A Circus of Brass and Bone

by Abra SW

  Rajesh hesitated for a moment. Then he said, “Yes.” No doubt he wondered what his life expectancy would be after he was no longer needed, but he’d correctly decided it was longer than it would be if he gave the wrong answer now.

  “Rajesh—or whatever your name really is—will you travel with the circus, but this time truly be one of us? Will you promise to put the interests of the circus first and to keep no other secrets from us?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “That was too easy,” Ginger said. “Will you swear it on the lives of your mother and your sisters?”

  This time, there was a long pause before Rajesh spoke. “I swear on their lives,” he said.

  Ginger tucked his bowie knife back in his waistband. “That’s all right then,” he said, his tone casually matter-of-fact. He sat down beside Rajesh and dangled his feet off the edge of the pier. “Pretty night,” he commented, “if you can ignore the smell.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.” Rajesh sounded stunned. “That’s it? I say I’ll live my life as a different man, and we’re done? I just … start again? It’s that easy?”

  “It’s not that easy, but it is that simple. People do it all the time.” Ginger allowed himself a small smile. “I’ll grant you, usually it’s not at knife-point. Though that happens more often than you might think.”

  “Ah.” Rajesh stared out over the bay as if he were seeing it for the first time. “So where will we be traveling to next?”

  “I asked around. There are rumors that Fort Augusta in Pennsylvania has been treating those afflicted by the aether sickness.”

  “You think they have a cure?”

  “The only way to know is for someone to go find out, and we’re the best ones for the job.”

  “A rumor is a slender thread to pin your hopes on.”

  “I have to pin them to something. Maybe if we have enough strands of hope, we can braid them into a rope strong enough to lift us all.”

  Rajesh snorted. “Now that sounds like a circus trick.”

  Ginger smiled and watched the moonlight dance over the waves. “That it does.”

  ~* * *~

  ~ * ~

  Also by Abra SW

  To enjoy other stories by this author, writing as Abra Staffin-Wiebe, visit her website at http://www.aswiebe.com.

  ~ * ~

  Thank you for reading my book! If you enjoyed it, won’t you please take a moment to leave me a review at your favorite retailer or book review site? I’ll wait right here.

  …Done? Great. Turn the page to find other extras, including a special bonus story that takes place after the events of A Circus of Brass and Bone!

  ~ * ~

  Extras

  Bonus Story

  What Happens Next

  Cast of Characters

  Glossary

  The Story Behind the Story

  Essay: You Might Not Have to Die

  (With Discussion Questions)

  Acknowledgments

  Bonus Story

  (Rough Cut)

  Bradley Roberts, the Negro So Strong He Can Carry a Mule Under Each Arm!

  Approaching Fredrickston, Pennsylvania

  “Vultures!” called the conjoined sisters riding the elephant with Rajesh, the Indian mahout.

  “Halt!” shouted Rajesh. “Stop!”

  Vultures? Bradley’s stomach tightened and he found himself running forward even as the implications filtered into his consciousness. Lacey galloped past him to speak with the Indian mahout at the head of the procession.

  Rajesh leaned down from the elephant’s back to talk to Lacey. “The girls saw the birds,” he was saying when Bradley caught up with them. “Vultures circling, they say.”

  “Turkey vultures,” the girls said in unison.

  “When I looked through the spyglass, I saw crows boiling up into the air and then settling back down,” Rajesh continued.

  “That’s bad,” Lacey agreed.

  “If there’s only a few vultures—” Bradley interrupted.

  The mahout and the equestrienne both looked at him with pity on their faces. He stopped.

  “The rest are most likely on the ground,” Rajesh said. “I doubt there are many survivors, if the carrion birds are feeding freely.”

  Bradley shook his head.

  “You have my condolences,” Lacey said. The words were stiff, but a terrible pity burned in her eyes.

  “No. No, you’re wrong. You don’t see that’s not possible.” He couldn’t seem to stop shaking his head. “We’re survivors, my family.”

