Pantomime

by Laura Lam

  "Do you wish for a gift for a special lady?" the woman asked, her voice authentically exotic. She was from Byssia.

  "I'm afraid I'm lacking in both coin and a lady," I said.

  "Come to me when you have found both, will you not?"

  I nodded and she smiled before turning her attention to a young pair new to love. The girl put a necklace to her neck and posed for the boy, tossing her head. His eyes glazed, and I knew he would buy it for her.

  I stood on the stretch of sand that had once been a carnival and wondered what to do next. I sat underneath one of the nearby docks and watched as, little by little, people left and went their various ways. The merchants packed up their remaining wares or empty boxes and men came and lowered the front flaps of their tents and stalls. Circus workers led animals away and put them into large carts that were parked on the road overlooking the ocean. The carnival returned to being a stretch of beach with a few lingering tents, and more litter and footprints than before. I should leave, and find shelter to spend the night. But I had nowhere to go.

  • • • •

  As the cold seeped into my bones and my teeth chattered, I saw the glass globes were still shining in the big circus tent, and I heard voices. A sign slung across the fastened entrance read "Circus closed."

  I crept around the tent until I found a rent in the thick canvas. I crouched and peered in. I did not know what sparked me to do so. The memory of the magic of the circus, undimmed even by the darkness that undercut the carnival? The image of the trapeze artists flying through the air?

  Mr Ragona stood to the side of the ring, beaming at those gathered around. The performers lounged in the stands, rubbing each other's muscles. The clowns sat in a rainbow of motley in the corner closest to me. Workers entered and left, stacking equipment into the corner of the tent.

  "Excellent work, me lovelies," Mr Ragona boomed, his lilting false accent replaced by gravelly Imacharan vowels. He swung his cane lazily. "Excellent work. An extra round to all tonight."

  The circus folk cheered.

  "Now, to business." Mr Ragona rubbed his hands together. "We got a tight schedule coming up, with no room for mistakes. A show each night here for two months, and then a few weeks in Cowl, three months in Imachara, and then we're done for the season. If we keep filling the seats like we did tonight, then we'll all have a hefty bonus in our pockets for our troubles by the time the rains come." Smiles split the faces of those gathered, though their exchanged skeptical glances showed they had all heard the words before.

  "But we can do better!" Mr Ragona said, pumping his fist for emphasis. "We can always push ourselves just that little bit more." He did not pronounce most of his "t"s. "We can add another flip to a routine, raise the tightrope, and teach them animals another trick. There's more seats to be filled, me lovelies."

  "Yes, yes. So you say after every show, Bil. What a surprise to hear the words tonight," the bearded woman said with a smile, and peeled off her beard. The moustache remained. I gasped, for though the beard was fake, the moustache was apparently genuine. The white clown, who was sitting in the seats quite close to me, raised his head and looked around suspiciously. I held my breath and ducked away from the gap for a few moments before putting my eye to it again.

  "And so I'm still waiting for a surprise of a full house, ain't I, my dear Bethany?" he said, winking at her. "I always like surprises." The white clown had gotten up and ambled toward my hiding place. I got up to retreat, but I tripped over a guide rope and landed heavily on my behind.

  "Ah," I said in pain. The canvas lifted and I stared up into the pasty painted face of the white clown.

  "Ah," I said again, for lack of something better. He grabbed me by the hand, lifted me up and dragged me into the tent.

  "Well, I found a surprise for you, Bil."

  4

  SUMMER: THE TRAPEZE

  "Find any retired aerialist and ask them what they miss the most. It is not the money, or the travel, the costumes, or even the show itself. It is the thrill of flying that they miss. The loss of flight is what haunts them until the end of their days."

  from THE MEMOIRS OF THE SPARROW,

  Aerialist Diane Albright

  For a moment, I was weightless, and time almost stopped. My stomach dropped. It was like every other jump I had taken. I grabbed the smooth wooden bar of the trapeze and swooshed through the air. I let out a laugh so loud I knew they could hear it below. It felt so much like flying.

  I used my momentum and swung back and forth across the top of the tent. I saw the girl, Aenea, on the platform, and so I swung the trapeze hard enough that I could land on the other. I jumped from the trapeze and crouched on the small wooden square. Aenea's mouth opened from across the rope.

  "Come on, you," she called, nervous. "Come down from there."

  "You climb down first," I said. "And I'll follow. I want to go down the ladder on your side."

  "Are you mad?" she called. "It's one thing to swing around on a trapeze, but you've not the training to balance on a tightrope!"

  "Who said anything about balancing?" I hooked my ankles and hands around the rope and worked my way slowly across. After travelling a third of the way, I let my legs drop. The girl screamed and the circus workers below cried out. I continued to work my way across using only my hands. The rope burned my hands and my shoulders protested.

  "Start climbing down," I said when I was closer to her. She gave me an inscrutable look and climbed down the rope ladder.

