Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti

by Genevieve Valentine

  It was the first time he had ever looked Elena in the eye, and there was only one reason he would have turned away from Boss for even a moment.

  Something was wrong with the wings.

  Elena waited nearly a year to see Alec alone.

  Before the show began he had to climb to his place in the rigging, where he would wait during the entire performance for the lamps at the top of the tent to turn on and reveal him. The rest of the time he spent with Boss, who was the only person who didn’t seem diminished standing beside Alec. (Against Boss, everything gave way.)

  But one night, when Elena was alone in the tent practicing on the trapeze, Alec found her.

  She was upside down when she sensed him, and it worried her that she knew it was him before she saw him. The sound of the wings must have told her, she thought at the time.

  (It wasn’t true.)

  She wrapped one leg around the rope, curled into herself, grabbed hold, slid upright. When she was sure the rope would hold, she looked down at him.

  “If you’re going to stare, you should pay your way like the rest of them,” she said.

  He said, “Elena, would you please come down for a moment?”

  She hadn’t thought he had manners. (She’d never listened.) She’d assumed people loved him because he was beautiful. Manners were a different thing—rarer than beauty, and more lasting.

  She came down.

  It was the middle of the night, and the tent was pitch dark, since Elena never wasted oil on a lamp just to practice by, but as she stepped off the rigging she knew already where he was.

  It was just that the wings gave off some light, she thought. (It wasn’t true.)

  When she reached him, his face looked more serious than she’d ever seen it, and for a moment her heart seized like it used to when she was a child and imaginary sounds were enough to frighten her.

  He asked her, “Have you felt anything?”

  She thought about growing up during the war, dying, living through the circus.

  “Not for a long time,” she said.

  His face was suffused with sympathy, as if he really did think it was sad, as if he wanted to understand her. She wondered what his game was.

  “Have you felt . . . ” he frowned, made a vague motion between them with his hands. “To me? With me?”

  She went cold.

  “Why?”

  Alec glanced away. The wings shivered. “She made the wings with human bone,” he said.

  Elena thought about detailing her lack of interest in Boss’s procedures, but the way he said it sank into her, and after a moment she understood.

  “Who else’s bones are there?” she asked, when she had a voice again.

  He shrugged, tried to smile. “They must be dead. I don’t recognize them.”

  She wondered what connection the wings gave him to those from whom it was made; for someone constructed from the dead, he was taking it well.

  (It wasn’t true.)

  “She should remake them,” Elena said. “Bad luck to have those on your back.”

  He didn’t answer, but she knew all at once, as clearly if he had spoken, that he would never tell Boss she had made a mistake; he would live with the demons rather than seem so weak that he would ask her to take back the gift she had made him. Better to die proud.

  That she understood. She might as well have been the one who said it. It might be the first thing she had really understood in someone else since she’d joined the circus.

  There was a twinge in her ribcage.

  “There. There! Do you feel that little thread?” He watched her face with eyes bright as a fever.

  She said, too late, “I don’t feel a thing.”

  He looked ready to argue; she crossed her arms and waited where she was. She wasn’t about to be chased out of her own circus because some man imagined he could read the hearts of the dead.

  At last, at last, he turned and left. When he opened the tent the moonlight fell on the wings.

  Well, she thought when she was alone, now that little feeling has a name, and that’s the last time I’ll have to think of it.

  (It wasn’t true.)

  53.

  It was well into the night when I walked Ying back to the aerialists’ trailer. Twice she leaned into me and I stopped, resting there with her and letting her steal some of my body heat.

  “You got taller,” she said once, as if it surprised her. I probably had—the last time we had touched was after Bird fell, years back.

  Mina pulled Ying inside. “Why can’t you ever stay with us when it matters? Quick, pack up your things and then be helpful, we might have to move out.”

  Outside, I saw Elena still standing at the edge of camp, her gaze still fixed on the horizon, her arms crossed like she was daring them to come back for her.

  (Elena always did have more fight in her than the war could provide.)

  After a moment I went back to Ayar’s trailer, where I could at least pretend to be useful.

  Ayar was gone, which was a good sign. I knocked, counted to three, opened the door.

  Stenos was alone inside, sitting at the edge of the bunks with his elbows on his knees. Scattered around him on the floor was the wreckage of tin plates and broken chairs. It looked like the scene of a murder, like a man had fought for his life.

  Stenos didn’t move. The dim light that filtered through the torn paper shades highlighted the fresh bruises against his pallor—his forearms, his knuckles, and an enormous one at the base of his neck down into his collarbone, where Ayar might have held him back from the government cars. It was so purple that his face seemed almost grey beside it. I wondered if it was broken.

  Without thinking, I said, “What on earth were you fighting for?”

  Stenos didn’t look up. He took a breath (carefully, around the bruises), said, “I wanted the wings.”

  I let it pass without challenge. The wings had a way of ruining someone’s peace of mind.

  “Clean up,” I said, “and get ready to move out.”

  He frowned and stood up—too fast, he buckled and grabbed at the upper bunk for balance. “We’re leaving? They’re back?”

