by Jon Berkeley
“I didn’t do anything, really,” said Miles, although he knew the Bolsillo brothers believed otherwise.
“Have it your own way,” said Baltinglass, “but I’ve got the leg of a twenty-year-old, and it will have to take many a step to catch up with the rest of my old bones. In fact I’m starting to think I might have one last trip left in me. Maybe we’ll all take to the road together once you’re finished gallivanting with the circus, eh?”
“I’d like that,” said Miles.
“You might even take a look at these old eyes sometime,” the old man said. A worried look crossed his wrinkled face. “On second thought, maybe not,” he added. “I’d be afraid I might come across a mirror.”
Miles sat now in silence, lulled by the rocking of the wagon on its iron springs, and thought about the touch that he had inherited from his mother. The words of the Shriveled Fella came back to him: “The bright hands are on you, buhall.” That must have been what he meant. He wondered if it was possible to lend someone so much of his life that there was none left for himself, and he shivered at the thought. The weather was turning colder now, and for the first time since they left he found himself looking forward to the soft beds and warm food that awaited them in Partridge Manor. “Not long now,” he whispered to Tangerine, and felt his little head nod silently in the warmth of his jacket pocket.
The circus rolled on through the hills and wound its way slowly up the mountain slopes. Miles had taken over the reins while Fabio dozed in his bunk. He sat in the box seat, trying to imitate the soft clucks and whistles that Fabio used to speak to the horses. They reached the mountaintop in the late afternoon, and Miles realized that it was nearly a year since he and Little had traveled this road the other way in search of Silverpoint and Tangerine. He could see below them the stepped vineyards and the yellow sea of sunflowers through which they had ridden on the tiger’s back, and beyond that the dark green of the forest that stretched back along the road to the hamlet of Hay. He wondered if the tiger was somewhere in that landscape, pacing silently through the shade of the trees, or standing in the clear waters of the stream waiting for a fat fish to swim by.
Fabio and Gila joined him on the box seat and they started down the mountainside with the evening sun shining in their eyes. From time to time they passed small groups of farmers in the fields, fanned out and carrying pitchforks and stout sticks, and marching through the vines and the sunflowers with a purposeful air.
“A lot of farmers abroad this evening,” remarked Fabio.
“What do you expect,” said Gila, “bank clerks?”
“Scarecrows,” said Fabio. “Farmers should be at their dinner.”
The road snaked through terraced vineyards that gave way to sunflower fields, and the circus ambled between the ranks of enormous flowers, their heads drooping like tattered grandmothers nodding off in the fading light. Ahead of them the dark line of trees grew gradually nearer, and at length the sunflowers ended and a small pasture opened out to their left, just before the start of the woods.
“This is where we stop for the night,” said Fabio.
“Good,” said Umor. “The horses are tired.”
“And the tires are hoarse,” said Gila.
They pulled into the field, and the other wagons and trucks followed, arranging themselves in a ragged circle. The circus people dropped down into the soft grass, yawning and stretching the journey from their tired bones, and the cart horses sighed deeply and flicked at swarming midges with their tails. Little sang like a blackbird, and Tangerine wriggled in his sleep, dreaming whatever stuffed bears in warm pockets dream. Umor lit a small fire in a circle of stones, while Fabio uncoupled the horses and Gila filled their nosebags from the hay wagon.
“I wonder what all those farmers were searching for,” said Miles, bending down and blowing on the fire while Umor added more kindling.
“Their lost childhood,” suggested Umor.
“Or a lost potato,” said Gila.
“Why don’t you ask them?” said Fabio.
Miles turned to see a knot of men approaching them warily, bristling with farm implements.
“Identify yourselves,” said a squat bald man, holding a pitchfork longer than himself.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” added a taller man behind him.
Fabio looked pointedly at the words THE INCOMPARABLE CIRCUS BOLSILLO spelled out in enormous colored letters on the wagon beside him.
“I am Fabio Bolsillo,” he said, “and this is the incomparable Circus Bolsillo.”
