Mammoth Books presents The Books by Kage Baker Read Free Book Online Page B

Manny’s strongman act where he picked up a Volkswagen. We kids knew all the heavy stuff like the engine had been taken out of it, but they didn’t. They applauded Uncle Derry the Mystic Magician, even though the talkers for the blind shouted all through his performance and threw his timing off. He was muttering to himself and rolling a joint as he came through the curtain that marked off backstage.
    “Brutal crowd, kids,” he told us, lighting his joint at one of the torches. “Watch your rhythm.”
    But we were kids and we could ignore all the grownups in the world shouting, so we grabbed our prop baskets and ran out and put on our act. Myko stalked up and down and waved his sword and yelled his lines about being the brave and dangerous Captainio. I had a little pretend guitar that I strummed on while I pretended to look at the moon, and spoke my lines about being a poor fool in love with the princess. Sunny came out and did her princess dance. Then we juggled. It all went fine. The only time I was a little thrown off was when I glanced at the audience for a split second and saw the light of my juggling torches flickering on all those glass lenses or blind eyes. But I never dropped a torch.
    Maybe Myko was bothered some, though, because I could tell by the way his eyes glared through his mask that he was getting worked up. When we had the sword duel near the end he hit too hard, the way he always did when he got worked up, and he banged my knuckles so bad I actually said “Ow” but the audience didn’t catch it. Sometimes when he was like that his hair almost bristled, he was like some crazy cat jumping and spitting, and he’d fight about nothing. Sometimes afterwards I’d ask him why. He’d shrug and say he was sorry. Once he said it was because life was so damn boring.
    Anyway I sang my little sad song and died of a broken heart,
flumpf
there on the pavement in my buffoon suit. I felt Sunny come over and put the rose on my chest and, I will remember this to my dying day, some old lady was yelling to her old man “ ... and now the little girl gave him her rose!”
    And the old man yelled “What? She gave him her nose?”
    “Damn it, Bob! Her
ROSE
!”
    I corpsed right then, I couldn’t help it, I was still giggling when Myko and Sunny pulled me to my feet and we took our bows and ran off. Backstage they started laughing too. We danced up and down and laughed, very much getting in the way of Uncle Monty, who had to trundle all his parrots and their perches out on stage.
    When we had laughed ourselves out, Sunny said “So ... what’ll we do now?”
    That was a good question. Usually the Show was at night, so usually after a performance we went back to the trailers and got out of costume and our moms fed us and put us to bed. We’d never played a matinee before. We stood there looking at each other until Myko’s eyes gleamed suddenly.
    “We can explore the Lost City of the Sands,” he said, in that voice he had that made it sound like whatever he wanted was the coolest thing ever. Instantly, Sunny and I both wanted to explore too. So we slipped out from the backstage area, just as Uncle Monty was screaming himself hoarse trying to get his parrots to obey him, and a moment later we were walking down an endless street lined with looming giants’ houses.
    They weren’t really, they had big letters carved up high that said they were this or that property group or financial group or brokerage or church but if a giant had stepped out at one corner and peered down at us, we wouldn’t have been surprised. There was a cold wind blowing along the alleys from the sea and sand hissed there and ran before us like ghosts along the ground but on the long deserted blocks between there was gigantic silence. Our tiny footsteps only echoed in doorways.
    The windows were mostly far above our heads and there was nothing much to see when Myko hoisted me up to stand on his shoulders and look into them. Myko kept saying he