Circus of Marvels Read online

  “Owww! What was that for?”

  “It’s how I do it, my boy. Blindness, you see, has forced me to do my readings by touch and your boney little hands are not giving much away. Sorry, dear, but the only way to get the proper measure of you is through your face.”

  “What? You’re blind? So when you cut my hair just now you—”

  SLAP!

  The next ten minutes were extremely uncomfortable for Ned. Kitty repeatedly slapped, pinched and prodded his cheeks, nose, ears and neck. Never hard enough to actually hurt, but always enough to shock him. The strange thing was, with every slap, pinch and prod came a squeal of joy from the old woman, even at one point an attack of the giggles that made her snort through her nose.

  “I think I want to go home now,” Ned scowled as soon as she paused.

  “Sorry, dear, I just haven’t had such a fun reading in ages, and your skin is so very soft, isn’t it? Now let me see,” she said, continuing her strange exploration, “interesting, not keen on homework … and not that good with a football either. Face not entirely remarkable, but not by any means plain. Something of a blank canvas on which to paint.”

  This was the part Ned was dreading. If Kitty really could read his mind and was hoping to discover anything exciting about him …

  “Not really the rising star, are we? Oh yes, I see … a bit cross with dad, but some new friends and a longing to grow roots. Hang on, I sense … Oh dear, a little sadness. We’ll have to see if we can’t fix that …”

  Ned was already feeling increasingly uncomfortable when Kitty’s fingers pressed down particularly hard on his forehead.

  “Oww!”

  “Interesting,” she whispered.

  “What? What have you seen?” Ned asked, trying to sound casual but secretly praying that she’d found something about him that was worth remarking on. “And if you prod me like that again, I’m leaving, clowns or not.”

  Kitty smiled. “There’s no reason to get all snippy, my little powder-keg. Nearly done, pinky promise,” squeaked Kitty. “Just close those eyes and breathe …”

  Suddenly he felt a pressure in the back of his mind. It was the same feeling he’d had outside the big top and again at the end of the show. It was as though someone, or something, were in there with him. “Heyyy, you’ve … bin here … bef … orrrr,” he slurred.

  “Yes, dear, I did have a little peek or two. Now pipe down, I’m trying to think.”

  In the darkness of his mind, Ned saw a pinprick of light a million miles away from his troubles. It was disorientating and strange, as though he were in the room and somewhere else at the same time.

  “Kitteee … moy stomach … feeeeels …”

  “A minute more … OK, just as I thought. Open your eyes, that’s enough for today,” said the old woman.

  Ned felt strange and very slightly sick, as the room came back into focus.

  “What just happened?”

  “Yes, Kit-Kat, what did just happen?” came a deeper voice from the bus’s doorway.

  Ned looked up. There, framed in the doorway, was the huge figure of the Circus of Marvels’ Ringmaster – Benissimo.

  Ned felt a mix of awe and hope. Perhaps he was finally going to get some answers. This was the man his father trusted, the man who would get Ned’s life back in order.

  “It’s unclear, Bene. On the one hand, something … on the other, most definitely nothing,” answered Kitty brightly.

  “Hell’s teeth, Kit-Kat! What kind of answer is that?”

  “It is the only answer you’re getting till you mind your manners and ask the right question,” she retorted, now in the deeper voice of an elderly but formidable woman, all traces of giggly girlishness gone.

  “I just did!” snapped the Ringmaster, his bushy moustache twitching irritably.

  “Not to me, you fool, to the boy.”

  The great tower that was Benissimo changed, his face shifting from irritation, to new-found understanding.

  “I see … yes, yes, of course.”

  He raised one of his large eyebrows, then lowered it and raised the other, before studying his subject more closely.

  “So this is him and here he is. Not much to look at and very young, Kit-Kat, too young,” said the Ringmaster, now drawing uncomfortably close.

  Ned’s shoulders tensed again. Benissimo may have seemed saner than the rest of the circus crew but he was also slightly terrifying and he was staring at Ned so closely it was as if he was trying to read the pores of his skin.

  “Err, sorry, but too young for what?”

