Beneath Ceaseless Skies #126

by Tobler, E. Catherine

  She carries me over the fence line inside the circus limits and sets me down near a metal barrel that is blazing with warmth and fire. The lioness keeps her distance, but I still stumble backward over a log which has been dragged close to the barrel. I bite my tongue and splutter blood as the siren nears. She strides forward on those talons, takes hold of the log opposite me, and perches.

  If beauty were a thing... No. If the impossible was made possible... No.

  Just as the wind has its own language, so too must whatever world this siren comes from. I cannot find the words for her. She watches me with her golden eyes, and I think that she must be draped in jewels to gleam the way she does but it is only feathers and firelight. I pick myself up and slide onto the log, wrapping my awkward wings around my shaking body. The siren does not waste time with hellos.

  “You are trying to be a bat,” she says.

  That isn’t entirely correct and I open my mouth, but the siren lifts a wing before I can speak.

  “You have been made into a bat,” she says next, “but were a little girl before this? Are still a little girl... but one with bat’s wings. Who has done this thing to you?”

  “Maman saved me.”

  The tone in my voice startles me. Startles the siren, too, because her shoulders lift, her head tilts, as if absorbing a blow. But then she smiles, and I am somehow telling her the story, the story of a girl so tiny she could fit through a whisper space between brick buildings if she had to (and she had to), a girl so tiny she could walk through puddles without leaving a ripple. A girl who did not know her parents but had been given up to the city, because the city seemed a kinder mother than one who spent all her money on tobacco and alcohol. This was a girl who was found by Maman Floss shivering in the rain until a velveteen coat was wrapped around her, until she was drawn into a beautiful car and carried away, to a house in the marsh filled with children like her, children who would be remade into things as beautiful as that car.

  “You are Gabrielle,” the siren tells me, and from her talon she tosses a scrap of paper, the poster with my face and name. “I am Agnessa.”

  Agnessa tells me her own story, about how she lived with others of her kind until one day hunters came, hunters with arrows which sliced the sky apart and sent her sisters to death. She alone survived the slaughter and lived because of the kindness of one man and one woman, these two emerging from a place she can still hardly believe, and at that she gestures to the circus which enfolds us. We are similar creatures, she tells me, having survived the worst things, but the difference is this: she has freedom, I have captivity.

  There is a denial in my mouth—it tastes metallic—but I know she is right. I had to sneak away to be here. I could not tell Maman I was coming, but even so, she knows, because Agnessa turns as we hear the crunch of tires over gravel, as that crimson car pulls up outside the line of the circus fence and Maman steps out to regard us.

  * * *

  Maman never yells. She takes me home, pressing fairy-soft apricots into my hands for the ride back. At the house, I worry the storm will come from Lucien but I don’t see him. Maman leads me into the kitchen, sits me on the stool beside the counter, and cleans my face. I am a mess of apricots and coal dust.

  Chauve-souris, she whispers. What if someone had seen you? What if someone had taken you from me? And when I don’t answer, she keeps on, her hands as tender as ever as they slide through my wet hair. I can feel each coil spring back as she passes through. I could not bear such a thing ever, ever.

  She encourages me to go back, insisting that Gordon accompany me. It will be difficult, she says, because Gordon cannot fly, but go, speak with the siren, learn her ways, test your wings. That same rosemary mint smell falls from her fingers as she strokes a shiver down my arm.

  I never dreamed of being allowed to go this way, and though the going is slower with Gordon we find a farmer who makes the trek every day and doesn’t mind a couple curious occasional passengers.

  For tales of our lives, he will take us. He thinks every word is a fiction. When I tell him of Maman’s grand head, of the way she lived her earliest years with it pressed between cloth-wrapped boards, he laughs, for the image of this young girl is a strange one. How did she see to walk, the farmer demands. She had no need, I say, because of what had been done to her legs, her arms. She could not walk as she was being remade.

