Lands Beyond Box Set: Books 1 - 3

by Kin S. Law

  A series of high tents had been erected around three rings in the center of the attraction. The first two rings were flat ground bordered by wood, but the third was recessed, a pit dug into the earth. All three were empty. A number of pavilions had been erected to shelter an audience around them. Stepping through, their multicolored exuberance revealed a bar under the stands, and an impromptu whore pit, where Hargreaves was mistaken for an employee. She didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted, until she tried to buy a drink and a large, foul-smelling swine began to snuffle after her posterior. Before she could react, one of his trotters closed on her ample bottom and squeezed possessively.

  “An English rose,” he said. “But needing a prickin’.”

  Hargreaves struck him hard enough to set her hand throbbing. She felt something crunch under her knuckles. There were far too many people in the brothel to shoot with impunity, so she participated in that noblest of traditions, the better part of valor. She turned tail and ran.

  Which drew her molester and his friends out with her. Obviously.

  She knocked over a collection cup and a brief havoc of scrabbling for coins followed her wake. Dodging left and right, the louts flowed through the circus like serpents in the garden. Hargreaves dispatched the first one by ducking into a blind corner, door-prizing the running man with a heavy strongman’s hammer leaned up in one corner. He went down hard. The second she managed to lead into an ongoing parade. Naked women with painted breasts cast batons and waved balls of fluff about, riling up the crowd. Behind them marched elephants, lions in cages, and floats full of peacocking people. Seizing a bag of gumdrops from a nearby stall she cast them behind her. Her pursuer slipped and slid right into the painted women. Hargreaves winced, as the batons and high heels fell upon the man. A nasty way to go.

  “Hello, rose….”

  “Bugger.” Hargreaves thought as a straight length of chrome appeared at her throat—a dirk. The man’s breath was foul, heavy, and likely a hundred proof. His beard scratched. Her hiding spot now became a dangerous niche where nobody could see.

  “Gave us a merry chase, didn’t you?” He growled now, his voice gravel. “Open that mouth and I’ll slit your tongue out. Now guess. What happens to a rose when it gets plucked?”

  The cold knife touched her neck and Hargreaves gasped. It slid like an icy trickle into her laced bodice. He slipped it up, fast, precise, and one side of her chest was hanging out. Hargreaves felt herself being flipped around, pushed, and she threw her arms out so she wouldn’t fall—winding up bent over, with him fumbling at her. It took a moment for him to notice she had got her lighter from where it was tucked into her boot. Still more precious moments before he realized the clicking sound and the smell were the trousers at his ankles, now aflame.

  “What the—”

  It was ballet itself, delivering the elbow to his face. She idly wondered if her skirts were aflame. She had acquired a plain rough-spun skirt that hid her .22 Tranter, but the edges were a cheap, durable trim lace. Seeing a stray ember, she beat at it until it went out.

  Hargreaves certainly did not expect the lout to rise to the occasion of fire with a soprano lilt, stumbling to put himself out, lurching into the crowd. But she followed him anyway, in case she had killed him with her little act. Her stomach gave a groan of protest.

  “That will never do,” said a voice nearby, and she almost lashed out again. But it was only one of the ladies from the parade, decked out in red, white and blue. Feathers at her crown soared high up, bowing and waving. Under the paint her skin was a rich sienna, her eyes kind. Hargreaves tucked in her elbows, in case she touched the woman’s front by mistake.

  “Did you know him?”

  “Don’t you worry about him, there he goes now into the horse trough. Crowd thinks he’s a clown. No, look at the state of you, honey. Come here,” said the woman, and she fussed over Hargreaves’ torn bodice. With a firm yank, she pulled it the rest of the way off.

  “Oh my word!”

  “My name is Jocasta Santiago,” said the woman. Behind her, a man in purple and yellow motley appeared with jars of paint and a brush. He had his eyes covered. “And that is Shanks.” Jocasta eyed Hargreaves’ assets. “He juggles.”

  “Oh, but I’m not—” Hargreaves protested, but the woman was already tucking Hargreaves’ bodice up into a bustle, and rolling the boots down for more skin. Shanks handed over the paints, and once Santiago began to apply them, Hargreaves was held rapt.