  “We need to scout to see if the danger’s gone,” Rajesh said to Lacey. “We need supplies, weapons, but we may need to swing wide around the town if the aether-sick monsters are feeding.” He ignored Bradley, as if they weren’t discussing impossible things right in front of him. It wasn’t possible that his family was gone. It wasn’t.

  “I’m fastest on a horse,” Lacey said. “I’ll go.”

  Rajesh nodded. He straightened and reached down to pluck a narrow brass tube from beside his seat. “Telescope.” He tossed it to her. “Keep your distance.”

  She nodded grimly. Then she clapped her heels to her mare and galloped away toward Fredrickston, the small town of free blacks that held all the family Bradley knew. Toward the carrion birds.

  “She doesn’t need to scout,” Bradley said to Rajesh. It was difficult to talk; his lips felt numb. “They’re fine. I’m sure they’re mostly fine. They could fight off an attack. I’m sure it’s safe now. I’ll go look.” Yes, that was a good idea, he decided. Lacey might think there was nobody there. A well-bred white girl couldn’t understand how well successful escaped slaves could hide. They could have fought off monsters and then hid. That would make sense. He nodded. “I have to look. They’re probably hiding. They won’t know it’s safe.”

  “We don’t know it’s safe,” Rajesh told him. “Wait until Lacey gets back.”

  “They might need me.” Bradley stared around with blind eyes. Everything blurred together. Horse. He needed a horse. He stumbled over to the closest wagon hitch.

  “Hey! That’s my horse!” protested Leah, the aerialist.

  He ignored her. His fingers fumbled over the buckles. His world narrowed down to the worn leather straps. One buckle came undone, and he moved on to the next.

  The horse was almost free when the thud of hoofbeats signaled Lacey’s return. He didn’t look up. Whatever she might say didn’t matter, he told himself, because she didn’t know where to look. He heard her sigh.

  “Dead,” she said flatly. “They’re all dead. The doors are all caved in. There are bodies lying out in the main street. They’ve been there some time. The vultures are feeding undisturbed. There’s nothing alive in that town, not even a dog.”

  The last fastening resisted him. It. Just. Wouldn’t. Go. His hand tightened. His muscles flexed. Pain radiated through his hand, leather creaked, and the buckle ripped free. He dropped it and hauled himself up on the back of the horse, ignoring the burning ache in his hand where the leather strap had cut into his palm. Blood dripped down his fingers and stained the snow. He bent low over the back of the horse, wrapped his hands in its mane, and kicked it into a gallop. He plunged forward along the winding dirt road that led to Fredrickston. Behind him, the aerialist shouted a protest and the mahout called out, “Wait!”

  Bradley smelled the town before he saw it. His stomach churned at the stench, like raw pork left too long in the sun. The horse tried to turn away, but he jerked its head back and goaded it on. It went reluctantly, dancing sideways at the slightest rustle in the trees.

  Then they rounded the last bend in the road, and he saw home. Except it wasn’t home. Couldn’t be. Home had hardworking families and well-maintained houses. Home had children playing in the street. Home didn’t have broken doors half-hanging on their hinges, or snow drifting across abandoned thresholds. Home didn’t have gnawed corpses sprawled across doorsteps, or a carpet of carrion birds glutting themselves on the
dead.

  “Go!” he bellowed, waving his arms at the birds. “Fly away, you horrible—agh!”

  Tested beyond endurance, his horse reared. He tumbled off, landing on the ground with an impact that knocked the breath out of him. He lay there, struggling to breathe, listening to the horse’s hoofbeats recede as it bolted back up the road. A crow hopped closer to him and tilted its head inquiringly.

  Bradley gritted his teeth. He pushed himself up from the ground. He stood, swaying. He bent over to brace himself against his knees. In front of him, he saw white snow marred only by the bloody handprint he’d left beside a fallen branch. He stared at that handprint until his head cleared and his breathing evened out, and then he looked up.

