The Grand Tour

by E. Catherine Tobler

  Jackson wanted what Roberts had—the secret to our talent, but we couldn’t give it, being that we didn’t understand it ourselves. We didn’t understand what happened to me, either. In the dark of night, when the train was at rest, Sombra and Gemma curled together in the dark and whispered. What had happened? Did Roberts do something to me? Where was I? They could both feel me, that I knew; they could feel me slip between them as easily as a whisper, filling up all the little spaces between and around. They tried to deny it, told themselves they were dreaming, but deep down they knew better. Deep down, they knew it was driving them mad.

  I kept going back to the bridge. In my dreams, I carried Sombra and Gemma with me. Bare feet on rain-wet iron-hard slats. The dog’s breath curling warm against my leg. Roberts pulling on the rope that tied us. Sombra and Gemma resisted, said now was the time—now, now, now!

  And then they pulled. Pulled so hard we three went down on the bridge. The dog whined, breath coming out in clouds, then scampered off the bridge and away as Roberts charged.

  “Come on!” Sombra screamed the words, pulling that wet rope, trying to get me and Gemma to our feet. But Roberts had hold of me on the other end, Gemma caught in the middle in this awful game of tug.

  Roberts drew his knife, a hunter’s knife that was well cared for. He was a hard man, in desperate need of money, but what he owned, he took good care of. That knife bit into the rope and as Sombra tugged, he cut. Cut until the rope came apart and I went staggering back into his arms.

  There was a moment when he smiled. Beyond his wet beard, his mouth parted to reveal crooked teeth. But it was a joyous smile, as though he’d won something. My bare feet slipped on the bridge slats, I went into his arms hard and unbalanced him.

  We flipped over the rail as though we had been pushed, and it was Gemma’s scream that followed us down. It was a long fall; it almost felt like there would never be a bottom to the valley, and when there was, it was icy snowmelt that closed over us. Icy water and rocks and

  then—

  Then, I was back on the bridge, standing between my sisters, looking down into that valley at the churning river. I curled my hands around Sombra’s arm and she shrieked. She batted at the air to push me away and screamed and screamed until her throat was raw. At long last, she didn’t push Gemma away. Only curled against our sister and moaned like her heart had been ripped out whole.

  That was when the train’s whistle rose above everything, and we moved.

  Jackson called Gemma to his train car, alone. I curled around her neck close to where her heart beat, tattered bits of me resting between her small breasts as she stepped into the ring of light nearer to Jackson’s desk. He crooked his fingers and she came closer yet, as though he had her tied with a rope the way Roberts had. Gemma slipped around the corner of his desk, her skirts whispering in a low, emerald voice.

  She thought he meant to take her up on her offer, of men finding pleasure with them, but when he finally took hold of her, she gasped in surprise. I felt the sharp draw of breath and the pain, too, where his fingers bit into her arm. He was quick about it, drawing a sweet-smelling kerchief from his pocket to press it over her mouth and nose. This awful, heavy scent made me withdraw; like clouds coming apart under hard wind, I felt myself dissolving. I slipped from Gemma’s neck, onto the dirty floor, and pulled myself back together.

  As Gemma finally slumped, unconscious, Jackson dragged her from the light, into the depths of his train car. There, against the back wall, were two cages, like one might keep animals in. Jackson opened the rusting gate of one, and pushed Gemma inside, before relatching and locking it. Inside, Gemma lay still like death, knees drawn to her chest.

  I fled. I slipped through every crack that train car had and stretched long across the frost-tipped grass. Could see in my not-eye the bridge Roberts had pulled me over, could feel those cold, wet slats under my not-feet as we slipped and went over. Reaching for Sombra now felt like falling all over again, and I discovered then, she was gone, too.

  The train car stood quiet, mattress empty, lantern snuffed. The scent of it did not even linger in the cold night air, so it had been awhile. I could see tracks in the dirt outside the car, bare feet and booted, but they vanished into the grass, the frost having covered them well.

