The Trilogy of Two

by Juman Malouf

  Sonja ran to him and grabbed his jacket. “Please, Pershing. It’s not our fault!”

  The ringmaster shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do.”

  Balthazar took a gulp from his bottle and smeared away his smile. He hiccupped. “I always knew they were witches.” The other two clowns nodded.

  “It’s not true,” muttered Charlotte.

  Pershing snatched the bottle out of the clown’s hand. “Clean up this mess, you clowns.”

  The twins changed out of their wet tuxedos in the dressing room. Monkey scrambled under the makeup table, searching for crumbs.

  “They’re ruined, aren’t they?” said Sonja, holding up her costume. It was black from the rain. She wondered if it mattered anyhow. They were fired. At this rate, she would never become famous like Kanazi Kooks.

  “They’ll be fine.” Tatty hung the child-sized suits, dripping, on a costume rack crammed with sequined leotards, striped overalls, and a gold lamé cape. She put her arms around the girls’ shoulders. “We’d better go tell the old man what happened.”

  Monkey scampered after them, his bulging little cheeks stuffed with popcorn.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mr. Fortune Teller

  AT THE EDGE OF THE CIRCUS CAMP, BESIDE A WITHERED tree, was a lonely caravan with a mosaic facade of mother-of-pearl and stained-glass windowpanes. Smoke puffed out of a small chimney and filled the air with the scent of burning herbs. A lantern hung on the door, illuminating a crooked sign that read MR. FORTUNE TELLER SEES YOUR FUTURE.

  Charlotte hurried ahead of Sonja and Tatty to a horse with his head buried in a bucket of grain. “Hello, Rhubarb,” she whispered.

  The horse looked up and shook his zebra-striped head, then huffed and whinnied. His short, stiff white-and-black mane stuck up on end like the bristles of a brush. He blinked two large, melancholy eyes.

  Mr. Fortune Teller had found Rhubarb in an abandoned zoo, and Charlotte had always been particularly attached to him. Like Rhubarb, Charlotte and Sonja did not know where they came from. And the way things were going, they would probably end up exhibited in a zoo just like Rhubarb had been. She brushed the flecks of grain from the horse’s cheeks. “It looks like freckles,” she said, smiling.

  Just then the door swung open and a middle-aged woman burst out. A customer. Tear-stained tissues fell from her hands. “Don’t believe a word that old man says!” she yelled, pushing past Tatty and the twins and disappearing into the night.

  “I guess she didn’t get the fortune she was hoping for,” sighed Tatty.

  They stepped inside. Leaves and twigs crackled in a small stove. Bookcases lined the worn velvet walls. Charlotte saw Mr. Fortune Teller crouched over a small brass case with a glass top. When he looked up, candlelight flickered in his white eyes. His fading irises had nearly disappeared. Charlotte knew his sight was getting worse, and that one day soon, he would be blind.

  “It happened again,” Tatty reported. “This time worse.”

  “I lifted the whole audience off the ground,” moaned Sonja.

  “I made it rain cats and dogs.” Charlotte stared at her shoes. She searched for the words. They were simple but strange: “Inside the tent!”

  The old man chuckled. “You gave them a performance they’ll never forget.”

  Mr. Fortune Teller was not much taller than the twins. He had a large, hooked nose and frizzy salt-and-pepper hair. He wore a checked wool suit and a matching bow tie. A hunk of tortoiseshell dangled from a foxtail chain around his neck. He was the wisest person the twins had ever met. He had taught them how to read and write and understand the world—as it was now, and as it had been before the cities had taken over.

  The old man gestured for them to approach. “Come have a look.”

  Monkey scaled the bookcases, scouring for hidden treats, as Tatty and the twins peered through the glass into the case. A colony of green caterpillars spun fluffy white cocoons—tiny oval clouds of silk. A single, smaller one whirled a completely different kind of thread: it sparkled bright gold. Its cocoon looked like a Turkish slipper.

  Charlotte gasped. “How does she do that, Uncle Tell?”

  “I injected her with a drop of your blood,” explained Mr. Fortune Teller. “I wanted to see if it was true.”

