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Description
Little Mo’s Secret – Package Delivery

Monique Aubin-Bellefontaine wasted no time in establishing her reputation within the carnival. Back in her home town of New Orleans she had been highly respected, and those who did not respect her at least feared her. It was a reputation she had invested a lot of time and energy in building and maintaining, and it was a role that she had lived and played for so long that it was second nature to her. It never occurred to her that many of these new and strange people she found herself amongst would see her as cold, stone-faced or in some cases, downright rude. Or perhaps it did occur to her and she didn’t really care. After all, she was far more interested in getting things done than she was in protecting the feelings of those around her.

There were, however, a few exceptions.

Naturally, Monique and Mr. Tzin shared a mutual respect. While conversation between them could often become heated, there was no lessening of that respect and, for the most part, they got along with each other very well.

There was Travis too who, like Monique, suffered no fool nor foolishness. The respect they had for each other was expressed by their nods of acknowledgement and the silence that passed between them.

And then there was Wyatt.

To see Monique talking to Wyatt, an onlooker would have thought she was an entirely different person. It was mostly Monique who did the talking and Wyatt the listening, but she always spoke to him in a low and kind voice, too soft for the words to be overheard, but the tone was unmistakable and almost motherly in nature. Her tone would always switch to a much more harsh address whenever somebody else approached. “Eavesdropping, are we?” she would call out. “Curiosity was never good for the health of the cat.” She didn’t even need to see someone come near, she always seemed to know that they were there.

She never patronised Wyatt. She spoke to him kindly, but honestly. Some of the other carnies had wondered if Wyatt might have been a little ‘slow’. Sure, he was more than able to carry a conversation and showed no difficulties with reading or writing, but he always had a certain naïve charm about him. He would never think to ask anyone to explain the punchline of a dirty jokes they told him, but the way he laughed along – light-hearted yet nervous – it was obvious that he didn’t really understand them.

It wasn’t long before Wyatt was calling Monique “Little Mo,” a name she did not seem to take offence to, and that name quickly spread around the carnival, first as whispers between those who talked about her but, after the first time it slipped out in conversation with her and it made her smile, it quickly became her established name within the carnival. And with that new name came a softening of her nature. It was almost imperceptible at first, but people quickly learned that, as long as they didn’t rub Little Mo the wrong way, she wouldn’t rub back.

Little Mo had been with the carnival for less than a fortnight when the ‘deliveries’ began to arrive. The very nature of a moving carnival made postal communication a near-impossibility but, somehow, the couriers who brought deliveries addressed to “Miss Aubin-Bellefontaine”, “Miss Monique”, or “Little Mo” always seemed to be able to find the campsite. The packages were small, at first. A box here, a package there, and whoever took delivery from the driver would have less than a minute to wonder what was inside the package before Mo would rush across the camp grounds to seize her parcel, or have Wyatt carry the larger, more cumbersome boxes to her caravan.

There wasn’t a soul within the carnival who didn’t have questions: What was she receiving in these strange deliveries? How did they even manage to find their way to the Carnival? Where was she putting it all? The caravans that some of them lived in were not very spacious inside – there was little room within for anything more than a bed, some clothing, and a few personal effects.

So many questions, and yet no-one asked them. Everybody had seen what the Voodoo Queen was capable of on the day that she arrived. She had first spoken to Sibyl the fortune-teller, and recognised immediately when she began to have one of her visions – a vision of Rick the tattoo-man in his truck, being followed by several police cars. Little Mo had demanded a half dozen balloons be brought to her. She spoke a few words and burst every one of them with one of the pins in her hair. That had raised some questioning looks at the time, until Rick returned with his story of how every car that had been chasing him had a front tyre blow-out. If that hadn’t been enough, then what followed most definitely cemented her power into everybody’s minds. Sibyl foresaw that the police were still coming to the carnival. They were known for not being kind to those who tried to evade them. Panic began to rise within the carnival, but Little Mo silenced them all with a gesture. She and Mr. Tzin exchanged words, and then everyone was instructed to go to the Show Tent – the ‘big top’ tent that was aging but still serviceable – and to wait. They did as they were told, of course. Mr. Tzin kept everybody calm as they waited and, less than a quarter of an hour later, Little Mo entered the tent with a broad smile on her face, a swank in her walk, and an almost melodic tone of voice that said “If they find us now I’ll give them every dollar I have.” When everyone emerged from the Show Tent the carnival was just as they had left it, but the surrounding landscape was completely different. The damp chill in the air was gone, replaced by a warm breeze and the smell of the sea. Even the sun was in a different position in the sky. Somehow, she had moved the entire carnival.

