The Reunion

by Michelle E Lowe

  “This is my best trick. The coffin will be suspended upside down while a candle flame burns the rope holding it until I can free myself.”

  He rose to his full height. “What if you don’t free yourself?”

  She winked at him. “You’re on.”

  Pierce realized the assistant was speaking to him in the form of a question. He quickly acknowledged her with a nod that the shackles were, in fact, real. She continued speaking into the trumpet as Liliya shuffled over to the coffin that waited for her at the edge of the platform. A strongman lifted her up and placed her in the pine box. She waved at the crowd the best she could before lying down. The strongman put the lid on and nailed it shut. With each pound of the hammer, Pierce became more and more nervous. He could only imagine what Tai was thinking.

  With the coffin lid fastened, the strongman jumped off the stage and helped the assistant wheel it over to another strongman waiting beside a rope that hung from a pulley in the rafters of the tent ceiling. The strongman looped the end of the rope through a metal hoop inserted at the bottom of the coffin, and then he and the other strongman hoisted the funerary box off the table. The moment the coffin was completely suspended upside down, the assistant quickly wheeled the table out of the ring.

  Lights dimmed, highlighting the single spotlight that shone on the rising coffin. A drum roll sounded in the darkness. When the coffin reached the ceiling, it stopped, and the strongmen wrapped the cord around a post and held it there. The assistant reappeared with a stool and the candle. She put the stool down, and then set the candle below the rope. The loud drum roll did its job in creating suspense as she lit the candlewick. Pierce believed there would be plenty of time for Liliya to escape. The rope was fairly thick, and it would take several minutes for the little flame to burn through it.

  Or, so he thought.

  The fire ate through each thread so quickly that it broke apart before anyone could react. Screams and shouts erupted as the coffin dropped straight down and crashed to pieces. Kirill, suddenly appearing from the darkness, ran with Pierce over to the shattered thing. Pierce expected to come upon a mangled body, but found only a pile of broken wood and the unlocked shackles on the floor.

  “Fuckin’ hell,” Pierce whispered with shock.

  He looked at Kirill with confusion. The ringmaster tried to look mystified. Pierce suspected something was up.

  The drum roll began again, and the spotlight slid off the men and traveled over to the other side of the ring, where it came to a sudden stop with the clash of cymbals. There it shined upon Liliya, mounted on the same white Clydesdale from before. She slowly rode forward, waving to the hysterical crowd. Many ticks went by before they figured out what was happening, and as it sank in, the cheering began. Pierce did not believe she was actually alive until she rode up to him and dismounted. She bowed deeply to her audience, who was in an uproar of applause. Once Pierce accepted that she was, in fact, all right, he tried to figure out how the trick had been done. He looked at the burnt end of the rope and noticed a glossy substance on it. Kerosene, he reckoned.

  Kirill shouted something in Dutch to the thrilled throng and pointed to Pierce, which prompted them to cheer louder.

  “Come,” Liliya said, stretching her arm out to him. “I’ll take you back to your seat.”

  Pierce wanted nothing more than to leave center stage and return to Taisia. He was reaching for her hand when another clasped his shoulder.

  “I want him in the next act,” Kirill told her.

  “What?” she asked, perplexed. “That’s not for a non-performer to be in.”

  “He will be fine,” he growled through a gritted-toothed grin. “Now go.”

  Liliya lingered a tad longer, blatantly wondering what her ringmaster was thinking. Without questioning him, she disappeared into the darkness.

  Be fine with what? Pierce wondered, rolling his shoulder to get Kirill’s grip off him.

  Kirill looked at him with those gemstone eyes of his and said, “You are not afraid, are you?”

  Pierce realized the man was challenging him. Naturally, anything that kept him in the dark worried him, but if the bastard wanted to play this game, Pierce would step up to it.

  With a fake grin of his own, he said, “Do what you will, mate.”

