The Palace of Laughter (3 page)

M
iles Wednesday, ice-cream-chilled and mucky-booted, saw the tiny acrobat fall from the toppling tower. Before he knew what he was doing, he was scrambling through the gap between the bench and the walkway as though he could catch her in his arms, but as he clambered over the seat in front of him the crowd gave another gasp, this time in wonder. Halfway to the ground the girl's fall had suddenly slowed. A pair of delicate pearly wings sprouted from her shoulders, fluttering minutely as she floated gently to the ground.

Her feet touched down so lightly that they left
no mark in the sawdust. Her wings folded and tucked themselves away, and a tiny smile crossed her face as the last of the colored shapes crashed to the ground around her and bounced to a standstill. In the stunned silence she looked directly at Miles, who was suspended half in and half out of the darkness. She looked into his face with her clear blue eyes and gave him a tiny bow, before being scooped from her feet and set on a beautiful piebald horse, which carried her proudly from the ring and through the star-strewn velvet curtains at the back.

Forgetting altogether that he was not supposed to be there, Miles picked himself up from the dusty planking, and stared at the swinging curtain through which the horse and his rider had disappeared. He was not the only one. At the other end of the curtain stood the ringmaster, a small neat man in red trousers and high black boots, and he too was staring after the tiny acrobat, stroking his blue chin beneath his enormous mustache and frowning to himself.

Some of the townsfolk broke into halfhearted applause, but others were confused and angry.

“Shouldn't be allowed to give people frights like that,” said a woman with a fur collar.

“Nearly gave me a heart attack,” said another.

“If you ask me she's far too young to be performing dangerous stunts,” said her husband. “You can be sure they're breaking some law putting her up there. Probably breaking a dozen of them.”

“It's all done with mirrors,” said a man in the row behind. “You'll find she never left the ground in the first place, if I'm any judge.”

“I prefer the clowns, anyway,” said the first woman. “I get enough of balancing just doing me finances of a Monday.”

Miles was about to say that it was the most magical thing he had ever seen, but he never got the chance to speak. A hand gripped his collar tightly from behind. He twisted around to see the man with the enormous belly and too-short trousers glowering down at him.

“Got your ticket, then?” said Genghis, giving his collar a shake for good measure. His voice was high and wheezy like a broken whistle.

“Lost it,” said Miles, looking him in the eye.

“Cobblers!” said the man. “You never came in the front door at all, you little weasel, but that's the way you're going out.” His swollen purple nose stuck out between his battered bowler hat and his stiff white collar, and he smelled of stale cigar smoke. He marched Miles toward the entrance, the boy
stumbling as he tried to keep up. When they reached the flap of the tent, Genghis grasped the seat of Miles's pants with his free hand and tossed him through the air like a sack of coal. He landed in the mud with a splash, and picked himself up just in time to avoid the toe of Genghis's boot.

“Next time I see your dirty face around here I'll feed you to
The Null
,” said Genghis as he turned on his heel and went back into the tent.

Miles headed for the exit, but as soon as he was sure the fat-bellied man had disappeared, he doubled back and began to slip between the wagons again. The second half of the circus show had started, with a clashing of cymbals and banging of gongs, and he was still determined to search for a tiger's cage. He peered into a wagon with barred sides. A reptilian eye stared at him unblinking from the smelly darkness. “Not that one,” he whispered to Tangerine, and crept on. Cage after cage he visited, some empty and some occupied. The zebras he had seen that morning stamped and whinnied. The next wagon contained long-necked wooly animals he had never seen before. The last one in the row was full of parrots and macaws, who screeched insults at him in several languages.

A little distance away he spotted a single red
wagon standing apart from the others. It was the one he had seen that morning, the one that even the dogs steered clear of. Making sure he was not watched, he ran lightly across the grass and slipped into the shadows beneath the red wagon. He took from his pocket the bone that he had kept for the tiger, and unwrapped it carefully. He wondered what would happen if he dropped it in through the small barred window above his head.

Miles did not know that this decision, along with the bone itself, was about to be taken out of his hands. The creature that lurked in the wagon above him was no tiger, nor anything that had been given a name. It was known only as “The Null,” a word that means “nothing.” It was a dark and terrifying beast, the sort of being that haunts the deepest corners of your blackest nightmares. The Null was large and squat and hairy and immensely strong, with red-rimmed eyes and bone-crushing teeth. Some said it was a kind of ape, or even a yeti from the unexplored reaches of the Himalayas. Others whispered that it had once been a man, turned into a monster by powerful witchcraft. Whatever was the truth, few had ever seen The Null face to face, for it could be neither tamed nor trained. The last man to try had ended up in Saint Bonifacio's
Hospital for the Unhinged, and had not spoken a coherent word for seven years.

