Dreadspace Archive

Violet sat on one of the warped wooden benches inside the empty big top. It was a warm, humid afternoon. Grounds muck had begun collecting in little pools at all the circus corners and crannies. There was a haze of dust hanging in the air, refracting all the slanted sunlight as it streamed in from the open flaps.

Violet hunched over her rucksack, digging around for an item she could not find. In frustration, she balled up her fists and began slamming them down feebly on the wooden bench. In response, the bench wobbled according to its distorted geometry.

“Ouch,” Violet drew back her hand. It smarted with a tiny splinter. She  was upset because she couldn’t find the little golden figurine she was so sure she had packed away in the rucksack. It was meant for Augromme. She had started bringing him little gifts in addition to jams and foodstuff. She felt sure that a better bond was forming. For a time, his training had been going extraordinarily well. Until it wasn’t anymore. He has ceased to pay attention and was increasingly ornery. She had been sure the little golden figurine would recapture his attention but now it was missing.

Violet rested her chin in her hands and closed her eyes. I’m exhausted she thought to herself. Once she thought it, she realized how true it was. All her limbs ached and the all the chambers of her heart felt squeezed with urgent hopes. The added pressure of Ungulen’s warning about the doctor was also growing as a storm cloud in her mind. She exhaled. It was so quiet in the big top. So still. She decided to light a cigarette.

The tiny cigarette was neatly rolled. She felt the world melt away as the tip of the paper caught with embers burning a resilient blend of orange and yellow.

“Lonely, Miss?” The question startled Violet. She turned and saw it was Binter, the youngest of the Keurmite brothers, the triplets with the removable heads. He had his own head tucked under into his elbow. He smiled at her and put his head back on. His jaunty trousers plumed pleasantly at the thigh. She always thought how charming and silly it was that all three of them went around shirtless in suspenders.

She laughed, “Hi, Binter. No I’m just thinking. Were you looking to use the rehearsal space?”

“Naye,” said Binter sidling up to her. “But I was looking to bum one of those cute little ciggies of yours.”

Violet rolled her eyes at him and handed him one of the other cigarettes from the inside of her jacket.

“So,” Binter’s face was alive with winking, dimpled suggestion. “How’re the oliphants?”

“They’re just grand,” said Violet, not making eye contact.

“I thought your last show was pretty good. All sea shanty like. It was different.”

“Well thank you, Binter. Nobody else seemed to think so.”

Binter saw that she was moody. He set down the cigarette and stood up abruptly. He put a hand in his pocket. With the index finger of his opposite hand he poked Violet directly in the center of her forehead.

“Seems awful congested up here. I think we need to do some weeding.”

Binter took his other hand out of his pocket. With a sleight and a trick, Binter began pulling a great sheaf of pink ribbon, seemingly directly out of Violet’s forehead.

“Well would you look at that,” he said.

Violet laughed.

“Wait, hang on. There’s even more over here.”

Binter cupped Violet on the ear, making her shrug away from him with a ticklish smile. Binter, however, was persistent and began to stream yellow, blue and green silk from out of her ear.

“Would you just look at that, Miss! No wonder you’re gloomy.”

Violet batted him away. “Shut up,” she giggled.

Binter sat back down next to her. He picked up his cigarette from the bench and stuck it back in his mouth. “Our mother was a painter, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yes. In addition to having four children, we three ugly mugs and a sister. My mother was pretty alright with it too. The painting I mean. Landscapes mostly, you know. Haystacks, cliffs, horses with a white spot on the forehead. All that sweet country living.”

Violet ashed carefully and looked at Binter.

“All I’m saying is,” Binter continued, “paint’s probably an easier medium to work in compared with the willful nature of an oliphant. Kind of a hard palette you’ve chosen.”

“Well some people are born with elephants and others have elephants thrust upon them.”

Binter burst out laughing at this. It was very loud but also very pleasant. They both ashed out their cigarettes and took little drags.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Binter said. “Have you seen Ungulen around lately? I feel like nobody’s seen him in quite a while.”

For the briefest moment, Violet went stiff. It passed through her mind that Binter Keurmite could very easily be taking money from Lorelei. He wouldn’t even need to be loyal to the chaotic doctor in order to be passing information along. Unwitting-like.

Binter, for his part, detected a change in carriage in his female companion. He, however, assumed a different reason for it.

“Not to pry into your business,” Binter said hastily.

