The Tiger's Egg

by Jon Berkeley

  Miles and Little took their place by the fire, and Umor passed them battered tin plates piled high with steaming food. The circus performers resumed their laughter and talk as though there was nothing remarkable about sharing their supper with a fur-covered four-hundred-year-old girl. Indeed it was no more remarkable than the lives that many of them had led, lives so rich and strange that they could fill a hundred books and still leave secrets untold. For the first time in days Miles began to feel warm, and content, and full.

  “Well, Master Miles,” said Fabio quietly, when Miles had cleaned his plate, “are you going to tell us where you got to?”

  “I went looking for my father,” said Miles.

  “Your father,” repeated Fabio. He was silent for a while. “And what did you find?”

  “Nothing, so far,” said Miles. He refused to allow the sinking feeling to overtake him again. “It was a false trail,” he said, “but I’ll keep trying.”

  “You went with Tau-Tau?” said Fabio. Miles nodded. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Fabio about the Fir Bolg, but he was weary from his adventure and did not want to have to tell the entire story to the assembled company. Fabio did not ask him where they had gone, but instead he asked, “Did he come back with you?”

  Miles suppressed a smile. “He’ll be back anytime now,” he said.

  “He fell behind,” laughed Little, and Fabio looked at her with curiosity in his hard black eyes.

  A moment later the fortune-teller himself wandered in from the surrounding darkness and threw himself down on the nearest log with a theatrical groan. As no one paid him much attention, he groaned louder.

  “I’m sure you’re all wondering where I’ve been,” he announced to the company in general.

  “Well?” said Etoile politely.

  “I’ve been tramping around the countryside, looking after young Miles and his little friend. Excitable kids, could have got into a lot of trouble if I hadn’t been watching over them. They fell back a little on the road home, but my second sight tells me they’ll be along shortly. The pace was too . . .” At that moment he spotted Miles and Little, sitting quietly on the far side of the fire, and his voice trailed off in midsentence. He sat forward on the log and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands. “Well, well,” he said. “How did you . . . wait, don’t tell me.” He closed his eyes and placed his fingers to his temple, as though waiting for a telephone call from the world next door. “Yes, I see now. You took the shortcut. Ingenious, I must say.”

  “That’s right,” said Little. “We took the shortcut you suggested.”

  “Of course, of course,” said Doctor Tau-Tau doubtfully. A grin lit up his face suddenly, and he waved his hand proudly in Little’s direction. “What do you think of the Bearded Lady, eh?” he asked the assembled audience. “One of my many potent preparations, that is. A brilliant disguise for traveling around the countryside unnoticed, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I think I’d notice,” said Umor.

  “It all depends,” said Fabio.

  “On what?” said Umor.

  “On whether she’s traveling with a herd of miniature bear-weasels,” suggested Gila.

  “I never thought of that,” said Umor.

  “I’m going to bed,” said Little, a yawn extending her matted beard.

  “I’ll walk with you,” said Miles. They set off between the trailers, their way lit by the occasional lamp hanging from the eaves. Miles felt as though he could sleep for days. They reached the Toki sisters’ wagon and sat on the step for a while, their breath fogging the air, until Little broke the silence. “Do you think they really would have eaten Doctor Tau-Tau?”

  “I don’t know,” said Miles, “but I’m glad you got us out of there before they had a chance.”

  “It was lucky I came across that fox,” said Little. She turned to Miles, and her clear blue eyes regarded him from the matted hair that surrounded them. “Remember when we heard the bees singing the flowers?” she said.

  Miles nodded.

  “The flowers would never open if they couldn’t hear the bees,” she said, “and the bees would starve without the flowers. The One Song has tied us together too, Miles. We can’t look after each other if we keep secrets, can we?”

  Miles shook his head. “I suppose not,” he said.

