The Tiger's Egg

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Chapter One

A Loose Cannon

Along a hospital corridor marched a man on squeaking shoes, dressed in an outsized orderly's uniform. He had a small round head and pale gray eyes, and he called himself the Great Cortado. Stuck to his upper lip, where his magnificent mustache had been only minutes before, was a tiny square of tissue paper with a spot of blood at the center. He was walking quickly toward the hospital entrance, away from the room where he had spent the past three months under lock and key. The room was locked again now, and the key was in his pocket. The uniform he wore belonged to the real hospital orderly, who lay unconscious on the floor of the locked room, his wrists and ankles tied with strips of torn bedsheet. The orderly had been hit over the head with a heavy steel tray, and would not be waking up anytime soon.

The Great Cortado squeaked through the reception area, past the desk where the night doorman sat reading his paper. The doorman looked up and frowned. "Knocking off early?" he said, glancing at his watch. "Shift doesn't end till four."

"I'm going on strike," said Cortado, "for better conditions."

The doorman put down his paper and raised an eyebrow. "Strike?" he said. "Is it official?"

"Whatever," said the Great Cortado, and he pushed the revolving door and spun himself out into the frosty night air.

His foggy breath was lit by the lamps that lined the gravel driveway, and the cold bit his upper lip. A snigger escaped him, and he clamped his mouth shut. Better nip that in the bud. Once he started it could get the better of him. He marched out through the gates and along the tree-lined street beyond, his head filled with a tumult of sounds and pictures, of cackling and howling and falling and spinning. Night and day this freak show went on inside his mind, and he walked a tightrope through the chaos, sometimes slipping off and losing himself for days. Now was not the time, he told himself, and he fixed his eyes on a spot ten feet ahead of him as he walked. One step at a time. Left, right, left, right, up, down and sideways. No skipping. Another laugh bubbled up and he forced it back down. "Concentrate," he muttered. "You are the Great Cortado."

"You were the Great Cortado," said a voice at the back of his head. He spun around, but there was no one there. "Nobody here but us chickens," he said. "I am the Great Cortado. Just a minor setback. Once I get back on my feet, then we'll see who's laughing."

He marched on unsteadily into the night, the once Great Cortado, sudden giggles exploding from him like hiccups. As the cold air washed the hospital drugs from his system his old plans and schemes began to rise up through the madness, stranger than they had been before, darker and more crooked. An army of slaves. A city of bones. A military-industrial complex bristling with rockets and roaring with ire. He breathed deeply and allowed himself to laugh aloud. No matter what monstrosity he chose to build or how he trampled his way to power, there was one thing he knew for sure. At the gates of his empire there would be a tall straight pole, and on that pole would be the head of Selim, the boy who had brought down the Palace of Laughter. "Item one on my shopping list," said the Great Cortado to the empty streets, "Selim's head on a pole. Then we'll see who's laughing!"

The Circus Bolsillo came to Larde on a crisp February morning. From the moment the first wagons appeared over the brow of the hill it was clear that this was a circus without equal. A pair of elephants led the parade, painted and tasseled and each with a waistcoated monkey perched between her ears. They were followed by a gap-toothed man with slicked hair, juggling a dozen flaming clubs. A troupe of tumblers cartwheeled along the frosty road, their breaths tracing spirals of vapor that vanished at once in the winter sun, and behind them came a procession of wagons and trucks, painted in bright colors and each one more exotic than the last. They rode in on a wave of drums, whistles and gongs that could wake the dead, and the strange hoots and rumbles of animals from far-off jungles and distant deserts. The lead wagon was painted with the words the incomparable circus bolsillo in reds, blues and yellows, and in the large round Os were painted the grinning faces of three little clowns with pointed teeth.

A small girl and a coffee-skinned boy sat on the parapet of the stone bridge that led into Larde, oblivious to the cold and waiting eagerly for the circus to reach them. The boy's name was Miles, and the girl was known as Little. Sitting side by side on the cold stone they might seem unremarkable enough, if you did not know that Little was over four hundred years old and had the outline of a pair of lost wings etched into the skin of her back, or that Miles had befriended a talking tiger and carried in his pocket a small stuffed bear that could dance like a drunken sailor.

The lead wagon drew closer, and Miles and Little could see the Bolsillo brothers themselves, Fabio, Umor and Gila, balanced on the roof like a small totem pole. As they rumbled across the bridge the totem pole made a triple bow. "How are you, Master Miles?" shouted Fabio over the racket of the circus band. "And the little lady, Lady Little?" called Umor, and Gila showed his pointy teeth in a broad smile.

"Fine, I suppose," shouted Miles. "How's the new circus shaping up?"

"Can't complain," called Fabio.

"Yes we can," shouted Gila.

"But we won't," said Umor, his voice almost lost in the cacophony.

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Excerpted from The Tiger's Egg by Jon Berkeley
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.