“No no,” Violet quieted him. “It’s just…I haven’t seen him either and it’s making me a little on edge. With Drutherstone gone away you know? Who does that leave us with? Goren Hargus at the helm?”

“Heaven forbid,” laughed Binter.

Violet shrugged ironically. “Well, I should get going.”

“So soon? Me and some of the gang snagged a great barrel of ale from in town. You could come have a drink with us?”

“Maybe next time, Binter.” Violet showed herself out.

Binter sat a few moments longer, puffing on the cigarette. Absently, he took his head off and began passing it back and forth in his hands.

Violet rolled her eyes. Ungulen gestured emphatically on the other side of the small window. Taking direction from his flailing hooves, she picked up a bucket and filled it with water, pretending in her overall posture that she was busily preparing snacks for the elephants. With nonchalance for anyone around who might care to notice, she picked up the filled bucket and opened the door to the walrus house.

“Oof,” Violent brought her hand to her nose. The overpowering odor of the kept walrus was stunning.

“Did anyone see you?” asked Goren Hargus from a dark corner of the room. Violent shook her head no and closed the door behind her. The walrus house flooded with cool, afternoon darkness.

“Good,” proclaimed Ungulen and gestured for all of them to be seated at a little card table. The meeting began.

“Violet, I’ve asked you here because you and Goren are the two people I trust most on the grounds.” Ungulen looked over his shoulder towards the door. “Now, Goren and I believe that there may be some misfortune amiss with the doctor.”

Both Ungulen and Goren fixed Violet with an expectant look.

Violet scoffed, “Well of course there’s something wrong with him. He punched me straight in the face and kidnapped Marrionetta, which by the way neither of you really did anything about at the time or after, thank you very much. So much for a young lady’s delicacy. ”

At this, Ungulen blushed deeply through the fur at his nape.

Violet continued, “He’s paying off half the staff with coin to fetch him little machine parts and the like. He eats all the chocolate and sardines at the mess, and actually he’s been very keenly peculiar since the very first day he showed up here.”

Ungulen and Goren each began nodding deeply. There was certainly nothing untrue in Violet’s pronouncements.

“Is that all?” Violet asked, angry. “He’s a mean, strange man and you just wanted to talk in secret about it? How is this cause for a secret meeting in a smelly old walrus closet?”

The walrus moaned quietly at this and slapped his bath water. He was insulted. Violet took no mind as she had not developed the same communicative sensitivity to the walrus as she had with the elephants.

“No no this goes beyond that,” Ungulen began chewing his long, flapping goat lips. “We think he’s taken to killing some of the younger lever boys.”

Violet drew back, astonished at this claim. She was very familiar with many of the lever boys. Several had tried to bring her daffodils. She began to reflect on which of them she perhaps had not seen in a while but stopped herself. The thought was too chilling to partake of.

“Ungulen, that’s just wild thinking. Surely nobody is…is…” she searched for a word other than murdering. “Surely it’s fine? They’re just run aways? Don’t you think, Goren?”

“I’m not sure just yet,” replied Goren. “But there’s a logic to it. Too many of these so called runaways never bothered to collect their last circus cheques and several of them left behind rather essential belongings, I would say. Boots, cigarettes, little Cormac left behind the walking stick he carved last spring. Had it mounted it with a bit of pyrite too.”

Violet took a moment to absorb this.

“So,” Ungulen sank closer into the table and his two friends. Goren and Violet drew in closer as well. “We need to begin spying on our good old friend, mister doctor, and see what he really gets up to in the meantime.”

 

“KURST!” yelled Lorelei, throwing down a small instrument. It clanged to the floor and rolled toward the desk where Marrionetta’s head was still floating in the chemical bath. She only blinked at the doctor as she was accustomed to his outbursts.

But then in a flash, he rose wildly out of his chair. The chair fell over. This was new. He stalked towards her head and in a single jab, plunged his arm up to the elbow into her bath and dredged her head out. The chemical bath waters got in her mouth and nose and she coughed and sputtered all the way to his work desk. He banged her down upright, so they could have a conversation.

“I’m sick of this, you know.” He was referring to the general progress he had made on the Hasse-Liebe Reverse Induction Contabulator. The progress had been slow. His myriad experiments on Marrionetta had been painstaking and exhausting for her. She was sick of it too. So, in solidarity, she spat in his face.

