Liahona by D. J. Butler

and the Englishmen, from the bench they sat on and the floor beneath
them, the brass beetles swarmed in a great mass towards Poe.   He raised his hands, stood still and
laughed as diabolically and mysteriously as he could as the bugs climbed his
clothing, laughed when he felt the first brass legs touch the bare skin of his
neck, laughed with his whole chest and belly as the scarabs detoured around his
head and crawled up his left arm, kept laughing as they swarmed ticklishly
about his fist and dropped one by one into their native canister, and then, for
effect, stopped laughing at the exact moment in which he slammed the canister
shut.
    The spectators went wild.
    “That wasn’t Egyptian,” Burton said sourly, but the
passengers all about him applauded, and a few whistled or whooped in
excitement.   Coltrane clapped along
with the crowd, shooting shrewd appraising looks at the people around him.   Sizing up the marks, Poe thought.   The man had the ingrained instincts of
an inveterate carny.   The little
boy with the loop of wire stood stiff as a statue, his eyes so wide they
threatened to swallow his face.
    “They’re scarab beetles, Dick,” Fearnley-Standish pointed
out.
    “I meant the words,” the darker man growled.   “Pure higgledy-piggledy.   Nonsense.   Arrant balderdash.”
    “My name is Doctor Jamison Archibald!” Poe announced.   “Tonight, at seven o’clock by the
Captain’s watch, in the stateroom, for the very reasonable sum of two copper
pennies, any passenger may see exhibited and explained these and other marvels,
visual and auditory.   See the
uncanny hypnotic hypocephalus in action, stealing the souls of men!   Witness the muscular terror of the dire
Seth Beast!”
    “Will children be admitted free of charge?” inquired a
plain-faced, reedy-voiced, gray-wrapped matron in a blue prairie bonnet,
clutching under her bony wings a trio of similarly undernourished-looking
brats.
    “My dear madam,” Poe stage-whispered, meeting her eyes over
the rims of his spectacles, “the things I have to display are dark and
terrifying apparitions, the stuff of nightmares.   Children will not be admitted at all .”
    The little boy with the loop of wire shuddered.
    “There’s nothing hypnotic about a hypocephalus,” Burton
huffed to Roxie.   “It’s just a
damned pillow!”   He glared at
Poe.   “The Geographical Society
would cut you to pieces, you knave!”
    Burton was the genuine article, then, and not some
impostor.   He also seemed to be a
tough customer, and his fuse was none too long.   Poe decided he would have to be careful around the
explorer.   On top of everything
else, the man seemed very attached to Roxie.   Was he playing her?
    Was she playing him ?
    Poe felt uneasy.   “For an additional three cents,” he quipped with a bow in Burton’s
direction, “you may join me at the lectern tonight and share your commentary.”
    Burton’s jaw went rigid and his face began slowly turning
purple.   “As for the Seth-Beast,
you humbug, there’s no such animal!   It is a mere symbol of chaos, and the Egyptians made it up!”
    Coltrane woofed! raucously in the ear of the little boy, who jumped nearly out of his skin and
went scuttling on to the wheelhouse to complete his errand.   The dwarf laughed heartily at his own
prank.
    Poe bowed again, deeply, and raised the canister to incite
another round of applause.   He
turned and walked away, upstaging Burton and not letting him finish.
    “It’s just a jackal!” Burton shouted after him across the
deck.   “With the ears and tail of a
jackass!”
    *    *    *
    Absalom cleared his throat.   Annie didn’t look up.
    He felt ridiculous, leaning slightly into the wind to keep
his hat on his head, coattails flapping behind him, a mint-spiked lemonade in
each hand.   What if she thought he
was an idiot?   She had looked so
happy talking to the Brute the night before—maybe he was actually the
sort of man she liked .