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The path, as it crossed the clearing, was paved in some smooth dark material, so bright that it reflected both the trees dancing in the rising wind and the sunset-tinged clouds flowing overhead. It ended at a rock precipice. The whole world seemed to end there, and to begin again a hundred wheels or more distant. In between was a great chasm of rushing air in which leaves danced and swirled. There were bin-rusties as well. They rose and twisted helplessly in the eddies and currents. Some were obviously dead, the wings ripped from their bodies.
Tim hardly noticed the great chasm and the dying birds, either. To the left of the metal road, about three yards from the place where the world dropped off into nothingness, there stood a round cage made of steel bars. Overturned in front of it was a battered tin bucket he knew all too well.
In the cage, pacing slowly around a hole in the center, was an enormous tyger.
It saw the staring, gapemouthed boy and approached the bars. Its eyes were as large as Points balls, but a brilliant green instead of blue. On its hide, stripes of dark orange alternated with those of richest midnight black. Its ears were cocked. Its snout wrinkled back from long white teeth. It growled. The sound was low, like a silk garment being ripped slowly up a seam. It could have been a greeting . . . but Tim somehow doubted it.
Around its neck was a silver collar. From this hung two objects. One looked like a playing card. The other was a key with a strange twisted shape.
Tim had no idea how long he stood captured by those fabulous emerald eyes, or how long he might have remained so, but the extreme peril of his situation announced itself in a series of low, thudding explosions.
"What's that?"
"Trees on the far side of the Great Canyon," Daria said. "Extreme rapid temperature change is causing them to implode. Seek shelter, Tim."
The starkblast--what else? "How long before it gets here?"
"Less than an hour." There was another of those loud clicks. "I may have to shut down."
"No!"
"I have violated Directive Nineteen. All I can say in my defense is that it's been a very long time since I have had anyone to talk to." Click! Then--more worrisome, more ominous--Clunk!
"What about the tyger? Is it the Guardian of the Beam?" As soon as he articulated the idea, Tim was filled with horror. "I can't leave a Guardian of the Beam out here to die in the starkblast!"
"The Guardian of the Beam at this end is Aslan," Daria said. "Aslan is a lion, and if he still lives, he is far from here, in the land of endless snows. This tyger is . . . Directive Nineteen!" Then an even louder clunk as she overrode the directive, at what cost Tim did not know. "This tyger is the magic of which I spoke. Never mind it. Seek shelter! Good luck, Tim. You have been my fr--"
Not a click this time, nor a clunk, but an awful crunch. Smoke drifted up from the plate and the green light went out.
"Daria!"
Nothing.
"Daria, come back!"
But Daria was gone.
The artillery sounds made by the dying trees were still far across that cloudy gap in the world, but there could be no doubt that they were approaching. The wind continued to strengthen, growing ever colder. High above, a final batch of clouds was boiling past. Behind them was an awful violet clarity in which the first stars had begun to appear. The whisper of the wind in the high branches of the surrounding trees had risen to an unhappy chorus of sighs. It was as if the ironwoods knew their long, long lives were coming to an end. A great woodsman was on the way, swinging an ax made of wind.
Tim took another look at the tyger (it had resumed its slow and stately pacing, as if Tim had been worth only momentary consideration), then hurried to the Dogan. Small round windows of real glass--very thick, from the look--marched around its circumference at the height of Tim's head. The door was also metal. There was no knob or latch, only a slot like a narrow mouth. Above the slot, on a rusting steel plate, was this:
NORTH CENTRAL POSITRONICS, LTD.
North Forest Kinnock
Bend Quadrant
OUTPOST 9
Low Security
USE KEYCARD
These words were hard for him to make out, because they were in a weird mixture of High and Low Speech. What had been scrawled below them, however, was easy: All here are dead.
At the base of the door was a box that looked like the one Tim's mother had for her little trinkets and keepsakes, only of metal instead of wood. He tried to open it, but it was locked. Engraved upon it were letters Tim couldn't read. There was a keyhole of odd shape--like the letter *--but no key. He tried to lift the box and couldn't. It might have been anchored to the ground at the top of a buried stone post.
A dead bin-rusty smacked the side of Tim's face. More feathered corpses flew past, turning over and over in the increasingly lively air. Some struck the side of the Dogan and fell around him.
Tim read the last words on the steel plate again: USE KEYCARD. If he had any doubt about what such a thing might be, he had only to look at the slot just below the words. He thought he even knew what a "keycard" looked like, for he believed he had just seen it, along with a more recognizable key that might fit the -shaped keyhole of the metal box. Two keys--and possible salvation--hanging around the neck of a tyger that could probably swallow him down in three bites. And, since there had been no food that Tim could see in the cage, it might only take two.
This was smelling more and more like a practical joke, although only a very cruel man would find such a joke amusing. The sort of fellow who might use a bad fairy to lure a boy into a dangerous swamp, perhaps.
What to do? Was there anything he could do? Tim would have liked to ask Daria, but he was terribly afraid his friend in the plate--a good fairy to match the Covenant Man's bad one--was dead, killed by Directive Nineteen.
Slowly, he approached the cage, now having to lean against the wind. The tyger saw him and came padding around the hole in the middle to stand by the door of the cage. It lowered its great head and stared at him with its lambent eyes. The wind rippled its thick coat, making the stripes waver and seem to change places.
The tin bucket should have rolled away in the wind, but it didn't. Like the steel box, it seemed anchored in place.
r /> The bucket he left for me back home, so I could see his lies and believe them.
The whole thing had been a joke, and under this bucket he would find the point of it, that final clever line--like I can't fork hay with a spoon! or So then I turned her over and warmed the other side--that was supposed to make folks roar with laughter. But since it was the end, why not? He could use a laugh.
Tim grasped the bucket and lifted it. He expected to find the Covenant Man's magic wand beneath, but no. The joke was better than that. It was another key, this one large and ornately carved. Like the Covenant Man's seeing-basin and the tyger's collar, it was made of silver. A note had been attached to the key's head with a bit of twine.
Across the gorge, the trees cracked and boomed. Now dust came rolling up from the chasm in giant clouds that were whipped away in ribbons like smoke.
The Covenant Man's note was brief:
Greetings, Brave and Resourceful Boy! Welcome to the North Forest Kinnock, which was once known as the Gateway of Out-World. Here I have left you a troublesome Tyger. He is VERY hungry! But as you may have guessed, the Key to SHELTER hangs about his Neck. As you may have also guessed, this Key opens the Cage. Use it if you dare! With all regards to your Mother (whose New Husband will visit her SOON), I remain your Faithful Servant!
RF/MB
The man--if he was a man--who left Tim that note was surprised by very little, but he might have been surprised by the smile on the boy's face as he rose to his feet with the key in his hand and booted away the tin bucket. It rose and flew off on the rising wind, which had now almost reached gale force. Its purpose had been served, and all the magic was out of it.
Tim looked at the tyger. The tyger looked at Tim. It seemed completely unaware of the rising storm. Its tail swished slowly back and forth.
"He thinks I'd rather be blown away or die of the cold than face your claws and teeth. Perhaps he didn't see this." Tim drew the four-shot from his belt. "It did for the fish-thing in the swamp, and I'm sure it would do for you, Sai Tyger."
Tim was once more amazed by how right the gun felt. Its function was so simple, so clear. All it wanted to do was shoot. And when Tim held it, shooting was all he wanted to do.
