The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) (18 page)

The boy had stood there crying for a long time. Then he’d gathered his toys, and played and played until finally he died.

Even after that, the carnival clowns walked. The rising wheel turned. The carousel tinkled and chimed.

When the boy had returned, as a thing of lights and shadows, the carnival simply played on.

The tiny carnival master turned toward me, walking my way, tapping his cane on the floor as he approached.

As he neared, the clowns began to follow. And the witch, and the Man of Bones, and all the rest. No longer translucent, each was solid enough to leave trails in the dust on the floor, to move aside the fragments of what I now knew to be bone or scraps of clothing.

More miniature monsters emerged from a toy box resting against the far wall. The lid of the box was open, revealing a number of neat compartments, each lined with shiny mirrors.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.

“Let me out!”
cried the child. He rose to his feet. Tears like shards of ice ran from those blank golden eyes.
“Please let me out! I’ll be a good boy! Please!”

Toadsticker’s hilt was warm in my hand. What was it the lightning rod man had said?

“What you need is what you lost.”

“Kid, you’re a ghost. Just float through the damned door.”

“Let me out!”

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t dream, so I tried to peer into that peculiar dark that lay beyond the walls of sleep.

Nothing. When I opened my eyes again, the wind-up carnival master was tapping his cane on the toe of my boot, and the rest of his miniature band were closing in.

“No one leaves!”
said the toy carnival master, his painted eyes turned up toward me.
“Everyone stays!
”

The ghost child cried. His wails never reached the volume of Buttercup’s cries, but they rang in my ears all the same.

I felt a tug on the rope at my waist. I wondered what might be going on, out there. Darla and Mama and Gertriss could be fighting off monsters. They could be fighting, and losing, and here I was, safe and sound, a step from the carnival’s heart.

Could I really end it all with a blow? Was the new Toadsticker able to deal out blows to ghosts?

“Kid, if you can hear me, look up.”

He didn’t stop bawling, but he did lift his face. His empty golden eyes turned about the room.

“Daddy?”

“No. Don’t you see a light or something? Dammit, isn’t there an Angel around?”

“Daddy!”

Darla yanked hard at the rope. I tugged back, and she yanked again, harder.

I kicked the mechanical carnival master away. He and a dozen of his fellows bounced off the wall, righted themselves, and came trundling back toward me, gears whirring, determined little metal feet scraping across the dusty floor.

I moved to stand before the ghost child. His eyes still turned, and he still sobbed, and with my free hand I reached down and tried to pat his glowing head.

My fingers stroked cold air. He gasped and reached up, trying to grab me, chilling my hands and wrist with every futile grasp.

Darla yanked so hard I nearly lost my footing. The gondola rocked, struck by something big and angry. Claws raked the gondola’s exterior.

“Damn it all to Hell,” I said, and I plunged Toadsticker straight down through the radiant boy’s tousled head until the sword bit an inch into the gondola’s hardwood deck.

The boy vanished. Vanished without a wail, or a struggle, or the faintest of cries. His light was simply extinguished, and the gondola went dark as a cave. Even Buttercup’s glow faded to nothing, though her skull continued to whisper.

I tugged at the rope. Darla tugged back, but she didn’t yank.

I found a fresh box of matches, lit one. The floor was alive with scurries and clicks.

It took six more matches to find all the pieces of the toy carnival, and stomp them into ruin. Then I put a boot to the toy box, smashing every tiny mirror and grinding the fragments to bits.

When it was done, I took a somber Buttercup’s hand. We walked through the empty gondola’s wall and into the fire-lit night.

Chapter Eighteen

We stood there till dawn, and watched it all burn.

The riding wheel was the last to fall. Flames rose up from the wheel’s base, licking at the timbers that supported the gears and the chains that would set it turning no more. Soon the central hub caught. That blaze radiated out until the wheel was, for a single brief moment, a tall and lovely thing formed of dancing, eager fires.

The wheel leaned, timbers snapping, iron beams sagging in the heat. The top flattened, the hub gave way, and the whole thing came crashing down with a terrible, thunderous groan.

