Читать книгу Menagerie - Rachel Vincent - Страница 11

Rommily

A bead of sweat rolled down Rommily’s brow and soaked into the thin blanket beneath her head. In midsummer, the inside of the cargo trailer was always sweltering, and being accustomed to the dark and the heat and the relentless jostling from the road wasn’t the same as being comfortable. But then, comfort wasn’t a concept she remembered very well anyway. She’d been sold to the menagerie as a skinny six-year-old with wide honey-brown eyes, clinging to her older sister’s hand while she whispered reassurances into her younger sister’s ear.

At twenty, Rommily was still thin and her eyes were still wide and honey brown, but the rest of her was all grown-up.

For the past decade of their fourteen years in captivity the oracles had shared a single cage on wheels, just wide enough to let them sleep side by side and just tall enough to stand up in. Rommily’s entire world consisted of 192 cubic feet of space, which she shared with her sisters. What little time they didn’t spend staring out at the world through steel mesh was spent performing, in chains.

Rommily could recall little of her life before the menagerie, and what memories she still possessed had taken on the hazy quality of a half-remembered dream.

The overloaded semi rolled to a stop with a familiar groan and the harsh squeal of brakes, and her body rocked with the motion. Near the front of the trailer, the pup whined in her cage, and at the rear one of the cats snorted, startled from sleep by the sudden loss of forward momentum.

The cats, she knew, always dreamed of trees, of wind and earth and prey. The pup dreamed about her mother. Rommily remembered their dreams clearly, though she hadn’t been able to peek into them in months.

She sat up on the threadbare quilt that served as her pallet in the summer and her blanket in the cold. She glanced at the sister on her left, then at the sister on her right, both still asleep in spite of the narrow empty space she had left between them. She could hardly see them in the muddy darkness, but she knew their shapes by heart.

On the left was Lala, with her perpetual baby face and thin frame, dirty toes peeking from beneath her long layered skirt, even with her legs curled up to her chest. Lala was the youngest of the three, and the smartest, according to most.

On the right was Mirela, whose bountiful figure endured, though she was fed no more than the rest of the livestock. Mirela had a spine of steel, a fact evident in her proud posture. Mirie would not bend. Not for food, not for sleep, and not for comfort. Deep down, her sisters understood that if she were ever pushed too hard, she would snap, and the recoil might kill them all.

There wasn’t enough room to move around in the steel crate, so Rommily sat with her knees tucked up to her chest and stared into the cage across the narrow aisle that ran down the center of the cargo trailer. A set of eyes flashed in the dark, reflecting what little light filtered through the vents in the top of the wide-load trailer.

The minotaur was awake. If he ever slept, Rommily couldn’t tell. Every time she woke up on the road, the bull was watching her. Not just looking at her. Watching her. She wasn’t sure of much anymore, but she was sure of that.

The rumble of the engine died, and in its absence voices echoed from outside, shouting orders and barking replies. Rommily couldn’t tell what time it was from the muddy light overhead, but the time of day never mattered anyway. Regardless of the hour or the weather, the roustabouts would start setting everything up the moment they arrived at the site, the latest in an endless blur of rural county fairgrounds. Lost time was lost money, and if there was anything old man Metzger wasn’t willing to lose, it was money.

Something scraped the outside of the cargo trailer, and Lala rolled over in her sleep. Metal creaked from the left and right as the other livestock began to stir in their cages. The acrid scent of fresh urine wafted from the front of the trailer and Rommily’s nose crinkled. Someone’s bladder control had failed. Probably the pup’s. But that was no surprise, considering how long they’d been locked in the dark.

A sudden violent squeal of metal ripped through the voices echoing from outside, and Rommily’s eyelids snapped shut as mental images rolled over her. Visions still came like that sometimes, triggered from deep within her by a sight, scent, or sound.

“Take the key and lock her up,” she mumbled.

The bull’s eyes narrowed as his attention to Rommily intensified, but she didn’t notice. She could no longer see anything but what played in her head, and even if she actually understood what she saw this time, no one else ever would. They hadn’t been able to make much sense of anything she’d said since the rainy night they’d found her wandering between the cages on some Midwestern fairgrounds, drenched to the bone and dripping with enough blood to drive the cats into a frenzy.

Rommily knew that she understood more of the world than it understood of her since that night, but that frustrated her much less than the brutal realignment of her divination. Her third eye saw mostly the end of life now, and each vision chipped away a little more of her sanity. Mirela worried that she was too far gone already. Rommily worried that Mirela was right.

