we could make these people see reason.
“I do not think that,” said Amarilla, her voice barely audible over the crowd that was on the verge of flooding the stage and taking their two guests captive. “We’ll have to distract them before they sacrifice us. Can you play this piano?”
“No.”
“Well, I can. Give me the piano and give me a good introduction.”
The mayor’s mind raced as Amarilla plopped the piano down on the stage with a bang. Ted decided that he had to pull out the stops in making a slick approach that normally he would have despised.
“Ladies and gentlemen and boys and girls!” the mayor’s voice rang out. To his surprise, the menacing crowd held back and became somewhat quieter. “I present to you Amarilla the Zip-Finger Velvet-Voice Mistress of the Frontier! Before you sacrifice us, let her dazzle you as she tickles the ivory of this Steinway Toy Piano, and let move you to tears and laughter with her deeply searching, soulful singing!”
The outcries turned into thunderous applause and the people sat back down at the tables. A boy hopped up on the stage to place a small chair in front of the piano. The man who had joined the mayor and Amarilla on stage slid back into his seat as if he expected to enjoy a nice performance.
“I hope you’re good at this,” the mayor whispered into Amarilla’s ear.
“Don’t worry, I am,” was Amarilla’s smug reply.
When Amarilla began playing a tinkly piece that sounded vaguely classical to Ted’s unpracticed ear, he started to fear for his life, but to his surprise, more people in this strange nightclub seemed willing to listen to the piece then he expected and a couple more tables surrounded by attentive listeners materialized. Then, without any transition, Amarilla switched to a jaunty, blues tune and began to sing, gesturing to the people to join in on the repeats:
We are the long lost city and our drawings are torn up!
We are the long lost city and our drawings are torn up!
We’re fractured and fragmented and we’ve got no place to be
We’re fractured and fragmented and we’ve got no place to be
All of us are nobody and nobody cares for us
All of us are nobody and nobody cares for us
Everybody seemed to be getting into the song, as if being nobody was a great treat as long as they could sing about it together. With every line, Amarilla’s voice grew stronger until she sounded like a blues singer with twenty years’ experience under her belt and her pyrotechnics on the toy piano made its tinny sound work to her advantage. The mayor himself joined in on the repeats and started clapping to the rhythm with the result that everybody clapped along with him.
We’ve nothing but our selves and we’re nobody at all!
We’ve nothing but our selves and we’re nobody at all!
We’ve nothing but our song of blues, that’s all we’ve got at all!
We’ve nothing but our song of blues that’s all we’ve got at all!
We’ll build our city with our song, our song will set us right!
We’ll build our city with our song, our song will set us right!
We’ll sing right into being that old drawing that’s torn up!
We’ll sing right into being that old drawing that’s torn up!
We’ll sing about the torn up square that’s central to our town!
We’ll sing about the torn up square that’s central to our town!
The space of the nightclub expanded and more people came seemingly out of nowhere to sing, clap, and dance among the tables. Ted took up the cue and started an impromptu dance that he knew would win him no prizes, but it was enough to get more people out of their seats and dancing on the stage and on top of the tables. To the mayor’s further astonishment, the back wall began to take on the look of an outdoor square surrounded by fragmentary buildings graced with strange curves in the roof lines and jewels spreading across the facades.
We’ll sing the jewels ‘cross our buildings so they gleam aright!
We’ll sing the jewels ‘cross our buildings so they gleam aright!
We’ll have a gate that’s open that will welcome all the lost!
We’ll have a gate that’s open that will welcome all the lost!
This lost city that’s so lost won’t be so lost no more!
This lost city that’s so lost won’t be so lost no more!
We’ll sing a lost train station that will call the trains for us!
We’ll sing a lost train station that will call the trains for us!
As Amarilla and the people sang about the train station, the lines of a building insinuated themselves among other unfinished buildings until a design that Ted thought should have been stuffed in the corner of a modern art museum spread itself out behind the tables, sporting a sign with ornate lettering that read: LOST CITY TRAIN STATION. Already, the mayor was sure that he heard a strangely musical train whistle adding its voice to Amarilla’s song.
-------------
An endless stream of profanity flowed through the spark who was Shawn. He desperately wanted to yell the words out loud and blast off the ear of the bird who carried him in his beak. One other stream ran through his mind where his train ran in circles and crashed into a wall, smashing every bone in the body of every thieving child who had boarded his train without permission and then left him behind. A dense web made of the luminescent strands of that wretched spider tied him in place, not that there was any place to go to inside the bird’s beak except into its crop and stomach.
