Brendon and Roan Murphy grew up with stories of their grandparents’ first days in New 
York and their hope that it could be more prosperous than Dublin. As luck would have it, an 
American at the dock of Ellis Island offered them a job in the same breath as he spat on their 
“Firbolg shoes.” From this man, the Murphy family first learned of the Appalachian accent, 
which the patriarch, Brendon’s grandfather, immediately, perhaps prematurely, and to the man 
himself declared was the most beautiful sound in the world. 

From then, he dug canals for the Appalachian. Brendon’s grandfather, whom the family 
learned to call Papaw, earned the nickname Irish Mole among broad-chested, digging men—and 
a nickel more per week from their employers; he consequently had to pay the first round at any 
pub. 

The Murphys were storytellers, and when Papaw’s son grew and had Brendon and Roan, 
he made sure they were rightly immersed. He acted fables out at their bedside after shifts on the 
dock. Though they were third-hand and greatly embellished not just by the errors of memory, 
their father had a strong voice, and they listened eagerly. They were attentive, mimetic children, 
whose first words were repeating “Mama” back to the woman who gave birth to them, and who 
later stubbornly insisted on calling their father what their mother called him, Croílár, an 
affectionate diminutive. While, at first, he insisted on becoming Papa, “Croílár” stuck. 

One night, as he strummed absently at his guitar, he told them again about a family story 
from the pub, the place men did the boasting they couldn’t accomplish with their labor. As a 
matter of habit, some drunks would parrot whatever the newspapers said. They thought they 
were very smart. And others, with just as much egotism, denied the conceits of the learned. Erie 
Canal was so expensive, the first half said it would bankrupt the country—even people who built 
it thought this—but on the other end, as Croílár explained, “Papaw saw what those politicians 
saw, ‘cause he knew when the water ran down the canal he built, boats’d come with it, and great 
big crowds of people and great big buildings, because in this country people take opportunities, 
even when it’s hard on them. See, Erie made this city what it is today, and that was your Papaw, 
much as they don’t praise an Irish ape in the papers, believe your father: Papaw made this city 
what it is.” 

The Murphys were believers. When the Irish Blight began, and the rest of the extended 
family came, Johana Murphy, Croílár’s wife, brought him to establish their inclusion in the 
Basilica of St. Patrick’s, internment in hostels, and employment at the dockyard, but the reunion 
hadn’t been what Croílár expected. 

He bought his cousin a whiskey in the hope that he’d admit its adequacy. But the 
Irishman, after swirling it around, smelling it, and holding it up to the light with incredible 
displeasure, declared that it could never compare to a glass in Dublin. He requested “something 
better” and began describing the devastation that had come to their homeland, which Croílár 
squirmed at and soon desired to stop. He then attempted to teach his cousin the American accent, 
but encountered no interest. Still, he tried many more times, because he was a resilient man, and 
was shot down many more times. So, he asked why. He wouldn’t explain to his wife, when he 
came home, how it escalated from there to the striped bruise along his ear. All he said was that 
the man had no pride, respect, or wherewithal. After that, Croílár visited another pub, and a 
different church, and stopped joining his wife to meet his cousins. He focused harder on his work 
and on his nucular family. 

In August, 1848, when Croílár heard of gold in California, he spilled his bourbon on his 
shirt, ran straight home, and fell on his knees for his wife Johanna to let him go and make their 
fortune. Though she had much she wanted to say of duty to parents and siblings, not to mention 
the security of their current life in the city, and of his disloyalty to his children, Johanna sat 
coldly and silently on the corner of their bed for several minutes, and for all his indignation, she 
was too upset to say anything to him the rest of the evening. Though she plated dinner and sat 
across from him with as much warmth as always, however apprehended.  

Being a loving husband, Croílár could have never dragged her out without her 
permission, but Johanna remained stalwart in the face of his many arguments, and the young 
teens, Roan and Brendon, watched concernedly to learn what the outcome would be. Though 
Croílár was too busy and too inebriated to notice, inside the children was an anxious mimicry of 
the crisis that had conquered their house in a day. They both idolized their parents, and though 
they were young, they were forced to choose on their own which was right.  

Sitting in the corner that evening, Brendon caught his sister praying with her mother’s 
name in her mouth. He knelt down and clamped his hands over top of hers, chiding her not to be 
like her mother—taking a position merely in the name of disobedience. She kicked him in 
retaliation, not yet finding the words to call him a cruel bully and a liar. 

That night, lying in their one-bedroom apartment, Croílár’s eyes burned with tears he 
thought Johanna wouldn’t notice. He felt a heavy weight coiled around his ribs, pulling like a 
noose. Softly, so his two children lying only feet away wouldn’t hear, in a state between lucidity 
and dream, Croílár whispered something he would come to regret: “Don’t I ought to take care of 
you? Don’t I ought to…I’ll miss my chance because of you. And what’ll happen if we keep 
going on the way we are? I’d despise myself. Don’t you see? I won’t be no proper kind of man if 
you don’t let me try.” 

This was how they left their extended family in New York, and the boys’ jobs at the 
dockyard, and sold their everything for a wagon and supplies. The Murphys set out in the 
Fall—earlier than the majority, who would wait nearly a year—because Croílár knew it would be 
a fight to merely stake a claim. He said, “The only bastards that’ll beat us are the Mexicans and 
Oregonians. We ought to be the first Irish apes to strike a vein.” 

Croílár’s excitement struck out on the trail, taking shortcuts on unfamiliar roads. With 
good weather in the first week, they made it halfway through Pennsylvania. Then, a sudden rain 
degraded the roads’ conditions, sinking their wagon in the mud. It took the whole family and 
several long oak branches to lever it to solid ground, and this ordeal they went through several 
times.  

In three months, when many others would only be buying their maps, the Murphys made 
it to Missouri, where Johanna caught dysentery. Progress slowed so as to keep the wagon steady 
for her condition, though she insisted they couldn’t stop no matter what, and this time, Croílár 
obeyed, and entertained the family by singing stories over his guitar. 

