Gabriel motioned toward the tigress. “Isadora here prefers to sleep in the cage with her cubs so they stay out of trouble. She’s a sweetheart, though. She’s only bitten off a man’s leg once that I know of.”
“What?”
“Might have been an arm.” Gabriel shrugged. “We usually throw the newbies in with the ostrich, but the manager of the menagerie put him in his enclosure and brought it outside because he causes a ruckus whenever the menagerie mirrors first go up. He goes nuts for anything that sparkles.”
“You’re telling me you and your cohorts put me in a cage with a beast that has dismembered someone? I could have been next. Or killed. Do you find murder amusing?”
“Only sometimes.” Gabriel chuckled. “I’m just kidding. The prized animals at Carnival Fantástico are treated so well and fed so often, they hardly ever attack. And if they do, the ringmaster says they must have had good reason.”
Ignacio couldn’t tell if Gabriel was joking again or not.
A bell clanged from somewhere outside the menagerie.
“Come on,” Gabriel said. “I’ll show you where to get some grub.”
He took off at a surprising pace for someone who’d also drank far too much the night before. Ignacio lengthened his stride tocatch up. It wasn’t hard. He towered over Gabriel and his legs easily matched his speed.
“Who’s in charge of the menagerie?” he asked.
“That would be Jade.” Gabriel jerked his chin toward a young woman who was busy scrubbing down the back of a tutu-clad alligator. “Are you looking for a gig?”
Ignacio shook his head. He couldn’t help but notice that every worker and performer he had seen within the carnival seemed conspicuously young. The ringmaster and supposed owner of the carnival himself couldn’t have been older than twenty-five.
“How long has Ángel Veracruz been the ringmaster?” he asked.
“Couldn’t say. I’ve been here less than a year, and no one except the main act stays on beyond their twelve months. But I think he got the position from his father years back.” He elbowed Ignacio. “Nepotism, am I right?”
Ignacio huffed a weak laugh. If nepotism had its way, he would be next in line for his father’s title too. If his father had his way, Ignacio would be leading a battalion deeper into Dos Palos to murder more innocent people. But for what exactly? He still didn’t know what General Keara had been stuffing into those satchels.
He’d tried to track her comings and goings across the northern border of Costa Mayor for the last month in hopes she might lead him to wherever she brought those bags, but she was a slippery eel. He’d lost the general in a major city and only spotted her again through the window of a train heading west.That was when he decided he had to go to his father’s home and see if he might have better luck gathering information there.
They neared the exit. The mirrors hanging on either side had the same inky coloring as the one he’d looked into before entering the caboose.
“They’re enchanted,” Gabriel said. “They keep the animalsin.”
A strange feeling of wrongness spread through Ignacio’s core as he passed between the mirrors. As if his body was trying to tell him something. What that something was, he had no clue. He stopped. After the cowardice he’d shown in Dos Palos, he had promised himself he’d never turn his back when he sensed trouble. He’d failed those people, and it haunted his every waking moment.
“What are the mirrors made of?” he asked.
“For as dark as the surface is, my best guess is that it’s some sort of obsidian, but what do I know, I’m no glazier. Never mind that,” Gabriel said. “The parade is going to start in half an hour, and we haven’t had lunch. I’ve been hungry enough times in my life to know never to take meals for granted.” He shoved Ignacioon.
Commotion washed over him the second he stepped out of the menagerie. Brilliant sunlight beamed in his eyes. He squinted and blocked the strongest rays with his arm. To his surprise, an entire tent city bustled before him. Almost every game and ride was up and in place. People shouted orders at one another as they decorated their booths. Others sweated and sang a merry tune as they built up the sideshow stage.
“How long have we been stopped?” he asked, impressed.
Finding Esmeralda amongst this chaos would not be as easy as he thought. In the daylight, he could see that the carnival grounds stretched on for acres.
“We pulled up to Aldama in the morning. It’s lunchtime now. So…a few hours, give or take.”
Ignacio had boarded the train at roughly eight o’clock in the morning yesterday, which meant he’d been out cold for nearly twenty-four hours. That wasn’t true. The memories were less fuzzy now. He spent quite a bit of time inside the caboose, raising his cup and shouting, “Death to love!” a few too many times. Still, building an immense carnival with so many intricate parts in a few hours was no small feat.
“I can’t believe all of this was constructed in that time.”
“Carnival Fantástico is a magical place,” Gabriel said.
They passed by a cart that popped outrageously large kernels of corn. The scent of salt and butter permeated the air.
“Where does the magic come from?” Ignacio asked.
