The Palace of Laughter

by Jon Berkeley

  “We have to go quickly,” she said. “These are bad, bad people.”

  The circus show had ended and the crowd began to spill out into the night air, laughing and jostling. Miles could see Genghis tying back the flaps of the tent. The big man barked something at one of the circus boys, who was waiting for the townspeople to go home so that he could search for their loose change under the wooden benches. Genghis turned toward Little’s wagon. “Quickly!” said Miles. He pulled Little down into the shadow beneath the wagon and crawled in after her. As they crouched in the darkness, a faint glimmer of light caught his eye. Some sort of ticket lay in the long grass. It shone faintly as he picked it up and slipped it into his pocket with barely a glance. He saw Genghis’s windswept ankles appear by the bottom step and stop there.

  “Hell’s teeth!” hissed Genghis’s voice. He ran up the steps and peered into the empty wagon. The door slammed behind him as he stomped back down the steps. “Now I’m for the high jump,” he muttered, as he strode off in the direction of the Great Cortado’s wagon.

  As soon as he was gone, Miles and Little crept out from under the trailer and slipped into the crowd that was streaming past them toward the exit. A large woman swirled by with a gaggle of small children hanging on to her skirts, and Miles and Little joined them, trotting to keep up. As they passed the Great Cortado’s wagon they could hear the ringmaster’s raised voice through the curtained windows.

  “Then get after them, you great barrel of pork! I want the girl back in her wagon within the hour, or you’ll find yourself starring in a disappearing act of your own!”

  “What about the boy?”

  The Great Cortado spat in disgust. “Give him to The Null.”

  “Give him to The Null? But it’ll tear him to pieces!”

  “Stop whining, Genghis,” barked the ringmaster. “The boy’s no use to me, and nobody will miss him. It will be the last time he tries to play games with the Great Cortado.”

  Genghis emerged from Cortado’s trailer, and at the same time the large woman in whose skirts Miles and Little were hiding stopped to pick up one of the children who had tripped and fallen. It took her some time to stop the child’s crying, and Miles had to bite his tongue to keep from telling her to hurry up.

  As they neared the circus exit they could see a bare-chested fire-eater standing by the ticket box, belching balls of flame over the heads of the departing townspeople. The people ducked to avoid having their hats set on fire, and as they did so, the dwarf with the helmet (who had managed to keep his trousers on this time) was handing them silvery tickets like the one Miles had found under Little’s wagon. “Congratulations,” he told each one in turn. “Another lucky winner.” Beyond the fire-eater Miles could see fat-bellied Genghis, who had stationed himself at the exit and was scanning the children in the crowd for escapees.

  “Not that way,” said Miles. He steered Little out of the crowd into the shadow of one of the cages. He peered around the back of the wagon, but one of the circus boys stood there, holding a snarling dog on a short lead. The dog strained and growled, and it took all the boy’s strength to hold him.

  “He’s had a splinter in his back paw for weeks,” whispered Little, “and no one has noticed it. That’s why he’s so mean.”

  “How do you know?” asked Miles

  The girl looked at him in surprise. “He told me,” she said.

  Something warm and wet slopped against Miles’s ear, making him jump. The llamas had crowded against the door of their cage, and one had stuck his tongue out between the bars. Little giggled. “I think you should let them out,” she whispered to Miles. “They want to go for a little gallop.”

  She nodded at the iron bolt on the cage door. It was unlocked. Miles eased it open and slid the door back. Immediately a woolly mass of llamas leaped out of the cage and charged happily into the shrieking crowd, sending people diving into the mud. One knocked against the fire-eater, who belched an extra-large fireball straight at Genghis’s head. Genghis leaned backward in the nick of time, but not quickly enough to save his cigar and the front of his hat brim, which both went up in smoke. He roared and swung a fist at the fire-eater. In the confusion Miles and Little darted behind Genghis and in among the hurrying townspeople on the road. Miles held Little’s arm in case she tripped. She seemed to weigh nothing at all.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as they ran.

  “To see Lady Partridge,” said Miles. “She’ll know what to do. But first we’ll go to my barrel to get my knife and cut that rope off you.”

