The Circus Rose

by Betsy Cornwell

  Why won’t you talk now? I thought at both of them.

  But as much as I despised them for keeping Bear’s voice a secret, just then, the weight of that pain was outbalanced by my relief that Rosie was finally awake again.

  “Ivory,” Bear rumbled. “Ivory . . .”

  Something in Bear’s deep, strange, animal voice reminded me too much of my father saying darling, and suddenly I wanted to scream.

  “Stop it,” I said, and even I could hear how harsh my voice was. “You never bothered to talk to me before, so I don’t want to hear you now. Just be”—my father’s hand in Rosie’s father’s, in Mama’s, in mine—“just be Bear.”

  Bear rumbled again, but it was a wordless noise, a Bear noise. He lowered his great head to look in my eyes.

  His eyes were still talking, of course. The sweet, dark, calm eyes of the beast who had looked after me since I was seven. They were saying . . .

  “She loves you,” Rosie said. “She loves you so much, you know.”

  “Who, the princess?” I started to shake. “Rosie, how is it possible for you and I to be so different? I’ve never understood—I can’t—” The shaking was getting so bad that it threatened to knock me down. I couldn’t even remember why I’d wanted to talk to her in the first place, this sister whose mind followed such different lines from my own. Even my twin, the person I loved most in the whole world, was someone I could love but could not know.

  “I’m sick of this. All this smoke and mirrors. And then the fire, and you and Mama gone, and I’ve been running everything, and our fathers gone, and everyone looking to me—I’ve had to make so many decisions, I don’t know how there’s even enough of me left to talk to you with right now—and Bear said our names, and you woke up—”

  Bear had moved toward me while I spoke, and I was still shaking, but his huge warm bulk was there against me, and my body leaned into it without my meaning to. Rosie’s still-bandaged hand reached out and touched my hair.

  I had never understood my sister. We loved each other, we protected each other and helped each other survive in all the strangeness that had surrounded us as we grew up, but there was some profound gulf of difference between us that we rarely crossed. We were twins, but our minds, our hearts, followed such different rhythms that if we’d met as strangers, I’d often thought, we likely wouldn’t have been friends.

  But something in us, sometimes, bridged the gap.

  Rosie

  “Tell me,” she says.

  “Just tell me why

  I never knew before.”

  How to say it?

  How to heal this?

  “Would you give

  away the Bear

  you grew up with

  all of these years?”

  Ivory shivers again.

  My hand and Bear’s

  breath steady her.

  “No. I couldn’t have.

  But now I do.

  I want to know. Bear,

  tell me. Please.

  Tell me who

  you really are.”

  A rumble in

  my sweetheart’s chest.

  The girl I’ve never touched

  now speaks.

  Ivory

  “She’s only ever spoken to me,” Rosie said quietly. “And you, now.” Her voice quavered a little with something that sounded almost like jealousy.

  I swallowed painfully.

  “Bear loves us. And Mama. And all the family. That much is true. That much is real.”

  They both nodded, my sister’s head and Bear’s moving in a strange kind of synchrony, for all they were so mismatched in size.

  We are what’s real, I thought, Mama’s voice in my head as if she stood by my side.

  I was crying, but it didn’t matter.

  “Right,” I said. “Tam and I need to sort out dinner. Bear . . .” The plans formed themselves only as I spoke them aloud. I didn’t know how to fix any of this, how to make anything be what it was supposed to be again—the circus, Bear, Mama—but I would deal with what was in front of us. It was all I could do.

  I couldn’t speak for another moment, remembering Bear’s voice. We looked at each other.

  “Can you say anything else?” I asked at last.

  Bear gazed at me for a long time. Finally he opened his mouth wide, showing white teeth the size of my fingers, and roared.

  Then he closed his mouth calmly and dipped his head, giving me a little circus bow.

  Bear was still Bear.

  Bear laid his snout along my shoulder and whuffled. Just like a bear.

  I leaned my head against his, and he was only what he’d ever been.

  Then I went out to face what needed facing.

  Rosie

  I dreamed a memory.

  Mama gathering

  us up from the campfire side

  after one too many

  questions about our fathers.

  “Who needs a father when

  they have Bear, and all of you,

  and me?” In a voice

  that tried so hard

  to prove she believed

  she was enough for us.

  I could always hear that lie,

  bravado like bearskin

  bristling, covering the unseen

  girl inside, some part of Mama

  who always feared

  she couldn’t give back to us

  what she’d taken away

  when she left our fathers.

  I often wondered,

  in a very Ivory way,

  if Mama only thought

  she’d have one fatherless girl

  no matter what—

  and it wouldn’t be right,

  be fair, to let one of us have

  what the other might always want.

