by K.L. Coones
*
The next morning Gareth and Doran were knocking on Ralik’s door as soon as the sun was up. Sluggishly, Ralik made his way downstairs and opened the door to see Doran equally bleary eyed.
“Ralik, the circus is starting; let’s go!” chirped Gareth. With a yawn he let the door swing wide as the two entered. Ralik trudged back up the stairs to put on some clothes. As he laced up his boots, he could hear his grandmother clanging her kitchen instruments together. The three rumbled downstairs and headed for the door.
“Don’t you boys want to eat anything before you go?” asked his grandmother.
“We’ll just have some toast, Grandma,” answered Ralik. The tapping of a small hammer could be heard behind a door as he pushed it open. He was excited to go to the circus, but he also felt obligated to see if his Grandfather needed any help first.
“Doran and I are going to go see the circus sometime today, Grandpa, but I wanted to see if you needed anything first.” The old man flipped a boot over deftly in his weathered hand and gave the heel a quick series of taps. Ralik and Doran had signed on in a recruit capacity with the town militia during the summers away from the Darkwater Adventurers Guild. As a result he had been less available to help his Grandfather with his cobbling, but he still tried to make deliveries for him when he could.
“The circus, eh? No guard duty today?” asked the old man without looking up from his work.
“We had a post last night,” responded Ralik.
“No, everything is fine here.” Ralik’s Grandfather was a man of few words, but Ralik had come to realize that most of what the old man communicated was in what he left unsaid. Ralik closed the door and joined Doran and Gareth at the table while his Grandmother finished making them all a slice of toast.
“What do you think we will see there?” asked Gareth excitedly. “Maybe that animal with the humps?” Doran frowned.
“I was only teasing; there isn’t any humped animal.” This time it was Gareth who frowned.
“They will have animals there, won’t they?” Ralik grabbed himself a piece of toast from the skillet as his Grandmother placed it on the table and began to butter it with a dull knife.
“I suspect they will,” Ralik answered between bites of toast. “And jugglers and acrobats and all sorts of things.” The girl Ralik had spoken to last night had been in the back of his mind all morning. She said she would “see him tomorrow at the circus”, but how was he supposed to find her? He didn’t know what she looked like, and he couldn’t ask anyone if they knew her by name. What if there were more than one girl in the acrobat troop and he approached the wrong one? He didn’t want to make a fool of himself. Maybe he shouldn’t go; he was tired anyway.
“Come on, you two,” prompted Gareth as he skipped to the door.
Looks like the decision is made for me. The field was already teeming with people. Above them, lofted up on stilts, was a man dressed in a purple suit and tall top hat. The shrill notes of his flute mingled with the dull thrum of the crowd’s voices. It was the Purple Piper! Upon entering the ring of wagons that had been moved to positions further from the center of the encampment, they saw the man with the huge muscles lifting a large black bar with two massive black balls attached to each end over his head. He held it there, suspended above his head, and slowly turned before the crowd. The onlookers clapped appreciatively at his performance. Suddenly, he dropped the bar to the ground with a heavy thud, and started to coax one of the larger men of the town out from the crowd with a challenge to lift the bar himself.
“Come sir! Win a gold piece if you succeed!” He held a huge gold coin out in front of him. The large man was Mr. Larn, one of the apprentices of Doran’s father, who was the town blacksmith. Mr. Larn finally emerged from the crowd and, to the delight of the crowd, flexed his own considerable arm muscles. Emboldened by the cheers, Larn strode confidently up to the bar resting on the ground, spat in his hands and rubbed them together quickly, then bent and gripped the bar. The crowd hushed and Larn gave the bar a quick jerk, but it didn’t move. Mr. Larn strained again at the bar, his face turning as red as an apple, but the bar still didn’t budge. The crowd booed playfully at his failure as he staggered back into the crowd, exhausted from his exertions.
“Hey look, a fortune teller!” cried Doran. Ralik cringed. He recalled, with little pleasure, his most recent encounter with a fortune teller. The lady had been reading cards for him when she suddenly became enraged and chased him from the building screeching, “Out Out!” while an eerie wind swirled about them.
