The Circus Rose Page 7

  With this man, though, it seemed to be a matter of passion rather than assignment.

  “All the face of the earth is under God’s purview, child. Doesn’t His light touch the ground here, even now? As an emissary of that light, I am only reflecting His.”

  I pointed west. “The sun is setting.”

  I felt someone yank me backward—and none too gently, either.

  I turned; it was Mama.

  “Hey!” I protested as she dragged me off. “What are you doing? I’m trying to help! That man is driving away customers!”

  Mama eyed the preacher and those gathered around him. “Is he?”

  I looked again, and after a moment, I saw them. Toro and Vera were weaving through the edges of the crowd, selling tickets—although most listeners stayed for only a few minutes, then made their way straight to the ticket booths. When he said something absurd about the extreme sinfulness of our show, a whole dozen or so of his listeners made a dash for the main booth, digging in their pockets or purses as they went.

  “We could have no better advertising than what that pompous ass is giving us for free,” Mama said. “Let him stick around. He’s doing us a favor.”

  I had to agree. “But, Mama, there’s something that bothers me about him. It’s like he’s a—a wrench in the works of the circus. It feels like he’s hurting us when I hear him say those things.”

  “Him?” Mama scoffed. “Couldn’t hurt us if he tried. It’s like I said—the more he tries, the more he ends up helping. Don’t give him another thought, honey love.”

  But I gave Brother Carey and his henchmen plenty more thoughts as I set up for opening with the rest of the stagehands; I just kept them to myself.

  I was running back to double-check the gas lines when I heard someone in the dressing room tent give a despairing, theatrical wail. I met Apple’s eyes, we both sighed, and he waved me toward the wailer while he ran toward the footlights. I was better at soothing preshow jitters than he was, and we both knew it.

  By the time I’d rebuilt Bonnie’s ego and rushed backstage, the tent doors were closing, enveloping the audience in shadow that made them hush their laughing chatter and turn from a multitude into one silent, waiting presence. I had managed to mostly forget the Brethren and all the half-done or undone jobs that fall in the wake of every opening night—I’d forgotten everything but the job in front of me, the rough feeling of the rope in my hands as I worked in tandem with Apple to shine the first spotlight.

  The show was about to begin.

  6

  Rosie

  I render the air—

  tent-peak shadow, lush darkness—

  dip my toes in the lights, soak my limbs, drench their eyes.

  Spin down from the center and leap for the edges,

  my red skirts, white smile, black heart in plain sight.

  I show them the shapes

  that they don’t know to dream of,

  I dance on steel wires and balance on light—

  I’ll be the one girl they can think of, see, long for,

  sweep into their gasps and their dreams and their sighs.

  My Ivory has built me

  high wires, trapezes,

  the sturdy, strong ground that launches my flights.

  When I fly, I don’t shake, I don’t stutter. I’m no stranger.

  Every face in the crowd’s a heart I recognize:

  A moment of union, transcendence, elation.

  A brief lifting free

  from the fires

  of the mind.

  Ivory

  Rosie was always our showstopper. Nobody ever wants to follow her act, so she goes last before intermission and then second to last, with Bear, before joining in the grand finale. I always loved to watch her—and I always worried about her until her act was safely over, no matter how many times I’d seen her execute it perfectly.

  Still, I wasn’t impatient as we swept through one performance, then another; I was kept plenty busy as a stagehand, of course, and then I still loved to see all the acts, even the ones I’d seen a thousand times before. Maybe especially those.

  First was Mama in her red jacket and top hat, playing mistress of ceremonies and telling teasing, just-bawdy-enough jokes to make the audience laugh and relax. Toro and the other clowns were waiting in the audience to reveal themselves at choice moments in Mama’s monologue, to sweep and leap and dance and somersault down to the stage and make the audience feel that they too might be part of the show. To blur the footlights’ line.

  Next came the dancing boys, our opening act ever since they’d joined us—and a wise choice too, an inspired one, really, from Mama. Between the thirteen of them, they seduced everyone in that tent. I used to think they were the most beautiful people in the world . . .

  I’d been wrong on that score. Even the memory of Tam’s kiss sent a searing shiver through me.

  But I still liked to watch the boys dance. Ciaran especially—we’d been each other’s first lovers, and while we shared only an easy friendship now, it still made me smile to see him move his hips with such grace and cast the same fetching glances at his enraptured audience that had once seduced me.

  It was extra fun to watch from backstage too. Many of the men in the audience had never looked at another man the way Ciaran and the dancing boys demanded to be watched.

  That was one of the things I loved most about them; most women had never been offered male beauty and bodies on a platter that way before, either. Girls are used to gussying up, trying to look pretty and appetizing and generally like something edible, something for men to devour until nothing is left.

  That’s part of what I hated about performing, even as a child. The look on the faces of certain people—certain men—in the audience that you can’t describe in any other way than hungry.

  It’s what most of the more risqué circus acts have in common, something that undercuts every show and that everybody knows, but they know it so deep that they don’t think it’s even worth talking about.

  Women perform to make men hungry.

  Men watch to eat.

