Inside the tent, it is mercifully quiet. Earl barely looked up when Lampie put two quarters on the counter but just raised an eyebrow and waved her through. Finally.
It is darker than the last time. Candles are burning in the alcoves to the left and right. The Phenomenal Freaks look up in surprise as Lampie walks by.
“Another one?” mutters the bird-woman. “Isn’t it dinner time yet? Go on, then. Just a quick look.” She climbs down from her stool and flutters around a bit: the thin black feathers attached to her costume dance about.
The fat bearded lady stands up and stares at the girl with the cart, but Lampie passes right by. The Siamese twins are playing cards with themselves. One of the heads glances up.
“Hello, child. Have you come to feed us today?”
The other one does not look. “Who’s coming to feed us?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ask who?”
“That girl.”
“Which girl?”
Their voices fade away as Lampie turns the corner. Then she stops. Edward has pushed his blanket down a little. She can see his eyes.
“Here?” he whispers.
“Shh! Yes, in that tank. Do you see?” She pulls the cart a little closer. There they are again: the glittering mermaids, the tridents, the fountains of blood and the dirty aquarium beneath.
Edward sits up and the blanket slides off him. “In there?” He wrinkles his nose as he looks at the tank of brown water. “I can’t see anything.”
“Stay under your blanket!” hisses Lampie. “Someone might come in!” She pulls the blanket a little higher over the boy and drags the cart closer to the tank. “She’s in there. Can’t you see? At the back, that dark—”
Suddenly the mermaid’s face appears, looming out of a cloud of algae, and pressing up against the glass. Her green hair fans out, her big pitch-black eyes seem to be searching for something – and they find Fish. He looks at her. His jaw drops. She presses herself even closer to the glass, her nose, mouth and cheeks becoming white and flat. A stream of bubbles flows from her mouth.
Fish makes a quiet sound. He stares and stares. The blanket has slipped off again.
“I thought so,” says a voice. Lampie is so startled that she actually jumps. “I thought you’d come back. I could tell by looking at you.” The dwarf is inside the dark tent now, hands on hips, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. But he looks friendly enough, and he is smiling. “And not alone, I see.”
Edward tries to pull up the blanket as quickly as he can, but he gets himself in a tangle.
“Peekaboo! I see you!” says the dwarf cheerfully. “I’d already spotted you in there. So where on earth did you find that?” he asks Lampie. “Under your bed?”
“Um…” Lampie tries to help Edward with his blanket, but it slides onto the ground.
“Stupid child! Idiot!” the boy hisses at her. “I can bite, you know. I’ll bite you to pieces!” He growls at the dwarf and shows his teeth. “Just ask her!”
“Oh, I believe you, Fishtail.” The dwarf calmly picks up the blanket off the dirty floor, shakes it out and lays it over the boy again. “So have you come to visit your family?”
Fish looks back at the mermaid. Is that what she is?
“In my case, it’s a deformity,” he says with an angry nod at his legs. “They’re already getting stronger too. I just need to do a lot of practice.”
“Oh, lad,” says the dwarf. “Of course. I can see that.” Then he holds out a hand to Lampie. “Hello, my sweet girl. My name’s Oswald.”
Lampie takes his hand. “Emilia,” she says shyly. “But people call me Lampie.”
“Lampie,” says the dwarf with a grin. “Perfect. And this is?”
“Edward,” says Lampie.
“Fish,” says Fish. He can’t take his eyes off the aquarium.
There is a ladder behind the canvas, for when Earl feeds the mermaid. Oswald fetches it.
“Would you like to go in there with her?” he asks Fish. “I can get Lanky Lester to lift you into the tank. The tall one. And you can go for a little swim with your auntie, eh?”
“We think she’s his mother,” whispers Lampie. “Or, um, that’s what I thought anyway.”
The dwarf narrows his eyes. “I doubt it,” he says. “Shouldn’t think so. But we can always ask. Well?” he asks. “Do you want to go swimming?”
Fish frantically shakes his head. “No! I can’t!” He gives Lampie a shove. “You know that! I can’t let my head go underwater!”
“Fine, then,” says Oswald, and he climbs the ladder himself. “She’d enjoy it though.”
“How do you know that, Mr… um?…”
“Just call me Oswald.”
“Can you understand her, um… Oswald? Do you talk to her?”
“Sometimes,” says the dwarf. He rolls up his jacket sleeve and puts one hand in the water. “She nearly always says the same thing.”
A white, almost transparent hand comes from below and takes his. But through the muddy water the mermaid’s eyes go on staring at the boy in his cart. There are bubbles coming from her mouth, which burst as they reach the surface of the water.
