The Emerald Circus

by Jane Yolen

  Putting her hand on the dog’s head for a moment, to steady them both, she climbed up into the dome of the house. In the summer there was always a fly or two buzzing about the windows and she quite liked them, her “speck pianos.” But in November the house was barren of flies. She would have to make all the buzz herself.

  Sitting on the bench, she stared out of the windows at the glittering stars beyond the familiar elms. How could she have abjured this peace for possibilities unknown?

  “Oh, Carlo,” she whispered to the dog, “we must be careful what we say. No bird resumes its egg.”

  He grunted a response and settled down at her feet for the long watch.

  “Like an old suitor,” she said, looking down fondly at him. “We are, you know, too long engaged, too short wed. Or some such.” She laughed. “I think the prognosis is that my madness is quite advanced.”

  When she looked up again, there was a flash of light in the far-off sky, a star falling to earth.

  “Make a wish, Carlo,” she said gaily. “I know I shall.”

  And then the top of the cupola burst open, a great gush of sound enveloped them, and she was pulled up into the light.

  Am I dead? she thought at first. Then, Am I rising to Heaven? Then, Shall I have to answer to God? That would be the prime embarrassment, for she had always held out against the blandishments of her redeemed family, saying that she was religious without that great Eclipse, God. She always told them that life was itself mystery and consecration enough. Oh, do not let it be a jealous God, she thought. I would have too much to explain away.

  Peculiarly this light did not hurt her eyes, which only served to convince her that she was, indeed, dead. And then she wondered if there would be actual angels as well, further insult to her heresy. Perhaps they will have butterfly wings, she thought. I would like that. She was amused, briefly, in her dying by these wild fancies.

  And then she was no longer going upward, and there was once more a steady ground beneath her feet where Carlo growled but did not otherwise move. Walls, smooth and anonymous, curved away from her like the walls of a cave. A hallway, she thought, but one without signature.

  A figure came toward her, but if that were an angel, all of Amherst’s Congregational Church would come over faint! It wore no gown of alabaster satin, had no feathery wings. Rather it was a long, sleek, gray man with enormous adamantine eyes and a bulbed head rather like a leek’s.

  A leek—I am surely mad! she thought. All poetry fled her mind.

  Carlo was now whining and trembling beyond measure. She bent to comfort him; that he should share her madness was past understanding.

  “Do not be afraid,” the gray man said. No—the bulbed thing—for she now saw it was not a man at all, though like a man it had arms and legs and a head. But the limbs were too long, the body too thin, the head too round, the eyes too large. And though it wore no discernible clothing, it did not seem naked.

  “Do not be afraid,” it repeated, its English curiously accented. It came down rather heavily on the word be for no reason that Emily could tell. Such accentuation did not change the message.

  If not an angel, a demon—But this her unchurched mind credited even less.

  She mustered her strength; she could when courage was called for. “Who—or what—are you?”

  The bulb creature smiled. This did not improve its looks. “I am a traveler,” it said.

  “And where do you travel?” That she was frightened did not give her leave to forget all manners. And besides, curiosity had now succeeded fear.

  “From a far . . .” The creature hesitated. She leaned into its answer. “From a far star.”

  There was a sudden rip in the fabric of her world.

  “Can you show me?” It was not that she did not believe the stranger, but that she did. It was the very possibility that she had, all unknowing, hoped for, wept for.

  “Show you?”

  “The star.”

  “No.”

  The rip was repaired with clumsy hands. She would always see the darn.

  “It is too far for sight.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I can show you your own star.”

  “And what do you want from me in exchange?” She knew enough of the world to know this.

  For a moment the creature was silent. She feared she had embarrassed it. Or angered it. Then it gave again the grimace that was its smile. “Tell me what it is you do in this place.”

  She knew this was not an idle question. She chose her answer with care. “I tell the truth,” she said. “But I tell it slant.”

  “Ah . . .” There was an odd light in the gray creature’s eyes. “A poet.”

  She nodded. “I have some small talent.”

  “I, myself, make . . . poems. You will not have heard of me, but my name is . . .” And here it spoke a series of short, sharp syllables that to her ear were totally unrepeatable.

  “Miss Emily Dickinson,” she replied, holding out her hand.

  The bulb creature took her hand in its and she did not flinch though its hand was far cooler than she expected. Not like something dead but rather like the back of a snake. There were but three long fingers on the hand.

  The creature dropped her hand and gave a small bow, bending at its waist. “Tell me, Miss Emily Dickinson, one of your poems.”

  She folded her hands together and thought for a minute of the dozens of poems shoved into the drawer of her writing table, of the tens more in her bureau drawer. Which one should she recite—for she remembered them all? Which one would be appropriate payment for this gray starfarer?

  And then she had it. Her voice—ever light—took on color as she said the poem:

  Some things that fly there be—

  Birds—Hours—the Bumblebee—

  Of these no Elegy.

  Some things that stay there be—

  Grief—Hills—Eternity—

  Nor this behooveth me.

