An air of menace wafted through the tent, accompanied by the sweaty stench of the approaching men. Robert counted them. There were at least ten, if not more. Eager, heavyset fellows, with bulging tattooed arms and dark eyes in shadowed sockets.

“We need to get out of here fast,” he told Lily and Tolly, glancing at the exit.

Slimwood and Madame Lyons-Mane still had it blocked. They’d barely reacted to Lily’s cry of alarm – in fact, they might’ve even been smirking.

Slimwood had his arms folded as if he was waiting for the children to be brought to him, while Madame leaned on her parasol and watched as the men split apart and tried to surround them.

“There must be another way out!” Robert exclaimed. He picked up a chair and threw it at the men, but one merely batted it aside, and another caught it in his hand like he was performing a circus trick, while the rest of them laughed.

“We gotta find Angela,” Tolly said.

“And Malkin,” Lily snapped. She pulled at Robert’s sleeve, and pointed in the direction of the artists’ entrance, where the curtains had been taken down. “There!” she cried. “We can slip through there.”

They ran in a scrambling panic, the men following. The end of Lily’s scarf dragged behind her in the dust and she hiked it up from round her heels.

They’d almost reached the far side of the ring when a horrible caterwauling emanated from behind the artists’ exit, and, with an awful wrenching sound, the Lunk appeared in the gap, blocking that way out.

His neck screeched slowly as he turned to watch them with hardened interest. Headlamps glowed behind the brights of his eyes, flickering with evil malice.

The men chasing them stopped and gathered round, throwing little broken-toothed grins and tips of the head to each other as they drew in from every side, making a ring around the children with space for the Lunk to step through. The Lunk ground forward with his arms outstretched.

Lily stopped in her tracks and looked desperately about. The three of them huddled together, trying to keep an eye on the Lunk and the men all at once.

Robert’s hands trembled as he groped in the pocket of his da’s coat for his penknife and pulled it out, unfolding the blade.

“You can’t fight a metal man with that,” Tolly hissed.

Robert shook his head. “I’m going to cut a hole in the tent,” he whispered.

“Where?” Lily asked.

“Anywhere will do, but we need a distraction!”

“I’ve just the thing.” Tolly put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the firecrackers and a box of matches. “Screw up your peepers!” he shouted.

Robert and Lily closed their eyes tight as Tolly lit a cracker and threw it at the men.

BANG!

The men ducked and cowered away as it went off. Tolly threw another.

BANG!

Lily blinked and spotted a gap in their line. She pulled Tolly and Robert by the hand and they ran through it, towards the canvas wall of the Big Top.

The Lunk saw what they were doing and let out a loud squeal of alarm, but Tolly lit another firecracker and threw it at him. “Hurry!” he cried.

Robert jabbed his knife through the canvas of the tent and began sawing downwards, the explosions still echoing in his ears – or was it the Lunk screeching as he ambled towards them?

BANG!

Tolly threw a fourth firecracker at Slimwood and Lyons-Mane, who were rushing at them from the other side.

Slimwood covered his face with a hand as his red tailcoat flew out behind him. “STOP THEM!” he cried.

Robert realized the bangs had gone quiet.

“You’d better get a move on,” Tolly said. “I’ve run out of crackers.”

Robert pulled the knife from the slit in the tent and ripped the two halves of the canvas apart to make a hole. “You first,” he said, thrusting Lily through. Tolly went second and Robert third. As he scrambled through the slit, Slimwood gripped his leg. Robert winced in pain and slipped, but Lily and Tolly seized his arms and yanked him until he tumbled out onto the grass.

Quick as a flash, the three of them were up and running. Drizzle folded around them. A few feet away the dim shape of the gigantic Skycircus balloon pulsed like a glow-worm. Robert kicked over an empty jam jar. The candle lights that had marked the path were gone and so was the fence and kiosk. The rest of the audience had long since left. There was no one about to help them.

They skirted a patch of flattened grass and ran towards a copse of trees that stood at the edge of the field.

There they stopped and caught their breath. Robert heaved in great lungfuls of air, trying to cool the panic flooding through him. Beneath his coat and jacket, his shirt clung cold and damp to his back.

He could hear the men nearby, searching for them.

“Why are they hunting us?” he gasped, agitated.

“I don’t know,” Lily whispered hoarsely. “Perhaps Malkin does. They could’ve captured him already. He might be in grave danger. We must find him.”

“And Angela…I mean, Angelique.” Tolly wiped the sweat from his face. His hands were shaking from throwing the firecrackers. “D’you think they’ve trapped her an’ all?”

Whatever Lily was about to reply was interrupted by one of the men shouting: “THIS WAY!” Then two glowing headlamps turned towards them, and the Lunk was coming, along with other figures holding lanterns above their heads.

