by Jon Berkeley
“They’ve gone,” said Miles. He turned to look at Little, but she was staring at the tree where the elephants had been tethered the morning before. Her face, if it were possible, looked even whiter than usual. Miles followed her gaze. For a moment he could see nothing, then he became aware of a figure standing in the shadow of the tree. Although he could not make out any features, nor even if it was a man or a woman, he was sure the figure was staring straight at them.
“I’ll go and ask him,” said Miles, “or her. Maybe they know where the circus has gone.”
Little grabbed his arm, and though she was light as a feather her grip was painfully tight.
“No,” she said urgently, “let’s go.” She pulled him by the elbow, turning in the direction of the disappearing wheel ruts.
“Wait,” said Miles. The figure under the tree seemed to be moving toward them. He felt a strong urge to see the person’s face, which still seemed indistinct. It was not that the distance between them was great, but his eyes felt heavy and he found it strangely difficult to focus.
“Stay awake!” hissed Little, pinching his arm so tightly now that he tried to pull himself free of her grip. “Please, Miles.” She seemed on the point of tears, and he looked at her in surprise. “Come with me, now,” she pleaded.
He began to walk slowly along the road. He suddenly felt as though he had not slept for a year. “Walk faster,” urged Little. He turned to look over his shoulder, and again she pinched him hard. “Don’t look back,” she said. “Just keep walking.”
Miles forced his leaden legs to keep pace with Little, and they walked quickly and silently toward the distant mountains. A cart passed them on its way into town with the muffled clanking of full milk churns, and Miles could no longer resist the temptation to look back the way they had come, but the figure was no longer anywhere to be seen.
In the shortening shadows of the late morning, Miles and Little walked along the center of the road, farther from the town of Larde than Miles had ever been before. They had followed the muddy tracks of the circus wagons until they faded into the road, and continued walking, with no plan left to them but to find the circus wherever it stopped next. Besides, as Miles had pointed out, the road followed the train tracks, more or less, which must lead eventually to the Palace of Laughter.
As they walked, Miles thought about the figure they had seen in the circus field. Little, who seemed incapable of remaining upset or anxious for long, was laughing at the chattering of the birds in the hedgerows, and he felt almost reluctant to bring the subject up, but his curiosity would not leave him alone. The tiredness he had felt had melted away, leaving only the ache of his feet in their cracked boots.
“Who was that, back there in the field?” he asked.
Little fell silent for a minute before answering. “Someone I thought I recognized,” she said.
“Someone from the circus?”
Little shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. “It was better not to risk it.” She gave him a sidelong glance, then turned her eyes quickly back to the road.
“Look,” she said, pointing ahead of them. “There’s a river crossing the road.”
Miles shaded his eyes and looked where she was pointing. He knew she was not telling him all she knew, but it was obvious she wanted to change the subject, and he did not see any point in pressing her further. He shook his head. “That’s just a mirage,” he said.
“A mirage?”
“Lady Partridge explained them to me. It looks like water, but it’s just the hot air bending the light.”
Little laughed. “It looks like water because it is water,” she said. She sounded so convinced that Miles almost expected to find himself shortly wading through a stream, but when they reached the slight rise where the mirage had appeared, the road was dry.
“See?” said Miles. “Dry as a dragon’s tongue. The water was just an illusion.”
“The water was here, and it still is,” insisted Little. “It just doesn’t want to be seen.”
“If you say so, Little,” he said, but she had picked up a praying mantis and was staring into its green bug eyes as it perched grandly on her outstretched finger, the subject of disappearing water already forgotten.
Around midday they arrived at a small hamlet, little more than a cluster of farms and a small village square with a row of shops and a tiny church. A sign by the side of the road said? WELCOME TO HAY. POP. 481. TWINNED WITH CARTHAGE. At the far end of the square stood a rambling inn with benches and tables outside. The inn was called the Surly Hen, and it appeared to have been built over several generations by owners with very different notions of what an inn should look like. The main part had two steeply pitched roofs rising to sharp points, with leaded windows set into white plastered walls that were divided into neat shapes by a web of black beams. Growing out of that was a low, small-windowed extension, roofed with an untidy thatch that looked like it needed a haircut. There were several other additions ranging in style from mock Gothic to simply indescribable.
