Le Cirque Navire

by Chele Cooke

  Hadley’s head lolled against her palm and her eyes slid closed.

  He was younger than he should have been. Instead of a man of nineteen watching her from the chair, Lachlan didn’t look older than nine or ten. The litcom was large in his hands, his hair longer and unkempt. His uniform had been exchanged for a grubby shirt and cut off slacks. His feet barely reached the floor from the chair he sat in.

  She leaned over him, her brown eyes as warm as her sun-kissed skin. Sweeping his fringe from his forehead, their mother’s own dark hair tumbled in waves around her son’s shoulders. She kissed him on the temple, her gaze never leaving Hadley’s.

  “Such good children,” she whispered. “My two.”

  Hadley jerked and opened her eyes. Grimacing at the sore stretch of muscles, she straightened up, massaging her neck as she looked towards the pillows.

  Lachlan was gone.

  Scrambling off the bed, Hadley tripped as she became tangled in Lachlan’s blankets. She wrenched her foot free and hopped towards the doorway.

  “Lach?” she called. “Lachlan, are you alright?”

  He appeared in the doorway, once again a man. He blinked as he looked down at her and the blankets, half-dragged from his bed.

  “What?” he asked.

  He was still pale and there were dark circles under his narrowed eyes, but his lips were pursed in the way she found so familiar. Even though his shirt was unbuttoned, it was clean and pressed.

  “Where were you?” she asked.

  His eyes narrowed even further. He reached behind his back and began tucking his shirt into his trousers.

  “I was getting breakfast.”

  Finally shaking the blanket from around her foot, Hadley tossed it back onto the bed. She pressed the heel of her palm against her eye and sighed.

  “You should have let me do it.”

  “Why?” he asked in surprise. He did up the buttons, only leaving the top one undone from around his throat. “I’ve got to go to work anyway. I can make my own breakfast, Hadley.”

  “You’re going to work?”

  He raised an eyebrow and let out a huff as he went past her. He straightened out his blankets, punched his pillow a few times, and within half a minute his bed looked like it had never been slept in. Hadley shuffled her feet and chewed her lip. Her own bed, despite having not been slept in, was unmade. Lachlan used to chastise her for it, but had given up long ago.

  “Lachlan, are we even going to talk about last night?”

  “Talk about what?” he asked, drawing a rolled tie out of his top drawer. He draped it around his neck and turned up his collar. “You knew I went to the Cirque so that we could bring it down, and that’s what I’m going to do. After last night, I thought you’d agree with me. These people need to be stopped.”

  His fingers were quick and his movements well practiced as he tied the knot in his tie. Unlike his first year as a soldier, he no longer had to look in the mirror. In fact, he barely looked at the tie at all as he buttoned his collar and tightened the tie at his throat.

  “What about what Jack said?” she almost cried. “His boss already knows you. They’ll be waiting for you.”

  “Jack?” he repeated in a murmur.

  Shaking his head, he grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and folded it neatly over his arm.

  “Look, I didn’t join the coalition to sit on the sidelines. You know that. The cirque needs to come down. If they know me, so what? I’m one man. We’ll have the whole force by the time we go there to get them.”

  “But Jack said—”

  “Hadley,” he snapped, rounding on her. “I don’t care if one of your friends from the docking station thought the cirque was cool, or if that fortune teller told you something about your future. I’m bringing down that cirque, no matter what your friend Jack says.”

  He was already at the doorway by the time he glanced over his shoulder. His gaze swept over her face and he sighed deeply, turning back fully. Reaching out, he cupped her cheek.

  “I’m good at my job, Hadley.” He leaned down and kissed her temple. “You should get ready for work.”

  Hadley sat down on the edge of the bed the moment she heard the door close behind him. It was one thing for Lachlan not to tell her about his work, but for him to feign ignorance of everything that had happened just wasn’t like him.