  For one thing, the paint made it hard to move without smearing it around. For another, Santiago was turning her skin into an inspired canvas. Stars appeared in deft strokes at her side, and stripes too, covering her front and up one shoulder: an artistic rendering of the American flag. It was too late to request the Union flag, Hargreaves supposed. Santiago put up her hair, so her neck rose swan-like and cool in the desert air. Then she felt herself being summarily pushed out into the parade, which had dispersed to let folks talk to and take photograms with the painted women.

  It was exhilarating. After a while her undercover training and the reflection in mirrors made her stand tall, push her chest out, and even preen, a little. People came by and offered her money to stand, and look magnificent, and smile. What few hecklers arrived were quickly dispatched by burly strongmen from the parade, so quickly it must have been according to some prior compact. The jugglers and clowns stood near, ready to receive the currency, which made it about the guests, not the money.

  Shanks the juggler wandered the outskirts, tossing aloft bottles, bright balls, and knives. “A hair under a pound,” he said, when Hargreaves asked him if they were difficult. “The bottles. The balls, lighter, half a pound. The knives, a quarter. But they’re the hardest.”

  Quite contrary to her own very Victorian sentiments, the enterprise of public nudity seemed natural and beautiful. Soon enough her smile was genuine. She didn’t think it possible, but the instant she found herself in the crowd, she understood why Jocasta Santiago had done it. Her clothes were hopeless, sliced too badly to be decent. But painted and part of the show, she was not only accepted as normal, she was revered. Celebrated. Amongst them, she was protected. Untouchable.

  In the distance, the dim glow of the rodeo’s lights lent a pagan air to the shouts of encouragement, like a May Day festival. The lights of the fire breathers lit up the night. A bull bellowed, in rage. Really, a spectacle was always a sort of sacrifice, she thought idly. Her aching feet were a testament to that, slotted into borrowed high heels after one of the girls remarked on the inspector’s excellent calves.

  Later in the evening, the performers counted the day’s substantial takings. A good percentage went to the strongmen and the jugglers, enough to be appreciative but not enough for them to have any power over the women. Jocasta Santiago counted the money, comparing it to a meticulous ledger in her head. Hargreaves accepted her stack of coins and bills. That small fortune would take her at least to the next woolly bear junction at Dodge City.

  The juggler Shanks raised his glass in toast, which Hargreaves gladly accepted. His full name was Cole D. Shanks. He was a lanky fellow, youthful, with old gray eyes. Old scars dotted his hands, whether from his profession or his peers, it was hard to say. As they ate, the food and beer and the money loosened their lips, and Hargreaves found herself sharing her trip across America with Shanks, who took it as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Of course, she mentioned nothing of her betrayal of Her Majesty, or the dire lumps sitting in her lorry out in the field.

  By and by they spoke again of the day’s haul, which even by an old hand’s standards was a fair lot.

  “I don’t mean to bite the hand that feeds,” said Hargreaves through a chummy bite of smoked turkey leg, “but the spectators are awfully loose with their money.”

  “It’s always this way. Doesn’t matter the season, they come in droves. This year, perhaps more…there’s a rumor afoot, you see,” said Shanks. He seemed a practical sort, but it would be wrong to
say there was no bitter bone in him.

  “A rumor?” Hargreaves answered. Shanks had an air of showmanship telling a story.

  “Yes…The rails are humming with a story…a story about a ghost train bearing the souls of the recently deceased…” Shanks went on. “Stand at midnight at any station in the country, and you’ll hear its keening wail across the desert. Stand too close and it will take you with it—barreling through like a bat out of hell. They say it’s no mere engine but a fortress of iron, its smokestacks huffing brimstone and its cars bristling with the skeletal arms of the damned!” Shanks made a wobbling howl, as of a lost soul.

  “No!” Hargreaves gripped her heart, and put her hand to her forehead, feigning a spell.

  “Absolutely! Why do you think the streets are so clean of vagrants? Ain’t Christian charity,” said Shanks. He turned and helped serve the arriving tankards from a passing hand. The clowns and strongmen did their own cooking and serving. The ale was good and river-cold.

