Circus of Wonders

by Elizabeth Macneal

  The sound of a body breaking on the stones below, a life cut short. Toby was on the ground, sharp pebbles cutting into his palms, the knee of his trousers torn.

  He could not have done it. A man could not be alive and well one instant, and then dead the next, because of him. It was simply not possible. He was a bystander, wasn’t he? His life affected nobody’s.

  A purple iris sprung from the stones, bathed in golden light. A starling was whistling on a tree trunk, crickets rasping. And he could not bring himself to see the look on his brother’s face. Could not bear to read the horror in it, to understand the fiend he had become.

  In the tent, violins saw, the same pitch as when Nell would rise beneath the balloon. This must be the finale when Jasper will unveil the machines, when they will creak and flap their wings and blow great puffs of smoke. He has a sudden desire to see it for himself, to hold those ropes in his hands and hear the hushed silence of the audience.

  He should be attuned to the roll and swell of a thousand small incidents, the finger-click instant when a river breaches its banks. But he finds he is surprised to see Nell take the match and strike it against the paper. That smell of camphor, the quick curl of smoke. A marbling in the air. She holds it in front of her eyes. The flame lowers and twists. She drops it. It falls like a girl, pale hair flung out behind her.

  Nell

  The match drops. It settles on the pile of handbills they have gathered on the floor. For a second, nothing. Nell thinks that is it, that the moment will peter out, that her anger will shrink inside her once more. The papers blacken in growing waves. The edges are red. And there it is: the first dance of flame.

  It unloosens something within her. There is her music, the sound that once carried her into the sky. She thumps her feet. Toby cries, ‘Stop,’ but she doesn’t, she can’t. All those years she spent making herself small and harmless, swallowing her anger, defying what people expected of her. Toby reaches for a glass of water but she snatches it from him, hurls it at the wall. Doesn’t he understand that this is what is left of her life? That this is all the power Jasper has allowed her? Flames lick the walls. She raises her hands above her head and twists her hips, kicks her legs. Storms hammering the rocks, waves thrashing pebbles, a current that tugs her under like a great fist. Glasses crack and burst. Shards pierce her shoes. The heat rises, irresistible. Her feet are bleeding. She catches the heavy lip of a decanter and smashes it on the floor. A laugh brims in her throat. She spins wildly, faster, an eddying whirlpool that she cannot fight. Briny fingers twisting her under the surface, a man’s hands on her wrist and waist, hurling her into a wagon, metal wings splitting the skin of her shoulders, a perfect white-haired child, squinting as she prods seeds into a mouse’s cage –

  Toby is scrambling for something to throw on the fire – a blanket, another pot of water – but can’t he see it’s too late? The flames are thirsty, their white tongues dancing. They lick up the bonfire of torn handbills, run their fingers up the sides of the bureau, swallow the books in a single gulp. As he pounds the walls with the blanket, he only fans the fire, only presses it higher.

  The smoke bites her eyes, stings her lungs like a swarm of bees. Low and black. She cannot see, cannot breathe, cannot hear. She could stay here in the dark, could feel the smoke closing about her, sink into it like a lover’s bed. She coughs, splutters.

  ‘Toby,’ she tries to croak, but no sound comes out.

  Arms about her, bundling her outside. Sunset, splitting open behind her. She hawks black phlegm on to the ground, pounds her chest. Her hands are as sooty as an urchin’s. When she looks up, the wagon is ablaze, wood spitting and cracking.

  ‘Toby,’ she murmurs, and he pulls her towards him. ‘Where’s Pearl? We need to find Pearl.’ She leans into him, his big arms wrapped around her. She shuts her eyes and flames still beat there.

  ‘We should hide,’ Toby says. ‘We should wait in my wagon. Then we can find her.’

  Her mind clears for a moment. There will be chaos, the surprise of Jasper’s burnt caravan. Then she will find the girl and they will slip away.

  It is only then that she notices the straw they heaped on the muddy earth, dried from three days of sunshine. The crisped leaves of the tree between the wagon and tent are already alight, papier-mâché fruits little more than kindling. Flames twist along the branches. The tent, newly waxed, waits like a candle.

