hundreds of full-sized creatures who circled on the platform of the carousel. Real creatures, imaginary creatures, and transformations of the two: each creature was different—he saw mermaid and merman, centaur and unicorn, elephants (one huge, one tiny), bulldog, frog and phoenix, zebra, tiger, manticore and basilisk, swans pulling a carriage, a white ox, a fox, twin walruses, even a sea serpent, all of them brightly colored and more than real: each rode the platform as the waltz came to an end and a new waltz began. The carousel did not even slow down.
“What’s it for?” asked Shadow. “I mean, okay, world’s biggest, hundreds of animals, thousands of light bulbs, and it goes around all the time, and no one ever rides it.”
“It’s not there to be ridden, not by people,” said Wednesday. “It’s there to be admired. It’s there to be.”
“Like a prayer wheel goin’ round and round,” said Mr. Nancy. “Accumulating power.”
“So where are we meeting everyone?” asked Shadow. “I thought you said that we were meeting them here. But the place is empty.”
Wednesday grinned his scary grin. “Shadow,” he said. “You’re asking too many questions. You’re paid not to ask questions.”
“Sorry.”
“Now, stand over here and help us up,” said Wednesday, and he walked over to the platform on one side, with a description of the Carousel on it, and a warning that the Carousel was not to be ridden.
Shadow thought of saying something, but instead he helped them, one by one, up onto the ledge. Wednesday seemed profoundly heavy, Czernobog climbed up himself, only using Shadow’s shoulder to steady himself, Nancy seemed to weigh nothing at all. Each of the old men climbed out onto the ledge, and then, with a step and a hop, they walked out onto the circling Carousel platform.
“Well?” barked Wednesday. “Aren’t you coming?”
Shadow, not without a certain amount of hesitation, and a hasty look around for any House on the Rock personnel who might be watching, swung himself up onto the ledge beside the World’s Largest Carousel. Shadow was puzzled to realize that he was far more concerned with breaking the rules by climbing onto the Carousel than he had been aiding and abetting this afternoon’s bank robbery.
Each of the old men selected a mount. Wednesday climbed onto a golden wolf. Czernobog climbed onto an armored centaur, its face hidden by a metal helmet. Nancy, chuckling, slithered up onto the back of an enormous, leaping lion, captured by the sculptor mid-roar. He patted the side of the lion. The Strauss waltz carried them around, majestically.
Wednesday was smiling, and Nancy was laughing delightedly, an old man’s cackle, and even the dour Czernobog seemed to be enjoying himself. Shadow felt as if a weight were suddenly lifted from his back: three old men were enjoying themselves, riding the world’s biggest carousel. So what if they did all get thrown out of the place? Wasn’t it worth it, worth anything, to say that you had ridden on the World’s Largest Carousel? Wasn’t it worth it to have traveled on one of those glorious monsters?
Shadow inspected a bulldog, and a mer-creature, and an elephant with a golden howdah, and then he climbed on the back of a creature with an eagle’s head and the body of a tiger, and held on tight.
The rhythm of the “Blue Danube” waltz rippled and rang and sang in his head, the lights of a thousand chandeliers glinted and prismed, and for a heartbeat Shadow was a child again, and all it took to make him happy was to ride the Carousel: he stayed perfectly still, riding his eagle-tiger at the center of everything, and the world revolved around him.
Shadow heard himself laugh, over the sound of the music. He was happy. It was as if the last thirty-six hours had never happened, as if the last three years had not happened, as if his life had evaporated into the daydream of a small child, riding the carousel in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, on his first trip back to the States, a marathon journey by ship and by car, his mother standing there, watching him proudly, and himself sucking his melting Popsicle, holding on tightly, hoping that the music would never stop, the carousel would never slow, the ride would never end. He was going around and around and around again…
Then the lights went out, and Shadow saw the gods.