Completely encased in the world’s most costly dung, Kitty found it difficult to breathe. She tried to work her hands up to cover her face, forced herself to keep her breakfast down in her stomach where it belonged. But before she could stop herself, she found her brain rejecting any chance at hope and began thinking, This is how it ends, smothered in a casket made of horseshit.
And then she felt herself being lifted. Felt herself being moved roughly through the air. And then she was dropping, rapidly, that plunging sensation erupting in her stomach and her temples.
She hit the water hard and the outer layer of filth was instantly washed away. The falling feeling was replaced by a sense of drifting, an almost peaceful languidness. She began to dig with her hands, used them like claws, tearing away the pasty crap above her eyes, shaking her head to dislodge the turban of scheisse.
Her mouth and nose sealed, she floated downward for a while, though her sense of time had been obliterated by trauma. She came to a stop suddenly and lay a second before the panic ignited. And then she was flailing. Her body was writhing, twisting, shaking, her arms and legs trying to thrash and kick. She opened her eyes, could see almost nothing, a pale shaft of light corrupted by free-floating clods and particles swirling away from her frantic dance.
And then even the light was gone. And she felt herself grabbed anew, manhandled and lifted up again. Felt other hands, bigger hands, wiping at her head, her face. She turned and saw the strongman, cheeks puffed out with captive air. Bruno knocked away the last of the clinging dung from Kitty’s face, pulled her into his arms and began to ascend.
They broke into the air, both of them gagging. Bruno seemed unsteady, his eyes overlarge and bulging a bit.
“Can you tread?” he asked and when Kitty nodded, he released her at once, took a huge breath and dove out of sight.
Kitty knew she was close to shock but she pedaled her feet and scrubbed at her face and neck with salt water and scratched with fingernails. From the deck of The Touya, crewmen threw shitballs, but managed only to pock the water around her. They yelled vengeful obscenities, but Kitty couldn’t hear them anymore.
Bruno was gone for what seemed like hours, maybe days. Kitty was woozy. She had to remind herself to work her legs and feet. Her head lolled and bobbed and she thought she heard Ringmaster Bluett calling her to perform.
When Bruno finally popped up again, he was alone. He heaved several times, got hit in the back of the head with a ball of shit, and said, “I can’t find him.”
Kitty moved her arms, propelled herself into the strongman’s chest, then, without a word, she put a hand on the top of Bruno’s skull and used the last of her strength to press down on that massive, shitstained cranium.
Bruno stared at her and after a moment, said, “Once more. That’s all I can do.”
Kitty just stared back as Bruno filled his lungs and pitched himself down once again.
This time, he seemed to be gone weeks, perhaps months. But this time, when he broke the surface, he had the chicken boy in his arms. Chick was unconscious but not quaking — the seizure had ended. His feathers, even wet, were black and tarry with horse manure.
Bruno didn’t speak. He turned his back to Kitty, who took a moment to understand that she was to climb on and wrap her tiny arms around the strongman’s neck. When she had positioned herself, Bruno shifted Chick to keep the boy’s face in the air, then began swimming.
The last thing they heard from The Touya was a single curse—Miss-geburten—in the horrible new voice of Captain Gunter.
IT WAS A LONG, painful trek into shore, and several times Bruno thought his absurd trio would go under. But the waves and the currents were with them, and when Bruno washed into Gehenna for the last time, the others were waiting. The clan was whole and again united.
Somehow, Aziz had managed to start a fire. Fatos was awake and lying next to the flames. Milena was still naked but the sarcasm had returned, fully intact.
“Smells,” s/he said, “like we’re home.”
Durga took Kitty off of Bruno’s back and proceeded at once to wash the dwarf in the surf. But it was Bruno himself, the new patriarch, who insisted on tending to Chick. Years later, the twins would say that this was the moment when the bond between the strongman and the chicken boy was first forged.
Bruno laid Chick on the beach, cradled Chick’s head with his massive hands, put an ear to the boy’s chest to confirm the heartbeat, and put mouth to beak to assist the struggling lungs. In seconds, the chicken boy heaved the last of the Limbo bile and a gallon of seawater into Bruno’s lap. And then he awoke, looked up into Bruno’s face, and said, “I knew you would save us.”
Upon hearing Chick’s voice, Kitty broke away from Durga and ran to her love. There were tears of both rage and joy then, from every eye in the troupe.
Sometime later, they all fell asleep and dreamed, restlessly, through the remainder of that day, huddled together near the warmth of the fire, like infant creatures in a cold and fearful new world.
6
Over the last year, Dr. Peck had become devoted to the sherry. It was a Manzanilla and had been shipped to the Clinic straight from Spain by Mr. Moore, the husband of the patient in 103. Peck had found it an odd choice for a Christmas gift and, upon sampling the first bottle, decided it was too pungent for his taste. He’d thought about giving the whole case to the housekeeper but Alice had discouraged him and, upon further consideration, Peck had come to agree with his daughter. Such a gesture would have been inappropriate. But in the end, after several more samplings, the doctor had grown accustomed to and, ultimately, quite fond of the wine.
Now he swirled it in his grandmother’s antique copita, as he climbed up the brief curve of stairwell that led to the tiny cupola above his study. This was where he learned to appreciate the Manzanilla, sitting under the low, copper-domed roof after a night of reading. The little round room was sealed but fitted floor-to-ceiling with glass, like a lighthouse, and on full moon nights, Peck loved the way the rays lit up the amber tinge of his wine. The room appeared designed for children, two, perhaps three of them at most, and Peck had spent a large percentage of his childhood here. The space limitation always produced a calming effect on the doctor. He liked to lounge on the narrow window seat and look down over the grounds of the Clinic as if gazing out on a vast sea. On a windy night, the pines that spread out across his acreage rippled like a black ocean. And when he spent enough time staring at the patterns of the waves, he sometimes reached a state of higher thinking, that realm in which the breakthroughs could come.
Tonight, as he sipped and brooded, Dr. Peck was thinking about his newest patient, Daniel Sweeney. It looked like Ohio was right. Everything indicated that the boy would be a premier candidate for arousal. Aside from the immediate area of brain trauma, he was young and strong and healthy. And the father, the pharmacist, was the perfect profile — devoted and unstable, desperate and drowning in guilt. The man was pliable and would be easily convinced. The trick was always to give them more hope than information. If you overwhelmed the families with the realities of procedure, you only confused them. Confusion led, inexorably, into fear. And though fear, on occasion, could be used as a persuasive tool, the more frightened the loved ones, the harder they were to control.
Everything requires balance, as the universe chronically reminds. The doctor needs to sense when to be authoritarian and when to be sympathetic. When to offer possibility and when to pull it away. When to be available but silent, and when to be absent but hovering as an unseen presence in the wardroom. The ghost with the only solution. The redeemer with magic scalpel and syringe.