Lorelei bared his Viennese teeth at her. An incredible rage beamed from behind his eyes but he did nothing. He didn’t even wipe the spittle off his face.

He continued, “Sick to death of it. Of the entire thing.” Absently, he gripped another small metal instrument at the desk and pointed at her with an accusatory mien. “Do you know that I have discovered something beyond the comprehension of man? Right here in this godforsaken circus? No. Of course not. Why would you know.”

“Right again as usual mister doctor! “screeched Marrionetta. “How would a head left in pal of your little piss and gravy experiment water, wrinkling to ages like a royal prune, know what the dog hair’s breath is going on anywhere and anyhow!”

Her angry outburst seemed to soothe him. He licked his lips. Finally, he wiped her splat from his cheek. “It was beautiful. A portal. Probably into another world. Can you believe it?” He wasn’t talking to her at all. She used the opportunity to survey the items at his desk. Maybe there was something she could pick up with her teeth and stab his hand with.

“I need you to assist me with finishing up my experiment. It has to go faster. It must. But I can’t concentrate. It’s beneath me now, I can see that. The celestial forces have summoned me to a greater project. I must finish this confounded machine and move on to the next and more spiritually freeing part of my journey.” The reverie on his own destiny brought him back to his former self. He looked younger somehow in the throes of forwardism. Then he frowned, remembering all the work still unfinished. He locked eyes with Marrionetta.

“You will do the tasks I assign to you. They will be simple. A child could do them.”

Marrionetta began to hack up another expectorant missile but Lorelei grabbed her with both hands and shook her entire head rather violently until she half choked and had to swallow it back down. The spit hack leaked out the bottom of her open neck.

“All done there, I see?” Lorelei placed her head back on the desk and started patting down her hair. Marrionetta was dizzy and angry.

“I will release your hands,” continued Lorelei, taking a locked wooden chest out from a shelf. It was deep red and had a crest on top. It was the width of his torso. The chest rattled once he began handling it.

He set the chest down on the desk a little ways away from Marrionetta’s head. With a key on a ring of keys, he unlocked the padlock and opened the box. Inside were both of Marrionetta’s writhing, disembodied hands. They were separated by a thick divider of wood. Each were attempting to escape the confines of the chest but were unable to. Lorelei had fastened each hand at the wrist with a metal ring (installed painfully some months ago), and each hand was leashed with leather cord to the box.

With minimal difficulty, Lorelei quashed one hand and separated it from its cording. He fastened a leather leash to the ring. He put the chest away with her other hand still inside.

Lorelei staked the leash of Marrionetta’s hand to a mount on the desk. The hand greeted its mistress’s face lovingly. I miss you it seemed to say.

“You will direct the hand and make it obedient to my wishes. In this way, I will train them,” he explained. “They will be instruments of my artwork.”

 

It was a cool evening, green and textured as a crocodile’s tail. The big top was open and torches threw off a dancing glow that had its own musicality and strangeness. The returning groundsmuck glinted with its own fecund magic.

A second rate clown show was churning away inside the big top, much to the delight of ticket holding suckers. All around the circus grounds, children and lovers fetched in and out of lightness and shadow. The evening was perfumed with a burbling sense of mischief and anonymity.

Lorelei strolled through the night air. He had an object in mind but wanted no one to observe him. His task tonight was scientific and stealthy. He had dressed down for the occasion in a woven shirt, commoner’s suspenders and brown trousers. He attracted no special attention except for the occasional lever boy who doffed a happy cap to him. Lorelei’s coin had bought him snaking threads of appreciative staff.

Lorelei approached the big top. Instead of entering through the flaps though, he made a mild and dispassionate circumference around its loud canvas stripes, picking his way among puddles of groundsmuck. He was looking for something. He knew it would be there, close at hand, even though the object of his interest was — technically — invisible.

Invisibility — as a foundational characteristic — is of particular significance to those in possession of a scientific mind. The scientifically uninitiated can only appreciate invisibility in two ways: as power or as perversion. Usually both together in the service of soaking in ladies at their toilet or in states of dressing. But to a scientist, invisibility is not just a matter of utility (though its utility is undoubtedly powerful). Invisibility as a characteristic challenges notions of what is possible or impossible. Something invisible implies a wider and greater universe than what has already been catalogued.

Absently, Lorelei touched his fingertips to the big top’s canvas tent. He traced a line, enjoying the gentle thrill of thick, acrylic paint. He swept his eyes through the dark, focusing on nothing in particular, waiting for the invisible thing to give up its secrets. He carried on this way for a few minutes, milling around the flanks of the tent until something caught his eye and he halted.

