by Jordan Bell
The smell of the Carnival. The way it breathed as if alive. Only when it was quiet could you hear the memory of all the performances that had come before. All the applause and the tears of wonder.
Now he could only think of the girl bleeding in his arms who’d pushed his brother from a moving train without hesitating. She’d done it without it even occurring to her to hesitate. There had been danger and if Eli couldn’t protect her, she’d damn well protected herself.
This was what he was starting to realize - Serafine Moreau did not look like much until she proved you wrong.
Georgianne, Imaginaire’s doctor, rounded the corner when he reached his wagon. She was a big woman, twice as big as most of the men and ten times as scary. Mama George to most of the crew and she looked every bit the affectionate title they’d given her. Fuzzy brown hair haloed her head, flattened on one side, still in her outrageous flowered bathrobe and slippers. She carried her black medical bag.
“What is this?” she demanded in a loud whisper. “Elijah, what is going on?”
“Inside, Georgianne, quickly.”
He took Sera to his bed. She settled into his pillow, still creased where he’d slept the night before, her copper hair fanned across the white linen. While Georgianne turned on the bare light at his dressing table, he worked to get her coat off. She was of little help in that endeavor, whimpering whenever he jostled her too hard.
As he settled her back down his hand grazed her side and she cried out, rolling instinctively into a ball. He immediately yanked his hands away.
Her shirt was soaked in drying blood. The knife. His knife. He’d thought Castel had missed when he’d thrown it at Sera, but of course he hadn’t. Castel never missed.
Together they lifted her to sit and pulled her ripped shirt over her head. Georgianne didn’t ask what happened, and for that he was grateful. He’d have to face Rook and that would be bad enough.
The knife hadn’t cut deep, the graze long from belly button to hip bone, but it had bled plenty and it was not pretty. She’d scar.
Another scar to add to all the things he’d never be able to make up for.
Serafine shivered and clutched her arms across her stomach, too out of it to be embarrassed wearing only a black bra and pants. He would have to have been blind not to notice the delicate lace material stretched around her heavy breasts, clinging to her shoulders where fireworks of freckles colored her pale skin. His hand lingered on her arm where they tapered off.
It must have been his lack of sleep or his exhaustion, but the ridiculous desire to count every last one of them overwhelmed him.
“Avert your eyes,” Georgianne admonished as she tossed the destroyed shirt to the floor.
“I…sorry.” He shook his head.
“Well don’t look. For heaven’s sake. Get her something to wear.”
Numbly he got one of his shirts from his dresser and Georgianne dressed her. Sera seemed to wake from her trance enough to try and help, but it was clear her vision was off when she couldn’t quite find the arm holes.
There were few things in this world he could not do, wonderful, terrible, impossible things. With this girl, bleeding and bruised, he came up with nothing. There was no way to help her. No way to touch her.
Though he very much wanted to try, which made being ordered out of the way all the more difficult.
Restless, he paced.
“Can you fix her?”
“She’s not a doll, Eli. She’s not a marionette with her strings tangled.” Georgianne tilted her head so she could see through the half lenses. Sera closed her eyes when the woman pushed her hair away from the wound. “Has she been sick?”
“Twice.”
The doctor nodded. “I’ll sew up the wounds. It’s the best we can do. With the head injury we’ll have to wait and see.”
“I’m going to have answers or I’m going to kill him!” The tent flaps flung open to frame a furious Alistair, still in his striped pajamas. He leaned on his cane and zeroed in on the Magician.
“What the hell is going--” He stopped when his eyes fell on Sera. “My God. Eli. I thought I told you she couldn’t stay.”
“He found her.” Eli pulled the canvas door closed after making sure no one stood too close to eavesdrop. “He found us. It’s time to pull up stakes, Alistair. We have to run.”
Georgianne pushed between the two men for the small washroom in the corner. A luxury for the star acts. She filled a water basin while the two of them argued.
“What do you mean he found you? He? Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.” Eli paced while Georgianne began cleaning Sera’s face. “Especially after he tried to put a swallowing sword through my gut to see if it would spill fire.”
Alistair exhaled rudely and turned his attention to Cora’s daughter. “My God. I thought we’d have more time.”
“We don’t. He’s coming and now he knows who Sera is. She’s not safe out there alone.”
Georgianne was gentle cleaning the wound and exposing the girl beneath the mess. Eli stalked behind them, stopping to run a hand through his hair and look away when Sera whimpered.
“Poor darling. Serafine, is it? Where did you come from, sweetheart?”
“She’s Cora’s.”
Georgianne stopped suddenly to peer closer at Sera’s face. “You don’t say. This is Cora’s little girl, is she? My goodness, you’re not really a little girl anymore, are you? Has so much time really passed?”
“You knew Cora had a daughter?” Alistair moved close, but not too close. There was something about all that blood that made even the hardened director hesitate. Beautiful girls were not meant for such damage. “Why was I never informed?”
Georgianne snorted rudely and peered down the length of her nose at the carnival director. “Of course I did. I’m the one that told her she was pregnant. About time too, I told her. But good things come to those who wait. It was only nights before we went dark.”
“She died.”
