Summerland

The Big Liars help the Shadowtails prepare to cross the river and provide them with a raft big enough for all of them and the car. After a day of sailing, the kids see apple trees on the other side. Suddenly, a storm rages over the trees, and apple blossoms attack the raft. Cinquefoil recognizes the weather as the work of storm buffalo and realizes that “Coyote’s done come ta the Land o’ Apples” (405). The raft is upended, and the Bottom-Cat—an enormous creature with fins a quarter-mile long—rises from the river, announcing that it will eat them. Ethan, Taffy, and Jennifer T. wedge Ethan’s bat into the Bottom-Cat’s mouth to hold it open while they grab its teeth and use Taffy’s jug to scrape its tongue, saying they’ll release the creature when it takes them across the river safely. The Bottom-Cat complies, and the group disembarks but realize that Taffy is gone.

Outlandishton, a dark citadel built on a crag overlooking the well, is home to giant demon creatures. When Coyote’s caravan arrives at the citadel, Coyote himself goes in to trick the demons into opening the gate. A moment later, he comes flying out, destroying one of his vehicles and skidding across the ice, “tossed out of Outlandishton like an empty beer can from a passing car” (416). The head of Angry Betty appears above the citadel’s walls. She orders Coyote to leave because she won’t fall for his tricks again. Coyote offers all his werewolf companions as a snack, and Angry Betty emerges to feast. Coyote then cleans her bloody beard. Angry Betty smells human, and Coyote offers her Ethan’s dad to eat. To stop her, Cutbelly uses his shadowtail ability to rip through her heart. In the confusion, Coyote plucks a flea from Angry Betty’s beard and gains the secret to opening the citadel’s gate.

The Shadowtails arrive at the well to find Coyote lying in wait. Coyote tricked Taffy, promising to return her children if she brought him the nothingness from the throat of the Bottom-Cat, which will kill the tree. Coyote keeps his promise for Ethan’s dad to see Ethan again, but since Ethan’s dad has been completely hollowed out, the promise means nothing. The only thing coyote needs is Ethan’s bat. With a piece of the tree, he’ll survive the unraveling of the world: “[A]s the case really ought to have been all along, the Changer will be the Maker” (436).

When Ethan refuses, Coyote imprisons him and Jennifer T. However, Cutbelly helps them escape. Jennifer T. leaves suddenly; she has a plan to defeat Coyote. Cutbelly goes after her, leaving Ethan to be drawn to La Llorona, who looks like his mother. She tells Ethan to let everything go and rest. Ethan starts to release the bat, but the knot scrapes against a blister on his hand, and with a jolt, he snatches the bat back, shoving away the ghost, which is now rotting.

Jennifer T. confronts Coyote, challenging him to a baseball game for the fate of the world. Coyote reminds her that he has an army 10,000 strong and doesn’t need to play her game; he only needs to starve Ethan until he gives up the bat for food. Jennifer T. despairs until she remembers her uncle’s book. She holds it up, and an army of 10,000 ghosts from its pages arrive to even the field. Angry, Coyote agrees to the baseball game but warns Jennifer T. not to count on winning.

Jennifer T. finds Ethan and tells him about the deal with Coyote, including that she wagered the bat. After gripping the wood tightly to keep from having it taken, Ethan’s blistered hand is swollen and barely fits in his catcher’s mitt. Coyote arrives with Taffy in a cage, telling the Shadowtails he brought her because “it would be a shame if there were no spectators at all for the last game of baseball ever played” (459). The kids try to tell Taffy that they aren’t mad, but she doesn’t respond. Finally, Ethan asks Taffy to watch his bat while he’s catching so that Coyote can’t get it. This gets Taffy’s attention, and she agrees to help.

The game is mostly a duel between the pitchers: Coyote and Jennifer T. By the top of the ninth inning, Coyote’s team leads by two runs. When Ethan gets up to bat, he gets two strikes before deciding to use the pain in his hand rather than fight it. Just before the pitch, Ethan hears his dad’s voice encouraging him, and this time, Ethan hits the ball so high it disappears into the sky. It’s a home run, and as Ethan rounds home plate, he hears the sound of a window breaking. Coyote forfeits the game and runs to pump the nothingness into the well, but the gods’ emergence stops him. Ethan’s home run hit broke open the window to the fourth world, freeing the gods, and they destroy the machine poisoning the well.

This chapter (unnumbered in the text) is the entirety of Part 4. For about an hour in the Middling, good fortune, love, and positivity flow from the well, curing diseases, stopping quarrels, and enabling many other beautiful events. On the baseball field, Ethan passes out. When he wakes, his dad is back to normal. Ethan gives him his wallet and asks him never to go away again. His dad promises he won’t, and though Ethan knows the promise can’t be kept, “he was glad to have the promise nevertheless” (476).

The gods took Coyote back to their domain, and a giant fence now stands at the gate to their world. The only being not cured is Taffy, whom they find half-dead on a sheet of ice near the Winterlands. Ethan and his group trek back through the Summerlands, dropping off people at their homes as they go. When Ethan, Jennifer T., and Thor get back to the Middling, only two days have passed since they first set out.

The kids go to baseball practice, where Ethan uses his bat and realizes that he’s used to the knot in the handle. Their team has an amazing comeback season, winning all their games. At the final game of the season on the final run, Ethan steps out to tag the runner coming home from third. As the book from Cutbelly tells him, he needs to hold tightly onto the ball, and he pretends he’s “holding on to the love of Jennifer T. Rideout, and to the great adventure they had just lived through together” (495).