by Pia Morrow
Pia Morrow
Of Air and Earth
A Sapphic Fantasy Novella
Copyright © 2021 by Pia Morrow
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
First edition
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Myra knew Kiana had magic in her from the moment she watched her step on the rope. She had hated her for it.
Aunt Elba had picked up the young girl from a small town by a gently meandering river, the kind of place where it looked like absolutely nothing interesting had ever happened. A peaceful place, so unlike Madame Elba’s Travelling Circus, which was a place, and not a place itself. Her parents had given her up for a pretty penny and a few tears, unable to feed her anymore in one of the small towns, of many, which had been deprived of its mage and thus most of its riches in the years since Emperor Telvalyn had come to rule.
She was a slip of a thing, about nine years old, of an age with Myra. Immediately, she was suspicious. Why had her aunt paid so much for her? She was just a girl, like Myra, and she barely paid Myra any mind at all, let alone five hundred dersentines. They needed a new rope girl, she claimed. The last one had fallen and broken her collarbone, and they’d left her behind, weeping and begging for another chance, several towns back.
All misunderstanding fled on the opening night of the new season, when Kiana, shining in a simple red dress, stepped onto the tightrope.
The day had been a busy one, a tiring one. Myra had had to make tea for all the higher profile performers, the ones that Aunt Elba always muttered that they should keep at all costs - the crowd-drawers. She had helped clean the stands from top to bottom after Jero and Len, the maintenance men, had set up the tents: one for the performances, one for the performers and one for Aunt Elba, or as she liked to call it, “administration”. When they weren’t on the road, Myra would sleep in a corner of this tent, a privilege she didn’t deserve Aunt Elba would proclaim when she was angry at her, and cast her out to sleep with the performers. She had completed most of her chores and the performers were taking their rest before getting ready for the night, when the audience would start streaming through the gates - then her work wouldn’t stop until the early hours of the morning, so she hoped to grab an hour’s rest.
She sneaked into the tent, opening the flap as narrowly as possible to avoid her aunt’s notice. If she saw her, she’d think of another task, and Myra was exhausted. Aunt Elba was sitting at her desk, engrossed in her books, which held all the numbers to run a circus. Credit, debit, performers, incomes. She was grateful when she passed by and she didn’t even raise her head. However, when she arrived at the little nest in the corner - a pile of soft blankets that made up her bed, she found it already occupied.
“Why are you here?” she asked loudly, forgetting that she had been trying to sneak.
The girl seemed to curl further into herself, like a mouse. She simply blinked up at Myra. Her eyes seemed too big for her face, beautiful though they were, a brown as dark and luminous as her skin. It gave her the look of being perpetually afraid.
“Leave her be,” Aunt Elba said, without looking up from her papers.
“But she’s in my bed,” Myra whined. This caught her Aunt’s attention. She could not abide whining.
“Well, she deserves it better than you,” Aunt Elba said. She put down her pen. “The noise of the performers’ tent was scaring her. Don’t you have chores to be getting on with? She needs her rest.”
So do I, Myra wanted to say, but she knew her aunt was right. She wasn’t a performer; she wasn’t strong and useful like Len and Jero, nor good with the books like Aunt Elba. She had nothing to keep her here but Aunt Elba’s magnanimity towards her poor dead sister’s child, and the minute she became more trouble than the little she was worth, she might decide that wasn’t enough. The way the world was now, she would never survive without the circus. Throwing the girl a last, resentful look, she went outside.
Outside the haven of the admin tent, performers would catch hold of her and make her run errands or do jobs for them. Shine the knife-thrower’s knives, help the contortionist with her outfit, be the test subject for the Sal the Magician’s newest, most dangerous trick yet. By the time she caught her breath, the sun was setting; the crowds were streaming in and she was busy until the show started. She helped with admittance and with preparations behind the scenes. Other children, she had heard once, went to school. But the circus was Myra’s school, and though she was not in possession of the higher skills associated with circus people, she knew it inside out.
The show started what would seem like chaos to the untrained eye, but Myra knew all its beats and movements as if it was part of her own body. She knew when to step in and help, and when someone was behind on their schedule to get out into the ring, she could tell when the crowd was growing bored and when they were entranced.
