by Steph Post
“Sir, you can’t go in there. Cordoned off. Illegal to tamper with arson evidence.”
Hayden stiffened.
“Arson?”
The other deputy hiked up his trousers and caught his breath. He glared at Hayden suspiciously.
“What are you doing here? You come to scavenge? Make off with something? There ain’t much to steal, but we’ll arrest you just the same.”
Hayden narrowed his eyes. Nothing about the deputies intimidated him. He opened his mouth to speak, to explain, but he froze when he heard another voice coming from behind him.
“Gentlemen, it’s all right. I know this man.”
Hayden whirled around and saw Samuel walking toward him from another group of cars that had maps and papers spread across the hoods. Three men in suits were studying the papers, though they looked up and watched Samuel cross over to the lot. The first deputy put out a hand and stopped Samuel before he could get too close. He jerked his head back toward Hayden and frowned.
“Whoa, now. He a carnie? He work here or something?”
The relief spread through Hayden like a warm flush. If Samuel was alive that meant others could be alive. She could be alive. He started to speak again, but Samuel firmly cut him off.
“No. He has never worked for the carnival. I believe he knew some of the men who worked there, though. If it’s all right with you, I’ll talk to him and explain the situation. There will be no trouble.”
“All right, then. Don’t be too long, you hear? We ain’t wanting no funny business coming from you.”
The deputy spat a thick stream of tobacco juice near Samuel’s boots, but let him pass. Though Samuel’s face was its usual unreadable, frowning mask, Hayden broke out into a childish grin and went to shake his hand. Samuel quickly turned to avoid it.
“Walk.”
Hayden cautiously drew his hand back and fell in beside Samuel.
“Samuel, I need to know. Ruby, is she alive? Did she make it?”
“Keep walking.”
Hayden jammed his hands in his pockets and walked a few more yards with Samuel before turning his head around to look at the scene behind them. Samuel kept his head straight forward, his hands behind his back and snapped at Hayden when he turned.
“Don’t look back. Don’t turn around, just keep walking for God’s sake.”
“What’s going on here?”
Samuel wouldn’t answer him until they had gotten nearly halfway around the blistered fairground. Hayden had been doing his best not to look over at the lot. Finally, Samuel stopped and turned sharply to face him. Hayden couldn’t read him. He couldn’t understand why Samuel was being so evasive.
“Ruby. I need to know if she’s alive.”
“I don’t know for certain.”
Hayden took a step back.
“You don’t know? Well, you made it out, right? Why couldn’t she? I mean, have they, have you, seen anything otherwise? Do you have any proof that she’s not alive?”
Samuel sighed and looked over Hayden’s shoulder at where the big top tent had stood.
“No. I have some reason to believe that she is alive, actually, but you need to give me a moment to explain why we are standing all the way out here.”
Hayden nodded slowly.
“Okay, but you think she’s alive.”
“I think she could be alive. I wasn’t here when it happened. There were a few problems with the altered route and I was already on my way with Chandler to Tuscaloosa to see about working out the advance. I didn’t find out about the fire until the next morning. I have an alibi, though. We were at a filling station in Camden and thank God so was the Wilcox County sheriff’s son. He already admitted to seeing me there with Chandler at the time of the fire. For once in my life, it has proved useful that I am a hard man to forget.”
Hayden shook his head.
“I don’t understand. Alibi?”
“Yes, I have an alibi. I obviously could not have started the fire if I was in Camden. And again, thankfully, the sheriff and the investigators could not imagine any man doing it on my orders. You, however, do not have an alibi. Which is why you have never worked for the Star Light, you have never met Pontilliar, or his daughter, or anyone of any importance in the show. You are simply a country bumpkin whose cousin guessed people’s weight or something of that nature. Understood?”
Hayden balled his hands into fists.
“You don’t think I did this?”
“Of course not.”
Hayden relaxed, but Samuel was still looking at him sternly.
