by Pia Morrow
Before anyone else could, she ran out of the tent. She shouted to the only two guards in the vicinity - those guarding Zello’s tent.
“Quick, you have to help!” she cried. “Someone’s doing the most wicked magic in there.”
To her dismay, they only chuckled. “It’s all tricks, girl,” one of them said, leering. “Although I would definitely let that tight rope girl do her magic on me any day of the year.”
Myra pushed down her disgust and kept her face frantic. “You don’t understand - something in there is growing. Unnaturally.”
They looked confused for a second more but then cries erupted from the tent and exchanging a look, they left their post and rushed towards the commotion. She vaguely hoped no one was hurt, though she didn’t feel much sympathy towards most of the audience if she was being honest.
As soon as the guards had disappeared into the performance tent, she let herself into Zello’s moss green home. It was dark, as he had been in there, watching the finale, but she felt her way to a table and found a softly glowing lamp which she held up to explore. She rifled through his things, not sure how much time she would have. She heard shouts carrying over from the other tent.
The first thing she could glean from his tent was the Zello was a slob, though that didn’t surprise her in the least. He had plates of half-eaten food cluttering the floor and his clothes - many of them smelling distinctly ripe - were strewn across every surface. Finally, by his sleeping pallet, she found a locked wooden box. Aunt Elba had had one just like it.
She pulled the hammer she had stolen from the pawnshop (another reason for her to feel guilty) and went at the lock. It was a heavy brass thing, but the wood surrounding it was not so much. She banged at it until the wood splintered and she could prise the heavy lid off.
Inside lay her escape route.
Myra had never seen quite so much gold in her life. Her aunt had been cautious about her accounts, never keeping much on hand and storing what she could in the central bank as often as she could make deposits. Even then, when they toured remote areas, she would go a long time without being able to make a deposit. But even though they were in a city now, and within easy reach of banks, Zello, it seemed, was not quite so meticulous. This had to profit from several of their recent rounds at least. She imagined he kept much of the profit for himself, instead of sharing it with the performers who earned it as well.
She took the small money bags (empty but for lint and a couple of pennies) she had stuffed under her cloak and filed them with as many gold coins as they would hold. She carefully tied the strings to her belt and arranged her cloak around her in such a way that there were no unseemly bulges. There was still plenty left in the chest when she was done, and part of her was tempted to drag the thing away and dump the whole thing in the ocean. Instead, she dragged it just outside the entrance and left it open. Perhaps a performer would see it and buy their way out of this place. Or maybe just a random passerby. She figured she ought to at least create the chance that Zello would bankrupt himself out of business and have to let all his performers go.
The exertion of dragging the chest and her new riches had distracted her for a minute, and she hadn’t noticed the people spilling out of the performance tent. The thing looked odd, misshapen. It took her a moment to realise that her trees had grown to such a size they had lifted the whole tent from its moorings so that the bottom hovered a few inches from the ground itself. She heard guards shouting to each other and screeching that sounded uncannily like the illustrious Mr Zello himself.
Unlike nearly everyone else, she approached the tent. Where was Kiana? Was she okay? She a sudden terrifying image of a tree growing so rapidly it snapped the thin length of gold and sent the walker tumbling to the ground. She ran the last few steps into the tent.
The rope was still there, she was relieved to see, but Kiana was nowhere in sight. Zello was raving to his staff, turned away from the trees.
Myra couldn’t look away.
Four huge apple trees, bigger than any apple tree had a right to be, their end branches still growing slowly towards the sky. She had hoped only for a distraction, something to allow her to steal the money and get Kiana out of there. She’d created something else entirely. She walked to the tree nearest and placed a hand against the trunk. She felt the magic weaving through it like golden threads, from its deep roots up to the stars. This wouldn’t go unnoticed. Soldiers would be here soon, and she would have to be long gone. Where was Kiana? She had to say goodbye. Goodbye and sorry, if nothing else.
And then, like magic, she saw a leg dangling between the branches.
“Ki?” she called, softly, through the branches.
And just like that her best friend, her love, fell for the first time, deliberately through the branches and landed spritely on her feet before her. Magic.
They simply stared at each other for a second, uncertain. Then Kiana took a step forward and suddenly they were in each other’s arms, as intertwined as the branches all around them.
“I thought I’d lost you,” Myra said through her tears.
Kiana drew back and wiped her tears gently. “I’m sorry. I’m so stupid, I regretted everything right away. I’ll never try to be noble again.”
Myra could only laugh.
“You did this?” Kiana said, her eyes wide, filled with something like awe.
She shrugged. “I guess so.”
“For me?”
“For you.”
She paused. “And for three sacks of gold. We have to get out of here.”
From behind her, she heard Zello begin to shout at Kiana. He had clocked them.
“One: what?! Two: great idea.”
Without another look back, they ran for the entrance.
The guards tried to follow, but a tree root conveniently tore out of the ground to trip them up and they screamed in horror.
As the two of them burst into the night, and far away from tents and ropes, Myra couldn’t help smiling. With Kiana’s hand in hers, she truly felt what she was for the first time: powerful.
Epilogue
Myra closed her eyes and let the wind run its fingers through her hair. The smell of salt on the air seemed to cleanse her from the inside out.
After they left the circus, they had gone straight to the docks and paid the captain of a passenger ferry three times the price of tickets to take them last minute on a boat that would leave at dawn. With that amount of money, it was no questions asked. When the soldiers had come round asking just before they set off, he had feigned ignorance. Myra felt grateful - he already had the money. He didn’t have to do that.
The boat was heading far away from the Dersen Kingdom to the Aslyan Islands. Myra didn’t know much about the place except that it was at the furthest eastern edge of the map her aunt had kept nailed to her portable desk all these years. They didn’t persecute magic in the East, she knew. She would be safe there. She might even flourish. Perhaps they might get a little shack near the sea. They wouldn’t need to work much, or perhaps just for fun. Myra could grow food for them with a touch of her fingertips and a push of her powers.
She felt fingers interlace through her own and opened her eyes to see Kiana next to her. She wasn’t looking out to the magnificent horizon or to the open sea before them. She was simply looking at her, eyes sparkling.
Since they had left land she had been luminous, unaffected by the seasickness that had claimed Myra the first few days.
“It’s like out here I can actually see a future for myself,” she had said. “Like that moment on the rope when it’s just you and the open air and a whole bucketful of trust. That’s what this feels like.”
Her necklace glinted in the sunlight. Perhaps one day she might even find those who gave it to her. Myra couldn’t believe she had ever considered selling it, or that Kiana had given it up for her. The money they had taken from Zello would see them have a comfortable start wherever they ended up.
Kiana gave her hand a squee
ze and grinned up at her as if there were no one else.
“What?” Myra said, suddenly shy. It came over her in waves, this sudden realisation of how good things were, finally. How good they could be, would be.
“You,” Kiana said simply and leaned her head on her shoulder. She smelled of vanilla and the sharp sea air. The sun seemed to light her from within.
After all these years, still magic.