Chapter 14
Cordelia heard the roar of applause within the tent, and the tinny rise and fall of horn music. The circus had begun, and she and Gregory were left outside, among the pastry peddlers and candy sellers, among the trampled hay and the discarded waste of the crowd.
The square was empty now, except for the cart-pushers and market stalls and a dozen raggedy children, barefoot and filthy-faced, who swarmed the streetlamps, straining for a glimpse of the action inside the tent, and trying to pocket food from the stalls when no one was looking.
“We need to get into that tent,” Cordelia said. But no sooner had she taken two steps toward the entrance than the oversize men, Tomaseo and Alonzo, reached for identical leather whips hooked to their belts. Cabal let out a squeak of fear and Icky ducked behind Gregory’s leg.
“It’s no use, Cordelia,” Gregory said, raising his voice so he could easily be heard by the two giants. At the same time, he gave her a wink. “We’ll never get into the circus without a ticket. We might as well give up.”
Cordelia, catching on, heaved a sigh. “You’re right,” she said loudly. “I guess we’ll just head home.”
They turned around with exaggerated care and began to move off in the direction of the train station. Cordelia, feeling the eyes of the two giants on the back of her neck, was careful to hang her head and look disappointed. Gregory walked with as much dignity as he could muster, considering the fact that he had a filch clinging to his lower leg.
At the first opportunity, however, they hid behind a fruit stand.
“We’ll have to circle around,” Gregory said, prying Icky from his leg with difficulty. “Maybe there’s a way to sneak into the tent through the back.”
Cordelia stretched onto her tiptoes, ignoring the rows of pears glistening like jewels on their cloth beds, candied apples shining with caramel drizzle, the smell of fresh-brewed cider, and the terrible whining of her stomach. She spotted a narrow path through the maze of carts and food stalls. If they were careful, they could circle around the tent and stay completely out of sight of the beastly men guarding its entrance. And maybe Gregory was right. Maybe there was another way in.
Cordelia turned to him. But before she could open her mouth, a loud scream made her jump.
“Thief! Scandal! Villainy! Murder!”
An old woman with a nose like a fishhook and a very large wart trembling in the middle of her forehead stepped out from behind the towering stacks of candied apples, wielding her broom like a sword.
“Get away from my apples, you miserable little monsters!” Swoosh. She struck out with her broom. Cordelia ducked to avoid getting a face full of bristles. “Keep your sticky paws where they belong!” Swoosh. She aimed another blow in Cordelia’s direction. Cordelia rolled aside as the broom thudded to the ground not an inch from her stomach, releasing a cloud of dirt.
“This way, Cordelia!” Gregory hooked a hand in her collar and dragged her forward as the old woman continued hopping and waving her broom, shrieking insults in their direction.
Cordelia and Gregory ducked under the enormous body of a glossy Clydesdale and snuck around a vendor roasting chestnuts over an open flame. Safely distanced from the old woman and her stiff-bristled broom, they slowed to a trot, scanning the purple tent for entrances or gaps in the stitching where the panels were bound together. They might, Cordelia thought, sneak under the tent—it was lashed to a stake in the ground every few feet, leaving plenty of loose fabric between tethers—if it weren’t for the guards stationed at every entrance, all of them equally as large as Tomaseo and Alonzo. Perhaps, Cordelia thought, they came from the same family of giants?
On the west side of Union Square, the street had been closed down to accommodate an overflow of props, wagons, trunks, and performers’ trailers. Gregory and Cordelia ignored the temporary fence that had been erected around it, and vaulted easily into the jumble of old costume racks, rusted washbasins, and empty cages.
Almost immediately, they heard the shrill of a woman’s voice and ducked behind a painted wagon. A dozen feet away, a bearded lady was combing and braiding her hair, singing absentmindedly, and missing nearly every note. A man roughly Cordelia’s height was standing in a barrel full of water, wearing nothing but a child’s bathing suit, washing himself, seemingly oblivious to the cold. Two acrobats dressed in spandex costumes were practicing their routine. A sword-swallower was massaging his jaw muscles, a sword staked next to him in the dirt.