As Johanna’s condition worsened, Croílár was more and more seized by terrible fantasies 
of losing her, and he stopped speaking. He grew absorbed in the work of the camp. Though he 
couldn’t help his behavior—he’d always been an instinctive man, equally prone to mania as he 
was to his indefensible meekness—his bad humor spread over the camp and seemed to dampen 
the air. 

Johanna wasted as little time as her condition allowed. Since her husband had busied 
himself, she asked Brendon and Roan to come to her side and said she would instruct them on 
the duties they, especially Roan, would have to overtake. But her daughter couldn’t bring herself 
to listen. She was disgusted with her mother’s complacency. For days, she’d been standing 
further from her, not daring to approach. She looked at the wagon floor and let her bangs cover 
her eyes. Before Johanna could continue, she ran into the woods. Brendon fed his mother castor 
oil and kept as near as he could without her protesting, so she could teach him recipes she and 
her family had been developing for generations, and how to mend a tear in his shirt, and how to 
undertake the other responsibilities of frugal comfort. Out of sympathy for her, and recognition 
that she’d been right from the very beginning, he’d lost all allegiance to his father, and believed 
the family would soon be in danger of collapse in some godless misfortune only his mother could 
prevent. 

All progress halted in Eastern Kansas, and a permanent camp was established. Roan 
began spending more time in the forest, accomplishing almost all the foraging, and Brendon 
learned to keep up the chores inside the camp, changing the wagon’s makeshift bedpan as often 
as it filled. Seeming to have lost his ability to speak and reason, Croílár paced aimlessly, and 
instead of helping either child, who seemed somehow to have everything done before he could 
get to it, he busied himself by undoing some device or knot somewhere and putting it back 
together repetitively and obsessively.  

After a day of particular torture, Johanna’s alertness increased suddenly, but having seen 
this before among swamp fever patients, Croílár knew what to expect. The resemblance was 
uncanny. She was sweating, and had a wet cloth sitting coiled and heavy on her chest. He took 
her hand and begged for her to forgive him and his folly. She said little, her voice frail and 
whistling, except, “It was my decision.” 

Later, Brendon and Roan went to her side alone, hoping she’d only softened her words 
for her husband, whom she owed it to out of pity. They hoped she would raise her voice two 
times and profess Croílár’s weak sinfulness, and how Brendon ought to step beyond him and 
care for her and Roan. But her answer remained the same: “It was my decision.” 

“How dare you say that!” Roan shouted, stomping off. She slept that night out of the light 
of the campfire, and came back in the morning no less inflamed. In time, Brendon recognized 
how strong his mother had been to not say what she had the right to say. 

Johanna soon lapsed, and succumbed entirely to her disease. When Brendon dug the 
grave, he’d hoped his father would be able to help, but Croílár’s hands seemed to burn when he 
grabbed the shovel, and he threw it at a nearby tree, collapsing on the spot. For her part, Roan 
insisted she would not help, that her mother should be “dragged off by the wolves like she 
deserved,” though she accepted an old severed knot of rope which had been passed down to their 
mother as a lucky charm. Roan gripped it tightly as she squeezed it into her shirt pocket, as if she 
was afraid it would slip out. As he now thought himself responsible for her, Brendon swore he 
would one day get her to admit she didn’t mean her curse.  

Croílár fell ill next. He slept all through the days, sweating profusely and babbling only 
to the thoughts inside his head—but sometimes gathered starts of terrifying energy that woke his 
son in the middle of the night, as he paced around the fire like a bandit.  

In the forest, Roan foraged on her own, which Brendon only tolerated out of necessity. 
He heard songs escaping through the trees. She inherited her voice from her father, a pure Irish 
tenor, a rarity among girls, especially at her age. Still, Brendon wished he didn’t have to hear it 
only when it was far away, nor to see her mouth fall back into its modern expression every time 
she passed through the tree line of their clearing.  

One day, when Brendon was washing a set of clothes in a basin, Croílár emerged with his 
mouth agape and a cooking pan in his hand. He raced over to his son and shouted, “What?! You 
ain’t meant to have this! Come on, I’ll show you!” Croílár dumped the basin and kicked the 
clothes into the dirt. He knelt down as the ground absorbed the water, then scraped the mud into 
the pan, and held it up for Brendon. “Here! There’s gold!” 

From there, he got better, and it began to look as though they may survive. Roan had set 
up in a separate clearing nearby, using it to escape her brother and father whenever she wasn’t 
eating their food. That was why, when she disappeared, it took until dinner for Brendon to 
realize.  

It didn’t look intentional. Among other things, she’d left the rope charm in her makeshift 
twiggy shelter. Brendon put it in his pantpocket and paced, his mind amuck with images of his 
sister with her leg broken at the crossing for a river or captured and eaten by bandits.  

Croílár had recovered enough to gnaw on salted meats and tend the fire, so he told 
Brendon to go, though his son had already made his own permission.  

By sunset, Brendon had found nothing but the road, which had been heavily traveled 
recently. He collapsed to the dirt, overcome with exhaustion from the frantic, scattered run 
throughout the nearby forest, and his recently sparse and interrupted sleep. His throat was as torn 
as his forearms and his canvas pants, but the worst pain of all was the knowledge that he had 
failed his sister. Poor Roan, so far apart from him. She would be sleeping in the dark, hungry, 
with no mother or father to comfort her and no stories that would show her everything would be 
alright, because it wouldn’t—couldn’t, not anymore. Just another night for her—he realized, as 
he felt for only a moment the immense and lonely stab that had become her waking life.  

Brendon picked himself back up and stumbled in a circle, looking once more for any 
desperate last clue. He scanned the impresses of the road and a gap in the treeline, where wide 
oaks had been uprooted like nothing. Rut marks, and similar tracks that looked wider, from many 
heavy wagons and horses wound through the slice and deeper, around a nearby hill, which 
Brendon mounted for a view.  