  What I knew, of course,

  is that there had always been

  a right choice. Ivory

  missed a father more

  than I ever had or ever

  thought I could.

  I only feared

  how easy it would be

  for them to take Mama away from us,

  if she could ever

  have them both.

  Ivory

  “How are we supposed to go on without our tent?” I asked Tam in frustration over burnt porridge I’d attempted to make in the huge black cauldron. “How are we supposed to have any show at all? A tent and a ring are what make a circus!”

  Tam looked at me shrewdly. “I could magic something to look a little like a ring. It’d just be a loop of light, but it might do . . . and you’re an engineer, aren’t you, Ivory?”

  “I’m not an engineer. I’ve had one year of engineering school,” I said. “If you study something for one year, all you find out is how many things you don’t know. The girls who’ve been there five years or more could maybe come up with something, working together. And the teachers, of course. Not me.”

  And then I knew.

  I leapt up like a mad scientist, like I had showmanship in me after all. I smiled at Tam. “The circus is saved!” I cried.

  Fe leapt up too, applauding. “Brava!”

  9

  Ivory

  Thanks to the aerograms that Miss Lampton herself had invented, my plea for help arrived at the Lampton School in faraway Woodshire not even two hours after I sent it, and I had my old headmistress’s reply shortly after lunch (which I also burned).

  My students are delighted to receive such an intriguing assignment, she wrote. I hadn’t even finished reading your message out loud before Dimity started making diagrams. I and five of the girls will arrive tomorrow, supplies in hand, and the rest of the students at Lampton all beg to be remembered to you—too many to name here, although I’m sure you remember them equally well as they do you. You’ll be pleased to reunite with the girls I’m bringing, I know. Thank you, Ivory, for the chance to give my students such a useful and fascinating bit of real-world application. I have no doubt this will be the mo
st fun we’ll have all year, and we’re all grateful to you already.

  Well, I was grateful to her for saying she was grateful, anyway. It made her coming so quickly feel less like pity.

  * * *

  The Lampton School’s airship, the Spirit of Jules, was comically small compared to the ones the circus hired for traveling; it was more like a private lake boat than a cruise ship or carrier vessel. Not much larger than a carriage, really, if you didn’t count the balloon that kept it airborne. I wasn’t sure how its six passengers could even fit inside along with the supplies Miss Lampton had mentioned in her letter when I saw it in the sky at breakfast the following day. That meal, at least, had not been burned thanks to Tam’s insistence that fe take over cooking duties.

  That was probably just more pity, but I was as ready as anyone to eat a meal that didn’t taste quite so strongly of char, so I conceded without a fight. As the Spirit of Jules approached and descended onto the flame-scarred field, I saw how they fit; everyone had stayed on the above decks for the whole journey, strapped securely into light-framed chairs around the perimeter. They all wore caps and goggles, and every one of them clutched the identical lidded teacups I’d grown very familiar with on picnic excursions during my year at school.

  Miss Lampton herself stood at the prow of the airship, the top of her head nearly brushing the light blue balloon, a color that blended with the cloudless morning sky. She expertly brought the ship to hover about ten feet above the ground, and I held out my hands to catch the rope that one of the students—I couldn’t recognize her yet, what with the goggles—threw to me. I tied it to one of the tent stakes, thinking with not a little sourness that at least now the stake had some kind of use, and on the other side of the ship, a rope ladder unfurled to the ground.

  Miss Lampton cut the engine, and I could suddenly hear the babble of the girls’ talk filling the air. My heartbeat sped up. It was almost as if I were back at school again.

  They tumbled out of the airship, scrambling down the ladder and across the singed and trampled grass, until I was tackled in the center of five hugs at once. “Oh, Ivory, we’ve missed you!” Dimity cried. “I’ve missed you! How dare you wait this long to invite us to your circus!”

  Behind the throng of girls, I glimpsed Miss Lampton grinning at us as she shielded her eyes from the sun, looking around the field. Her expression told me she was the gladdest of anyone to see me again—and it somehow seemed as if she were even proud. I thought that must have been just residual pride in her other students. After all, what could I show her now that would do her credit? All my projects had been lost in the fire. I hadn’t found even traces of them in the rubble.

  But it was useless to think of any of that now. I hugged as many of the girls as I could reach. “Dimity, Rachida, Constance, Felicity, Faith!” I laughed. “I can’t believe I get to see all of you again!”

  When they’d finally unhanded me, I waved Tam over to the circle and made introductions. They all seemed fairly awestruck by fer beauty—as who would not be?—and I felt a kind of possessive pride in fer. I had to keep myself from preening outright when fe took my hand as we led the girls and Miss Lampton to ground zero of the tent’s destruction.

  “Well,” she said, “this will be quite a project.”

  Rosie

  Ivory talked about them. All

  those girls,

  in her letters from school. Friends, rivals,

  roommates.

