Le Cirque Navire

by Chele Cooke

  Lachlan scowled, his amusement vanishing as fast as it had come. He couldn’t believe it. He’d been very clear in his instructions and here they were, two of his own men, drunk already! It wasn’t even fully dark and they had forgotten their orders as easily as they abandoned their morals. It was a disgrace and he would make sure that the both of them were punished severely for it.

  Paul and José turned to face the crowd, broad grins on their faces. Paul waved his hands towards the sky to raise a cheer from the gathering crowd. Behind them, the tall bulky man reached up and grasped both coalition soldiers by their collars. José tucked his hand in the front of his collar to stop himself from being strangled as both were lifted into the air.

  Hoots and cheers echoed through the watching crowds. Even Hadley laughed and clapped beside him. Lachlan’s frown only deepened. The man placed the two soldiers back on their feet and José doubled over, laughing. Paul clapped the strong man on his thick, muscled shoulder and stumbled back into the crowd. Soon, others were rushing forward, asking to be lifted into the air. The strong man looked around suspiciously. His footsteps boomed through the earth as he strode to a bench and lifted it, placing it on the ground in front of him. Children rushed forward, clamouring to get a seat. When he heaved six of them into the air they shrieked and cried.

  “Look at me! Look at me! Dad, look! LOOK!”

  A shoulder bumped against Lachlan’s back and he turned around, but all he could see were patrons laughing and shoving to get a better view. A small child, not as high as Lachlan’s hip, sprinted between the legs of the adults to the front of the crowd. Lachlan pulled Hadley away.

  Despite his promise to his sister that he wouldn’t speak badly of the cirque again, he wanted someone to talk to about the effects of the alcohol. Perhaps he could have believed it of the two sinewy women. Perhaps they weren’t used to the effects. He possibly even could have thought it of José, having stuck to their laws for so long, but Paul hadn’t been on Corapolvo all that long and everyone knew that the prohibition laws were circumvented more often than not on the central planets. Whatever they’d been drinking, it was far more potent than the wheat beer and brewed liquors anyone had seen on an outlying planet in a long time.

  Lachlan glanced at his sister, hoping that she would, at least, stick to this one request he had made of her. He had put everything he had into protecting her, into making sure she didn’t feel the shame of their parents. He hadn’t been able to protect her from all of it, he knew that. Perhaps, had things been different, Hadley would have been able to get a position in the central quadrant, teaching or something; a nice, respectable job. Not that engineering wasn’t respectable. It was respectable enough, but it wasn’t what he’d intended for the only family he had left.

  An odd feeling came over him as they swept along the midway, pausing frequently to look at stalls and tents. Hadley fingered every trinket and smiled brightly at every painted man and woman, but he couldn’t get rid of the feeling that someone was watching him, waiting. Vendors beamed at Hadley and spoke to her enthusiastically about their wares. They barely gave Lachlan a second glance. It wasn’t them making the hairs on his neck stand on end. He looked around, but nobody but vendors and patrons littered this section of the grounds.

  One vendor with long, golden hair called them over to his stall as they passed, offering glass gems to be placed in designs fitting their personality. Hadley approached and he looked her up and down as she selected a green glass gem and turned it in her fingers.

  “No,” the man said, stepping around his stall. “No, not that one. That is far too dark for a sunburst like you.”

  “Sunburst?” Hadley echoed, her voice awed in embarrassment. He nodded.

  The man stepped forward and took the green glass from her, a wicked and conspiratorial gleam in his eye. He reached to the back of the stall and drew out a fiery orange gem, flecked and veined with yellow and red. Hadley’s eyes were wide at the sight of it. It was more beautiful than any of the stones on the stall before them, but it was nothing to the way it looked when the man placed it at the hollow of her throat. Under the light of the torches, the orange glass lit Hadley’s skin until it glowed with fire and sunshine. In an instant, Lachlan stepped forward and dug into his pocket. The man stepped away with caution, holding his hands up defensively under Lachlan’s stern face. Lachlan drew out his beaten leather wallet.