  Slumping down onto the edge of the bed and rumpling Lachlan’s perfect blankets, Hadley held her head in her hands and stared at the floorboards between her feet. Lachlan hadn’t been the same since he’d said he was getting lemonade. When she’d seen him in the fortune teller’s room he’d been different. Jack had mentioned something about being ordered to ensure he had a good time and the only way she could image he’d be able to distract Lachlan from his job was to ply him with liquor until he forgot. Only, Lachlan would never have gone for it. He would have spat it out the moment he realised what it was. He wouldn’t have ever drunk enough to make him forget.

  There was something wrong with that cirque, she could feel it. She’d felt it from the moment the fortune teller had given her that indecipherable reading.

  Jack had promised to come and see her to make sure that everything was alright. How would she tell him that after everything, Lachlan was just ignoring what they’d both been told? Her brother expected her to go to work as if nothing had happened. He thought, or even expected, for her to return to her boring life and forget everything.

  She couldn’t. She knew she couldn’t. Hadley knew she would remember that cirque for the rest of her life, even if she never saw it again.

  Instead of following her brother’s orders, Hadley returned to her room. She peeled off her clothes and crawled into bed. No answers came to her before she slipped off to sleep.

  Long trestle tables had been set up outside the cookhouse. Steam from the pots and hobs rose into the air in swirling columns of grey and white against the pale blue sky. The sun hung in the east, hovering above the horizon like it could drop back down at any moment. It hadn’t taken long after the departure of the last patrons for the roustabouts to start dragging out the tables and the cookhouse to set up shop. Vats of porridge were pre-mixed and placed over heat pads to simmer and two pans as large as tables were filled with strips of bacon. Eggs were cracked and scrambled by the dozen as the last of the performers changed and began streaming from the ship to collect their food.

  By their schedule, it was almost bedtime, and yet they accepted breakfast cheerfully, squashing onto benches with stories and raucous laughter. It didn’t make sense to change their food schedule for two days on the ground. There would be another long jump after their stay on Coropolvo and switches to the menu only served to make men grumpy.

  Jack clutched his cook house ticket in his hand, his head down as he shuffled forwards in the line. The triplets stood in front of him, their small lithe bodies hidden by oversized sweatshirts and baggy trousers. They huddled together, heads bent.

  “Just dropped,” Karolin whispered as she stepped towards one of the steaming pots of porridge and grabbed a bowl. The slop of the mixture being placed in the bowl echoed in Jack’s empty stomach.

  “Dropped?” Nicky asked. “What do you mean, dropped?”

  “Dropped dead. Like she just fainted, or so I heard it. Hit the ground and I don’t know whether she hit her head or something, but Yao says she was just gone.”

  Piper stepped up to the pot, bowl in hand. As she grabbed for the spoon she looked up. Her eyes widened at the sight of Jack, his hair unkempt and his eyes red. She shoved her elbow so violently into her sister’s ribcage that Karolin almost dropped her porridge.

  “What?” Karolin demanded, only then spotting Jack standing right behind her. “Oh… oh Jack, I’m…”

  Jack tossed his cook house ticket into the bowl and swerved around them, heading straight for the eggs. The triplets began whispering to each other but he wasn’t listening.

  Jack noted that the toast was burned again as he shov
ed his plate down onto one of the tables and swung his leg over the bench. All along the table, from all sides, the buzz of conversation rang in his ears like the hum of the machinery on the ship. They always shared their stories from the night before at breakfast and today was no different. Only, instead of funny tales of stupid patrons and mistakes made in the ring, there were only two topics of conversation on everyone’s lips. Jack hung his head over his plate and stabbed listlessly at his bacon, watching the grease that slid across his plate.

  “Wrapped in tarp,” one of the vendors was saying, using his fork to gesticulate.

  “Nah, someone’s exaggerating,” another replied.

  “Not from how I hear it. Shoulder torn to shreds. Looks like one of the cats got him.”

  “How did a cat get out and no one heard about it?”

  Having spent every second since leaving the ship trying to block everyone out, Jack lifted his head, the mouthful of eggs turning into a swallow of sand in his throat. He stared at the table, gritting his teeth as he dropped his fork onto his plate and ripped his toast in two.

  “Well, that’s the question, ain’t it?” the vendor said. “And who got it back in? Because none of the cats are missin’.”

