by Colin Meloy
The schematic drifted from Wigman’s fingers to the carpeted floor as he stared at the man in the closet, trying to make sense of the very strange aura that exuded from him. It was, he reasoned, the pince-nez. The man really knew how to wear a pince-nez.
CHAPTER 22
Procession; Final Performance Tonight!
They held hands in a long line, all thirty-eight of them. The line stretched from the front porch of the cottage and extended up over the lip of the vale. Those who were able also held the leashes of as many dogs as they could manage to round up. It was agreed that Rachel should be first in the line. There was no telling the effect the Periphery could have on someone without Woods Magic emerging first. Elsie would take up the rear, so as best to distribute the current. These were the precautions that they’d all worked out, carefully, after the rousing meeting in the cottage dining room.
Rachel shouted from the front. “All connected?”
Each Unadoptable, Carol among them, sounded out along the line. “Yep!” “Uh-huh!” “I am!”
“Okay!” hollered Rachel. “We’re moving.”
And so the line began to snake away from their solitary home in the midst of the Periphery, the one that they’d shared for so many days and nights—days and nights that would’ve amounted to years and years in the outside world; but in here, in this purgatory, it had been like the same day replaying itself, over and over again. They each in turn gave a final glance to the sad little glade and the dilapidated cottage that sat nestled in it. A remnant wisp of smoke trailed from the chimney, like a waving hand bidding them adieu.
As they walked, Elsie wondered on all the things that had transpired over the previous few days. The revelation of her connection to the Impassable Wilderness, while being strange, had somehow not been as big of a surprise to her as she would have expected. It was as if she’d known all along that she’d harbored something bizarre and special. What’s more, the feeling that this gift had some bearing on her brother’s disappearance grew by the hour. Deep down, she’d felt some weird resonance in the circumstances around his leaving, and she could no longer brush it aside as a hallucination.
Rachel, on the other hand, had bristled at the mention of their incredible pedigree. She seemed to wear it like a shameful label. The night before they left, when preparations were being made, Rachel had shushed her sister anytime she’d wanted to bring it up. “It’s nothing,” she’d said. “We should be focusing on just getting out of here.”
There was one thing, though, in all the children’s planning, that they’d failed to consider. They’d forgotten about their identical earrings, the yellow tags hanging from the lobes of their ears. They’d become so accustomed to them, no one thought to imagine what they were for. By the time they’d headed away from the direction of the road and toward what they figured was the eastern edge of the Bind, it was too late.
“Who are you?” demanded Wigman, after he’d recovered from his shock. It was rare that Brad Wigman found himself in a room where he didn’t know absolutely everyone of consequence—particularly considering that the man who had emerged from the closet had a kind of dapper raiment that Wigman could only dream of pulling off.
“Name’s Roger Swindon. I’m not of the Outside.”
“What are you doing here?” Remembering where he was, Wigman turned to Unthank. “What’s he doing here?”
“Well, it’s a bit of a long story—” began Joffrey. He was cut off by Roger.
“As I said, I’ve commissioned him to build a cog. One that will, once it’s finished, prove to have great influence on the affairs of my home country. I’ve offered him a stake in the winnings. He’s failed in the attempt.”
“Failed?”
“I gave him five days to build this cog, the one that you saw in the schematic. He has just told me that he is unable to make it.” The strange man walked confidently between Unthank and Wigman and scooped the blueprint from the floor. He shook it out and began to fold it by its worn creases. “Unfortunately, I’m now forced to bring my proposal to another manufacturer. I’d been told he was the best; I see now I was sadly mistaken.”
Wigman glared over at Unthank, who was cowering slightly. “Is this true?”
Joffrey nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this, Machine Parts?” asked Wigman.
“Well, you were so, I don’t know, unhappy about my … my interest in the Impassable Wilderness. I thought it best to just do it in secret. I was going to tell you eventually, promise.” Unthank was lying to the Chief Titan. In a way, it felt good.
