by Ellie Marney
She’s wearing celebratory red, which seems odd under the circumstances, and she gives me a strange grin as she sits on the couch. Everything from her crimped waist to her jet drop earrings is perfect, her goatee neat and her dark hair swept off her forehead. Detective Pang gives her an appreciative glance, and now I like him even more.
Dad gestures around. ‘Okay, the gang’s all here, Detective. Tell us what you know.’
The detective nods and gets business-like. ‘I can tell you we’ve arrested Angus Deal, on charges relating to kidnapping, false imprisonment, and aggravated assault. That much is already confirmed.’
‘Cavendish just lost his best engineer,’ Mitch says, sounding low-key jubilant.
Detective Pang nods. ‘In relation to the fire here at your circus, we have confirmation that Angus Deal paid a former roustabout named Rowan Pickering to enter the lot as a patron. Mr Pickering has been arrested, and admitted during questioning that he jumped the fence behind the Ferris wheel on the far side of the Big Top in order to spread accelerant–lighter fluid–on the back wall of the tent and set it alight.’
‘Has the information about accelerant been confirmed by the arson report?’ Eugenia asks quietly.
‘Yes, ma’am, it has.’ Pang inclines his head. ‘Mr Pickering has been charged with arson, reckless endangerment, conspiracy, and a number of other charges relating to the commission of a felony. On the basis of Mr Pickering’s testimony, we have subsequently charged Angus Deal with further counts of conspiracy to commit arson, conspiracy to commit bodily harm, criminal incitement–’
Dad shakes a fist in victory.
‘…and a bunch of other charges which I can outline for you, but which you might be better off just reading through on the charge list.’
But I’m desperate to find out if this is all over. I want the cloud that’s been hovering over this show to break into a million pieces and float away. ‘What about the other sabotage events? The trapeze, and Gabi’s horses, and Dad’s accident–’
‘I’m getting to that.’ Pang calms me with a raised hand. ‘With Angus Deal in custody, we’re in the process of obtaining a warrant to go through his personal and phone records. But the information we’ve gathered so far from Mr Pickering suggests that all the events can be traced back to Angus Deal. The walkie-talkie that Rowan Pickering had in his possession was the same make and model as the one you found smashed after the bleacher accident.’
‘I knew it.’ Mitch shakes his head. ‘Dammit, I knew that walkie-talkie was important.’
The detective checks his notes. ‘According to Mr Pickering, Angus Deal was directing his footsteps here on the lot via walkie-talkie. And also according to Pickering, he wasn’t Angus Deal’s only agent-at-large. We’re looking for at least three other suspects–Charles Truc, Lane Elias Mosman–’
‘I know that name,’ Dad interrupts.
‘You should,’ Mitch says. ‘You fired him a year ago.’
‘For bullying in the mech yard!’ I say. ‘I remember. He’s one of the guys we flagged while going through the personnel records.’
Pang nods. ‘It sounds like all the threads are coming together. Finally. We just needed something concrete on Angus Deal to crack it all open.’
My smile sobers. ‘I’m just sorry it had to be at Zep’s expense.’
‘The kid’s okay.’ Mitch leans against the kitchen benchtop, his arms crossed over his barrel chest. ‘I’ve talked to him some more. It’s like he told us earlier–Angus has been obsessing over this show and getting his son back. At first he was using threats, then Angus realised you catch more flies with honey, so he’s been cosying up to Zep, trying to encourage him ‘back home’. When Zep agreed to meet his dad for peace talks over burgers in town, Angus offered him a little extra–something to tide Zep over. Only Zep is smarter than that.’
‘He knows that nothing from Angus ever comes for free.’
‘Damn right. Anyway, Zep figures that whatever journey it took, the money’s dirty, and he’s not gonna be bought. So he says, “Thank you for your kind offer but no thanks”, and pushes the money back.’
Eugenia frowns. ‘And that was what Dita saw, when she was in the CBD?’
‘Yep.’
‘So Zep was never involved in the sabotage on the lot?’ I know it, but I need to say it aloud to make it real.
