by Sarah Noffke
Two more months passed before he looked at the walker and said to himself, “I don’t really need that.” Soon his physical therapy would begin and he was expected to spend several hours a day building the muscles that had atrophied along with the skill that he once had to walk. He was a baby gearing up to take his first step. And although the X-rays reported he was finally ready to start physical therapy, Fanny refused to allow him. The healer had said he couldn’t begin therapy until he achieved one important goal: walking in dream travel form.
Jack pressed his eyes closed and focused his attention on the location. He hadn’t dream traveled in months, not since Nashville. He’d used all usual dream travel sessions to meditate. Like the last time he dream traveled Jack landed in a lying position on the grass of the stadium of Olympia. He was resting on the site of the first Olympics in Olympia, Greece. It was a location he and Zuma and Jasmine had practiced in many times. It had been Dave’s idea. “To be an athlete you must practice in the place where the greatest people made inspirations we still follow to this day. To be great, practice where the great practiced.” The memory of Dave’s words and the experience of Jasmine in that place tightened Jack’s heart. He wasn’t going to be another victim. Knight’s abuse had to stop. He would no longer be walked upon.
Jack looked not at his outstretched legs but rather at the heavens. “Dave, you believed in me in a way I couldn’t understand before, but now I get it. I am like the gods the athletes first competed for. I’m great! I’m powerful. I can do anything,” he said aloud to the sky. Then Jack pressed his hands behind him into the sandy ground. He pushed up, pushing his legs underneath him the way he practiced with Fanny. She had him do this from the floor, knowing he had to get up before he could move forward, both in a literal and metaphorical sense.
Jack took a breath and felt his knees bend. That had always been the easy part. It wasn’t the movement of the legs, but rather their structure that had prevented them from supporting Jack’s weight. That was not the thought Jack had in that moment. He wasn’t thinking of the past. Jack’s thoughts were firmly hinged on a reality that hadn’t come to pass yet. One that he saw clearly.
“This is possible. This is easy,” he said through gritted teeth. His foot slipped under his weight, making his rear end fall back on the earth. He drew in a heavy motivated breath.
“I can do this.” And again Jack saw himself doing it. Saw in his mind his legs easily negotiating under him until he stood. Jack pressed his eyes shut, pressing the visual firmer into his cortex. His hands ached beside him from the exertion of putting so much of his weight under them. He pulled his feet in close and decided to make a fast attempt. Not an attempt, he corrected himself. I will stand. I can.
And then his feet bore more weight than he’d managed since the accident. He pressed his hands under him until he felt steady on his legs and pushed up to a standing position. Jack wanted to look down at the legs under him that held him up, but he knew that would reek of his astonishment. Instead, he looked out at the stadium where athletes performed great feats for the gods. Competed, showing their incredible speed and agility.
“I can walk. Nothing is stopping me,” Jack said and like a bolt falling into place, opening a door, a new pathway fully opened inside his mind. A new neural network had been paved and it operated with a clear flow, electrifying the potentials that had died before. Jack’s foot rose only an inch, but it was all he had intended. He brought it forward another inch and set it down. Again he didn’t act surprised by this reality within the dream travel realm. Instead he said to himself, Just as I suspected, I can walk. But a smile did join that thought.
The next movement was bolder; his other foot rose higher, reaching further. And it was followed by another step, not graceful, but a step nonetheless. And then Jack was walking in his dreams, not because his muscles could physically support him. That would take much effort in the physical world. Jack was walking in his dreams because he believed without a single doubt that it was possible. He looked out at the grounds. Clamped his feet together as he had done so many times before in practice. And then in a firm standing position he made himself levitate off the ground until he was five feet in the air. Jack also hadn’t been able to use his dream travel gift because he was so scarred by the pain of not walking, but now the acrobat hovered off the ground, higher than he usually dared to rise from the earth. He then lifted his arms out and spun like a ballerina on top of a music box, all grace and control. Then the acrobat raised his eyes to the sky. “For you, Jasmine. For you, Dave. For me. I won’t give up. I am a god,” he said with pure conviction. No longer a victim to pity, Jack felt something he had never known. He felt his own worth. He finally felt equal to the greatest of beings. No longer did he think of himself as “less than” in comparison to his brothers. He was Jack Fuller, the guy who would walk again.
Chapter Forty-Five
Titus’s head lay cradled in his hands when Fanny entered his office tent. This was now known as the “Titus is frustrated” stance, and his back and neck ached from constantly taking the position.
“You know I’ve never told you how to do your job, Titus,” Fanny said, a look of disapproval written on her usually accepting face.
“Does this mean you’re about to start?” he said, his voice muffled due to his mouth being obstructed by his hands.
“Really, how much more are you going to wallow in this self-pity? You bucked up when Knight first showed up. I even thought you might make a stand, but now you’re looking incredibly defeated,” Fanny said, the drawl of her words lengthening due to her emotion.