  “How much?” he asked.

  “Lachlan, no,” Hadley practically cried but he could hear the yearning in her voice. It had been so long since she’d had anything pretty. Everything in their home was functional. Neither of them earned enough for frivolities.

  “Fifteen,” the man answered.

  He surveyed Lachlan for a moment, his head cocked to the side. With a flicker of a smile, he reached to the back of the stall again and drew out a collection of five tiny gems. These were as black as midnight, veins of glimmering silver, lilac, and dark burning red that changed when you turned them.

  “The stars,” he said, “flicker and shine even without the sun, for they have a light of their own making.”

  “Oh, Lachlan, look, they’re beautiful,” Hadley cooed.

  “Stars are suns,” Lachlan reminded her.

  Hadley rolled her eyes and batted the back of her hand against his arm.

  “Do you have to take the joy out of everything?”

  Lachlan looked down at the tiny glass gems and nodded. The man didn’t smile again. He watched Lachlan with a thoughtful and curious stare that unnerved him. Deft fingers fitted the sunburst gem into silver wires that swirled like tangled vines then slid the creation onto a thin silver chain. He sunk the midnight gems into a thick leather strap studded and woven with metal as black as the stones.

  “For both, twenty-two,” he said.

  Lachlan drew out his money and handed it over. The man passed him the leather cuff, but as Hadley reached out for the sunburst and silver, he shook his head. He held the chain open towards her.

  “If you don’t mind.”

  Hadley swept her hair up into her hands away from her neck but the man watched for Lachlan’s nod before he stepped closer. Leaning in, he draped the necklace around her neck and clasped it at the back. He touched the gem at her throat and smiled, turning back to his stall without another word.

  Hadley touched the sunburst repeatedly as they continued to the next stall. The trinkets on their brightly coloured tops were forgotten. She barely looked at them as they passed. Lachlan placed his hand on Hadley’s shoulder and she insisted on helping him attach the leather cuff, thanking him repeatedly for such a beautiful gift.

  All the while, Lachlan could feel the eyes on his back, waiting.

  Annalise rubbed her fingers against her temple and tried to remember what she’d been thinking about before that last reading. She’d barely had a minute to herself since the gates had opened. Visitors made their way through the midway and into the belly of the ship, straight past her tent as they headed for the big top. Women queued and giggled until she told them their futures, men ambled by and thought to try their luck. The images and stories came to her as easily as breath. For Annalise, it was becoming easier to look at the futures of others than it was to look at her own. What had once been set in stone was now murky and uncertain. Not that she’d ever been able to truly See her own life, not like that.

  Some looked sceptical when she invited them for a reading, but by the time they stepped out, each was upbeat and thoughtful at what was to come. Annalise gazed after each one wistfully, wishing she could see her own path and not just the futures of strangers. Threads of time and consequence wove themselves together, tangled into knots that she picked and pondered over as she waited for the next customer.

  Her skin was hot within the stuffy confines of her perfumed tent. The tent assigned to her was built into one of the outer alcoves of the ship near the loading dock. The entrance consisted of two pieces of heavy velvet in swirls of blue and teal, hints of summer green thread
ed through it like gold woven into expensive silks. Heavy drapery covered the studs and joins of the ship on each rusted metal wall, creating a beautiful and serene, if claustrophobic tent. A single round table stood in the centre with two chairs, one placed on either side. A silk cloth covered the cheap table and was held in place by a heavy crystal ball. Tarot cards were even spread to one side, not that she needed them.

