“Roland, help me. He knows what he’s supposed to do, but he doesn’t know how to do it.” Jake glanced up at Eddie. “And don’t make any smart remarks, okay?”

“No,” Eddie said. “No smart remarks, Jake. Do you think just Oy has to do it this time, or is it still a group effort?”

“Just him, I think.”

“But it wouldn’t hurt us to kind of click along with Mitch,” Susannah said.

“Mitch who?” Eddie asked, looking blank.

“Never mind. Go on, Jake, Roland. Give us a count again.”

Eddie grasped Oy’s forepaws. Roland gently grasped the bumbler’s rear paws. Oy looked nervous at this—as if he perhaps expected to be swung briskly into the air and given the old heave-ho—but he didn’t struggle.

“One, two, three.”

Jake and Roland gently patted Oy’s forepaws and rear paws together in unison. At the same time they clicked the heels of their own footwear. Eddie and Susannah did the same.

This time the harmonic was a deep, sweet bong, like a glass church bell. The black glass bar running down the center of the gate did not split open but shattered, spraying crumbs of obsidian glass in all directions. Some rattled against Oy’s hide. He sprang up in a hurry, yanking out of Jake’s and Roland’s grip and trotting a little distance away. He sat on the broken white line between the travel lane and the passing lane of the highway, his ears laid back, looking at the gate and panting.

“Come on,” Roland said. He went to the left wing of the gate and pushed it slowly open. He stood at the edge of the mirror courtyard, a tall, lanky man in cowpoke jeans, an ancient shirt of no particular color, and improbable red cowboy boots. “Let’s go in and see what the Wizard of Oz has to say for himself.”

“If he’s still here,” Eddie said.

“Oh, I think he’s here,” Roland murmured. “Yes, I think he’s here.”

He ambled toward the main door with the empty sentry-box beside it. The others followed, welded to their own downward reflections by the red shoes like sets of Siamese twins.

Oy came last, skipping nimbly along in his ruby slippers, pausing once to sniff down at his own reflected snout.

“Oy!” he cried to the bumbler floating below him, and then hurried after Jake.

Chapter III

THE WIZARD

1

Roland stopped at the sentry-box, glanced in, then picked up the thing which was lying on the floor. The others caught up with him and clustered around. It had looked like a newspaper, and that was just what it was... although an exceedingly odd one. No Topeka Capital-Journal this, and no news of a population-levelling plague.

Vol. MDLXVIII No. 96 “Daily Buzz, Daily Buzz, Handsome Iz as Handsome Duuzz” Weather: Here today, gone tomorrow Lucky Numbers: None Prognosis: Bad