The Palace of Laughter (13 page)

“Ten against one's not fair,” said Miles.

“You really don't know anything, do you, pez?” said the one called String. “Fights with outsiders is always one-on-one. If you lose, I keep all your stuff and you run as fast as you can until you're off our turf. That's if you can run at all by the time I've finished with you.”

“And if I win?” said Miles.

“You don't need to worry about that,” said String, “'cause you're not going to win.”

“Get on with it, String,” shouted the other boy. He also carried a bone, and a scar ran from the corner of his mouth across his left cheek. “You're nattering like an old woman, and I'm getting hungry. I bet the pez has some grub on him.”

String turned to answer him, but he never got a chance. The moment his attention shifted, Miles reached out and jerked the bone from his grip. Before String could recover himself, Miles hit him with the bandaged end, knocking him sideways. He
jumped on the boy and sat on his back before he could get to his feet.

“Bone!” shouted Miles. “Or should I have named it first?”

String twisted like an eel and tried to sink his crooked teeth into Miles's leg, but Miles pinned him with the bone across the back of his neck. The boy struggled and spat. Miles was just wondering what was considered a win, when a loud clang sounded from above him.

“Twelve seconds,” called the boy from the top of the junk pile. He swung his own bone again and hit the end of a metal drum beside him. “Halfhead out, Halfhead in.”

“Halfhead out, Halfhead in,” repeated the other boys in unison.

String stopped struggling for a moment. Miles got off him cautiously, keeping a wary eye on his opponent and a firm grip on the bone. String got to his feet and spat. “Gimme my bone,” he said.

“Not till I'm well out of your reach,” said Miles.

“Not then either,” said the boy with the scar, clambering down the junk pile. “Bone's yours now, pez, and he knows it.”

“I don't want his stinking bone,” said Miles. “I just don't want to be hit with it again. He can have
it back as soon as we're gone.”

“No he can't, pez,” said the other boy, “'cause he's not a Halfhead no more. He's out. You're in. Them's the rules, and Halfhead rules don't bend nor break.”

“Look,” said Miles, “I don't want his place. I just want to get to the Palace of Laughter.”

The scar-faced boy looked at him as though he were planning to visit the moon. “Hear that?” he shouted. “Pez thinks he's going to the Palace of Laughter.”

The Halfheads roared with laughter, all except String. “Let him go then, Jook,” he said sullenly. “Fight wasn't fair anyhow. It don't say in the rules that an outsider can use a Halfhead's bone in a fight.”

“It don't say that he can't, neither,” said Jook. “Face it, String. The pez fought smarter than you. He's in. You're out.”

“Fine,” said String. For a moment his tough face crumpled, and he looked on the verge of tears, then it hardened, and he fixed Miles with a look of pure malice. “I'll see you again, pez,” he said, and without another word he turned and disappeared down one of the junkyard alleys.

M
iles Wednesday, chest-poked, half-shaved and hungry, sat on a stone slab in a ruined church as a small boy named Henry tied bones into the remaining half of his hair. His scalp was stinging from the razor, and his stomach rumbled. Little sat quietly beside him.

“Toe bones,” said Henry. “Least, they're supposed to be, but it's hard to find real toe bones anymore so these are mostly just from back of the butchers.” His quick little fingers knotted as he spoke. “Jook, he got real toe bones back in the old days, when there was still bones left in the broken graves. That was before I became Halfhead. There was another
Jook then, but he got took by the cops and then they growed him up. Now he's a cop himself. I seen him in his brass buttons and coat, and he's just as mean as the rest now. Meaner even.”

As Henry chattered on, Miles tried to think his way out of the situation they found themselves in. They seemed to have escaped the shadowy figure for the time being at least, but it did not look likely that the Halfheads could be persuaded to let them continue on their way. Henry had told him that now that he was Halfhead, any attempt to leave would be considered desertion, which carried a punishment of a week locked in the sheds behind the junkyard. “Not many has tried it,” he said, “and no one's ever got away with it neither.”

A fire crackled in the center of the ruined and roofless church, keeping back the twilight. Around the fire sat a dozen Halfhead boys on large stones. Jook, the boy with the scar across his cheek, was eating some of the food that the creepers had stolen from the pantries and kitchens of the big houses on Elm Hill that day, and the others had to wait until he had finished before they would get their share. The creepers were generally the smaller boys, who could fit through narrow windows or scurry unnoticed under tables. Henry was one of them, and when he
wasn't being a creeper he was a nonstop talker.

“Boneyard, junkyard, and bullring, them's the three corners of Halfhead territory. No one passes through here but answers to us. Any Halfhead that catches an outsider has to challenge him. Mostly Halfhead wins, and he gets everything outsider has on him, and runs him to the borders. But if outsider wins, like you did, Halfhead loses his place to outsider. Them's the rules.”

