The Sixteen Burdens (33 page)

“He’s right,” Pickford said. She grabbed his hand and pulled him down off the float with her.

“I’ll hold them off,” Panchito said. “I’ll find you at the meeting spot.”

He watched them turn away from the fracas only to run into a fourth dwarf who was wearing a boy’s pea coat and poor-boy cap.

“Leaving so soon?” the clown said to Pickford and Gray. “But the show’s just beginning.”

The clown pulled open his coat to reveal a belt buckle that was a spiked ball. He yanked off the belt, and the sharp buckle stayed attached to one end, making a spiked whip. Panchito was about to attack when Pickford pulled up her veil, stepping into the clown’s path.

“Stop what you’re doing!”

The clown screeched to the halt in front of Pickford’s radiant face. Even after weeks of captivity, her pale beauty was astonishing. She looked nearly translucent. An angel.

“Give me your weapon,” Pickford said.

The clown raised an eyebrow, unimpressed.

“Give me a break.”

With a balled fist, the clown punched Pickford squarely on the cheek. She reeled backward and Gray caught her. Pulling off his hat, the dwarf revealed two long braids. It was a female.

“The queen of silent film?
Ha
!” she said. “I always liked Lillian Gish better.”

She lifted her spiked whip, but Panchito sent it flying out of her hand. She chased after it.

“Seriously, guys, go!” Panchito said.

Gray took Pickford’s hand and they went running ahead, down the path of the parade. Panchito put himself in-between the clowns and Gray’s escape route. The clowns had grabbed their weapons and regrouped. They spread out on all four sides so that he couldn’t take them out all at once. They began to close in.

He didn’t know how, but he would keep them back. This felt right to Panchito; this was his chance to be a hero.

Atlas watched as his clowns circled the boy with courage. They would easily subdue him and then capture Gray. Fairbanks stood on the edge of the parade route, ready to intervene if Atlas gave the word.

The audience didn’t seem to notice the few out-of-place people on the street below. If they could capture Gray and the others without a hubbub, it would make things easier. But he would get Gray either way. Deda said his blood was the key. But the key to what? The old man was inscrutable, and he’d be dead weight once Atlas copied his power.

Let’s kill him once we get his power.

I’ve been waiting thirty years to hear that.

As Atlas stood he saw a flash of light in the corner of his eye. There was the clink of something falling to the ground. He looked down and saw a girl in white crouched in the aisle, chasing after something rolling down the stairs. Atlas grabbed her by the tail of her coat.

“Shirley Temple?”

She turned and looked at him, offering a guilty smile.

“Did you want an autograph?”

She had a slight accent and the curls in her reddish-brown hair were drooping. Atlas looked at her gloved hands. She was holding an Eye in each one. She had two Eyes.

“You’re the one who delivered the letter. Where’s Sugar?”

“She’s doing swimmingly.”

The girl held up one of the Eyes to him.

“Here you go.”

It flew at his face. Atlas let go of her and caught it. It looked just like the Eye he had been holding. He squeezed it in his hands and felt it crush into splinters.

“YOU!” Atlas yelled, but it was too late.

The girl was gone. Not for long.

Gray pulled his mother along. She struggled to keep up.

“You should go ahead,” she said. “I’ll be fine. He has no use for me anymore.”

“I ain’t leaving you after just rescuing you!”

There was a series of mad honks up ahead. Gray saw that Chaplin was driving in reverse toward them. He screeched to a halt.

“Get in!”

Gray helped Pickford into the front seat, then hopped up on the throne in the back.

“Hello, darling,” Chaplin said to Pickford without looking at her.

“You look worse than I do,” she said.

“Oh, I died for a couple of days.”

Chaplin threw the car in drive and sped ahead.

“Where’s Elsie?” Gray asked.

“She ran off. I don’t know where.”

Gray remembered the ripple of fear that had run through him.

“Jack Siegel. It must be.”

Lulu appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. She sat in the back seat, at the base of the throne.

“You’re in my seat.”

“We have to go back,” Gray said.

“We can’t go back,” Lulu said.

“Why not?”

There was a blood-curdling scream, then the sound of building chaos, like the rumble of an approaching avalanche. Gray stood up and looked back to see Darko Atlas storming down through the bleachers. He was pushing people left and right, clearing a path with brute strength.

People were screaming and running away, as if King Kong had broken out of his cage.

“So you got the Eye back?” Gray asked Lulu.

She nodded and handed him the Eye.

“But he noticed.”

She nodded again.

“No one told me how slippery gloves can be.”

There was a heavy crash that shook the ground. Atlas had jumped the final few rows of bleachers to the sidewalk. He ran toward them. It was a massive, lumbering run—a boulder rolling through a field of daisies.

Police on crowd control surrounded Atlas and drew their guns. Squad cars pulled up behind them.

“Halt!” yelled a cop in Atlas’s path. The strongman grabbed him by the front of his uniform and tossed him over his shoulder, high into the air.

From behind, another officer made a futile attempt to tackle Atlas, who shrugged him off like a coat. The officer fell to the ground and Atlas stepped on him with a sickening crunch. It left a giant flattened footprint across the man’s body. Other officers opened fire, and the bullets glanced off Atlas, some of them rebounding and hitting the cops. The remaining flatfoots fled.

