[i]”Now, at times, brothers in the Blood, a pilgrim will come crawling up to me and ask: why?

“Why?

“Why a carnival? We hold life everlasting, we hold the holy Transubstantiation, we are made pure by the Blood, and we run a sideshow and rides? Oh, tell me, Ringmaster, why do we have a riding wheel when ain’t nothing to look at but more of the Wound in the World all around? Where’s the castle, where’s the statues, where’s the seven thousand step temple?

“Well, I could tell you what I tell the pilgrims. I could tell you all that it’s because we’re called to be Life, and Life is ridiculous as much as it’s lethal— because, let’s face it, you and me are the only ones who get on the ride who won’t get off sooner rather than later! Yeah! Yeah, let me hear you, brothers! Whoop it up!

[pause for howling]

“So why shouldn’t we let our little operation be like the life of the uninitiate? Why shouldn’t we take our little grain of death and wrap it up in gaslight and grease paint and fried megagator? Why shouldn’t we tell the rest of the world the joke and laugh at them for not getting it?

“But let me lay the truth on you. That’s right, I’ll lay it on you righteous! That’s nothing but another hoop for them to jump through! Ain’t no choice in this!

“We hold the Dark Carnival, day and night, no matter how the Wound contracts around us, because [b]it was here waiting when I got here.[/b] The lights were on, the sausages were hot, and I wondered who stepped away and left it running—

“But then I found the Grail, here, and it realized it don’t so much as matter if I don’t understand. We have got [b]Eternity;[/b] and so this’ll be the last thing standing when [b]all[/b] the other lights. go. out.”[/i]

***

The Dark Carnival smells of fried food and sugar-breath and dried blood.

The lights overhead are bright, bright enough to see by, but the cavern roof above (if this is a cavern) is nothing but a suggestion in the dark between the bulbs. And there is a crowd.

Some of the things that pass you are inhabitants of the Heart, almost-Angels. Some of the things that pass you are fellow delvers, looking for the exit, bristling when you get too chummy, as if you mean to take their supplies or their tickets. Some of the things that pass you are tall and cloaked and unfold spindly arms to play the Toss-a-Ball. And some, unfortunately, are clowns.

There is a conditional docility that lies upon them, saturates them, when they leer at you in greasy polka-dot aprons and lean casually against the posts of a ring toss. That you are safe, so long as you do not break the spell. If only you knew what was forbidden you! What in the Heart holds them back from the impossible, brutal violence promised in their bulging muscles and beetle-dark eyes, in their rows of teeth and their rust-brown nine-pins— and how you could avoid the forbidden secret that will cause them to tear you limb from limb, laughing and honking and praising the Holy Grail.

And you travel with a man who wants to become one.

“We’re going around in circles,” he says, confidently, “because we have not gone [i]there.[/i]” He jabs his turkey leg at the massive red-and-burgundy Big Top that squats at the center of the labyrinth-carnival. From the food square, delineated by thin ribbons fluttering between posts, it seems deceptively easy to get to, as if five minutes (surely ten at most) would get you there. “The Grail knows. I am ready. I have witnessed the death of Wormwood Station; I have passed through the Stations, if you will forgive the joke. We must go [i]there,[/i] comrades. And when my honor guard brings me before my apotheosis... then you will be allowed to leave. The signs are clear.”

Shrieks ring out above the tents. They coincide with the dreadful rattle of the Jet Courser, but correlation is not necessarily causation. Wolf continues to stuff coleslaw tins into her coat.