Noir (7 page)

His eyes meet my breasts, and I gag in my throat. I launch forward and spit in his face.

“You little—” He tosses C.L. aside and comes at me with the speed of a jaguar, twisting me into his arms. C.L. falls to the ground, gasping for air, his head connecting hard with a rock. “Now,” the ringmaster says, his breath at the back of my neck. “I think it’s time to unwrap me present.” He reaches for me and I duck, slamming us both back up against a tree. Air pops from his lungs as he bounces off. I spring free.

“Leave me alone.” I turn, grabbing a sharp piece of bark and holding it out like a knife. “Leave me alone, or you’ll never open another present again!” I swing it low, trembling, my wrist injured in the fall.

“Don’t make me laugh.” The ringmaster’s chin waggles.

He reaches for me again and I swing, connecting and gashing open his arm. My wrist throbs with pain.

The freaks’ voices rise up. They ring their bars with their chains. My eyes dart wildly between them, the ringmaster, and C.L., out cold on the ground.

Please get up, C.L.
Through wisps of fog I see blood on the rock near his head.
No, please, God, let him get up . . .

The sound of the freaks’ screeches in my ears.

Teeth chatter in the trees at my back.

“Don’t make me do this,” the freakmaster says, pulling a knife from his pocket.

My eyes stick on the blade.

I look again to C.L. as the freakmaster storms toward me, closing my back in on a tree. I need a weapon. I’ve got to find something. My head jerks around, my mind searching. Wait,
the dart. Iris’s weapon.

I grope my chain-mail pocket, searching for it.

I can’t find it.

Have I lost it?

Where’s the dart?

The ringmaster’s eyes flash. He presses himself up against me, dirty bits stiff and poking at my thighs. All the muscles in my back tense. “’Ow’s about we call a truce and have a little fun, eh?” I turn away. His breath smells of spirits and regurgitated sausage. I long to retch, but I hold it in. His teeth are yellow and tinged with brown.

He reaches up, running a grimy hand through my hair as I fumble through the folds of my armour, still searching for the dart, shaking.

“What’sa matter, love?” The ringmaster’s sour breath sweeps the hollow of my neck. “Your first time?” His eyebrows lift. He drags a slow, calloused knuckle down the side of my cheek as my fingers close around the reed. I snap it up to my mouth, sucking back a huge breath, and blow hard, only to discover . . . it’s empty.

“Whatchu gonna do”—the ringmaster smiles—“’histle me away?” Perversion flashes in his dirty, dark eyes. His stomach bounces jovially as he laughs and clutches me by the wrists.

Panic pulses through me like a drug as he pulls me away from the tree toward his lair, stopping to cup my chin and press his grimy mouth to mine. His rough lips grate my skin as I struggle to get away. He smells of grease and guts and unthinkable desire.
“Please.”
I squirm and turn. “Please, don’t do this!” I pound my damaged wrist against his chest. A quick rise of my knee and I’ve balled him square, but even that doesn’t seem to affect him.

“A fighter.” He moves in on me again, all lips and hands and rancid breath. “God knows I love a good fight.”

I pound and scream around the seal of his mouth.

Clementine turns her head.

The freaks roar, rock their cages, and angrily strum the bars.

My heart floods into my ears.

Out the corner of my eye, I see something rising. A quick flash of metal whips the air. The ringmaster’s head snaps forward, slapping hard against my chest bone. I fall back, screaming, splattered in his blood.

The freaks howl. They chant. They scream.

He melts to his knees on the ground in front of me, his head flopped at an awkward angle. His eyes are wide, entranced with shock, stuck in a forward gaze.

I cover my mouth with both hands and scream, flicking his blood from my fingers as he collapses dead over the tops of my boots.

At first I don’t realize what’s happened, and then it registers. Clementine stands, fetlock bent, blood dripping from her shoe, her long guilty face peering back at me from where the ringmaster lies face down in the dirt—unmoving.