A float they had passed by—the one with the sea horses—had stopped amid the confusion, blocking the street. Bracing himself against the ground, Atlas lifted and heaved the float out of his way with one hand; it went careening off into the crowd on the other side of the street. People scattered, screaming and running away.

“Let’s hop off and disappear among the crowd,” Chaplin said. “With my luck he’ll never find us.”

“No,” Gray said. “He’ll only hurt more people looking for us. Keep on the parade route. Try to get us to the end, away from everyone.”

“And then what?”

Gray hadn’t planned for this. He felt foolish; he had no idea the lengths to which Atlas would go to get the Eye. His plan had been childish, and people were dying because of it.

“I don’t know.”

Members of the marching band had dropped their instruments and fled. Atlas scooped up a few pieces of brass and hurled them high into the sky. Gray heard a wobbly musical note coming from high above them; it grew louder and louder.

“Watch out!”

A trombone shot down from the sky and pierced the hood of the car like a spear. Gray looked back and jumped off the throne onto the back seat.

“Duck!”

They sank into their seats just as a tuba whirled at them. It sliced through the throne and then cleaved the front windshield clear off the car. The tuba clanged on the asphalt and rolled, landing among a procession of men on horses. The animals whinnied and reared, and many of them galloped away.

Chaplin slammed on the brakes just in time to avoid a man who was thrown off his horse.

“Move along!” Chaplin shouted.

The man pushed himself to sitting.

“I think my leg’s broke.”

Chaplin grumbled, then jumped out of the car and dragged the man to the sidewalk. The car sputtered and smoke rose from the hole the trombone had made.

“The car’s dying!” Gray shouted.

Chaplin hopped back in just as the Phaeton stopped idling. He tried the ignition. It turned over once, then died.

“Come on,” Chaplin said. “A little luck, please.”

Lulu tapped Gray hard on the shoulder.

“He’s here.”

Gray turned just as Atlas ripped the remains of the throne off the car. He towered above him, silhouetted against the sun like some kind of prehistoric statue.

“Let’s not make a scene,” Atlas said.

“It’s a bit late for that,” Chaplin said, still trying at the car.

It suddenly roared to life. Chaplin slammed his foot on the accelerator, but Atlas lifted the back of the car with one hand. The wheels spun futilely in the air. Atlas wrapped his other hand around Gray’s neck.

“The Eye,” he said.

Gray nodded ever so slightly. He reached down as if going for the Eye, but instead grabbed a sharp steel rod that had been part of the support structure for the throne.

He lifted it up and plunged it toward Atlas’s chest. The crystalline energy that encrusted Atlas’s skin resisted him, and the pointed end of the rod hovered a millimeter above.

The skin ain’t the problem. It’s his talent.

Gray felt the blood in his neck pounding against Atlas’s grip, demanding passage to his brain. Desperate to breathe, he dropped the iron and ripped at Atlas’s giant hand. Gray’s eyes bulged and he saw flashes of light until, all of sudden, Atlas dropped him. Gray gasped for breath.

When his eyes could focus again, he saw Atlas scrutinizing his hand. There, on the backside, was broken skin in the shape of four distinct fingernail marks.

“How did you do that?” Atlas asked.

The Phaeton slipped from Atlas’s grip, and it rocketed down the empty street.

Atlas stared at Gray as they sped off, his hands balling into fists.

I’ve only made him angry.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
-S
EVEN

P
ANCHITO
WAS
ABOUT
to push over the nearest clown when a human body came hurtling down at him from the sky. It was a police officer. Panchito could only give the man a soft thrust upward so that he flipped awkwardly away, a football bouncing down a field.

Atlas cut through a line of police as easy as tall grass in a meadow, clearing his way toward the Grand Marshal car. Panchito needed to follow, but Horace blocked him.

Panchito plucked a cattail from the float and wielded it like a fencing sword.

“Don’t make me hurt you.”

“With what?” Horace asked. “Flowers?”

There was nothing in the way of a weapon for Panchito to use. There were only tens of thousands of rose petals littering the parade route. He got an idea.

Panchito crouched down and thrust outward all about him, sweeping up the rose petals like a giant broom. They flew up in a flurry of pink and red and white, making a kind of smoke screen. He made a run for it.

Just as he was feeling confident he had escaped the clowns, something heavy and sharp dug into his back and knocked him face forward to the ground. He turned and saw the female clown take the handle of her belt whip and yank. Panchito cried out as the spiked ball pulled out of him, bloody with small bits of flesh.

“You run like a fat penguin,” she said.

Panchito rolled over onto his back.

“And you look like an ugly duckling.”

He grabbed the dangling end of her belt whip and pulled it. She stumbled upon him and he lifted his feet to stop her.

“Now fly!”

He thrust upward as he kicked her in the chest. She shot into the air like a cannonball, landing high in a ficus tree down the street.

“Hey, that’s my girlfriend!” Horace said.

Panchito got to his feet.

“Weird place for a date.”

