Circus of the Unseen (12 page)

‘I promise.'

‘He's a naughty boy who kept trying to escape, so Mother locked him in a cave over that way.' She pointed. ‘It's near the waterfall behind the Big Top.' She covered my mouth with a cold hand. ‘Shh, Rose Girl! You mustn't tell anyone I told you, especially not Mother Matushka and
especially
not Lola.'

Just then, all the flames on the skull-posts around the Big Top died. All of them, I noticed, except for the one closest to the opening of the tent, the one I'd carried here. That one still flickered and, in its glow, I watched the performers lie down. ‘What's happening now? Is this where we're supposed to sleep?'

‘We don't exactly sleep,' said Coco. ‘We lie down and rest until Mother comes again to do the light. We don't need to sleep, but she says we need to have a night and a day. She's going to make the night now, look.'

Mother Matushka was standing in front of the entrance to the Big Top. She looked more ancient than ever, like one of those bodies preserved in a bog. Her skin was shiny, leathery meat, shrouded in fur. She stretched out her arms and performed the same ritual I'd seen outside the cottage, only this time, after grasping the invisible wheel, she turned it anti-clockwise. The sun moved quickly at first, but she faltered, and it seemed to get stuck just over the Big Top, like it was burning into the canopy.

I still couldn't believe this was real. How could it be? The trappings of an illusion
had
to be somewhere. I watched Mother Matushka straining, putting the full force of her body into turning the wheel, and then, with one last almighty effort, the sun jerked down and a thin blade of moon emerged over the edge of the rocky verge that lay beyond the trees that ringed the Big Top. Then she picked up a pail and went into those trees, scattering something as she went.

I turned on my side to face Coco. She was lying down flat, completely still, completely silent, but with her eyes wide open. All the others I could see looked the same, like they were in a trance, somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. There were no breathing sounds, no sleep snuffles or snores, and in the moonlight their skin looked like stone. I couldn't sleep here. It was like lying with the dead. And I had this horrible creeping feeling that this circus wasn't actually part of the world I knew. No, it was more than creeping. The sense that there was too much madness going on here for it to be a weird secret sect was starting to
flood
through me.

And as well as the freakiness of Mother Matushka appearing to make night and day, and Coco talking about dying, and the weird horses and birds and ghostly instruments that played themselves, there were also the connections with Granny, like the dolls, and that wolf boy mentioning
The Beast Who Walked Like a Man
. I couldn't just lie here doing nothing. If that boy, Freddie, had tried to leave, maybe he knew something. I had to find him, and I couldn't wait.

I waved my hand in front of Coco's face, to be certain she couldn't see. The last thing I needed was anyone trying to stop me, or worse. I did the same to the person lying the other side of me, the flamingo girl who'd tried to pinch me. Neither of them showed any response, so I took the lit skull-post and left.

Even with the torch, I couldn't see further than a few metres ahead, but the darkness made my hearing hypersensitive. I could hear the tiniest movements in the bushes and grass – scratches, shuffles, whirrs and crunches – and I tried not to imagine what creatures might be making them.

I pressed on in the direction Coco had pointed to, feeling increasingly stupid about this whole ‘plan'. Her gesture had been pretty vague and even if I found this Freddie boy, what good would it do? And, in all likelihood, he was probably as real as Coco's story about what had happened to her and Lola. I kind of believed parts of it, like them being bullied – but everything else? Maybe there was some truth in it, but I didn't think I'd heard the
whole
truth.

The flame flickered in the wind, so I cupped my free hand around it and turned onto a more protected-looking route, through more tightly clustered trees, to keep it alight. It wasn't long before I found myself close to the rocky bank Accordienka and I had climbed down to get into the circus area. I noticed an opening in the rocks, and my heart leapt. Maybe this was the cave Coco meant. If that existed, maybe the boy did too. The opening was nothing more than a narrow split, just wide enough for me to slip through. The air inside made my chest tighten. It was stiflingly humid, like when you step off the plane after landing in a hot country or visit a tropical greenhouse in a nature park, and I was standing on soft, red clay, with wet stonework either side of me and overhead. The narrow entryway had opened out into a huge cave. A gust of wind whipped through the opening, and my flame went out. I froze in the pitch-blackness, listening to the drip-drip-drip of water and feeling the occasional splat smack me on my bare shoulders. As I crept forward, a rush of water joined the drips and their echoes. The waterfall had to be through here. ‘Hello!'
I called. ‘Freddie?' As I crept on, slow and cautious, the noise became violently loud. Even if the boy
was
here, he probably couldn't hear me. I went deeper into the cave, feeling my way along the wet walls to the source of the noise. Cold water sprayed my face and the sound was now deafening. I had reached the deepest part of the cave. I'd walked the whole way through, and found no one. Coco must have got it wrong, or maybe Freddie was in a different cave. Maybe there were others along the bank.

