The Wild in her Eyes

by Karina Giörtz

  “I think I’ll pass,” she mumbled, doing her best to focus all her efforts on collecting the last few kernels of corn from her plate just so she could avoid looking Bess in the eye.

  Sawyer seized the moment, as usual, despite not being previously involved in the conversation. “I think you should do it, Annis. Opportunities like this won’t come around again so soon, and you want to learn as much as you can from your day with Bess, don’t you? Might as well see if you can get a handle on her ability to maintain her balance under any and all circumstances.”

  “You’re horrible,” Annis said, lifting her eyes to stare straight at him. “You know that, don’t you? I mean, you’re so horrible, I’m starting to wonder if you’re trying to knock me off. To get me killed.”

  He laughed, but it only made her carry on. “You’re trying to murder me and not get caught. It’s brilliant, but it won’t work. I won’t be lured to my death by a man who can’t even see out the train windows without standing on the nightstand.”

  Sawyer’s mouth, still open in preparation for his next round of comebacks, widened and his jaw dropped nearly to his chest. “Annis. You’re getting to be mean.” He smirked. “Maybe I’ll let you live after all.”

  “How very gracious of you,” Annis replied dryly.

  “Yes,” Sequoyah agreed, grinning. “We really do appreciate it.”

  “Meanwhile,” Bess said, “are we still convinced climbing the pole will end in certain death or are you willing to take a risk with me?” She flashed Annis a brazen smile. “Don’t you want to be the hero who puts the flag back, Annis?”

  It was all she’d needed to say to steer Annis toward her next adventure.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE STORY

  “Swear this won’t turn out to be the unexpected end of my story?” Annis whispered, staring up at the tent ceiling. She was sorry she’d asked the twins to care for Finian while she went with Bess to tackle the flag problem. He would have provided her an excuse to back out, completely through no fault of her own. After all, who could have blamed her if Fin had been too scared, or too squirmy to hold on to? Not to mention feeding time.

  “I swear,” Bess said, squeezing her shoulder. “It’ll make a wicked good plot twist, though. No one would see it coming,” she laughed. “Least of all you, from the looks of it.”

  Annis felt her entire body shiver, starting at her core and spreading evenly in both directions until her teeth began to clatter. “Maybe I can’t do this,” she breathed.

  “It’s just nerves, Annis. You need those. They let you know when you’re growing, taking chances, becoming more. If you don’t feel the rattle of your teeth between your jaws every now and again, you’re not living right. Hell, you’re probably not living at all.”

  The words reckless and fearless bounced back and forth inside Annis’s mind, and the conversation she’d had with Hugh about them ran through her thoughts on loop. The longer she listened to Bess, the harder it was for her to determine which one she was chasing at that moment. Was she being reckless? Taking a stupid chance? Or was this calculated risk without the fear of falling? Because that’s what she would be required to do to complete this task: Give up the fear of falling.

  “Tell me again how we’ll do it,” Annis begged.

  “Nope,” Bess answered. It was the most cheerful rejection Annis had ever received.

  “Okay,” she muttered, following Bess, who reached up for the first rung drilled into the pole and began to climb.

  “Don’t look down, Annis,” she said for what had to be the hundredth time since talking Annis into this asinine plan. Annis wasn’t sure she agreed with Bess’s advice. Looking down seemed sensible. How else would she know when she’d reached the point of no return? Or climbed so high that survival was out of the question should she make one mistake and slip?

  “I won’t look down,” she promised, despite her reservations. Annis reminded herself repeatedly that Bess was the height expert, the woman who knew how not to fall. Whatever Bess said, Annis would treat as law and follow to a T. Annis would not look down.

  Seven rungs in, and she was still whispering the same words to herself over and over again: “Don’t look down, Annis. Don’t. Look. Down.”

  And she didn’t. Instead, she kept count.

  Eight rungs.

  Nine.

  Ten.

  By the time she reached fifteen it occurred to her that she might have preferred knowing how many there would be in total, so she could track the climb. On the other hand, should the number have been something as terrifying as a hundred or more, she likely wouldn’t be at number twenty-four right then, or on any rung at all.

  “Just a few more,” Bess called back.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” Annis wheezed. She heard Bess laugh. Bess really did find everything amusing. She also, as it turned out, had a very different definition of how many a few was, compared to Annis. “A few” turned out to be ten more rungs to climb, making the grand number they had scaled thirty-five. Not nearly as horrifying as one hundred, but still frightening all the same.

  Annis watched as Bess twisted and turned her body to navigate several ropes near the circus tent ceiling. She then slithered through an opening at the top where the materials of the tent overlapped but were held in place by the weight of the heavy tarps alone. Bess’s feet were the last to disappear as she pulled herself through to the other side.

  For a moment, Annis felt completely alone in the world. It was as though everything and everyone had disappeared and all that was left was her, clinging to her rung, desperate to stay alive. Then, after what felt like several minutes to Annis, but had likely been only a matter of seconds, Bess reappeared. The world came back along with her. Sticking her head through the opening and reaching her hand down toward Annis, she called, “Grab ahold.”

