Scrivener's Moon by Philip Reeve Read Free Book Online

buildings had lately stood and which tents had not yet had time to colonize. A travelling show had set up there, a spiky black barge with a big tent pitched beside it and torches burning at the entrance. For a moment Fever wondered if it might be old friends of hers from Summertown, but no; this was a raggedy northern show; the sort of show which opened when respectable people were heading home to bed. Along the side of the barge, in big red letters made to look as if they had been painted recently in blood, it wore the name The Amazing Borglum’s Carnival of Knives!
    Wavey rapped on the wall of the chair to make the bearers stop. “Oh, my dears, we must see the Carnival of Knives!”
    “A Carnival of Knives?” said Dr Crumb. It was already past his bedtime, and he yawned as he spoke. “Wavey, it sounds somewhat irrational. . .”
    “Nonsense,” said his wife. “It is the very thing to cheer poor Fever up!”
     
    There were a lot of showmen in the world who styled themselves Amazing, but in Jasper Borglum’s case it was the simple truth. He even felt amazed at himself, as he stood on the roof of his land-barge watching his audience gather. He had not visited London since the Movement took it, and he felt hopeful about the place. It reminded him of huge nomad encampments that he had known up in the Birkenmark. And here he was, with his circus ready like a net to gather in the shoals of shiny little coins that swam in this canvas sea.
    He was about the same age as Dr Crumb, and in some ways he was rather like him, for he was intelligent, cautious and neat, although when necessary he could show a certain reckless daring. Like Dr Crumb he cropped his hair down to a fuzz, but it was a blond fuzz in Borglum’s case, and he left one long lock at the front to dangle down over his forehead and half hide one of his eyes, which were as bright as chips of feldspar. For clothing he favoured the furs and ’broidery waistcoats of a nomad nobleman, and he wore a jewelled dagger in his belt that was just for show and a plain one in his boot that was not. When he drew himself up to his full height he stood just a half-inch under three feet tall.
    Quite early in his life the Amazing Borglum had understood that he was an oddity, and that people were going to try to exploit him. Travelling shows stopped most summers at the village where he grew up, and there were whole barges packed with freaks and misshapes for the paying public to google at. Once the silky gent who ran a barge called the Knuckle Sandwich tried to persuade Borglum’s ma and da to sell him their little dwarfish boy for twelve gold coins. They wouldn’t sell, for they loved their son, even if there was a little less of him than they might have hoped. But they wouldn’t be around for ever, would they? And even while they were, what was to stop some big neighbour from picking Borglum up and selling him to the shows without their permission? It was a burden to a young man to be worth a dozen of gold.
    So the following summer, when the Knuckle Sandwich reappeared, Borglum went and made his own deal with the silky gentleman. He gave the money to his ma and da, wished them a loving farewell, and set off upon his travels. If people wanted to exploit him it seemed to him that he’d best beat them to it and exploit himself.
    He missed his parents, but otherwise life on a travelling show suited him well. It was better than village life, with all those towering lads who’d scoffed and bullied and the girls who would never even notice him. Aboard the Knuckle Sandwich he made friends who’d been born with the same lopsided luck as himself; the Stone Faced Man and the Bearded Lady, pretty Liv the Human Lemur with her covering of pale gold fur, who taught him to juggle and walk stilts, savage Quatch who made rich ladies faint when he roared at them and rattled the bars of his cage, but who wasn’t really savage at all, and who, on quiet nights between stops, would entertain