Annie slid down the side of the bowl that contained the town, nearly toppling end over end in her hurry to reach the settlement and the distant flames that engulfed the bright oilcloth tents of her home. As she got closer, two things became clear: that the boneyard was essentially untouched, far enough back from the fire as to have been spared, and that the damage was almost entirely confined to the attractions around the rim of the show. The tents must have gone up like candles, primed to the slightest touch of flame, but the wagons, the games of skill and chance, those were still largely intact.
Her feet found the flat ground of the bowl’s bottom. She stumbled, once, from the sheer change in her situation. Then she broke into a run, heading as fast as she could for the show. People were running in the opposite direction, townies fleeing from the fire. Annie hated them. She was not a woman much inclined to hatred, but in that moment, she hated them all the way down to the bottom of her soul. She would have thrown every damn one of them to the oddities, and let the godforsaken creatures of the American West decide their fates. She did not think any of those fates would be kind.
The closer she drew to the circus, the more of her own people she saw. They were everywhere, racing around with buckets of water and of dirt, throwing them on the flames. Annie ran past them all, heading for the wagon of oddities. The question of Adeline still loomed large in her mind, but it was no longer the only dilemma she faced. The oddities. The freaks. Tranquility. They were all her responsibility, as much as Adeline was, and she had left them alone. She had turned her back on them.
The smell of ash and charred oilcloth hung heavy in the air, an accusing perfume. Annie ran faster still, until she rounded the tent where the dancing girls shimmied and swayed on better nights, and beheld the dreaded spectacle of the wagon of oddities, burning.
It was not engulfed in flame: the fire was confined to the roof, where it crackled to itself as it consumed the mossy shingles. Annie grabbed the bucket of water she kept next to the wheel for the use of thirsty dogs and horses, swinging it as hard as she could toward the fire. The wave landed with a loud splash, and the fire died back, not going out, but dying down enough that she felt safe running for the door and yanking it open.
Inside, cacophony. The animals that could make a sound were, roaring and hissing and rattling around inside their cages, anxious to be free. Tranquility’s snarls were anything but tranquil, shattering the air in loud trills, like the revving of a chainsaw. Annie rushed across the wagon and opened the latch on Tranquility’s cage, allowing the lynx to rush out.
She did not look back as she ran down the length of the wagon and leapt through the open door. Annie could only hope that she wouldn’t go too far. The townsfolk were understandably upset by their current circumstances. Adding a panicked lynx to the scene might be a step too far and result in bloodshed.
Backtracking to Oscar’s tank, Annie scooped out a healthy bucket of water. The great white catfish watched her warily from his place on the bottom, whiskers twitching.
“I would free you if I could,” she said, and ran back outside, adding her second bucket’s contents to the first.
It took four trips, and four buckets of stolen water, before the flames were out. Oscar’s tank was more than half-empty, leaving the great cat’ pressed against the bottom, half-hidden in the silt. Annie dropped the bucket and sank to rest her hands on her knees, struggling to breathe. It felt as if all the wind had been sucked out of her, extinguished along with the flames.
All over the circus, similar scenes were playing out. She could see a good few of them, people beating out fires with sheets of canvas or with their bare hands. Circus orphans swarmed from place to place, straining under the weight of the buckets they carried. She saw no townies moving through the chaos. They had their own problems, presumably, and no sympathy to spare for strangers.
But there had been no flames that she could see in the town proper. All the damage was to the circus.
“Annie!”
The voice was Mr. Blackstone’s. She straightened up, wincing as her strained shoulders expressed their displeasure, and turned. The normally dapper ringmaster was running toward her, smudges of ash and char on his formerly immaculate shirtfront. He looked like a man on the verge of absolute collapse.
He ran until he reached her. Then he seized her, drawing her into an embrace before she had a chance to protest.
“I was so afraid that you’d been taken!” he exclaimed, his voice right up against her ear, closer than any man’s voice had been in years. “Annie, Annie, where have you been?”
“Adeline,” she replied, and pulled away, moving so that she could see his face. “Some of the children from the town tricked her into going into the woods to fetch them a pinecone, of all things. I went to bring her back again. I got … I was turned around in the trees. The darkness there is … it’s very dark, in the trees. When I stumbled out, the circus was in flames. What happened? Has anyone been hurt?”
“You weren’t here.” He sounded almost amazed, like he couldn’t believe his own luck. “You missed the whole thing.”
Annie opened her mouth, ready to tell him about the dead body, about the sound of snarls in the wood. Then she stopped, and frowned, and looked at him. Really looked at him, not just at the idea of him, the phantom friend who haunted her memories.
