A Lesson for the Cyclops Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Bryanae Series

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

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  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

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  25

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  27

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  29

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  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  The Bryanae Series

  A Lesson for the Cyclops

  Jeffrey Getzin

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without express written permission from the author, except where permitted by law. For information or to obtain permission, contact Jeffrey Getzin, Boonton, New Jersey.

  The characters, locations, and events depicted in this work are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental and unintended.

  Copyright © 2013 by Jeffrey Getzin (www.JeffreyGetzin.com)

  Cover design and artwork by Carol Phillips © (www.CarolPhillipsArt.com)

  Author photo by Wai Ng Photography © (www.WeddingFlair.com)

  ISBN: 9781301651757

  A Lesson for the Cyclops

  For Dan.

  He was a great man, take him for all in all.

  I shall not look upon his like again.

  Chapter 1

  The Cyclops was in love with the new acrobat, but she kept the secret locked in her heart, where no one ever looked. Members of a traveling circus were close-knit, and gossip traveled faster than the apple on the Tattooed Lady’s navel. Life had dealt precious few good cards to the Cyclops. She was not about to discard the few she had.

  She fell in love with him that first night. Half-dead from exhaustion, he stumbled into their camp with the broken shaft of an arrow still jutting from his shoulder. Not surprisingly, he had a fever and babbled a never-ending stream of nonsense about such things as the Plague, magical bags, and an impressive list of enemies. Whenever Marco asked the man his name, he hadn’t gotten the same answer twice.

  The acrobat was on the run, of course, but then so were most of the Venucha Players, from one thing or another. Perhaps that's why they had immediately accepted him as one of their own.

  But my, was he handsome—even wounded and smeared with mud! He was young—barely more than a boy—but he had the lean musculature of an accomplished dancer. His eyes were hazel, almost green, and they gleamed with a feverish sheen. His face was kind, though his mouth held a wild, wicked curve capable of either gentleness or cruelty: the combination sinful and irresistible. Clad in an outlandish wide-brimmed hat with a garish white plume upon it, and a long coat that seemed unfashionable, he wielded a fencer’s blade in one hand; in the other, he held a burlap sack.

  He clutched these two items with fierce protectiveness, and shouted unintelligible threats when Marco tried to pry them from his hands.

  “Leave off!” he shouted. “Leave your hands from yon beauty’s tongue or I shall … I shall …” He apparently couldn’t decide what he would do, because his threats trailed off into mumbles.

  By then, Alfredo and his wife Conchinara had emerged from their tent, and the Cyclops noted that each viewed the acrobat with avarice. Alfredo the Master Fencer eyed the sick man’s weapon with a greed he scarcely bothered to conceal, while his wife surreptitiously studied the young man’s marvelous physique.

  “Calphus’s erection,” Marco exclaimed, “we ain’t trying to rob ye; we’re trying to help! Ye mayn’t’ve noticed, but ye’ve got an arrow sticking out of ye!”

  “Who is he?” asked the Cyclops, but nobody noticed.

  One of the haulmen came up behind the man, and with Marco’s help, they forced the man struggling to the ground. Alfredo joined Marco and the haulman in trying to hold the injured man down, but he bucked like an angry horse fighting the saddle.

  “Who is he?” Conchinara said, her green eyes wide with excitement.

  “We don’t know,” one of the haulmen said. Of course they would answer her. “He just ran into camp shouting.”

  “He’s hurt. We need to get that shirt off,” she said, and there was something in her tone that made the Cyclops think, I’ll bet you do.

  “We’re trying!” Marco was by no means a weak man. His solid frame was corded with muscles, yet he seemed unable to get the injured man to settle down.

  “Will you let go?” Alfredo hissed, prying at the hand grasping the sword.

  Slipping off both Marco and Alfredo, the injured man leapt to his feet and drew his sword, which gleamed orange in the light of the campfire. There were numerous gasps, and all assembled collectively withdrew a step from the man as if it had been choreographed.

  “Ha!” he said, standing unsteadily. “Try to throw another demon at me, why don’t you, Gianelli? If they could fit a dragon in that bag, I can certainly squeeze you in there somehow.”

  “What is he talking about?” Alfredo said, his hand on the hilt of his own sword. He didn’t draw, which was good. Alfredo was a deadly fencer.

  Marco walked slowly towards the man with his hands raised.

  “Easy, fellow,” he said. “There’s no need for that. We’re only trying to help ye. Now if ye’ll put down the—”

  He found himself looking down at the point of the man’s blade, inches from his throat. He froze.

  “Alfredo,” Conchinara hissed. “Help him!”

  Alfredo’s rapier whisked from its sheath, and he eased into his fighting stance as if he were born to it. He advanced two steps. Suddenly, the injured man leapt at Alfredo. There was a blur of motion too fast for the Cyclops to make out. Then Alfredo’s sword flew across the clearing.

  The man laughed, and his eyes burned even brighter. Alfredo had barely registered the loss of his weapon before the man darted forward again, and made two lightning-fast cuts with his sword. Alfredo’s breeches dropped around his ankles.

