Something white flickered behind the men. Martin raised his eyes, squinting. The shape resolved into Adeline. She lifted a finger to her lips, making a wholly unnecessary shushing motion. No one with the show had ever heard that girl make a sound.
But if she was shushing him … “I’m sorry, fellows, but this buck belongs to the circus, and it’s not mine to give away,” he said.
From off to the side, blessedly welcome as the first of May, a voice boomed, “What is the meaning of this?”
All three townie men backpedaled away from him, creating space where there had been none. Martin turned. A short, fussy-looking man in a waistcoat was boiling up on them, with the reassuringly lanky shape of Mr. Blackstone following behind him. The lengths of their legs were so different that where the shorter man was all but running, Mr. Blackstone seemed to be out for a leisurely stroll.
“Mayor,” said one of the men. Martin wasn’t sure which one. He’d lost track as soon as they’d all moved, and none of them had any real distinguishing marks—they were just men, like the kind he’d seen at towns all across the West.
“This man,” the mayor indicated Martin, “is a guest in our midst. Is this how we show hospitality in The Clearing? Through aggression and grift?”
“No, sir,” said all three men in ragged chorus.
“What makes us better than animals? Well?” The mayor planted his hands on his hips. “Would any of you care to wager a guess?”
“Manners and restraint,” said one of the three, eyes downcast.
“That’s right. These folks have come here to entertain us, and that’s what they’re going to do. We’re not going to taunt them for being strangers. Strangers breathe new life into a settlement. Now say you’re sorry, all three of you.”
The men muttered apologies to Martin. Only one of them looked resentful. The other two seemed practically cowed, like they couldn’t believe themselves doing what they’d done.
“Come, Martin,” said Mr. Blackstone, stepping fluidly around the cluster of men. “What an excellent deer you’ve taken for us. Let’s get back to camp and see what wonders we can make from this.” More softly, he said, “Walk, and don’t look back.”
Martin knew well how to follow orders from his master. He bobbed his head and obligingly began to walk. Adeline fell into step on his other side, and the three of them proceeded toward the colorful edge of the circus.
When they were almost there, Martin asked, “What just happened?”
“Emily-Ann got roughed up and lost two of the four rabbits she’d been able to get before we were able to intervene,” said Mr. Blackstone. “It seems the people in this town don’t care for strangers as much as they claim.”
Then they reached the circus, and safety swallowed them once again.
Chapter Seven
“Step right up! Ladies and gentlemen, our display is not for the faint of heart, but for the price of one copper penny—one single coin!—you can see the wonders of the modern world spread out before your eyes. Have you heard the stories of the American West? Well, ladies and gentlemen, I assure you that they pale before the reality. No refunds in case of fainting or fleeing in terror! Test your bravery, stretch your mind, one copper penny—”
The barker’s cry went on and on as the crowd gathered outside the wagon of oddities. Inside, Annie moved quickly between exhibits, checking that each of them was ready for the public.
Only the nibblers had been fed. They became aggressive when hungry—more aggressive than they already were—and could potentially rush the wall of their tank. Annie didn’t believe they could break the glass. That didn’t mean she was going to press her luck in front of townies, especially townies who might well come back for another look at her wagon’s many wonders. The nice thing about a crowd was the way it rushed itself along. On a slow day, a person might pay their penny and spend an hour slowly exploring the oddities, seeing them each in detail, getting their fill. They’d have no cause to come back. On a busy day, everyone was rushed through by the person behind them, and some folks would come back three, four, even half a dozen times before they felt as if they’d seen everything there was to see. It was a blessing for her coffers, and for the circus as a whole.
(The wagon of oddities and the freak show were not the only revenue-generating exhibits. The contortionist, the dancing girls, the mentalist, and the magicians all made their share of profit, and it all rolled back into the circus proper, one way or another. But the oddities made the most money for the least investment and, more, were unique enough to make a lasting impression on the people who saw them. Someone who had seen the oddities in one town was likely to come and see them again in the next, if only to reassure themselves that yes, those things existed. Yes, those things were real.)
The barker was winding his pitch to a close. Annie looked across the wagon to Adeline, who stood motionless next to the exit, her hand on the latch.
“Go,” she said. “I’ll see you later tonight.”
Adeline nodded and opened the door, vanishing into the afternoon air. Annie smoothed her hands along the front of her dress, removing the wrinkles, and walked to the entrance, picking up her coin pot before opening the door.
The crowd outside was not the largest she had ever seen, but it was still large enough to be striking. Annie smiled as mysteriously as she could, trying to play the benefactress of beasts, and held out her pot.
“A penny buys you passage,” she said. “Who walks this way first?”
“I do,” said a barrel-chested young man, earning himself cheers and applause from his fellows. He swaggered forward, dropping a penny into the pot. Annie stepped aside, letting him enter.
Which will it be? she wondered. The nibblers? The snakes? The spiders—
He froze only a foot or so past her. Unable to resist, she glanced over her shoulder to see what had transfixed him.