It fell full on the carousel, which was already engulfed in sheets of flame. Both wheel and carousel disintegrated, sending up an enormous column of sparks before the fires settled and joined their many fellows burning low across the grounds.

The monsters burned too. The dragon went up like a pile of resin-rich pine kindling, leaving nothing behind but tangles of wire. The Man of Bones burned bright for a long time until nothing was left but ash.

The battle was over when Buttercup and I stepped out of the gondola. The Hall of Horrors fell instantly. The mirror denizens lingered on, slowing, Darla said, as though wounded, or winding down.

They say Mama caught hold of the flying witch’s cape and snatched her right off her broom. Mama’s cleaver did the rest. I gathered Mama was truly disappointed the witch hadn’t put up much of a struggle.

The only survivors were Malus, who looked decidedly less than magnificent, and his assistant Molly. Mama had shaken her birds over them and declared them free of any touch of darkness.

I wondered what Mama’s dried crows would say about me.

Mama yanked up the swamp witch’s head by its matted black hair. She held it up and spat in its face. “That’s what happens to them who lay a finger on me or mine,” she said. Then she hurled the severed head into the nearest bank of flames.

“One less monster in the world,” said Mama.

“Or maybe one more,” I replied.

Darla squeezed my hand. She’d asked what I found, inside the gondola. All I told her was that I’d found the carnival’s heart, and stopped it beating.

That’s all I’ll ever tell her, I think. Dead or not, shade or not, I struck down a child. I’ll not burden Darla with that. I’ll bear it alone, for all of my days, and die wishing I’d found another way.

“It’s all gone,” said Darla. She leaned in close, laid her head on my shoulder. “All over.”

I nodded.

Half the sky was veiled with a high bank of clouds. The face of the sun that peeked above the horizon painted the clouds with red and gold. The same gold as the ghost child’s hair.

A pair of sooty, grinning gunners came trotting up. “Nothing moving, sir,” they said, to me. “If it wasn’t on fire before, it is now.”

“You sure?” I asked. “It’s all burning?”

“Every last scrap,” said one.

Weariness washed over me. “Good. We’re leaving. Get everyone on the wagons.”

“Yessir,” they chorused.

The midway was flanked by fires and smoke. We picked our way down it.

The wagons waited. We clambered aboard, day folk and halfdead and Troll alike coughing and wheezing and exhausted. Slim managed to clear his throat and start bellowing some Troll walking song, and we turned our wagons toward home.

The Corps hit the carnival right after we took to the boats. There came a great booming thud, as though a mountain fell to earth, and a moment later the normally sluggish river water showed whitecaps and spray.

We paddled like madmen, and though the sky lit up with flashes and roars, I didn’t see anyone looking back.

Ask any Markhat, and he’ll tell you with a smile that life on the water is the only way to live.

Dasher
is steady as a house. She doesn’t rock, or pitch, or yaw, or do whatever it is boat folk speak of when they mean rock.

Majestic, claims Darla. That’s how she described
Dasher’s
motion, the first time we took her out of the slip and tootled around the Brown. It was a warm, bright afternoon, and I was wearing my new captain’s hat. Darla was smiling, a red scarf in her hair, her white dress whipped by the wind. She stood on
Dasher’s
blunt bow and lifted her hands and said simply, “Majestic.”

I’m not one to argue with a happy wife.

Cornbread mastered the fine art of stairs his first day aboard. Now he charges up and down them all hours, his little doggie toenails clicking away, his tongue hanging out, his fuzzy face alight with simple canine joy.

If Darla and I are officers and Cornbread is first mate, Slim makes up our crew. He sleeps under a tarp beneath the covered porch, and he keeps a good sharp axe in his mighty Troll hand, and Darla sleeps soundly knowing a Troll, even a smallish one, slumbers lightly right outside.

I was afraid the Troll might return to his beloved whiskey after we buried Alfreda. She’d wound down with the rest, lingering just long enough for us to fetch her mother, so they could say goodbye. Mrs. Ordwald left for home the next day. She didn’t shed any more tears.

