Mad War - Second Part
“Hmf! So, hmf, you mean to tell me that a yellow, with a blue on the sidecar no-less! Hmf! Failed to retrieve the Child?” Pompador Bombastic huffed as he paced in front of Cheerio.
“Sir, the vamp used a teleportation spell, even after getting pied.” Cheerio said.
Bombastic pirouetted on the clown, “I know that! Hmf, you think I did not read the report? In my day, hmf, I would have tackled that blood sucker before, hmf! Hmf! HMF!... Well, that is that. Did you manage to capture any of them?”
Cheerio stared straight ahead, down the featureless field, as he replied, “No, sir. Garlic bread, all of them.”
“Well blast the- HMF!- The ringleader himself!” For a second, Bombastic stared across the airship field at the bobbing shadow of Cheerio’s vessel. Such a wide expanse would be swept by gales that would bowl him over in peacetime, but not a gust or breeze had been loosed in five years. When they didn’t need to dock airships here, then maybe the winds would return. Bombastic flipped his red curls over his shoulder, as if wishing the wind would come back to do it instead.
“Well, my boy, hmf, those fangs are full of tricks, of course. No use painting tears on your cheeks for it.”
“That is very funny, sir.” Cheerio said.
“Hmf. There is some good news for you though. Next mission is on the land. No more wirework for now.”
Behind the commander, Cheerio and Jefferson exchanged huge frowns, very subtly. Bombastic knew damn well that they were the best wire-ridders in the force. He was trying to play coy to take the sting out of this new assignment.
He continued, “Now, let’s find the specifics, hmf!, shall we? Tiny, Vlat, Jefferson, you are dismissed.”
The three gave swift, identical salutes as they pinwheeled their arms in a unison mockery of lost balance, before about-facing sharply, all three in different directions, and setting off for the barracks tents.
“Now, my boy, we must, hmf, be going.”
Cheerio assumed they were heading for the command tent, but they passed the behemoth of blue and red without a glance from Pompadour. On all sides, clowns were carrying crates, papers, flowers, anvils and doves, but none of them disturbed the commander red and soldier yellow marching through the chaos. Pompadour only stopped when a trio of triplet blues disrupted the haphazard crowd by herding a clowder of cats between tents and underfoot. Cheerio came abreast to watch, carefully shuffling so he wouldn’t step on any of the felines with his big boots, and was surprised to look up to see Pompadour as morose as ever, staring at the cats.
“My boy, have you, hmf, put red on the ground since Hooptember?”
“No sir.”
Pompadour gave a deep, long, long, long, comically long sigh, “Then just hear; hmf, that I hope the damn cats are the least of our concerns.”
“Sir?”
But now the clowder was past, and Pompadour marched ahead as if he’d never stopped. But where to? Cheerio looked about, as if a glance at his ringmembers would give him a clue, but they were too busy attending to the funny business of the army’s headquarters to give him a second look. He couldn’t pick a trend or hint out of their behavior. Of course, even to a fellow clown, trying to predict what was about to happen was impossible. Looking at the manner and supplies was pointless; no one could know what kind of joke the force was setting up for... Assuming they were still setting up jokes. Were they in the punchline now? Cheerio realized his team had been chasing the vamps for over a month. Was it possible that they were reaching the end? Had their joke fallen flat?
“Eyes front!” Pompadour coughed from ahead.
He did and now saw where he was going after all. The pure white was tent ahead. Cheerio stomach filled with a sense of relief, even as his body suddenly felt all the tire of his assignment. Pompadour must see fit to give him a rest before he got his assignment. Overheard, suspended by party balloons of gleaming white, painted with white paint on white wood, a sign named the tent, “Eggs”.
The flaps parted before them, and when they closed, there was silence.
Thousands of eggs. Tens of thousands of eggs. Miles of eggs in this tent.
Cheerio could only honk his nose in reverence as he continued to follow Pompadour deeper into eggs on pedestals. Every egg was painstakingly decorated with paint, a wig, craft paper, cotton thread, bits, bobs, and, rarely, a miniature animal. All of them bore faces, some smiling manically, some frowning with distressing depression, some with open mouths darkened by charcoal black, and some sticking out clay tongues. Cheerio realized he was now leading Pompadour. He wasn’t marching anymore, he was running swiftly through the grid of eggs, some only as high as his ankle, some head and shoulders above him, he ran on. Looking at each one was overwhelming, but he did not have to look to know where he was going, or who he was passing. For a second, he felt Tiny’s eyes on him and glanced aside to see a tiny shock of blue hair passing swiftly, then he was past. Then he felt a different gaze magnetically drawing his eyes forward, under his own more powerful command.
