heavy as a sleeping child.
How magical, this gift.
To watch, to wait.
My heart is impatient
to leap again,
but it has been so long
since I have seen,
from the sweet outside,
this bright glow.
Ivory
Tam couldn’t perform and control the lights at the same time, so we’d lost another of our top acts even though fe was still right here with us. Fer lights were a definite hit, however—although magic hadn’t been illegal since King Finnian was crowned, it was still controversial enough that most people stuck to Estinger tech.
I was selfishly gleeful that fe’d defected to the stagehand side. And in my pacing, I got to pass by fer several times, sitting tailor-style in the shadows at the edge of the third ring, breathing as slowly as if in meditation but with fer eyes wide open.
I didn’t dare kiss fer or anything so intimate, not wanting to disturb fer too much, but fe smiled up at me every time I passed, and I smiled back and brushed fer cheek with the back of my hand or ran my fingers lightly through fer hair. Every touch was grounding, quieting the edge of panic that kept lancing through me, as if my fears were lightning and Tam were a strong tree, connected to the damp ground, that could take my energy down and dissipate it in the infinite earth.
Finally the show was over: bows, applause, and even an encore. Just one, but it was enough to allay my fears for at least a little while.
“Thank you, everyone!” cried Vera. “Please tell your friends—there are more wonders waiting for you here tomorrow night in the first-ever three-ring circus!”
When the final chords of the finale faded away, I felt my whole body shudder with relief. The show had ended, and nothing had burned, and everyone was safe. As I watched the smiling, murmuring audience pour out of the three connected tents, I let myself think that it had even been a success.
Tam stood up, still breathing deeply and evenly, although I could see a light sheen of sweat on fer brow. “A three-ring circus,” fe said, coming over to put fer arm around me. “Isn’t there something about that that just sounds right?”
I smiled. “You’re done working,” I said.
Fe looked at me, nonplussed. “I am . . .”
“Then I can distract you.” I slipped my arms around Tam’s neck and kissed fer soundly, and for a few moments, I forgot everything but how we felt together.
Then we went to find Rosie and Bear.
As we neared the spot backstage from which my sister had watched the show, I began to shake with relief, and I felt tears starting in my too-dry, tired eyes.
Now, at last, I could believe that we were going to make things work, that the Circus Rose would still be here for Mama when she woke up.
“There’ll be a circus for Mama to come home to,” I said when I finally sat down next to Rosie. “That’s what matters. We have to keep it going.”
“The show must go on,” she murmured.
* * *
As the last of the crowds drifted away from the park, the troupe finally gathered for our midnight supper.
I stood by the fire, ready to hand out portions to everyone; I didn’t feel I could breathe until I’d congratulated all of the performers and crew.
With my fears unrealized, I became aware anew of my huge gratitude for my former teacher and classmates. I’d seen them in the audience, and they’d been thrilled, but I hadn’t seen them since. I thought Miss Lampton might have taken them off to a late supper in the city—or that they might already be asleep. They deserved a rest maybe more than any of us.
Except—hadn’t Miss Lampton said she’d come congratulate me after the show?
My heart banged up into my throat, and I left the fireside and walked quickly, then half ran, toward the Spirit of Jules and the tent the girls had pitched underneath it.
No one was there.
I ran back toward the campfire, and Apple met me on the border of its light.
“Ivory, none of us can find Vera, Bonnie, or Toro. I think you need to come see this.”
He showed me the area backstage where they had been bantering and cleaning off their makeup just a little while before. Rosie, Bear, and Tam huddled together there, looking at the ground, where drops of blood soaked into the grass.
Rosie
Ivory’s magic lover
raises the alarm.
I climb on Bear,
my princess,
for her
warmth and my comfort
and we follow.
We find the scene
where Vera
last was seen.
Scattered ribbons,
spilled rouge,
a tidy box of stockings,
all knocked over—
no choice to leave,
not her choice. Blood
on the ground,
dark like dirt.
Bear smells it,
points it out,
metal tang rising
over the scent of the crowd.
Not enough
for us to notice,
our sad human
senses. Not enough
to mean that Vera
won’t have lived.
Enough to know
she didn’t want to go.
Ivory
“I was just here,” Tam whispered. “I was just with them . . .”
“Did you hear anything?” I asked Apple.
“Nothing.” The lashes under his eyes were wet. “Nothing.”
None of us could stop looking down at the small drops of blood on the ground that Bear had found.
“Vera’s blood?” I asked. “You’re sure?”
I realized that most of the troupe was now gathered around Bonnie’s dressing table. All of them were watching me. Not looking at the scene of Bonnie’s usually neat toilette all overturned, nor Vera’s dumbbells on the ground spattered with blood and—now, that was odd—some kind of white hair.
