Imaginary Friends
Author: Terry Brooks
Date: 2011-10-31 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Young Adult; Adult; shannara; short-stories; Paranormal; Fiction
Description: In 1997, New York Times bestselling author Terry Brooks reinvented the fantasy genre again, publishing the contemporary fantasy masterpiece RUNNING WITH THE DEMON, the first book in a trilogy of novels that would become known as the Word/Void series. But in 1991, six years before RUNNING WITH THE DEMON, Terry Brooks began testing the mythos found in Word/Void and wrote a tale titled IMAGINARY FRIENDS, a short story published in the Lester del Rey anthology ONCE UPON A TIME! IMAGINARY FRIENDS has been out of print ever since -- but no longer! Jack McCall is ten days shy of his thirteenth birthd
Publisher: Speakman Press

Full disclaimer, right off the bat: I wrote this story back in early 1990 when Del Rey Books came to me for a piece to be included in a coffee-table book of modern fairy tales. Other contributors included Anne McCaffrey, Isaac Asimov, Lester del Rey, and half a dozen more. Since Lester was my editor and Judy-Lynn my champion, of course I agreed to contribute.

The collection was titled Once Upon a Time, and when it was published in 1991, “Imaginary Friends” was included.

So the story is neither brand-new nor unpublished. Of course, it has been out of print for quite a while, so at least it will seem new.

The idea for the story was already in my head when I was approached. For some time, I had been thinking of breaking away from the Shannara and Magic Kingdom series to write something new. I wanted to do a big, sprawling saga—another, obviously—but one that was situated in the present and in which the schematic of magic was so integral to what we know to be true about our world that it would feel entirely plausible. That meant the fantasy elements and magic devices I chose to employ had to have explanations that made them feel real to the reader.

I had envisioned this saga as a trilogy of books, all of them linked by a series of common elements, but never as a short story. However, since no one was clamoring for such an opus, I thought this would be a good chance to put something down on paper as a sort of rough blueprint of what I would one day have a chance to write in larger form.

So I wrote about Jack and his impish friend Pick and the owl Daniel and their lives together in Sinnissippi Park. Most of what I wrote in the shorter version was changed entirely in the longer. Yet I think you will find that the story stands up pretty well on its own merits.

Several years later, I would write the books that comprise the Word & Void series, but “Imaginary Friends” was the prototype. Read on, and you can discover a little about how the one led to the other.

— Terry Brooks

IMAGINARY FRIENDS
Terry Brooks

Jack McCall was ten days shy of his thirteenth birthday when he decided that he was dying. He had been having headaches for about six months without telling anyone, the headaches being accompanied by a partial loss of vision that lasted anywhere from ten to twenty minutes. He hadn’t thought much about it since it only happened once in a while, believing that it was simply the result of eyestrain. After all, there was a lot of homework assigned in the seventh grade.

But ten days before his birthday he had an attack as he was about to go out the door to school, and since he couldn’t very well ride his bike in that condition or stand around pretending that nothing was wrong, he was forced to admit the problem to his mother. His mother made an immediate appointment with Dr. Muller, the family pediatrician, for that afternoon, sat Jack down until his vision cleared, then drove him to school, asking him all the way there if he was all right and calling him “Jackie” until he thought he would scream.

She returned promptly when school let out to take him to his appointment. Dr. Muller was uncharacteristically cheerful as he checked Jack over, even going so far as to ruffle his hair and remark on how quickly he was growing. This was the same Dr. Muller who normally didn’t have two words for him. Jack began to worry.

When the doctor was finished, he sent Jack and his mother over to the hospital for further tests. The tests included X-rays, blood workups, an EKG, and a barrage of other examinations, all of which were administered by an uncomfortably youthful collection of nurses. Jack endured the application of cold metal implements to his body, let himself be stuck repeatedly with needles, breathed in and out, lay very still, jumped up and down, and mostly waited around in empty, sterile examination rooms. When the tests were all done, he was sent home knowing nothing more than he had when he arrived beyond the fact that he did not care ever to go through such an ordeal again.

That night, while Jack was upstairs in his room fiddling with his homework and listening to his stereo, Dr. Muller paid a visit to his house. His parents didn’t call for him, but that didn’t stop him from being curious. He slipped down the stairway to the landing and sat there in the dark on the other side of the half wall above the living room while Dr. Muller and his parents spoke in hushed tones. Dr. Muller did most of the talking. He said that the preliminary test results were back. He talked about the body and its cells and a bunch of other stuff, throwing in multisyllabic medical terms that Jack couldn’t begin to understand.

Then he used the words “blood disorder” and “leukemia” and “cancer.” Jack understood that part. He might only be in seventh grade, but he wasn’t stupid.

He stayed on the stairway until he heard his mother start to cry, then crept back up to his room without waiting to hear any more. He sat there staring at his unfinished homework, trying to decide what he should be feeling. He couldn’t seem to feel anything. He heard Dr. Muller leave, and then his parents came up to see him. Usually they visited him individually; when they both appeared it was serious business. They knocked on the door, came inside when invited, and stood there looking decidedly uncomfortable. Then his father told him that he was sick and would have to take it easy for a while, his mother started crying and calling him “Jackie” and hugging him, and all of a sudden he was scared out of his socks.

