SEVENTEEN
The children crept along the narrow passageway on their soft bellies. Tunnelled out by the water flow millennia before, the passage curved and spiralled; only the Scuttlers with their flexible shells and tiny bodies could have attempted to negotiate it. The dark was punctured by beams off the headlamps each child wore, tied in place by the lady monk who’d produced special ribbons for the purpose.
“Lazurite blue,” she’d said to Rind, adding, “For the queenly one.” Ol got “Red as jewel fruit. For the spicy one.” And for Tib. “The warrior. Green, like the eyes of a rattler.” She’d shown them how to wind the clockwork generators inside each lamp. Then she’d shown them the way. Up into the gods of the tent, to one of the two points where the circus roof steepled. She’d lifted each in turn and they’d scrabbled out the canvas trapdoor there.
“Look for my love in the crags and the black spots,” she’d told them. “Do this for me and I promise you each a free pass to Heaven.”
So they’d crawled through the passage in the rock like worms through dirt, front pincers elbowing forward. The roof of the tunnel was centimetres above their heads. Every so often an insect would be caught in the glow off the headlamps, beautiful weird things in metallic shades.
“Hello, mister beetle. Where you scurrying?” Ol poked the bug, a many legged oddity with huge opalescent eyes. The weight of her pincer crushed it.
Rind was out in front, her little old woman face shrewd as she led her siblings through the chasm. “Shadows can be big. Shadows can be small. Me’s thinking the lady’s love might have tucked further in, where it’s chapel quiet.” She stopped and nosed backwards, “What do he and she reckon?”
“I’s reckon the lady’s a nutcase. Brain gone mushed,” shot Tib from the backend of their procession.
“I’s think she’s an angel,” said Ol, her voice sweet with hope. Underneath her, the bones of tiny dead things crumbled.
“I’s think she’s dangerous. A creeping thing that knows too many secrets and keeps magic in her itty bitty fingers.” Rind poured herself out of the tunnel. Like any other insect, she ran up the wall where the passageway came out, followed by her sister and brother. They climbed the fleshy folds of the rock face, limbs clattering beneath their beetle backs. In and out and over the craggy surface they climbed, spread out to investigate at greater speed. Potato noses poked in at crevices. Claws scooped in at cracks. Dust billowed out into the black world at their backs.
“Nuthin?” Tib called.
“Nuthin,” agreed Rind and Ol in unison.
They entered another fissure and scurried out onto the walls of a new cavern. Their small weak eyes blinked. Bioluminescence coated the distant roof-space and dripped down the walls in great thick loops. Shadows roamed the walls or clustered in at the honeycombed rock. Mandibles dripped. Wing cases chaffed.
“Nasty creepy things,” whispered Tib. He pop-popped his mouth in delight.
They’d seen the one giant locust back at the circus. Landing on Herb’s private platform, it had spied the monk woman and taken to the air again. Now, the Scuttlers were hemmed in by hundreds of the creatures.
“Don’t like it,” muttered Ol.
The children backed towards one another. One of the colossal insects moved in close, its movement impeded by the keratin wing cases and hugely powerful yet overlarge back limbs. Head feathers waved at its neck frill. Cold black eyes switched focus from Rust to Ol to Tib. With the tip of its antennae, the creature felt about Ol, the child closest. The head feathers shivered and the locust returned its attention to processing some stinking matter inside its jaws.
Slowly the children unbuttoned from one another and began to move amongst the swarm. Head feathers brushed against their hoary hides; the stings did not penetrate. Integrating with the herd, the Scuttlers grew in confidence. They took to investigating the pocked rock, where hoppers raised their plated skulls and lazily looked away.
The atmosphere grew increasingly humid as they journeyed down the walls. Below were two great banks of rock and accumulated dust. Between the banks was a wide stretch of water. The surface was phenomenally smooth and shining like black ink. Steam rose up from rock pools in the banks either side. Condensation left a greasy layer over the walls.
This was a proper crawling brew, a witch cave, said Rind.
Ol was more accepting. “Nimble sucky mouths. No different to coyotes at the teat. Lovely damp air too.” She leapt down onto the nearest bank and tipped back to seesaw in her shell, buffering it in the layered dust. Locusts whirled overhead.
“Oh, oh!” cried Tib, the beam from his headlamp dancing over the flying insects like a spotlight. “They’re pretty when they fly.”
Rind, though, hadn’t quite given over her heart to the monsters. Instead she stared at a shimmering slice of rock at one end of the lake. Inside the rock moved a shadow. Tall, man-like, with a long spread of limbs.
“Listen!” she snapped.
All three hushed and listened beyond the click-clack of jaws and whir of looping flight.
“Ca-ca,” said the voice, low and resonant. “Ca-ca... Carrie-Anne.”
The crew of Cyber Circus stood on the dusty rock surface in the centre of the tent. At the heart of them stood the HawkEye and the Zen monk.
“Move it, move it!” Herb bustled through the onlookers, egg belly leading the way. He stopped abruptly in front of the intruder. Resting his hands on his hips, he rocked back onto his heels and pulled a face.
“Well, ain’t that just the butt-ugliest outfit you ever saw, folk? Mask like that? Sheesh, its gotta turn the milk sour in a clothhod’s udders. And that belt? What ya got dangling there, fella? All that dead stuff hanging about your person? Ask me, it’s unsaintly.”
The carnie folk stayed hushed. Only Herb had the nerve to bad mouth the extremist ways of the Zen brotherhood.
Herb peered at the mask, getting in close as if the more he examined the nature of the thing, the greater the chance he’d find it less despicable. “Way I understand it, you Zen monks make yourselves as hideous and death-riddled as possible so if a Saint just happens to be in the neighbourhood, they’ll judge you a worthless abomination. Now that, my fellow carnies, is self-flagellation!”
He shook his head and rocked back onto his heels. “Not one iota of it makes sense to a Saints fearing man like myself. But enough about the perverse ways of your order.” His eyes grew tight. “What the hell are you doing here inside my circus?”
The monk didn’t reply.
“Silent order.” Herb nodded. “Ain’t that friggin’ convenient.” He held out his hands to include all. “Whaddaya say, folks? Do we keelhaul him some until he learns to use his tongue, same way we chastised our chief pitch man.”
Herb gestured to Pig Heart, who stiffened at the reminder. “And he’s a fella I’ve trusted the care of my circus to for many a year.” He got in close to the mask again. “Want to start flapping those gums now, sonny?”
“He’s no sonny, Herb,” Hellequin said quietly. “You’ll trust me when I say I’ve got a way of seeing things differently and there’s a woman inside that garb.”
The Zen monk turned to the HawkEye in apparent surprise. Rather than suffer the indignity of being forced to do so, the monk removed the hideous headdress.
“You were looking for the Scuttlers? They are on an errand for me and will no doubt discover any other secrets the caverns have to offer in the process.” The woman spoke softly. Her mouth was just a little too wide, but there was sensuality in the face. And sadness to the eyes.