  There are that resting, rise.

  Can I expound the skies?

  How still the Riddle lies!

  When she was done, she did not drop her head modestly as Miss Lyons had taught, but rather stared straight into the starfarer’s jeweled eyes.

  It did not smile this time and she was glad of that. But it took forever to respond. Then at last it sighed. “I have no poem its equal. But Miss Emily Dickinson, I can expound the skies.”

  She did not know exactly what the creature meant.

  “Give me your hand again.”

  And then she saw. “But I cannot leave my dog.”

  “I cannot vouchsafe the animal.”

  She misunderstood. “I can. He will not harm you.”

  “No. I mean more correctly, I do not know what such a trip will do to him.”

  “I cannot leave him behind.”

  The gray creature nodded its bulb head, and she unhesitatingly put her hand in its, following down the anonymous corridor and into an inner chamber that was something like a laboratory.

  “Sit here,” the starfarer said, and when she sat in the chair a webbing grew up out of the arms and bound her with filaments of surprising strength.

  “Am I a prisoner?” She was not frightened, just curious.

  “The lightship goes many miles quickly. The web is to keep you safe.”

  She thought how a horse starting too quickly to pull a carriage often knocks its passenger back against the seat, and understood. “And my dog?”

  “Ah—now you see the problem.”

  “Can he sit here in the chair beside me?”

  “The chair is not built for so much weight.”

  “Then he may be badly hurt. I cannot go.”

  The creature raised one of its long fingers. “I will put your dog in my sleeping chamber for as long as we travel.” It took Carlo by the collar and led the unprotesting dog off to a side wall, which opened with the touch of a button, letting down a short bed that was tidily made. “Here,” the creature commanded the dog and su
rprisingly Carlo—who ordinarily obeyed no one but Emily—leaped onto the bed. The starfarer pushed another button and the bed slid back into the wall, imprisoning the now-howling Carlo inside.

  “I apologize for my shaggy ally,” Emily said.

  “There is no need.” The gray creature bent over a panel of flashing lights, its six fingers flying between them. When it had finished, it landed back into its own chair and the webbing held it fast.

  “Now I will show you what your own planet looks like from the vantage of space. Do not be afraid, Miss Emily Dickinson.”

  She smiled. “I am not afraid.”

  “I did not think so,” the starfarer said in its peculiar English.

  And then, with a great shaking, the lightship rose above Amherst, above Massachusetts, above the great masses of land and water and clouds and air and into the stars.

  She lay on her bed remembering. Carlo, still moaning, had not seemed to recover quickly from the trip. But she had. All she should think about was the light, the dark, the stars. And the great green-blue globe—like one of Ned’s marbles—that was her home.

  What could she tell her family? That she had flown high above them all and seen how small they were within the universe? They would say she had had a dream. If only I could have returned, like Mother from her ramblings, a burdock on her shawl to show where she had been, she thought.

  And then she laughed at herself. Her poems would be her burdocks, clinging stubbornly to the minds of her readers. She sat up in the dark.

  The light. The marble of earth. She would never be able to capture it whole. Only in pieces. But it was always best to make a start of it. Begin, as Cook often said, as you mean to go on.

  She lit a small candle which was but a memento of that other light. And then she went over to the writing table. Her mind was a jumble of words, images.

  I do not need to travel further than across this room ever again, she thought. Or further than the confines of my house. She had already dwelt in the greatest of possibilities for an hour in a ship made of light. The universe was hers, no matter that she lived only in one tiny world. She would write letters to that world in the form of her poems, even if the world did not fully understand or ever write back. Dipping the pen into the ink jar, she began the first lines of a lifetime of poems:

  I lost a World—the other day.

  Has Anybody found?

  You’ll know it by the Row of Stars

  Around its forehead bound.

  Story Notes and Poems

  Andersen’s Witch

  When editor Jonathan Strahan asked me for a story for his witch anthology, Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron), I’d just finished a picture book for children about the life of Hans Christian Andersen: The Perfect Wizard. So the idea of doing a story about Andersen wasn’t much of a stretch. Andersen (1805-1875), the great Danish storyteller and dichter (poet-writer), was known for his fairy tales.

  He was a sad, strange, skinny little boy who became a sad, strange, gangly man who—with little schooling or training—became the most famous storyteller in all of Europe and the world. The only thing that made sense was that he’d had a bargain with a witch or wizard or the devil—take your pick. And as I was thinking that, I thought of the story he wrote about the Snow Queen. Maybe she had been a witch . . . and the story began.

  It didn’t hurt that I have been called the Hans Christian Andersen of America (though I insist I am really the Hans Jewish Andersen of America). However, I’d had a much easier childhood than he, and am much better socialized! It didn’t hurt that I owned dozens of books about him from my research for the picture book. It didn’t hurt that I could write the story as a quasi–fairy tale after years of practice. And it certainly didn’t hurt that Jonathan loved the story enough to take it for the anthology.

