A gathering of men in dirty clothes huddled some distance from the train, smoking and passing around bottles. Inside another open boxcar, a dwarf sang and played a miniature guitar while Hester the Monkey Girl laughed and watched Magnus the World’s Ugliest Man trying to teach his dog to play dead. Stubs the Smallest Man in the World sat on the lap of Belinda the Woman with Two Bodies and One Head, a hardcover book in his tiny hands. Hester caught sight of Lilly and called out, asking her to join them. Lilly smiled, shook her head, and kept going.
For some reason, she wanted to be with the animals more than the people. She couldn’t describe how she felt about the animals or why she had such a strong need to see them, because she didn’t understand it herself. But it was one of the reasons she was brave enough to venture out for the first time on her own. Maybe she was drawn to them because they understood what it was like to be locked up, with no control over what happened next. Maybe it was because her cat was the only one who had never let her down. Or maybe her love of animals was part of who she was, like the way her left foot turned in slightly, the way her fingers were long and thin, and the way her skin was white as snow. Whatever the cause, seeing the baby elephant and the other animals was the only thing she cared about right now.
When she finally reached the animal tent, she slowed, suddenly unsure. What if someone yelled at her for being there? What if they told her to go away and not come back? Then she remembered nearly everyone was done for the day, resting up for tomorrow and relaxing in boxcars and open tents, looking for relief from the heat. Hopefully, no one would be inside the menagerie at this hour.
She took a deep breath and slipped in through a side flap, staying close to the shadows. On the other side of the tent, the elephants loomed large and gray, like dark mountains against the canvas. Across from the elephants, zebras, horses, and giraffes stood behind low ropes, sleeping or chewing hay. Camels and llamas lay in a circular bed of straw in the center of the tent, and wagon dens with lions, chimps, and bears lined one wall. The sweet-sour tang of hay and animal dung filled the air, and the only sounds were munching, snorting, thumping, and shuffling.
With every sense on high alert, Lilly slowly moved through the aisle and approached the elephants, stepping as lightly and quietly as she could until she reached the first one. She tilted her head back to stare up at the massive creature. It gazed down at her with amber eyes, a low, rumbling noise vibrating deep in its throat, like the loud purr of a colossal cat. The elephant was mottled and gray, wrinkled and cracked and furrowed from the top of its head to its enormous legs and platter-sized feet. Its toenails were as big as potatoes. Dark swathes of green ran across its ears and knees, like the mold on the bars outside Lilly’s old bedroom window. Black hairs and deep ridges lined its trunk, and the tops of its ears looked thick and rubbery, then grew thinner and thinner until the bottoms resembled a tattered old leaf.
The only thing between Lilly and the elephant was a rope, hanging across the front of the two-sided stall. A heavy chain wrapped around the elephant’s back ankle, then attached to a thick stake in the ground. Looking up at the powerful beast, the walled-in feeling of being locked in her room returned, and the heavy, horrible ache of missing home. The sensations were so strong they nearly brought her to her knees. It was almost as if she could feel the elephant’s misery, like she had with the lion, except this time, there was something else too, something that felt like tenderness. Was it possible that this powerful animal cared about people, even after everything they had done to it, even after they had caged it, tied it in ropes and chains, and forced it to perform? Lilly’s eyes grew moist. More than anything, she wanted to go into the stall and comfort the elephant, to stroke its head and explain she understood what if felt like to be held prisoner, and to still love someone who hurt you. But she didn’t dare.
She moved along the front of the stalls to the second elephant, which seemed even bigger than the first. This one looked half-asleep, its long lashes drooping, its eyes almost closed. She kept going and stopped in front of the third elephant, lying on its side in the straw. Next to it, the baby elephant stood picking at a pile of hay with the end of its little trunk. Lilly gasped quietly and put a hand over her mouth. The baby was even more beautiful up close. When it saw her, it lifted its trunk and reached toward her, a fingerlike lip at the end of its trunk wiggling and moving. Lilly smiled and held out her hand, hoping the baby would come closer. But there was a chain around its hind leg and it couldn’t move forward. Suddenly, the mother elephant startled, sat up, and leapt to her feet faster than Lilly thought possible. Lilly scrambled backward, her heart racing.
“Hey!” a voice yelled, and a boy tumbled between the mother’s tree-sized legs and fell in the straw between her feet.
It was the boy she had seen with the baby elephant on her first day, the one who waved at her and wanted to help when Merrick dragged her away from the freak show. He scrambled to his feet. When he saw Lilly, his eyes went wide.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” he said.
Heat climbed up Lilly’s cheeks. She thought about running, but she was spellbound by the elephants and didn’t want to leave. Before she could decide what to do, the baby elephant reached for her again. The mother held the baby back with her trunk, keeping her eyes on Lilly and trying to push the baby behind her. She looked like the same elephant Lilly had seen tied to ropes in the half-open barn, the one the men were trying to teach new tricks. The boy came out from beneath the mother elephant and put a hand on her giant, wrinkled leg.
“It’s okay, Pepper,” he said to the mother elephant. “Back. Get back, girl.”
Pepper stepped backward and grumbled, a deep, vibrating sound in her throat. Then she lowered her head and checked to make sure her baby was okay, examining its ears and legs and belly with her trunk.
“That’s it,” the boy said. “Steady, girl. Steady.” He patted Pepper’s leg, then moved toward Lilly, frowning and brushing straw from his clothes. “What are you doing in here?” he said again, this time with less irritation.
She swallowed, searching for the right words. Would he get her in trouble, or would he be nice? Maybe he was wishing he’d never waved at her, now that he’d seen her up close. “I-I just wanted to see the elephants,” she said.
He put his hands on his hips. “You know these are wild animals, right? They can be dangerous. You can’t just come in here whenever you want.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and turned to leave.
“Wait,” he said.
She faced him again. To her surprise, he was grinning.
“I thought you came in here to see the elephants?”
She gave him a weak smile, relief washing through her.
“You want to meet them up close?” he said.
She nodded.
“Well, come on, then,” he said. “Crawl under the rope.”