She hurried after Momma, counting her steps until she caught up. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven . . . The feeling of walking and walking and not hitting a wall felt strange and exciting and scary at the same time. Together they crossed the shadowy yard, past the long silhouettes of trees and the towering shape of the barn. Horses whinnied and nickered inside the dark building, thumping against the walls of their stalls. A sweet, dry grass smell filled Lilly’s nostrils, along with a musty, warm tang she imagined was manure.
Momma opened the gate to one of the pastures, let Lilly through, then closed it again. Side by side they moved across the field. Insects chirped and clicked all around them. Lilly wanted to walk slower, but Momma was in a hurry. On the other side of the field, they ducked beneath a white plank fence and made their way toward a line of trees. The ground was rutted and uneven and Lilly kept tripping on clumps of dirt and grass. She was wheezing again, but didn’t dare stop to catch her breath. She thought about asking why they didn’t take the road, then remembered they couldn’t chance being seen. Who knew what would happen if someone saw a white monster on the side of the highway?
Following Momma into a stand of evergreen trees, she did her best to keep up. Her shoes, which she only wore when Daddy asked her to, pinched her toes. Sweat broke out on her forehead and her nose started to run. Inside the trees, Momma led the way along a narrow dirt path padded with pine needles. A clean smell filled the air, like soap and Daddy’s cologne. Lilly wondered if it was the trees. She thought about asking Momma, but it was all she could do to stay behind her. An owl hooted above her head and she jumped, then craned her neck to see it and nearly tripped over a rock.
When they finally made their way out of the woods, through thinning trees and low bushes, they came out at the grassy edge of another field. From there, Lilly could see the dark shapes of circus tents and wagons. The colored lights had been turned off, and the midway was deserted. Momma led her across the grass into a sawdust-carpeted lot, beneath a huge banner that read: THE BARLOW BROTHERS’ CIRCUS. Overhead, triangle flags hung limp in the warm air. Closed lemonade and hot-dog stands lined the lot next to stands with signs that read: COTTON CANDY, ICE CREAM, and ROASTED PEANUTS. A giant painting of clown faces filled the sky above one tent. The silent clowns stared back at Lilly, frozen mid-laugh. Traces of moonlight glinted off flagpoles, making them look silver and cold. Purple-black shadows and gray light crisscrossed the grounds, and a strange mixture of hot grease and animal dung filled the air. There was so much to see and smell, it made Lilly dizzy.
“Where’s Daddy?” she whispered.
Momma shushed her and kept going.
Lilly scanned the lot, waiting for someone to come running at them through the maze of tents, popcorn, and candy apple stands to ask what they were doing there. If the circus owner had agreed to put on a show for her, where was everyone? Where were the animals and performers? Why was everything so dark and quiet?
When Momma’s lantern light swept over a row of giant banners in front of a parade of tents, Lilly wanted to close her eyes again. She shrank away from the paintings of scary-looking people below words that read: ALDO THE ALLIGATOR MAN, LUCIFER THE DEVIL BABY, VIDAL THE THREE-LEGGED BOY, and DINA THE LIVING HALF GIRL. The people in the pictures looked like something out of a nightmare, each one more upsetting than the next. Where are the clowns and the elephants and the horses? she wondered. And where is Daddy?
She stopped next to a ticket stand, gasping for air. “I want to go home,” she said.
Momma came back to where she stood, grabbed her wrist, and dragged her forward. Lilly tripped and stumbled, but Momma didn’t care.
Then they came to a big tent with poles and beams and wires sticking out in all different directions, like the bones of a giant beast. It was the big top Lilly had seen from her attic window. The front flap read: TO THE CIRCUS MAIN ENTRANCE. But the entrance was dark. When Momma passed it and kept going, Lilly dug in her heels.
“Where are we going?” she said.
Momma ignored her and yanked her forward.
On the other side of the big top, a train sat parked on the railroad tracks, a long row of passenger cars and boxcars behind a massive black engine. It was bigger than Lilly could have imagined. From her window, trains looked the same size as her model farm animals. Yellow lights shone here and there behind square windows, and circus wagons with animal cages sat on the ground beside the engine and first few cars. Lilly couldn’t see inside the cages because it was too dark, but to the left of the wagons, a group of bulky mounds lay on the grass.
Elephants, she thought. Real, live elephants. One, two, three, four. Number four stood on its thick legs, its trunk hanging down like a giant worm.
Lilly started toward them, but Momma pulled her in the other direction, toward the back of the big tent into a cluster of covered trailers, trucks, and wagons painted with horses and winged lions. Lilly tried to get Momma to let go because she was hurting her arm and pulling too hard. But she was no match for Momma.
“Where are we going?” she said again. “Where’s Daddy?”
Finally, Momma slowed, and a gloom-shrouded figure moved out from behind one of the trucks and walked toward them. It was a man, quite big, with a thick neck and broad shoulders.
“Daddy?” Lilly said. Then the man moved into Momma’s lantern light and Lilly screamed.
It wasn’t Daddy.
It was a giant monster with a bony forehead, eyebrows grown together over a wide nose, an ape-like jaw, and a mouth that looked like a steam shovel. The monster had massive shoulders and huge arms, and his boat-sized feet kicked up clouds of dust from the earth. A jagged slit ran up the middle of his face, separating his top lip and splitting his nose into two mangled pieces. In the middle of his forehead a mass of dark red tissue looked like a third eye. Big gray teeth filled his mouth, crowding one another for space and overlapping at several points. A checkered shirt stretched over his muscled chest, and the bottom of his worn trousers stopped just below his tree-trunk-sized knees.
Lilly tried to look away but couldn’t. She stood frozen in terror and amazement. Maybe he was an ogre, like the one in Puss in Boots. She didn’t know those things were real. Momma gasped and shrank back, but held tight to Lilly’s wrist. Lilly moved behind her, her limbs heavy as stone.
“Please, Momma,” she cried in a weak voice. “I want to go home.”
Then a normal-looking man appeared behind the monster, dressed in black trousers and a long jacket. He took a drag from a fat cigar and moved toward them, smoke wafting from the corners of his mouth.
“No need to be afraid,” the man said. “Viktor won’t hurt you.” His oily dark hair was pulled into a ponytail, and his face reminded Lilly of pictures she’d seen of the moon, with craters and dents and rocky parts.
“What . . . who is he?” Momma said.