Miles said nothing. It seemed the only sure way to escape the gang was to lose a fight with an outsider, but he could hardly wait around until a suitable candidate happened by. Even if the opportunity came quickly and he lost the fight, he was not sure if they would let Little go. “We have to escape tomorrow,” he told himself, but he did not want to risk spending a week locked in anyone's shed. They would have to keep their eyes clear and their claws sharp, as the tiger had put it, and wait for the right moment.

“What will happen to String?” asked Miles.

Henry yanked at Miles's hair. “Don't say that name again—it's not allowed,” he whispered. “Once Halfhead's gone, he's gone, and his name goes with him.”

“But wasn't he your friend?” asked Miles, twisting
around to look at Henry's face in the flickering firelight. Henry looked at him defiantly. “Once Halfhead's gone, he's gone,” he repeated. “And yer bones are all done, pez.”

He jumped down from the stone slab and took his place by the fire. Little leaned in close to Miles and whispered in his ear with a voice that was tiny and clear. “I'm not hungry,” she whispered. “Keep them talking. I'm going to take a look around.” Miles nodded. “Be careful,” he said under his breath, and he got up to join the other boys.

Jook had finished eating, and the food was being passed around. “Sit, pez,” said Jook, sucking meat juice from his fingers. Miles could feel his stomach rumble. He looked at the other boys who sat around the fire. They passed the food back and forth—half-eaten chops, apples and onions, stale bread and sausages—and they talked and laughed as they ate, an odd brotherhood of the unwanted and the lost. “In other circumstances,” thought Miles, “I could feel at home here.” He emptied his own pockets and passed around the half bottle of elderflower wine and what remained of the food that Baltinglass had given him.

Jook took a swig of the wine. He looked at the bottle (although it had no label) and nodded wisely.
“Now,” he said to Miles, “tell me where you was
really
headed.”

“I told you,” said Miles to Jook. “We need to get to the Palace of Laughter urgently.” The other boys laughed again, but Jook rapped on a stone with his bone, and they fell silent.

“You'd never get near the Palace of Laughter, pez. Why do you want to go there anyways?” asked Jook.

“We lost a friend of ours, and we think he's been taken there.” He did not mention Tangerine. A stuffed bear that could walk would require too much explanation.

“If your friend is in the Palace of Laughter,” said Jook, “he won't be the same no more. And like I said, you'll never make it there.”

“Well we're not afraid, even if you are,” said Little. She had returned from her investigations, and when Miles looked at her she gave her head a tiny shake. “Come on, Miles” she said.

Jook laughed again. “The kid can go if she wants,” he said, addressing Miles as though it were he who had spoken, “but you're Halfhead now, and you ain't going nowhere. Besides, the Palace of Laughter is in Stinkers' territory. They'd tear you to pieces.”

“Stinkers?” asked Miles. “Who are they?”

Jook turned to Henry and gave him a rap on the
head with his bone. “Didn't you learn him nothing, Henry?”

Henry stood up, his cheek stuffed with meat, and began to recite the missing parts of Miles's Halfhead lesson, spitting crumbs of food into the fire as he spoke.

“Halfheads, Gnats, and Stinkers. Them's the three gangs. Halfheads got the yards, Stinkers the bad-egg factories and the fun park, and Gnats got the alleys. Crossing to another territory is a raid; raid means war, war means prisoners, prisoners means Pigball.”

“What if I just fought one of the Stinkers, like I did with…like I did today?”

Henry swallowed his last mouthful and stood up again. “One-on-one is for outsiders. You're Halfhead now, pez, and if you step into Stinkers' territory, it's a raid. That means they all got a right to fight, no matter if there's one of us or twenty-four. And that means a war, cause no Halfhead gets left to fight solo.”

Henry sat down, his speech finished. He yawned and stretched, then settled himself by the embers of the fire. “Sleep before creep,” he said. Most of the other boys were curling up in their favorite sleeping spots. Jook produced a small box of blackened
wood from his pocket. There were several half-smoked cigars of various thicknesses inside. He selected a fat Havana that had hardly been smoked, and lit it. They sat and watched the slow blue smoke, listening to the crackling of the flames and the hiss of sap bubbling from the firewood.

“That kid your sister?” said Jook after a while, nodding his head at Little as though she were deaf.

“No,” said Miles. “She's…my friend.”

“Friends come and go,” said Jook. “You got to get rid of her tomorrow.”

“What do you mean, get rid of her?” asked Miles, trying not to sound too alarmed. He glanced at Little, who looked more indignant than worried.

“What do you mean, get rid of me?” she echoed.

“What I say,” said Jook to Miles. “There's never been a girl Halfhead, and that's not going to change on my watch. Long as she's here she's using up food, and if it comes to a raid or a war she'll slow us down. Tomorrow you got to run her off the territory. I'll send some of the boys with you, make sure it's done right.”

