All that remained now of the great rambling Rade was the armored truck, a great black-and-red katydid crouched on the edge of Murmury Well, from whose belly there played the endlessly unspooling bobbin of Mr. Feld's hose. There was also a painted sledge, like a gypsy caravan on steel runners, drawn by a team of werewolves. As they stepped out onto Diamond Green, Ethan saw the back door of this wagon swing open, and the shaggy white creature with the irritating laugh stepped out. He raised his hand, and then one by one the Shadowtails emerged and stepped blinking into the sun. They ran toward each other and met at the very center of Green Diamond, where mysteriously in the night a pitcher's mound had been raised, or had sprouted of its own accord from the grass. They embraced, or shook hands. They took stock of their hurts and weaknesses, and confirmed, to their universal regret, that Taffy was not among them. Then they moved into the ruined orchards of Applelawn to rustle up some breakfast.
Aside from the loss of their center fielder—Cutbelly would have to take the Sasquatch's place—their single greatest liability was Ethan's hand. Overnight the blister on the palm had ballooned to the size of an olive. The skin all around it was fiery and swollen. Furthermore, his repeated struggles to cling to the bat, in the face of attempts by Coyote and La Llorona to take it, had left the muscles of his hand stiff and aching. He could barely fit it into the glove.
"We'll need a salve," said Pettipaw. "A blister like that calls for comfrey."
"Comfrey, my eye," Grim the Giant said. "Comfrey is for boils. What's wanted is yarrow."
A hot dispute might have broken out then, but Cutbelly cut in sharply.
"Clearly the herbal lore you two possess couldn't squidge a blackhead," he said. "What's truly wanted in this case is marshmallow."
The three of them tramped off into the Summerlands, arguing, while the rest of them set about gathering the wood the graylings had left unburnt. Amid the heaps of foul garbage and dubious bones they managed to find a sack filled with loaves of the grayling's sour bread, and a miraculous two dozen eggs that Spider-Rose taught them to roast in the ashes of the fire. They had a strong, rich flavor—Cinquefoil said they were goose eggs—and after he had eaten three of them Ethan felt strong enough to contend with the pain in his hand. It was decided among the three quarrelling herbalists to craft a compound of the leaves they each favored. Grim the Giant upended an iron hat abandoned by some fleeing skriker and filled it with water. Then he tossed in the leaves and steeped them until the water had all boiled away, leaving a noxious charred paste that stank like tar. Like tar, the smell of it, though awful, somehow reached down into you and reminded you that you were alive. Cutbelly slathered it onto palm of Ethan's hand with a quick paw. They were just going to have to hope for the best.
"You know there's no way we can beat them," Spider-Rose said. "I say we don't even try. Everybody knows the Hobbledehoys are the best. They been playing on Coyote's team since the day he invented the game. That's what I heard, anyway."
"It's true," Pettipaw said. "They were the First Nine. Demons, is what they were, until Coyote put gloves on their off-hands and set them loose right there on the green. They traded in their hell-hammers for bats and their iron slippers for lace-up leather spikes. That's how all the demon virtues—patience, deception, quick hands, craftiness, an eye for the mistakes of others—they all got dragged deep into the game."
"I've played 'em before," Cinquefoil said, and everyone turned to look at him. They were sitting around the embers of the fire as the last chill of the morning burned away. "Tough team. I don't mis-doubt the demon tale, though they looked ta me like more or less ordinary reubens, but even uglier. They was making a tour of the Outer Islands, oh, it was long, long ago. Took a best-a-nine series from us in five straight games. Tough, tough team."
"How do we play them?" Jennifer T. said.
"What do they got?" said Grim. "Tell us all about it. Did you hit off 'em? Tell the truth."
"Yeah, Chief," Ethan said. "Can you give us a scouting report?"
"No." It was Rodrigo Buendía. He had been quiet all morning, puffing away at a succession of cigars, walking back and forth across Diamond Green as if taking the measure of it. The confinement he and the others had undergone, in a lightless cell in the wagon sledge, had been hardest on him; Cinquefoil had told Ethan that the great slugger even wept in his sleep. "Waste of time, dude. We should to be out there warming up. Sprints. Bunt work—fielding and laying them down. And then a couple hours of BR You, little fox dude, you going to be in center today. When the last time you played ball?"