The long tables outside the inn were crowded with local farmers and travelers at lunch, shoveling chunks of bread and sausage into their stubbly faces and washing them down with pitchers of dark wine. Miles looked at them curiously. An air of resigned misery seemed to surround them like a fog, and hardly a word was spoken as they ate. Two small girls chased each other among the tables, laughing, but no one paid them any attention. At the nearest table sat a stocky man in a shapeless hat, and a plump woman with several chins. They had a large feed spread out on the rough boards before them, and they were working their way through it with a kind of sad vigor. A half-demolished pie sat in front of each of them, and with a large forkful of steak and pastry on its way into her mouth it looked like Mrs. Farmer was ahead in that particular race. Between them on the table sat a basket piled with crusty bread, and a bowl of green olives that Mr. Farmer was tossing in handfuls between his thin lips after every mouthful of pie. Two plates of sausage were all but done for.
Miles felt a yawning cavern in his stomach at the sight of all this food. His morning bowl of hot porridge seemed a lifetime ago. Mrs. Farmer caught sight of him standing in the road, transfixed at the sight of her enormous lunch. She stared sadly at him for a moment, then returned her attention to her food. As Miles contemplated the best way to get himself and Little fed, without so much as a brass penny between them, the landlady of the inn bustled out among the tables. By contrast to her customers she wore a broad grin, and sang snatches of some tune that must have sounded considerably better in its original form, or it would have been strangled at birth.
She planted her tray on the end of Mr. and Mrs. Farmer’s table. “Now, ducks,” she said happily. “One jug of wine and a bottle of Tau-Tau’s.” She took from her pocket a small bottle with a bright green label, which she uncorked and emptied into an earthenware wine jug. She picked the jug up, swirled its contents around for a moment, then slopped a generous measure into two glass tumblers, which she plonked on the table. The farmer and his wife picked the glasses up greedily and emptied the contents in unison. The farmer refilled them at once.
They carried on eating with no less gusto, but it seemed that Mrs. Farmer’s cheeks were growing redder by the moment. She glanced in Miles’s direction again, and stopped in mid-chew, a ribbon of cabbage hanging from the corner of her mouth. She nudged her husband sharply in the ribs. He had just put his tumbler to his lips, and took more wine up his nose than into his mouth. While he coughed and spluttered into a grubby handkerchief, Mrs. Farmer beckoned to Miles. “Come here, come here,” she called, a smile breaking out on her plump face. “Don’t be shy, lad.”
The farmer glared at Miles as he shoved his handkerchief back up his sleeve. “No beggin’ allowed here,” he grunted, tearing off a chunk of bread and wedging it into his cheek to allow other food free passage through his mouth.
“Oh put a sock in it, George,” said Mrs. Farmer, whose mood seemed to be brightening by the second. “Can’t you see t
he boy’s ’ungry? Looks like he’s never had a proper feed in his life. Where’d you come from, lad? Call your little sister over—there’s plenty ’ere for both of you.”
Mr. Farmer stared over Miles’s shoulder in puzzlement. “What little sister, woman? There’s only another young lad there.”
“Don’t be daft, George! Them’s just boy’s clothes. Anyone can see it’s a little girl what’s wearing ’em, ain’t that right, lad?” Miles nodded. “She’s shy,” he said.
“Bless ’er,” said the plump woman, chuckling, it seemed, at nothing in particular. She emptied some of the bread basket into her pie dish, filling the empty space with the remaining slices of sausage and a lump of rank cheese.
Mr. Farmer grunted, but the miserable expression seemed to be melting from his face too, like winter snow. “I don’t spend the day breakin’ my back to feed every ’ungry urchin that ’appens by,” he muttered, though none too loudly.
“You don’t spend the day breaking yer back at all, you lazy old coot, unless it’s liftin’ a beer tankard you’re talking about.” She handed the bread basket to Miles, throwing in the last few olives for good measure. “’Ere, lad, this’ll stop your ribs knockin’ together. Take it over to your sister and mind you share it, eh?”
“Thank you,” said Miles. He hesitated by the table.