He didn’t sleep much that night, letting the weight of what he had discovered sink in, trying to comprehend what his dying meant, trying to decide if he believed it was possible. Mostly, he thought about Uncle Frank. Uncle Frank had been his favorite uncle, a big man with strong hands and red hair who taught him how to throw a baseball. Uncle Frank used to take him to ballgames on Sunday afternoons. Then he got sick. It happened all at once. He went into the hospital and never came out. Jack’s parents took him to see Uncle Frank a couple of times. There was not much left of Uncle Frank by then. His once-strong hands were so frail he could barely lift them. All his hair had fallen out. He looked like an old man.

Then he died. No one came right out and said it, but Jack knew what had killed him. And he had always suspected, deep down inside where you hid things like that, that it might someday kill him, too.

The next morning Jack dressed, wolfed down his breakfast as quickly as he could, and got out of there. His parents were behaving like zombies. Only his little sister Abby was acting as if everything was all right, which was the way she always acted since she was only eight and never knew what was going on anyway.

It was Friday, always a slow-moving day at Roosevelt Junior High, but never more so than on this occasion. The morning seemed endless, and Jack didn’t remember any of it when it was finally over. He trudged to the lunchroom, found a seat off in a corner where he could talk privately, and told his best friend Waddy Wadsworth what he had discovered. Reynolds Lucius Wadsworth III was Waddy’s real name, the result of a three-generation tradition of unparalleled cruelty in the naming of first-born boys. No one called Waddy by his real name, of course. But they didn’t call him anything sensible either. It was discovered early on that Waddy lacked any semblance of athletic ability. He was the kid who couldn’t climb the knotted rope or do chin-ups or high-jump when the bar was only two feet off the ground. Someone started calling him Waddy and the name stuck. It wasn’t that Waddy was fat or anything; he was just earthbound.

He was also a good guy. Jack liked him because he never said anything about the fact that Jack was only a little taller than most fire hydrants and a lot shorter than most girls.

“You look okay to me,” Waddy said after Jack had finished telling him he was supposed to be dying.?“I know I look okay.” Jack frowned at his friend impatiently. “This isn’t the kind of thing you can see, you know.”

“You sound okay, too.” Waddy took a bite of his jelly sandwich. “Does anything hurt?”

Jack shrugged. “Just when I have the headaches.”

“Well, you don’t have them more often now than you did six months ago, do you?”

“No.”

“And they don’t last any longer now than they did then, do they?”

“No.”

Waddy shoved the rest of the sandwich into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Well, then, who’s to say you’re really dying? This could be one of those conditions that just goes on indefinitely. Meantime, they might find a cure for it; they’re always finding cures for this kind of stuff.” He chewed some more. “Anyway, maybe the doctor made a mistake. That’s possible, isn’t it?”

Jack nodded doubtfully.

“The point is, you don’t know for sure. Not for sure.” Waddy cocked his head. “Here’s something else to think about. They’re always telling someone or other that they’re going to die and then they don’t. People get well all the time just because they believe they can do it. Sometimes believing is all it takes.”

He gave Jack a lopsided grin. “Besides, no one dies in the seventh grade.”

Jack wanted to believe that. He spent the afternoon trying to convince himself. After all, he didn’t personally know anyone his age who had died. The only people he knew who had died were much older. Even Uncle Frank. He was just a kid. How could he die when he still didn’t know anything about girls? How could he die without ever having driven a car? It just didn’t seem possible.

Nevertheless, the feeling persisted that he was only fooling himself. It didn’t make any difference what he believed; it didn’t change the facts. If he really had cancer, believing he didn’t wouldn’t make it go away. He sat through his afternoon classes growing steadily more despondent, feeling helpless and wishing he could do something about it.

It wasn’t until he was biking home that he suddenly found himself thinking about Pick.

The McCall house was a large white shake-shingle rambler that occupied almost an acre of timber bordering the north edge of Sinnissippi Park. The Sinnissippi Indians were native to the area, and several of their burial mounds occupied a fenced-off area situated in the southwest corner of the park under a cluster of giant maples. The park was more than forty acres end to end, most of it woods, the rest consisting of baseball diamonds and playgrounds. The park was bordered on the south by the Rock River, on the west by Riverside Cemetery, and on the north and east by the private residences of Woodlawn. It was a sprawling preserve, filled with narrow, serpentine trails; thick stands of scrub-choked pine; and shady groves of maple, elm, and white oak. A massive bluff ran along the better part of its southern edge and overlooked the Rock River.

Jack was not allowed to go into the park alone until he was out of fourth grade, not even beyond the low maintenance bushes that grew where his backyard ended at the edge of the park. His father took him for walks sometimes, a bike ride now and then, and once in a while his mother even came along. She didn’t come often, though, because she was busy with Abby, and his father worked at the printing company and was usually not home until after dark. So for a long time the park remained a vast, unexplored country that lay just out of reach and whispered enticingly in Jack’s youthful mind of adventure and mystery.

Sometimes, when the lure was too strong, he would beg to be allowed to go into the park by himself, just for a little ways, just for a few tiny minutes. He would pinch his thumb and index finger close together to emphasize the smallness of his request. But his mother’s reply was always the same—his own backyard was park enough for him.

