Circus of Marvels Read online

  Even as he said it, it surprised him. He wanted his father back just the way he was. Even if it meant being bored, even if it meant being fussed over and forced to stay in. He would do anything for that right now, anything at all.

  “I can’t promise normal, but with enough wind behind us …” the Ringmaster sighed and looked him up and down yet again, “… and a great deal of luck, yes, you’ll get your dad back.”

  “I’m going to ignore that look you just gave me, if you promise not to do it again.”

  “I’ll do no such thing.”

  Ned gritted his teeth. “Fine. When can we go?”

  Benissimo’s mouth turned towards what might have been a smile, though it ended up with just a hint of sadness.

  “Perhaps you’re more like your father than it first appears … though while you’re with us, it’d be for the best if you kept him to yourself. Just a few of the troupe know who you really are – let’s keep it that way. Tell me, did the clowns see you?”

  “I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure.”

  “Well, ‘don’t think so’ will have to do. That said,” continued Benissimo, “it does not guarantee that prying ears or eyes won’t find out about you. There’s a rot in my circus, a spy or spies that are trying to hamper our progress. Until I root them out, you keep your head down, understood?”

  “Understood.”

  “For now we’ll say you’re a runaway. We get a lot of recruits that way and no one will pay someone like you much heed.”

  Ned felt another flicker of anger. Why did the man dislike him so much?

  “By ‘like me’ I guess you mean ordinary, right?”

  “I had something else in mind, but ordinary will do.”

  Ned had a pleasing vision of yanking Benissimo’s moustache, then setting it on fire with one of the Tinker’s gadgets.

  “Tinker, a message to Oublier, if you will?”

  “Right you are, boss!”

  Ned seethed quietly as Benissimo’s head of R&D opened two windows at the back of the truck and picked up a large device shaped like a trumpet. Directing one end out of the window, he started to speak in a mixture of slow drawn out tones and revolting nasal snorts, all the while contorting his face and lips horribly.

  “N e w … l e a d … f o u n d … F i d g i t … a n d … S o n s.”

  A large gust blew up, swirling leaves into a pillar of spinning greenery, before launching itself over the forest’s canopy and away from the truck.

  “What’s he doing?”

  The Ringmaster gave Ned a withering glare. “Hush, boy, it’s an air-modulator. He’s harnessing the wind to send a message.”

  “Who is he messaging?” whispered Ned in amazement, but they were too deep in concentration to hear him, or to reply.

  The Tinker continued to work the machine, twisting dials and pressing its keys to change pitch. Finally something else happened. A dozen wind chimes, both crystal and wooden, started to sound on the truck’s roof. Outside a gust of wind was blowing in over the treetops. And then it came, in soft blowy whispers. A reply.

  “H … U … R … R … Y .”

  “Well, we’d better get to it then,” said Benissimo, “it’s time for tear down.” And taking Ned’s blood-key for safe-keeping, he charged out of the Tinker’s vehicle.

  Ned followed closely behind, having no idea what he was talking about. But as Benissimo called for the troupe to gather round, he soon found out.

  “All right everyone! Pull your tent pegs and fire up the engines …” he called. “We’re going home!”

  ***

  Much further than the crow flies but only moments later, a meeting was held between a spy and his master. The master was holding an apple, which he cut carefully, his sharp knife making perfect incisions across its golden skin. He was a great dark hulk of a man, with a deep, unsmiling voice.

  “Sister Clementine’s ‘ending’ was unfortunate. She was the closest we’ve come in years,” brooded the master.

  “Yes … but now there is the boy,” whispered back his spy.

  “A lucky turn of events. Tell me, does he know?”

  “Not all of it, no. Bene has kept nearly everyone in the dark for fear of your watchful eyes.”

  “And fear them he should!”

  “How shall we proceed?” asked the spy from his shadow.

  “Everything depends on the boy’s key. I believe it always has. Do you remember the tale of the Parnifer tree?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “You of all creatures should. In the story, the King’s son was taken by a terrible affliction and could not be woken. The King cried for a hundred days and a hundred nights, till his tears formed a river. By its banks, a tree sprang up from the ground.”

