In these deadlands, thought Granny Two-Shoes, might merely being alive mean being too alive? Are we flaunting our liveliness to these dead gray skies? Are we attracting the attention of the dead? Can the dead harm the living? What does harm mean here, where hurt doesn’t necessarily stop with the cessation of a heartbeat? Where there is no hope of healing?
The Flabberghast caught her eye and held a finger to his lips. Hush was implied, but all he said aloud was, “Check your cuts, children,” in a voice that even Tex obeyed.
Diodiance dabbed at her wrist, at the place she had torn it against the Flabberghast’s fingernail. “Still bleedin’.”
“Good,” said the Flabberghast. “We can stay here until your scab forms and closes. Keep a lively eye upon it. And another on the sky.”
Tex’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What’re we lookin’ for?”
For answer, Granny Two-Shoes threw out her arms and flapped so vigorously she almost fell off of Sheepdog Sal. Sal turned around in circles, trying to keep her rider astride.
“Bad birds?” Diodiance guessed.
“Sad birds,” Tex corrected.
“Not birds at all,” said the Flabberghast. “But”—he bowed to Granny Two-Shoes—“I am impressed.”
Nothing more was said on the subject. The Flabberghast unfurled his hands in a herding gesture and once more they all started moving along the gray groove. Tex and Diodiance marched at the vanguard, taking inventory of their pockets, swapping out what they didn’t want with each other. PayDay candy bars for watermelon-flavored Jolly Ranchers, bullet casings for smooth pebbles, bones for crayons. A happy breeze riffled their hair like a mother’s fingers, conveying sunshine and safety and the promise of joyful rest. Gone too soon.
The Flabberghast, taking up the rear, sniffed for traces of that breeze when it departed. He frowned at what lingered.
Equidistant between them, Granny Two-Shoes rode Sheepdog Sal at a pleasant trot. She didn’t bother listening in on Tex’s and Diodiance’s conversation, which she generally considered comfortable white noise to stimulate her own ruminations. She didn’t look over her shoulder to see what shenanigans the Flabberghast got up to; he had his own agenda, and it was not hers. But she did check the twin holsters she wore beneath her nightgown. One for her switchblade. One for Beatrice’s slingshot. She was ready for anything.
Rosie Rightly led Beatrice away from the burning buildings. They passed a dusty little market square with tattered awnings over abandoned booths that read, “tender leonard’s jokes and gags!” and “solomon sot’s society of carefree kiddies!” and “frabjous the fool’s popular puppets!”
“Where is everyone?”
Rosie Rightly shrugged. “Those’re the clowns that did their job. Made the kids laugh, helped ’em move on. When the kids moved on, so did they. That’s why the Big Bah-Ha’s here—’cause it’s never funny when a kid dies. We have to learn to laugh again, before we can go through…to whatever’s next.”
“That’s what all the clowns are for?” asked Beatrice.
Rosie Rightly nodded. “That’s what they were for, way back before I got here. I think the Big Bah-Ha was different then. But that’s done with. The Gray Harlequin says we’re all clowns now.”
Beatrice tugged one of her braids. One of her ribbons was missing, and another had gone all loosey-goosey. The thought of losing another ribbon gave her a sick jolt of panic. She tightened it fiercely. The panic receded.
“Were you always a clown, Rosie?”
“No,” Rosie Rightly sighed. “I just…never learned to laugh.” She touched her painted face.
“Oh.”
Rosie Rightly started skipping. Her flounces flounced. Her sequins flashed. Everything about her was gleeful with cheer, except her round blue eyes. She pointed at the dusty market with glittering fingernails.
“I know it looks all sad and dusty and stuff. But really it’s GREAT! It means that if we do our jobs, then some day, we can go back to the mirror. Take a look at ourselves again. Tell ourselves, we brought joy to the joyless. We deserve the next world, too. And this time, this time, we’ll be able to meet our own eyes without flinching. We’ll know we’re worthy. Like Solly Sot, and Frabjoojooface, and Lenny, and Sudsy Aimee, and Snotty Sue. They did it. They learned to see themselves as something other than dead. They got through. I will too. Someday.”
Beatrice nodded, frowning. “Is that hard? Seein’ yourself?”
“It’s the hardest. You look in the mirror the first time, and all you see—” Rosie Rightly gulped. “But the Gray Harlequin says…” Here she stopped, shook herself. Poked Beatrice in the ribs. “Hey. Bee-Bee. You think I’m funny? You do, right? You think I’m the funniest?”
Beatrice patted her gloved hand, avoiding the luminous wound on her wrist. “Keep tryin’, Rosie.”
Rosie Rightly hunched her shoulders. They were just coming upon a section of Chuckle City where a colossal tent loomed larger than any three of the burning tenements put together. The tent’s canvas was striped red and white like the barber’s pole Beatrice had seen in her first moments of the Big Bah-Ha. Red and white. Blood and bone. Near the curtained-off entrance, a twinkling Ferris wheel turned and turned into eternity.
“That’s the Big Top,” Rosie Rightly whispered. Her expression said she wanted to scurry by, but her feet dragged to a standstill. “The tramps live there. They ride tigers and swing from wires.” A shiver wracked her. Beatrice could see the raised bumps beneath her painted flesh.
“When you’re inside the Big Top and you look up, all you see are spiderwebs. The Eleven Lovely Emilies spin them, web on web. The Emilies all have beautiful red hair, like yours.” Rosie Rightly’s eyes lingered on Beatrice’s hair. “And they have red eyes like hourglasses, and four arms and four legs apiece. They spin nets to catch the tramps should they chance to tumble from their wires. Whenever a tramp falls, the Eleven Lovely Emilies can eat. Their red tongues go all the way down to here!” Rosie Rightly touched her tummy.
Like Dad’s dark ladygods, Beatrice thought, with their many limbs, and scarlet mouths, and the way they could eat whole armies.
Beatrice did not want to see the Emilies. Not without Dad at her side to explain them. Sure, in legends the ladygods could be brought to compassion, to show a mercy as miraculously ardent as their appetites. But no mercy remained here in the Big Bah-Ha, she thought, else Chuckle City would long since have been razed to dust.
“Do you want to see them?” Rosie asked, as if afraid of the answer.
Whatever Dad’s old ’cyclopedia used to say, these Eleven Lovely Emilies could only be hideous. If Beatrice saw them, she knew her heart would break. She tightened her ribbon again.
“I want to see the Gray Harlequin,” she said.
Rosie Rightly began to bounce on the balls of her feet. “We could do that, or…Or! Or! Or!”
“Or?”
“Instead of seeing the G-gray Harlequin, we could go to the petting zoo!”
Beatrice vaguely remembered petting zoos from the olden days. Sad sheep and decrepit llamas, dirty chickens running underfoot, rabbits in cages, bristly pigs setting the stable a-snore, and the whole place smelling earthy and unsavory. But the animals were pretty neat-o. They ate from the palm of your hand.
“Sometimes,” Rosie Rightly nattered on, “the Gacy Boys go big game hunting out beyond Chuckle City. They bag prizes to bring back—and that’s the petting zoo.”