As Miles removed the last shred of soggy paper from the bone, an immense knotty black arm swung down from the small barred window, snatched the heavy bone in its clawed hand, and withdrew with it into the darkness.

Crack!
The Null's mighty jaws split the bone with ease, and it slobbered and gulped as it sucked the marrow from inside. Its great teeth ground the bone to splinters in seconds, and a belch like a blast on a tuba made the wagon dance on its iron springs. Miles crouched, trembling, under the monster's cage. He had no idea what kind of creature lurked in the wagon above him, but it was not the tiger he had expected, and he knew that if it once got hold of him it could crack his skull like a boiled egg.

 

Miles Wednesday, bone-bereft and shaken, crouched behind the wooden spokes of the red wagon. He was afraid to leave his hiding place, and just as afraid to stay in it. As he huddled out of reach (he hoped) of the monster's hairy grasp, he saw two figures emerge from the back of the circus tent, one large and one small. The bigger one, a black shadow with a bowler hat and an
unmistakable belly, was pushing in front of him the tiny acrobat from the toppling tower. Her hands were tied behind her back. The moonlight shone in her hair and winked from her sparkling outfit. Genghis opened a small wagon with a key from the large ring hanging on his belt. He lifted the girl, threw her bodily into the wagon and locked the door. He turned and stumped over to the Great Cortado's trailer with its crazed clown's face, and disappeared inside.

“It's time we got out of here,” whispered Miles to Tangerine.

Tangerine said nothing, but Miles knew what he was thinking.

“If they catch us, we'll be fed to The Null,” he said. Still Tangerine kept silent.

“We
can't
get her out,” he hissed, beginning to feel annoyed. “The door is locked, and there are bars on the windows. Besides,” he said, forgetting to whisper now, “it's none of our business.”

At the sound of his voice the red wagon tilted on its creaking iron springs. The Null's hairy claw appeared and began to grope between the spokes of the wheel. It had enjoyed its starter, and was looking for the main course. A curved yellow nail scraped Miles's bare ankle, and with that he was out from
under the wagon like a greyhound from a trap and flying across the muddy grass. In his panic he headed for the cover of the nearest wagon, and only when he reached it did he realize it was the small one in which the tiny acrobat was imprisoned. He groaned quietly.

“Who's there?” came a small voice from the barred window.

“Me,” said Miles.

“Can you get me out of here, Me?” said the voice.

“Not Me, Miles,” said Miles.

“Who's Miles?” asked the voice.

“I am,” said Miles. “And I can't get you out. The door is locked.”

“Then you'll need the key,” said the girl.

“Genghis has the key,” said Miles.

There was a shuffling sound from inside the trailer, and the top half of the little girl's face appeared in the window, peeping over the wooden sill.

“Oh!” she said in surprise. “It's you! You tried to save me when I fell.”

Miles blushed in the darkness.

“I'm glad it's you,” said the tiny acrobat. “You are very brave. I'm sure you can get the key and let me out.”

Miles sighed, and looked up at the girl. She looked small and frightened in the darkness of the wagon.

“What's your name?” he asked.

She hesitated for a moment, then said, “Little.”

“All right, Little,” said Miles. “I'll try to get the key. Get down from the window and stay quiet.”

Little nodded. Her face stayed at the window.

The large wagon that Genghis had entered stood a short way from the one where Little was locked up. It was a dark midnight blue, edged with silver decorations that curled and twisted like thorn bushes. The door to the wagon stood ajar, and a dim red light and the sound of muttered conversation escaped from inside. Miles crept forward and hid himself beside the wooden steps. His heart was beating like a drum.

A man's voice came from inside the wagon. “The older one is going down a storm at the Palace of Laughter. His trick with the firebolts works a treat, though I still haven't figured out how it's done.”

“You reckon we can trust him?” asked Genghis's reedy voice.

“As long as we keep his little sister here at the circus, he'll do as he's told.”

“What about her then…that business with the wings?”