Ni
ne

Eyelet

“C.L.!” I run to him, crouching to my knees by his side. “C.L., wake up, please!” I shake him. “We have to get out of here! Clementine’s killed the ringmaster!”

The freaks cheer.

Frightened, I haul C.L.’s head up. “Oh, my God, you’re bleeding.” There’s a sizable gash at the back of his skull from where he landed on the rock. Blood trickles through his hair. I tear a length from my petticoat to try to stop it.

“There’s a first-aid kit in the caboose,” a raspy voice says.

I look up and stare at the train. The freaks have fallen quiet, receded into the shadows of their pens. Or at least it appears so, because I cannot see them.

I look all around me, searching for the voice, but through the trolling fog I see nothing.

“The keys,” the voice says. “You’ll find them in his pocket.” A snake-scaled human arm pokes out from between the bars, pointing in the dead ringmaster’s direction. A clamp and chain dangle from its wrist, connected to the wall of its car. “On the inside of his breast pocket, in a secret zippered compartment,” the voice adds.

I scramble to my feet, a little afraid, racing on shaky knees toward the ringmaster’s lifeless body. Bending down, I unbutton his vest quickly and run my fingers along the inside of his garment. I try my best to avert my eyes from the bones protruding from his neck. The pocket is cool, a fine grade of silk, just as fine as my father used to wear. I drive away the thought and keep searching. My fingers soon find the compartment. I unzip it and find a large set of skeleton keys on a ring.

I yank them loose, nearly flinging them into the trees, I’m so nervous, and race for the caboose. The lock on the door clamours as I stuff key after key into it.

“It’s the gold one,” the voice says. “The kit is inside the bench to the right.”

“How do you know all this?” I ask curtly into the darkness.

“Let’s just say”—the voice hesitates—“every freak show needs a doctor, even if he travels in chains.”

The air fills with the clank of chain links and shackles, as one by one the freaks gather up enough courage to reveal themselves. The whites of four sets of eyes peer out at me through the bars. Their haunting presence chills my skin. I rub down the goose bumps that grow on my arms and will my feet to move toward them. I know I need to get back to C.L. But I fear I’ll need some help to revive him. And the plan always was
to overthrow the master and befriend the freaks for their help. I swallow. I just expected C.L. would be the one befriending them, not I . . . alone. I gulp again. No time like the present to meet my future accomplices, I suppose.

I tread lightly, looking back over my shoulder at C.L. The same kind of turbulent fury whirls in my chest as it did the first time I laid eyes on him and Cordelia.

What am I fearing? C.L. once lived among them, and he’s wonderful. A branch snaps beneath my feet and I jump. A tiny bolt of terror shoots through me.

Honestly.
I shake it off. They’re just people. I bite my lip. A burning cold shivers through my body. My mind drifts to my epilepsy. All the violent episodes I’ve endured through the years. Had I ever been caught having one of those, I, too, could have been forced to live behind bars.

This could just as easily have been my destiny.

The notion emboldens my step, and I move more confidently toward the cars. “Hello,” I say into the darkness.

“You a friend of Crazy Legs?” says a set of blinking eyes.

“Yes. Are you?” I test the waters, trying hard not to tremble. The creature shifts to the front of the car, and I try not to react, failing, gasping and feeling instantly shameful, as I’m taken aback by the look of his skin—parched and dried as a drought-damaged riverbed, not a single hair on his head.

“Any friend of his is a friend of ours, right, group?” He speaks over his shoulder.

Three more creatures rumble in their cages.

“I’m Martin.” He sticks a mummified-looking hand out between the bars. Chains rattle at his wrist.

I hesitate before taking it, not proud of myself, but I do, trying my best not to cringe, worried as I shake it that his hand may snap loose.

He wears only a loincloth, which has my eyes darting for something else to focus on. My cheeks flush red. His entire body looks as though the skin has baked in the sun for a thousand years. I can’t help but think it must be painful to wear. He is missing a nose, and parts of his lips are broken off, as if from age or weather. He is like a corpse that’s been pickled and dried and kept for centuries, but he can’t be as old as his skin appears. I think about him being carted around and put up for show, and my heart bleeds for his pain.

