by Jon Jacks
‘How did you get it?’ I whisper anxiously when, at last, he lets me take a breath of air. ‘What did you offer for it?’
The real ElixiAir, the one from Carnival Diabolus, doesn’t come cheap. And payment is hardly ever in something as mundane as money.
‘Never mind!’ Kevarn answers, his dark skin glistening with sweat. ‘This will work!’
He forces more of his precious drink into my mouth. It no longer tastes bitter. It tastes sweet. Like summer wine.
I laugh, like I’m drunk.
Laughing no longer hurts.
Instead, it feels good.
Very, very good.
‘Is it working?’
He frowns, the concern in his eyes more obvious than ever.
I nod.
He smiles, like he takes the fact that I can nod as a good sign.
‘It works!’
He says it like he’s surprised after all.
‘Help me up, please.’
‘You sure?’
He stoppers his bottle.
I nod again.
‘Just a bit dazed; feel a little drunk – that’s all!’
I grin; grin stupidly, I reckon.
He eagerly helps me sit up on the pile of clothes.
‘She’s fine! She’s okay!’ he yells out excitedly.
Verelda’s the first to rush elatedly towards me, eyes wide with wonder and joy.
‘But…but they said your back…’
A split second later, Jeserel is with her. Like her, he holds me close yet delicately, as if worried that my back might break again at any moment.
‘They said to stay back; that you mustn’t be moved!’
Everyone around me is now darting forward, weeping with joy as they hug me. They help me down from the piled clothes, help me to stand on my two feet once more.
The cheers and whoops rise up, even amongst the last of the departing crowd.
‘It’s all right everyone! She’s fine, she’s fine!’
Even Master Elias sounds overjoyed as he announces my recovery through his megaphone.
Then again, it’s more likely to just be relief.
It wouldn’t be good for business, me getting injured. Especially not in the middle of a Miracle Play.
It doesn’t exactly have the right connotations, does it?
The angel falling. Breaking her back.
Scaring everyone off.
Then again, who knows? Seeing carnie trash getting badly injured might actually appeal to a large number of townies.
Might actually have them all flocking in.
Master Elias is glancing my way; wondering what else he can milk from my recovery, I’ll bet.
His eyes light on the bottle being held by Kevarn; light up as an idea dawns.
‘The miracle cure, ladies and gentlemen!’ he hollers through his megaphone, directing his cry towards the tail end of the rapidly vanishing crowd. ‘You saw how badly she fell–’
As he speaks, he rushes over towards Kevarn, snatching the bottle from him. He holds the bottle up high in the air, letting what’s left of the liquid sparkle in the light from the oil lamps.
– ‘yet she was cured by ElixiAir!’
Kevarn glowers, furious that Master Elias has used my injury as a sales tool.
The departing crowd are only slightly more impressed; they laugh, or jeer, taking it all for granted now that my fall had been deliberate – just another ploy by the carnies to prise more money from them.
Master Elias glares at me, indicating with an abrupt wave of his hand that he requires a little more from me. Something to help him sell our ‘cure-all for most sorely afflicting ailments’.
I pirouette gracefully, end the move with a deep, ballerina-esque bow.
Finally, I elegantly skip off into the darkness with the odd, grateful wave to the departing townies.
The crowd laugh again, but this time add a few claps of appreciation.
They have to admire, I suppose, the audaciousness (if not outright stupidity) of attempting to sell a medicinal lotion with a trick that could have resulted in serious injury if it had gone wrong.
Of course, it hadn’t been a trick.
But something had gone wrong. And I had been seriously injured.
I’d hardly been able to move.
The pain had been steadily getting worse.
Whatever was in that bottle from Carnival Diabolus, it really had worked!
*
Chapter 4
Despite being physically cured, I still feel cut up inside.
Lorn hadn’t come to see how I was; he must have heard about the fall, yet still he hadn’t come to see me, to check I was all right!
I’d broken my back. I could have spent the rest of my life in a wheelchair.
Yet Lorn was nowhere to be seen.
He’ll have some excuse. He always does.
My friends had wanted to leave with me, of course. To make sure I really was okay. That I wasn’t going to suffer a relapse.
An irate glare from Master Elias had put them right on that score.
With a glower from beneath a severely lowered brow, he’d left them in no doubt that they had to stay, had to prepare the equipment for the next acts.
I was glad they had stayed behind. I wasn’t in the mood for talking.
Unless it was talking to Lorn. If only to see what excuses he’d got for me.
I was in a nosier, smellier if more brightly lit part of the carnival.
The area where the ancient, rattling big wheel turned. Where screams and guffaws came from the churning ghost train, or shrieks of pleasure from the few, smaller rides we’d managed to salvage.
Over it all, their hung the tinny sounds of scratchy music, the worryingly irregular throb of the generators that kept all this and the strings of electric lights running.
It was all centuries old. No one could build anything like this anymore.
It was now probably more patch and cannibalised components than original material. Whenever one ride finally failed, every piece was painstakingly saved to help keep the rest going.
