Kieli remembered the stories Becca had told her about the images projected on the walls of the buildings in Westerbury. In Westerbury, they probably projected huge three-dimensional images on screens tens, hundreds of times bigger than those boxes, and multicolored lights decorated the streets. When she heard about it from Becca, it seemed to have so little to do with her that she couldn’t even imagine it, but now she could wrap her mind around the idea of that scenery, at least better than she could before. “I’m going back after we’ve gone around once,” Harvey said, setting out into the hustle and bustle. Following after him at a trot as he zigzagged his way through (he said he was just going to buy cigarettes, but evidently he felt like sticking around for a while), Kieli looked up over his shoulder at his profile with more than a little envy. It was possible that Harvey had been to the mechanized capital and the Sand Ocean. Maybe he even crossed the continent on a ship over the sand, and visited the ruins of the spaceship. The Corporal had said that Harvey wandered all over the planet in the eighty years since the War ended. To Kieli, eighty years was such a long time, it might as well be eternity. She wondered if he traveled alone all that time before he picked up the Corporal. A troupe of musicians in red-and-green-striped breeches and yellow tights passed by, playing haphazard melodies at high volumes, derailing Kieli’s train of thought. Kieli covered her ears with both hands, but smiled as she shouted, “That’s so weird!” and watched them go. On the other side of the street, some large, half-naked, red-faced men were twisting iron pipes, as spectators waved their fists in the air and excitedly made bets over who could touch the opposite ends together fastest. Moving on, Kieli came near a skinny man who was trying to swallow a sword that was about as long as she was tall. When she saw it, she let out a little cry. “Harvey, Harvey, that man’s going to die!” Without thinking, Kieli ran forward a few steps and pointed. As she did so, she looked back to see Harvey with an expression more of consternation than interest. He asked, as he did before, “Is it that much fun?” Kieli stopped and stared at him, still pointing. Now that he mentioned it, it was true — she had been acting strangely cheerful for a while, bouncing around and making a lot of noise all by herself. Even she couldn’t tell what she was so merry about. When she lowered her arm, puzzling over her own behavior, someone wearing a white glove offered a hand to her from behind. The hand came out of a sleeve wearing fluttery fringe and held the string of an orange balloon. When she turned around, more balloons of varying colors surrounded her, and there stood a clown whose face was painted white with blue stars. “Th-thank you…” Kieli blinked two or three times and tried to accept the balloon but immediately let out a short gasp. The clown was covered in blood. A thin line of it formed a circle around his neck, and it poured down from his decorative collar and all its ruffles, dying his white clown costume red. Half of the paint on his face had come off, too, and only the blue stars around his eyes and the rouge that formed a smile on his mouth managed to remain. As Kieli stood speechless, the clown, a smile still stuck on his face, held out the balloon once more. Kieli impulsively withdrew her hand and shrunk back, looking to Harvey for help. “Ha —” “Harvey!” It wasn’t Kieli who called out first. But the Corporal never called him Harvey; so as far as Kieli knew, she should have been the only one who would say that name. “Harvey!” the high voice called again, carrying surprisingly well through the tumult, and then a hand reached over from the side and pulled on the sleeve of Harvey’s coat. Perhaps it had taken Harvey by surprise, because he stumbled a step and turned around, gaping. A woman pulled herself out of the crowd and jumped in front of him. “It is you! Wow, you haven’t changed a bit! I knew it was you the minute I saw you! I didn’t think I’d see you in this town. Could it be you came here to see me? Oh no, what do I do? I don’t want to be unfaithful, but…!” the woman started chattering away, connecting one sentence to another with an energy that even the crowd’s enthusiasm couldn’t outdo. On the other hand, Harvey, not quite able to grasp the situation, did not hesitate to say, “Umm, who are you again?” But after looking down at the woman’s face for a second, he seemed to remember, let out an, “Aaahh!” then opened and closed his mouth a few times. “Don’t ‘Aaahh’ me. You didn’t recognize me? Ugh, that part of you hasn’t changed, either.” The woman stuck out her painted lips in a pout. But her smile returned in no time. She wrapped her arms around one of Harvey’s and said, “You have time to talk, right? I just got on my break! I want to surprise the troupe leader. You really haven’t