"Fifteen sixty-nine," Cutbelly said at once. "I hit into three double plays."
"That's what I'm saying," Buendía said.
THEY SPENT THE NEXT TWO HOURS WORKING OUT ON DIAMOND Green, and then, when the sun had climbed nearly to the center of the sky, a crew of graylings emerged from the wagon sledge, carrying chalk-spreaders and bases, and chased them from the field. They went to work laying down the lines, painting the batter's boxes and basepaths. Half an hour later the field was ready. Jennifer T. climbed the mound and began to throw softly to Ethan at home plate, warming up her arm. Little by little she increased the velocity of her pitches until they were snapping pretty well into Ethan's mitt. She was not going to be able to avail herself of the wormhole today. Diamond Green was the hinge of Worlds, the axil point. All branches were born from it, but none crossed it. There was no way to scamper across it.
Each time the ball slammed into the heel of Ethan's mitt, it hurt so badly that he clenched his jaw, and his breath came hissing through this teeth. It was while he was waiting for a curveball from Jennifer T. that he heard Cinquefoil say,
"That's them."
They were just there, the Hobbledehoys, crossing the outfield grass with the great blue sky of the lost Gleaming behind them, as if they had stepped somehow out of that sealed-up land. As Cinquefoil had said, they were like men, lean, rangy men, and one broad, beefy fellow, with sallow, pinched faces. They reminded Ethan of the faces you saw on really old baseball cards, country faces, squinting eyes set close together, noses sharp, mouths lipless and grimly smiling. They wore white flannel uniforms with red pinstripes and black caps with red bills. Across the front in black script it just said HOBS. Their spikes were long and black, with pointed rat-snouts and quivering black laces. They walked right up to the mound and stood in a loose group around it, looking at Jennifer T. She pretended to ignore them—actually Ethan supposed she actually was ignoring them—reared back, and let fly with her slider. It dived, and bent at the end like a buttonhook, and smacked like a brick against Ethan's glove. One of the Hobbledehoys grunted, but none of them spoke. Then they went over to their bench and sat down. Aside from grunts and mutterings, they hardly spoke. When it was necessary, they communicated mostly by means of a series of signs, like those used by managers and third-base coaches.
"There are only eight of them," Thor said. "Where's the ninth?"
"Here," Coyote said. "He's here."
He was looking splendid in a dazzling Hobs uniform, standing behind the visitors' bench. Beside him, on its black wheels, stood the great iron cage that held Taffy the Sasquatch.
"I hope you don't mind," he said, "but I really thought it would be a shame if there were no spectators at all for the last game of baseball ever played."
"Taffy!"
Ethan, Jennifer T., and Thor ran to the cage and pressed their faces against the bars. The Sasquatch lay in her old boneless heap on the floor of the cage, an arm thrown over her face.
"Taffy!" Jennifer T. said. "Taffy, are you all right?"
There was no reply. Jennifer T. knelt down beside the cage and reached in between the thick iron bars. The tips of her fingers just reached the ends of the fur on the Sasquatch's head, and she stroked it, gently.
"We're not mad at you, Taff," she said. "We understand."
"Yeah—" Ethan began. He was about to tell her that La Llorona had come to him, too, with an offer of release from sorrow. But then he re
membered that, thanks to the Knot, he had managed to resist the temptation of La Llorona, where Taffy, dooming the Lodgepole, had failed. So he just said, "Yeah."
But Taffy didn't stir.
"Hey," Ethan said to Coyote. "I need somebody to hold my bat when I'm catching. To make sure you don't get it."
"As if I would ever resort to such trickery."
"Yeah, well, and I want it to be Taffy."
Taffy lowered an arm from her face and gazed at Ethan with her little round eyes. They shone with tears.
"Will you, Taff? Will you watch my bat?"
Taffy blinked, and puckered her dark forehead. Then, slowly, she nodded.
"All right, then," Coyote said. "Let's begin."
"Wait a second," Thor said. "Who's going to be umpire?"
"Heh-heh," said a raspy voice. "That'd be me."
Ethan turned, expecting to see the foul shaggy creature, pale as a worm, who had been dancing in attendance on Coyote since their arrival at Diamond Green, and saw instead a young man, his longish hair swept back behind his ears, dressed in the pale blue shirt and dark blue trousers of an umpire.
