by R D Martin
Looking at the feline, hoping for a suggestion, she wasn’t disappointed when he turned his nose toward the bathroom. It was as if lightning struck her. Energy bound through her and set the hair on the back of her neck on end. There was a toothbrush for Samantha in the bathroom in case she forgot hers when she spent the night.
“You’re a genius,” she said, running to fetch the toothbrush.
“Did you expect less?” her familiar replied before licking his paws and rubbing them over his head and ears.
Returning with the toothbrush, a map and a small bit of string, Bella spread the map open on the table, hoping Samantha was still inside the city somewhere. It had been hours, and if whoever took her had kept traveling, they could be too far away for the locater spell to work. Tying the toothbrush to the string, she started swinging it in small circles around the map. Pushing her exhausted and rather feeble magic to its limit, she willed the brush to point to its owner.
It took a few minutes, during which she started giving up hope, but the first tug on the string caused her heart to jump in her chest. Samantha was still in the city. The string tugged harder toward the center of the map and she let it guide her hand, its movements shrinking as the spell narrowed down Samantha’s location.
Before the brush could stop swinging, however, there was another tug on the string, this time toward the far left of the map. Surprised, she watched the brush shoot off to the left, pulling the string and her hand with it. As the brush reached the edge, it shot off again, this time toward the bottom of the map.
“What’s going on?” she mumbled. Locater spells didn’t work like this. It should be a gentle, ever-closing circle that pinpointed the object. Not this jerking from one place to another.
As if just to defy her expectations, the toothbrush jumped again and again, pinging around the map as if it were a rubber ball bouncing off walls. Trying to force the spell to work, she concentrated and tugged on the string. At that moment the string broke, sending the toothbrush skittering off the table and hitting Cat, interrupting his tongue bath.
Baffled, she retrieved the brush, ready to try again.
“Don’t even,” said Cat, somewhat irritated by the interruption.
“What? Why? I can find her. I almost did.”
“Oh, you found she’s still in the city all right, but you’re not going to find her. At least not in your current state.”
“What do you mean? She’s here. She’s right here.” She felt almost frantic and her words rose to a high pitch as she pointed to the map.
“Calm down and think. Why did the spell not work? She’s in the city, we know that, but you couldn’t locate her. Why?”
Cat was right. The spell should have worked better than it had. She knew Samantha was in the city, but that was all. Why had the spell acted weird? It wasn’t as if she’d had her concentration broken. There was no one here but Cat and herself. At that thought, realization dawned on her.
“Someone’s interfering,” she said at last.
Cat nodded. “And that means?”
“It means…” She thought for a moment. If someone was interfering, there was nothing she could do. She was too drained to overpower whatever was blocking her. With that thought, the small amount of energy she had left abandoned her and allowed a wave of exhaustion to swamp her. “It means I’m too tired to do this right now.” Again she got a nod from Cat.
It was time, past time really, that she got some sleep. She’d need her energy if she was going to find the girl. Though finding her really wasn’t the problem. Whoever had her was using stronger magic than she could wield by herself. She’d need some help to break through the spell. Once she did, though, there was still the matter of getting to her, which meant getting by whatever had her.
It was too much. Too much excitement, too much magic, too much everything. She needed sleep and a clear head. Cat was right.
Leaving the kitchen, she headed toward her bed, ready to let sleep take her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Cat sitting on his haunches and staring at her, his tail swaying. In her room, the last thing she thought before falling asleep was how crazy it was to argue with Cat, a thought he would agree with.
Chapter 7
“Have a nice day, Ms. Rigby,” Bella said, waving to the old woman stepping off the elevator. Ms. Rigby might be old, but her mind, not to mention her tongue, was as sharp as ever. Elevator passengers were forced to listen to the woman’s opinions on everything from dealing with a disrespectful younger generation to what she’d do to whoever had caused last night’s fire alarm. Most of the passengers on the elevator rolled their eyes and ignored her, but Bella listened, doing her best to stay in the woman’s good graces. After last night, she needed all the good karma she could get.
Sleep had come, but it had not been restful. She’d tossed and turned, filled with dreams of horror and pain. Waking up in a cold sweat had almost been a blessing.
Hoping she’d regained enough energy to break through whatever spell had been blocking hers, she tried the locater spell one more time. Though she felt she was just on the edge of success, the results were the same as before. She knew Samantha was in the city, but no more. It was, she decided, time to find some help. Telling Cat she would be back later, she’d headed for the elevator.
When the last passenger stepped off, no doubt more than happy to be away from Ms. Rigby, she stayed behind and let the doors close. She traced a rune on the button panel, and the metal rippled for a moment as if made of water and the rune flashed a forest-green color before calming again. When it did, where there had once been ten buttons, there were now eleven. The button glowed with a rainbow light that expanded to fill the elevator until nothing else was visible. A jerk of the elevator car to the right caused her stomach to feel twisted, and dinging as though the car had reached the next floor, its doors slid open. As they did, she wasn’t greeted with the drab off-white marble of her building’s lobby, but the bright and vibrant colors of the Circus.
