A Circus of Brass and Bone

by Abra SW

  “Do you think they’ll have an elephant?” Robert whispered. “I heard they had one, but it wasn’t in the menagerie.”

  The answer was: not exactly. A monstrously elephantine bone and brass creature marched into the ring with two passengers, a dark-skinned man with a turban and a white man wearing a frock coat and top hat. The elephant’s long, ivory tusks gleamed menacingly, and glass tubes filled with bone aether lined its ribcage. William gasped and heard his reaction echoed by the crowd around him. If the mayor of Boston hadn’t already assured them that the circus aether devices were fine—if that mayor weren’t sitting right at the edge of the ring with his daughter—.

  The turbaned man raised a long stick and tapped the elephant’s skull. The elephant bent bone knees and lowered itself to the ground with a clatter of bone and metal. The befrocked man slid down the side of the elephant and bowed deeply to the crowd, doffing his hat as he did so.

  William squinted, but it wasn’t until the man spoke that he was sure it was the Great Doctor Panjandrum.

  “Welcome to the Loyale Traveling Menagerie, Hippodrome, Circus, and Museum of Educational Novelties,” Doctor Panjandrum said pompously. He still sounded like he was selling something. “Our aether-powered elephant, which you have seen, returned with us from India, along with—”

  He spoke a bit too fast and not quite loudly enough, and he kept looking off at one corner of the tent, until William looked in that direction too. There wasn’t anything interesting there, though. Doctor Panjandrum talked on. William fidgeted and glanced around the crowd. Most of them weren’t paying attention to the ring, either. William looked at the mayor. He expected to find him drumming his fingers, ostentatiously consulting his fob watch, or using one of the hundred other tricks the rich had for letting you know you weren’t worth their time.

  Instead, the mayor was simply watching his daughter. Seeing the mix of thankfulness and sorrow in his expression made William feel raw inside. The little girl laughed then, pointing at the ring. The mayor’s face rearranged itself into a mask of benevolent approval as his gaze followed her pointing finger.

  As Doctor Panjandrum pontificated, a clown had crept out of the shadows of the tent and snuck up behind him, placing each oversized shoe with excessive care. He put his finger to his lips to ask for silence, but a wave of laughter answered. Doctor Panjandrum halted, startled, and then continued his awkward and overlong introduction of the first act. Behind him, the clown pantomimed broad exaggerations of the doctor’s mannerisms.

  The clown was mid-strut, his fingers hooked under his suspenders, his chest puffed out, when Doctor Panjandrum whirled around and caught him in the act.

  The crowd held its breath as the two stared at each other.

  Finally, Doctor Panjandrum invited the clown into the center of the ring with a broad sweep of his arm. The clown shrugged his shoulders and wrung his hands until Doctor Panjandrum repeated the gesture. Then the clown stepped forward, struck a pose, opened his mouth to speak—and nothing came out. He stepped back, thumped his chest a few times, cleared his throat, and tried again. Nothing. He made a sad face and turned to Doctor Panjandrum, shooing him forward.

  Doctor Panjandrum started to speak and then stopped, startled, when the clown bent down and tugged at his feet. He shifted position until the clown was satisfied, opened his mouth—and stopped when the clown took hold of one of the doctor’s arms and rested it on the doctor’s hip, then raised his other arm in an oratory pose. The clown gripped the doctor’s shoulders and pulled up until the doctor straightened, then pushed his shoulders back a bit more.

  The doctor waited. When no further adjustments were made to his person, he began to speak. The clown reached out and pushed his palm hard against the doctor’s diaphragm, sending his voice booming out into the tent. Once the crowd’s laughter died, the improvement in the doctor’s voice was noticeable.

  And so the performance went, with Doctor Panjandrum announcing the acts and the clown correcting him to properly ringmasterly behavior. The doctor’s face reddened a few times, but maybe it was just from being in front of the hot lights.

