The Tiger's Egg

by Jon Berkeley

“Back to your schooling after that,” said Gila, handing Miles a wrench with a long handle.

  “No more being sawn in half,” said Fabio.

  “Though you can still come and shovel elephant dung for us.”

  “Tembo and Mamba would miss you if you didn’t.”

  “And so would your shovel.”

  Miles set to work tightening the tension on the steel cables that held the rigging in place. He had a question he wanted to ask the Bolsillo brothers, but the thought of it made his stomach tighten like the cables with each twist of the wrench. He decided to ask an easier question first. “Where did Barty Fumble’s Big Top spend the winters?” he said.

  “All over the place, in the early years,” said Gila.

  “But later we used to winter just outside Fuera,” said Fabio, tapping a fat bolt into place with a lump hammer.

  “Your father loved Fuera, Master Miles.”

  “He called it the heartbeat of the world.”

  “No he didn’t, he called it the cocktail of the continents.”

  “If you ask me,” said Umor, running up the rigging like a monkey in overalls, “it was the temptation of the taverns.”

  Miles took a deep breath and tried to make his voice as casual as possible. “Why didn’t you tell me The Null used to be my father?”

  Fabio’s tapping stopped instantly. Gila continued fiddling with the cables at the back of a spotlight as though he had gone suddenly deaf, but his shoulders hunched. Umor, who always climbed the rigging barefoot, stared at his toes and said nothing.

  “Who told you that?” said Fabio, staring at Miles with his hard black eyes.

  “Doctor Tau-Tau,” said Miles.

  Fabio spat over the edge of the rigging, without looking to see if anyone was below. “Tau-Tau has a head full of wind,” he said.

  “Maybe,” said Miles, “but I’m sure he’s telling the truth. He told us the whole story at breakfast the other day. Lady Partridge was there too.”

  “What did he tell you?” said Fabio quietly.

  “He said that he made Barty Fumble into The Null by mistake. The Great Cortado threatened to kill him if he didn’t bring my father back to his senses, and he tried to make a cure from Celeste’s diaries, but he made a mess of it.”

  “Then it’s true!” said Gila to his spotlight.

  “Poor Barty,” said Umor.

  “You mean you didn’t know?” said Miles. “How could you not guess, when The Null arrived on the night Barty disappeared?”

  “There’s not much of a resemblance,” said Gila.

  “And everyone said that Barty had left,” said Umor.

  Miles looked from one to the other of the three little men, searching for clues in their faces. It was hard to believe that they had never questioned the strange events of that night, never searched for their friend Barty Fumble, or asked themselves how such a large man could have disappeared so completely.

  “I knew,” said Fabio quietly. “To tell the truth, we all did.”

  Gila opened his mouth to speak, but Fabio threw him a dark glance and he closed it again quickly.

  “In the back of our minds, I think we all knew that The Null was what was left of your father,” said Fabio. “We just didn’t want to admit it.”

  “Those were dangerous days, Master Miles,” said Umor.

  “The Great Cortado was a frightening man.”

  “Even on his deathbed.”

  “We were afraid he would come back.”

  “And he did.”

  “It wasn’t just that,” said Fabio. “The Null is not Barty Fumble. Not anymore.”

  “There’s nothing in there,” agreed Umor.

  “How do you know?” asked Miles. “Why has nobody ever tried to reach him?”

  Umor stared at his wiggling toes, suspended over the tent boys who were assembling the banked seats far below. “He’s too far gone,” he said.

  “You couldn’t put The Null on the couch,” said Fabio.

  “It would eat any doctor in four minutes.”

  “And pick its teeth with his stethoscope.”

  “Maybe I can reach him with the help of the Tiger’s Egg. You said that it was the Egg that gave Celeste some of her healing powers.”

  Umor and Fabio shook their heads in unison. “Don’t ever fool with that thing,” said Umor, showing his pointed teeth in a nervous grin.

  “It takes great skill to handle a Tiger’s Egg,” said Fabio.

