Free Live Free

Epilogue

The ragged man and the ragged boy came down the alley slowly, picking their way between pools of melting slush. The air was cold, but the sun was bright. “There it is,” the man said, pointing. “See, I told you they wouldn’t bother to fence off the back. Think you can climb over that junk?”

The boy had already begun, scrambling over an abandoned stove and dodging through the gutted body of a wrecked car. The man was still clambering after him when he halted on the porch.

“Can we go in?” the boy asked. “There’s a sign.”

The man nodded, half to himself. The sign, crudely hand-lettered in black paint, read FREE LIVE FREE. It was a trifle weatherworn now.

Through a broken window he saw the looted kitchen and the ruined parlor beyond it, a doll’s room laid open.

The knob turned, and taking the boy by the hand, he stepped over the sill.

Coffee was perking on the stove. A taller Stubb and a slimmer Candy stood beside it, she dressed in some shimmering material he had never seen, a gown of silver light.

In a wall, the ragged man thought. The old fox. Free told me he’d hidden it in a wall. He thrilled with fear, with discovery and joy, an unnamed emotion.

“Glinda!” Candy called. “Look who’s here—it’s Popeye!”

The sorceress’s familiar voice floated in from the parlor. “Ah, Mr. Barnes!” she said. “The quadrumvirate is complete.”