Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti

by Genevieve Valentine

  He has forgiven Ayar, mostly.

  He fears for Ayar. Ayar is the kind of man who does any work that’s put before him without asking questions, but sometimes he forms an attachment to a lost cause, and each time it drags Ayar through the mud as if Ayar has never had his heart broken. (Jonah knows that for certain; he had been half-awake the whole long walk to the circus yard, Ayar bearing Jonah in his arms like a sacrifice.) If the government man comes back for them, Jonah and Ayar might be separated.

  (He fears this most.)

  And when he moves through the camp, telling this crewman and that one to pack up the trucks, he realizes he doesn’t know their names. He tried to learn everyone’s names, and argued with Elena that the crew and the dancers were worth knowing even if they would leave someday.

  But now he’s worried, and he is thinking only of saving Elena’s girls and the tumblers and Ayar and Bird. He has stopped caring about any of the ones who come in and out and grow old and die. He has become like Barbaro or Alto or Elena, who don’t even bother to look at someone until they have the bones.

  If there was ever a reason to be afraid, becoming like Elena is one.

  42.

  On the night the government man came, as soon as Jonah had signaled that the tent was empty and the crew had set first watch, I unlocked myself from my metal casts and ran to Boss’s trailer.

  She was sitting at her dressing table. The last flickering bulbs that hadn’t burned out cast her in a sickly light, but I could still tell she had gone pale. The griffin tattoo stood out like ink on paper, she was so white, and she was so distracted that she hadn’t even taken off her fancy dress. She was staring unblinking into the mirror, as if she could see past it.

  I knocked on the wall (I was too far inside to pretend I hadn’t let myself in).

  “Come in, George,” she said without turning.

  I took a few steps closer and locked my hands behind my back like a soldier.

  “Some of us want to pack up and go,” I said. “You should hold a vote, at least, and see who’s for staying and who’s for going.”

  In the mirror, she cut her eyes to mine. Her gaze hit me like a punch, and for a second I felt like Stenos must when Bird trained that glass eye on him.

  “I’m going to guess that no one with the bones cares to leave,” she said.

  (I didn’t know what she meant, and I was too angry to examine what she said.)

  “Jonah is frightened,” I said. “I don’t know about the others yet. Elena is scared for sure. Bird doesn’t want to leave, but—” I made a face that showed what I thought of Bird’s opinion.

  Boss smiled into the mirror. “I’m not surprised Bird doesn’t want to leave her wings behind,” she said. Then, after a moment with me pinned under her stare, she seemed to come to a decision.

  She pointed to the stool beside hers. “Come and sit.”

  I lifted a box of her old circus advertisements off the stool and took a seat. I waited, nervous and glowering at her, feeling like she had brought me low by asking me to sit where I would have to look up at her.

  (Now I think she asked me to sit because my legs were trembling from the strain of fighting those false brass knees all night, and she wanted to offer me a little relief before she took my measure.)

  Finally she looked away from her reflection and down to me, and she wore that expression I loved most on her, where she was planning something and would need me. If there was sorrow there (and there must have been) it was too dark, and I was too foolish to see it.

  “George,” she said, “have you decided on the circus?”

  I blinked. “How do you mean?”

  “Is it what you want, for the rest of your life?”

  “Never considered anything else,” I said, proud of myself for having an answer ready. “I want to be a tumbler, if I can.” Or an aerialist, if Elena wouldn’t try to kill me, I thought, but didn’t say. I didn’t want Boss to laugh me right out of the trailer.

  She wasn’t laughing. She looked at me, level, like I was her reflection.

  “What if you couldn’t be an act? Would you still stay?”

  “Yes,” I said, which sounded less brave, but was just as true. Where else would I go? Join Valeria and be a baker in some town that went dark at sundown, until war started again and I was gunned down in the street?

  Her eyes wouldn’t let me go. After a long time, she said, “I never wanted you to be like the others. I think that’s why I’ve waited. But now I have something I need to give you, if you’ll take it.”

  It was the most confidence in me I’d ever heard from her. It was the first moment I had ever thought she cared for me. I was overwhelmed; I could hardly breathe.

  (I should have known the government man was closing in.)

  “Yes,” I said.

  When she picked up the needle and the little pot of ink, the griffin on her arm leaned forward and shrank back again, trembling, the gears of its metal wings flickering in the guttering light.

  “Roll up your sleeve.”

  I tore it, I was shaking so hard, but I rolled my sleeve up to the shoulder and laid my arm on her desk without having to be told.

  “I hope you never need it,” she said, and then she began to draw.

  43.

  The wolf tamer drove the beast up to camp ahead of him, snapping his whip above its head, calling out orders if the wolf strayed from the straight path. The whip-sound carried, and he was half a mile away when the circus started to gather and watch him approach. He whistled shrilly, let the whip sing. The beast cringed with ears back and moved faster.

  When he reached the camp, there were nearly two dozen costumed performers waiting for him, and another dozen crew in drab colors. The wolf tamer was pleased; if the circus could sustain this many, it could sustain two more.