  “And years of practice.”

  “There’s no one alive now who could master it.”

  “Then it does exist,” said Miles. “Is it really inside me, like Doctor Tau-Tau says?”

  Gila looked over his shoulder at Fabio, his eyebrows climbing into his curly hair. Fabio looked at Umor, then all three unexpectedly burst into laughter.

  “That man has a deep well of foolishness at his disposal!”

  “And no holes in his bucket.”

  Miles felt a hot prickling on his skin. He felt as though he were left out of some great joke, and he didn’t know whether to be offended or to laugh along.

  “The Egg is not inside you, Master Miles,” said Umor.

  “You are its owner,” said Fabio.

  “But you might never be its master.”

  “But if I’m its owner,” said Miles, “how come I’ve never seen it in my life?”

  Fabio glanced at his two brothers and sighed deeply.

  “I will tell you the whole story,” he said, “though you will think less of us afterward.”

  Umor cleared his throat loudly and shook his head. He looked like a small boy caught near a broken window with a large catapult.

  “He has a right to know,” said Fabio. “And the secret has weighed on us too long.”

  “Tell him, so,” said Gila. Umor stayed silent, but he would not meet Miles’s eye.

  “It was not by chance that we first met your mother, Master Miles,” said Fabio.

  “We were sent to keep an eye on her.”

  “On her and the Tiger’s Egg.”

  “Who sent you?” asked Miles.

  “Our father’s people sent us,” said Fabio.

  “Our father was of the Fir Bolg.”

  “His name was Fathach of the Nine Toes.”

  Miles looked at the three little men as though seeing them for the first time. It was true that they were not quite as hairy as the Fir Bolg he had met, but their small pointed teeth and their glittering black eyes were so like those of the little cavemen it was a wonder it had not been obvious to him before. “Our father was not typical of his people,” said Umor.

  “He had itchy feet.”

  “He would leave the caves and travel for many weeks.”

  “Always at night, of course.”

  “He could no more stand the light than his kin, but to tell the truth he couldn’t really stand them either.”

  “He got work as a circus sideshow.”

  “The Shrunken Man of Kathmandu, they called him.”

  “It cost half a shilling to see him by a dim red light.”

  “And for another half shilling he would play a tune on the pipes that could curl your hair and cure blisters.”

  “He met our mother there, in Neptune Dangerfield’s Three-ring Hoopla.”

  “She was small, like he was, and a fine horsewoman, and old Fathach could play a woman’s heart like the pipes under his arm.”

  “Or so she told us.”

  “She wasn’t after his money, that’s for sure.”

  “He traveled with the Three-ring Hoopla on and off for several years, though he returned often to his people.”

  “He always seemed to be off visiting whenever one of us was born.”

  “I came a year after Fabio,” said Umor, “and Gila two years after me.”

  “Our mother never allowed us to visit our father’s people.”

  “She was afraid she would never see us again.”

  “Why did she think that?” asked Miles. />
  “Because it was true, Master Miles,” said Fabio. “Our father’s eldest sister would have claimed us as her own, and we would not have been allowed to leave.”

  Miles tried to imagine how it would feel to be kept underground forever, between dim light and darkness on a diet of rabbit and marsh grass. The two days he had spent there with Doctor Tau-Tau had seemed like an eternity. Down below him the tent boys were arranging red-and-gold painted boxes in a broad circle to form the ring, while others filled it with a layer of fresh sawdust. They shouted and joked and whistled snatches of unidentifiable tunes, striped by the afternoon light that entered between the loosely anchored canvas walls. Now and then one of them would glance up toward the striped ceiling, wondering why Fabio was not yelling instructions at them as was his habit, but Fabio’s eye was not on them today.

  “If you never met the Fir Bolg, how did they send you to keep an eye on Celeste?” asked Miles.

  “Our father took us to the Crinnew when we were old enough, and there we met his people.”

  “What’s a Crinnew?” asked Miles.