  “If what was true?” asked Sonja.

  “That you have magic in you.”

  “You said it was a coincidence,” blurted Charlotte. They were already strange enough. They lived in a circus and had extraordinary musical talent. Other children were scared of them. This would only make it worse.

  “When magic is released from the body, it appears gold.” The old man pointed at the cocoon. “There’s no doubt about it. You have magic in your blood.”

  Charlotte remembered a time when they were very young, seeing a traveling magician make a pigeon disappear. Afterward, the girls had asked the old man if magic really existed. Mr. Fortune Teller explained that it was rare, but that there were people with true magic in them. Where did it come from? The old man did not know, but added that one thing was certain: magic always came hand in hand with Talent.

  Sonja shook her head. “It can’t be true.”

  “Let’s review the facts.” Mr. Fortune Teller sank into a tired leather armchair. “A year ago, it began. Little incidents here and there when you played. Everyone thought it was Helmut the Contortionist’s ghost.” He chuckled. “In the past three months, it’s happened four times, each incident bigger than the last. It sounds like tonight’s was the biggest.” His hands searched and fumbled across the desktop and settled onto a tin pipe. He stuffed it with wild sage and lit it with one of the candles. “Your magic is only growing stronger. It’s no coincidence.”

  “What are we going to do?” moaned Charlotte. “Pershing’s banned us from the show!”

  “The others won’t come near us,” Sonja said unhappily. “They’ll probably have us committed to some hospital to do experiments on our brains.”

  “Come, Sonja. Sit down,” said Tatty, leading her to a divan. “You, too, Charlotte.”

  “In time, you’ll learn how to control it,” Mr. Fortune Teller said, taking a slow, gentle puff on his pipe. “Like every fledging.” He leaned back into his armchair. A mist of scented smoke veiled his face. “At first, it falls to the ground or crashes into a tree, but eventually, it flies. It has no choice.”

  Charlotte paused for a moment, thinking. “Does it have something to do with our parents?”

  The old man put down his pipe and wiped his mustache with a handkerchief. “Possibly.”

  Sonja stared at Mr. Fortune Teller blankly. “It does, or it doesn’t.”

  The old man exchanged a silent look with Tatty. He shook his head. “I don’t know for sure. In the old texts, some say it’s inherited, others say it’s exposure. Whatever the case, you’ve got it. A lot of it. More than I’ve ever seen.”

  Charlotte’s heart sank. Any dreams of one day having a normal life were rapidly slipping through her fingers. All she ever wanted was to make friends her own age, maybe even have a boyfriend. “Why is this happening?” she grumbled. “It’s not fair!”

  “In a few years, I’ll be blind. Is that fair?” Mr. Fortune Teller shrugged. “Maybe not, but it’s helped me develop something else. An inner sight.” He walked over to the divan. Tatty and the girls stood up, and the old man placed a creased, sun-spotted hand on each of the girls’ shoulders. “One day, I promise, something good will come from these gifts. For now, you must practice every day. Don’t let the music take over. Learn to stay in control.”

  Monkey began to snore. He was sprawled across a high shelf, fast asleep. An empty bottle of sweet wine lay beside him.

  “That little rascal,” muttered Tatty, taking off her shoes. She stood on the divan and picked up the sleeping monkey and cradled him. She turned to the old man. “Sorry, Hieronymus.”


  The old man chuckled. “Better him than me.” He walked them to the door and looked out at the faint blinking lights in the distance. “Rain City,” he mused. “The place of my youth. I remember when the buildings were only two stories tall and people used to walk in the streets.” He shook his head. “Nothing ever stays the same.”

  They said their goodbyes to Mr. Fortune Teller and left him alone.

  The old man listened for a moment as the footsteps trailed off across the camp. He hurried to his desk and pulled open a drawer. He unlocked a small jewelry box and took out a purple stone. He placed it delicately onto a little antique wooden stand. He rubbed the tortoiseshell pendant hanging from his neck, burnishing it, then pressed the face of it flat against the stone.

