The Snake Charm

By Laura Ambrose

“To most, Drystan was just another buffoon in the collective of clowns. But behind the inane grin, he saw everything, keeping the secrets he discovered close, like precious gems to barter.”

THE SNAKE CHARM

Mutiny is brewing in R.H. Ragona’s Circus of Magic. When Linden, the leader of the clowns steals one of the ringmaster’s most prized possessions, Drystan, the white clown, finds himself caught in the middle. Tasked with retrieving the Lethe, he’s forced to betray Linden or risk his troubled past coming to light. But the Vestige artifact has its own history and its own power. Drystan will learn what it can really do, and who it can hurt.

Vestigial Tales are stories set in the world of the award-winning Micah Grey series. Step behind the circus ring from Pantomime, the theatre of Shadowplay, and more...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Laura Ambrose
• Release date: Sep 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992942809

Laura Ambrose

Laura Lam was raised near San Francisco, California, by two former Haight-Ashbury hippies. Both of them encouraged her to finger-paint to her heart’s desire, colour outside of the lines, and consider the library a second home. This led to an overabundance of daydreams. She relocated to Scotland to be with her husband, whom she met on the internet when he insulted her taste in books. She almost blocked him but is glad she didn’t. At times she misses the sunshine. PANTOMIME was released February 2013 through Strange Chemistry, the YA imprint of Angry Robot Books, and is a winner of the Bisexual Award, is a Top Ten Title for the 2014 American Library Association Rainbow List, as well as being nominated for other awards. The sequel, SHADOWPLAY, followed in January 2014, and is also an ALA Rainbow List nominee. Her next book is FALSE HEARTS, a near-future thriller coming from Macmillan/Tor in hardback in June 2016. Laura Lam is represented by Juliet Mushens of The Agency Group in London, with film rights represented by Michelle Kroes of Creative Artists Agency.

Book preview

THE SNAKE CHARM: A VESTIGIAL TALE

Laura Lam

Copyright Laura Lam 2014

Cover Art Copyright by Dianna Walla / Paper Tiger 2014

By Penglass Publishing at Smashwords

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

www.lauralam.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-9929428-0-9

Contents

By the Same Author

The Snake Charm

Thank You for Reading

About the Author

Other Books

Praise for

Other Vestigial Tales

By the Same Author:

Micah Grey:

Pantomime (2013)

Shadowplay (2014)

Masquerade (2017)

Thrillers:

False Hearts (2016)

Shattered Minds (2017)

Vestigial Tales:

The Snake Charm (2014)

The Fisherman’s Net (2014)

The Tarot Reader (2014)

The Card Sharp (2014)

THE SNAKE CHARM:

A VESTIGIAL TALE

The show never ends with R.H. Ragona’s Circus of Magic, the ringmaster cried, as he did every night, but first, we must let it begin!

Bil Ragona bowed and spread his arms wide, clutching his cane in one hand. The brass buttons on his red ringmaster’s shirt glinted under the lights of the glass globes beneath the canvas big top. The seats were only half-filled in the small tent camped on the small beach of the even smaller town of Cowl, one of their stops on the way to Ellada's capital, Imachara.

The tumblers opened the show, somersaulting and flipping over one another. After their performance, the clowns cartwheeled onto the ring, taking their place in an ungainly echo of the tumbler’s smooth grace. They settled into their routine as easy as breathing.

The clown in orange motley, the star of the troupe, walked stiffly into the center of the ring before falling limp at the waist. Only then could the audience see the large wind-up key sticking out from his back. The clowns all paused in their antics, looking at their unmoving leader in dismay and embarrassment. They mimed covering him from the audience, waving their hands. Nothing to see here.

The red clown darted forward, the horn on the gramophone warbling a wordless question. He cocked his head. He cranked the key ever so slightly. The orange clown’s head popped up. The red clown and the others all squealed and ran away, hiding behind one another. The red clown crept forward, poking the other joker again. Nothing. The music rose, the horns urging him on. He squared his shoulders and twisted the key in the orange clown's back.

The orange clown came back to life, laughing uproariously. He gestured for the others to follow him, leading them into their act of blundering tumbles and practical jokes, and leaving the audience, though small, clutching their sides with laughter. Their act came to an end and they fled the stage.

The show continued, the clowns waiting in the wings before bumbling onto the stage to parody the previous act. They mocked the equestrians and the lion tamers, riding each other around the rings or forcing each other to jump through hoops.

They twined themselves into a tangled human knot, crab-walking about the ring, or they balanced on a tightrope a few feet above the ground, falling off it in increasingly outlandish ways and flipping around the perimeter of the circus ring. At the end of the show, all