Circus of Thieves and the Raffle of Doom (2 page)

Hannah stopped. An amazing, incredible thought had just popped into her brain. The camel! The boy! One camel, one boy,
two
humps. She could ask for a lift! OK, so the pyjama and welly
combo wasn’t exactly ideal for hitchhiking, but the boy was basically dressed in a pair of curtains, so she didn’t think he’d be too bothered. And as for the rest of the town, who
on earth would notice your clothes when you were riding a camel?

She turned and ran back to tell Fizzer about her fantastic idea, but saw immediately in his eyes and the tilt of his head that he’d figured it all out already. Hannah didn’t like
feeling patronised by a dog so, as they stood and waited for the camel, she decided to make up a fact designed to impress him.

‘Circuses are famous for picking up hitchhikers,’ she said in a school-teachery voice. ‘It’s an ancient custom of the circus community.’

Fizzer raised one eyebrow. He was unconvinced.

‘It’s true,’ said Hannah. ‘I read a book about it.’

Fizzer lowered the other eyebrow. It was almost impossible to impress Fizzer with anything, least of all with made-up facts, which his encyclopaedically intelligent nose seemed to sniff out with
unerring accuracy.

‘Here’s the camel!’ said Hannah, who had realised it was time to change the subject.

As the procession approached, three things became clear. First, that the boy’s song was about an ant from Antarctica, a cat from Catalonia and a phoenix from Phoenix; second, that his
singing voice was so loud and out-of-tune and lacking in any sense of rhythm that it was enough to make nearby plants wilt in horror; and third, that despite the plant-wilting tunelessness of his
melody, this boy sang with all the joy and gusto of an operatic maestro performing to a thousand adoring fans. As a result, there was something weirdly, uglily
⁴
beautiful about it.

Only when the boy was directly in front of Hannah and Fizzer did he stop singing, much to the relief of the local plant life, which quickly pinged back upwards towards the sun.

‘Ho, there!’ he said to his camel, pulling the reins, halting his big beige bulbous beast. The boy looked Hannah up and down slowly, starting with her wellies and working his eyes
upwards. ‘Nice pyjamas,’ he said, eventually.

‘Thanks,’ replied Hannah. ‘Nice camel.’

‘He’s called Narcissus,’ said the boy. ‘And if I made a list of a hundred words to describe him, I reckon “nice” would be at the bottom.’

Narcissus raised his droopy lips, showing a murky keyboard of long yellow teeth, and spat out a blob of camel goo which landed with a splat on Hannah’s left welly.

‘See?’ said the boy. ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t love him. Why be nice when you can be a camel?’ He patted its hairy neck and the camel farted
appreciatively. At that moment, like a strange echo, the enormous lorry let out an enormous honk.

‘That’s my dad,’ said the boy. ‘Driving that lorry turns him into a total … oop.’ The lorry’s second honk drowned out a mysterious cluster of
syllables, but it was pretty clear to Hannah that the boy wasn’t complimenting his dad’s driving.

‘Do you want a lift?’ the boy asked.

‘Yes, please,’ said Hannah. ‘How do I get on?’

‘Willpower, strength and good luck,’ he replied, from his high perch.

‘Oh, I’ve got all of those,’ said Hannah. ‘Watch this.’

With that, she turned, ran a few steps, climbed the nearest tree and edged along a branch that overhung the road. ‘You step forward, I’ll jump on,’ she instructed.

‘That’s not how we usually do it,’ the boy said, hesitantly, ‘but I’ll try anything once.’

Fizzer raised one eyebrow again and stepped back, away from the fall-out zone.

Narcissus yawned as Billy edged him into position. It took a lot to surprise Narcissus. A girl dressed in pyjamas and wellies was about to jump out of a tree and use him as a landing mat –
so what? Even if this was the most ill-advised, badly-planned and likeliest-to-end-in-injury attempt to mount a camel that he had ever encountered – big deal.

While Hannah prepared herself for the jump, Narcissus drifted off again, back to his favourite daydream, which was, as always, about taramasalata.

‘Ready?’ said Hannah. ‘3 … 2 … 1 …’

T
HE MANOEUVRE
didn’t exactly go to plan, what with Hannah landing backwards on top of the boy’s head, flattening him
and wedging his face into a camel hump with her bum on his right ear. As Hannah tried to squirm herself into position, she heard a muffled voice say, ‘The thing you’re sitting on
isn’t a saddle. It’s my head.’

Eventually, she got herself up onto the rear hump and the boy, looking only slightly squashed-faced, congratulated her on her inventiveness.

‘Thanks,’ she replied. ‘Sorry I sat on you.’

‘That’s OK. Hold on tight,’ he said, advice which wasn’t strictly necessary, since riding this animal was like sitting on a seesaw strapped to a supermarket trolley
rolling around the deck of a boat on a stormy day in the middle of the Atlantic.

‘Just feel the motion with your legs, and go with it,’ said the boy, whose body swayed gently from side to side, while Hannah’s flipped and flopped and lurched and jounced,
like a puppet in a washing machine.

‘You getting the hang of it?’

‘Oh, yeah. No sweat,’ said Hannah, relieved that he was staring calmly ahead, rather than looking back at her, in which case he might have noticed that she was now upside down, doing
the splits, clinging on to a lump of camel hair for dear life, with her legs in the air and her nose in a far smellier part of the camel than any sane person would normally approach without a face
mask.

‘Fun, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘Yeah. Great.’

Without turning round, the boy reached backwards, grabbed one of Hannah’s ankles, and gave her leg a flick which sent her body spinning upwards, back onto the rear hump.

‘I’d work on your stunt moves later if I were you,’ he said.