  “Is the beast yours?”

  The woman who had spoken was built like a tower of stone, and had her two lieutenants—one with brass ribs, the other with a brass hunchback—flanking her. So this circus had an order; another good sign.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, picking his next words carefully. This circus was more refined than the bickering cesspool he had expected, and words might matter. “I caught it myself in the woods outside the city. I trained it alone, and it obeys my commands and mine only. Heel!”

  The wolf set back its ears and slid at once to his side, half-crouched, waiting for its next order.

  “What can it do?” she asked.

  “It can jump, and dance, and count to ten.”

  The woman nodded. Then she half-smiled. “And is the whip for show?”

  He had impressed them, then. He bowed and smiled.

  “Oh no,” he said. “An animal learns best at the end of the whip.”

  She nodded once, and the wolf tamer thought she was agreeing with him until he heard the whistle, a split second before the whip came down across his face.

  (Jonah wielded the thin coil of wire—Boss knew he had the steadier hand, and the advantage of being dismissed when he stood beside Ayar.

  Elena admired his aim.)

  The wolf tamer thought for a moment that there must have been some mistake, but when he wiped the blood from his brow, he saw thirty stony faces turned on him.

  Then Jonah struck again, just below his knee, and he went down screaming.

  The wolf tamer stumbled away from the onslaught of the whip, first in shock, then mindless with pain and fear. He tripped and rolled down the hill, banging over rocks and hard ground, until he lay choking on the flat ground below. He staggered up and ran until the terror left him, and then he sank against the city wall and peered back up the way he had come.

  He had left his whip behind; the animal had not followed.

  The grey wolf lived with the circus for almost a year.

  It was largely Jonah’s, padding a few feet behind him when Jonah crossed the camp, taking up a satellite position when Jonah was resting. It would not enter Ayar and Jonah’s trailer, but it
slept on the ground just under the stairs.

  As it came to realize that no harm would come to it, it became bolder and harsh, slinking around the edges of the trucks, baring its teeth at anyone it disliked.

  It disliked Ayar most; Ayar was the one who had to lock it up at night when they were performing. Animals of its quality were in short supply, and it was too tempting a thing to leave unguarded. Ayar was the only one strong enough to hold the fighting wolf, and the claws seemed not to bother him, even when the wolf drew blood.

  Sometimes, as if it missed cruelty, the wolf would follow Elena. It would last a day or two under her icy stares, and then bound away, skulking in the shadows for a week before appear-

  ing again under Jonah’s trailer.

  One day the wolf was wild enough to run into the forest near their camp, hunting something only it could sense. A week later when they pulled down the tent, the wolf had not come back.

  “Call it, if you want,” Boss told Jonah. “We’ll wait.”

  That night Jonah stood for an hour at the edge of camp, looking into the darkness of the woods.

  He came back empty-handed.

  Ayar frowned. “It didn’t come?”

  Jonah said, “I didn’t call.”

  Jonah still thinks of the wolf sometimes when he sees Stenos.

  Stenos goes to Elena when he misses cruelty, too.

  Jonah wonders if Stenos, too, will grow too hungry to hold; if he will disappear into the dark woods some night and never come out again.

  44.

  The first city we came to, after we left the city where the government man had seen us, had a name carved in stone above the wall (Phyrra). It had a magistrate, and close-paved walkways, and the only people who carried guns on the streets were the town militia.

  When I came through the city with my posters, the magistrate asked me to make sure we kept our camp well clear of the city garden. There were children lining the streets when the parade came through. I’d never seen anything like it; even the peaceful cities and the standing cities weren’t like this.

  “This is magic,” I said to Boss, swinging up into the truck as we drove away from the city up the hill where the crew was setting up camp.

  It was the first I had seen of her since she had given me the ink. I had traveled with the dancing girls in their little trailer; we had lost one in the last city (the city needed a stonemason), and I could sleep in a real bunk.

  She glanced at me and half-smiled, looking older than I had ever seen her look. She must have had a hard journey. “Most cities were, before the war,” she said.

  The new griffin on my shoulder ached. (The blood was still drying, over the eyes and along the joints. Boss had tattooed my griffin with metal legs to match his wings, legs that looked like mine.)

  “When was that?” I asked. “Before the war. How long ago was that?”

  It was the first time I had ever asked her a question like that, and my voice shook.

  She looked over. “Farther back than you think.”

  We passed under the shadow of an oak tree, and in the moments of shade she looked hundreds of years old, like a statue battered by the rain and cracked here and there by a cold winter.

  I had never seen her this way before, and I wondered why until I realized it was the tattoo; I saw, finally, there was magic at work here that was darker and deeper than I had imagined, that the tattoo was like putting a pair of spectacles on a child with poor vision.

  I stared up at the camp hill, my heart in my throat, and wondered what everything would look like, now that I could see.

  The government man came the next day, as the sun was going down, and we were setting up for the show.

  His three cars climbed up the hill and slid into our camp, three black dogs come to feast. I feared him, suddenly, as I hadn’t thought I could fear anything. How could he have found us, unless he had followed us? How could he follow us and we not have known?

