f clouds. If you opened
the window you could feel fresh air against your forehead, you could
breathe it in and breathe out the headache.

But you didn't dare look down. Oh, no, never look _down_, because then
you'd see the buildings all around you. The buildings below, black and
sooty, their jagged outlines like the stumps of rotten teeth. And they
stretched off in all directions, as far as the eye could attain; row
after row of rotten teeth grinning up from the smog-choked throat of
the streets. From the maw of the city far below came this faint but
endless howling, this screaming of traffic and toil. And you couldn't
help it, you breathed _that_ in too, along with the fresh air, and it
poisoned you and it did more than make your head ache. It made your
heart ache and it made your soul sick, and it made you close your eyes
and your lungs and your brain against it.

Harry reeled, but he knew this was the only way. _Close your brain
against it._ And then, when you opened your eyes again, maybe you
could see the way things used to be--

It was snowing out and it was a _wet_ snow, the very best kind for
snowballs and making a snowman, and the whole gang would come out
after school.

But there was no school, this was Saturday, and the leaves were russet
and gold and red so that it looked as if all the trees in the world
were on fire. And you could scuff when you walked and pile up fallen
leaves from the grass and roll in them.

And it was swell to roll down the front lawn in summer, just roll
right down to the edge of the sidewalk like it was a big hill and let
Daddy catch you at the bottom, laughing.

Mamma laughed too, and she said, _Look, it's springtime, the lilacs
are out, do you want to touch the pretty lilacs, Harry?_

And Harry didn't quite understand what she was saying, but he reached
out and they were purple and smelled of rain and soft sweetness and
they were just beyond the window, if he reached a little further he
could touch them--

And then the snow and the leaves and the grass and the lilacs
disappeared, and Harry could see the rotten teeth again, leering and
looming and snapping at him. They were going to bite, they were going
to chew, they were going to devour, and he couldn't stop them,
couldn't stop himself. He was falling into the howling jaws of the
city.

His last conscious effort was a desperate attempt to gulp fresh air
into his lungs before he pinwheeled down. Fresh air was good for
h