Amid all this, feeling completely at home in the chaos, Myra spotted Kiana. She was standing, all stiff, long limbs in a corner, in a bright red dress. The contrast was beautiful against the ebony of her skin, and thin threads of gold held it together. Myra felt a pang. She would never wear anything so beautiful. The closest she might get would be to wash it when the girl was done. She didn’t look like much, Myra thought meanly. She hoped she would disappoint and that Aunt Elba would demote her to the role of the average performer. And give her bed back.
The show passed much as it always did: the showy parts with the knife-throwers and the lion-tamer predictably ramping up the excitement, which tamer acts such as the contortionists and troupe of clowns gave a much needed break in the intensity. Kiana, much to everyone’s bewilderment, was one of the last acts to perform. It was nearly unheard of for a newbie to be placed so late in the show.
Despite herself, Myra sneaked into the stands to watch when it was her turn. She had never thought a tight-rope walker could be any kind of special - sure the balance and strength it took was impressive, but they were no lion-tamers for gods’ sake. Then she watched Kiana.
They had arranged a new piece of music and the usually rowdy crowd hushed in jovial excitement. Myra spotted her a few moments before anyone else. She expected to see her up there, stiff and shaking as usual. She felt a jolt when she saw her standing sure and tall, as confident as any grand lady, the likes of which would never be seen at Madame Elba’s shows, of course.
The audience was quiet, maybe bored, as she stepped onto the rope. Then she began to dance. There was no other word for it, in Myra’s mind, no other word for the delicate yet strong steps she took across the thin, golden rope. She twirled and flipped across it in ways Myra didn’t think was possible - surely the forces which kept them all tethered to this world would deny it. But they did not deny Kiana. She whipped and whorled her way across the rope to the bated breath of the audience, perfectly in rhythm with the sound of the music below. Myra wondered why her chest was hurting so, until she realised she had been holding her breath since the moment the girl stepped off the platform. For a moment, she even suspected magic - surely Aunt Elba would not be so reckless, not in these
times, not with the suspicions against them growing steadily - but when she strained her eyes, she saw the muscles rippling beneath the skin of her small body. She had been doing this a long time, then. Maybe from birth, the way she moved, a hundred times more surely in the air than on the ground.
By the time Kiana had reached the other end of the rope - to rapturous applause, of course, Myra understood why Aunt Elba had paid for her so, and why she was special, a thousand times more so that she could ever hope to be. But something about the sight of it, still dancing behind her eyelids when she blinked, stopped her from feeling very sad about it.
Myra rushed back to the section beneath the stands where the performers prepared before anyone could notice her missing. Despite her antipathy, part of her hoped for a glance of the girl again, to see whether any of that magic had stayed with her, with both feet firmly on the ground. But she didn’t see her, and in the chaos of preparing for the grand finale (someone had misplaced the fireworks and she had had to race to find them) she had nearly forgotten about her by the time the show was over.
She remembered again, rather unpleasantly, when she thought longingly of the bed that awaited her - but did it? Perhaps she would be permanently cast out now, forced to sleep in a corner of the performers’ tent with forty others.
When the crowds were gone and the stands cleaned and cleaned again, she was finally about to go to see if she had a bed anymore, when she noticed a small figure crouched by the entrance of the tent. Everyone else had gone.
As she got closer, she recognised Kiana and hesitated. Then she saw the girl was sobbing. Despite the warmth of the summer night, she felt a chill run through her.
She reached the girl, who hadn’t noticed her approach through her cries. What should she do? On the days she used to cry and cry when she was younger, no one had done anything, but instinctively she knew they should have. She knelt down beside Kiana and put a hand on her shoulder. The girl jumped violently, and looked afraid as she stared at Myra, big eyes full of tears.
“What’s wrong?” Myra asked, not knowing what else to say. She realised then that she had never heard her speak in the week since they had left her town. She wondered then if she could.
She had an idea, suddenly, and dug through her pockets for the little bag her aunt had given her.
The girl watched as she pulled out the folded paper bag and took out a seed. The tears had stopped falling so rapidly now, at least.
“My aunt gave me these for my birthday,” she said. Then she checked no one was around and whispered to Kiana. “They’re magic. Don’t tell anyone, okay?”
She said nothing but nodded slowly, her eyes wide and curious now.
Myra poked her finger into the ground and wiggled it around, forming a small hole. She popped the seed inside, just as her aunt had told her, and patted the soil affectionately over the seed.
Nothing happened for a few moments and Kiana frowned, her eyes filling with tears again.
“Wait, look - do you see it?”
It was tiny, but it was there. Kiana peered at the ground, then gasped.
