LITMIR.BIZ

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any of the departing audience had heard this, they decided to ignore it. Now everyone had departed. The Criss-Cross Man didn’t bother to look around at the empty auditorium. He had all his attention focused on Candy.

      “Run…” Malingo murmured to her.

      Candy shook her head and stood her ground. She wasn’t going to let Houlihan think that she was afraid. She refused to give him the satisfaction.

      “Please, lady,” Malingo said. “Don’t let him—”

      “Ah!” said a ripe, rounded voice from the direction of the stage. “Fans!”

      With a little growl of frustration, Houlihan dropped his hands, still a stride or two away from Candy. The man who had just played Jaspar Codswoddle had appeared from backstage. He was nowhere near as fat or as tall as the character he had just portrayed. The illusion had been created with a false stomach, a false bottom and leg extensions, some of which he was still wearing. In fact he was a diminutive man, and beneath his makeup—most of which he’d wiped off—he was bright green. The robes he’d thrown on offstage were more theatrical than anything he’d worn during the play. Behind him came his entourage of two: a highly muscled woman in a florid dress and what looked like a five-foot ape in a coat and carpet slippers.

      “Who wants an autograph then?” the little green actor said. “I’m Legitimate Eddie, in case you didn’t recognize me. I know, I know, it was an uncanny transformation! Oh, and this young lady behind me is Betty Thunder.” The woman curtsied inelegantly. “Perhaps you’d like an autograph from Betty? Or from my playwright, Clyde?” The ape also bowed deeply. Candy glanced around at Houlihan. He had retreated a step or two. Obviously he didn’t like the idea of doing anything violent in front of these three witnesses. Especially when one of them—Betty Thunder—looked as though she could break his nose with one punch.

      “I’d love an autograph,” Candy said. “You were wonderful.”

      “You thought so?” Legitimate Eddie replied. “Wonderful?”

      “Really.”

      “You’re too kind,” he protested with a sly smile of satisfaction. “One does one’s best.” He quickly produced a pen from behind the rolls of his stomach fat.

      “You have something for me to sign?” he said.

      Candy pulled up the sleeve of her jacket. “Here!” she said, proffering her bare forearm.

      “Are you sure?”

      “I won’t ever wash it off!” Candy said. She caught Malingo’s eye as she spoke, and with a couple of darting looks to left and right, instructed him to look for a quick exit.

      “What shall I write?” Eddie wanted to know.

      “Let me see,” Candy said. “How about: To the real Qwandy Tootinfruit.”

      “That’s what you want? Well, all right. To the real…” He had barely written two words when the significance of what he’d been asked to write struck him. He very slowly raised his head to look at Candy. “It can’t be,” he breathed softly.

      Candy smiled. “It is,” she said.

      From the corner of her eye, she could see Houlihan was now approaching again. He seemed to have realized something was wrong. At lightning speed, Candy snatched the pen out of the actor’s hand and then swung around behind him, putting her shoulder against his back and shoving him toward the Criss-Cross Man. The padding made him unstable. He stumbled forward and fell against Houlihan, who also lost his balance. Both men fell to the ground, with Legitimate Eddie on top.

      Houlihan roared and raged—“Get off me, you fool! Let me up!”—but by the time he had got himself out from under Eddie, Malingo had already led Candy to a gap in the wall of the tent.

      “You’re not going to escape me, Quackenbush!” Houlihan yelled as Candy slipped away.

      “Which way?” Malingo said when they got outside.

      “Where are the most people?” He pointed off to their left. “Then let’s go!” she said.

      As they made their way toward the crowd, she heard Houlihan’s voice behind her and glanced over her shoulder to see him appearing from the tent, a look of insane fury on his face.

      “You’re mine, girl!” he yelled. “I’ve got you this time.”

      Though there were only about six strides between the pursuer and pursued, it was enough to give Candy and Malingo a head start. They plunged into the throng and were quickly hidden by the parade of people and animals.

      “We should split up!” Candy said to Malingo as they took refuge behind a line of booths.

      “Why?” said Malingo. “He’ll never find us in this chaos!”

      “Don’t be so sure,” Candy said. “He has ways—”

      As she spoke, Houlihan’s voice rose above the clamor of the celebrants. “I’m going to find you, Quackenbush!”

      “We have to confuse him, Malingo,” Candy insisted. “You go that way. I’ll go this.”

      “Where will we meet again?”

      “At the freak show. I’ll meet you there in half an hour. Keep to the crowds, Malingo. It’ll be safer.”

      “We’ll never be safe as long as that man’s on our heels,” Malingo said.

      “He won’t be on our heels forever, I promise.”

      “I hope you’re right. Vadu ha, lady.”

      “Vadu ha,” Candy said, returning the wishes in Old Abaratian.

      With that they parted. For Candy the next few minutes were a blur. She pressed through the crowds, trying all the while to get the sound of Houlihan’s voice out of her head, but hearing him every step of the way, repeating the same dreadful syllable.

       “Mine! Mine! Mine!”

      Hundreds, perhaps thousands of faces moved before her as she proceeded, like faces in some strange dream. Faces masked with cloth or papier-mâché or painted wood; smiling sometimes, astonished sometimes; sometimes filled with a strange unease. There were a few faces she recognized among the masks. The Commexo Kid appeared in a hundred different versions; so did the faces of Rojo Pixler and even Kaspar Wolfswinkel. There were others to which she could put no name that nevertheless drew her attention. A young man danced past her wearing a black mask streaming with bright red dreadlocks. Another man had a face that had erupted into bright green foliage, in which flowers like daisies bloomed; yet another was tattooed from head to foot with golden anatomy but wore on his chest a cleverly painted hole, which seemed to show her his mechanical heart.

      And every now and then among these bright, strange creatures there would be a naysayer: a serpent in this Eden, preaching the Coming Apocalypse. One of them, dressed in a ratty robe that exposed his sticklike legs, even had a fake halo attached to his head and pointed at the people as they passed, saying they would all perish for their crimes, at the End of Time.

      But his bitter words could not destroy the magic of this place, even now. Everywhere she looked there was beauty.

      A swarm of miniature blue monkeys the size of hummingbirds fluttered up in her face and clambered into the sky, up invisible ropes disappearing in a cloud of violet smoke. A dozen balloons floated past her, pursued by a quiverful of needles, which caught up with their quarry and pierced them, liberating a lilting chorus of voices. A fish of elephantine proportions, with bulging eyes that looked like twin moons, floated past, trailing a scent of old smoke.

      In this confusion of wonders Candy had long ago lost all sense of direction, of course. So it came as a total surprise when she turned the corner and found herself in the very backwater that they’d first come down with the zethek in his cage. Straight ahead of

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