Tabitha watched, fascinated, as Isabelle gave birth, too tired now to scream. When it was over, the baby gave a hearty cry, and Tabithas father sucked in a breath. Tabithas mother pulled a rag from the pocket of her apron and wiped the infants face. She stood and turned, holding the child closer to the candlelight to examine it.
Please... Isabelle begged from the ground. Let me see him.
Her, Tabithas mother corrected. She folded the rag, then scrubbed it gently over the infants head. Then she looked up at her husband, disappointment clenching her square jaw.
The babys hair was a soft, pale green.
Tabithas father threw his glass at the side of the barn. It shattered, raining shards all over the hay. She flinched. Her father stomped out of the barn, headed for the house.
Tabithas mother spread the rag on the ground at Isabelles feet, then laid the baby on top of it. She turned to her daughter as Isabelle cried.
Give me your knife.
While families all over the country are in mourning, a couple of local grandparents are counting their blessings. Two weeks ago, twelve-year-old Willem Henry Vandekamp survived whats become known as The Reaping because he was at a birthday party sleepover. He is Otto and Judith Vandekamps only surviving grandchild.
from a September 4, 1986, broadcast of the Channel 10 Nightly News, Poplar Bluff, Missouri
Rommily
The oracle wandered down the midway, her gaze flitting from one brightly striped tent to the next, her fingers reaching for each soft scrap of silk and scratchy patch of sequins she passed.
She had not forgotten the cages and chains and blood. No matter how fractured her mind might be, she could never erase the pain and terror of that night in the rain or overcome a lifetime spent in a four-by-six animal pen.
But those were distant horrors now, relegated to the realm of nightmares.
The daylight was for dreaming.
As she meandered in the afternoon sun, her eyes were bright and focused. Her thoughtstypically tangled like a knotted cordwere blissfully calm, because there were no customers yet, and her fellow carnies knew better than to touch or speak to her. Those she considered friends smiled or waved when she passed, and those she cared little for paid her little attention.
Rommily listened to the shifters count out beats under the big top as they rehearsed an addition to their hoop-jumping, ball-balancing act. She heard the soft shuffle of hooves from behind a heavy canvas flap as the centaurs played their afternoon game of poker with Abraxas, the young human roustabout whod taught them when to hit and when to stand.
As she passed the next tent, Rommily heard a familiar snort, and the sound triggered a warmth that spread beneath the surface of her skin. She veered from the midway with no conscious intent. Her feet followed instructions from her heart without consulting her brain, and a minute later, she stood behind the equine tent, where a single broad tree spread limbs in all directions, and with them, cool patches of shadow.
The minotaur sat in the shade on a wide, sturdy bench most men couldnt have lifted. He stood when he saw Rommily, and the images that flashed behind her eyes were triggered not by premonition but by memory.
Strong hands tearing guilty flesh.
Blood spilled in the name of justice.
She said nothing as she crossed the patch of sparse grass separating them. Rommily only spoke in the grip of a vision, since that night in the rain, and without a human mouth, the bull couldnt speak at all. Their connection had developed without the luxury of unnecessary words.
The minotaurs arms spread as Rommily came closer. She reached out for him, her hand tiny and fragile against massive planes of muscle, her touch a delicate contrast to his raw power. The oracle trailed her fingers over the ridge of his human collarbone, just where dense, soft bovine fur began to grow. The top of her head didnt reach his shoulder, and three of her standing side by side couldnt have matched his width, yet she seemed to fit perfectly when she laid her head against his chest and wrapped her arms as far as they would go around his immense rib cage.
For several long minutes they stayed just like that, free from the burden of words. Safe from prying gazes.
When the pace of the day began to pick upwhen footsteps fell hurriedly and voices began to sound tenseshe reluctantly stepped back and squeezed the bulls hand, then made her way to the fortune-telling tent all on her own.
Her older sister, Mirela, was already dressed in the white flouncy blouse and long, colorful skirt of a fortune-telleran oracle cursed by fate with the genes of a cryptid and cursed by law with the chains of captivity.
Once, the outfit and chains had been authentic. Their internment in the traveling menagerie had been reality. Now the clothes were a costumethe wool pulled over the eyes of an audience that wanted to believe what it was seeing.