  The vultures and crows had gone back to their feeding. They ignored him entirely. Bradley’s jaw tightened. The birds thought humans had no power to stop them. Anger bloomed in him. He grabbed the fallen branch in front of him and ran forward, shouting something unintelligible even to himself. Crows exploded into the sky in a startled cloud. He swung at the fleeing crows and missed. The vultures raised their heads, staring at him with beady eyes. He charged them. They flapped their wings and took to the air.

  He stopped in the middle of main street, panting. Vultures wheeled above. Crows huddled in the trees, watching him. Waiting.

  Bradley remembered shooting marbles in the street in front of the dry goods store with the other boys. They always started playing under the giant pine tree that grew in the center of Main Street, but their game always expanded until they took up half the street. They’d kneel in the dust and play for swirlies and aggies and milky cat’s eyes until somebody chased them out of the road.

  A crow perched on the railing in front of the dry goods store now, a pale white marble in its beak. A pink thread of flesh dangled from it. Bradley turned from the sight and stumbled away from the main street, trying not to look at the corpses sprawled through the town.

  Behind his Aunt Hattie’s house, laundry was hanging out to dry, though half the clothes had been blown down. When he was thirteen or so, Aunt Hattie had always sent him out to hang up the laundry, despite his protests that laundry was women’s work. Sheets blew in his face as he walked between the laundry lines. A lost half-smile bent Bradley’s lips.

  He almost tripped over the body. He put his hand out to catch himself against the laundry line. The cord cut into his injured palm, but he didn’t notice the pain. A young mulatto girl lay swathed in fallen drifts of linen. Blood and other liquids had soaked through the sheets and crusted them to her body. Hollows where there should have been curves promised horrors unseen.

  Her face was untouched, and that was the worst thing. Bradley had never met her, but she bore a strong resemblance to his Aunt Hattie. Recognizing a new member of his family this way created a tangled-up knot of grief and wistfulness in his heart. He should have come back to visit earlier. Now it was too late.

  They can’t all be dead. He called out and no-one answered, but they were probably all hiding. His family hadn’t survived slavery to end like this. He just had to find the survivors, that was all.

  He pushed back the village well cover and squinted into the darkness. Something pale bobbed in the water far below, but nothing answered his call.

  He went to the little hollow covered by bushes where he’d always hidden when his older sister was on a cleaning rampage, or if his Papa found out he’d done something bad. He squatted down and pushed the bushes aside.

  Movement. Bradley tensed.

  A mouse popped its head up out of a nest of leaves and squinted at the invader of its home. Bradley let the bushes fall closed again and stepped back. Life went on, after all.

  Then he saw the furrows in the dirt. Four crooked lines dug deep near the roots of the bushes and then faded away, as if somebody had scrabbled at the dirt as they were being pulled out by the ankles. It would have taken a small hand to leave marks with that narrow of spacing between them: a woman’s hand, or a child’s.

  Bradley was barely old enough to remember when his family fled slavery, but he found his memory of their hiding places coming back to him as he searched Fredrickston for survivors. He investigated root cellars and ransacked closets. He poked his head into dusty attics and belly-crawled under porches. He held his breath and lowered a lantern into latrines. He tapped walls and stomped on floors, listening for the telltale hollow sound of a hidden passage. He peered inside chicken coops and tossed aside hay bales in case there was room for a person between them.

  He found only gnawed corpses and the remnants of their struggle for life: bloodstains, smashed furniture, and weapons twisted into scrap metal and tossed away.

  Only one of the aether-maddened monsters had been killed, and that by his own hand. Bradley found the body inside a small, whitewashed house. A woman’s mauled body sprawled across the bedroom threshold. Her soft innards had been devoured, and large chunks of flesh had been chewed off. Half her face was gone; the half that remained bore a peaceful expression, as if death had erased some unendurable knowledge. A hand-carved wooden cradle sat beside the blood-splattered family bed. The aether-sick man lay on the bed, clutching two rifles pointing at where his face had been. He must have rigged both of them to fire at the same time to be sure his brain was completely destroyed. It would have taken great willpower to clear his head long enough to follow that plan. He had been deep in the grasp of the aether sickness. His clothing was torn at the seams where muscles bulged through. Bone spurs erupted from his shoulders. The hands that gripped the rifle barrels were twisted into clawed monstrosities. Only something truly terrible could have shaken him loose from the madness long enough to kill himself.