What he saw astonished him: At the base of the hill, merely two miles from his camp, 
was a torch-lit circus as big as a city. The massive central tent was surrounded by a 
pandemonium of variously sized smaller additions, all red. There was a cage with a goliath white 
bear standing on its hind legs, and even a war elephant painted with asiatic designs. All the 
tropes of circus men preying on lonely children surfaced in Brendon’s mind, but there was no 
tent fabric, talking bear, or trapeze artist, no cage or labyrinth that would keep his sister from 
him. 

Angrily, he huffed down to the nearest worker, a man with a red bandana around his neck 
and a painted mask on his face, who gave him a strange look as he shouted his introduction.  
“Not my circus, and I dunno where the owner is,” the man said, disappearing into one of 
the tents. That, Brendon surmised, would be the man who could help him, and he immediately 
began asking for both “a small ginger girl” and “the owner.” 

Still, he noticed his confusion at the way the man sounded, which was perhaps a result of 
cosmopolitan travel, and perhaps what a native Kansas man sounded like. It had been a strange 
accent, unlike anything he’d heard even in New York. This, he found, was relatively consistent 
among the workers, all with the unnervingly white painted masks that made them impossible to 
identify. None of them talked exactly how they ought to. They sometimes borrowed words from 
other languages, and therefore must have been well-educated, and yet they were crass and rude, 
unlike any wealthy man Brendon had seen. Maybe they were what the papers called 
nouveau-riche, or even French.  

One woman with a man’s haircut and a dress that was simple, metallic, and boisterous 
like a mountain smiled widely and politely, but went back to frowning when she noticed his 
bright orange hair.  

She used a staff to open a flap in a tent and duck inside, where there were an array of 
strange objects piled on various carts. Some made noises or lit up periodically like a curtain 
being opened and then closed. There was a box decorated in lights that changed colors somehow. 
Brendon hardly had time to take it in; the entire room seemed impossible. The woman hardly 
looked up at it. She lit an orange and white tobacco roll from her pocket with some sort of 
self-lighting metal spill. Brendon started to feel lightheaded and sick, but he managed to ask for 
his sister, though the woman only nodded and said, “You’re looking for the Don.” 

In the tent, there were several curiosities big enough to fit a grown woman: for instance, a 
pale chest in the corner wrapped in thick iron chains and padlocked. Merely to look at it made 
Brendon shudder. 

He asked, “Would it be alright if I looked in here?”  

The woman, who was called Marion, leaned over and brought her pale painted face close 
to his, blowing her smoke out to the side. “Some of these are dangerous if you don’t know what 
to do with them. Not to mention you can’t afford them.” 

“Oh no, I won’t take anything, ma’am.” 

Marion laughed, “I’m being a hardass!” 

“Hard…ass?” 

“A dominatrix, or an austere,” Marion said, leaning back. “I always forget. Now what’s 
your name? I swear you’re not bad, you’re just a kid after all. I’ll call you malleable. You’re not 
all bad, are you? Don’t tell anyone I said that. You won’t go playing with my lighter on a 
gunpowder barrel, will you? No, you’ll be good.” 

Brendon nodded.  

“And I’m not here because I agree with Don on much. Not on you, anyways. After all,” 
Marion whispered, “my grandfather was Irish. The thing is, it’s easy to get what you want out of 
him if you throw him a bone.” 

Brendon waited until it was clear the woman was done speaking. He got the distinct 
feeling he was still not welcome, but for the moment, he suppressed this fear. “...They call me 
John.” 

“John…” Marion said, taking a drag of her cigarette and flicking her wrist. “Go on.” She 
seemed to have taken a paternalistic tone. Brendon was thankful after having been rejected so 
many times by the other workers. He walked around the room slowly, looking inside dressers 
and behind carts, while the woman accompanied him, watching his hands closely, and explaining 
what the objects were, and why the owner had her show them. The item that had lit up before 
told the time when you pressed on its smooth, glassy surface. The owner, a great inventor, had 
powered it with a piece of meteorite. In another corner, a cupboard, freezing cold when opened, 
was empowered by the captured wind of the North Pole, and could keep food for long periods. 
The Don apparently intended to produce more of these inventions to sell across the country and 
bring a new age.  

Brendon avoided the chained chest for last, and when he stepped up to it. The texture of it 
reminded him of the pale and mildewed skin of a cadaver. Beads of water sweated down the 
sides of it, and after a moment, he heard a scratching sound inside. He turned frightfully to his 
guide.

​

“Careful with this one in particular. It can be persuasive.”  

“The lock…Is that to keep the patrons out, or…?” 

Marion smiled slyly. “You’re smart.” 

Brendon shook. “Will the owner see me at this hour?” 

She sighed. “No—” 

“What if it were profitable?” 

“You’ll need a bigger bone than that.” 

“But you don’t even know half of what I was to offer.” 

The woman rolled her eyes and prodded him forward with her cane. They made their way 
to a larger tent with suited men outside with harnesses and weapons holsters. They wouldn’t let 
the pair in, holding out their hands and watching Brendon carefully with their hands over their 
weapons. Soon, an incredibly tall and portentous man ducked through the tent flap. He was one 
of the most overfed people Brendon had seen, but nonetheless weak-looking. His suit was a new 
shade of blue, and his wrinkled skin was painted the shade of a well-tanned corpse. A thin 
gold-cross necklace hung from his neck. He held out his hand to the young boy, and the boy was 
reaching in return and introducing himself with his fake name when Marion pushed his arm 
down with her cane.  

After exchanging a look with her, Don lowered his hand and said in a soft, grating voice, 
enunciating too hard, “Should I have to get a second secretary for meetings under the moon? I 
need something…He’d be a bad fit for you Marion. For me.” Don turned and whispered to his 
guard, who disappeared into the tent. Turning back, he said they weren’t hiring, but would be 
opening for business in a few days. 

