Banished

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  She stood back until she spied the boss man, the manager. He was a small round man with a mustache. He flung his arms and gave orders others obeyed. She waited for hours until the tents were set up and the cages where set behind the largest tent. Then she approached the manager with a smile.

  “Sir, may I show you what I can do for your company?”

  He was a gloomy man and full of frowns. He said, “You’re a kid, get outta my way.”

  “I can make a panther lie down on my command.”

  “Sure you can,” he said, walking away.

  She followed, her skirts flouncing. “I can make any animal go to sleep just by clicking my fingers. I can make a snake stand on its tail. A fish fly! A mongoose dance!”

  He had sped up and she was racing behind, yelling.

  He stopped so abruptly, she ran into the back of his legs.

  He turned and took her by the scruff of the collar, half lifting her off the ground. “What do you want?” he growled.

  “I can do magical things you’ve never seen. Let me prove it.”

  He hauled her, feet dragging along the ground, behind the large tent. He threw her toward the lion’s cage. “There,” he said. “Go ahead, do something magical or maybe I’ll feed you to him.”

  Angelique looked into the lion’s eyes and immediately read him. He was old and diseased. He had bad teeth and two in the back hurt him like hell's blazes. He was quarrelsome and wanted free so badly it made a sourness fill his mouth. He wanted to eat her just so he could crack open her bones and suck the fatty marrow.

  She communicated with the old beast, promising that she would free him from his imprisonment if he obeyed her every wish.

  Slowly the lion stood. His gaze never left the girl. Angelique raised her hand. Suddenly the lion stood on his back legs, wobbly but strong enough to hold the stance several seconds. She lowered her hand. The lion landed on all four paws. She twirled. The lion twirled. She got onto her knees and then lay down on the ground. The lion did the same, the yellow of his eyes twinkling with danger.

  During the whole demonstration, the circus manager stood aside, unbelieving. Never in his life had he seen an animal obey anyone so completely—and a child!

  He turned and said, “How did you do that?”

  “Magic.” She smiled a shy, little girl smile. “And I will work cheap for you.”

  “You can do this with other animals?”

  “All of them,” she said.

  “Where are your parents?”

  “Dead. I am alone, sir.”

  “I guess I could take you in, let you try out

  a show or two…”

  Angelique knew how to play this man now. She ran to him and hugged his legs. “Oh thank you, sir, thank you!”

  She was given a small cabin built on the back of a wagon, only large enough for a small bed and a woven basket for her clothes. She was never happier.

  CHAPTER 14

  CIRCUS DAYS

  During her stint with the circus, which lasted just three years due to how she never aged and not aging would have caused consternation, Angelique grew ever more lonely. No one in the circus cared for her, keeping a wide berth. A child who could so easily command wild animals spooked them all.

  Finally, at the end of three years, just before Angelique knew she had to move on, she made a decision. She relented and summoned forth Nisroc, her most troublesome angel.

  She realized that only another immortal being could fulfill her wish for companionship. After the circus, all on her own again, she would have to move on, take up a fake family, create a new life. But if she had another angel with her, and he took the body of a grown man, he could play her father and they could live for hundreds of years on Earth without all this nettlesome change and lengthy training of humans she was having to endure.

  And the wire-walker artist was dying. He had contracted consumption and now lay in his cabin coughing blood. He was a lovely man, all Scandinavian blonde with white skin and a smoothly hewn masculine face. His eyes were blue and due to his artistry, his body was beautifully muscled.

  But he was dying, nevertheless.

  A perfect vessel for Nisroc.

  She called for him at night, after the circus had shut down and all the city gawkers had left the midway. The great angel heard her and came immediately, wings flapping, eyes flashing. She stood outside her little cabin and it seemed that Nisroc filled and darkened the sky. “As you know, I’ve been obediently waiting,” he said.

  “I have a body for you. It should be empty tonight if I am any judge of death’s ways. Come with me, I’ll show you where this body lies.”