Miles frowned. He did not like Jook's attitude toward Little. He tried to think of how it might be turned to their advantage.

“I thought she was to be used as a creeper,” he said.

“Did you?” said the older boy, blowing out a column of smoke and looking sideways at Miles. “And what gave you that idea?”

Miles knew it had been String's suggestion, but he was not about to fall for that one. “She's small and quick,” he said, “and she moves without a sound. You know she'd bring more food than she eats.”

“I don't know nothing of the sort, pez,” said Jook.

“Maybe you could try her out,” he said quickly. “You might be surprised.” He winked at Little, and she gave him the ghost of a smile. Jook smoked his cigar silently, until Miles began to think his suggestion would simply be ignored. Eventually he took a last pull on the cigar and flicked the butt into the fire, then he reached out with his bone and gave Henry, and another small boy curled up beside him, a sharp poke each.

“Henry. Ignatz. Wake up. Got a job for you,” he said. Henry opened his eyes at once, as though he had slept a full night on a feather mattress. The other boy sat up and yawned.

“Time to do your rounds, boys. You're taking the pez's girl with you, see if she's got the makings of a creeper.” He turned to Miles. “Not a Halfhead, mind. A creeper.”

“You mean right now?” said Miles. His suggestion had been a delaying tactic, and he had not meant Little to be sent out to sneak into sleeping houses before they even had a chance to formulate a plan.

“Why not?” said Jook. “You waiting for her to grow wings and a tail?”

Miles thought that question would be best left unanswered. “Are you sure this is a good night for creeping?” he asked instead. “There's no moon.”

Henry laughed. “That's what makes it a perfect night for creeping,” he said. “Cloudy sky, and no wind for blowing things about when the windows is opened. Just the night for breakin' in a new creeper.”

“Maybe I should go with you,” said Miles. Little smiled at him, but in the flickering firelight he could read nothing more in her expression.

“You're too big for creeping, pez,” said Jook. “And I don't fancy having to come and prize you out of a tight window.”

Little stepped forward to whisper in Miles's ear. He expected to hear something she had spotted on her brief investigation, but instead she whispered, “Am I really your friend?”

“Of course,” said Miles, taken aback. Little nodded. “Then I'll be fine,” she said, and she turned
and disappeared after Henry and Ignatz into the darkness.

The fire died down, and he moved closer by degrees as the pool of warmth shrank toward the ashes. He pictured Little creeping through the night with the two boys, and all the dangers that might be waiting to ambush her. He chewed his nails, and missed having Tangerine to confide in. Talking to the bear made things clearer in his head. “What now?” he muttered to himself, trying to imagine that Tangerine was listening from his inside pocket, but the only answer was the snoring of small boys, and the faint hissing of the dying fire.

Miles slept fitfully on the hard ground, waking at every sound. The night seemed to drag on forever, but it was still well before dawn when he heard someone dropping from the window onto the broken tiles of the church floor. It was Ignatz, and he was alone and limping, and smelled of something indescribably rotten.

Miles sat up at once, straining for a sound of Little or Henry. “Where are the others?” he asked Ignatz. “And what happened to you?”

“Got jumped by Stinkers, up near the borders,” panted Ignatz. “We was outnumbered, and the other
two got taken. They would've got me too, only I can run like a snotty nose.”

Miles felt his heart plummet. “We have to go after them,” he said.

“No point,” said Jook. He and Lob, his lieutenant, had awoken at the sound of Ignatz's return. “They'll be well inside Stinker territory by now.”

“You can't just give up on them!” said Miles.

“Course not, pez. Henry's our best creeper. We'll have to win him back at Pigball.”

“What exactly
is
Pigball?” asked Miles.

“Pigball's played in the bullring,” said Ignatz, who was beginning to get his breath back. “It's real simple. Each team has a big oil drum, up on the top terrace. You got to get the ball into the other team's drum to score. That's all there is to it.”

“Then we have to play for both of them,” said Miles. “Henry and Little.”

“The girl's not Halfhead. Pigball's never played for outsiders, and there's nothing in the rules says they have to give her back,” said Jook.

“Rules were made to be broken,” said Miles.

“Not our rules, pez,” said Jook. “Pigball game starts at midday after prisoners are took, and you're on the team, so you better get some sleep.”

“But I've never played before!”

“Don't matter,” said Lob. “You won Halfhead's bone, you get his place on the team.”

 

Miles Wednesday, sleepless and ash-dusted, crept through the back lanes in the morning haze with a gang of half-shaved boys. He gripped a leg bone in his right hand, and his breath fogged the air. Thoughts of Little and the upcoming game knotted his stomach. The rest of the Halfheads, by contrast, seemed unconcerned, and most of them had slept through the morning while Miles fidgeted and practiced swinging his bone.