‘Correct.’ Mitch looks pretty happy about that. It’s hard to tell with Mitch sometimes, but the corners of his mouth are turned up in a suspiciously smile-like way.
I throw up my hands. ‘I get it, Angus has a grudge against us, fine. But what made him think sabotage was a good idea?’
‘Angus thought the threats hanging over the lot here might be enough to encourage Zep to take cover elsewhere. To leave, and go back to Lost Souls.’
‘I have a question.’ Dad raises a finger. ‘How much of this did Vas Cavendish even know about?’
‘Nothing, as far as we can make out,’ Detective Pang says. He shrugs. ‘Cavendish was as much in the dark about all this as you folks, when we questioned him about it.’
‘I believe that,’ I say firmly. ‘I stick by my original assessment. Cavendish is a vile excuse for a human being, but he’s not a saboteur.’
‘I’m so glad this is over,’ Eugenia says. She presses a hand to her midriff, sinks back on the couch beside me. ‘So, so glad.’
I search inside myself for a similar reaction, waiting for the elation. But there’s…nothing.
‘Hey.’ Dad nudges me with his elbow. ‘What’s up? Aren’t you happy?’
I try to fix my face. ‘I am. It’s great. I’m happy–really. Everything is working out. I mean, that’s what we all want, right?’
While Dad thanks Detective Pang for his hard work, and everyone congratulates each other, I push up off the couch and collect all the mugs to take into the kitchen. I set the dirty crockery in the sink and start running hot water, thinking the whole time.
So much of show life is luck: you find the right performer at the right time, you hit on a new act as it becomes popular, you stumble onto a fantastic promoter, you get a good deal that floats you for the coming season… All of these things can make or break a show, and it’s nothing you did that made it happen. Sometimes it’s just luck of the draw.
So our luck is improving. This resolution is great. It’s what I’ve wanted. But I’m still angry. It doesn’t change anything. The show is still a mess. My father is going to be living without a major internal organ for the rest of his life. And Marco is working another job, deep in the city, miles out of my reach.
This feels like a consolation prize.
Eugenia interrupts my aggressive sponging of the dirty dishes. ‘We never finished our conversation the other day.’
And I really don’t have it in me to finish it now. I swipe my face against my sleeve. ‘Another day, okay?’
‘Okay.’ She passes me a dish towel. ‘I’ll do the rest. I need you to go up to Practise Shed One.’
I wipe my hands. ‘I can do that. Did you leave something there?’
She makes a more-enigmatic-than-usual smile. ‘Yes. In a way, I did.’ Her eyes meet mine. ‘Just go there for me. And one more thing I want you to do. Keep an open mind.’
My eyebrows scale my forehead. ‘Okaaay… Sure, I guess I can do that.’
I kiss Daddy on the cheek and leave for Prac Shed One. Eugenia is being weird. But everything about the last two days–the last two weeks, to be honest–has been super weird. My circus family is weird, and I’ll come to terms with it one day.
There’s nothing in the shed. I mean, there’s the trapeze training rig, but there’s no people, no left-behind belongings, nothing I can see that Eugenia might need. I stand on the mat under the trapeze net for a minute, turning in a circle. I don’t know why I’m here. That seems to be my whole life right now.
B
ut it’s quiet. Nobody’s around. Maybe this is what I’m seeking, this calm silence. I look up at the rig, think for a second. Slip off my shoes and walk to the ladder.
Nineteen bolted metal rungs later, I’m on the platform. I remember Seb Patel telling me once that if he had to climb up to this height above the ring, he would most likely throw up and then keel over. Everyone’s different, I guess. Vertigo is a foreign concept to me. Being this high up–for me–just means freedom.
I’m only in yoga pants and a tank, I’m not dressed for practise. But I unhook the fly bar and swing out anyway. I do long swings, for fun. I do suspended swan. I roll over the bar and sit up on it and kick my legs for more momentum, like I’m on a kiddie swing.
A voice sounds out from below. ‘You look great up there, y’know. I never got to tell you, that day you hurt your foot.’
I almost fall off the bar, recover with difficulty. ‘You…you…’
‘Yep,’ Marco says. ‘Me, me.’
