“Charlie! Charlie!” Justin calls out.
“Just a second, Joy’s Dad!”
Joy and Charlie pull the flying elephants’ ears softly, then pull the left one only. The elephants slow in mid-air, then make a U-turn to the left. Justin, helming Bonny’s Revenge, stops the warship in mid-air.
“Dad, we’re busy!” Joy says.
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Charlie and Joy are still riding the flying elephants. Following from behind on Bonny’s Revenge, Justin is lost in thought, and Suzy’s and my attention turn to him completely. Master Mind, next to us, watches over the kids.
“Um…How do I do that exactly?” Justin says.
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Charlie and Joy are riding flying elephants today. Justin helms Bonny’s Revenge next to them, just in case. Master Mind, the dutiful chaperone, as always watches over Joy’s safety, also from Bonny’s Revenge. Suzy and I came to watch. It’s not every day you see your grandchild ride a flying elephant.
Suzy holds my hand tightly and enjoys the view. She loves it when dreams are beautiful.
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The screaming and shouting and pinballing continue as the Tooth Fairy adds magical lights to the sky, more rules to the game, and makes it more complicated and more fun every few minutes.
Joy and Charlie are having the time of their lives, flying, bumping, crashing in the sky.
And then, after a few hours, it’s over.
Joy drinks. The Tooth Fairy creates a bathroom for her to go to. And when she returns, the mood is much more somber.
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As Joy and Charlie are thrust by the power of cannons into the sky of the amphitheater, I can hear a series of BOOMs immediately follow them: BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
I look down and notice for the first time that there are dozens more cannons all around the arena.
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Two small fairies fly into the arena. I should say the fairies look like male body builders, only tiny and with wings. Justin, Suzy, and I, sitting in the first row, look at each other. Master Mind only looks forward.
One small fairy lands next to Joy, who is now engulfed in a protected padded globe, and the other fairy lands next to Charlie, also inside a padded globe. With a lot of show and hefting of muscles each fairy lifts a padded child above his head and rises into the air.
“PUT THE CHILDREN IN THE CANNONS!” The Tooth Fairy orders again. She is flying above the huge cannons, wand in hand.
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“Enough of this chit chat!” The Tooth Fairy says in her deafening voice. “Let us dress the children for BATTLE! Bring in THE PADDED SUITS!”
Joy and Charlie giggle.
Small fairies fly in from behind us bringing in clothes racks of… I really don’t know what those things are.
“DRESS THE CHILDREN!” The Tooth Fairy orders the smaller fairies. “Grownups and robot - find seats in THE ARENA!”
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The Tooth Fairy flies over to look at Master Mind. Half his size, her wings keep her afloat so that her eyes are at the same level as his. I look at them, and it hits me that this is my life. A life inside a dream. A life in which everything is crazy, where reality shifts, where impossible creatures exist. This is my life, even as my ‘real self’ is back in Toronto living my actual life. This is a life I can never leave. I will never be back to the waking world.
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Master Mind reaches the top first. Then Joy, then Justin.
They reach the top and disappear from view into the wormhole-like tear in the sky.
The big leaf holding Suzy, Charlie and I accelerates as we approach the top, and we are right behind them.
“Joy the Pirate!” I hear a female voice boom as everything changes around me and I find myself in a hall with a checkered floor, one that looks like it had been taken out of a chess board. “I have missed you!”
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We don’t wait more than a few seconds when suddenly something green begins to grow where the kids buried the Last Tooth Dust.
Then the green turns to leaves, then the leaves grow on a stem that grows up and up, widening and turning into a tree trunk. The trunk grows high, and the higher it goes, the thicker it grows. Branches and leaves extend from it every which way, hiding the trunk from view.
High above, the trunk appears to be almost a kilometer high, when the sky cracks open revealing another sky. It is as if a wormhole has appeared in the middle of the sky.
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“All right, kids, you know the drill,” Justin says. “Dig a small hole!”
Joy and Charlie run forward, go down on their knees, and start burrowing in the desert sand with their hands.
For the last almost three years now, they’ve come here every time Joy lost one of her teeth. Yes, they know what to do. I’ve come with them every time, but they had never let me into the world of the Tooth Fairy because I couldn’t climb the Tooth Tree at my age.
“But, Justin,” I say. “You asked us to keep the tooth. How can you keep her last tooth if we’re going to bury it?”
Justin gives me a wink and a smile then returns to look at the kids.
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Suzy smiles, “Aye aye, captain!”
“Walter Shelley, are you ready to see the Tooth Fairy?”
I try to come up with something smart to say, like ‘ready as a bird of prey descending on a dead wolf’, but I feel I’ll regret it, so I just say, “I’m ready.”
“Is the last tooth here?”
Suzy raises the small plastic jar that holds it. “You asked me to put it in a–”
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It’s the end of the day for Joy and the end of a long dream for Justin. Justin rarely gets to tuck Joy in and tell her a story, but today he did.
Suzy and I sit in our living room when he walks in.
“Is she asleep?” Suzy asks.
He nods and sits on the sofa next to Suzy. I look at him from my Archie Bunker Chair.
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“I am practicing for the Paralympics today,” Madelyn tells us. She just appeared on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge and came down to our small home on the island, where Joy is sitting with Charlie and Justin and eating breakfast. “Do you want to come? Justin? Zhoy? Charlie? Suzy? Walt?”
Madelyn is going to participate in the Beijing 2008 Paralympics with her team, and she’s been practicing every day.
“I would like to see that,” I raise my hand.
“I want to–” Joy says with her mouth full, then clams up, looking guilty of something.
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“I want an apple!” Joy says at breakfast in Suzy’s and my home.
“Sure thing, sweet–” Suzy begins, but Justin raises a hand.
“Nope. Only cereal.”
“I want an apple for breakfast,” Joy says. “It’s healthy!”
Justin shakes his head. “Nope.”
“Why can’t she have an apple?” Suzy asks.
“She knows why.”
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“You know what you need, Charlie? You need to learn how to fight!”
“Huh?”
We’re in Justin’s dream, playing on a planet Charlie created a few months ago called Playground World. Everything in it is taken out of playgrounds or amusement parks.
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“But what did he say to you?”
It’s been a day since we last saw Colin and Hugh, and Justin is trying to ask Charlie what made him run away yesterday.
Charlie keeps ignoring Justin’s questions as Joy and Charlie play with toys on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge.
“Charlie,” Justin pleads for the seventh time. “What happened? What did he say?”
Charlie looks up finally. “He said ‘poop’.”
“Huh? He said ‘poop’?”
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“Hugh. Nice to meet you,” Justin offers his hand. “I’m Justin.”
“Pleasure,” Hugh shakes his hand.
“This is my father, Walter. My mother, Susanne. And you just met my daughter, Joy. Her friend was Charlie. The big robot, that, uh, chased her in the flying ship,” he sneaks a look at Colin to see if it’s okay to mention a robot and a flying ship, “that’s Master Mind.”
“Pleasure,” Hugh shakes my hand. “Enchanted,” he kisses Suzy’s hand.
“Oh, laying it on a bit too thick, aren’t you?” Colin tells him.
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Colin stands there in the street as Hugh talks to Joy and Charlie about the documentary he’s shooting right now.
Justin stands very close to Colin. “Whatever happens, there’s no need for monsters,” he tells him. “No monsters. No monsters.”
“No monsters,” Colin whispers.
“Everything’s okay,” Justin says. “You can see that, right?”
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“This was all a terrible idea! A terrible idea!” Colin begins to scream as if he is facing one of his monsters.
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