And stopped, before his egg. Right before his face, his egg.
Gold hair, over a coy swashbuckler’s smirk. Blushed cheeks and boyish chin, all dominated by keen jade eyes. Except he was not looking at the egg, he was looking at himself; the dirt on his face, the wrinkles in his plaid jumpsuit, betraying the effort of his failed mission. It was all he saw. He knew the egg’s face did not have tired bags under its eyes, nor was its perfect texture marred by the scars of battle. Looking now, it was hard to tell, who was the egg? Was the egg Cheerio? Was he? Cheerio Egg Was?
Now it was impossible to tell.
Applause.
The noise of the encampment was back, the oppressive pressurized silence of Eggs was gone, and all that was left was the dazed waking confusion of not knowing which was looking at who, and then that evaporated away too.
He broke his stare, and saw his body turning away from him, just in time to see the scars gone, the youth returned, and his polka-dot jumpsuit as fresh as a polished horn. He did not see his egg, now smudged and tired. Not cracked, but almost.
“You better, son?” Pompadour asked.
“Right as cats and dogs, sir!” Cheerio said, saluting enthusiastically, his flailing arms carefully avoiding the delicately painted totems on all sides. He felt like Cheerio again.
“Good. Hmf. Gonna need your pep, cause cat’s ain’t so right anymore.”
“Sir?”
“Hmf. Follow me.”
Cheerio’s cadmium yellow brow furrowed as he fell back into step. Before they were too far, he spared a glance over his shoulder, seeing the grimy, marked face of his egg smirking sardonically back at him. It was almost enough to damp his refreshment. Then it was out of his mind; he’d have to fix that up before his next mission.
Pompadour was back on track, marching as swiftly as ever past the endless grid, and it was not until they had gone a thousand feet did Cheerio realize; they were not leaving. They were going deeper into Eggs. And shortly, he realized the tent was getting brighter. Growing light, but this light was not soaking through the canvas. And this light was not still. It flashed and span, it danced. Cheerio realized he had never been this deep in Eggs, nearly at the center. He saw that these eggs were coarser, no more perfect faces with perfect paint, now they were crude things. Wax smeared in the poor imitation of a face. Some pedestals were empty. One egg was green, the unpainted shell itself a sickly shade. These were ancient. The original eggs.
That was all he saw before the wild light was all he could see, and then they were at the center, where the tentpole stretch up to a cloudy canvas above.
And he heard crying song. Now he saw, in the center of Eggs, was the Dancing Clown.
White light, blazing white, dancing, pure clean and glowing all over, the Dancer moved and swang hypnotically, casting their light askew, falling in place and rolling over itself, bald head bobbing, hips thrusting, arms weaving, feet rising, soles falling, hands waving, fingers tutting, elbows wagging, shoulders cycling, body swaying, waist gyrating, knees popping, wrists flapping, the whole Dancer swinging and sliding around the center pole, so bright that the pole of Eggs was a black line against the brilliant Dancer.
And the Dancer spoke,
The boy, the boy,
Ahoy the boy
No coy ploy the boy!
Far away falls the boy, when slipping.
The Dancer, supreme leader, the King of Clowns, span around and bucked madly with its song,
The land, the land,
unhand the land,
Plans to span the land!
You say in land is the boy, a-dripping.
The Queen of Clowns rose and fell, blinding and dazzling in their song.
The top, the top
Stops a-top
Elope the top p-l-o-p!
Unhand the prop, the boy is flipping!
Pompadour put a hand on Cheerio’s shoulder. The message was done, the Dancer had sung. His mission was-
The wire, the wire
So dire the wire
a-flyer aspires
High on the wire but I won't trip it.
And with a great crash of both blazing boots striking the ground, Cheerio was awoken as the tent flaps parted before him. Except they were behind him, for he and Pompadour were walking backwards out of Eggs.
It was time for the next mission. He did not know what it was, but Cheerio knew he wouldn’t fail this time. He’d had his tragedy, he’d dipped into bathos. But he knew that next time he was out there, he would kill it. One way, or the other.