  Another of the haulmen advanced, brandishing a piece of lumber held two-handedly. The injured man patted Marco’s face gently with the flat of his blade, and then he turned on the haulmen.

  In a show of solidarity, the rest of the haulmen present—an even half-dozen—stooped to pick up one kind of makeshift weapon or another. The injured man laughed, an expression of delight on his face, as the point of his orange blade bobbed like the head of a serpent about to strike.

  The Cyclops hesitated a moment and then stepped forward.

  “Please,” she said softly.

  The injured man spun to face her. His face registered astonishment, like everyone did when they saw her. He laughed, too, as they all did, but there was something different about his laugh; it seemed almost as though he were laughing with her and not at her, as though sharing a private joke.

  “Get out of the way, you fool,” Conchinara said.

  Fear pounded in the Cyclops’s chest, but she held her ground.

  “Please, mister,” she said. “We’re only trying to help you.”

  “Stay away from him,” Marco said to her. “He’s crazed with fever. He’s likely to hurt ye badly without even meaning to.”

  The injured man’s gaze darted to Marco and then back to her. He stared at her quizzically. Likely, her appearance made him doubt what was real and what was feverish hallucination.

/>   “Please,” she said again. “I’ll hold your things for you.” She extended her hands and advanced another step. “I won’t let anybody steal them. I promise.”

  “Are ye insane?” Marco said. “Get away from him before he kills ye!”

  The injured man swayed uncertainly for a few moments. Then, surprising everyone, he flipped his sword in his hand. He offered it to her, pommel first, as if it were the greatest of all royal treasures. She accepted the sword from him gravely.

  Before she could do anything else, two of the haulmen rushed at him. She swung the injured man’s sword at them. They retreated, scowling darkly.

  “Get back!” she cried. “He’s not going to hurt anybody.”

  The injured man laughed in delight.

  “Careful with that thing,” he said to the Cyclops. “You’ll take out an eye.”

  Then he fell to the ground at her feet and did not move.

  Chapter 2

  “Quick,” Marco said, gesturing to a pair of haulmen, “carry him into my tent. Take care ye dint bump the arrow shaft.”

  Marco wasn’t a proper healer, but he was the closest thing the Venucha Players had. Traveling players were held in low esteem in the various realms through which they passed. They knew there was no help to be found among the local authorities. In fact, the authorities may have been the ones who caused this man’s injuries; if so, returning him to them would be no help to him.

  Alfredo sidled up to the Cyclops. Since she had joined seven years ago, he hadn’t spoken to her more than five times.

  “Well done,” he said. “You can give me the rapier now.”

  The Cyclops nearly swooned at the unexpected praise, then blinked. Confused, she asked, “Give you—?”

  “Yes,” he said, as if to a child. “The rapier. You did well. Now hand it over.”

  “But I promised him…”

  Alfredo’s brows furrowed in annoyance. “You promised him you wouldn’t let anybody steal his possessions. I’m the Master Fencer; it’s hardly stealing if I hold them for him.”

  “But—”

  “Listen, you freak,” Alfredo said, his face reddening. “You only have one function in the circus: to sit in your cage and frighten the marks with that ghastly face of yours. Don’t presume to take on any other responsibilities. You are hardly indispensable.”

  The Cyclops felt the Master Fencer’s will bear down on her. She looked down, and saw herself reaching forward to hand the sword to Alfredo as if she had no willpower of her own.

  She pulled the rapier back.

  “I … I’d better check with Marco,” she said.

  Alfredo, shocked, grasped only thin air.

  “Marco will know what to do.”

  “Listen, you fool—!”

  “I’ll check with Marco,” she repeated, backing away from the Master Fencer the way she would from a snarling hound. “He’ll know what to do.”

  She turned around, heading for Marco’s tent at a shambling jog—the fastest her trembling legs would allow.

  “You’ve made a terrible mistake, freak!” Alfredo shouted after her. “This is not over!”

  Chapter 3

  The oddities nattered outside of Marco’s tent, each trying to crane past the others to peer inside. There was much speculation about from whence the injured man had come, and why he was on the run.

  “Is he all right?” the Cyclops said to Pahula, the Tattooed Lady.

  Pahula’s parents had come overseas from Kardán, and Pahula still had a thick Kardish accent when she spoke.

  “Marcoo has removed the arrow from the crazy man. Now he is—how you say it?—dressing the injury.” The chubby woman shuddered with glee, sending her illustrations dancing and fluttering. “You should see this man without his shirt. Ayah! What a body!”

  The Cyclops wouldn’t mind seeing it as Pahula suggested, but she was cautious about letting others know of her desires. Once, when she had worked at a freak show in Dhallabi, the owner had learned of her passion for collecting teacups. Whenever he felt she had not performed to his satisfaction, he would smash one. She had learned the hard way that people could use what they know about you to hurt you.

  “Where do you think he’s from?” asked one of the midget twins.

  “The Cyclops has his bag,” said the other twin. “What’s in the bag, Cyclops?”

