Through the Looking Glass (2 page)

It saves time.

"Pardon me, but would you have the time?" The voice was harassed and anxious, just like the face Gideon found turned beseechingly up to him. It was an elderly face with wrinkles and a tentative smile, sitting atop a portly body dressed in a plaid suit that combined the improbable colors of lime green and purple.

Somewhat hastily, Gideon looked at his wrist-watch. "It's quarter after three," he replied.

"Oh, heavens, I'm late." The little man moaned and bustled away.

Gideon gazed after him for a moment, grappling with the notion that there was something familiar about the preceding scene. He shook off the thought and ventured a few more steps away from his car, looking around him with the wary gaze of a man quite definitely out of his element. Since he was sprung from a long and distinguished line of financial wizards with the Midas touch, his natural habitat tended more toward stately homes, huge boardrooms, and Learjets.

Definitely not seedy carnivals.

Though, to be fair, the colorful jumble of tents, wagons—the horse-drawn kind—people, and animals wasn't exactly seedy, since everything appeared to be clean and in good shape. It was just... well, cockeyed. In this age of high-tech special effects the Wonderland carnival was positively archaic. In its thirty years of existence it had eked out a marginal living for its varied dependents without ever making much of a splash. The carnival rolled into small towns and took up temporary residence in a parking lot or empty field for a few days or a week before moving on. The carnival wandered without rhyme or reason. That fact was the major cause of Gideon's apparent short temper. It had taken him nearly a month to find the carnival, and since his task wasn't a particularly pleasant one, the delay had done nothing to improve his state of mind. Muttering to himself, he took several more strides into the heart of chaos and very nearly fell over a towheaded urchin who had appeared out of nowhere.

"You cuss better'n Maggie," the urchin confided with the air bestowing a great compliment.

Estimating the boy's age at six or so, Gideon got a grip on himself and said, "Do you belong here?"

"I'm carny," the boy said, lifting his chin and showing a missing tooth as he grinned.

"Is that your name?"

" 'Course
not. My name's Sean." Sean eyed the tall man before him while giving him a disconcertingly adult smile of condescension. "Don't know much, do you
? '
Carny' means I belong here. You don't belong here. Whatcha want?"

Unused to children, Gideon returned the stare for several moments before it occurred to him that he wasn't going to win the battle of wills. Sighing, he said, "I want to talk to the—the manager, I suppose. Whoever runs this
place.
"

"Why dincha say so? Come on, I'll show you." Without waiting for an agreement Sean turned and walked away, his short legs covering the ground with remarkable speed.

Gideon followed as the boy wound his way between wagons and tents and cages. The cages held animals, most of which were sleeping. The variety was astonishing. Gideon counted two lions, a tiger, and what he thought was a cheetah, as well as monkeys, bears, and a number of unidentifiable balls of fur.

He was thinking about the unexpected variety when he rounded the corner of a tent to see Sean holding an earnest conversation with a woman. She turned to face Gideon as he approached—and he felt a jolt as strong as kick in the stomach.

Midtwenties at a guess, though all he was certain of was that childhood was behind her. Her hair was so light it seemed made of spun silver, gleaming in the afternoon sunshine, and it was so long she probably sat on it. Incredibly green eyes looked out of her delicate face with the enigmatic mystery of a cat and an underlying... something... that wasn't wildness exactly, but more like the mischief of an incorrigible, but delightful, child. And her small, slender body was draped in some filmy green material that fluttered about her in the slight breeze.

If Gideon was any judge of shapely female forms, she was wearing absolutely nothing underneath the gauzy emerald material.

"You're just in time," she told him in a bright, sweet, childlike voice.

Taken aback, Gideon said, "Just in time for
wh
—" and found himself with an armful of something furry. To his immense relief, he discovered it was a puppy. He stood there holding the small, wriggling creature and feeling slightly shell-shocked as he stared at the woman.

Ignoring him now, she spoke to Sean with improbable sternness. "You should be helping Malcolm get ready. You know he likes tea and poker promptly at four o'clock."