  Nisroc was so excited his wings rustled as he strode beside her, his non-corporeal body shimmering through the air like shadows over water.

  Outside the wire-walker’s cabin she stopped and pointed. She knew Nisroc could sense the human inside, just as she could. He could feel the life there and how it waxed and waned like a candle flame blown by a breeze.

  “I’ll be ready,” he said. He turned and embraced Angelique. “I’m so grateful to you.”

  She eyed him cautiously. “I need a companion. I’m weary of the humans. I need someone to complete a family for me since I am a…a child. It’s been too difficult going it alone. You’ll still have to obey, of course.”

  “At your command, my queen,” he said, bowing low, his wings grazing the ground.

  She watched as he disappeared, nothing but a wisp of cloud on the wind and she turned to the cabin, waiting. It would happen tonight. Not more than an hour away. She could hardly wait.

  #

  Angelique watched the dead man’s eyes open. Success!

  Nisroc was back.

  The body was exquisite—muscled with long legs and wide shoulders. The face was Scandinavian, square with a strong jaw and a high, intelligent brow. The eyes were a blue that would rival the deepest, stormiest seas.

  Now those eyes, no longer dead and empty, but reflecting intelligence and understanding stared back at her. He looked incredulous.

  “Angelique,” he whispered, recognition finally dawning.

  “Can you move?”

  His face drew in with effort. A crease furrowed between his fine, blue eyes.

  “I can’t…”

  She put a hand on his shoulder and pressed him back. He lay on the wood plank floor of her wagon, a small embroidered pillow beneath his head. She had the thick curtains drawn at the back of the wagon, but she still glanced there every little bit to make sure no one had come to fetch her. It was yet two hours before show time, but sometimes they checked her wagon to remind her the panther was calm or the elephant was tearing up his pen again or the lions were so lethargic they’d fed them raw meat coated with pepper to try to rouse them.

  The body she had taken for Nisroc had belonged to the circus high wire walker and special gymnast, a man named Gustav Freedrickson. He had come down with consumption that took but months to wear down his defenses and leave him weakened. Consumption was a scourge racing across most of Europe and Gustav sickened rapidly with a particularly virulent form. He literally coughed himself to death, hemorrhaging his life’s blood in one horrendous, extended spell of spastic lung contractions. Angelique knew he would die and she lusted to own the shell left behind once the spirit absconded. It did not matter the lungs were filled with blood and disease ridden. Once the new spirit took over the entire make-up of the human form would be changed, even down to the molecular level.

  Until now she hadn’t needed any of the other angels’ help, but finally it had become imperative. She was, after all, a child. She was tired of training humans to do her bidding, to stand in as her parent or guardian. She wanted a partner, not a puppet. She wanted Nisroc.

  “I have to go prepare the animals for the show, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. Just rest here.”

  Nisroc nodded, blinking with some confusion. Angelique patted his shoulder, smiled, and throwing back the curtains, leapt down from the wagon
.

  Dying sunlight pierced through the slight opening between the curtains, but most of the interior lay in shadow.

  The beautiful male form that remained prone on the boards of the wagon did not move an inch only because right now he could not move. The supernatural elements of his being busily suffused the human body, permeating the cells, flowing through the bloodstream, animating the heart, the damaged lungs, and filling the brain with new light…

  ***

  Within an hour Nisroc felt a human strength he had not felt in nearly two thousand years. As disembodied angel there were no sensations of body, only of mind. Now that Angelique had brought him to Earth again, he reveled in the sensations he had only dreamed about for all those long moments lost in the dark alone-and-lonely void. It was almost painful to see the dim light streaming through the parted curtains beyond his feet. The boards under his back felt like rock, hard and pressing against his flesh and bone. His nostrils flared with the mingled scents that assaulted his senses—Angelique’s clothes that stank of her human sweat, dust that was settled over the canvas roof of the wagon, and beyond the wagon, the scent of food cooking, animal dung, wood fire smoke, latrines full of human waste. He swallowed and marveled at the sensation of saliva sliding down his throat. He moved his tongue over his teeth, front, back, and sides, finding them firm and whole and clean. He drew in air and sighed at the beauty of oxygen filling what had been ravaged lungs that even now was in the process of rejuvenation.