  “Why do you keep it in a barrel?” said Little.

  “I live in the barrel,” said Miles, lifting Little over the ditch and starting up the hill. “It’s my home.”

  “Oh,” said Little. “Does Lady Partridge live in a barrel too?”

  “Of course not,” said Miles. “She lives up a tree.”

  Little gave a sudden gasp as she twisted her ankle on a loose stone. She sat down on a tussock and grimaced with the pain. Miles pulled up some cold dock leaves and wrapped them around her ankle. “We’re nearly at the barrel,” he said. “You can rest there for a few minutes before we move on.”

  He helped her hop up the last part of the slope. She winced with each hop.

  “It’s a pity you don’t have those circus wings on,” said Miles. “You could fly the rest of the way.”

  Little laughed her musical giggle. “You’re funny!” she said.

  Once inside the barrel he took his pocketknife from under the mattress and cut the rope binding her wrists. “They weren’t taking any chances with you, were they?” he said.

  “They never tied me up like this before,” she said. “I think something bad would have happened tonight, if you hadn’t helped me escape.”

  Miles wrapped her in the overcoat, and she watched him silently as he coiled the rope and put it in his pocket, along with his last apple and his pocketknife. He went to the door of the barrel and looked down the hill to see what was going on below.

  “Are they looking for us?” asked Little.

  “I don’t think so,” said Miles. Darkness stole over the field as a cloud covered the moon, leaving the swaying strings of colored bulbs to cast a dim light over the scurrying circus people as they rounded up the last of the reluctant llamas. When the moon emerged again, Miles noticed a knot of people gathered around the red wagon in which The Null was housed. Two boys carried lanterns, and there were several strongmen holding long poles and heavy chains. Two of them held up what appeared to be a net. Genghis stood to one side of the wagon door. It looked as if he were removing the padlocks.

  Miles felt the floor of his stomach fall away. “Oh no,” he whispered.

  “Oh no what?” asked Little.

  “It’s The Null,” said Miles. “I think they’re letting it out.”

  “Oh no oh no,” said Little. “We have to go now, at once. Far away.”

  “You can’t walk, and I can’t go fast enough carrying you,” said Miles. “You’ll have to stay hidden here, and I’ll draw them off.”

  Little shook her head. “But I…” She paused, looking uncertain. “Are you sure I’ll be safe here?”

  Miles covered her completely with the overcoat. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “Just keep out of sight, and whatever you do, don’t make a sound until I come back for you.”

  “Be careful,” came a muffled voice from under the overcoat.

  “Don’t worry,” said Miles. “I know this hill inside out, and they’re strangers, even if they do have a monster with them.” He wished he felt as confident as he sounded.

  He slipped back down the way they had come, peering through the shifting darkness for any sign of the circus men and their beast. The moon was hidden behind another cloud, and the wind gusted up the hill, flattening the grass and stealing the breath from his mouth. A strong odor like rotten bananas reached his nose, mixed with the stale cigar smell that surrounded Genghis like an invisible fog, and he heard the clink of ch
ains and the nervous shouts of the strongmen. An eerie barking laugh made the hair stand up on his scalp.

  He left the path and pushed through the bushes, heading directly away from the barrel. As he half ran, half slithered down the side of the hill, he strained his ears for any sign that the circus men and their beast were following him. He remembered the smaller children he had tried to bring with him on his failed escapes from Pinchbucket House, and the beating they would all receive from Fowler Pinchbucket on their return. Miles had a feeling that Little’s fate, if his diversion should fail, would be something far worse. The men’s shouts were getting closer now, and he could see the lanterns swinging crazily as the boys who held them clambered over the rocky ground. They had picked up his trail all right, and they were gaining on him.

  Deep beneath the town of Larde, an ancient stream flowed through a dark tunnel before emerging through a stone arch below Beggar’s Gate. Miles had used this underground stream in two of his failed escape attempts, and it was to the stone mouth of the tunnel that he was headed now, along the slippery bank of the stream. He knew his footprints in the mud would make him easy to follow.