Titus slowly brought his head up, his eyes carrying a sobering expression. “He killed Jasmine.” The he didn’t have to be detailed. They both knew Sebastian did it, under Knight’s orders. “I can’t even protect my circus members. Ian says we can’t give up. That we defeat him by staying, but how many more are going to die first?”
“I know,” Fanny said, fretting her hands in the tail of her button up shirt. “It was a senseless death.”
“And I can’t prove a thing. All I have is Zuma’s testimony that Knight made a threat and she saw Sebastian outside her trailer that night,” Titus said.
“But you can’t release that without putting Zuma in jeopardy,” Fanny said. They’d been through this dozens of times over the last few months, never finding a solution.
“I know!” Titus said too loud and then grabbed the back of his neck which spasmed. “Ouch,” he said with a grimace.
“Oh, look at what you’re doing to yourself,” Fanny said, stalking around the table dividing them. “Let me work on that for you.” The healer didn’t ask permission before laying her hands on Titus’s long neck. He instantly let out a groan of relief.
“There’s so much abuse that the circus is having to endure. And he’s so good at his manipulation that I can’t prove anything. I even called the authorities about Knight’s kids,” Titus said, rolling his head around as Fanny massaged him from behind.
Fanny’s hands paused on Titus’s neck. “You did what?”
“I thought I could prove he’d kidnapped or enslaved them.”
“What happened?”
“The sheriff couldn’t find anything. The semis are all suitable living quarters now,” Titus said.
“Where did those kids go?” Fanny asked, bemused.
“I don’t know. They just disappeared one day.”
Fanny shook her head before pressing her hands into Titus’s neck, massaging away the tension with the pressure and her healing ability. “Oh, I tried to help those kids. To get close to them, but the supervisors and surrogates kept them well-guarded.”
“Well, they’re all gone now,” Titus said, blowing out a long breath, like the tension released from his neck was torture to let go of. “Only Knight, Sebastian, and Gwendolyn remain. And they keep creating problems I can’t fix. And the circus is doing well. Bringing in enough profits to flourish and yet the show we put on doesn’t promote the mes
sage Dave wanted.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Titus tilted his neck to the side, allowing Fanny to work deeper into the muscles, his eyes closed. “If you want to start telling me how to do my job, then go ahead.”
“Titus, we have to outmaneuver Knight and the only way to do that is to actually get one step ahead of him.”
“How do I do that?”
“You start by facing these fears. By summoning the strength I know resides in you,” Fanny said, her usually sweet words demanding.
Titus reached up and laid his hand over Fanny’s, making her pause. “Thank you for believing in me. I don’t know where I’d be without you.”
She looked down from her position standing behind Titus and smiled affectionately. “Well, I can believe in you all day long, but that does you no good if you don’t also believe in yourself.”
Titus released her hand and swiveled the chair around so he was facing Fanny. She took a step back so they weren’t so close. “I’m working on it, Fanny. I’m not deserting the circus. I promise.”
“Good.”
“So I summon the strength to bring Knight down and then what?”
“We make a plan,” Fanny said plainly, like it was as easy as making a grocery list. “One where we systematically take him down.”
Titus sputtered out a long breath. “I’m a bit at a loss for what that will look like.”
“Well, I might be able to help with that.”
Titus, who had averted his eyes, looked up at Fanny. “Oh really? Do tell.”
She shook her head of soft graying curls. “It’s better if I wait. Ian’s given me instructions on the most effective way to disperse this information.”
“Fanny, you’re going to start keeping secrets from me?” Titus said, looking hurt.
“I’m sorry to say, but I’ve been keeping this particular secret from you for a long time. Soon though, I’ll make things right by telling it,” Fanny said.
“I hope you do. I hope Ian is setting this up right,” Titus said, stretching his back and neck.
Fanny’s face fell with worry; it didn’t look right on her, like an angel crying. “Oh, me too. Everyone’s life is in that crew member’s hands.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Padmal narrowed her eyes toward the top of her foot before slipping a sock on it. The two-inch-long scar made her pulse with anger for the man who did it to her. The fibrous scar tissue was waxy in places and too thick in other places. Fanny had said healing the knife wound evenly was too tricky since the sharp knife struck through Padmal’s shoe. The speed and assault of the knife had forced the soft fabric of the sneaker into the wound, widening it. And Padmal was certain Nabhi only made the wound worse when he pulled the knife from her foot, although Fanny said that there was no right way to do it in that scenario. Now the girl was never going to be able to wear sandals without seeing the gross remains of her encounter with Knight.
Padmal had thought she was going to come to respect Knight, but this just proved that there were no good men in the world. Even Oliver, who had once made her heart flutter at times, had lost favor with her. During the three weeks she’d been laid up in her bed, unable to walk properly, he hadn’t visited often enough for her liking. Only once every few days. He had used the excuse that reworking the circus to replace Jasmine had been taxing on him. And that he also had to replace Padmal in his magician act, which meant Sunshine was his new lovely assistant who he made disappear and reappear multiple times in multiple places inside the ring. Padmal didn’t like the idea that Sunshine was spending so much time with her Oliver. She saw the way the girl watched him. And on every occasion he visited he had little to say, always making the excuse that Jasmine’s death and all the negative events at the circus were weighing on him.