Nobody knew where the Circus came from, or even where it was located, though there were as many ideas as creatures who visited. Technically the name of the place was the Iremia, but she referred to it as the Circus because, in her mind, that’s what it looked like. From where she stood in the elevator, she could see tents, larger on the inside than on the outside, in every color she could imagine. In the distance there was a dragon, a real dragon, breathing fire on the crowd below, though they walked through the yellow flames as though taking a stroll in a warm garden. That was the thing here. The Circus was a place of safety for everyone.
Stepping through the doors that closed behind her and shimmered out of existence, she wound her way through the crowds. The air smelled of a mix of food, spices, and a mosh of sweat the way busy farms do. The number of creatures here had always been a startling revelation on just how full of the supernatural the world was. She remembered her first time coming here as a child. Her father had brought her along as part of his search for something or other as part of his business, and she’d been afraid of everything. Without letting go of his hand, she’d tried to hide behind him, which caused him to laugh and pick her up. This only gave her an excuse to wrap her arms around his neck so tight that he could have passed out from a lack of oxygen. It only took him pointing out a pair of fairy wings, flapping rapidly and leaving an iridescent glow behind them, for her to stop being afraid. Any place that had Fae couldn’t be so bad.
During that trip she’d learned that this was the place all supernatural creatures could come, escaping the mundane world and persecution of humans, safe as long as they stayed. Some creatures, like the dragon flying overhead in a loop-the-loop pattern, disappeared from the human world entirely because they never left here. Others just came and went as they pleased. All any creature needed to get here was a bit of magic and a door. Travelers could be anywhere in the world, then arrive here in a single step. And because they took that step, it made the Circus the natural place to become the economic cente
r of trade for, well, everybody. If a traveler looked hard enough, they could find almost anything.
With the vast diversity of creatures here, there was bound to be some tension. After all, an Ifrit and a water nymph are opposites in every way and coming together here would cause nothing but trouble. That trouble, however, was avoided because of the Fengari Mati.
Hanging in the sky, about the size of a small moon, was, for lack of a better term, an eye. The Fengari Mati, also called the Eye, was a giant round blue orb looking down on the Circus and everything happening here. Since it was never night and the eye never blinked, it saw everything. The Eye got its power from everyone who visited the Circus, taking just a small fraction of their power into itself. With millions of creatures visiting at any given moment, that was a lot of power, and every bit of it was needed.
Bella jumped as a giant bellowed. Though she was close enough to see him stoop and slam a massive hand into the ground, causing everything around to shake with the impact, but couldn’t see what he was aiming for until a small creature darted out of the crow. Though it was fast the little creature, a hobgoblin if she had to guess, wasn’t fast enough. Having missed the darting figure with his first attempt, the giant tried to smash it again. As the massive hand came down, slamming on top of the small creature with enough force to turn it to pulp, the earth shuddered, and she almost lost her footing.
When the giant lifted its hand, the hobgoblin stared around itself with a wild-eyed expression as though surprised to still be alive. Some of the crowd looked surprised as well. Not that they should have been, though. The Eye kept everything in the Circus from hurting each other, at least on purpose. Accidents could still happen, but by-and-large, this was a pretty safe place. Bella looked up at the Eye, silently hoping she never needed it’s protection.
Wandering through the crowds, she followed the path she’d taken to the Finder so many times as a child. Finders, a special breed of beings whose magic allowed them to search for anything, were in high demand in places like the Circus. Her father had used one particular Finder so often that the creature might as well have been family. Seeing the different marking posts pushing up from the ground like leafless trees made locating the shop easy, and before long, she stood in front of a small gray tent that looked not only as if it had seen better centuries, but shouldn’t have been able to fit two people inside, much less an entire shop. Dropping to her hands and knees, she pushed the tent flap to the side and crawled in.
As drab and washed out as the outside of the tent was, the inside was the complete opposite. Rising, she took in her surroundings. She stood in what could be the lobby of a very expensive hotel. Tall marble columns flecked with blue and gold rose high into the air, their tops disappearing in darkness above. A lush, deep red carpet covered the floor, while suits of armor stood beside glass cases full of weird and wonderful objects. For customers with time to lounge, large overstuffed chairs called invitingly for them to sit and enjoy a long conversation. The air was full of the smell of roasted beans that reminded her of the best coffee she’d ever tasted. This lobby was, in every way, the very definition of luxury.
Walking to the front desk, a slab of black marble more than twenty feet long, she was surprised to see no one behind it. Sitting in the center of the black expanse, propped against a silver bell like a miniature island in an endless flat sea, was a small white card. Picking it up, she had to focus on it for a moment as the writing on it kept shifting between different languages. While most of them she didn’t know, she recognized the human languages, the flowing script of the Fae and the crisp, blocky writing that belonged to the Dwarfish nations, though which of the half dozen she did not know. The shifting slowed and, as though making up its mind, settled on English to read, “Ring Bell for Service.” Setting the card down, she tapped the counter bell.