  Bradley turned away and left the room.

  ~ * ~

  Dainty Miss Eads, Who Flies Through the Air Like a Bird of Paradise!

  Fredrickston, Pennsylvania

  Leah tugged nervously on her orange hair ribbon as the circus wagons rolled into Fredrickston. Bodies sprawled everywhere. It was worse than Boston. Here, nobody was left to bury the dead.

  “They’re all dead,” murmured Pamela, her fellow aerialist.

  Before Leah could answer her, Michael echoed her unspoken thought. “There ain’t even anyone to bury them.”

  Left without anything meaningful to say, Leah shot a sideways scowl at the interloper in her wagon. She should have been the one with the profound answer to Pamela’s comment. This was the aerialists’ wagon, after all. Michael should have been with his precious monkeys.

  Her irritation grew when she realized that neither Pamela nor Michael noticed her displeasure. Pamela stared adoringly up at Michael, and Michael gazed down at her with an idiotic smile that was quite inappropriate for their surroundings.

  The circus was trapped among the dead. The equestrienne may have scouted ahead to check for danger, but nobody really knew if it was safe. One of those monsters could be lying in wait. Ahead of them, there was a loud bang like the slam of a door. Leah’s muscles tensed, just as they always did before she dove off the trapeze platform, but there was nowhere for her to fly to.

  A horrible howl echoed through the town. Leah flinched and curled into a protective ball.

  The howl broke apart into ragged sobs. Leah uncurled enough to peek over her knees.

  The strongman staggered out of a small whitewashed house farther down the main street. He clutched his hands to his chest, as if he were trying to cover some terrible wound. Leah held her breath, waiting for the monster to burst out of the house and attack them.

  A long minute passed. She couldn’t bear to look. She closed her eyes and turned to bury her face against her sister aerialist’s shoulder, but there was no shoulder there for her to rest against. She leaned forward more. Still no shoulder. She cracked one eye open.

  Pamela had leaned away from her! Her dearest friend, closer to her than any sister, had chosen to nestle up against that—that animal handler. Why, he was hardly better than a roustabout!

  The insta
nt she had that thought, Leah felt ashamed, but it didn’t take away the hollow of hurt that Pamela’s desertion left.

  At the head of the circus caravan, the Indian mahout threw the lever that transformed his curious brass-and-bone elephant into a fearsome war machine. He reined the beast in front of the wagons and waited for the attack. Leah wrapped her arms around herself. She wished she had a rifle, and that she knew how to use it.

  The other circus members readied their weapons and waited. The only sounds were the impatient stamping of the horses and the disjointed sobs of the strongman. In the distance, a crow cawed.

  “If there were monsters here, they would have attacked by now,” the Indian mahout said eventually. He moved the elephant out of its guard position, but Leah noticed that he didn’t transform it back into its peaceful configuration. “Causing a false alarm is highly irresponsible!”

  The veiled fortune teller stepped down from her wagon and walked toward the strongman, who had collapsed to sit slumped in the center of the street. “Let me,” she said to the mahout. “He must have seen something terrible. The poor man.”

  In the aerialists’ wagon, Pamela shivered and quietly asked, “Do you think we’re safe?”

  “You heard the mahout,” Michael said. “They ain’t here. They moved on. Like wolves looking for new prey.”

  “New prey—that’s us!” Pamela shuddered and leaned closer to Michael.

  Leah felt a spurt of irritation. “So what you’re saying is that nobody knows if they are here or not, and nobody knows where they might have gone. That’s terribly useful!”

  “You think you can do better?” Michael demanded.

  “Maybe I can!” Leah ignored the hurt look that Pamela gave her and jumped down from the wagon. She stalked down the main street, past the strongman and the fortune teller, to a kind of island in the middle of the street where a giant of a pine tree towered above a bench and a hitching post.