  Sometimes people asked to come in to hear the reading of a loved one but Annalise never allowed it. The past was private, the future secret. She did not allow an audience to taint the precious tales told within those walls. That was what she was told to say. There were lots of things she was told to say. ‘Don’t give them bad news,’ Mr. Hatliffe had said to her once. ‘Let the fools leave happy.’ Annalise didn’t agree with his instructions, but she followed them as best she could, his rules burned into her mind as if something catastrophic would happen if she did not heed him. She couldn’t remember him telling her something bad would befall her should a customer not be happy with their reading, she couldn’t even remember her first reading anymore, but the feeling was there none the less. Some things, like the controlling glare of the ringmaster, were not as easily lost as words and memories.

  Deciding that a breath of fresh air would do her headache some good, Annalise pushed back her chair and swept through the opening in the velvets, her shawls tinkling as she went. The open loading dock allowed for a warm summer breeze to pass through the cargo bay. It brought dust and the smell of popping corn, but it was welcomed over the stuffy pink perfumed stillness of the reading tent.

  Visitors spotted her, so obviously a member of the cirque with her intricately patterned skirts and shawls. They whispered curiously between themselves but passed her with nothing more than courteous smiles and nods, heading into the main events. They had all night to visit the smaller attractions, but the main show only ran three times. If they missed it, they would be disappointed.

  Annalise pulled the headscarf from her brow, fingering the golden medallions that hung along its edge as she stared across the crowd coming up the loading dock slope. A dark-haired pair walked together, looking as bound as a planet and moon held by gravity. They did not talk and both were more interested in taking in their surroundings alone than sharing their thoughts. Still, they stuck close.

  The man was tall, athletic, and handsome, a stern look etched into his striking features. The girl was short and curved where the man was straight. She had a pretty face surrounded by long, dark hair. It was the girl from the gate, the one she’d seen before. She ambled next to the man, looking around with interest while his gaze surveyed everything he passed with scrutiny, his jaw set. The girl reached up and touched a bright stone at her throat awkwardly. Walter had found another mark, then. The man’s taste was as deft as his fingers. The stone suited her.

  As they came towards her, Annalise forgot her break and the relief of the breeze.

  “Care for a reading?”

  The man surveyed her with cool, dark blue eyes. The intensity of his stare brought Annalise back a step. He grasped the girl’s elbow and pulled her behind him, shielding her, as if Annalise would shed her skin and pounce like a lion.

  “No, thank you,” he answered. The girl swallowed, glanced to him, and looked away without a word.

  “Your brother does not approve,” Annalise teased, looking to catch the girl’s gaze.

  That brought her attention. It caught his attention too and his dark gaze became narrowed, thoughtful. The girl ducked back a step and nodded over his shoulder. Annalise held back a giggle.

  “Perhaps I should read you then, sir,” she offered politely. “If you give me a moment of your time.”

  He shook his head, his expression emotionless.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Annalise took a slow breath and reached over her shoulder, rubbing her fingers between her shoulder blades to soothe out an ache.

  “No, I suppose the hacks on the midway were not to your liking. Which mistake did they make when trying to tempt you?”

  The girl gasped. She took a small step towards her brother, her expression making her younger than she was. Annalise smiled and raised an eyebrow.

  “Ah, yes. Love. Such an overused reading if you ask me.”

  The man moved away from her, his hand reaching back to clasp around his sister’s wrist. His expression was critical and the piercing blue went straight through her, the way Mr. Hatliffe’s stare went straight to her core.

  “How do you know that?”

  “We are not all charlatans,” she told him gently, ignoring the ferocity of his stare. “One reading, for yourself or your sister. I won’t even charge. Call it an apology for the disservice you were served out on the midway.”

  “Come on, Lach,” the girl urged. “Maybe she’ll tell you about a promotion… again.”

  The man rolled his eyes and glanced at Annalise uneasily. His expression softened the moment he turned back to his sister.

  “You go,” he said kindly. “You believe in this stuff more than I do. I’m just going to get a drink.”

  “A drink?” she repeated, surprised. He grinned at her.

  “Lemonade,” he insisted. “There’s a stall just over there. Don’t be too long.”

  “I won’t.”