He shakes my hand and his eyes shine, so youthful behind their yellowed lenses. “Pleased to meet you.” He smiles, and I’m surprised to see he has teeth. Not many, but more than the ringmaster. “You have a kind heart,” he says, and his eyes roll as if he’s channeling that information from another world. He launches into a momentary dream state still in possession of my hand, and my heart flutters uneasily in my chest.

“Oh, come now.” I chuckle nervously, not knowing what to make of his strange actions. “How can you say that, you don’t even know me?”

“I don’t have to.” He awakens, and shifts his gaze back to me. “I can tell everything about a person by just looking in their eyes.” He stares.

I pull my hand back, a little unnerved, fighting hard to disguise the discomfort that’s swallowed me. “You can, can you?”

“Yes, and from what I see”—he smiles, his weathered lips splitting—“you’re our destiny.” His words come out low and slow.

A niggling feeling creeps down my neck, a spider of sorts, spun of his words. I move on to the next cage.

Crouched in the corner is a decrepit stump of a man. I stoop, trying to better align my face with what I think to be his. I’ve never seen such a troubled creature before.

He stretches his eyes up to the tops of his lids, struggling to peer out from beneath a frightening mountain of tumour. One eye is so awkwardly placed on his head, it appears to be an ear—and his ear, offset and sliding down the side of his head, does not align with the other. His other eye can barely be seen for another massive growth.

His arms are of different lengths. One is but a stub with a hand, his fingers gnarled into a permanent hook. He looks like something out of the monster comics—the kind the masters forbade us to read in school for fear we’d all have nightmares.

“M’ name is Reeke,” he says very slowly. I notice an abundance of teeth in his mouth, staggered and jumbled, more than a double set in the lower jaw alone. Foam forms when he talks, and drool drips from his lips. He’s quick to steer the excess away with his knuckles, flushing.

He offers his hand to shake, then just as quickly draws it back, realizing his mistake. He wipes it clean on his clothing and tries again.

“Pleased to meet you, Reeke,” I say, patting him on what I believe to be his shoulder. My heart aches for this urchin of a man. How could I have ever believed myself unfortunate when there are people who face conditions such as this in the world? How narrow-minded of me to think myself so cruelly afflicted.

I turn to the next. The Snakeman, obviously—I recognize him from C.L.’s poster, named for the grotesque and painful-looking condition of his spine. Contorted from stem to stern into an almost perfect S, he shuffles toward me, rocking side to side.

“Sadar,” he says, offering me his hand. He has the most beautiful, smooth, brown-coloured skin with matching eyes, and snow-white hair. I take his hand and he grips mine shockingly firmly, shaking it with such enthusiasm my shoulder feels temporarily dislocated. His chains jingle against the bars and he talks over them. “Though some call me the Snakeman
.
Either way, it’s me.” He grins.

“Sadar? That’s a fascinating name,” I say. “What does it mean?”

“In my country, it means ‘respected.’” His tongue catches on his teeth in that lyrical way immigrants from the East speak, bringing to mind the faraway pleasures of incense and spice.

“Well, that’s irony, isn’t it?”

He smiles, and I notice he hasn’t let go of my hand yet. He closes his eyes and mutters something, as if performing some form of prayer. He tips back his head instead of bowing. I worry he may be a Cantationer—the real sort, the kind that should be dipped in wax. Perhaps he
should
be in this cage.

I’m about to pull away when his eyes pop back open.

Cantation ended.

He nods as he steps back with a slight fluttery wave of his hands, as if to say,
Don’t worry, all is well
.

I can’t help but recognize what the commoners of Brethren used to think about me. Judging me over something they didn’t understand. How rapidly my heart has just beaten. How quickly my mind jumped to evil things . . . over nothing, really: a man with his eyes shut.

