Colene nodded. “Um, yes. But there must be a way. Maybe if we stay in the countryside, and you do magic only when no one else is around.”
“We would still have to explain the source of our supplies,” Darius pointed out. “Lest they think we are thieves. And I am not certain how we can ever explain Burgess.”
“This is true,” Nona agreed. “There is no creature like Burgess on this world. He will become an object of cynosure very quickly.”
Colene turned to gaze at Burgess. “Yeah, I guess he’s a freak, here. No offense, airfoot.” She touched a contact point. Then she did a double take. “A freak! That’s it!”
The others all looked at her, even the horse and Burgess’ three eyes on stalks. “Is the mind predator after you again?” Darius inquired with a smile that was not fully humorous.
“No, I’m okay, honest!” Colene exclaimed. “Tired, sure; I’ll have to sleep a day or two pretty soon. But I know what I’m thinking. Back on Earth sometimes they have these freak shows, with a traveling circus or something. A bearded woman, a dwarf, a dog-faced boy, a two-headed snake—that sort of thing. Folks have to pay to see the freaks. It’s always a rip-off, but as old Barnum said, there’s a sucker born every minute. So Burgess can be our freak, and we’ll make folk pay to see him. We’ll say he’s from a weird distant world, which he is, really: an alternate Earth. But tame, and we won’t let anybody hurt him. That should be good for a few thrown pennies.”
“Pennies won’t account for our food and supplies,” Darius said.
“So who’s to know how many pennies we get? Maybe nickels and dimes, too, or gold pieces, whatever they have here. The point is, it’ll explain our livelihood, and no one will question it.”
“An entertainment troupe,” Nona said, appreciating the nicety of it. “We do have those on Oria. Traveling minstrels, groups of actors who put on plays. I suppose one could be for the showing of an unusual creature.”
“It sure could,” Colene said. “Darius can be the ringmaster, riding a big brown horse—guess who, horseface! Did you know that Seqiro’s the exact age and color I am? Fourteen, and brown hair! We were destined to be together. And you can play music and sing and dance, Nona; the men’ll love it, ‘specially if you wear a skirt which flares. So sure we can be an entertainment troupe; I like that notion better than freak show.”
“But what will you do?” Nona asked. “You are definitely not a freak, but—”
“But I don’t have a body to madden men’s minds, either,” Colene agreed. “Guess I’ll just have to be the hat girl.”
“A girl in a hat?” Nona asked, perplexed.
Colene laughed, and clarified the thought. “An urchin with a big hat, running around and begging for coins, when the show’s done. I’ll catch ‘em in the hat, see. And I’ll do the chores, like cleaning up manure. All-purpose servant.”
“This is obviously your ideal vocation,” Darius said drolly.
“And I’ll feed that manure to you, after Nona has made it look like gourmet fare,” she responded with mock sweetness. She turned to Nona. “So have I figured it out? If I conk out now, can you folk carry through?”
“I believe we can,” he agreed.
Colene went to Seqiro. “Can you carry me for a while, horseface? Poor Burgess’s been doing it, and I know he’s worn out too. I’ve got to sleep safely.”
Seqiro agreed that he could carry her, and Colene climbed up on his harness and half sat, half lay on his back. In a moment she was asleep. Nona knew it, because of the telepathy; Colene dropped out of the net.
“We had better get away from here first,” Darius said. “So that the folk of your villages don’t see us.”
“That is true.” Nona knew that he could conjure them to another place, but this had its complications. It was better simply to walk. “I will clothe us in illusion. It would be easy for another person to penetrate it, but perhaps none will bother.”
She made Seqiro look like a smaller horse, with no harness and no person on his back. She made Burgess look like another horse. Both wore yellow animal tunics. She conjured a blue tunic for Darius and a red one for herself. These were the theow colors; when the animus had become anima, and the men lost the power of magic, and the despots their authority, the colors had not changed. It was just that blue and red were now worthy colors, instead of indications of servitude. The black and white of the male and female despots had become the lowly colors.
She led the way away from the village. They were lucky; they encountered no one. She wondered about that; normally there were folk working in the fields, and lovers taking walks, and animals grazing. It was odd that things were so quiet.
By early evening they had reached a secluded region shielded from any thoroughfare by an arm of the forest. It was relatively barren, so that no fanning was done here. They should be able to camp here without being disturbed.
She took up a stick of wood and transmuted it into a swatch of cloth. Then she expanded the cloth until it was large enough to make a tent, and gave that to Darius to work with. She picked up a stone and transmuted it to crockery, and magically shaped that into a small cup. She expanded the cup into a bucket. She took an acorn and transmuted it into horsefeed, then expanded the feed until it filled the bucket. Seqiro had his meal. She was about to make something for Burgess, but he didn’t need it; he was already sucking up more of the fallen acorns and grinding them up inside. Finally she went through a similar process to make bowls of mashed potatoes and cups of milk for the three human folk. It was not, as Colene put it, gourmet fare, but Nona was not an artist with culinary magic; she could produce only type and quantity. However, illusion did serve to improve it.
Colene woke and got down from the horse. She had had several hours’ sleep, and remained logy, but was feeling better; her emotion was only slightly depressive now. She was hungry; she gobbled her dish of mashed potato and gulped down her milk.
As night closed, they stripped the harness and burdens from Seqiro, and the horse went grazing. Burgess continued to quest for things on the forest floor, quite competent to take care of himself. The three humans settled into the tent Darius had made from Nona’s material and planned their tour. Then they settled down to sleep in their normal fashion, Darius between the two women.
This was not, Nona reflected, so much different from their stay on Shale. Except that here they did not need to fear any wild predators; none would venture this close to a human settlement.
“Right,” Colene muttered. “The only one we have to fear is our own kind.”
NEXT day their group visited a village that Nona had not been to since her childhood. Darius, the nominal master of the troupe, led Seqiro the trained horse, and Nona, her hair concealed by a cap, rode somewhat regally on the horse’s back. A closed wagon was hauled along behind, containing the Monster from Afar. The last was the hat girl, looking somewhat woebegone. They had rehearsed their parts, and hoped the villagers accepted the show for what it was intended to be.
The village seemed normal from a distance, but the closer they got the stranger it became. Instead of a reasonably neat array of modest houses, there was a collection of shells of houses, with rubbish littering the street. A barricade had been placed across the street at the edge of the village, and several grim-looking men were guarding it.
“I don’t like the look of this,” Darius said mentally. “This looks more like a military camp than a hamlet.”
“I don’t understand,” Nona said. “It looks as if there has been fighting here. Where are the women?”
“Methinks this region of Oria isn’t as peaceful as we thought,” Colene said from within the closed wagon. “We may have to beat a retreat.”