A peal of thunder rolled in the distance. It provided a bass counterpoint to the tapping of the rain and the whistle of the wind through the tents. A summer storm meant the night off for many in the company, but Brendan had insisted they meet to practice anyway.
At least the rain had cooled things off. Knowing their luck, it'd probably stir up a cyclone or a lightning strike to destroy half the tents and wagons.
As she pondered these atmospheric perils, another blade sliced the air mere inches away from her. It landed dead center between a faun's lifted chalice and the urn poised to fill it with make-believe wine.
"I still can't believe you convince total strangers to let you do this every show," she said with a sigh.
"I naturally inspire trust. It's my charming demeanor. My sparkling wit. And my stellar confidence. Plus having a ringer in the crowd helps. After all, if a meek little thing like you volunteers, it must be perfectly safe."
He waved the hilt of another blade her way, sketching her general outline with it. In her opinion, it was an outline far more curvaceous than her real figure.
In Neve's opinion, Brendan didn't look particularly trustworthy. Handsome and charming, yes, but not necessarily trustworthy. His dark beard and mustache trimmed to a point, along with inky lashes and sharp eyebrows gave him the visage of a pirate. The flamboyant costume he wore, with its rust and chocolate brown velvet tunic, didn't exactly declare "solid citizen" either. Not to mention, how he managed to get into those leather pants was an inscrutable mystery of the ages.
"Speaking of a meek little thing like you, when on earth are you going to have that conversation with our illustrious manager Mr. Lang? Your act is ready, Neve. I've been watching you for a week, and I still can't figure out how you do half those tricks."
He picked up a gilded celluloid hand mirror. He turned away from her, regarding her reflection over his shoulder. She made a face at him and offered him a sharp reply.
"That's because I naturally inspire trust, so people assume I really can do magic. Of course, some of it actually is real magic, thanks to Papa's formulaes."
She stuck her tongue out at him and then thought the better of it, considering the gleaming blade in his hand. A sudden flash of light brightened the tent a few seconds before another peal of thunder cracked and shuddered the tent.
"Nice feint, love, but I'm not letting you divert me so easily."
Completely ignoring the rattle and flash of the storm, he sent a blade whizzing past her hair. It embedded itself perilously close to the heart of a stag with a loud "Thunk!"
He continued practicing as she paced the small stage. She was more nervous about the subject of the conversation than the whirling metal flying past her. But Brendan seemed determined not to drop the topic.
"Why haven't you talked with Lang about adding your act to the show? You're already ten times better than that bumbling idiot, Marcus." He drawled out the name, mocking the young performer's accent.
She couldn't deny that. Since her father's death, the circus had trouble attracting decent illusionists. Magicians tended to be superstitious. Some believed Lang & Perrault's was under a curse.
Even among the most sober-minded and cynical, no magician worth his top hat wanted to be compared to the Magnificent Bianchi. Her father's long shadow meant they had to make do with amateurs like Marcus.
They'd picked him up in a small town just this year. He'd been pulling card tricks in the local saloon and was anxious to leave, having aroused the ire of the local card sharps. Aside from card tricks, he was a terrible magician. Worse, he seemed oblivious to his own incompetence. A dangerous combination. It was a miracle he hadn't injured himself yet.
"How about we have this conversation after you're done practicing, O mighty Prince of Blades? You need to pay attention to your own act, or you'll end up skewering me before I have a chance to talk to Lang. And then you'd feel awful, wouldn't you?"
Her hand rested on her hip, and she offered him a stern frown, wagging her finger at him.
Thunk! Another knife passed harmlessly through the loop created by her arm and body. It stuck between an amorous nymph and a male dryad, dissecting their passionate painted embrace.
"Not going to happen. I've never injured anyone with my knives. At least, not unintentionally." He winked at her.
She couldn't help giggling. He really was incorrigible. His personality was a buoyant and reckless contrast to her cautious one. She often wondered if his ebullient demeanor was an act, concealing the parts of her friend he'd prefer remained unseen.
Neve knew nothing about Brendan's background. Circus folk often pulled themselves out of dark circumstances. You never asked, unless someone offered their story.
She preferred not to think about how or why Brendan had originally acquired his dangerous talent.
She'd grown up among scoundrels who vacillated up and down the spectrum between redemption and damnation like the puck on a high striker. It taught her the value of taking people as they were. The Prince of Blades had proven himself a reliable friend so far, albeit one with an unnerving talent. The sense of danger around him was part of his appeal.
That, and the almost-palpable confidence fueled by his shameless bragging. The circus' steam engines didn't produce that much hot air. Still, she doubted his claim that he'd never once mistakenly hit someone.
"So, how exactly do you manage that unbelievable level of accuracy?" Her eyes lit up as an intriguing possibility occurred to her.
"Ooh! Don't tell me you managed to get a nevermiss formulae applied to those blades?" It was a rare and complex alchemical potion.
"Enchanted blades? I'm offended at your lack of faith in my natural talent, Neve."
He flung the next blade with a huff, spearing a painted cherub's round derriere.
"No, my knives don't have any special properties. I'm the special property."
