Two

There was no way to tell the passing of time, save for the wheeling of the stars overhead. They moved visibly, even during the few seconds that he caught a glimpse of them through the branches.

Some part of him registered that the little pinpoints shouldn't be visible between the points of the crescent moon. They also shouldn't be moving so quickly in their wheel around the moon, or occasionally choosing, in small groups, to dance back in the opposite direction. But they were, and they did.

The trees were odd as well, as if some cosmic force had simply picked up whatever seeds were to hand and scattered them around piecemeal. At one point, he leaned against a palm to rest for a moment; shortly after, he was forced to push thick pine branches aside as the needles scraped over his exposed hands.

It didn't hurt, or even itch. His hands were wooden, the fingers overlong and formed of jagged splinters that scraped across the bark. Some part of him registered that this was wrong, too, but it little more than an afterthought. There were too many blank spots in his head-

No, not blank spots. Broken spots. The glass shards shone in his mind.

He forced his way through another pine, lurching like a drunken man. His limbs were all the wrong sizes, and didn't bend the right ways. They felt almost artificial, as if they were attached to him only by the barest means. But he didn't fall.

The light was closer now, close enough for him to see that it was a set of lights rather than one. The trees around him were festooned with little brass flowers on wires, all with tiny, flickering bulbs set into them. They didn't so much cast back the darkness as enhance it. Tiny islands of dim amber filled the trees.

But there were more, stronger lights ahead. Now, when he turned his head upward, he could see spotlights spearing upward into the stars, weaving back and forth lazily. Ahead, in a clearing, he could see tents in red and white and orange and purple, decorated with more brass flowers with bulbs in even more colors. Wooden carts and booths occupied almost all of the free space. And, in the center of it all, rising above the rest like a cathedral, was the big top.

In the sparse gaps between the booths and the tents and the carts, a crowd moved. Their shapes were indistinct, their faces lost in the press of bodies, but he saw them drifting about, saw the bright clothes they wore, and heard the dull roar of their collective murmuring. Above it all, there was the slightly shrill sound of a calliope.

A circus. The reflection of a memory flashed across one of the shards of his mind, and he seized on the phrase. It was a circus, and there were people.

Someone might know who he was.

He staggered forward again, drawing closer to the edge of the clearing. He could make out faces in the crowd now. There was a dumpy woman with sharp blue eyes, standing by one of the booths and laughing. There was a boy with sandy hair, chasing a laughing girl through the maze-like confines. None of them were wooden.

He lurched to a halt just outside the clearing. Something else flashed across his mind, some fragment of memory or instinct.

He shouldn't be there. Not this way. A thrill of terror coursed down his spine at the thought, and he turned to stagger away again, moving around the clearing rather than through it, keeping to the shadows in the trees.

No one noticed him, though he wasn't entirely sure if this was because he was too far away for them to see him in the darkness or because they were simply preoccupied. Either way, he made his way through the trees for a while until he came to a collection of carts.

There was no crowd here. There were less lights here. The carts were large and bulky and had things like THE BEARDED LADY and THE ILLUSTRATED MAN painted on the side in large, red letters.

He stepped forward, creeping between the carts as best he could, listening. The roar of the crowd was less oppressive here, but he could still make out the piping of the calliope, and catch glimpses of the booths through gaps in the carts.

There was one cart that didn't have any writing on it. Not obvious writing, at least. It was larger than the others, and in better repair; the wood didn't quite look as if it was about to rot away, and the dark varnish on it gleamed in the light from the brass flowers. He edged around it, carefully, until he found the door.

There was some writing there. Tiny golden letters said:

PENELOPE C. WISE

WHITEFACE

Penny Wise. The name sparkled in his head for a moment before vanishing. It was stupid, a show name, not a real one. But it was familiar, somehow.

For a few minutes, he stood there in front of the door, swaying softly. The name was familiar, though he couldn't quite place it. And he had come to look for answers; he had to start somewhere. But something in his head stopped him here. It wasn't the flash of foreboding that he'd felt at the edge of the circus proper, but he was... frightened? Was that the phrase? He was frightened of what his appearance would provoke. 

He knew he wasn't normal, at least. He wasn't sure how abnormal he was, but he knew that he wouldn't be out of place in the freak show. THE SPLINTER MAN, his cart would say. Or maybe something worse. There was something wrong with his face as well, he knew, but he didn't know what. 

So he stared at the door and tried to dig some resolve out of the wreckage of his mind. He wasn't sure how long he stood there, but after a time, the calliope music stopped abruptly, and the crowd became quiet. He turned, and crept back towards the circus proper, staying behind the shadows of the carts.

The crowd was visible through a gap between two of them, and he peered through. There was the big top, just ahead, and a figure standing in the entrance with a megaphone in hand. It was tall, and thin, and wore a satiny red jacket with golden buttons that gleamed in the dim light. 

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!" it boomed. Its free hand rose into the air in a gesture towards the crowd, as if inviting them in. "It's time for the main event! The one you've all been waiting for! Come one, come all, to the greatest show on Earth!"

He stared at the figure's face. It seemed somehow sharper than the ones in the crowd, as if it stood in a permanent spotlight. There was a tiny, neatly-trimmed black mustached, and bright green eyes just visible under the brim of a top hat, and a sharply-pointed nose - but the face itself, the sum total, somehow seemed to be all brilliant grin. 

He shook his head. The figure had retreated back into the big top, and the crowd were pouring in after it en masse as the calliope music returned. 

When they had all gone, he stepped out from behind the carts and edged up to the entrance, hiding just out of the light, and watched.