13. Circus Charlie (12)
13. Circus Charlie (12)
Of all the months in the year, the children of Willy's Circus School in Alamo looked forward to September the most. It wasn't that they welcomed the stinging sand-winds the Nevada Wasteland spat out every autumn.
It was because every year, around this time, they traveled to the big city nearby—Vegas—and stayed for about two weeks.
They visited Vegas for one reason: the Theater District Festival. During the day, they roamed the theater streets in small groups, free and unsupervised, and at night they gathered at their lodgings, chattering about the shows they'd seen and dreaming of the day they, too, would stand on those stages.
The tickets supplied to them were the cheapest general-admission passes, which granted free entry to about half of the festival's performances. Naturally, those were mostly street stages or shows in small theaters. To see the famous, large-scale productions, they had to pay extra out of pocket.
That was unavoidable, given the school's poverty. Even their lodging in Vegas reflected it. Calling it lodging was generous—it was an old warehouse with a few dozen hammocks simply strung up inside. During the festival, accommodation prices soared so high that finding any place at all was a struggle.
Not a single child complained. They were satisfied just to watch performances they normally never got to see.
All year, they scrimped and saved every spare coin for this trip. They used that money to buy tickets to must-see shows or to purchase keepsakes that caught their eye.
Ella had saved a decent sum over the past year, mostly by herding cattle at the ranch or looking after merchants' camels—work that left her pockets pleasantly heavy.
She already had every coin accounted for. The top priority was, of course, a ticket to the main performance at the Christian Memorial Hall. It was the largest theater in Vegas and, true to its name, famous for staging Christian's works year-round—the originals, not adapted versions.
Christian's plays demanded acting, singing, and acrobatics from a single performer, so even respectable theaters rarely followed the original scripts faithfully. But here, at the Christian Memorial Hall, you could always enjoy the originals.
What was more, during the festival, the A-list actors who normally rotated through the roles all performed at once. As a devoted Christian fan, Ella had no intention of missing this chance.
"Anna, you're going to the Christian Memorial Hall too, right?"
"Of course."
Anna nodded, checking her schedule. There was no way it would be missing from the list of reports required by the Christian Guide.
"Want to go together today?"
The Guide's evaluators were encouraged to attend shows alone to remain objective. Going with company risked getting swept up in the excitement or swayed by a companion's judgment. But Anna accepted Ella's suggestion without hesitation.
Ella had the sharpest eye for performance analysis of any friend at school. Watching a show with her, Anna figured, would bring more gains than losses.
So the two of them visited the Christian Memorial Hall on the very first day of the study trip.
The marble stairs led up to a grand colonnade and a formal, rectangular roof that made the building feel less like a theater and more like a temple.
The plaza in front of the hall swarmed with people trying to buy tickets. Normally advance booking was required, but during the festival, they operated on a same-day, on-site ticketing policy.
Of course, a very select handful were exempt from that rule.
"Look over there."
"Why isn't that guy waiting in line?"
"Shows what you know. Look at his face."
"Isn't that the poet, Mr. Mull?"
People watched as a middle-aged man strode past the ticket booth and through the theater's main entrance as if he owned the place.
The poet Mull.
He was a minor celebrity in the Vegas theater district. He'd never made much of a name as a poet, but as a performance critic, his pen was famously merciless.
Lately, he'd been a contributor for Bread and Circus, where he'd earned a notorious reputation for ruthlessly savaging even the most celebrated shows.
Someone of his stature held a special membership at the Memorial, granting him unrestricted access to the theater. The rest of the public had no such privilege; they all had to queue at the ticket window.
"Buyers for two-seat, three-seat, and four-seat blocks—please send only one representative forward. ID registration will be processed after ticket purchase."
"Sounds like I can handle this alone. Anna, want to check out the exhibition hall or something while you wait?"
Anna didn't ask if she should wait in line instead. She could guess why Ella was being considerate. For a while now, people nearby had been sneaking glances at the burn scars on her face and murmuring.
"Thanks, Ella."
"Don't mention it! Just come shopping with me later."
"Shopping?"
"Yeah. If I really end up forming that circus troupe with Troupe Leader Wonderstein like I told you about, I want to give him a gift to celebrate the founding... Mmm, I just don't know what to buy."
Anna's expression tightened.
"Uh... you're still planning to run off with that guy?"
"Of course! I've got a gut feeling. He's my destiny!"
Anna felt grateful Charlie wasn't around to hear that.
"Still, nothing's been decided yet. Buying a gift already seems a bit..."
"If I buy it and it doesn't work out, I'll just give it to Charlie or something. As a graduation present."
A gift bought for another man... given to Charlie?
Anna felt truly, profoundly grateful he hadn't heard any of this.
"Fine. If that's how you feel, let's do it."
"Great. Now go, have fun! Once I get the tickets, I'll send Gudol to find you."
Anna parted ways with Ella and headed for the exhibition hall.
The Christian Memorial Hall served double duty as both theater and museum. Naturally, the exhibits centered mostly on the playwright Christian himself.
His origins, speculations about his true identity, analyses of his twelve surviving scripts, rumors of the Illusory 13th—
Anna wandered through the hall, memories surfacing of running wild through this place as a small child treating it like a playground. Then she came face-to-face with someone she'd seen earlier in front of the theater.