Tea and crumpets, Gideon thought. Wasn't it supposed to be tea and crumpets? If she'd said beer and poker, now he could have understood. He shook the absurd thought away.

"Ill help him, don't I always?" Sean was demanding aggrievedly. "But you said to find Leo and I can't, so I had to tell you. And besides, he wanted to talk to you." A small, grubby thumb was jerked toward Gideon.

"Well, all right then." She plucked the puppy from its temporary resting place in Gideon's arms and handed it to the boy. "You take Alexander back to Tina and I'll find Leo."

" 'S
okay with me." Sean accepted the puppy with a charitable nod and expertly tucked it under one arm as he strode away.

Gideon discovered that his dark suit was liberally covered with white hair. He brushed at the clinging stuff, then gave up and prepared to address himself to the woman. Except that she was wandering away. He went after her, avoiding one large dog sprawled out between two tents and the ample rump of a huge horse grazing peacefully and completely untethered on thick green grass.

She was standing at the edge of the woods and frowning slightly when he caught up with her.

And before he could say a word, she turned to him with a faintly anxious air.

"Do you think Leo could have gone into the woods?
Even after I told him not to?"

He stared down at her, wondering inconsequentially how such a tiny woman could be so... so richly curved. Her filmy outfit made the fact obvious.
Very obvious.
He tried not to think about it. The top of her head didn't even reach to his shoulder, and something about the way she tilted her head to look up at him was peculiarly moving. No.
A ridiculous idea.

Then her question sank in.
The suspicion that she might be a little less than all there crossed Gideon's mind, but he dismissed it.
Those eyes might be enigmatic and contain a gleam of devilment, but there was also sense there. He hoped.

"Who—or what—is Leo?" he asked with what patience he could muster.

"Well, he thinks he's a lion," she explained.

Gideon wasn't sure he wanted to know, but asked anyway, "What is he really?"

Bafflement crossed her features. "We've never been quite sure. Maybe you'll know when you see him."

"I don't think I want to see him. Look, if you run this—this carnival, I came here to talk to you."

"All right," she said mildly. "But first I have to find Leo before he scares somebody.
Especially himself."

Gideon discovered he was addressing the back of her silver-blond head as she turned away, and he wasn't surprised to hear a note of frustration in his voice. "At least tell me what the hell he looks like."

When she glanced back over her shoulder at him, he could have sworn there was a fleeting gleam of sheer laughter in her fey eyes, but her sweet voice remained vague. "Oh... he's sort of brown. He looks like a cat.
But not really.
Bigger than a cat.
Smaller than a lion."

After that masterly description Gideon was prepared for almost anything. Telling himself that this odd woman was obviously unable to think of anything but her misplaced animal, he got a grip on his patience and began to follow her into the woods.

He lost her almost immediately. It surprised him, because with her silvery hair she should easily have been visible; though shadowed in places, the woods weren't particularly dark. He debated briefly and silently, then cursed under his breath, took his suit jacket off, and rolled up his sleeves. He left his jacket hanging on a handy limb as he set out.

He wasn't worried about becoming lost since he had an excellent sense of direction. And if it occurred to him that the diminutive lady, who, according to Sean, was the manager of Wonderland, would hardly treat him with such childlike friendliness once she found out why he was here, he tried not to think about it. Even though he had an uncomfortable awareness that it was his reason for engaging in this absurd hunt: anything to delay the inevitable.

Being a methodical man, he worked his way methodically through the woods. Bordered on two sides by winding, two-lane country roads with fields beyond, the forest was a roughly triangular section of towering oaks and maples and other hardwoods bisected by a tumbling stream complete with a small waterfall. He estimated the total size of the forest at about ten acres.

He searched ten acres. Then, hot, tired, and irritable, he found himself back where he'd started. His jacket was just where he'd left it. So was something else.

It was crouched on the same limb, the very tips of two forepaws resting on the jacket's collar. It was, without doubt, brown—several mottled shades of brown, in fact. And it was smaller than a lion by several feet and a considerable number of pounds. But it was definitely bigger than a cat. Even though that was what it
was.