“Joffrey, Joffrey,” chided Wigman. “You have to tell me about these things. I could help you, old man.”
Joffrey began to protest, stammering something about how he had told the Chief Titan about it, and Wigman had only ever given him scorn and reprimands.
Wigman wasn’t listening. “What were the terms?” he asked, speaking over Unthank as he turned to face Roger.
“Produce the Cog, have free and unfettered access to the Impassable Wilderness and all the resources you can plunder. Simple as that.”
Unthank objected. “Well, it’s not quite that simple. This piece, this Möbius Cog, is one of the most complex and intricate things I’ve—”
Wigman waved him aside. “Suppose I got involved. Redoubled our attempt. Would you give us more time?”
Roger seemed to chew on the idea for a moment. Finally, he said, “I’m afraid my confidence in your man has been badly shaken. Redoubling efforts is the least that can be done—but may yet prove to be insufficient. No, I shall have to find another manufacturer, someone who can meet my demands.”
Joffrey, despite himself, stifled a laugh. “Mr. Swindon, sir, with all due respect, there is no …” He paused, a thought coming over him. “Unless. Unless.”
“Unless?” asked Wigman.
“Wait a second,” said Unthank. “Hear me out for a second. I got really, really close to making this thing, to succeeding. So close that I could taste it. If I just had a little help, I’m sure I could build it.” He reached his hand out to Roger, asking for the blueprint. It was given with some reluctance. He then waved the two men to the desk, where he flattened the schematic out on the surface. He pointed to two scrawled names on the bottom of the page. Unthank read them aloud; he’d spent many hours marveling over the two names—imagining what these men must’ve looked like. The skill that had been required to not only build the thing, but to design it, was simply staggering. “Esben Clampett. Carol Grod,” he intoned. “I need them.”
“Well, where are they?” asked an indignant Wigman.
“Exiled,” said Roger.
“Why on earth were they exiled?”
“To prevent this precise thing from happening—so that no one could ever replicate the work they’d done. So that no one, not even the makers themselves, could somehow outdo or create a better version of the thing itself.” Roger waved his hand dismissively in the air. “The woman who hired them—she was a madwoman. Raving.” He said it as if it were an adequate explanation.
Wigman laughed under his breath. He’d had experiences like this before—not necessarily finding people in exile, but certainly gaining access to people who’d been sheltered from potential competitors. It was, in fact, one of Wigman’s most prized qualities, his ability to convince engineers and chemists to leave competing companies. It was called poaching; it wasn’t a very honest way of dealing, but honesty rarely got anyone anywhere in his line of work. “Nothing a few sawbucks couldn’t fix,” said Wigman. “And let’s say we only found one. Wouldn’t that do the trick?”
Unthank looked to Roger imploringly.
“You don’t understand,” said Roger. “This is not your everyday exile. These makers were put in places where they could not be reached without considerable effort. And you’d have to locate both. Their employer took very severe measures to make sure that they’d both be needed in order to recreate the thing.”
“Severe measures?�
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“One was blinded, one had his hands chopped off.”
Unthank blanched. The Impassable Wilderness was suddenly seeming a very vulgar and rough place. It was the first time that his monomania, his obsession with the I.W., was put into question.
Wigman, on the other hand, was not daunted. In fact, he was quite the opposite. “Impressive,” he said. “I’ll have to meet this woman. I like the way she works.”
“Her essence was swallowed by living ivy,” explained Roger. “So that won’t be happening.”
“Shame,” said Wigman. Then: “Wait—what?”
Roger again waved his hand dismissively. “But this is all neither here nor there, gentlemen.” He looked to Unthank. “If we find them, do you think you’ll be successful?”
“Think?” Joffrey said, smiling. “I know I will be. With the two designers here, even without their, um, salient body parts, I have no doubt we can—”
But he didn’t have a chance to finish his sentence. At that moment, every last white transponder unit on the bookshelves of Unthank’s office let out a shrill, deafening staccato of BEEPS. They were a winking city of flashing red lights, these metal boxes, their needles flying wildly in the peaks of their gauges. The three men stared, immobilized, at the display.