Everyone in the wagon froze and turned their attention to the fortune teller’s daughter. Sera touched her right eye and rubbed it as if to clear sleep from the corners. She stared at her hands then up into Georgianne’s rumpled, but kind face.
“I…” Georgianne faltered, pulled her glasses off to clean them unnecessarily. She cleared her throat, put the glasses back on and continued with her work on cleaning the blood. “It’s going to need stitches. I hope you’re brave.”
“She is.” Eli could feel Alistair staring at him and he did not give the director the chance to dissect him. “She pushed Castel from a moving train.”
Georgianne sucked in a hissing breath and shot Eli a look mothers perfect that screamed Watch your mouth! without having to say a word. Rook leveled him with a patronizing glare.
“Must you say his name?”
The tent was too small and hot with so many bodies in it. He couldn’t remember the last time so many people were allowed in his bedroom. A girl. Maybe two on a very bad night. Never so many people he had no intention of bedding.
So he paced once more. “He put Sera’s face through a window and tried to take my key. I’m tired of giving him more dominion than he’s due. His name has no more power than mine.”
“That doesn’t mean we want to hear it spoken inside the gates.” Georgianne yanked open her black bag and dug out her supplies. “Do something useful, one of you, and distract her while I sew her up. I can give her a little something for the pain. Not much. She’ll need to be brave once more.”
Alistair took the spot beside her on the bed without waiting to see if Eli would go to her first. The old man took her hand in his and patted it grandfatherly with more affection than the Magician had ever seen his friend show anyone.
Without looking at him, the carnival director said, “Tell me what happened.”
“Ca--”Georgianne shot him an impatient look and he scowled. “My brother sent men to her apartment looking for me. He must have eyes here, either ins
ide or not. He’s charismatic, he could have any number of followers working for him now. They must have followed me to her. I got her out only to have my brother confront us on the subway. I don’t think she was part of his plan until I tried to protect her. Then she was just a means to an end for him.”
“What did he want with you? To kill you?”
“If only. That would have made it so much simpler.” He touched the key beneath his shirt to make sure it was still there. And then because he couldn’t check one without the other, he touched the lock tattoo on his wrist. “He wanted the key. He wanted me to open the lock.”
Alistair swore. “You didn’t give it to him I hope.”
“No. I gave him Sera instead.”
He didn’t need to look at his friends to know their shock, to feel their disgust even though they knew as well as he did that giving Castel the key would be tantamount to burning the carnival to the ground with everyone inside. As soon as he’d made his choice, he was ready to change his mind. The lion-haired girl did not deserve to be so casually brushed aside and left to defend herself. Everyone in the carnival owed their lives to Serafine Moreau, though they’d never know it.
“He forced me to make a choice. I made it.”
“Then how did you both survive without having to give him anything in return?”
Eli ran a hand through his hair and turned so he wouldn’t have to face their inquisitive eyes. “I lost my temper. He was about to snap her neck and he kissed her and I just reacted. I tried to stop his heart.”
“Elijah! You were not meant to use your power like that.” Georgianne dropped her glasses to stare at him, her shock and disappointment the least of his worries. He’d never used his power to hurt another person, not even Castel when they faced each other the last time as the main stage tent burned around them. He hadn’t known he had it in him.
What he couldn’t admit to his old friends was how it felt to see Castel’s mouth against Sera’s. How it felt to see him take something he didn’t deserve. He couldn’t articulate it even if he wanted to. It made no sense and there weren’t words in all the languages to describe it. So he left that part out.
“It doesn’t matter because it didn’t work. He’s stronger than he used to be. He resisted.”
Before they could offer up more unnecessary outrage, Sera’s voice cut them off.
“He deserved what he got.” She looked dazed. He doubted she’d remember any of this. “Like sucking on a frog.”
Georgianne grinned and glanced between Alistair and to where Eli busied himself trying not smile.
“I like her,” she decided. “I hope we plan to keep her.”
“Don’t say it like that,” Eli warned them. “She’ll gloat.”
12
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White and yellow kernels opening with a pop, doused in golden butter fat, light as air, sticking to my tongue, bursting with flavor. I was six. Maybe seven. We were in upstate New York in October and the trees had gone Technicolor and a traveling carnival had come to town. We drove a half an hour in a borrowed Ford pick-up to reach them in the mountains. It was my first carnival.
This was what I remembered.
My mother on the midway. My hand in hers. Her kaleidoscope quilt skirt brushing against my cheek. My mother handing me a red and white striped cup of hot popcorn. Me stuffing the first fistful into my mouth. My mother’s laughter. “Don’t make yourself sick, Serafine, my little queen.” Her fingers in my red curls, pushing them out of my face. “Let’s go sneak some to the elephants.”
13
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Atop a chair in the middle of the room, a girl stood on her forearms, body contorted into a graceful C. Slowly she extended the stretch until the C formed an O and her toes touched her nose.
I gasped and, startled, she tumbled onto the floor.
“Micah, really. You’ll wake her.”
“Too late.” She righted herself and pointed. “She’s aliiiiiiive.”
The girl wiggled her fingers in the air and swayed her body back and forth until the older woman sitting in the chair next to her wacked her on the top of the head with her newspaper.