Ridiculously long, funnel-shaped ears topped the traditional wedge-shape of a cat's head. A ringed and bushy tail lay alongside the mottled-brown body with its tip twitching lazily. And huge, startlingly round, yellow eyes peered at Gideon doubtfully.

"Leo?" He felt a bit absurd asking, but something about the hesitant stare made him feel he ought to.

"Wooo?" the animal replied.

Gideon blinked. Not exactly a catlike sound, he reflected. Still, it had to be Leo. And he was sick of the search. "Come down from there," he commanded firmly. Somewhat to his surprise, Leo instantly jumped down from the tree's branch and stood looking up at him with a comically dubious expression on his pointed, furry face.

Gideon lifted his jacket from the limb and draped it over his arm. "Come along," he ordered, and began making his way out of the woods. A glance down showed him that Leo was obediently pacing beside him. He was a large animal; the point of his shoulders nearly reached to Gideon's knee, and he had to be almost three feet long from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail.

"Oh, good!
You found him."

For an instant Gideon's feelings threatened to overcome him. She was sitting just outside the woods in cool shade, her seat a canvas camp chair. A bundle of colorful material was in her lap, and she was mending a tear with small, neat stitches. Opening his mouth to say something that probably would have scorched her, Gideon was forestalled when Leo, making the most absurd chattering sounds, hurried over to her.

She seemed to listen seriously, gazing at the cat gravely as he reared up with his forepaws on her knees. Then, when he fell silent and looked at her expectantly, she shook her head and said, "Well, it isn't my fault. I told you not to go into the woods. Tina saved your lunch for you, so go and eat it."

"Wooo?"
Leo asked dolefully.

"Yes, I expect so. She has every right to be angry with you. You'd better hurry. If you ask her nicely, she might make you another one."

Leo removed his paws from her knees and loped—peculiarly, since his back legs were longer than his front ones—toward the scattered wagons.

Gideon gazed after him for a long, silent moment,
then
looked down at the woman. "Make him another what?"

"Collar."
She held her sewing up and studied it critically, then neatly finished off the row of stitches and removed the needle from the cloth, tucking it away in a small sewing kit, which she slid absently into a pocket of her skirt. "He lost his in the woods. Didn't you hear him say so?"

Several possible responses to that mild question occurred to him as he watched her rise and fold the camp chair, then tuck it under one arm along with the bundle of material. Gideon really— really—wanted to believe that this woman was absolutely batty. It was the simplest and safest explanation. She was quite mad, and it would be in his best interests to say what he'd come to say and then leave this place with all speed.

He half convinced himself of that. Then she looked up at him, brows slightly raised in question. And he felt a curious mixture of shock and satisfaction when he saw a brief glimpse of cool, tranquil intelligence in her green eyes.

She was not crazy.

Gideon had always been fascinated by puzzles. He couldn't leave one unsolved; he had to understand. He rediscovered the trait within himself at that moment. This woman was the most enigmatic puzzle he'd ever stumbled across, and he couldn't leave without at least trying to understand her.

That's what he told himself.

"How did you scratch your arm?" she asked, looking at a small cut on his forearm.

He followed her gaze, remembering that he'd rolled up his sleeves at some point. "Thorns, I suppose. Do you mind telling me your name?"

"No. It's Maggie. We should put some antiseptic on that so it won't get infected. My wagon's this way."

Walking beside her, he glanced down and had to ask. "Did you really understand Leo?"

"Didn't you?"

He decided not to answer that.
"Maggie what?"

"Durant."

"My name's Gideon Hughes."

"Yes," she said tranquilly. "I know."

"You do?" He was a little startled.

"Of course.
Balthazar's attorney contacted us after the tragedy so we'd know what had happened. Sad, isn't it? That he went all that way, I mean, and almost made it. If the authorities hadn't stopped him in Dakar, the rhino would never have gotten so upset and gored him. But you can't get probate for months, so we weren't really expecting you yet."