‘Good idea,’ Hannah replied, enjoying the feeling of right-way-upness, a delicious sensation which she now realised was far too often taken for granted.

‘I’m Billy,’ said the boy. ‘Billy Shank. Junior member of Shank’s Impossible Circus, heir to the Shank Entertainment Empire.’

‘I’m Hannah,’ said Hannah. ‘Like Anna, but hiding between two “H”s.’

‘I like you,’ said Billy.

‘Oh,’ said Hannah.

For a moment she couldn’t think how to reply to this strange comment, and she knew ‘Oh’ was not a sufficient response. Then she heard herself say, ‘I like you,
too.’

Only as these words came out of her mouth did she realise this was a perfect description of how she felt. It seemed odd to say this kind of thing out loud when you’ve only known someone
for a few minutes, but also kind of exciting, like finding a good short cut, or skipping the main course and going straight to dessert. Using somebody’s head as a camel saddle, she reflected,
was clearly a quick way to form a friendship.
⁵

‘Narcissus is a good judge of character, and he thinks you’re OK, so you must be,’ said Billy.

‘How can you tell he thinks I’m OK?’

‘Because he only spat on your wellies. If he didn’t like you it wouldn’t have been your wellies. That’s about as affectionate as he gets.’

‘Wow. I’m flattered.’

‘You’re not a wimp like all the others.’

‘All what others?’

‘Civilians.’

‘Who?’

‘Civilians. People who aren’t in the circus.’

‘Oh. I see,’ replied Hannah, feeling a rush of pride tingle in her chest at Billy’s assessment of her character. ‘Not a wimp’ was the exact thing Hannah wanted to
be more than anything else in the world.

‘I think Fizzer likes
you
,’ said Hannah, more out of a desire to return his friendliness than from any real evidence.

‘I know,’ said Billy.

‘How do you know?’ said Hannah, slightly affronted.

‘Because it’s obvious.’

Hannah looked down at Fizzer, who was trotting companionably alongside Narcissus. He looked back up at her and said, ‘
Nyumnyapupupu
,’ with a subtle but definite nod. There
was no doubting that this meant, ‘He’s right. I like him.’

Now Hannah was really impressed.
⁶

‘Are you going to come tonight?’ asked Billy.

‘Where?’

‘To the show. We’ll be on this evening.’

‘Er . . . I hope so. I mean, I’d love to, but I didn’t know anything about it.’

‘Nobody knows. We never announce our shows in advance.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’s not our style.’

‘But wouldn’t it be better if people knew you were coming?’

‘It would be a disaster.’

‘How could that be a disaster?’

‘Nobody can know where we are.’

‘Nobody?’

‘Nobody official.’

‘Official? What does that mean? Who’s official? Am I official?’

‘
Are you?
’ Billy span round to face Hannah and eyeballed her fiercely.

‘Am I what?’

‘Official.’

‘I don’t know. What’s official?’

‘Police.’

‘Police!?’ shrieked Hannah.

‘SHHHHH!’

Hannah lowered her voice. ‘Of course I’m not police. I’m a child.’

‘Hmm,’ said Billy. ‘I suppose you are.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Billy leaned towards Hannah and whispered, ‘Don’t tell anyone I told you this, but we’re on the run.’

‘From who?’

‘Everyone.’

‘Are you serious?’

Billy shifted on the hump, his rump taking a bump from the jump and pump of the lump. ‘Sort of.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, nothing! I’m only joking. Just messing about. Winding you up.’ Billy slapped himself on the thigh, like a dodgy panto actor let out an unconvincing laugh and turned back
to face the road.

Hannah who was good at sensing the subtle meanings that sometimes sneak out between the words people actually speak detected something strange in Billy’s tone of voice. She had an odd
feeling that just as air pushes against the sides of a balloon that’s about to pop, Billy was struggling to hold in something important. His sort-of joke felt like a tiny leak of a secret
that wanted to burst out of him. Hannah decided to take what is often a wise course of action when the person you’re talking to isn’t being entirely honest: she said nothing.

‘You shouldn’t take everything so seriously,’ said Billy, who happened to be good at sensing the subtle meanings that can be expressed by a few seconds of silence. He knew that
Hannah suspected the true meaning behind his sort-of joke. Billy had never told any civilian about the secret of Shank’s Impossible Circus, and now, after knowing her for only a few minutes,
he had already almost let it slip to Hannah, but he was surprised to find that he didn’t care.

He’d never befriended a civilian before. It was a strange, exciting and slightly dizzy-making feeling.

‘So how do you get an audience if you never announce the show?’ Hannah asked.

‘You’ll see.’

‘Will I?’

‘Yup. Just keep your eyes and ears open, and if you hear anything that sounds like applause, follow the noise. But if you see me, and I look like I’m working, don’t come and
speak to me.’

‘OK.’

‘And when I am working, it may look as if I’m not working, but I probably am. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ said Hannah, though if she was being honest she would have said something more along the lines of, ‘No.’

‘I’m just saying I’ll find you. Don’t you find me.’

‘Are you trying extra hard to be mysterious, or does it come naturally?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I practise in the mirror every morning. Do you want to see my mysterious face?’

‘OK.’

‘I have several, but I think this is the best one.’

Billy swivelled on his hump to face her so he was now riding backwards. His mouth was half open, one eye was shut and his nostrils were flaring in and out. Hannah told him he looked like he was
being attacked by a jellyfish, and he let out a big, throaty laugh. Or, rather, he let out half a big, throaty laugh, because in the middle of it he suddenly stopped and a look of terror overtook
his face. This wasn’t fake terror, either. This was the real thing.