  Jasper

  The silence descends, just as he imagined it. Mouths fall open. The red-haired child shifts on the bench. Jasper watches a hack, his pen piercing the page, ink blooming at the nib.

  Ropes creak as the machines are lifted from the ground. The fly’s wings shudder open and closed, the creature spiralling in a slight breeze. Violins scream. He sees the metallic tail swatting from side to side, just as he designed it. A single crow feather breaks away from the body and drifts down. It is time for the woodlouse to inch along the track, and there it is, steam torrenting from its belly. The tent is filled with the reek of industry, of oil and boiling metal, of things being invented and built and powered. A child coughs on black smoke.

  Nobody moves. They sit, stunned. Jasper flexes his fingers. He thinks of the broadsheets, whirring from black-hammered presses, rolls of paper as large as haystacks. His name, filling every column inch – ‘Jasper Jupiter’s Mechanical Marvels, Jasper Jupiter’s Mechanical Marvels’ – ink poured on to tiny stamps, the pages regaling readers with the glory of his inventions. The shimmering scales, the feathers, the claws made of an eagle’s talons – a patchwork of life and industry and machinery. ‘The machine age is here, welded to the Romantic age of nature and the sublime.’

  Time ticks. The tail thumps. Fish scales drop like confetti. He waits for the applause, for the crowd to stumble to its feet, whistling. He waits to be hailed as magnificent, as the greatest showman in the world.

  Time, he realizes, dabbing at his forehead, is stretching. His white-painted face begins to sweat, rouge leaching down his cheeks. Low murmuring, a shifting. He surveys the crowd. It dawns on him. It is not fascination that stills them. He touches his chest, does not want to believe it.

  They are disappointed. Bored.

  He stands, frozen.

  A woman begins to laugh. It is just one person, a single stifled giggle. But she is laughing at him, at everything he has built. Other people begin to whisper, to murmur. Somebody yawns.

  He blinks in the candlelight. He has broken the spell of the show. He has lost his audience. Behind him, Stella coughs, wills him to do something.

  But as he gazes around the tent, he sees it all anew – the pain which sits beneath this shimmering illusion of ease and magic. Behind each cartwheel is a child, sobbing as her mother presses her legs into the splits each morning. Heavy beams lugged in the rain, elephants straining on chains, sick animals with little meat to feed them, stables to muck out endlessly.

  He sees Winston, sitting there, watching the show and waiting for Pearl. The man’s lips curl into a smile. Shame creeps up Jasper’s throat. Winston has not ruined him. He has ruined himself, sent a Trojan horse into his own camp. Pearl, and now this. He thinks of Victor Frankenstein, his monster which destroyed everything that mattered to him. His mechanical spider spins helplessly on its rope.

  He should, at the very least, leave the stage. But he stands in the middle of the ring, the monsters creaking above him, his hands loose at his sides. The smoke of the engine is building, filling the tent with the scent of burning. A woman clambers to her feet. The little boy with orange hair looks about him, trips forwards.

  ‘Fire,’ somebody bellows, and he turns and sees it behind him. A flash of yellow, climbing the side of the tent. But he is ready. He has planned for this, how to extinguish a blaze before it grips the tent. He knows what to do. He keeps a barrel of water beside the ring, two buckets to be filled and slung on the fire.

  He does not move, cannot move. He watches the spreading flames as if it is happening to a different showman, as if it is
merely a scene spinning on a Japanese lantern. He is vaguely aware of panic, screams, shouting. Benches are overturned. Horses cower, canter here and there, toss their heads and scream.

  Jasper walks towards the barrel and dips a bucket in it. He flinches at the coldness of it, as sharp as a burn.

  He has tried to hold the parts of himself together, tried not to let the quicksand close over his head. His dream has gripped him in a stranglehold. He has bucked and struggled and fought. He should have known how it ended, should have gleaned warnings from every myth he ever read. Those who strive for more will be punished. Daedalus, the melting of his son’s wings, white-capped waves rising up to meet Icarus. Victor, undone by his own creation. So many books, so many poems caution against it. My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings –

  I am just one person, he thinks, staring around the tent as the sides are torn open, as screams rise. I am just one person trying to get ahead, trying to make my name.

