The Palace of Laughter

by Jon Berkeley

  “Because Rufus told me you might slice me in half with one of your swords.”

  Baltinglass stroked his stubbly chin. “He’s got a point there,” he said.

  “Do you think I could have a few apples to bring with me?” asked Miles. He had mangaged to eat one as he picked them, but his stomach was still rumbling. Baltinglass leaped to his feet. “By the trousers of the Sphinx!” he bellowed. “Your friend is waiting, and the sands are running on your mission, while we’re sitting here nattering in the sun like two old men. Come to think of it, I am an old man, but you’ve got a fate to catch. By all means take as many apples as you can carry, my boy. You’ll find a bag in that cupboard there, and while you’re loading it I’ll have a rummage in the supply depot and see what else I can provide you with. An ill-equipped explorer is like a camel with no hump….”

  Miles took a bag and began to fill it with apples. He took as many as he could fit in.

  “…and only three legs,” shouted Baltinglass from the darkness of the house, amidst the clattering of tins and the squeaking of corks in bottles.

  He emerged after a while with an assortment of foods—dried sausage, bread, cheese and olives, a jar of his apple jelly and a bottle of elderflower wine. “Open up another one of those bags, my boy, and I’ll drop these in. They should keep you going for a while.”

  “Thank you,” said Miles.

  “Not at all, not at all. I have a very fine Berber sword I could lend you too, with a hilt of black horn, or a Gurkha knife if that’s more your size. Just in case you come across that Weedle lad. He’d get up to no more mischief if he were diced like a carrot.”

  “I don’t think that would be a very good idea,” said Miles.

  “You don’t, eh?” said Baltinglass, sounding slightly disappointed.

  “You need him to pick and peel all those apples, for one thing.”

  “Ah, you’ve got a point there. I used to do it all myself, you know, but I’m getting a little stiff around the joints for that sort of thing nowadays.”

  “How did you manage to do it on your own?”

  “Well the ladder’s not hard to find, my boy. I fall over the blasted thing every day. The trees are always where I left them last, and the apples smell so sweet I can almost see them in front of my face. They have a green smell, Master Wednesday. The greenest smell there is.”

  He led the way to the front door and unlocked it. Miles stepped out into the empty street, the sack of provisions and the bag of apples slung over his shoulder. He turned and shook Baltinglass’s hand. “I’m sorry I lied to you,” he said.

  The old man wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. “Tactical necessity, my boy. Think nothing of it. I only wish I was able to come with you. My heart is like a swallow in this old rib cage, Master Wednesday. Now you get on with your adventure before it leaves without you, and may good luck dog your heels.”

  “Thank you,” said Miles again. As he hurried down the dusty street toward the olive grove, he heard Baltinglass bellow after him: “And give my regards to Gertrude when you see her. Tell her she could have seen the farthest corners of the world with me, if she hadn’t married that benighted fool Partridge.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  BIG LAUGHING HEAD

  Rufus Weedle, sly-eyed and slick-witted, sat in the lee of a haystack boring a hole into one arm of a forked stick. The stick was thick and smooth, cut from a branch of ash with the bark stripped off. With a length of strong elastic it would make a lethal catapult, and woe betide any small bird that showed its beak once he had it finished. He heard someone walking through the hay stubble, and wormed his way quickly back into the haystack, but not quickly enough.

  “There you are!” said Miles. “I’ve been looking for you.” He could tell that Rufus was more than a little surprised to see him.

  “Looking for me?” said Rufus. His small eyes squinted nervously up at Miles.

  “Of course. How else can I give you your share of the apples?” He swung the bulging sack off his shoulder and held it up for Rufus to see.

  “But…how did you get them?”

  It was Miles’s turn to act surprised. “Exactly as you said. I collected his eggs for him and he gave me the apples. Gave me lots of other stuff too, but I forgot to ask for another bag to put your share in. Look—my friend is waiting over there in the olive grove. Come over with me, and we’ll sort everything into the two bags so you can have one to take home with you.”