The Unadoptables had returned.
Prue and Curtis were out of breath by the time they’d made it down the sloping hill of junk and had crossed the rusted rails of the train track. The carnival was in full swing, though its swing seemed to be of a fairly dismal arc. There were perhaps three families milling about the grounds, eyeing the yelping barkers and counting out change for the cotton candy machine. The blue-and-yellow big top tent held the center of the carnival’s meandering layout like a great eye, and the two friends paused only briefly to catch their breath before jogging the final yards to what they guessed to be the backstage entrance. A grumpy-looking man stood guard.
“We have—” sputtered Prue, her breath coming in heaves. “We have to get back … we have to see Esben.”
The man, chewing on a toothpick, looked at them askance. “Who says?”
“We say,” insisted Curtis. He thought quickly. “We’re relatives.”
Prue caught on quick. “Yeah,” she said. “That’s our dad. We need to see him.”
The man looked at them both, very carefully, before giving out a loud, braying laugh. “Thought I’d heard ’em all,” he said. He squared up and pulled the toothpick from his mouth before adding, “The show’s about to start, anyway. They ain’t lettin’ anybody back.”
Prue’s heart sank a little. Septimus said, “Squeak.” Curtis didn’t miss a beat.
“Where do we get tickets?” he asked.
Not far off, a sign above the ticket taker’s booth read FINAL PERFORMANCE TONIGHT! CHILDREN TEN AND UNDER FREE! Arriving there, Prue tapped on the glass, startling the man sitting within. He’d been reading a tattered paperback, and he looked up at the two children at the window as if he’d just teleported from the astral plane.
“Two tickets, please,” said Prue. She held her two fingers up.
The man looked down at them through his bifocals. “How old are you?”
“Ten,” said Curtis.
“Twelve,” corrected Prue, elbowing Curtis in the ribs.
He glowered at them. “Eighteen bucks.”
Prue gaped dramatically at the man in the booth. The price seemed awfully expensive for an event at a near-abandoned carnival by a trash heap. She looked helplessly at Curtis. He gave her a shrug. She flipped her knapsack over and searched the contents for cash; none was forthcoming. Then she remembered something; a nagging memory, calling to her from what felt to be another century. In her jeans pocket were the crushed dollars that her mother had given her to buy naan bread, so many days previous. She heaved a sigh of relief as she extricated them from her pocket. She began flattening them out, one by one, on the booth counter. There were ten, all told. She smiled at the ticket taker.
“It’s all we have,” she said. She flashed then on her parents; they had sent her out to a neighborhood restaurant on a simple errand. What must they be thinking now? Would they ever have imagined—would she ever have imagined—what she would, in the end, be using these few crumpled dollars for?
“We really want to see this show,” said Curtis.
The man arched an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?” He studied them both. “Well, you and about nobody else. Thank God they’re movin’ on tonight. The show stinks. I mean, besides Esben.” He grumbled a little and started pulling on the roll of blue tickets by his side. He slid two of them through the hole in the window; depositing them there, he begrudgingly began sorting out the mass of crumpled dollar bills Prue had given him.
“Enjoy the show,” he said before turning back to his book.
They found their seats in the audience of the big top tent; a gray-haired woman handed them a program. The room was nearly empty. Two teenagers were giggling in the back row of the bleachers; a middle-aged man, alone, sat off to the side, eating roasted peanuts from a grease-stained paper bag. Curtis, taking his seat, looked at the program the woman had given him; it was a cheap, photocopied pamphlet, printed on shocking yellow paper. On the cover was the picture of a bear, its jaws open to reveal an astonishing row of teeth. Above the picture was a banner, which sported the words: “WILD ANIMALS! SAVAGE BEASTS!” At the bottom, a similar banner read: “ESBEN THE GREAT!” Curtis opened the pamphlet, only to have the inner pages go fluttering to the ground at his feet. He was just reaching down to retrieve them when the lights flashed in the tent.