Things have a way of working out, though, and the summer before he entered second grade he ended up going into the park alone in spite of his parents. It all came about because of Pick. Jack was playing in the sandbox with his toy trucks on a hot July afternoon when he heard Sam whining and barking at something just beyond the bushes. Sam was the family dog, a sort of mongrel terrier with a barrel body. He was carrying on as if he had unearthed a mountain lion, and finally Jack lifted himself out of the maze of crisscrossing paths he was constructing and wandered down to the end of the yard to see what was happening. When he got there, he found that he still couldn’t see anything because Sam was behind a pine tree on the other side of the bushes. Jack called, but the dog wouldn’t come. After standing there for a few minutes, Jack glanced restlessly over his shoulder at the windows of his house. There was no sign of his mother. Biting his lower lip with stubborn determination, he stepped cautiously onto forbidden ground.

He was concentrating too hard on what lay behind him. As he passed through the bushes, he stumbled and struck his head sharply on a heavy limb. The blow stung, but Jack climbed back to his feet almost immediately and went on.

Sam was jumping around at the base of the pine, darting in and out playfully. There was a gathering of brambles growing there and a bit of cloth caught in them. When Jack got closer, he saw that the bit of cloth was actually a doll. When he got closer still, he saw that the doll was moving.

“Don’t just stand there!” the doll yelled at him in a very tiny but angry voice. “Call him off!”

Jack caught hold of Sam’s collar. Sam struggled, twisting about in Jack’s grip, trying to get back to his newfound discovery. Finally Jack gave the dog a sharp slap on its hind end and sent it scurrying away through the bushes. Then he crouched down beneath the pine, staring at the talking doll. It was a little man with a reddish beard, green shirt and pants, black boots and belt, and a cap made out of fresh pine needles woven together.

Jack giggled. “Why are you so little?” he asked.

“Why am I so little?” the other echoed. He was struggling mightily to free himself. “Why are you so big? Don’t you know anything?”

“Are you real?” Jack pressed.

“Of course I’m real! I’m an Elf!”

Jack cocked his head. “Like in the fairy tales?”

The Elf was flushed redder than his beard. “No, not like in the fairy tales! Since when do fairy tales tell the truth about Elves? I suppose you think Elves are just cute little woodfolk who spend their lives prancing about in the moonlight? Well, we don’t! We work!”

Jack bent close so he could see better. “What do you work at?”

“Everything!” The Elf was apoplectic.

“You’re funny,” Jack said, rocking back on his heels. “What’s your name?”

“Pick. My name is Pick,” muttered the Elf. He twisted some more and finally gave up. “What’s yours?”

“Jack. Jack Andrew McCall.”

“Well, look, Jack Andrew McCall. Do you think you could help me get out of these brambles? It’s your fault, after all, that I’m in them in the first place. That is your dog, isn’t it? Well, your dog was sneaking around where I was working and I didn’t hear him. He barked and frightened me so badly I got myself caught. Then he began sniffing and drooling all over me, and I got tangled up even worse!” He took a deep breath, calming himself. “So how about it? Will you help me?”

“Sure,” Jack agreed at once.

He started to reach down, and Pick cried out, “Be careful with those big fingers of yours! You could crush me! You’re not a clumsy boy, are you? You’re not one of those boys that goes around stepping on ants?”

Jack was always pretty good with his hands, and he managed to free the Elf in a matter of seconds with little or no damage to either from the brambles. He put Pick on the ground in front of him and sat back. Pick brushed at his clothes, muttering inaudibly.

“Do you live in the park?” Jack asked.

Pick glanced up, sour-faced once more. His pine needle cap was askew. “Of course I live in the park! How else could I do my work if I didn’t?” He jabbed out with one finger. “Do you know what I do, Jack Andrew? I look after this park! This whole park, all by myself! That is a terrible responsibility for a single Elf!”

Jack was impressed. “How do you look after it?”

Pick shoved the cap back into place. “Do you know what magic is?”

Jack scratched at a mosquito bite on his wrist. “It turned Cinderella into a fairy princess,” he answered doubtfully.

“Good gosh golly, are they still telling that old saw? When are they ever going to get this fairy tale business right? They keep sticking to those ridiculous stories about wicked stepmothers, would-be princesses, and glass slippers at a royal ball—as if a glass slipper would last five minutes on a dance floor!” He jumped up and down so hard that Jack started. “I could tell them a thing or two about real fairy tales!” Pick exploded. “I could tell them some stories that would raise the hair on the backs of their necks!”

He stopped, suddenly aware of Jack’s consternation. “Oh, never mind!” he huffed. “This business of fairy tales just happens to be a sore subject with me. Now about what I do, Jack Andrew. I keep the magic in balance, is what I do. There’s magic in everything, you know—from the biggest old oak to the smallest blade of grass, from ants to elephants. And it all has to be kept in balance or there’s big trouble. That’s what Elves really do. But there’s not enough of us to be everywhere, so we concentrate on the places where the magic is strongest and most likely to cause trouble—like this park.” He swept the air with his hand. “There’s lots of troublesome magic in this park.”

Jack followed the motion of his hand and then nodded. “It’s a big place.”

“Too big for most Elves, I’ll have you know!” Pick announced. “Want to see how big?”

Jack nodded yes and shook his head no all in the same motion. He glanced hurriedly over his shoulder, remembering anew his mother. “I’m not supposed to go into the park,” he explained. “I’m not even supposed to go out of the yard.”