  The request had caught her off-guard. She looked at the bag, then back at the oddities.

  “Goo on,” Pahula urged in a conspiratorial whisper, “just a peek.”

  The Cyclops hesitated for a moment, and then unwound the ties that sealed the injured man’s bag. She had started to open it when Marco emerged from his tent.

  “All right, all right,” he said. “The excitement is over; ye can go on back to your tents. I’ve removed the arrow and he’s resting comfortably. There’s nothing else ye can do now. Go back to your tents and get your beauty sl—” His gaze fell upon the Cyclops.

  “Go get some rest,” he said in a softer voice, and then returned to his tent.

  The oddities cursed and complained, but at length, they relented and dispersed into the night.

  The Cyclops remained, blinking in confusion.

  For just a moment, before Marco had sent everybody away, she had glanced into the injured man’s bag. She had only caught a glimpse, but she was certain she hadn’t imagined it.

  The bag was empty. Really, really empty. From the single glance, it seemed as if there was a cavernous space contained within that simple burlap sack.

  The Cyclops looked at the bag again. It seemed plain enough, the surface completely unremarkable save for a row of intricate chartreuse stitching.

  She glanced around to make sure she was alone, and then opened the bag once more.

  Inside was vast. Vast and empty. By all rights, the bag should have had no weight to it at all, yet it felt about as heavy as a small melon. Left to itself, the bag tended to fill out toward the bottom, as though it were partially full, but the Cyclops was able to press the surface completely flat if she wanted, and could fold it into a small space roughly the dimensions of a deck of playing card. When she unfolded it, however, the back once more returned to its half-full shape.

  The Cyclops looked at the tent in which the wounded man slept. Just who was he?

  Chapter 4

  The Cyclops made excuses to pass by Marco’s tent the next day, hoping to catch a glimpse of the stranger. He had been asleep for nearly a day and his fever had not yet broken. Marco had the haulmen attend to the stranger in shifts, sitting beside him with buckets of frigid water drawn from the nearby stream. When the stranger began to sweat more than usual, the haulman would mop his brow with the cold water in an effort to keep his fever under control.

  On her sixth pass, the haulman on duty called out to her.

  “Hey, freak!” he shouted, his voice sounding anxious “Get over here, willya!”

  She hesitated, caught between her desire to get a closer look at the stranger and fear of what the haulman might want her for.

  An implicit hierarchy existed at the circus. Marco was at the top of this pyramid by virtue of being the owner. Below him were the circus’s headliner acts, such as Alfredo and Conchinara, as well as the brother and sister trapeze act Stefan and Sophia. Beneath them were the other popular attractions such as Stihl the Strong Man and Dale the fire-eater.

  Next came the hucksters. Below them were the haulmen and ticket-takers. Finally, at the bottom were the Freaks, and the Cyclops, the lowest among them.

  Being at the bottom of the hierarchy made the Cyclops an ideal victim for the bullies in the circus, particularly those among the haulmen who felt the work they did was beneath them. They sometimes shoved her, or insulted her until she cried, and, very rarely, hit her. They were cautious about causing her any visible injury, since they considered her Marco’s property. Nobody wanted to damage the boss’s property.

  On one particularly bad occasion, one of the haulmen had almost raped her.
They had been celebrating the end of a successful run in Venucha, and the drinking and dancing had gone on late into the night. The Cyclops had remained by the fire long enough to be polite before heading back to her tent. Oddly enough, she felt more alone when she was surrounded by people who thought her lower than a dog than when she was by herself, with only her dreams of a happier world to keep her company.

  As she had weaved through the stalls, all in various stages of disassembly, a man staggered toward her and clamped a hand over her mouth.

  “Don say nuttin’,” he had whispered. His breath smelled sickly-sweet, like rotten apples.

  She had tried to flee, but his iron grip dragged her to the ground. She lay there, sobbing and still half in shock. She couldn’t make out his face in the darkness, but she saw that he wore the overalls of a haulman. As she watched, her attacker began to unfasten those overalls.

  “… been wondering what yer like down bottom without that fucked up face of yers…” he mumbled. He fumbled at her skirt with his large, drunken, and useless hands.

  Then he pulled a knife.

  She had begged him, pleaded with him, to stop, until he slapped her so hard her ears rung. She cried softly as he slit the fabric of her skirt.

  “… gonna give you sumthin’ special …” he said, climbing on top of her. One of his hands clutched her breast like a vise. Then he reached back and eased his breeches down.

  “Please,” she begged. “Please, stop…”

  “… gonna give you something goooood …” he said.

  He grabbed her breast again and leaned in to lick her face. His breath was so foul that she gagged.

  The gagging was contagious. After she started gagging, he did, too. Then he looked at her face as if for the first time. His eyes widened in disgust. Abruptly, he leaned to the side and threw up by her head. When he was finished, he half-heartedly returned his attention to her.

  Then he threw up again.

  That must have killed the mood for him, because after he vomited the second time, he climbed off her and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.