Mr. Blackstone’s skin wasn’t merely covered with ash; it was ashen, like all the blood had been removed from the flesh behind it, turning him into an empty tent waiting for the show to begin. The wax on his mustache had trapped a remarkable amount of char, turning that great black display piece gray as old charcoal. A ring of red showed all around the whites of his eyes, a sign of strain and terror. It was like he had forgotten how to blink.
“Nathanial,” she said, touching his hand. He started, although whether from the contact or the rare use of his given name, she couldn’t possibly have said. “What happened? I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I can’t stay. I have to find Delly. But what happened?”
“Things.” The word, which should have seemed vague, was so laden with meaning and with dread that Annie had to fight against the urge to take a step backward, away from the man who spoke it.
Nathanial’s hand suddenly moved, grabbing hers and holding it so tight that it hurt a little. Annie went very still. She had promised herself, after leaving Deseret, that no man would ever hurt her again. The only thing that kept her from slapping his face and running was the fact that when Michael had hurt her, he had done it to remind her that she was his property. He had done it on purpose. Nathanial didn’t even know that he was causing her pain. He was a man on the verge of falling off the world, and he was holding on for dear life.
“Things from the woods,” he said. His voice shook. “They came … they came out of the trees. I was in the tent. I didn’t see until they had already descended into the bowl.” Because this wasn’t a valley, not really; it was too shallow. It was a killing ground.
Why hadn’t they seen that before? They should have looked upon The Clearing and seen it for the honey trap that it was. Not a natural valley. Anything herded into it wouldn’t be able to get out. They would be trapped. They would be lost.
Annie shook her head, chasing the thought away. It was the delusional raving of the panicked mind, of a mother with a missing child, standing in the body of her burning home. She needed to be rational now. For Adeline’s sake, and for her own.
“What sort of things?” she asked.
Nathanial shook his head. “I didn’t see them,” he said. “There was a great tearing sound, and a smashing, and when I made it out of the tent—through the panicking bodies of the townies, who were already fleeing toward their houses—they were already gone. As were at least seven of our people.”
Annie gasped. “Who…?”
“Sophia, the seamstress’s girl. Piotr and Patrick, from the knife-throwing act. Three of the roustabouts. And one of the newer orphans, the towheaded boy from the last town.” His lips drew downward, ashy mustache bristling. “His parents told him to run away with the circus for his own safety, for a full belly and a trade. How can we ever go back there now, with him missing in this godforsaken land?”
“Things in the woods,” she said faintly, her brain finally catching up to the situation. She let go of Nathanial’s hand, taking a step backward. “Adeline is still out there. I have to find her. She must be so afraid—”
“Half a dozen of the wagons have been damaged, and that was before the fire,” said Nathanial. “We couldn’t leave here if we wanted to. We’re trapped until the wainwrights can repair them. There’s no shortage of lumber, but…”
“Why are you standing here with me?” Annie buried her hands in the skirt of her dress, hiding them from view. She didn’t want him to see her ball them into fists. She had nothing to hit, but oh, the urge to swing was strong. “The circus is in flames. Your people need you.”
“The flames are under control. The townies have been evacuated back to their safe streets; the creatures from the woods are gone. I thought you were gone as well.” He allowed himself the sliver of a smile. It barely reached his eyes and did nothing to lessen the strain in his face. “I am allowed a moment’s rest and relief before I lurch into the next crisis.”
“Nathanial…” She paused. “Never mind. I can’t stay here. I only came because I saw the fire.”
There was a shout off to the left. Both of them turned, tensing, only to relax as Tranquility came pacing out of the shadows. The big cat’s head was down, and her short tail was lashing side to side with a force that would have been terrifying from one of her wild cousins. She continued forward until she reached Annie’s side and buried her face in her mistress’s skirts, pressing it against her leg.
“Shhh, Tranquility, shhh,” said Annie, bending slightly to scratch the lynx behind the ears. “You’re a good girl. You did well, coming back to find me.”
“And without a train of angry townies calling her the monster that brought this down upon them,” said Nathanial. “If anything is the miracle here, it’s that. Annie, I’m not comfortable with you walking alone into the woods. You should stay here, at least until morning. Go when the sun is in the sky, when you can see where you’re going.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” she said. “Adeline is out there. She needs me.”
“I need you.”
“I am her mother, sir,” said Annie, her voice like the cracking of a whip. “She has no one in this world if she does not have me, and I do her no good by standing here and continuing to argue my case with you, who has no authority over my actions.”
“I run this circus.”
