SEVENTY-FIVE

TOO LATE TO MAKE IT OUT ALONE.

The enclosure collapsed around the mirror. Curtains jerked from supports, clotheslines whip-snapping like power cables. Avalanche of clothing, stumbling, tripping and pedaling dirt—he could not fall.

Over his shoulder, the Paths were gone.

With jaws of water and wood, the wave had claimed the horizon. Ahead of itself, it pushed a cool breeze of decay—mud, clay, rot. The pain in Griff’s foot ballooned. He twisted, grabbed a clot of earth to climb—dust in his fist. Handholds evaporated like mouths snapping shut.

He couldn’t climb out.

Ladders, all pulled. Part of his plan. Paths branched left and right, forked again, confusing. He made a curve and remembered the switchback for vehicles. He banked right and crashed into a booth’s sharp corner, but the wave had forked with the paths—muddy freshet churning toward him, snapping, swallowing. It tumbled closer and the crowd shrieked.

WHOOMP!

He set his eyes to the Encore.

Sprinting, he stumbled on something sharp and his foot screamed—these strange new objects on the ground—paper, coins, and fabric coming down like snowfall. People tossing objects into the Paths. A giant wishing well. A big goodbye. They were burying him.

A blast of rotten air on his neck.

Colors rippled on the Encore’s surface.

He could hear their voices before he heard the words, or recognized his name in the noise. His friends, calling for him. A signal. And slender cords dangling like spider silk, the black only visible when it brushed against the white, and although they looked delicate, Griff knew they held 500 pounds dead weight and 200 swinging.

He could not make out their faces. He tangled his hands in the lines. He used his knees. He pulled and kicked and climbed and fought through hot streaks of pain and sound. They pulled him onto higher ground and he rolled himself over. Shut his eyes, curled on his side. His lungs rose. Fell.

Breathing. Alive.

His friends saved his life with the lines he gave them.