....

The grinding, clunking, rumble faded away, as did the sound of ten thousand bells. The thing had stopped.

Jimmy watched.

The boy-driver took off his outrageous golden crown, removed a key from a switch, unfastened his safety belt, and jumped lightly to the ground.

"Good to see you, Jimmy, my boy," he said as he walked up the hillside. His skin was copper, like the color of Felipe Sanchez, Jimmy's only fifth grade friend. And somewhere in his voice there was an accent, but not quite like that of Felipe.

He sat on the grass beside Jimmy. "Y'all don't lock doors around here, do you? So I can leave the key." He tossed the key back toward the thing. The key hit one of the little bells and fell to the ground, but now all the bells were ringing again.

Jimmy forced his head to turn, and looked at him. "Who are you?"

The boy--he looked no older than Jimmy--touched his lips, said, "Shhh."

A small red hole appeared in the center of his bare chest. At first, Jimmy thought it was another magic trick, but then blood ran from the hole and he crumpled to the ground. Jimmy was frightened, knew he had been shot, but he had heard nothing.

He knelt beside the boy, holding his head. He wanted to scream but said, "What is it? What happened?"

"A hunter..." The boy's eyes were wide, bright.

"But you said..."

"He couldn't see me, or the Great Car, or you right now for that matter. He saw something, probably he thought it was a bird. And he shot. It's all right."

Jimmy remembered the one time, late at night, when his father had talked of his experiences in the war. The stories, most of them, were gone. Jimmy remembered only the blood, "everywhere, sometime for days." Like this? Jimmy wondered. He remembered the pain and disgust in his father's eyes that night.

"No, it's not all right."

"But it is. It is. You will understand, maybe not today or tomorrow, but you will understand."

Jimmy really wanted to scream now. He felt tears running down his cheeks. "You're going to die."

"Yes."

"What will happen, I mean, to, to, you know, the...."

"The boy smiled, laughed a little. "You can say it. It's not a dirty word."

Jimmy felt silly. The tears were coming faster. Too loud, he said, "To the Great Car,"

The boy was still smiling. "Nothing. Nothing at all. It was here, growing, before I came. It will be here, growing, after I go."

Jimmy looked at the giant thing, paused ridiculously in the valley, his valley.

"But." Jimmy's brain seemed frozen. Not thinking, not feeling. Seeing only, so intensely.

The boy's breathing was becoming slow, shallow. His eyes were half-closed. "It's your turn now, if you want."

"Uh-uh. No way, man. I don't want to get shot."

"Don't worry. It doesn't happen very often."

Jimmy's mind abruptly thawed and he began to sob. "Shit, shit, shit."

"Ah, Jimmy, look at me. Look." The boy gestured toward his eyes. "What do you see?"

Jimmy looked and saw in two dark mirrors a tiny double image of himself, hunched over. "It's a dream, right?" As soon as he said that, the pressure in his chest ceased, and the tears stopped coming.

"If you mean, it's not real, no. It is not a dream. It gets more real every day. See?"

Jimmy looked at the monstrous colorful toy resting in the little valley below them, like some ridiculous Christmas-birthday-Halloween-Easter fantasy. It was true. Something was different just in these few minutes. It seemed both a bit bigger, a bit brighter, a bit more colorful.

"Watch it closely. Choose a part and watch it closely. Like clouds, you'll see it growing, changing, germinating, blooming. Watch."

Jimmy chose an area that he thought might be a fender, covered with gold and silver nooks and crannies, jewels, countless small figures: animals, plants, people, towns, cities, forests, seas. Jimmy stared. It was like an optical illusion,. Or like clouds. The change was slow, so slow, that you couldn't really see the change, but you knew after a minute that it was different.

"What did I smell coming up the creek behind you? Sort of sweet, tangy."

Beneath his golden skin, the boy blushed. "I. .  I. . . .  Asian sweat. It's such a hot day. I had been intending to hop off and take a dip but with one thing and another..." Clearly abashed, he looked down and waited for Jimmy to speak.

As if on cue, a drop of sweat appeared on the boy's forehead and ran down into his dark eyebrow.

""But this is April. You think this is. . ."

"Maybe I should change."

"Huh?" Jimmy looked him up and down. Not a stitch of clothes. "Change?"

The boy laughed. "Bodies. This oriental version is not accustomed to such heat." He saw the incredulous look on Jimmy's face. "You want me to? You can watch." He said it as if he were talking about standing on his head.

"It, this is a dream then."

"No. Not dream. Here." He took Jimmy's hand and placed it on his chest.

Jimmy felt the warm smooth skin, the breathing, and faintly the heartbeat, and the slick blood.

"You want me to? I'm sure I can choose something much more suitable to this time or place. It'll take about five minutes."

"lt has to be a dream."

"I know it seems fast. It's five minutes of your time. The, uh, body time would be about two months. Come on, I'll do it. It's fun. Oh, but you should know, watching, you'll be sucked into my time, so when I'm finished you'll think two months have passed."

"No way. No thanks."

Fear took Jimmy. "Who are you? What is that thing?" In his shock, Jimmy's manners had left him completely.

"You might call it a juggernaut."

"Huh?"

"May we sit down? It's been an exhausting day."

They sat and leaned against the large trunk of a live oak.

"A juggernaut. It is this, this thing that is in the world always, moves through the world."

"But what does it do? What is it for?"

"Ah." The boy suddenly looked very sad.

Jimmy regained something of his polite self. "I'm sorry. Did I say something wrong?"

"Oh no, not at all. It's just that sometimes it's painful to remember what a long trip it's been... Tell me, what do you see when you look at it?"

Jimmy thought this was a pretty strange question, strangely formed., "It's not like anything I've seen before. Like a giant float, but it's not flowers. It's gold and silver and jewels and tiny plants and tiny people." Jimmy squinted, looking closely at the thing some hundred meters away. "Funny, but the longer I look at it the more details I see. Like now I see that there are tiny clouds around some of the little mountains of gold and silver. Pretty weird."

"Indeed. Would you believe me if I told you it has always been here, in this little valley. Elsewhere too, but always here."

"What do you mean? I come here all the time and I never saw it before today."

"Most people, if they came here, would not see it either. At most they might notice a certain shimmering shifting in the air, which they would write off as heat waves or some such."

"It's a dream. Has to be. What do you mean, other people can't see it? It's right there."

"Yes, but you, some part of you, has to know how to look, has to look in just a certain, a uh, a certain mood."

"Like depressed? I was feeling really depressed before you came chugging up the draw.?

"No. Not depressed." The boy lapsed into thought, Jimmy waited, thinking he was going to explain what he meant by 'mood'.

"You want to take a ride?" The boy spoke brightly, as if Jimmy had not just told him how bad he felt.

"Sure."

END

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Magellan's Log VII

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