And still, nobody asked questions.

Bradan O’Shaughnessy wanted to ask questions. His mind burned with them. Both he and his brother, Aedan, had seen many things in their nine hundred years of walking the Earth. They were no strangers to its darker elements, nor to the mysteries of the occult. They both knew too well that they had to exercise care around those who were gifted with the powers of magic. As vampires, they were immune to many things – disease, poison, and even bullets and knives – but magic? That was something that was just as effective on them as it was on any other creature in the world.

Bradan had held his tongue when the carnival had moved but, with all these deliveries arriving and addressed to Little Mo, his curiosity grew so strong that it felt as though it was trying to claw its way out of his skull like a cat in a box. And the most infuriating thing for him… when larger parcels began to arrive and Little Mo would call Wyatt, the Carnival’s ‘Strong Man’ over and say to him “Take this to my tent would you, my lovely?”… was that Wyatt never asked any bloody questions!

“Sure, Mo!” Wyatt would answer, and he would carry whatever she asked him to, with a high-spirited sense of duty, and even joy. When Bradan asked him later what was in the box, Wyatt would answer “How should I know, buddy?”

‘But didn’t you ask? Didn’t you wonder? Didn’t you even take a peek?’ Bradan yelled inside his mind, but he kept his thoughts to himself. It wasn’t Wyatt’s fault that he lacked a basic sense of curiosity. Perhaps that was why Mo always asked the young man to do all the fetching and carrying for her – that and the fact that Wyatt was strong enough to lift the side of a small van and hold it there long enough for a tyre to be changed. And, perhaps, Mo never asked Bradan to ferry her parcels to her caravan or tent because she knew he’d rattle them and try to guess at the contents, or even peel back a little of one of the flaps to take a peek.

Bradan’s curiosity annoyed his brother. No, it didn’t ‘annoy’ Aedan, it was more like a mild irritation. It was natural for Irish people to be curious about things and, even without the benefit of vampiric charm, Irish people always had a way of steering a conversation so as to gather the most information. Back on the Emerald Isle, in the brothers’ home community, everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business. A baby could be born at one side of town and they would be talking about it on the other side within the hour. It was just their way. Most of the time the people they spoke to didn’t even realise they were doing it. It took a lot of careful afterthought to realise that, within an hour of talking to an Irishman, you left the conversation with them knowing far more about you than you did about them.

So, when a van reversed up to the edge of the new Carnival campsite, and the driver approached Bradan, the closest member of the troupe, and handed him a clipboard and pen, Bradan gave the man his most charming smile and asked “So, what’s this then, buddy?”

“Damned if I know, pal,” the driver shrugged as he began to unlock the rear doors of the van, “I just move ‘em from ‘A’ to ‘B’. Hey, you got any buddies to help me unload this?” he added as he opened the back doors of the van and revealed a large wooden coffin-shaped casket inside that was more than six feet in length, two and a half feet in width and about two feet in depth.

Bradan looked up from signing the clipboard and his eyes landed on the casket. “You have got to be shitting me!” he exclaimed. “Is she taking the piss? What the fuck is she gonna do with that? Where’s she gonna put it?”

“None of your business, Mr. O’Shaughnessy,” Little Mo’s voice called from way across the campsite behind him. Bradan closed his eyes and sighed. He didn’t even bother turning around. The sound of the heavy footsteps that approached from behind him could have only belonged to one person. Bradan stepped up to the driver and handed back the clipboard.

“You’re in luck,” he smiled. “Wyatt’s gonna unload this for you.”

The driver looked over Bradan’s shoulder at the broad-chested young man with spiky hair and blue stripes of body paint across his chest who approached the van. He looked back at Bradan and frowned. “It’ll take more than one lad to…” Wyatt reached into the van, hauled the crate out with one arm, and hefted it onto his shoulder with the other. He flashed the driver a genuinely friendly smile, turned, and returned back in the direction he had come. The driver’s jaw dropped open.

“It’s his diet,” Bradan offered. “Lots of chicken. And eggs. Good for the muscles.”

“No doubt,” the driver nodded with a dazed expression. The man shook his head briskly, took back the offered clipboard and locked up the van. Then he climbed back into the driver’s seat, started the engine and drove away across the field and onto the road beyond. Once he was out of sight, Bradan turned around. Wyatt had walked some distance away and was turning towards Mo’s tent. Bradan looked around and saw Mo walking in the other direction towards Mr. Tzin’s caravan, and a smile crossed his face.

“Oh not this time, darlin’,” he whispered to himself. “Today’s the day that old Bradan here gets some answers!”