I cling to the wires, wait for my breathing to level out. ‘Okay. This is not cool. What are you doing here?’
‘I’m here with Brian.’ He’s wearing his classy, corporate suit again, although his collar is loosened and his tie appears to be in his jacket pocket. He toes off his brogues and steps onto the mat. ‘Can you come down? Then we can have this conversation without shouting.’
‘No,’ I say bluntly.
He shoves his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘I guess I deserve that. But do you want me to tell you what’s happening right now?’
‘You can tell me from down there.’
‘Okay. Well, right now, Brian is talking to your dad. He’s offering to buy into Klatsch’s Karnival, with a thirty-percent stake. It’s a bailout, Fleur.’
I glare suspiciously from my eyrie. ‘Dad won’t take it.’
‘He will. It’s a good offer, and your father is a smart guy. Plus, I Skyped my mother to pass on some early details, so she could chat with him about it.’
‘That’s cheating.’
‘That’s not cheating. That’s business, and this show is a business. I’ve been trying to make it so the family-tradition parts and the entertainment-business parts can mesh together. Cadell’s will have a permanent stake in the show. It makes sense for them, as event organisers, and it makes sense for Klatsch’s. There’ll be money for repairs straight away. And there’ll be some new initiatives to get the circus running again.’
‘Like what?’
‘Expansion, for one. Adults and kids workshops. Special performances. Some cooperation with Cadell’s to run events in the new tent.’ He steps closer, his face upturned. ‘New revenue streams. It’ll revitalise the show, Petal.’
‘Don’t call me that. And that sounds like a lot of work.’
‘It will be. So you’re going to need another assistant manager on-site.’
When Marco says that, I finally start to thaw–and to hope.
He rubs the back of his neck, which must be sore from being tilted up at that angle. ‘I’ll be working here three days a week, and at Cadell’s the other two. Brian’s engaging another PA, because he’s effectively promoting me to joint-run a Cadell investment, but it should be okay. It’ll be a bit hectic, at first, because I won’t really have a day off–’
‘Will you be living on the lot?’
‘Yes.’ He says it softly, but the word carries. ‘Yes.’
‘Tell me again about the new initiatives.’
‘I’ll tell you more, but first you have to come down.’ He takes a step back. ‘Drop, Fleur. Come on. It’s okay. It’s safe, now. You can let go.’
The Practise Shed is empty: no audience, no music. Not even a spotlight. This is not the way my dream played out, but my hands are still sweaty.
Marco bites on his bottom lip, and his voice is sinuous. ‘Fall for me, Fleur.’
There’s no flailing or fear this time. I trust the net. I open my arms and feel the seconds of absence, of air, and then–the softly-bouncing catch.
Marco waits for the bounces to settle before he takes off his suit jacket and lays it down. Then he flips himself up and crawls over to lie beside me. The net is spongy, so we find ourselves pressed quite close together.
‘This is like being on a waterbed,’ Marco notes.
‘That was a good flip. You’ve still got the moves.’
‘Believe it, baby.’
‘“Fall for me”? Seriously?’ I squint at him. ‘You are such a cheese, Deloren.’
‘I can’t help it.’ He grins. Then he draws my hand into his. ‘I’m sorry if I freaked you out when I left. I hoped I could pull all the pieces together, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to make promises I couldn’t keep.’
‘What would you have done if Brian Cadell hadn’t agreed to your plan?’
‘I would’ve quit.’ He shrugs, an action made awkward in the net’s embrace. ‘Mum told me about Zep and Angus, and everything else. Are you feeling okay?’
I gather the remaining pieces of my brain and think on it. ‘I’m relieved Zep has escaped his horrible father. I’m relieved our sabotage situation is over.’
‘But?’
My cheeks heat up, so I look up at the roof. ‘But I only really felt better about twenty seconds ago, when you said you’d stay.’
Marco reaches over and tugs on me gently. ‘Come here. Roll onto me.’
I roll, and now my whole body-length is on top of his whole body-length. Because of the way the net works, we’re smooshed together like butter melted onto bread. Marco’s eyes go a little hazy, so he closes them.