It was already over but Lorelei knew the gist of what he had not seen. A vacant-eyed and expressionless woman was gliding towards the circus tent’s open wings. An indigo ticket was clutched in her gloved hand.

Lorelei strode past her without giving her a second look. He settled near a patch of briar, prepared to wait for as long as necessary.

So it startled him somewhat when, nearly immediately, a lank young man materialized in front of him. The young man had the same, drugged appearance. His eyes were glowing, distant, and absent of thought. With an eerie grace, the young man slipped past the doctor, also in the direction of the circus tent.

Now Lorelei could see it. The vein. It was so effervescent, so slight, it would be impossible to detect during the day time. Even here in the dark, it’s ghostly seam was masked by the interlocking branches of the briar patch.

Lorelei licked his quivering, lower lip. He felt the unmistakable prick of arousal beneath his vestments. He approached the seam and raised a confident, exploring hand.

The seam of the portal was icy to the touch. Undeterred, Lorelei pressed on. To his roaring excitement, his hand dipped through space, disappearing from sight as into a freezing, rushing river. In pain, Lorelei snatched his hand back. All his fingers were still intact, however they were burning and itchy, as though covered in stick pins. A deep and sideways smile gripped the doctor’s face, almost as if he were having a stroke. But he was not. He was consumed with desire. His eyes flashed and his breathing pulsated.

He pulled out a graphite pencil from his breast pocket and gently ran it through the freezing, ghostly sliver. The Hasse-Lieber Reverse Induction Contabulator receded from his mind like a station recedes from the barreling train. Marrionetta too was spiritually obliterated from his fantasy world.

“Darling,” he purred to the portal. “You and I have much to learn from each other.”

Augromme thrashed and roared. He scraped around the enclosure, trying to turn around but was unable. He was sore and he was thirsty. He kicked with his back legs. He stamped with his forelegs. He trumpeted and the result was gargling and expectorant. His flanks and his legs were skinned and scabby, punished and weeping fresh sores that were discernible even in his repudiated, zombie flesh.

This tumult caused quite a stir on the other sides of his encasing walls. Small, roving eyes crowded up the darkness of several peeping holes. There were several peep holes, all drilled in at strange, titillating angles of the creature in the Box. The patrons scored in, keen to catch a glimpse of the ornery beast whose massive whole they could only extrapolate from bits and pieces.

“He’s got horns!” one child imagined aloud.

“I see spots!” Another chimed.

The crowd was a healthy melange of local peasantry and the occasional dreaming damned with their precious indigo tickets. Ungulen was taking tickets today and the line worked itself at a slow and steady pace that required the oversight of an adult. The lever boys, Ungulen had noticed, did far better under the pressurized intake of crowds on an opening night or a particularly popular sideshow. Afternoon work was no good for their bucking spirits.

Violet lingered nearby in the grass and Ungulen waved to her. She came over.

“Long faces leave traces,” Ungulen scolded her gently. She was unmoved by the sentiment. He tried again. “Something amiss?”

“It’s just that he’s upset.” Violet kicked a dirt clod and pulled a slim, homemade cigarette from the inside of her jacket.

Ungulen took a few more tickets from excited farmhands and then fixed Violet with a quizzical eyebrow. “Who’s upset?”

“Him. The elephant. Doesn’t it bother you?” Violet took a teensy drag on the cigarette and coughed delicately into her elbow.

“Since when do you smoke?” Ungulen observed.

Violet pointedly took a longer pull on the cigarette and suppressed a growing nausea.

“Alright” Ungulen shook her off, hoping the topic would turn.

“How can you listen to that? Don’t you have any feeling for him?”

“Ah.” Ungulen finally understood her complaint. “Because we’re cousins of some sort? Herds of a feather?”

“You’d think,” Violet shrugged and it was pert and irritable. Ungulen couldn’t hold back a smile and gently took the cigarette off her. He took a long drag of it himself.

“If yer going to start smoking, you could do with making ’em a bit less lumpy.” And then, after a moment, “Is this to slim down some? You’re already fit enough to do jumps. What’s this fer? Got yourself a new fella?”

Violet scoffed and took the cigarette back. She went to drag on it again but instead became entangled with retrieving a piece of grass from her tongue. Presently she continued with her accusation “So you don’t think anything of his pain? Of that poor creature stuck in a box to be mocked and looked over. Inspected like?”