The man who they’d just bought tickets from shuffled in and surveyed the sparse audience. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a flat and unenthused voice, which seemed to sluggishly slide from one word to the next. “Prepare yourselves for the experience of a lifetime. Let the Gamblin Brothers Circus big top transport you to a place of magic and wonder.” He stopped and picked at his nose, briefly studying his finger before wiping it on his pants and continuing, “They’ve traveled the world, from Siam to Siberia, tickling the fancies of tsars and sultans alike. Women and small children should be advised: What you are about to see will confound and astonish. The show everyone’s been talking about …” He gave a halfhearted dramatic pause before announcing: “Esben the Great.”
The seats rose up in an amphitheater-like fashion from a dirt floor that was the big top’s stage. A bright red tent stood at one end; its flaps were thrown open suddenly, and out strutted a man in a felt top hat, candy-striped tights, and a black jacket with tails. He seemed to take a moment to glare at the ticket taker—his introduction had apparently lacked sufficient gusto—before smiling widely to the audience members. Curtis looked around him. There were only six of them.
Curtis heard Prue hiss, “Could that be …?”
But they both came to the same conclusion simultaneously: The man made a low bow before dramatically flourishing his hands. They were, undoubtedly, very real hands, not resembling hooks in the slightest. The man, having finished his bow, waited patiently as an old woman, a latecomer, hobbled her way to her seat.
“LADEES AND GENTLESMEN,” said the man, very loudly, in a voice tinged with an accent of indeterminate origin. “Thee danceeing monkeee.” His words slurred together as if they were made of putty; it occurred to Prue that he might be drunk.
A young boy, perhaps Curtis’s age, manned a station on the side of the stage surrounded by an array of instruments: a dented trumpet, a snare drum, and a penny whistle. At the announcement, he lifted the trumpet to his lips and gave a sorry fanfare.
The flaps of the canopy behind him were folded open again, and a darkened figure shoved two rhesus monkeys out into the lights of the big top. The two animals wore matching fezzes. They looked confused. In the time they’d taken to scurry to center stage, the ringleader had procured two hula hoops, which he was brandishing wildly.
“Thee monkeees will jump. Throo zhe hoooops!” The man walked with determina
tion to where the monkeys stood and waved the hoops in their faces. “Jump!” he yelled. “Jump!”
They stared at the man, bewildered.
The man let out a string of curses in an unrecognizable language before walking sternly to the two monkeys and quietly berating them. He then returned to his original position and held the hoops aloft. “Jump, monkeees, jump!” he shouted.
One of the monkeys wandered to a hula hoop and lazily climbed through, one leg after the other. The other stared at something on the ground; whatever it was, it didn’t survive much inspection before the animal had grabbed it with its thin fingers and popped it into its mouth. The boy on the side stage gave another splatty toot on his horn; the monkeys were ushered from the stage.
“This is depressing,” Septimus whispered into Curtis’s ear. Curtis could only nod.
“Did we get the wrong Esben?” he asked.
“Maybe Esben’s coming out later,” Prue whispered.
What followed was the most dismal display of a one-ring circus event that any of them had ever seen. The monkeys had been reluctant, but they had been more invested than the single wizened elephant, who lumbered onto the stage with all the enthusiasm of a kid going into the dentist’s. The lions were positively narcoleptic and the “dancing squirrels” so hyper that they immediately dashed from the tent flaps to the exit in a split second, presumably freeing themselves to return to their brethren on the outside. Their trainer, a fat man in a too-small suit, ran after them, smiling all the while to the audience—though not before Prue noted that his hands were, in fact, very real. The ringleader was becoming increasingly frustrated and thereby increasingly sober at every disaster; he stamped his feet angrily as each one came to pass until, conferring with an offstage handler (real hands, no hooks), he decided to move directly to the main event.
