Wild Boy by Rob Lloyd Jones

nail,” Clarissa insisted. She slid a leather pouch from her coat pocket. “I got my father’s old lock picks, though.”
    Wild Boy stared for a second — had she always intended to rescue him? He banged a hand on the bars, delighted. “That’s great! Now, use them!”
    Her hands shook as she selected two of the thin iron slips from the pouch and slid them into the lock. Metal rattled against metal.
    “Hurry,” Wild Boy urged.
    “I am hurrying!”
    “I know, but hurry faster!”
    Then —
clunk
— the lock turned. Wild Boy cried out in joy as the cage door swung free. He leaped through and landed beside Clarissa in the straw.
    And then the stable door burst open. The porters staggered inside, stopping when they saw the scene — the golden-eyed man unconscious on the ground, Wild Boy free from the cage, and Clarissa beside him with the lock picks in her hand.
    Mary Everett stood among them, staring, aghast. Again Wild Boy thought he saw the ringmaster’s hard eyes soften, as if she were fighting against a kinder person inside. Then she looked at her daughter with
the freak.
    Clarissa reached out a shaking hand. Tears glistened in her eyes. “Mother,” she said. “I —”
    “Get them,” the ringmaster growled. “Get
both
of them.”
    Wild Boy couldn’t leave Clarissa, not after what she’d just done. He grabbed her arm to pull her with him, but she resisted. Still she stared at her mother, as the ringmaster approached with the mob.
    “Come on!” Wild Boy said. “I know a way out.”
    But now something grasped the tail of his coat. It was the golden-eyed man. His silver hair hung around his face, and blood oozed from a cut above his empty eye socket. “Do not run!” he said. “You are in danger! Great danger!”
    Wild Boy tore free and ran for the wall. Clarissa followed, fleeing for her life from her own mother.
    “Go!” Wild Boy said, pushing her through the hole in the wood. As he climbed after her, he heard the golden-eyed man crying out, and he knew the man was right. They were indeed in great danger.
    And now they had to run.

W ild Boy ran.
    In among the sprawl of vans behind the circus, slipping over, staggering up. Wind whipped at his eyes and dried his tears. Caravan doors burst open. Voices rang out, horrified, confused.
    “What is it?”
    “One of the freaks killed the Professor. That one with the hair.”
    “There! It’s there! Grab it!”
    “There’s two of them! It’s Clarissa an’ all!”
    Clarissa raced up beside Wild Boy as he hid behind one of the vans. She was breathing hard and shaking, her face as pale as snow. “What do we do now?”
    Close by, a gang of showmen charged past, heading for the big top.
    “Quick,” Wild Boy whispered.
    As soon as the men had gone, he darted around the side of the van and scrambled breathlessly up the ladder. Clarissa came up after him and they lay flat against the rain-slicked roof, sides pressed together. Wild Boy could feel her heart beating even harder than his as they listened to the circus crew run past on the path below.
    And then they heard something else.
    Dogs — coming closer.
    “Your crazy mother’s set the hunting dogs on us!” Wild Boy gasped.
    The porters must have given the dogs a smell of the Professor’s blood, and he was covered in the stuff. He bolted upright, rubbing frantically at the blood on his hands, tearing thick clumps of bloody hair from his skin. But there was too much blood, too much hair.
    They needed to get away from those dogs, but there was no way they could escape on the ground. There
had
to be another way out.
    Clarissa was no help. Her gaze was fixed on the big top. She didn’t look like she could move, let alone escape. Wild Boy thought about leaving her, but she had helped him escape when she didn’t have to, and because of that she was on the run too.
    “The roofs,” he said. “We can use the caravan roofs.”
    He turned and looked across the roofs of dozens of vans parked behind the big