And just behind him, a vertical sweep of light pushing between tent panels marked an unguarded entrance to the circus.
“What do we do now?” Gregory whispered. “You think we can get past them?”
Cordelia shook her head. “We can’t,” she said. “I can. You’re going to cause a distraction.” Her stomach gave a nervous lurch. But they had come this far. She had to be brave.
“Uh-uh, no way.” Gregory shook his head so emphatically, his hat nearly slipped off his head. He righted it quickly. “I’m not letting you go in there alone.”
“Please, Gregory,” Cordelia said. She didn’t want to confess that she also didn’t want to venture into the tent alone. “It’s the only way.”
Left and right went the hat while Gregory debated. “Fine,” he said at last. “If you say so. You want me to dance a jig? Start a riot? Juggle sausage links?”
“Easier,” she said. “All you have to do is light a fire.” Cordelia cracked a smile for the first time in what felt like ages, reached into her pocket, and passed Gregory the dragon. Gregory took Icky, too, but insisted that Cabal stay with Cordelia “for protection,” and even though the zuppy’s attacks resulted only in enthusiastic and aggressive face-licking, Cordelia didn’t protest.
With a quick look in either direction, Gregory eased into the open and Cordelia quickly lost sight of him. She stayed where she was, concealed behind the painted wagon, and waited. Every so often, she heard an appreciative roar from the crowd. She wondered whether her growrks were being forced to turn somersaults, whether her pixies were dressed up in costumes to make them look like fairies—an absurd idea, and one she knew the pixies would detest, since they despised their fairy cousins and made a point of cannibalizing them whenever they could.
She thought of wild living things kept in cages, and the ugly letter her mother had received. She thought of Henry Haddock, and the man whose belongings he’d shaken into the mud. And for a second she wished she could simply will herself back home, and shut the doors forever on the world and its fears and cruelty.
But she couldn’t. Her father needed her. The monsters needed her—to save them all from the real monsters.
Even though the wind had picked up, carrying with it the promise of snow, Cordelia was sweating. Her thighs had begun to cramp. She felt like she’d been crouching forever. She shifted a little, trying to give her legs some relief, scanning the market for signs that Gregory was carrying out the plan. So far, nothing.
“Come on, Gregory,” she muttered. If he didn’t hurry, she would lose her chance.
Then she spotted it: a fine thread of smoke unspooling a short distance away between the trees. At first it was no wider than a finger. Then it was a black branch, growing quickly to the sky, and suddenly there was an eruption of shouting, the drumming of footsteps, and overlapping cries of “Fire, fire!” Cordelia said a quick prayer that Gregory had successfully escaped—otherwise, he’d be trampled by the crowd.
“Ready, Cabal?” she whispered. Cabal was rigid, tense, ready to run. All the performers rushed to give aid. The man toweling off in the bathing suit began hauling the barrel full of his old bathwater in the direction of the flames. The bearded lady trotted over to help him. The acrobats shouted competing advice, until the sword-swallower threatened to skewer them both if they didn’t stop squawking.
The tent was left momentarily unguarded.
“Now!” Cordelia said. Instantly, she was up and running, staying as low as she could, while Cabal darted beside her, kicking up mi
niature clouds of dirt. Her heart was pounding so loudly she couldn’t hear anything, not the continued sounds of shouting, not the crackle of fire. At any second, she expected to feel a thick hand on her back. She expected the terrible tattooed men to appear before her, for someone to shout and command her to stop.
She was almost there. She was so frightened she could hardly breathe. Any second now she would be caught, she would be thrown into a cage beside the growrk.
But then she was at the tent, and no one had cried out, and no one had stopped her.
Cordelia risked one glance behind her. Gregory had done his job to perfection. A hastily collected pile of straw and old newspaper was burning cheerily, and a crowd had gathered to try and put it out. Now the sword-swallower was trying to extinguish the flames with an old blanket but had only succeeded in stoking them higher. The bearded lady had somehow managed to overturn the barrel of water onto both acrobats.
No one was looking in Cordelia’s direction at all.