There was a long silence, followed by a cloud of smoke that curled out through the half-open door and was whipped away by the breeze.

“There's more to that little one than meets the eye,” said the first man finally. “We'll have to get to the bottom of this before someone gets too curious, and the sooner the better. See that she gets some sleepwater with her supper tonight.”

Miles raised himself up quietly and risked a glance over the top step. Through the gap in the doorway he could see a slice of the wagon's interior. The two men sat in leather armchairs, their faces out of sight, their legs stretched beneath a black marble table that stood in the center of the thick red carpet. Big Belly's too-short trousers revealed lemon yellow socks peeping over the necks of his boots. Miles recognized the other man as the ringmaster by his black knee-length boots and red trousers with the yellow stripe. Lazy plumes of cigar smoke drifted back and forth in the dim red light, as though each man were trying to outsmoke the other.

An ebony carving of the laughing clown's face hung on the trailer wall, just inside the door. A mirror was set in the clown's wide-open mouth, and below it was a row of hooks. An enormous key ring,
carrying at least forty heavy keys, hung from the nearest hook. Miles felt his heart beat even faster. He had just made up his mind to run up the steps as quietly as he could, when Genghis leaned forward and placed his empty glass on the table. Miles froze.

“Well,” said Genghis, squinting through the smoke at a large pocket watch, “show's just about over.” He put his cigar butt in his mouth and sank back out of sight, in order to make the biggest smoke cloud he could manage by way of a finale.

The orchestra in the circus tent reached a crescendo that sounded like several angry cats doing battle with a buffalo in a hotel kitchen. Miles seized his chance. He ran up the wooden steps of the Great Cortado's luxurious wagon and reached for the heavy keys that dangled from the hook. As he did so he glanced in the ebony-framed mirror, and found himself looking straight into the eyes of the Great Cortado himself.

M
iles Wednesday, mud-caked and red-handed, stared at the Great Cortado through a cloud of cigar smoke and an ebony clown's mouth. At first glance, the only thing great about the ringmaster was his mustache. It was a fine, thick mustache that swept outward from his face like wings and curled up to two needle-sharp points. It far outmustached Mayor Doggett's droopy whiskers. By contrast, everything else about the Great Cortado was small. He had a small round head like a marble, with hair slicked back and curling behind his ears. His delicate red lips held a fat cigar, and blue smoke curled from the nostrils of his neat button nose. He looked
almost like a child with a blue chin and false mustache, but his pale eyes seemed to overflow with wisdom and humor.

Genghis hoisted himself from his armchair with a grunt, and the Great Cortado spoke.

“We have a visitor, Genghis,” he said. “Bring him inside.”

Miles froze for a second. His gaze was still held through the mirror by the Great Cortado's clear gray eyes. Had Cortado guessed what he had been reaching for? Should he grab the keys and make a run for it? But by the time these thoughts had flashed through his mind it was too late; Genghis had reached him in two strides. He grabbed his arm and hauled him roughly into the trailer.

“Genghis, please!” said the Great Cortado, with a smile in his voice. “Is that any way to treat a guest?”

Genghis released his grip, but not before giving Miles a hard pinch. “Not sure if ‘guest' is the word for this 'un,” he said sullenly. “I've already turfed him out of the show once tonight. Caught him sneaking around under the seats. Told me he'd lost his ticket, the little weasel.”

“Is that so?” said the Great Cortado, his eyes wrinkling with amusement. Miles felt himself relax a little under the small man's steady gaze. “Perhaps
you would go and see the punters off, Genghis, while I find out from this lad why he is so drawn to our circus that he is undeterred by the mere lack of a ticket.”

Genghis shot Miles a dirty look and clumped down the trailer steps. The Great Cortado stubbed out his cigar and waved Miles into the empty chair. Miles felt scruffy and out of place in these comfortable surroundings. He sank down into the soft leather upholstery, and held the collar of his jacket closed so that Cortado could not see that he wore it over his bare skin.

“Well,” said the Great Cortado at length. “Do you have a name?”

“Yes,” said Miles.

There was a moment's silence, then the Great Cortado laughed. “Would you like to tell it to me, or is it top secret?”

“It's Selim,” said Miles at once. He was not sure why he said this, although he knew from his spelling lessons with Lady Partridge that Selim was his own name spelled backward. “Perhaps it was that mirror,” he thought, “that made me think back to front.”

“Tell me, Selim,” said the Great Cortado, “what did you think of our circus? Was it worth watching from under the seats?”

“I didn't see much of it, to be honest,” said Miles. “And I was hoping there would be a tiger.”

“A tiger?” The Great Cortado took another cigar from the box on the table, and tapped it twice on the lid. His clear gray eyes fixed their gaze on Miles. “Why a tiger, Selim?”

“There's one on your poster,” said Miles. He did not think it wise to tell the Great Cortado of his moonlit conversation with a tiger the night before.

“So there is,” said Cortado, “so there is. But that's an old poster, and a traditional design. There has not been a tiger in this circus for many years.”

“Maybe you should get one, since you still have one on the poster. If I'd bought a ticket, I would have been disappointed.”

The Great Cortado's face cooled, and the smile disappeared from his eyes. “There are not many people who would speak to the Great Cortado like that,” he said quietly. “I wonder is it courage or foolishness that makes you so bold?”

“Maybe it's a bit of both, Mr. Cortado,” said Miles.

“Perhaps it is,” said the Great Cortado. He lit the cigar that he had been turning over in his fingers. “In which case,” he said, “you would have precisely the qualities needed in a circus performer.”

“That's what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Miles. He was becoming anxious about Little, waiting for him in the locked trailer, and an idea was beginning to form in his head.

“I thought it might be,” said Cortado. He leaned forward in his seat. “Let me show you something that might change your mind.” He unbuttoned his shirt, and opened it to reveal a long white scar that stretched diagonally across his chest and abdomen, from collarbone to hip. The skin around the scar was puckered and bore the traces of large clumsy stitches. “This,” he said, “is the mark of a tiger, a tiger that I adopted from another circus and cared for as though he were my own. This is how he repaid me.” He buttoned his shirt again. “The circus is a dangerous place, my boy, and if it is the life you choose, you had better be strong enough to stay on top. What would your parents have to say about this idea, I wonder?”

“I wouldn't know,” said Miles. “I've never met them. I live by myself, and I make my own decisions.”

“I see. And in the absence of a tiger to tame, what do you feel you could bring to a show as spectacular as the Circus Oscuro?”

“Oh I wouldn't want to tame any tigers. I was
thinking more of a disappearing act.”

“A disappearing act? Is that it? Every nickel and dime show has a disappearing act, Selim.”

“Not one like mine. Mine is different.”

The Great Cortado raised one eyebrow.

“Mine is completely unexpected,” said Miles.

The Great Cortado leaned forward again in his seat, and fixed Miles with his unwavering stare. The smile had returned to his face, but it did not reach his eyes. “Would this act simply consist of you disappearing from my trailer, by any chance?”

“That wouldn't be very spectacular, would it, Mr. Cortado?”

“No it wouldn't,” said the Great Cortado. He sat back. “In that case, when will I have the pleasure of seeing this fabulous act?”

“I can show you now, but I will need to go outside and make some preparations.”

The ringmaster considered this for a moment, then he said, “You look tired and hungry to me, Selim. So this is what we will do. I will fix you a drink from an old recipe that we circus people guard jealously. I guarantee you it will take care of all your hunger and fatigue. While I do this, you will have a minute or two to make your preparations. But I warn you, I am the Great Cortado, and
people who waste my time end up very sorry indeed. This trick of yours had better surprise me.”

“I think I can promise that,” said Miles.

He stood up and went to the door. A glance in the ebony mirror showed him that the Great Cortado had turned his back and was fixing his special drink at the marble bar in the end of the trailer. Miles lifted the heavy key ring gingerly from the hook and slipped it inside his jacket. His heart was beating so loudly that he was sure the ringmaster would hear it. He went quickly down the steps and ran across the grass to the trailer where Little was being held. The keys clinked together as he took them from his jacket.

“Is that you, Miles?” whispered Little through the keyhole.

“It's me,” said Miles. “But I don't know which is the right key. There are a lot of them to try.”

“Come to the window and show them to me,” said Little. Her face appeared over the sill again. Miles climbed onto the wheel rim and held them up for her to see. She examined them for a moment. “That one,” she said. “The one with the twisted stem and the curly end.”

Miles put the key in the lock and it turned with ease. Little slipped out through the door. Her wrists
were tied behind her back by a long rope, wrapped several times around her waist for good measure, and Miles had left his pocketknife in his barrel. She held a thin blanket behind her back. Miles wrapped it around her to hide her bound wrists and sparkly suit, and she stood on tiptoe on the wooden step to whisper in his ear.

