by Ben Galley
‘Thank him indeed, though I would like a word about him sending that twister in the first place,’ Merion croaked, putting his hands on his knees so he could finally rein in his breath. ‘Almighty’s backside, what an evil invention of nature that is. Just when I thought I was getting used to this damnable desert!’
His aunt had finally shaken herself into working order. ‘Nature’s the cruellest mother of them all, Merion. Never let her catch you out. She has a habit of it.’
Merion flashed a murderous look at the sky, which was now fading to a lighter shade of grey. ‘Well, I shall just have to add her to my growing list of enemies.’
‘Any injuries?’ Lurker grunted, patting himself down. A broken roof-tile was wedged into the toe of his boot, and he pulled it free with a grimace.
‘Rhin?’ Lilain inclined her head. The faerie was standing with one hand on the wall of the hole, the other clamped to his side. ‘You alright?’
Rhin flashed her an awkward, pained smile and said nothing. She knelt by his side and slowly prised his hand away. A small metal shard protruded from his ribs, smeared in bluish blood. The faerie winced as she touched it.
‘Is it deep?’ she asked, and Rhin nodded.
Merion knelt down too, once again his misgivings forgotten. Urgency has a habit of doing that. ‘Is it serious?’
‘Well, I can breathe, and I’ve had worse, so I don’t think so,’ Rhin whispered. ‘Just another scar for the canvas.’
‘I’ll carry you,’ Lurker offered, ‘you can sit in my hat.’ The prospector reached up to grab his hat and found nothing but his bald, scarred head. ‘Ah, for fu—’
‘Have mine.’ Merion reclaimed his from the mud and held it out for Rhin to slump into.
Faeries are proud beasts, and it was plain to see on his face that the charity irked him. But he accepted it all the same. Perhaps it was because Merion offered, and that the mask of cold expression he had been wearing for the past three weeks had now faded, replaced by one of concern.
Lilain used some water from her flask to wash the wound. Rhin winced, but he did not make a sound. Once her hands were clean, she put pressure on the wound with two fingers. ‘This is going to hurt, so whatever spells you Fae have in you, I’d suggest usin’ them right about now.’
‘Mmm,’ was all Rhin said, his wings twitching in pain. ‘Get it done.’
Lilain pinched the shard with her other fingers and slowly drew it out, the metal glistening with dark blood. It was barely larger than a pine needle, but to a faerie, it might as well have been a spear. She flicked it into the mud and kept her fingers on the wound to stop it bleeding.
‘I can do the rest,’ Rhin whispered. Lilain nodded and backed away.
‘A soldier through and through,’ Lurker muttered, looking for a way out of the hole.
Rhin coughed, and immediately winced. ‘Among my many talents.’
Once Lurker had hoisted himself, Lilain, an aching Merion, and a hatful of faerie out of the hole, they stared around at the damaged caused by the twister.
The tumbledown town had been destroyed, utterly and completely. The twister had reduced it to a field of broken things: roof-slats, pipes, doors, planks, stones, and shattered glass, spread like inferior diamonds across the dirt. What hadn’t been swallowed by the twister lay strewn underfoot, ready to be swallowed by the dust and the prairie. Whatever souls had forged this town were long gone, and now their abandoned town had followed them. The wilds can never be conquered for long.
Merion paced through the destruction, marvelling at how completely the twister had shattered the buildings. How powerful that thing must have been, he thought. Like the fist of an angry god, wreaking havoc.
He picked up a shattered cupboard door and stared at the gaping hole a rock had punched in it. He shook his head as he stared at the ragged edges of the wood. A flash of colour caught his eye beyond the hole, and he found himself looking down at a crumpled poster, a flash of colour amidst the mess. Merion bent down to rescue it and spread it out with his hands, wincing as the skin on his back stretched. Then a smile grew on his face.
‘Cirque Kadabra,’ he announced, and the others turned around. They too had been wandering through the debris. ‘They’ve been through here.’ Merion took his matching poster from his pocket and held it up, noticing how bright the colours were on the poster he had just found. It looked almost freshly printed, despite the dust and splinters. ‘And recently too.’