"I'll grant the skill of the actors here. But for a place carrying the Memorial's name, it has some embarrassing shortcomings. Take the Christian artifacts in their collection, for instance. Inferior in both quantity and quality to any nobleman's private holdings. When I was in Yeterinpurk, I once saw the genuine article that goes with a replica they have here..."
The poet Mull passed right in front of her, talking down to someone who appeared to be a staff member. He crossed into an area guarded by security without being stopped. Someone of his standing, it seemed, could come and go freely even in spaces closed to the general public.
Anna didn't care for the way he flaunted his critic's privileges. The Christian Guide used anonymous evaluators to produce the fairest reviews possible, whereas Bread and Circus loved nurturing celebrity critics. Because of that, too many of their pieces were less professional analysis and more self-indulgent rants, nitpicking or outright savaging based on personal taste.
Apprentice though she was, Anna took pride in being an evaluator for the Christian Guide.
I won't become someone like that.
She was about to continue through the exhibition hall when a commotion erupted from the restricted area Mull had just entered.
"This filthy old man, trying to sneak in here!"
Every gaze snapped toward the disturbance. Guards were restraining someone.
"Let go of me, you wretches!"
The speaker was an old man with gray hair, a black suit, a black hat, and a black cape. He flailed a cane wildly, but not a single blow connected with the guards.
He was the strangest-looking person Anna had ever seen in her life.
He was so short he barely reached her chin, yet his stomach bulged out like a great ball. His arms and legs, by contrast, were long and spindly against his torso.
His mouth stretched ear to ear in a permanent gash, and the teeth that flashed within were each needle-sharp. But most striking of all was his nose—pointed and hooked like a bird's beak, it seemed three times as long as any normal person's.
The guards, perhaps self-conscious under the crowd's stare, set him back down on the floor.
That was when Anna realized he was a hunchback. A lump the size of a human head jutted from his back.
"You bastards! I won't take this humiliation lying down!"
Freed from the guards' grip, the old man flew into a rage and charged again. He swung his cane at a guard's shin. The attack wasn't particularly forceful, but it was enough to kindle the man's temper.
"Why, you—!"
The guard hoisted him up and slammed him to the floor. He let out a strangled screech.
"Gahk! You dog!"
Sprawled on the ground, the hunchbacked old man tried to rise and counterattack. But his hump kept him from righting himself; he could only thrash like an overturned turtle. The guard smirked at the sight and gave him a kick. His body went spinning across the floor like a top.
The onlookers burst out laughing. They'd pitied him at first, but after he attacked the guard, they'd decided it was his just deserts and happily joined in the mockery.
Anna couldn't just watch. Years of cold stares because of her burn scars left her feeling a sharp kinship with him.
She helped the old man to his feet and straightened his disheveled clothes.
"Are you all right?"
"Hrn. A kind young lady. Thank you, thank you. But it was unnecessary. Scorn, ridicule, a laughingstock... I satisfied him, in any case."
"Him?"
Who was he talking about?
She raised her head and scanned the room, her gaze quickly fixing on the restricted area. There stood the poet Mull, snickering as he watched the scene.
Anna's mood curdled.
"Sir, get up. Let's get out of here."
Anna supported the old man and steered him away. Fortunately, the guards didn't try to harass him any further.
Once they'd moved to a different exhibition hall, she took another close look at him. He seemed to have escaped serious injury. Hunched and short as he was, his build was quite robust.
"Thank you, miss. How am I ever to repay this kindness...?"
"Kindness, nothing. I just couldn't walk past. What happened?"
"I tried to cross over without realizing it was a restricted area, and those brutes grabbed me straight off. But how was it earlier? My spinning-top act? Entertaining?"
The old man cleared his throat and deliberately put on a cheerful laugh. Anna couldn't help but inwardly admire the way he'd turned his own affliction into a joke. The sight of him smiling after such treatment struck her as genuinely good-humored.
Just then, he spotted something over her shoulder and clicked his tongue.
"Wrong. Tsk, tsk."
Following his gaze, Anna found a statue standing nearby.
The room they'd entered was for sculptures—works by artists inspired by Christian's plays, recreating scenes from the dramas.
The one the old man was looking at was among them.
The Life and Suffering of Saint Victor.
Like other playwrights, Christian had written one religious script. The sculpture before her depicted a scene from it.
It was the moment Saint Victor drove the Sacred Stake into the Plague Lord. The precise method varied from one religious painting to the next, but in Christian's play, it was staged with Victor personally wielding hammer and nail.
The old man eyed the nails driven into the Plague Lord's forehead and heart and shook his head.
"It was the neck where Victor drove them in. Two, one on each side."
He murmured to himself, stroking both sides of his own neck as if he'd felt the spikes himself. Eccentric as he seemed, he clearly had a keen interest in this field.
Anna smiled, pleased to meet a kindred spirit, and introduced herself.
"What is your name, sir? I'm Anna. I dream of becoming a performance critic."
"My name," he said, his sharp teeth glinting as he spoke, "is Igor."
"Leader of the Monster Circus Troupe."