  I, too, am being remade. Agnessa welcomes us with open wings. Every time thereafter, it is also a welcome. Gordon and I sit amid the performers as they practice. The gates are closed during the day to allow preparation for the evening shows. They will have a float in the parades, Agnessa tells us. They will shower the crowds with beads, coins, and if someone is very lucky, free tickets to all the circus shows.

  The marmalades are sweet and tart both, and while they don’t evoke a response me in other than hunger Gordon is drawn to tears with every bite. It reminds him of Paris, he says as he folds a bit of croissant together with orange marmalade and tears pressed between, and I never knew he was in Paris—don’t even know where that is, but I picture deserts, flowing sand. He says no more, swallowing the bread, tears and all. Beth who makes the marmalades only smiles like she knows. Jackson, who owns the circus, asks about Maman Floss and Lucien. He has seen the posters, he prompts. This reminds me I am to be sold.

  Jackson never asks about that. He only smiles like Beth as Agnessa leads me to the main tent and shows me the trapezes. They hang in pairs from the tent ceiling and we watch as the humans swing upon them, and leap, and soar. My heart aches for it and when Agnessa nudges me toward the long rope ladders that lead up, I stumble. I could not—

  Mother birds don’t push their young from the nest, Agnessa tells me as she walks me over. But her mother was not precisely a bird and so felt no such need to hold back and shoved her out with one strong wing. Agnessa screamed the whole way down but before she could hit the ground unfurled her wings and flew. Flew away and never looked back, until she was captured.

  The ropes sag under my weight, but soon I am at the top and no one there looks at me like I am out of place. They step back and give me the platform, one man holding a trapeze should I decide I want one. But I don’t. I look down at Agnessa and don’t think about anything as I let go and fall.

  The air catches me, or I catch the air, and I lift myself up with one stroke and then another. But my body is too heavy for my wings, so I let the air guide me down in slow spirals, until I touch my feet to the dusty ground.

  Agnessa beams. If beauty was a thing... No. If the impossible was made possible... No. There are just no words for that, nor when she has us climb upon her broad back and nestle between her wings. She smells like all the high places, where only wind and cloud go, and that’s where she takes us, up and toward Maman’s marsh house, where she leaves us, traces a wide circle in the sky, and is then gone.

  * * *

  Fat Tuesday. Tonight, the nuns stay inside to prepare for the coming of Lent, and even the moon has tucked herself away this year. I cannot see the stars for the amount of light that vomits up from the bedecked streets. So many lights and candles and it doesn’t matter that most people have no money; what little they had was converted to light, just for tonight.

  Amid the floats roams the circus and its people. Not creations. They have not been made the way Gordon and I have been and I think my eyes should run green with envy. Each is a natural thing: Agnessa the siren, Delilah the bearded lady, Prancer the man who is somehow as tall as rooftops; Foster who smells like the hot metal of fresh coins, and Sombra, who is a shadow against her sister Gemma until she turns into the light and Gemma the shadow. The lions prowl on leashes of cobweb and mist, and I can hardly stand the wonder. Gordon and I watch from the rooftops, trailing the procession. Maman Floss says she will meet us at the end, with hot cocoa because the night is cooler than any yet.

  But she meets us with more than that. I don’t notice until I’m on the ground, because the glide down is what I look forward t
o. Tonight of all nights, I can be me, because they will mistake me for a thing from the parade, possibly a wonder from the circus, so I need no cloak even though the air is cold. Gordon and I reach the last building and there is a rush of air and I unfurl my wings, to catch this and ride it down. I scoop this invisible air into the skin that Maman so lovingly stretched over my broken arms, the ordinary skin she made into extraordinary wings, and even when my feet touch down, I keep my wings spread. They ruffle like silk.

  Gordon takes the fire escape to the ground and he’s clapping for me, clapping and laughing until he sees Maman and the strange man at her side. This man is gaunt, his cheeks hollowed as though someone sucked him empty with a straw. But his coat is the color of Lucien’s car and this draws me forward when perhaps I should show more caution.

