Tex gulped.
“Granny’s right,” he said. “We gotta stick together. No tag, or even Hide-and-Seek, or Flabby’ll pick us off for sure.”
“Red Rover?” Diodiance suggested pragmatically.
Tex scratched his freckles. “Dunno. Ol’ Flabby’s pretty big. One of the tallest Tall Ones. He might break through, and then he’d win the game and bargaining rights. That won’t win us back B’s bones. ”
Diodiance slowly lifted one leg behind her the way she’d learned in ballet, in the olden days, back before the slaprash. Easier to focus when balance is at stake. She stretched out an arm to finger the sleeve of a secondhand coat that hung on the fifty-percent-off rack.
Maybe she remembered, or maybe she had dreamed, shopping with her momma at the Catchpenny. Eight-dollar winter coats. Made of real wool. Red wool. From red sheep, Momma used to say. All the way from London. That was all acrost the sea, which was bigger than the big lake to the East, and even the lake was like something out of Queen B’s bedtime stories, for Diodiance had never seen it, and never would. She settled into a plié.
“Here’s what, Barkas. Come noon-up, we’ll parley with the Flabberghast. We owe Queen B her death rite. Remember when she faced off Aunt Oolalune with fisticuffs? Remember when she led the march on the Rubberbaby Gang, and won Granny Two-Shoes back for the Barkas? Not for her, Granny’d be slave bait still to those dirty snotbums.”
Tex shifted. Not quite a shrug. Not quite an agreement. Diodiance had never understood his problem with the Flabberghast. With her it was never, “Isn’t the Flabberghast scary as thunder?” but always “Isn’t the Flabberghast fancy and strange?” and, “Isn’t the Flabberghast’s voice so sweet?” and, “Don’t the Flabberghast smell like pineapples and toothpaste and broken perfume bottles and the moonlight on pine trees?”
Her obsession was, in his opinion, unfortunate. But she was correct; Beatrice deserved this much from them upon her death. She had taken care of them far back as he could remember. He could not remember the olden days. Sometimes he didn’t think he believed in them.
Oh, if only they could deal with any other Tall One but the Flabberghast. At least the rest of them dwelled behind the gravy yard wall. You could keep the gate between you and the white lights on their shoulders. You could offer them old bones through the bars in exchange for stuff that came from the graves they exhumed for their banquets. Diamond rings, or pictures in fancy frames, or bouquets of flowers tied up in someone’s braided hair. Best were their queer shiversome stories about life under the hills, with the folks they only ever referred to as “those underground.”
But to creep close to the gray stone arch, where the Flabberghast lived in his cardboard house? Where he lived outside the black iron gates, with nothing keeping him in?
That was like cutting off your finger in shark water.
welcome to chuckle city!!! it’s a laugh a minute!!!
Beatrice stood before a high wall. The stones of the watchtower were as shiny a pink as a piece of watermelon bubblegum all blown up. The billboard that announced the city was lettered in bold yellow, with six orange exclamation points like floating construction cones.
Balloons everywhere.
Balloons tangled in the portcullis. Balloons tied to the barbed wire lining the heights of the walls. Balloons flying like pennants from the watchtower’s parapet, lurid against the uniform sky.
From beyond the balloon-obscured grid of the portcullis came a thin strain of cheerful music. It sounded as if a very small person in a very large coffee can played it, just for laughs.
If she ever felt less like laughing, Beatrice couldn’t remember. Her mouth pulled down at the edges as if weights hung from her lips. She could feel the hard pinch of her brows drawn tightly together. Dad had always called that look “Nana Larsson’s Evil Eye,” and said he knew what side of the family Beatrice favored that day, and for Durga’s sake, might he be spared?
Today, Beatrice didn’t feel like sparing anyone her Evil Eye. Not the billboard, not the city, not the gray groove, or the gray sky, or the large gray ravens circling above.
She just wanted Dad. That was all. And Dad was not here, though she had been walking forever.
A silky, silly breeze danced over her brow. It was not sunshine, but it was the closest thing to it Beatrice had known since her arrival in these deadlands. The breeze seemed to chime, seemed to tickle and tingle and ring. Beatrice almost smiled. But before she could make up her mind, the breeze went away again, and so did her inclination.
About that time, a jolly shout echoed down from the pink watchtower:
“Ho there, girlington! Are you new to the Big Bah-Ha?”
“Is that where I am?” Beatrice asked, looking up but not raising her voice.
“Why, of course you are here! Where did you think you were?”
Beatrice shrugged. “Been walkin’ alone since I got here. Except for the—the critterbirds.”
“The which?”
Beatrice pointed at the sky, toward the gray ravens. From a window in the watchtower, out popped a small, round face with round, pink-painted cheeks, glittering tinsel-green eyelashes, and a head of hair as blue as radioactive violets. Owl-like, the head twisted nearly full circle to stare up into the sky. Seeing the gray ravens for herself, she gasped.
“Gacy Boys!” squeaked the little clown. “And you still all in one piece! Bless my soul!”
“I threw my shoe at one when it got too close,” Beatrice said. Her socks she had stripped a while back, tossing them over her shoulder like salt to ward off ghosts. After a lot of walking and squinting at the sky, she couldn’t help but notice that the ravens only looked like ravens when you expected them to be ravens. But if you stared through your lashes and a little sideways-like, weren’t they something else again?
Something with heads that might be human, hooded like hangmen.
But Beatrice did not tell the little clown any of that. She already seemed upset enough. Even her pink paint seemed to blanch. She whimpered what sounded like, “Oh, the poor tidbit! The poor cutlet!”
“I’m Beatrice,” said Beatrice.
“Oh! How rude I am!” The little clown’s body followed her face right out of the tower window. She crawled in all her crinoline and sequins down the pink stones, face first and feet clinging to the plastic ivy. Her frills fell over her shoulders, revealing big polka-dot bloomers and spangled green tights. She did a neat flip near the bottom of the tower, and landed on her tiptoes on the ground.
Diodiance would die, Beatrice thought, almost grinning.
But the idea of Diodiance dying and waking up here made her feel oh, so very sick, so she frowned all the more blackly. The little clown, who looked as if she’d wanted to do a “Ta-da!” decided against it.
“I’m Rosie Rightly,” she blatted instead. “Hello! Hi! Hello! Oh, Beatrice, it’s so good to see you! Welcome to Chuckle City! It’s a laugh a minute! All laughs, all the time! Come in! Come in!”
“How?” asked Beatrice. “Gate’s closed.”
“Oh. Um.” Rosie Rightly stared at the portcullis as if she’d never seen one before. Then she shrugged and banged a fist on the balloon-festooned grid. The grate creaked up slowly. Several balloons popped with the sound of bullets, reminding Beatrice of home, of the end of the olden days, back when the grown-ups had tried to contain the slaprash to one area. It hadn’t worked. The slaprash took all the grown-ups first. Even the ones with masks and guns.