changed at all!” “No, sorry, but…” Harvey tried to decline at first. “…So Shiman’s here?” he murmured, a thoughtful look on his face. He glanced in Kieli’s direction. Kieli was standing a few steps away from them, her mouth still open from when she started to call Harvey’s name. The clown, despite holding so many very conspicuous balloons, had disappeared completely. “Kieli, I’m going to go talk for a bit. What do you want to do? You can come if you want.” “You’re with someone?” Apparently that was the first time the woman noticed Kieli. She stared wide-eyed in her direction, so Kieli closed her mouth and stared back. Her bouncy, high voice sounded like it could be a teenage girl’s, but she looked a few years older than Harvey, as if she was in her early twenties. Judging by her bright makeup and the sparkling light blue costume that covered her body in feathers from head to toe, she might have been a singer or a dancer or something. But her limbs and face were relatively plump; she was the type of woman one might call “cute.” After wondering suspiciously who the woman might be, the obvious thought finally occurred to Kieli that, regardless of Harvey’s antisocial personality, he had traveled for a long time, so it wouldn’t be too strange for him to have acquaintances. From Harvey’s perspective, the few days that Kieli had known him must’ve felt no longer than the blink of an eye. “What? What’s the deal with the girl!? Don’t tell me you just didn’t know what to do and got involved in something criminal!” “Who didn’t know what to do about what? Don’t shout that stuff; you’ll give people the wrong idea.…She just started tagging along after me on her own,” Harvey responded to the high-pitched, fast-talking voice with a grim expression. He might not have been trying to imply anything, and it was actually the case, but the words still stung Kieli. She suddenly felt as if Harvey had placed some distance between them, and her high spirits of a moment ago came crashing down. “I’m fine. I’m going to look around a little more.” The tumult swallowed her mumbles, and they may not have reached him, but she turned and started to walk away. “Kieli! Hey!” She stopped, feeling like his act of calling her back had saved her somewhat, but Harvey only added, “Go on back without me. I’ll be back by morning at the latest.” Some passersby got between them, and it wasn’t until after she had started walking, the tide of people carrying her along, that Kieli realized the meaning of those words.…Back by morning! Just once, when she was very small, her grandmother had taken her to a carnival like this. Thinking about it now, she realized that her grandmother’s aged hand, the hand that held Kieli’s so tightly as she was jostled around between the legs of so many adults, couldn’t have had much strength in it, but the warmth that connected them promised little Kieli the highest degree of protection and security. Those hands had gone long ago to a place where Kieli could no longer touch them, and now Kieli walked alone as the waves of carnivalgoers pushed against her. Ignoring manners, she popped a stick of yellow candy in her mouth (even one stick of candy would seem like a waste to the normal Kieli’s financial sense; but today, when she saw it at a booth, she felt like buying it) and walked with her face down and both hands in her coat pockets. The musical troupe she passed by earlier now caught up with her from behind. The trumpeter blasted a broken brr-rrrm in Kieli’s face; the flute player danced around her, and finally, a sudden gust from the cymbals crashing right before her eyes blew her bangs up, and the musical troupe went on its way. Kieli watched them and saw that they wound their way around other passersby in the same manner and basically teased the pedestrians as they paraded on, playing their individual parts however they pleased, but the people they harassed looked very pleased as they covered their ears. Kieli was the only one to see them off with a blank expression as she sucked on her candy. The current Kieli was neither an audience member nor a clown. Now that she was alone like this, she thought it was very strange that she had been in such high spirits until a short while ago. At the boarding school, if anything, she was a very sober person. Somehow I’m different than usual. I guess it’s been since I met Harvey and the Corporal…she thought, vaguely. Her feet moved naturally away from the main street, as if avoiding busy places. When she left the heat of the crowd, the cold of the night that she had once forgotten seeped in through her coat, and, thanks to it, her stuffy feelings cleared up a bit. She wandered into an alley beside a circus tent and came out to a vacant lot where she discovered the blood-covered clown again. The white clown costume appeared to be floating in the gloom of the lot. The clown was practicing juggling knives. He started with two and