by Dora Badger
Following are the opening scenes of the first full novella set in Charley Cat’s Carnival.
We hope you enjoy this sample.
Urn (1913)
Mommy darted forward and down, and bit Wylie in the forehead. She yanked her head back and spit a mouthful of his face onto the ground.
That yellow girl who’d been following them all day began to shriek. She struggled so much, the carnival boss could barely hold onto her. The band stopped with a discordant jangle; even the giant lady singer got quiet. Mommy and the yellow girl were the only people making noise in the entire Big Tent. Still screaming, Mommy stamped the clump into the packed dirt.
It didn’t hurt, exactly – almost nothing could cause him physical pain – but the shock of being so abruptly separated from a piece of his body and the pressure of the crazy woman’s foot on the mouthful she’d tossed in the dirt combined to snap Tlön back to himself for the first time in hours. When Mrs. Davis bent down to holler at him again he reached up and smacked her hard enough to crack his wrist. She stepped back, and he snatched the dented yellow wax of his forehead from beneath her feet. He leapt away from her grasping hands and darted past Lorelei, whose sudden stunned silence was almost as surprising as the bite. Before the Siren could grab at him, Tlön slid through the place in the tent where they kept it loose to give the band a little air.
Cursing the short reach of the stupid little-boy legs he’d been forced to wear, Tlön ran as if hell itself were behind him – which, as soon as Charley Cat extricated himself from Uqbar’s maddened flailing, it would be.
The low, musty tent the Carnival set aside for Tlön and his sister Uqbar was across the Midway, on the other side of the animal cages. Tlön darted between the candy floss seller and Ironboy Grim’s strength show.
“Shit,” Grim groaned. He dropped the calf he’d been holding aloft in one hand. It scrambled away, complaining at the top of its young voice. Grim jumped off the stage and raced after Tlön.
“What happened?” Grim huffed. Tlön didn’t answer. He just kept running, weaving through the crowd with the ease of long practice. He laughed when his bees rose up from their hives behind the Wild West Extravaganza Stage. Their black and buzzing mass darkened the sky over Charley Cat’s Carnival. Carnies dove into their stands. The crowd was slower to react, but within moments they’d broken into screaming clusters. The bees ignored them all and sped toward the Big Tent.
“Return to your hives!” Charley Cat roared behind Tlön. The bees roared right back at him, but turned to follow Tlön instead. He laughed and pumped the awful, chubby little legs as fast as he could. He skidded into his and Uqbar’s sculpting tent. He turned to the opening and almost collided with Grim, who hurried in behind him. Tlön lunged past Grim and slid his finger along the outer edge of the tent flap. The edges molded themselves together until only a seamless expanse of canvas remained. If he or his sister sealed the tent, not even Charley Cat could enter without permission.
Nut-Meg’s pups were drowsing, all curled up together in the fire pit. They gave off a thick, stifling heat. Tlön handed Grim the lump of wax from his forehead and knelt next to the fire pit.
“This is injured,” Grim said. “You should use fresh wax.”
The tent shuddered. They both jumped. Tlön laughed nervously. Grim hunched his shoulders. Charley Cat must be throwing his entire will at the thing to shake it like that. Tlön, already beginning to soften, looked up at Grim.
“We can use this,” Grim said.
Tlön nodded, then held himself still and waited.
Grim balanced the wax upon his fingertips and stuck his hand deep amongst the pups. They turned over in their sleep, and the wax shivered. Thin yellow globules began to crawl into Grim’s palm. When the living wax had separated itself from the dying, Grim pulled his charred hand back from the fire pit. He pressed the softened wax into the new cavity on Tlön’s head. Tlön sighed with relief as the gap filled. Grim wiped the dirt from his fingertips onto his strongboy’s vest. He reached over and smoothed the surface of Tlön’s wrist, mending the deep crack that slap had made. Tlön looked at the top of Grim’s head as he bent to his work, and twisted his fingers in the teen’s thick black hair. Grim smiled up at Tlön, but leapt back when he caught his expression.
“I can’t,” he said. “He’d kill me.”
“You shouldn’t be with him anyway, you know. He’s too old for you. By at least five million years.”
Grim skimmed slick slivers of dead wax from beneath his nails, flicked them amongst the snoring pups. The tent shook again.
“I’ve defied him enough for one day,” he replied.
“He wouldn’t have to know you gave it to me,” Tlön said. “I can say I ripped it from your head and transformed before you could stop me.”
Grim pulled a face. “He knows I could stop you.”
The light within the tent dimmed and they both looked up. The top of the tent, where the poles formed a narrow gap to allow smoke to escape, was thick with Tlön and Uqbar’s bees. They crowded the space, peeping inside the tent to make sure he was okay.