Ungulen sighed deeply and turned his massive, shaggy head towards the Box. “I suppose I could. Except I know him quite well. He’s a mish mosh upstairs, love. Never knows where he is or why. Creatures that old should be expected to die. But this one can’t. Brought back from the dead for some wicked warlock’s purpose and then forgotten about once the ritual was all said and done. He’s just a remainder. Like the last speck of porridge in a pot.”

“So, hopeless.”

Ungulen shrugged. “I feed him kippers now and then. He earns his keep. Just like the rest of us.”

Violet blushed in anger. She couldn’t tell if his words stung her or if the cigarette had suddenly induced a sharp headache. She suddenly flicked her cigarette to the ground.

“Maybe one day, Drutherstone will put you in a box,” she seethed.

Ungulen turned that one over with care. “Doesn’t seem likely,” he concluded, scratching his neck scruff but Violet was already marching away.

“Hand me that,” Lorelei gestured absently towards his tools. Ossip fetched the implement and directed it to his mentor’s long and agile fingers.

Lorelei pursed his lips as he worked. It was a looming Sunday, full to brimming with idle hours and coffee. Ossip hopped around the Emerald House in a doused state of caffeination. Even at age 19 he was a seasoned coffee drinker but Lorelei’s brew was darkly energizing. Ossip was excited, curious. He was open wide to everything.

The little project they had elected to work on together was nothing of consequence. It was an inverted rat trap. A machine that squealed at a frequency far above those detectable to human ears. It was a mechanical irritant to ward away circus vermin. Lorelei made a few final touches to the massive circuit board and then, with a magnanimous smile, slid the contraption across the work desk to his pupil.

Ossip grinned. So strong was his desire to please and to work at something new, the smile stretched his face until it nearly cracked open for a moment. His teenaged fingers set to work at the wiring, soldering the diodes together in alternating crosses like stitching up the corset of a beautiful woman.

It was careful work. Painstaking and satisfying. Hardly a word was shared between them as Ossip fulfilled his mentor’s instructions. The boy was certainly thriving with the special attentions of “mister doctor.” The newly won envy from his peers had put an imperious slant to Ossip’s jaw and a raptness to his work. Doctor Lorelei’s eyes roamed over the boy, making inventory of his talents, his weaknesses, and the manifesting bond between them.

Ossip looked up from the wiring and indicated a more complicated looping of copper wires and switches. Lorelei tapped his index finger on the work desk, very much pleased with his handiwork.

Marrionetta’s head bobbed gently in the center of the chemical bath. Her head, geometrically an oval of Finnish pine, weighted out evenly in the bowl which lent her days an incessant rhythm of gentle turning. To and fro. Back and forth. She had to shut her eyes for great lengths of time as the routine of it became nauseating, infuriating, depressing and, at long last, merely dull. Once the dullness set in, it made it easier to think.

She did not know what the doctor was planning to do with her. He spent boorish hours singing his southern operas, going over the crevices in her torso with a fine toothed instrument, cleaning, oiling, and testing all her joints. She had to assume he had some sort of death in store for her but it was taking an awfully long time. She wondered if he had done something bad to Violet, that poor little dancer girl. Marrionetta knew she didn’t deserve the girl’s sympathy but objectively it didn’t seem likely that the dancer would have so quickly abandoned her mistress like this. Things must be going very, very wrong at the circus down below.

She bobbed to and fro. Back and forth. She kept an eye on the insane doctor with a practiced neutral face. If he planned to murder her, she planned to surprise him but there was nothing she could do at the moment.

The long days in the chemical bath were the longest she had ever experienced. A creature of passions, Marrionetta was unaccustomed stillness, the quiet of mind, or the restrained nature of being unattached from her body for so long. Blinking began to feel new and significant. She rediscovered all of her teeth again, one at a time. Slowly a very profound sensation began to dawn on Marrionetta. She began to sense and feel the artistic influence of her Maker’s hand. It seemed present in the curvature of her face and wooden skull. In the long and echoing hallway of time, she suddenly sensed that she was truly a designed being. It almost gave her a sense of nobility. The doctor wasn’t the only one with some kind of pedigree.