  The dancing boys flip that deep-down knowledge neatly on its head in their first moment of performance. Men see bodies like their own offered up for the pleasure of . . . well, everyone. Anyone at all who has an appetite. Then they maybe start to sense a hunger of a different kind than they’ve let themselves feel before.

  And the women, even the married ones, are too often like I was that hot dusty day when I first saw the boys leave the tent—they’re waking up for the first time to the fact that, their whole lives through, they’ve been starving.

  After the last swooping, languorous blare of the trumpet in the dancing boys’ act, there was a moment of silence and darkness—the liquid shifting darkness that lets one act flow away and then reveals the next act in its place in the center ring.

  The second act was Tam and fer illusions.

  Fe performed gracefully, slowly, sending glowing whorls and spheres around the tent in an intricate dance, seeming to pull some from the mouths and eyes and chests of certain members of the audience, all different colors, all merging and shimmering together overhead and out to the very cheapest of seats in the back. Tam told me on the trip from Faerie that fe always tries to give the cheap seats the best show of all, since that was all fe could afford the first time fe went to the circus.

  I felt close to overflowing with how much I liked fer in that moment. Something trembled along the edges of my body like water about to spill over the lip of a glass. I liked everything fe was doing and how fe was doing it—that fe was also so beautiful while fe was being wonderful was almost an afterthought.

  Almost.

  “Making yourself useful, Ives?” Apple whispered from behind me.

  I turned. He had a strange look on his face, like he was fighting with himself, not like he was checking on one of his stagehands.

  “Everything’s under control. I had a spare moment.” I tried not to blush.<
br />
  “You should be careful.” He paused, chewing on his lip. “Tam means well, but fe is what fe is.”

  I stared at Apple. He couldn’t mean what I thought he meant. “Because fe is Fey?”

  “Because magic isn’t safe. You can’t trust it. You don’t know where it comes from or what it can do.” He looked toward the crowd. “I told your mama, I don’t think there’s any place for magic in the circus, but she’s always one for trying new things.”

  “We’ve always had magic in the circus.”

  “We’ve always had tricks. But you know as well as I do that tricks make sense when you’re on this side of the curtain. Magic never makes sense.” He sighed quietly, turning to go back to work. “You just think about what I said, okay? It’s important to know what’s real.”

  I didn’t want to think about what he’d said. And thankfully, the following three acts required so much of my attention—pulling ropes, pushing levers, changing light colors, minding the phonographs that produced some of the sound effects—that I didn’t really have to.

  And then it was time for Rosie. Even in the rush of everything I had to do, I loved seeing her perform too much to keep working while my sister danced. I stood back, just beyond the edge of the pool of light in the ring, ready for Rosie’s acrobatics to unfold. We’d set up the high wires before the show started, so now there was nothing for us to do but watch.

  Rosie descended from the shadows at the top of the tent, her gold costume glittering with sequins, a flowerlike spray of pale pink feathers arranged at the back of her auburn updo. More gold sequins adorned one eye and cheekbone, as if she’d crashed sideways into a star on her way to the stage.

  She perched like a bird on her trapeze, holding the rope and lowering herself slowly until she was at the exact midpoint between big top and sawdust, suspended in the air at the center of the circus universe.

  The Rose of the Circus Rose.

  She showed the rope she used to lower herself to the audience, winked, and then let it go.

  She flipped upside down on the plummeting trapeze.

  The audience gasped as one.

  Then—thanks to one of my own designs—an invisible catch stopped the rope in its tracks and the trapeze halted just in time.

  The feathers in Rosie’s hair brushed up sawdust on the ground in a cloudy halo.

  She lightly flipped again, landing smoothly, smiling her radiant-sun smile at all the world.

  Relieved laughter and applause.

  She waved, still smiling, and spun slowly all the way around, giving that warm look to everyone as she went, so that suddenly each person who came to see the Circus Rose felt as if they were the star of the show too. They felt seen.

  This is a different kind of hunger than the dancing boys evoke—although I know that gorgeous Rosie breaks more than her share of hearts too.

  But once she’s gotten everyone on those benches to fall in love with her, what she gives her audience—above and beyond her breathtaking aerial dance—is the feeling she’s loving them right back. It’s why Rosie gets more flowers thrown at her feet, more admirers lining up after the show, more letters sent to our traveling group even years after the writer’s day at the circus, than anyone else of our number. She doesn’t just inspire love—she gives it, with every movement of her act. I often wonder if that’s what exhausts her so profoundly that she has to hide with Bear for half a day after every show, what makes her mind hurt so much that she vanishes inside of it sometimes. All that giving.

  They could just watch her forever and be happy, I thought, looking out at the rapt audience, and so could I. Glowing pride and love for her was filling up my whole chest when I caught the sinnum scent of a newly familiar perfume and realized that Tam had come to stand beside me.

  Fe was still in full stage makeup: heavy-handed, smudged eyeliner, as if fer eyes weren’t dark pools of honey as it was, and a trace of silvery shimmer on those high cheekbones, that arched nose, the cupid’s bow of fer perfect mouth.

  “Hello, Ivory,” fe murmured in the under-the-breath voice everyone uses backstage. Fe stroked fer hand lightly along my arm in greeting.

