I did and the man's bright old face lit up. «Scare butt plum jabs!»

Sizzling Thumb was the first human we had seen on Rondua and despite the jumble of words, his presence was tremendously reassuring. He wore a suit made entirely of newspapers, as did everyone in the castle. On closer inspection, I saw that the newspaper was the one Eliot wrote for, _Tic-Toe_.

This jolly old fellow controlled the entire Fourth Stroke ol Rondua – the southern section we had been crossing ever since our arrival – and his castle sat on the border with the north. I was required to turn the first Bone over to him if we were to pass on unharmed. There had been no mention of Pepsi surrendering his.

The King of the Fourth Stroke worshipped light, so everything around him was there to serve and complement it; not argue or distort. We were treated well, but with the distance and respect usually afforded ambassadors from remote, questionable countries. Everyone stared uncomprehendingly at us in our multicolored clothes and sneakers. No one paid any attention to the animals.

We were given a tour of the castle and shown little cars that ran on solar power, rooms where reflections were stored, museums that housed perfect diamonds and glass noodles. Everything was certainly solid and real, but I kept feeling I was either stoned or under water the whole time. Later on, at the end of the tour, I hesitantly asked why everyone wore newspaper suits. Sizzling Thumb smiled and put out his hand and one of the butlers put a magnifying glass in it. The king walked over to a window and, holding the glass this way and that, focused sunlight on to a small piece of his suit in the middle of his stomach. In a few seconds the suit started to smoke, then caught fire underneath the glass with a slight «puff sound. Alarmed, I looked at him to make sure he knew what he was doing.

«_Hot_ light!» He watched the flame catch hold of everything and burn right up. The suit was one big orange blaze in a few seconds, but none of the servants did a thing. Pieces of ash like black snow-flakes floated wispily up and down and everywhere around us. Sizzling Thumb flapped his arms up and down like a fat bird on fire. The air was full of ash and pieces of flaming newspaper.

Minutes later, he stood there naked and untouched and jaunty as ever.

After the banquet was over and everyone had toasted everyone else, Sizzling Thumb (in a brand-new suit) banged his goblet down for quiet.

«The hat looks like it wants to say something.»

I smiled and nodded and waited for the Mr. Tracy translation.

«Sizzling Thumb says the north has very bad weather now. That will make it very difficult for us to find the second Bone. He says he doesn't even think Pepsi's walking stick will help us, but I don't believe that.»

«What's he going to do with mine, Mr. Tracy?» I looked at it on the old man's lap, not without a lot of sadness; I had grown very used to having it in the dome of my hand.

«It's his protection, Cullen. The entire Fourth Stroke is safe now.»

«And what about us? Are we safe too?»

«Yes, as long as Pepsi keeps his.»

«But isn't he too young? He doesn't understand everything yet.»

Mr. Tracy turned and nodded to Pepsi, who was sitting on his other side. «Tell your mother the Law of Stolen Flight.»

«Only flame, and things with wings. All the rest suffer stings.»

«Mr. Tracy? Where did that come from?»

«From no one, Cullen. You should remember all this. Pepsi's change has begun. He _will_ find the second Bone because he owns the important half of the first. You found it for him. After he owns the second, then he will be stronger than all of us.»

The North was dark with clouds and impending war. As soon as we crossed the border, we met up with dragoons of Heeg, the lizard King. These soldiers rode giant iguanas the color of stone and grass and were dressed in parish uniforms that reminded me of Hapsburg outfits Danny and I had seen in a military museum in Italy.

Once we had shown them Pepsi's walking stick, they treated us with brusque respect. Nevertheless, they warned us to travel only in the day because their patrols might otherwise mistake us for the enemy who had been steadily moving in from the West for the past few weeks.

A day later we met this «enemy.» They looked exactly like Heeg's men, only this bunch was all in gray: uniforms, sabers, iguanas. But they were awed by Pepsi's stick and asked if there was anything they could do for us. They treated us to a delicious meal of gray food.

Later we watched them ride off and wondered which of them would survive their coming battles.

The wolf rubbed her nose with a paw. The camel quietly chewed his cud. The dog looked at me.

«It wasn't like this before, was it, Mr. Tracy? We used to come to the North to watch the thunderstorms and wash our clothes in the rain.»

Felina spoke. «It's never been like this before. I have cousins by the sea who march in file and sharpen their teeth on wet coral. There's greed and treachery everywhere. It used to make us sad, but now we're frightened. Aren't we?» She looked at the dog and the camel and they nodded.

«Are we going to fight too?» Pepsi waved his stick around in the air like a sword.

«You're going to _stop_ the fighting, Pepsi. You and your mother.»

Martio stretched his long camel's neck and gazed down the railway track into the silent, empty distance. It had rained again and the steel rails shone a wet, silvery blue.

«Don't sit down, Pepsi. You'll get your pants wet.»

«I'm tired, Mommy! I want to go to sleep!»

He hardly ever whined or complained, so the day's trip across the North to this railway line must have been harder on him than we'd thought. We'd been moving since dawn. Sizzling Thumb had said it was imperative we walk and not ride the animals at all across the Third Stroke. However, that cut our pace to about a tenth of what it had been before.

The train was due at any time. There was no station where we were, only a place where the road crossed the narrow, meandering railway track. The train would take us to Kempinski, the capital city of Rondua where the first of Pepsi's great tests would take place.

The brown sky and fall of late afternoon light left us all quiet and still. There was nothing to do but wait and think about what we had seen and heard that day.

Purple Jakes lived in the North. Purple Jakes and Yellow-striped Drews that ate cheese pies and slept furious or in fear of everything. Every one of them, bright neon things moving fast against the dark-earth colors of that landscape. Besides the colors, if you asked me to try and describe them, I would smile.

Do you know the pictures children draw when they're first given crayons and paper? Those wild red slashes, or thick blobby blue circles that spill and shoot off the page and have nothing to do with one another? Those were the Jakes and Drews, the major inhabitants of this stroke of Rondua. Heeg ruled this section, but it was a mystery to me what he and his men controlled besides a certain piece of hilly land on a map. Beside his gray soldiers and their lizards, there were no «living» beings here that had any kind of recognizable form.

Something else too: I have no idea what language they spoke or even how they communicated, because every time we saw one of them that strange day, they were far off in the distance moving in the opposite direction.

Felina said no one she knew had ever seen a Jake or a Drew close-up. Like shy rare birds, the scribbled-looking things fled from everyone. The only way you could recognize them was by their brilliantly distinctive colors.

«If they're always running away, why does Heeg have to have an Army? Who's here to conquer? Who's his enemy?»