  When I didn’t answer, he frowned. His bruised knuckles went white around the edge of the bunk. “We can’t go without them. We’d be leaving them to die.”

  My throat went dry. That was how I felt, down to the bone.

  “Pack up,” I said, and left.

  I couldn’t bring myself to go inside Boss’s trailer, even to look through her things, even to get a moment alone. I didn’t want to think about why. (I had never opened the door without seeing her inside, feeling like I had come home.)

  Jonah found me there, standing outside Boss’s trailer like I was waiting for orders.

  “Who’s the ringmaster now?” he asked. His voice was low and even, as if Boss had just died of old age instead of being ripped from us.

  Jonah only ever wanted to be of use, I knew, and he was better at heart than most of us, but I looked at him and hated him. How could he stand there? Didn’t he know everything was over?

  “You looking to fill the position?” I snapped.

  He blinked. “No. I thought she’d named you. When she spoke to you before—before she went.”

  The griffin burned.

  I wrenched the door open, jumped inside, slammed it shut. The bolt slid into place, and then I was alone in the dim, close quarters.

  (When I was a boy, I would come in for my morning orders and see Alec still sleeping with his wings draped around him like a blanket, Boss sitting at her dressing table tucking her curly hair into a bun, and without looking away from the mirror she would say, “Almost on time today,” even though I was never late, and when I smiled she would smile, too, without ever looking.)

  I sat at the dressing table, in her seat, and felt as cold as if her ghost was there. I shook it off—it was my imagination. There was no way they could have killed her so soon. They might not have even reached the
city yet, and once they were inside, whatever questions the government man would ask, he would take his time getting the answers he wanted.

  (Poor Boss. Poor Boss.)

  When I looked into the hinged mirror, I saw that it faced the long window opposite. From my seat I could look in the mirrors and see the yard, from the tent on one side to the aerialists’ trailer on the other.

  I wondered where she was; what the government man was trying to get her to do.

  (I wondered if she would eventually give in and make him some soldiers. She was practical; sometimes she made what she could of whatever was at hand.)

  Behind me, the camp looked empty as a grave, and on my arm it felt as though the griffin was stretching and pulling, coming to life under the skin.

  Boss’s trailer was warm and dark, and the dressing table smelled faintly of her greasepaint, and I might have stayed there all night without moving, if Stenos and Elena hadn’t gone to war.

  54.

  Alto comes to the circus when they set up outside a city without smoke on the horizon. (It’s early days for the war; good signs are relative. A lack of smoke is the best indication Boss has that a bomb won’t strike them as they drag the poles off the back of the truck.)

  The little canvas tent has stopped being a sideshow; now it has one act. Now Boss announces The Amazing Elena, who performs to Panadrome’s music on a trapeze suspended from the crossbar. By the end of the act, the whole tent sways back and forth, and those on the edge of the crowd have to lean with it so the canvas doesn’t hit them. Alto approaches in the middle of the afternoon, so they can see him coming. (People who come in peace do so when the sun is out.) He still waits outside the trailer for half an hour before Boss opens the door in answer to his knock. Panadrome is behind her; Elena appears like a ghost from inside the tent.

  “I’m an acrobat,” he says.

  Boss says, “Congratulations.”

  “I want to join you.”

  Boss says, “I’m sure,” but she looks him up and down for a moment, and then she says, “What can you do?”

  “I can juggle,” he says. “I can be a porter. I can balance. I can do partner trapeze.”

  “The hell you will,” says Elena.

  “Show me the balance,” Boss says. She looks at Elena and gestures once, sharply.

  Elena rolls her eyes and goes to the truck for a spare tent pole. She shoves it deep into the ground into the middle of the yard, where he will crash clear to the ground without breaking his fall with the trailer or the tent.

  He grins at her, jumps up to grab hold for the climb.

  Ten minutes later, he’s a part of the circus.

  “You’ll sleep in the truck until we can find you something,” Boss says. “Bring what you can carry, except weapons.”

  Alto’s heart turns over, thinking about being so naked.

  “No offense, boss,” he says (he assumes another name is coming), “but what if we’re shot in our beds?”

  Boss waves Panadrome out of the trailer. In the daylight, away from the lanterns of the tent, Alto sees the little welds and screws holding the barrel closed, all the mismatched bits of pipe that are lashed together for his arms. The human head, with its little brass collar holding it in place, seems like a cruel joke to play on a perfectly useful machine.

  “Here, being shot is only temporary,” Boss says, and Alto looks back and forth, realizes how Panadrome got this way, that the head isn’t a joke, it’s a man.

  He blinks, takes a step back.

  “Relax,” says Elena, from the top of the trailer. She looks down at Alto, her legs swinging gently back and forth. “It’s not like she can make you look any worse.”

  He grits his teeth. “No weapons,” he agrees.

  Boss says, “Step inside.”

  (People Alto has killed: 47.)

  Altissimo was a dancer. When war broke he was recruited to the makeshift gate, a rickety pile of doors and tractors and rusted-out barrels. Anyone who was nimble got sent there; they could scramble over the mess without being crushed.