Brendon ground his foot and made his best appeal. “Please, sir, I need to find my sister, 
I—I just have to find her, don’t you see? We’re all alone.” 

“That’s very sad. I hope she shows up. Believe me, I’m very good at finding people, it’s 
true. They call me a bloodhound. But I…just don’t know with this.” 

“That’s exactly it, exactly,” Brendon stammered, trying to think of how to convince a 
man as important as this one. He bowed down deeply and lavished the old man in praise, 
emphasizing that he was the only one who could help, the best one, and Brendon could pay with 
his wagon and supplies. 

Don still looked uninterested as his cracked lips parted, so the boy started again, offering 
his labor and his sometimes-lunatic father’s. “And of course, this wouldn’t be enough,” he said. 
“I’d still owe you a debt if you only help me—if you only help. I won’t hold you to anything if 
you can’t find her.” 

“Alright,” Don said. “I like that, I do. You’re persistent, a family guy.” He then explained 
that a businessman could never refuse him, much less a great German businessman. “Certainly 
not. My master taught me better. Only I might not take you and your coocoo father because it 
would cause me issues. We’ll see.” 

He turned to Marion and, with a smile, told her they would “nimrod” the entire forest. 
“She’s not here?” Brendon asked. 

“Of course not—not that I know of—and my men would have told me. Someone running 
into nothing tends not to run into the biggest circus in the world. Trust me. I made this in the first 
place because I was aiming for something, not nothing.” 

Marion tapped Brendon’s ankle with her cane. “Thank you, Don,” he blurted, holding out 
his hand again, which Don’s hand shook quickly and firmly, then wiped his hand on his pant leg. 
“Your reputation is…so much your true character, and—and I have no doubt she’ll be returned.” 
The old man then explained that “Don” was a title from his old master meant for 
underlings. Consequently, it was wrong for the boy to call him that. He was to call the old man 
“Mr. Topper.”  

Mr. Topper turned to the guard, who had emerged from the tent a short while before, and 
grabbed something. “I do love kids,” he said. “I love them when they’re sincere. Now, go attend 
to the other thing. And you, John, come inside as well.” 

With the graciousness of a condemned man, Brendon found himself borne inside. The 
guard disappeared into a room far back, while in front was a surprisingly ornate and 
discomforting office, with unbelievably expensive furniture and gold accents over everything. In 
the candlelight, it seemed to blind Brendon anywhere he looked.  

Mr. Topper sat down at a desk and lifted something over his eyes, which squeezed a 
water droplet onto them. He blinked heavily and adjusted in his seat, seeming to startle to life as 
he put the glass dropper down. Behind him was a cage on a golden pedestal with an eagle inside, 
staring the boy down.  

Mr. Topper asked him questions about his sister: at first basic ones, like what she looked 
like, whether she had any birthmarks, and about her personality, but also about her favorite 
foods, and events from their family’s past, which Brendon used to emphasize his storytelling 
skills. Mr. Topper had an expressed interest in her heritage. Then he began asking about whether 
she’d ever drank, and whether she’d dated in elementary school. “All little girls have a 
sweetheart,” he said, laughing inwardly and delightedly as one can only do when their present 
company is unaware and even excluded from the meaning. He added, “And enigmas never age.” 
From another room, a man grunted and pounded. The bird in the corner flapped its wings 
and shrieked. Mr. Topper and Brendon both stopped to listen, and the boy was grateful for the 
interruption to a conversation he’d found it difficult to continue lying in, but before he could 
insist he join the search, Mr. Topper loudly explained that his men liked to be prepared in case a 
band of savages attacked, of which there were many cases, and Brendon had been lucky. 
He suddenly lifted a small, shiny stick with a golden tip, which he called a ballpoint pen, 
an invention he made because he thought inkwells were pathetic. He tried to demonstrate it on a 
piece of paper, but it had run out, and he apparently couldn’t open it to refill, though he struggled 
for several minutes. 

“It’s beautiful,” Brendon said to break the silence. “All of this. It’s astounding, more so 
than anything from all the stories of my people.” 

“Oh, yes.” Mr. Topper attempted to recover. “I love beautiful things. But my point…my 
point is that this is an important tool for a businessman. A very important tool. A man’s word is 
nothing to laugh at. And a great man needs a great pen.” 

They were again interrupted by a loud stomping band of boots and swinging arms outside 
the tent, which continued on around the circus.  

The old man, instead of explaining—and even having lost his taste for the business of 
their conversation—dragged the boy towards the back of the tent and insisted he cover his eyes 
and squeeze them tight. The bird shrieked again, insistently. 

As Brendon passed the various, curtained rooms, he heard agitated whispers, but he 
didn’t peek. The two emerged through the back exit, passing another set of guards, and walked 
the grounds of the circus. He pointed out different tents and explained the attractions when 
Brendon asked, but Mr. Topper now preferred detailing his vision for the world, in which new 
vehicles would enhance travel and trade, people could send a message instantly from all the way 
in China, and streets would be clean, extending all across the country, and every house and 
apartment would have its own fountain, and machines could wash things for people, and 
eventually do everything you would never want to do.  

“In two hundred years,” Mr. Topper said, “When you open a history book, it’ll all be 
things I did. And the one thing everyone’s forgotten that the Bible says over and over: It says if 
you don’t follow God, he’ll make things worse for you, but if you do, he’ll give you blessings. 
That's important when you look at the success of a man, or of our great country. Well, that’s lost 
on you.” 

“No,” Brendon said, falling behind the man. “And we’re no less than Protestants. We’re 
part of this country’s prosperity.” 