  Rufus stood up and shook the hayseeds from his collar. He looked baffled to find that his tall story had somehow twisted itself into reality, but curiosity had got hold of his devious little mind, and he followed Miles down among the olive trees. They reached the shelter in the stone wall. Miles poked his head into the shadows and said, “It’s me. I’ve brought you some lunch.” He stood aside and motioned Rufus in before him.

  We will never know who the boy expected to meet in the darkened cave, but it’s a safe bet that he was not expecting to find himself face to face with a Bengal tiger. This tiger was staring at him with interest, and he appeared to have already caught a small girl. Rufus let out a sort of whimper, and tried to reverse out of the shadows, but Miles was standing right behind him. He winked at the tiger over Rufus’s shoulder, although he was not at all sure that winks worked on tigers.

  “Well that’s very gracious of you, tub boy,” purred the tiger. “It’s nice to see you bring back someone with a bit of meat on him for once. I don’t suppose you’ve got any sauce, have you? I do like a bit of relish with a plump boy.”

  Rufus let out a long moan of fear. His knees had gone wobbly and he had to support himself on the wall with one hand. The apples he had stolen from the tree must have been bad. Not only did the tiger sound like he was talking, but the little girl appeared to be grinning at him.

  “I’ve got some Baltinglass’s Famous Homemade Apple and Thyme Jelly,” said Miles. “Apparently it’s a big favorite with royalty.”

  “That sounds like just the thing,” said the tiger, but at this point the terrified Rufus found his voice.

  “A-a-actually, n-now that you mention it, I ha-have to help an old m-man to make some apple j-jelly,” he stammered.

  “So you do,” said Miles. “He mentioned something about that. Eighteen hundred apples’ worth, I think he said.”

  “What a pity,” said the tiger. “It’s not often we have someone for lunch. Are you quite sure you have to go?”

  “P-p-positive,” said Rufus. He turned and shoved past Miles, his face drained of color, and took off at a fast if shaky pace toward the house of Baltinglass of Araby. He didn’t once look back.

  “I trust he deserved that, whoever he is,” said the tiger.

  “More than you can imagine,” said Miles. “Would you really have eaten him?”

  The tiger met his eyes with his cool gaze. “You should not play games with a hungry tiger,” he said, “if you care what happens to the players. And now I think we had better get back on the road before the whole village comes out with their best pitchforks.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” said Miles. “If he does tell anyone, they won’t believe a single word.”

  Miles and Little ate their fill of the food that Baltinglass of Araby had given them. They offered some sausage to the tiger, who looked at it as though it were a rotten egg and politely declined. After washing down their meal with a little elderflower wine, Little wandered out of the shelter, while Miles set about repacking what remained into one sack.

  When he stepped out into the sunlight he could see Little sitting in the shade of an olive tree a little way off. She appeared to be talking to a tiny old man with a big nose, his hands clasped behind his back. As he got closer, Miles could see it was not a miniature person at all, but an ancient and bedraggled crow. The bird was almost completely bald, and most of his feathers were gray, as though summers beyond counting had all but bleached the night out of them.

  If you have ever heard crow ta
lk, you will know that it sounds like an old witch with a sore throat who has just caught her fingers in a door, and this old crow’s voice was hoarser and wheezier than most. Little was speaking to him in his own language, of course, but the sound of her “Crow” couldn’t have been more different. She somehow made it almost musical, and unlike the old crow’s speech, Miles could get at least a vague sense of what she was saying. He crept forward slowly, afraid that the old bird might take fright and fly away, but the crow ignored him.

  “He says that he knows of a place that he thinks might be the Palace of Laughter,” said Little to Miles. “He calls it ‘Big Laughing Head,’ and he says it’s in the big city, about two days away as the crow flies.”

  “Two days?” said Miles in dismay. “That’s farther than I thought.”

  “Are you sure it’s that far?” Little asked the crow. He wheezed something, nodding at a tree a few feet away.

  “He says it depends on which crow is doing the flying. He’s over twenty years old, and he can barely make it to that tree over there without having a little sleep to recover. He says a young crow would make it in an afternoon.”