  The moon came out again as he reached the tunnel mouth, and as he ducked down into the darkness, he risked a glance over his shoulder. The Null was no more than twenty yards behind him, a hideous shadow that seemed to suck the moonlight into itself like a black hole. It had shaken off the strongmen, and its three stout chains dragged loose behind it from its iron collar. The creature’s red mouth opened wide in the blackness and its manic laugh followed Miles into the tunnel.

  The tunnel was clammy and pitch black, and cold water soaked Miles as he ran through the shallow stream. The faint moonlight from behind was blocked by the huge beast that splashed through the water on all fours, almost at his heels. A little way up the tunnel was an iron gate, and he knew from his Pinchbucket House escapes numbers three and five that he could just about squeeze himself between the bars. He was struck by the awful thought that he may have grown too big since the last time he tried this, and a moment later he was struck by the bars themselves as he ran full tilt into them in the inky darkness. His head met the iron gate with a loud clang, and he almost fell backward under the feet of his pursuer. With stars exploding in front of his eyes, he stumbled to one side and began to wedge himself into the narrow space between the bars. He breathed in, and turned his head sideways, but it was no good. He was stuck fast.

  In the cold darkness, deep below the sleeping town of Larde, The Null hit the center of the gate like a giant hairy cannonball, almost wrenching it free of the crumbling stone walls. The impact buckled the gate, pulling the bars apart slightly and releasing Miles from its rusty grip. He fell through the gate and onto his knees, and began to crawl through the water, his head throbbing. The Null was rattling the bars and screeching with rage. Between its shouts he could hear Genghis’s wheezy voice echoing up the tunnel.

  “You, Knoblauch and Kartoffel, get in there and see what’s going on.”

  “Not me, sir, I ain’t going into the dark with that thing.”

  “You’d better get in there, you haddock-brained half-wits, or I’ll have you boiled in vinegar,” shouted Genghis.

  “You’d best heat up the vinegar then, sir, ’cause I ain’t going in no tunnel with that devil-thing.”

  There was more shouting and cursing, mixed with The Null’s angry gibbering, as Miles felt his way along the left-hand wall, looking for the rusting iron ladder that led up to the drain in Crooked Street. The ache in his head was subsiding, and he felt pleased with himself. The Null would keep them occupied for a while, leaving him to slip back to the barrel, collect Little and bring her to Lady Partridge. She would be safe there, and Lady Partridge would know what to do.

  Miles climbed the ladder and pushed at the heavy grating above his head. It was jammed shut with dirt, and he had to work at it with his pocketknife for some time before the grate would open. He clambered through the opening and crept through the winding alleys, shivering in his thin jacket. He had lost the heavy keys somewhere in the darkness. He kept to the shadows as he passed the circus, dark now except for the glow of lamplight from some of the trailer windows. Somewhere a concertina played a cheerful tune, and there was the sound of laughter and the clinking of bottles. There was no sign of The Null or its reluctant handlers. “It must be back in its wagon by now,” he whispered to Tangerine, who was cold and damp too, and not feeling talkative.

  When he came within shouting distance of his barrel, he stopped. Something was wrong. He could smell the rotten-banana smell again, and there was harsh laughter coming from the direction of his home. Miles sank down and began to crawl through the long grass, his heart thumping. As he neared the spot where the tiger had sat the night before, the moon emerged from behind a cloud and shone on a terrible scene.

  The Null had not been returned to its barred wagon at all. It sat among the smashed ribs of Miles’s barrel like the black heart of some ruined animal, tearing chunks from the mattress and stuffing them into its mouth. The strongmen had a tight grip on the chains again, and the boys with the lanterns leaned against the trunk of the pine tree, smoking the cigarette butts that the strongmen had thrown aside. Genghis kicked through the ashes of old campfires, a cigar glowing beneath his singed bowler hat. A handful of gnawed bones lay in the grass next to The Null, and there was no sign of Little anywhere.

