A hand grabbed one edge of the tarp and pulled. The tarp began to slide away.
Then, just shy of exposing us, it stopped.
“What’s the matter with you?” I heard the dog’s handler say.
“I’d steer well away from that cage if I was you,” said another voice—a Gypsy’s.
I could see half the sky above us, stars twinkling down through the branches of oaks.
“Yeah? And why is that?” said the handler.
“Old Bloodcoat ain’t been fed in a few days,” the Gypsy said.
“He don’t usually care for the taste of humans, but when he’s this hungry he ain’t so discriminating!”
Then came a sound that stole the breath right out of me—the roar of a giant bear. Impossibly, it seemed to be coming from among us, inside our cage. I heard the dog’s handler shout in surprise and then scramble down the ramp, pulling his yelping dog along with him.
I couldn’t fathom how a bear had gotten into the cage, only that I needed to get away from it, so I pressed myself hard against the bars. Next to me I saw Olive stick her little fist in her mouth to keep from crying out.
Outside, other soldiers were laughing at the handler. “Idiot!” he said, embarrassed. “Only Gypsies would keep an animal like that in the middle of their camp!”
I finally worked up the courage to turn around and look behind me. There was no bear in our cage. What had made that awful roar?
The soldiers kept searching the camp, but now they left our cage alone. After a few minutes we heard them pile back into their truck and restart the engine, and then, at last, they were gone.
The tarp slid away from our cage. The Gypsies were all gathered around us. I held my egg in one trembling hand, wondering if I’d have to use it.
The leader stood before us. “Are you all right?” he said. “I’m sorry if that frightened you.”
“We’re alive,” Emma replied, looking around warily. “But where’s this bear of yours?”
“You aren’t the only ones with unusual talents,” said a young man at the edge of the crowd, and then in quick succession he growled like a bear and yowled like a cat, throwing his voice from one place to another with slight turns of his head so that it sounded like we were being stalked from all directions. When we’d gotten over our shock, we broke into applause.
“I thought you said they weren’t peculiar,” I whispered to Emma.
“Anyone can do parlor tricks like that,” she said.
