He closed his eyes, smoked. He’d seen his first ever show as a child, way too young to understand what was happening. He had run away from his mother, leaving the traditional side of the fair, entranced by the call of the strange flutes and horns, a native song some might have said. It stirred something deep within, something like memory and he had run, not hearing his mother shout, not hearing anything but the music and that voice. Come one, come all … He was saying … Come one, come all … Tiny Alask pushed his way around people, wound his way through legs, walking sticks and shopping bags and scuffed pointed shoes, until he saw him: the Barker. He was a squat, muscular man wearing a top hat, a button-up vest with no shirt, the vest left open so Alask could see his bare glistening chest, his egg-like belly, brilliant and smooth. And then he noticed the best thing, the thing that stuck in his mind ever since, the thing that made Alask what he was, had made them all: the Barker raised his thick, muscled arm, pointing his stick at the embossed sign which said Dr Magnesium’s Augmented Circus. Alask saw a box embedded in the arm, and the box was filled with pale blue water, yet the box was actually a tank, and there were golden fish inside it, and the fish tank was there, in the Barker’s arm, for everyone to see.

Alask smiled, remembering his shock, how his mother had grasped his arm and pulled him away. Bright pain. He remembered how he’d dragged his feet, and she had only pulled harder, how he’d shouted, and how people had looked, the Barker’s grin. His mother was a good woman, gone now, but she hadn’t understood; or rather she had, but thought she could prevent the inevitable, change his mind. The Barker listened to the boy scream, caught his eye and grinned because he had known what was coming. He listened to the hoarse wail and heard something that pleased him. So long ago, it seemed, when Alask thought of the experience now.