Rather than a light ping, a loud gong sounded, reverberating throughout the room and causing dust to fall from rafters high above. A flock of birds took flight somewhere in the darkness as the sound startled them from their nests. Off to her right something small and furry raced past her, running toward the far reaches of the room. From behind the counter, she heard a booming, deep voice hollering, though what it said she couldn’t make out.
“Coming,” a voice yelled from the other side of the counter. The sound was small and tinny, as though spoken through the far end of a tin can telephone, though she couldn’t see anyone speaking.
A long squeal of hinges drew her attention, and, standing on the tips of her toes, she watched a trapdoor flip open on the other side of the counter. As the source of the voice appeared from behind the counter, she almost gasped at the lanky creature towering above her. The creature was entirely covered with brown greasy hair that drooped and swayed as it stepped out of the trapdoor. The hair hid its entire face except for a long sharp nose poking out of the hairy coat.
It spoke and its words, muffled by the hair covering its face, made no sense. When she didn’t respond, the creature began drumming its fingers on the black marble in front of it, as if waiting for her to make the next move.
“I, uh, I’m here to see the Finder,” she said. In all her visits here as a child, she’d seen no one but the Finder before.
“Ah, human. English. Right. Sorry about that. The translation spell doesn’t work until customers say something first. So, what can I do for you?” the creature said with a vaguely British accent.
“I’m here to see the Finder,” she repeated.
“And you have an appointment?”
“No, I didn’t know I needed—”
“Everyone who wants to see the Finder needs an appointment. Rules you know.” The creature shrugged as if trying to show its sympathy for her wasted time.
“Okay, I’d like to make an appointment, please. How do I do that?”
“Oh, easy. You ask the Finder.”
Somehow she knew the creature was grinning through the mass of hair on its face.
“Excuse me?”
“Okay, you’re excused,” it said, turning its back on her.
“No. I mean I need an appointment.”
“Oh. Not a problem.” Turning back to face her, the attendant reached beneath the counter. Pulling its arms back, it lifted an enormous appointment book larger than any she’d ever seen. Dropping it on the counter and blowing off a layer of dust that caused her to sneeze, it flipped the gigantic cover open. “So. When did the Finder say you should visit, eh?”
“What? I… I thought you were joking. You mean I really need to see the Finder to make an appointment to see the Finder?”
“Oh, aye,” the creature said. Closing the book, it replaced it under the desk. “The rules are very clear about that. Only the Finder makes his appointments. Imagine if anybody could. We’d have a line of people going out the door trying to make their own appointments, wouldn’t we?”
“But you need to see the Finder to make an appointment with the Finder? That’s, well, that’s ridiculous,” she said.
“Yeah, isn’t it, though?” the creature said in a tone that failed to hide its amusement at the situation. “But it’s the rules.”
Massaging her temples to hold off the migraine she knew would be coming with a vengeance, she decided on a different approach.
“Can you tell the Finder that his appointment to make an appointment for a future appointment is here?” she asked, smiling at the hairy giant.
“Ah, I’m sorry, say again,” the creature replied, having lost the thread of the conversation.
“It’s simple, I’m his current appointment to make an appointment for an appointment later.”
The creature smiled as it caught onto her game. “Good one,” it said, looking as though it appreciated her effort. “Most people just walk away after that.” It gave a small chuckle.
“And the Finder doesn’t mind losing the customers?”
“Don’t know. He never tells me.”
“Okay, then. Well, do you think you could tell him
?”
“Sure, be right back.”
The creature turned and descended the hidden stairs behind the counter. She heard a few crashes and some yelling and a short time later, the creature’s head reappeared. Drawing itself up, the creature placed a carved wooden box on the counter. A variety of colors splashed across its surface as though a child was given a paint palette and told to have fun. The result resembled a psychedelic bird house, only instead of a hole in the front underneath the perch, there was an actual door.
The creature, with a slow grace she would not have thought possible, opened the delicate door. A freezing wind blew out through the doorway for a moment, carrying snowflakes in its wake, and, with a pace so slow as to make an ice age seem fast, a caterpillar emerged.
The caterpillar, inching its way out the door, was covered in blue and red tufts of hair while stubby little black feet helped move it along. If not for two large white dots near the front end, it would have been impossible to tell if the caterpillar was coming or going. Reaching the end of the perch, it bent itself double before unfolding straight up to reach a height of about three inches. In doing so, it uncovered what was a face, though one so scrunched up and twisted it looked as though it had been living on a steady diet of sour lemons.
“Finder,” she said. Leaning down, she almost placed her chin on the counter to bring her face even with the insect.
The Finder was a Moab, a race of creatures so scarce that no written record of them existed. The only thing she knew about them, other than they looked like caterpillars, was that they originally came from thick forested areas in Europe and were very magical. Her father once hinted the Moab had a hand in creating the Circus, and if the Finder was any example of its race, she would believe it.