  He loved this world. He loved life, real life lived in human form. A beating heart, rhythmically drumming to circulate his warm blood, seemed to speak like a lost lover as it reverberated in his ears. It whispered I AM, I EXIST, I LIVE…I AM IN THE HERE AND NOW, REAL. There was nothing compared to this existence. No angel in heaven or cast into the nether regions experienced such fantastic sensations. The mind lived forever, the soul never died, but the body was a magical mechanism that took in all of life and translated it into sensation and that was God’s most gracious gift in all of creation.

  Nisroc had hungered for it always, true life. In God’s court there was but mind and spirit. But what He created on this planet was the true bounty--the experience of living man.

  Now thanks to Angelique, he was back. Back in the world!

  The very thought propelled him. He came up as if loosened from chains, sitting straight, shoulders back, hips tensed. From this perspective the world seemed to tilt and skew for a moment. He closed his eyes, but the darkness behind his lids scared him, reminded him of the dark from which he’d come, so he quickly opened his eyes, his mouth falling open. He took a deep breath. He looked around.

  Angelique was living such a meager existence. Her clothes, lying crumpled on the floor and hung from pegs, were ragged and faded. Her bed was made of rope, woven and tied, swinging from the ribs of the canopy that covered the wagon. She had a small chest, but without looking in it he knew there was little of value there.

  Reduced to these circumstances he could understand why she needed his assistance. She had tried for three lifetimes to make it on her own, training humans to care for her. Losing her last human to death threw her again on her own where she convened with orphans, setting up a place for them, and finally she’d discovered this job with the traveling circus. Naturally they had not wanted her, hadn’t believed she’d be of use—a ten-year-old waif with worn shoes and holes in her clothes. But she had convinced the Master of the circus that she had supernatural abilities dealing with his few wild caged animals. She could make them bend to her will. The elephant lifted front legs into the air on her command and danced when she made her biding. The lions sat on small stools and roared on cue. The panther, the best performer of all, slithered in a circle, its sinuous muscles moving like snakes beneath its skin. It could leap through a burning ring of hay bales and leap out again unscathed. It would go to its belly and let Angelique climb onto its back for a ride around the circus arena. It could even stand up on its back legs, taller than a man, and scream with a piercing cry, showing teeth that were a child’s nightmare. This panther, under Angelique’s tutelage, had become the star of the show.

  In his dark place in the far regions of creation Nisroc had now and again widened his vision in order to see what Angelique was doing. He tried to imagine the scent of the animals, tried to hear the sound of the wind and rain, tried to feel the rest of true sleep, but all he could do was watch and hunger and hope.

  Now she had deigned to bring him to her and he was so full of joy and appreciation that he thought he might burst.

  He felt an itching on his back and sensed his great wings buried beneath his skin, but only as nubs, tiny buds of flesh that through the strength of his will he could cause to grow. Not now, of course. He had no use for them in this fine body of a man. But he knew they were there if ever he did need them.

  He lifted his arms above his head and laughed. LIFE!

  **

  Angelique returned to her wagon after the show. The crowds were thinning, families trudging home to London and outlying farms. She carried a bowl of stew made from goat, potatoes, rutabagas, and carrots. Nisroc would need to eat. By now she expected he was able to move, but even though his angel being was renewing the diseased human flesh, he still needed to take sustenance just as any man would. He was now part angel, part human, the greater being angel. She was so excited he was with her. Human guardians were fine for a while, but tended in the end to be such a burden. Nisroc, on the other hand, was like her—nearly indestructible. Some accident might fatally injure the body, even kill it, but being angel made them both so quick, so sensitive to danger, that neither of them needed to worry overmuch about human death. Given the properties they had brought to the body from the angelic realm, it was as if they were a completely different, rare, and superior species.