“She was a stupid acrobat,” Padmal had said to him one time.
“We are a circus family and she was a part of it,” he said, his strange eyes not on her.
“We aren’t a family,” she said through clenched teeth. “And why should you care about the Afro?”
“A girl died, Padmal. Mysteriously. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“She was sick,” Padmal said, disinterested.
“It still doesn’t feel right,” Oliver said, shaking his head at her.
“Look at me,” she ordered and he complied, pulling his heavy eyes to stare at her lying in her bed. She glared at his eyes, one green and the other brown. “Leave the circus with me. Let’s run away.”
He narrowed his gaze at her. “I can’t. The people here need me. I can’t believe you’d abandon them after everything they’ve been through.”
“My brothers seem to have no problem replacing me in the act so why should I care?” she said angrily.
“Padmal, they had to. You’re on bed rest until you’re healed. Do you think they want to do a two-person juggling act when the crowd expects three people?”
“Get out,” she said, pointing to the door. “As long as you’re going to make excuses for other people I don’t want to speak to you.”
Oliver shook his head at her and turned to leave, not even caring to argue.
He had only been gone for a few minutes when Sebastian showed up. Padmal had startled at the sight of the kid.
“What are you doing here?” she said with a sneer, remembering he’d stood by watching when Knight maimed her by having Gwendolyn take her powers. Before that moment no one knew that was her power. Now everyone kept a distance from the redhead.
“I just came to check on you to see how you were doing,” Sebastian said, pinning his straight black hair behind one of his Dumbo ears.
“Why do you care how I’m doing?”
He shrugged, his eyes on her foot. “Can I see your wound?”
“What? Why?”
“I wanted to see if it was healing all right.” He dropped his eyes with a rehearsed look. “I was worried about you when you were stabbed,” Sebastian lied.
“Yeah, you had a funny way to show it.”
“So can I see your foot?” he said, bringing his eyes up to meet hers. There was a piercing quality in the way he looked at her, something dangerous. Padmal instantly realized she liked it. Liked the adrenaline that shot through her, telling her he was a bad boy not to be messed with.
“Sure,” she said, leaning forward and pulling the tape from the bandage back to show a red gash sutured with black thread. It was black and blue in places and swollen around the stitches.
Sebastian leaned forward, his eyes lighting up when they connected with the wound. He looked at Padmal and tilted his head to the side. “That must have hurt a lot,” he said, a tiny ounce of delight in his voice.
“It did,” she said, almost shivering from the way he looked at her.
“Well, I hope you heal fast,” he said and then licked his thin lips and turned and left without a goodbye.
Padmal slipped the bandage back into place, feeling goose bumps from her encounter with Sebastian. She was mistaking the crawling sensation on her skin for attraction and she was also mistaking his check-up on her as kindness. The truth was, on the long list of demented things about Sebastian, he had an obsession with looking at fresh wounds.
Chapter Forty-Seven
The Pacific Ocean had always been just a few miles from Finley’s back, and yet he’d never had a real opportunity to study the magnificent body of water. A rare chance had presented itself to Finley and he stole it for himself, indulging in selfishness for the first time ever. He had one solid hour where he wasn’t required to practice with Zuma or run an “errand” for Knight or to serve his own needs. Finley’s long legs carried him farther and farther, a distance that most would consider driving, and then he found himself face to face with the navy blue waters of the Pacific Ocean. The clouds in Santa Barbara were low on that winter’s afternoon, reflecting back the water’s dark blue appearance.
Finley kicked off his shoes once the pavement ended and the sand began. His feet sunk down t
wo inches, the granules of soft earth bathing his skin in a cool warmth. He almost smiled at the feeling. To feel cool and warm at the same time. To feel smothered and also comforted. To feel planted firmly to the earth and also like he was sinking. And then Finley realized something and it made him stare down at his feet with a strange reverence. He’d never had his feet in the sand. Ever. He hadn’t been given the type of life where one indulges in weekend trips to the beach or pops over for a picnic. Finley was born a slave and had lived that life, without the experiences that so many people took for granted. His evenings had been spent lying on the pad in his cell, watching other children cry themselves to sleep. He had spent his free time doing strength training. And that time had been rare since Knight monopolized most of his time with teaching him everything he now knew.
The acrobat walked until the tide was only a few feet away. Finley considered going to the edge and allowing the ocean to lap up on his feet. He shook his head. Not today. Today he wanted to remember as the day he met the sand. Another day would maybe be reserved for meeting the waters of the Pacific. He shouldn’t overwhelm his senses or overwhelm the memories he was creating.
Finley took a seat in the sand and immediately realized the stuff was going to be all over him. Such was sand. It found its way into every spot and liked to be carried away from the ocean, hiding in places to be discovered later. He looked down at the cuff of his jeans and realized sand had already adhered into the fabric and folds and would travel back to Vagabond Circus with him.