“No, not your mother,” says Oswald. “But she does know who you are. She’s your, um… some kind of aunt, I believe. They looked for you, she says.”
Fish’s eyes grow big and round. “But who? And when? And wh-where?”
The dwarf on the ladder closes his eyes. “Sparkling Diamond,” he says. “That’s her name.”
Lampie looks at the greenish-brown thing floating in the water. Sparkling Diamond?
“She is a long way from home,” says the dwarf. “For so long… Homesick, homesick.”
He starts talking in a different voice, a voice deeper than his own. It is the voice of the mermaid. Lampie feels Fish’s hand grab hers and squeeze it. A bit hard, but that does not matter. In the semi-darkness she can see a few of the Freaks leaving their alcoves and coming closer. The bearded lady, the very tall man, the ragged bird-woman: they all shuffle quietly up to the aquarium and listen to the voice coming from the dwarf.
“She came… I came… I came to seek my sister, my beautiful, my sweet sister. She was the most beautiful of all the Children of the Sea. And one day she was gone. They said she went with a two-legs, went with a ship. But I could not believe it. Who would want that? Who would want to be above water? The longer I am here, the less I understand. This is no world for us. We cannot live here. But we don’t die either, so it is even worse. Look at me here. Around in a circle, and then another circle, never going further, never going anywhere…” The mermaid swims up and down a few times before grasping the hand again.
“It was my own fault. I wanted to wave to my sister, only to wave, only to ask why. Or maybe to ask very quietly if she wanted to come back with me. Because I missed her so much. But I did not find her. They said one of us sometimes swam in the bay, around and around the rock, but when I went there, I did not find her. Just some stupid, gossiping fish. They talked about a fat mermaid, fat with a child inside. But a child does not stay inside, and one day I knew it would come out, and I waited for that to happen. But I waited too long and came too close to the coast, and then I… Then a…”
She thrashes her tail and the water sloshes over the edge of the tank and splashes onto the floor. A wave sweeps over Oswald and he tries to hold on to her hand, but she goes furiously around and around in circles. The dirty water bubbles and brims over, her head bangs against the glass, until she jerks and swims in the other direction. Bang, she goes, against the glass. And back again. And again.
Lampie looks at Fish, who is sitting upright in his cart, his eyes wide open. He can’t tear them away from the writhing mermaid for a second. She feels his hand, still squeezing hers, feels how cold it is.
After a while, the mermaid’s fury seems to ease and she lies still in the water. When the dwarf holds out his hand again, she takes it.
“I do not know if they ever came to look for me too. I hope so. No, no. I truly hope they did not. I hope they stayed there, beyond the White Cliffs, where two-legs do not go. Or… or are there more of us, in tanks everywhere, on display for the two-legs? That’s what I sometimes dream, that all my sisters have been fished out of the water, one by one, and…” She shows her teeth. “All those faces in front of the glass, every day. The things they say. The things they put in the water.”
“I don’t think so,” says the dwarf, in his own voice. “I’ve been to plenty of fairs, all over the place. And you’re the only one I’ve ever seen.”
“Only me,” whispers the mermaid. “Then they didn’t come.” She looks terribly sad. “It’s just as well.”
Then her eyes fix on the boy in the cart again.
“And what about you?” she asks. “Is it you? Are you my Nephew Neverseen?”
She looks at Fish. Everyone looks at Fish. He shrugs. How can he be? He is, he isn’t… Or is he?
“Take that blanket away,” the dwarf says to Lampie. “She wants to look at him.”
Lampie takes hold of the wet blanket and pulls it from the cart. The mermaid presses her face flat against the glass again. She starts talking with such force that Oswald almost falls off his ladder. Fish does not need the dwarf in order to understand her; he can feel the mermaid’s voice thundering through him.
“GO! GET AWAY!” she screams. “What are you doing here? Get away! Leave before it’s too late! Why are you sitting there in a cart, like a cripple? Don’t you know what you are? Jump into the water! SWIM!”
Fish shakes his head. “I can’t! My head’s too heavy, it’s not allowed, I’ll drown in a second, I can’t even swim!”
“Oh dear,” says a voice behind them. They all turn to look.
A big, tattooed man has appeared at the back of the tent. He is carrying two buckets, which he quickly puts down. Then he steps forward and, with one movement, he hauls Fish out of the cart and dangles him by the tail.
“Well, that’s no good, is it?” sniggers Earl. “It’s about time you learnt – and fast.”