  The aether elephant did tricks. The lady in the blue riding habit came out standing on the back of two horses, with one foot on each as they galloped around the ring, and then she rode through hoops of fire. A man stuck his head inside a lion’s mouth. Acrobats flipped and rolled and twisted in ways that made William wonder if they had any bones at all.

  During the grand finale, three trapeze artists swooped down on swings suspended from the tent poles. The girl in the green costume smiled hugely as she dove down out of the dark. William caught his breath. Their fragile limbs flashed through the air as they circled and dove and performed acrobatic twists high above the hard ground, with no net to save them if they fell.

  The girl in green flipped up into a one-armed handstand that had her audience cheering. Then her hand slipped.

  She plummeted. As one, the crowd gasped.

  William wanted to close his eyes. She would die. She would hit the ground and her back would break and she’d die in front of them, all twisted up with blood streaming from her eyes and her ears and her nose and her mouth and—the other trapeze artist swung down out of the shadows and caught her. He hung upside-down, anchored only by his feet, and he caught her arm as she fell past. He grimaced at the weight, but he didn’t let go. He drew her up until she could grasp the trapeze swing and pull herself up to stand on it, and then he hauled himself up to stand beside her—no fancy acrobatics this time!

  William gulped in air. He’d forgotten to breathe. His eyes smarted, and his cheeks were wet. He wiped the moisture away with the back of his hand, sneaking a glance at Robert to see if he’d noticed. Robert’s face was buried in his hands, and his back shook as if he were learning how to breathe again, and doing a poor job of it.

  William looked across the shadowed crowd. The mayor was also doubled-over, his face in his hands.

  As if he’d suffered like the poor!

  The mayor’s daughter patted his back. His only child, now.

  Well, and maybe he had.

  Robert chattered away as they left the circus tent, but William stayed quiet until they were outside, walking across the Common, and he saw Valentine leaning against a tree as if he’d been waiting for them. Valentine’s gang didn’t accompany him, but he held his shillelagh by his side.

  “Hello, Valentine.”

  “Hello, little man,” Valentine said, falling into step with them. “Did you see much that was interesting at the circus?”

  “Oh, all kinds of things!” Robert burst in. “There was a huge bone elephant, and they had the best clown!”

  William only nodded.

  “Did you have something you wanted to talk to the lads about, William?” Valentine asked.

  William shook his head. “Robert and I are just going back up Beacon Hill to stay with my mam and Dr. Fallon.”

  “That’s a good thing, that is,” Valentine said. “Being together is the only way we’ll all get through this.”

  ~ * ~

  Jonathan Matzke, the Man So Thin He Wears a Wedding Ring As a Belt!

  Boston, Massachusetts

  The next morning, the circus sat on benches and dug into a hearty breakfast. As a sort of celebration of their first breakfast on dry land again, the cook had fried up a mess of sausages and eggs to go along with their porridge, and the delicious smells made the day seem promising. The sky was bright and blue, and the trails of smoke above the city thinned as the fires died.

  Jonathan eschewed the porridge entirely in favor of a mound of eggs and so many sausages that the cook gave him a dirty look and muttered about ‘wasting good food’. Jonathan took his breakfast and sat on the bench near the equestrienne, the doctor, the fortune teller, and Ginger the clown.

  “I’m sorry, doctor,” Lacey said, “but I think you’re better off as our doctor than as our new ringmaster.”

  Jonathan stifled a laugh at the understatement.
He’d snuck out of the freak tent to watch part of the show, and the doctor was terrible. The ostriches would have done a better job.

  “To be honest, that’s a relief,” the doctor said. “I don’t know what I would have done without Ginger.”

  “Yes, Ginger, you did a very nice job getting the doctor to act as a proper ringmaster ought,” the fortune teller said. “Though I suppose that makes sense.”

  “You really saved the show,” Lacey said thoughtfully. “I’m sure we could find a fine suit that would fit you.”

  “Oh, no!” Ginger said. “You won’t get me up there with a naked face in front of all those wit—those people.”

  “You may be our best option.”

  “Oh no, I’m not!”

  “Then perhaps you’re the best one to find our new ringmaster and train him properly,” the fortune teller said, squinting at her sausages.