  “The Parnifer tree.”

  “Precisely. They say a single seed from the tree’s fruit could cure anything. The girl is like the seed. If she were to meet with the Engineer …”

  The master put down his knife, before crushing the apple in his fist, its wet pulpy flesh oozing through his fingers.

  “The seed, must, be, crushed. I’ll send the devil himself if I have to.” He gazed for a moment at the fruit falling from his hand. “In the meantime, we’ll be needing some leverage. With the boy’s spirit-knot and enough time, we could do extraordinary things. I’ll leave that up to you. Watch, observe, slow them down if you can. When the moment is right, we’ll make our move.”

  And with a silent nod, the spy melted into the shadows and returned from where he came.

  The Flying Circus

  There was all-round whooping and hollering and a happy trumpeting from Alice as the Circus of Marvels readied itself for departure. According to the Tinker, they always did their real travelling at night. When Ned stepped outside, he could see why. The very same fog that had rolled into Grittlesby had followed them again across the sea. Through the layers of rolling grey he saw the circus’s big top. Its red and white striped canvas was bulging as if it were about to burst, making it more than twice its normal size.

  Even stranger though was the fact that the big top seemed to be floating thirty feet off the ground, as if it were some sort of hot-air balloon … Then Ned saw them through the fog …

  Hanging from the big top, suspended in the air, was a series of buses and caravans that had all been joined together. Some were inside out, and others bent in half, all forming a huge metal gondola more than three storeys high through the middle and four at the back. It was all tethered together with great bars of steel and knots of iron rope. Walkways taken from the big top’s inner seating ran all over its hull, and Ned could see crewmen running along the upper deck, checking its rigging and shouting to one another over the roar of the engines. Not for the first time that day, Ned stood wide-eyed and open-mouthed, gawping up at this great metallic beast as against all odds it rose up through the fog. It was the stuff of dreams, a marvel of engineering, and Ned was lost in its every detail.

  “Come on, josser, don’t just stand there! Wind’s about to change!” yelled Benissimo.

  Ned’s body suddenly drained of blood as he was marched up a narrow walkway and into the airship’s belly. Inside were mismatched corridors of old and new. Not even his dad could have made any sense of it. Every room was different, latched together from some metal bus or wooden trailer, and yet it all seemed to fit perfectly, as though it had been built as a whole first and its separate four-wheeled vehicles extrapolated after. But it was dawning on Ned that impressive as it was, it was also uncommonly large; large and extremely heavy, and also extremely high. As he peered over the edge, his heart plummeted to his stomach. Being scared of heights was one thing; flying in an inflatable tent was quite another. He was already dreading Benissimo’s reply as the question left his lips …

  “This thing, this flying machine … is it … safe?”

  The Ringmaster stopped dead in his tracks and began muttering to himself.

  “Why me? A blasted child and scared of his own shadow
…”

  “Oi, I am here, you know?” said Ned crossly.

  “For your information, boy, this is not a ‘thing’, this is the Marilyn – the finest airship on either side of the Veil and as safe as a ruby in a crown.” Benissimo’s moustache was now twitching quite violently. “There are ‘things’ aplenty where we’re going that will offer up more than ample danger. Your fear of heights should be the least of your – or my – concerns.”

  Ned sensed that it might be a good time to hold his tongue.

  “Now, while you’re aboard, you need to follow a few simple rules. One – don’t touch anything. Two – don’t talk to anyone, and if anyone talks to you remember: you’re a runaway.” The Ringmaster paused to scratch at his chin. “On second thoughts, it might just be better if you stayed in your bunk. Don’t leave unless you absolutely must.”

  Benissimo indicated a door to their immediate right.

  “What about permission to breathe? You left that out,” Ned grumbled under his breath.

  “Veil-bound and right secure on the third!” roared one of the Marilyn’s crewmen.

  “Nearly home and all aboard on the second!” yelled another below.