“Why didn’t that new engine come?” the spark asked himself. “Okay, it did come but that spider tricked me into falling into the box the engine was packed in. Why did the train crash inside the box? Who are these guys who think they can just take my train away? Why did Karen leave me when I was taking her out for a nice meal? All right, I ran off to get my engine at the shop next door and I got lost. Maybe I should have waited. But why should I have to wait for anything? Karen doesn’t care about me anyway. Where is my train now? Where are those guys taking it? I can’t get it back as long as I’m locked up in this web inside a bird’s beak. Why doesn’t my mother get out of treatment? Is she taking advantage of the time to stay away from me? Why doesn’t my father let me live in my house? It’s my house, too, isn’t it? I want my own room instead of that hole in the wall at my aunt’s house in the hick town to end all hick towns. I know she doesn’t want me but I guess she got bullied into taking me anyway. She’s a wimp, that’s for sure. At least I don’t let her boss me around. I can call the tune in her house when I want to. Why don’t any of the kids in Milton like me? I suppose it’s for the same reason that the kids back home don’t like me. They’re jealous because I’ve got all the things they want but don’t have.”
“That’s a good question but not a very good answer,” said an all to familiar voice.
“How do you know a good question and an bad answer when you hear them?” asked the spark who was Shawn.
The spider who had tormented him before climbed down her web towards him.
“Let me put it this way,” said the spider. “What makes you think anybody is jealous of you?”
“If they weren’t jealous, they’d like me,” Shawn insisted.
“Hmm. Let me put it this way,” said the spider. “Do you really think anybody wants to trade places with you?”
“Uh—well—uh—of course they’re jealous. Why else would those guys steal my train?”
“Nobody is riding the train out of jealousy of you,” said the spider. “They are riding the train out of obedience to my wishes.”
“Who gives you the right to boss everybody around?” asked the spark.
“Why, the One who tells me how to spin my Web gives me the right to connect your train where it needs to be connected,” said Melanie the Web Spinner.
“Who gives that guy the right to boss me around?” the spark snarled.
“My, my, my” said the spider. “You just don’t understand. Please remember that it was not intention that you ride the train in this way.”
“Then how come I’m stuck inside this bird’s beak?” the spark raged.
“Because you chose to defy the connections I was spinning for you and for the train,” answered the spider.
“I can defy every connection I want!” the spark yelled.
“That is very true,” said Melanie the Web Spinner, “as you have proven many times. But every time you break a connection, I simply must make another one whether you like it or not.”
“Nobody likes me, so why should I have to be connected with anybody?” grumbled the spark who was Shawn. “I’ll bet you a million train sets that not one person cares about me at all.”
“My, my, my, what am I going to do with a million train sets?” the spider asked herself. “Maybe I will have to give each one away to a child who is nicer than you.”
“Do you mean to tell me that some snotty kid somewhere cares about me?” Shawn asked.
“Yes, it is my intention to tell you just that,” said the spider.
“You must be wrong about this.”
“Melanie the Web Spinner does not like to be told that she is wrong when she knows she is right,” said the spider.
“How do you know somebody cares about me?” Shawn asked.
“I suppose it is because I have to go everywhere to make what connections that I can,” the spider replied. “A web spinner hears many things while she goes about making these connections.”
“Why should I want to be connected to anybody?” asked the spark who was Shawn.
“Well, well, well, well, that is an interesting question. I suppose I could say you might be happier if you were a little more connected to others, but you probably wouldn’t believe me.”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t believe you.”
“Melanie the Web Spinner does not appreciate not being believed when she believes what is right,” said the spider.
“Come on,” Shawn scoffed. “Who wants to be connected to any of the junkheads I have to go to school with?”
“Dearie, dearie, dearie me, do I have news for you! Most of the junkheads—as you call them—are worth being connected to.”
“How come?”
“Well, when somebody is well connected, then that somebody is worth being connected to,” answered the spider.
“Do you mean they’re connected with the president or something?” asked the spark.
“My, how you manage to misunderstand everything I say,” said the spider. “What I mean is that some people are connected to people who really matter right now. By this, I am speaking of people who are bringing the light back to the world.”
“And I suppose you think I should help with that?”
“Well, yes, to tell the truth, I do think you should help bring the light back to the world. In case you are wondering why this web has become so entangled in this space, the answer is that all the other connections I am currently making come to you, but you are not connecting.”
“Does that mean that I have the power to keep the whole world in darkness if I choose not to cooperate?” asked Shawn.