  “Too young for us, pup,” said Benissimo, “for the Circus of Marvels and the road we travel. Tell me, did your father explain anything about what we do here and where it is we come from?”

  Ned shrugged. “He garbled a lot of stuff, none of it made much sense though …”

  Benissimo did not look impressed.

  “Just as I thought. Underaged, unprepared and frankly … underwhelming.”

  The brutish Ringmaster was intimidating, but he was also rude and Ned had had enough.

  “Look, I don’t know who you lot are or what my dad’s mixed up in, all I know is you’re supposed to help me, and right now you’re not being very nice, so what I want to do is … call the police, or something, so if I can use your phone …”

  “Help you?” said Benissimo with a snort. “That’s not it at all. You’re here to help us – though I seriously doubt a josser like you will be anything but a hindrance.”

  Ned didn’t know what Benissimo meant by “josser” but by now he was somewhere between the salty welling-up of tears and outright anger. His dad had told him to trust Kitty and Benissimo, and one of them was mad – and clearly a, well, witch – and the other was rude, bordering on foul. What was his dad thinking and how could he possibly help anyone when he didn’t actually know what was going on?

  “Why don’t you tell him about your little box, dearie?” cut in Kitty’s singsong voice.

  Ned suddenly remembered the birthday present and how it had slipped through his fingers the night before.

  “How do you know about that? Dad said I should give it to you, but I think I lost it last night …”

  “Fear not, lamb chop, George found it when he scooped you up off the floor,” said Kitty, pulling the box from her pocket and handing it to Ned.

  He studied the cube and for the first time noticed a tiny O embossed on to one of its sides.

  “Yes, this is it. It’s a puzzle box I think. I’m usually pretty good at stuff like this, but I can’t figure out how it opens.”

  Benissimo’s eyes grew wide.

  “Jupiter’s beard! That’s no puzzle box, boy, that is something else … entirely.”

  Lots & Lots of Marvels

  “If it’s not a puzzle box, then what is it?” asked Ned.

  “My suspicions will need a pinch or two of verification, but if I’m right, this may well be the second half –” the Ringmaster paused, eyeing Ned up and down – “of a very slim chance.”

  “Chance of what?”

  “Of keeping the world’s biggest secret a secret, boy. And of keeping your father alive. Come with me, there are some things you need to see.”

  Ned’s chest tightened. “Keeping your father alive” were not words he wanted to hear. Was his dad really in that much trouble?

  The Ringmaster stepped off the bus and beckoned Ned to follow. Outside, Ned realised they were nowhere near Grittlesby green. The sun was rising and he could see now that the circus had pitched its tents by the side of a motorway. In front of them was the abandoned building site of a half-constructed shopping mall. A single large sign across its fencing read ‘OUBLIER AND CO’. Beyond that, thick untameable forest.

  “Where are we?”

  “Across the Channel, southern France.”

  “France! How did we get here so quickly? Did you get the entire circus on the ferry while I was asleep?” gasped Ned.

  “Our presence was required to take c
are of a local disturbance. It’s what we do, my troupe and I.”

  “Disturbance? I thought you like … juggled and stuff?”

  “Juggled and stuff?” Benissimo sighed. “This is going to take longer than I thought … I’ll start at the beginning, shall I? You see, the circus, as you and the rest of the world know it, is a place of harmless fun, but its roots are of a more secretive nature. When the old Roman Empire used to rule, they would scour the world for its best fighters and train them in mortal combat. Back then we fought as gladiators, for money, and for fame. It was barbaric, they were barbaric times, but it was done for a reason – to ready us to manage certain borders, to keep what was in in. We’re descendants, Ned, of those very same circuses, those very same warriors, the gatekeepers of a border or borders that we collectively call ‘the Veil’, behind which certain things hide or are kept hidden.”

  “I still don’t understand. What hides? And what’s it got to do with me and my dad?” Ned asked.

  “What you need, young pup, is a little orientation, a little bit of knowing your up from your down,” said Benissimo. “Come with me.”

  The Ringmaster turned abruptly and marched Ned over to the circus’s empty animal cages, then stopped by its smallest.