  “Divining from your sausages?” Ginger asked.

  “Just picking the best one.” She speared a fat sausage and bit into it with relish.

  A boy barely old enough to shave approached them hesitantly, a wrapped box in his hands. “Miss, are you the equestrienne?” he asked Lacey. “The mayor wanted you to have this.” He handed the box and a card to her and then retreated.

  “With thanks for your circus’ fine performance,” Lacey read. She opened the box and frowned. “A pen holder?”

  Jonathan fingered the mayor’s pen in his pocket and eyed the pen holder. It would be his as soon as nobody was looking at it.

  The doctor spooned up his last bite of porridge and stood. “If I’m not going to be the ringmaster—thank God—then I’d best practice my profession. And there’s one task I have to do that shouldn’t wait any longer.”

  “What’s that?” the fortune teller asked.

  “An autopsy.” The doctor walked away, leaving the circus members sitting in a spreading silence.

  Chapter 5

  ~* * *~

  The Harvest

  Connecticut, Midway Between Boston and New York

  The second wave of death swept across the nation before we even knew it existed. It was subtle, made of all the little individual deaths that would have been prevented only a few weeks earlier. The child who fell down a well because his father and mother and oldest sister had all died, and his brother wasn’t used to looking out for him. The executed prisoner whose reprieve would have been telegraphed in time, if the telegraphs still worked. The baker whose burned arm became infected, who died of blood poisoning because there was no doctor to insist on amputating before the infection spread. The sailor who started the steam engine on a boat that had been dry docked for repairs when the aether storm struck. The woman who went back into the fields too soon after childbirth because the family ox had died, who bled out among the furrows. The bystanders caught in the crossfire between rival bandit gangs who came to town and found there was no sheriff to stop them. The maid who switched on a gas light. The baby who starved in its own crib.

  Many people starved, or were so weakened by malnutrition that they died of common ailments.

  The cityfolk starved because few farmers hauled vegetables in by cart to sell in the market. The railroad let farmers ship their produce to the big cities. Cowboys herded thousands of cattle to the railheads, where they were transported East. But the aether wave ruptured all the locomotives’ steam engines. In one afternoon, the trains went from being the power that pushed civilization out to the frontier, to being very expensive sheds of scrap metal, filled with rotting produce and starving cattle.

  Food grew dear while we were in Boston, though our supply master saw the way it was going soon enough and bought all the non-perishables he could get his hands on. One night, the men went out and came back carrying barrels of flour and salt pork. I do not think they paid for them.

  The farmers were in hardly better shape. The railroads had allowed them to specialize—they could reach enough customers to justify growing only high-profit crops like strawberries, or grapes, or asparagus. Before the storm, it was an excellent way to prosper. After the storm—well, a body could try to survive on a diet of strawberries, but they’d find themselves shivering, weak, and afflicted with constant bouts of diarrhea. That was if enough of their crop could be harvested.

  In their frenzy to butcher and preserve the meat of the animals the aether storm killed, it took the countryfolk a while to notice that the storm had killed more than animals. Some trees bore withered fruit, while gobbets of exploded fruit flesh draped the limbs of others. One wheat stalk might be strong and firm, and its neighbor disintegrate to dust at a touch. Root vegetables fared better than aboveground plants, but without digging up the crop, it was hard to tell what amount would be edible. In farms across the (Rapidly-Less-)United States of America, the same amount of work gave a smaller yield.

  Ravenous insects attacked the harvest. Every bird in the air when the storm struck had died instantly. The insects survived in greater numbers, and they bred faster. Without enough birds to keep them in check, the insects ate and ate and ate.

  The humans tried not to starve, using a variety of tactics.

  We left Boston a couple of days after the Mayor instituted a rationing system. Surprisingly, no riots impeded our exit.

  We’d been on the road for a week and were halfway to New York. I was enjoying the brief freedom—my arm was free and my face turned up to the sun, though I was still mostly concealed. From my position, facing backwards in the second-to-last wagon, I looked out over the land. Only the trailing supply wagon, far behind us, marred the pretty picture made by Connecticut in autumn, and even that blemish would vanish from sight as we followed the curve of the road.