  The young woman followed Annalise to the entrance of the tent and stepped past as she held the velvet open. Annalise watched her as she rounded the table and took a seat. She clasped her hands in her lap and leaned back into her own chair.

  “Aren’t you going to use the cards or crystal ball?” she asked when Annalise made no motion to select anything on the table. “Ask to see my palm?”

  Annalise chuckled.

  “Would you prefer for me to shroud the mystical in something understandable or deniable?” She licked her bottom lip and nodded. “Yes, that’s something you’ve become used to in your life, wonderful things becoming mundane or deniable. Your brother does not believe in such things.”

  “That’s hardly a mystical reading,” the girl replied. “You only need to read his face to see that.”

  “True.”

  Annalise dropped the headscarf onto the table between them and they both gazed at it for a moment. There were those who wanted the spectacle. They wanted tarot cards, even if she told them a different story to the one the cards showed. They expected a swirling crystal ball as the girl had suggested, or for her to stare at their hand and draw the lines of their palm with her fingernail. Mr. Hatliffe told her to shroud her gift in such things. True talent, he said, was to be feared by those who didn’t know better. This girl, Annalise knew, was looking for true magic, not flashy shows of false power. From the look of her brother, she guessed the girl might have been looking for some magic for much longer than most.

  While the girl was clearly a young woman out of her teens, there was something young about her. She had the look of someone who had been shielded from the harshest aspects of the world and had therefore not seen the best parts of it either. Annalise wondered if that was why she was eager to see true magic, because that, at least, was a taste of that heart-lifting danger.

  She took the crystal ball from the centre of the table and turned it deftly in her hands before putting it aside. She gathered the tarot cards from their swept display and placed them down next to the orb.

  “Your brother cares for you very deeply,” Annalise said slowly, not taking her gaze from the scarf. Usually, she stared into their eyes and she watched their faces, but this time it was different. The longer she looked at the patterned material and the stamped metal disks, the more she could see.

  “He doesn’t always show it. He scolds you more than shows true affection, but for him scolding is equal to affection because he wants you to be better. He doesn’t want the things for you that he himself suffered.”

  “Lachlan didn’t…”

  “Your parents,” Annalise interrupted. “He suffers your parents, even now.”

  The g
irl didn’t have an answer for that and Annalise wasn’t surprised. There was pain smouldering at every edge of the couple she could see. Dark blue eyes, so like the brother. They still clung on all these years later.

  “Your job is intricate, methodical and known. So buried in the mundane that it is not surprising you long for the mysterious. Every element of life must be in balance, and you have suffered logic for too long.”

  It didn’t usually come this easily. There were flashes, images, and voices. She wove the images together into pretty stories but there was never a whole person stood before her. Everything this girl was and would be surrounded her, filled her, making her forget even herself. Her life spanned as far as the fields, as beautiful and detailed as heather.

  Her name was Hadley.

  “But you need to show caution. Those who have been mired in one way will often dive too deeply into the other.”

  “What does that mean?” Hadley asked.

  Darkness crept in around the edges. Tendrils of black smoke searched for cracks and crevices they could burrow into, as alive as anything Annalise had seen. Stretching towards Hadley, they were breathed in through the nose and when slipped out past her lips, they were even darker than before.

  “Your obsession will be your downfall. You need to hold onto what you know, not that which lies before you.”

  “I don’t understand. What obsession?”

  “That I cannot tell you,” Annalise admitted. “For it has not been woven into your future yet. You have a transformation to take before it comes to pass.”

  Annalise reached out and grasped Hadley’s slim and work-worn fingers. She rested their hands on top of the scarf, cool silk and metal against their skin.

  “You should not take it. No matter what is offered, for it will never be as bright, nor as mysterious as you hope it will be. The price is too steep, even though it sounds like a bargain. It will bring you more pain than wonder.” She found Hadley’s gaze. “But, if you must accept, if you find yourself lost, look for that which cannot be seen. Your solace will be found in the invisible.”