  She turned back to the crow. “Which way is it?” she asked. The bird croaked a long reply.

  “He says keep the sun behind and to the left in the afternoon, pass two wooded hills on our right, look for a rock that looks like a three-headed turtle, bear a little to the left and keep going downward until the ground begins to rise. If we reach the old cork tree we’ve gone too far to the east, and should go back about five hundred paces and bear farther left, heading straight for the hill that looks like it has been cut in half. When we get to the birch woods we should cut through them in a southeasterly direction, crossing two small streams and turning to the right after the second one. When we come out of the woods we will be near the top of a small ridge, and from the top of that ridge you can see the city below. In the middle of it is a wheel that’s bigger than the biggest tree, and beside that is Big Laughing Head.”

  The crow said something else.

  “Or we can just follow the road. It goes straight there,” said Little.

  The bedraggled crow took a couple of hops to one side, and cocked his head as though to see around Little. Miles followed his gaze and saw that the tiger had emerged from the cave and was stretching himself in the sunlight. The crow stared at him for a moment through bleary eyes, then he croaked something to Little. She laughed. The old bird flapped his great wings, made a little run and took off slowly down the olive grove. He made it all the way to the far end of the grove before alighting in a tree, where he shuffled along the branch until he was hidden by the foliage.

  “What did he say?” asked Miles.

  Little stood up and whispered in his ear, “He said that he had never seen such a large cat, and that we must be giving him far too much food.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  HALFHEADS

  Miles Wednesday, saddle-sore and sun-browned, felt the breeze in his tangled hair as the tiger ran on through field and forest. He had become so used to traveling on tigerback that he wondered how he had ever been satisfied with walking. The smooth rhythm of the mighty animal’s pace, which was somewhere between running and a sort of long leaping, was hypnotic. Sometimes it seemed as though they were not moving at all, but were suspended over a river of grass and wildflowers that flowed fast beneath their feet. “This must be the next best thing to flying,” thought Miles.

  “Is this as good as flying?” he asked Little.

  She laughed, and looked over her shoulder at him. “This is fun!” she said. “But flying is living.”

  The hills stretched before them like irregular green waves. They passed a large rounded rock perched near the top of a hill. Smaller outcrops of stone were clustered around its base, and Miles could make out the shape of a tortoise with three heads. “We must be on the right track,” he said to Little, but she was lost in thoughts of swooping between the bright clouds, and gave no answer.

  As the afternoon wore on, the sky paled and a cold breeze began to blow. The tiger followed the road into a birch wood. They ran through fern and forest, leaping each of the two streams with a single bound. Up ahead Miles could see the trees begin to thin out toward a rocky ridge that was silhouetted against the sky. He knew from the old crow’s directions that the city was near, but nothing could have prepared him for the sight that would meet them from the top of the ridge.

  Below them the city of Smelt spread across the floor of the valley like a lake of red roofs and tall steeples and gray chimneys and bridges, and stone buildings with more windows than you could count. It seemed to go on forever. A broad river wound through the heart of the city, glinting yellow in the late afternoon sun, and here and there columns of smoke stood like purple pillars, all tilting at the same angle and rising silently into the pale autumn sky.

  Miles whistled. “It must be fifty times the size of Larde,” he said.

  “It certainly smells fifty times as bad,” said the tiger, wrinkling his nose. “Not that it’s any surprise. Nature never intended any of its creatures to live in boxes with a neighbor at the end of each whisker.”

  “Look,” said Little. “Is that the big wheel that the crow told us about?”

  Miles shaded his eyes and looked where she was pointing. Away in the distance he thought he could see a shape like a spoked wheel rising out of the haze and the gray buildings. He could not imagine what it might be for.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “We’ll have to go down through the city to reach it.”

  “Then I suggest you start without delay,” said the tiger. “The farther you can get before nightfall the better.”

  Miles felt his stomach fall. “Aren’t you coming with us?” he asked.