“Oh,” said Pick quietly. He rubbed his red-bearded chin momentarily, then clapped his hands. “Well, a touch of magic will get the job done and keep you out of trouble at the same time. Here, pick me up, put me in your hand. Gently, Boy! There! Now let me settle myself. Keep your hand open, palm up. Don’t move. Now close your eyes. Go on, close them. This won’t hurt. Close your eyes and think about the park. Can you see it? Now, watch…”

Something warm and syrupy drifted through Jack’s body, starting at his eyes and working its way downward to his feet. He felt Pick stir.

And suddenly Jack was flying, soaring high above the trees and telephone poles across the broad, green expanse of Sinnissippi Park. He sat astride an owl, a great brown-and-white feathered bird with wings that seemed to stretch on forever. Pick sat behind him, and amazingly they were the same size. Jack blinked in disbelief, then yelled in delight. The owl swooped lazily earthward, banking this way and that to catch the wind, but the motion did not disturb Jack. Indeed, he felt as if nothing could dislodge him from his perch.

“This is how I get from place to place,” he heard Pick say, the tiny voice unruffled by the wind. “Daniel takes me. He’s a barn owl—a good one. We met sometime back. If I had to walk the park, it would take me weeks to get from one end to the other and I’d never get anything done!”

“I like this!” Jack cried out joyously, laughed, and Pick laughed with him.

They rode the wind on Daniel’s back for what seemed like hours, passing from Riverside Cemetery along the bluff face east to the houses of Woodlawn and back again. Jack saw everything with eyes that were wide with wonder and delight. There were gray and brown squirrels, birds of all kinds and colors, tiny mice and voles, opossums, and even a badger. There was a pair of deer in a thicket down along the riverbank, a fawn and its mother, slender and delicate, their stirrings barely visible against the trees. There were hoary old pines with their needled boughs interlaced like armor over secretive earthen floors, towering oaks and elms sticking out of the ground like massive spears, deep hollows and ravines that collected dried leaves and shadows, and inlets and streams filled with lily pads, frogs, and darting tiny fish.

But there was more than that for a boy who could imagine. There were castles and forts behind every old log. There were railroads with steam engines racing over ancient wooden bridges where the streams grew too wide to ford. There were pirate dens and caves of treasures. There were wild ponies that ran faster than the wind and mountain cats as sleek as silk. Everywhere there was a new story, a different tale, a dream of an adventure longing to be embraced.

And there were things of magic.

“Down there, Jack Andrew—do you see it?” Pick called as they swung left across the stone bridge that spanned a split in the bluff where it dropped sharply downward to the Rock. “Look closely, Boy!”

Jack looked, seeing the crablike shadow that clung to the underside of the bridge, flattened almost out of sight against the stone.

“That’s Wartag the Troll!” Pick announced. “Every bridge seems to have at least one Troll in these parts, but Wartag is more trouble than most. If there’s a way to unbalance the magic, Wartag will find it. Much of my own work is spent in undoing his!”

Daniel took them down close to the bridgehead, and Jack saw Wartag inch farther back into the shadows in an effort to hide. He was not entirely successful. Jack could still see the crooked body covered with patches of black hair and the mean-looking red eyes that glittered like bicycle reflectors.

Daniel screamed and Wartag shrank away.

“Wartag doesn’t care much for owls!” Pick said to Jack, then shouted something spiteful at the Troll before Daniel wheeled them away.

They flew on to a part of the park they had not visited yet, a deep woods far back in the east central section where the sunlight seemed unable to penetrate and all was cloaked in shadow. Daniel took them down into the darkness, a sort of gray mistiness that was filled with silence and the smell of rotting wood. Pick pointed ahead, and Jack followed the line of his finger warily. There stood the biggest, shaggiest tree that he had ever seen, a monster with crooked limbs, splitting bark, and craggy bolls that seemed waiting to snare whatever came into its path. Nothing grew about it. All the other trees, all the brush and the grasses were cleared away.

“What is it?” he asked Pick.

Pick gave him a secretive look. “That, young Jack Andrew, is the prison, now and forever more, of the Dragon Desperado. What do you think of it?”

Jack stared. “A real Dragon?”

“As real as you and I. And very dangerous, I might add. Too dangerous to be let loose, but at the same time too powerful to destroy. Can’t be rid of everything that frightens or troubles us in this world. Some things we simply have to put up with—Dragons and Trolls among them. Trolls aren’t half as bad as Dragons, of course. Trolls cause mischief when they’re on the loose, but Dragons really upset the apple cart. They are a powerful force, Jack Andrew. Why just their breath alone can foul the air for miles! And the imprint of a Dragon’s paw will poison whole fields! Some Dragons are worse than others, of course. Desperado is one of them.”

He paused and his eyes twinkled as they found Jack’s. “All Dragons are bothersome, but Desperado is the worst. Now and again he breaks free, and then there’s the very Devil to pay. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen too often. When it does, someone simply has to lock Desperado away again.” He winked enigmatically. “And that takes a very special kind of magic.”

Daniel lifted suddenly and bore them away, skying out of the shadows and the gray mistiness, breaking free of the gloom. The sun caught Jack in the eyes with a burst of light that momentarily blinded him.

