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“What have you to worry about, Worm Man?” Dr. Mink walked out of the shadows.
“Bess hasn’t come back from her bath,” I said, starting to worry myself. That was hours ago.
“Run off and left you, has she?” Mink said to Mr. Bopp.
Mr. Bopp trembled, on the brink of violence. “She ain’t.”
Mink smiled smugly. “Sure she has. Gone off to join that sister of hers without you.”
“She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t go without me.”
“You want me to go and look?” I offered. “I was looking for Moses anyway.”
Mr. Bopp considered this. “Naw,” he said. “She’s a brawny lass. She can take care of herself, and she does like to get off on her own sometimes when the world gets her down. She’d smack us in the head fer our trouble.”
He was almost certainly right, but I liked the forthright woman, and her absence now troubled me. “In the morning, then?” I offered.
“If she’s not back, which she will be,” he said as he crawled away.
“Aren’t you at all worried that one of your acts is missing?” I asked Mink.
He gave me his death’s-head grin. “Like Bopp said, she’s a brawny lass. And if you’re so all-fired keen on being nursemaid, why are you letting the kids run wild?” Mink accused. “I just sent that frog boy back to the wagon where he belongs.”
Well, there’s one less worry, at least, I thought.
Mink sneered with pleasure, like he’d caught me out. “Go help Bonfiglio set up the mummy and the babies, and we can have an earlier start in the morning. You’ll sleep in the exhibit tent tonight,” Mink told me. “Yiss. So the local rats don’t creep in.”
After Bonfiglio had left me in the tent for the night, I looked around at the exhibits. My nighttime companions aren’t exactly the stuff of my dreams, I thought wryly. Poor Mr. Bopp. The girl of his dreams was absent too. I wondered if Bess would be back before morning. Gunther Bopp was more sentimental than he let on, I decided as I laid my blanket on the floor. I wondered how much Bess did for him. Did he need her or miss her or both? I’d like to have someone to need and miss, I thought, and as if in answer, the ghost of a feeling came over me, and I longed for someone I could almost name. The mood fled, but it left my knees weak, and I sat on the crate next to the coffin.
“Well, here we are again,” I said to the mummy. “You’re still stretched out there, and I’m still fainting like a girl.”
“Of course, anyone would faint with what goes on here,” I added after a pause. “The giant died, you know, and the bearded lady’s missing, but there’s worse. The children are burned and beaten, and they accept that as part of their lot in life. I’m sickened to think they can be hurt and believe they deserve nothing better.”
What a relief to talk, even to someone who couldn’t talk back.
“I had a good home, you know, except I wanted some adven-ture and freedom. Only look at me now. I feel responsible all the same. Responsible for Apollo, who followed me and ended up among ruffians, and responsible for those children because no one else will be.”
A sigh bubbled up from within me. I missed home—my uncle’s lessons, Archie Crum’s rude jokes, and the warm support of everyone around me. My hand went to my neck and the ring Violet Giovanni had given me.
How shameful. I had hidden a gift given in affection more likely because I was embarrassed by it than because I worried it might be stolen, yet how would this ring make me stand out more than the exotic creatures around me? All those fancies about the ring making people say and do odd things were just that—fancies, excuses to hide it away. It seemed to me there was a lot less affection out in the world than at home, and gifts of love should not be taken lightly. I slipped the chain over my head and undid the catch to allow the ring to slide down the links and tumble into my palm. The ornate gold band fit per-fectly on the ring finger of my right hand.
What had seemed bulky when hung from my neck took up a new elegance on my finger. Were those pincers or mere orna-mental fancy that sprang from the scarab beetle’s shoulders and met above its head? I was neither entomologist nor archaeolo-gist to say. The ring appeared exotic and mysterious and quite beautiful. How kind of Violet to have given it to me.
“Did you wear jewels like this?” I asked the mummy. I laid my hand on her chest so I might imagine the ring as an ornament at her throat. “I would love to look across time and see you as you were.”
The mummy opened her eyes.
20
I SAW, WITH HORROR, MY HAND AT her breast, but no amount of willpower could make me move it. I was frozen. A chill licked my fingers and crackled up my arm to the vault of my chest, where it grabbed my heart in a viselike grip.
The mummy’s dry lips parted, and air sucked past me to fill a void within her; then she exhaled in a rattle, as if she were filled with pebbles and crushed paper. She spoke in a voice like dry autumn leaves and smoke.
“I have waited forever for you.”
I snatched my hand back and stood.
“Don’t go!” Her voice broke with so much loneliness and fear that I sat again.