  The stone lit up like a purple lightbulb and began to quietly pulse.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tabitha Tatters

  CHARLOTTE AND SONJA LEANED OUT THEIR CARAVAN window side by side. The circus members were all in for the night. The clowns next door sang a melancholy Gypsy song. At a porch table, Pershing played chess against a woman the size of a table lamp. Silvery moonlight gleamed down through the clouds. Sonja waved to an old lady wearing a purple turban in the caravan opposite them. A pale boa constrictor was draped across the woman’s shoulders. She sneered at them and looked away.

  Sonja sighed and yanked shut the two dish towels that served as curtains.

  She remembered when the circus members used to fight over whose caravan would be parked closest to theirs. Most of them had never had children, and they loved being around the twins. They sang them songs, told them stories, and made them toys. As the girls grew older, and their musical abilities developed, the circus members grew more and more suspicious of them. Now they argued over whose caravan would be parked farthest away. Sonja felt rejected by the only friends she had ever had.

  She looked around their tiny home. Thirty marionettes fashioned out of bits of wooden junk dangled from the caravan’s arched ceiling. They were creatures and animals from Tatty’s tattoos. Books, clothes, and old newspapers were piled over the floor, and stacks of musical compositions and flutes of various shapes and sizes lay scattered all around. Hanging against the peeling, flowered wallpaper were a cuckoo clock, a snapshot of Tatty and the twins, and a red accordion.

  Sonja slumped alongside her sister at a table in front of the junk they had gathered, including the broken table leg. A book of sketches was propped open by two tin cans. There was a drawing of a man with wings and horns.

  Sonja looked up at Tatty. “Are you scared of us like the others?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Tatty said, laughing. She plopped snoring Monkey into an open drawer.

  Charlotte fiddled with the torso of an unfinished marionette. “I didn’t see Bea tonight. Where was she?”

  “On a date.” Tatty cleared plates of half-eaten pancakes and carried them to a makeshift kitchen at the back of the caravan.

  Of all the circus members, Bea had hurt Sonja the most. She had lived with them when she first joined the circus. They had loved her like an older sister. But she had changed, just like the others. Sonja looked from the drawing to the broken table leg to Charlotte. “I’ll do the horns,” she said matter-of-factly. “You can do the wings.”

  “I found the wood,” Charlotte said stubbornly. “I’ll do the horns.”

  Tatty stood over them. She wiped her hands on her robe. “Making a Tiffin?”

  Sonja nodded sulkily. “We’ll have plenty of time, now that we’re banned.”

  “Remember what Uncle Tell said. Once you learn how to control it, you can perform again.”

  Charlotte sighed. “We haven’t missed a performance since we were three.”

  “Except when you had the measles,” reminded Tatty. She slipped off her robe and tipped a bottle of vinegar onto a handkerchief. She rubbed the smelly white liquid across her oily chest, where animals within a dense wood were inked. “What do other children your age do?”

  Charlotte shrugged. “How would we know? They don’t speak to us. Except Scrummagers.”

  “Anyway,” said Sonja, “we don’t want to do what other children do. We want to do something great like Kanazi Kooks.” She took out a newspaper clipping from her jacket pocket. There was a photograph of a man with spiky hair and large, black-framed round glasses holding a flute. “He performs all over the world. In the biggest big-city auditoriums. He was born in the—”

  “Outskirts,” interrupted Charlotte. “We know. We know. We know all about Kanazi Kooks, thank you. Well, you can count me out. I don’t want to go to some gifted school. And I definitely don’t want to be a city girl.”

  Sonja crumpled the newspaper clipping. “They wouldn’t let the likes of us in anyhow.”

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Sonja, and help me,” ordered Tatty. Sonja reluctantly stood up and rubbed Tatty’s greasy shoulders with the vinegar-soaked handkerchief. She studied the tattooed images of sloping sand dunes, temples carved out of rock, and women hovering above the ground.

  “Sometimes I think I should have sent you to live with Aunt Alexandria and Uncle Arthur,” said Tatty. “Maybe your lives would have been a little more normal.”

  “Normal?” grunted Charlotte. “Are you kidding? They’re both crazy.”

