As
soon as Ellis stepped outside of the caravan he was overwhelmed by a chorus of
sensations. He was assaulted by the
musty smell of animals and of sweat, of spicy foods being prepared, of sawdust. Noise and music filled the air, shouts and
strains of melody thrumming every particle 'til his ears were near
hurting. Bright lights and colours
surrounded him, blending gaudy and violent.
It was as if each element of the chaos he had stepped into had a
counterpart in some other spectrum of scent or sound or light. It made it difficult to take it all in, to
extract the detail from the collage and so, as Nadiyya walked him away from the
caravan and across the plaza which was steadily being transformed into a circus
ring around them, elements of what he was seeing leapt out at him one by one,
as if that was all his mind could take.
He
saw children playing with hoops, each flaring with some kind of hypostatickal
light as they danced through them. Each
pass they took was quicker than the last, each move connected to the one before
it in an illusive pattern which drew the eye and confounded the mind. He saw the burn marks on their arms and
wondered whether their parents knew they were part of this circus, or if they
had any parents left at all.
He saw a group
of women dressed in colourful, translucent veils, dancing a complex
choreography of interweaving steps, all somehow suggestive, both enticing and
disturbing. Ellis blushed and looked
away.
He saw a small
troupe of musicians playing an assortment of instruments, some of which
resembled ones he was familiar with - one something like a violin, another
reminiscent of a flute - whilst others were completely alien. They created a sound which was part melody,
part cacophony and just when Ellis thought he might have caught the pattern in
the music, it faded into the din of the circus and he didn't catch the refrain
again.
He saw a great
menagerie of creatures, from winged monstrosities that seemed more fantastical
than real, to a beast the size of a cow which resembled nothing so much as a
sort of pygmy elephant, although if he stared at it too long the similarities
began to be outweighed by the differences.
He saw a
series of cages which contained, to his horror, a Grinder, a Spiketail and a
Slatewing. At first he was just shocked
to see Lithoderms and, despite his familiarity and fondness for Rockspark, his
instincts had told him to run. Once he
saw the conditions the creatures were being kept in, however, the tiny spaces
they were confined to, the way their eyes burned like dying embers, he began to
feel sorry for them. Is that what
awaits me? he wondered.
In another cage, partly obscured by a gigantic man
in a loincloth performing back-flips whilst juggling blades, was an enormous,
insectile creature with huge leathery wings and mandibles like a pair of
twisted shears. The beast seemed to be
perfectly still, even its wings were held in a perfect, frozen poise. It took Ellis a moment to realise that it
was no longer alive, but had been posed that way by a taxidermist's art. Nadiyya caught his gaze and frowned, coming
to a halt.
"That was
Scythe," she said with a hint of regret, "he was
magnificent." Ellis was more
inclined to suggest terrifying as a better adjective, she continued to stare at
the stuffed monster for a moment and he could sense her sadness. “The Stoneskins ride Winged-Reapers down
south in the desert ruins of Dunetide, where the Reaper Hives have almost
completely taken over the remains of the buildings. It took the men my father hired three years to capture one…” She almost sounded wistful now and Ellis
began to think that there might be a softer side to this woman after all. Then,
suddenly he felt her boot in his bottom as she kicked him forward.
"Move!"
she commanded and he had no choice but to obey.
Eventually
they reached an empty cage. It was not
much larger than width of two phone boxes and there was nothing inside it at
all but for a layer of dirty straw in the bottom. Above it there was a freshly painted sign which read, BORN
BENEATH A BLUE SKY: ELLIS, THE BOY FROM THE OTHER WORLD.
Nadiyya
grabbed Ellis' arm with one hand as she reached for a key-ring hanging from her
belt with the other. She unlocked the
cage, threw Ellis inside with enough force to send him crashing into the bars
on the other side and then slammed the door shut, twisting the key in the lock
before Ellis could even rub his head and turn around.
"This is
your home, now," she said, her eyes daring him to dispute the fact. "I will bring you some food before the
performance. Until then, behave!"
And with that she turned around
and left Ellis alone in his tiny, dirty cage; too small to even lie down in.
“Wait,” he called after her,
“you’re just going to leave me here?”
If she heard him she did not
react. She kept her back straight as
she marched away through the maddening circus crowd, leaving Ellis despondent
in his cage. He banged the bars,
rattled the door and was depressed by how solid and heavy everything was. He slumped against the bars at the back of
the cage and held his head in his hands.
What can I do? he asked
himself, How can I get out of here?
“It’s not so bad, once you get
used to it,” came a clipped, soft, almost whispered voice to Ellis’ right. He turned to see the source of it and was
surprised to see a very small, low cage with a creature resembling a snake
curled up inside. It had a large
arrow-shaped head and a long, tapering body covered in scales of vibrant reds
and greens. It had slender legs tucked
in underneath it, almost like a cat and three sets of wings lay flush against
its back at intervals along its length.
It took Ellis a moment to realise that they were bound that way. “The food’s not awful, at the very least,”
it continued.
“What are you?” he asked it,
completely forgetting his manners.
“What I am is,
technically, a Hexopterid, or a Sixwing.
Finding out who I am might have been a better strategy though.”
“Sorry,” Ellis replied,
shamefaced, “I’ve been having a bad day…”
“So I can see,” the Sixwing
hissed.
“So, what’s your name, then?”
“I’ve had
a few, in my time,” the serpent-like creature replied, “but at the moment I
prefer Theophilus.” He glanced up at
the sign above Ellis’ head. “Am I to
assume that you are Ellis?” he asked.
“Ellis
Graves,” Ellis replied, “so, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve never heard of a being
like you before, how did you come to be part of the circus?”
“Well,
that is a bit of a long story,” Theophilus said, then, glancing around, added, “but
I don’t think we’re going anywhere for a while, so perhaps I’ll tell you.” He raised his arrow-like head and gestured
toward the corner of Ellis cage. “Make
yourself as comfortable as you can,” he said, “and then I’ll begin.”
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