“Then why has your entire race fled here from that wasteland? There’s a mistake when 
people say they can escape those things by moving somewhere else. They only bring it with 
them, because the common denominator hasn’t changed, and neither have they. You ought to 
drop that, yourself. That Holy Roman and Apostate Church. And why the look, John?” 
“Father wanted to convert.” Mr. Topper nodded enthusiastically. “Mother didn’t let 
him—” 

“You need two things to succeed,” Mr. Topper interjected, “Confidence, and God. That’s 
why any man can have greatness inside him, or not. You have to be willing to use your greatness 
to accomplish great things, and I’m willing to use it. Actually, I prefer to. We don’t need drunks, 
or riots over your favorite theater actors, if you’ve been keeping up with Astor Place. It’s crazy 
over there. It’s like a war zone.”  

The two came to the massive cages with the elephant and the white bear that Brendon had 
spotted. The bear lifted its massive, sleek head and apathetically accounted for the two. Don 
explained that the elephant was a gift from a distant friend, but he had hatched the bear from an 
egg treated with silver. To his satisfaction, the boy performed a nod of wonder, though he 
inwardly frowned, because he knew that bears couldn’t hatch from eggs. The old man then 
opened a blue box with a white lid and what looked like meat on a bed of quartz. Then he threw 
a steak through the bars of the cage, a yard away from the beast, which opened its mouth and 
closed it again when it saw it was too far away. Then the two turned back where they’d come. “I 
can see the future as clearly as the past, like staring into the throat of this bear. Cities burning, 
everything stolen from you, but I can steer the country out of it. We’ll take the good people, and 
we’ll build this country up with them. People like you. You have to nip it in the bud, that’s what I 
say. You have to fix it while you can. America needs great people who are willing to do that. You 
don’t drink, do you?” 

“No, sir,” Brendon sighed. "No. I find it bitter.” 

“That’s good. If it were at all possible, this country would do better without alcohol. You 
must know that. You said your father became a lunatic recently. Did you check your alcohol? No, 
I expect. My brother poisoned himself with it. I swore I’d never have a drop, and I’ve stuck by 
that. They call it depressive because it weakens you. There’s no reason to weaken yourself with 
such a devilish drug, and when you set it loose into a population, nothing ruins them faster. The 
Irish, for instance. Imagine how they would have fared. What if your father didn’t drink, and 
what if all the fathers in the world didn’t drink. No poison on the earth. If you, John, don’t drink, 
you could turn our expectations for your race around.” With that, Mr. Topper winked knowingly, 
and Brendon came upon the back entrance to the tent, closing his eyes and entering. The 
whispers were hushed this time, and Brendon wanted even more to look, in peril of his 
benefactor’s assistance. So much did he fear and admire him, he felt he should be offended by all 
the drivel—which was so characteristic of the population, and yet uncharacteristic of the old 
man. Brendon tried not to be patient with himself. 

“You must be wrong about something in the way you talk about them,” he said. “You 
can’t actually believe all that.” 

“Call it a creative difference, if you like.” Mr. Topper smiled and looked away. “I’m 
going to let you in on a secret: If I did believe it, I wouldn’t be able to make exceptions for 
people like you whom I like enough to give exceptions to…Can you guess why I would say all 
that I’ve said if I didn’t believe?” 

“Not at all, sir.” 

“That’s because you don’t know politics, John. If you believe what you say, it isn’t 
politics; it’s activism. In other words, a waste of time.” 

Bewildered and tired, Brendon finally thanked his host and made to go join the search for 
his sister, but Mr. Topper insisted he inspect a room prepared for him before he left, and led him 
to the exit, where he was dragged away by Marion. 

After this, he was congratulated by the old woman and walked through the torchlit paths 
of red tents. 

Marion asked in a low voice, “Took you around, didn’t he?”  

“No.” 

“Alright,” Marion said with a smile. “Did you ever consider that he doesn’t have your 
best interests at heart?” 

Brendon shrugged, feeling embarrassed about being caught. “Well…yes.” 

Marion softened. “The naive can’t play the game.” 

“It’s just…he couldn’t figure out how to open the pen,” Brendon said, to no response. 
“...Did he really invent all those things?” 

“Of course not,” Marion said. 

“Then he’s an artificer, and a fool,” Brendon said, though he couldn’t help but like the 
man because he’d been so likable.

“Neither of which prevent me from following him. It’s natural to want to help someone 
who can return the favor,” Marion said. “It’s all about exchange. You’ll see. Tit for tat.” 
Soon they came to a small, spare tent, where Marion stopped rigidly and put her hand on 
his shoulder, which was a shock to him, who expected the cane.  

The woman looked over her shoulder and then knelt down so he could smell the tobacco 
smoke and papery chemicals of her skin. She patted his chest softly and gave a small, whiny 
gasp. “Come to me if you need anything,” she said. “I might be the only one truly on your side.”  
She left him outside his tent and told him to rest, though he didn’t want to, feeling a rush 
of energy from his success at finding help and potential employment as a storyteller. Like his 
mother would have, he’d made the best of a disaster. All this and more, he hoped for, but as soon 
as he undid the clasp on the red fabric, he was overcome with the exhaustion he’d heretofore 
ignored. Through the flap, in the middle of the floor, was the chest in iron chains. 

As he fell on his back, Brendon choked on the wind. His heart beat like an anvil through 
his sputtering, empty lungs, and he pulled himself backwards, staring at the ghostly chest, the 
never-moving chest.  

A sound rose from it, first a rubbery touch, and then pounding, though the surface didn’t 
move, or even vibrate. In just a moment, his mind gleaned the trappings of a conspiracy. Why 
had it been moved there, and when? Marion was supposed to be its keeper, but she never had 
time to move it. And if there was some sort of plot, what could be its aim when he owned 
nothing anymore? This, he asked himself, before his mind went blank with terror. 

“Oh, God. Oh, Mother Mary, full of grace—hallowed be thy—savior—please!” 

“Brendon?” the box called in a muffled, familiar voice; a sing-songy, beautiful, healthy, 
needful voice. “My Brendon?” 

“Mother?!” Brendon launched himself onto the chains and pulled without thinking.  
“No, no! Don’t let me out! Have you gone mad?” his mother said.  