Description
Little Mo’s Secret – Package Delivery

Monique Aubin-Bellefontaine wasted no time in establishing her reputation within the carnival. Back in her home town of New Orleans she had been highly respected, and those who did not respect her at least feared her. It was a reputation she had invested a lot of time and energy in building and maintaining, and it was a role that she had lived and played for so long that it was second nature to her. It never occurred to her that many of these new and strange people she found herself amongst would see her as cold, stone-faced or in some cases, downright rude. Or perhaps it did occur to her and she didn’t really care. After all, she was far more interested in getting things done than she was in protecting the feelings of those around her.

There were, however, a few exceptions.

Naturally, Monique and Mr. Tzin shared a mutual respect. While conversation between them could often become heated, there was no lessening of that respect and, for the most part, they got along with each other very well.

There was Travis too who, like Monique, suffered no fool nor foolishness. The respect they had for each other was expressed by their nods of acknowledgement and the silence that passed between them.

And then there was Wyatt.

To see Monique talking to Wyatt, an onlooker would have thought she was an entirely different person. It was mostly Monique who did the talking and Wyatt the listening, but she always spoke to him in a low and kind voice, too soft for the words to be overheard, but the tone was unmistakable and almost motherly in nature. Her tone would always switch to a much more harsh address whenever somebody else approached. “Eavesdropping, are we?” she would call out. “Curiosity was never good for the health of the cat.” She didn’t even need to see someone come near, she always seemed to know that they were there.

She never patronised Wyatt. She spoke to him kindly, but honestly. Some of the other carnies had wondered if Wyatt might have been a little ‘slow’. Sure, he was more than able to carry a conversation and showed no difficulties with reading or writing, but he always had a certain naïve charm about him. He would never think to ask anyone to explain the punchline of a dirty jokes they told him, but the way he laughed along – light-hearted yet nervous – it was obvious that he didn’t really understand them.

It wasn’t long before Wyatt was calling Monique “Little Mo,” a name she did not seem to take offence to, and that name quickly spread around the carnival, first as whispers between those who talked about her but, after the first time it slipped out in conversation with her and it made her smile, it quickly became her established name within the carnival. And with that new name came a softening of her nature. It was almost imperceptible at first, but people quickly learned that, as long as they didn’t rub Little Mo the wrong way, she wouldn’t rub back.

Little Mo had been with the carnival for less than a fortnight when the ‘deliveries’ began to arrive. The very nature of a moving carnival made postal communication a near-impossibility but, somehow, the couriers who brought deliveries addressed to “Miss Aubin-Bellefontaine”, “Miss Monique”, or “Little Mo” always seemed to be able to find the campsite. The packages were small, at first. A box here, a package there, and whoever took delivery from the driver would have less than a minute to wonder what was inside the package before Mo would rush across the camp grounds to seize her parcel, or have Wyatt carry the larger, more cumbersome boxes to her caravan.

There wasn’t a soul within the carnival who didn’t have questions: What was she receiving in these strange deliveries? How did they even manage to find their way to the Carnival? Where was she putting it all? The caravans that some of them lived in were not very spacious inside – there was little room within for anything more than a bed, some clothing, and a few personal effects.

So many questions, and yet no-one asked them. Everybody had seen what the Voodoo Queen was capable of on the day that she arrived. She had first spoken to Sibyl the fortune-teller, and recognised immediately when she began to have one of her visions – a vision of Rick the tattoo-man in his truck, being followed by several police cars. Little Mo had demanded a half dozen balloons be brought to her. She spoke a few words and burst every one of them with one of the pins in her hair. That had raised some questioning looks at the time, until Rick returned with his story of how every car that had been chasing him had a front tyre blow-out. If that hadn’t been enough, then what followed most definitely cemented her power into everybody’s minds. Sibyl foresaw that the police were still coming to the carnival. They were known for not being kind to those who tried to evade them. Panic began to rise within the carnival, but Little Mo silenced them all with a gesture. She and Mr. Tzin exchanged words, and then everyone was instructed to go to the Show Tent – the ‘big top’ tent that was aging but still serviceable – and to wait. They did as they were told, of course. Mr. Tzin kept everybody calm as they waited and, less than a quarter of an hour later, Little Mo entered the tent with a broad smile on her face, a swank in her walk, and an almost melodic tone of voice that said “If they find us now I’ll give them every dollar I have.” When everyone emerged from the Show Tent the carnival was just as they had left it, but the surrounding landscape was completely different. The damp chill in the air was gone, replaced by a warm breeze and the smell of the sea. Even the sun was in a different position in the sky. Somehow, she had moved the entire carnival.