  Kirill took center stage once again, speaking into his mechanical speaking trumpet. Pierce was utterly lost until every gas-powered lamp brightened. Two other sparkly-costumed assistants appeared, rolling in a large wheel painted brightly like a target board. Pierce had seen the likes of it before, and now he realized what he had gotten himself into.

  “Bugger.”

  Kirill shouted into the speaking trumpet at the excited crowd hungry for more life-threatening entertainment. The assistants came alongside Pierce, taking him by the arms and leading him forward. He grimaced at the four leather buckled straps on the wheel. The women relieved him of his jacket and hat before guiding him up onto a short crate and strapping his wrists and ankles to the target board. They removed the crate and he found his feet suspended off the ground. Two other women arrived, one cradling a bowl of apples and the other pushing a rectangular table toward Kirill. Something on it was hidden under a black cloth. With a single theatrical move, Kirill yanked the cloth off, revealing several glimmering knives underneath.

  “Here we go,” Pierce muttered, trying not to show his nervousness.

  Kirill shucked off his ringmaster tailcoat and removed his top hat, handing them over to an assistant. He picked up a knife—a long, thick, blasted thing—and held it high. He circled slowly around, showing it to the crowd. He stopped when he again faced Pierce. To prove its sharpness, he grabbed an apple from the bowl and tossed it up. As the apple fell, he sliced it in half. The audience oohed and aahed. The sods.

  Pierce, on the other hand, locked the air in his lungs as the apple landed in perfectly cut halves. Without warning, Kirill threw the knife at him and its point slammed into the wheel right by his ear. Pierce turned his head and saw his eyes reflected in the shiny blade.

  “Goddamn,” he gasped out.

  The crowd cheered, but Pierce was not amused. He looked over to where Taisia was seated, but the low lighting in the stadium made it difficult to see her. The other assistant, stationed by the target board, pulled a pin that kept the large wheel in place. She gave the wheel a spin and everything in the circus tent circled in a blur. He shut his eyes, hearing nothing but the thunk and thud of each knife as it hit the wheel.

  THUNK!

  THUD!

  THUNK!

  It was like being shot at by a soundless gun. He honestly came close to blacking out.

  The last whack he heard got the most reaction from the people. After what seemed like an eternity, the wheel slowed to a stop. He opened his eyes to the shocked look on the assistant. He didn’t understand, nor did he care. The wheel may have quit spinning, but the world hadn’t. When the leather straps no longer bound him, his dizziness nearly caused him to drop to his knees. The women helped him stay on his feet as they carried him toward their ringmaster.

  “Get him outside to the changing tent,” Kirill ordered sternly as they passed.

  As he was being led away, Pierce asked, “What happened?”

  “It’s all right,” an assistant told him. “You’re going to be fine.”

  He had no clue and feared the worse. As Kirill spoke into the speaking trumpet, Pierce checked himself, dreading the sight of a knife sticking out of him somewhere.

  They exited the Big Top and headed to a tent in the back where performers were getting ready for their next act. Pierce spotted a vacant chair and went to it on his own. He sat and planted his face in his palms. Why he believed spinning as a child was fun was beyond him now. When he touched his cheek, he noticed something. He drew his hand away and saw liquid red on his fingers. He stood on wobbly legs and checked himself in a vanity mirror. A thin cut sliced across his cheekbone where blood was sliding down.

  “Bloody bugger c
ut me,” he muttered angrily.

  Taisia and Liliya entered.

  “Pierce,” Taisia said, rushing to him.

  “That bastard fuckin’ cut my face,” he complained.

  Taisia studied the wound, and her expression darkened with anger. Kirill appeared and approached them. Everything turned to a red haze. It wasn’t the cut, or the scar it would later leave, that angered him. It was that Kirill had done this to prove a point. Clearly, he still cared for Taisia and wanted Pierce to bow out.

  “Pierce,” Kirill began to say. “I . . .”

  Pierce swung a hard fist and knocked the knobhead off his feet.

  “What the bloody hell is wrong with you?” Pierce bellowed at the man on the ground. “You could have killed me!”

