“Can it talk?”
The taunting continued as the train left town.
“What’s the matter, freakmonger? Ashamed to talk to your betters?” said the vulgar clown, glad of another opportunity to pay me back for the night he was dressed down in front of the others by the senior acrobat.
“Maybe he’s a freak too,” said an acrobat.
They gathered around my bunk, and I steeled myself for a fight.
“Maybe we should strip him and see,” said one of the boys.
The vulgar clown grabbed me by my shirtfront and pulled. The ring I hid was bunched amid the cloth in his fist, and the chain bit into my neck. Another kid took my leg. They had me halfway off the bunk.
“I’d rather not see,” cried the youngest acrobat—the one who had been upset by my song.
The others hooted and cackled.
“He’s not good enough to be in here with us,” said the vulgar clown, who almost choked me with his grip. The chain around my neck flared red hot, and I yelped. The vulgar clown’s eyes glazed over, and he jerked like a faulty clockwork mouse. I feared he was having a fit or going crazy, and I cringed from him. “Let’s red light him,” the clown yelled, then let go of me and looked surprised at his words.
“Yeah! Red light him. Like they do to uppity roustabouts,” cried someone.
“Red light, red light,” others took up the call.
More hands landed on me, while I struggled and protested my unknown fate between gasps and coughs. The senior acrobat, the one supposedly in charge, leaned against a bunk at the end of the car with an evil grin on his face.
They dragged me fighting down the carriage. I banged my knee against a bunk, hit my head on an oil lamp.
“Mr. Marvel wants me whole enough to work,” I cried, and managed to get the heel of my hand under a fellow’s chin and push.
“He’ll thank us in the morning,” the fellow countered, and smacked me in the face.
I found myself at the carriage door. One of the jugglers pushed it open. The night skimmed by in a gray blur of bushes and trees. Horror consumed me as I realized what they were about to do.
“No!” I screamed as hands let go and someone kicked me in the back, sending me flying into the night.
For a moment I
thought I would never land, but gravity won. I skidded through gravel, which peppered my palms with grit and stung like acid, then crashed into a bush.
Something large hurtled by me, almost hitting me in the head.
The red lights disappeared down the track, and I understood what those scoundrels had meant.
And with those red lights went Apollo. How would I ever catch up?
10
AS I SCRAMBLED OUT OF THE BUSHES, groaning, my foot thudded into an object that gave under the blow. I felt about with my stinging hands and discovered smooth, worn leather. In the dim moonlight I made out what appeared to be my suitcase. I sighed with relief. I had something to call my own, so I would not appear a beggar. I didn’t know if one of my former companions had taken pity on me or just wanted to be rid of anything to do with me. I was destitute except for a little pocket change, but at least I would have an extra suit of clothes and my knives to earn my keep.
I was almost sure I was somewhere in Indiana. Should I turn back or continue? I had no idea how far the next town was ahead or the last behind, and whichever way I chose, I would have to earn my fare before I could board a train again. I needed a good-luck charm now more than ever. I clutched the ring I wore and then winced. My neck was abraded from the way that clown had twisted the chain. I snorted. Some good-luck charm. I glanced behind me. When I thought of going back, my heart turned to lead, but when I looked ahead, despite my sorry plight, my heart leaped. I had wanted adventure, and there it was. Apollo was traveling that way on a fast track to disaster, and I had no time to waste if I must rescue him.
I limped through the rock debris along the side of the tracks and listened for a whistle that would warn me to back away from the sucking airstream that could sweep me under the wheels of a train. The damp odors of summer night were made all the more incomprehensible by the intermingled smell of cinders left by the trains. My head throbbed where it had hit the oil lamp, and my back ached where I’d been kicked. The moon set, and I stumbled repeatedly in the dark. To guide myself, I felt with my foot for the wooden cross slats that supported the rails, stubbing my toes often. My left hip throbbed from my fall, my right knee hurt from its collision with a bunk, and the handle of my bag chafed the scrapes on my hands. So, this is misery, I thought. I wondered if the sun would ever rise again, and if it did, if I would ever see a town, or whether there would be nothing ahead all the sweltering day but steel rails, undergrowth, and the occasional cast-off trash in the rubble of the embankment. That was if the tracks didn’t cross a bridge before daylight and I fell to my death from a trestle.
Self-pity will get you nowhere, I chided. Apollo was in much more serious peril than I. Where was this vaunted asylum in which the Marvel brothers wished to deposit my friend—in the next town ahead or farther on? Could I find Apollo before he was locked away? If I had money, I could send the name of this asylum in a wire to Colonel Kingston and get on with my adventure, but here I was, looking after the dog boy again.
Then I wasn’t alone. I sensed a presence to my right, even though I heard no footsteps, even though no one took a breath. Somehow I felt the weight, the volume, the aura, of another human beside me displacing the air. I dared not look. I quickened my speed, and the person beside me quickened too. Did a robber pace me? He would be disappointed. I hoped he wasn’t a murderer as well as a thief. I shuffled and bumbled as fast as I dared, my breath shallow. The stranger stayed with me.
“I apologize,” a woman’s voice said. “Do not run from me.”