Pix

Pix is one of the star performers in Master Payne's Circus of Adventure. We first see her here, lurking in the background with Zeetha -- which will be the last time for a long time that she plays a background role, because Pix likes the limelight. As will be seen, that's incredibly important.

In her first few appearances, Pix is a bit grumpy, toward both Agatha and Abner -- both of whom will experience drastic changes in her behavior as time goes on. She's one of the Circus folk who meet Agatha when she brings the lost child Balthazar home to his mom. Of course, she's appreciative, as are the others among the Circus, but she reacts negatively when Abner starts making noises about Agatha staying around. This reaction probably comes from several levels. For one thing, at this point in the story, she's still baiting Abner much of the time, and is perfectly happy to see him taken down a peg; the decision on whether Agatha can stay, she insists (with some justification), has to come from Master Payne himself. On a slightly deeper level, she's one of the first characters to think through the implications of having someone around who's on the lam from Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, as Agatha clearly is. And deeper yet, might she detect in Agatha a certain ... competition for herself as regards unattached males in the Circus? Maybe.

But there's more to Pix than meets the eye, to put it mildly. She's upset when Payne turns Agatha and Krosp away, because she sees wandering solo in the wilderness as a death sentence for this naif, having no idea yet that Agatha is a big-time Spark. Of course, the episode with the Spider Clank takes care of that, and when Gilgamesh Wulfenbach and Bangladesh DuPree come calling in the aftermath of that affair, Pix plays a key role in convincing Gil (if not necessarily Bang) that Agatha is dead. This is in the interest of all involved, except probably Bang. Her attitude toward Abner also begins to change, in no small part owing to the memory of a kiss that was part of the Gil-duping act, and hastened by the nastiness involving the Monster Horse Beastie shortly afterward. By the time Pix and Abner conclude a good, long talk over the smoldering remains of this beast, a relationship has been well formed, and Pix and Abner are an Item from this day forth.

Her most important role, however, is yet to come. Pix frequently gets pressed into service playing Lucrezia Mongfish in the Heterodyne shows, which is reasonable as she bears a distinct resemblance to the young Ms. Mongfish of ages past, and is a good enough actress to play up to Lucrezia's ... distinctive ... personality. She doesn't particularly like playing Lucrezia, and therefore is happy to defer the Lucrezia role in a performance of Race to the West Pole to Agatha, but she gives the performance of her life as Lucrezia when the whole troupe conspires to rescue Agatha from the clutches of the Baron at Sturmhalten. The ruse works, Agatha is rescued, and the Circus escapes along with her (with the exception of the unfortunate Lars), eventually to take Ardsley Wooster up on his offer of sanctuary-cum-performance-venue in England. That's the last we've seen of Pix, although it's reasonable to think that she and Abner are living happily ever after in England -- at least until the next plot twist brings them back into Agatha's (or Gil's) life.

It's interesting that "Pix" is also the alias that Agatha adopts as she slips incognito into Castle Heterodyne to try to repair the place. Given that Agatha also claims to have poisoned 37 disgruntled diners, who knows what weird rumors about Pix that will cause.