  “It’s a meeting that’s held the first new moon after midsummer’s day.”

  “The elders of all the Fir Bolg tribes come to Hell’s Teeth to attend the meeting.”

  “The Fir Bolg at Hell’s Teeth aren’t the only ones?” asked Miles in surprise.

  “There are seven tribes who send their people to the Crinnew,” said Umor.

  “They have to travel at night, and keep hidden.”

  “Why didn’t they capture you once you went there?” asked Miles.

  “We went under our father’s protection.”

  “Fathach’s sister claimed us, but our father refused to give us up, and disputes that can’t be talked out at the Crinnew must be settled by a fight.”

  “Your father fought his sister?” asked Miles in surprise.

  Gila laughed. “It never came to that, but the women of the Fir Bolg are fierce creatures.”

  “Did you not notice that on your visit?”

  “Our father’s sister was like a stoat full of wasps.”

  “But in the end a bargain was made that she would drop her claim on us, and we would look after the Tiger’s Egg in return.”

  Gila mopped his brow as if he still felt the relief.

  “She was a fearsome crone, that one,” he said.

  “And I would not have learned good cooking from her,” said Umor.

  “We’d be eating half-boiled rabbits with the fur still on,” said Gila.

  “We’d have had fewer dinner guests.”

  “And less washing up,” said Umor.

  “What about the Tiger’s Egg?” asked Miles, who was beginning to think the Bolsillo brothers would never get to the point.

  “The Tiger’s Egg belonged to the Fir Bolg of Hell’s Teeth,” said Fabio, scratching his stubbly chin. “How they came by it I don’t know, but they had had it a lifetime or more.”

  “They could not get much use from it,” said Umor.

  “They didn’t have the knowledge of it, and in any case a tiger will not venture underground.”

  “They agreed to lend it to Celeste for twenty-one years.”

  “She was to do something for them in return, at the end of that time,” said Umor.

  “Though they would not tell us what that was.”

  “They had not heard from Celeste in five years, and they were getting worried.”

  “They wanted us to find her, and keep an eye on her and the Egg.”

  “Because you could see in the light?” said Miles.

  “Of course, Master Miles. And we would not stand out so much as a true Fir Bolg.”

  “We searched for her for some time, and found her in Barty Fumble’s Big Top.”

  “We found work there easily, and soon became friends of both Barty and Celeste.”

  “They got married a couple of years later, and before long they were expecting you, Master Miles.”

  “Barty had never looked happier.”

  “But not Celeste,” said Fabio quietly, looking at Miles from under his bushy eyebrows. “Not Celeste.”

  “She must have seen something bad was coming,” said Umor.

  “But Doctor Tau-Tau says,” said Miles, “that a fortune-teller can’t read her own future.”

  “That’s what Celeste always said,” agreed Umor.

  “But she would have been able to read yours.”

  “Maybe she saw you would grow up without parents.”

  Miles nodded. He felt suddenly angry at the mother he had never met. If she was a healer, and could read the future, and had the power of a Tiger’s Egg at her disposal, how could she let her son fall into the clutches of Mrs. Pinchbucket and her foul husband? The suddenness of this unexpected feeling caught him off guard, and he opened his mouth and blurted out his question. “How could she let herself die?”

  Gila flinched as though he had been hit, and Umor continued examining his toes, but Fabio looked Miles straight in the eye.

  “She didn’t, Master Miles,” he said. “We did.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  A STROKE OF GENIUS

  Fabio Bolsillo, broad-faced and dark-eyed, watched Miles closely as the boy tried to grasp what had just been said to him. Perched sixty feet above a ring of sawdust is probably not the best place to hear a shocking secret, and the little ringmaster was ready to reach out and grab Miles if he seemed about to lose his balance. Fabio could tell that his two brothers were thinking the same thing.

  “I don’t understand,” said Miles at last. “What did you have to do with my mother’s death?”

  “We borrowed the Tiger’s Egg, Master Miles,” said Fabio.