  Those riding ahead in the caravan could stare at horse butts and circus wagons covered with muddy canvas. I preferred my view of rolling hills. White oaks and red maples glowed dark red and scarlet in the sun. Even the pinkish-red clumps of sumac were lovely.

  In the distance, a flock of sparrows launched into the air. A small miracle. I find the world so precious and amazing that I sometimes think you all should be blinded and bound until you learn to appreciate it properly.

  A breeze played across my sun-warmed arm. I knew I’d be blistered with sunburn if I left my mushroom-pale skin uncovered for too long, but I didn’t care. The only sounds were the jingle of harnesses, the creak of our wagon wheels, and the occasional swear word or grunted comment from farther up in the wagon train. It might have been an uncomfortable silence to them, but I liked the absence of chatter that I wasn’t welcome to join. And I felt none of their discomfort at the idea that there was a murderer among us. I welcomed my companion-in-infamy, whoever he or she might be.

  I was watching the trees, and so I saw them first. Four men eased out of the woods behind us just as we rounded the bend that would hide them and the supply wagon from sight. I heard faint sounds of a scuffle, though if I hadn’t been listening for something, I wouldn’t have noticed it over the clop of the horses’ hooves.

  My silence was a habit of such long-standing that it took me precious moments to realize I should scream.

  “Bandits!” I shrieked, my voice rusty and horrible-sounding from disuse. “The supply wagon!”

  A clanking cacophony answered me as the Indian charged past us on that monstrous, beautiful bone elephant. He glanced in my direction. He had not known of my existence until that moment, but he did not flinch when he saw me. Our eyes locked—and then he was galloping away down the road.

  ~ * ~

  Dr. Christopher Janzen, the Great Doctor Panjandrum and His Amazing Panacea That Cures All Ills!

  Connecticut, Midway Between Boston and New York

  Dr. Christopher Janzen sat on his bunk, which rocked back and forth with the movement of the wagon. Sleep helped pass the tedious travel time, but since performing the ringmaster’s autopsy, dark thoughts circled around him whenever he lay down. He tilted a small glass bottle carefully as he measured out a few drops of laudanum to help
him sleep.

  “Bandits!” a woman screamed.

  The scream startled him, and his hand shook, spilling the laudanum on the floor. He looked at the wet drops seeping into the planks of the wagon. “Damnation,” he said mildly. His wagon lurched as the caravan halted.

  But—bandits? It was as well he hadn’t taken his sleeping medicine yet. He reached into his steamer trunk and brought out the black leather doctor’s bag he kept there. It would have been a useful prop for his Doctor Panjandrum act, but he never used it for that. He couldn’t bring himself to disrespect the memory of young Dr. Christopher Janzen, just out of medical school, filled with fresh-scrubbed pride and as shiny as his new patent-leather doctor’s bag.

  The bag Dr. Janzen took out of the bottom of his trunk now might be worn down, but it still held all the tools a proper doctor would need in a hurry. He might no longer be licensed to practice, but if he stayed out of the big cities, his patients didn’t care. As long as he had his tools, he was still a doctor.

  He stuck his head out the door of his wagon and into chaos. The caravan boiled with activity. The equestrienne slid a derringer into her pocket and mounted her white mare. The fat lady loaded a shotgun. The skeleton man jumped down from his wagon and ran off into the underbrush, a burlap sack in hand. A trapeze artist furiously unharnessed the horse from his wagon. The hostlers tried to lead balking horses around to circle the wagons—a move they hadn’t practiced recently, not expecting to need it this far East. A dozen men (mostly roustabouts) set off. They rode whatever nag hadn’t been harnessed or ran afoot. They carried mallets and crowbars or other weapons. The knife thrower wore a full bandolier of shining blades.

  Dr. Janzen scowled. Whatever lay around the curve of the hill, he would definitely be needed.