“MISS HARTMAN!” a deep booming voice called out. Robert recognized it as Slimwood’s. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. No point hiding in an open field. We’ve got your mechanimal, and we have you surrounded.”

Lily’s mouth fell open. She rubbed her eyes. “W-what do they want from me?” she asked, her voice shaking.

Robert thought she might cry, but she bit her lip and held the fear in.

Suddenly there was a whooshing sound and the ghostly shape of the Big Top collapsed. Through the mist they saw flashes of its candy-coloured canvas folding in on itself like the rippling waves of a patterned ocean.

“We have to scarper,” Lily said, pointing along the hedgerow. “That way.”

They made a dash for it under cover of the chaos. Now the tent was down, the anchored Skycircus balloon seemed to loom even larger. The silhouette of the gondola’s big wooden hull was like a beached wooden whale.

“If they’ve caught Malkin,” Lily said, pointing at it, “he’ll be in there. We have to sneak aboard and get him. We can look for Angelique too.”

“Definitely,” Tolly said, squeezing in beside her. “She’s a good person. She ain’t involved in all this. We can’t leave her behind.”

“They’re after you, Lily,” Robert said, staring despairingly at the gondola. “Going aboard might be exactly what they want you to do.”

“Or,” Lily said, “it could be the last place they’d expect to find us.”

“Let’s do it!” Tolly said, but his eyes looked wide with fright.

They hunkered low so their shapes wouldn’t be spotted in the fog and ran in short bursts along the hedge. When they reached the hot-air balloon, they stopped a few feet away and crouched in the tall grass.

Robert glanced back to where they’d just been, and his heart jumped. A few of the men were searching that very spot. Best not to think about it. They had to keep moving; find Malkin and Angelique and get away.

A great carved figurehead loomed above them – an angel with chiselled wings thrust back, the wooden feathers spreading out along either side of the three-deck gondola, lit portholes streaming behind her, making pinpoints in the fog like sparkling stars.

Skirting round the hull, they passed a gangplank and platform on the far side leading to a hatch locked with a large padlock. Further on, at the stern of the ship, the loading bay was open and the rear ramp was down.

As they reached it, Tolly almost tripped, but he righted himself before he fell in the mud. A rudder and large propeller blade stretched above him.

The mist cleared for a second and, beyond them, Robert glimpsed the collapsed Big Top. Figures crossed the tent’s striped surface or crouched low to the ground, pulling apart the seams. The Top was being stripped, picked apart, the pieces folded up and forced into waiting bags.

“We probably don’t have much time to get in and out before they stow the last of their stuff,” he said to the others.

Tolly looked like he was about to reply when a harsh whine echoed down the cargo-bay ramp. For a second Robert thought it might be the scream of a human child, but there was a rough edge to it that could only mean one thing: it was Malkin.

“D’you hear that?” he whispered to them both.

“It was coming from inside,” Lily said.

The three of them slunk up the ramp and peered carefully in.

The cargo bay looked empty of people, but the noises and the sour scents of the animals cut through the air. A cacophony of growls, snarls, roars, huffs, grunts and whinnies that made Robert shiver.

“What an awful earful!” Tolly said. “If they don’t simmer down they’ll have those men on us again. And they’d best not bite. I’ll tell you, I’m not a fan of biters.”

“Me neither,” Robert said. “Just don’t get too close to the cages. Malkin!” he called out quietly into the dark. He worried that they might not find the fox at all – at least not before the circus folk arrived to load up the last of their stuff. What if their friend had been imprisoned elsewhere?

Something large in the oversized cage in the centre of the bay shifted. Forgetting his own warning, Robert peered in to see what it was.

With a ROAR! a tiger threw itself against the bars.

A spike of terror soared in Robert’s chest. He jumped back, almost leaving his skin behind, while Tolly yelped and stepped on Lily’s foot as she stumbled aside.

The tiger paced restlessly, uncurling its long tail and shaking its huge fearsome head. Two lions and a bear lurked behind it, but of the four of them, the tiger seemed to be the leader. It arched its back and licked its chops, scratching in the sawdust with its claws and making jagged lines in the boarded floor of its cage. If they’d been any closer it surely would’ve got its teeth into them. It was a wonder they hadn’t eaten each other.

Robert was about to say as much to Lily and Tolly when they heard the noisy clump of boots outside.

They ducked quickly behind a stack of boxes. Robert held his breath as a long line of men brought in bags of canvas and piled them against the far walls.

Some of them looked like the group who’d chased them.

“This is the last of it,” one said.

“We’ll be off soon,” another added.

“After we find those kids.”

“Forget about them. They’re one of Slimwood’s stupid ideas.”

“Hardly worth it.”

“Nor for all that running about,” said another. “Still, best do as he says if we don’t want to get a beating from that creaking metal monster of his. Let’s try outside again.”

