The Immortal Circus (Cirque des Immortels)

by Алекс Р. Калер A. R. Kahler

  That when I realize he’s not looking at the performers. He’s looking past them, into the cupola.

  At Lilith.

  The man’s gaze flickers to me, and it feels like vertigo slaps me in the face, twists around my stomach. I look away, look up to the fliers that are readying for another trick, and try to force the sickness back down. Each trapeze has a man swinging out toward the other, then back to their platforms. As they swing back, they invert, grab the hands of the waiting girls, and swing out again. Both girls release at the same time, one flying high over the other; the lower girl curls tight into a ball, the one above spreads in a wide X. They both reach the awaiting partner at the same time. Grips catch in a snap of chalk dust. But the lower girl only locks one hand. The other hand slips. In that horrifying moment, I know she’s fucked. The crowd gasps.

  It’s only a second. Only one terrible second as gravity connects and her swing pulls her back down to the earth. That one tentative grip slips, and then she’s plummeting to the ground.

  Someone in the audience screams, or maybe it’s many people, I don’t know. All I know is that the girl only falls for a moment, then she gives a jerk, like something’s snagged her, and her descent immediately slows. She lands lightly within the mist, clearly shaken but doing her best to smile and pose. Something flashes as she turns to face all sides of the crowd, which is now applauding as fervently as though she’d landed the trick. I see her safety lines. Two long black cables stretch from her waist up into the cupola. They caught her and kept her from landing in the dirt in an explosion of blood and bone. She unclips the cables and they slink back up into the heavens.

  Except I know without a doubt that we don’t use safety lines because no one in this circus messes up. Ever. Either Kingston or Mab is covering an accident that shouldn’t have happened.

  For some reason, I look away from the girl on the ground — Jillian is her name, I think — and catch sight of the blond man across from me. He’s still not clapping, but at least he’s looking down now, still scowling. He looks disappointed that the girl is alive.

  * * *

  Although intermission follows immediately after the flying trap, I don’t wait until the end of the act. I awkwardly make my way toward the aisles and bolt out the exit, heading around the tent toward the backstage. Despite the fact that someone almost died, no one seems to notice something went wrong. People are changing or stretching or relaxing. That’s when I notice Kingston standing beside the backstage curtain. He’s peering out through the crack like when we watched the contortionists together. His fingers are clenched into fists.

  “What was that?” I ask when I reach him. He jumps slightly but doesn’t make a sound. When he sees it’s me, his fingers relax just a little. He really should wear a shirt backstage. His abs are distracting, even at the worst of times.

  “Wait,” he whispers. “Just in case.” He turns back and continues to watch through the curtain. A few moments pass while I watch the performers mingling backstage, and then the audience breaks into loud applause. He steps aside just before the trapeze artists run through the back curtain. The girl who fell spots Kingston and wraps him in a hug.

  “Thank you,” Jillian says. There are tears in her eyes and her makeup is smudged.

  Kingston just returns the hug and whispers something in the girl’s ear that I can’t hear. Then the rest of the trapeze artists are circling us, asking what happened. I can’t tell if they’re asking Kingston or Jillian, but it’s Jillian who answers.

  “I don’t know,” she says.

  The guy who caught her — Peter — chimes in.

  “Everything felt good from my end,” he says. “That was a perfect toss.”

  “I know,” Jillian says. She shakes her head. “It felt perfect. But then…I don’t know. Right when I was about to catch, something just…just took my breath away.”

  “What did you smell?” Kingston asks. I stare at him. The question seems ridiculously out of place.

  Jillian rubs her arms. Peter steps up behind her and wraps his own muscular arms around her. She leans back into him, but she’s still shaking. It takes her a while to answer.

  “Lightning,” she finally says. “It smelled like lightning and cut grass.”

  Kingston’s face darkens.

  “They wouldn’t dare,” he whispers. “I have to find Mab.”

  “What is it?” Peter asks.

  “Summer,” Kingston says.

