The horrible anticipation of feeling the beast’s teeth had set every nerve on edge, so even when it didn’t come Jo opened her eyes expecting the worst. But there was no more roaring maw of fangs, nor the creature that they belonged to.
Instead she found herself staring at a very petulant-looking Bex, his arms crossed and those odd stripes on his face gone so completely that she might have imagined them. He was frowning at Jo as if she’d ruined a rather fun game.
Both confused and hugely relieved that the cat-beast had vanished, Jo cautioned a look behind her. She was hoping that the man with the yellow eyes had also disappeared, but none such luck. He was standing just where he had been, and still wearing that inviting grin, but now something like real glee shone through.
He caught Jo eyeing him and chuckled, a sound that was just as dark and venomous as his voice. His next words were barely above a whisper.
“Oh I doubt you’ll be able to stomach it, girl.”
Jo turned away again, not wanting him to read her fear. The relief at not having been killed by some monstrous cat in this office had been swiftly replaced by a single worried thought: What if that death by mauling had been the better option? No, she refused to board that train of thought. She clenched both hands into fists and squared up to the yellow-eyed man, instead.
“I can stomach more than you might think,” she spat at him. “And what about my horse?”
He blinked, smile fading slightly. Jo thought she saw a flash of surprise there, but it could have been irritation. His voice revealed nothing as he leaned forward until their noses were mere inches apart. “Finders, keepers.”
It was outrageous, childish even, and Jo would have told him as much had he not suddenly shoved past her to whisper something into Bex’s ear. Bex nodded, and the yellow-eyed man left the room without another word.
“The Ringmaster says I’m to give you a ticket,” Bex told her after a moment’s pause. “Follow me.”
Jo had a million questions, but Bex didn’t exactly seem like the type to entertain any of them. She tried to focus purely on the fact that she was alive. Alive might be the bare minimum, but it meant she had a chance at getting out of this. She would wait and watch and try to work out a way to get her and Tumble out of this strange place.
Since she wasn’t being pulled along by the throat this time, she tried to memorize as much as she could about the path Bex led her down. From the office they had turned left, back the way she’d come, but then they went through a door on the right that opened into a high-ceilinged corridor with all sorts of strange mechanical things along one side of it.
One looked like a pulley system, and another a giant crank, but the rest might as well have been from another planet for all the sense they made. From there a set of double doors brought them to a violently yellow room with a mirrored wall and a large hanging hoop. Beyond that, a smaller hall lined with red doors. Then a blue room with a few racks of brightly-colored clothes and a table full of objects that would have all been at home in a child’s playroom.
Jo lost track after that, as their route might as well have been a maze. They passed endless brightly colored rooms and doors and halls of all shapes and sizes. Exhaustion had set in and her chills had returned by the time they finally stopped for Bex to knock at yet another door. She heard movement from the other side of it, but nobody answered. Bex knocked again, harder this time.
“What!” Someone shouted through the door.
“Bex here, got something important for you to take care of!”
The door was yanked open and a man with curly graying hair glared out at them. His cheeks were flushed and his voice sullen. “What is it?”
Bex stepped aside with a flourish, indicating Jo. “We have a guest staying with us til Kaamos. Ringmaster’s orders. I was told to bring her to you, so that you might find some use for her in the meantime.” He had fallen back into his bored, impassive tone. “This is Merrick,” he said to Jo. “I don’t recommend straying from his sight.”
She shivered harder than ever but said nothing. Bex nodded as if everyone was in agreement and disappeared down the hall. Jo was starting to feel a little surreal again, as if her being handed off from person to person in this labyrinthine building was just part of a fever-dream.
Merrick frowned after Bex’s back, looking seriously put-upon. He looked at her, sighed, and stepped back to open the door wider. When Jo made no move to enter he beckoned her in. She reluctantly obeyed.
“You’re either very lucky, or very unlucky,” Merrick mused. “People kill for entry to Kaamos. I shudder to think what they’d do for a look behind the curtain before showtime.”
Jo was only half-listening, distracted by the state of the room. It was small and sparsely furnished, but every inch in disarray. Against the far wall, heaps of clothes and empty bottles nearly covered a bed that would have looked perfectly at home in a hospital room, and close to the door a starkly contrasted set of ritzy lounge seats and matching table were piled high with dirty dishes.
Stains and cigarette burns covered every visible piece of fabric, and cigarette butts were everywhere- on dishes, in bottles, in between the cushions of the seats; they were stuffed into any place big enough to fit them. Bottles and broken glass covered so much of the floor that walking there barefoot would have been nearly impossible.
“Sit,” Merrick instructed, unceremoniously sweeping the mess on one of the chairs onto the floor. Something shattered. He picked up a bottle from the table, peered inside it, and tossed it aside. Jo sat, trying to keep the disgust off her face.
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He moved a stack of dirty, cigarette-ash-covered plates and sat on the table. “So what brought you to Kaamos?”
“I… I don’t,” Jo’s teeth clattered shut through another set of wracking chills. “Know what that… is.”
Merrick raised his eyebrows, then seemed to notice the state of her. “Hells, you’re freezing. You look like death.”
A strangled laugh was all Jo managed through the shivers. She was thankful this guy seemed at least somewhat sane, the state of his room notwithstanding. Her mind was spinning in sleepy confusing loops.
“Get by the stove,” he demanded, pointing to indicate the squat, ashy wood stove in the corner. Jo didn’t need to be told twice. She picked her way through the mess as carefully as she could and then kneeled on the hearth —this, at least, had been swept clean— and shrugged the borrowed coat off to let the heat hit her back.