The man with the pitchfork grunted. “There’s a devil on the loose,” he said. “Have you seen it on your travels?”
“It’s not a devil, it’s a giant baboon,” said his tall companion. He had tangled orange hair and a beaky nose.
“I heard it was a yeti,” said a third man. The others turned and glared at him. “Or something,” he mumbled.
“What does it look like?” asked Miles apprehensively. He had a feeling he already knew the answer.
“We’ve not seen it,” said the beaky man, “but they say it’s big and hairy with teeth like fence posts.”
Miles cleared his throat loudly. “Where was it last seen?” he asked.
The squat bald man turned to look at him. “Ate a whole coop of chickens in Hay this afternoon, then took off into the trees. They say it’s headed this way,” he said. “If it shows up in our fields it’ll be sorry.” His companions didn’t look so sure as to who would end up the sorrier.
“It’s just scared,” said Miles. There was only one creature he knew of that fit the nervous farmers’ description, and he was worried that they would provoke it into doing something terrible. He was sure that if The Null hurt someone else he would not be able to save it a second time.
“Wasn’t too scared of the chickens, was it?” said the tall beaky man. “If you don’t mind me saying so,” he added.
“What do you know about it anyway?” asked the bald man, scowling suspiciously at Miles.
“It used to be with our circus,” said Fabio.
“But it took early retirement,” said Gila.
The bald man surveyed the brightly colored trailers that filled the field, as though he was obliged—as chief pitchfork-carrier—to check that it was indeed a circus. His inspection was interrupted by the rumble of an approaching engine, and he turned around irritably. A battered blue police van came barreling along the road and screeched to a halt in a cloud of beige dust. The dust was so thick on the windshield that it was hard to imagine how anyone could see through it. The driver leaned out of his side window, and Miles recognized him at once. It was Sergeant Bramley, and he wore an official police frown that put the bald man’s petulant scowl in the shade.
“Now then,” said Sergeant Bramley, addressing the farmers. “Aren’t you supposed to be combing the fields and ditches?” He spotted Miles and raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Master Wednesday,” he said, giving him a curt nod. He ducked back into the dusted cab, and reappeared a moment later. “Lady P. would like a word with you, young man,” he said. A ginger cat poked his head out from below the sergeant’s double chin. Miles ran around to the other side of the van and there, sure enough, was the monumental figure of Lady Partridge, beaming down at him from the battered cab as though she were in a gilded carriage. She wore the same Chinese dressing gown she had lived in for years, but since moving back into her stately home she had taken to wearing ornate hats that would once have snagged in the tangled branches and bric-a-brac of her cluttered tree house. The one she wore now was crested with peacock feathers, making her look like some kind of prehistoric tree decorated with red dragons.
“Hello, Lady Partridge,” grinned Miles.
“I’m so glad to see you, Miles!” boomed Lady Partridge. “You look quite the part! You must tell me all your adventures as soon as we have the chance to sit down together, but I’m afraid we have a more pressing matter at hand. I suppose you’ve heard that our hirsute guest has escaped?”
/> “You mean The Null?” said Miles. He was sure he should know what “hirsute” meant, having reached the letter “Q” in Lady Partridge’s encyclopedia, but it seemed that much of his book learning had been pushed out of his head to make room for the kind of education gained from running through pitch darkness with cave dwellers and having knives thrown at you by a man who never washed.
“I’m afraid so,” said Lady Partridge. “The creature went missing sometime in the night, and I very much hope we are the ones to find it. There’s no knowing what damage a scared man with a pitchfork might cause, especially to himself.”
“Can I come with you?” asked Miles.
“By all means,” said Lady Partridge. “If we do find the creature there’s a chance it might recognize your voice, if it has any memory at all. We shall have to be very careful, of course, but there are several sturdy policemen in the back of the van, and they may come in useful if they have managed to disentangle themselves from their net on the way here.”
“I’ll just get Little,” said Miles.
“Don’t be too long,” said Lady Partridge. “Night will be falling soon, and we should press on.”
