by Eli Brown
A heart was necessary. A brain. Water to drink . . .
Her mind was straying. She’d chewed on the word so long that “necessary” was unraveling into nonsense, the sounds blurring like smoke.
“If you’ve finished your inventory, fall in line,” Hannibal ordered, strutting down the mountainside. “It’s a long way to New Manchester.”
It occurred to Clover, as she repacked her bags, that she didn’t need to find the oddity herself. After all, Aaron Agate was an expert, famous for his lectures and essays. He would know the necessary oddity on sight. He would tell Clover why Constantine had hidden it. He would explain why this had happened. The hummingbird of hope lit on the thinnest branch inside her as she followed the Rooster.
The smell of baking bread carried from the whitewashed buildings of Rose Rock as Clover and Hannibal looked down at the wide dirt road through the little town. The mounds of drying hay in the fields looked like the pills of felt Clover used to shave from Constantine’s woolen coat so he wouldn’t look so unkempt.
Hannibal flapped his good wing impatiently. “This road leads to the Regent’s Highway, which will take us straight to New Manchester.”
Clover turned and looked back into the shrouded mountains, her legs aching from the steep slopes. Her home lay on the other side now. She hoped Widow Henshaw had buried her father in his good suit.
“I had planned to rejoin my comrades here, but I see no sign of my men,” Hannibal said. “How much money do you have toward hiring a coach?”
“None,” Clover answered. “Just a dime.”
“We’ll have to sell those tools,” Hannibal declared.
“I’d see you in a soup pot before I sell these tools,” Clover said.
“Don’t forget you’re talking to a decorated colonel!”
“I’d see you in a soup pot, sir.”
Hannibal glared but didn’t argue. “In that case, we’ll have to commandeer a mount.”
“We’re not stealing a horse.” Clover started down the hill.
“Stealing wouldn’t cross my mind!” Hannibal said, marching beside her. “We’ll return the animal in good fetter, and with a generous fee, once we’ve made it to New Manchester. We don’t have time to amble up the highway like a couple of shiftless farmhands.”
“If you take a horse from these people, they’ll tar us,” Clover said. “We’ll have to figure something else out.”
They scrabbled down a gravel slope toward the road. An old goat grazed near the ruins of a toppled windmill. Once her father had pointed them out, Clover had begun seeing these ruins everywhere, the silent scars of the war. A poster had been recently pasted to the remaining brick foundation.
AUBURN FOR PRESIDENT!
It featured a portrait of the senator with his chin held heroically high. Underneath, in scarlet print, it read:
FOR A FEARLESS FUTURE, VOTE AUBURN!
“The senator is a man of great vision who sees both the danger and the potential of our times,” Hannibal mused. “The pride of Farrington. A gentleman who is not satisfied with the ashes of a lost war.”
Clover decided not to tell him that her father used to call Auburn a “war-hungry slug who has sold arms to both sides.” With her feet on the cobble road that led to the town square, she felt suddenly vulnerable back among people. She’d seen the horrors of scurvy and starvation, stabbings and typhus, but nothing had prepared her for those bandits on the bridge. They’d come from darker waters, a tide of trouble deep enough to swallow everything.
Passing a livery, Clover blinked at the smudged ink of another sign tacked to the wall:
$$ REWARD FOR RUNAWAY SLAVES! $$
The state of Farrington had outlawed slavery along with five other northern states, but federal law still made it illegal to help a fugitive slave. Clover looked away, feeling queasy. She needed to get to New Manchester quickly. She needed the safety her father had promised.
To her relief, no one looked twice at the weary girl coming up the road with her rooster. They were more interested in the commotion in the center square, where a traveling performer was striking a gong.
A small crowd had gathered around a paneled wagon whose flaking yellow paint made it look like a cracked egg. The performer, a girl about Clover’s age, struck the gong again and sang over the tone: “Come witness a miracle, wondrous to see!”
Her stout figure was festooned with sashes. Brass bells sewn to the hem of her rainbow quilted skirt tinkled as she strode across the stage.
“Marvels and miracles for the smallest of fees!”
Someone in the crowd shouted, “Get on with it!”