  The small crowd gasps. I have no idea what he’s talking about.

  “Take her to her trailer,” Kingston says to Peter. “Watch her. If anything changes, find me immediately.”

  “Am I in danger?” Jillian asks. Her voice trembles.

  “Keep her out of sight,” Kingston replies, looking only at Peter. Then he’s off, heading toward the trailers.

  The trapeze artists disperse the moment Kingston leaves. Jillian’s practically carried off by Peter and the rest follow in a half-circle behind. I don’t wait around. I jog over to Kingston’s side.

  “What’s going on?” I ask him again. He doesn’t slow.

  “This doesn’t concern you, Vivienne,” he says.

  I reach out and grab his arm, force him to stop. He turns. His eyes burn and I nearly let go. But I don’t. I’m not going to just stand around and wait for someone to include me. I don’t know where this inner fire came from, but I’m not going to fight it. After all, it already saved Lilith’s life. Maybe it’ll save someone else’s, like a heroic sixth sense.

  “I’m part of this troupe,” I say. “What’s going on?”

  I can see the frustration in his eyes, the immediate desire to push me away. I steel myself for the outburst, but it doesn’t come.

  “Summer,” he finally says. “They’re here.”

  If this wasn’t clearly a serious situation, I’d make some witty comment about it being obvious it was summer, seeing as how it’s eighty degrees even after dark. He must notice I’m clueless because he doesn’t wait for me to say anything.

  “The Summer Court. Mab’s rivals. They’re here. They’re interfering.”

  “You think they tried to kill Jillian,” I say. Pieces are clicking together in my head.

  “I think they’re trying to make a point. Which means we need Mab. Now. Before they make any more.”

  He turns to go but I grab him again. Touching him is addictive and, in this instance, allowed.

  “How do you know?” I ask. “What if she just fell?”

  “That doesn’t happen,” Kingston says, not even turning around. “Besides, even I could smell Summer magic at work. I just needed Jillian’s confirmation.”

  We’re nearly to Mab’s trailer when he turns around.

  “Please, Vivienne. Stay out of this. You don’t need any more attention. Just go back to the show.” His eyes are pleading, and he doesn’t give me time to refuse. He turns and heads around the corner of a trailer. I don’t follow.

  Instead, I turn around and head back toward the front of house. I don’t stop until I catch sight of the blond-haired guy who was sitting across from me. He didn’t make it hard; he’s standing at the concessions booth right in front of the tent, looking over our DVDs with the mildest amount of interest. He’s tall and thin — taller than me — in a grey pinstripe suit that makes him even more angular. I stand on the other side of the promenade and watch from the popcorn queue. The man keeps glancing around, but he doesn’t seem to notice me noticing him.

  Mab comes out from the crowd before I reach the cashier. The man in the suit puts down the brochure he was pretending to read and smiles, but it's not even close to friendly — it's the grin of a man looking forward to a conflict. Mab doesn’t even return the forced affection. She strides right over to blond guy with a grim look on her perfectly painted face. A few people stop and stare and make like they’re about to approach her for an autograph, but there’s a darkness to her presence, something that radiates don’t fuck with me. And the whip at her waist only push
es that point home.

  The two share a look, but I don’t see their lips move. Instead, she turns and escorts him away from the booth, behind the picket fence separating backstage from the front. I know that following her would be suicide, but something in me can’t resist the temptation. I don’t know why the hero thing has taken over, but the very thought that this guy might be the one trying to hurt someone in my troupe — my home — makes my blood boil. No one messes with my family. In that moment, I realize it doesn't matter that I've felt like I'm still on the edge of this place. These people took me in. If nothing else, I'm indebted.

  I watch her take him away from the chapiteau — not toward the backstage tent and not toward the trailers. I grin in spite of myself. She’s taking him to the freak show.

  Without hesitating, I head toward the makeshift wooden sign and enter the tunnel of freaks.