A huge drop of condensation from the roof of the tent chose that particular moment to land on his head with a satisfying Splat!
"Right. You're so special that you need twice as much practice as Stella will put up with."
Stella was the attractive young woman who served as Brendan's primary target during his show. She also served as Marcus' assistant. Stella was very good at wearing revealing costumes and posing dramatically. Neve thought she tended to drape herself over Brendan in a way that was a bit improper at the end of the act.
Brendan drew out an exaggerated sigh.
"I appreciate your faith in my nonexistent work ethic, but Stella adores me."
"I'll just bet she does," Neve muttered under her breath.
"I have to practice with someone other than Stella for the part of the show where I pull a volunteer from the audience. I need a nice normal person to prepare for that."
Neve raised an eyebrow and shot him a dubious look, hand returning to her hip.
"Well, of course, you're not exactly the picture of ordinary yourself, but we are in a circus after all. I have to take as close to normal as I can get, and you're it around here."
Another knife whipped neatly through the space between the curve of her arm and the curve of her waist, apparently gelding a prancing centaur. He continued his lecture, heedless of any equine emasculation on the backdrop.
"When I'm practicing with Stella, I'm working on my technique for the fancy throws. With you, I'm working on my secret talent. My very own magical ability, you might say. The reason I've never accidentally hurt someone is because I can read a person's body language. I can tell what move anyone, anywhere is about to make. It's almost preternatural, really."
Neve rewarded him with a skeptical smirk.
"You don't believe me? I'm hurt, truly." He put a hand to his heart as if she'd wounded it. "Well, then, I'll just have to prove it to you."
He set his few remaining blades down on a wobbly three-legged stool.
"How exactly are you going to prove something so ridiculous, Brendan?" Now both her fists were firmly planted on her hip
s, since he wasn't in a position to view the encircled spaces as obvious targets.
"By dancing, of course."
The look of alarm on Neve's face must have been extreme. He burst out laughing at her while sauntering over to a small music box on a steamer trunk nearby. He wound it and leapt to the practice stage in front of Neve. An electricity radiated between them that made her far more nervous than lightning flashing outside.
Undaunted, he placed one hand against her waist, and grabbed her opposite hand with the other. The music box plinked out a popular tune in three-four time as an enameled bluebird spun and flapped its wings over the top.
"Who do you think I am, some debutante? Orphans don't get a society ball when they turn sixteen. Besides, I think I left my ball gown and kid gloves in the pocket of my other overalls." She tried to back away, but he was just a bit too fast, and her heart wasn't really in the escape attempt.
"All the better, love, to prove my point. Now just close your eyes, and start following the music as best you can. I'll do the rest."
She frowned at him and shrugged. "It's your toes that'll suffer."
"Trust me," he said. "It'll be fine."
Neve took a deep breath, and stepped to one side. She was shocked to find that Brendan moved smoothly along with her, as if he'd been expecting her to move in that direction all along, and was just waiting for her to start. She swayed a bit to the other side, moving backwards a bit, but he remained perfectly, effortlessly aligned with her.
Trying to be unpredictable, she decided to spin. She hadn't even started moving when he'd lifted her hand and propelled her in the direction she'd meant to go. Her eyes popped open.
How did he do that?
Now that they were moving in earnest, she felt the lead in their dance pass gently back and forth between them. A slight pressure from his hand, and she knew to move her right foot forward. If she had the inclination to turn, he was turning with her before she had fully formed the thought.
It was like magic.
"The way a person moves is as distinctive as a fingerprint," he whispered, leaning his head near her ear. "That's why I can always recognize you. Even across the midway. Even by moonlight and the flickering light of those electric lamps. Even without seeing that lovely face of yours. You have an indelible grace all your own."
A chill that had nothing to do with the drop in temperature from the storm ran down her spine.
Neve's face felt uncomfortably warm under his gaze. They weren't moving that quickly, but she was starting to feel breathless and dizzy just the same. She needed to return to earth before she got completely swept off her feet. She planted her feet suddenly, ending the dance.
"I have an aroma all my own. I don't doubt you can recognize me at a distance, but it's more likely because I reek of animals and sweat."
She put her hands on her hips.
"I'm a circus brat, Brendan. Save your talk of magic and moonlight for the paying customers. So you've learned to observe people closely. It's not a magical power. It's a skill -- every performer does it. Although I'll admit you have it mastered. Maybe you should change your name to Prince Charming, with that gift of sweet talk."
Her heart was pounding, despite her attempt at returning to their usual friendly banter.
They were still standing face to face, not a foot apart, but somehow the distance between them seemed to have widened to the breadth of an elephant.
She'd been trying to keep things from getting strange and complicated, but it came out all wrong. Her friend's blue eyes narrowed and turned a bit grey.
"Yes, I suppose we're all quite good at observation and misdirection around here." His tone was cool, and devoid of its usual jovial lilt. "After all, you managed to tempt me off the topic of why you won't talk to Lang about your act. Should've known. Any time you get me talking about myself, it's just to avoid talking about something else."
Neve sunk down onto a nearby crate.
"I can't, Brendan. Maybe I am good. I probably am better than Marcus, but that's hardly a great bar to clear. But I'm never going to be as good as my father."