  “We needed it to save Gila’s life,” said Umor.

  “On the night you were born there was a terrible storm.”

  “The thunder roared so loud, we thought the earth would crack,” said Umor.

  “The animals were nervous, and even Tembo took fright,” said Fabio.

  “She broke out of her pen and crashed her way through the camp.”

  “Gila tried to stop her, but she was terrified out of her wits.”

  “She never even saw me,” said Gila.

  “She crushed him against one of the tent trucks, and when we found him he was close to death.”

  “We didn’t know what to do. Barty and Celeste were occupied with the birth of . . . with you, Master Miles,” said Umor.

  “I was sure Gila would die,” said Fabio quietly, “so I sent Umor to get the Tiger’s Egg from Celeste’s wagon.”

  “We knew where it was hidden.”

  “We knew a little about its use, from scraps of things our father had told us.”

  “We thought, Master Miles, that we could borrow its power for a few moments, and no one would ever know.”

  The Bolsillo brothers fell silent. The tent boys had gone back to their wagons, and a light breeze sang in the cables that anchored the tent. One of the canvas panels flapped and danced in the wind, and little storms of sawdust eddied across the ring.

  Umor resumed the story. “I brought the Tiger’s Egg to where Gila lay.”

  “He was the color of marzipan, and he shook like a leaf.”

  “I held the Egg to his chest, and all at once the thunder stopped.”

  “We could hear Varippuli roaring in his cage, like he would smash his wagon to pieces, and then we got really frightened,” said Fabio.

  “I ran back to Celeste’s caravan and hid the Egg exactly where I had found it. When I got back, Gila was breathing again.”

  “But Celeste paid the price.”

  “We didn’t mean it to happen, Master Miles,” said Umor.

  “We were so busy looking after Gila, we only found out the next morning.”

  “We never knew exactly how she died.”

  “But she lost the protection of the Tiger’s Egg just when she needed it most.”

  “So you see,” said Fabio, “how a Tiger’s
Egg might be considered a mixed blessing.”

  “Or a mixed curse,” said Umor.

  Fabio looked straight at Miles, his eyes like little black olives in his sun-browned face. “Just supposing you found the Tiger’s Egg,” he said, “what would you do with it?”

  The rigging creaked as the big top stood against the breeze. Suddenly it seemed a very long way to the ground. “You know where it is, don’t you?” said Miles.

  “No, we don’t,” said Gila.

  “Fried it for breakfast a long time ago,” said Umor.

  “Yes, we do,” said Fabio.

  “Don’t tell him,” whispered Gila.

  “It’s too dangerous,” muttered Umor.

  “It’s his inheritance,” said Fabio. “And it’s time he knew.”

  “I don’t know what I would do with it in the end,” said Miles, “but it’s my only chance of getting my father back, and I’d have to try that first.”

  “You would never be able to do that,” said Fabio.

  “It would take a lifetime of learning.”

  “And there’s no one to teach you.”

  “I have my mother’s diaries,” said Miles. He did not mention that the diary he needed most was in the possession of the Great Cortado. “She knew how to use it.”

  Fabio sighed. “We hid the Tiger’s Egg many years ago, Master Miles, and we had to hide you too.”

  “After your mother died and your father . . . left, you were no longer safe,” said Umor.

  “Varippuli’s attack had made the Great Cortado more dangerous than ever.”

  “With your parents out of the way, he was in sole charge of the circus again.”

  “And he swore that he would kill you as soon as he recovered.”

  “Why me?” asked Miles with a shiver. “I was just a baby.”

  “He believed that Celeste had been a witch, and that Varippuli was her familiar,” said Umor.

  “He wanted revenge.”

  “And you were the easiest target.”

  “We had to get you away from the circus.”

  “And we had to send the Egg with you.”

  “Why would you do that?” asked Miles.

  “The Tiger’s Egg was your inheritance, Master Miles.”

  “And the promise that went with it.”

  “Besides, we were afraid the Great Cortado would find it by chance.”