The Tiger's Egg (4 page)

M
iles Wednesday, scarf-wrapped and half-awake, sat on the box seat beside Fabio, who drove the Bolsillo brothers' wagon at an easy pace along the road that led from Larde to the distant mountains. The birds were beginning to awaken in the trees, and the sky ahead of them lightened toward dawn. Fabio spoke softly to the massive horses that plodded slowly ahead of them, and Miles listened in comfortable silence, not yet awake enough for conversation. He tried to make out what Fabio was saying, but the words were unfamiliar, and punctutated with little chucks and whistles that did not seem to have any meaning.

The three long trucks that carried the big top had gone well ahead of them, and were long since swallowed up by the orange blob of the rising sun. With them had gone the tent boys, K2 the Strongman and the Bolsillo brothers' hardworking elephants, Tembo and Mamba. They would reach Shallowford well before the rest of the circus, and there they would make ready the tent to be raised, once more hands had arrived.

Miles had been allocated the spare bunk in the Bolsillo brothers' wagon. He had cleared it of polka dot socks and luminous wigs, and found a space among the ropes, the hoops, the cymbals and horns and greasepaint for the small trunk that Lady Partridge had packed for him. Little was to ride with the Toki sisters, a troupe of contortionists who had arrived just weeks before from the Far East. Miles had seen the Toki sisters at practice, tying themselves into a fantastic beast with four heads and many limbs, and he had heard that they could fold themselves up like deck chairs, or make themselves into hoops and roll effortlessly around the ring.

He leaned out and looked back along the road to see if he could spot Little. Directly behind them came the blue and silver wagon of the mysterious
Doctor Tau-Tau, and behind that was the lion cage, driven by the haughty Countess Fontainbleau, and the battered van belonging to Stranski the Magician, followed by the Zipplethorpe family's horse trailer, but the Toki sisters' wagon was still lost in the morning mist.

“When did Doctor Tau-Tau join the circus?” asked Miles.

“Just after Christmas,” said Fabio.

“He was abroad for many years,” said Gila.

“But he was with Barty Fumble's before that,” said Umor.

“Why does he never leave his wagon?” asked Miles.

Fabio shrugged. “Who knows?” he said.

“None of our business,” said Gila.

“People join the circus for many reasons,” said Fabio.

“And it's not always a good idea to ask.”

“A man's wagon is his castle.”

Miles pulled his overcoat tighter to keep out the biting cold. There seemed little point in trying to tell them about the conversation he had overheard from Doctor Tau-Tau's wagon, and in any case the fragment he had heard would mean little on its own. He wondered how many secrets the circus carried with it as it wound through the countryside.
Perhaps a clue to his father's disappearance still lurked in one of the painted wagons. He always pictured his parents in a wagon with a magnificent tiger's head painted on it, but he was not sure why, and he knew of no such wagon in the circus.

“Which wagon belonged to my parents?” he asked. “Is it still with the circus?”

Fabio cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said.

“And no,” said Gila.

“What they mean,” said Umor's voice from inside the wagon, “is that all the wagons change hands.”

“They get repainted.”

“And refitted.”

“They get married and separated.”

“Sometimes we make a new one from two old ones.”

“I once tried to turn one inside out,” said Gila, “but I couldn't get the wagon through the door.”

Miles waited for them to finish. “Which one is it?” he repeated.

“Tau-Tau's wagon,” said Fabio, staring straight ahead.

Miles leaned out to the side and looked back along the road. Tau-Tau's wagon was directly behind them, and for once he could see Doctor Tau-Tau himself, perched on the box seat in his battered fez.
His face was round and red, with a little tuft of beard dangling from it so that he looked like a goat in a coat. Miles tried to picture Barty Fumble himself sitting on that very seat with Miles's mother beside him, but while he could clearly see his barrel-chested father in his mind's eye, his mother was as indistinct as a noonday ghost.

He turned back to Fabio. “What was my mother's name?” he asked. For years he had known nothing about his parents, but in the months since he had learned of his mother's death in childbirth and the subsequent disappearance of his father from his own circus, he had begun to think that it was time to start filling in the new and hollow feeling that had grown within him.

“There's a village up ahead,” said Gila.

“That'll be Hay,” called Umor from inside.

“Nice little inn there,” said Gila.

“Very reasonable too,” said Umor.

Fabio kept silent, watching the horses' broad backs.

