"Care to see the dancing sylphs and undines of myth?" Compared to the other middle-aged and paunch-bellied men about, I must have screamed "young, lily virgin."
I shook my head and hurried on, even though a small part of me was curious. Very curious.
The same barker who had lured me into the circus was standing in front of the freakshow tent, and he had no qualms about shouting at the top of his lungs.
"Come and see the perfect show to end a fantastic evening at Mr Ragona's Circus of Magic!" he cried. "Come see the menagerie and the freakshow! Inside this tent are the strangest creatures ever seen by man. Animal and human, twisted in their nature. Animals from Byssia, Kymri, Temne, and Linde! Come and see, my good friends. Come and see things you've only seen in your dreams… or your nightmares."
I did not want to go into this tent, either. I feared they wouldn't be as freakish as I was.
But out of the corner of my eye I saw the shiny helmets of the two Policiers.
I turned my back to them and waited in line with the others, hiding behind a fat man as I had no money to give and ducking into the dark tent. It smelled musky, and the glass globes flickered over the cages and the animals inside. Most of the smell came from the large cats.
I had befriended small, feral felines in my youth, but creatures that looked sweet when they did not come up to my knee looked terrifying when they weighed twice as much as a man. There was a lion, almost comical with the gigantic ruff of tawny fur around his face. A tiger prowled the cage, displaying its orange, yellow, and white stripes. A cyrinx, a black cat that shined purple in the light, rubbed itself against the bars of its cage. It barely had enough room to turn around. I wanted to reach out and touch the fur, but a sign to the side read: "Do not touch if you value your hand."
The striped cat gnawed on a metal bar. He was fond of doing so judging by the scratched and dented iron, and his teeth were dull and worn. The sight of the cats behind bars twisted from exciting to saddening. I wanted to see them prowling through grass fields, not curled up within cages.
Saitha the elephant slurped water into her long nose before squirting it into her mouth. Her cage only barely contained her, the bars pressing against her flank. "Poor thing," I said, not realizing I had spoken aloud.
"She has her own cart on the circus train and she'll spend the day in the big top," the trainer said, his voice defensive. "She's not in this very long." He put his hand on the elephant's large leg. I nodded, though a cart of a train did not seem large enough for her, either, and continued through the maze of the tent.
Horses shied in their stalls, their nostrils flaring at the smell of the nearby predators and so many unwashed people. The star of the herd was from the plains of Kymri, its body a rich gold that darkened to reddish amber around the hooves, mane, tail, and nose.
As I moved deeper into the maze of cages and canvas, the animals shifted from the exotic to the strange and malformed. A turtle with two heads shared a tank with a fish with a strangely human face. A pig with two snouts stood in a pen, snuffling and hanging its heavy head close to the ground. A glass aquarium held an array of albino creatures – a frog, a water snake, and a few fish. One of the fish might have been dead. Another tank held a stunted albino alligator, its pink eyes gazing at us impassively, and its white tail lashing against the grimy glass.
A woman stood next to the covered entrance to the rear of the tent. She had unnaturally red hair, dusky skin, and wore large clunky jewelry wherever she could – earrings, five necklaces, jangling bangles, and a ring on every finger. Loose, multi-colored scarves were draped about her stout body.
After enough of a crowd had gathered, she spoke. "This is what you have entered to see, is it not?" she said in – of course – an affected, accented voice. "In here are people unlike you or I. In some way, these men and women are unique to any others. They come from all over the world just to show you their extraordinary bodies. Some you may find beautiful. Others you may find repulsive. Are they blessed? Are they cursed? You decide."
She held back the cloth door so that we could shuffle in. This section of the tent was darker, and somehow colder. It did not smell of animals, but dust and stale human sweat. I wrapped my arms about myself.
The woman snapped her fingers and the glass globes brightened. In a large circle men and women stood, or sat upon stools. Small plaques were hammered into the ground in front of them. Like the others, I gawked.