juggled with light, rhythmic motions. While they were in the air, he would add a knife with one hand. Three knives, four, five — when he missed, he started from the beginning. Just as the Corporal said back at the hotel, the excited thoughts of a large number of people jumble together at carnivals, and it was like those feelings had erased Kieli’s ability to sense spirits. In this quiet place, where the tumult of the main street was only so much noise, she could tell right away. No matter how much he practiced, he would never be able to show anyone. Kieli stopped and watched for a while as the clown’s ghost focused all his attention on his practice. He threw the knife with one hand and caught it with the other; now he threw it higher, passed his hand under his leg, and…missed. The illusion knife grazed the clown’s hand and stabbed the ground with a thunk. The clown raised a foot and jumped back in girlish surprise. It was so funny, Kieli couldn’t help laughing. The clown stopped and looked back at her. Even with the paint peeling pitifully off his face, he opened his mouth and gave Kieli his very best clown smile. In a bar, one street over from the carnival’s main thoroughfare, gathered a motley group of peddlers, street performers on break, and sightseers who had grown tired of playing outside and had come in to get warm. None of them seemed to have anything in common, but they mingled together. They filled a hall wrapped in dim lights and the smell of alcohol with a flurry of multicultural excitement. “Huh. The abandoned mine, eh?” a middle-aged man said thoughtfully from the other side of the round table, lighting his umpteenth cigarette with his favorite silver lighter. “You been there, Shiman?” “Nobody’s got any business in that place. There’s nothing but graves. Haven’t you been there? I thought you’d been everywhere on the planet.” “My feet just never took me to Easterbury,” Harvey said, smiling wryly as he took advantage of the flame to light his own cigarette. The man closed his eyes and muttered, “Right. That was the field of your last battle, wasn’t it…?” Shiman was one of the rare people who had a lasting friendship with Harvey and was one of the few Harvey trusted with his true identity. He was the leader of a troupe of dancers and street performers who toured all over, and, as they both did a lot of traveling, sometimes they would run into each other like this. Come to think of it, he could easily have guessed that they would be visiting this town during carnival season. On the other side of the narrow wisp of smoke that rose from the end of the cigarette in his mouth, Harvey looked at his old friend’s face with mixed emotions. They had met twenty or thirty years ago; at the time, he was nothing more than an acrobat, but now he had the full dignity of a troupe leader, and, while it was only natural, Harvey found that the wrinkles in his face deepened proportionally every time they met. Just then, cheers erupted in the middle of the hall, and he turned his head to see a very cheerful, very drunk street performer with a fat belly begin to demonstrate his fire-breathing abilities to the surrounding guests. There was a scuffle with the barkeep, who interjected, shouting at him to take it outside so as not to start a fire, and jeers flew from the other tables to agitate the situation. “He with you?” “He’s all brawn and no brain,” Shiman chuckled, nodding. Apparently this was a familiar scene, and he made no effort to mediate. “Have any of your clowns ever died?” Harvey asked, remembering suddenly as he watched the excitement in the hall, his head resting on his hand. The look on Shiman’s face asked, “What’s this all of a sudden?” His cigarette hand stopped on its way to his mouth, and he frowned as if recalling something not particularly pleasant. “It wasn’t one of our clowns, but there was an incident about this time ten years ago, where an inspecting party came to this town from the capital. A bigwig from the Church thought that a clown was mocking him with his performance and had him beheaded. Since then, there haven’t been any clowns in this town.” “I see…” “What’s this about clowns?” a bright voice interjected. Harvey stopped his pondering and looked up, dodging the question with a vague smile. “Oh, nothing.” The woman he had met outside stood holding a glass of diluted whiskey in each hand. She exchanged one of them for Shiman’s now-empty one, then, catching sight of Harvey’s glass, she asked, mystified, “Oh, you’re not drinking?” Her question made Harvey realize for the first time that he had forgotten to touch his drink. Thanks to his seemingly fortunate condition of having an internal power source that removed the need to take in external nourishment, if he wasn’t careful, basic human actions like eating and drinking slipped his mind. Although his rebellious nature did foster his persistent habit of smoking. “Just leave it