“That’s enough, necromancer.” The woman peered through the bottom half of her bifocals. “Good morning, darlin’. How’s your head?”
My head. A cottony sensation filled up the space between my eyes. A dull ache emanated from a spot near my left temple. It burned like a scratch and throbbed in time with my heartbeat. I wiggled my fingers out from beneath my blanket and felt gauze taped where it hurt.
Not entirely sure I wasn’t dreaming, I pressed my face into the downy soft pillow. The pillowcase smelled faintly masculine, the sheet starched taught but soft beneath my body. There was a dent in the mattress where one person had laid the same every night for a very long time. I fit inside of it so that it seemed to cradle me.
“Maybe she has amnesia you think?”
“Shhh, Micah. Really.” The woman set her newspaper aside and stood. Her largeness filled the room, stout as well as round. The floral dress she wore seemed very old fashioned, but it fit her pin curled mouse-brown hair and tiny glasses. “Do you remember anything, love?”
I did. Sort of. I remembered her voice. The girl on the floor seemed familiar too, but I couldn’t place her. Her face was small, perfectly circular with apple shaped cheekbones and thin eyebrows. She wore her snow white hair pixie short. She wasn’t exactly small though, kind of thick like a boy. Muscular and stubby. I could almost place her. Almost.
“Not really,” I said into the pillow. “Sort of.”
Not my pillow, I realized, though that should have been an obvious observation.
It was not, also obviously, my bed.
And with that, it all came rushing back as awful the second time as it had been the first time.
The only thing in the whole room that belonged to me was a pair of baby blue suitcases and a backpack stacked neatly by the door. The rest of the room belonged to a man, even the vanity and all its make-up and powders and a glass mannequin head that wore a shiny black top hat.
A magician’s top hat.
Eli.
And with that, another memory - Castel.
I sucked in a difficult breath, felt it in my guts where pain lodged inside like a steak knife, sawing and sawing when I tried to move.
“The magicians,” I whispered.
The girl, Micah, winced and looked to the older woman for direction. She gave a small shake of her head.
“Eli?” Micah asked. “He’s our magician.”
I nodded without raising my head. “And--”
“Don’t,” the woman interrupted. “Please don’t say his name.”
Micah climbed back onto her chair to kneel on it backwards. “Do you remember me?” She mined juggling and it clicked. The girl acrobat from yesterday who’d met me at the gate.
“I remember you. You had more hair then.”
She grinned a bit wolfishly, which seemed all kinds of wrong on her pixie face. “Name’s Micah.”
“And a lot of other names besides.” The woman snorted, though it was an affectionate kind of abuse. “You probably do not remember me, love. You were out of it when Eli brought you here. My name is Dr. Georgianne Smith, but most just call me Mama George which is as good a name as any. We know you’re Serafine, Cora’s little girl, and we know what happened last night - least as much as Eli was willing to tell. You should know you took quite a hit to the head and I had to give you three stitches here.” She tapped her left eyebrow, then her belly button. “And six here. You’ll be okay, I suspect, in the next few days but you’ll have to take it easy. No heavy lifting. No fist fights.”
“No fist fights?” I sighed. “There goes my afternoon.”
Mama George grinned. “I bet you’re starved. Horus could be persuaded to fix you something if you like.”
At the promise of food, my stomach growled. “I could eat. I could also love a shower.”
Micah thumbed over her shoulder at a decorative door in the corner. “Eli’s got his own, lucky dog. Steal his, then I’ll take you over to the cook house and we can sweet talk Horus into fixing us some sandwiches.”
“You should probably go see Annabelle before she complains to the boss that you’re not at practice, girl.” Mama George gave her a stern look and the acrobat blushed.
“Yeah, after. Annabelle will complain no matter when I show up. It’s her favorite thing to do in the world.”
I was reluctant to leave the warm comfort of the bed and the heavy quilt I’d woken up tucked beneath. I couldn’t remember the last time I slept in a real bed, not that my mother and I lived like paupers but we rarely splurged for a two bedroom. She always had the bedroom and I took the couch since she did all the work at the market and was about six inches taller than me. After her death, I could never bring myself to sleep in her bed, so I never did.
This bed though, Eli’s bed, was the softest in the world. Softer than regular mattresses, supple like clouds. Not the sort of thing I expected to find in the living quarters of a carnival magician. The room looked like the inside of a gypsy wagon, tiny windows and undersized doors. The bed took up most of the backside of the long room and had curtain panels drawn to the side to separate it from the living area. The floor was carpeted and the furniture all felt oversized, but cozy. The ceiling had been painted like the night sky.
Since I couldn’t live in his bed forever, I pushed the quilt off and rolled to my feet, an action that took more out of me than I expected. My side ached like I’d been skewered through and every part of me felt greasy, dirty, lopsided.
I kind of smelled.
Micah fit beneath my arm and helped my hobbled body into the bathroom and the very modest shower. I could have gotten more water pressure from a garden hose and the water felt only lukewarm, but it was heavenly. I stayed inside until the water went cold and slowed to a dribble. Even then I leaned against the plastic wall and dozed.