Firetale (12 page)

Today was truly a strange evening. Our
circus stopped in a quiet California town, as small as the hairs on
a gnat's bollock. The people who came to the show were the usual
denizens of such places—penniless, dimwitted, and unpretentious.
Only one man stood out in the crowd. He was dressed in a suit that
would have cost a local family a month’s earnings, and he avoided
the other spectators, who looked at him with a mixture of envy and
contempt. The man's face seemed strangely familiar, but I thought
little of it, figuring that he just looked a bit like a much older
Rudolph Valentino.

The performance went well. As usual, I
watched it from behind the scenes, serving my archivist duty, which
tells me to enter on paper everything that deviates from the plan
of the performance. As almost always, everything went off without a
hitch. I was about to return to my records, when I heard voices
from the arena. I moved from backstage and saw Mr. Bernardius
talking to that Valentino gentleman.

The stranger waved his arms so
desperately that he knocked off his own bowler hat. I could not
make out the words, but his tone changed from pleading to
threatening. Our tentmaster’s voice was sympathetic, but not warm.
Unable to end the conversation, he had to call one of the ogres. To
my surprise, the man was not afraid of the giant and even seemed
delighted. He started to explain something to Bernardius with
fervency. But Lazarus was adamant. I, however, was interested in
the stranger’s reaction to the ogre, so I ventured out from behind
the scenes.

I asked Bernardius what was happening,
and he reluctantly told me that the man, whom the ogre had
practically dragged out, had claimed to be linked to a demionis
named Hevfra, who once had worked with us. I remembered her, a
wonderful creature. Hevfra's face popped into my mind, along with
the face of the man she had chosen over the circus many years ago.
The memory stunned me. I immediately understood why the unusual
visitor seemed familiar to me. It was the young man with whom
Hevfra had left the circus. Rather, he was a young man more than
twenty years ago. I asked Bernardius why he had kicked out the man.
I had no doubt that, like me, our ringmaster could not forget the
history of Hevfra and her lover. Mr. Bernardius just looked at me
sadly and said what he always tells us: our circus is not a place
for mortals. Of course, he was right, and I had often found sad
evidence of the ringmaster’s wisdom in the circus
archives.

But I’m an archivist, and I couldn’t
miss a chance to learn what happened to our former demionis after
she left the circus. I came out of the big tent. The ogre was not
around, and Hevfra’s former lover was walking slowly away from the
circus. I caught up with him and offered to let him tell his story
in my tent. He did not recognize me, but he was as eager to accept
my invitation as a madman would be at the prospect of release from
an asylum.

In the tent, he hesitated for a long
while. His breath came out in pants, and tears welled in his eyes.
I offered him a drink. He accepted. His hands shook as he took the
glass. It was brighter in my tent than on the street, and I could
see his face. His trembling hands, it seemed, were not the result
of a sudden disturbance. Red veins on his nose and swollen eyelids
revealed him as a longtime lover of drink. Finally, having quieted
his alcoholic shiver, he was able to speak clearly.

I will tell his story in my own words,
without distorting basic facts or adding anything of my own. In the
hope of saving my successor from a long search in the archival
books, first I'll talk about Hevfra.

Hevfra was a mermaid. You must
understand that neither she nor any other mermaid was anything like
that hideous jackstraw exhibited in New York in 1842 by Dr.
Griffin. Hevfra was beautiful. She was like a mermaid from a canvas
of Howard Pyle—long dark hair, white skin and body, elegance that
would have been the envy of every woman. When we found her, she had
strayed from her flock. Mermaids are nomadic creatures, and her
chances of finding her sisters were poor. All the flocks are
extremely reluctant to accept outsiders, so she seemed doomed to
remain alone. But a solitary mermaid has no chance to survive at
sea, so we took Hevfra into our circus.