Lurker nodded, and began to cast around for any tracks that might have survived the twister’s path. It took him about ten minutes, and he had to walk in an extraordinarily large circle, but he found them nonetheless. Merion could tell. When he trundled back, he might have just about hidden his smile.
‘Smellin’ things I ain’t tasted in years: greasepaint, animals, tent-cloth, and sweat,’ he told them. ‘That way.’ He levelled a finger at the horizon, still smudged with cloud. ‘That’s the way they went.’
‘And which way is that?’ Inside, Merion might have been screaming with the thought of success. Heading east …
‘East, and a little south, if I ain’t mistaken. And I seldom am,’ replied Lurker, eyeing the glow in the clouds to the west.
Merion tried to suppress his smile and failed. ‘Then that’s the direction we’ll head,’ he said affirmatively.
Lilain rested a hand on his shoulder, and he winced. She leant close, sucking her teeth. ‘Is that so? Tell me, what’s this sudden obsession with a circus?’ The tear-drop mole under her eye fidgeted as she spoke.
Merion brandished the poster and pointed out the words. ‘Heading east, it says.’
Lilain was not convinced. ‘And?’
Merion tutted. ‘Well so are we, and if we catch up, they might let us travel with them. We may have to do a few favours here and there, but they could feed us, put us up, and there is safety in numbers. No more bandits and sleeping on rocks—at least for a little while. Who knows? They could take us all the way.’
Lilain raised her eyebrow. She was a little impressed, it was clear. ‘You seem to have thought about this a lot.’
Merion felt the smile itching to spread. There was always a little pleasure to be had when an adult capitulates to a younger judgement. ‘What else is there to do but think when all you have is walking?’
‘A fair point, Nephew,’ Lilain said, rubbing her chin, and then shrugging. ‘Can’t argue with that. The circus it is. But at the first sign of trouble, we go our own way, is that clear? Circuses attract strange folk. Odd characters. A lordling from the Empire might seem like a good prospect if the profits ever get tight. Ransom you back to the Empire. Or Dizali.’
‘That seems a little extreme, Aunt Lilain. They look respectable enough,’ he retorted, waggling the poster again. ‘We’ll keep ourselves to ourselves.’
It was Lilain’s turn to smirk. Her nephew seemed full of surprises today. Karrigan was starting to peek out from behind those blue eyes. She reached out and ruffled his sandy blonde hair, shuffling some of the dust from it. ‘Cirque Kadabra it is.’
‘All I care about is some tobacco, whiskey, and blood,’ mumbled Lurker, kicking the sand. He was out of all three: his pouch, flask, and pockets were painfully dry.
‘So easy to please, John Hobble!’ laughed Lilain. It sounded strange for a moment, a foreign sound, before they all realised it had been a long time since any of them had laughed at all. They all found a little comfort in it, before they moved off towards the horizon. Even Rhin, lounging and wincing in Merion’s hat, managed a chuckle or two.
*
Night had closed in around them before they found the lights, burning like a bonfire in the middle of the distant town, just a proud star in the rolling hills. A curve of moon hung over the glow like a lopsided grin, inviting them closer.
The circus had most definitely come to town. They just didn’t know which town it happened to be. Another half an hour of walking brought them to a sign, hanging from a sun-bleached stake in the ground.
Dax, it said, before taunting them with a few more miles for their feet to tread—as if they needed any more.
Yet with every step, their pace quickened. Especially that of of Lurker and Merion, each for a slightly different reason. For the former, it brought back fond memories, and they were so hard to come by these days, he didn’t mind them holding sway. For the latter, it brought hope, and that too was tough to find in the desert. So it was that they both found themselves racing without breaking out of a walk, a silent little game to shorten the miles before them.
Lilain hung back, holding a sleeping Rhin, still cradled in the hat, with both hands. Faeries will always sleep deeper when wounded. There is a magick in them that works best when their eyes are closed, one which knits them back together quicker than any bandage or stitch.
