Ned’s Circus of Marvels

“I still don’t understand. What hides? And what’s it got to do with me and my dad?” Ned asked.

“What you need, young pup, is a little orientation, a little bit of knowing your up from your down,” said Benissimo. “Come with me.”

The Ringmaster turned abruptly and marched Ned over to the circus’s empty animal cages, then stopped by its smallest.

“Do you believe in fairies, boy?” he asked, without a hint of sarcasm.

“Course not, I’m thirteen.”

“That is a shame … but you did? When you were younger, yes?”

“Maybe.”

“And at that time, you were probably a little scared of the dark too? Saw things in it when nothing was there?”

Of all the people Ned had met, Benissimo was the very last he’d want to admit that to.

“I … erm …”

“Seeing things in the dark,” continued Benissimo, “we call that ‘sight’. The gift of it leaves us when we come of age. The less we believe, the less we see. The Veil takes away that sight completely. Do me a favour, pup, and look into that cage.”

Ned did not like being referred to as “pup” and he certainly wasn’t Benissimo’s “boy”, that privilege was his dad’s alone, though he was starting to wonder if he’d ever forgive his father for leaving him in the Ringmaster’s care. Nonetheless, the man had a way of asking that made you feel like you had to say yes. He stared through the bars.

“What do you see?”

“Just the cage, that and a little sunlight, I guess.”

“Dusk and dawn are the best times to see them, especially the Darklings that we have caged here. Your youth and Kitty’s tea should be enough to break the glamour. Look again.”

This time, as Ned stared through the bars, something began to form. In the dance of shadow and light, he saw a shape. Something small and sinewy, something with teeth.

“Wha … what?”

Before him stood a ferocious creature, which snarled and lashed at the cage bars. Its clothing might once have had some colour, but today the creature’s threadbare rags were reduced to a grimy mush. It had white clammy skin, orange slits for eyes and a pointy, evil face.

“That, my boy, is a hob-gor-balin, only a level three menace, but quite clearly on the wrong side of the Veil. The effects of Kitty’s tea at your age should be permanent, though breaking the strongest glamours needs more aggressive magic …”

Ned’s jaw dropped.

“Ned Waddlesworth, son of Terry. Feast your eyes on the truth. Drink it down like a warm cup of honey. This …” said Benissimo as he led him round the corner to where a large troupe of performers were having their lunch, “… is my circus, the real Circus of Marvels,” announced Benissimo, gesturing in a circle, his chest puffed up with pride.

Ned looked over the troupe and his already dropped jaw gaped wider still. The cook was an unshaven, gruff-looking man who had clearly never washed his apron. He also had tusks hanging down from his mouth, and the snout of a pig. Pretty dancing girls in sparkly make-up laughed, as a red-faced cheery-looking woman sewed sequins and bells on to a pink dress. One of the girls had scales for skin, another short fur and the spots of a leopard, and the third was covered in tiny blue feathers.

Beside them, an excited group was laying down wagers, as Rocky and what Ned could only assume was his wife, despite the beard, went head to head in a playful arm-wrestle. Except that Rocky wasn’t Rocky any more. His bulging muscular skin had turned a hard grey and had the texture of rock. Watching the two lovebirds wrestle were Julius, Nero and Caligula, but the breakfast-stealing monkeys were now in their blue-skinned, mischievous pixie form, and the elephant that had ruffled his hair only moments ago had the pretty white wings at the top of her back Ned had seen in his dreams, where there had previously only been cardboard.

Each and every one was different, from the enormous troll that was Rocky, to the dwarven unicyclists delivering food at the food truck’s trestle tables.

“The hidden. Marvellous, aren’t they? Every myth and legend, every obscure or forgotten tale, they are all, most wonderfully, most stupendously and on numerous occasions, rather dangerously … true.”

Ned turned around to take in the other Darklings in their cages. They weren’t like George or Rocky or even the clowns. They were monsters, of every possible size and shape.

“That there is a harpy,” said Benissimo indicating a brown-winged woman sat scowling in one of the cages, her mouth covered to stop her taunting screams. “Her voice can cause instant paralysis, or madness, or both. Very nasty indeed,” explained Benissimo. Behind her, in a far larger cage, were a pair of thin-limbed creatures wearing clothes that looked like they’d been stolen from the dead.

“Nightmongers; the less said about them the better. Look into their eyes and you see your worst fears. Hear them talk and it’s already over.”

Their faces were covered by wide-brimmed hats, and instead of fingers Ned saw long claws the length of kitchen knives hanging from their wrists.

“Please, please tell me I’ve gone mad,” said Ned, suddenly longing for his dull, safe dad more than ever.

“It’s always hard on jossers the first time,” said Benissimo dismissively. “That wyvern took ten hands to capture, most of which wound up in the infirmary.”

The beast he was talking about was in the largest cage by far. It was about the size of a horse with the features of a dragon. Its leathery wings had to be chained down and it wore a heavy iron muzzle.

“Flammable spit. I’ve seen them burn bones to ashes in mere seconds.”

As still as it was, the briefest look from its glowering grey eyes was enough to chill Ned’s bones. The Darklings were nightmares come to life, only worse, only real. Ned didn’t care whether he was going mad or not. He was quite beyond that now.

BANG.

An unmarked grey truck backfired beside them. Its rear doors were flung open and out stepped a tracker. He wore a long wax coat to match his long greasy hair and his wild eyes looked entirely feral.

“Lerft! Roight! Heel!” he called in a strong Irish accent.

Ned watched in awe as the tracker’s pet lions, Left and Right, bounded out of the truck and fawned over him like obedient puppies. It wasn’t so much that he had a power over them, it looked more like he was one of them, a creature of the wild too.

“Aark!” he called next, in a voice only part human.

From somewhere high in the air came a screech and a swoosh of wings as a large black hawk flew down to the man’s arm. A large black hawk … with two heads.

It was at this point that Ned lost the power of speech altogether.

Circus hands lowered a covered cage from out of the back of Finn’s truck, while two men in matching pinstripe suits interviewed the German tourist who’d been unlucky enough to stumble upon whatever it was the tracker had captured.

“Oh dear, Mr Smalls,” said one of the suits.

“Yes, quite, Mr Cook,” agreed the other.

The tourist was babbling and in severe shock.

“You see, one moment it was there unt the next, nosink. No beast unt only the forest. You believe me, ja?” pleaded the tourist.

“Yes, sir, actually we do rather. Mr Cook, if you wouldn’t mind doing the honours?”

The taller of the two pulled a long silver tube from his breast pocket that looked a little like a flute, only it wasn’t. He pointed it at the tourist’s face and blew. The two men then dragged the now sleeping backpacker to Kitty’s bus.

“You see,” Benissimo rumbled, his great eyebrows furrowed, “when the two worlds come crashing together, yours and mine that is, it’s the Circus of Marvels and others like her that have to clear up the mess. When things go awry and the shadows bite, it’s my troupe that bites them back. Whether you’ve the teeth for it, pup, remains to be seen.”

Ned felt his anger rise up again. Benissimo kept talking to him as though he’d somehow agreed to join their band of travelling monstrosities while in the same breath reminding him that he was not up to the task. And he still hadn’t explained how he and his dad were part of all this! He was about to tell his host exactly what he thought of him when there was an almighty howl from inside the truck’s cage. As the beast within threw itself at its bars, the cover slipped and fell. In place of the monster Ned was expecting, was a thin, shaking man, clammy with sweat. The man looked at Ned, cocked his head to one side and started to whimper. But despite the timid sound, he watched Ned with the same look of interest a dog gives a cat, before trying to tear its head off.