  The tiger shook his massive head. “This is as far as I go, tub boy. From here on, you must rely on your own mettle, and on your little friend’s considerable charm.”

  “But…,” said Miles, and stopped. He had known in the back of his mind that the time would come when the tiger would leave them, but the thought of going on without him filled him with dread. He had already lost the comforting feel of Tangerine in his pocket, and now he felt as though some of his own strength and confidence would leave with the tiger and disappear back into the forest.

  “…couldn’t you come with us, if we waited for night to fall?”

  “Night or day, it makes no difference,” said the tiger. “Cities are not made for tigers, nor tigers for cities, and there’s no doubt I would draw unwelcome attention on the streets. Besides, I have other places to be.”

  “Where will you go?” asked Little, but the tiger gave no answer. He stood a moment longer, looking out over the city below. His nostrils widened and he drew in a deep breath, as though preserving the odor of the city, or perhaps of Miles and Little themselves, for his journey. He turned to look at them. “Now keep your eyes clear and your claws sharp, both of you,” he said. “The city is a jungle, by all accounts, though I have more experience of the leafy kind myself. I suspect your journey so far will turn out to have been the easy part.”

  He turned and padded back toward the forest until he slipped out of sight among the trees, like a dream retreating from the morning sun. Miles felt like a small boy again, exposed on a rocky ridge and about to enter a city that was larger than anything he had imagined, in search of a place he knew nothing about. He looked at Little, who had already begun to slither down the rocky slope into the valley. He knew that when they found Silverpoint she would be leaving him too, but right now she was all he had left, and he pushed thoughts of the future from his mind and called after her, “Wait for me!”

  She stopped and waited for him to catch up. “I think we can join the road now,” he said. “Genghis must be half a day ahead of us, and like the tiger said, I don’t think anyone else will be looking for us here.”

  They picked their way across the rocky slope until they reached a loop of the road. The road wound down int
o the valley, and as they walked quickly along it they soon reached the outskirts of the city. There were low square buildings with blind windows on either side that looked like factories, and between them wooden houses with peeling paintwork and sunken steps. On the sides of the buildings were large posters advertising strange things: Type-o-matic Writing Machines, Golden Meadows Rest Home for Elderly Poodles, Cuffe’s Shirts of Distinction. They passed several large posters advertising Dr. Tau-Tau’s Restorative Tonic. The posters showed ruddy-faced, happy families holding up bottles like the one Miles had fished out of the stream, and laughing as though they hadn’t a care in the world. BRING THE LAUGHTER BACK INTO YOUR LIFE read the slogan, in huge red letters.

  There were rails like train tracks that were sunk into the cobbles, running straight down the center of the road, and a narrow tram with a clanging bell that swung out of a side street and almost ran them over. Here and there were people, walking quickly with heads down, dragging wide-eyed children who stared at Miles and Little as though they had blue skin and horns. Most wore the same expression, tired and slightly sad, that Miles had noticed on the faces of the diners at the Surly Hen.

  A little farther on, a small striped tent had been erected over a manhole in the street. Outside the tent a single roadworker warmed his hands at a makeshift stove made from a punctured metal can. Miles felt the warmth from the fire as they drew level with the tent. A wave of weariness crept over him, and he felt a strong urge to curl up inside the warm tent and slip into a dreamless sleep, where all his fears and his tiredness would slip away from him for good. He looked at the man who stood by the tent, but he could not make out his features. It was as if he were looking at someone standing in a patch of twilight, though the rest of the street was lit by the pale afternoon sun.

  Miles became aware that Little was saying something to him repeatedly. “Stay awake. Stay awake. Keep walking,” she said. She gripped his hand tightly and was almost dragging him along the road. He wanted to turn and ask the man if they could rest in his tent, but Little’s voice reached him again through the humming fog in his ears: “Look at me. Stay awake, Miles.” He felt as though he were wading through molasses. Little began to sing snatches of some strange tune, a running song. There was a tremor in her voice, but some of the heaviness lifted from his feet and he began to run with her. Their boots clattered on the cobbles, and people stared at them as they ran by.