How the Stars did Fall (23 page)

“Ah, almost forgot the last piece.”

Roberta opened a drawer and plucked from it the wreath she had mentioned. She placed it on Olivia’s head.

“You look like a Druid.”

“What’s a Druid?”

“Don’t know. My old mam used to say that to me whenever I put on a fancy dress. She had a little Gaelic in her.”

“Then so do you.”

“You speak true.”

Olivia took the rest of the togas and thanked Roberta for them profusely. Then she let herself out of the tent and walked swiftly over to her own tent, where Luke stood admiring her efforts.

“An interesting setup you have here,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“And costumes, too. Let’s hope our customers like it, aye?”

“I’m sure they will.”

Luke took out a pocket watch from his jacket and glanced at it.

“One hour to showtime,” he said.

First Olivia changed into the toga and then Molly, who would serve as guide and herald, telling the story Olivia wanted told. Then they together they made their final preparations and taking their places inside the tent they waited.

But no one came. So Olivia got up and put her head out of the tent to have a look. The whole place was empty. No one walked on the central path and the only living people she could see were the three at the entrance who worked the ticket booth. She went back inside and waited some more and then became impatient and looked out again. Now she could see a few stragglers here and there walking amidst the tents, taking in the sights. A couple holding hands, and behind them a whole caravan of children being led by a pair of women like a flock of crazed geese, yapping loudly as they walked. Further beyond, Olivia saw that a line had formed at the booth, so she took her place again at her table, where a glass full of water waited to be levitated.

Eventually a pair of drunkards sojourned into the tent. Molly led them forward like a desecrated Virgil, her wiry frame eaten up by the folds of her toga.

The men reeked of whiskey and their sullied trousers and sweat-stained shirts indicated that they had come to the carnival directly from their place of employment. Their faces were blank and one of them grabbed at his own crotch and spat at the ground.

It took only a few moments for them to reach the second partition.

“Look directly forward and you will see something you’ve never seen before,” Molly said.

Then she clapped her hands three times. A signal for Jason, who hid on the far side of the tent. The Drummond light sparked on and the beam brought forth the apparition, leaving it hanging against the white screen. Yet despite the awesome scene, the men, emboldened by drink and reassured by the carnivalesque context, laughed among themselves. One of them imitated the ghost in posture, mouthing off a litany of gibberish and curses. A mockery of that mysterium tremendum.

“I seen this before,” one of the men said. “It’s just a picture.”

“I’ve never seen it. Not bad. But it ain’t worth fifty goddamn cents.”

Molly escorted the men into the final partition, where Olivia waited with the glass in front of her. Even without any clothes underneath, the toga left her hot and her sweat had caused the fabric to cling to her body somewhat, but she tried to not think about it. She took a deep breath and noticed the men nudging each other and whispering. Olivia resolved to get on with it. She closed her eyes and spoke the magic words she had made up and the glass did arise, but then she heard the sound of a revolver cocking and when she opened her eyes she found the muzzle of the revolver pointed at her. The glass tumbled from the air onto the table, spilling water, and bounced off and fell onto the ground, where the grass softened its fall, keeping it intact.

Jason entered the tent, then, and tried to intervene but the man merely pointed the revolver in his direction and made him get on his knees and be quiet.

“What do you want?” Olivia asked.

“Why, I want my money’s worth, little lady. This two-bit freak show ain’t gonna cut it. Right, boys?”

“Not at all. It’s not right to bilk a couple of working men of their hard-earned coin.”

“There’s no need for violence, sir. The carnival will refund you your money.”

“What about the time we wasted out here? Gotta count for something.”

“I can give you more money, if that’s what you want,” Jason said.

“Now we’re talking in English. Let’s see your money.”

Jason pulled the coins the men had given him from a pouch and placed them upon the table. Then he brought out banknotes of his own and laid them in a stack next to the coins. He had laid five notes of one dollar each when he stopped, but the men glared at him and told him to go on. Jason took a good look at the revolver and brought out more banknotes until the stack had thickened enough for the men’s liking.