  I made it onto the wooden platform and stood up. People below clapped and cheered, and I bowed before climbing down to the ground. My face was burning crimson. What had come over me?

  Mr Ragona did not look amused. "Well, that sure was stupid," he said.

  "Perhaps, sir," I said.

  Mr Ragona turned to the aerialists. "Could he be trained?"

  "Easily," the man Arik said. Aenea hesitated, but nodded. "Yes."

  He stroked his chin, shrewd. "Where are your parents?" he asked.

  "Dead," I lied.

  The ringmaster narrowed his eyes, considering. "All right. You can stay, for a time. But you'll have to earn your way up. You won't be going near a trapeze again for quite some time." He waved to his workers.

  "Come on, get to your tasks."

  As I followed the crowd out, I clasped my hands together to stop them from shaking.

  The workers had made a giant bonfire on the beach. I stood in line by the clowns, unsure what exactly I was waiting for. The white clown looked over at me, his pale eyes unreadable.

  "You have no idea what you're getting yourself into," the white clown said. The other clowns looked at him in disgust, clearly annoyed that he was speaking to an outsider, and a new one at that. His voice was educated.

  "You could have let me be outside of the tent," I pointed out. "It wouldn't have occurred to me to walk in and try to join."

  "That would not have been as fun. Worked in your favor, in any case."

  "So it seems. Did you know what you were getting into, when you joined?" I asked.

  "Not in the least."

  He seemed serious and nothing like the carefree, bumbling clown I had so recently seen on stage. Now that he was not dragging me by his collar, I could see what he looked like. Up close, he was less ghostly. His thick white makeup had cracked about his eyes and mouth, the rouge and lip color garish. His hair was not naturally white – golden blonde roots sprung from his skull. The clown was younger than I thought. Twenty-two, twenty-four at the oldest.

  "I'm Micah Grey," I said, holding out my hand.

  He took my hand carefully, barely touching it, his fingers cold. "Drystan." He did not give his surname.

  I prepared to introduce myself to the other clowns, but they turned toward the front of the queue. I had been snubbed.

  The ghost of a smirk played around the edges of Drystan's mouth. The line inched forward and I took a step. The smell of chicken and vegetable soup reached us and my stomach clenched in hunger.


  "Where did you learn to be a clown?" I asked, and winced at how clunky and awkward the words sounded.

  He lifted an eyebrow at me. He had not expected me to continue the conversation. "I've always been a clown. A little funny, a little strange."

  Drystan stared at me solemnly and then he grinned so wide that it looked like his face was about to split in two. His bulging blue eyes showed the whites, almost ready to pop from his head, and they vibrated in their sockets. I felt a strong urge to back away, and then run.

  He relaxed into a good-natured grin and slapped me on the shoulder. The other clowns had turned to sneer at me.

  "You reacted better than the last new member," he said. "Your eyes only went as big as saucers. The other one screamed and ran straight away and didn't talk to me for a week. Maybe you'll last a bit longer than him."

  I laughed, relieved. I was tempted to ask what happened to "the other one," but I was smarter than to rise to that bait.

  "There's no point in queuing," the white clown said. "The cook won't give you any food."

  My stomach clenched in another hunger pang. "Why not?"

  "You have to last the night, first. You'd be surprised how many say they wish to join just for the free meal. You'll get breakfast."

  I swallowed and turned away from him, and I made sure to sit on the opposite side of the bonfire. The flames would part and I would catch glimpses of Drystan, his whiteness tinged orange and pink from the flames, laughing with his motley fellows.

  No one else spoke to me. They milled and divided themselves into groups. The workers, with their grubby faces and much-patched clothing, congregated on the edge of the circle of firelight. The men were mainly in their thirties to forties, and beginning to redden in the face from their nightly drink. They did not even glance in my direction.

  The performers, besides the clowns, also kept to themselves. The fire-eaters appeared to be quite friendly with the jugglers, lounging close to the fire and speaking with their mouths full. Everyone held rough mugs of beer, drawn from the large barrel by the food. The tanned acrobats talked to each other in foreign tongue so fast I could not tell where sentences began or ended. The male animal trainer had a particularly tame otter wrapped around his neck, the little whiskered face asleep beneath the man's chin as he spoke to the female trainer.

  I assumed the woman with the snake twined around her neck was the snake woman from the tent. She said hello to the trainer, but kept her distance so the snake would not be too curious about the otter. She wandered over to two other young, pretty women. I knew immediately that they were the women from the other tent. One was impossibly blonde, and the other had hair of deepest black, both elaborately styled. They looked as alike as sisters and had bodies any male would want to see unclothed. They were smiling and jostling each other. Many of the men stopped and flirted with them, and the women flirted in return, throwing their heads back and laughing, obviously wellaware of the effect they had on the men.