  The poem below references the Snow Queen story, for Kai (the hero of Andersen’s tale) has had a shard of glass placed in his heart by the Queen so he cannot love. And my story is about the boy Hans wrestling with his own ice shard until he finds at the end how to melt it. (Though in Andersen’s story, and my poem, it is Gerda, Kai’s childhood friend, who looks for a way to melt that ice.) The poem, though, is really about my husband’s death and my long widowhood.

  Note on a Dried Cod

  I would write on anything,

  even the unyielding skin

  of a preserved fish,

  to find my lost love.

  That’s the easy part.

  I’d use my knucklebone

  as a stylus, blood for ink.

  The stink of it

  would keep me awake

  for the cold journey.

  How long does it take

  to remove a shard of ice

  from a cankered heart?

  I would melt it

  with my tears.

  But the cod, the message

  On the skin,

  writing things down,

  that’s always easy.

  It’s the long hope,

  the death between us,

  that’s the hard part,

  the only hard part.

  Lost Girls

  The Scottish writer J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) was a novelist, essayist, and playwright of some note, but he is by far best remembered as the creator of Peter Pan. Peter Pan was first a London play and afterwards a book (or rather two books—Peter and Wendy and then Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens). Barrie was born in Kerriemuir, Scotland, his father a weaver. A family tragedy—one of the Barrie brothers was killed in a skating accident two days before his fourteenth birthday—tore the family apart. Eventually, with the help of another (older) brother who was a schoolmaster, J. M. Barrie received a good education and then moved to London to work as a journalist and essayist, before becoming a short story writer. Novels and plays soon followed.

  After meeting and befriending a young mother with four boisterous boys, and becoming the patron to the boys when their father died of cancer, Barrie unofficially adopted them three years later, when the boys’ mother died of cancer as well.

  Before he died, Barrie gave the rights to the Peter Pan stories to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, which continues to receive royalties for the books and plays and movies to this day.

  I wrote Lost Girls because I couldn’t forget the uneasy scene in which Peter Pan is weeping because he can’t re-attach his shadow. When Wendy sews it on for him, he crows and cries out, “Oh the cleverness of me!” As if Wendy had done nothing and he had done it all.

  And then, I had an original thought—Peter might be eternally young in his looks, but his eyes betray his real age. He has seen so much, he would have an old and narcissistic soul. Alison Lurie wrote this quick study of Peter in a 2012 essay in the New York Review of Books, but I had figured it out when I wrote my story in 1997: She notes that “Like a small child, he is easily distracted and lives almost entirely in the present. He forgets the past rapidly and has little understanding of the future. For him, real life and make-believe are almost the same thing. He also lacks empathy, and is only rarely aware of other people’s feelings. Today, this view of a child’s psychology is fairly common, but in Barrie’s time it was almost shocking when he declared in the famous last words of Peter and Wendy that children are ‘gay and innocent and heartless.’ Peter is gay and innocent, but he is also deeply self-centered and without remorse; at one point he declares that he cannot even remember the names of the pirates he has killed.”

  The story I wrote is about the above, though my story was published before Lurie had written her essay. Great minds etc. “Lost Girls” is novelette length and won the 1999 Nebula. It was first published in my collection Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast. Afterwards, I wrote a picture book biography of Barrie, called Lost Boy, which was published in 2010. Sometimes I actually sneak in right before a trend happens. Usually I am either ten years ahead of the curve or ten years behind.

  From: Five Meditations On Us

  I o
we you something.

  From the past you are in,

  from the past I was in,

  there is a debt to be paid.

  Call it a thimble of love.

  We travel first star to the right

  and straight on until morning.

  hand in hand, where the air is thin.

  I do not want to leave those children behind.

  Tough Alice

  I was teaching a class in writing fantasy, and I gave the students twenty minutes to write the beginning of an alternate Alice in Wonderland story. I told them I would be working on one myself and got as far as the pork loin sentence when our twenty minutes were up. It went into my Must Finish Some Day file. And there it sulked for several years.

  At that time, I was putting together a collection of my fantasy short stories that were readable and appropriate for middle schoolers—you know the ones who still loved picture books and at the same were galloping through Jane Austen and Stephen King. I was calling the collection Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast (1997). The title was a tweak of something the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland says: “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Of course six was far too few stories for such a collection, so I simply doubled it. The majority of the stories I’d written and published at that time were for adults. And since I’d quoted Alice in Wonderland for the title, it behooved me to write a new story set in Wonderland. Appropriate for middle graders.

  Since I’m an ex-tough girl myself (captain of the high school girls’ basketball team and a top fencer in college), it wasn’t a stretch to make Alice tough. In her own inimitable way, of course.

  Managing Your Flamingo

  So there she is, Alice underground,

  life more complex than imagined.

  A game, she’s told, though without

  rules or white lines or a sense of finality.

  They hand her a bird, the pink of longing,

  beak as sharp as an executioner’s sword,

  its gangle of legs tangling her skirt.