The Palace of Laughter by Jon Berkeley

look over his shoulder, and again she pinched him hard. “Don’t look back,” she said. “Just keep walking.”
    Miles forced his leaden legs to keep pace with Little, and they walked quickly and silently toward the distant mountains. A cart passed them on its way into town with the muffled clanking of full milk churns, and Miles could no longer resist the temptation to look back the way they had come, but the figure was no longer anywhere to be seen.
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    In the shortening shadows of the late morning, Miles and Little walked along the center of the road, farther from the town of Larde than Miles had ever been before. They had followed the muddy tracks of the circus wagons until they faded into the road, and continued walking, with no plan left to them but to find the circus wherever it stopped next. Besides, as Miles had pointed out, the road followed the train tracks, more or less, which must lead eventually to the Palace of Laughter.
    As they walked, Miles thought about the figure they had seen in the circus field. Little, who seemed incapable of remaining upset or anxious for long, was laughing at the chattering of the birds in the hedgerows, and he felt almost reluctant to bring the subject up, but his curiosity would not leave him alone. The tiredness he had felt had melted away, leaving only the ache of his feet in their cracked boots.
    â€œWho was that, back there in the field?” he asked.
    Little fell silent for a minute before answering. “Someone I thought I recognized,” she said.
    â€œSomeone from the circus?”
    Little shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. “It was better not to risk it.” She gave him a sidelong glance, then turned her eyes quickly back to the road.
    â€œLook,” she said, pointing ahead of them. “There’s a river crossing the road.”
    Miles shaded his eyes and looked where she was pointing. He knew she was not telling him all she knew, but it was obvious she wanted to change the subject, and he did not see any point in pressing her further. He shook his head. “That’s just a mirage,” he said.
    â€œA mirage?”
    â€œLady Partridge explained them to me. It looks like water, but it’s just the hot air bending the light.”
    Little laughed. “It looks like water because it is water,” she said. She sounded so convinced that Miles almost expected to find himself shortly wading through a stream, but when they reached the slight rise where the mirage had appeared, the road was dry.
    â€œSee?” said Miles. “Dry as a dragon’s tongue. The water was just an illusion.”
    â€œThe water was here, and it still is,” insisted Little. “It just doesn’t want to be seen.”
    â€œIf you say so, Little,” he said, but she had picked up a praying mantis and was staring into its green bug eyes as it perched grandly on her outstretched finger, the subject of disappearing water already forgotten.
    Around midday they arrived at a small hamlet, little more than a cluster of farms and a small village square with a row of shops and a tiny church. A sign by the side of the road said? WELCOME TO HAY . POP . 481. TWINNED WITH CARTHAGE . At the far end of the square stood a rambling inn with benches and tables outside. The inn was called the Surly Hen, and it appeared to have been built over several generations by owners with very different notions of what an inn should look like. The main part had two steeply pitched roofs rising to sharp points, with leaded windows set into white plastered walls that were divided into neat shapes by a web of black beams. Growing out of that was a low, small-windowed extension, roofed with an untidy thatch that looked like it needed a haircut. There were several other additions ranging in style from mock Gothic to simply indescribable.
    The long tables outside the inn were crowded with local farmers and travelers at lunch, shoveling chunks of bread