Summary
Joe returns to the house and finds that his pajamas, which had previously vanished, are now lying on his bed folded up along with a rolled-up comic book. He discovers that the comic book is a Knockout that he hasn’t read yet. When he opens it to read, he finds that all the squares are blank.
Joe approaches a mirror and looks at himself in it before the mirror transforms into a piece of black hardwood and glass with no frame. Joe runs outside and tears a branch off of the pear tree which he then uses to try and break the glass. He then tries to break it with a stone and pebbles, as well as the "donkey stone" that Treacle Walker gave him. He suddenly finds that the donkey stone goes through the mirror and he gets swept into the mirror, feeling a cold passing through his whole body.
Joe stumbles out of the mirror and finds himself in a box of darkness. He sees the chimney and the cupboard and bed, but all are reversed. He approaches the window and sees the valley, although it, too, is reflected as if a mirror-image and reversed. He continues to go through the rooms of the house and sees all of them reversed the wrong way around. He searches the house but it is empty.
Joes lifts the stone and presses it into the mirror; the stone passes through and Joe follows it, passing once more through the mirror. The world reverses and rights itself, no longer a mirror image. He returns to the mirror and goes into it, again feeling the cold and passing through it. He begins to go back and forth through the mirror and runs through it nine times, emerging into the room that is the right way around. Suddenly, he sees a bubble with letters pop up, as if from the comic. Stonehenge Kit appears and tells Joe to follow him. They run through a black tunnel and emerge into the reverse mirror-image room again.
Joe runs into the Brit Basher, who attempts to bash Kit and Joe. Joe takes the Knockout comic and presses it to the mirror. The paper twitches and writhes before Joe drops it. When he picks it back up, he finds the room depicted within it. Joe reads the comic book and finds that Kit, the Brit Basher, and Whizzy are depicted in his house running through the rooms.
Joe leaves the house and goes out to grab a bucket of water. He rubs the water onto the donkey stone, then covers the mirror with grit that he also fetches from outside.
The next chapter begins abruptly as Joe comes across Treacle Walker under the pear tree with his pony and cart. Treacle Walker asks Joe if he can come into his house and Joe allows him to. Joe tells him that everything is over; Whizzy and the rest of the Knockout characters are back in the comic book. Joe asks Treacle Walker what more he could want from him and Treacle Walker tells him that he wants nothing. Joe reminds Treacle Walker that he once told Joe he was a healer and asks if Treacle Walker could heal him. Joe asks him to make his eyes “proper” again so that he can tell what’s real and not real, but Treacle Walker responds by asking Joe what is “real,” which frustrates Joe.
Treacle Walker tells Joe that he chose the “glamourie,” which Joe disagrees with but Treacle Walker continues to tell him that he chose to see this way. Treacle Walker then tells Joe that he can give him back his “blindness,” if he so chooses.
Treacle Walker tells Joe to bring his knife, stone, and dobber to the bog. He tells Joe to cut five green branches the length of his arm and additionally instructs him to cover his eye so he can see the “glamourie,” and not the “real” world. Joe gives the branches to Treacle Walker, who takes them and calls for Thin Amren by the bog’s edge. A voice calls out from the trees and tells the pair that Thin Amren sleeps, but then reveals that Amren is not sleeping. The voice, presumably Amren, demands that Treacle Walker give him “Whirligig,” which potentially means that he demands Treacle Walker to hand over Joe. Treacle Walker tells Joe that if Amren doesn’t have Whirligig, then the cuckoo shall rule over nothingness—a phrase that Joe doesn’t understand.
The sky turns dark and a gap opens in it, revealing a huge, terrifying cuckoo bird. The blackness surges from the sky and encompasses everything. Joe hears thunder and the sound of the cuckoo over and over. Joe takes out the dobber and shoots it into the bird, which erupts into flames. Treacle Walker tells him to throw the stone at the sky. Joe rubs the stone with water and throws it, but the chaos continues. Treacle Walker instructs Joe to go towards Thin Amren.