The middle-aged red-haired woman nearest to me looked like anyone's mother, aside from the fact that she had a bushy moustache and beard. She wore a long dress with a flowered print and an apron to heighten the oddness of her ginger beard. Her blue eyes crinkled at me and I averted my gaze. I raised a hand to my still-smooth cheek and wondered if I would ever sprout hair.
"Bethany here was a perfectly normal girl from the village of Rionan, but when she entered her blossoming time, she ended up growing a beard as well as breasts!" our gypsy guide said.
The strongman from the circus act had a pile of wooden planks, and he picked one up and snapped it as if it were sugar glass.
"Mr Karg here grew up in Girit on a farm. They used him instead of a plough-horse because he was stronger."
Next to him, to provide the utmost juxtaposition, was a tiny man who came up to my waist. His face was handsome, with swarthy skin and a furrowed brow underlined by thick black eyebrows.
"Mr Tin is the tiniest man in Ellada, but he has the biggest of tempers." The dwarf scowled at the gypsy woman and looked as if he would like nothing more than to kick her kneecaps.
A woman seated on a stool waved, and she seemed normal at first glance. She was perhaps thirty, with a handsome face and dark brown hair coiled into a bun, and she wore a maroon dress several years out of fashion. The woman held the taffeta skirt bunched in her lap so that we could see her pantalooned legs. Two of her legs were perfectly normal, finely-muscled legs in delicatelyheeled black boots. But from her lower belly sprouted what looked like two child's legs, complete with shiny black children's shoes. She wiggled first her normal legs and then twitched her tiny legs. My mouth dropped open in shock and the four-legged woman laughed coyly.
"Madame Limond is one of the rarest women in the entire world. She has two pairs of fully functional legs and two working pelvises." She paused significantly, though at the time the allusion was lost on me.
A man wearing only a loincloth posed for us, covered head to toe in tattoos depicting all the myths I had heard growing up. The Lord of the Sun shone from the right side of the man's chest, his head crowned in sunrays, his hands aflame. The Lady of the Moon glimmered on the left side of his chest, her head haloed by a crescent moon. Female Chimaera were inked along his stomach and back – mermaids, centaurs, angels. Monsters twined about his calves – two hydra, two dragons, and a sea serpent. He flexed his muscles, causing the monsters and women to dance.
A man with the pimpled skin of a chicken bobbed his head and gazed at us over the beak of his nose, the slack skin of his neck wobbling. He wore a bobbled red cap and a yellow outfit. Our flame-haired narrator named him "Poussin." I half-expected him to squawk.
Next was the "Leopard Lady of Linde," though she looked as though she might have been from Byssia. Most of her skin and hair were bleached, like the white clown of the circus performance. Dark rosettes dotted her skin. Her eyes were ringed like a cat's. She was beautiful, her limbs long and graceful, as though she could sprint away at a moment's notice. Her skirt came to her knees, leaving her spotted legs shockingly bare. A man came too close for her liking. She hissed at him, flashing her pointed canines.
The last man was not a man at all, but "half-man, half-bull," the woman proclaimed. He was large and muscular and his body matted with hair. Though he was distinctly bullish in appearance, he was not the Minotaur out of legend. His face and head were still human, mostly. He had a heavily-boned face with slack muscles, a long nose with flared nostrils, and two horns growing from his head, though they were a bit lopsided. The flesh of his nose between his nostrils was pierced with a thick ring, like an ox, and he wore a leather collar. His wide, cowlike eyes did not appear to recognize us in any way.
"His is a sad tale," our guide said, holding her hand to her face in emphasis. "His mother was a beggar woman and heavily pregnant. A fearsome bull had escaped from the docks, where it had just arrived from Girit. The bull knocked his mother down and frightened her so much that when her babe was born, he was part bull. She herself died from childbirth and poor Tauro was left in an orphanage and grew up bullied by the others until he learned to fight. R.H. Ragona's Circus of Magic rescued him from the stocks so that you fine ladies and gentlemen could see him this evening." The bull-man only stared at us balefully in response.