“Jack fell down and broke his crown,” she whispered, and the words ran together like watercolors on canvas.

On her right, Mirela sat up, took one look at Rommily, then shoved her other sister’s shoulder. Lala groaned and opened her eyes, ready to grump, but when her gaze fell on Rommily, the words died on her tongue.

Before either of them could try for the thousandth time to interpret their sister’s words, the mighty groan of steel obliterated any attempt at communication. A second later, their cage began to tremble as the floor of the trailer shuddered beneath it.

The trailer wall behind the bull’s cage separated from the ceiling with a great creak. Harsh daylight poured in through the ever-widening seams at the top of the wall and down both sides, blinding the occupants inside as the wall, hinged at the bottom, folded down like a ramp the full length of the trailer.

The effect was like opening one long side of a box to reveal its contents. Anyone unaccustomed to the sight would have been astonished by the number of wheeled cages lined up inside, neat as a child’s blocks put away for storage.

But Rommily and her sisters, and the pup, and the cats, and all the others—they only stared out at the circus unfolding before them with tired, glazed eyes.

The bull didn’t turn to look, not even when several big roustabouts in dusty jeans and matching red shirts climbed the ramp at his back. Their heavy boots clomped against the metal floor, and they began opening locks and pulling heavy iron chains from the axles beneath the bull’s cage.

The minotaur was bigger than all three of the oracles combined, and it took eight men—all of them big and strong, and accustomed to the work—to control the roll of his cage down the ramp. If left to gravity, his cart would crash heavily into whatever blocked its path, and if there was anything old man Metzger liked less than wasted time or lost money, it was broken equipment.

While several of the roustabouts stayed behind to sedate the bull, then let him out of his pen and fit him with a work harness, the others climbed the ramp again to fetch the horse cages. The centaurs couldn’t bear a load like the minotaur, but all beasts of burden would be put to heavy labor of one sort or another.

To keep them healthy enough to work, they were given extra food.

To keep them relatively safe to work with, they were given regular sedatives, which kept their minds dull.

Rommily watched as the minotaur was harnessed, leather straps fitting over his largely bovine head and massive, heavy horns before lying across enormous cords of human neck muscle. He blinked at her through a medicated daze. His attention didn’t falter even when the lot superintendent started shouting orders and waving his arms, directing carts of brightly colored costumes and decorative wagon casings—huge hand-carved frames, which would be mounted on the sides of the cages when they went on display.

Mirela and Lala sat on their knees on either side of their sister, and together they watched the pre-carnival dance, a laborious routine they knew well. Everyone had a job. Every job was important. The last time someone forgot to double-check a lock, three people had died. Four, if you count the creature that got loose.

But no one ever counted him.

The beasts of burden were put to work unloading the other cages. The oracles watched, mute, as pairs of large men hauled huge posts toward the fairgrounds. Women drove tractors pulling carts full of supplies, hay, and feed.

Rommily’s fingers folded around the steel mesh in front of her when the roustabouts came for her cage. The animal exhibits had been unloaded and all that remained were the specialized-service acts. The succubi. The sirens. The oracles. Soon they would be cleaned up, decked out in bright colors, and acclaimed on the midway as dancers, singers, and fortune-tellers. But that was all for show. For profit. For later.

For now...

The rattle of chains and the metallic screech of wheeled cages. Sweat-stained clothes and growling bellies, and the aged stench of travel.

The oracle sisters rocked with the jostle of the cage as they were rolled off the trailer. They squinted against the harsh sunlight. Rommily breathed deeply in the open air, but even outside the stale livestock trailer, the menagerie still smelled like captivity. Like straw and animals and sweat and manure. Like rust, oil, and exhaust.

The bull passed the oracles’ cage pulling two of the wolves’ pens, linked end to end. His gaze caught on Rommily again, and he veered so sharply that the man pulling his harness turned and beat him over the head with a thick baton. Rommily could only watch, and when the small procession had gone, her focus fell on a sign revealed by its passing.

Welcome to the Franklin County Fairgrounds.

Rommily shook her head, and her grip on the steel mesh tightened. When she opened her mouth, the commotion of the menagerie swallowed her voice before even her sisters could hear it. But the words echoed in her own head long after they fell from her tongue.

“...we all fall down...”