  During his night watch, one of his friends who had snuck out through the gate came back. After Altissimo lowered his gun (his friend just stared at it, half-smiling, like it was a puppy), his friend introduced himself as Alto.

  Altissimo snorted and wiped the nervous sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. “You think a new name is going to get you out of here?”

  Alto grinned. “Come with me. See what I’ve found.”

  “I won’t like it,” Altissimo said.

  (People Altissimo has killed: 30.)

  They get chased out of a town.

  It’s early enough in the war that they’re run out for deep, cold reasons—suspicion of witchcraft, suspicion of spying. (Later they will be run out because of greed or boredom, which are easier to understand and to run from.) When the performers race for the trucks, the bullets spray into the ground at their feet.

  When they’ve leapt onto the trucks and are racing to outpace those chasing them out, Boss sees they have three more men than they started with; they jump onto the last trailer, and lay down some cover fire during their escape.

  “What are you doing?” Panadrome shouts, leaning out the window on his side of the truck.

  “Like we were going to stay in that shithole?” one of them calls back. He turns back to the road, lifts the gun to his shoulder, fires.

  Two of them are already bleeding as they swing up into the truck, and by the time the town soldiers have given up and they can pull over and take stock, all three have been shot. One of them is already dead. Another one follows a minute later, pressing his hands into his dead comrade’s, grimacing his way into the next life.

  Boss steps around the truck, looks over the two dead men. The last man is still alive, though blood is pooling out through the slats of the truck (the stain remains for years) and his time is running out.

  She asks the dying man, “Are you agile?”

  He frowns at her through his tears, nods yes.

  Boss sits back and rubs at her eyebrows with her thumb. “Bring them into the workshop, if they’re still warm,” Boss says. “Then we’ll see.”

  (People Spinto has killed: 22.)

  (People Focoso has killed: 26.)

  (People Brio has killed: 13.)

  When Brio wakes up, he’s already laughing, gasping for breath, reaching for anything he can get his hands on. He was happy to be anything, in any shape, so long as he was alive.

  He is the one who tricks Alto into becoming friends; he is the one who makes them all brothers.

  Moto was with a local militia that came to the camp on their last day to demand a tithe from Boss (as soon as they decided Ayar wouldn’t kill anyone on his way out, they got bold enough to shoulder guns and march over).

  When the others started the walk back to the city, Moto stayed where he was, standing in mud up to his ankles.

  “You need anyone?” he asked.

  Boss looked him up and down, raised an eyebrow. “You trained?”

  It was a trick question—by then the only training anyone got was for soldiering—but Moto just shrugged and smiled. “I’m trainable.”

  “How will your employer take you leaving his service?”

  Moto smiled wider.

  (People Moto has killed: 19. The last four of them he killed on the night he left the city to join the Circus Tresaulti.)

  Years after, a man auditions for them in the normal way, which Boss thinks is a nice departure from the way her last four acrobats have entered her scope.

  Barbaro looks like the first Grimaldis on her poster, dark hair and high cheekbones and skin like an oak tree. He flips and grins at the audience just as an acrobat should, and when Moto and Focoso lock hands underneath him to give him a place to stand, he steps up without hesitating and lets them launch him, flipping three times before he comes down again. Boss hasn’t seen acrobatics like this since the early days, when her applicants were trained. Even Elena loo
ks a little impressed.

  “If you join us, you give up your gun,” she says. “There are no guns in the Circus.”

  “Oh, I’m done with weapons,” he says.

  (People Barbaro has killed: 88.)

  Sometimes, a member of the crew is devoted enough to the circus to want to stay. It’s rare; the traveling life is hard enough on people who are guaranteed to live through it, and life is too precious to spend ten years hauling canvas off trucks. Crew come and go. Most crewmen never bother to give names; they know they’ll be forgotten.

  But sometimes, Boss is having a softhearted morning, and when a crewman asks, “May I audition, Boss? I’ve been practicing,” she sits back in bench on the truck bed and looks him up and down, and says, “By all means.”

  At her side, Little George looks as though she’s sliced his heart open. The whole audition happens with Little George’s eyes fixed on the crewman, as if George can knock him over with the depth of this injustice.

  (People Pizzicato has killed: 0.)

  He’s proud of the number, though when Barbaro asks him “How many?” he says, “Six,” just to have something to say.

  Barbaro laughs once and claps him on the back and says, “Welcome, brother!” and they all pour out fingersful of the gin Joe makes in the barrel that hangs from the back of the cooking cart. It’s worse than gasoline, but Pizzicato is used to it. He drinks it in a single swallow.

  He never admits to the real number, though they might not be cruel about it. The Grimaldi brothers don’t argue amongst themselves, not badly.

  This rule does not apply to everyone else, of course. With everyone else in the circus, the Grimaldi brothers are more than happy to put up a fight.

  55.

  The shouting reached me even inside Boss’s trailer, and as soon as I open the door I could tell this wasn’t the usual disagreement, because the rest of the camp had gone totally quiet, everyone pausing with one hand still on their work as if waiting for the outcome before they bothered taking up their burdens again.

  As I closed in on the tent, I passed Ying and Mina, Jonah and Ayar, and Barbaro and Brio, taking bets.