Miles ran back through the field, looking for Little. He could not see where the Toki sisters had parked their trailer, but as he passed Doctor Tau-Tau’s wagon he was startled by the red-faced fortune-teller himself, who stepped out from the wagon’s shadow like a dressing-gowned jack-in-the-box. Miles had not seen Tau-Tau since they had left Cnoc, and had assumed that the fortune-teller had returned to skulking in his wagon as they approached his home turf. “Ah, Master Wednesday!” said Tau-Tau in a strained voice, “a quick word, if you please.”
“It’ll have to wait, I’m afraid,” said Miles. “I’m in a hurry. Have you seen Little?”
“Never mind Little!” said Doctor Tau-Tau, grabbing Miles’s arm. “You must show me where the Tiger’s Egg is hidden.”
Miles shook himself free. Doctor Tau-Tau was acting even more strangely than usual. “You know I don’t know anything about it,” he said. “I only have your word that it even exists!”
“It will be better for you if you tell me,” said Tau-Tau. “It will be better for both of us.” He sat down suddenly on the wagon steps and put his head in his hands. “My head hurts,” he said despondently. “I need to lie down.”
“You do that,” said Miles. He had spotted Little walking along the top of the wire fence that separated the field from the forest, and he turned on his heel and ran toward her. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” he shouted over his shoulder as he crossed the field.
When he returned with Little, Sergeant Bramley had just finished discussing search strategy with the pitchfork platoon. It was decided that the farmers should retrace their steps, as their homes lay in the direction from which the circus had come, and that Sergeant Bramley and his men would turn back toward Hay and make another sweep of the road that ran alongside the forest.
“You take care, both of you,” said Fabio, his ears wagging as he placed more firewood on the campfire.
“That beast’s no teddy bear,” said Umor.
“As you well know, Master Miles.”
“We’ll be okay,” said Little.
The sergeant stubbed out his cigarette and sent the farmers on their way, and the police van took off once more along the road, with Little and Miles wedged on the bench seat between Lady Partridge and Sergeant Bramley. The sergeant squinted through the dusty windshield and drove as though he were being chased by a pack of starving wolves, while Miles searched the trees as best he could through the open side window and Little listened to sounds that no one else could hear above the roar of the engine. They had not gone far when Little laid her hand on the sergeant’s arm. Without further signal he stood on the brakes and the van screeched to a halt with the sound of several half-entangled policemen piling up against the bulkhead behind the cab.
“What is it, my dear?” asked Lady Partridge.
“Listen,” said Little.
The cloud of beige dust gradually settled around them, and they could all hear a sound that the roar of the engine had hidden moments before. It was a sort of terrified bleating, coming from somewhere in the woods. Sergeant Bramley straightened his cap and took his truncheon from its clip above the windshield. “Sounds like it’s got itself a sheep,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
SHADOWS AND TEETH
Doctor Tau-Tau, suspended, upended and bleating like a sheep, hung by his belt from a tall tree. The Null sat brooding over him like a shadow on an X-ray. The light had all but gone from under the trees, but even so the creature seemed to radiate darkness, and only the red rims of its eyes showed in its hairy silhouette.
“It’s Doctor Tau-Tau!” whispered Miles. “What’s he doing here? I thought he was sick in his wagon.”
“Someone should call the police,” whispered a nervous voice behind him.
“We are the police, Constable Wigge,” said Constable Flap.
“Someone should call the army,” said Constable Wigge.
Lady Partridge huffed up behind them, her dressing gown trailing twigs and leaves along the forest floor. “There it is!” she whispered, as she arrived at the edge of the clearing where the search party crouched in the bracken. “What on earth has it . . . ?”
The Null shifted on the branch, causing the dangling Doctor Tau-Tau to bounce in the air. He whimpered loudly.
“It’s all right, Doctor Tau-Tau,” said Miles as loudly as he dared. “We’ll get you down somehow.”
The Null bared its teeth and growled. The fortune-teller, whose broad backside had been facing the search party, managed to twist himself around and peer over his shoulder.
