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He froze in shock. The corner store looked the same as it always had. Whenever he had come home to visit, it had always looked the same, only the brands on the shelves changing the styles of their labels.
Home to visit? Yes, he was, wasn't he? The Spider King, whose web of forces and personas stretched across the dimensions to catch all the Earths in all the alternate universes, had acted with amazing speed. Matt couldn't help feeling that it had been too easy, much too easy, especially considering how much effort he had expended for weeks, even months, before he'd finally been able to make sense of the arcane verse he'd found, and been transported to Merovence. Suddenly, Matt began to feel an old and highly unpleasant sensation, as if there were invisible strings tied to his ankles, wrists, and temples. He was being manipulated again. He began to wonder if it was really Saul who had put the idea of going home into his mind.
Something roared behind him. Matt whirled, adrenaline pumping. What kind of supernatural monster ...?
The Route 34 bus pulled up to the curb.
Matt stared. He was so used to seeing dragons and manticores that the bus did seem supernatural--and the stink of exhaust, which he'd scarcely noticed before, was a veritable stench. He'd been spoiled by clean air.
The doors folded open, and the driver said, "You gettin' on, mac, or just lookin'?"
Matt couldn't help the foolish grin that spread over his face. "Just saying hello, Mr. Joe."
The driver stared, then grinned. "Hey, it's you, Matt! Day off from school, huh?"
Matt gave a half shrug and a sheepish grin.
"Day off, but they didn't know about it." Joechuckled. "Well, good to see you, boy. Take care."
"You, too, Mr. Joe." Matt raised a hand.
"Just 'Joe' now, Matt," the driver said. "You're old enough, and I been telling you that for eight years. So long, now!"
The doors closed, and the bus rumbled away, turning the corner. Matt followed it with his gaze, taking in the rest of the intersection. The apartment building on the northwest corner still looked the same, except that the landlord had finally had the stoop fixed. The little meat market across the street still looked as busy as ever. As he watched, Mrs. Picorelli bustled up to put some more cans on the shelf, then bustled away back out of the light--seventy-five, and still going strong. He hoped her husband was still okay--at eighty, he should have been taking his ease in a rocking chair, not still cutting meat. But who was going to make him retire? He owned the store.
Then he remembered that he'd seen them just last Easter, and it couldn't be later than early June. If it had been, the schoolkids would have been out playing in the street, ducking out of the way when a car came along. No reason to think the old couple were in any worse shape than when he'd last seen them. Of course, that had been five years ago for him--but not for them.
He turned, strolling down the street. The Spider King's aim had been nearly perfect--not quite at his parents' doorstep but only half a block away. Not bad, from another universe. He noticed that Mr. Gussenhoven's garden was as neat and tidy as ever, his lawn still rich and luxuriant. The corner of the garden wall was broken again, and the heavy piece of angle iron tilted over, making the whole fence lean. Some drunken idiot must have crashed into it with his car, trying to make a K-turn at night. He must have been drunk, or he would have realized that the heavy steel would dent his fender nicely. He might not pay Mr. Gussenhoven for the damage, but he'd pay his body shop.
Matt turned to look down the length of the street, still not quite believing he was home. Only a few minutes ago, he'd been inside the walls of a castle; his wife had been holding court in a real, genuine throne room where the suits of armor standing in the corners had real live guards inside them--and now he was here, on a quiet blue-collar street in suburban New Jersey! It was definitely unbelievable.
But as the gloss wore off, claustrophobia suddenly hit. The houses were so close together, the front yards so small! Had he really grown up here, and thought it was perfectly normal? It seemed so hard to believe now--not just compared to his wife's castle, but even to the university town where he'd gone to college!
Of course, it used to look a lot better. The Daleys' garden had shrunk, flower by flower, even after they'd put the chain-link fence up. "Those darn kids, while they're waiting for the bus!" Mrs. Daley had told him. "They get into fights and knock each other into my bushes! They play tag and trample all over my petunias!" But she'd kept replanting--for a while. "The police said I couldn't complain if I didn't have a fence," she said, "so I put up the chain-link. The kids climb it to pick flowers for their girls. The police tell me they've got too much real trouble to worry about a few posies."
