reply as the question left his lips …
“This thing, this flying machine … is it … safe?”
The Ringmaster stopped dead in his tracks and began muttering to himself.
“Why me? A blasted child and scared of his own shadow …”
“Oi, I am here, you know?” said Ned crossly.
“For your information, boy, this is not a ‘thing’, this is the Marilyn – the finest airship on either side of the Veil and as safe as a ruby in a crown.” Benissimo’s moustache was now twitching quite violently. “There are ‘things’ aplenty where we’re going that will offer up more than ample danger. Your fear of heights should be the least of your – or my – concerns.”
Ned sensed that it might be a good time to hold his tongue.
“Now, while you’re aboard, you need to follow a few simple rules. One – don’t touch anything. Two – don’t talk to anyone, and if anyone talks to you remember: you’re a runaway.” The Ringmaster paused to scratch at his chin. “On second thoughts, it might just be better if you stayed in your bunk. Don’t leave unless you absolutely must.”
Benissimo indicated a door to their immediate right.
“What about permission to breathe? You left that out,” Ned grumbled under his breath.
“Veil-bound and right secure on the third!” roared one of the Marilyn’s crewmen.
“Nearly home and all aboard on the second!” yelled another below.
The first floor’s reply was a loud metallic clunk as the circus’s captured Darklings were locked into their hold. Benissimo strode away to take his place at the helm from where Ned heard a long blast of the ship’s foghorn. From all around the Marilyn a chorus of trumpets and what could only have been a cannon replied and Ned realised she was only one floating vessel in a much larger convoy.
He went into his cabin and looked out the window to a wall of fog. It came as a huge relief. Without seeing their take-off, at least he could pretend he was on a bus. A really big, weird bus.
One thing was certain, Benissimo – his protector and only route to finding his father – did not think very highly of him, which was fine because the feeling was entirely mutual. He decided to focus on more pressing matters. There was the girl for one thing, Lucy Beaumont. Did she know they were looking for her? Was she lost? Afraid? Were the clowns after her too? It was then that he remembered the scratched writing on the patio doors of his sitting room.
Y C U L …
Of course! He hadn’t thought about it at the time but the clown’s writing, seen from the other side of the window, would appear backwards. It was Lucy’s name. Was that what his dad had wanted to explain? Did he want to tell him about her? This new world that his father was supposed to be part of was not Ned’s. It made him feel like he didn’t really belong, even at home with his own dad.
Alone in his swaying bunk, Ned checked on the black bag his dad had given him. He found clothes, a toothbrush and his passport (which had never actually been used). He opened it up and looked at his name. It made him wince because it wasn’t really his name after all. Was any of it real? Was anything his father had ever told him actually true?
At the bottom of the bag he found some cash, quite a lot of cash. But the most surprising item was the empty photo frame Ned kept by his bedside. So that was what his dad had run up the stairs for when they’d made their escape.
This was not the freedom Ned had wanted. This was the kind of bag you prepared if you knew you weren’t coming home. It made his eyes prick with tears. He took his phone from his pocket and laid it by the photo frame. A pictureless frame and a powerless phone; even Ned’s pet mouse wasn’t real. He had never, in all of his life, felt more alone.
“Room for another?” came a polite grunting voice from the doorway. It was George the giant gorilla.
His attempts to fit his enormous bulk into the small cabin made him look rather clumsy and much less intimidating. Despite everything that he’d seen that day, Ned still had no idea what to make of him.
“Err, sure, but I don’t think I’m allowed to talk to you. Or anyone else.”
“I think that’s over-egging it a bit, old bean. I’ve been fully briefed on your situation along with the rest of our inner circle.”
“Oh. Right …”
“And on that note,” George rumbled gently, “I made you some angel cakes. Had a feeling our resident josser might need a smidge of cheering up.”
The oversized ape opened a bag and beneath a pile of books and his favourite reading glasses, were four of the ugliest cakes Ned had ever seen.
“Wow, err, George, I don’t know what to say. You, err, you really shouldn’t have?”
“My pleasure, laddie. Of course, as far as I’m concerned, nothing beats these little gems,” said the gorilla, pulling out a banana. “I could write an entire book of sonnets about the joys of this yellow beauty. There’s baked banana, creamed banana, puffed, boiled and fried banana. Caramelled, salted, barbecued, even pickled. Of course my favourite is sushied,” he added, before gulping it down whole.
Ned couldn’t help smiling.
“There now,” said George, “a smile, that’s more like it.” He beamed – revealing his huge teeth – but somehow still managing to look friendly.
“George?” asked Ned. “What’s a josser? Only Benissimo’s been calling me that a lot, amongst other things, and I don’t know what it means. I don’t really know what any of this means and the only thing I thought I knew, is, well … not what I knew at all.”
“You mustn’t take it personally, old chap. The boss has a few rough edges, but he’s a decent fellow under all that bluster. Jossers are what we also call outsiders, folk who are unaccustomed to our ways.”
Ned was used to being an outsider, but in the Circus of Marvels he was something else, something way beyond average. Half of the troupe weren’t even human and even those that were had powers of some sort. Ned was average by tradition, because that’s what the Waddlesworths were, or so his father had led him to believe. But being average in the Circus of Marvels did not mean slipping through the cracks – it was like strapping a flashing light to your head and asking people not to look.
“I don’t fit in here, George. What if, even without me talking to anyone, someone figures out who I am, or why I’m here?”
“Don’t fret, dear boy, I have your back while you’re with us, and no one will bat an eyelid. Being lost with nowhere else to turn is something of a requirement before the Circus of Marvels will have you.”
“Is that what happened to you? Were you a josser?”
George grinned again. “Between you and me, I think I still am, but then I’ve got my books and my bananas.”
Ned suddenly felt far less alone.
“What about Benissimo? What is he, besides being … well, obnoxious?”
George looked over to the doorway, before lowering his voice.
“We are not all the creatures we become by choice, old bean, and the least said about it the better. When a chap tries as hard as the boss to hide what he is, it’s considered rude to ask.”
Ned took George’s hushed tones as the warning they were meant to be. Whatever Benissimo was or had been was clearly not a topic for discussion.
The towering ape talked late into the night and turned out to be a living encyclopedia on the creatures and places that the Veil kept hidden. He told Ned about the Grand Duke of Albany, Viceroy to St Albertsburg; the last hidden city of Queen Victoria’s