Ray Bradbury - Dandelion Wine

“She never runs out of ink!”

He looked at Mr. Black sitting there finishing off his bottle and cursing, not knowing how lucky he was, living in the arcade. Please, he thought, don’t let the arcade fall apart, too. Bad enough that friends disappeared, people were killed and buried in the real world, but let the arcade run along the way it was, please, please . . .

Now Douglas knew why the arcade had drawn him so steadily this week and drew him still tonight. For there was a world completely set in place, predictable, certain, sure, with its bright silver slots, its terrible gorilla behind glass forever stabbed by waxen hero to save still more waxen heroine, and then the flipping waterfalling chitter of Keystone Kops on eternal photographic spindles set spiraling in darkness by Indianhead pennies under naked bulb light. The Kops, forever in collision or near-collision with train, truck, streetcar, forever gone off piers in oceans which did not drown, because there they rushed to collide again with train, truck, streetcar, dive off old and beautifully familiar pier. Worlds within worlds, the penny peek shows which you cranked to repeat old rites and formulas. There, when you wished, the Wright Brothers sailed sandy winds at Kittyhawk, Teddy Roosevelt exposed his dazzling teeth, San Francisco was built and burned, burned and built, as long as sweaty coins fed self-satisfied machines.

Douglas looked around at this night town, where anything at all might happen now, a minute from now. Here, by night of day, how few the slots to shove your money in, how few the cards delivered to your hand for reading, and, if read, how few made sense. Here in the world of people you might give time, money, and prayer with little or no return.

But there in the arcade you could hold lightning with the CAN YOU TAKE IT? electrical machine when you pried its chromed handles apart as the power wasp-stung, sizzled, sewed your vibrant fingers. You punched a bag and saw how many hundred pounds of sinew were available in your arm to strike the world if it need be struck. There grip a robot’s hand to Indian-wrestle out your fury and light the bulbs half up a numbered chart where fireworks at the summit proved your violence supreme.

In the arcade, then, you did this and this, and that and that occurred. You came forth in peace as from a church unknown before.

And now? Now?

The witch moving but silent, and perhaps soon dead in her crystal coffin. He looked at Mr. Black droning there, defying all worlds, even his own. Someday the fine machinery would rust from lack of loving care, the Keystone Kops freeze forever half in, half out of the lake, half caught, half struck by locomotive; the Wright Brothers never get their kite machine off the ground . . .

“Tom,” Douglas said, “we got to sit in the library and figure this thing out.”

They moved on down the street, the white unwritten card passing between them.

They sat inside the library in the lidded green light and then they sat outside on the carved stone lion, dangling their feet over its back, frowning.

“Old man Black, all the time screaming at her, threatening to kill her.”

“You can’t kill what’s never lived, Doug.”

“He treats the witch like she’s alive or was once alive, or something. Screaming at her, so maybe she’s finally given up. Or maybe she hasn’t given up at all, but’s taken a secret way to warn us her life’s in danger. Invisible ink. Lemon juice, maybe! There’s a message here she didn’t want Mr. Black to see, in case he looked while we were in his arcade. Hold on! I got some matches.”

“Why would she write us, Doug?”

“Hold the card. Here!” Douglas struck a match and ran it under the card.

“Ouch! The words ain’t on my fingers, Doug, so keep the match away.”

“There!” cried Douglas. And there it was, a faint spidery scrawl which began to shape itself in a spiral of incredible corkscrew calligrapher’s letters, dark on light . . .a word, two words, three . . .

“The card, it’s on fire!”

Tom yelled and let it drop.

“Stomp on it!”

But by the time they had jumped up to smash their feet on the stony spine of the ancient lion, the card was a black ruin.

“Doug! Now we’ll never know what it said!”

Douglas held the flaking warm ashes in the palm of his hand. “No, I saw. I remember the words.”

The ashes blew about in his fingers, whispering.

“You remember in that Charlie Chase Comedy last spring where the Frenchman was drowning and kept yelling something in French which Charlie Chase couldn’t figure. Secours, Secours! And someone told Charlie what it meant and he jumped in and saved the man. Well, on this card, with my own eyes, I saw it. Secours!”

“Why would she write it in French?”

“So Mr. Black wouldn’t know, dumb!”

“Doug, it was just an old watermark coming out when you scorched the card . . .” Tom saw Douglas’s face and stopped. “Okay, don’t look mad. It was ’sucker’ or whatever. But there were other words . . .”

“Mme. Tarot, it said. Tom, I got it now! Mme. Tarot’s real, lived a long time ago, told fortunes. I saw her picture once in the encyclopedia. People came from all over Europe to see her. Well, don’t you figure it now yourself? Think, Tom, think!”

Tom sat back down on the lion’s back, looking along the street to where the arcade lights flickered.

“That’s not the real Mrs. Tarot?”

“Inside that glass box, under all that red and blue silk and all that old half-melted wax, sure! Maybe a long time ago someone got jealous or hated her and poured wax over;j her and kept her prisoner forever and she’s passed down the line from villain to villain and wound up here, centuries later, in Green Town, Illinois—working for Indian-head pennies instead of the crown heads of Europe!”

“Villains? Mr. Black?”

“Name’s Black, shirt’s black, pants’re black, tie’s black. Movie villains wear black, don’t they?”

“But why didn’t she yell last year, the year before?”

“Who knows, every night for a hundred years she’s been writing messages in lemon juice on cards, but everybody read her regular message, nobody thought, like us, to run a match over the back to bring out the real message. Lucky I know what secours means.”

“Okay, she said, ‘Help!’ Now what?”

“We save her, of course.”

“Steal her out from under Mr. Black’s nose, huh? And wind up witches ourselves in glass boxes with wax poured on our faces the next ten thousand years.”

“Tom, the library’s here. We’ll arm ourselves with spells and magic philters to fight Mr. Black.”

“There’s only one magic philter will fix Mr. Black,” said Tom. “Soon’s he gets enough pennies any one evening, he—well, let’s see.” Tom drew some coins from his pocket. “This just might do it. Doug, you go read the books. I’ll run back and look at the Keystone Kops fifteen times; I never get tired. By the time you meet me at the arcade, it might be the old philter will be working for us.”

“Tom, I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Doug, you want to rescue this princess or not?”

Douglas whirled and plunged.

Tom watched the library doors wham shut and settle. Then he leaped over the lion’s back and down into the night. On the library steps, the ashes of the tarot card fluttered, blew away.

The arcade was dark, inside, the pinball machines lay dim and enigmatic as dust scribblings in a giant’s cave. The peep shows stood with Teddy Roosevelt and the Wright Brothers faintly smirking or just cranking up a wooden propeller. The witch sat in her case, her waxen eyes cauled. Then, suddenly, one eye glittered. A flashlight bobbed outside through the dusty arcade windows. A heavy figure lurched against the locked door, a key scrabbled into the lock. The door slammed open, stayed open. There was a sound of thick breathing.