  All the long night, I looked. Looked but could not see or feel Sombra. I could taste her though; her fear coated these mountain woods and the back of my tongue alike, thick and bitter. It was nowhere and everywhere, and I could not latch onto it.

  Knowing where Gemma lay, I crept back to her side, slipping through the cage bars. But when I settled beside her, she came awake, shrieking like she was being killed. Her hands knotted into her hair, over her ears, and she rocked, screaming incoherently. I did not want to leave, tried to touch her, crawl inside, but she bucked like a green horse, flinging herself against the side of the cage until at last I left, and her screams turned to whimpers carried on the night wind.

  The following day was quiet. I could not go near Gemma without making her shriek and I could not find Sombra, so I shadowed Jackson. On the surface, his day was ordinary. He walked circles around the tents to inspect them and be sure they were holding up well under the constant tug of wind; he spoke with employees as to the evening's performances; he visited the few horses they kept and offered his hands to them to nuzzle with velvet noses.

  But beneath that calm surface, I felt something else was at hand, and when he shuffled back to his train car, and a dog fell into step beside him, it seemed like a puzzle piece. The St. Bernard gave a low whuff into the evening air and I could remember what that warm breath felt like against my own leg as we stood near the bridge. Roberts’s dog, now Jackson’s? What had Jackson done to my sisters? What torment did they know while he roamed his circus train?

  Jackson packed the main tent that night, oversold the show and left people pressed outside, straining to see. Experience the Weird Sisters! his hawkers cried. Witness the Sheer Bounty of Strange!

  I lingered at the top of the tent, against the striped canvas though it moved against me with every breath of wind. Prior to the show, the lights in the tent were doused; everyone there was thrown into darkness and Jackson let it linger long enough to grow uncomfortable. The people fell to utter silence, and then you could hear the uneasy murmur among them. What was happening? Could anyone see? Did something just brush against my leg?

  The lights returned with a great explosion; from every corner of the tent, colored-glass oil lamps were lit in the same instant, bathing everyone in a strange, green glow. It seemed as though we were underwater, compressed by great fathoms of water. I stretched along the tent, my not-eyes riveted to the cages which rolled into the center ring.

  Two cages, one draped with blue-dyed canvas, one of them the animal cage from the back of Jackson’s train car. I could feel then Gemma’s heart lodged in her throat. Warm and salty, metallic and not unlike silver. A thing that called to me, bid me down to the ground. I clung to the tent canvas, trying to feel Sombra in the other cage.

  The fire that was my eldest sister had been banked. She existed—oh yes—but as a low pile of cooling embers only. I reached for her and it was like reaching my not-hand into an icy lake. Beyond the chill, there was a fiery sting, something that promised warmth but could not yet deliver. I drew back, attention rounding on Jackson, who walked between the cages, his walking stick having been replaced with a whip. I became aware of a low rumble at the base of Sombra’s throat. Wherever she had been kept, she knew well the feel of that leather lash.

  In the sickly light, Jackson appeared like a man from another world. His small body unbent and he stood straighter than I’d seen before—the showman in his element, garbed in a suit that shimmered in the green lights. He was not small and hunched over with pain in this place. His face unpinched itself and, though bathed in emerald and lime, seemed at the height of health. He smiled and lifted his arms and the crowd leaned forward as one, to see what he had brought before them.


  “I beg you all to be witness tonight,” he said, his voice carrying to even those outside the tent. “I beg you to witness these strange women, these weird sisters, and know them for what they are.” Slowly, he rounded the cages; I could smell the ground beneath his boots, dirt that had been pounded by horses earlier in the day. “They are not human women, my friends, oh no. Not these.”

  The whip trailed with a whisper across the top of Gemma’s cage. I felt her flinch as my own.

  “Angry and strange, they will consume you if you look too long upon them.” Jackson moved around Gemma’s cage, to a point again between them, where a table had been placed. He set his whip to the side and drew back a blanket to reveal a staggering sight. “Two bodies trying to contain three souls! They must be appeased!”