Despite its ridiculousness, Mr.
Griffin’s scam had served us well. One result was that nobody
believed in the reality of mermaids, so anyone looking at our
Hevfra assumed she was just a lovely young woman whose legs were
hidden by fake scales. Her beauty attracted viewers, especially, of
course, men. Often they received a slap from their wives or
girlfriends when they spent too much time in front of Hevfra’s
aquarium trying to see how her lower part was connected to the
upper. For most she was just an exotic beauty in a bright suit.
Until David. Once David saw Hevfra, he began wandering through the
boondocks after our circus, just so he could gaze upon her
again.

Oh, no, David was not a prince from a
fairy tale. At the time, his trade was not clear to me or Mr.
Bernardius. But David always was in pocket, and in each new town,
he appeared with a gift for Hevfra. Mr. Bernardius became indignant
at the young man’s behavior, but the mermaid liked him. David was
very good-looking. While husbands stared at Hevfra, their wives
gazed hard at David. He was clearly the favorite of women, but he
never took his eyes off the mermaid. A handsome young man,
showering you with gifts! What woman could have resisted? One day,
the show barely finished, the mermaid asked Mr. Bernardius to let
David in. After much wrangling and disputation, the ringmaster
conceded. To my surprise, the young man wasn’t terrified of a close
acquaintance with the girl, and after a night together, David's
interest in the mermaid only grew. He continued to come to the
circus, like a dog to its owner, for almost three months.
Eventually, Hevfra told us she wanted to live with David and leave
the circus. Of course, Bernardius was against it, but Hevfra asked
and asked, and whenever the ogres didn’t let David enter the
circus, she was not herself. Eventually, Mr. Bernardius conceded
again, showing, in my opinion, too much softness. But he always
believed that sane demionis have the right, like humans, to control
their lives, and their participation in the circus must be
voluntary, as long as they were not harmful to people. Hevfra was
sane and harmless and therefore free to choose her own
future.

On the day of her departure, when
Blanche and Black loaded Hevfra’s aquarium into a truck hired by
David, Mr. Bernardius explained to the lad in detail how mermaids
are different from humans and told him how to take care of Hevfra.
He showed him the technical features of the aquarium, which was
eight feet by thirteen feet by seven feet high. David wrote down
everything in a special notebook, looking like a diligent student
struggling to catch every word from the teacher. And then they
left, and for twenty-one years nobody in the circus heard any news
of Hevfra or her lover.

Until today. David has appeared at the
show, aged and sad, to tell his part of the story.

David was a player. Not the classiest,
but better than most. He won more than he lost. But, unlike other
gamblers, David was not going to play to the end of his days. He
had ambition, and he had a plan. Cards were a way for him to raise
money to invest in a business. Initially, Hevfra and David’s life
was like a fairy tale. They lived in a small house on the beach and
enjoyed life as only the young can. Thus it went, until one day
David lost. He lost big. He had money, but making good on the big
loss would mean saying goodbye to their dream of having their own
business. The young man decided it would be cheaper to escape from
the town. Escape was not cheap. Transporting the huge aquarium in
secret and paying truckers and others for their silence drained
David’s purse. To compensate, he played twice as much and sometimes
did not come home for days. Left alone, the mermaid spent her days
in anguish, dreaming that one day everything would be fine and
David would spend more time with her than at the card table. During
the times her beloved stayed home, she reached out to him, but deep
down, David blamed her for his financial problems and began to
think of her as a burden.

David’s run from his creditors lasted
almost three years. During this time, he saved enough money to
repay his debts and invest in a business. He started a fishing
business not far from the town where he first had come to our
circus, and his life became routine and secure. David bought a big
house with a pool, and Hevfra, for the first time in many years,
had the opportunity to swim not only in the aquarium but also
outdoors. The mermaid was as happy as a child and believed such a
gift was a sign that their relationship would bloom with renewed
vigor. But it was not to be. David was no longer a drifter with
questionable pursuits. He was a respected gentleman with a good
income, still young and attractive. Of course, no one knew that
David lived with a mermaid. Local beauties in search of a
successful man considered him an eligible bachelor. David again
began spending a lot of time away from home, not at the card table
but in the beds of young mistresses.