  The Circus Bolsillo, flagged, bagged, horse-shoed and hobnailed, meandered slowly southward in the weeks that followed Miles’s encounter with the Fir Bolg. The frost began to thaw and the days to lengthen as the circus brought the spring to each town it visited. In fields and on village greens they pitched their big top, and every night they filled the tent with people, and the people filled the tent with laughter and gasps of wonder as Little’s music and the genius of the brothers Bolsillo worked their peculiar magic. In the mornings, as they packed up their show to take to the road again, Miles would see that the spring in the air was matched by a new spring in the step of the people passing by, and he would smile to himself as he hosed down the elephants, or fed enormous steaks to the haughty lions.

  There was little time in the bustling rhythm of his traveling life for Miles to discuss his visit to the Fir Bolg with anyone, but he turned the strange adventure over and over in his mind as he worked. Doctor Tau-Tau would say nothing more on the subject, and he became so despondent whenever Miles tried to bring it up that Miles would feel sorry for him, and let it drop. He wouldn’t hear of Miles mentioning his meeting with the Great Cortado, pointing out only that the Bolsillo brothers had worked for Cortado at the Palace of Laughter for some time, a point with which Miles found it hard to argue.

  The circus had not been raided again by the Fir Bolg since leaving Nape, and Miles wondered whether they were relying on him to find the Egg and fulfill his mother’s promise, or simply living in fear of the stranger with the blinding light. He felt sure that the Bolsillo brothers knew more about the hairy little cavemen than they liked to admit, though he knew from experience that getting the brothers to talk could be like eating jelly with chopsticks.

  On a fine spring afternoon Miles sat, weary from hard work and an early start, on the box seat of the Bolsillo brothers’ wagon. Little sat beside him, humming to herself as she stitched sequins onto a new outfit with tiny, invisible stitches. She had indeed returned to her normal appearance, although it had taken longer than Doctor Tau-Tau had predicted. The hair had gradually fallen out in clumps, which had rolled around their various campsites and snagged themselves on corners and on ropes for several weeks, while Little herself had hidden away during the daylight hours, looking like a small yak with a severe molting problem.

  Miles looked at Fabio, who sat on the far side of Little, talking and chucking softly to the horses. The little ringmaster’s mood was always lightest when the tent was packed away and they were on the open road, and it seemed a good opportunity to try and wring some information out of him.

  “Fabio,” said Miles, “have you ever heard of the Fir Bolg?”

  “Of course, Master Miles,” said Fabio.

  “Furry fellas, live in old stories,” came Umor’s voice from inside the wagon.

  “Who’s been telling you about them?” asked Fabio.

  “I’ve met them,” said Miles, “that time when I went off with Doctor Tau-Tau, and Little grew her beard.”

  “Is that so?” said Fabio, his gaze fixed on the road ahead.

  “They kept us in a cave for two days,” said Miles, “and they said they were going to eat Doctor Tau-Tau.”

  “Nobody could be that hungry,” said Fabio.

  “Probably just those hairy kids again, playing at cavemen,” said Umor.

  “They let you go in the end, then,” said Fabio.

  “Little helped us escape,” said Miles. “That’s why she needed the Bearded Lady lotion.”

  The great cart horses plodded on, their hooves thumping a soft tattoo on the dusty road. Eventually Fabio spoke. “What did they want with you?”

  “They were looking for a
Tiger’s Egg,” said Miles. “Doctor Tau-Tau thought I had swallowed one.”

  There was a loud crash from inside the van. Fabio reined in the horses, and the wagon came to a halt. He turned to Miles, leaning forward in his seat. “That fool has been filling your head with nonsense,” he said. “Tigers don’t lay eggs.”

  “And chickens don’t hunt antelope,” said Umor from inside the wagon.

  Fabio cracked the reins, and the wagon creaked as the horses ambled forward. He talked to them softly for a while. Little continued sewing, as though she had heard nothing. Miles sighed. The Bolsillo brothers’ reaction made him almost certain that they had also heard of the Tiger’s Egg, but he would have to choose his moment to find out what they knew. “There’s something else that puzzles me,” he said after a moment.

  Fabio rolled his eyes, but he gave Miles a look of faint amusement. “Life is a puzzle, Master Miles,” he said.

  “And some of the important bits are lost under the sofa,” said Umor.

  “Why did you say ‘well done’ to me,” said Miles, “after Dulac had his accident?”

