The Circus Rose Read online

  Truth was, I should have worked more during the months-long voyage from Faerie. I always think I’ll get so much done while we’re traveling, but I rarely do—it’s so tempting to use the free time resting and reading when being a stagehand demands so much work and so many hours once we arrive at our next venue.

  And, all right, maybe I’d spent less time reading on this trip and more time talking with Tam.

  But I hadn’t had a crush in a long time. It was fun.

  I told myself to stop feeling guilty, and I refocused on the task at hand: getting the circus on land again and making sure everyone knew we were here.

  Mama creates all the fanfare she can whenever we arrive somewhere new; it’s free advertising, she says, the gossip about something bright and shiny that’s just pulled into town.

  I waited impatiently for the end of the showing off, then hurried back to the hold to make sure I could oversee my contraptions getting unloaded in good time.

  Usually the Circus Rose does make a fair splash wherever we arrive, with the blaring trumpets and the banners—and we ourselves, of course. Mama has everyone who’s willing (that is, exactly all the performers and exactly none of the stagehands) wear costuming and makeup when we get out somewhere new, but we hardly need that to stand out, what with a bearded lady, a strongwoman, a fire-eater, and contortionists and clowns by the dozen among our number. Not to mention the dancing boys, the only group of their kind, and our absurdly beautiful new magician.

  Well. Not absurdly beautiful.

  Seriously beautiful.

  Deeply, gravely, sincerely beautiful.

  Black curls tumbling down to big, sooty-lashed gray eyes, radiantly smooth olive skin constellated with the blue freckles that mark all the Fey. Even the lines of fer nose and chin and cheekbones stroke so lovingly across fer face that they look made on purpose.

  Long, slim hands, powerful and delicate at once. Strong, graceful limbs, with a chest you just want to rest against. And a mouth that makes you want . . .

  I stopped my own thoughts. I hadn’t gotten this swoony about anyone since Mama first hired the dancing boys.

  That was two years ago, just before we left on the grand tour that eventually took us to Faerie. I remember the exact day. It was when Rosie and I both knew we were growing up.

  We were never permitted to watch the Circus Rose auditions, as much as we begged to do so. We had been allowed to, once, but then a seemingly innocent act turned into something violent enough to give us both nightmares, and after that, Mama forbade it. She and Vera held the auditions, and Mama got final say over the new acts joining the troupe before anyone else got to see them.

  It was strange to see the circus tent from the outside on audition days. We were kept occupied sweeping up and breaking down the merchandise stalls and all of those wholesome, boring, busy-making types of things, but despite the rush of activity, there was still an eerie quiet around the main tent: no blaring recorded orchestra, no applause or echoing laughter or unified gasps. Just one quiet phonograph for background music—instead of the elaborate sound system we employed during shows—that was never enough to carry past the thick canvas walls.

  I hadn’t noticed the dancing boys when they arrived among the other hopefuls in the morning. They would have just looked like . . . like everyone else, then. They wouldn’t have put on their costumes yet.

  But when the hopefuls walked out of the tent in the evening . . .

  I was leaning on the long broom I’d been using to sweep up the path between concession stands. My face felt hot and grimy, sticky with sweat. I was a little out of breath too. I wasn’t long back from my year as a student, and I wasn’t exactly in stagehand shape. My heart was thumping and my throat felt a little raw, as if I’d spent the day running laps instead of just sweeping and uprooting tent pegs. It was work, but nothing I would have called hard the year before. I was feeling childish and inadequate and very annoyed with myself for not being bigger and stronger—especially since Rosie had recently had a growth spurt, both up in height and out in some very specific places that made me devastatingly jealous.

  Combine that with the fact that I’d already overheard audience members exclaiming over her beauty in a way that was very different from the “pretty child” they used to call her, and I was sure my twin had vanished behind the two-way mirror of growing up and that I had been left behind.

  A long parade of unsuccessful auditioners walked morosely out of the tent and drifted away down the side streets.

  I carefully didn’t look at them, both because no one wants to feel judged when they’ve already been found wanting . . . and because I was much more curious about the people who’d remained in the tent, who would be signing their contracts with Mama even now.

  When Apple nudged me to keep sweeping, I took up my broom again, but I kept my eyes on the tent, waiting . . .

  And the boys exploded out.

  They laughed and teased and tackled each other and whooped for joy, a baker’s dozen of boys—Well, young men, I thought—in full stage makeup and the skimpiest costumes I’d ever seen: corsets and thigh-high stockings, some of them, or cropped shirts that exposed long expanses of lean, tight torso, or transparent bits of chiffon tailored as if they were formal suits—except that you could see right through them, skin and limb brushing up against sheer fabric. Some of the boys were tall, some short, some broad and thick-muscled or padded with fat, while others were slender and lithe; all were breathtakingly fit as only dancers can be, every motion of their bodies artful and graceful and deliberate.

  I had never given much thought to male beauty before. Outside the tent that day, it overwhelmed me.