All of them were watching me.
And all my aching muscles felt so weak, and my throat caught, and my eyes grew once again too dry.
And I couldn’t stand any of it anymore.
I needed my mama.
Rosie
Through the gate
of Carter Park
and past
the picket line.
The Brother who burned
so terribly bright is gone.
Ivory and I walked
alone.
I longed to hide
my face in Bear’s thick fur.
I held my head
up high and kept it clear,
staring straight
ahead and into nothing,
praying my mind
wouldn’t let too much in.
Ivory watched it all.
She looked them in the eye.
She never had to learn,
as I did,
how to keep her thoughts
from screaming.
I felt her heart
break all the way there.
To the hospital,
so white it hurt
to look at, even
at night.
A sister nurse
watched as we passed
the atrium, and Ivory
nodded to say she knew her.
It was nighttime. We met
no one else.
Most people fear the dark, but
what’s scarier than an empty spotlight
after the performer’s cue?
Bright—bright and searingly empty.
The bed barely disturbed—she couldn’t
put up a fight—empty and white as
a blank eye, no blood, the only red
Mama’s ringmistress jacket,
still neatly folded over a chair.
Ivory and I alone
in this burning silence.
Ivory tears at the bedding,
like this is another myste
ry she can solve
by pulling things apart.
Aha!
She holds up a swath of gauze
fallen off Mama’s arm as they took her.
Ivory
Beside me at Mama’s empty bed, Rosie was doubled over, holding the scrap of gauze that had bound Mama’s wounds.
“Oh, Rosie, I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry?” Her voice was a rasp.
I flinched. “If I’d just checked the gaskets, I had time, I was so stupid—”
“Ivory.” Her voice was shaky. “No. The fire wasn’t your fault. Don’t you hear what they’re saying outside the circus? All that shouting about hellfire?”
Rosie
What is the opposite
of a mystery?
Ivory
I asked the first nurse I found if she knew what happened to our mother. The question caused a flurry of activity—it was very clear no one had expected an unconscious patient to disappear—but neither Rosie nor I had any hope they would find her. We walked back to the circus, passing so many Brethren posters along the way, as Rosie made a convincing case that they were the ones behind both the fire and the disappearances.
Back at Carter Park, I held the gauze beneath Bear’s nose. He huffed over it, separating Mama’s scent and the tang of hospital disinfectant from the one who took her.
“And you’re sure it’s Brother Carey?”
Rosie glared at me. “You’re meant to be the logical one, Ivory. Can’t you put the pieces together?”
Bear watched me too, his expression as fierce as my sister’s. In all the years he had played the beast in our circus, I had never seen even a hint of real anger, of anything frightening or even wild in his demeanor. But now Bear growled, rage like a fire behind his eyes.
I could see that pain, that rage. I knew it, because I shared it.
I didn’t know who else would vanish, but I was sure now, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that they had been taken.
They’d been taken.
Rosie was right. She had to be right.
It was Brother Carey. It was the Brethren—all of them.
* * *
We couldn’t go to the police, not after we’d turned them away when they were investigating Lord Bram’s disappearance. Plus, they had been friendly with Brother Carey. And we had nothing concrete we could offer them as proof. We needed to find out more.
Half the remaining troupe stayed and kept watch over the circus grounds while the rest of us set out to search the city for clues. I was pretty sure I knew where to start looking.
All those long days when we’d been working so hard to bring our circus back to life, it had been impossible not to hear parts of Brother Carey’s sermons at the edge of Carter Park.
And what had been his constant theme since the fire?
“Turn away from these wages of sin! Reject these glamorous lies and find refuge in the light and loving embrace of the Lord! Sanctuary is always granted to those who seek His mercy at our hands.” And he handed out pamphlets with directions to the city cathedral on them, surrounded by further urgings to the reader to come and be saved.
It wasn’t as if anyone needed directions. The cathedral’s white spires needled the horizon, visible even from as far away as Carter Park. Marble and metal, all of it, white and silver and shining.
“I have to admit, it’s a stunning building,” I said to Tam as we approached.
“Stunning is the perfect word. The sight of it about whacks you on the head,” fe replied.
I tried to laugh, but my fears about what might have happened to Mama and the others drowned out everything else. “I hate to think we’ll find them here,” I said as we walked up the wide steps leading to the cathedral’s heavy double doors. “I hate it almost as much as thinking we won’t find them.”
The cathedral was nearly empty inside. In the aisles, a few solitary faithful said their prayers, lighting white candles and placing coins in offering boxes.
The whole place fairly gleamed with light and money.
“You can’t tell me this isn’t beautiful,” I whispered.
