The Circus Rose

by Betsy Cornwell

  I tried to tell myself that anyway.

  I traded our cozy dorm room with its cluster of desks, the quiet evenings where we read and talked about what we wanted to build, and the orderly workroom where every tool had a home for the close-knit chaos of the circus.

  I came back full of new skills to share with the stage crew, and we set off on our circuit again, up and down the three continents and then across the great wide sea, to the newly free nation of Faerie. It would be two years before we’d see our home country again.

  I missed school and the friends I had made there. But I didn’t miss the gnawing heaviness I’d felt thinking of Mama and Rosie—of having left them behind, or of their having left me. After I came back, I made sure to tell both of them every day how much I loved them.

  Yet not everything was the way it used to be. Rosie had left the caravan, for one. She slept in Bear’s cage, which she’d hung with old curtains and raggedy lace until it was closer to a tent than a pen, the inside strewn with frilly pillows and discarded girlish costumes, her overflowing trunk of cosmetics stashed in one corner and her dressing mirror hanging on the cage door. It had become a favorite joke among the crew that Bear was tidier than my sister.

  The Tin Can had ample room for just me and Mama, but the shadows at night made the caravan seem too big and empty without Rosie sleeping next to me. The first few times Mama went out, I slipped away to the cage and slept cuddled with Rosie in the nest Bear made of his body around us. But they had grown toward each other while I was away, and I felt like the third with them. I despised myself a little for leaving Rosie lonely enough to replace me. After that, I went back to the caravan, but whether Mama was there or not, it never felt quite like the home that I’d left.

  Mama always said our home is wherever the circus goes, but I’m not so sure.

  Maybe Mama is more like Rosie than me. Of the three of us, I’m the only one who always wants my feet on solid ground.

  Rosie

  The first time I

  stepped into the show,

  I knew the light.

  The air, applause.

  I twirled and leapt

  in spotlight gold.

  The audience gasped

  at a girl so bold.

  I chased the bright,

  faster and faster to

  some white peak that—

  as I reached

  it burned

  away my

  balance,

  my whole

  way to

  see—

  Ivory saw me stumble

  and somehow knew.

  She rushed onstage,

  straight into the light

  she always avoided, for

  my sake. She helped me

  stagger backstage,

  safe darkness,

  soft touch. She

  stayed with me there.

  Our shushing,

  matched breaths an ocean

  buoying me up.

  Ivory

  King Finnian was crowned when Rosie and I were only small. He declared that Esting would no longer have an official religion. The new king was full of idealism, and in his first act as ruler, he also turned the magic-filled land of Faerie from an Estinger colony into an independent state. But neither liberating Faerie nor removing the Brethren from court had quite the intended effect. Esting’s laws no longer discriminated against Fey immigrants, but many of its people still did, and losing official power had radicalized some members of the Brethren Church. Priests appeared on street corners and standing in open carriages, preaching to the people to turn away from Fey magic and all forms of illusion and accept the truth of the Lord’s light. They opened Houses of Light all over Esting City, offering help to the poor and desperate—if they converted. And anything that the Brethren could call deception, from Fey magic to the illusions of the theater or the circus, they were quick to label as sin and to protest.

  The Circus Rose weathered many protests over the years, but Mama rarely acknowledged the trouble outside the tent. She preferred to ignore the preaching and praying, the men who stood outside demanding we repent—as if she could will them out of existence.

  Most of the time, she seemed to be able to. Their show couldn’t compete with ours.

  Then, the night Rosie graduated from just dancing and debuted her high-wire act, one of the men got frustrated with yelling from outside and stormed into the tent. Just as Rosie landed, just as the thunder of applause that cushioned her to the ground faded, the man tore in, book in hand, walked right up to her, and demanded she consider her sins.

  Rosie had never looked small to me before, not as she did then, the priest towering over her, his face scarlet, gesturing between her and the audience. She looked blank, unsteady on her feet, staggering as she took a step back to put distance between herself and the man. He closed the distance.

  The other stagehands rushed out to drag him away, and Mama swanned out with a distraction for the audience, a joke that burned off the haze of his anger, but Rosie was still out there, frozen.

  I ran to get her, though I hate being on that side of the spotlight. She leaned against me as I half carried her backstage, where it was dark and safe. Bear was sitting tamely behind the props, waiting for the finale, but he lumbered up when he saw us. I led her to him and tucked her against him, curling up around her too, and together we held her, waiting.

  Rosie

  And now,

  back to the show.

  4

  Ivory

  “Nothing brings the family together like tarot poker.” Mama grinned at us from across the circle, stroking her beard.

  To my left, Vera laughed. “Just deal already.”

  Mama shook her head and shuffled languorously. “I so rarely get to have everyone together, that’s all.”

  “Rarely? We’ve been sailing for a month! I’ll be singing praises to my gods and yours when we disembark, just because I’ll get to see a little less of you. I’ll tell you what I’m looking forward to seeing: a glass of Port’s End porter.”