  He has taken too much, from too many people.

  He remembers how Toby tripped, his hands landing squarely in the small of Dash’s back. He’d said it was a mistake, but Jasper knew better. The strange thing was, Jasper was not angry. He wanted only to protect his brother, to suck the poison from his guilt. As Toby lay on the ground, he fitted his arms around him as he had when they were boys. He had always been able to understand him, as if he were a line of neat type, a heart living outside his body. ‘We’re brothers, aren’t we?’ he whispered. ‘Linked together.’

  As Toby quivered beside him and repeated, A mistake, I tripped, it was an accident, Jasper was stung only by his own remorse. He realized then as he realizes now, how careless he has been, how cheaply he has held Toby’s affection. The show they planned together, the two camels and the capes, how much it meant to Toby. Breaking their dream meant little to Jasper because he knew that his brother would forgive him. Toby would stay beside him, as meek and loyal as a shadow. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Those walnuts, flying through the air; the flurry of words that mocked him. It was him who had driven Toby to it; him who had goaded and pushed and lavished affection and then withdrawn it. As if Jasper were a great scientist, testing human nature, Toby his specimen, wriggling on a glass slide. How powerful it made him feel, how important.

  When Toby crossed that field with Nell, he could not believe it.

  The fire is before him, the barrel of water in his hands. His skin tightens at the heat of it. The fly clatters to the ground, the ropes dropped. Metal crumples. Scales split. Its head is twisted at an unnatural angle. Dash, he thinks, broken on the rocks, the ring that glinted on his finger. He wonders how long it will be until the Jackal hears of this. He touches his throat.

  He would do it all differently, if he could. He would start again. He would give everything to Toby freely and expect nothing in return. He would be nobody, ordinary. He would live a decent life and find contentment in it. He would not strive.

  No, he thinks. That is a lie. He would do it all again; he could not do otherwise. A wolf cannot stop being a wolf. Instinct cannot be suppressed. This fire will make his name, even if he does not live to see it. The conflagration of a man on the cusp of greatness.

  The bucket of water is so heavy. He throws it to the ground, tips over the barrel. In its place, he seizes a bracket of candles and hurls it against the tent wall.

  Nell

  A brick-red triangle lights the sky. The fire is a monster with a hundred tongues, a thousand fingers, licking and spitting and panting. Its great lungs heave. Nell made this. It is here because of her. She puts her hands over her ears. Screams rise.

  She shouts Pearl’s name, again and again, ramming her way through the crowds. She seizes soot-blackened children, turns them to see their faces. ‘Pearl,’ she bellows, her throat cloyed with smoke. ‘Pearl!’

  The mob heaves past her, a searing mass of bodies, their skin sizzling with droplets of burning wax. A trumpet, pressed into the mud. A scent of molten fat, of wood, of a whole world eating itself up. She stands among the wagons and rocks back and forth. The fire spreads along the grasses, touches her feet. Toby’s caravan catches and she can hear bottles bursting like baubles. Secure the shadow ’ere the substance fades. Those lines, obliterated at last.

  ‘My photographs,’ he cries, but there is nothing he can do.

  A grating, symphonic boom from within the tent, and she shields herself with her hands. Fire rips a hole in the sky. The whole tent is lit.

  What is a half-blind child supposed to do in a fire? Where would she run? Nell zigzags across the fields. A tank of rattlesnakes is split open and they writhe through the grass, their scales seared and splitting in the heat. The lion hurls itself against the bars of its cage, roars. The monkeys are wailing, tiny fingers clawing at their ears, at their chests, hammering at the locked gate of their pen. Already, the fire is gripping the wheels of their wagon. It is too late to yoke horses and pull it to safety. She seizes the bolt and the monkeys spring out, scamper into the trees.

  ‘Pearl!’ she shouts, and her hair is stuck to her face, each step a blade of pain. ‘Pearl!’

  Would Jasper have kept the child in a caravan, guarded her until Winston collected her? She breaks into wagons, searches up trees, in chests half-turned to charcoal, all the while calling the girl’s name. The flames writhe like bodies. She trips over dropped hats, coats, a woman’s shoe, scattered chestnuts and discarded bottles. The child cannot simply disappear.