Thin Amren lies in the bog. He tells Joe that he dreamed Whirligig would come and Joe said that of course he has come. Joe tells Amren he has to sleep, but Amren says he’s tired of dreaming, and that he wants Joe—Whirligig—to stay with him. Joe tells him he can’t stay and that he needs Amren to dream so that he can “be” and exist. Amren asks for a drink of water and Joe uses his jar to help Amren drink water from the bog. Joe cradles Amren in his arms and carries him into the bog; Amren sinks into the water and settles on its floor.
Joe weeps and then takes a stick. He stabs it into Thin Amren’s neck, then pins Amren’s arms down at the bottom as well, and does the same with his other arms and legs, pinning Amren to the bottom of the bog. Joe wades out of the bog and falls into Treacle Walker’s arms, who helps him up and the two return to the house.
Treacle Walker takes out a cuckoo’s egg. The two sit in front of the fireplace, which has a fire burning in it, and Joe tells Treacle Walker that he saw himself fetching the cuckoo. The two speak in apparent nonsense, with Treacle Walker telling Joe an absurd phrase and Joe responding with a riddle.
Joe asks Treacle Walker if he—Joe—is dead. Treacle Walker tells him that he is not dead, but rather, that he has changed his life and gone to another place. Joe continues to ask Treacle Walker questions, this time wondering what Treacle Walker wants. Treacle Walker tells Joe that all he wants is to “hear no more the beat of Time,” and to be “free of years” in oblivion. Joe gathers the magical objects and takes off his eye patch, throwing it into the fire. He then runs out and jumps onto Treacle Walker’s cart. Unlike before, he finds himself able to command the pony, and they leave the house, going through the Big Meadow and over the brook. The novel ends with Joe yelling “Ragbone,” as Treacle Walker did at the novel’s very beginning.
Analysis
The novel’s conclusion is as ambiguous as much of its prior action and plot; rather than allowing the reader the satisfaction of a concrete ending, it leaves much up to interpretation. As Joe becomes Treacle Walker by adopting his role on the cart and calling out his similar refrain, the question of where Treacle Walker has gone remains unanswered. Whether Treacle Walker achieved what he most desired—to live outside of time—is open to interpretation. It is possible that in his disappearance, Treacle Walker has left the reality in which time governs. However, this interpretation is never confirmed, and thus, cannot be taken as the "real" ending.
Joe’s potential transformation into Treacle Walker also hints at the fact that he may have let go of his resistance to the “glamourie” and second sight that he develops. Where previously Joe resisted Treacle Walker’s absurd and nonsensical language, in the final chapter, they are able to converse and relate in this same register. Joe even tells Treacle Walker a riddle before commanding the pony to start moving through a series of nonsense words, yelling out words that appear to simply come from somewhere within him, unconsciously: “Kosko gry! Kosko gry! Muk man kistur tute knaw!” Joe embraces the absurd and nonsensical, letting go of the tight grip he had on trying to remain within reality as he knew it.
The scene with Thin Amren, the cuckoo, Joe, and Treacle Walker marks the novel’s cathartic climax. Where the novel often contained ambiguous descriptions, this scene is fleshed out in extremely vivid language that pushes the novel into a much darker and violent tone than it previously used. Joe’s battle against the cuckoo and the subsequent struggle between him and Thin Amren, in particular, is the novel’s first depiction of tangible violence.
The novel’s ending, despite its ambiguities, is also remarkably circular in nature, bringing together many narrative threads and marking their conclusion. For example, when Joe carries Thin Amren into the bog and pins him down so that he continues sleeping, it mirrors the very first scene in which Joe encounters Thin Amren, since that is when he first wakes him up. Similarly, Joe utilizes the very same phrase that Treacle Walker spoke when approaching Joe’s house for the first time: “Ragbone.”
The circular nature of the narrative also reflects the running motif that Treacle Walker repeats: "what's in is out," and "what's out is in." Treacle Walker's words are repetitive and circle around a reflective logic—as does the novel's very plot. This circular nature further strengthens the novel's similarity to allegories and fables, which commonly end in the same setting where they began after the hero's return or after his journey is completed. Joe returns to where the story began and assumes Treacle Walker's position, completing the narrative "circle" by stepping into Treacle Walker's role.