  Chapter Five: Freak Show

  On my second night in the troupe, I was gathered around a bonfire with Kingston and Melody and a few others, listening to stories of past shows and the wild adventures people had experienced off-site. Some had gone skinny-dipping in the Arctic. Others reminisced about buying out an entire town’s stock of glazed donuts. Kingston sat next to me, our arms brushing as he laughed. He kept waving his hand over the thermos being passed around, magically refilling it with unknown booze. I hadn’t really grasped that at the time. There were mostly Shifters with us, and they could hold their drink. Most of them, anyway.

  That’s when they started playing Outfreak the Freak.

  It was Melody’s idea, probably because I’d just asked her why members of the tent crew were called Shifters.

  It started by her daring Stephanie to turn into Mab, which made the girl crow with laughter and ask which incarnation? Mel just smiled, said, “Present.”

  Stephanie stood up, brushed herself off, and cleared her throat.

  “Presenting,” she said, “the most feared faerie in history. The one, the only, Mab!” With that, her features melted and stretched, melding into a perfect likeness of Mab. If not for the fact that Stephanie was wearing shorts and a hoodie — something I doubt Mab would ever get caught dead wearing — she pulled it off spectacularly.

  “Fail!” Melody yelled.

  Mab/Stephanie glared at her.

  “Mab’s eyes are more hunter green. I’d call yours mint.”

  Stephanie kicked sand in Mel’s face and sat down, promptly shifting back into her normal pink-haired Goth self.

  “Let me try,” said Heath, a heavily tattooed man with thick round glasses. He stood up and gave himself a shake as his blond hair turned black and wild, his features angling up into a vision of Mab that was frighteningly realistic. Minus two things.

  “Boobs are way, way too big,” Roman said.

  “Not big enough,” countered another guy.

  Moments later, every Shifter around the fire was doing their best impersonation of Mab — some aiming for exactness, others just going wild. There were snake-headed medusae and Mabs with red skin and devil horns. Others had two heads or five breasts. It just got worse from there, as they deviated from impersonating Mab into creating the weirdest creatures they could think of. Soon, the campfire was surrounded by bleeding harpies and twelve-foot-tall stick men and — strangest of all — a round blob of human flesh with no eyes or appendages, just a giant mouth filled with broken-syringe teeth.

  “That, my friend,” Melody laughed, “is why they’re called Shifters. Shapeshifters, if you want to be precise.”

  “How the hell do they do that?” I asked, watching the blob slurp itself back into the form of a tiny girl with a green buzz cut.

  “Lineage,” Kingston said. “You know all those stories about gods mating with mortals?” I nodded, thinking of Zeus and all his bastardized offspring. “Yeah, well, replace ‘gods’ with ‘faeries’ and that’s what you get.”

  I watched as Heath — at least, I thought it was Heath — mutated into one giant blue breast.

  “Not as refined as the stories, eh?” Melody laughed.

  “Never is,” Kingston said.

  * * *

  Roman is the first guy I recognize in the throng, though it takes me a moment to connect the guy I’m looking at with the heavily pierced, blue-mohawked guy I’m used to. This new, changed Roman is wearing a three-piece suit that looks like it was in at least a dozen pieces before he resurrected it. Patches are fraying off the elbows and I can’t tell if it’s mostly brown or tweed or black pinstripe. He’s also at least seven feet tall, with thick black tattoos curling around his bare wrists and tunnel plugs in his ear that are big enough to pass a tennis ball through. His general face shape is still roughly the same, albeit pointier, a bit more elfish. But he still has the blue mohawk.

  “Vivienne,” he says. His voice is much deeper than usual, rumbling in the depths of his chest. “Enjoying the show?”

  “Yeah,” I say, looking around, trying to find my quarry. Everything here seems dusty and antiquated, from the hand-painted signs proclaiming the bearded lady (classic), bat boy, and serpent fingers, to the makeshift tents and pavilions set up for the shows. I don’t see Mab or the blond guy anywhere.