“But this is about to turn into a nightmare of accusations and motives and guilt and so on. There are creditors already coming in, debts, the insurance. The bloody insurance.”
Samuel put his head in his hands. Hayden had never once seen Samuel hide his face. He assumed this was the strongest way he knew how to express emotion.
“I don’t care about the insurance. I need to know about Ruby. Now.”
Samuel slowly raised his head and stood straight and tall again, his face returned to its stoic countenance.
“Someone has to care. Someone has to bring this to order. I spent thirty-five years with Pontilliar. More than half my life. This situation has to be brought to heel. Everything he built cannot be lost in chaos. It cannot be devoured by the vultures. Do you see?”
“You’re talking about justice?”
“I’m talking about order. There is nothing I can do about justice.”
Samuel started walking again.
“I can’t go up against him. But she can.”
Hayden jogged to catch up.
“Him? She? Are you talking about Ruby? What are you saying?”
Samuel kept walking and Hayden threw his hands up in the air and yelled loud enough to make Samuel cringe and stop.
“God Almighty, stop speaking in riddles!”
Samuel stopped, but still didn’t turn around.
“I believe Ruby is alive because something is missing from my wagon that only she knew about. I am going to show you. And I am going to give you something. Then, you must find her and give it to her. Do you understand?”
Hayden sank to his knees, pressing his hands into the warm dirt to hold himself up. The certainty in Samuel’s voice. The plain directive of the task. Ruby was alive. She had to be.
I’m going to tell you a story. A nursery rhyme, really. For a time in the middle of the fourteenth century, when I was feeling particularly tired, I stayed in a little village in Germany, right on the edge of the Black Forest. It was charming, if that’s the sort of thing you go in for. It was the kind of place where the wolves really did come out of the forest to eat small children, which made it authentic and I liked that.
Anyway, the village children used to sing this nursery rhyme in the street:
There once was a man with no eyes.
And since he had no eyes, he had no windows to his soul.
So the people thought he had no soul.
And they tried to kill him to prove it, but could not.
Children were so much more interesting back then. When the threat of monsters and murderous stepmothers lurked around every corner. When stories were true and full of nonsense. Now everything is so rational. So shiny and clean. It’s disappointing, really.
I used to walk the cobblestone streets of that little village and the children would follow me and sing this story. For some reason, the children thought it was about me. I’ve always had my eyes, so they were wrong there, but they were onto something about the soul. Children can do that, you know. See things. Understand things. Draw aside the curtain and peek behind it. That’s why I don’t like them. In their make-believe and their sing-songs they are often right.
I do not have a soul. And many have tried to kill me, baited by me, of course. They have challenged me to duels. Condemned me for seducing their sons or daughters. Rounded me up as a prisoner of war. I like to play along with it sometimes, just to see what will happen. It’s always
the same. I have no soul. I’ll never die. There is no other way around it.
I cannot help but wonder if you hate me now. The past is one thing, but the village in the swamp? The carnival? I haven’t even told you about the church steeple I toppled onto a congregation just this past Sunday morning on my drive over here. Why did I do it? I had the wind in my hair, cigarette between my teeth, lambskin driving gloves gripping the wheel, the engine of my Duesenberg Model A roaring beneath me, not a care in the world. The sun was shining. Why?
Because at the end of the day, of the year, of the century, of the millennium, what else is there? I will tell you. There is nothing. Nothing.
The inside of Samuel’s wagon was coated with ash. The floor was littered with glass, charred paper, scraps of fabric, and odd remnants of the midway that had been swept in by the strange wind that was now said by the few survivors to have accompanied the raging fire. Hayden stepped over a once white, patent leather baby shoe and a collection of balloons tied together and now punctured to shreds. A woman’s straw hat. A Chinese paper lantern that was a prize from the ring toss game. A bouquet of silk flowers with a gold wedding band attached by a purple ribbon. Hayden picked up the flowers and set them on the edge of Samuel’s desk. What had people been doing the moment the fire came sweeping down the midway? What had Ruby been doing? What had she thought? Felt? Hayden closed his eyes and shook his head. She could be alive. She had to be alive. He didn’t have time to think about anything else now but finding her.
