The Kingdom of Kevin Malone Read Free Page B

faced with sizable blocks of gray stone. He shook the bars of the locked gate. Not surprisingly, they didn’t budge.
    Inside, the arch was high and wide, with deep dirt verges on either side of the surfaced walkway through the middle. I could make out big barrels lined up in rows on either hand. Beyond, there was another stretch of path, gloomy green foliage, and then the stone face of another arch farther on.
    â€œWhat’s in there?” I asked. I realized that I’d been hoping to meet somebody besides Kevin in what was beginning to seem like an awfully empty landscape.
    He stepped back, staring upward and rubbing his palms on his sweats. “The Prison City,” he said.
    I looked up too, expecting to see rolls of razor wire and guards with Uzis. “You made all this,” I said, “and you put in a Prison City?”
    â€œEvery country has prisons,” Kevin said in a hard, superior tone. “On your side it’s the Central Park Zoo in there behind the double arches of the Denesmouth. Here, it’s prison.”
    It fit, in a gloomy way: a home for caged animals was turned, in his fantasy, into a town of caged people, which was what I assumed Kevin meant by “Prison City.” It was not what you’d call an ambiguous phrase.
    â€œSo we were going to do what?” I asked. “Drop in here at this prison, which was somehow supposed to get me home?”
    â€œSomething like that,” he said. “But we can’t get in, and there’s guys around here who’d lock me up if they could and keep me for the White One. Let’s go.”
    The image of something fat and pale like a large slug popped into my head. Somehow I did not want to pursue the subject of the White One.
    â€œLock you up?” I said. “In your own country?”
    â€œI made this place for adventure,” he said, sort of throwing out his chest and looking around possessively. “The whole thing, the people, the plot of the story, everything. ‘Plot’ means things happen, so there’s enemies around, you know? Danger. Scared?”
    â€œNervous,” I said. “Because you don’t seem to know your way around your own private country.”
    â€œI know every inch of this place,” he said loftily. “Every ritual, everything! So relax, Amy. There’s another way back nearby, if it’s where it belongs. And if not, it’ll just take a little longer to find an arch you can use, that’s all. Sooner or later the Battle Path will take us where we need to go.”
    I stood where I was, clutching the roller skates for security. “What do you mean, ‘if it’s where it belongs?’ ”
    â€œOh, things sort of move around,” Kevin said. “Not the arches, they stay put, but other stuff kind of migrates. There’s magic currents in the earth that shunt things around, like.”
    Oh boy, I thought. “You invented a magical land where you can never know where anything is for sure?”
    He gave me a charming grin. “Magic is full of surprises. That’s half the fun.”
    He led the way down a steep path through a tunnel of huge old trees. Far below I thought I saw  . . . was it possible? Was that why the air had such a tang to it? Where Fifth Avenue was supposed to be, marking the eastern boundary of Central Park—was that blue band on the horizon the sea?
    I could not make my dazed mind come up with a sensible-sounding way to ask about this. The best I could do was, “So where are we going now, Kevin?” Which sounded whiney and stupid, and as soon as the words were out of my mouth I wished I hadn’t said them. Luckily, he didn’t seem to have heard me.
    Suddenly the trees thinned out around an outcrop of black granite. From there Kevin pointed down at a shingled rooftop in a clearing below.
    â€œSee?” he said triumphantly. “I knew it was here someplace.”
    I saw