  Living packed

  close together

  as queen cakes

  in a pastry tin.

  I couldn’t have borne it.

  We were the only

  girls our age

  the circus ever had.

  Between Ives and Mama

  and the family, and

  always, thank goodness,

  Bear, I was never alone.

  But I never knew, either,

  what I had missed.

  All those girls,

  all around me?

  I’d have burst.

  Exploded.

  Dissolved.

  Absolutely

  swooned.

  Even watching

  them now, from the caravan

  shadows, sends my

  skin burning again.

  Their casual, careening embraces.

  Their kisses on

  my sister’s cheek

  arrive like cool ghosts

  to my own.

  Bear rumbles, in darker

  shadows. “Are you jealous,

  my darling?” I ask.

  No words in reply.

  No words ever,

  but my name

  and Ivory’s.

  That much is true.

  I know, as Ivory

  doesn’t, the years

  Bear worked to shape

  her animal throat

  to the sound of two

  names she loves.

  I leave the window,

  settle my skin

  into resting again.

  As I settle

  the rest of me down,

  my hand on Bear’s paw,

  to dream of the

  princess again,

  the light still falls

  through the pane and

  fills

  the bed.

  Ivory

  The girls soon had the circus well in hand. I could hardly believe the amount of supplies they’d stored away in that little toy airship of theirs, and Miss Lampton insisted that they were all covered by class expenses. We’d had costlier projects when I was a student, not least among them creating a pair of wind-up ballet dancers to perform for the Royal Exhibition of Art and Science, so I didn’t argue—not that I had the budget to argue in earnest, anyway.

  Skeletons of new tents were erected by the end of the following day; Dimity’s blueprints had made it clear that it would be much easier to create three small interconnected tents than try to build a single huge one in a matter of days. Tam’s “loops of light” inside the tents meant we didn’t even need footlights; the rings would be moodily lit and silver-dim, but I actually liked that better. “More shadows means more room for roughness in the props and sets,” I said.

  “Spoken like a true stagehand,” Tam replied, molding the line of light along the ground like clay in fer hands.

  Between the engineering students and the remaining stagehands and troupe—working in shifts, granted, all hours of the day and night—we skimmed along toward Saturday morning in a blur, since I hoped reopening that weekend would begin to get the circus back on its financial feet, something I wanted to happen as soon as possible. On Friday night, we went back to selling tickets.

  Of course, Brother Carey was still there warning people away. I tried to remember Mama’s insistence that he was the best advertising we could get . . . but the fire had been the worst. Even a child could make the connection between his preaching about brimstone and divine punishment and the inferno in the tent.

  He talked about hellfire and holy light and the Lord’s bright glare so often, though, that I began to have my own ideas about what—or who—might have started the fire. And it wasn’t the Lord, in whom I still didn’t put much stock.

  But just as I had pointed out to Brother Carey that the circus had the right to make use of public spaces, so too did he. So I settled for staring daggers into his back whenever my chores and errands forced me to walk by him at the park’s entrance—not more than two or three times a day, thank goodness. His unsettling, pale gaze was bad enough when it only came as often as a meal.

  And so we found ourselves opening again on Saturday night, a new kind of circus, smaller but still coming back fighting.

  I watched everyone get set up, overseeing what I could. Vera was going to be mistress of ceremonies—that was one job I knew for sure I couldn’t handle, even though she had pointed out multiple times that I was the one who had earned the title these last weeks, who had been mistress of the circus, who had kept
everything going, who had called in the Lampton girls to help us rebuild.

  Miss Lampton found me before the show started and gave me a hug. “The Circus Rose is a bouquet now,” she said, looking at the low, triple-crowned tent she and her students had designed.

  I gave a startled laugh. “Maybe it always should have been,” I said. And then, “Thank you so much.”

  Miss Lampton squeezed my shoulder again. “I’m going to get a sinnum bun and watch the show with my girls,” she said, “something I’ve been waiting to do since I first met you, Ivory. I’ll come congratulate you after the show.” She winked at me and was off.

  I spent the whole show pacing the three tents, tracing the perimeters of Tam’s lights. I knew well that they couldn’t catch fire—fe’d assured me of that countless times, and the bluish-pink light even felt cool, not warm, when I passed my hand through it. But still I worried.

  Another fire would annihilate us completely.

  Rosie

  How strange to watch

  the show backstage.

  Too injured now.

  Too raw. Too new.

  And sister too afraid

  to see me freeze

  or burn again—

  I know she

  could not stand

  to see me fly.

  But it is dark

  back here.

  Darkness is good.

  Is blessed. It lets

  me rest. Until she heals

  Bear has no act either.

  I rest against

  her side, her paw

  curled back into my lap,