  The crowd drew back with assorted gasps at the sight of the struggling sheep bound to the table. Jackson took up a knife, not unlike that which Roberts had used to cut me free from my sisters, drew back the sheep’s throat, and cut it open. My sisters screamed with the sheep, and it felt I did, too, until our throats were raw from it. Warm blood, a familiar metallic tang against my not-tongue, and to the west I could feel every bit of silver calling us. Burning into us. The blood flowed down the sheep’s neck, over Jackson’s hand, into a bowl of honey where it pooled crimson against the gold.

  “Strange offerings for strange women!” Jackson cried above the din of the crowd. He was losing some of them—some of the more delicate ladies in the audience had swooned. Others had fled, pressing through the eager bodies yet outside the tent. These came in to take their places, to gape at Jackson’s sacrifice in the ring. “I give you this, O Silver Sisters!”

  There was a strange reverence in Jackson’s voice at that, an almost-caress that seemed to slip right down our spines. Gemma curled into it, while Sombra leaned toward it and then, angry at herself for doing so, revolted. Her entire cage shook. A spark burst from Jackson’s hands, and the sheep, blood, and honey were engulfed in flame.

  Sombra came alive again; heat called to heat, and she drew this power into her. The blanket that covered her cage was wholly consumed by the flames; for a moment, it looked like she was sitting in the middle of the fire herself. I could feel her straining against the metal which confined her, and Gemma, too. I was drawn to that power, unable to fight it, and slipped away from the tent roof, riding those warm currents of fire toward my sisters.

  Jackson withdrew; he stepped back and dropped to his knees, mindless of the pain they gave him, his eyes bright with tears as he watched the scene before him. I felt myself sucked into the heat of the flames, near to exploding again; felt whatever was left of me turn liquid and stretch, reaching for the cages.

  The metal doors flew off their hinges, into the crowd which moved like some confined ocean wave in the tent. I was aware of a new metallic tang, fresh blood from the weeping crowd. Bodies pressed under hot metal doors. Seared flesh. Screaming children.

  I stood again on the bridge, toes curled against the iron-hard slats of wood. Roberts’s knife, bright in the rain, sharp as it bit into the rope. I clung to that memory, as though it might anchor me and save me from the madness in the tent. But I saw then it was also an anchor to Gemma and Sombra. If I didn’t let go, they would never let go.

  I let go. The tide turned black and devoured me. I channeled the blood and the screams and the fire and beneath it all, the sweet taste of that honey; sucked the power from them and reached for my sisters. Reached until my not-hands took hold of them and dragged them from the ruins of their cages. At that touch, the three of us together again, the tent exploded.

  The striped canvas snapped upward, as though a great hand grabbed it. The poles came inward and the crowd fled, strange black shadows in that green light. Three days later, Jackson’s boys would find the tent and its poles in a Kansas field. Tonight, there was only the fire from the sacrifice, the broken oil lamps that scattered the field.

  There was something else then, a prickling along my arms, an awareness that I was once again sheltered within a body. Gemma’s head rested gently between my hands, silvered hair trailing across my fingers and arms. In a blink, I shifted from Sombra’s body, into Gemma’s, and she was not screaming, but welcoming me inside. I watched through her eyes as she looked up at Sombra, her body seeming black like the night sky above, strewn with stars. Charred by the fire, yet still alive. Still alive ...

  “Sombra?” Gemma whispered.

  “Hush now,” she told me, and gathered the Gemma-me against her. I bled out of Gemma and back into Sombra, feeling securely held between both. Sombra lifted her head, eyes pinpointing Jackson. Blood and soot made a strange mask over his face and Sombra nodded to him once. “Thank you.”

  These were not the words I expected her to say and only in the days that followed did I understand. My thought that Jackson had known ... the sight of the St. Bernard trotting at his side ... the discovery of a stack of bills in our train car, tied with a slip of paper that read “Roberts.” Sombra and Gemma sat with this money between them one evening, legs crossed Indian-style.

  “He knew,” Sombra told Gemma, black eyes lifting from the money. Her fingers moved over the stack of bills between them, sparks of fire glinting from their tips. “He heard what we were and claimed us.”