“You told me you knew my parents well,” said Miles, carefully keeping the impatience from his voice. He had long since learned that getting information from the Bolsillo brothers was like catching fish with your bare hands. A lot of patience was
required, and there was no guarantee of success.

“As well as anybody, Master Miles,” said Fabio.

“I don't know anything about my mother,” said Miles.

Fabio sighed. “Your mother's name was Celeste,” he said, “and she came from down south, across the water.”

“She had hair like midnight,” said Gila.

“And eyes to match,” said Fabio.

“Always smelled of warm coconut,” said Umor, his head poking out from between the curtains at the front of the wagon.

“And when Barty laughed, she would just smile,” said Gila.

“Like she knew a deeper secret,” said Umor.

“Celeste knew all the secrets, Master Miles,” said Fabio.

“Do you have any pictures of them?” asked Miles. “Of my parents?”

“Of your father, yes,” said Fabio.

“Your mother didn't like cameras,” said Gila.

“Or they didn't like her,” said Fabio.

“She didn't like to be trapped in a picture, did Celeste,” said Umor, poking his head out from the wagon once more.

He held out a small photograph in a dark wooden
frame. Miles took it with trepidation. He was almost afraid to look, in case what he saw did not match his expectations. The frame contained an old black-and-white photograph, faded by age to a brownish color. A number of bleached yellow blobs floated like giant amoebas in the center of the photograph. Beside them a large man stared out from the picture, his head tilted back and a smile creasing his face, though little of it could be seen behind a bushy black beard. The man wore a double-breasted ringmaster's coat with two rows of shiny buttons and elaborate epaulets. Behind him could be seen a wagon painted with a rearing tiger, almost exactly as Miles had imagined it.

The man in the photograph, who of course was Barty Fumble himself, stood with his arm around a slender woman in a dark dress, but the largest of the yellow blobs floated just where the woman's face should be. A tangle of beads could just be seen hanging below the blob, but not a trace remained of her features. Miles stared at the picture as though he could will his mother's face to appear. He felt cheated.

“It's a good one of Barty,” said Gila.

“But not a great likeness of your mother,” said Umor.

“What happened to the photo?” asked Miles.

Fabio shrugged, making a clicking noise to the horses as he did so.

“Who knows?” he said.

“She didn't want it taken in the first place,” said Umor.

“But Barty insisted.”

“The photo came back all right.”

“But before the week was out, her face had disappeared.”

“When Barty saw it, he just laughed, and threw the picture away.”

“But we kept it.”

“And now it's yours,” said Gila. “If you want it.”

“Thank you,” said Miles. He took another long look at his father, who smiled out at him as though he knew that Miles were there, then he slipped the picture into his inside pocket, feeling Tangerine wriggle around to make room for it.

“Have you ever looked for my father,” he asked Fabio, “since he disappeared?”

Fabio said nothing. Gila jumped up from the box seat and ducked into the wagon to help Umor with some unspecified task.

“Has anyone ever searched for him?” asked Miles, looking at Fabio. “He can't have just vanished
off the face of the earth.”

Fabio stared ahead in silence. They rumbled over the bridge into the small town of Hay, where Miles and Little had stopped to find something to eat on their long journey to the Palace of Laughter the previous autumn. As they approached the Surly Hen Inn, Fabio turned to Miles, a fathomless expression in his little black eyes.

“Your father is dead,” he said. For once there was no echo from the two brothers in the wagon.

“But how do you know?” said Miles. He could feel tears welling up in his eyes, and he fought them back. “You said he had disappeared.”

“Just believe me, I know,” said Fabio. “Barty Fumble is dead and gone.”

He called softly to the horses, and they pulled in to the yard beside the Surly Hen and drew to a halt before the dark, silent forest.

T
angerine the bear, birdbrained and half-stuffed, felt his master's hand reach into the warm pocket where he lived. He gave Miles's fingers a soft squeeze, and the fingers squeezed back. Miles was in the habit of checking on Tangerine regularly, both to make sure he was still there and to keep him from showing himself in company. A bear that could walk and dance generally attracted the wrong sort of attention from strangers. As he sat at a heavy wooden table in the corner of the Surly Hen, Miles checked on Tangerine more frequently than usual. This was, after all, the place where he had lost the bear once before, and it was not an
experience he wanted to repeat.

The inn, which was normally quiet this early in the morning, was crowded now with circus folk. The landlady and her daughter were bustling between the contortionists, lion tamers and sword swallowers, balancing above their heads plates of fried breakfast and steaming mugs of coffee. At the bar sat a scattering of farmers, making sure they had a good feed under their belts before embarking on the hard labor that separated them from lunchtime, and staring at the circus folk with open curiosity.