The others chatted excitedly as we left the tent, but I was subdued and almost wished that I had not gone. First almost seeing the naked women in the tent, and now seeing the sadness of the menagerie and the freakshow had dimmed the vivacity of the circus. People wandered through the carnival, laughing and pointing out oddities. I watched a man juggle whatever the crowd passed him – bottles, trash, books, and a baby's doll – to the delight of the crowd. The fire-eater's dragon breath illuminated the funfair. Stalls sold hot drinking chocolate and roasted hazelnuts, popping corn and caramel apples.
I returned to the jewelry stall with the woman in the red headdress. The "alchemist" pointedly ignored me from across the lane. The woman's wares were lovely, polished black stones with silver wire swirling over their faces. A necklace looked as though a spider had woven a web over the stone, and another looked like plant tendrils had taken possession of it.
"Do you wish for a gift for a special lady?" the woman asked, her voice authentically exotic. She was from Byssia.
"I'm afraid I'm lacking in both coin and a lady," I said.
"Come to me when you have found both, will you not?"
I nodded and she smiled before turning her attention to a young pair new to love. The girl put a necklace to her neck and posed for the boy, tossing her head. His eyes glazed, and I knew he would buy it for her.
I stood on the stretch of sand that had once been a carnival and wondered what to do next. I sat underneath one of the nearby docks and watched as, little by little, people left and went their various ways. The merchants packed up their remaining wares or empty boxes and men came and lowered the front flaps of their tents and stalls. Circus workers led animals away and put them into large carts that were parked on the road overlooking the ocean. The carnival returned to being a stretch of beach with a few lingering tents, and more litter and footprints than before. I should leave, and find shelter to spend the night. But I had nowhere to go.
• • • •
As the cold seeped into my bones and my teeth chattered, I saw the glass globes were still shining in the big circus tent, and I heard voices. A sign slung across the fastened entrance read "Circus closed."
I crept around the tent until I found a rent in the thick canvas. I crouched and peered in. I did not know what sparked me to do so. The memory of the magic of the circus, undimmed even by the darkness that undercut the carnival? The image of the trapeze artists flying through the air?
Mr Ragona stood to the side of the ring, beaming at those gathered around. The performers lounged in the stands, rubbing each other's muscles. The clowns sat in a rainbow of motley in the corner closest to me. Workers entered and left, stacking equipment into the corner of the tent.
"Excellent work, me lovelies," Mr Ragona boomed, his lilting false accent replaced by gravelly Imacharan vowels. He swung his cane lazily. "Excellent work. An extra round to all tonight."
The circus folk cheered.
"Now, to business." Mr Ragona rubbed his hands together. "We got a tight schedule coming up, with no room for mistakes. A show each night here for two months, and then a few weeks in Cowl, three months in Imachara, and then we're done for the season. If we keep filling the seats like we did tonight, then we'll all have a hefty bonus in our pockets for our troubles by the time the rains come." Smiles split the faces of those gathered, though their exchanged skeptical glances showed they had all heard the words before.
"But we can do better!" Mr Ragona said, pumping his fist for emphasis. "We can always push ourselves just that little bit more." He did not pronounce most of his "t"s. "We can add another flip to a routine, raise the tightrope, and teach them animals another trick. There's more seats to be filled, me lovelies."
"Yes, yes. So you say after every show, Bil. What a surprise to hear the words tonight," the bearded woman said with a smile, and peeled off her beard. The moustache remained. I gasped, for though the beard was fake, the moustache was apparently genuine. The white clown, who was sitting in the seats quite close to me, raised his head and looked around suspiciously. I held my breath and ducked away from the gap for a few moments before putting my eye to it again.
"And so I'm still waiting for a surprise of a full house, ain't I, my dear Bethany?" he said, winking at her. "I always like surprises." The white clown had gotten up and ambled toward my hiding place. I got up to retreat, but I tripped over a guide rope and landed heavily on my behind.
"Ah," I said in pain. The canvas lifted and I stared up into the pasty painted face of the white clown.
"Ah," I said again, for lack of something better. He grabbed me by the hand, lifted me up and dragged me into the tent.
"Well, I found a surprise for
you,
Bil."