Many of the cages in the wagon of oddities had been repurposed from other things. The tallest enclosure had once been used for a parrot owned by one of the sleight-of-hand operators, a great gold-and-red thing imported from some exotic land. It had spoken with a voice like a man, and had been halfway to being an oddity itself, before it had sickened and died for reasons unknown. Parrots were not suited to the harsh realities of the West. But the cage was good wrought iron, and once the bird had no longer needed it, Annie had claimed it, knowing it would be occupied again in short order.
Its new occupant was a mockery of the human form, two feet high and made entirely of green leaves, like corn husks twisted together by an unkind hand. Its head was a leering pumpkin with deep-set eyes that burned like coals. It grasped the bars of its cage with two-fingered corn husk “hands,” tugging itself up against the metal. Those burning eyes were fixed on the townie man, and its mouth was working silently, shaping unheard obscenities.
“The man who sold it to me called it a ‘corn stalker,’” said Annie. “They walk the fields in Oklahoma and Nebraska, looking for a place to lay their roots. Don’t go too close, good sir. It might well seek to plant its roots in you.”
It was impossible to keep those outside the wagon from hearing her words. They surged forward, eager to pay their pennies and see what had frightened one of the bravest men in town. Annie took as many as she could before beckoning the barker forward to handle the rest and retreating into the wagon to answer questions and keep an eye on the patrons.
She was explaining bloodwire to a wide-eyed little girl when there was a snarl from the back of the wagon. Quick as a blink, she whirled and shoved her way back there to find two little boys standing outside Tranquility’s cage. One of them had a stick guiltily held behind his back.
“Hey!” he protested, as Annie snatched it away.
“Am I to assume that you were prodding at this poor cat?” she demanded, waving the stick in front of him like a switch. His eyes tracked it, waiting for it to descend. “She never did a thing to you. Why should you want to hurt her?”
“It was just
lying there,” said the boy. “I just wanted it to do something.”
“You never sleep? Does your mother come into the room at night and jab you with a stick to see what you’ll do?” Annie waved the stick again.
Tranquility had risen at the sound of her mistress’s voice, turning in her cage and pressing her face against the bars. Seeing the stick in Annie’s hand, she quite reasonably assumed that it was intended for her to play with, and stuck one vast paw between the bars, wrapping it gently around Annie’s calf and pulling her closer to the cage. She made a rumbling noise, not quite a growl and not quite a purr, expressing her interest.
The boys, who were not accustomed to being this close to large cats, yelled in dismay and stumbled backward, flinging their arms around each other in their terror.
Annie bent and gave the stick to Tranquility, who promptly bit it in half. The two boys fled the wagon. Annie smiled. Sometimes the easiest solutions were the pointiest ones.
She moved through the wagon, answering questions about the oddities, asking people not to touch things they didn’t understand, and nudging small children away from the snake tanks. All the serpents were housed behind thick glass; not even the largest of them had the necessary strength to break free. But snakes were not the cleverest of creatures. When they felt threatened they would strike, and she had watched rattlesnakes break their teeth against their enclosures often enough to feel protective of even these slithering members of her entourage. They had their own quiet beauty, as long as one steered clear of their fangs. They deserved the same respect that was afforded to everything else.
A man stood transfixed in front of the tank of terrantulas, staring at the skull-shaped markings on their abdomens. Annie stepped up next to him and said mildly, “These specimens were collected in New Mexico by a man who had seen them devour an entire wagon train. I started with a dozen of them, only to discover that when unfed, they will fall upon their siblings. These five are all that remain. If you return tonight, there will be a private show for adults only, where you may watch them eat.”
Privately, Annie couldn’t imagine wanting to watch the terrantulas eat. They swarmed over their prey, first pumping it full of caustic venom, then dissolving it with their powerful digestive juices. The spiders were too aggressive to allow her to clean their tank, but it didn’t matter much; by the time they finished eating, only bones remained, and those were so damaged by their acidic juices that they quickly broke down and dissolved, adding to the white “sand” that lined the enclosure. A very small hole, no bigger than the tip of a bullet, was drilled into one corner of the glass; by uncorking it, she could bleed off the “sand” whenever necessary, leaving a trail of bone dust scattered across the continent, while her chamber of horrors remained blessedly intact.
So many of the oddities required that kind of careful compromise. Feeding them, keeping them healthy and whole … sometimes it felt like a form of blasphemy. These weren’t things that deserved to roam the earth. They needed to be buried somewhere they would never be found, never be brought back into the light. Keeping them alive was wrong.
But living monsters brought in more coins than dead ones did, and who was she to judge? There were people who would call Tranquility a monster, with her sharp claws and taste for raw meat. There were people who would call Adeline a monster, citing her silence as proof of some deeper defect. There were even people who would call Annie a monster, for no honest woman would have fled her husband as she had done. Monstrosity was in the eye of the beholder, and while the oddities would have gladly devoured this entire town, given half the chance, they were never going to have that chance. They were captive. They were contained.
The man transfixed by the terrantulas turned to look at her, almost desperately. “They have skulls on their backs,” he said. “You paint them there?”