“I'm starving,” said Little, sliding onto the bench beside Miles with a knife and fork at the ready. “The Toki sisters talked about food the whole way here. It was mostly stuff I never heard of, but it made me hungry all the same.”

Miles felt empty too, but he could not tell how much of this was hunger and how much was the yawning hole left by Fabio's insistence that his father was dead. He was sure that Fabio would never tell him an outright lie, but he couldn't shake the idea that he was not being told the whole truth either. He tried to put thoughts of Barty Fumble out of his mind as two enormous breakfasts arrived on the table. They were followed a moment later by
Doctor Tau-Tau, whose own breakfast was piled so high on the plate that it was in danger of keeling over. He sat down gingerly to avoid shaking the table. His face was weathered to a brick red, and his bulging eyes took in Miles and Little as he speared a large sausage with gusto.

“Doctor Tau-Tau, clairvoyant and master of nature's remedies,” he said through a mouthful of sausage. He held out his hand. “You must be Stranski's new boy and the little bandmaster.” A gold tooth glinted through his half-chewed breakfast, and his faded red fez perched on grizzled brown hair. It looked as though both he and the hat had spent many years in the sun.

“That's right,” said Miles. “I'm Miles, and this is Little.”

Miles was rather surprised to be addressed so heartily by Doctor Tau-Tau, who had never even shown his face since they had joined the circus. Perhaps, he thought, it was the open road that had lightened Tau-Tau's mood.

Doctor Tau-Tau pointed at them with his fork, and chewed vigorously to make room for speech. “I can see many things in your past,” he said eventually in a sausage-muffled voice. “And your futures are an open book to me.”

Miles was not sure if this odd statement, spoken in a thick foreign accent, required an answer, so he concentrated on taking the edge off his own hunger. Little ate too, her clear blue eyes fixed on Doctor Tau-Tau's face.

Doctor Tau-Tau took a noisy slurp from his tea and leaned across the table. “Reality is a veil,” he said, “and the truth swims behind it like a golden fish with ruby eyes and fins of . . . some silvery stuff. Few are the people who can pull that veil aside, but I have that gift. That gift, young travelers, is one that I have.”

“Is the veil in the water?” asked Little, mopping her plate with a piece of bread. “Or is the fish flying?”

Doctor Tau-Tau sat back in his chair and laughed. “You are sharp, little girl,” he said. “There are many kinds of veils in the water. There's . . . er . . . a water veil, for a start.” He paused for a moment, and a frown creased his forehead. “And the fish of truth can of course fly . . . .” His voice tailed off as though he had just thought of something else, then suddenly he sat bolt upright and turned back to Miles. He put his fingertips to his temples. “Ask me a question,” he said, fixing Miles with his goggly eyes and looking not unlike the fish of truth himself. “Anything at all.”

Miles thought for a moment. “Okay,” he said, suddenly remembering where he had seen the fortune-teller's name before. “Did you invent Dr. Tau-Tau's Restorative Tonic?”

A shocked look came over Doctor Tau-Tau's face. “Infamy!” he spluttered. “I never had anything to do with the stuff. I hope no drop of that insidious juice ever passed your lips, young man.”

He straightened his fez with a hand that shook slightly. “My name was stolen, if you must know, by a villain named the Great Cortado. He hounded me from the circus and stole my possessions! My books, my herbs and remedies, even my name he took for his vile concoctions, and I was left to start again in foreign parts with nothing but the clothes I stood up in.” He took a gulp of tea, and it seemed to restore some of his composure. “And, of course, my uncommon talent,” he added.

“You used to be with Barty Fumble's circus, didn't you?” said Miles.

Doctor Tau-Tau nodded. “Many years ago,” he said, “I was apprenticed to a fortune-teller named Celeste. My unparalleled knowledge of the divining arts was built on the foundation of her teaching. She also taught me much about the ancient healing properties of plants, and with my innate talent I
was able to develop a number of excellent potions and cures from her simple remedies, although unlike that infamous tonic, few of them have received the recognition they deserved.”

“What kind of potions did you invent?” asked Little.

“Well, there was my powerful sleeping draught, which could calm the most nervous of people and send them into a deep and dreamless sleep for an entire day. I also perfected a cure for gastric distress, and of course my patented Bearded Lady lotion remains an untried marvel to this day.”