  (The magistrate must have sent word when he saw us coming. One government man looks after another, and the magistrate had worked hard for his city’s peace.)

  I was at the edge of camp in an instant, watching the cars. Boss came behind me. She glanced at their approach, then walked across camp, so that when the cars came over the hill, she would be framed by the tent. (Ringmaster habits; Boss believed in a good show, no matter what.) Then she folded her arms and waited.

  The government man had brought more men with him this time—six of them, with jackets that seemed strained under the arms, where a holster would go.

  I took a step towards Boss. “What should we do?”

  “You’ll do what I tell you,” Boss said, lightly, and motioned me back with her left arm. Her griffin tattoo seemed to shrink back from the approaching men.

  Around us, the performers were gathering.

  “Madam,” said the government man when he was close enough not to have to shout. He smiled and inclined his head, as if they were alone and he was pleased to see her. “You left so soon.”

  “We like to hit as many cities as we can before the frost,” she says. “The trucks run slow on the ice.”

  His smile got wider. “Interesting. I would love to hear more about your operations. I’m always interested in examples of order. Would you mind coming with me? I’m always more comfortable having long chats when I’m safe at home.”

  The two men nearest her shifted and slid their hands inside their jackets.

  Boss looked from the government man to his backups. Then she shrugged, as if he had asked for the last glass of beer, and glanced coolly at me over her shoulder. “I’m going with the Prime Minister to discuss the circus. I’ll be back soon.”

  She slid the workshop key off her neck and handed it to me, right in front of him, like it was worth no more than a bottlecap.

  I thought, so it’s Prime Ministers these days. I thought, It’s a lie. You don’t come back when a government man takes you away to answer a few questions about your business.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  As soon as their backs were turned, I looped the chain over my neck and shoved the key out of sight.

  Boss moved placidly through the camp alongside the government man. She walked slowly, though, as if the bulk of her body dragged on her (it was the first time I’d seen it, but a good scam for a rube), and by the time she had reached the cars, there was enough of a crowd that the Prime Minister frowned at us all. Gently, he took Boss’s arm and made her turn to face them.

  “So they don’t worry,” he invited her.

  She smiled and looked over at us. “I’ll be back in a day or two,” she said. “The Prime Minister has some questions about mechanics.”

  Her voice shook on the last word.

  No one spoke. From where I stood, I could see Ying, her face chalk-white, her hands balled into trembling fists at her sides. Nothing else moved.

  Then, from the center of the knotted performers, Bird leapt out.

  The jump was so high and fast that I thought someone must have launched her, but Stenos was too far away.

  She spread her arms and curled up her legs as she jumped, her knees tight to her chest and her feet as hooked as a hawk’s talons, and I saw that she would land on the government man’s throat with her feet and knock his head clean off his shoulders—then we’d have to fight, kill them all before they could call for help.

  She hung in the air for ages. Someone in our crowd started to call out.

  Then came the gunshot.

  Bird cried out and fell; I saw the blood pouring from her right ankle where the bullet had struck her. She landed in a heap, turned away from us, one arm extended and the fingers curled in.

  I saw Alec, suddenly, in the crumpled body—as sharp as if I was back in the tent all those years ago, listening to the last trembling notes from his wings.

  Mina screamed. The government man shouted an order, and his men converged on Bird, dragging her limp body to one of the three dark cars. Someone in the crowd shou
ted for the men to stop, and a few of the crew moved forward—they were answered with a volley of shots in the air. The crowd froze, but the murmur swelled.

  “Don’t wait for me,” Boss said under the noise—she was looking right at me, my arm burned—and then she was being dragged after the Prime Minister to the black sedan that was standing open and waiting for them.

  Stenos was already running after them when Ayar caught him.

  He lifted and swung Stenos around in a single motion, so that when the government men turned, they saw only Ayar’s back.

  The car’s engines roared to life.

  “We’ve lost enough!” Ayar was hissing, over Stenos’ struggles. “What can you do?”

  Boss’s dark head was silhouetted in the window of the black sedan as the three cars snaked away down the hill to the main road, headed east to the capital city.

  The camp was shocked into silence, so quiet that I heard Elena’s labored breathing as the cars disappeared down the hill.

  Stenos pulled at Ayar even after the cars were gone, kicking Ayar’s chest, shoving at Ayar’s face, aiming for his ribs—a man possessed, trying get some leverage to break out. The only sound in the frozen camp was the creak and bang of Ayar’s skeleton as Stenos threw himself against it.

  Ayar shouldn’t have been concerned about stopping him (Stenos was strong, but Ayar was unstoppable), but I remember Ayar holding on for dear life, as if the moment he let go Stenos would be out of his grasp and flying after the car to murder them all.

  (I wish he had let go.)

  45.

  This is why Elena is breathing hard:

  She and Bird reach the gathering crowd at the same time. Boss has not yet turned back to them and spoken—it looks like everything is already settled for Boss, that Boss is already gone.

  Elena knows what comes now, and trembles.