“The contortionists and oddities won’t get no sleep in with the meat-eaters,” one of the keepers protested. “All that howling and pacing don’t bother the dead ’uns.”
“Get out of here, and do as I ordered!” the Ringmaster snarled, shoving the man toward the curtained door.
He stepped aside and let the sullen henchmen pass, then turned back to Duckfoot Sally.
“You can stay in here. Make certain nothing else happens to him.”
“Aye, that I’ll do,” Sally said, still panting from the fight.
The Ringmaster glared at the creature in the glass tank once more, then turned and disappeared through the curtains.
Duckfoot Sally wiped her nose with the back of her arm, then made her way across the wagon to the tank that gleamed dully in the dark. She untied the canvas cover, then pulled a small wooden chest over to the tank and stood atop it, plunging her arms into the unclean water.
“There, there, Fair ’un,” she said softly, gesturing, making smooth ripples in the creature’s prison. “Yer safe. I won’t leave ye; and the Ringmaster’s word is law here. No one will bother ye again. Come, my pet. Let Sally rock ye back to sleep.”
The creature hovered in the water at the back of the tank for a long time, staring wildly at her in the dark. She could see the cloudy eyes, open and round like moons, above the wrinkled skin of its face, the rest fading away into the watery green. Finally it swam cautiously over to her, and laid its head in her open hand.
Duckfoot Sally smiled her broken smile, curled the fingers of her other hand into a fist, and wordlessly caressed the creature’s cheek with her knuckles, crooning a melody she had heard, though where she had long ago forgotten.
The night before the sideshow caravan entered the mountain pass leading into northern Sorbold, the Ringmaster opened the gate to a contingent of Sorbold’s mountain guard, soldiers in the elite unit that patrolled the border between that nation, Roland, and the Firbolg realm of Ylorc.
The soldiers, long away from home and without anything much to do except train and watch for invasions that never came, welcomed the Monstrosity enthusiastically. While the whoring tents saw the longest lines, the tents that housed the most deformed and grotesque exhibits were patronized eagerly as well.
Faron had been displayed between the dead specimens of preserved freakdom with which it shared a traveling wagon, the two-headed baby, the winged man, and a score or so of other malformations that floated, pickled, in salt solution. The creature by that time had grown so despondent that the crowds of soldiers didn’t even notice that it alone in the tent was a living specimen; they walked through, talking among each other, much as they would at a museum, then hurried on to the more exciting tents where danger, however staged, lurked.
Afterward, when the keepers were loading the wagons up for the night, the Ringmaster stormed angrily through the curtains at the door of Faron’s wagon and strode over to the tank, slamming his hand against the glass.
“Wake up, you damned fish!” he snarled, shoving a horrified Duckfoot Sally, who had been sewing on a stool next to the tank, out of the way. “I paid dearly for you, lad, one hundred gold crowns, plus two! Rescued you from those imbecile fishermen. And why?” He slammed his hand against the tank again, causing it to rock crazily, water leaking from the seam at the side. “Because you were a hissing, spitting nightmare, that’s why! And how do you repay me? By floating lifelessly in your tank, no different from the dead ones, who the audiences think are fake!”
“Leave my Fair ’un alone!” Duckfoot Sally shouted indignantly.
The Ringmaster wheeled and belted the odd woman to the floor with the back of his hand.
Faron, who had shrunk to the far side of the tank, cowering, while the Ringmaster ranted, screeched in rage and slammed against the front glass pane, scratched futilely with its soft, curled hands.
“Ah!” the Ringmaster exclaimed, his dark eyes glinting with understanding, “that’s it. You need to be angry, do you?” He turned and kicked Sally squarely in the forehead as she tried to rise, knocking her unconscious, then smiled as the creature screeched again, yellow teeth clenched, its eyes bloodshot with hate. It pressed itself against the glass, clamoring to get out, scratching at the canvas covering above its head.
The Ringmaster’s eyes widened in amazement.
Jutting from the folds of the creature’s belly was something he had never noticed before. A series of multicolored fins, or something like them, were hidden in the freak’s sagging skin, one of which dangled at the edge of the skinfold, ready to fall. A moment later it did, as the fish-boy continued to pound on the canvas covering, its arms elevated. An irregular oval, the size of the Ringmaster’s hand or so, with tattered edges, blue in color, drifted down into the offal at the bottom of the tank, sparkling as it fell.
Faron stopped rampaging at the look of amazement on the Ringmaster’s face and followed his eyes down to the tank floor. Fury fled in the face of panic; the creature darted quickly to the bottom and snatched the blue scale, returning it rapidly to its belly folds, glaring at the Ringmaster.
Shouting for his henchmen, the Ringmaster began to roll up his sleeves.
“Give it to me,” he said in a low, menacing voice.
The creature shook its head, retreating to the far side of the tank.
The Ringmaster grasped the edge of the glass and rocked the container violently.
“I said give it to me, freak. Before I pull you from the water and toss you into the sand of the Sorbold desert to wither.”
Faron hissed and spat in return.
Amid loud tromping the keepers came into the wagon. With an efficiency born of years of experience dealing with unwilling monstrosities and beasts of violent capabilities, they wrestled Faron to the back of the tank and pinned the creature, amid sloshing water and shrieks of inhuman noise. Then, once the freak was secured, the Ringmaster, his clothes drenched in fetid water, plucked the blue scale from Faron’s belly, ignoring the creature’s howls of distress, and stared at it in the lanternlight.
It was a concave oval, tattered slightly at the edges, gray when held flat, its blue coloration only noticeable when it was turned in the light, which then refracted into a shimmering spectrum that danced across the scored surface. On one side of the scale the image of an eye was engraved, surrounded by what appeared to be clouds. The Ringmaster turned it over carefully in his hand, noting that the other side, the convex one, bore a similar etching, but the eye on this surface had clouds obscuring it.
He looked back at the trembling creature, bound in the arms of the keepers, still squealing in fury, black blood trickling from the skin folds of its abdomen, clouding the water.
“Well, isn’t this a pretty thing?” he mused, holding up the scale, taunting Faron with it. “At least now I know how to make you perform the way you should, Fish-boy.” He nodded to the keepers. “Let him go.”
The henchmen released the creature, allowing it to slide back into the now half-full tank, and trooped out of the wagon, followed a moment later by the sodden Ringmaster.
Faron continued to howl, sometimes angrily, sometimes piteously, until Duckfoot Sally finally came around. She pressed her hand to her bruised forehead and made her way amid her wet, rustling tatters to Faron’s side, whispering words of comfort and solace, until the creature finally gave in to racking sobs.
“There, there, my Fair ’un, don’t fret, luv. It’s all part of the life, I’m ’fraid.” She stroked the soft head gently with her knuckles. “All part of the circus life.”