Samuel frowned at the flowers on the edge of his desk, now blown clear of papers for the first time since he’d moved into the management wagon. He stepped over a fallen tapestry bunched on the floor and unlocked a door behind his desk. Hayden was sure he had never seen the door before. Samuel waved his hand for Hayden to hurry up.
“Come on. The deputies and investigators will be back from lunch soon. If they find us here, it’s one more reason to suspect us of foul play. Nothing is supposed to be touched until a conclusion is reached concerning who could have started the fire.”
Hayden followed Samuel into the dim, cramped space. Except for a fine layer of ash that had blown underneath the door, the room had been untouched by the fire. It became almost pitch black as they edged against the wall and went farther back.
“Any ideas on who did start the fire?”
“Yes.”
Samuel lit a lamp and the dark area Hayden was standing in came to light. It was a bedroom. Or, as Hayden turned to the wall of books, a library. Books were also strewn across the cot and stacked in piles on the table. The floor was littered with splintered wood and Hayden could see that a cabinet in the corner of the bookcase had been battered and pried apart into pieces. It looked like someone had taken a crowbar or a clawed hammer to it.
“What is this place?”
Samuel gestured around him.
“This was my room. My home. No one but Pontilliar knew about it. And Ruby. I brought her here the day before the fire. And she was the only one, absolutely the only one, who knew what was in that cabinet.”
Samuel pointed to the shards of wood on the floor.
“What was in there is now gone. Do you see? She took it. She must have survived the fire and come here afterwards to take it. She’s alive, Hayden. She has to be.”
Hayden looked up at the shelves of books.
“The entire carnival, her entire world, is burned to the ground. She survives and she comes here to steal something from you? Why? What was in the box? Money? Your savings?”
“A book.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Samuel turned sharply to Hayden.
“I am about to tell you some things that don’t make a lot of sense, and I am going to tell them to you very quickly and I need you to listen. Just listen, don’t comment, don’t ask questions.”
Hayden was about to argue, but all he wanted was to be back on the road, searching for Ruby. The sooner he could do that, the better. He ran his hand over a row of leather bound books and nodded. Samuel bowed his head, collecting his thoughts.
“I said I knew who set the fire. I do. I’m almost positive. The man who came to us in Sulphur, posing as a geek. Daniel Revont. He started the fire, which wasn’t a natural fire at all. I think he started it for Ruby.”
Hayden couldn’t help himself.
“Wait, what? Not a natural fire?”
Samuel slammed the palm of his hand down on the table and a stack of books slid to the floor.
“Will you just listen to me? I have never been a man who wastes words and I don’t intend to start now!”
Hayden sighed deeply and adjusted his hat, waiting for Samuel to continue.
“That man Daniel is no man at all. I still can’t figure out what exactly he is. Ghost. Demon. Jinn.”
Hayden’s mouth hung open, but he kept himself in check, letting Samuel continue.
“He is something not of this world. Not human. The book Ruby took, the one that I showed her, I had thought it would tell me what Daniel was. Instead, it told me something about her. I found a drawing in it, and inside it was a depiction of one of the tattoos that repeats itself across her body. The eye surrounded by three wings. The drawing, I believe, insinuates that the symbol, and hence her tattoos, protects her from something.”
Samuel closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Hayden, no one from the back end of the midway could have survived the fire. I walked through there with the inspectors yesterday. The big top, the small show tents, they got the worst of it. There’s nothing left of the snake show tent. Nothing. It is a graveyard out there.”
Samuel picked up one of the books that had fallen to the floor and held it in his hands.
“I think the fire came from Daniel. And I think she survived it because she was protected from him. Her tattoos saved her.”