Metzgers Menageriethe institution that had once held her in bondage, half-starved and sometimes beaten where the bruises wouldnt showhad become her salvation. It was now the veil shielding her from the prying eyes and cruel hands the rest of the world seemed so eager to wield.
Lala, Rommilys younger sister, wore blue jeans and a red uniform shirt, which declared her name to be Louise. That was a lie Rommily found funny on some days and sad on others, but today she gave it little thought as she stepped behind the folding screen and exchanged her long white cotton dress for a blouse and skirt matching Mirelas. She wasnt fit to performnot even the miracle of freedom could fix her shattered mindbut she had to wear the costume because the inability to control her visions meant she couldnt pass for a human employee.
Dressed, she let Lala secure her with chains and shackles that didnt really lock. Then when Mirela slid her paperback novel beneath the table and gave them a nod, Lala led Rommily out the tent onto the midway, where she would serve as a living advertisement for the wonder customers would find inside.
Overhead, static blared from a speaker mounted on a tall pole, then organ music poured forth, its playful notes dancing up and down the oracles spine, spinning around and around in her head like the stylized mermaid and unicorn seats on the carousel. The music was calming, some nights, because it signified a routine she knew well. But tonight the notes made her dizzy.
The oracles gaze lost focus. Her eyes closed as she chased the melody in her head, winding down mischievous paths and around dark corners. She didnt notice when the carnival gates opened or the crowd appeared. She didnt notice when Lala launched into her spiel.
The music felt odd tonight.
Laughter broke into the oracles thoughts and her eyes flew open as a father passed by the fortune-tellers tent, tickling a toddler whose hair was fixed in blond pigtails.
Cradle and all... Rommily mumbled, her gaze glued to the child as terrifying images flickered deep in her mind. The crowd seemed to blur as her focus skipped from face to face, searching for another piece of a puzzle she would never be able to fully assemble.
Minutes later, a man and woman pushed a stroller down the midway. Rommily stared into it as it passed, and her eyes glazed into solid white orbs. Out with the bathwater! People turned toward the oracle and her petite female handler, intrigued by what they assumed to be part of the show. Wednesdays child! From the cradle to the grave!
Parents pulled their children closer. The crowd began to murmur, and the whispered word reaping met Rommilys ears.
Lalas sales pitch ended in midsentence as she tried to shush her sister. But Rommilys messageunclear as it wascould not go unheard.
The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world!
Delilah
Calliope music shrieked from the speakers just off the midway, its grating notes bouncing around my head like the ricochet of a whimsical bullet. Night after night, the iconic circus music managed to overwhelm all the other sounds of the menagerie, no matter how loud the cries of the barkers and buzz of the crowd grew.
Not that there was much of a crowd on the midway, after 10:00 p.m. The main event drew most of the customers into the big top for the last two hours of every evening, leaving only stragglers to knock down mermaid-shaped cutouts with water guns and toss rings onto an inflatable minotaurs plastic horns. Or to visit the exhibits.
Delilah!
I turned toward the sound of my name to find Lala at her post in front of the fortune-tellers tent. Folding my arms over my clipboard, I crossed the sawdust-strewn path toward her, sidestepping a little boy eating a melting ice-cream cone while his father threw darts at the balloon breasts of a cartoon-style siren. My head throbbed from the music and my feet ached from another eighteen-hour workday, but I put on a smile for Lala.
She was living her dream.
Howd we do? the youngest of the three oracles asked, crossing her arms over a red Metzgers Menagerie polo. Shed filled out a bit with proper nutrition, since our coup of the menagerie, but the true source of her newfound confidence was the hours she spent watching television and listening to the radio while she worked, immersing herself in human culture. Despite her youthshe was barely nineteenLala had become one of our most self-assured and dependable liaisons with human society, and it certainly didnt hurt that she looked completely human when she wasnt in the grip of a vision.
Um... I checked the figure at the bottom of the form clipped to my clipboard. Fifty-one thousand, two hundred seventy-two dollars. Gross. In one night.
Thats almost a thousand dollars more than last night. Lalas brown eyes shone in the light from a nearby pole. Thats good, right?
Its very good. That was nearly twice what Id made in a year as a bank teller, before I was exposed and sold into the menagerie. I should have been thrilled, especially considering that at $104 per ticket, admission wasnt exactly affordable for the nine-to-fivers and minimum wagers who made up most of our customer base. Yet people kept paying night after night, in town after tiny, rural town.