  With a piece of toast in each hand, Jack stared at the vendors. They both kept their eyes on their breakfast, just another conversation after a show. His mouth had gone so dry that he could barely swallow. He didn’t even attempt to carry on eating.

  “Surely Clint knows,” the other vendor suggested.

  “You not heard?” He let out a blast of laughter. “Clint was found locked in one of his own cages, screaming his head off. Big rope knotted around the lock.”

  “Serious?”

  The vendor jabbed his fork over his shoulder.

  “Ask him.”

  Jack jerked his head up, his gaze scanning up and down the other tables.

  He sat as calmly as anyone, not really joining in on the rundown of their night. He had a litcom on the table in front of him and in between bites he swiped a greasy finger across it. Jack’s stomach convulsed and he dropped his toast back onto his plate.

  “Heard it was some drunk groundling,” the vendor continued. “Thought it’d be funny. Maybe they’ve been spiking a little too hard?”

  They glanced up as Jack clambered from the bench and collected up his barely touched food. They raised their eyebrows but at the sight of his red eyes and sallow skin, they quickly returned to their plates. He walked slowly along the back of the bench, their conversation continuing before he left earshot.

  “Sorry to hear about Annalise. She was a good girl.”

  Jack dumped his uneaten food into one of the trash bins and dropped his plate into a large metal tub of washing up. He rubbed the side of his fist into his eyes and strode away from the cookhouse.

  It didn’t take long to find the Junkers. They collected in the main ring, brushes already in hand. They’d cleared half of the ring to a large pile of sand and were leaning on their brooms in a small semi-circle. Most of the performers didn’t speak to the Junkers much, the men left to do the jobs nobody else wanted whilst on planet. They cleared the ring after each performance, ready for the sand to be relayed by roustabouts. They shovelled the shit in the menagerie and cleared up the inevitable vomit. During the jumps, they kept the ship in order and assisted the engineer, but on the ground they were little more than the boys they used to pay with free tickets. They got all the worst jobs, and Jack knew they would be the ones told to bury the butcher.

  They looked up from their cigarette break and watched every step Jack took. He gazed down at his feet, making sure he wasn’t about to trail new dirt into the ring.

  “You here to tell us we missed a spot?” one of them asked. He was a large man, sandy hair hanging limp to his shoulders. Moving his broom in front of him, he grasped it like he were about to start using it as a weapon. His gaze drifted over the half of the ring still covered in sand but there was no smile to be found as he looked back at them.

  “I just wanted to ask to borrow a shovel,” Jack said.

  “Shovel?”

  He didn’t see him at first, half-hidden behind the other men. The boy was barely older than fifteen. His hair was the colour of ash, his skin dirty, and his clothes hung from his tiny body the way the cigarette hung from his lips.

  “Annalise died. I want to bury her.”

  “We’re burying the groundling after we’re finished here. We’ll dig one for ya.”

  Jack gently shook his head.

  “I’d like to do it.”

  The sandy-haired man stared at him for a long moment. Leaning more heavily on his broom, a flicker of a smile tugged at his lips and he gave a slow, metronome nod.

  “Mouse,” he said. The boy jumped forwards. “Go grab the man a shovel.”

  The shovel was heavier than Jack remembered a shovel being. It had been a while since he’d done any manual labour and he knew that it would probably take him twice as long as one of the Junkers working alone. With the five of them all working, they’d probably have the grave for the butcher dug in no time at all. Still, he wanted to do this for Annalise. He couldn’t bear the thought of her being rolled haphazardly into a hastily dug grave, no one caring whether she lay face up or if her skirt was hiked up around her knees. She deserved better than that and the work would keep his mind from the gossip rolling around the cookhouse.

  He strode down the loading bay ramp, shielding his eyes with his hand. He wouldn’t be able to go far in order to bury her and decided that south would be the best. The further from the city, the better. He didn’t even know if Annalise had liked cities. He’d known so little about her life before she joined the cirque and he was beginning to wonder if she’d even known by the time he came along.

