Chapter Seven
By the time we arrived at the Hall of Curiosities, Halfrieda had changed her mind and agreed to accompany me inside.
She was afraid I might get lost and, given my propensity for getting lost already, I was quickly persuaded to let her follow me.
My first obstacle was a padlock on the front door. In the dark, I couldn’t see it well, so I felt along with my fingers and fiddled with it. To my great surprise, the padlock wasn’t actually locked and opened for me when I pulled on it. Very strange that it should appear locked and, yet, wasn’t. Regardless, I seized the opportunity and opened the front door.
Stepping through the doorway was like being immersed in an entirely new world, a sensation I was quickly getting used to where Cirque du Noir was concerned. Halfrieda crushed me to her side as we crept down the hall and her breathing was furious in the dark. Clearly, she was nervous about this. I was too, but I was also exhilarated.
My heart was pounding so quickly, it was hard to breathe, and I nearly collapsed from shock when a series of spotlights flashed overhead, reflecting against the darkened, cobwebbed windows. I glanced around for the source of the lights, but just like inside the big top, their origin remained a mystery. Almost as mysterious as the objects they illuminated.
The Hall of Oddities was the first room we entered, and it contained a strange collection of jars and tanks of various sizes and shapes. The acrid smell of formaldehyde permeated everything, even the glass itself. Suspended in the murky liquid were organic pieces: parts, bits, and bobs of… things. I didn’t look too closely because I wasn’t eager to figure out what each jar contained—it was enough that I could make out a two-headed rat, a frog with fangs, a pure-white lizard whose scales glistened beneath the light. I swore the eyes of the dead specimens were looking at me.
“Okay, yer minute’s up,” Halfrieda mumbled, more than eager to leave. “Let’s git the heck outta here.”
“Wait.” I tugged on her arm, gesturing to an illuminated curtain further back. “Laurent mentioned there were three rooms inside. This is just the first one.”
Halfrieda made a strangled noise deep in her throat. “Bindiii…”
“Come on, it’ll just be another minute,” I promised as I gave her a big smile and she returned it with a frown. Regardless, there was no way I was leaving yet—my gnawing curiosity forced me on. There was still much more to see, but there was more, besides my curiosity. Strangely, I felt drawn here. As if something had pulled me to this exact place and I needed to find out what.
With a reluctant nod, Halfrieda clung to my shoulders, as though trying desperately to hide her lumbering frame behind mine. I steadied myself, acting the brave one as I led us forward, skin shivering with every creak of the floorboards beneath my feet. I wasn’t feeling brave. My heart was racing so loudly in my ears, I was sure it was echoing against the wood of the walls. Could anyone hear us as we walked through this off-limits place? And if they did catch us here, how much trouble would we get into? I’d only just joined the Cirque, so it’d be pretty embarrassing to get hired and fired in less than twenty-four hours.
Not to mention what Laurent would have to say about the whole thing—it was his disappointment that would sting the most. I didn’t know what exactly it was or how it was possible that it was even there, but there was definitely something between Laurent and me. I could feel it as surely as he could.
The gentle snoring of live animals drifted softly through the otherwise unnervingly quiet space—a space that was strangely much larger on the inside than it appeared on the outside. The caravan from the outside appeared to be twenty feet long perhaps. And yet, in here, the space seemed to continue without end.
I pushed past the curtain and both heard and smelled animals. This had to be The Menagerie. I expected the typical lineup of circus animals—elephants, big cats, horses, camels—but walking past the small enclosures, I realized these were something else entirely. A coop contained chickens with long, reptilian tails and bat-like wings, and a fish bowl was the home of a tiny seahorse which had four legs and a horse body but the head and curly tail of a seahorse. I’d never seen anything like it. I blinked furiously, rubbing my eyes in case I was hallucinating again. The animals both fascinated and horrified me at the same time.
Not to mention the fact that they should have been impossible and yet… here they were.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” I asked Halfrieda, just to be sure.
“I sure as heck am an’ I sure as heck cain’t believe my own eyes!”
That was a relief, even if it didn’t explain how these animals existed and what, exactly, they were. Halfrieda released my arm and wandered a bit to one side of the room as I took the other, each of us ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ as we went.
“Bindi, come look at this!” Halfrieda tried to whisper, but the excitement in her voice was clear. I hurried to her side, finding a rabbit hutch filled with small, snow-white rabbits that were so tiny, they could easily fit into one’s palm. Halfrieda coaxed one into her hand, which she held outward, showing me the tiny, horn-like nubs on top of its head.
“What is it?” I asked. Better yet, how did these mutant creatures even exist and where in the world had Laurent found them?
“Don’t rightly know. But it’s just about the gosh-darned cutest thing I ever did see! Must be some kinda rabbit from some far-off place, if you ask me.”
The baby rabbit, or whatever it was, made a strange squeak, nuzzling its face between Halfrieda’s fingers. I hesitantly placed my fingers on top of its head, feeling the hard nubs, which were rough and rigid beneath my fingers. “They’re real,” I gasped softly. “All of these creatures are real.”
“Reckon that’s why it’s called The Menagerie,” Halfrieda whispered back with a quick nod. “An’ why there’s a padlock on the front door.”
“And yet the padlock wasn’t really locked.”
She nodded. “Someone just forgot to lock her up, I reckon.”
I nodded but then breathed out deeply because for some reason, I wasn’t convinced. It almost seemed more to me as if I’d been meant to find this place, that it was waiting for me. But how and why?
“Maybe this caravan is reserved fer Laurent’s private tours, if ya git what I mean,” Halfrieda continued.
I didn’t really get what she meant, but also didn’t want to inquire. Too much talking meant someone might overhear us, and that was the last thing I wanted.
As I continued to study the creatures around us—who seemed faintly similar to animals I knew and recognized, yet were still different, the impact of everything in this room began to hit me. I glanced around the dimly lit space, my stomach churning in a frenzy of nerves as the weight of this discovery settled inside my gut like an anvil. “This means anything could be real. Dragons, ghosts, w-werewolves.”