“Well?” said Mr. Farmer. “What is it, sonny? Want me socks and britches as well?” He laughed loudly at his own wit.
“I was just wondering if you knew where I could find a place called the Palace of Laughter.”
The reaction to Miles’s question was not what he had expected. Mrs. Farmer’s face went strangely blank, yet at the same time her mouth stretched in a sort of strained grin that was quite unlike the sunny smile she had worn a moment before. A strangled whinny came from the back of her throat. Mr. Farmer stared fixedly at Miles, as though he were trying to remember where he had seen him before. “Never ’eard of it,” he said eventually. He picked up the wine jug and emptied it down his throat, then he and his wife got up from their bench without another glance at Miles, for all the world as though he had become invisible. They walked a slightly meandering path to their battered old car, giggling like a couple of schoolchildren, and drove away in a cloud of dust.
Miles stood for a moment staring after them. He noticed that some of the people at the nearest tables were looking at him with suspicion, so he took the basket of leftovers and hurried over to where Little was waiting for him. She sat on the rim of a stone fountain that stood in the center of the small square, dangling her fingers in the cool water. “Why did those people leave so suddenly?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I asked them if they knew the way to the Palace of Laughter, and they reacted very strangely. They said they’d never heard of it, but I don’t think they were telling the truth. I suppose I could ask someone else.”
Little put a piece of cheese in her mouth. She pulled a face and bit off a chunk of bread to dilute the sour taste, and shook her head. “I don’t think anyone here is going to tell us. As long as we can still see the train tracks we must be going in the right direction.”
They ate in silence for a while. The midday sun was hot for October, and after they had quenched the thirst of their long walk with handfuls of clear water, they sat down on the warm paving stones, leaning against the fountain’s smooth rim. With his belly full and the sun on his face, Miles felt sleepy. He looked around him for a moment, half expecting to see the strange figure the circus had left in its wake, but there was no one to be seen but the chuckling landlady, her melancholy customers and the two small girls, who had been joined by a blond boy and were squatting in the dust making patterns with pebbles. “We’ll rest here for a few minutes before we go on,” said Miles, but Little was already asleep.
Miles felt in his pocket for Tangerine, who gave his fingers a squeeze. He seemed tired too, although he had done none of the walking. A fly buzzed somewhere above their heads, and wood pigeons hooted softly in the trees beside the inn. Squinting through his eyelashes, Miles noticed a circus poster tacked to a pole across the square. Beneath the words “CIRCUS OSCURO,” the tiger, magnificent and fierce, reared in the center of a flaming hoop, while a fearless boy in a red suit with gold epaulets brandished a whip in the background. He wondered whether he would ever again meet the tiger he had spoken to in the moonlight. It seemed such a long time ago.
Miles felt his head nodding, and the tickle of Little’s soot-blackened hair as she leaned against his shoulder. “She weighs nothing at all,” Miles thought as he drifted into sleep. “She must have hollow bones, like a bird.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
TANGERINE
Miles Wednesday, stone-warmed and Tangerine-less, blinked in the afternoon sun and wondered for a moment where he was. He lifted Little gently upright and…just a moment…Tangerine-less? His hand dived into his pocket, but somehow he already knew what he would find there. A silver ticket to the Palace of Laughter, and no bear. Where had he gone? He shook Little’s shoulder.
“Little—wake up! Have you got Tangerine?”
“No,” she yawned. “Isn’t he in your pocket?”
Miles shook his head. He stood up and looked into the fountain behind them, but there was nothing in the water besides a few yellow leaves. He had a panicky feeling, as though the ground were falling away beneath his feet. The square itself was almost empty. At the inn tables the crowd had thinned out, but there were still clusters of people, hunched over beer tankards and talking of horses and hoes and the storms that came down on them from the mountain. Small bottles with green labels stood empty on some of the tables, and if Miles had not been searching so anxiously for Tangerine he might have noticed something odd. Unlike the other knots of silent, gray-faced diners, the people sitting at those tables laughed and chatted as you would expect people enjoying a long lunch and good company to do.