  “Do you believe in fairies, boy?” he asked, without a hint of sarcasm.

  “Course not, I’m thirteen.”

  “That is a shame … but you did? When you were younger, yes?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And at that time, you were probably a little scared of the dark too? Saw things in it when nothing was there?”

  Of all the people Ned had met, Benissimo was the very last he’d want to admit that to.

  “I … erm …”

  “Seeing things in the dark,” continued Benissimo, “we call that ‘sight’. The gift of it leaves us when we come of age. The less we believe, the less we see. The Veil takes away that sight completely. Do me a favour, pup, and look into that cage.”

  Ned did not like being referred to as “pup” and he certainly wasn’t Benissimo’s “boy”, that privilege was his dad’s alone, though he was starting to wonder if he’d ever forgive his father for leaving him in the Ringmaster’s care. Nonetheless, the man had a way of asking that made you feel like you had to say yes. He stared through the bars.

  “What do you see?”

  “Just the cage, that and a little sunlight, I guess.”

  “Dusk and dawn are the best times to see them, especially the Darklings that we have caged here. Your youth and Kitty’s tea should be enough to break the glamour. Look again.”

  This time, as Ned stared through the bars, something began to form. In the dance of shadow and light, he saw a shape. Something small and sinewy, something with teeth.

  “Wha … what?”

  Before him stood a ferocious creature, which snarled and lashed at the cage bars. Its clothing might once have had some colour, but today the creature’s threadbare rags were reduced to a grimy mush. It had white clammy skin, orange slits for eyes and a pointy, evil face.

  “That, my boy, is a hob-gor-balin, only a level three menace, but quite clearly on the wrong side of the Veil. The effects of Kitty’s tea at your age should be permanent, though breaking the strongest glamours needs more aggressive magic …”

  Ned’s jaw dropped.

  “Ned Waddlesworth, son of Terry. Feast your eyes on the truth. Drink it down like a warm cup of honey. This …” said Benissimo as he led him round the corner to where a large troupe of performers were having their lunch, “… is my circus, the real Circus of Marvels,” announced Benissimo, gesturing in a circle, his chest puffed up with pride.

  Ned looked over the troupe and his already dropped jaw gaped wider still. The cook was an unshaven, gruff-looking man who had clearly never washed his apron. He also had tusks hanging down from his mouth, and the snout of a pig. Pretty dancing girls in sparkly make-up laughed, as a red-faced cheery-looking woman sewed sequins and bells on to a pink dress. One of the girls had scales for skin, another short fur and the spots of a leopard, and the third was covered in tiny blue feathers.

  Beside them, an excited group was laying down wagers, as Rocky and what Ned could only assume was his wife, despite the beard, went head to head in a playful arm-wrestle. Except that Rocky wasn’t Rocky any more. His bulging muscular skin had turned a hard grey and had the texture of rock. Watching the two lovebirds wrestle were Julius, Nero and Caligula, but the breakfast-stealing monkeys were now in their blue-skinned, mischievous pixie form, and the elephant that had ruffled his hair only moments ago had the pretty white wings at the top of her back Ned had seen in his dreams, where there had previously only been cardboard.

  Each and every one was different, from the enormous troll that was Rocky, to the dwarven unicyclists delivering food at the food truck’s trestle tables.

  “The hidden. Marvellous, aren’t they? Every myth and legend, every obscure or forgotten tale, they are all, most wonderfully, most stupendously and on numerous occasions, rather dangerously … true.”

  Ned turned around to take in the other Darklings in their cages. They weren’t like George or Rocky or even the clowns. They were monsters, of every possible size and shape.

  “That there is a harpy,” said Benissimo indicating a brown-winged woman sat scowling in one of the cages, her mouth covered to stop her taunting screams. “Her voice can cause instant paralysis, or madness, or both. Very nasty indeed,” explained Benissimo. Behind her, in a far larger cage, were a pair of thin-limbed creatures wearing clothes that looked like they’d been stolen from the dead.

  “Nightmongers; the less said about them the better. Look into their eyes and you see your worst fears. Hear them talk and it’s already over.”