She dug her hands into the pockets of her overalls, hoping he couldn't see them shaking.
"You could be! If you'd just try, you could be even better than Giovanni!"
"But what if I'm not? Or what if I'm too late for it to make any difference? You know as well as I do that Lang & Perrault's is failing. What are the chances that I could bring it back? What if I tried and failed? Or what if I'm exactly like Papa? What if I get overconfident and end up killing myself like he did? I'm scared, Brendan. I'd like to do it, but I'm just not that brave."
Her eyes welled up with tears.
"It's easier to hide in the shadows. It's safer to deal with the tigers and the horses and the homicidal monkeys."
The knife thrower knelt in front of her, putting his hands on her face and tilting it up at him.
"You're braver than you think. You prove it by still being willing to practice with me."
"Because I might get hurt?"
"Because you believe you'll get hurt, yes."
"I was just joking before. You know I don't actually believe you'd ever hit me with your knives, right?"
The young Irishman sighed and stood up. He gathered up his blades from the backdrop and the stool and headed for the door. Looking back at her, he said "I wasn't talking about the knives."
The knife-thrower and his blades were gone, but Neve felt a stabbing pain in her chest just the same.
She realized there was something she feared more than whatever fate or ambition might do to her.
She'd been honest when she'd said she wasn't worried about being hit by one of her friend's errant blades. But she was very much in danger of falling in love with him. It was a danger much sharper and more terrifying than polished steel.
Unpleasant Reflections
Bella sashayed down the midway, wearing an emerald green haute couture gown. Her auburn Gibson Girl pouf was topped by an enormous veiled hat, a forest of gilded-tip peacock feathers exploding from the crown.
It was her "going incognito" ensemble.
She was headed to someplace she'd prefer no one see her enter. But desperate times called for desperate measures.
She paused several times along the way, turning away from the familiar faces until she'd arrived at her destination: the Mirror of Destiny.
It always seemed eerily quiet near the fortune teller's tent. As she stepped to the door, the rising sounds of the midway faded. The noise hushed entirely when she entered.
As always, the room appeared empty except for the velvet bench, the casket of coins, and the mirror hung from the curtained wall which split the tent in half.
Bella settled herself on the bench, removing her veiled chapeau to better see the mirror's surface. She plinked a few coins noisily into the casket. She admired her reflection in the mirror, fluffing her hair a bit.
Then she waited.
A light breeze seemed to circle within the tent, ruffling the feathers on her hat and the gauzy layers of her gown. A pattern of smoke rolled across the mirror's surface behind the glass, obscuring Bella's reflection.
She held her breath and pressed her lips together tightly, afraid of what she might see when the smoke cleared.
Slowly, a shadowed female face emerged from the misty mirror, bathed in an eerie green glow. She wore an old-fashioned bonnet with a thin veil which obscured her features. The Mirror regarded her for a moment, then her mouth twisted into a smile.
"Ah, Bella Venezia. You're here sooner than I expected. Is it the future or the past you seek this time?"
"Neither. I'm here for the same thing I always want. I've no use for your silly parlor tricks. Do you have the tonic?"
"Ah. The past. As usual."
"Stop pretending you can show me some mystical vision. I'm not buying it."
"But you are buying a vision of the past. Does the potion not restore your visage to its former youthful appearance?"
Bella frowned, as the Mirror's double meaning became clear. If she didn't need to look ten years younger, she'd love to collect her money and leave. She'd bet the fake psychic wouldn't see that coming. Unfortunately, she needed the Mirror and her alchemical potion. She'd been using it for a year now, but the effects seemed to fade faster with each application.
She'd talked Vladimir Propp into attending the next show. It was crucial to convince him she was the same beautiful, talented aerialist she'd always been. So instead of storming out, she sneered a reply.
"It must be so wonderful, having a gift that amounts to making vague comments which could mean anything. Yes, Madame Mirror. I suppose I'm buying my past back."
"At least, the part of it you're willing to remember. There is a part which is not so lovely, isn't there?"
Bella's face reddened. "Do you want to sell me the tonic or do you want to continue playing word games?"
"Who says I can't do both?" The Mirror's smile broadened beneath the veil.
Bella stood to leave, pushed past the limits of her patience and pride.
"Calm down, Bella. You'll have your potion. In fact, it's already sitting on your dresser, inside your caravan. Not that it'll do you any good."
"What's that supposed to mean? I knew it! You've been watering it down, haven't you? Just like a charlatan! Trying to extort more money from honest people."
At that, the Mirror cackled laughing.
"Oh, Bella. Hearing you describe yourself as an honest person in that sanctimonious tone is absolutely worth selling you my tonic at half price. You really should consider moving to the stage. Melodrama suits you, and it would be easier on a woman your age than continuing those acrobatics.
"But I can assure you, I'm not weakening the potion. You are. There's an ugliness in your heart, Bella, and it's growing. That's the reason the tonic isn't working like it once did. If your heart held an ounce of innocence or loveliness, you might not even need it. People see you as beautiful as you are."
Mirrors and Magic: A Steampunk Fairy Tale (The Clockwork Republic Series) Page 5