Slim asked to stay with us, and we’d gladly agreed. Darla cooks him hams, and Mama brings him bitter black tea. He’s getting a belly, and teaching Mama a few words of Troll, and I guess all that beats a cage lined with dirty hay and all the rotgut moonshine you can drink.

They tell me a sorceress called Wither whacked the carnival site. They say there’s nothing left except an enormous bowl-shaped depression in the charred ground. Never heard of Wither, and don’t care to see the havoc she wreaked.

After all, my little band did all the work.

There’s another benefit to life aboard a boat. Our neighbors are hardy seafaring sorts too. The boat to port is the
Elegant Lily
, and her owners are a pair of opera singers who throw the best parties this side of the High House.

Look starboard, and you’ll find the red and black paddle wheels of the
Furious Caleb.
The
Caleb’s
occupants, a trio of self-described ‘ladies of leisure,’ put on their own fireworks show the last evening of every month. The whole street lines up to watch, and the celebration goes all night.

Buttercup pays us regular visits, of course. She is fond of dancing atop
Dasher’s
single smokestack.

All of our new neighbors have seen her. None did more than wave and shout a cheery ‘hello.’ The opera singers treated her to a few lines of song, and applauded her when she sang them back.

“It’s a seafaring life for me,” I said to Darla.

She mumbled an affirmative and fell back to sleep.

Evis recovered, right on schedule. I’ve seen him a dozen times since the night I slew the carnival’s heart. Each time, he looked more and more like the man he must have been before he was turned, during the War.

He’s a handsome fellow, if still a bit pale. His eyes are kind, like I always knew they’d been. His smile is quick and easy.

When he smiles, that is. These days he’s more prone to frown. Gertriss moved her things out of Avalante and isn’t answering his letters. She’s barely speaking to me, either, but in time she’ll forgive.

I keep telling Evis that. And I believe it’s true. She understands he kept the truth from her because he didn’t want her burdened with guilt if he had died.

She understands, but can’t accept it. At least not yet. I think she’ll forgive, one day, but even my much-vaunted wisdom can’t say when.

So Evis, who discovered the secret of immortality but lost the girl, moons around like a lovesick teenager with his first broken heart. And Gertriss, who found true love and incidentally a way to live forever, spends her evenings moping on our couch while Darla tries to cheer her up with hats and shoes and board games.

“Love,” I muttered. “Ain’t it grand?”

Darla stirred. Cornbread kicked and moaned, dreaming doggie dreams.

I lay there and stared at my ceiling, fighting sleep. I went to Mama the day after the carnival burned, told her I didn’t want to dream for a while. She keeps me supplied with a bitter black tea that so far has prevented any walking dreams.

Tomorrow, I decided, I’ll get up early and hire a wagon and buy a few cords of nice dry pine. Slim can split it into boiler-sized wedges while I see to the arrangement of our deck chairs.

Then we’ll cast off and head south. Troll and dog, man and wife. We might put in at Bel Loit for a few days, or we might just keep churning toward the Sea. It won’t matter where we go. We’re just going to
go
.

Darla turned over, tickling my face with her hair. I snuggled close and drifted off, listening to the lazy Brown lap gently against our hull.

Despite Mama’s ink-black tea, I dreamed.

I dreamed
Dasher
sprouted wide white gull wings and took me aloft. For a time I flew, crisscrossing Rannit, soaring so low over the park I sent idlers fleeing and pulling a dozen hats along in my wake.

Up and up we flew, until the sky turned coal-dust black and stars began to shine and I could see the great gray curve of the world as it turned far below me.

I tried to wake, but could not. I railed and cussed, but
Dasher
turned her bow toward the silver coin of the moon and Rannit and the Brown and everything I’d ever known shrank with distance and then disappeared.

When
Dasher
touched down, her flat-bottomed hull came to rest on the peculiar grey soil of the moon.

I leaped easily down, increasing my stature so that I might better see my surroundings. I had no idea where Stitches and her vault of magic wonders might be, and unlike before, I found I couldn’t simply will myself into her presence.