  I could watch Rosie forever . . .

  But I’d watched her before.

  I shivered under Tam’s touch and turned away from the ring.

  “Hi, Tam.” I took fer hand where it was lingering at my side and weaved our fingers together. “Do you think you can make us both disappear?” It was dark backstage, true, and I had no responsibilities for the next few minutes, but I still didn’t wish to make a spectacle of myself. I never did.

  “Mm,” Tam said. Fe waved two fingers delicately through the air.

  We smiled at each other, and the smiles were a secret.

  I was grateful for every touch I’d known before, for every kiss, because I knew what I was doing when I pushed my other hand through Tam’s thick hair and pulled fer roughly in for more of what we’d had that morning.

  I only surprised fer for a moment. Tam’s hand tightened around mine and our bodies pressed together and fe pushed me against the large pulley behind us. The metal and thick rope dug into my back, but I was too focused on the taste of Tam’s mouth, the feel of fer lips and tongue and teeth.

  The kiss went on for long breathless moments, our bellies pressed together and Tam’s legs pushing between mine, fer body all against me, and the cold, hard metal of the pulley at my shoulders. Our fingers tightened together; my free hand fisted in Tam’s hair, and fe drew me toward fer at the waist with those long, elegant, marvelous arms.

  The whole world contracted. Just the two of us here—no twin, no troupe, no circus at all. The only person in the world for me just then was Tam.

  And it was clear as day in every moment of our kiss, every movement of Tam’s body, that I was the only one fe wanted too.

  It was so lush that I found myself shaking between kisses and touches. I squared my back against the pulley and brought my legs up, wrapping them around Tam’s waist. We soared through a blessed, private, heat-soaked darkness. Even the light in the ring turned red with the fire we made.

  Tam’s mouth moved down from mine, slipped warm and slick over my jawline and my neck, bit at my collarbone—

  I was gasping again, breathless, not enough air in the world—​and a sound in my mind like a rising crowd, like screaming—

  Screaming.

  No, not in my mind.

  In the ring.

  We pulled apart, sharing a frightened look.

  I still couldn’t breathe.

  Couldn’t breathe for the smoke that was filling the air.

  Smoke.

  Screams.

  Red light in the ring . . .

  “Fire!” I shouted, but my cries were lost in the sea of everyone else’s screams of panic.

  Tam and I rushed into the ring, running almost headlong into Toro and two of the stagehands, who were desperately trying to take down one of the tightrope supports.

  I looked up and saw why: Rosie was hanging in midair on her trapeze, an impenetrable haze of smoke above her, the fire painting its evil lights over her face and making her gold costume blaze like a hot cinder.

  “Ivory, Ivory!” she called. “Bear!” And then, like a small child: “Mama!”

  “I’m here, Rosie, I’m here!” I screamed. “I’m going to get you!”

  But even though she was only twenty feet above me, close enough that my voice surely carried, she didn’t even look down. She just kept screaming and twisting around and calling for Mama, so that the trapeze rope wrapped inexorably around her limbs—

  A fire in the circus could kill her. It was more dangerous to Rosie than to anyone else because it forced her mind right into overwhelm. She’d gone inside herself, and she couldn’t understand what was happening.

  “Ivory, we have to get out!” I felt Tam’s arms around me, dragging me away.

  “No, stop!” I said. “She doesn’t understand!”

  “Look around you!”


  I could barely tear my eyes from Rosie, but one glance showed me burning great shreds of the tent itself collapsing around the ring, ropes falling to the ground like flaming snakes, fire tearing across the sawdust and wood chips in the ring as quickly as if they were made of kindling—which they were.

  “Oh lord,” I said, “the footlights—”

  They exploded.

  I shielded my eyes with one arm and flung myself back against Tam, keeping fer under me as we both fell to the ground. Flying shards of glass from the footlights crossed over us, and I heard a chorus of cries of pain.

  This was my fault, mine—I was supposed to double-check the gas connections before we let the audience in, and I’d been running late all afternoon, between mooning over Tam’s kiss and fuming about the Brethren—

  No time for guilt, not yet. I knew we had only minutes left, with the gas from the footlights feeding the fire.

  We had a sold-out show. Five hundred souls in the seats.

  And Rosie above us only one.

  My sister, the one life I’d choose to save before even my own, if I had to. If I could.

  Someone loved every single person in the tent as much as I loved Rosie.

  But still I couldn’t leave her.

  I ran to the trapeze ladder and grasped it. The metal was hot enough that I watched my palms turning angry red and blistering as I started to climb, but I hardly felt the burning, couldn’t think of stopping until I got to my sister. She needed me, she’d always needed me, and I’d known after that year at school that I could never abandon her again—and by the lord, I wouldn’t abandon her now.

  My eyes watered from the smoke so I could hardly see, but I climbed.

  Then someone grabbed me, someone far stronger than I was, and I felt myself yanked back down to the ground and across the ring. “Let me go!” I kept shouting. When I finally wrenched my gaze away from Rosie, I saw that it was Tam and Ciaran, together, dragging me away. For that moment, I hated them both.