there, Augusta.” Shiman came to his rescue, waving his hand to shoo her away. “Go over there. The air’s bad here.” “It would be fine if you didn’t smoke.” Augusta pouted, but relented unexpectedly easily and went away, leaving the glass on the table. Harvey thought something was strange as he watched her walk toward the brawl with the fire breather at its center. “She’s carrying a baby. This is her last carnival before she retires from dancing,” Shiman explained, exhaling smoke without a qualm. Harvey looked back at Shiman and blinked, then returned his gaze to the woman, who had gotten rather plump for a star dancer, and nodded in consent. Now that he thought of it, she would be old enough for that by now. When he last chanced on Shiman and his troupe, Augusta had been in the troupe for only a year and was about seventeen or eighteen. As a matter of fact, when she first called to him, he remembered her face but couldn’t recall her name — it was no wonder, since a girl he thought was younger than him was suddenly an adult woman, passing him in age. Augusta had gotten between the barkeep and the fire- breather, stopping the scuffle, and was looking straight at the fire-breathing man, unafraid despite his being twice her size, and saying something in a stern tone of voice. The fire-breather shrunk back, dejected, as she scolded him, and Harvey watched, impressed. “That’s her husband?” Harvey wasn’t asking so much as confirming something he had noticed, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Shiman nod in the affirmative. “He’s stupid, but honest. He’ll make her happy. Five years ago, she was obsessed with you, but she’s completely settled down now.” “Ha, ha…” he let out a dry laugh, and, as he was already trying to avoid the subject, he lit a new cigarette. So it had already been five years. Of course Augusta would be surprised that he hadn’t changed; he’d better not see her again. Five years was the time period he had sort of decided on as the limit at which point he would cut off relations with people. Augusta was barking out orders — the fire-breather would of course pay for damages, and she made the customers who participated in the ruckus help clean up the fallen tables and dishes that lay scattered around the floor. “So what’s this about a girl you have with you? What brought that about? If she has no relatives and needs a place to go, then we can take her in.…” As the noise in the hall went down a notch, Shiman changed the subject. He probably made the offer because he knew that Harvey preferred not to be involved with other people too much. Grateful for his friend’s consideration, he shook his head lightly. “She has a place to go. I’ll send her back next week. Besides, I’m surprised at how interesting it is to watch her. Actually, I’m kind of enjoying it,” he said, breathing out his honest feelings along with a puff of smoke. Something about Kieli seemed to prevent her from getting too close to normal people, and he thought she might be surprisingly like himself. On the other hand, she would react so sensitively to beings that weren’t normal humans — like that girl who called herself her roommate or whatever, and that conductor from this morning — that it was almost disgusting. Then, when he realized that, she would suddenly start acting like a normal girl after all, getting excited at all those old carnival acts. He honestly never thought he would encounter anything that would seem so new to him at this point in his life. He had seen every single thing the planet had to offer and was quite sick of it all. “Well, it’s about time I got going,” he said, for some reason. He smothered his still-fresh cigarette in the ashtray. “Oh.” Shiman smiled sadly, a bit disappointed, and raised his glass in farewell. “Let’s meet again. We’re planning to leave the East when the Colonization Days are over.” “Yeah. I’m glad we could talk,” he answered with a smile, getting up from his chair. Apparently Augusta had gotten to a good stopping place; she left the cleanup to the men and ran up to Harvey. “Harvey, don’t tell me you’re leaving? Let’s talk all night!” “You’re pregnant, Augusta,” Shiman interjected, exasperated. She retorted, “Oh, I can stay up one night!” looking indifferent (she was about the only one who could talk to the troupe leader as an equal), and, turning to Harvey for support, added, “You can stay, right?” Harvey smiled bitterly and shook his head. “I’m leaving. My princess must be missing me. I’ll come see you again after you have the baby.” He wasn’t used to refusing so diplomatically, and as he pacified her, he inwardly hoped that she couldn’t tell he was lying — he had just decided that he would try not to run into them again. Part of it was that he knew he wouldn’t get off with just a “You haven’t changed!” if he met Augusta again, but more than anything, it was getting harder and harder to see Shiman’s face. He might be an old man the next time they met. I wish I could get a break already. I just don’t want to watch people grow old anymore.