Soon enough, the music and muted rumble of crowds reached their dust-ridden ears and even Lilain walked a little faster. The coloured lights grew more visible now. They could pick out the lanterns dangling from poles, and the red bunting that was strung between them. They could even hear the shouts from various stalls and attractions, the roars of various creatures behind bars, and even the clink of coin here and there, between the voices.
The circus had parked itself just outside the town, on the western side, and the town had emptied itself to come and greet it. Only a few lights shone in the dark town of Dax, just sufficient to keep the windows lit and the night at bay. The pull of the lights had proven too powerful. A circus weaves its magic on all sorts of people, in all sorts of different ways.
That very same magic was currently going to work on Merion. He could already smell the sawdust in his nose, and the paint and musky whiff of animals on the night breeze. He could smell food too, strange spices and odd meats, crackling somewhere in pans between the tents. It set his stomach to rumbling and his mind to buzzing.
Merion looked up at the main tent, towering above the rest. It was a brightly lit cone of spiralling black and red tarpaulin, patched here and there to show its years. It was the hub of the glittering wheel that was the circus.
In no time at all, the last mile fell away and soon enough they were standing at the circus’s entrance, like stubborn rocks in the flow of people, staring up at a banner that had been stretched over the entrance.
‘Cirque Kadabra,’ Merion read aloud.
‘Bigger than any I ever seen,’ Lurker replied.
‘Only in London, have I seen bigger,’ Lilain chimed in. ‘And even then, I doubt they were much bigger. Everything seems larger when you’re small and when it was long ago.’
‘You are gettin’ on a bit,’ Lurker smirked. The excitement had obviously got to him. He even dared to smirk at her, as she realised what he had said. She smacked him on the arm and he winced.
‘Don’t test me, Lurker.’
‘Well, what are we waiting for?’ Merion asked.
‘Here, give me that hat,’ Lurker said, gaze flicking to the hat in Lilain’s hand. He prodded Rhin gently as he took it from her, and after a flickering of the eyes, Rhin got the hint. He held on tight as his temporary sickbed was pressed firmly onto Lurker’s head. ‘Little small, but it’ll do.’
Merion smirked to himself as the man strode briskly forward, eager to get at the wonders. For all the bandits, twisters, and murderers the scarred old prospector had fought, for all the hardship in his life, who knew it would be a circus that could turn him into such a child.
The young Hark took it in at his own pace. For all the dread and hardship the desert had brought him since he had first stepped off that locomotive, he felt he deserved a little excitement for a change. Somewhere at his core, he felt the tension die away, and leave him lighter than before, if even just for a little while. Merion rolled his shoulders and let himself bask.
The main tent beckoned to them with its open mouth, blurting out the cheering coming from within. They entered it, squinting. Lanterns burned hot everywhere they looked, backed with mirrors and smeared with translucent paint. Blues, greens, oranges, purples, reds—every lantern shone a different hue. There must have been a hundred of them just hanging from the mighty wooden poles that held the tent aloft.
A thick crowd had gathered all around the edges of the tent, craning their necks to watch the mind-boggling show taking place in its sandy centre. Merion found a box to stand on, while Lurker just stood on tiptoe. Lilain hopped up and down to catch the odd glimpse over the countless heads.
A heavily muscled man stood on a barrel, half-naked and painted with all sorts of different colours. He stood as still as a statue, holding his arms out to the side, a wooden board in each ham-sized hand. There was a third hanging from a rope around his stomach, dangling just over his groin. The crowd cheered him on as he stood there, still as a gravestone.
Merion followed his vacant gaze, and spied the main attraction. This was a woman, dressed in long, overlapping orange skirts that spun as she strode back and forth, working the crowd into a frenzy. Her long red hair hung in myriad curls over her shoulders. The skin of her arms was whiter than snow, and in each hand she held a long knife with a zig-zag edge. A third was clamped between her grinning teeth. Merion grinned, realising what sort of show this was.
Only when she had worked the audience to its fever pitch, making it chant its lungs out, did she begin. First, she faced the man on the barrel head on, standing almost thirty feet away. With a deft flick of her wrist, the first knife flashed through the air. There was a collective gasp, then a thud as the blade buried itself in the board in the man’s left hand. Next, she turned side on, looking straight up at the hollow cone of the tent. Without switching hands, or even sneaking a look, she threw the second knife. Whack! And there it was, quivering in the second board.