Well be near Tucson in a couple of days, right? I know we have bills and things, but do we have enough? Her wide-eyed optimism made me feel guilty for being the bearer of bad news.
Lala, we dont have any. The moneys spent before we even make it.
What? All of it? Unshed tears seem to magnify her eyes. But were going to be within a few miles of Gaels son.
Like most of us, Lala got invested in every cryptid we tried to buy from the other menageries, preserves and labs that owned them. But this one was personal for her. She was the one whod found the berserkers son, in a vision.
We have to buy him, Delilah. Thats the whole point of this, right? She spread her arms to take in the entire menagerie, and our perilous, secret possession of it. So pay something late. We only need twelve thousand dollars.
Right after wed taken over the menagerie, I would have paid it in a heartbeat to free one of our fellow cryptids from captivity. In fact, Id done just that, before I had a handle on the menageries finances. Before Id realized how dire our financial situation really was.
Id handled tens of thousands of dollars in cash nearly every night since we took over the menagerie, but the vast majority of it went to paying our operating costs. Taxes. Licenses and permits in every single town. Fairground rental fees. Inspections. Food. Fuel. Maintenance. And insurance. That was the big one. Insurance alone cost Metzgers Menagerie more than a million a year. And we were only getting off that easily because Rudolph Metzger hadnt reported most of our recent incidents to the insurance companysome, because the old man was trying to cut corners, and some because he was no longer in a position of authority at the menagerie.
Wed shipped him south of the border in one of his own menagerie cages, as a peace offering to the marid sultan, whose only daughter had died during our revolt.
If the insurance company knew about everything Metzger had covered up, our coup of the menagerie would have been exposed long ago, not because a customer saw through our masquerade, but because of simple, stupid bankruptcy.
Even so, we sat on the verge of that very catastrophe on a nightly basis.
Lala, were already paying bills late. If that gets any worse, theyll start foreclosing on things. Old man Metzger had bought much of his equipment on credit. Ironically, we no longer needed most of it, since we were running our own show now and only selling the illusion of captivity. But we couldnt return any of it without explaining why our creatures and hybrids no longer needed to be restrained or sedated.
There has to be a way, the young oracle insisted, heartbreak shining in her eyes.
Maybe there is. I dont want everyone to get their hopes up, but I was thinking about asking Renata if shed be willing to help.
Oh! Lala jumped and clenched her fists in excitement.
Shhh! I stepped in front of her, trying to shield her delight from the man running the funnel cake stand. The game booths and food standseverything other than the actual menageriebelonged to subcontractors who worked the seasonal carnival route. They had no idea Metzgers was being run by the very cryptids who made up its exhibits and performances, and if any of them ever found out, our ruseand our freedomwould come to a violent end.
Sorry, Lala whispered, as she recomposed herself into the role of tired carnival worker. I just... I thought it was too dangerous to let the encantados play with peoples minds.
It is. But we dont have a lot of choice this time. I pulled my pen from the top of the clipboard while she tried to control her smile. I have to go collect the stats. What was your head count?
Two hundred seven. We had a thirty-minute-long line late this afternoon.
Mirela must be exhausted. The oldest of the three oracles was alone inside the tent, since it was Lalas turn to play carnival employee.
Lala shrugged. Exhaustion makes the bed feel that much softer at the end of the night.
I gave her a smile as I moved on to the next tent. Her upbeat outlook never failed to amaze me. At the end of the day, as grateful as I was to have regained my freedom, I couldnt help missing the apartment and belongings I lost when I was arrested and sold. I resented the fact that even in freedom, I had to hide. But Lala lived for every minor liberty and moment of comfort, as if indulging in them might someday make up for everything shed been denied in her sixteen years as a captive.
I continued down the sawdust path, taking head counts from the few tents that were still open until I got to the bestiary, where the nonhuman hybrids were on display in a series of vintage circus cage wagons. Ember, the phoenix, was easily my favorite. From her head down, her plumage graduated through shades of red, yellow and orange, ending in long, wide tail feathers that looked like living flames in the bright light thrown from high pole-mounted fixtures. But she could hardly even stretch those tail feathers in the confines of her cage.