"Padfoot!" Ethan said.
"What's up, dude-let?"
"No way!" Ethan yelled, turning on Coyote. "That guy works for you. He can't be an umpire"
"You have no choice in the matter, first of all," Coyote said. "And second of all, I have discovered, to my surprise, that my old friend Robin Padfoot seems to have arrived, much to my hurt and consternation, on your side of the question of his own continued existence."
"All due respect, boss, heh-heh," Padfoot said. "But I like the universe okay. I know, heh-heh, that makes me weak."
"I think that, torn as he is between his sworn oath to serve me, and his inexplicable fondness for his own miserable life, he can manage to be fairly impartial. So come. Let's do it."
"Play ball!" Padfoot cried.
HERE ARE THE LINEUPS, ACCORDING TO ALKABETZ, FOR THE GAME played at Diamond Green, on the ninth day of the ninth moon of the year 1335th Woodpecker (Universal Reckoning):
SHADOWTAILS HOBBLEDEHOYS
Rideout, J.T., P Breakneck, J., SS
Pettipaw, D., LF O'Scratch, J., 2B
Boartooth, C., lB/Mgr Bones, J., 3B
Buend.a, R., RF Gobbet, J., CF
Reynard, C., CF Van Slang, J., RF
Wignutt, T., 3B Lupomanaro, J., 1B
Dandelion, S-R., 2B Strzyga, J., LF
John, G., SS Slaughter, J., C
Feld,E.,C Coyote, P/Mgr
For the first few innings it was a pitchers' duel. Coyote threw heat and smoke and lightning and thunder, pitches so wild yet true that you were certain they were coming at your head and yet when you looked down you saw them there, curled neat and tidy in the heel of the catcher's mitt. Some of his pitches may well have been invisible; others turned the air blue as they ripped on through. Then there were his junk pitches, screwballs and offspeed curves, sinkers and sliders and back-door curves. They were imbued with all the craft and treachery that have made Coyote's activities so interesting over the last fifty thousand years.
Jennifer T., whenever she took the mound, proceeded more deliberately, stopping frequently to confer with Ethan on pitch selection, relying mostly on her fastball, but with her change-up working well and her slider a quick shimmering silvery hook of unhittable air. One or two of Padfoot's calls were questionable, in the opinion of the Shadowtails, but there were as well a pair of Rideout pitches that he called as strikes, when Ethan was sure they had been outside and low.
Yet the Hobbledehoys, as Cinquefoil had said, were a tough team. They chipped away at Jennifer T., a hit here, a walk there, now bunting the runner over to second, now stealing third, until in the bottom of the fifth they lined everything up right—a walk, a stolen base, a fielder's choice, and a sacrifice fly—and managed to get a run across the plate. They went scoreless in the sixth and seventh, then added another run in the bottom of the eighth when Cutbelly lost a fly ball in the sun. By the top of the ninth, the score was 2-0 in favor of the Hobs. And within that zero were contained entire alphabets and inventories of zeroness; the Shadowtails were runless, hitless, and without a walk; Coyote was throwing a perfect game. Of all of the Shadowtail hitters, only Buendía had connected solidly, sending two of Coyote's pitches deep before they were run down by Jack Gobbet, the Hobs' center fielder.
Spider-Rose led off the top half of the ninth by coaxing a walk out of Coyote, who seemed to be generally unnerved by the sight of the tattered doll that he had once foisted off on Filaree. Grim followed this with a first-pitch single, simple and clean. In spite of this apparent turn for the better in the Shadowtails' fortunes, Ethan came to the plate with almost no hope in his heart of succeeding. He had struck out once—swinging. Though he tried with each swing to ignore the pain in his hand and the chafing of the Knot, it was impossible. In his second at-bat he had hit a towering foul ball to left that was chased and caught by Jack Strzyga, and that was the best he had to show for his afternoon.
Now as he came to the plate for what would likely be his last time at bat—ever—he stopped. He looked at Spider-Rose, with a lead off second base, Nubakaduba tucked under her left arm, and at Grim lurking behind the Hob first baseman. Ethan turned and looked back at his bench, at Jennifer T. in the on-deck circle, at Pettipaw, Thor and Cutbelly, Cinquefoil, at Taffy in her cage, and at Rodrigo Buendía. Taffy was on her feet, gripping the bars in her great fists and looking right at Ethan. He wondered how she felt, now, about the universe's coming to an end. At this point she probably wanted just to get it all over with. She was probably pulling for him to strike out.