And still, nobody asked questions.

Bradan O’Shaughnessy wanted to ask questions. His mind burned with them. Both he and his brother, Aedan, had seen many things in their nine hundred years of walking the Earth. They were no strangers to its darker elements, nor to the mysteries of the occult. They both knew too well that they had to exercise care around those who were gifted with the powers of magic. As vampires, they were immune to many things – disease, poison, and even bullets and knives – but magic? That was something that was just as effective on them as it was on any other creature in the world.

Bradan had held his tongue when the carnival had moved but, with all these deliveries arriving and addressed to Little Mo, his curiosity grew so strong that it felt as though it was trying to claw its way out of his skull like a cat in a box. And the most infuriating thing for him… when larger parcels began to arrive and Little Mo would call Wyatt, the Carnival’s ‘Strong Man’ over and say to him “Take this to my tent would you, my lovely?”… was that Wyatt never asked any bloody questions!

“Sure, Mo!” Wyatt would answer, and he would carry whatever she asked him to, with a high-spirited sense of duty, and even joy. When Bradan asked him later what was in the box, Wyatt would answer “How should I know, buddy?”

‘But didn’t you ask? Didn’t you wonder? Didn’t you even take a peek?’ Bradan yelled inside his mind, but he kept his thoughts to himself. It wasn’t Wyatt’s fault that he lacked a basic sense of curiosity. Perhaps that was why Mo always asked the young man to do all the fetching and carrying for her – that and the fact that Wyatt was strong enough to lift the side of a small van and hold it there long enough for a tyre to be changed. And, perhaps, Mo never asked Bradan to ferry her parcels to her caravan or tent because she knew he’d rattle them and try to guess at the contents, or even peel back a little of one of the flaps to take a peek.

Bradan’s curiosity annoyed his brother. No, it didn’t ‘annoy’ Aedan, it was more like a mild irritation. It was natural for Irish people to be curious about things and, even without the benefit of vampiric charm, Irish people always had a way of steering a conversation so as to gather the most information. Back on the Emerald Isle, in the brothers’ home community, everyone seemed to know everyone else’s business. A baby could be born at one side of town and they would be talking about it on the other side within the hour. It was just their way. Most of the time the people they spoke to didn’t even realise they were doing it. It took a lot of careful afterthought to realise that, within an hour of talking to an Irishman, you left the conversation with them knowing far more about you than you did about them.

So, when a van reversed up to the edge of the new Carnival campsite, and the driver approached Bradan, the closest member of the troupe, and handed him a clipboard and pen, Bradan gave the man his most charming smile and asked “So, what’s this then, buddy?”

“Damned if I know, pal,” the driver shrugged as he began to unlock the rear doors of the van, “I just move ‘em from ‘A’ to ‘B’. Hey, you got any buddies to help me unload this?” he added as he opened the back doors of the van and revealed a large wooden coffin-shaped casket inside that was more than six feet in length, two and a half feet in width and about two feet in depth.

Bradan looked up from signing the clipboard and his eyes landed on the casket. “You have got to be shitting me!” he exclaimed. “Is she taking the piss? What the fuck is she gonna do with that? Where’s she gonna put it?”

“None of your business, Mr. O’Shaughnessy,” Little Mo’s voice called from way across the campsite behind him. Bradan closed his eyes and sighed. He didn’t even bother turning around. The sound of the heavy footsteps that approached from behind him could have only belonged to one person. Bradan stepped up to the driver and handed back the clipboard.

“You’re in luck,” he smiled. “Wyatt’s gonna unload this for you.”

The driver looked over Bradan’s shoulder at the broad-chested young man with spiky hair and blue stripes of body paint across his chest who approached the van. He looked back at Bradan and frowned. “It’ll take more than one lad to…” Wyatt reached into the van, hauled the crate out with one arm, and hefted it onto his shoulder with the other. He flashed the driver a genuinely friendly smile, turned, and returned back in the direction he had come. The driver’s jaw dropped open.

“It’s his diet,” Bradan offered. “Lots of chicken. And eggs. Good for the muscles.”

“No doubt,” the driver nodded with a dazed expression. The man shook his head briskly, took back the offered clipboard and locked up the van. Then he climbed back into the driver’s seat, started the engine and drove away across the field and onto the road beyond. Once he was out of sight, Bradan turned around. Wyatt had walked some distance away and was turning towards Mo’s tent. Bradan looked around and saw Mo walking in the other direction towards Mr. Tzin’s caravan, and a smile crossed his face.

“Oh not this time, darlin’,” he whispered to himself. “Today’s the day that old Bradan here gets some answers!”