Please, said his tone. Please, tell me you painted them there; please, tell me this is some kind of a hoax that I just don’t understand. I won’t be angry. I won’t even ask for my money back. Just lie to me, and all will be forgiven.
“You couldn’t pay me enough to paint on the backs of these spiders,” she said. “They’re vicious things, and they don’t forgive people who interfere with them. No, this is as Nature made them, and whatever her reasons, I’m sure that they were good ones. It’s best not to look too long, sir. People have been known to start seeing the faces of their beloved dead in those skulls, and the nightmares that follow are nothing I would wish on my worst enemy.” It was a lie, of course, but a believable one, under the circumstances. She didn’t like to eject people from the wagon—those who’d been thrown out were less likely to pay for the opportunity to come back again—and yet she had been operating it for long enough to recognize the signs of a breakdown.
Men always thought their wives were fainting flowers, and true, more women than men had fainted within the confines of the wagon of oddities, but when it came to true confusion and dismay, nothing could top the anger of a man who had seen his own mortality reflected in a captive monster’s eyes. Women danced with death every time they loved their men, knowing that a bad pregnancy could take them from the world in an instant. Men … they hunted and they fought and they did their manly things, and yes, those things were dangerous, often by their own choice. That was the key word: choice. A man could choose whether to draw his gun or stay safe at home. A woman faced her greatest dangers in the place where she lived.
After watching a child choke on their own breath when the fevers came, few women found much to fear in monsters like Annie’s. All the oddities in the world couldn’t hold a candle to the dangers of the home.
“Ah,” said the man in a faint voice, and turned away.
He would be back. Annie knew enough about human nature to be absolutely sure of that. The ones who were the most distressed by some member or other of her menagerie were always the ones who came back when the lights were down, like they could face their fears and thus conquer them forever.
She could have told them a thing or two about facing fears. About the power that fear could have, no matter how many times it was stared down. But fear—seemingly safe, seemingly contained—was much of what kept the pennies dropping into the pot, and so she said nothing. Food on the table was more important than honesty.
The rest of the afternoon passed quickly. Show days always did. Once word got out about the contents of her wagon, the crowds were steady. She saw the same faces three and four times as they came back with friends, now content to play the role of the world-wise explorer, parroting back the same things she’d said to them on their first trip through. She hid her smiles as she hovered nearby, tidying things, straightening shelves, always listening, always making sure that the things that were being said were close enough to true that they wouldn’t turn dangerous.
(And there were dangerous rumors that could be spread about her creatures; there were always dangerous rumors. One town had somehow gotten it into their heads that eating the flesh of a nibbler would cure disease, as if the vicious, bony little fish were a secret panacea placed in the rivers of America for the brave and the desperate. She hadn’t caught on quickly enough. That stop had cost her three nibblers, and cost a boy with an ailing father his left hand, and the circus had been forced to leave so quickly that for a while there had been a question whether or not they would be able to keep all the wagons. Now she listened like a hawk, and when words like those were spoken, haltingly, for the first time, she was there to ensure that there would not be a second.)
The ebb and flow of the crowd told her what was happening outside. When the men vanished and the women came through like bright birds, the dancing girls were performing—and the women without the men were something to see! In the company of husbands, brothers, or suitors they were timid things, swooning behind their hands, clinging to the arms of their menfolk like they could no longer stand on their own. When they walked through in the company of other women, they were bold as anything, staring into the tanks with a
n intensity that would no doubt have frightened their menfolk.
“I kill bigger things than this in the privy at least once a week,” sniffed one of them, looking at a pit wasp with disdain.
“I think I’ve eaten these,” said another, looking at the corn stalker.
Annie hid her smile behind her hand and said nothing. She was privileged, as the somehow sexless keeper of the wagon, to see people as they were when not observed. It had taught her more about the true nature of humanity than she ever would have thought to see, back when she’d been a cosseted society wife. As lessons went, there were worse to take to heart.
For reasons of propriety and not being accused of wrongdoing, children were allowed only when in the company of a parent. Despite this, a surprising number of parents left their children in the wagon when they moved on, and sunset found her chasing the last trio of boys out, shooing them off to find their mothers.
The sky was the color of slowly drying blood, and the moon hung suspended in the middle of it all, like a clot of curdled milk. Annie paused at the back door, looking up and frowning to herself. That moon …
Some moons were kind and some moons were cruel, and superstitious as it might be, she couldn’t stop herself thinking about them in those terms. This moon, though. This moon was cold, like it was standing in impartial judgment over everything it saw. It made her miss the vast, cream-colored desert moons, which might be harsh but at least seemed to somehow care what happened to the people who lived and loved and died beneath their all-seeing eyes.
All moons were faces of the same moon. She knew enough about the sky to know that. And yet it was difficult not to look at this moon and shiver, for she felt as if she’d never seen it before.
The show was winding to a pause around her. It would spin back up as the night grew later, when the men returned for more ribald entertainments, and the women returned for closer looks at things that would have been scandalous by daylight, and everyone returned to see the oddities eat. In the meantime, the circus could take a breath, and eat.
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