  “And a porterhouse—a big, juicy steak. I’ve had enough of fish and hardtack to last me the rest of my blessed life.” Toro’s pipe sent smoke unfurling around him, like feathers in a showgirl headpiece. Our new Fey magician, Tam, had spelled the smoke so that it was contained in a tight radius around Toro’s head, or we’d all be hacking and coughing; the airship’s common room was cramped enough, and tonight all the vents were battened down to keep out the weather. We’d risen above an ominous-looking rainstorm just before sunset, but the air above the clouds, while clear, is always freezing cold.

  At the start of our journey, it had seemed odd to see so many of the performers not just out of costume, but bundled up completely against the chill. Most of them liked to show off, whether an actual show was on or not.

  Now we wore our heaviest coats. The airship Mama had rented wasn’t exactly first class, and heating was one of many luxuries it lacked.

  The troupe had made do, though, as we always did. We’d unpacked tent canvas and curtains to use as extra blankets and to insulate against drafts.

  For this game, an old red velvet curtain was spread out under us like a picnic blanket.

  “Come on then, Mama, deal us in,” Vera continued. “Let’s find out what the cards have in store for us in Port’s End.”

  Mama cut and shuffled a final time and, smiling fondly, began to deal us into the game. Everyone else watched each person in the circle as they received their cards, hoping to detect a tell, but I couldn’t look away from Tam.

  Fe had signed Mama’s contract just before we left Faerie, and while fe wasn’t aloof or really even all that shy, something about fer seemed more refined than the boisterous circus troupe with whom Rosie and I had grown up. Something made fer different, something besides fer Fey heritage—and being neither male nor female, like all Fey—but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

  I caught Rosie smirking at my side, watching me w
atch Tam. My twin raised her eyebrows and grinned. She had her own opinions about why I thought Tam was special. I could never keep my crushes from Rosie even if I tried; maybe I’d just had so many of them that she knew all my tells. My sister, on the other hand, was never one to fasten her dreams to particular people the way I did. She watched the other acrobat girls with heat in her eyes sometimes, but she never seemed to want to do anything to stoke that fire. She got enough romantic thrill from performing, maybe. She spent her off-hours with Mama and me, or with Bear, when Bear came into the caravan with us like the world’s biggest pet dog, as he sometimes did in the evenings or even occasionally to sleep. Rosie always said she never needed to see anything outside of the circus ring or the caravan walls.

  Maybe she went so high up in her act that she never felt the need for a wider world, never felt the need to find it in a person.

  Tam glanced at me and smiled a little, and I realized I’d been staring again. I snapped my gaze down to the first card Mama dealt me: the Seven of Cups.

  Temptation.

  Right. Fair enough.

  I put Tam out of my head.

  “Let me guess,” whispered Rosie, nudging my shoulder with the fluid grace that infused her every movement. “The Magician? Or, no, the Lovers!”

  “Hush,” I grumbled at her, grateful to have skin dark enough to hide my blushes—and not for the first time, growing up in a household as loud and bawdy as this one. Rosie’s pale cheeks, on the other hand, blossom like her namesake flower—only I’ve never seen her embarrassed. Her face washes pink with excitement and pride when she’s performing, so that she hardly needs stage makeup.

  Rosie smiled warmly at me. She didn’t have to tell me she was only teasing, just like I only had to glare at her to make the teasing stop.

  Mama was circling back around to deal our second cards. I tipped my head to rest on my acrobat sister’s strong shoulder, and I kept my eyes strictly on my cards until the dealing was done.

  “The pot starts at two crowns,” Mama said.

  We each tossed our coins onto the curtain.

  Vera quickly cleaned up on the first round with her set of all four knights, but she got cocky when Mama dealt again, and Tam took the whole pot with fer royal flush.

  As Mama dealt us in a third time—more cups for me, just my luck—I got the unsettling lifting feeling in my stomach that meant the airship had begun to descend.

  Around the circle, we held our cards to our chests and shared excited glances. Outside the circle, I heard glad murmurs and even whoops. In a few hours—just past dawn—we’d touch down in Port’s End, Esting’s bustling coastal city and the place where Rosie and I had been born seventeen years before. The place where our two fathers still lived; the place where Mama had founded the Rose.

  The circus was coming home.

  Rosie

  Somewhere in the hold

  my love sleeps

  under shadow,

  through moons.

  The wind shifts,

  the world lifts,

  an old home

  reaches up to take us.

  Our ship moans

  through the turn,

  light spilling

  through portholes.

  Below us whales breach,

  heavy, leaping free.

  The ship bellies down

  to earth. This is

  how it is, to feel

  something so big

  turn its heart

  to the sky.

  Ivory

  We were low enough that I could smell the ocean.

  I breathed sea air as we descended from the sky, the airship sweeping down just fast enough that I could still feel the lift in my belly as I watched the coast of Esting rise to meet us.