Coal rather than far more unattainable oil powered the ingeniously adapted generators.
Standing virtually beneath one of the strings of brightly coloured lights, a townie cart displayed a skill far less established than ours at rescuing the scavenged materials of earlier times.
The tyres were heavily patched, being – I suspect – now solidly filled rather than inflated with air. Metal had rusted, despite numerous coats of paint. The worst areas had been patched with wooden boarding.
The useless engine, as with our own carts and caravans, had been replaced with a seating area for the driver.
It’s an ambulance: that’s why it had been allowed so far into the carnival. Yet it had obviously gone this far and no farther, stopping well short of arriving at the spot where I’d suffered my accident.
The uniformly clad ambulance crew are arguing with a handful of carnies I recognise.
They hadn’t realised they’d been called out for an injured carnie, the crew are complaining. They’d been told there had been a casualty amongst the audience.
They’re so angry, they fail to recognise the disquiet of their horses. If they have noticed, perhaps they’ve simply put the nervous skittering of their horses down to the effects of the argument itself.
The horses, however, are shying away from the darkness beyond the lights.
They sense the presence, deep within the darkness, of the other carnival; the Carnival Diabolus.
*
Chapter 5
Even when you know it’s there – even when you shade your eyes against the brightness of the overhead lights and try and peer as intently as you can into the sheer darkness – it isn’t always easy to see anything of the Carnival Diabolus.
It’s there, though; definitely there.
At times, I’ve caught glimpses of it. A carnival much like ours – only, they say, one w
here it’s not fakery.
It’s real; all too real.
The freaks. The fortune telling. The healing. The hurt that comes before the healing.
People have gone in there, returned dazed, changed.
Shocked. Blissful. Bewildered.
Some have never been seen again.
Sometimes, too, when the wind's right, I’ve heard the screams. The laughter. The music. The drunken singing.
All muted, naturally. But there if you listen carefully enough.
I swear, too, that I’ve seen large fish in the darkness. Glistening, weaving shoals of them. Even whales.
All swimming in the air, as if it were a deep sea.
The ambulance crew, of course, remain oblivious to this whole other world. Even though it exists just a few steps away from them.
They see only a complete darkness beyond the lights. They sense, as everyone who attends a carnival senses, that it’s not wise to enter that darkness.
But they don’t know why they feel this way.
They tell themselves it’s ridiculous.
Just an irrational fear.
Still, they don’t enter that darkness.
There’s always some reason to pull them away, just before they’re about to step into it.
Even when our carnival suffers a surprise search for any illicit copies of the Testament, the officers carrying out the rifling of our homes, our rides, our booths, all stop short of entering the darkness lying just beyond the lights.
They don’t know why.
You can see it on their faces.
They don’t even realise they haven’t searched there.
We could hide countless copies of the Testament within the darkness.
Yet we don’t: because even carnies aren’t sure what lies on the other side of our lights.
*
Chapter 6
‘Hey, you! You boy!’
One of the ambulance crew has stopped off from arguing. He’s pointing off towards the crowded walkways running between our booths.
He could be pointing at any number of people thronging around the hexagonally shaped stands.
‘You with the humped back!’
That could only be Lorn!
I look urgently for him amongst the crammed people. The other members of the ambulance crew are also now intently looking for him, alerted by their colleague’s cry.
What do they want him for? What’s he done?
‘We can help you!’ one of the crew pleads, shouting over the heads of the crowd as he ploughs into them, searching for Lorn.
‘It should be treated!’ yells another, similarly storming into the massed passers-by.
Their aggressive actions are at odds with their protestations of caring, of offering assistance. They’re more the actions of police running down a thief.
Lorn seems to think so too.
I can see him now. He’s stooping even lower than his crooked back forces him to, weaving his way swiftly through the crowd.
The people in his way stand aside for him, puzzled by this mix of deformity and beauty, wondering if it’s yet another piece of the carnival’s fakery. They unintentionally block his pursuers, seeing only irate men attempting to bludgeon their way through families and couples.
The odd carnie, recognising if not quite understanding Lorn’s plight, create further obstacles.
This seems the ideal time to move a large piece of boarding. Or to pull out an awning.
Despite their frustration, despite their last glimpse of Lorn being his humped back as he vanishes around a far corner, the pursuers don’t give up the chase.
*
Chapter 7
I know were Lorn will have headed for.
The Glass Labyrinth.
The walls are of glass, appearing little different from the openings. Every now and again, a mirror adds to the confusion.
If you know the way, however, it’s not a maze but an elaborately weaving corridor.
Lorn is in the Mirrored Hall, where he’s almost unnoticeable amongst the deformed reflections of so many other people.
In at least two mirrors, he appears almost normal; normal, that is, apart from his ethereal grace, the elegantly and perfectly proportioned elements of every other part of his body.
When he sees me, he grins.
There’s an anxiety in his eyes, though: an anger blending with the bitterness that has grown within him as he has grown older. He has become increasingly aware of how his deformity sets him apart.