Brendon stopped pulling and begged, but the voice insisted he not let it out—that 
whatever came out might not be her. This only convinced him more that it was his mom, but he 
had learned never to mistrust her instincts, and he remembered what Marion had said about the 
chest.  

For a time, he only sat and talked to his mother, and touched the strange, cool material to 
test its reality. “None of this…none of this would have happened if we’d listened,” he said 
quietly, but he was too pleased now to be appropriately upset. He realized from a pinch in his 
shirt pocket that he had a metal key, which he didn’t know the origin for, but he hoped he’d be 
fine as long as he didn’t touch it. There was one thing that his mother said that caused him again 
to worry, and that was that she was certain, even after his explanation of events, that Roan was 
inside the circus.  

So, very late in the night, Brendon went to search. He slunk between his tent and the 
next—dodging a man who was suspiciously awake and about—and peeked under its side, where 
he saw wooden crates marked MRE. A few tents over was a man standing guard. Not smoking or 
drinking—just standing, though he soon yawned. The sides of this tent were tightly tacked into 
the ground. It had to host something important. Brendon waited inside the tent next to it, which 
had empty bedding on the grass, for a chance to look. When the guard was relieved by his 
replacement, the new one quickly started fidgeting and abandoned the tent for the forest, giving 
Brendon his opportunity, in which he found boxes marked “flammable,” and what looked like a 
caged armory of rifles. Brendon checked through more tents with people sleeping, strange 
animals, and various inventions from the owner, slowing all the while from exhaustion. Soon, he 
blinked and found that his eyes stayed shut. It took a great will not just to see, but to stumble 
forward; he had lost his bearings. He heard in the distance the sound of a young Irish tenor 
singing, and the torchlight flicked its bug-like wings at him. Soon, he felt dirt across his chest, 
nearly beaten into mud. Laying down, fallen, he tried to blink himself awake. To his right was a 
tent-side flapping in the breeze. Like blood, it flowed and beckoned for him, like a tidal wave of 
blood, like a slosh of blood inside a bedpan. He felt guilty that he had only grown to love his 
mother as she died.  

The girl’s voice grew louder, but he didn’t have the strength to pursue it anymore, only a 
desperate desire. A wrinkled face peered over him, and the shiny fringe of Marion’s dress. She 
drew something from her pocket and let a liquid drop into his eyes. Dimly, he registered the pain, 
squinting uncomfortably until a moment later, when an explosion of energy burned all through 
his limbs. He sat up and saw Marion much clearer in the torchlight, looking down at his 
disgusting clothes.  

A group of men marching could be heard not far away. Only out of fear did Brendon let 
the woman drag him to a storage tent only a few meters away, where she opened a massive 
wagon drawer full of uniforms in various sizes, even as small as to fit a toddler. The childrens’ 
were gold and straight-fitting, while the others were stern and provincial. She paused and rolled 
her neck around with a loud, bony pop, then handed him a pair that would fit. 

“Did you come to see me?” she asked. 

Brendon shrugged, not wanting to give away his suspicion. “This…and the 
inventions…how many different stations do you manage?” 

“Most of them,” Marion said, smiling and shaking the glass dropper she’d dosed him 
with so it glinted in the light. “Especially the secret ones, like this, but I do have…assistants. 
And I get consideration in the hiring. We like to give each other presents, me and Don…” 
The woman continued explaining, much to Brendon’s vexation, and the diatribe drifted 
into declaration, into manifesto, as she talked on and on about gratitude. She explained how all 
relationships were based on favors and repayment, and there was nothing worse than being 
indebted, because any man would have the right to take what he wanted from you. Because the 
world was cruel, most people were indebted and could only aspire to one day repay their 
benefactors. Employees repaid their employers, and students repaid teachers, and children repaid 
adults, for the tremendous sacrifices they made for their benefit. 

Brendon, all but fed up, thanked her, and said he’d go back to his tent to change. 

“Leave the dirty ones here. I’ll step outside—if you’d like,” Marion said. 

Brendon checked his pockets to make sure he wouldn’t lose anything except the infernal 
key, which he hoped wouldn’t find its way into his new gold uniform. The rope charm, he 
reverently took into his hands. Marion still hadn’t moved. She licked her lips and left them just 
as dry as they had been.  

Brendon asked, “Ma’am…have they found my sister yet?” 

“That’s a more complicated question than you know.” 

“Okay.” Brendon shifted uncomfortably. 

Marion seemed to grow more agitated as she made Brendon her audience. She began 
talking about certain regrets in her recent life, though she remained vague. She had left her 
home, she said, a long ways away—out of necessity—but when she returned, things would be 
much more in her favor. And yet, she repeated, she hadn’t made any choice in the events except 
out of blind necessity. 

“I often wonder if there isn’t something more interesting for me to be doing,” Marion 
said, looking up at the moving shadows on the ceiling. “I get so bored and dissatisfied, and I’ve 
resorted to such despicable means of pleasure, I can barely respect myself.” 

“But that’s common enough,” Brendon said. The flash of energy had begun to fade 
already, and he wondered if he’d need another drop before he finished his mission. 
“I know. I mean why are any of us here? If we had a good enough reason to leave, this 
circus would only have one person left.” 

Brendon rolled his new clothes into a ball, wanting to tell her that her dream was the most 
threatening thing she could entertain, and not her current situation, which seemed by all accounts 
to fulfill her needs. Even then, there was something terribly wrong with this circus, something 
she’d come far closer to than he. 

“If I were forced to leave, I would be happy to,” Marion sighed. “But I can’t do it 
otherwise. I’m only waiting for things to collapse, and that’s the worst, most numbing feeling. 
It’s true, he’s an idiot, Don. But I lied before, he did make one thing, more through malice than 
cunning, easy enough to get the two mixed up.” 

“What is it?” 

