"No, not yet," said the cold rain in his mouth. "Part of me in a hospital a long way off home, part of me in that old Egyptian tomb. Part of me in the grass in England. Part of me here. Part of me in a worse place--"
"Where?"
"I don't know, I don't, oh gosh, one minute I'm yelling laughs, the next I'm scared. Now, just now, this very minute, I guess, I know, I'm scared. Help me, guys. Help, oh please!"
Rain poured out his eyes like tears.
The boys reached up to touch Pipkin's chin, as best they could. But before they could touch...
A lightning bolt struck out of the sky.
It flashed blue and white.
The entire cathedral shook. The boys had to grab demons' horns and angels' wings on either side so as not to be knocked off.
Thunder and smoke. And a great scattering of rock and stone.
Pipkin's face was gone. Knocked off by the lightning bolt, it fell down through space to shatter the ground below.
"Pipkin!"
But there below on the cathedral porch stones were only flinty firesparks blowing away, and a fine gargoyle dust. Nose, chin, stone lip, hard cheek, bright eye, carved fine ear, all, all whipped away on the wind in chaff and shrapnel dust. They saw something like a spirit smoke, a bloom of gunpowder blow drifting south and west.
"Mexico--" Moundshroud, one of the few men in all the world who knew how to utter, uttered the word.
"Mexico?" asked Tom.
"The last grand travel of this night," said Moundshroud, still uttering, savoring the syllables. "Whistle, boys, scream like tigers, cry like panthers, shriek like carnivore!"
"Scream, cry, shriek?"
"Reassemble the Kite, lads, the Kite of Autumn. Paste back the fangs and fiery eyes and bloody talons. Yell the wind to sew it all together and ride us high and long and last. Bray, boys, whimper, trumpet, shout!"
The boys hesitated. Moundshroud ran along the ledge like someone racketing a picket fence. He knocked each boy with his knee and elbow. The boys fell, and falling gave each his particular whimper, shriek, or scream.
Plummeting down through cold space, they felt the tail of a murderous peacock flourish beneath, all blood-filled eye. Ten thousand burning eyes came up.
Hovered suddenly round a windy corner of gargoyles, the Autumn Kite, freshly assembled, broke their fall.
They grabbed, they held to rim, to edge, to cross-struts, to trapdrum rattling papers, to bits and tatters and shreds of old meat-breath lion-mouth, and stale-blood tiger's maw.
Moundshroud leaped up to grab. This time he was the tail.
The Autumn Kite hovered, waiting, eight boys upon its billowing surf of teeth and eyes.
Moundshroud tuned his ear.
Hundreds of miles away, beggars ran down Irish roads, starving, asking for food from door to door. Their cries rose in the night.
Fred Fryer, in his beggar's costume, heard.
"That way! Let's fly there!"
"No. No time. Listen!"
Thousands of miles away, there was a faint tap-hammering of deathwatch beetles ticking the night.
"The