“Jackie!”

He thought he heard his mother calling. He blinked.

“Jackie, where are you?”

It was his mother. He blinked again and found himself sitting alone beneath the pine, one hand held out before him, palm up. The hand was empty. Pick had disappeared.

He hesitated, heard his mother call again, then climbed hurriedly to his feet and scurried for the bushes at the end of his yard. He was too late getting there to avoid being caught. His mother was alarmed at first when she saw the knot on his forehead, then angry when she realized how it had happened. She bandaged him up, then sent him to his room.

He told his parents about Pick during dinner. They listened politely, glancing at each other from time to time, then told him everything was fine, it was a wonderful story, but that sometimes bumps on the head made us think things had happened that really hadn’t. When he insisted that he had not made the story up, that it had really happened, they smiled some more and told him that they thought it was nice he had such a good imagination. Try as he might, he couldn’t convince them that he was serious and finally, after a week of listening patiently to him, his mother sat down in the kitchen with cookies and milk one morning and told him she had heard enough.

“All little boys have imaginary friends, Jackie,” his mother told him. “That’s part of growing up. An imaginary friend is someone whom little boys can talk about their troubles when no one else will listen, someone they can tell their secrets to when they don’t want to tell anyone else. Sometimes they can help a little boy get through some difficult times. Pick is your imaginary friend, Jackie. But you have to understand something. A friend like Pick belongs just to you, not to anyone else, and that is the way you should keep it.”

He looked for Pick all that summer and into the fall, but he never found him. When his father took him into the park, he looked for Wartag under the old stone bridge. He never found him either. He checked the skies for Daniel, but never saw anything bigger than a robin. When he finally persuaded his father to walk all the way back into the darkest part of the woods—an effort that had his father using words Jack had not often heard him use before—there was no sign of the tree that imprisoned Desperado.

Eventually, Jack gave up looking. School and his friends claimed his immediate attention, Thanksgiving rolled around, and then it was Christmas. He got a new bike that year, a two-wheeler without training wheels, and an electric train. He thought about Pick, Daniel, Wartag, and Desperado from time to time, but the memory of what they looked like began to grow hazy. He forgot many of the particulars of his adventure that summer afternoon in the park, and the adventure itself took on the trappings of one of those fairy tales Pick detested so.

Soon, Jack pretty much quit thinking about the matter altogether.

He had not thought about it for months until today.

He wheeled his bike up the driveway of his house, surprised that he could suddenly remember all the details he had forgotten. They were sharp in his mind again, as sharp as they had been on the afternoon they had happened. If they had happened. If they had really happened. He hadn’t been sure for a long time now. After all, he was only a little kid then. His parents might have been right; he might have imagined it all.

But then why was he remembering it so clearly now?

He went up to his room to think, came down long enough to have dinner, and quickly went back up again. His parents had looked at him strangely all during the meal—checking, he felt, to see if he was showing any early signs of expiring. It made him feel weird.

He found he couldn’t concentrate on his homework, and anyway it was Friday night. He turned off the music on his tape player, closed his books, and sat there. The clock on his nightstand ticked softly as he thought some more about what had happened almost seven years ago. What might have happened, he corrected—although the more he thought about it, the more he was beginning to believe it really had. His common sense told him that he was crazy, but when you’re dying you don’t have much time for common sense.

Finally he got up, went downstairs to the basement rec room, picked up the phone, and called Waddy. His friend answered on the second ring, they talked about this and that for five minutes or so, and then Jack said, “Waddy, do you believe in magic?”

Waddy laughed. “Like in the song?”

“No, like in conjuring. You know, spells and such.”

“What kind of magic?”

“What kind?”

“Yeah, what kind? There’s different kinds, right? Black magic and white magic. Wizard magic. Witches brew. Horrible old New England curses. Fairies and Elves…”

“That kind. Fairies and Elves. Do you think there might be magic like that somewhere?”

“Are you asking me if I believe in Fairies and Elves?”

Jack hesitated. “Well, yeah.”

“No.”

“Not at all, huh?”

“Look, Jack, what’s going on with you? You’re not getting strange because of this dying business, are you? I told you not to worry about it.”

“I’m not. I was just thinking…” He stopped, unable to tell Waddy exactly what he was thinking because it sounded so bizarre. After all, he’d never told anyone other than his parents about Pick.

There was a thoughtful silence on the other end of the line. “If you’re asking me whether I think there’s some kind of magic out there that saves people from dying, then I say yes. There is.”

That wasn’t exactly what Jack was asking, but the answer made him feel good anyway. “Thanks, Waddy. Talk to you later.”

He hung up and went back upstairs. His father intercepted him on the landing and called him down again. He told Jack he had been talking with Dr. Muller. The doctor wanted him to come into the hospital on Monday for additional tests. He might have to stay for a few days. Jack knew what that meant. He would end up like Uncle Frank. His hair would fall out. He would be sick all the time. He would waste away to nothing. He didn’t want any part of it. He told his father so and without waiting for his response ran back up to his room, shut the door, undressed, turned off the lights, and lay shivering in his bed in the darkness.

He fell asleep for a time, and it was after midnight when he came awake again. He had been dreaming, but he couldn’t remember what the dreams were about. As he lay there, he thought he heard someone calling for him. He propped himself up on one arm and listened to the silence. He stayed that way for a long time, thinking.