Hayden put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels.
“You know you sound crazy, right?”
“Yes. But if I am right, then Ruby is alive. The fire didn’t kill her. Couldn’t kill her. Even if you do not believe anything else I am saying, please believe this much.”
Hayden nodded.
“I can do that.”
Samuel ran his hand over the cover of the book he was holding and then held it out to Hayden.
“Go and find her. And give her this.”
Hayden took the book and looked at the spine. There was no title and the pages were bound by brown leather. It looked ancient.
“Another book?”
Hayden started to lift the cover, but Samuel smacked it closed.
“Do not open it until you are with Ruby. She is seeking. Looking for answers now as to who she is and who Daniel is and why he has committed this atrocity. I’m sure of it. That is why she took The Book of Others. I don’t think it will help her any further, but I believe this one might. This is The Book of Knowns.”
Samuel pointed to the book.
“I had been trying to pin down Daniel since he first arrived, but I was looking in the wrong places. He has hidden from us by appearing right before our eyes. Daniel is no Mwenembago or Amazimu, he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He is neither us nor them. I believe he lives in a liminal state that has thus far shielded him from the prying eyes of seers and shamans, but perhaps not certain scribes. Those he would not bother with. I did not realize this before. I think The Book of Knowns will help and so you must get it to Ruby. I don’t have time to explain more. And for heaven’s sake, quit looking at me like a gaping goldfish.”
Hayden shook his head and gathered himself together. He tucked the book under his arm.
“I’ll take the book with me, but I don’t understand why you’re not coming with me to find Ruby.”
“Someone must take care of the ruin here.”
“And that’s more important than her?”
Samuel slowly shook his head.
“Ruby has an Iku’anga, a path I cannot walk with her. Sh
e must be her own guide, her own shadow. But that does not mean we do not have a role to play. Mine was supplying the knowledge. Yours will be to deliver it. Perhaps more. But in the end, whatever it is Ruby must do, she must do alone.”
Hayden lifted his hat and set it squarely back on his head.
“That makes about as much sense as everything else you’ve said in the past ten minutes. But I’ll find Ruby. After this, the fire, do you think she’s hiding from Daniel?”
Samuel frowned and looked once all around the room before settling his gaze back on Hayden.
“I have no idea where she is. But I can tell you one thing. I don’t think Ruby is running away from Daniel. I think she is running straight for him.”
Hayden put his hands in his pockets and eyed the door in front of him. It looked old and heavy and was carved with a pattern of fleur-de-lis. He focused on the design and tried to think of what he would say if the door opened to him. He could hear footsteps creaking on the hall floorboards above him and the cackle of laughter coming from the downstairs parlor. He could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears. Hayden set his jaw and raised his fist, ready to knock.
Immediately after leaving Samuel, Hayden had gone to the nearest filling station and bought a map. Outside of eastern Texas and some parts of Louisiana and Oklahoma, Hayden was lost. He knew the towns in the usual circuit of the Star Light, but not intimately. Hayden had spread the map of Alabama out on the hood of his car and tried to think like Ruby. It hadn’t been easy. He could go anywhere, do anything, blend in. She was a woman traveling on her own. A woman covered from head to toe in tattoos, who couldn’t walk into a store and buy a stick of gum without being stared at, questioned or worse. And a woman trying to keep a low profile. Someone had just set a match to her entire life.
Hayden had been so focused on Ruby, on knowing whether she was alive or not, that he hadn’t let the destruction of the carnival fully hit him until then. As he stared at the spidery lines on the map, he had realized with a sudden stab in his chest that he would never see January’s smile again. She would never tilt her head over her shoulder and wink. He would never again hear one of Pontilliar’s blustery speeches or play cards with Franklin or trade barbs with the gamesmen and the rousties or ever walk down the midway of the Star Light feeling like it was home. It was gone. It was all gone.