“There you are, and not a moment too soon!” he said in a trembling voice. “Get my sleepwater, boy. Don’t forget how I saved you from those underground barbarians, eh?”
“Sleepwater?” said Miles. The name rang a bell.
“In my leather case, boy,” said Doctor Tau-Tau, pointing to the ground below him. “A small yellow bottle, if the brute hasn’t smashed it.”
“Be very careful, Miles dear,” said Lady Partridge.
Miles crept forward slowly, never taking his eyes from The Null. An old doctor’s bag lay on its side below the tree, its mouth open and its contents scattered in the moss. Miles was directly below The Null now, and its eyes followed him unblinkingly. He could smell the musty odor of the beast, a smell that had always reminded him of rotten bananas, and he could almost feel the crushing embrace with which it had once tried to squeeze the life out of him. He sank down slowly on his hunkers, and the beast suddenly opened its mouth and let out an eerie cackle that froze him to the bone. His hand shook as he rummaged among the spilled contents of Doctor Tau-Tau’s case. He felt notebooks of some kind, a small wooden figure, a coin with a square hole cut from its center. His fingers found a bottle, and he straightened up carefully. He wished that the tiger was there beside him.
“What now?” he whispered.
“Climb up here and make it drink the stuff,” said Doctor Tau-Tau.
“Do no such thing!” called Lady Partridge from the edge of the clearing.
“Just throw it up to him, Miles,” said Little. “I’m sure Doctor Tau-Tau has already thought of a way to make The Null drink it.”
“I have?” said Tau-Tau in a strained whisper. “I have, of course,” he added. “But you won’t be able to throw it high enough. Better if you climb up here yourself. Boys like to climb trees, don’t they?”
“Put your hand out,” said Miles, who had been learning all summer how to throw daggers and was now almost as accurate as his teacher, Stranski, “and keep still!”
Doctor Tau-Tau stretched out his trembling hand. Miles sized up the distance for a moment, then he drew back his arm and threw the small bottle. It arched up through the gathering gloom, straight to the outstretched fingers of the fortune-teller, who almost forgot to catch it in his surprise.
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nbsp; “Right . . . ,” said Doctor Tau-Tau, but before he could do anything The Null suddenly came to life. In a whirl of tangled hair it swept out along the branch, grabbed the collar of the terrified fortune-teller’s jacket with its curved yellow nails and hauled him upright, freeing his belt from the branch that supported him. It snatched the bottle from the air as it fell from the terrified Tau-Tau’s hand, and let him go. The fortune-teller dropped unceremoniously to the ground twenty feet below, where he landed with a soggy thump in a carpet of moss. There was a collective gasp from the edge of the clearing. Constable Flap, who had earned a diploma in first aid from a course in Modern Constable magazine, crawled across the moss toward the crumpled figure of Doctor Tau-Tau, peering nervously up into the branches as he came. Miles, who had stepped backward in the nick of time, looked up, too, at The Null. The creature bit the neck clean off the bottle with a crunch, and much to everyone’s surprise it emptied the contents down its throat. There was a moment’s silence while the stout lady, the four-hundred-year-old girl, the boy, the sergeant and his constables all held their breath, and The Null crouched against the trunk with its eyes closed and its great jaw hanging open. The only sound was the soft counting of Constable Flap, who held Doctor Tau-Tau’s wrist in his fingers and marked out his pulse like a whispering metronome.
Miles was just beginning to hope that the sleepwater had worked on The Null, when the creature’s eyes snapped open and it let out a cackling howl that made Constable Wigge break cover and bolt for the safety of the van. It swung down from the branch and hung there for a moment, its great fangs bared and its wild black eyes staring down at Miles, who backed slowly away from the tree. The creature’s hollow eyes stared straight at him, and they seemed to suck in the last of the failing light. “Maybe,” thought Miles hopefully, “it remembers all those mornings I read to it from the newspaper.” He thought about all the gossip and tattle that filled the Larde Weekly Herald from cover to cover. “Maybe it’s better if it doesn’t,” he muttered to himself.