  Chauve-souris, Maman whispers and she draws me close, a hand under my chin. Her long fingers curl up along the side of my face to lift my gaze to that of the strange man. He looks at me without so much as a smile. He is intent, studious, and smells like dark leaves that have been dried in hot sun. When he takes hold of my hand to draw my wing back out, I pull back, but he doesn’t let me go, and that’s when I know. His eyes narrow and his hand hurts so badly around mine and he pulls me toward him. No.

  My time spent with Agnessa and the flyers has served me well. For a moment that lasts too long, I give in to his pull. My feet whisper across the ground, and when he has me closer he eases his touch because he thinks ah, she has understood and given up as the smaller animal will give in to the larger. No.

  This close in I tuck my wings and dive for the ground. He does not expect this, so I am gone as he turns, as Maman cries out.

  These cries are lost in the sounds of the parade. I run blindly from the man she would sell me to. I picture her mouth on Lucien and stop only once, to vomit every carnival treat I have eaten onto the street which still gleams with gold light. And then, running, flipping into the air when I feel an uprush. Putting more distance between me and everything I know until I stumble against a fabric wall, until I sink into straw and it swallows me and I can only think thank you, thank you, before I sob myself to sleep.

  Jackson finds me. I wake to find he has pushed the straw back, enough to allow me to breathe without inhaling it. There’s no panic when I sit up, when I pick straw from my skin. He offers me a wide cup and I drink as if I have roamed the deserts of Paris, and it’s sweet lemonade, the best thing I have ever known. Jackson already seems to know my plight.

  “Your bitch maman has my Agnessa,” he says and he brushes his hands together to remove flecks of straw. His fingers are bent as if his muscles seized up on him, as if he knows the pain in my own body from being changed. “You could stay here. Would never sell you.”

  He draws a poster from his shirt pocket and his face is a misery as he studies it. “She does this.” It’s not a question. I realize this is partly why they came, why Agnessa took me in. Jackson has known. “She takes children and she...”

  I can hear the pain in his voice when he can’t continue. Remakes us, I tell him. Breaks us as she was broken. And I know now it’s not normal, and it is like an awful waterfall through me, the truth rushing. All those children who left the house... where had they gone? I could name them all—but I don’t, because... Because. That Jackson understands this betrayal is plain on his face. He nods, folds the poster back up, slides it back into his shirt pocket.

  “Could stay here,” he says again.

  Maybe later, I tell myself because like it’s a dream, that idea. But not yet, not while Maman has Agnessa.

  * * *

  Jackson drives me out to the marsh, where the house sits amid the moss-draped cypress, where the crickets’ call is louder than nearly anything. I see Gordon in the yard but no one else. Jackson waits in the truck. Trusting me. Gordon hurries to my side, clutching at me, warning me how angry Maman is and Lucien too and they are looking for me, but they have also—

  There is an awful sound from the house, a body screaming like it is being torn in two, and I run because I know the sound a thing makes when it breaks. I don’t care about Maman and Lucien. I don’t even care about me right then because there is this feeling inside like I will die if I stay here, if I am sold, if I am not sold. I have glimpsed awful things—and there is more awful to come, for I can smell the blood—but I have also seen the beauty and the light; I have seen that the train tracks leave this place.

  Maman has Agnessa strung up in the room I hate, the walls bright with lanterns. Metal loops now descend from the ceiling, rise from the floor, and even emerge from the walls. Maman has tied Agnessa every which way, with rope that burns into her wings, her legs. I scream my fury at all of them, and Maman and Lucien stare—they have never seen me like this. I have never been like this. Maman tries to talk sense into me, but Lucien approaches with another loop of rope.

  This is where things go bad. Agnessa struggles in her bonds, shedding feathers in her fear. The lanterns shake with her fury, light wavering as if in wind. Lucien strides forward and his hands smell like oil, like angry bird. The rope rasps against my cheeks as he drops it over my head, loops it around my throat. I picture Maman bent before him, her own throat held tight in his fist as her mouth moves against him. Chavre-souris, she told me long ago, it is our way. But not mine.