Poor Hevfra knew nothing about David’s
affairs. She never reproached her loved one, though she sensed that
his love for her was waning. As more years passed, David became
more distant from the mermaid, sometimes showing his irritation
when she asked where he had been. He scolded her, saying that only
a wife dares to ask a man such questions. Finally came the hour
when Hevfra asked him to let her go. Sometimes David imagined their
farewell, thinking he would feel relief, but he felt only guilt and
shame. The mermaid convinced him that parting would be better for
both of them, and the next night David went to the pier owned by
his company, took a seiner, sailed away to sea, and released Hevfra
from the aquarium. The mermaid smiled at him from the quiet waves,
on which the moonlight played, and disappeared under the water.
That was fourteen years ago.

David got over his guilt and chose a
wife from the host of mistresses. She gave him two children, a boy
and a girl, and they lived the life of the provincial wealthy. His
existence was only occasionally marred by dreams. In them, he
sailed across the sea in a tiny boat, surrounded by darkness, warm
and inviting. It seemed he could touch it, and then it would
embrace him. From the darkness, he heard the voice of Hevfra. When
David dreamed such dreams, he did not want to wake up.

In the eleventh year of David’s
marriage, he dreamed again about the sea and the darkness. Only
this time the darkness was bitterly cold, and David tried to wake
up but could not. The next day, a messenger from the pier came to
his door with news of something strange and frightening, and David
realized what had happened.

Examining the daily catch on the
wharf, fishermen had found the body of a woman with a scaly tail
instead of legs lying under hundreds of pounds of fish. This
strange creature had become entangled in a net and, once on firm
ground, she suffocated under the weight of the fish. When David
arrived, he immediately recognized Hevfra. Only the presence of
other people kept David from bursting into tears at the sight of
the mermaid. She had not changed, and not even death could mar her
beauty. David paid the fishermen for their silence and threatened
to strangle anyone who revealed the discovery. He wrapped Hevfra’s
body with burlap, tied a metal box full of old machinery parts to
her tail, right above the fin, and loaded it onto a boat. Then, for
the second time, he went to sea to release the mermaid, this time
forever.

That day changed David. Estranged from
his wife and children, he stopped going to the marina and tried to
avoid the sea. Worst of all, David was drinking and seemed
desperately suicidal.

"I'm sorry," he told me in my tent.
"Why was she at my marina? She was looking for me. She was looking
for me." I did not dissuade the poor fellow. I know that mermaids
are too well versed in water to accidentally sail to the wrong
place. David had learned about our circus performance from his son,
who had seen the poster. Turns out this man has been looking for us
all these years. Knowing that anywhere else he would be called a
fool or a drunkard, he wanted to come to us and pour out his heart.
I felt sorry for the man. I can’t blame him, because I know more
than he does about people, and about demionis. I hate alcoholics,
degraded creatures that allow one painful idea to poison their
minds, but I decided to help David. Important note: I did it not
because I had lost fortitude with age but because I did not want
David’s drunken chatter to bring strangers to the
circus.

Fortunately his mind was in such a
state that deep hypnosis could create a miracle. When David left
our circus and returned home, he remembered no more about Hevfra,
did not remember what had happened in our circus, and did not
remember his craving for alcohol. If he’s lucky, he will even
forget the dreams of the sea and the cold, inviting
darkness.

“
Hey cut me, I am such a sick
man.”

Paw
, “Pansy”

Zinnober returned to the circus
after Greg. He already knew what he would say to Lazarus.
Greg
liked to
walk to local bars, perhaps to start a fight. At first, Zinno was
tempted to tell some contrived story about Greg enjoying the
strippers, figuring that Martha would hear about it and dump the
magician. But he resisted the urge and gave up this idea. Everyone
knew there was only Martha for Greg, and only Greg for Martha.
Nobody would believe such absurdity, and if Greg learned who had
invented the fable, even Bernardius would be unable to reason with
him.