  The freaks formed another small nucleus near the clowns. The four-legged woman and the giant man chatted. The leopard lady read a book in the light of the fire, and Poussin the chicken man napped against a log. The bullman, Tauro, sat with them, but focused only on his food.

  I was startled when the two aerialists sat down beside me. They had changed from their costumes and were both clad in loose shirts tucked into trousers. The girl, Aenea, still managed to look feminine despite the male garb. The fire outlined her features and made her glow.

  The man called Arik looked much older than he had on stage. His handsome, tanned face was lined, and he moved a little stiffly. His smile was warm, as was his hand when I clasped it in greeting.

  "Arik," he said.

  Aenea also took my hand in a strong grip. Her hands were rough and calloused. "Aenea."

  "Micah." Following her lead, I did not give my last name. It was refreshing; surnames meant so much in my past.

  "Here, I stole this for you," she said, passing me a roll filled with cheese and apple.

  "Thank you," I said, taking it from her.

  "Where did you learn to climb like that?" Aenea asked. Her voice had a working-class accent, but she spoke well.

  "Here and there." I took a bite.

  Aenea rolled her eyes. "Nice try, but you'll not get away with vagueness. You have the strength and balance, and you barely hesitated at all before you jumped, even though you were well over sixty feet off the ground."

  I swallowed. "I climb a lot. And I have taken dance lessons since I was very young."

  "What sort of dance? What did you climb?" Aenea asked, undeterred as a dog with a bit of rawhide. Arik smiled, obviously amused by her interrogation.

  "I did different types of dance." I could not very well say ballet and court dancing. "I climb scaffolding. And trees," I added.

  "Ah, rich boy," Aenea said, nodding, and I winced at my blunder. The only trees in the cities were in parks clustered in the rich sections of town, and the poor could never afford to travel into the countryside or former colonies.

  "Merchant class," I said, quickly. "My parents live beyond their means."

  "They 'live' beyond their means?" Aenea asked. "I thought you said they were dead." She was quick.

  "Uh, they are. I am not used to… referring to them as gone." I endeavored to look morose.

  Aenea winced. "Oh, I'm sorry! I'm cruel. I should not have pointed it out." She looked slightly disappointed, as if it would be a better story were I a rich runaway. I supposed it would be.

  "How long have you been with Mr Ragona's circus?" I asked.

  She looked up as she calculated. "Six years."

  "You must have started when you were young."

  "I was eleven, yes."

  Arik smiled. "Ah, the youth. You're how old, Micah?"

  "Sixteen."

  "I've been in circuses longer than both your ages added together," Arik said. "I joined when I was ten."

  "You've been travelling all this time?"

  "Most of the time, yes. The winters I rent a room here in Sicion from my good friend, but nearly every spring, summer, and autumn I'm swinging from the trapeze. There have been a handful of seasons I have not been able to. Injuries, you know."

  "What sorts of injuries?"

  "Torn ligaments, sprains, a break or two."

  "From falling?"

  "No, I've never fallen," he said, drawing himself up in pride. "And I never will. The break was from landing badly, the others were done in the air." Landing badly was not much different from falling in my mind, but I kept silent.

  "I won't fall," I blurted.

  "Of course not," Aenea said. "We'll be training you."

  "Really?" I said. "Mr Ragona wasn't just teasing me? I'm not too old?"

  "Really," she said. "You're older than most to start training, but Bil has a keen business eye, or he wouldn't have taken you on. You've the strength and the skill. But you need the patience. You will not be going up on that trapeze again until you're good and ready, and so don't even think about it until then."

  "Of course," I said. We'll see about that. I was itching to fly again.

  "Will we be a three-person act, then?" I asked. There were only two trapezes.

  Aenea and Arik exchanged a glance.

  "No," Arik said. "I'm slowing down and I'm tiring of the circus life. I'm going to finish this season, maybe next, and then I'm taking my savings and buying the little room I rent in Sicion in the off-season, and that's where I'll stay. I'm hoping having you trained and able to replace me will make Bil more willing to let me go. He must realize I won't stick around much longer, but all the same…" He had pitched his voice low so that it would not carry.

  "He doesn't want you to leave?"

  "He's not good at letting go of people he thinks are valuable. Not good at all."

  The clown's words came back to me. What was I getting myself into?

  The first night, I slept in Arik's cart. Arik lit a candle and set it on the clot
hes chest. He made a pallet for me and gave me his spare quilt. The cart was barely big enough for him and his belongings. With my pack and my pallet, the floor disappeared.

  "We'll lay your pallet atop mine in the morning, so there's more room for dressing and whatnot," Arik said. I smiled at him in response.

  Arik gave me a short candlelit tour of our shared abode. Despite the small size, the cart was immaculate. Floorboards swept and scrubbed, the pallet fresh, the bed linens laundered. Shelves on the wall displayed several tattered volumes of plays and a history of the circuses of Ellada and the Colonies. Arik picked up a collection of work by the famous playwright Godric Ash-Oak.