“Then leave us behind when you go. Leave us to make our own way in the world. Find someone else to tend the oddities, if that’s what you require. But I will find my daughter. I will bring her safely home, even if home is no longer ours to claim.”
Nathanial seemed to wilt. He was still one of the tallest men she had ever known, even with his shoulders slumped and his spine stooped, but he lacked the authority that he had always commanded. He was just a man, tired and charred and frightened.
“Will you at least take someone with you?”
“Not you, sir,” she said calmly. He flinched. She continued, “The circus needs you as Adeline needs me. If you would wish to come with us, under better circumstances, that’s something we can discuss later.”
“That’s something we’ve needed to discuss for a while,” he said.
“Maybe so. But I will not take you into the woods now.”
“I’ll go,” said a voice.
Annie and Nathanial both turned, Annie stumbling slightly as the motion brought her into contact with Tranquility’s head, still buried against her leg in a bid for comfort. Martin was walking up on them. His shirt was torn, the edges of the slash red with blood. His hair was wild. His eyes were wilder, filled with the shadows of silent screams.
“I will go with you,” he said. “Those … things, whatever they are, took my Sophia.”
“Martin, you’re hurt,” said Annie.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. She screamed. I was beating out the fire on a roustabout wagon, and she … she screamed, and I didn’t get to her in time. I never asked for her hand. We’d talked about it, a little, but I hadn’t asked. If she dies…” His voice broke. “If she dies out there, she dies a spoiled woman, and it’s my fault.”
“Women are never spoilt,” said Annie firmly. “We can get dirty at times, but that’s our choice as much as the choice of the men around us. We are not pots of cream, to go bad simply because our lids have been removed. Of course you may accompany me to the wood. We’ll go now.”
Tranquility made a deep chuffing noise in her throat. Annie sighed and smoothed the lynx’s ears.
“Tranquility will come as well,” she said.
“Please,” said Nathanial. He stepped toward her, grabbing her shoulders this time, making it impossible for her to pull away without physically shaking him off. “Be safe. Come home.”
“Not without my daughter,” Annie said gently. She didn’t move, waiting until he lowered his hands and stepped back before she smiled and touched his cheek. There was nothing of joy in her expression. It was the smile of a woman who knew the sky was falling and was willing to stand in the open and let it rain down on her head if that was what the world required. “But I will come back to you, if the world allows.”
She turned then, retrieving her lantern from the ground before walking toward the trail that would take her back to the edge of the bowl. Tranquility paced by her side, and Martin hurried to catch up. She gave him a sidelong look. He had a rifle in one hand, leaning against his shoulder with the muzzle turned toward the sky. His face was a grim mask under his concealing layer of ash. He looked like a man marching off to war, unsure whether he would return, unable to care for his own safety. It was of the least importance in this moment.
The sound of shouts still rang from the circus behind them, lacking the urgency of the earlier screaming, but pained all the same. Annie couldn’t help wondering how they must look in that moment, turning their backs on the people who should have been a part of their family. The circus needed them, and they were walking away.
I must find my daughter, she thought, and she did not look back.
When they reached the sloping footpath up to the road, Annie took the lead, scrambling up the hillside despite the rocks that turned under her feet, threatening to dump her back to the bottom. Tranquility was close behind her, at least in the beginning. After only a few feet, the big cat struck out on her own, walking effortlessly up the side of the bowl. She was a desert creature, as unsuited to these woods as her mistress, but the desert was a land of buttes and towering stone as much as it was sand. Nature had equipped her well to survive in that environment.
“Your cat’s leaving,” said Martin, watching Tranquility scramble out of sight over the lip of the bowl.
“She won’t go far,” said Annie with a confidence she didn’t feel but couldn’t stop herself from projecting. So much in her life was pretense. Always had been. “She knows she’s to stay close to me, unless she wants a scolding.”
“Don’t know if I could scold something with that many teeth, ma’am.”
“You get used to it.”
They trudged on in silence for a few feet more before Martin said, “I heard you tell Mr. Blackstone that you were going to look for little Delly. Is she really missing, ma’am?”
“Yes,” she said. “Some of the local boys convinced her to go into the woods and she hasn’t returned. I’m worried for her. So I’m going to bring her home.” She didn’t mention the body, or the sounds in the trees, or the way the darkness had seemed to hold its breath and follow her, dogging her footsteps like a living thing. He would see many of those things soon enough, and nothing she said was going to make him change his mind and go back. He needed to find Sophia as much as she needed to find Adeline. People with something to die for were surprisingly difficult to dissuade.