Unlike the other young boys, who are proud to show off their developing bodies – stripping off their shirts, eagerly baring their torsos as they help the carnival rise from the ground – Lorn always keeps his body covered.
Even when I’ve held him, held him close, he shrugs free whenever my caressing hands draw near towards his back, his serpentine-like spine.
‘Why are they after you?’ I ask.
It’s odd, their insistence that he needs treating. They were prepared to leave me to suffer, even though I had broken my back.
‘They want to cut my back open. They’re under orders to look out for people like me: to bring them back for treatment.’
He says it with a remarkable degree of certainty. But how could he possible know this?
He sees the question in my puzzled, disbelieving stare.
He chuckles wryly.
‘I saw it in the crystal.’
I give a snort of derision, angry that he’s resorting to lies.
Lorn’s fortune telling, his palm readings, are as fake as anything else here at the carnival.
His real skill lies in observation and charm: picking up clues to a person’s character, their history, from the way they speak, what they wear, how they move.
He builds on his originally simple pronouncements by noting the reactions they elicit. He subtly feeds back their own innocent disclosures.
‘It’s true,’ he insists, yet without any real enthusiasm, like he wishes it wasn’t really so. ‘I don’t know how it happened: it was a vision, I’m sure! I just sensed, deeply, that it was real! Like with your accident.’
He grabs my hand, looks directly into my eyes. Asking me to believe him, to trust him.
‘I knew you’d be okay! That I didn’t need to come! That I didn’t need to risk being taken away!’
‘I wouldn’t have been okay,’ I say sourly, ‘but for Kevarn and his water!’
He guffaws roguishly.
‘His water? Don’t you mean water from Diabolus?’
‘You saw that in your vision?’
‘Yes, and no,’ he admits. ‘“No” in that I already knew Kevarn had a bottle: he’d asked me to drink it. To cure my back.’
‘You can’t have taken enough! It worked for me.’
Even as I scold him for refusing this opportunity to cure his affliction, another part of me recognises that if he had, I’d be the one now permanently deformed.
‘It worked for you,’ he said, a hint of a scoff to his tone, ‘because it returned you to how you’re supposed to be. As for me; I’ve always looked like this. This is how I’m supposed to look!’
I reach out to stroke his back; but, as always, he shrugs, pulls clear. He raises his clenched hands up before his face, a sign that he’s trying hard to control his emotions.
‘Don’t…don’t say they’re where my angel’s wings should be!’
He doesn’t believe that we’re descended from angels. He’s never believed it.
Recently, he’s been even edgier than usual with me.
Treating me weirdly.
Like he can’t get enough of me, yet somehow still wants to keep his distance.
Staring into my eyes, clasping my hands tightly.
Like he wants to soak up every element of my being.
Like he wants to be able to remember me.
Like he thinks I’m not going to be around much longer.
If I’d believed he had any talent for seeing the future
, I’d’ve been anxious, worrying about what he might have seen.
Now, of course, it seems he can see the future in his crystal.
‘He’s here! Hiding in the mirror maze!’
Thorough the multiple layers of glass, one of the pursuing ambulance crew has spotted us.
He makes to dash towards us. He runs into a glass pane, crumples to the ground.
‘Quick!’ Lorn cries. ‘I have to get out of here!’
*
Rushing through the maze, we plunge out of a maintenance exit we know of, out into the still-crowded alleys running between the rides and booths.
We weave past anyone who would otherwise be blocking our way.
Alerted by his cries, the friends of the stunned ambulance man are all heading this way, all coming from different angles: a pursuing man coming down every alleyway.
‘We’re trapped!’
Lorn urgently glances everywhere about him, desperately seeking an escape route. The nearby booths are too small to hide in. Too high and too separated for us to bother climbing.
Directly ahead of us, beyond the glare of the strung up, gaily-glowing lights, lies the darkness of the Carnival Diabolus.
Lorn hesitates; he whirls, kisses me.
Says: ‘I saw this too! I have to do it.’
Then, releasing my hand, before I can protest, let alone try to stop him, he sprints towards the darkness.
He rushes beneath the lights.
As he steps into the darkness, he vanishes.
*
Chapter 8
Despite my fear, I chase after him.
Suddenly, however, strong arms are curling around my waist, lifting me off my fruitlessly whirling feet; holding me back from completely following Lorn.
‘Let me go, let me go! I have to go–’
‘No, no! You won’t come back! You’re carnie; you won’t come back!’
It’s Kevarn, crying his warning out close to my ear. He must have heard the earlier shouts, come along to see if he can help.
Like me, he will have seen Lorn vanishing over the line. Disappearing into the Carnival Diabolus.
‘I have to try and bring him back!’
I struggle to break free, but Kevarn’s gradually dragging me clear.
The crew of the ambulance are nearby, impatiently looking around for Lorn, wondering where he went, how he managed to avoid them.
They didn’t see him vanishing into the darkness.