  ‘Pearl!’

  There ahead, she sees Stella and Violante, their shoulders bent to the lion’s wagon, trying to pull it away from the fire. The heat stops her as fast as a wall. She seizes Stella by the arm, rattles her. ‘I can’t find Pearl –’

  And when Stella points to a small girl, hunched in the shade of a tree, Nell lets out a cry which is scarcely human. The child is safe. She kisses her on the arms, on the cheek, grips her so tightly she worries she will hurt her. ‘Pearl,’ she says. ‘You’re safe. You’re safe.’

  ‘I can’t find Benedict,’ she cries, her lip wobbling. ‘They took him away.’

  ‘They’ll have set him free,’ Nell says. ‘We’ll find you another mouse.’

  ‘Not – the – same—’ Pearl wails, and Nell clasps her, breathes in the scent of her hair.

  Behind her, the tent burns. Screams, sobs, names hurled into the night. ‘Laura’ and ‘Beatrice’ and ‘Peter’. She and Toby could leave with Pearl now. They could slip away, build a life together.

  But she cannot leave what she has created, cannot turn her back on this. The flames, the choking smoke – it is all because of her. Jars of oil pop like bullets.

  She joins Stella, and fits her shoulders to the lion’s cage, drags the animals to safety, Pearl beside her. Dry earth crumbles under her feet. ‘Open the birds’ cage,’ she shouts to Pearl, and the girl fumbles with the catches. Parrots and hummingbirds and mockingbirds fly upwards in a dense cloud of feather and wing.

  The show crowd has gathered in the road, massed with more people, passers-by who have come to watch the fire. The roofs of nearby houses are crammed with spectators. Men and women climb trees for a better view of the tent, faces basking in the glow of the flames. A great gasp as the tent creaks. It is impossible to pull the animals any further, impossible for any firemen to drive their wagons through.

  She screams, ‘Get back!’ but the eyes of the mob do not move from the fire.

  A groan of awe. Arms rise, pointing. A man is lumbering towards the tent, pushing past those who try to stop him. His shoulders are stooped, his chest wide.

  She throws herself forwards. The heat beats her back. The crowds will not part. Someone smacks her across the head, elbows her in the side. Pearl is crying and she lifts the child on to her hip.

  ‘Jasper’s still inside,’ Stella shouts at her. ‘He won’t leave –’

  She realizes, then, what Toby is doing. She surges forwards but arms bind her, haul her back. Stella and Peggy cradle her as she fights and th
rashes.

  His name echoes in her skull and chest and mouth, screamed again and again, but it is swallowed by the roar of the crowd.

  Just before he ducks inside the tent, he turns and looks back. He does not see her.

  ‘Toby,’ she shouts, but he is gone.

  Toby

  We’re brothers, linked together.

  How can he explain how deep their roots are, that they are formed from the same tree?

  One Christmas, Toby was given a photography machine and Jasper was given a microscope. His brother’s excitement was feverish and Toby was infected too. ‘Look through there,’ Jasper said, tapping the metal circle at the top of the machine. He hopped from one foot to the other. ‘Through there, there.’

  Toby did as he was told. He reared back. He saw glossy pincers, as large as his fist, twine-thick hairs. ‘What is that?’

  ‘A beetle,’ Jasper said. ‘And look. Look at this spider.’

  He looked again, through all the slides his brother prepared. Worlds bloomed before him. They trapped woodlice and fleas, ladybirds and flies. They tried to force the cat’s paw beneath it. They laughed and dreamed up stories about trekking through Borneo, how Jasper would make scientific discoveries while Toby catalogued it all with his photography machine. They were the Brothers Grimm, one quiet, the other genial. Were they content, or was Toby jealous, even then? Has the way Jasper relayed these memories twisted the truth of them? When he remembers the war now, he mainly recalls the images he took, printed on wet card.

  All of history is fiction.

  Jasper held him as he lay on the ramparts, as his knee bled from where he had fallen. ‘Nothing happened,’ he whispered. ‘A mistake. You just tripped, didn’t you?’

  He said it as if he believed it, as if it were a simple fact, as if it were his right to replace a true history with a false one.