  “Because it was you who set him back on his feet,” said Fabio.

  “But I didn’t do anything,” said Miles. “I felt dizzy and had to sit down.”

  “You have the touch, Master Miles,” said Fabio.

  “Your mother left it to you,” said Umor.

  “Tau-Tau guessed it,” said Fabio.

  “Must be the only thing he’s ever got right,” chuckled Gila from inside the wagon.

  “The boy’s life had all but run out.”

  “You lent him some of your own.”

  “Which came as a surprise to us.”

  “And to you, it seems.”

  Miles thought about the feeling of hollowness that had come over him, as though he might have blown away like a dried leaf. It was not a very nice sensation, but with the Bolsillo brothers’ explanation it seemed to make a certain sense. Little glanced up at him and smiled, then returned to her stitching. Miles leaned his head back against the painted wood of the wagon, and as the sun created swirling patterns on his closed eyelids he slipped into a light doze.

  “Have you ever seen the sea, Master Miles?” said Fabio, his voice coming from somewhere far away.

  Miles opened his eyes. It seemed as if he had awakened into a new world, and for a moment he could not remember where he was. The wagon had stopped on the crest of a hill and there, spread out before them, was the sea. It was still and broad and blue, and it stretched to the very edge of the world. On the far horizon lay a pale suggestion of a distant coast. Miles had seen the sea in pictures, but they could no more paint the vastness of the ocean than they could bring to him the salt tang that hung on the air, or the unfamiliar cries of the seabirds, urgent and wild, that set his heart beating faster. He sat up straight and took in a deep breath, and though he did not know it at the time, that breath of sea air filled him with a wanderlust that would be with him to the end of his days.

  Below them the hills swept down to the clear blue waters, and there nestled the port of Fuera like a handful of sugar cubes emptied into the curve of the bay. In the port Miles could see the rust-colored sails of the schooners that came from the east, and the funnels of the steamships with their cargoes of coal and sugar and diamonds and silk. As the wagon started down the winding road that led toward the port, Miles looked at Little. Her sewing was forgotten and a smile lit her face as she gazed out on the ocean, and although the sky was no longer hers he thought he could see some of its boundless freedom reflected in her eyes.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHASING GHOSTS

  Miles Wednesday, salt-lipped and sea-struck, drank in the smells and the sights of faraway places as he wandered with Little through the crowded market of Fuera. The tops of the schooner masts swayed gently above the surrounding roofs, and the palm-shaded square was packed with stalls selling goods that had arrived by sail or steam from every point of the compass. There were silks and spices, turtles and tea chests, macaws, monkeys and incense and pearls, rope, sailcloth and brass chandlery, coffee and cinnamon, oils and unctions and strange carvings of grimacing faces, knives and pots and enormous seashells that nature had decorated with the colors of a tropical sunrise. From the surrounding countryside, too, there were eggs, geese, buckets and barrels, salt meat and vegetables, and fresh fish landed that morning from the trawlers whose masters lived by the water’s edge.

  They passed a stall selling rough woven robes in white and cream, with embroidered cuffs and collars, and from the back of the stall a flash of red caught Miles’s eye. A single crimson fez stood at the table’s edge, and the stall holder, following Miles’s eye, picked it up and placed it with a flourish on Miles’s head. The hat sank slowly over his eyes. “It is big, young sheikh, but you will grow. Thirty shillings, my special price for you,” said the man, his pointed beard wagging as he spoke.

  “It’s not for me,” said Miles, “and I don’t have nearly that much.”

  “It is of superior quality, and will last you a lifetime,” said the stall holder, and he leaned forward as though imparting a valuable secret. His breath smelled of something sweet and spicy. “Because I like you, for you I give it for twenty shillings.”

  Miles removed the hat and shook his head. “I’ll have to leave it, thank you,” he said.

  The stall holder threw up his hands. “Eighteen shillings, and I am robbing myself. Tell no one!” he said at the top of his voice.

  Little took the hat from Miles and turned it in her hands. “It is a beautiful hat,” she said as she handed it to the man. “You must be as clever as you are generous, but we really can’t take it. It would not be right to give you so little money for this.”