‘Holy shit.’ He sounds breathless. ‘Give me a minute.’
I smile. ‘You said you wanted all of me.’
‘I do.’
‘Don’t you want to tell me more about the new initiatives?’
‘Jesus. Yes. But not right now.’
‘I’m not very interested in them either.’ My hair trails against his throat, and I watch him gasp softly. ‘In the interests of full disclosure, I really like it when you say Jesus with that accent.’
‘I think we should go back to my van,’ Marco says, ‘and eat crème brulee.’
‘And read romance novels.’
‘And not be friends.’
‘Right. The friends thing was never going to work.’ I let my lips sink forward onto his, and the reaction in his body is mind-blowing.
In the end, we never find the energy to move. We just lie in the trapeze net, bobbing and making out, while the dust motes swirl around us in the shards of sun from the shed skylights. The motes drift–flipping, diving, spinning, leaping–and after a while I raise my hand and Marco raises his. We conduct the events, laughing: a troupe leader and a ringmaster, waving in the air, making the dust motes dance.
A teenage contortionist and a young cardsharp risk danger to right a family legacy of injustice.
Nineteen-year-old contortionist Ren Putri is committed to circus, study and self-discipline–in that order. But after being rescued from a carnival fire by cardsharp Zep Deal, she’s overwhelmed by some highly disorderly thoughts. Zep has a long history of trouble, and now he’s been suspected of sabotaging the circus that’s become his whole life. Ren is already coping with family, and keeping secrets of her own–but she can’t resist a mystery. Will Ren’s penchant for solving puzzles bring the case against Zep to rights, or will digging further into the history of rival carnivals only put them both in danger?
Read on for the first chapter
CIRCUS HEARTS 3: One
Brahmamuhurtha is ‘the divine time’ for meditation and yoga practise, and it occurs approximately one and a half hours before sunrise, which is convenient as that’s the time I usually wake up anyway.
My best friend, Sorsha Neary, likes to joke that I wake up earlier than the birds on the lot. When Sorsha and I shared this dorm
space, I had to slip out to the women’s common lounge here in the bunkhouse or walk all the way to Prac Shed Two if I wanted to stretch first thing in the morning. But Sorsha moved out with her boyfriend, Colm Mackay, so the room is all mine now.
I could get up at five a.m. and dance around in my pyjamas, if I wanted to. Usually I just practise, though.
Pale light from the dawn outside spills through the window as I finish saying good morning to my body. I’ve put the space heater on, because the floor is cold. But the best thing about my craft is that I don’t need any other equipment. No wires, no weights or pulleys; no trapeze bars or knives or silks. Just the mat on the floor, and me. And a generous helping of self-discipline. Contortion is as much about discipline as it is about art or a science.
All the self-discipline in the world won’t ease this constriction in my chest, though. I lean deeply into padmasana, make a few adjustments. Nope. My lungs still feel tight, high on both left and right. It’s a weird feeling–sticky, somehow. Like these red breathing sacs inside me have caught on a snag. What snag? I don’t know. I can expand my chest, but it hurts.
As the pulmonary specialist explained, ‘It’s only been a month. Smoke inhalation is tricky, Ren. Don’t force it.’
I want to force it. This sticky-lung business is annoying the crap out of me.
I try to ignore it. Bend to my feet, press my seat forward and push into my legs. Breathe. Extend my arms, stretch back, reach high to open my shoulders. Clasp my hands, circle my wrists. Breathe. Make a long line of my neck, work the kinks out. Open my arms wide, swoop forward again, rest my chin on my ankles. Breathe.
My chest is still tight. Brengsek.
I need to stop stressing about it. The wise sage, Patanjali, once said, ‘Yoga is the cessation of the movements of the mind’. So I try to stop my mind from moving. Think of nothing at all.
It’s not actually that easy.
My father, another wise sage–well, he’s an academic–once said, ‘Pikiran Ren seperti seekor kodok’. That my mind is like a jumping frog. Unflattering, but true. I am an orderly person, a disciplined person, but my brain has a terrible habit of leaping all over the place.