«_Drovo pradatsch, Zulbi. Tras-treetsch_.»
«Pepsi, would you come here? I don't know what he's saying.»
Before he came, Pepsi held a hurried conference with Mr. Tracy. The big dog listened more than he spoke. When they were finished, Pepsi took the familiar first Bone out of his knapsack and brought it over with him.
«Close your eyes, Mom.»
Putting the Bone firmly against my throat, he said something mellifluous but impossible to make out, as usual. Then he did the same thing to each of my ears.
«You'll understand everyone now, Mom. Later it'll go away because you're really not supposed to have this power, but for now you'll understand. You'd better get ready because it comes fast.»
The experience was similar to entering a railway station or airport from a silent corridor or street. Instantly, absolutely everything around me had a voice and was using it every second. The grass spoke of the fickleness of the wind, the clouds of their search for the perfect speed across the sky. Stones, flowers, insects . . . All of them talked over and under and beyond each other in a kind of pleasant cacophony of original voices I had never heard in Rondua, much less imagined existed.
One of my favorite books when I was a little girl was _Doctor Doolittle_, but I was envious of his ability to speak the language of Gub-Gub the pig, or laugh at the jokes of horses. How wonderful it felt at this new moment to be able to laugh at the jokes of everything!
After the initial tidal wave of racket, I learned to filter out most of the sounds so that I could pay attention to the lovely looking Stastny Panenka.
«Vuk and Zdravko will be coming in from the First Stroke any day now. That I am sure of. The problem we have is Endaxi and his Barking Flutes. . . . You never know with them. Look, when you have ten brothers all married to the same woman, you cannot expect them to be dependable! I'm sorry about that. They are good fighters. If they come, they come.»
Looking proudly at his zeppelin off in the near distance (which seemed to be grazing the sky as calmly as the cows, directly below it, grazed the meadow), he rattled off the names of others who would be joining us on our march against Jack Chili.
The only thing that made an impression on me was the name/word «Endaxi.» Endaxi meant «O.K.» in Greek. «Do you want another Coke?» «Endaxi.» The question was, in Rondua, who was Endaxi and his Barking Flutes? Within the next few days we were to find out.
«They look like fire bees, huh, Mom?»
We had been on a night cruise with Stastny in his blimp and were just returning to the meadow where all of our allies were massed. Hundreds of feet below, campfires burned everywhere. Their flickers and jumps did remind me of fireflies, in a way.
Looking down there with Pepsi alongside reminded me of the first day we had arrived in Rondua. How much had we changed since then? In the faint light of the cockpit, I looked hard at my son's profile. His hair was longer and his face was thinner. It was too dim to see his expression, but memory told me it was as vital and open as it had been so many long days ago when we looked out of another high window in the sky and saw giant animals waiting for us below: Mr. Tracy, Felina. Martio.
But what waited below us now really defied description.
They had come from every part of Rondua: from cities, hives, forests, towers, nests, caves, under rocks, jungles, deep water. . . . They had come to join us because it was known everywhere that this would be the final battle, the final chance to do what one could to save a world that otherwise was truly lost. Final battles are not a newr thing in the history of the world, but they are still more terrible than anything else. They are the last resort, and only the desperate or the mad ever revert to that. When an entire civilization is pushed to that extreme, nothing could be more dangerous.
«Would you like to stay up here for a while? We have plenty of gas and everything seems to be under control below.»
Pepsi shook his head and said there was too much work to do down there before we went to sleep. Stastny quickly gave orders for the eel ladders to be let down. Whatever my son said now, Ronduans hopped to it with an alacrity that shocked me. Had he suddenly, or secretly, become someone I wasn't aware of? Sure, he was Pepsi with the Four Bones, but he had had them an awfully long time and no one had made such a big deal of it before. What had happened? Or rather, what _was_ happening to change Rondua's attitude toward him? Was it the imminence of both Jack Chili and our forthcoming battle with him?
An hour before, while out cruising the night skies, Stastny had pointed without any big fanfare to a small sparsely lit village in one of the mountain valleys about ten miles from our meadow.
«That's it. That's where he lives.»
«Jack Chili? Down _there_?» From up in the sky, the town looked as if it had barely two hundred houses, if that.
«Yes, down there.»
«But I don't see anything! It looks totally asleep. Where are all of his troops and forces, or whatever you call them?»
«Still in the children's heads.» Stastny spoke as if I should have known that.
«What are you talking about?»
We motored on for two or three minutes more before Panenka ordered all engines stopped. Pressing a button on one of the glowing red consoles, he brought a brilliant spotlight to life on the left side of the gondola. Shining it back and forth on the ground below, he finally found what he was looking for: a long building set back on the side of a hill in the middle of a thick forest. In that stark unnatural light, the place looked like a bandage on the hill's dark head.
«What's that?»
«The Cafй Deutschland.»
«What do you mean, _cafй_?» It did _not_ look like a place where you drank coffee.
«Jack Chili gives names to things. Half the time no one knows what they mean except him. He calls that the Cafй Deutschland. It's a madhouse for children.»
«My God. What does he do to them?» I shivered as if someone had put a cold hand on the back of my neck.
«To the children? Nothing at all. Don't misunderstand. It's reputed to be very clean and pleasant inside. The children are treated very well.»
«_And?_»
«And . . . Chili is able to use the children's nightmares. He taps into what they dream and chooses the parts which he wants to bring into being.»
«You mean, one of those poor mad children has a dream –«
Stastny interrupted me with a gentle defeated voice and a hand on my arm. A small squeeze. «A mad child dreams terrible things, doesn't it? Jack Chili enters their sleep, chooses whatever he wants in their dreams, and then those things become his soldiers.»
«My God! There's no way we'll ever win! Against that? Kids' nightmares? _Mad_ kids? Big bugs with six heads? Rats on fire? Things from horror movies multiplied a thousand times?» I was getting louder and louder, but I couldn't help it. «That's our enemy? Stastny, we're talking about Hell here. If you just take a _normal_ kid's imagination – '
«Mom, would you be quiet?»
«All right. I'm sorry.»
«Let's go home, Stastny.»
The many campfires on the meadow were reassuring in a small way, but what we'd learned sixty minutes ago was enough to leave anyone in drop-jawed paralysis. The entire ride back, I sat silently in my seat, masochistically trying to remember some of the nightmares _I_ had had as a child.
Once on the ground again, I asked Stastny if I could speak to Pepsi alone.
«Honey, do you know what you're doing? Do you know what you're _going_ to do?»
«I think so, Mom. But first I have to talk with Mr. Tracy to make sure it's all right.»
«Can you tell me?»
«I'm sorry, Mom, no.»
He was facing me and I couldn't resist reaching out to brush the flop of hair off his forehead. «That's okay, Peps. Did you know that you're getting to be a very handsome guy?» He took my hand and, turning away from the zeppelin, pulled me along after him.