There was a tiny green shoot, pushing up through the soil. Faster than any plant ought to sprout.
They watched in silence as the shoot grew up and up, as leaves unfurled from the stems, and then finally a tiny bud grew bigger and bigger until it unfurled into a bright yellow carnation.
Myra grinned. She plucked the flower out of the ground and handed it to Kiana. “A present.”
The girl stared at the flower with something like wonder.
Myra had felt the same when she saw it. The seeds were the only present her aunt had ever given her. She said she had got them from a market stall selling goods from the East, where magic and chaos reigned hand in hand. Why she had given such a forbidden and dangerous present to Myra, she had never known, but she was always careful with it, as she had been taught. She only grew the flowers on special days, or on days when she was so sad nothing else would do. It made her feel good, somehow, to leave something behind. Growing roots was so very different from the life she led, never in one place for more than a week.
Suddenly, Kiana spoke.
“I thought…” She could didn’t look up from the flower she held delicately between her fingers. The words were barely a whisper in the wind, but Myra heard them clearly.
“You thought what?” she prompted when the girl had been silent a few moments. No answer. “You’ll get used to it, you know. If it wasn’t what you expected. And you were good. Really good. You’re sure to have a place here forever if you carry on like that.”
Kiana’s face crumpled at that. “I thought they would come,” she said softly. “I don’t want to stay here. I want to go back home.”
Of course. How could Myra have been so stupid? While she had been jealous of Aunt Elba’s attentions, her ministering to Kiana like a particularly precious possession, she had been thinking of her family. Myra had been part of the circus since she was a squalling baby, passed from spare hand to spare hand. The performers had some affection for her, maybe even care, but they came and went like the day. She forgot sometimes what it might be like to have a family. To lose a family.
“Maybe they will, some day.” Kiana was fiddling with her necklace, a burnished gold thing with a pendant that looked like a small coin.
“They promised me.” She showed Myra the pendant. On it was an engraving of the Lady of the Sea. She watched over all children in the land. “Mama told me to never take it off so they can find me easy. Why didn’t they come yet?”
Myra felt a flash of anger then. How could they leave her? If she had a family, a real one, she would hold on and never let go. She told her, “My parents left me too. They won’t come back.”
“Why not?”
“They died. But that’s the only reason. They couldn’t come back. Yours are fine, so they will be back. They just need some time, to get things ready for you.”
“I don’t need things, I just want to go home.”
“I know.” She didn’t. She had never had a home. She had never stayed in a place long enough. She couldn’t even imagine it. Then she had an idea. “If you want, you can stay with me until they find you again.”
“What do you mean?” She had stopped crying so much, Myra noticed.
“Well, we can stick together until your family comes back. You can stay with me in the admin tent, and if you ask Aunt Elba, I’m sure she’ll let you travel in our wagon when we go back on the road.”
She considered. “But what will happen to you when they come back?”
Myra felt her heart sink. She shrugged, as if it didn’t bother her. “I’ll just stay here. Like I always have.”
Kiana brightened suddenly. “No, I have an idea! I can ask them to take you with us. If I ask really nicely, they won’t say no. Papa could never say no to me. Except…”
Except that last time. Even though she didn’t really believe it, Myra smiled and took Kiana’s hand. “Deal.”
They went back to the tent together and curled up in the soft nest of blankets, whispering so they wouldn’t wake Aunt Elba, who was whistling with snores in her sleep. They were more comfortable for each other’s warmth.
They would share their bed for the next five years, then they would sleep on pallets pushed close to one another. Kiana slowly stopped talking about what they would do when her parents came to fetch them, and slowly, maybe they became enough to each other that they didn’t need that dream anymore.
Chapter 2
Fifteen Years Later
“You just don’t understand,” Lia sobbed as Myra was anxiously dabbing at her running eye makeup. She was due out in three minutes. “He was everything to me, everything. And now suddenly his reputation is more important? Three years I gave him, and now it’s all ‘I just can’t be seen running about with circus folk Li.’” She hiccupped. “Is that all we are to the rest of the world, Myra? Circus folk are people too!”
It took all her energy not to
roll her eyes. “Lia, you’re about to go on.”
“And another thing!” She batted away Myra’s hand impatiently, tears drying up. “He acts like it was just because of them clamping down on us, but I know he’s been eyeing Araminta at the dressmakers’. I just know that’s why he chose to do it now. She just broke up with -”