So year by year, the neighborhood had lost its flowers. Mr. Gussenhoven had patched up the corner of his retaining wall the first time a car had crumbled it while making a K-turn. Then he'd patched it again, when he'd come out and found it broken again, only this time, he'd reinforced it with the angle iron. Apparently that had made the kids mad, when they damaged their cars on the K-turns, because they must have come back with sledgehammers and broken ten feet of wall. Mr. Gussenhoven had fixed that, too, but not anymore. The corner was broken now, and looked as if it was going to stay that way.
Matt looked up and down the street, noticing all the signs of disrepair and decay. Some of those gardener couples had died; others had moved to retirement villages. He wondered what kind of people had moved in. What were his parents doing here, his educated, cultured mother and father?
He knew the answer to that. Sure, his father had a graduate degree in literature, but he had chosen to teach college. His mother had taken her M.A. and started her doctoral coursework after Matt started school, but by the time she hit the job market, the colleges were trying to get rid of faculty, not hire new. Papa had been passed over for tenure again and again, which meant no promotions, which meant there had never been money for her to finish her degree. For a minute, Matt felt a surge of second-generation hatred for Castro, for driving his mother out of the comfortable house and lifestyle her father had worked so hard to keep up. They had also lost the money he had saved for her education, so she had needed to work her way through, taking two years longer.
He swallowed the anger, reminding himself that if she had stayed in Cuba, she never would have met Papa, and Matt himself never would have been born--not as he knew himself, anyway. Different parents, different body, different personality, probably--but the same soul?
He shrugged the question off, irritated. He was back in the USA now, not in Merovence! Those kinds of questions had no meaning here--did they?
"Well, if it ain't the college boy."
Matt's head snapped up. Lost in his thoughts and memories--he should have known better! Liam, Choy, and Luco had stepped out from under some rock to block his way.
"Playin' hooky, chicken boy?"
The "chicken" struck home; old fears raised their grinning heads inside Matt. These three had taken every chance to torment him since they'd hit junior high, even though he'd been two years ahead--along with their half-dozen buddies. The fear hollowed Matt's stomach; dread climbed up into his chest, his arms ...
... and faded away. It disappeared as quickly as it had come. Iron determination took its place. Matt stood mute and staring, amazed at himself.
Luco laughed. "Too scared to talk, huh? Think I'm the truant officer?"
He guffawed at his own wit. Choy and Liam echoed him.
The jeering raised Matt's anger. He let it build, glad of it, but held it at its proper level. "Truant officer? Well, I suppose you know all about playing hooky, Luco."
Luco's grin turned nasty. "Permanent hooky, dum-dum. We got smart."
"That's why you've got such good jobs, huh?"
Liam swung a short, vicious jab to the ribs. Matt blocked by reflex, and for a second Liam's eyes went wide. Then they narrowed again, and he snarled, "So the college finally taught you something, huh? Let's see how they did on street fighting!"
He swung again, but Matt jumped back, knowing what was coming--Luco's fists, from the right, in a quick combination. Matt danced away, reciting,
"His nose should pant and his lip should curl,
His cheeks should flame, and his brow should furl,
His foot should trip, for he is my foe,
And his chin receive a hammer of a knockdown blow!"
Luco stumbled and flinched--nothing more. Of course. This was the USA, in the universe of science and reason, where poetry could only work wonders in people's hearts. Fear started again.
"Very pretty," Choy snarled, and lashed a kick at Matt's belly.
He caught Choy's foot. He actually caught it. He stared at the sneaker for a second in amazement. He'd never been able to move that fast before.
At least, not in this universe. He grinned up at Choy, twisting, then shoving the foot away. "Slowed down, Choy. Too many drugs, huh?"
Choy hopped backward, cursing, face darkening with anger. Liam and Luco both struck, red-faced and outraged.
"Think they really taught you something, college boy?"
"Think you're better'n we are, huh?"