  And, knowing a second thought would lead to a third and a fourth thought, all of which would tell her not to do it, Annis emptied her mind and took Bess’s hand.

  A rush of air swooshed down her body as Bess yanked her upward. As soon as she was outside of the tent, knees weighing into the canvas tarp creating a sort of hammock for her to sit in, a new breeze hit her. This one was warm and pleasant, as was the view.

  “I told you not to look down,” Bess snapped. Then she laughed, letting Annis know she was only teasing. “Pretty incredible, isn’t it?”

  “Do you come up here often?” Annis asked, surprised at how commonplace it all seemed to be for Bess.

  “How do you think the flag wound up like that in the first place?” She winked. “Don’t tell Poppy.”

  “No wonder he’s always suspicious of everyone around here,” Annis muttered.

  “It’s true,” Bess agreed. “We give him good reason.” She grinned, staring out at the horizon. “You should see it at sunset. It’s magical.” Her gaze drifted toward the train. “Sitting on top of the cars isn’t too shabby a view either. I’ll take you up there next.”

  “I think I’d like that.” Annis smiled, taking a long, deep breath in until her chest felt as though it might burst. “I might have liked it even more if we could have started with that. They’re considerably lower to the ground, you know.”

  “I do know,” Bess said, her eyes glossy from the wind. “That’s why we go big and work our way down. If you work your way up, there’s less fun in it. The trip gets comfortable, you lose your nerves. And you need those, remember?”

  She did remember, though. She realized she no longer had them. They’d been replaced with something new, something better, something more tremendous and rewarding than anything she’d ever experienced. She liked the nerves. She wanted more of them, especially if they all led to feeling like this. Strong. Rebellious and almost euphoric. Question was, how far would she have to push herself out of her comforts to generate nerves the next time around?

  Conversation dwindled between them as they got to work replacing the flag. They secured it better than the previous one for
reasons Bess chose to keep to herself. Annis assumed they were related to preventing the flag from falling again the next time Bess attempted whatever act had caused the flag to break in the first place.

  As it turned out, once she forgot how high up she was, Annis didn’t feel at all out of place working at the very tip of the tent. Not until it was time to make their descent did she find her nerves ready to return—and with a vengeance.

  “You looked down, didn’t you?” Bess said, matter-of-fact, when she noticed Annis glued to the top rung.

  “It was an accident,” she hissed. “I went to move my foot down and my eyes just followed automatically.”

  “Alright. Hold on.” As if there were any other option for her.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Rather than answer, Bess apparently thought it best to show her. Gripping around the outside of Annis’s hands, Bess took hold of the rung and then carefully lowered herself down behind Annis to the next one. Instantly Annis’s fears jumped from herself to worrying about Bess. “Be careful!” she cried out, feeling Bess’s body slip against her back.

  “I’m fine, Annis,” Bess assured her, moving past Annis and then looking up to meet her terrified eyes, pools of endless white surrounding pupils that swallowed up the irises, making them look entirely black.

  “Now what?”

  “I’m going to go down,” Bess said, already moving toward the ground. “I suggest you do the same.”

  “But...How?” Panic rose from Annis’s chest to her throat, making her hiccup.

  “One foot at a time, Annis. Same way you got up. Same way you get anywhere.”

  “What if I can’t?” Surely there was another way down.

  “Can’t’s not really something we do around here. Impossible tasks get done every day, Annis, because people simply have no choice but to do them.”

  It wasn’t at all the answer she’d wanted to hear, though it was exactly the one she’s expected. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the image of the ground a million miles away from her, blurred and possibly shaking, growing more vivid and more horrifying the more she tried to erase it from her mind’s eye. Her own thoughts, ruthless in their attempts to destroy her, added scenarios of falling—a slipping hand, a misplaced foot—that all ended with her body broken beyond repair in the dusty dirt below.

  Fear was completely taking over, until she nearly lost her footing just standing there, worrying. And then fury stepped in. Fury with herself for getting in this ridiculous situation in the first place. Fury with her stupid instincts to look down when Bess had hammered it into her head not to. Fury with her own cowardice. She’d allowed her fear to spread malicious lies about her fate when she already knew, had already decided once, that death could call for her, but she would not answer. Not yet. Not when there were debts left to be paid and terrible wrongs left to be made right. She could not be defeated. And she would no longer allow herself to be taken in by fear and its laughable lies.

  Annis was halfway down before she noticed she’d been moving at all, huffing and puffing along to the angry rant inside her head.

  “Giving yourself a good talking to?” Bess called out from below. “It’s good. In the end, you are usually the only person you’ll listen to. It’s the only person any of us listen to.” She laughed. “It’s a bloody shame we usually don’t have a clue what we’re talking about.”

  Annis reached the last three rungs and leapt to the ground, abandoning her climbing efforts. And, because she’d finally got her head straight, she landed firmly on her feet. There was no fall left in her.

  “Well done, Annis,” Bess said, nodding approvingly. “I knew you’d do it.”