‘Almighty, this man is brave!’ Merion hollered over the roar of applause and whooping.
‘Or she’s just that good!’ yelled his aunt.
Lastly, the woman turned her back on the man. She took the last blade from her mouth and flashed the audience a wink and a smile. Without even pausing to let the clapping die, she tossed the knife over her shoulder. No gasp this time, just a horrified silence as it all looked to go wrong. She had thrown too high! The knife soared across the circle in a high arc, catching every colour of the lanterns as it spun. It was an awful flash of a moment, where eyes were either covered or glued in place.
Thunk!
The blade struck the centre of the last board—much to the man’s evident relief, it seemed. The audience was beside itself, throwing their hats in the air and clapping until their hands were sore. It was impossible not to get caught up in the waves of excitement. Merion whistled through his fingers as Rhin had taught him to. Lurker applauded with heavy thwacks of his gloved hands. Lilain cheered as loud as anyone else.
‘I would not want to get on the wrong side of her, that’s for sure,’ Merion smiled, as they made their exit from the main tent, in search of other spectacles.
‘Nor me, boy. Though the right side of her might be interestin’,’ the prospector chuckled, before sniffing the air. Lilain smacked his arm again.
‘Have some respect,’ she admonished him.
‘I’m hungry,’ Merion suggested, and the others had to agree.
There was almost too much food to choose from: pies, cakes, hot broths, strange red sausages wrapped in buns, and a myriad of sweet things to rot teeth and stick lips together. Merion of course, went for the latter, spending some of his last coins at three stalls before deciding he felt sick and needed something more substantial.
They ate as they walked, touring the circus’s spirals calmly, taking in all the sights and sounds, one by one. There was almost too much to see in one night. There, a strong man lifted huge iron balls and their chains with barely a grunt. Here, a fortune teller waggled his fingers over lanterns and decks of foreign cards. Just a little further on, a contortionist and an acrobat vied with each other from two opposite stalls, turning heads this way and that with every somersault and leg-knot. And a mound
of a man, an explosion of fat, sat on a stage, tipping his hat and winking at his gawpers. All the while, jugglers and fire-eaters wandered in and out of the milling crowds, juggling stolen hats and blowing fountains of flame.
After the banality of the desert, it was intoxicating. Whether it was the sugar that had gone to his head, or the lights, the smells, or a sip from Lurker’s freshly filled flask, Merion felt dizzied and entranced by it all. Even the thick press of people was bearable. Fingers bent towards him from every stall as he wandered in circles, staring and gawping until he felt drunk on spectacle. The deeper he wandered into the circus, the more drowned in noise and lights he felt.
He did not know how, but at some point he lost Lilain and Lurker in the crowds, and wandered off by himself. He clutched nothing but a cup of sickly sweet liquid to his chest; a gift from a passing circus girl draped in strange furs.
Whilst busy staring at a clown with a tattooed face spin plates on pointed sticks, somebody gripped him by the shoulders, and Merion whirled. He was met with a wild-eyed woman, clearly in a state of upset, who had discovered the boy was not who she thought he was.
‘Have you seen my son?’ she cried, motioning his height. ‘Blonde hair. Little scar on his nose!’ Several heads turned and, like Merion’s, they shook. No, they had not. The young Hark bit his lip as she retreated back into the milling crowds.
Merion soon found himself behind the main tent, where the crowds were thinner and the attractions smaller. There he found a strange little circus, with cages lined up in wandering rows, with a roof of draped curtain and blanket, a maze filled with all manner of beasts.
Leopards he had seen before. The monkeys seemed too tired to offer any sport. There was a mottled bear that wore a glum expression. A wolf paced in circles, snarling at anybody that got too close to its bars.
With each cage he passed, the creatures grew slowly stranger. There was a peacock with eyes in its tail that seemingly moved around, staring at him whether he dodged left or right. There was a lemur that changed colour every time it moved. There was even a tortoise with a miniature castle for its shell.