Miles shaded his eyes with his hand and searched the shadows beneath the tables for a sign of Tangerine. He spotted him after a moment. A wave of relief swept over him. The bear was ambling between the table legs toward the door of the inn. Miles took from his pocket the cap that Lady Partridge had given him, and pulled it low over his eyes. He made his way among the tables to the point where he had last seen Tangerine. No one paid him any attention. He bent and looked quickly beneath the table next to him. Tangerine was not under that one, but he could see him in the shadow of the table behind that. The bear had come face to face with a large tabby cat, who stood frozen with his tail fluffed, and stared at him with unblinking green eyes.
Miles ducked under the table and crawled between the muddy boots toward Tangerine. The cat hunched lower and shifted his paws, preparing to spring. Miles wriggled over a crossbar between two table legs, desperately trying to reach Tangerine, who had decided that hide-and-seek must be the cat’s game, and was trying to hide himself behind a pair of ankles.
The ankles that Tangerine had chosen to hide behind were dressed in lemon yellow socks, plainly visible beneath too-short trousers. As he stuck his threadbare orange head between the ankles and stared at the slightly bemused cat, two things happened at once. A hand reached down from above the table, and the cat sprang. The tabby cat and the owner of the lemon-yellow ankles reached the small bear at the same moment, and the cat’s claws sunk themselves into the man’s hand instead.
Genghis (for who else would wear lemon-yellow socks?) staggered to his feet with a yell. The bench fell with a crash. He let fly several strange curses that you would only hear in a circus, and not very often at that, but he did not let go of Tangerine. He aimed a kick at the cat, who bolted for the nearest tree and ran straight up the trunk until he disappeared among the rattling brown leaves. Miles clambered out from under the table, the panicky feeling growing stronger in the pit of his stomach. Genghis was sucking the torn knuckles of his right hand, and holding Tangerine tightly in his left. Miles cleared his throat loudly, the cap still pulled low over his eyes. Genghis tur
ned to him with a face like thunder.
“That’s my bear,” said Miles. He could see Tangerine pushing feebly at Genghis’s thick stubby fingers. He frowned at him desperately to try and get him to lie still, but Tangerine took no notice.
Genghis took a good look at Tangerine for the first time. His sly eyes widened as he saw the bear struggling in his grasp. “Not anymore it ain’t,” he said. “Now take a hike before I polish my boot with your backside.”
“Give him to me!” shouted Miles, grabbing Genghis’s wrist. People stared from the surrounding tables, but Miles didn’t care. All the love that a luckier boy might have given to his parents, Miles had given to Tangerine, and he was not about to let him go.
Genghis reached over with his bleeding right hand and grabbed Miles by the collar in a grip that was starting to feel too familiar by half. He tried to squirm from Genghis’s hold, and the cap was knocked from his head. Genghis gave a start. “Well skin me alive!” he said. “It’s you again, you little weasel. You seem to be everywhere, except when you’re nowhere to be found, that is.” He shoved Tangerine into his overcoat pocket and leaned closer to Miles, his words floating on stale cigar breath. “My boss would like a word with you, little weasel. And I don’t think he’ll be offering you no job, neither.”
The landlady of the Surly Hen had emerged again from the inn’s dark interior to see what the commotion was about. “Leave that young ’un alone, you big lummox,” she said. “’E’s just a boy.”
“Get lost,” growled Genghis, swinging around to face the landlady. As he did so, Miles twisted in his jacket, sinking his teeth into Genghis’s hand at the base of his thumb and stamping on his foot with all the strength he could muster. Genghis yelled and let go of Miles’s collar. He stuck his clawed and bitten hand back into his mouth and aimed a clumsy swipe at Miles with his other. Miles ducked, but not fast enough. The big man’s fist hit him squarely in the ear, sending him sprawling on the dusty paving stones. Through the ringing in his ears he could just hear the landlady squawking at Genghis, her face red with anger and her finger stabbing the air in his direction. The diners were glaring at Genghis now too, and from the shadows of the inn door a large bearded man was emerging, hitching his gravy-stained cook’s trousers up to an imaginary waist and squinting in the light. He had a large meat cleaver in his hand, and did not look happy to be disturbed in his work. “What is it?” he growled.