Tranquility’s head appeared over the edge of the bowl, her ears flat and her lips drawn back in an expression of curiosity that many would have taken for a snarl. Annie forced a smile.
“It’s all right, pet,” she said soothingly. “We’re slow and plodding things, humans are, but we’re coming for you. It’s all right.”
“How much does she understand you?” asked Martin.
“Are you wondering whether she’ll attack you?”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” he said reluctantly.
“If you harm her, or me, or Adeline, she’ll have your throat out so quickly that you won’t have time to suffer,” said Annie.
From the look on Martin’s face, he didn’t find this very reassuring.
She grabbed a dangling root, using it to pull herself the rest of the way up the side of the bowl. Tranquility backed up as her mistress stepped onto solid ground and straightened, dusting her hand against her skirt. She turned to offer that same hand to Martin, pulling him the last few feet.
“There,” she said, letting him go. “Come. They’re waiting for us.”
They turned toward the trees, and stopped.
The darkness had not receded any with the passage of time or with the flames from below: if anything, it had deepened, pooling between the trees like thick syrup, black and deadly, imbued somehow with a terrible independence of purpose and thought. It was impossible to look upon that darkness and not feel as though they were being somehow watched.
Martin took a step backward. Tranquility flattened her ears and growled deep in her throat, giving the lie to her name. Annie reached down and rested a hand between the lynx’s shoulders, trying to lend her some comfort. Tranquility stopped growling but did not relax. If anything, she tensed further under her mistress’s hand, like she was suddenly aware of the fact that she had something to protect.
“This isn’t right,” muttered Martin.
“From your lips to God’s ears,” said Annie. She turned to look at the man. His face was a pale shadow in the flickering light from her lantern. “Did you see the thing that hurt you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, not even in your house of horrors—begging your pardon, ma’am, I don’t mean to speak ill of what you’ve made. It’s just there’s some things under your roof could make a good man fear the Devil.”
“They make each other fear the Devil, too,” said Annie. “What was it?”
“I thought a bear, at first. It was big enough to be a bear, big enough to be the King of All Bears, if it wanted to be. But it was too fast, and too hairy, and I ain’t never heard of a bear that had teeth like those. It was like…” He didn’t shudder. Instead, he did the opposite, freezing from tip to toe, until he didn’t even appear to be breathing.
Finally, he said, “Those fish you have. The red ones, with all the teeth. It was like the thing wasn’t the King of Bears. It was the King of Fish. Fish that shouldn’t be. When it opened its mouth, it wasn’t anything but teeth. It wasn’t even the idea of anything aside from teeth. Just teeth, and teeth, and teeth, forever.”
“Your shirt?” asked Annie gently. They needed to be moving: every word he said only made her more certain that Adeline was in terrible danger. But moving in ignorance was even worse than standing still. If he was talking, she was going to let him, until there was nothing left for him to say. She needed to know.
“Claws.” He looked down at his torn and bloodied shirt like he was seeing it for the first time. Perhaps he was: it was sometimes easy to overlook small injuries in the face of great disasters. “They had claws, too. They just … the claws seemed to matter less, because the claws belonged. You see something big and shaggy and terrible, of course it’s got claws. Of course it has a way to rend the world. It’s the teeth that shouldn’t be. Nothing needs that many teeth. Not in the natural world.”
“I see.” Something with that many teeth would use them whenever possible: would be an appetite walking, equipped by some ungodly hand to devour the world.
Annie was well-acquainted with the ways of ungodly hands. It had been her treatment at her husband’s hands—so pious and so profane at the same time—that had led her to care so well for her oddities, which were at least natural, if terrible. They had been born, not made. Whatever this thing in the woods was, this paragon of teeth and hunger, it was natural. It was just a larger oddity, and however terrible she found it, she was well acquainted with its kind.
“If it has not devoured her already, she is waiting for us somewhere in these trees,” she said. “If she has been devoured, you owe it to her to avenge her.”
Martin paled. “How can you…”
“Because the same things are true of my daughter. She is lost. Somewhere in this wood, she is lost. It is down to me to find her and bring her home. Living or dead, I will bring her home.” She looked steadily at Martin. “Are you prepared to walk with me?”
He took a deep, shaking breath before he said, “I wouldn’t have come this far if I weren’t, ma’am.”
“Excellent,” she said. “We proceed.”
Hand still resting on Tranquility’s back, she started forward, into the syrupy darkness clinging to the trees. Martin followed, half a step behind, his gun resting against his shoulder, ready to fire.
The night opened its terrible jaws and swallowed them whole, leaving no sign that either of them had ever been there at all.