“That I cannot say,” said the spider. “I suppose that I will eventually work out another set of connections with some other well-connected people, and then it will not matter that are no longer connected, except possibly to you.”
In spite of the flame that made him a spark, Shawn felt a chill at the thought.
“Did you say that some do care about me?”
“Yes, I must confess I did say that.”
“I see,” said the spark that was Shawn. “What about this bird that picked me up in its beak. Does it care about me, or is it going to swallow me when it’s tired of carrying me in its beak.”
“I must tell you that the phoenix has been tired of carrying you for a long time, but it cares sufficiently about you so as not to drop you into such deep darkness that it would be hard for even the deepest and wisest of beings to bring you out of it. I must also tell you that if ever you should have to carry a rebellious spark like yourself in your beak, assuming you should happen to be a phoenix yourself some day, you will find that carrying somebody such as you is not the most enjoyable thing one can do in life. And another thing: the phoenix cares about other people just enough that he will keep you in his beak until he reaches the place where you can help bring back the light.”
“Sounds like I don’t have any choice,” Shawn sulked.
“Oh, but I can give you a choice,” said the spider.
Suddenly, all of the strands of web holding the spark that was Shawn collapsed and Shawn was free. He started to float away to his heart’s content, but he quickly felt himself falling much deeper into the darkness than should be possible inside a phoenix’s beak.
“Uh—spider!” Shawn called out.
“My name is Melanie the Web Spinner.”
“Please come back!”
The spark heard a long sigh before the spider answered.
“I suppose I can return to you, now that you have called me. It happens that I have more work to do than ever, thanks to you, but I suppose that is just as well in the long run. This has been quite a hard day, if you know what I mean.”
“It hasn’t been an easy day for me, either,” said Shawn.
----------------------
“How about a tower over there?” Roger suggested as he pointed to another spot on Kevin's drawing of the Lost City.
“With jewels?” asked Kevin.
“Of course,” said Samantha.
“The parchment got ripped right through the street leading up to this, said Kevin. “I’d better draw that in first.”
“Here, I’ll hold the pieces together,” Sheila offered.
As Kevin drew the street across the tear, Humphrey the Bullfrog jumped off of Sylvester the Turtle and hopped along the street Kevin had just drawn. When Humphrey the Bullfrog reached the end of the street, the two pieces of parchment had fused so that one would never know it had been torn.
“Did you do that, Humphrey?” Roger asked the bullfrog.
“It wasn’t my grandmother, I’ll tell you that,” croaked Humphrey. “Keep going, Sir Kevin, you’re doing great.”
When Kevin drew a jewel-studded tower like the ones he saw in the Lost City before he tore up the first drawing, he felt that he was really losing control of his work, but he was all the more dazzled by the results. As soon as he had established the pattern of the jewels on the tower’s facade, the rest of the pattern spread out ahead of Kevin’s quill.
“The Lost City, not to speak of the rest of the world, is getting exponentially heavier by the minute,” complained Sylvester the Turtle.
“I thought you said I made the world heavier by ripping the city apart,” said Kevin.
“Everything makes Sylvester’s burden heavier than it was before as far as Sylvester is concerned,” said Roger.
“Maybe you can squeeze Morley's Toy Store between those two buildings,” said Samantha as she pointed to another spot on the drawing.
“I don’t remember what it looked like,” said Kevin. “Mostly I was inside it.”
“I’m sure that Morley’s Toy Store will be glad to take on any appearance you want to give it,” said the engineer. “It’s the most accommodating toy store I know.”
The quill pulled Kevin’s drawing of the toy store into an odd shape beyond his intentions.
“I—I hope this store knows what it wants to look like,” Kevin stammered.
“I think Morley’s will be the proudest toy store in town now that it looks like that,” said Roger.
“You should try carrying the whole world and the new buildings in the Lost City and see how you like it,” said Sylvester.
“I’ll need to grow a shell like yours first,” said Roger.
“We’re so sorry, Sylvester,” said Samantha. “We wouldn’t add to your burden unless we absolutely had to.”
“I understand,” said Sylvester the Turtle. “Nobody adds to my burden unless they absolutely have to but everybody does absolutely have to add to my burden.”
Kevin ignored Sylvester the Turtle and continued his work. More and more lines appeared on the parchment beyond what he was drawing and the parchment itself expanded until Kevin and his companions had to crawl about from place to place to see what was there. The more Kevin drew with the bright gold ink, the farther its light pushed back the surrounding darkness.
“Isn't that the Main Street drug store?” Sheila asked as she pointed it out on a street that Kevin hadn’t drawn yet.