Just as I was about to turn back, I noticed spots of light catching on the cascading water, occasionally sparkling like little crystals. And, through the gaps in its flow, I could see that the cave continued beyond the waterfall. I
hadn't
yet reached the deepest point. ‘One, two, three,' I counted and ran through the stream. It thrashed down hard on my head and back. The air this side of the water was cold, and the ground and walls were crumbly and left salty traces on my wet body. As I wiped it from my arms and legs, the saltiness turned to misty vapours that rose and swirled above me. I stared up at them, mesmerised, but lost my balance and slipped against something. There was a smashing sound. I cried out as a spike of glass pierced the palm of my right hand, and one, two, three, four, five lights flashed on right in front of me. And then I saw the boy.

Only it wasn't a boy. It was a dusty statue of a boy's head inside a broken glass case. The head looked like it had been burned and frozen, like someone preserved at Pompeii. As I touched it, its eyes flashed open and its mouth released a gasp of air. I screamed and jumped back.

‘You took your time,' said the head.

Keeping my distance, I tiptoed around it. The glass case was sitting on top of a large wooden box. It was like one of those creepy fortune-tellers' cabinets you find at the seaside – stick in a coin for it to spit out a cryptic one-liner about your future – except this was even creepier. This was a talking, dead-looking child's head, with no slots, and no wires.

‘Cat got your tongue?' it asked. ‘I
said
, you took your time. Did Mother Matushka send you? Are you going to unfreeze the rest of me? Been here long enough, haven't I? Must've been punished enough by now. Come clean, girl, she sent you, didn't she?'

‘She didn't send me,' I replied, almost laughing at myself. Was I actually having a conversation with a mechanical head?

‘Thinking about it, I might just believe you. Mother wouldn't have sent someone else to do her work. Likes to keep things in her control, doesn't she? Wait a minute  … ' His voice had changed. He sounded nervous, and I guess if he could have turned any paler, the colour would have drained from his face. ‘You're not here as a test, are you?' He glared at me. ‘Where is she? Where's the old witch? You can't scare me any more, Mother!' he shouted. ‘You can't do any worse to me!'

‘There's no one else here,' I said. ‘I came on my own.' The statue fell silent and I wondered if I was imagining this whole ridiculous situation; if I'd gone as crazy as everyone else here. I had to get a grip. But then he started up again.

‘Okey-dokey. Looks like you are telling the truth. She would've shown herself by now. Open the box, won't you?' he asked. ‘Need to stretch my legs.'

I did as he asked, and sure enough the rest of his body was inside. He manoeuvred himself carefully from the box, shedding powder from his rigid joints.

‘Who are you, then? What brings you to my humble abode? Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad you came and got me talking and moving again, but what are you doing here?'

‘I heard you'd tried to leave the circus, and I thought you might be able to help me to get out of this place.'

‘You haven't been here long, have you?' he snorted. ‘You can't get out. I tried, and look what happened to me. That was my crime, wanting to go home, so she froze me into a salt fossil.'

‘Mother Matushka did this to you?' I gasped. ‘She can do that?'

I felt totally sickened, disgusted that she was cruel enough to do this to a boy, not to mention freaked out that it was even
possible.
I was also terrified she'd do the same to me. I'd hardly made a secret of wanting to go home.

‘I was even prepared to go
through.
Anything to get away. That's how frantic I was. I would have taken
that
over staying here. Couldn't stand it a second longer. Too many show-offs for my liking. It's like we're all sideshow freaks. Anyway, she said she'd let me go, so she let me through the fire, but then changed her mind and pulled me from the flames. I was burned back to my bones, but here I am, alive as can be – in a manner of speaking. I mean, she can burn us, freeze us and turn us to salt, but not even she can kill what's already dead.'

Dead.
The word thudded through me, driving all the crazy pieces into place with the weight of a clunky mallet.
She can't kill what's already dead
. That was it. This boy had been burned alive. Coco claimed to have drowned about a hundred years ago, and Scarlet had survived a knife stabbing right into her neck, and said she'd been to an event that had happened about fifty years ago, when she was nowhere near old enough. No one here needed to eat or sleep, and Mother Matushka had said something about her work being a balancing act between life and death. And I'd seen a headstone with my name on it, and  …  and
everything
. Was everyone here dead? Was this secret circus where the dead go?
Could
they be dead? Was
I
? Had I died and gone to the circus? I might have laughed if I hadn't felt like throwing up. No, this was crazy. It couldn't be true.

‘Are you saying  … ?' I asked, eventually. ‘Are you saying that everyone here is  … 
dead
?'

But before he could answer, the slap of wet feet sounded behind us. The boy froze, and so did I.

The slaps stopped right behind me and I felt claws digging into my arms and Mother Matushka's hot, earthy breath burning into my neck. ‘So, child,' she said, ‘you have learned about my world.'