I swallow down my prejudice and move on to the last cage, my mind occupied with concern for C.L. The sign below the bars reads
Wanda the Werewolf Woman
. My skin ripples at the thought. “Hello,” I say, looking deep into the cage. My heart thumps in my throat. Something stirs in the corner, and I extend a hand, praying I get it back, feeling immensely afraid. When she doesn’t respond, I say it again. “Hello?”

“She doesn’t speak,” Sadar says.

“She has a tongue, doesn’t she?” I whirl around, feeling slightly panicked.

“Yes. She just prefers not to use it. Ever since the fire.”

“The fire?” My head jerks forward.

“Yes. We had a stunner a few years back. We were all performing at the time. Wanda was alone in the train. She got the fool notion to try to burn the excess hair from her skin with a candle. Only it didn’t go as planned.”

I cringe at the thought of it. “You mean she—”

“Went up in smoke, yes. The whole train did. Cost the freakmaster a bundle. And he was none too pleased about it, either. After the whipping, she never spoke again.”

“He beat her?”

“He beat us all, miss.”

My mouth falls open.

“Come on out, Wanda. It’s all right.” Sadar adds, “She’s a friend.”

A woman covered from head to toe in hair appears. Big brown eyes shine from under long, lanky black lashes. She strides only halfway up to the bars and raises an arm, trying to shield her hairy face from my sight as if she’s ashamed for me to look on her. Every inch of her is covered in hair but her gaze.

My mind jumps to thoughts of the Illuminator. If we were to recover the small one, the one my father first made, perhaps it could be used to help her. In one of my father’s early tests he rendered a kiwifruit completely bald, I remember, leaving it only minimally scarred. Perhaps it would work the same way on Wanda’s skin? I sigh, my thoughts slipping from there to the dangers of the machine. My eyes grow warm with tears. I don’t dare try to help her; I could kill her.

Wanda glances up at me briefly, then just as quickly away, and I feel the pang of her heavy heart in my chest. She saw my tears and thinks I’m pitying her. I’ll have to make it up to her later. Right now, I turn back to C.L., still knocked out on the ground, the dead ringmaster beside him. I’ve got to get on with things. “Well, now that we’ve all become acquainted,” I smile and say, “I could use a little help.”

Martin sticks his head out between the bars and smiles. “Slip the keys in the locks, love, and we’re at your service.”

I creep along the line, releasing each from their cages, shaky fingers manipulating locks. Each exits their cage—all but Wanda.

“Here, let me.” Sadar waddles down the row of cars, stopping outside the caboose, sliding the gold key into the lock. He twists it, and I’m relieved at the sound of turbines clunking. He unhinges the lock and throws back the door, and I’m overcome by the stench of mould. Moss grows on every surface inside, mushrooms in the corner. The wood of the train is clearly rotting away.

“Tell me no one sleeps in here.”

“Just the freakmaster.” Martin grins.

I throw an arm over my nose, hike up my skirts, and haul myself through the doors.

“There are smelling salts in a jar on the shelf above the bench,” he says, reaching for the first-aid kit inside. Hinges creak as I throw the door open. Spiders flee down my arms. I shriek a small shriek and fling them off, grabbing for the jar, and hurl myself back out the doors. Sadar following quickly behind, I race back to C.L., pressing a wad of gauze to his head.

“Here, put pressure on this,” I say to Martin, spinning open the jar of smelling salts. I wave the whole lot past C.L.’s nose, and his eyes spring open, wincing at the white light of the beginning of day.

“Oh, thank God,” I say, bringing a hand to my chest.

“What’s ’appened?” His body pops up. He makes a horrible face. “It smells like bottled dead-rat guts.”

“It is,” Sadar says.

I drop the bottle and gasp.

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“What’s ’appened? Where am I?” C.L. spins around.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say slowly. He raises a foot to his head, discovering the gash. “We’re in the forest.” I take his foot. “We’ve come to overthrow the ringmaster, remember?”