She had always known that she was a rare thing. A survivor. A consummate performer. But she had not spent much time in her life reflecting on the fact that she had been sculpted. Someone had preconceived of her. Before she was, she had been. At least in the chamber of someone’s heart. A feeling overtook her and she could not shake the idea that perhaps some of this intentionality has been transferred to her during the process of her construction. Was there a lingering spell of the toy maker still ingrained in her? It gave her an odd sense of pride. Most of her life had been a propulsive drive to threaten those who would harm her or impress someone to give her money. Look what I can do she had spat at the world countless times since her mean and furious childhood. Look what I can do and then some. But this idea of the toy maker and his originating intentions towards her gave her a new idea. Look what someone else wanted for me. It was a warm feeling that had become lost for so many years. The chasm between his intentions and her reality were great but the differences did not anger her. Instead, it felt like interesting knot in a tree. A perfect shape that made the world seem more full of possibility. It was perspective. She wondered if creatures made of flesh ever had these kinds of thoughts.

In her dreamings on her origins, it also began to occur to her that, in a way, Doctor Lorelei wasn’t just stealing away her life, vitality and time. He was also stealing the toy maker’s original warmth and intentionality for her. Whatever Marrionetta might choose to do with the life that was crafted for her might not suit what the toy maker intended but there wasn’t a chance in circus hell that the doctor’s inspired plans were anything legitimate for her. An image came to her. A chain of hands, each taking and receiving from the next. A line of gifts being passed down and modified. Some of the exchanges were willing. Some were not. Some of of the modifications were improvements. Some were not.

She bobbed. To and fro. Back and forth. She continued to watch the doctor silently, paying special attention to his hands.

 

 

Tasked with two buckets, a rucksack, her cleats, and a fresh bouquet of daffodils for her ailing mistress, Violet trudged back from the pasturelands towards the big top and its subterranean dressing rooms. One of which was still occupied by the flagging Marrionetta.

Things with Augromme had been steadily progressing. She had to keep up the clandestine habit of only visiting him while he was put out to graze. Ungulen still hadn’t caught on that she was rehearsing the grievous creature in her spare time. The zombified, nightmare elephant was picking up the dance routines in fits and starts. One week he would have grasped something superbly but then the next, he would forget nearly all of it. Almost purposefully, Violet felt. Essentially, he was a frustrating mess. Still, she felt certain that if she could get him into some kind of rhythm, some kind of mutual understanding, she could unleash his beastly bravado as a major coup for her showcases.

Practice with the healthy, un-brainsick elephantrinas was no less demanding. She had introduced new choreography and they had all been working on that together for several weeks. The elephantrinas were doing remarkably well with it but the constant count offs, repetitions, and management of their temperaments was draining. Still, Goren and Ungulen had agreed to extend her foray as manager of the elephant showcases. So, for better or worse, she was contractually obligated now. Violet couldn’t decide if she was pleased to be locked into the performance schedule as an official second bill for the circus or if she had gotten herself in over her head. Could she succeed the next time around? Would she soon fail to magnificent fanfare? Or was she better than all this? Perhaps the elephant show was beneath her and a waste of her time, youth and talents. It was hard for her to say which version of her predicament was the most real. So instead, each of the three blended together into an unfocused, self-feeding cycle of crushing doubt that released into giddy flights of pulsating energy that could keep her going for days.

Things with Marrionetta hadn’t been progressing at all. The star was a fixture on her chez-lounge, languid and pale. Violet continued to sleep up in the canopy cot in the dressing room with her and she was constantly at the star’s beck and call. Marrionetta could be harsh with Violet. At other times though, she was sweet, even circumspectly grateful. The otherwise fiendishly practiced puppetress was clumsy with her gratitude. Any word of thanks she gave was accompanied by avoidant eye contact or a rushed gesture. Yet, to Violet, this seemed genuine. Or at least it wasn’t an act. The unvarnished aspects of Marrionetta were like bird calls through dense, thick trees. Evidence of a life unperceived, except by those paying close, close attention.

In the mornings, Violet would breakfast with Ungulen down in the public mess. Buttering toast and chattering away on her flimsy, flighty energy of underslept resilience. It was a lie to eat with him. He didn’t know about her several, competing arrangements. As far as he knew she was handling the elephant show and that was it. Had he known that she had become Marrionetta’s full time caregiver or the de facto dance instructor to the wild and unpredictable Augromme, he almost certainly would have had words for her. As it was though, they broke bread in the curling sunshine of green mornings, discussing anything and everything that didn’t matter at all.