  He would have gone in for another attack if Taisia hadn’t blocked his way while shouting at Kirill in Russian. Her tone of voice frightened Pierce, and he backed away.

  “I’ve never seen my sister so upset before,” Liliya confessed to Pierce. “Or heard her speak such foul language.” She took a cloth from a nearby table and handed it to him. “She must care for you a lot.”

  Pierce placed the cloth against the cut, struck by what Liliya was saying. He returned his attention on Taisia, who continued giving her former lover an earful, barely allowing him to get a word in edgewise. Pierce almost feared she would use his gun on poor ol’ Kirill.

  Was she really so upset by what Kirill had done? Did she actually care for him?

  After her rant, Taisia turned sharply to Pierce and grabbed him by the wrist. “Come on. We’re leaving.”

  She had nearly dragged him off when Liliya called out, “No, Sister. Wait. Please, don’t leave yet.”

  Liliya’s somber expression was a painful sight. Although Pierce had had more than enough circus entertainment for one evening, he reckoned it wouldn’t hurt to linger a while longer.

  “All right,” he said, looking over at Taisia. “Let’s stay the night. You can have more time with your sister.”

  He believed his suggestion would make her happy. Instead, her face hardened with more rage.

  “You mean you can have more time with her?”

  He knitted his eyebrows together. “Pardon?”

  She let go of him and marched out of the tent.

  “Taisia,” Liliya called, running after her. “Wait!”

  Pierce stood utterly mystified by what just happened. He narrowed his eyes at Kirill. “Happy now?”

  * * *

  Taisia’s blood burned fire-hot inside her veins. This was what she got for allowing her feelings for Pierce in. He was just a typical male wanting a willing body beneath him. And after she had nearly torn Kirill’s throat out for what he did. She had gone on this mission to make up for her misdeed against Pierce by making sure he returned safely to his parents. Developing these strong feelings was not supposed to be part of it.

  Damn him!

  “Taisia,” her sister shouted. “Stop!”

  Taisia did and turned sharply to her. “Stay away from me!”

  Liliya grabbed her by the elbow when she tried stalking off again. “You need to stop behaving like this. You haven’t changed since you were a child.”

  Taisia snatched her arm away. “What are you talking about?”

  “That temper of yours. You would get so angry and jump to conclusions in an instant. Pierce has done nothing wrong, and you attacked him.”

  “It wasn’t over nothing. I saw you both touching each other earlier. And the way he acts around you, he . . . he is so calm and relaxed. Around me, he behaves like some sort of bumbling fool.”

  Liliya laughed loudly.

  “What?” Taisia demanded.

  Her sister shook her head at her. “That’s because it is not me he is in love with, silly.”

  Taisia gasped. “In love?”

  “Da. Why else would he be so nervous? I saw the love in his eyes when you called to him. He could not have left my side fast enough to be with you. Even after I—”

  “After you what?” Taisia demanded, placing her hands on her hips.

  Liliya shied away and admitted softly, “After I offered myself to him.”

  “Liliya!” she shouted, stomping her foot.

  “Well, I did not know you loved each other,” she said in defense. “You both don’t even realize it yourselves, apparently.”

  That took Taisia aback. Indeed, she held strong feelings for him, but love?

  “Please stay,” Liliya implored. “For after tomorrow, who knows when or if we shall see each other again?”

  Taisia considered it a moment and nodded. “All right.”

  Liliya sighed deeply and hugged her. “Did you enjoy my coffin trick?”

  Taisia laughed as she pulled away. “Da. And thank you for telling me about it instead of letting that be a surprise, too. I think I would have dropped dead with fright if I hadn’t known about your trick beforehand.”

  * * *

  The assistance returned Pierce’s hat and jacket to him, and after he had cleaned his wound, he left the tent. He didn’t know where else to go, other than to Liliya’s carriage, where he sat on the steps under the door lantern and waited with his chin resting on his palm.