“We have to go quickly,” she said. “These are bad, bad people.”

The circus show had ended and the crowd began to spill out into the night air, laughing and jostling. Miles could see Genghis tying back the flaps of the tent. The big man barked something at one of the circus boys, who was waiting for the townspeople to go home so that he could search for their loose change under the wooden benches. Genghis turned toward Little's wagon. “Quickly!” said Miles. He pulled Little down into the shadow beneath the wagon and crawled in after her. As they crouched in the darkness, a faint glimmer of light caught his eye. Some sort of ticket lay in the long grass. It shone faintly as he picked it up and slipped it into his pocket with barely a glance. He saw Genghis's windswept ankles appear by the bottom step and stop there.

“Hell's teeth!” hissed Genghis's voice. He ran up
the steps and peered into the empty wagon. The door slammed behind him as he stomped back down the steps. “Now I'm for the high jump,” he muttered, as he strode off in the direction of the Great Cortado's wagon.

As soon as he was gone, Miles and Little crept out from under the trailer and slipped into the crowd that was streaming past them toward the exit. A large woman swirled by with a gaggle of small children hanging on to her skirts, and Miles and Little joined them, trotting to keep up. As they passed the Great Cortado's wagon they could hear the ringmaster's raised voice through the curtained windows.

“Then get after them, you great barrel of pork! I want the girl back in her wagon within the hour, or you'll find yourself starring in a disappearing act of your own!”

“What about the boy?”

The Great Cortado spat in disgust. “Give him to The Null.”

“
Give
him to The Null? But it'll tear him to pieces!”

“Stop whining, Genghis,” barked the ringmaster. “The boy's no use to me, and nobody will miss him. It will be the last time he tries to play games with the Great Cortado.”

Genghis emerged from Cortado's trailer, and at the same time the large woman in whose skirts Miles and Little were hiding stopped to pick up one of the children who had tripped and fallen. It took her some time to stop the child's crying, and Miles had to bite his tongue to keep from telling her to hurry up.

As they neared the circus exit they could see a bare-chested fire-eater standing by the ticket box, belching balls of flame over the heads of the departing townspeople. The people ducked to avoid having their hats set on fire, and as they did so, the dwarf with the helmet (who had managed to keep his trousers on this time) was handing them silvery tickets like the one Miles had found under Little's wagon. “Congratulations,” he told each one in turn. “Another lucky winner.” Beyond the fire-eater Miles could see fat-bellied Genghis, who had stationed himself at the exit and was scanning the children in the crowd for escapees.

“Not that way,” said Miles. He steered Little out of the crowd into the shadow of one of the cages. He peered around the back of the wagon, but one of the circus boys stood there, holding a snarling dog on a short lead. The dog strained and growled, and it took all the boy's strength to hold him.

“He's had a splinter in his back paw for weeks,”
whispered Little, “and no one has noticed it. That's why he's so mean.”

“How do you know?” asked Miles

The girl looked at him in surprise. “He told me,” she said.

Something warm and wet slopped against Miles's ear, making him jump. The llamas had crowded against the door of their cage, and one had stuck his tongue out between the bars. Little giggled. “I think you should let them out,” she whispered to Miles. “They want to go for a little gallop.”

She nodded at the iron bolt on the cage door. It was unlocked. Miles eased it open and slid the door back. Immediately a woolly mass of llamas leaped out of the cage and charged happily into the shrieking crowd, sending people diving into the mud. One knocked against the fire-eater, who belched an extra-large fireball straight at Genghis's head. Genghis leaned backward in the nick of time, but not quickly enough to save his cigar and the front of his hat brim, which both went up in smoke. He roared and swung a fist at the fire-eater. In the confusion Miles and Little darted behind Genghis and in among the hurrying townspeople on the road. Miles held Little's arm in case she tripped. She seemed to weigh nothing at all.

“Where are we going?” she asked as they ran.

“To see Lady Partridge,” said Miles. “She'll know what to do. But first we'll go to my barrel to get my knife and cut that rope off you.”

“Why do you keep it in a barrel?” said Little.

“I live in the barrel,” said Miles, lifting Little over the ditch and starting up the hill. “It's my home.”

“Oh,” said Little. “Does Lady Partridge live in a barrel too?”