  “Looking for something in particular?” he asks, the hint of a joke on his lips. “I hear the fire eater’s quite hot this time around.”

  “Mab,” I say, ignoring the horrible pun. His face becomes serious in an instant.

  Roman clears his throat. He doesn’t ask me why I want to know, doesn’t ask if I’m getting into trouble. We stare at each other for a moment and it’s clear he already knows something’s up, and he’s not interested in getting involved. Mab doesn’t come into the freak show; whatever’s going on is serious.

  “She went that way,” he says, pointing to the side.

  I glance around. The tents back here are chaotic, all jammed together with no real rhyme or reason. Small alleys appear between a few tents, leading off in more directions and more shows. Hiding somewhere behind them is Mab and the man, and my time to find them is running out fast.

  “Any idea which one?”

  He shakes his head. “Went down Alligator Alley. You’ll have to look.”

  Across the circular pitch from Roman stands a tank as wide as I am tall, and twice my height. In its depths, waving slowly with a grin on her face, is Penelope. Her red hair floats around her in a halo, her pale skin looking even paler in the clear water. She’s wearing a bra made of sequined seashells, and from the navel down, her body is that of a fish, with opalescent blue scales and a beautiful fin as diaphanous as a betta's. She smiles at me, a tiny trail of bubbles escaping her lips, and I wave back, trying not to look as rushed as I feel. To the right of her giant aquarium is a space between a couple tents. A wooden sign strung above it reads Alligator Alley with a bitten-off chunk missing from the side. There are a few people walking in and out of the narrow space, heading for or returning from the other tents nestled in the back.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Be careful,” he says in return, not looking at me. I nod and head into the crowd.

  The air back here is stifling. It smells of sawdust and horses, kerosene and sweat. I cram down the tight passage next to a couple others and squeeze my way forward. I can’t see Mab or the blond guy over the heads of everyone, and I’ve got a sneaking suspicion they wouldn’t just be standing out in the open. They’re hiding.

  I come to an opening in the tent on my left. I glance up. Tarantina the Tarantuless — araknaspiderphobes beware is written in black ink on the wooden sign. A rubber spider hangs off the edge. Deciding to start at the beginning, I duck inside.

  The moment I enter the tent, I feel like I’ve stepped into the Amazon. Stunted trees arch under the tent’s canopy, and long strands of moss droop down like broken wings. All I can see is the winding path in front of me. The floor is dirt and the air is thick and moisture immediately starts dripping down my forehead. There isn’t much of a crowd in here, and it doesn’t take long to figure
out why; every surface is covered in spiders. Big Brown fuzzy creatures the size of my thumbnail or larger than a plate roam freely over the tent. They dangle from webs in the ceiling, crawl over the moss. A few scurry across the path in front of me.

  I shiver in spite of myself. I’ve never been afraid of spiders, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy the idea of a large one dropping down the back of my neck.

  I creep through the undergrowth, careful not to step on any of the spiders making their oblivious way underfoot. The only sound in the tent is the hum of cicadas and the occasional disturbing crunching noise; I can’t hear the music from outside or the voices of the audience. I feel completely alone. I walk a few steps deeper and turn a corner. The trees close in, reaching out with their leg-like branches. Cobwebs stretch from floor to ceiling.

  Something slides across my neck and I jump, my hand immediately swatting at it.

  A woman stands behind me. Her hair is long and braided, her skin deep brown. She’s wearing leopard skin and leather. Her feet are bare. There’s a tarantula the size of my fist on her shoulder and another creeping through her hair. Tiny spiders crawl up and down her legs.

  “Vivienne,” she says, flashing a razor-toothed smile. Her eyes glint gold and black.

  I take a deep, steadying breath and thank the gods I didn’t scream.

  “Taran…tina?” I say.

  She laughs, though her voice deepens. Her face changes.

  “Heath?”

  He chuckles. It’s just Heath’s face — stubble and all — that’s similar. The rest is definitely feminine. He gestures to his body with the hand not holding the spider.