  He wondered if what Liliya had said about Taisia having feelings for him were true. His emotions at that moment were a mixed drink. He felt irritated for the undeserved wrath, guilty for his brief consideration of Liliya’s private offer, and yet, happy he actually stood a chance with Taisia.

  “Pierce?”

  He raised his chin and saw her approaching him.

  “Hey,” he said in his usual soft-spoken tone.

  She opened her mouth to speak but said nothing. Instead, she joined him on the steps and rested her head on his shoulder. He put his arm around her and leaned his head against hers. Together, they sat in complete silence and listened to the show continue inside the Big Top.

  * * *

  The following morning, while Pierce went to fetch the horse, Taisia washed up. Her head ached from the vodka she’d shared with Liliya, Pierce, and the rest of the circus freaks after the show ended. Kirill had stayed clear of them, which suited Taisia just fine. It was a good night, one filled with laughs and pleasant memories with her sister, who had explained how the coffin trick was done.

  “It was rather simple, actually. The coffin had a trapdoor on the bottom of it. While the lid was being nailed shut, I unlatched the moveable panel and dropped to a platform beneath the table that was hidden by the tablecloth. I then unlocked the shackles with the keys I keep in my pocket and placed the manacles inside the coffin before latching the trapdoor. As soon as the table was wheeled out of sight, I got out from under it and hurried into position as the coffin was being raised.”

  Both Taisia and Pierce thought it was very clever.

  * * *

  The door of the wagon opened.

  “Taisia?” Kirill said, closing it behind him.

  Taisia was anything but pleased to see him, and yet she decided to act civil.

  “Kirill,” she greeted curtly, taking a towel to dry her face.

  He had a deep blue and violet bruise surrounding his sealed eye where Pierce had struck him. The extent of the damage surprised her, for Pierce did not appear capable of carrying that much power over a man twice his size.

  “I want to apologize for the treatment of your friend,” he said humbly. “I did not mean to hurt him.”

  “Didn’t you?” she retorted. “I know how you are.”

  He stayed quiet for a while.

  “I suppose I did want to harm him—a little. I’ve notice how he looks at you.”

  “And what business is that of yours? We are no longer together, and have not been for years now.”

  “Perhaps we should be,” he suggested, taking a step inside. “My heart still aches for you, Taisia Kuzentsov. Not a day passes that I don’t think of you, and seeing your likeness in your sister only intensifies my passion.”

  “
Marry her, then.”

  “I want you. What we shared was real affection, and when you decided to leave, it greatly wounded me.”

  She hadn’t realized her departure had hurt him so. His statement briefly restored a little spark of the love she once felt for him.

  “Stay here and be part of the circus again. We can have a life together, you and me.”

  Once upon a time, Taisia loved Kirill Azarov very much. They worked well together both on and off stage, and when they made love, he brought her to another place. In the end, however, they had wanted different things, and what he desired for them was something she was not interested in.

  “I’m sorry, Kirill. I have a new life now—with Pierce.” She went over and kissed him on the cheek. “Goodbye.”

  The heartbreak in his clear eyes nearly caused her to weep. He sucked in a breath and left. She followed him out in time to see Pierce approaching with the horse.

  “What did he want?” he asked as Kirill stormed away.

  “He wants me to rejoin the circus,” she said, coming down the stairs. “He asked me to be with him again.”

  The look on Pierce’s face showed his terror of losing her.

  He swallowed thickly. “What did you tell him?”

  The corners of her mouth rose.

  “I told him that I am with you, Pierce Landcross.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Toll Man

  Midday had arrived by the time they reached the town of Koudhoorn. They ate at a tavern using the money Liliya had given them.

  “Where are we supposed to go?” Taisia asked Pierce.

  Pierce crammed a piece of banket into his mouth, the sweet pastry melting on his tongue. He shook his head as he looked down at the map spread out over the table.

  “The clue says to travel north from here. I reckon we’ll just have to see what’s up there in the forest.”

  “What do you think the clue means?”

  Pierce folded the map and placed it in his vest pocket. “Could be anything.”