  The stall holder looked at Little and his dark eyes softened. “You are right, little princess,” he said at last. “It is too small a price, so instead I will make to you a present. Please take the fez. It is yours.” He dropped a handful of sugar-dusted sweets into the hat, and handed it back to her with a bow.

  “Thank you,” said Little, and she popped a sweet into her cheek and handed one to Miles.

  As they wandered on through the crowd they came across the Bolsillo brothers, arguing loudly with a bony man who sat in the center of a miniature city of wicker birdcages. The cages were filled with a screeching, scratching rainbow of brightly colored birds. There were parrots and macaws and cockatoos and budgerigars, and between them they kept up a riot of conversation in the borrowed tongues of men and birds, punctuated now and then by a deafening screech or a cackle of laughter.

  “You bare-faced brigand!” Umor was saying to the man as they approached.

  “That’s five times what they are worth,” said Fabio.

  “And they’re half starved,” said Gila.

  “We’ll take them off your hands for four shillings apiece,” said Fabio.

  “You’ll have five less beaks to feed,” said Umor.

  The bird seller threw back his head and laughed. No more than half his teeth remained in his head, and most of those were gold. “No no, my little friends,” he chortled. “These magnificent birds were bred by the emperors of the Indus themselves. Each is more precious than the finest jewels, and they will talk like a harem on holiday.”

  While Gila and Umor haggled on over the birds, Fabio winked over his shoulder at Miles and Little. “All the animals fed and watered?” he asked. Miles nodded. “Time to feed ourselves, so,” said Fabio.

  They reached a price with the bird man and left him shaking his head with a woebegone expression, as though he had just sold his grandmother for a handful of seed. Gila carried a cage almost as large as himself, in which five bedraggled cockatoos shifted nervously on their perches. They found a sunlit courtyard filled with café tables, and Gila set the birds down in a shaded corner. The waiter seemed to know the Bolsillo brothers, and soon their table was filled with an assortment of rich spicy foods, clustered around a tall silver coffeepot.

&n
bsp; The Bolsillo brothers were in a buoyant mood. There was to be no show that evening, and the three off-duty ringmasters became progressively merrier as Umor tipped brandy from a small hip flask into their thick black coffees. Gila produced his harmonica and played a tune that made everyone laugh. A pale moon rose in the evening sky, not content to wait until the sun had gone.

  “You’re very quiet, Master Miles,” said Umor.

  Fabio showed his pointed teeth in a smile. “Still chasing ghosts, I think,” he said.

  “Whose goats?” said Umor.

  “Ghosts,” said Fabio, pouring Miles a coffee. “He’s chasing the ghost of his father.”

  “Ah, that ghost,” said Umor.

  “Bigger than most,” said Gila. He had stopped playing his harmonica, though his tune seemed still to echo from the courtyard walls.

  “That, and the ghost of a Tiger’s Egg,” said Fabio quietly.

  “Does it really exist, the Tiger’s Egg?” asked Miles.

  “Who knows?” said Fabio. “Your mother brought with her a fine tiger when she joined Barty Fumble’s Big Top, and rumor grows in the circus like mushrooms in a basement.”

  “My mother had a tiger too?” said Miles in surprise.

  Fabio shook his head. “There was only one tiger,” he said.

  “Varippuli,” said Gila, and Miles thought he saw him shudder slightly.

  “The tiger joined the circus with Celeste,” said Umor, “but it was Barty Fumble who showed him in the ring, and they gained a certain respect for each other.”

  “Where did my mother come from?” asked Miles. He had never known the Bolsillo brothers so willing to talk, and he wanted to learn as much as he could while their tongues were loosened.

  “Celeste came from across the sea to the south,” said Fabio.

  “With a wagon full of books,” said Umor.

  “And the far eyes.”

  “And the healing hands.”

  “Too many gifts for one person to carry, perhaps,” said Fabio.

  The three men sat in silence for a while. A gecko crept up the wall behind Gila’s head, and froze at the edge of a circle of lamplight, waiting for his dinner to land.