Then he rose; dressed in jeans, pullover, and sneakers; and crept downstairs, trying hard not to make any noise. He got as far as the back porch. Sam was asleep on the threshold, and Jack didn’t see him. He tripped over the dog and went down hard, striking his head on the edge of a table. He blacked out momentarily, then his eyes blinked open. Sam was cowering in one corner, frightened half to death. Jack was surprised and grateful that the old dog wasn’t barking like crazy. That would have brought his parents awake in a minute. He patted Sam’s head reassuringly, pulled on his windbreaker, and slipped out through the screen door.

Silence enveloped him. Jack crossed the damp green carpet of the backyard on cat’s feet, pushed through the bushes at its end, and went into the park. It was a warm, windless night, and the moon shone full and white out of a cloudless sky, its silver light streaming down through breaks in the leafy trees to chase the shadows. Jack breathed the air and smelled pine needles and lilacs. He didn’t know what he would tell his parents if they found him out there. He just knew he had to find Pick. Something inside whispered that he must.

He reached the old pine and peered beneath its spiky boughs. There was no sign of Pick. He backed out and looked about the park. Crickets chirped in the distance. The baseball diamonds stretched away before him east to the wall of the trees where the deep woods began. He could see the edge of the river bluff south, a ragged tear across the night sky. The cemetery was invisible beyond the rise of the park west. Nothing moved anywhere.

Jack came forward to the edge of the nearest ball diamond, anxious now, vaguely uneasy. Maybe this was a mistake.

Then a screech shattered the silence, and Jack caught sight of a shadow wheeling across the moonlight overhead.

“Daniel!” he shouted.

Excitement coursed through him. He began to run. Daniel was circling ahead, somewhere over the edge of the bluff. Jack watched him dive and soar skyward again. Daniel was directly over the old stone bridge where Wartag lived.

As he came up to the bridge he slowed warily, remembering anew the Troll’s mean-looking eyes. Then he heard his name called, and he charged recklessly ahead. He skidded down the dampened slope by the bridge’s west support and peered into the shadows.

“Jack Andrew McCall, where have you been, Boy?” he heard Pick demand without so much as a perfunctory hello. “I have been waiting for you for hours!”

Jack couldn’t see him at first and groped his way through the blackness.

“Over here, Boy!”

His eyes began to adjust, and he caught sight of something hanging from the underside of the bridge on a hook, close against the support. It was a cage made out of stone. He reached for it and tilted it slightly so he could look inside.

There was Pick. He looked exactly the same as he had those seven years past—a tiny man with a reddish beard, green trousers and shirt, black belt and boots, and the peculiar hat of woven pine needles. It was too dark to be certain whether or not his face was flushed, but he was so excited that Jack was certain that it must be. He was dancing about on first one foot and then the other, hopping up and down as if his boots were on fire.

“What are you doing in there?” Jack asked him.

“What does it look like I’m doing in here—taking a bath?” Pick’s temper hadn’t improved any. “Now listen to me, Jack Andrew, and listen carefully because I haven’t the time to say this more than once!” Pick was animated, his tiny voice shrill. “Wartag set a snare for me and I blundered into it. He sets such snares constantly, but I am usually too clever to get trapped in them. This time he caught me napping. He locked me in this cage earlier tonight and abandoned me to my fate. He has gone into the deep woods to unbalance the magic. He intends to set Desperado free!”

He jabbed at Jack with his finger. “You have to stop him!”

Jack started. “Me?”

“Yes, you! I don’t have the means, locked away in here!”

“Well, I’ll set you free then!”

Pick shook his head. “I’m afraid not. There’s no locks or keys to a Troll cage. You just have to wait until it falls apart. Doesn’t take long. Day or two at most. Wouldn’t matter if you did free me, anyway. An Elf locked in a stone cage loses his magic for a moonrise. Everyone knows that!”

Jack gulped. “But, Pick, I can’t…”

“Quit arguing with me!” the Elf stormed. “Take this!” He thrust something through the bars of the cage. It was a tiny silver pin. “Fasten it to your jacket. As long as you wear it, I can see what you see and tell you what to do. It will be the same as if I were with you. Now, hurry! Get after that confounded Troll!”

“But what about you?” Jack asked anxiously.

“Don’t bother yourself about me! I’ll be fine!”

“But…”

“Confound it, Jack! Get going!”

Jack did as he was told, spurred on by the urgency he heard in the other’s voice. He forgot momentarily what had brought him to the park in the first place. Hurriedly, he stuck the silver pin through the collar of his jacket and wheeled away. He scrambled out of the ravine beneath the bridge, darted through the fringe of trees screening the ball diamonds, and sprinted across the outfields toward the dark wall of the woods east. He looked skyward once or twice for Daniel, but the owl had disappeared. Jack could feel his heart pounding in his chest and hear the rasp of his breathing. Pick was chattering from somewhere inside his left ear, urging him on, warning that he must hurry. When he tried to ask something of the Elf, Pick cut him off with an admonition to concentrate on the task at hand.

He reached the woods at the east end of the park and disappeared into the trees. Moonlight fragmented into shards of light that scattered through the heavy canopy of limbs. Jack charged up and down hills, skittered through leaf-strewn gullies, and watched the timber begin to thicken steadily about him.