Quickly, with no further hesitation, she lifted the tent flap and slipped into the circus.
Chapter 15
Almost immediately, Cordelia saw her mistake: the performers’ entrance fed straight into the wings, where only a single sweep of curtains divided her from the stage, and a trio of clowns stood awaiting their cue.
The first thing Cordelia noticed, as she stood blinking, waiting for her eyes to adjust, was the sawdust. It coated everything and hung in the air like a veil, shimmering in the darkness. It muffled the sound of her footsteps and coated the inside of her nostrils and gummed the back of her throat.
Cabal sniffled beside her. His pale nose quivered, as it did when he was about to sneeze. Cordelia whispered, “Don’t even think about it.”
Cabal swallowed.
The music was louder inside the tent, and she could hear a booming voice, which she recognized as belonging to the awful short man with the mustache. Slowly, shapes began to assert themselves in the gloom: crates upon crates stuffed with straw, overturned stools and discarded costumes, old trunks and ladders. She even saw a hot-air balloon, deflated, lying among a tangle of ropes, like a vast squid that had been lashed to the ground.
She began picking her way through the labyrinth of junk. Cordelia felt like she was on a ship, moving through vast swells of gray: furniture, half-built set pieces, and stacks of plywood loomed on either side of her. She saw no cages, though—that meant the monsters must be kept somewhere else. At least the sawdust made it easy to move quietly. . . .
The sawdust!
Now that she was paying attention, she could make out the shuffling tracks of performers, footsteps big and small.
And paws. Though the tracks were confused and blurry, she could definitely make out various animal—or monster?—tracks leading off to the left. She followed them, scanning the ground, listening, always, for signs of disturbance—a voice, a footstep, a sniffle or snort, as her father had taught her to do.
She came around an old set piece designed to look like a pirate ship and saw them: crouched in the half-gloom, massed in their cages, miserable and silent. Monsters. Dozens and dozens of monsters.
Tears welled up in her eyes and she didn’t bother to wipe them away. In the low light, she could just make out the jointed flippers of the hufflebottom and the scaly spine of the bulliehead.
She had found them.
There was no sign of her father, but she quickly put that worry aside. She would free the monsters—she wasn’t sure how yet, but she would—and worry about her father afterward.
“Don’t worry,” Cordelia whispered, drawing close to the hufflebottom’s cage. “I’m here.”
To her surprise, the hufflebottom drew back even farther into the liquid pool of shadows on the far side of the cage. She could just make out the gleam of her dark eyes and the curve of her noble beak.
“It’s me, Cordelia,” she said, threading her fingers through the cage bars. The hufflebottom adored Cordelia and liked to playfully nip at her fingertips. In fact, Cordelia had not cut her own fingernails in ages. The hufflebottom happily did it for her. But today the hufflebottom remained still, silent, and watchful, and did not approach. Cordelia felt a momentary pull of anxiety. Could this be a different hufflebottom?
No. The coincidence was too extreme. Huddled silently in their cages were diggles and squinches, and hufflebottoms and goblins: monsters rare and dangerous and difficult to procure.
Perhaps—and the thought made fury well up inside her—the monsters had been mistreated. Traumatized. Perhaps that was why they were so frightened and seemed not to recognize her.
Cordelia withdrew her hand from the cage. “I’m going to get you out of here,” she said. Each cage was encircled by a rusty chain and padlock; she jiggled one and found it sturdy. No hope of snapping it, then.
From the stage, the ringmaster’s reedy voice floated back to her. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages . . . now for a finale that will leave your ears spinning and your eyes ringing!”
The crowd roared with applause as the band swelled and the drums pounded out a frenzied rhythm.
Cordelia’s palms began to sweat. Still standing in front of the hufflebottom’s cage, she crouched down so she was eye level with the padlock. It looked as if it took a standard key; it was likely that a single key opened all the cages. But she didn’t see a keyring anywhere.
She turned out her pockets, sorting through her tools to see if any might be useful. The old metal spyglass had come partially apart in her pocket, revealing innards of glinting copper coil.