Kevin stopped drawing and leaned back. He blinked his eyes and looked again. There was no question that the Main Street Drug Store where he had bought tons of candy and comic books had intruded itself between two buildings he had drawn for the Lost City.
“And there's the Byrd & Tallis,” said Samantha, pointed to a building that had emerged on the other side of Kevin's drawing of the tower.
“And—there’s Donna’s Donut Shop!” Sheila pointed out.
“Not to speak of Taverner & Tye’s,” added Roger.
It dazzled Kevin’s eyes to see all the stores that had drawn themselves unless Kevin had drawn them in a trance.
“How about doing a train station so that the train can come in and pick everybody up?” suggested the engineer. “Then this city won’t be so lost any more.”
“Okay,” said Kevin.
Before he could draw the station, Kevin had to stand up and walk around the map for several blocks until he found a suitable place for the station. Humphrey the Bullfrog joined him and hopped along at his side and then stopped at the right place.
“I don’t know about you,” said Humphrey the Bullfrog, “but I think this city drawing was worth diving into the primordial depths for.”
“Thank you,” said a bemused Kevin as he began to design the train station.
“How about decorating the station with the boar's head?” Samantha suggested.
“That might drive people away,” said Sheila.
“A boar’s head should go over a tavern door,” said Roger.
“I’ll make the boar look real friendly,” said Kevin. “I think he wants to be the first to greet everybody and make sure they have a good time here.”
But Kevin found himself struggling when it came to drawing the boar’s head. His quill kept slipping off to some other part of the station, making its eccentric design go more haywire than he intended.
“Maybe it doesn’t want to go there,” said Roger.
“If one thing doesn’t work, try another,” suggested the engineer.
“I’ll try doing an arch, like what I saw on the map,” said Kevin.
As soon as he started drawing the arch, Kevin heard a sound that was something like a horse galloping over a paper terrain.
“What’s that?” asked Sheila in alarm as she pointed to something that looked like a ball of fire hurtling towards them.
“It’s the Golden Boar himself!” Kevin gasped.
The Golden Boar trotted over to Kevin. No sooner did Kevin stroked the boar’s fur and let the beast lick his hand, then a thunderous sound rattled the parchment.
“I can’t believe this,” Sylvester groaned from underneath the map. “I feel my shell cracking already.”
“It’s Bertha the Elephant!” cried Samantha. “I’ll bet nobody’s seen you in a thousand years!”
“Well I’ll be a tiger with its claws stuck in its mouth!” said the engineer.
“I can’t believe this!” said Kevin as he tried to hide his face, not on account of the elephant lumbering along a street in the Lost City, but because of the passenger on the elephant’s back. To his great relief and amazement, Karen was carrying the candle Sheila had found at Taverner & Tye’s.
“You don’t have to hide your face from your own sister,” Karen chided her brother from on top of the elephant. “I didn’t come here to nag you about eating healthy food.”
“Where did you get the candle?” Sheila asked in amazement.
“We found it in—in the thicket of the tangled hearts of humanity,” Karen replied as she handed the candle down to a grateful Sheila Armstrong.
“That’s me,” said Kevin.
“Don’t feel bad about that, my dear,” said Bertha whose soft milky voice startled him. “Anybody can get a heart tangled in that thicket. My, what a wonderful drawing of the Lost City!”
“I told you my brother could draw,” said Karen proudly.
A melodious train whistle sounded in the distance. The Golden Boar bellowed as if it were trying to imitate the whistle, then it jumped up into the arch Kevin had just drawn. As if the animal was a light switch, everything in the Lost City turned brighter as soon as the boar was in place.
“You’d better draw in the train tracks,” Roger suggested, “just to make sure the train doesn’t crash when it comes into the city with all the passengers who are coming to visit the Lost City.”
“I’ll help,” promised Humphrey the Bullfrog.
With renewed energy, Kevin sketched in a set of train tracks running from the station to the arch. Before he knew it, the tracks stretched along the parchment further than Kevin could see, outdistancing the hopping bullfrog. As he worked, he heard the train whistle a second time, and he also thought he heard music coming from a distance.
“I think we’re going to have a parade!” Roger cried out.
“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” said Karen.
“Well, I never thought my older sister would play music like that on a piano like that in a parade like this!” Roger exclaimed.
“I can’t believe anybody would want to play that piano,” said a flabbergasted Sheila when she saw the instrument for herself.