  Mr. Hatliffe marched up to meet him. He’d changed from his performance clothes, dressed instead in a linen shirt and loose black trousers. Despite the off-duty clothes, he looked as slick as ever and he turned a flat cap in his fingers.

  “Mr. Western,” he greeted with a sharp nod.

  His gaze went straight to the shovel in Jack’s hands. Bringing the tool before him, he rested the worn teeth at the end in amongst the rivets in the ramp, pressing his hands hard against the handle.

  “Mr. Hatliffe, I wanted to talk to you,” Jack said.

  Glancing around himself and Mr. Hatliffe to ensure that no one was close enough to hear them, he gulped as his arms trembled. He’d tried not to think about the butcher, about Clint, but he had to bring it up. He couldn’t allow the rest of the crew to think that Clint had been the victim of some prank, free to continue on as normal.

  He knew what Cole Hatliffe did to those who no longer served their purpose, they all knew. Red lighting wasn’t as common as on some ships, but it was common enough to send a tingle of fear down his spine.

  “And you thought it fit to bring a weapon?”

  Jack glanced down at the shovel and noticed that his arms were shaking so badly that the shovel vibrated beneath his fingers. He shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “No, it’s about Clint.”

  The smile that graced Hatliffe’s lips as he shook his head was accompanied by a roll of his eyes.

  “Drunk people will always find their fun,” he mused.

  “It wasn’t a drunk person, Mr. Hatliffe,” Jack said, pausing as he took another look around. “It was me.”

  “You locked our menagerie man in a cage for half the evening?”

  “The man they found, the one wrapped in a tarp? Clint did it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Jack didn’t know how to explain. It had all been so fast, so disgusting. He didn’t want to think about it more than necessary. A shudder ran through him and bile crept into the back of his throat.

  “I saw him. Clint wrestled the guy down and smacked his head against the floor. Soon as… As soon as he was… he bit him. Tore his flesh off and…”

  He heaved and gritted his teeth, forcing t
he bile back down his throat. It was acrid, burning all the way back down. Blinking, he faced the ringmaster.

  “He was trying to eat him!” he said. “So I knocked him out and, and shoved him in the cage.”

  He couldn’t mention Tack. He wouldn’t put the man in even more danger after he’d made sure to get him out. The soldier had drunk the spiked lemonade, there was a chance he wouldn’t even remember what he’d seen. Jack wasn’t about to take that chance.

  “And you didn’t think to tell anyone?” Hatliffe asked.

  “I was trying to get back to the soldier,” he lied in a single breath. “And then Annalise was… I was going to find you but things got on top of me.”

  Hatliffe nodded and glanced over his own shoulder towards the cookhouse. It was quieter than it had been before. Most of the performers had headed off to bed to get a decent sleep before they needed to get ready for another show. Still, there were a few crowded around the tables, chatting and laughing.

  “I’ll deal with it.”

  “Sir, don’t you think we should…”

  Hatliffe’s gaze was enough to cut Jack off.

  “I said I would deal with it, Mr. Western.”

  Jack nodded and took a small step away from him. He pulled the teeth of the shovel from the ramp and lifted it up under his arm.

  “You’re burying Annalise?” Hatliffe asked, his gaze once again drawn to the shovel.

  “I thought…”

  “Some physical activity would help you work out your grief.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Jack nodded just the same.

  Hatliffe patted him on the shoulder, not a particularly warm or friendly gesture. The jolts of his palm coming down on him were sharp and solid. Jack gulped and waited until Cole Hatliffe had reached the top of the ramp before he set off to the bottom, weaving his way through the midway to the gates.

  He’d head south, out into the cornfields and open air. At least he knew that she had loved open air.

  The thrumming ache in his head pounded with every step, a particularly clotted bit of blood trying to push its way past his temple. Breakfast hadn’t been a good idea either. The porridge rolled and churned in his stomach, threatening to expel itself. The sun was unnaturally bright, his eyes stinging and watering against the glare of the sunlight bouncing from the windows. He had loosened his tie and undone his top button the moment he left the house and Hadley couldn’t see him, only buttoning it again at the last moment. Even then, the tight collar felt more constricting than usual.