She ripped off a wire and bent it in half, so it formed a narrow metal pin. Carefully, she inserted the wire into the old lock and began pushing and twisting. One time, she and her father had tracked a pair of highly contagious ghouls to the locked basement of a hat factory. She had watched him pick a lock with her mother’s hairpin.
Then, as now, it took only a moment of wiggling before she heard the lock release with a small, satisfying click. She let the chain thud down into the sawdust and slowly swung open the cage door, wincing as it whined on its hinges. But the music and clapping were so loud, no one could possibly hear.
“All right, girl.” Cordelia stretched a hand toward the hufflebottom, who was still trembling in the far corner of her cage. “Come to me. You’re all right. It’s going to be all right.”
The hufflebottom didn’t move. Cordelia swallowed a sigh.
“Stay here,” she instructed Cabal. Then she stepped into the cage and inched forward toward the terrified monster, still keeping one hand outstretched. “What’s the matter with you?” she whispered, when the hufflebottom drew back even farther, until it was pressed against the bars of the cage. “It’s me.”
She finally got a hand around the hufflebottom’s collar. Cordelia heaved, and the hufflebottom slid forward a few inches, scrabbling desperately for purchase with her heavy hind legs and letting out a panicked whimper that Cordelia had never heard before.
“Why,” Cordelia panted, “are—you—making—this—so—difficult?” She grabbed a dorsal flipper, hoping for a better grip. . . .
And it snapped off in her hand.
Cordelia reeled backward, horrified. But the hufflebottom didn’t even seem to notice. She just sat there, blinking at Cordelia with her big brown eyes.
Brown eyes . . .
Cordelia felt her chest go hollow, as if she’d once again been whacked with the ringmaster’s cane. Hufflebottoms had gold eyes—everybody knew that. She peered more closely at the broken flipper. Now that she was paying attention, she saw small seams of glue, where the scales had been attached to a kind of flexible fabric. She saw stitching where small rents in the wing had appeared and been mended.
A fake. An illusion.
She moved once again to the hufflebottom-that-wasn’t and ran a hand over its remaining dorsal flipper, her fingers easily detecting the leather harness where it was attached. Snap. It came right off. Cordelia saw now that its �
�beak” was actually a curved wooden horn, painted to resemble the real thing, affixed to the animal’s face by a nearly invisible wire. She extracted a pair of clippers from her pocket and snipped the wire.
The false beak tumbled into her hands, revealing the perfectly ordinary face of a perfectly ordinary sheep. Just as quickly, the rest of the illusion was revealed: the heavy casts molded around its legs, to give the impression of huge hindquarters. The garish dye, which turned its fleece a golden color.
Cordelia stumbled backward out of the cage, practically dizzy with disappointment. The sheep opened its mouth and let out a single, plaintive bleat, as though in apology. She stumbled down the long line of cages, as the music swelled and crested and the audience shrieked with pleasure. To her, it sounded like a prolonged scream.
Fakes. Fakes. Every one of them—fakes. Lions decked out with horns and long snake tails made from rubber hose, so that they resembled griffins. Deer fitted with shaggy fur coats so they could pass as elusive slints. An enormous iguana wearing paper wings. A dog dyed white, fitted with false fangs, meant to be a zuppy. Again, it was the eyes that gave it away. They weren’t red, like Cabal’s, and they certainly didn’t glow.
They were fakes, frauds, cardboard cutouts. She’d been wrong about the monsters. Her only real clue had proved pointless. And they’d wasted time.
She was so consumed with disappointment, she didn’t hear the approaching footsteps until they were only a few yards away. Someone—no, two someones—were moving through the backstage area and headed directly toward her.
“I’ll skin her alive! I’ll feed her to the lions! I’ll poke her eyes out with a pencil! This is the second time she’s missed her cue in a week . . .”
She recognized at once the voice of the ringmaster, who had greeted them so unpleasantly and refused them entrance into the circus. For a second, she was paralyzed with fear. She couldn’t see him—yet—but from the sound of his voice, he was just on the far side of a tumbled-down series of wooden crates.
The Magnificent Monsters of Cedar Street Page 12