  The first floor’s reply was a loud metallic clunk as the circus’s captured Darklings were locked into their hold. Benissimo strode away to take his place at the helm from where Ned heard a long blast of the ship’s foghorn. From all around the Marilyn a chorus of trumpets and what could only have been a cannon replied and Ned realised she was only one floating vessel in a much larger convoy.

  He went into his cabin and looked out the window to a wall of fog. It came as a huge relief. Without seeing their take-off, at least he could pretend he was on a bus. A really big, weird bus.

  One thing was certain, Benissimo – his protector and only route to finding his father – did not think very highly of him, which was fine because the feeling was entirely mutual. He decided to focus on more pressing matters. There was the girl for one thing, Lucy Beaumont. Did she know they were looking for her? Was she lost? Afraid? Were the clowns after her too? It was then that he remembered the scratched writing on the patio doors of his sitting room.

  Y C U L …

  Of course! He hadn’t thought about it at the time but the clown’s writing, seen from the other side of the window, would appear backwards. It was Lucy’s name. Was that what his dad had wanted to explain? Did he want to tell him about her? This new world that his father was supposed to be part of was not Ned’s. It made him feel like he didn’t really belong, even at home with his own dad.

  Alone in his swaying bunk, Ned checked on the black bag his dad had given him. He found clothes, a toothbrush and his passport (which had never actually been used). He opened it up and looked at his name. It made him wince because it wasn’t really his name after all. Was any of it real? Was anything his father had ever told him actually true?

  At the bottom of the bag he found some cash, quite a lot of cash. But the most surprising item was the empty photo frame Ned kept by his bedside. So that was what his dad had run up the stairs for when they’d made their escape.

  This was not the freedom Ned had wanted. This was the kind of bag you prepared if you knew you weren’t coming home. It made his eyes prick with tears. He took his phone from his pocket and laid it by the photo frame. A pictureless frame and a powerless phone; even Ned’s pet mouse wasn’t real. He had never, in all of his life, felt more alone.

  “Room for another?” came a polite grunting voice from the doorway. It was George the giant gorilla.

  His attempts to fit his enormous bulk into the small cabin made him look rather clumsy and much less intimidating. Despite everything that he’d seen that day, Ned still had no idea what to make of him.

  “Err, sure, but I don’t think I’m allowed to talk to you. Or anyone else.”

  “I think that’s over-egging it a bit, old bean. I’ve been fully briefed on your situation along with the rest of our inner circle.”

  “Oh. Right …”

  “And on that note,” George rumbled gently, “I made you some angel cakes. Had a feeling our resident josser might need a smidge of cheering up.”

  The oversized ape opened a bag and beneath a pile of books and his favourite reading glasses, were four of the ugliest cakes Ned had ever seen.

  “Wow, err, George, I don’t know what to say. You, err, you really shouldn’t have?”

  “My pleasure, laddie. Of course, as far as I’m concerned, nothing beats these little gems,” said the gorilla, pulling out a banana. “I could write an entire book of sonnets about the joys of this yellow beauty. There’s baked banana, creamed banana, puffed, boiled and fried banana. Caramelled, salted, barbecued, even pickled. Of course my favourite is sushied,” he added, before gulping it down whole.

  Ned couldn’t help smiling.

  “There now,” said George, “a smile, that’s more like it.” He beamed – revealing his huge teeth – but somehow still managing to look friendly.

  “George?” asked Ned. “What’s a josser? Only Benissimo’s been calling me that a lot, amongst other things, and I don’t know what it means. I don’t really know what any of this means and the only thing I thought I knew, is, well … not what I knew at all.”

  “You mustn’t take it personally, old chap. The boss has a few rough edges, but he’s a decent fellow under all that bluster. Jossers are what we also call outsiders, folk who are unaccustomed to our ways.”

  Ned was used to being an outsider, but in the Circus of Marvels he was something else, something way beyond average. Half of the troupe weren’t even human and even those that were had powers of some sort. Ned was average by tradition, because that’s what the Waddlesworths were, or so his father had led him to believe. But being average in the Circus of Marvels did not mean slipping through the cracks – it was like strapping a flashing light to your head and asking people not to look.