  “Why are Americans so keen on traveling?” said Hargreaves, feeling the chill from the ghost story blend with the ale. She wanted to talk about little nothings instead.

  “Most of them are just passing through, on their way to some other place,” said Shanks. He made a sort of flapping shape with his hands, to indicate greener pastures far away.

  “Why is that, you think? Don’t they have anything better to do?” asked Hargreaves.

  “People out in flyover country, they get a little crazy,” said Shanks, between sips. “Fly-over, because the woolly bears generally take folks over without stopping by. Nobody here wants to live here, but folks stay for the freedom, and the lawlessness, and the sheer stubbornness of having a piece for themselves.”

  “That explains the spectacle, the sideshow feats. The enormous novelty.”

  “There’s so much space and wealth and time―who knows what to do with it?” said Cole indifferently. “Look at that horizon. It doesn’t go anywhere! The airships close everything down real small, maybe a few days apart, but down in the flyover, the west might as well still be endless.”

  “Scrappy plains from nowhere to nowhere. Rolling hills full of coyotes. Fruitless woods thick with murderous lions and tigers and bears,” said Jocasta, coming to sit with them. “And nary a good man in all of it…save this one.”

  Hargreaves started. The woman was voluptuous, top to bottom. She had the wild beauty of the plains Indians. An equestrian’s body, an aquiline nose, but the olive complexion of the Spaniards. Up until then Hargreaves hadn’t noticed her own nudity. Jocasta went on.

  “Lots of people don’t belong here. They came in their ships with their guns hundreds of years ago and still think they own this place. They haven’t earned this land, and the land knows it.”

  “It’d be the stupid man who can’t sit still and appreciate all that natural beauty,” said Shanks. “But the conveniences of the Steam Age make it hard to. The looseness of the girls in the big city, the wealth and power, and the height of the towers. Seeing airships crisscross over their heads day in and day out. Anybody would feel inadequate.”

  “You’re the last one to feel inadequate,” said Jocasta, nudging him with her elbow. The smile she extracted seemed a little forced, but it clearly satisfied Jocasta, who held on to Shanks possessively. Hargreaves brought them another round from the tent’s stall, and Shanks went on as if there was no interruption.

  “There’s something going around this land that taints everything. The ether is always jabberin’ about limeys waging war in South America, beggin’ your pardon. About the Mohammedans killing everybody. Two hundred pounds at a time, receiving a nitroglycerin blessing and up! In the air. They fear the prairie pirates coming to take their daughters. They fear our way of life coming under fire, of killers falling from the clear blue sky. Meanwhile, the people doing the most killing are born and bred right here. The senators and congressmen don’t see, so far away, fighting amongst themselves, deciding the lives of the soldiers without ever setting foot on foreign soil.”

  “As if you vote,” said Jocasta, looking away. She looked like she’d heard it before. Probably Shanks himself would be swallowed up in his flyover country, if he didn’t have Jocasta.

  “People feel powerless, they feel small, so they get in a rickety cart and they ride, like their folks used to on the frontier. For any ounce of hope. On the bleeding edge of the frontier, because they’d got to where they were going, where the edge of the world was. What else was left?” said Shanks.

  “How about a family? Building something for themselves, like a house, or a town?” said Jocasta.

  “But that’s not what they do. They wind giant balls of string, they build unlikely architecture, and they fuck, yes, and maybe that makes them happy, for a time. Maybe they feel like their tiny flyover world opens up into something big and they’re free from that terror for a while.”

  Shanks fell into an introspective silence, sipping at his suds. Jocasta looked into the sideshows, at the bright lights in the darkness. A weariness was settling into Hargreaves’ bones. Dancing was hard work. The chill of the night crept inexorably in. As she got up to go, she nearly missed Shanks’ slurred mumble, deep in his cups.

  “The folks who have the most? They’re the nuttiest of them all.”

  Vanessa Hargreaves spent the night, at Jocasta’s insistence, in the small train car that housed the performers’ bunks. The others bolted the thick doors against the calliope music and the shouting. The train walls were solid steel, covered by soft, colorful weaves, and made a comfortably quiet place to rest. She had been invited to stay and join the revelry, but Hargreaves was weary from the road. As it turned out, that was her salvation.