“It looks like we found ourselves a rich man,” one of the thieves said. “What are you doing working in a carnival, rich man? Rich man like yourself ought to carry a gun like I do. Never know when it might come in handy.”

While Jason emptied his pockets, Olivia felt helpless. All she could think of was the sea and endless water. She pined for it. If she had been within sight of a pool of water of some kind she could’ve overpowered these thieves easily. But she wasn’t. Inland her power counted for little. She truly became nothing more than a carnival sideshow. Yet while she pondered this sad fact she noticed a subtle movement in the table in front of her.

Then she heard a creaking sound coming from it. The thieves, too busy admiring the cash, heard nothing. Nor did they see what happened next. The table shifted and its legs changed shape, curving at the middle until they became like the muscular legs of a horse or a bull. Some of the wood broke off and formed arms and the sound of the cracking wood startled the thieves. They gazed at the table as an eye the size of a fist opened right in the middle of its body, and underneath the eye a mouth broke open with teeth and a tongue.

When table moved forward and extended its arms at the thieves, the one with the revolver fired. The bullets did little to stop the newly awakened thing, passing straight through the wood, and soon it was upon them, driving its splintered arm into their faces and stomachs. Together all three thieves were able to topple the table and pin it to the ground with their weight but not without suffering a few broken teeth and ribs.

They had not accounted for the magic lantern. It, too, had birthed arms and legs and it whinnied like a horse before trampling the thieves, smashing hands and arms and skulls until the thieves looked no longer like men but misshapen clay sculptures splattered in red. Unfinished and discarded.

Olivia gaped as the table picked itself up from beneath the bodies and off the ground, and with the magic lantern it strode right out of the tent. Olivia set out to follow the furniture, but as she passed Jason grabbed on to her hand.

“Don’t go,” he said. Jerking her hand away from Jason, she went on. She caught sight of the living furniture fleeing the carnival towards the east.

Olivia followed behind until they entered into a pristine forest, past streams of water and fluttering owls and silent deer. The clacking of their wooden feet echoed in that wilderness, their absurd existence astonishing the deaf trees. Finally Olivia saw them cut into a cave hidden in the foliage, a slit covered in green and brown, camouflaged, like the lair of some witch in the woods, she thought, desiring no visitor or intruder. Olivia crouched over the damp soil. Her toga had browned at the bottom and she still wore the mistletoe wreath, and in that grove, as she walked to the mouth of the cave, she looked like the relic of a long-lost age. Then she entered.

The narrow path was strewn with objects. Books and pens and pots and pans and shovels and bed frames and tubs and hats and belts and belt buckles and a great wool rug like those made by Indians, wide as a pond of red and white and yellow. Olivia stepped onto the rug and passed a threshold where the cave opened up further. The light at the entrance still illumined the space but it was faint. She could see that more objects had been piled together, there but this time leaves and branches had been placed atop them in some kind of funeral rite. Like a graveyard for unliving things. Then she noticed an aperture in the stone wall leading to another part of the cave and there she found the table and the magic lantern and ahead of them, on top of a mound, a man extending his arms and touching the furniture. He had a candle with him but it was still too dim for Olivia to make out who it was. So she approached him and once she had come close enough she saw that he was petting the furniture like they were dogs and they were drinking water from a trough. Then she looked at the man’s face and saw that it was Lynch.

Chapter Sixteen

After languishing in the fort’s jail for over a week, Faraday and Moon and Tenhorse were taken out into the courtyard, where a wooden platform had been erected. They were each placed underneath a rope that hung from the boards above and then one of the officers tugged at the rope, extending it, until he had a noose in his hands that he passed over each of their heads so that it hung from their necks like some barbaric necklace. The mark of some fallen tribe. And the three of them stood facing the crowd assembled before them. Faraday looked over at Moon and saw that she cried. And he looked at Tenhorse and the Indian looked unfazed, almost happy.