I turned to face her, not caring that her teeth were clacking like they wanted to bite me, and coils of hair were flailing around her head like snakes preparing to attack. I only cared about knowing the truth, however sick it made me feel, however crazy it was.

‘Am I right?' I asked. ‘Is it true?'

She went to the boy and examined him and the box, running her hands over his head and the glass. ‘Can it be true that you have released this boy from the salt? This is your blood,' she said, rubbing two fingertips together like she was breaking bread into crumbs. ‘Your blood in the salt liberated him.'

‘Blood?' said the boy. ‘She has blood? I thought there was something funny about her. I mean, I thought only you would have been able to make me move again. So what's she doing here, then? And what will happen to me? I mean, what will her blood do to me?'

‘Silence!' shrieked Mother Matushka. ‘You should think yourself blessed,' she said. ‘Blessed by living blood. She made you move, didn't she?'

I couldn't take this any longer. ‘Are you going to answer me? Is everyone here  …  are you all
dead
?'

Mother Matushka fixed her eagle eyes on me. ‘So, you know what my circus is, you know what we do?' Her voice crackled like leaves on a bonfire. ‘I shall speak of who I am, and I shall speak of this place, child. I am Mother Matushka, Mother of Mothers, and in this place everything is my child, and I am everything's Mother. Since the beginning, since the marsh and the mist, I have protected the world of the living from the world of the dead, and the world of the dead from the world of the living. I keep them apart to keep order. And this place, and everything in it, exists
between
the place of the living and the place of the dead.'

‘So the people here
aren't
dead?' My head was bursting. ‘I don't understand what you're saying.'

‘You are not listening, child. The people here are not exactly alive, but neither are they dead. I told you, this is a place of the in-between. The dead pass through the fire in my hearth to their peace, but those who die on thresholds, in in-between places, or in-between states, remain in this place between life and death, and they work with me to keep the boundary sealed.'

Crap.
Coco said that she and Lola had died
between
the sea and the sky, and between the water and earth. Did those poor little girls really go through everything Coco had described? And what had happened to everyone else, to Fabian and Accordienka, and Scarlet?
And what about me?
I wondered. Nothing like that had happened to me, so why had I ended up here? And hadn't Mother Matushka just said my blood was living?

‘But I can't be  …  I mean, why am I here? I'm not  … '

‘Dead?' She said it for me. ‘You arrived on the carousel, as all the dead do, and you were escorted by my horses, as is always the way. But your passage here wasn't as it should be, and it wasn't the time. There hadn't been enough suns and moons since the previous passing. Also, you bleed, you feel hunger. So no, child, you are not dead.'

I caught my breath, partly relieved but still reeling. ‘So what am I doing here?'

‘That is still a mystery to me. To begin with, I thought you had come to take over my world. To begin with, I thought my struggle with the sun, and the birds obeying you, was because you had broken through to take my place, in the way that the old are replaced by the young in the world you came from. But that's not it, is it? You didn't intend to be here, did you? Lola said you almost drowned in the marsh. You didn't mean to make it shrink, did you?'

‘That's what I've been telling –' But she wasn't listening.

‘So, while I believe that this disruption is due to you being alive in this in-between place, I do
not
believe it was your intention to cause it. Indeed, I have seen you make harmony here, as well as disruption. You saved me from my own birds; it was in your company that Accordienka found her voice; and you helped me seal my hearth with salt.'

Oh, God. The hearth!
My blood ran cold as I suddenly remembered what had happened to me
after
I'd found Granny's letter. It was pouring back to me so fast I felt out of control. The floor around the hearth had collapsed, hadn't it? And I'd fallen through, and just kept falling and falling. And then I remembered that dream I kept having, where I'd seen Mum, Dad and Daisy in that strange room. I couldn't feel my body, and they couldn't hear me, but I could hear them – Daisy blaming Granny, and Mum blaming herself, and saying she knew about Granny being married before. She actually
knew
and hadn't said anything. I remembered the white walls, the overpowering smell, the curtain being drawn  …  What if it hadn't been a dream at all? I blurted this all out, not sure if I was making any sense, but I just had to get it out.

‘I had an accident in a hearth,' I said. ‘Where my granny died. I fell through it. I hit my head. I think I was in hospital, but it's like I fell through to this world. That must be why I'm here. Maybe I nearly died in that hearth.'

Mother Matushka nodded, slow and sure. No flailing coils, no snapping teeth. She was calm as anything. ‘There is no place closer to death than a hearth,' she said. ‘It must have claimed you. And now you are here, we shall make good use of you.'

‘No.' I panicked. If I wasn't like them, if it had been an accident, I had to be able to go home. ‘I shouldn't be here, it was a mistake. There must be a way to leave. I can't stay.'

