“Or maybe flying over a carnival in a desert in the middle of nowhere. That’d really make you curious, really make you want to go down and check it out.”
Mally’s grin held but she gave him another hard look, as if he had just said something profound, then went back to playing her own part in keeping it light. “Works for us, Jem. Never short of people dropping by.”
“So why out here?”
Mally kept her eyes on the road. “Now that’s the question. Part of it’s about words. Names for things. Where they come from. What they mean. How you say them.”
“Like Heirloom.”
“There you go. Used to be the name for an important family entitlement. Something passed on in trust. From the word for a tool, an instrument. Ask Mr F.”
“Right. And Corpse Rose?”
“What it says. Plant a rose bush on someone’s grave and you get a very strong-smelling rose. Very sweet. Beauty from corruption. A special fragrance with a hint of carrion, some say, but that’s nonsense.”
Jem considered that, then gathered his thoughts enough to ask: “Mally, why am I here?”
“Can’t say too much, Jem, but some people have a special gift they’re never aware of. The thirteen in our troupe, well, it’s our job to find these gifted ones, set up ways to bring them to us and use that gift while it’s good and strong. They enable us, see, let us do what we do.”
“And I have this gift? This power?”
“Right.” And she told him how he had been chosen all those years ago, appointed, seconded, whatever it was, making it seem casual but no doubt proceeding according to a careful script.
Jem sat smiling and nodding in the pleasant buzz of wheels on sand, sun on his face, and accepted it all. These sorts of things had to happen all the time. People just never knew.
But he made himself keep at it. “So once they’ve found someone, what do these old Heirloom Carnivals do? Apart from running away to join people.”
Mally grinned again. “Like that, do you? Well, for a start we keep some things to ourselves. We appreciate things done right, using the old traditions. There’s at least one Sly Carnival on every continent, tucked away, making do, getting by, can you believe it? Lots of friendly competition.”
“And what? They stay hidden?”
“Enough people find them.”
“You’re not telling me much.”
“Just what so many words do, Jem. Don’t tell you much. Make you go deeper. But you’ll see for yourself. Not long now.”
For the rest of the drive it was just flat horizon in every direction under a hot blue sky, long sweeps of red earth, stretches of sand and salt pan, scraps of saltbush and bluebush on what modest dunes and ridges there were. Then there was a crusting of something off to one side, a few uncertain shapes that grew to be a clustering of tents and vehicles near what might have once been a watercourse of some kind.
Mally pulled up, opened her door, and jumped out. “I’ll go find Mr Fleymann and tell him you’re here,” she said, and set off amid the tents.
Jem sat a while listening to the day, watching the spot where she had disappeared. It occurred to him vaguely that he should call his Gran and Lucy, though he felt little urgency about that. Still, he was missing from the train. When he did try Lucy’s number there was no signal, hardly surprising, so no way to check in, check facts, confirm terms like Heirloom and Corpse Rose, the rest of the world for that matter. And Mally had taken the keys. He really was cut off from everything.
Except this.
Jem didn’t like the feeling it gave him. It made him decide that, since Mally hadn’t actually told him to stay in the car, he’d take a look around. If this was all he had then he’d have it.
He opened the door and started toward the tents. As far as he could tell there were maybe ten in all, three impressively large, the size of modest family homes, the rest no larger than the average one-car garage. No real fairway running between either; it was much more haphazard than that, more a series of narrow alleys snaking between guy-lines to where some well-used caravans, a few vans, and two weathered SUVs were parked.
Jem studied the scene, listening for voices. The tents stirred in the afternoon breeze, bellying now and then so the entry flaps showed glimpses of darkness. Sand hissed against the canvas. Stays thrummed a little, but as the softest, listen-or-you’ll-miss-it sound.
It was starting to spook him, though Jem told himself that thirteen in the troupe didn’t mean they were necessarily on site. Maybe they were off in a town somewhere or sleeping out the hottest part of the day. The effect was of no-one-at-home quiet, but he sensed he was being watched all the same, that if he turned quickly enough he’d see someone before they pulled back out of sight, maybe catch them peeping out of tents.
At least Mally’s Jeep was still where she had left it. At least there was one other person besides himself.
Had been.
So where on earth was she? Going to find Mr Fleymann, she’d said. Surely no finding was involved, although, going by what she’d said about words, maybe there was.
We appreciate things done right.
Jem shook his head, worried by how easygoing, how unworried he kept feeling about all this. He’d been abducted, tricked, conned. Things were seriously wrong, though it all seemed harmless, no big deal.
And maybe they wanted him to get a sense of the place on his own, check out the different tents, see which ones he’d try. There weren’t that many. That had to be it.
Part of the package.
He moved toward the caravans, taking the alleyway with at least four tents opening onto it. They all had signage of some kind, wooden display boards above the entrance flaps, though most with words so faded he could only make out the nearest. THE WAIT, it said in bleached gold on weathered blue, which made him chuckle since that was exactly what he was doing. Still, hardly the name for your usual fairground attraction.
Maybe the Tauregs and Gipsies did better.
Jem was summoning up the nerve to enter, actually reaching to lift the flap, when Mally appeared at the entrance to the last tent in the row, the big one nearest the vehicles.
“Jem, over here! Come meet the boss!”
He waved in acknowledgment, as if he were the one who had chosen to interrupt his train journey and pay a visit. He stepped over guy-lines to the largest tent of the lot, probably the closest thing to a big top the carnival had. There was no signboard above the entrance this time.
When Jem stepped inside he saw two masts supporting the canopy, though, again, there was no sign of Mally. It was frustrating, annoying somehow — welcome feelings after the buzz of the drive out from Cook. The world was slowly becoming real again, his again. He blinked, kept allowing that he was being tricked, not seeing people who were right in front of him. The space looked completely empty but for a large display case between the masts, an old waist-high museum-style thing on four wooden legs, the size of a kitchen table, glass top and sides lit from above by a powerful spotlight that created a dazzling pool of light where it stood.
The obvious thing to do, the only thing really, was go see what it contained. Which had him smiling again. All part of the show.
The case held a model of the carnival itself, miniature versions of the tents, caravans, and vehicles, even Mally’s Jeep, showing the alleys running between, the adjacent sand flats, the tiniest tufts of scrub. The spotlight was like the blazing sun outside, and Jem could even imagine the tents stirring ever so slightly in an impossible breeze. It looked so real that it made him wonder if he’d be shown in the diorama if he stepped outside again, which meant he’d have to be out there for it to happen, of course, which meant he could never be in a position to see it. But that was the sense he got, that he’d be shown, that it was all shown in miniature here: a lizard scurrying by, a bird flying through.