“You go ahead,” said Ralik, turning away quickly he plunged into the crowd before Doran could protest. He made straight for the animal wagons, hoping to identify one that might look as if it could drink from a cup. He had never seen such a collection of strange animals living and breathing before him. Many he recognized from the bestiary volumes of the Guilds library. He recognized the majestic golden mane of a huge lion as it lounged in the shade of its wagon, peering out languidly at the gawking townsfolk. He saw the familiar black and orange striped hide of an enormous tiger. Unlike the lion, it paced back and forth in its cage, issuing low growls when someone dared come too close. A woman in a sheer silken costume displayed a huge snake to astounded onlookers. She danced lithely to hypnotic music as the huge snake slithered around her arms, legs, and torso. There was a bison, and next to it, the hump backed creature Ralik and Doran had only joked about. He had seen such an animal, described as a camel, in books. The list went on, but he saw nothing that would even begin to favor drink from a cup over a large bucket, or prefer bread over a slab of raw meat or a pile of hay for that matter. By all accounts these beasts were from distant lands. It must cost a small fortune to bring them here and to care for them.
“Come one, come all! Come and bear witness to the swooping, diving, aerial acrobatic skill of the Flying Swans!” Ralik immediately headed toward the barker’s voice. It led him to the center of the circus encampment where several people bounced into the air, only to land on a strange apparatus that launched them back into the air again. While in flight, the performers would twist and turn with astounding speed and agility. One of them looked like a young girl, but it was difficult to tell for sure, as the hair was bound tightly to the person’s head and the face was painted, one half in black, the other half in white, to match a skintight outfit. Up and down the acrobats flew, going higher with each ascent, turning faster with each twirl. Ralik began to feel dizzy simply watching the display, but he could not take his eyes from the spectacle. Suddenly a man on high stilts, dressed in the same checkered outfit, came into view and took up a position in front of the apparatus. The black and white acrobat soared up behind him to appear over his head, then to disappear from sight behind him. A second time the acrobat appeared above the man on stilts, and then a third, only this time landing on the shoulders of the man standing on the stilts. The crowd cheered as the acrobats raised their hands in triumph. The show went on for several more minutes, the acrobats finally disappearing into a tent behind some wagons. Ralik was making his way toward the tent, when out of the corner of his eye a huge hulking shape appeared. Ralik knew instinctively who it was, Studus Richter, the biggest, meanest bully in town. Studus had been the bane of Ralik’s existence, the huge boy dumping Ralik to in an alley trash pile at every opportunity. Reflexively, Ralik ducked behind one of the tents, cautiously peering around to make sure Studus did not approach.
“Hello, Ralik.” The sound of his name made his heart leap into his throat. He staggered back into the tent, struggling to see who the potential assailant was. It was the acrobat, indeed a girl, standing behind him, a confused look wrinkling her black and white face. “What are you doing?”
“Ah, n-nothing!” he stammered. “Just, just making sure this tent is set up right.” He patted the fabric in a vain attempt to look occupied. Her frown told him she didn’t believe him, and she peered around t
he tent in an attempt to identify what he was watching. Ralik was mortified. She was going to see Studus, and she was going to know that Ralik was afraid of him, that Ralik was hiding like a frightened rabbit, and then she would laugh. “What’s so interesting over there?”
“Nothing, forget about it.” He had to change the subject quickly. “Was that you on that thing over there, bouncing and flipping in the air?”
“Yes, it is part of our act. Everyone in my family is an acrobat.”
“That was, incredible. I’ve never seen anything like that,” exclaimed Ralik. “I mean, I’ve been chased by headless horsemen and seen an elf hit a bullseye with a bow from two hundred paces, but nothing like that!”
“You’ve seen an elf!” she squealed excitedly. “Tell me all about them!”
“Why?” asked Ralik perplexed. “They are just people after all, but you, you’re amazing!”
“Oh, please!” She grabbed his hand and started pulling him through the crowd. “Come on, let’s get some turkey legs; I want to hear everything!”