“A Bearded Lady lotion?” said Little.

“Absolutely,” said Tau-Tau, chewing the last of his sausage. “Two drops of this liquid applied to the chin of the daintiest lady would be enough to produce a beard of magnificent quality in minutes. Think of the money an enterprising girl could make as a sideshow. I can't imagine why no one has ever consented to try it.”

“Very odd,” said Miles, who was far more interested by the mention of his mother than by Doctor Tau-Tau's back catalogue of untried marvels. He tried to keep his tone casual, but he was burning to know more. “What was she like?” he asked.

“I told you I never found anyone brave . . . I mean,
enterprising enough,” said the fortune-teller sadly.

“I mean Celeste,” said Miles. “What was she like?”

“Ah!” said Tau-Tau, and he paused for the first time since sitting down at the table. He seemed to be lost for a moment in another time. “Great clairvoyants don't come along every five minutes, young man,” he said at length. “I, of course, am the greatest fortune-teller and healer alive, though I don't like to blow my own trumpet, but Celeste was certainly something special in her day. She made you feel like you were made of glass, and your beating heart was suspended there for her to see.”

“But what did she look like?” asked Miles.

“What did she look like?” repeated Doctor Tau-Tau. He was silent again for a while, except for a loud belch that started deep in his stomach and rumbled its way out without disturbing his train of thought. “Funny you should ask that,” he said eventually. “I remember her well, but I just can't see her face for the life of me. For the life of me,” he repeated, “I just can't see her face.”

“You must have known Barty Fumble too,” said Miles. He wondered to himself what kind of fortune-teller would be unaware that he was talking to the son of his own mentor, but he thought it best not to mention this for the time being.

“Of course,” said Doctor Tau-Tau, coming out of his reverie. “Big overweight chap. He would have been nothing without his tiger.”

Miles was almost too surprised to be annoyed. He had never heard anyone speak of his father with anything less than affection and respect. “It wasn't his tiger,” he said shortly. “No tiger can be owned by a man.”

“Ah!” said Doctor Tau-Tau, tapping the side of his nose and looking pleased with himself. “I think you will find that you are wrong. I know many of the secrets of the striped cat. You won't find the important details in picture books, my boy.”

“I think your fish has slipped behind your veil,” said Miles indignantly. “I happen to be good friends with a tiger, and he told me so himself.”

Little clattered her cutlery loudly on her empty plate. “People are leaving,” she said. “We'd better get back to the wagons, Miles.”

For a moment Miles and Doctor Tau-Tau held each other's stare, then the fortune-teller straightened up and showed his gold tooth in a broad smile. “Forgive me!” he said. “Sometimes a man with my talents can be blinded by overconfidence. You do indeed bear the mark of a tiger friend—I see it now.” He reached across the table and grasped
Miles's hand warmly. “Perhaps you will ride with me for the rest of our journey. Such a gift is rare, and I would be honored to hear more about your friendship.”

“I'd rather not talk about it,” said Miles. He was uncomfortably aware that Little was trying to steer him away from the fortune-teller, but at the same time he could not help being flattered by the interest Doctor Tau-Tau showed in him. Sometimes he almost forgot how unusual a thing it was to have been befriended by a talking tiger.

“Of course, of course,” said Doctor Tau-Tau. “As you wish, my boy. But please ride with me anyway, both of you. We will be many months on the road together, and we should not be strangers.”

“Thank you, but I promised the Toki sisters I would help them with their costumes,” said Little. She shot Miles a meaningful glance. “They need a lot of help,” she said.

Miles shrugged. “I'm not much good with a needle,” he said. He had just remembered that the wagon in which Tau-Tau was traveling had once belonged to his parents, and he was curious to take a look inside. “I'll see you when we get to Shallowford.” He leaned close to Little as they made their way out into the cold morning. “Don't worry,”
he said. “I think he's harmless.”

“The man who was in his wagon the other night didn't sound so harmless,” said Little. “Just be careful what you tell him.” She turned and jumped onto the back of the Toki sisters' wagon just as it began to roll toward the open road.

Miles sat up beside Doctor Tau-Tau on the box seat of the small wagon, swaying with the rhythm of the wooden wheels, his belly comfortably full with a warm breakfast.

“A real tiger,” sighed Doctor Tau-Tau, almost to himself. “And you say he spoke to you? It is a sign of great fortune. But of course, if you don't want to talk about it, you certainly shouldn't. Not so much as a word, my friend.”