Buendía pointed at Ethan. He put his hands on an imaginary bat handle and swung. Then he pointed at the sky. Ethan nodded.
"Yeah, right," he said.
"Batter up," Padfoot said.
Coyote tugged on the bill of his cap, then went into his stretch. He centered his body around the ball, in his glove, over his belly. Then he rocked back and let fly. Ethan caught a flash of the ball's seams as it came screwballing in at him. He swung, but at the last minute the pitch broke sharply away.
"Strike one!" Padfoot said.
The next pitch was another breaking ball, a curve that started away from Ethan and then dove in. He swung at it, pain lancing through his hand.
"Strike two!" Padfoot said.
Ethan stepped out, and took his left hand off the bat, and shook it. He tried once more to put the pain from his mind, but it was impossible. So he decided to try something new, something that struck him as very much in the vein of an idea Mr. Olafssen would have had. Instead of shirking the pain, he would allow himself to feel it. He would use the hurt, if he could. Maybe it would make him angry, or help to focus his thoughts. He stepped back in, and gripped the bat. He gripped it as tightly with his left hand as he could, allowing the Knot to press deeply against the tender spot on his hand. The pain shimmered through him like a ripple in a thin sheet of metal. He raised the bat over his shoulder.
"Get a hit, Ethan!" called a voice, reedy and strange, from beyond third base. Ethan looked up and saw his father, the remnant of his father, standing on the steps of the pump truck, watching the game. The Flat Man didn't raise his hand—didn't even move—but Ethan was sure it had been he who spoke. Nobody on the visitors' bench seemed to have heard or noticed, however. Nobody turned around. Ethan wondered if somehow the sound of his father's encouragement could have been simply wishing. He gazed out at Coyote. The pitch came. It was a fastball, straight down the middle. Ethan dug the handle of the bat into his outraged palm and swung. The impact of the ball on the shaft was so hard that Ethan felt the bones of his body shatter. His arms broke at the elbow, and his shoulders snapped off, and then as his momentum carried him around, his upper torso twisted entirely around on his hips, around and around like a stick of taffy, his waist corkscrewing thinner and thinner until it sheared in two and his upper body fell with a thud to the ground.
"Little dude!" cri
ed the voice of Buendía, from somewhere back in a place where time and joy and the acrid tang of a burning cigar still existed. "Dude! Dude! Dude!"
Ethan staggered to his feet and looked up, and caught sight of the ball he had hit. It was rising into the air, over deep left-center, a seed, a liner, a frozen rope streaking skyward over Diamond Green.
The speed of a home-run shot is determined not only by the velocity of the bat at the moment of impact, but by the speed the ball is traveling toward the hitter. So it must have been the combination of Ethan's pain-driven, father-haunted, wild, desperate swing, and a truly scorching hummer thrown by the Changer of the Worlds, that produced the magnificent shot that rocketed off the bat of Ethan Feld. It rose, and rose, and rose into the sky. It kept on rising, traveling farther and farther, out toward the limitless blue beyond the outfield of Diamond Green. Then, as everyone agreed, it seemed to hang a moment, a tiny gray period, pale against the blue—and disappeared. Ethan stood there, watching the fuzzy little hole it left in the sky, trembling and faint, like one of those optic floaters (actually they are called phosphenes) that you catch sight of from time to time, gliding across the empty air at the corner of your eye.
"Run!" came the cry from the Shadowtail bench. "Run, Ethan, run!"
He started running then, and when he crossed home plate, to be caught up in the collective dancing embrace of his teammates, was amazed to the discover that the Shadowtails, thanks to him, now held the lead, 3-2. The celebration was cut short, however, by a sound, distant and clear as a bell. It was a familiar sound, crystalline and bright and yet at the same time alarming. It was the sound of mischief, of reckless play and impending disaster, of a backyard game of baseball carried just a couple of inches too far. It was the sound, at once unmistakable and infinitely far away, of a breaking window. Everyone, Shadowtails and Hobbledehoys, turned and stared up at the high featureless wall of sky beyond the outfield fence. The silence that fell upon the field was haunted by a tinkling that lingered in the ears.