Then from among the crowd emerged an elegantly dressed man. He wore a black top hat upon his head and his dark suit held a single red handkerchief, tucked inside one of his front pockets. This man read out loud from a scroll the charges laid before Faraday and the others and then he spoke his own condemnation, and Faraday understood the man was a judge of this jurisdiction or someplace nearby. But while the man spoke, something peculiar began to happen. Birds of every kind appeared in the sky. Babblers and crows and pigeons and wood-warblers, flying down from on high and perching atop the wooden platform. Around ten at first and then more. Twenty, thirty, the numbers so great the whole assemblage turned their attention to these flocks and even the judge stopped speaking for a moment before continuing. Then larger birds fell upon the platform, swans and albatrosses and turkeys, and these stood next to the prisoners and with their beaks they tried to bite off the shackles but they could not dent the metal.

Seeing this, the colonel ordered his men to shoo the birds away but they would not be driven off. The birds counterattacked, snapping at fingers and faces. So the soldiers brandished their weapons and fired at the larger birds. Even the colonel took a revolver from one of the soldiers and set out to fire upon them himself. But more birds fell from the sky like lightning. Hawks and eagles now and a black-and-white osprey like an angel of death. They converged on the colonel, their claws tearing out eye and ear and lips until the flailing colonel could no longer stand, his revolver emptied into the air. And the birds fell upon each armed soldier, ripping open deep gashes in their flesh.

After a while, all of those assembled feared for their lives and some of them fled the fort while some remained in awe of the spectacle. A few more brave men dared to battle the birds and some of their shots hit true, downing a swan here and an eagle there. Seeing these deaths, the other birds squawked in unison as if they could all feel the same pain and sadness. But these men did not remain living for long.

Eventually only the injured men and a small number of others remained in the fort. The birds now became so numerous that there was no longer room for any more birds on the platform, nor on the roof of the colonel’s lodge, nor on any of the watchtowers, so the latecomers took to the ground, waddling about like penguins, sometimes fighting each other, sometimes pecking at the men lying in the cots.

All of this Faraday watched in amazement, unsure of what to make of it. He was still shackled and so were Moon and Tenhorse. Unable to break free, he decided to use his power once more, to look for some solution to his quandary.

He closed his eyes but only a face appeared to him. A furry face with massive fangs and green eyes like a bear mixed with a wolf. It spoke to Faraday.

“I am close,” it said. Then everything became dark in that other world and Faraday felt compelled to open his eyes.

And he beheld a stranger entering the fort, garbed in green with wiry hair like roots and little branches with leaves sticking out from his neck and arms as if he were part man and part tree. Next to this man, matching him stride for stride, a coyote bared his teeth whenever they passed by one of the soldiers who had stayed behind. Now, as this man approached the platform, the birds sang and flew to him and some hovered above him, and the man lifted his arm to the osprey, giving permission for it to perch. The man climbed onto the platform, the coyote still by his side, and faced Faraday.

“Who are you?” Faraday said.

“It is only important that I am an ally of your sister and she calls me Adler.”

“You know where my sister is? Is she safe?”

“For now. But she is being pursued by forces that are beyond even my power to oppose.”

Just then the green man snapped his fingers and a tiny partridge that had been hiding beneath the platform flew up with a bronze key in its mouth and delivered it right to the man, and with it he unlocked Faraday’s shackles first and then Moon’s and Tenhorse’s.

“You know where my sister is?” Faraday asked.

“I do. I am here to take you to her. The course of this world is hidden in shadow and only a few may pierce the veil, not by any merit of their own but by the ordinance of one above.”

Now the four of them descended the platform but Faraday stopped on the way out of the fort to try and gather some supplies. Food and water and guns and munitions. But Adler, noticing Faraday’s efforts, stopped him with one leafy arm.

“Leave these behind. We will make our own way. Do you think I am unaware of what places you’ve been? And how you’ve gotten there? I know of your gazes, your meanderings in the world of shadow.”

“You know of my gift?”

“I do and I even know who gave it to you.”