“The one inside that box you were afraid of. I’m upset you think I’d know, but of course I 
do. Its creation…was a terrible thing to witness. An unfortunately useful thing. Unfortunately, 
and unpredictably, if you can take advantage of the destruction.” 

Brendon swallowed what it was she was saying, which he tried to remember, but it could 
all still be lies. “So you don’t control it?” 

“As much as we can…John. But why, anyways? It hurts me when you ask.” 

“Can I get another of those drops? I’d like to continue searching for my sister now.” 

“...My, what a forward young man you are,” Marion said, even as she unscrewed the cap. 

“I didn’t mean to interrupt, ma’am.” 

“No, it’s okay. It’s only rude,” Marion said, grabbing his chin firmly to steady it, and 
tilting it up. “I’ve done so much for you.” The drop splashed into his right eye, and he withdrew 
instinctually, causing her to grab him harder, digging her nails in. Another drop in his left, and 
then she made him stare, blinking wildly, at her unmoving face. “And you haven’t even thanked 
me. You should be on your knees, thinking about how to make it up.” 

Brendon’s head started hurting desperately, and he doubled over away from her, rubbing 
his eyes hard. When he opened them again, Marion was gone.  

In his new uniform, he snuck out again, but this time he knew exactly where to go. When 
he got to the large, ornate tent where a woman’s voice could be heard, the guards refused to let 
him in, but didn’t manage to grab him hard enough before he burst through to see Mr. Topper at 
his desk, and his sister in a shining golden dress, spinning like a lunch plate in the middle of the 
room.  

“You lying trickster—” 

“Now, Brendon,” Mr. Topper interrupted, throwing the boy off guard. “Or John, if you’d 
really like to keep deceiving me. I have some explaining to do, sure, but first we’ll get the facts 
straight: your sister came to me, my future star, and my enigma. She wants to be here, and I don’t 
think it would be right as a gentleman to let you take her from me.” 

Roan, shocked and up until this moment silent, spoke with an unforeseen assertiveness: 
“How long have you been keeping me from my brother?”  

“I was acting on your behalf, which is the role of a guardian. You don’t want to be with 
him, do you, Roan?” 

“I’d like to make that choice myself, sir, please.” 

Mr. Topper lifted his hands and shrugged. “As you wish.” 

Roan then turned to her brother, smiling with satisfaction, though she couldn’t find 
anything to say to him. She let her resplendent appearance explain for her, though Brendon saw 
something she wouldn’t expect him to. He was disgusted, not with her, but with the horrible 
things surrounding her. At once, he realized how much he hated all shiny, pompous beauty. He 
wanted to see dirty stone streets and a small, cramped apartment. He wanted his family together. 
His mind ran to find some way to convince her. 

“I’m just…so glad you’re okay,” he said. 

Roan softened, and stepped forward to pat his shoulder. He pulled her into a tight hug and 
whispered, “It’s not safe here. They tried to kill me, and you’ll be next. I don’t know what they 
have planned—” 

His sister pulled away from him and scowled. “You always think you know what’s best 
for me, and you’re not just a liar, you’re a bad one, and a no-good, selfish man, like Father.” 
Brendon stumbled back. His sister stood with her hands on her hips. Her words hit like a 
horse hoof in his stomach, and then he only felt anger. He stomped out of the tent, not defeated, 
but with an aim in mind. After all, he couldn’t make her leave without good reason. Now 
familiar with the path to his personal tent, he ran. But on the other side of the blood-red flap, the 
chained chest was missing.  

Panicked, he looked behind him, down the dirt pathways, for the thief. But there his 
mother’s captured soul was, squat in the middle of the path, staring back at him. He followed. 
Each time he blinked, the chest moved further back, always too far to speak to, but always within 
view. He picked up his pace, until the chest led him to the entrance of another tent. Entering 
silently, Brendon spied a makeshift kitchen, with a boiling pot and the charred ghosts of logs 
underneath it. Next to that was what Marion had called a “lighter.” He had crept forward and 
passed it into his pocket when he heard the old woman’s voice faintly speaking to itself further in 
the tent.  

“You ought to do anything. You ought to do anything you can,” she repeated. Brendon 
slowly rose, looking over the side of a stack of boxes at a row of blankets filled with young boys 
and girls, only their heads peaking out from the thin bedding, staring blankly at the ceiling like 
cadavers. Marion paced between them, a stack of golden suits and dresses just like Roan’s on her 
arm. “You owe me,” she said, setting her foot gently on the chest of the boys, who winced. 
“You...” 

Brendon charged and toppled her head into the ground between the children, where she 
lay still and silent. Terribly still. She would certainly get up, he expected, and grab his face 
between her fingers, screaming so loud. But she laid still. Brendon breathed, and only after a 
moment realized the sound he’d heard: the sound of something important breaking. And then he 
couldn’t stop hearing it. Meanwhile, she laid still, her body contorted ever so slightly like a 
wooden puppet. He turned dizzily, backing away, as the other children warned each other not to 
scream. Each scrambled for their clothes, keeping themselves tightly wrapped in the blankets, as 
Brendon turned through the tent flap, frantically striking the button at the top of the lighter and 
eking out a flame, but not a big enough one. He ripped off his shirt and held the sleeve over the 
blue-cored flame, then used it to set the wall of the cursed tent on fire. Those left in the tent ran 
into the forest, but Brendon quickly moved to the next tent, and the next after, the one which held 
munitions, once again undefended. He lit the bases of each red tarp, looking back at his climbing 
work and breathing heavily from the excitement. Soon a loud explosion rocked the campground, 
and screams could be heard all around as they were all surrounded by the flames. 

Brendon weaved through tents, dodging men and women panicking and running and 
screaming, grabbing anything they could. There was only one thing he was after. He soon came 
back to the owner’s tent, that gaudy beast. By then, he had dropped his shirt and used burning 
wooden stakes.  