  As much as this should have horrified Gemma and me, it didn’t. Gemma nodded, stardust shifting down her shoulders. “Broke us and remade us right,” she whispered, feeling right for the first time in years.

  Roberts hadn’t wanted silver at all. He’d hunted us at Jackson’s behest. In the end, though we escaped Roberts, we had still come to Jackson’s train, drawn by those often-heard whistles that carried through the mountain valleys we called home.

  And now this train was home, my sisters and me remade into something we had never imagined. My sisters were two halves of the same thing, one light and one dark, and me still the breath between them. Where one was concave, the other was convex. Where one was sharp rocks, the other was smooth water. Sombra’s hair was the night sky while Gemma’s was the stars. And sometimes, I made them exactly backwards from that.

  Blow the Moon Out

  1957, Philadelphia

  In those moments before, in the dark of the woods, we were near perfect likenesses of each other: faces round and curious, not having lost the plumpness of youth; eyes brightened by the possibility that lay at the end of our journey; coats buttoned up proper and bags carrying all we thought we needed still neatly zippered closed.

  One might look at we four and say sisters, but we were not. Beneath our exteriors, we were as different as sun and moon, as Earth and Mars. Each might hang in the same sky, but one burned with its own light while the other could only reflect what was thrown its direction; one exploded with water and life while the other hung as a dry husk, millennia dead.

  Moon was what my mother called me, bundling me like a crescent within her arms as she rocked me to sleep on the back porch night after night. Her weathered hands smoothed over my cheeks as she told me there was no man in the moon, but a girl, round and plump, gleaming pale as moonlight itself. Moon was what I was, then—in those moments before.

  I didn’t possess my own light, but readily reflected and studied that of others.

  * * *

  1. Strays

  The woods were not lovely, though I would grant them both dark and deep as we wound our way closer to Philadelphia to see Jackson’s Unreal Circus and Mobile Marmalade. It was the best of all possible worlds: Halloween had come and gone, but the weekend stretched ahead and with it, a chunk of treasured, unsupervised adventuring.

  My sister Audrey, seventeen, slim, and perfect, had kicked us out of the faded tomato-red Rambler still on the Jersey side of the river. She was supposed to take us straight to the circus, but left us before we’d even hit the old rail bridge. It wasn’t right, but after seeing the empty look in her eyes, none of us said a word. We slid out and she was gone almost before the door latched shut. We woul
d end up like the boy in the box, Norma whispered, but Trudy slapped her arm and for a long while we stood in silence, daylight running out around us.

  Two nights ago, Audrey and I sat at the very intersection we shuffled out of now; the Rambler rumbled as it always had and Audrey stared down the road, like she could see all manner of things I couldn’t. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her purse, held one unlit between her lips, and just stared. Joel wasn’t supposed to ... he was supposed to be there, supposed to take me, Lucy. The cigarette had bobbed, drawing a long shadow over her chin, her neck. In the half light of the streetlight, she was just shadows. She never did light that cigarette.

  Four shadows stretched across the road now as we nodded at each other, resolved, and left the pavement for the woods trailing along the Delaware River. Five miles to the bridge? More? I didn’t know, had never been there on foot before, and wasn’t sure why Audrey had been.

  The Delaware River growled a distant rumble to our left. The day was not yet over, but sunlight struggled to reach the ground here, leaving the mulch dappled in vague shadows. I placed my foot in every slight mark Rum left ahead of me, as she followed Trudy. I glanced over my shoulder to make certain of Norma. She was still there, though lagging behind, the tall grass plucking at the frilled hem of her skirt.

  “They are not putting a dog in space.”

  Norma, who tended to cringe every time she heard a male voice, cringed now, even though there were no boys or men close. Her head came up sharply at Rum’s words. Her eyes were as dark as the woods, but I could see the confusion in them. I looked forward again, to the set of Rum’s slight shoulders, to the bounce of Trudy’s copper pompadour turned umber in the forest gloom.

  “Lu, you tell her—dogs don’t go in space. People don’t go in space, tell her.”