Matt blocked with his left as if he held a dagger, struck with his right fist as if it were a sword. A punch rocked his head, one that would have laid him out the last time he was home. Now he counterpunched, turned to block a kick, swung a vicious jab, then stepped in to finish off Luco with three blows to the belly and one to the jaw. As the man folded, he pivoted to push Choy's punch aside, then caught his wrist and swung him, hard, into Liam. The two of them went down in a tangle of legs and shouted curses. Liam's head struck the concrete; he went limp. Choy scrambled to his feet, catching up a fallen stick, and swung it at Matt's head with all his might.
It was the worst mistake he could have made, against a belted knight. Matt ducked under the blow and came up with a left jab into the belly, as hard as if he were driving in a dagger. Choy folded over sudden intense pain, gagging and dropping the stick.
Matt caught it and broke it over his knee. He stood a moment, panting, then reached out and shoved on Choy's shoulder, hard. The thug staggered to the side, tripped on Luco's legs, and fell.
Matt stood staring down at them, feeling the thrill of victory coursing through him. Victory over his childhood tormentors! He could scarcely believe it.
Then he fingered his own biceps, flexing the arm. The muscles Sayeesa the lust-witch had given him by her magic were still there. Sir Guy had taught him swordplay and quarterstaff play, and the knowledge he had gained in Merovence's universe was still in his mind and neurons! Magic might not work here, but the fencing Sir Guy had taught him and the martial arts Saul had made him practice stayed in his brain and nerves. He grinned down at his old enemies, letting the excitement crest and begin to slacken. Then, working hard to scoff, not gloat, he said, "Too much booze, guys--and you'd better quit smoking. Oh, and you might want to give up tobacco."
Choy glared up at him, still struggling for breath.
"Don't be here when I get back," Matt advised, and turned to stroll away down the block, looking about him and reveling in the softness of the air, the scents of home--acrid though they might have become--and the vividness of the sky. It certainly was a fine day.
But something nagged at the back of his mind--magic. It shouldn't work at all in this universe, but it had worked a little. He had called for Luco to trip, then be punched out, or at least down--and he had stumbled, then flinched as if somebody had slapped him.
Coincidence. Matt put it out of his mind and went back to enjoying the day. He looked around him at the neighborhood--and found he was standing in front of his own house. His parents' house, he amended; he didn't live here anymore. But it was the house he had grown up in, and Merovence began to recede, to seem awfully far away, just a fairy tale ...
Until he noticed the two-foot-wide spiderweb between the porch roof and a pillar.
Matt smiled, feeling oddly reassured. He didn't remember seeing webs like that very often around this neighborhood. The Spider King had a strand in every universe, a magical connection of some sort. Matt's magic might not work here, but somebody's did.
Of course, it might be a perfectly normal spider, completely natural.
Sure.
He smiled, feeling very nostalgic as he gazed at the house. It was three windows wide on the second story, a door and two windows wide on the ground floor. Plain wooden steps ran up to the porch, with latticework between the brick pillars that held it up. Inside, there was a narrow entry hall that turned into an even narrower stairway about four feet from the door, narrower so that an eighteen-inch-wide passageway could lead back to the kitchen--about ten feet wide and twelve feet long. To the left of the entry hall was the doorway into the living room, which opened onto the dining room with its windows at the back and side of the house. Upstairs there were two decent-sized bedrooms, a small bedroom, and a bathroom just long enough to hold a short bathtub and just wide enough for everything else. It was old, it needed a coat of paint, the front-yard garden was down to two rosebushes--and it was wonderful. Boyhood memories swirled around it, nostalgia tugged him toward the door ...
Then it opened, and a dainty woman in a housedress, with her black hair in a knot, came out with a broom, straight toward the spiderweb.
"No, Mama!" Matt cried in panic.
The woman looked up in surprise, and in the split second that she stared at him, Matt was shocked to see a few gray hairs in the thick, luxuriant mass. Then she dropped the broom and ran down the steps to throw her arms around his neck with a glad cry.