Finally, he tripped over a tree root and dropped wearily to his knees, gasping for breath. When he lifted his head again, he was aware of two things. First, the woods about him had gone completely silent. Second, there was a strange greenish light that swirled like mist in the darkness ahead.

“We are too late, Jack Andrew,” he heard Pick say softly. “That bubble-headed Troll has done his work! Desperado’s free!”

Jack scrambled up quickly. “What do I do now, Pick?”

Pick’s voice was calm. “Do, Jack? Why, you do what you must. You lock the Dragon away again!”

“Me?” Jack was aghast. “What am I supposed to do? I don’t know anything about Dragons!”

“Stuff and nonsense! It’s never too late to learn and there’s not much to learn in any case. Let’s have a look, Boy. Go on! Now!”

Jack moved ahead, his feet operating independently of his brain, which was screaming at him to get the heck out of there. The misted green light began to close about him, enveloping him, filling the whole of the woods about him with a pungent smell like burning rubber. There was a deadness to the night air, and the whisper of something old and evil that echoed from far back in the woods. Jack swallowed hard against his fear.

Then he pushed through a mass of brush into a clearing ringed with pine and stopped. There was something moving aimlessly on the ground a dozen yards ahead, something small and black and hairy, something that steamed like breath exhaled on a winter’s morning.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” murmured an invisible Pick.

“What is it?” Jack demanded anxiously.

Pick clucked his tongue. “It would appear that Wartag has learned the hard way what happens when you fool around with Dragons.”

“That’s Wartag?”

“More or less. Keep moving, Jack. Don’t worry about the Troll.”

But Jack’s brain had finally regained control of his feet. “Pick, I don’t want anything more to do with this. I can’t fight a Dragon! I only came because I…because I found out that…”

“You were dying.”

Jack stared. “Yes, but how…?”

“Did I know?” Pick finished. “Tut and posh, boy! Why do you think you’re here? Now listen up. Time to face a rather unpleasant truth. You have to fight the Dragon whether you want to or not. He knows that you’re here now, and he will come for you if you try to run. He needs to be locked away, Jack. You can do it. Believe me, you can.”

Jack’s heart was pounding. “How?”

“Oh, it’s simple enough. You just push him from sight, back him into his cage, and that’s that! Now, let’s see. There! To your left!”

Jack moved over a few steps and reached down. It was a battered old metal garbage can lid. “A shield!” declared Pick’s voice in his ear. “And there!” Jack moved to his right and reached down again. It was a heavy stick that some hiker had discarded. “A sword!” Pick announced.

Jack stared at the garbage can lid and the stick in turn and then shook his head hopelessly. “This is ridiculous! I’m supposed to fight a Dragon with these?”

“These and what’s inside you,” Pick replied softly.

“But I can’t…”

“Yes, you can.”

“But…”

“Jack! You have to! You must!” Pick’s words were harsh and clipped, the tiny voice insistent. “Don’t you understand? Haven’t you been listening to me? This fight isn’t simply to save me or this park! This fight is to save you!”

Jack was confused. Why was this a fight to save him? It didn’t make any sense. But something deep inside him whispered that the Elf was telling him the truth. He swallowed his fear, choked down his self-doubt, hefted his makeshift sword and shield, and started forward. He went quickly, afraid that if he slowed he would give it up altogether. He knew somehow that he couldn’t do that. He eased his way warily ahead through the trees, searching the greenish mist. Maybe the Dragon wasn’t as scary as he imagined. Maybe it wasn’t like the Dragons in the fairy tales. After all, would Pick send him into battle against something like that, something he wouldn’t have a chance against?

There was movement ahead.

“Pick?” he whispered anxiously.

A shadow heaved upward suddenly out of the mist, huge and baleful, blocking out the light. Jack whirled and stumbled back.

There was Desperado. The Dragon rose against the night like a wall, weaving and swaying, a thing of scales and armor plates, a creature of limbs and claws, a being that was born of Jack’s foulest nightmare. It had shape and no shape, formed of bits and pieces of fears and doubts that were drawn from a dozen memories best forgotten. It filled the pathway ahead with its bulk, as massive as the crooked, shaggy tree from which it had been freed.

Jack lurched to an unsteady halt, gasping. Eyes as hard as polished stone pinned him where he stood. He could feel the heat of the Dragon against his skin and at the same time an intense cold in the pit of his stomach. He was sweating and shivering all at once, and his breath threatened to seize up within his chest. He was no longer thinking; he was only reacting. Desperado’s hiss sounded in the pit of his stomach. It told him he carried no shield, no sword. It told him he had no one to help him. It told him that he was going to die.

Fear spread quickly through Jack, filling him with its vile taste, leaving him momentarily helpless. He heard Pick’s voice shriek wildly within his ear, “Quick, Jack, quick! Push the Dragon away!”

But Jack was already running. He bolted through the mist and trees as if catapulted, fleeing from Desperado. He was unable to help himself. He could no longer hear Pick; he could no longer reason. All he could think to do was to run as fast and as far from what confronted him as he could manage. He was only thirteen! He was only a boy! He didn’t want to die!