… The ghost clown’s slender fingers moved nimbly, twisting the balloons in knots; he created one round balloon animal after another and released them into the blue-gray night sky. A droopy-eared dog, a hook-tailed cat, a flock of yellow pigeons, a sand lion, even the sheep and guinea fowl normally used for food. The ship that came to colonize brought only a few types of animals, so there wasn’t much variety on this planet; it was possible that the clown had learned how to make every animal in the encyclopedia. After that, he did some hat tricks and balanced on a ball, performed a funny little silent one-man comedy act, and showed her the knife juggling he had been practicing earlier. This time, he succeeded in catching the knife under his leg, and, from Kieli’s place on the empty lot’s bench, she cried out, “You did it! Amazing, amazing!” She showered him with praise and cheers with all her heart. Before she knew it, the balloon animals had gathered on the bench to her right and left, imitating Kieli and clapping their hands. Kieli burst out laughing and kept applauding with the animals. Time passed, and when the clown removed his hat and took a bow to signal the end of his final act, tears were running down Kieli’s cheeks. “……” When she stopped clapping, the animals stopped with her. The lot instantly fell quiet, and the faint din from the main street started to sound louder. In reality, only Kieli’s voice and applause had existed in the empty lot to begin with. “Sorry, sorry. I’m okay…” While the clown and balloon animals watched over her, unsure what to do, Kieli wiped her tears with her coat sleeve and laughed it off. She remembered when she was little and had sat next to her grandmother, clapping with all her might. She got the feeling that that carefree, happy little girl had disappeared somewhere when her grandmother died, and since then, she naturally stopped opening her heart much to people. Becca was the one friend she ever had; but she, too, had gone where she belonged, and now she, like her grandmother, was in a place Kieli could not reach. She had met Harvey and the ghost in the radio in Becca’s place, but, of course, they weren’t normal living people, either. Now that she thought of it, Kieli only felt comfortable when she was with dead people. Maybe I just haven’t realized, and I’ve been a ghost all this time, too.…It was impossible to tell if the thought was joking or serious; as soon as it occurred to her, a balloon dog that had been peering at her, worried, perked its ears, burst, and disappeared with a little pop. The other animals followed, bursting one after another like bubbles. Kieli sensed someone’s presence and raised her face. Turning around, she saw a tall, redheaded man standing behind the bench. “Hey, you. Why weren’t you back in the room? I’ve been looking for you. What are you fooling around here for?” Harvey said in a light tone, leaning over her to look into her face. His jaw dropped, and then, “Huh? What? Why are you crying?” “Shut up. Weren’t you gonna come back in the morning?” She was deliberately short with him as she hurried to wipe her face. Her reply took Harvey completely by surprise, and he blinked. “Is that what you’re crying about?” “No,” Kieli retorted, looking down, suddenly angry, and stood up from the bench. He doesn’t understand people’s concerns. “Sorry, sorry. I finished my business,” Harvey said, ruffling Kieli’s hair with one hand. “Stop it!” Kieli cried, and tried to brush him away, but he caught her hand easily. “Let’s go back. The Corporal’s gotten bored and is doing nothing but whining. After he’s the one that said he’d stay in the hotel by himself, the old fogey,” he said as if nothing was the matter, keeping her hand in his as he started to walk off. Kieli sulked but let him pull her by the hand. After she had gone a few steps, she stopped and turned around to see the clown’s ghost, standing alone in the middle of the empty lot, waving his white hands. The balloon animals had returned and floated around the clown, and they all waved together. Kieli smiled, too, and gave a small wave with her free hand. Beside her, Harvey smiled wryly and tugged lightly at her hand. “Let’s go.” Turning away from the clown and his company, the two headed back. The injury from the train accident this morning still inflamed the hand that held hers. His large palm and long, rough fingers wrapped themselves around Kieli’s hand that had nearly frozen over, now that she stopped to notice it. It was completely different from the wrinkly hand of her grandmother that lingered in her memory; it was a strange sensation, touching this hand for the first time. But Kieli felt the same comforting warmth from his palm that she had felt then, and she returned the grasp, not wanting to let it go.
Chapter 6
23 min read