  I only go slack enough to draw him in. He smiles—mon petite, he whispers and draws the rope into his fist. I slip forward, looping the rope around his wrists and pulling as I slide between his legs. With a tug, we both go down, and Maman screams. She can hardly stand it, but her nature is two-fold: the breaker, the healer. She staggers, clumsy in her panic, but I am not once loose of that rope.

  It’s deliberate when I sweep a wing into a lantern and send it crashing. Oil and flame lick up the wall, across the floor. The ropes which bind Agnessa catch. Maman shrieks and it’s not Agnessa she reaches for, but me. I dance away, throwing shutters open so the air floods in, feeds the flames. I dash more lanterns to the floor. The room is engulfed and the heat is tremendous as Agnessa’s ropes burn apart. She falls and her massive wings calm the fire a second before it surges back up.

  Agnessa and I flee the room as the ceiling crumbles and the house is madness around us. Casks and jars explode from heat, sending dwarves sprawling on uncertain legs. Gordon helps them up, small hands clasping small hands that should not be small from now own, lined palms being allowed to finally grow outside glass walls.

  This house is ever making things and now makes more Curious Who Used to Live With Maman. They emerge from their hiding places and we save all we can. As the fire consumes the house, the bed of Jackson’s truck becomes an ark for the strange, the misplaced. Gordon huddles in my arms under the canopy of Agnessa’s blood and ink wings, and we leave this place where we were broken and healed, returning to tents and train, and the promise of open skies.

  Agnessa shows them to me. One by one, she teaches me the language of the winds.

  Copyright © 2013 E. Catherine Tobler

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  E. Catherine Tobler is a Sturgeon Award finalist and the senior editor at Shimmer Magazine. Among others, her fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and multiple times previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Her first novel, Gold & Glass, is now available. For more, visit www.ecatherine.com.

  Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  LAST RITES FOR A VAGABOND

  by Justin Howe

  Wraiths, like dark whispers—

  And Beryl danced with them in the abandoned house, alder-wood sword in hand. Steady then. Masterful in deed and action. Not what he was, but something more: an exorcist.

  Feint. Dodge. Riposte. Wooden sword pressed against palm. Beryl invoked banishment, and the ectenic fluid sublimated from him, cold as glaciers.

  The deed done, the shakes began and the alder-wood trembled. Ten and I braved that cold to his side, running up the stairs into the house and
letting the old man collapse upon our shoulders. We got to him before the crowd outside could move. They idled still in the road.

  Beryl was less now than he had been. Diminished. Mastery gone. A slave again though none of those gawkers in the street knew it.

  “Do you have it, boy?” Beryl’s fingers gripped my shoulder like talons. My chest hurt from the cold, and maybe from something more. I wanted to believe there was a time once when he wasn’t like this. When his gift wasn’t bound to what he put in his pipe, and dying a piece at a time wasn’t so much a part of his life.

  “Yes, I have it,” I said, teeth rattling. “Everything’s fine. Let’s go.”

  Ten glared at the crowd gathering about the door. Beryl sagged against me. He’d been reduced down to bones and angles now.

  “Come on.” Ten was tugging him. “The shakes will be on him if we don’t hurry. Keep him steady while I clear this bunch. Let’s go. Make way. Make way.”

  “It’s gone. The ghost’s gone.” That was the house’s owner. He was stepping through the door as Ten shoved him back out. The man tumbled down the steps, landing on his ass in the mud. We stepped over him, not bothering to look back.

  The trick’s to stay away so long no one remembers the hurt from how you left.

  * * *

  That year everyone had trouble with specters, and you knew you were near an old battlefield by the way the ghost-lights flickered above them. Unable to compete with the black-coated exorcists banishing whole battalions of the deceased, Beryl worked the backwater provinces. We could hardly come to town and rent a room without someone telling us about their departed yet lingering kin.