He broke free of the dark woods and tore across the ball diamonds toward the bridge where Pick was caged. The sky was all funny, filled with swirling clouds and glints of greenish light. Everything was a mass of shadows and mist. He screamed for Pick to help him. But as he neared the bridge, its stone span seemed to yawn open like some giant’s mouth, and the Dragon rose up before him, blocking his way. He turned and ran toward the Indian burial mounds, where the ghosts of the Sinnissippi danced through the shadows to a drumbeat only they could hear. But again the Dragon was waiting. It was waiting as well at the cemetery, slithering through the even rows of tombstones and markers like a snake. It was waiting amid the shrub-lined houses of Woodlawn, wherever Jack turned, wherever he fled. Jack ran from one end of the park to the other, and everywhere, the Dragon Desperado was waiting.

“Pick!” he screamed over and over, but there was no answer. When he finally thought to look down for the silver pin, he discovered that he had lost it.

“Oh, Pick!” he sobbed.

Finally he quit running, too exhausted to go on. He found himself back within the deep woods, right where he had started. He had been running, yet he hadn’t moved at all. Desperado was before him still, a monstrous, shapeless terror that he could not escape. He could feel the Dragon all around him, above and below, and even within. The Dragon was inside his head, crushing him, blinding him, stealing away his life…

Like a sickness.

He gasped in sudden recognition.

Like the sickness that was killing him.

This fight is to save you, Pick had told him. The Elf’s words came back to him, their purpose and meaning revealed with a clarity that was unmistakable.

Jack went a little bit crazy then. He cried out, overwhelmed by a rush of emotions he could not begin to define. He shed his fear as he would a burdensome coat and charged Desperado, heedless now of any danger to himself, blind to the Dragon’s monstrous size. To his astonishment, the walking stick and the garbage can lid flared white with fire and turned into the sword and shield he had been promised. He could feel the fire spread from them into him, and it felt as if he had been turned to iron as well. He flung himself at Desperado, hammering into the Dragon with his weapons. Push him back! Lock him away!

The great gnarled shapes of the Dragon and tree seemed to join. Night and mist closed about. Jack was swimming through a fog of jagged images. He heard sounds that might have come from anywhere, and there was within him a sense of something yielding. He thrust out, feeling Desperado give way before his attack. The feeling of heat, the smell of burning rubber, the scrape of scales and armor plates intensified and filled his senses.

Then Desperado simply disappeared. The sword and shield turned back into the walking stick and garbage can lid, the greenish mist dissipated into night, and Jack found himself clinging to the shaggy, bent trunk of the massive old tree that was the Dragon’s prison.

He stumbled back, dumbstruck.

“Pick!” he shouted one final time, but there was no answer.

Then everything went black and he was falling.

Jack was in the hospital when he came awake. His head was wrapped with bandages and throbbed painfully. When he asked, one of the nurses on duty told him it was Saturday. He had suffered a bad fall off his back porch in the middle of the night, she said, and his parents hadn’t found him until early this morning when they had brought him in. She added rather cryptically that he was a lucky boy.

His parents appeared shortly after, both of them visibly upset, alternately hugging him and scolding him for being so stupid. He was still rather groggy, and not much of what they said registered. They left when the nurse interceded, and he went back to sleep.

The next day, Dr. Muller appeared. He examined Jack, grunted and muttered as he did so, drew blood, sent him down for X-rays, brought him back up, grunted and muttered some more, and left. Jack’s parents came by to visit and told him they would be keeping him in the hospital for a few more days, just in case. Jack told them he didn’t want any therapy while he was there, and they promised there wouldn’t be.

On Monday morning, his parents and Dr. Muller came to see him together. His mother cried and called him “Jackie” and his father grinned like the Cheshire Cat. Dr. Muller told him that the additional tests had been completed while he was asleep. The results were very encouraging. His blood disorder did not appear to be life-threatening. They had caught it early enough that it could be treated.

“You understand, Jack, you’ll have to undergo some mild therapy,” Dr. Muller cautioned. “But we can take care of that right here. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Jack smiled. He wasn’t worried. He knew he was okay. He’d known it from the moment he’d pushed Desperado back into that tree. That was what the fight to lock away the Dragon had been all about. It had been to lock away Jack’s sickness. Jack wasn’t sure whether or not Pick had really lost his magic that night or simply let Jack think so. But he was sure about one thing—Pick had deliberately brought him back into the park and made him face the Dragon on his own. That was the special magic that his friend had once told him would be needed. It was the magic that had allowed him to live.

He went home at the end of the week and returned to school the next. When he informed Waddy Wadsworth that he wasn’t dying after all, his friend just shrugged and said he’d told him so. Dr. Muller advised him to take it easy and brought him in for the promised therapy throughout the summer months. But his hair didn’t fall out, he didn’t lose weight, and the headaches and vision loss disappeared. Eventually Dr. Muller declared him cured, and the treatments came to an end.

He never saw Pick again. Once or twice he thought he saw Daniel, but he wasn’t certain. He looked for the tree that imprisoned Desperado, but he couldn’t find it. He didn’t look for Wartag at all. When he was a few years older, he went to work for the park service during the summers. It made him feel that he was giving something back to Pick. Sometimes when he was in the park, he could sense the other’s presence. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t see his friend; it was enough just to know that he was there.

He never said anything to anyone about the Elf, of course. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

It was like his mother had told him when he was little. A friend like Pick belonged only to him, and that was the way he should keep it.