“You’ll have to give me a hint,” I shouted. “My knowledge of lunar cartography stops at ‘it’s round.’”

A plain wooden door appeared in the face of a nearby peak. I stomped toward it, adjusting my size as I went.

The door wasn’t locked. I entered. Inside was a tall, brightly lit circular chamber which housed a winding spiral staircase. Each stair tread was decorated with an arrow pointing down and the words THIS WAY PLEASE.

“Nobody likes a smart-ass,” I observed. Then I set about descending the stairs.

Down and down and down I went. The echoes of my bare feet rang up and down the stairwell. I willed boots to appear, but none did.

“This isn’t my dream,” I said. My words echoed with my footsteps, making the stairwell sound suddenly crowded. “You brought me here.”

I got no reply. A glance down revealed a floor, though, so I hurried down the last few turns of stairs and found myself faced with a pair of identical white doors.

A placard between them read CHOOSE WISELY. Below that was written a lot of nonsense about one door always lying and one always telling the truth and I stopped reading.

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Stitches, if you dragged me all the way to the moon to play some damned silly game of wands and cups I’ll just pinch myself and wake up.” I grabbed a fold of skin between my thumb and forefinger and started to squeeze. “I mean it. Open up or I’m taking my boat and flying home.”

Laughter rang up and down the stairs. The right-hand door opened, and Stitches stepped out, smiling.

“I believe I have summoned the true Markhat,” she said. “A simulacrum would have at least attempted to solve the riddle of the doors.”

She was dressed in a flowing white robe that had the sheen of finely-woven silk. Her hair was combed and decorated with a simple silver band. Her eyes were bright and cheerful.

“You’re wearing make-up,” I said, and damned if she wasn’t.

“And you are wearing a Captain’s hat,” she said, snickering. I was, although I’d forgotten I’d worn it to bed as a joke for Darla. Stitches smiled. “Really?” she said. “A boat? It seems we both have stories to tell. Pray accompany me to the parlor, Captain Markhat. I have beer.”

“Dream beer?”

“The very best,” she replied, before turning and marching back through her door.

I straightened my Captain’s hat, tightened my nightgown’s belt, and followed with as much dignity as my bare feet could muster.

Dream or not, the beer wasn’t bad.

What Stitches called her parlor was a domed cavern that stretched off so far away I couldn’t see the back of it.

Which was for the best. The few things I could see were sufficiently unnerving.

I didn’t know what they were, and I didn’t ask. Most were shrouded in covers of some kind, but below them shapes reminiscent of folded insect legs protruded. Each time my gaze wandered from our table and our icebox of beers, I became aware I was dwarfed in the presence of monstrous walking engines, built on the scale of giants.

I kept my eyes on Stitches, the table, or my dream-beer.

“So you opened the vault,” I said when she paused for a drink. “You found a way in.”

She drank. “I did,” she said, after a time. “The guardian is mine now. As are all the contents of the vault.”

“Making you, what? The most powerful sorcerer in Rannit?”

“My access to the vault’s contents renders me the most powerful being in the world,” said Stitches. Her face remained somber. “I literally have no equal.”

“Thus the good beer.”

She almost grinned.

“You don’t seem celebratory,” I said. “This is what you came for, is it not? The vault, all the summer goodies the bad guys hid away?”

She nodded. “It is,” she replied. “A thousand years of scheming and research and planning. All for this moment.”

“What’s wrong, then?”

“I underestimated the potency of many of the artifacts,” she said. “I knew them to be powerful. I did not understand they conferred what amounts to actual deification.”

“Whoah. Deification? As in—” I waved my hands about. “Godhood? Bossing angels around, pitching devils into lakes of fire, demanding prayers but ignoring them, that kind of thing?”

“Yes.” She drained her beer. “For all practical purposes, yes. As soon as the conditions of the arcane summer commence, it will be possible for me to achieve a state of omnipotence.”

“So why the long face? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“I wanted a means to combat the capricious, merciless beings who emerge in the time of summer,” she said. “Now I fear I shall simply join their ranks.”