“All I need is to go out there with a different body,” Tlön said. “If I don’t look like her boy anymore, that witchy orbit turtle will quieten and go away.”
“Her kind never calms down.”
“She bit me,” Tlön whined. He rubbed at the freshly patched spot on his forehead. Already he felt Wylie slipping forward.
“I’m sorry.” Grim brushed off Tlön’s exasperated sigh. “I am,” he said. He walked away from the fire, stopped before the canvas. Although the hexes embroidered around the hem of the canvas helped block most outside noise, Uqbar’s voice, made shrill with anger, came through just as loud as if she were inside with them. She was haranguing Charley Cat. If anyone else out there was speaking, Tlön couldn’t hear them.
If he’d met Mrs. Letitia Davis before Grim started the sculpt this morning, Tlön would’ve set the bees upon her right then.
Grim had passed the framed photograph across the fire pit. The bright, hot firepups within tussled together, jumping and growling and playing tug-o’-war with large pieces of coal. Tlön pressed his fingertips against the edges of the fine silver frame and turned the picture toward their light. His gentle movements didn’t prevent a dollop of himself from dripping down his arm and sliding into the pit. The pups yipped and sizzled, and a sharp, sweet odor pierced the sculpting tent.
Tlön got a close look at the photograph and recoiled from the unsmiling child pictured there.
“We don’t do the little ones,” Tlön protested, but of course it was too late. That delicious, terrifying warmth already filled his entire body. Grim didn’t answer, just waited for Tlön to let him know when to begin. The orange firelight flickering across the teen’s naked chest made Tlön think of tigers. The illusion was compounded when Grim turned, revealing a cluster of dark slashes between his shoulders: deep wounds, barely scabbed over. The gashes, almost certainly courtesy of Charley Cat, looked like they’d been administered by a wild animal.
Grim opened the sleek porcelain box on the bench beside him and removed a small lock of fine hair. He passed over the finer tools and selected the bone finishing knife. When she saw it, Uqbar cried out from her perch on the other side of the room.
“Let me see,” she said. Tlön angled his lean head and narrow shoulders to block her view.
“Come on over, if you’re so curious,” he answered. She scooted her chair back, away from the fire and closer to the cool breeze seeping in at the tent’s flap. Tlön spun around, afraid she’d lit out, but relaxed when he saw her sitting calmly near the closed flap. Fall had come early to Kentucky this year, and a blast of the chilled morning air could cause him serious injury just now.
Despite the damage it would do to him, Tlön wouldn’t have blamed Uqbar if she’d told the tent to open. The stifling heat within kept building, and he knew as well as she did the fear and the pain of the formlessness that came when
one of them melted without a template available. If he were the one watching he’d be halfway tucked into the double flap of the door by now, ready to escape into the brisk fall morning the instant her change was complete.
Tlön’s chest began to slip and he turned back to the photograph. A small boy, maybe six or seven years old and dressed in a sailor suit, posed in front of a painted seashore backdrop. At five and a half feet tall, Tlön would have to come down in size a great deal for a child this small. Grim came around the fire and set the knife, the hair, and the box in front of Tlön. He knelt, and waited. A few moments later, Tlön’s entire body began to sag and, still staring at the photograph, he nodded once. The hair of Tlön’s previous template was emerging from his chest, near the spot where anyone else’s heart would be. Tlön reeled when Grim tugged it from his body. Formlessness threatened, made Tlön’s body shudder and shift. Grim threw the old hair to the flaming pups and pressed the new lock of hair against Tlön’s chest. Tlön shivered with delight as he absorbed the fresh template. While Tlön’s face loosened and began to flow into its new features, the Carnival’s strongboy reached forward and began, with great care and delicacy, to carve Tlön’s legs off at the knees. The last thing Tlön had heard before wax swamped his ears was his sister’s soft groan of distress.
When it was finished, Grim stepped outside the tent. The yawning firepups cooled as they tired. Tlön backed away from them, moving slowly as he acclimated to this new form. Tlön’s feet smudged against the warm dirt floor, but the slightly cooler air at the edges of the tent hardened his body enough for him to begin refining his features. He regenerated the toes that had fallen away. “Now?” Uqbar asked.
“Yes,” Tlön answered. A brief, sharp chill pierced the tent, then receded as steam continued to pour from the fire pit. Tlön prickled but didn’t crack. He smoothed a spot on his left arm that had crusted over too quickly from the sudden cold. He tossed the photograph on the ground, fine frame and all.