He waited, sweat sizzling on his bare chest, hidden from the entrance, where Mr. Topper 
left with his two guards and a scowl on his face, to the portion of the camp on fire. The old man’s 
harsh voice could be heard preoccupied with the state of his “enigmas.” Brendon slipped under 
the side of the large tent and found his sister pacing around the front of the owner’s desk, and the 
eagle behind her shrieking for release. He got his claw stuck in the bars of the cage and thrashed 
harder. Brendon stopped as if held back by some barrier, and felt as if washed over with water.  
His sister, without seeing him, approached the cage with the mean, disheveled bird. “I 
know, I know, I know Fawkes. I know, baby.” She quickly unhooked the talon, and unlatched the 
cage at the same time. It flew out the front before a second passed, and without an inclination of 
thanks.  

Roan winced and put her thumb in her mouth, turning to see her brother, who had 
shuffled closer without realizing. 

“It’s all gone! We need to escape!” he said, reaching out and pulling on her hand. 

“Haven’t you seen?! It’s all burning!” 

But his sister resisted. “You set them, didn’t you? The fires.” 

“No! Why are you bickering now? With Mom and now me, you’re bickering. I won’t let 
you die too!” 

Roan pulled with all her might and escaped her brother’s grasp. “I loved mom, 
but…that’s all there is to it.” 

“There’s no time!” 

“Then you go.” 

“Please,” Brendon begged. “I know I’ve done wrong by you. I swear it will be different. I 
will trust you. I’ll never lie again. So please, just trust me too!” 

Roan looked back at the eagle, then at her brother, and relented. 

Brendon and his sister followed through the vestiges of Mr. Topper’s empire and into the 
treeline, as a painted man caught sight of them and set off into a hobbled sprint. Emerging from 
the flames behind him was the lumbering form of Mr. Topper, from which echoed, soft and 
grating, “YOU…WILL…GIVE ME…COMPENSATION!” 

Roan began to lead them when they got into the forest, her shoes picking expertly over 
uneven ground. Brendon kept up by mimicking her footsteps, but the man behind them dwindled 
and tripped on what looked between fire-lit trees to be the chest.  

Roan stopped suddenly and took one step backward, her eyes wide with horror. 

“No!” Brendon said, grabbing her wrist harder. “Keep running, or they’ll hang us both.” 

“But that was the titan,” Roan said. 

“The box? He just tripped on it, it isn’t open.” 

“Is it following us?” 

Brendon tugged again and this time, Roan allowed herself to run. “Maybe. But we won’t 
open it,” he said. 

“It’s following us because it thinks we will!” 

As the brush grew thick and the light dimmed, it disappeared. The siblings tunneled 
through thorns and branches, but he was certain somehow it would be waiting for them when 
they got to their wagon. Croílár would be so happy to hear her voice again.  

It was dawn when they arrived, and their legs were more tired than they’d ever been—so 
tired they felt like dead weights slinking from their bodies. They slowed to a crawl before the 
clearing. Brendon called in a smoke-cracked voice for his father and the horses, but got no 
response. In fact, there were no sounds at all. He stood, his senses now at full alert, and stumbled 
through the last thicket. 

“We need to go,” Roan stressed. “Don said that thing is dangerous.” 

Brendon waved her away and crept to the wagon, where all that was left of the horses 
was a spray of drying blood. He looked inside, and in the bottom of the wagon was the pallid 
chest, the chains lying flaccid in a pool of blood, a key still sticking from its front, and its lid 
lying open. Inside was a black pit five times larger than it should have been, covered in thin 
scratches and the chewed-off ends of fingernails, the remnants of the thing inside that had 
escaped.. 

“Run!” he called. “I’ll be right behind you!” 

Brendon heard a sound cracking from the forest, like the crack of Marion’s neck, and 
looked for its origin, which was concealed in the trees, moving so fast that it could only be 
tracked by the moving shadows and the rapid-breaking branches in its path. Roan had already 
disappeared expertly into the brush, and Brendon was glad she’d trusted him in the end; that 
she’d escape. 

The boy stumbled back and felt wood blocking him. He climbed up into the wagon, 
keeping his watch, and grabbed the chain. The sound grew louder over his hard breath and 
failing, scrambling limbs, and then he heard nothing.  

“Watch out!” Roan’s voice screamed. He turned to look for her instinctually, until a crate 
knocked him to the floor, a pain starting near his heart. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a 
mass of hands and feet, twisting and disappearing into its own body, crawling over the crate of 
cans. The palm of a hand reached out and split in two, teeth escaping from new skin and 
expanding into a wide, hungry smile. Then it pursed its lips and his mother’s voice forced its 
way out: “Use the chest!”  

Brendon threw his weight with the chain into the center of the creature, but a new hand 
caught his wrist, sucking down into a bite. At first, it didn’t hurt. He only watched in horror as 
his wrist disappeared in red. Brendon pulled away and stumbled over the pale chest into more 
hands—his sister’s—but it followed, slowly, churning like a river. From the mouth that had 
blood running down its lips, Croílár’s voice said, “I’m so sorry.” 

Brendon put his hand on his sister’s shoulder. “Run,” he whispered.  

Roan braced her legs and lifted the lid of the chest like a shield covering her torso. The 
thing propelled itself and mauled the chest, clawing at the sides and pushing them back. Roan, 
tripping on herself, called, “HELP!” 

Brendon threw himself forward just as the lid began to tip, and forced it back down. Roan 
jumped on top, not heavy enough on her own to keep it from resisting, peeling its way out 
around the sides, the many hands finding purchase at every gap and opening, grabbing and biting 
the air. Brendon screamed and hit them—whomever they belonged to—until they disappeared, 
and the key could be turned back, and he could lay down on the wood with his sister, she with 
the key rent into an angular mess between her struggling hands, and he fumbling his mother’s 
rope into his remaining palm and sobbing uncontrollably. Roan slid closer to him and squeezed 
her hands around his like it was the only thing keeping them in the present.

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