  CHAPTER SIX

  LADY PARTRIDGE

  Miles Wednesday, homeless and headstruck, wormed through the long grass in a wide circle around his smashed barrel. His head throbbed from the impact of the iron gate, and fear crawled over his skin like a swarm of icy centipedes. He found a vantage point behind a small twisted bush, and tried to blank out the pictures that ran through his mind of what The Null might have done to Little. The beast had tired of chewing the mattress now and was beating it with a curved rib from the barrel. Tufts of white stuffing rolled up the hill before the breeze.

  Genghis blew his nose on a large gray handkerchief that he had pulled from his sleeve. “Knoblauch! Kartoffel! Get that creature to its feet and let’s get it back into its box,” he said. “And don’t let go of it this time.” He gave the ashes an angry kick.

  “Wasn’t our fault, sir,” said Knoblauch, his white hair standing up from his scalp like a yard broom. “Monster was ’ungry.”

  “It hunts better when it’s hungry, you bonehead,” said Genghis. “But it’s supposed to be hunting runaway brats, not flocks of sheep.”

  “It only ate two, sir.”

  “Ought to have the beast put down,” muttered Kartoffel. “Gives me nightmares, it does.”

  “Course it does,” said Knoblauch. “It’s meant to. That’s why the boss keeps it, innit? Keep everyone in line.”

  “Stop flapping your gums and get moving,” barked Genghis. “We have to get The Null back into its wagon before the Lardespeople roll out of their beds and find something’s been snacking on their mutton.”

  The strongmen yanked on the chains, and The Null whipped around in the remains of the mattress and gave a cackle that made the hair stand up on Miles’s neck. Two of the strongmen pulled it after the retreating figure of Genghis, while another couple hauled from behind, stumbling and slipping as they struggled to keep the creature from mauling the men in front.

  Miles waited behind the rock a few minutes more, shivering in his wet clothes. He stared at the bones that lay scattered in the grass. If The Null had been eating sheep, he thought, perhaps it had not devoured Little after all. But if not, where was she? She could not have run away with her twisted ankle. Perhaps she was under what remained of the mattress, squashed flat by the weight of the monster. He crept forward and stood before the mattress, summoning up the courage to look underneath. He bent and flipped it over. It was lighter than before, having lost most of its stuffing, and there was nothing underneath but splintered wood and his old biscuit tin, entirely flattened. The overcoat lay in the grass where it had been toss
ed aside.

  Miles flopped down on the disemboweled mattress and put his head in his hands. “This is what happens,” he muttered to Tangerine, “when we meddle in things that aren’t our business. Now the girl is missing, and we have nowhere to live.” There was no answer from Tangerine.

  A pinecone fell from the tree above and bounced off the back of his neck. Another one hit the top of his head. Miles looked up at the tree. “That’s right, drop your cones on me,” he shouted. “Do I look like I don’t have enough troubles already?”

  “I’m sorry,” said the tree in a familiar voice. “I just wanted to make sure it was safe.”

  “Little?” said Miles.

  A pale face appeared in the darkness between the branches. “Have they gone away?” asked Little.

  “They’ve gone away,” said Miles. A wave of relief rose from his frozen feet and swept through him like laughter. “You can come down now.”

  Little scrambled down the twisted trunk. Her skin was scratched by the bark. Miles shook out the overcoat and wrapped it around her. It trailed on the ground like a royal train.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know you told me to stay out of sight, but I heard someone coming, and I knew it wasn’t you. You don’t smell that bad. So I hid up the tree.”

  “You’re lucky you got up there before they saw you,” said Miles. He looked at the small girl, who reached no more than halfway to the tree’s lowest branches, and wondered how she had managed to get up there at all.

  “Let’s go,” said Miles. “I’ll carry you on my back.”

  Little did not seem as light as before, but Miles suspected that his old overcoat counted for much of the weight. He followed a familiar path between the rocks and gorse bushes, over the brow of the hill and down into the small wood on the other side. Dry leaves whispered under his feet, and overhead the wind rustled through the treetops, making the branches creak. Out of sight of his smashed home he could imagine that it was still there, warm and dry, waiting for him to return. To push the picture of the demented beast out of his mind he thought about the tiger who had visited him the night before.