  “Alexandria’s a chain smoker and always smells like black gin,” Sonja said with a frown. “She’d make a terrible role model.”

  “I wish you were nicer to her.”

  “Nicer to her!” blurted Charlotte. “She’s not nice to us. She can’t even remember which one of us is which.”

  “Remind me not to get on the wrong side of the two of you.” Tatty stood up and slipped a nightgown over her colorful skin, like drawing a shade over a bright landscape. “Come on, girls. Time for bed.”

  The twins changed into mismatched pajamas and wriggled under the covers. Tatty climbed into bed next to them. She pulled the string above her head, and the light went out.

  “Tatty?”

  “Yes, Charlotte.”

  “You’re sure you don’t think we’re freaks?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Tatty?”

  “Yes, Sonja?”

  “You think we really have magic in us?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Go to sleep.”

  “First, the story,” said Sonja.

  “You know all about that. You don’t need me to tell that story again. Besides, you girls are old enough, you can just tell it yourself.”

  “No, Sonja’s right,” said Charlotte. “Tell it just to remind us.”

  Tatty groaned. “Okay, but then sleep.”

  “Agreed,” they said in unison.

  Sonja held Charlotte’s hand under the covers. It was a habit they had formed as young children.

  Tatty cleared her throat and began. “I was getting ready for bed one night when I heard a knock at my door—”

  “It was your first week at the circus,” Charlotte interrupted. “You were scared to live alone in a caravan.”

  Sonja chimed in, “You peeked outside, but nobody was there.”

  Tatty nodded and continued: “Just as I was about to close the door, I heard a gurgling, gargling sound, and I looked down at the ground—and there you two were. Wrapped in one woolen shawl and stuffed into a milk pail. There was a note pinned to the shawl with your names and your birthday written on it, and a heart-shaped locket with a strand of brown hair curled inside it.”

  Sonja opened the locket that lay on her chest. Inside, underneath the cloudy, scratched glass, was the curled lock of brown hair. The twins had a rule: they were not allowed to open the locket outside under any circumstances. They were scared of losing the only little piece of their mother they had.

  “Tomorrow’s my turn
to wear it,” whispered Charlotte.

  “I had tried to have my own children,” continued Tatty, “but I never could. It was at that moment that I knew why. I was waiting for my dear girls to be delivered to me in a milk pail.” Tatty’s voice broke. It always did when she reached the end of the story.

  Sonja pressed her toes against Tatty’s. Tatty tried her best to be a good mother, and even though she did not know how to read or write, or understand why the sky was blue or why the moon changed shapes, she made them laugh, comforted them when they were sad, and loved them with all her heart.

  “Thank goodness we were orphans,” said Charlotte.

  “We love you, Tatty,” said Sonja.

  “And I love you, my dearies.”

  Monkey grunted from the open drawer.

  “And you, too, of course, Monkey.”

  Sonja knew that Tatty had sacrificed everything for them. She had even sold her gold fillings to get them milk when they were babies. But as much as Sonja loved Tatty, she often found herself thinking, late at night, about the mother and father who had abandoned them and where they were now.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Seven Edens

  A WHITE SUN ROSE ABOVE THE OUTSKIRTS OF RAIN CITY. The gray smog hung low across the wide landscape. Rain pitterpattered on the tin roofs of the circus caravans. Everyone was still asleep except for Charlotte and Sonja. They sat at the table in their pajamas, whispering and working. Charlotte had sawed the piece of wood into smaller blocks and was chiseling a miniature horn out of one. Sonja was carefully sticking little feather shapes made out of costume scraps onto cardboard wings.

  “Once we’ve finished the Tiffin,” remarked Charlotte, “we’ll have all the creatures from Tatty’s tattoo. Then we’ll only need to paint the backdrops, and voilà: we’ll have our marionette show.”

  Since the twins were very young, Tatty had told them stories about the Seven Edens and the characters who inhabited them. Tatty had learned the details from the tattoo artist himself all those years ago. The girls knew the legends inside and out and backward and forward. When Charlotte was bored, she would go through the seven lands and their inhabitants like a multiplication table: