These were professional fighting mans, and the fights were exciting, with lots of punching and scratching and biting, as biting was legal in professional fights. His female man watched each fight with interest. At the end of each bout, the boy would point to the winning combatant and say to her, “Oh, he’s not so tough. You could beat him, couldn’t you?”
And she would nod her agreement and fire angry punches into the air, fighting an invisible opponent.
As they were leaving, they passed the stands where the singing mans were singing, and he felt a tug on her leash. He told her, “Okay,” and she led him to the sound of music.
Onstage there was a man playing the singing harp, after that two female mans came on and played a colored flute and banged on a tinny drum, and finally three singing mans in blue appeared.
The boy and his female man leaned toward the stage to get a better look as the mans sang. Indeed, it was the three singing mans owned by the wealthy boy they had met at the field.
The one with the lidless eyes, the fattest of the trio, waved his fingers at the female man and she waved back.
As they sang, his female man shed tears and pouted.
When it was over, the boy went behind the stage to where the owners were leashing their mans after the performance.
The wealthy boy who owned the three singing mans in blue saw him and said, “They were good, weren’t they?”
“They were very good,” the boy answered.
“Has your father finished building the proper kennel yet?”
“Yes, she sleeps in it every night. She likes it a whole lot.”
He did not tell the wealthy boy that because of the cost of building the proper kennel, their meals of late had been meager and many nights he had gone to bed with an anguished stomach that grumbled.
The wealthy boy was nibbling on a meat stick as he leashed his three singing mans. The poor boy watched the meat stick, his stomach grumbling. The wealthy boy caught him eyeing the meat stick, and the poor boy turned away.
The wealthy boy said, “Here, you can have one.” He opened his sack and the poor boy saw inside, and there were meat sticks and candy rolls and sweet breads and every treat that a boy at a circus could ever want. The wealthy boy reached into the sack, withdrew a meat stick, and handed it over.
The poor boy thanked him and pushed the meat stick into his own empty sack and said, “I’ll save it for later.”
The wealthy boy passed him a sweet bread from the sack. “Friend, you’re at the circus,” he reasoned most kindly. “Eat something now.”
The poor boy tore open the sweet bread and popped a piece of it into his mouth where its softness dissolved in a sugary deliciousness on his tongue.
As they ate their circus breads, the wealthy boy and the poor watched their mans.
The one with the lidless eyes was talking to the poor boy’s female man. They listened as the man with the lidless eyes told her, “I will always be here. You never have to fear. I am your song bird forever and ever.”
“The silly things mans say,” said the wealthy boy.
“I once had a man that talked.”
“Did you really?”
“I only had him for a week. He belonged to the mayor’s wife. He was a runaway. I had to give him back. But then my father bought this one for me.”
“She’s beautiful,” the wealthy boy said. “I like her hair cloths. Where did you get them?”
“My mother made them,” the poor boy answered.
And they watched their mans and smiled with fascination when the one with the lidless eyes sang to the female man, “There is no reason to fear. I will always be here. I will always be here.”
She made a cooing sound and touched his face with the back of her hand.
“There is no reason to fear,” he sang, holding a high, beautiful note.
The wealthy boy said to the poor, “I think we’re going to have to separate them before they go at it again and we get in trouble.”
The poor boy agreed. “It’s time for us to get home anyway. Thanks for the snacks.”
The compassionate wealthy boy waved it off. “It’s nothing. You want more?”
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
And the poor boy opened his sack, and the wealthy boy dumped all of the treats from his own sack into it. They shook hands as friends.
Then they created a secret handshake that only they two would share.
The poor boy said, “I’m sorry she bit you. She doesn’t like strangers.”
“It didn’t hurt all that much. I’m sorry about what my father’s doing to you and your man, and I hope we can always be friends.”
“Friends forever and ever,” the poor boy said.
And the poor boy and his female man left the circus grounds and went home.
“In the frozen regions of the north, we hunted the mans of the snow unto near extinction. Then we began to notice that the great white beos were vanishing too — and the great northern deer, and the great white wulf. The only creature on the increase was that pest, that vermin, the great white rat. It seems that the mans of the snow kept the great white beos in check. Left to their own devices, the great white beos overhunted the great northern deer — without the deer, the great white wulvs also began to decline in number, and then the beos too, as they were eating up their entire food supply, the deer! So, we emptied our zoos and reintroduced the mans of the snow to the icy frozen regions of the north. Twenty years later, their number is again close to what it once was, and not surprisingly the great white beo, the great northern deer, and the great white wulf have returned to plenteousness. The only creature whose number has declined is the pest, the great white rat. Great nature was set in motion by a lord wiser and mightier than we. He created nature and made of it a perfect balance. And in the frozen north, the mans of the snow are important to keeping the rigid line of balance on the scales of that life system. Without balance, there is death and decay. Remove mans and the ice melts into bloody water. A world without mans is a world without us all.”
The boy nodded his head, silently mouthing the sacred speaker’s words: Perfect balance. A world without man… a world without us all.
The baby man — there was only one — was born with much wailing and pain.
She was born at night — she was, like her mother, a female man — and the boy stayed by his window peering at the candle in the window of her proper kennel until the cries of a mother’s agony were replaced by the sweeter cry of the newborn baby man.
As soon as he heard that, the boy ran outside and into the proper kennel where they all were gathered.
His mother was holding the baby female man in her arms and kissy-cooing her, and his smiling father was looking over his mother’s shoulder and kissy-cooing too. His father hadn’t mentioned anything about the cost of anything since she had gone into labor three and a half hours ago.
His father gushed, “She’s beautiful. She’s absolutely beautiful. The miracle of birth.”
“She’s beautiful like her mother, with red hair,” the boy’s mother said.
The boy pushed between them to see the tiny being in his mother’s arms. He exclaimed, “She’s got lidless eyes like the singing man and frecks all over her face like her mother!”
His female man made a weak plaintive sound in her throat and held out her arms, and the boy’s mother placed the baby in her arms, and she held her child and kissed its face and nuzzled its wisps of bright red hair. She smiled warmly as she blessed the infant’s pinkish face with kisses.
The boy and his family watched the female man and her child, and she fed her child, and a sweet sound came from its chest, and it rested its head on its mother’s chest and went to sleep.