  Hargreaves only found out what happened the next day, but knowing didn’t help her guilt. She hadn’t known what had happened to Shanks or Jocasta. Neither of them had returned to the bunks, and Hargreaves had stayed as long as she dared, long into the day. But the red-soaked ground at her feet had been terrible portent for their fates, and she’d remembered her own pursuers, certainly not far away. So she had pulled her Feint away from the circus, surprisingly untouched.

  That night, the circus had gone on, sleepless. Clowns had appeared, chucked a few pies. Handsome cowboys had ridden, with just the right blend of simpleton charm and not giving a damn. Fun was had by all. That is, until they brought out the Brazen Bull.

  Its muscled surface gleamed in shades of bloody gold and yellowed bone. Grates held back the fire of its loins. Its hooves raised a fine dust that burst scintillating into a thousand sparks, rising up from its steaming, rumbling flanks. Most terrible of all, its golden horns twisted out and forward, a yoke tipped with carved images of sacrificial rites and a pair of wicked points. The builder, an unknown man with rather Latin mustaches, demonstrated their sharpness by holding out an inflated canvas balloon, a sturdy stabilizer common to airships as counter-ballast. Snorting, the Bull reared, its head twisting in the direction of the target, and the balloon became rags on the ground.

  All this Hargreaves heard later, driving her Feint away and chatting with the folk at waystations on the road. One of them had a poster depicting the animal, though it did not look nearly as terrifying flattened on paper. Hearing the storytellers reiterate how the Bull snorted and tore through the ring, how the challenge was issued, and how the freemen who roped the livestock fled from it like a black tide. She fancied she could still detect the faint thunder of its footfalls. The shining spurs of the rider, as he mounted against the handler’s protests. She could envision the fine weave of his showy spats against the tiny pistons of steam work. The glint of the Bull’s hooves, stomping the remains of its rider to pulp. And then it had torn its way out, trampling the rest of the rodeo.

  Of course, none of the storytellers had actually seen it for themselves—but they had seen the bodies in the morning, gored through by the thing’s horns and bloody upon the ground. And, remembering Cole D. Shanks’ words, Hargreaves did not forget to look at t
he faces of the storytellers: flush, animated, lively with lust and novelty. Perhaps the accident had been some tonic for their otherwise gormless lives, but Hargreaves did not care to repeat the experience. The thing she was towing in the back of the lorry was terrible enough. She did not need to seek a golden calf to feed an existential wanderlust.

  But she found she hadn’t yet tired of the sideshow quality of the American highway. The roads were rough, and the going bland. Any distraction was better than the endless stretches of rolling plain, dotted here and there with disturbingly adorable roadkill. Hargreaves did wonder; was the moping Shanks right? Did the infinite land and cruel wildness make the natives go mad? Mad enough, perhaps, to lavish their unblinking affection onto a clockwork folly even as it speared them on its horns.

  In a dive somewhere on the plains, Hargreaves cheered as a local man heroically tackled twenty-one Hamburg steaks (bun and lettuce included) to win the local championship eating contest.

  She stopped at a grotesquerie housed in a humid lean-to. Featured attractions included a three-headed sheep, an aborted cow fetus, an allegedly haunted doll, and a man with six fingers to each hand, who turned out to be the proprietor. The curator’s doe-like smile belied something sinister that Hargreaves could not place; she found him the most unnerving specimen of all.

  At length a tornado sent her far north off her regular route, where she came upon an enclave of recluses made up of musicians, nudists and mushroom fanatics. They lived high on a plateau where they held saturnalia in rock chambers that overlooked the plains below. Hargreaves dimly remembered changing into something not quite decent, joining the group in a dazed catatonia. In her sweet madness, she thought she heard a long, low whistle come tearing over the plain. When she peered out over the shadows of the country below, she thought she saw a long, thin shadow writhing over the land like a wraith trailing its cloak of pestilence. Shanks’ ghost train? But the stone room had no substance, and the world was topsy-turvy. Her eyes could not be trusted. Hargreaves felt a bit like Alice falling down the rabbit hole.