Weary from all his work, Kevin dropped his arms and he looked up to see a loud and noisy crowd was parading down the street in his direction. At the front of the parade, children were carrying a street wide banner that read: WELCOME TO THE LOST CITY. Just behind them, a familiar-looking girl was playing a pink toy piano and singing her heart out while riding a platform carried by several people,. An even more stunning sight for Kevin was the man clapping and dancing alongside the raised-up girl. Amarilla belted out each line and then all the people of the town repeated it:
We’re here to welcome in the train, the train that’s found the lost!
We’re here to welcome in the train, the train that’s found the lost!
The train’s a-coming through the arch, the arch that Kevin drew!
The train’s a-coming through the arch, the arch that Kevin drew!
We’ll give the city’s key to Kevin, to Kevin who can draw!
We’ll give the city’s key to Kevin, to Kevin who can draw!
When the marchers came up to Kevin and his friends, they stopped and the older man who had acted as spokesman earlier walked up to Kevin. He was carrying a key as wide as a street and it was covered with specks of gold paper that caught the light from the emerging buildings.
“Sir Kevin the City Planner and Designer!” the spokesman cried out. “On behalf of the Lost City, I award you with a key to the city in token of our gratitude for the great drawing and designing that you have done for us.”
A red-faced Kevin held back and looked uncertainly at the faces of the people who had so rashly sacrificed his friends to the Dark Lake.
“I hope you’re willing to let bygones be bygones,” said a man off to the side.
“We wouldn’t have sacrificed your friends if we knew you were coming,” said a woman.
“Wasn’t it kind of hard, being a lost city?” Roger asked.
Several people nodded sadly. Kevin looked over at Roger, puzzled by his forgiving attitude.
“Seems to me that things are turning out pretty good right now,” said the engineer.
“Come on, Kevin,” his mayor urged him, “be a sport. Accepting a key to the city means a lot to a town.”
A girl stepped out of the crowd and awkwardly took the large key out of the spokesman’s hands.
“I’ll make it easier for you to take it with you,” the girl said.
The girl folded the key over several times until it was a manageable size, then handed it to Kevin. Unable to resist this gesture, Kevin put out his hands and accepted the key. The crowd cheered and then another blast of the train's whistle drowned out the cheering. A train, its caboose leading the way, and sporting a bright reddish light in front of the engine chugged through the arch and came to a stop at the station. A network of thin wires sprang from the train and as soon as they connected with the street lamps, the whole Lost City broke into an explosion of bright colors. Then two familiar faces popped out of the doorway of one of the train cars.
“All aboard for Milton Carelin City!” Edmund yelled.
“No tickets needed!” Nigel announced, “just happy customers!”
There was an instant jam up at each passenger car as people clamored to board the train. Kevin noticed that the mayor of Milton was trying, ineffectually, to restore order.
“Cornelius, my friend!” croaked Humphrey the Bullfrog.
“Humphrey, my friend!” cried what looked like a spark leaping off the train.
The insect and Humphrey the Bullfrog leaped around each other in the air as if it were their style of doing a high five.
“And if that ain’t Bertha the Elephant, then I’m not a bullfrog!” cried Humphrey.
“And since when has a phoenix ever pulled a train like this?” Roger asked.
Only then did Kevin realize that the strange light on the front of the train was a fiery bird with fire in its beak.
“Not since Martahol turned into an anteater for the first time is my guess,” said Amarilla.
“Nothing like having your old job back,” said the engineer as he leaped into the caboose like a child at play. “And nothing like running a train from the caboose!”
Over the din of the people jostling each other while boarding the train, a thunderous groan broke out underneath the train tracks.
“I think we’re forgetting poor Sylvester again,” said Samantha.
“Don’t mind me,” complained Sylvester, “I've carried villages and towns and countries and empires and worlds and universes and cosmoses before. I suppose there's no limit to what the universe and all its people can impose on me. I guess I can manage to carry a train with everybody on it , even if Bertha the Elephant and Cornelius the Beetle and Humphrey the Bullfrog think they have to ride the train with everybody else when I’d rather they held me up the way they should, since I have to carry the whole world to begin with. I just hope I don't get too badly crushed by the weight.”
“Don’t worry, my dear,” said Bertha the Elephant to Sylvester, “I will spend the whole time on the train hoping your shell doesn’t break, but if it does, I will personally ask Gertrude the Walrus to sew it back up for you.”
“My gratitude is deeper than my groans can convey,” Sylvester replied.
“Come on you guys!” Nigel called out. “All aboard! The train’s leaving!”
“Can Bertha the Elephant get in this car?” asked a dubious Karen.
“Of course she can,” Edmund answered. “When Bertha the Elephant’s around, we’ve got all the room in the world.”