‘Most people see being here as a privilege.' She sounded offended. ‘For isn't this another chance to live, and in a most remarkable place, with most remarkable people? A world in which you can do anything you want.'

‘Anything
except
what I want,' I said. ‘Except going home.'

‘I didn't have to invite you to join the others, girl, and I don't have to accept you here. I could destroy you.'

That might have been true, but I sensed that something had shifted. If my blood really had made the boy move, and if my being here was having such an effect on how this world worked, surely I wasn't completely powerless myself?

‘Maybe I could do the same to this place,' I said. ‘Maybe I could destroy it. Isn't that what's already happening?'

Her crumpled, cagey expression told me I was right.

‘I shall be honest with you, there is one way to leave. This boy here, Freddie, had a chance to do so.'

My heart jumped and I opened my mouth to speak, but she waved a finger and went on.

‘Freddie has never got used to the idea of having died, and has never settled here. He tried to leave himself at first, several times, but of course the mists kept him in, and the carousel always brought him back, yet still he would not settle, still he wanted no part in what we did here. So I gave him a choice. He could stay and take up his role with the others, or he could go through the blazing hearth with the dead. If he went through and was able to bring me back something I lacked, something I didn't have and could make good use of, I would grant his wish to go home. That way, the balance is kept. I'd have something new, so I'd then be able to let something leave. Freddie weighed up the risks and chose to go through, but when it came to it, I couldn't let him go. I knew he would fail, you see. He talks a lot, but he is not a strong boy. See how he's silent now? You would not have come back, would you, little Fred? You would have been trapped there. Better to be frozen in this cave for a while to make you think, than be burned in the fire and trapped with the dead.'

There was genuine tenderness in the way Mother Matushka spoke about Freddie and, for a split second, everything else left my head. She sounded like she really had kept him in the circus for his own good. I looked at Freddie and just wanted to hug him, because he'd tried to go through, and because Mother Matushka had decided he was too weak for the task, because he
was
too weak for the task. But most of all I wanted to hug him because he was simply a cheeky little boy who'd died far too young and just wanted to go home. But I had to shake myself out of it and concentrate on getting
me
out. While this task might have been beyond Freddie, maybe it wasn't beyond me. However mad or deluded it was, I had to hope; I had to try.

‘When can I go?' I asked.

‘This passage to the dead can only happen when the next arrivals come, when the hearth is unsealed for them to pass through. There are four more suns before that time. You have four suns to decide.'

That didn't sound long, which I supposed was better than having to wait for ages worrying about it, but that also didn't give me much time to prepare. Although I wasn't sure how you could prepare for doing something like that.

‘What's through there? What shall I bring back? I'll do anything you want. I just want to go home to my family.'

‘This is your decision to make, but since I am nothing but fair, I will warn you that I have need of nothing.'

‘Nothing? Then how is that fair? How could anyone succeed?'

‘It is a fair challenge for the magnitude of the reward, child. The dangers of fulfilling it are great. Also, I am being fair in warning you how difficult it is, and I am being fair in strongly suggesting you stay and make the best of things here.' She coughed, throatily. ‘I shall leave you to think it over. I must prepare to bring up the sun.' She took hold of Freddie. ‘Back to the circus for you, boy. It's time you tried to find your place here again. I haven't given up on you.' She turned back from the brink of the waterfall to face me. ‘
You
could have a place here, you know. You
have
a place here. We might work well together – as we did with the birds, as you have done with this boy.'

As soon as I was alone, I dropped to the cold ground and bawled like a baby. I thought I would never stop. I made my eyes sore and my throat burn and my head throb. What was I supposed to do? To leave, I'd have to go through a burning hearth with dead people –
dead
people – and somehow find something Mother Matushka didn't have and needed, when she didn't actually need anything. It sounded like a wind-up. Utterly impossible. Then I started wondering what they'd look like. Would they look like people? Zombies from a film? Wispy cartoon ghosts? That's kind of what Coco had said. She'd said something about me not being a shadow, and seeming like a real girl. I understood what she meant now – some of it, at least. I was real, because I was alive, and they weren't. All this time, I'd been going on about finding a way home, and all this time I'd been trapped in a circus of half-dead people. I couldn't stand being left alone in that cave any longer, so I went outside.

The sharp slice of moon was still there, and I wondered if this was the same moon people could see in the real world – if Mum, Dad and Daisy could see this same silver blade. I had to try, didn't I? I couldn't let fear stop me. I guess this was like the biggest audition of all, and if I didn't go through with it, I'd be stuck here forever and I'd never see them again. I thought of them standing over me in that white room. Did they think I was going to die? It was cutting me up to think that Daisy blamed Granny for what had happened, and I was desperate to ask Mum why she'd never said anything. I had to get back to them. I had to try to go through, didn't I? How
could
I have a place here?