  I glanced at Rosie, unable even to speak, and I found that she was watching me.

  She looked . . . puzzled. But before I could collect myself enough to say anything, she just gave a little sigh and a nod, and went off to find Bear.

  In the familiar way of Rosie and me, we never had to talk about it; we both already, and in the same moment, just knew—just recognized another of our many differences.

  We knew I liked boys in a way that she very much didn’t.

  In the years since, I’d become a kind of worshipper of male beauty: the swoop of collarbones above flat chests, the expanse of wide shoulders tapering to tidy waists, the vee where stomach muscles meet hips. Thoughtful gazes from long-lashed eyes under heavy brows, the sudden flash of a grin that’s just carnivorous enough.

  Men were gorgeous. Why women were called “the fairer sex” was entirely lost on me.

  And then I’d met Tam, and fe was the most stunning person I had ever seen, and looking at fer and talking to fer sent heat sweeping up through my whole body in a way I recognized from my love of men . . . but fe was no more male than I was. I wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  Rosie would say I didn’t need to make anything of it. She’s never felt the need to sort herself into understandable parts the way I do.

  Of all the things that people ask me if I envy Rosie for—her easy grace, athleticism, charisma—that fluid self-acceptance never comes up. But it’s the one thing I most wish we had in common.

  The other stagehands were already unloading, and between their chatter and the heavy lifting, I soon had no more attention left for my own thoughts. I was grateful. Glad, too, that my place in the stage crew meant I wouldn’t have to be part of the showy main disembarkation. No one should notice us at all as we trolley-pulled the heavy equipment, hidden behind the performers handing out free samples of wonderment to whoever happened to be at the pier that day.

  We emerged.

  I’d spent just enough time in the darkness inside the airship that I had to squint when we came back outside.

  Besides the bright sunlight that had greeted us as we made berth in Port’s End, there was an extra brightness to the warm air. Golden whorls and spirals sparked like fireworks around the airship but made no sound.

  Tam herded the lights like a shepherd, murmuring careful
ly under fer breath and making gentle stroking motions through the air with those elegant hands.

  I was transfixed for a moment, until I stumbled into the trolley in front of me.

  “Watch it, Ives!” Apple scolded. “I want to live as long as the Lord sees fit, please!”

  “Sorry!” I squeaked.

  Ahead of us the performers were dancing and sword-swallowing and fire-eating and clowning and contorting, turning somersaults and pirouettes or walking on stilts—and I knew without having to look up that Rosie skimmed the air above all our heads, flitting between the ropes that held the airship to the dock and giving the grandest performance of all. I could tell that just from the faces of the people on the pier, mostly tilted up to watch my sister even though there were so many closer marvels approaching them from the gangplank and on the ground.

  Mama’s voice, amplified through a bullhorn I’d designed myself and that Tam had augmented during the trip from Faerie with just a little magic, cut clear through the drums and Toro’s walking xylophone: “Come one, come all, to the grand and grandiose, magnificent and marvelous Circus Rose, opening Friday night in Carter Park! Buy your tickets from any of our per . . . formers . . .”

  Mama’s voice drained away.

  I wondered for an anxious moment if my bullhorn design had failed.

  I bumped into Apple’s trolley again and opened my mouth to apologize—and then I realized that he’d stopped moving because our whole procession had.

  The troupe stood still, those on stilts wobbling a little as they found a steady stance, everyone else staring at . . . something at the front of our group.

  No one on the pier was looking up anymore, either.

  I looked up. Rosie dangled by her knees from a thick rope, and she too stared at something that must be just ahead of Mama. She hung upside down in the air, not even bothering to right herself. And the expression on her face . . .

  Well, it told me I’d best be looking too.

  I clambered on top of a fellow stagehand’s trolley, steeling myself to ignore her grumbles, but even she was too distracted by whatever was up ahead to scold me.

  From the top of the boxes, I could see clear across the crowd that had gathered to watch the circus come in. I could see what they were looking at now too.

  A show.

  Only one that Mama obviously hadn’t planned. She’d dropped the bullhorn to the ground, and her mouth was open a little in surprise. The point of her beard trembled.

  Two men knelt before her at the end of the pier.

  One was brown-skinned with a salt-and-pepper queue, the other pale and red-haired. Both were handsome, the first man slim, the second broad.

  The sight of them twisted my heart. I had only seen their faces a few times when I was young, but I recognized them straightaway.

  My father.

  And Rosie’s.

  They each rested one arm on a forward knee, and they knelt next to each other, so that their shoulders touched as they lifted . . . something . . . toward our mother. They both smiled at her, and my father was saying something, but I was too far away to hear the words.

  Then the ring they held sparked in the sun and the light from Tam’s fireworks, and suddenly I knew.

  They were asking our mother to marry them.