It almost hurt to feel direct heat on all those frozen muscles. Everything tingled as blood flow returned, but even the ensuing cramps were better than the aching cold of the past few days. She realized after a while that she’d been crouched there with her eyes closed.
Merrick was still sitting on his table, apparently unbothered by her intrusion and subsequent silence. His dark eyes were gentle, at odds with the grizzled stubble and tired face. Jo found herself groggily thinking that in his youth he had probably been handsome, or if not quite handsome than charming at the very least.
“Sorry,” she said into the silence. “I… I’ve been outside awhile. Pretty cold.” Understatement of the century, Jo thought, and Merrick’s raised eyebrow suggested that he silently agreed.
“What brings you to Kaamos?” He asked.
“I’ll be honest, I’ve no idea what that is. Everyone keeps saying it so I guess it’s important but – forgive me, I’m not from anywhere near the wastes— I was just following my stupid boy… Fiance… on some stupid attempt to-”
Merrick had shook his head and raised his hands to interject. Not aggressively, but firmly enough to draw her up short. “Word of advice, fortuije, try not to give away too much of your life story to people around here.”
Jo would have asked what he had called her, had circumstances been different, but something in his tone assured her it wasn’t an insult, so she nodded instead and started again:
“I got lost. What the hell is Kaamos?”
Merrick smiled uncertainty, as if waiting for the punchline of a joke. When Jo didn’t laugh or go on, his smile turned to a look of shock and… Something else. Fear? Pity? It was hard to say.
“Not so lucky, then.” He sighed in real distress, running a hand down his face to rest on his chin. “Kid… Kaamos is the biggest show of the year for us. Have… Have you heard of Umbra? The… The shadow-show? Cirque North?”
A long-buried memory floated to the surface and Jo narrowed her eyes. “The… Wait. My friend’s father used to tell us as kids about his frontiersman days… A circus in the polar circle… Except, he said it was a myth. That only fools went searching for it and half as many as left ever returned. Said… said it was supposed to be run by fiends and ghosts. That it… Ate souls.”
Child-fear flared up in her then, despite her disbelief in all of that. There was something about ghost stories you heard as a kid that always got your hackles up even as an adult. Thankfully, Merrick threw back his head at this and laughed. It transformed him, turning his tired face into a mask of joy. It was a deep, contagious belly-laugh that had Jo grinning in spite of herself.
“Eats souls? Damn, our reputation is worse than even Zephyr believes!” He snorted and laughed again. “Yes, I suppose you technically have heard of us, in that case, though I feel responsible to warn you it’s nothing so exciting as a ghost show! My, that would be something…” He trailed off, staring at the ceiling.
“I thought it was a wives’ tale told around frontier fires,” Jo admitted sheepishly.
“It certainly is, in your case,” Merrick said. “We pride ourselves on being the biggest, baddest spectacle known to man. We amaze and delight, we terrify and entrance… But we don’t eat souls, I’m afraid.”
“But you are a circus?”
“Oh yes. And not one I’d suggest anyone try to bring children or the faint-at-heart to. In fact, I don’t believe you should even be here. Forgive me saying so but most of our guests do tend to be men, and the women who do want to see us badly enough to make it here are, er, not the kind you’d want to meet.”
“I thought circuses were for kids, and families?”
Merrick’s expression turned stony. “Not this one.” He turned around and dug through the mess on the table till he found a bottle with a thumb’s width of amber liquid in the bottom. Draining that in one go, he took a deep breath and looked at Jo once more. “Our type of entertainment is geared mostly towards the hardiest, toughest frontiersmen. You must understand and remember that.”
“I was at the edge of the wastes with a frontiering group myself,” Jo said. Merrick shook his head again.
“Stop with the stories. Please. I don’t want to know. Keep that stuff close.” His eyes were urgent.
“Sorry. I’m just here to get my horse. I’ll be glad to l-” A cramp seized her right shoulder then, doubling her over.
“Are you okay?” Merrick was beside her in an instant, hands hovering uncertainly around. “What happened?”
“Just a cramp,” Jo squeaked out. She grabbed her shoulder to show where.
“Ah… You were likely hypothermic. Those cramps are good. You’re thawing out.”
She knew this already, but nodded. Tears of pain stung her eyes and she bit her cheek to keep from crying out. Then, as fast as it had come, the cramp subsided. Merrick had taken a seat on his disgusting bed a couple paces away and regarded her with concern.
“Better now,” she assured him. She felt shaky and tired but, seeing nowhere pleasant to sleep in this room, decided it best to keep that to herself. “I just want my horse. And then, I want to leave.”
Merrick looked like he was miles away, eyes distant and face puzzled. “Kaamos,” he began, as if answering a question she hadn’t asked. “Is our biggest show of the year. It runs from the last sunset of midwinter to the first sunrise. Polar night. You know of it?”
“I know of Polar night, yes.”
“The show doesn’t stop. People travel for months just to queue in hopes that they might get a ticket. Many will be turned away. We make most of our money, and re-establish our fame during Kaamos.”
“I think I get it. You’re a big, famous, raunchy carnival out here in the wastes. You don’t need an unassuming girl like me ruining the mood. Neither do I. I just want my horse.”
“The thing is,” Merrick continued. “Once the doors close for Kaamos, they don’t open again until sunrise.”
“As in… No late arrivals? No re-entries?”
A manic spark in his eyes now. That flush had returned to his cheeks. He picked another mostly-empty bottle up from a pile on the bed and gulped that down before speaking.
“As in nobody leaves.”