  “I don’t fit in here, George. What if, even without me talking to anyone, someone figures out who I am, or why I’m here?”

  “Don’t fret, dear boy, I have your back while you’re with us, and no one will bat an eyelid. Being lost with nowhere else to turn is something of a requirement before the Circus of Marvels will have you.”

  “Is that what happened to you? Were you a josser?”

  George grinned again. “Between you and me, I think I still am, but then I’ve got my books and my bananas.”

  Ned suddenly felt far less alone.

  “What about Benissimo? What is he, besides being … well, obnoxious?”

  George looked over to the doorway, before lowering his voice.

  “We are not all the creatures we become by choice, old bean, and the least said about it the better. When a chap tries as hard as the boss to hide what he is, it’s considered rude to ask.”

  Ned took George’s hushed tones as the warning they were meant to be. Whatever Benissimo was or had been was clearly not a topic for discussion.

  The towering ape talked late into the night and turned out to be a living encyclopedia on the creatures and places that the Veil kept hidden. He told Ned about the Grand Duke of Albany, Viceroy to St Albertsburg; the last hidden city of Queen Victoria’s old empire; the Norwegian library city of Aatol, buried deep underground, which could only be accessed by solving a series of impossible riddles; Gearnish, the city of Tickers where almost everything was run by metal machines; and Shalazaar, the trading city and ‘jewel of the desert’, where they were currently heading.

  Ned listened to George’s descriptions in contented silence. To his relief, the angel cakes didn’t taste at all how they looked. They were the lightest, fluffiest things he had ever eaten and for just the briefest moment, over-affectionate, winged elephants and talking gorillas didn’t seem quite so bad.

  Later that night, he was woken by the cabin-shaking snore of his new roommate. The colossal pile of fur lay on his back, his great chest heaving up and down and his nostrils blowing out so much air that
the curtains in their cabin actually flapped. The troupe had stopped singing about the joys of returning home hours ago and Ned tiptoed his way to the bathroom quietly. He was breaking Benissimo’s in-flight rules, but needing the loo was in his view an acceptable emergency. Aside from George’s snoring, the only sound was the gentle groan of rigging being pulled by the wind and the purr of the airship’s engines. Being in the air wasn’t so bad after all. It was the first time there had been any actual calm since just before his birthday. That was, till he heard a somehow familiar metal clunk.

  It was the door to the Darklings’ hold.

  Two floors below, some ‘thing’ stirred.

  It moved slowly, methodically. Boards creaked and the stairs groaned as the ‘thing’ began to climb from the first floor to the second, then the second to the third. Ned stood in frozen horror, the smell of wet dog and old meat drifting towards him as the ‘thing’ appeared at the other end of the passageway.

  Somehow Ned knew – maybe it was its smell, or its manner – it was the sickly, shaking man that had been brought in that morning. But it was now transformed to its natural state – a hulking mass of claw and fang. His bottom half was human, but above his waist, grey hair bristled, till his chest, neck and head were completely covered in thick, sweat-stained fur. His face had pushed itself outwards to a slobbering pointed snout and two sharp ears protruded from the top of his head. He was half-man, half-dog, or more accurately … half-wolf.

  The wolf-thing eyed Ned, sniffed in his direction, and growled, before baring it’s teeth and lunging.

  And then it pounced.

  Collision Course

  Ned scuttled and scrambled over the Marilyn’s floorboards, a speck of frightened boy, against a freight train of lashing claw. He felt a fear unlike anything he had ever known. How could nightmares actually come true?

  Lights flickered on and those unlucky enough to look out from their cabins were quickly knocked back through splintered doorways. With every pace it drew closer, lashing, biting, howling and raging. Behind it, a trail of broken debris; in front, a thirteen-year-old boy inches from death. Ned nearly broke his fingers as he reached the entrance to Marilyn’s flight deck and pulled at the hatch door, desperately trying to prise it open, until he realised with mounting horror – it needed a key.