The performer reached up to free a latch on the wagon. The doors popped open, releasing a striped awning that unfurled over the plank stage. The shelves inside were lined with bottles of an unsettling purple hue. One nook was occupied by an ominous jar covered by an oilcloth. The girl smacked a tambourine and shouted, “What have you gathered to witness, I hear you asking!”
She shook out a banner and hung it proudly next to the bottles. Its faded letters read:
MYSTIC SECRETS AND RARE HERBS
A MIRACLE IN EVERY BOTTLE!
BLEAKERMAN’S CURE-ALL TONIC!
Clover had never seen a medicine show, but she was fairly sure this one was going badly. The singer started into another song, but one of the horses tied to the wagon had a case of diarrhea and interrupted the song with splashes that were hard to ignore.
Mutters of disappointment rippled through the crowd, and some turned to walk away. The girl stomped a heeled boot and shouted, “Yes! Go home to your lumbago, consumption, and constipation. Go home to your restless nights and toothaches and infernal boils.”
This made the people pause, and the girl pointed at a man in the crowd, demanding, “You there! Guess my age! How old am I?” She turned her round face sideways, as if posing for a portrait.
“I’ll guess you’re sixteen at most,” said the man.
The girl set her hands on her hips and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Nessa Applewhite Branagan, and I am forty-two years old.”
There were howls of laughter, and someone yelled, “Hogwash! If you’re forty-two, I’m a plate of pickled eggs!”
“Bleakerman’s has kept me young!” Nessa insisted over the laughter. “This tonic will thrash a rash and beat the butter out of a headache!” She grabbed one of the bottles from the wagon and shook it. “This is as sure a medicine as you’ll ever find!”
“It don’t look like any medicine I’ve ever seen!” A bald man pointed at the storm-colored liquid. “It looks like something I’d poison a rat with!”
“Sir, I would advise you not to waste even a single drop of Bleakerman’s on a rat,” Nessa replied, “unless you want the healthiest, fattest rat in town. A rat with sparkling eyes and the glossiest hair doing gymnastics in your kitchen, sir!”
Someone yelled, “If it works so well, why not give it to your horse?”
Nessa was losing the crowd. Frustrated, she stormed across the stage and leaned her freckled face close to Clover. Clover found herself looking into eyes as green as Bramley apples. She noted the girl’s sunburned neck and scabbed knuckles, signs of a rugged life.
“Do me a favor, sister,” Nessa whispered.
“I can’t,” Clover said.
“You can’t shake a tambourine?” Nessa cocked an eyebrow.
“Even a donkey can shake a tambourine if you tie it right,” Clover said.
“Well, there you go!” Nessa shoved the tambourine into Clover’s hands and began stomping out a rhythm. She sang:
It’ll knock the bunions off,
Sure to cure a shotgun’s cough — Bleakerman’s!
Removes rheumatism with ease,
Sworn enemy of ticks and fleas — Bleakerman’s!
The lyrics were nonsense, but Nessa’s voice was deep and glorious, as if a small cathedral hid behind her double chin. Clover stared. No one in Salamander Lake sang like this.
When
Nessa saw that Clover wasn’t playing, she gave her an exasperated look. A thought occurred to Clover as she began to shake the tambourine. “This may be our ride,” she whispered to Hannibal.
“A sham medicine show?” Hannibal snorted.
“A traveling medicine show,” Clover corrected him. “She could take us a good way toward New Manchester.”
Nessa was still singing, “It’ll put silk in your hair and steal away your every care — Bleakerman’s!”
An old women in the crowd shouted, “Does the tonic work or don’t it?”
“Ma’am, you are rushing me,” Nessa said.
“I aim to rush you! Who has time for dancing in the middle of the day?”
Nessa crossed her arms and scowled at the crowd. “You want to see the tonic work its wonders?”
“Yes!” the crowd shouted as one.
Without any further ceremony, Nessa yanked the cloth away from the large glass jar. Inside, an enormous snake rose from its coil, disturbed by the sudden light. It tested the glass with a gray tongue.
Everyone gasped.