Grim returned with a knapsack over one shoulder and a steel bucket filled with water. He set the knapsack down for Tlön. While Tlön rifled through it and began dressing in the dead boy’s clothes, Grim poured the water over the firepups. Water wouldn’t put them out, but it would cool them further. Grim poured slowly, so the steam that filled the tent would be warm instead of hot. The pups made soft noises as they settled into sleep.
The clothes were tiresome: a frilled shirt and tailored jacket, short pants, socks that kept sliding down the smooth wax of his legs, and rough shoes that had been buffed to a dull sheen. Except for the brown shoes and a fine green newscap Tlön found at the bottom of the knapsack, the outfit was a swamp of mismatched whites and creams.
“You look like curdled milk on tapioca,” Grim said.
“Guess Charley Cat didn’t tell the parents I’m yellow,” Tlön replied. He stretched out his arms, flexed his fingers. “I’m too damn small. How long did they pay for?”
“She; it’s just the mother.”
“Oh...no. No father?”
“Dunno about him. She has you for the whole day.”
“I hate this.” Tlön glared up at Grim. “Where is he right now?”
“Complain later. She’s supposed to be here right after setup.”
With the sculpted hair, his head was the wrong shape for the cap. It wouldn’t stay on. Tlön had stuffed it back into the knapsack and slung the pack over his shoulder, run his hands over his new chubby face, groaned, and stomped out of the tent.
Now Grim loomed over Tlön, vexation twisting his features into something far older than his fourteen years.
“Are you going to let me out?” Grim asked. Before Tlön could answer, the side of the tent fell open and Uqbar stormed inside. Charley Cat followed close behind her. The bees poured in through the top of the tent and crowded the opening. Mrs. Letitia Davis tried to enter the tent but was stopped by a cloud of angry, buzzing insects.
“Calm your pets,” Charley Cat snapped.
Uqbar rushed to Tlön. Her struggle with Charley Cat had left her covered in cracks and dents. Tlön tried to pull her toward the fire pit, but she bent down to examine his forehead.
“It’s smudged,” she said. She rubbed at it. “Half this patch is really hurt.”
“I separated it best I could,” Grim said.
“It isn’t your fault,” Uqbar replied. She turned to Charley Cat, tucked Tlön behind her. She pointed out the tent at Mrs. Davis, who still batted ineffectually at the angry bees and cried out for Wylie. “This is why we don’t do children.”
“You will do as you are told or I’ll throw you to the pups, and hurl your pets in after,” Charley Cat snarled. “Now call them off.”
“They know the rules,” Uqbar said. “They’ll not sting her if she stays outside the tent.”
Charley Cat whistled. Nut-Meg’s puppies bounded from the fire pit and scampered across the tent. They tumbled and wrestled with one another at Charley Cat’s feet, six tiny balls of blazing fluff.
Tlön and Uqbar moved in front of the open tent flap. They edged as close to the cool evening breeze as they could without leaving the protection of the tent. Their bees danced in anxious orbits around them, sensing danger but not quite daring to attack the flaming pups.
“Wylie,” Mrs. Davis wheedled, “enough playing around. Come on out, now.”
“You can’t send him back to her,” Uqbar told Charley Cat.
“He will finish out the party.”
“It’s your birthday party, Wylie,” Mrs. Davis said. “Don’t you want to open your presents?”
Tlön turned.
“She’s a complete orbit turtle,” Uqbar said. “Refund her for whatever time remains and end this.”
Charley Cat clicked his tongue and the firepups grew silent.
“I’ve taken her coin. I have promised her one day with her beloved son. I will not return her funds, nor break my oath.”
“Mommy’s sorry she scared you,” Mommy cooed. “Come back, and the band will play a special birthday song just for you. I won’t try to make you eat any more. You used to love cake, but…I can eat it for both of us. Wylie’s a good boy.”
Wylie ran through the curtain of bees and jumped into Mommy’s arms. She fussed over him and turned away from the tent. Over Mommy’s shoulder, Wylie saw the yellow girl struggling with the carnival boss again. She hollered in a language he didn’t understand. A cluster of burning puppies bounded from the tent and followed him and Mommy past the animal cages. They fell all over one another as they ran. Wylie laughed at their antics until the carnival boss called to them and they turned back.
Bees filled the air over the tent. The carnival boss had the yellow girl around the waist. She looked angry, but she wasn’t fighting any more. A muscled teenager stood beside them, holding the tent flap open for the puppies. The small group stared after Mommy and Wylie. As Mommy rounded the corner to the Midway, Wylie smiled as big as he could and waved at them. The carnival boss grinned huge; his sharp black teeth gleamed in the bees’ flickering shadows. The teenager looked away. The yellow girl raised one hand, but she didn’t smile.
-end of sample-
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