He picked up the woman’s whip and threw it at Horace, who easily ducked and rolled under the float.

“Get him!” Horace yelled. “And hold on to your dang weapons!”

The two clowns ran at him. He heard the bald one cock his pistol and aim. Panchito focused carefully on the weapon and thrust with all of his might. The gun flew out of the man’s hand, taking his trigger finger with it. It landed somewhere up on the float. The bald clown screamed and rolled to the floor, holding his bloody hand.

The hook-nosed clown charged him with the lead pipe. Before he could get within striking distance, Panchito balled his hands into fists and thrust a punch at the man’s face. The clown’s face cracked to the side as if he’d just gotten jabbed by an invisible boxer. He shook it off and charged again. Panchito thrust with a cross, then an uppercut to the clown’s stomach.

Horace popped out from under the float and swiped low at Panchito. The dagger sliced him along his outer thigh. Panchito jumped away from the float, stumbling to his side. This gave the hook-nosed clown time to reach him. He lifted the lead pipe high in the air but paused, half expecting Panchito to thrust it out of his hands. When nothing happened, the clown swung down as hard as he could. Panchito waited for the split second when the pipe was in-between them, then thrust. The pipe slammed into the clown’s forehead, knocking him out cold. He dropped to the ground.

That ought to hold them. That only leaves…

Panchito turned around and saw Horace on the float. He held Carole next to him, pressing his dagger against her soft, fleshy side. She must have hidden in the rocks of the float when the fracas broke out.

“Give yourself up,” Horace said. “Or I’ll make ancient history of this cave girl.”

“What makes you think I care what you do with her?” Panchito asked.

Horace raised an eyebrow.

“You probably don’t. But you’ll care what people think about you if they find out you failed to save her.”

Panchito didn’t show it on his face, but the words rang true. He didn’t care much about what happened to Carole. Maybe that was his problem. His courage, it was self-serving. When he chose to save someone, it was only to demonstrate how great a hero he was.

A real hero doesn’t choose who he saves.

An unexpected wave of compassion washed over him. He felt sorry for Carole, even though she had been nasty to him. He even found himself feeling sorry for Horace, a dwarf who was probably forced to join the circus. This compassion, it was unlike him. And then he realized it wasn’t him.

Elsie.

Wherever she was, Elsie had pulsed him with the emotion. He didn’t know why she did it, but it was exactly what he needed. It was the one thing he was missing. All this time he worried about rescuing people—Pickford, Gray, and now Carole—without really caring about the people themselves.

“Let her go,” Panchito said. “Take me.”

He climbed up on the float.

“I knew it,” Horace said. “You’ve got hero syndrome if I’ve ever seen it.”

But he didn’t know. Panchito wasn’t surrendering to be the hero; he was swapping places because Carole looked terrified and didn’t deserve to get caught up in this. As soon as Panchito was within arm’s reach, Horace gave the actress a little shove. She stumbled off the float and ran away. The clown grabbed Panchito from behind and brought the knife under his neck, then clamped Panchito’s head down so that the dagger was pinched between his chin and his chest. Any direction Panchito tried to thrust at the knife would only slit his own neck or jaw.

“Now what?” Panchito asked. “You take me to Atlas?”

“No,” Horace said. “It’s your body I’ll bring to Atlas. Your courage. I’ve heard rumors about how to take it.”

“From who?”

“It doesn’t matter. There are advantages to being small. Eavesdropping is one of them. Now, goodbye.”

Panchito felt the blade sliding across this throat. He thrust in the opposite direction to stop it. But Horace merely changed the direction and pushed the dagger up against the bottom of his jaw instead. Again, Panchito thrust against it in the opposite direction. This couldn’t go on for long.

A few feet away the pistol was lying on a bed of moss. Panchito reached for it, but it was still a good foot away. He could thrust the gun farther away, but he couldn’t pull it closer to him.

Panchito felt the dagger dig into his throat, and felt the ooze of blood run down his neck. This was it. He had lost. But he felt content he had done the right thing. Courage didn’t mean fighting all of the time. Sometimes, courage was about submitting. The way his father had submitted his life to save his family. Like Panchito had submitted himself to save Gray and Pickford.

Courage fights, but sometimes it also surrenders.

Panchito reached for the gun one last time.

And then it happened: He
tugged
.

The gun flew toward him, into his hand. He bashed Horace on the side of the head. The clown lost his grip and Panchito scuttled backward, aiming the pistol at him.

“Back off!”

The clown growled and leapt at Panchito with his dagger. Panchito could have shot him point blank in the chest, but he restrained himself. He remembered his compassion for Horace, even then as the man was trying to kill him.

Instead, Panchito thrust him backward, sending him flying up and into the volcano at the back of the float. He heard a loud thud and scrambled up the incline to look inside. Horace had dropped a good twelve feet down into the hollow center that was still smoking from the remains of dry ice.

“You’re a coward,” Horace said. “Come down and fight me.”

“I’m not a coward,” Panchito said. “I’m letting you live. That’s true courage.”

The volcano wouldn’t hold him forever, but long enough for Panchito to get out of there. Long enough to find out what had happened to the others.