“Well, there it is, if you’re in such a rush,” Nessa said. “This is the monster you think it is. See the oak-leaf pattern of its scales” — she tapped the glass, and the snake reared up, its tail vibrating furiously — “and a rattle like a sleigh bell. They say that when the angels hear that sound they open heaven’s gates because some poor soul is getting ready to put this world behind them. This is a Sweetwater rattlesnake, the deadliest serpent on earth! God rolled this beast together from the dregs of the pot he boiled the devil in.”
The crowd had backed away from the stage, but all watched closely as Nessa drew a lazy figure eight on the glass with her finger. The snake’s angular head followed.
“No one survives a kiss from the Sweetwater viper,” Nessa said. “In fact, no one has walked more than three steps after such a bite. But don’t you worry. It can’t hurt you through the glass.”
Hannibal shuddered at the sight of the serpent. “Clover, let’s be done with this!”
“Wait,” she whispered, clutching the tambourine to her chest.
People groaned as Nessa lifted the lid off the jar. The snake reared, its rattle amplified by the glass, shrill as a cicada summer.
“The only way to get hurt,” Nessa said, dangling her hand over the exposed snake, “is to do something foolish.”
Nessa shoved her hand deep into the jar, and someone in the crowd screamed.
The serpent struck immediately, and struck again. Nessa was bitten twice before she yanked her hand out and clapped the lid back on the jar. She fell to her knees immediately, holding her bitten hand lamely against her belly and looking very ill. She fumbled with a bottle of tonic.
“Heavens,” she moaned. “I am too weak . . . to get the cork out. Someone please . . .”
The woman who had been heckling her rushed forward and pulled the cork out of the bottle, but too late. Nessa had collapsed on the stage. She thrashed about horrifically for a moment and finally lay still. There were more screams as others rushed to help. They managed to get some of the tonic into her mouth. It splashed on her blouse, staining the collar a deep purple. The crowd pressed forward, riveted by the spectacle. Someone cried, “Send for the doctor!”
Others muttered, “Well, she asked for it.”
“The girl is dead!”
“She sang like an angel, but the poor fool had porridge for brains.”
Clover, clutching her father’s bag, was trying to push through to help, when suddenly one of Nessa’s legs shot up, startling everyone. Nessa sat up as if struck by lightning. Clover gasped along with the rest of the crowd.
Nessa rose and spun, her skirt a vivid pinwheel, and clicked her heels together, whooping and singing, “I am alive! Thanks to Bleakerman’s, I — Am — Alive!”
Clover couldn’t help but smile at Nessa’s theatrics. The girl could certainly put on a show.
Clover stepped clear as the crowd pressed forward to slap their coins into Nessa’s hands. One man was so eager for the tonic that he grabbed a bottle right from the shelf before paying. Nessa snatched it away and threatened to crack it over his head. “There’s enough for everyone, mister!” she said.
Some took swigs of the tonic right in the square, their faces wrenched into masks of disgust. Nessa winked at them. “A powerful taste for a powerful medicine!”
Clover and Hannibal watched the hubbub from the shade of a mulberry tree. When the crowd began to disperse, Nessa rolled the awning and gathered the stage boards with practiced efficiency. She disappeared behind the wagon and emerged having traded her color and bells for a threadbare hemp traveling dress.
“We can still commandeer a horse,” Hannibal whispered as Clover stood to return the tambourine.
“No free samples,” Nessa said, adjusting her pantaloons with an unladylike grimace.
“Oh, I don’t want any of that . . .” Clover couldn’t bring herself to call the mysterious fluid a tonic.
“The snake’s not for sale,” Nessa said.
“I don’t want the snake. I need a ride north. I don’t have any money, but I am helpful and will not be a nuisance.”
“Can you speak Italian?”
“Well, no,” Clover said, blinking in surprise. “Only a little medical Latin.”
Nessa wrinkled her nose as she climbed up onto the driver’s seat. “That’s not the same thing.”
Clover turned toward Hannibal with an apologetic look.
“Well? Ain’t you coming?” Nessa shouted. Then in a hoarse whisper she said, “Best to leave before they ask for refunds.”
There is some trick to it,” Hannibal huffed as Clover picked him up. “No one survives a Sweetwater bite.”