  Rosie

  Oh, my heart—

  I usually know,

  I’m usually ready—

  I can feel it coming, the rush, the overwhelm, the crush,

  the world turning into too much, and I can back away, finish my act, release the ropes, push the sky away, be ready be ready be ready for needing the dark and the quiet and a loving arm that will keep me safe, I know who these men are, I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it, I lock eyes with Ivory for one moment and she knows too and she hates it too but she’s grounded she always is she always is and I’m pinned to the air can’t move can’t move need Bear—oh lord, oh Bear, oh Ivory—sick rushing behind my eyes can’t move can’t move—all black all red all too too bright—

  oh—

  oh.

  I feel

  my heart

  lower. The ropes

  lower. I know

  the hands

  that wait for me below,

  the sister’s touch,

  the grounded hand,

  a bird’s own

  nest.

  Oh, Ivory.

  You saw me.

  Cool hands,

  sweet blank.

  She saw me.

  She saved me.

  I open

  my eyes to darkness,

  fur all along my side,

  two shapes in the shadows,

  worried, keeping me safe.

  Two who love me.

  Our fathers outside,

  the crowd waiting,

  but we are

  here.

  Alone.

  Together.

  There’s space

  to breathe

  between

  my thoughts again.

  Ivory

  Thank goodness I looked up. Thank goodness I caught her.

  Rosie, hanging frozen in the air.

  It hadn’t happened that badly in years. Whatever it is that flinches in her mind, the overwhelm that freezes her up, we know the warning signs by now—and we know the things to help her avoid.

  But seeing our fathers there on the pier, holding up that sparkling ring; it nearly stopped my heart too.

  “Rosie!” I called, rushing to the ropes and ready to pull her down to safety—only these were the airship’s ropes, not the trapeze’s I had helped design. I didn’t know how to manipulate them to get her down.

  But Tam saw, and fe was there with me too. One hand still herded fer lights around the circus troupe, and with the other, fe sent a soft current of silvery light up to Rosie, where it cradled her like a gust of wind, like a giant, luminous hand, and set her gently down in my strong arms.

  I took her to Bear’s berth, where Bear was only just stirring from the hibernation in which he had waited out the trip from Faerie.

  Without a word, only a look between us, Tam nodded and left me to my sister and our bear.

  I laid Rosie down on Bear’s thick fur.

  She shivered and began to stir.

  5

  Ivory

  Supper that night, without Mama, was a raucous affair.

  Not that Mama kept us quiet or even polite—there wasn’t much in the way of table manners or refinement of any kind at campfire dinners, which was just how the troupe liked it—but something about Mama’s very presence made the rest of us organize ourselves around her, like planets around a sun. Bees around their queen.

  Without her, we were just a hive.

  “Lord, what’s going to happen now? If Mama Angela takes up with the girls’ fathers after all this time, she’ll want to set up house with them.”

  “Sure, wouldn’t anyone? Those two live in Lord Bram’s mansion and I’ve heard tell even the servants eat off gold plates there.”

  “The circus is done for. We’re nothing without our Mama, and those two will lure her away from us for sure. What right do they have after letting her go for so long?”

  In the din, I wasn’t sure who said those words, but they might as well have come from inside my own selfish, grasping heart. What would it mean for our fathers to come back into Mama’s life? I couldn’t even bear to think what it would mean for us, for Rosie and me.

  I had never had a father, not really. I had Mama. I had Apple, quiet and thoughtful and capable, and Bear, steady and warm and there every single night if I had a bad dream. How dare two more fathers think they had a right to Mama, to our family?

  “I’d go along with just one man that handsome, but two . . .”

  There was a ripple of appreciative, slightly shocked laughter.

  “You wouldn’t think people would be so scandalized anymore, what with the king himself and those two royal friends of his sleeping in the same bed every n
ight—”

  “And with more Fey families immigrating every day—”

  “Sure, my da’s a joiner, and his letters are full of shock at the orders he’s had lately, the sheer size of the beds he’s been asked to build for fives, sevens, dozens of Fey who want to sleep together. Courtiers, too, who want to mimic the king.”

  Vera’s laugh rang out across the fire. “Mama Angela will be writing to your da, then—she’ll need a good strong bed with two braw lads like that to—”

  “Vera!” I cringed. “I don’t want to hear it!”

  She just cackled. Vera had always been that way, bawdy and full of teasing, and usually I liked that about her. She’d been the Circus Rose’s first headliner, the Nordsk Strongwoman, and Mama’s best friend since before Rosie and I were born. I knew if Mama had heard what Vera was saying, she wouldn’t mind; of all the things to love about Vera, the best was how much she made our mama laugh.

  But that didn’t mean that I had to laugh or to like hearing her jokes. Not then.

  Rosie squeezed my shoulder. “Just Vera being Vera, Ives,” she said.

  I took a deep breath. “Well. What about Mama being Mama? What do you think is going to happen, Rosie?”

  She shook her head. “Mama being Mama . . .”

  “She always said she couldn’t choose, and there they are, together. I would never in a million years have thought—”

  “Those two will lure Angela away from the circus, clear as the Lord’s light,” I heard Apple mutter somewhere to my left.