  She stepped onto the rear step they’d made for her small stature on the back of the wagon, drew back the curtain, and saw Nisroc sitting up on the floor, staring at her, tears in his eyes.

  “I can’t believe this,” he said. “It’s so…so wonderful.”

  She climbed in beside him and handed over the bowl of food. “Eat, you need to bolster your strength.”

  He didn’t need to be told twice. He ate like a ravenous dog, hardly chewing before swallowing. When the bowl was empty, he used his fingers to scrub out the residue of stew gravy. “Ummm, so good.”

  “As you see, I live in mean conditions,” she said, coming right to the point of why she’d summoned him.

  “It’s not a palace,” he agreed. When he smiled he was a beautiful creature.

  “You’re to be my father. When around the Others, treat me like your child. Speak to me as an adult guardian. But…” She squinted her eyes and Nisroc lost his smile. “…when we are alone, I won’t tolerate being spoken to without deference. I hope you understand that.”

  “Certainly.”

  “Because I can send you back. If I have to.”

  Now he quaked, his hands taking on a tremor he couldn’t quite control. “I love it here,” he said.

  “I know you do. But the last time here you failed. This time you’ll do exactly as I say or I have no use for you. Understood?”

  He nodded, not trusting his voice.

  “We’re getting out of this stinking place,” she said, beginning to pack the loose clothes in her chest.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the wharf in London to buy tickets on a ship.”

  “Where to?”

  “The New World--though now they call it the United States of America.”

  “That sounds wonderful.”

  She paused and eyed him. “I’m taking a chance fleeing this soon after your coming. You might not be ready to play your part.”

  “I’m ready!”

  “Who am I?”

  “What? You’re Angelique, Queen of…”

  “No! I’m Angelique, your daughter. A child, Nisroc, I’m just a little girl.”

  “Of course.�
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  “Don’t forget. Don’t mess this up for us, Nisroc. You’ll buy the tickets. Here…” She held out a soft bag filled with coins. “There’s enough there for our passage, but not much more. It’s taken me months to save it.”

  “What will we do once we arrive?”

  “Steal, what else? You’re not fit for work, except of the physical kind, and we’re NOT going with a circus, ever again. It’s filthy work, despicable. I hate it. In fact, when we leave I’m opening all the cages and letting the dumb animals free.”

  “Is that wise?” As soon as he’d asked the question he knew he’d made a mistake. He could never question her decisions, not ever.

  She paused in the stuffing of her things into the small chest. She became as still as a snake eying prey, eyes unwavering. Her pupils contracted, morphed into pinpoints of darkness. Just the look of her was terrifying.

  “You’re questioning me?”

  He hung his head. “I’m sorry, Angelique.”

  “Damn you and the reason I needed you. If only I hadn’t been trapped in this miserable child’s body!”

  He said nothing and would not look into her eyes.

  “Never mind. Just don’t ask so many questions. Just do what I tell you and we’ll be fine. You’ll gradually feel natural in that body and back in this world. Now help me lift this out of the wagon. It’s time to go.”

  ***

  Nisroc watched from the sidelines as Angelique undid the latches on the cages. It was dark and the only noise came from the wagons where other circus performers readied for their beds and sleep.

  First, the panther leaped to the ground and lumbered to Angelique’s side to lick her hand. The lions growled low in their throats, surprised to be free in the night. Then the monkeys were let out and they immediately scrambled off into the darkness. The elephant was unchained from the iron bar attached to the back of the lion cage. It shuffled off, following the monkeys’ lead. Finally came the white wolf, an albino captured in the far north and sold to the circus. It stood at Angelique’s side as if it would never leave until she gave it a command Nisroc didn’t understand. Then it strode off majestic into the night. When all the cages were open and all the occupants gone, only then did Angelique turn to him and gestured that he lift the little chest to follow her.