  Their faces were covered by wide-brimmed hats, and instead of fingers Ned saw long claws the length of kitchen knives hanging from their wrists.

  “Please, please tell me I’ve gone mad,” said Ned, suddenly longing for his dull, safe dad more than ever.

  “It’s always hard on jossers the first time,” said Benissimo dismissively. “That wyvern took ten hands to capture, most of which wound up in the infirmary.”

  The beast he was talking about was in the largest cage by far. It was about the size of a horse with the features of a dragon. Its leathery wings had to be chained down and it wore a heavy iron muzzle.

  “Flammable spit. I’ve seen them burn bones to ashes in mere seconds.”

  As still as it was, the briefest look from its glowering grey eyes was enough to chill Ned’s bones. The Darklings were nightmares come to life, only worse, only real. Ned didn’t care whether he was going mad or not. He was quite beyond that now.

  BANG.

  An unmarked grey truck backfired beside them. Its rear doors were flung open and out stepped a tracker. He wore a long wax coat to match his long greasy hair and his wild eyes looked entirely feral.

  “Lerft! Roight! Heel!” he called in a strong Irish accent.

  Ned watched in awe as the tracker’s pet lions, Left and Right, bounded out of the truck and fawned over him like obedient puppies. It wasn’t so much that he had a power over them, it looked more like he was one of them, a creature of the wild too.

  “Aark!” he called next, in a voice only part human.

  From somewhere high in the air came a screech and a swoosh of wings as a large black hawk flew down to the man’s arm. A large black hawk … with two heads.

  It was at this point that Ned lost the power of speech altogether.

  Circus hands lowered a covered cage from out of the back of Finn’s truck, while two men in matching pinstripe suits interviewed the German tourist who’d been unlucky enough to stumble upon whatever it was the tracker had captured.

  “Oh dear, Mr Smalls,” said one of the suits.

  “Yes, quite, Mr Cook,” agreed the other.

  The tourist was babbling and in severe shock.

  “You see, one moment it was there unt the next, nosink.
No beast unt only the forest. You believe me, ja?” pleaded the tourist.

  “Yes, sir, actually we do rather. Mr Cook, if you wouldn’t mind doing the honours?”

  The taller of the two pulled a long silver tube from his breast pocket that looked a little like a flute, only it wasn’t. He pointed it at the tourist’s face and blew. The two men then dragged the now sleeping backpacker to Kitty’s bus.

  “You see,” Benissimo rumbled, his great eyebrows furrowed, “when the two worlds come crashing together, yours and mine that is, it’s the Circus of Marvels and others like her that have to clear up the mess. When things go awry and the shadows bite, it’s my troupe that bites them back. Whether you’ve the teeth for it, pup, remains to be seen.”

  Ned felt his anger rise up again. Benissimo kept talking to him as though he’d somehow agreed to join their band of travelling monstrosities while in the same breath reminding him that he was not up to the task. And he still hadn’t explained how he and his dad were part of all this! He was about to tell his host exactly what he thought of him when there was an almighty howl from inside the truck’s cage. As the beast within threw itself at its bars, the cover slipped and fell. In place of the monster Ned was expecting, was a thin, shaking man, clammy with sweat. The man looked at Ned, cocked his head to one side and started to whimper. But despite the timid sound, he watched Ned with the same look of interest a dog gives a cat, before trying to tear its head off.

  Benissimo’s whip snapped at the cage bars, seemingly without the Ringmaster moving.

  “Any more of that and I’ll order our boy Finn here to give you a bath with his lions,” he warned.

  The man cowered at the Ringmaster’s glare and the cage was covered up again. Ned was shocked by Benissimo’s ferocity. Could they really treat a person like that? Weren’t there rules and laws for that kind of thing?

  “Don’t be fooled by its human form. That’s the level fifteen our pinstripes called us in for. Thankfully the threat of soap is usually enough to calm them before it comes to blows. Ours is a dangerous path, boy, and requires a firm hand to keep it straight.”

  Ned looked at the man in front of him as he strode on once more, a towering mast in a sea of monsters. One thing seemed certain – the Ringmaster would do anything to keep the shadows, as he’d called them, at bay.