“I never said it’s not beautiful,” Tam said, fer breath a gentle miracle against my skin. Even after the fire, after all that had happened since, just the feather-light trace of a breath was enough to make me shiver. I bit my lip, trying to pretend I wasn’t wishing it were Tam doing it instead. “It’s just . . . blunt,” fe went on. “There’s no subtlety. There aren’t even any shadows—too many lights everywhere. Don’t you find that . . . creepy?”
Fe was right. The intrusive brightness of the church was, in its way, more unnerving than a ghost story.
We cased the whole church and found nothing. Not that there were many places to hide in that too-bright space, anyway.
“Looking for a friend?” someone said as we walked out the front door again.
I flinched and turned. I knew that voice.
“Where are they?” I demanded.
Brother Carey served me such a blank expression that I had to admit, even then, that he could have been a top-tier performer.
And I supposed that, looking at him in his costume of black robes, standing on the white aisle of his stage, that was exactly what he was.
“If you’re looking for your . . .”—he paused—“colleagues, I’d suggest that this is the last place they’d come unless they have had a true change of heart. Our doors are always open to everyone, as you can see—we would never try to turn anyone away—but unfortunately none of your group have taken my words to heart.” His gaze barely flicked to Tam, who looked profoundly bored. “I’ll be sure to mention your friends in my prayers, child.”
I grabbed Tam’s arm, and fe jumped, startled. We turned and left without another word.
“Did you see his face when he saw us?” Tam asked once we were out. “He absolutely knows something.”
I frowned. “You know, Tam, there are other places in Port’s End besides the cathedral that the Brethren run.” As we blinked in the sunlight, something occurred to me—something so obvious that I couldn’t understand how I hadn’t thought of it earlier. “What about the Houses of Light? That priest, the day you first kissed me, boasted about how they took people into the houses, young women . . .” I closed my eyes and opened them again. “The nearest House of Light is the library a few blocks away, I think.”
* * *
“I have to admit,” I murmured to Tam as we walked into the Sealight branch of the Brethren library system, “this place is coming much closer to converting me than the cathedral ever did.”
Tam said nothing, just smiled at me. But fe didn’t look away long, either, from the huge collection of books stretching from the floor to the ceiling of this place.
The library was quiet in a way the cathedral, with its high ceilings and echoing prayers, never could be. Just a few people tucked away in corners curled over their books.
“I’m wondering if Brother Carey has ever written anything. Maybe if we knew more about him, we could figure out where he’s taking the people he’s kidnapped,” I suggested, grasping at straws.
Our search took us to the basement of the library, an area less trod, less pristine, and less full of the shiny new books that would attract the regular patrons. Here, only the historians and archivists ventured.
“I’ve found something!” Tam pulled a thin volume from a shelf, its leather cover embossed with Brother Carey’s name in gold. Fe handed it to me.
“It looks like it’s a record of his time as a missionary.” I flipped through, skimming for anything that might be useful to us, until a paragraph toward the end caught my eye.
The nature of man is to cultivate bravado, a shield of belief in himself over all other forces, to hide from himself the truth of what he is and where he comes from, and it is only when he returns to his animal state that he can drop his shield and feel again the holy fear that connects him to the Lord.
As I puzzled over this
, Tam moved closer to me and ran a thumb across my wrist.
I looked up at fer. Fe moved fer thumb again and a pink light twined around my skin, sending out little sparks that looked like—yes, like thorns. And just over my pulse point, the light blossomed into a delicate, transparent rose.
“It feels right,” Tam murmured. Fe bent down and kissed my wrist above the bracelet. “Do you mind that I did that? I just thought—or, um, I can take it away—”
“It’s perfect,” I said. “I wish I could do that for you.”
Fe smiled shyly. “Maybe you could make me one out of . . . a gear, say, and a leather strap,” fe replied. “I’ve wanted to give you something for a while, but I haven’t been sure how to ask you. I thought . . . I still don’t feel I can stay here, Ivory, not after the contract I signed with the circus runs out. Esting still isn’t a place for the Fey to feel safe, no matter what the laws say. But . . . a little light like this only takes a little corner of my mind, a little secret thought. And I’m, well, always thinking of you. And I will be, even when I leave. I want you to know that.”
I reached up to bring fer in for a real kiss. If I had said anything in reply, it would have been an argument, a claim about Esting’s tolerance that I’d know was not true.
Better to do something that was only what it seemed. Something I knew was real.
We were far back in the stacks by now. We’d walked through all of them, looking for secrets and clues, and we hadn’t seen anyone else in a long while. Tam and I were more alone here in the recesses of the library than we ever were in the circus.
And something about books always just warms me up.
The Circus Rose Page 12