“Of course there is a trick to it,” Clover whispered, lifting him up onto the roof of the show wagon. “But we could be waiting for days before we find another ride.”
And just like that, the three of them were rattling out of Rose Rock together on the wagon. Nessa put her dust-caked feet up on the dashboard, wriggling her plump toes with satisfaction. “Help yourself,” she said. “There’s wind enough for everyone.”
“No, thank you.”
“My name is Nessa Applewhite Branagan,” the girl announced. “My favorite food is rhubarb jam on salt pork. But I will take leek soup, and winceberry pie when I can get it. A witch stole my tooth when I was eight years old. Look here, see?” She pulled her cheek back to show Clover the wet gap in her molars. “And I am the only authentic vendor of Bleakerman’s Cure-All Tonic in this whole Unified States. Well?”
“Well what?”
“Aren’t you going to introduce yourself?”
“I’m Clover Elkin. And this is Colonel Hannibal Furlong.”
“Salutations.” Hannibal saluted with his good wing.
Nessa yelped and stared bug-eyed at the Rooster. She fumbled the reins so much that Clover had to take over the driving for a while.
Hannibal peered into the seams of the wagon, saying, “Look here. We’re grateful for the ride, but are you certain that snake can’t escape? They can insinuate themselves through all manner of crevices.”
Nessa only shook her head, stunned to be in the presence of the historic talking Rooster.
“What exactly is in that tonic of yours?” Hannibal asked.
Nessa swallowed hard and said, “Well, sir, Bleakerman’s consists of a secret recipe of Indian herbs and miracle roots . . .”
“Aha! You’re a charlatan.” Hannibal laughed. “A mountebank if ever I saw one. A chiseler and a cheat.”
“Just hold on, now!” Nessa blinked vigorously, as if through a cloud of gnats. “They pay for the tonic, they get the tonic. That’s an honest business.”
“The chief ingredient is probably horse urine.” Hannibal winked at Clover.
Nessa flinched and glanced around, though they were far from town. “It is not!”
Clover couldn’t help pushing. “What is it, then?”
“A secret is a secret,” Nessa said, looking miserable. She took the reins from Clover. “Uncle used to say, ‘Nothing works better than a secret ingredient.’”
“A steaming heap of taradiddle!” Hannibal chuckled as he sat and tucked his head under his wing. Soon he was snoring loudly from his perch on the top of the wagon.
Clover realized that the old bird must be exhausted. After all, he had fought in a war before Clover was born.
Nessa was clearly upset by his accusation. With one hand holding the reins, she tugged a comb through her thick hair until it shone like amber. Her earlobes, furred with nearly invisible down, reminded Clover of piglets.
“You sing beautifully,” Clover offered.
“That’s a fact.” Nessa nodded, happy to be in agreement. “What I really want” — Nessa leaned toward Clover in confidence — “is to sing in the opera. But you have to speak Italian to stand on that spangled stage. And fate put plain old English on my tongue, so . . .” She shrugged. “You take what you get. Me and Uncle used to sell peanuts on the steps of the opera house in New Manchester. Oh, the rhapsody that rolled through those marbled columns! Uncle translated their woeful stories so I could follow, and they sang like their hearts were near to popping!”
Clover watched Nessa reveling in the memory. She made a mockery of medicine, she aired her feet in public, but her feelings rose right to the surface of her face, like trout feeding. It was hard not to like the girl.
“Look there!” Nessa half stood and pointed to a fallen tree that seemed, at first glance, to be enameled with molten rubies: a massive swarm of ladybugs. “Good thing we’re here or that would go unseen, which would be a crime for certain.” Nessa nodded with the satisfaction of a job well done. With no sound other than Hannibal muttering occasionally in his sleep, the girls craned their necks, watching until the marvelous swarm disappeared behind them.
They rode for a while in companionable silence. Perhaps it was the beauty of those jewel-toned bugs, the grass-scented breeze, or simply the knowledge that she was on the way to New Manchester, but for a moment Clover forgot her worries. Up ahead they saw a covered bridge over the Nominam River. It was guarded by two soldiers who put down their playing cards as the wagon approached.