  I let go of the wooden railing and raised my hands above my head, imagining myself leaping down, perfect and beautiful, full of easy grace, like Rosie at the end of one of her routines. An angel touching earth, kicking up the sawdust of the circus ring.

  To thunderous applause.

  Someone’s hand grazed my back.

  The touch was warm and gentle, but the surprise still made me jump.

  “Happy to be home?”

  I twisted around and saw Tam grinning down at me, eyes glinting happily in fer blue-freckled face. Fe hadn’t performed with the Circus Rose yet so fe was technically still new, but Mama had hired fer in Faerie over two months ago, and during the long voyage back to Esting, everyone had gotten to know one another—frankly, much better than I’d have liked sometimes.

  Especially waiting in line for the baths.

  But the circus is like that anyway. You get intimate fast, even though we are a band of itinerants and people join up and break away in almost every city we visit. Cuddles backstage; hugs for good luck; napping in piles in whatever ship or train Mama hired to get us to the next city or the next venue, or around campfires, with the empty circus tents and caravans circling us when nights are warm enough . . .

  It’s normal for us to touch each other like this. Easy, simple, intimate.

  Or it should be.

  So I didn’t want Tam to know that fer touch made me shiver. “Home? Hardly. I’ve been a traveler since I was born, you know.” I smiled big, wide, and teasing—which would have given the game away if Rosie were there. She always says I’m too serious for teasing to make sense in my voice.

  “I know.” Tam shook fer head. “I can hardly imagine. But it was in Esting you were born, and it’s where your mother is from. That surely means something.”

  First in the litany of things I’d come to like about Tam: fe was just as serious as me. Even fer magic tricks were performed with all the gravity and precision of a scientist in a laboratory. I loved to watch those thoughtful, deliberate performances, even though I imagined some must find them slow—or they would, if Tam weren’t so beautiful. When Mama introduced fer to the troupe, before we even knew what fer act was, I overheard Vera whisper that fe was so beautiful, she’d listen to fer read scripture.

  “Well, home is the circus, wherever we are. Mama’s made sure of that. And my father’s a noble from Esting City, the capital, although he lives in Port’s End now. We write letters sometimes, but I haven’t seen him in . . . a while.” I took a deep breath as the city came into view. “But still, if I did call someplace home, Port’s End would be the top contender. It’s where Rosie and I were born, and where the circus was born too.”

  “Your father is an Estinger nobleman? I thought Rosie said he was from Nordsk.”

  I felt my lips press together. I had thought a Fey wouldn’t ask questions like that. They live in friend groups rather than in couples like Estingers, and one Fey can have many parents. It’s one of the things the Brethren missionaries tried to put a stop to when Faerie was a colony of Esting, but it never worked.

  Still, maybe all Tam knew of Estinger families was what those missionaries told fer. “Rosie’s father is Nordsk. Mine is Estinger. They both live in Port’s End now, but . . . we don’t see them much. At all.” I swallowed. “Mama couldn’t choose between them, so here we are. It bothers people more than it should.”

  Tam touched me gently again, in apology this time. “It doesn’t bother me. I have five parents, you know. And one of them is human—a soldier who defected during the war.”

  I smiled at fer. “I’d better check the luggage again before it’s disembarked,” I said. “Some of the mechanisms are pretty delicate. I can’t have Rosie off-balance for our homecoming show.”

  “Can I come?” Tam’s freckled face lit up. “I still can’t understand the first thing about what it is you do, Ivory. The way you make machines that obey your bidding at a simple touch or without touching them at all. It’s like . . .”

  “Magic?”

  We both laughed, and Tam followed me to the hold.

  Rosie

  Do you know how to fly?

  I do. It has nothing

  to do with becoming airborne,

 
; the way Ivory thinks:

  so many feathers, this much

  tailspin, that much lift.

  You can fly in your own

  skin. All you need

  is to make your hands

  rough and find

  something strong

  to hold on to.

  The crowd at the docks

  will have such heavy hearts.

  Crowds always do.

  An acrobat’s work

  is to lift them too.

  Flights you don’t see.

  We measure the breadth

  of each muscle, each breath.

  I move them with me.

  My limbs could be

  heavy as Bear’s

  and still

  I’d bring the sky

  down in my grip

  and make you

  believe

  you

  too

  have

  wings.

  Ivory

  Pink and gold banners unfurled across the starboard side of the airship as we pulled into view of the port. Everyone with free hands had been given cheap trumpets so they could help blare the Circus Rose’s tinny theme tune—which made me feel almost grateful for the heavy wheeled boxes I dragged behind me.

  I may not have an ounce of showmanship in my bones, but I love being backstage, managing the lights and the music that I’d gotten nearly half automated by then—or better yet, designing some newer, better contraption to show off Rosie’s dancing and acrobatics. I was sure the girls from engineering school, not to mention my old teacher Miss Lampton herself, were going to admire the work I’d done. I was going to send Miss Lampton enough tickets to bring the whole school to one of our shows.