When they were gone, Robert let out a sigh. “That was close!”

“Too close,” Tolly whispered. “We can’t take any more chances. Why don’t I wait by the door? I’ll whistle if they return.”

“All right,” Lily said quietly. “But if we get caught now you’re to run home and fetch Papa at once.”

“Right you are.” Tolly disappeared along the length of the cargo bay, taking up a position just outside the doorway.

Robert heard a faint yelping coming from behind a nearby stack of shelves.

Hrrmmm. Hrrmmm. Hrrmmm.

It was accompanied by a low and persistent scritchy-scratching noise that seemed to match his own heartbeat. He tapped Lily on the shoulder and they stepped towards the noise. It was coming from a small cage, about the size of a doghouse, inside which a thin, red, angry thing was scrabbling about.

“Malkin!” Lily cried, and Robert’s chest flooded with relief at the sight of him.

“Mmmm!” Malkin whined from inside the cage. “Mmmm.” He stepped towards them, thrusting his face between the bars.

A muzzle strapped around his snout was stopping him speaking properly.

“Mmmm,” Malkin said again.

“Don’t worry,” Lily said, stroking him through the straps. “We’ll have that off and you out of there in a jiffy.”

The fox’s big black eyes rolled worriedly up at her as she pulled at the muzzle, but she couldn’t reach far enough into the cage to get her fingers around to the back of it.

“Keep him still,” she told Robert.

Robert grasped Malkin’s snout. The fox’s dry tongue darted through a small gap in the leather muzzle and licked his palm with a sandpapery slurp. It felt warm against his skin, a balm of relief.

Lily drew her hand back through the bars. “I can’t undo the strap like this; I still can’t reach. We’ll have to try the cage door first instead.” She pulled out the lock-picking kit Tolly had given her. “Hold out your hands,” she said.

Robert held both palms out in front of him and she unrolled the leather scroll onto them. “Will these get it open?” he asked, staring at the tiny lock picks in their pockets.

“I don’t know yet. The lock looks rather complicated.” Lily selected a pick from the set and stuck it into the keyhole. Then slowly, steadily, she flicked the pick to the side.

There was a grinding noise as the lock’s cylinder began to turn.

The animals in the other cage, and the horses in their stalls, shifted restlessly, whinnying, growling and snapping. Robert clasped the leather wallet and tried to quiet the unease rushing through him as he watched Lily fiddle with her pick, peering at the lock.

She jiggled the pick one last time, and the lock rattled loosely.

Then, with a click, everything dropped into place.

“You did it!” Robert whispered, the tension easing from his face.

Lily opened the cage and Malkin leaped into her arms. “MMMM!” he whined in alarm as she pulled on the muzzle strap at the back of his head. Finally she got the buckle undone.

“It’s a trap!” Malkin barked. “They haven’t given up on you! They know you’re here!”

But it was too late. Tolly gave a desperate warning whistle and then a worried yelp from outside as the cargo-bay door clanged shut. Then, with a horrible grinding clank, they heard the bolts being slipped across the door hatch, securing it in place. They were trapped!

Robert stuffed the lock-pick set into his pocket and ran to a porthole along the side of the ship. The men were releasing the anchor chains that kept the ship secured to the ground. With a whirr, the prop started up, clearing the ground fog. The last of the men ran up a gangplank and through the hatch in the fore of the ship, the hum of the engines began and the animals growled and complained as the entire vessel lifted slowly off the ground.

They were already ten feet in the air when Lily stuck her face into the porthole beside Robert’s. “Where’s Tolly?” she shouted over the noise. “I can’t see him.”

As if on cue, Tolly jumped up from behind a clod of grass, sidelit by the ship’s headlights. He was the only thing left in the empty field; everything else was gone. It was as if the ticket booth, the canvas outhouses, the Big Top, all of it had never existed. The Skycircus had been awaiting their capture, waiting to skyjack them, and now it was taking off with them aboard.

“TOLLY!” Lily screamed through the glass. “Don’t let them take us!”

Tolly waved his arms above his head and shouted something in return, but they couldn’t hear it above the engine’s roar. They tried to make out the words he was mouthing, but the sky-ship was rising fast now, and his little face was getting smaller and smaller as they lifted higher into the sky. Soon he’d diminished to the size of a matchstick, then a pin, and then, as the glow from the sky-ship dissipated from the field, he disappeared altogether.

A terrible dread crept over Robert at the thought of what might lie ahead, and when he looked to Lily and Malkin, standing beside him in the cargo bay full of wild animals, he knew they felt the same.

The very last they saw of Brackenbridge and their home were the five lamp posts illuminating the tiny fog-shrouded village green. But soon those shrank away too, becoming no more than one part of the patchwork of darkness as they were spirited into the night sky by the enormous red-and-white striped circus air balloon.