  “You knew I wouldn’t stay up at the top of the pole and die a slow and terrible death because I was too scared to come down? Thanks, I’m glad you knew I could make that judgement call.”

  Bess hooked Annis’s arm with her own and tugged her back out of the ring. “Don’t be silly, Annis. We would have to get you down tonight after the show. Tent doesn’t stay up longer than that, remember?”

  She did now.

  Flabbergasted by the realization she’d suffered for naught, and had looked a fool doing it, she could do nothing but sputter nonsense the entire time they walked. Her frustrations with herself and Bess’s clear disregard for sharing valuable information Annis could have used amid her harrowing efforts to have her feet meet with the ground again, fumbled back and forth within her mind. Not until they reached the train and headed into Bess’s cabin did Annis feel she could start making sense again.

  “I can see why you don’t value trust a great deal,” Annis grumbled, following Bess inside.

  “You’re saying I’m not trustworthy?” Bess asked, sounding far more amused than offended.

  That had been Annis’s initial intention, but now that she was thinking about it, she wasn’t sure. “I suppose I’d trust you with my life, but I wouldn’t trust you to be all that forthcoming with truth you didn’t deem to be required information, even if I might prefer to have it, if given the option.”

  “You know,” Bess said, pulling the pins out of her hair and letting the long brown strands spill down her back, “I think I’m okay with that.”

  “I kind of thought you might be.” Annis looked around the otherwise empty cabin. “What are we doing in here? It’s hours yet before showtime.” She knew this for certain because she was still down one meal for the day. Annis couldn’t remember a time she’d been more concerned with eating her fair share in one day but heading back to Momma’s for dinner had been on her mind ever since touching down on solid ground again. Following Bess around certainly worked up her appetite.

  “We need a change,” she said, lifting the lid on a massive trunk and shuffling carelessly through its contents. “Here,” she said, tossing a new pair of trousers at Annis. “Wear these.”

  Annis looked at them, and then down at the ones she already had on. The ones she wore were the same pair she’d received from Babe a few days ago. Annis had seen to it they’d been washed and pressed by those on laundry duty, so there really was no need for a new pair. “What’s wrong with the ones I have on?”

  “They’re too pretty.”

  “I beg your pardon?” She’d been working in them all day. When had they become too pretty?

  “Believe me, for what we’re about to go do, you want a pair of trousers you won’t want to wear again.” Mischief flared in her eyes and Annis knew she was in for it. Again.

  “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what that is, are you?” Annis mumbled, already giving in to the inevitable and changing her pants while Bess did the same.

  “And ruin the surprise?” she mocked. “Absolutely not!” She threw a pair of boots in Annis’s direction. “You’ll want these too.”

  The boots were so crusty and old that Annis couldn’t tell where the leather was flaking and where the dirt was coming off in layers. She didn’t want to touch them, much less wear them, but if there was even a chance her good shoes could wind up looking like these by the time they were done doing whatever Bess had in store for them, she knew it would behoove her to put them on.

  “Brilliant,” Bess exclaimed, taking in the sight of Annis’s new wardrobe. Brilliant was hardly the word that came to Annis’s mind when peering down the length of her body, but she wasn’t about to argue, not when Bess had a potentially torturous surprise in store for her. Sensing Annis’s apprehensions, she added, “You know, you really don’t need to look so frightened. I haven’t steered you wrong yet all day.”

  Annis’s mouth flew open to point out the various ways in which Annis had nearly died already, but then thought better of it when she remembered that the other side of feeling scared was feeling more alive than ever.

  “Alright then, steer me onward to the next grand adventure,” Annis declared, throwing her hand up to her forehead in a dramatic salute that made Bess laugh out loud.

  “Oh, it’ll be grand, alright.” She
turned toward the door and began marching. “And away we go!”

  Indeed, they went. All the way past the train toward the end of camp, stopping only when they reached the animal tent.

  “Bess.”

  “Yes, Annis?” Her innocent tone impressed Annis.

  “Will this adventure involve poo?” Jacob the monkey flashed in her mind and it was all she could do to keep from running in the opposite direction. If she’d thought Sawyer was brash for recommending she dig around in monkey poo in search of a brooch, she was sure she’d have to come up with entirely new descriptive terminology once she discovered what Bess intended for them to do. It did give her some peace of mind, though, knowing Bess was planning to participate herself. Not much peace, of course, given the things Bess was willing to do, but a little.

  “I can assure you, poo will be no part of it,” Bess said, very seriously. Annis believed her and let out a loud breath of relief.

  Inside the animal tent, there was nonstop commotion. Sequoyah was busy running the horses while Sawyer was at the other end rehearsing his act with Roderick and Phryne, two of his lions. Millie and Edi seemed to be on their own for the moment, and neither of them was dressed for the evening, so it was only a matter of time before someone came along to begin the hazardous affair of putting tiaras on them.

  There were others in the tent as well, but Annis was too busy staying close to Bess and trying to figure out their mysterious task to pay attention to them.

  “Here we are,” Bess announced, coming to an abrupt halt in front of the monkey enclosure.

  “No!” Annis burst out, hands flying up in protest. “You said no poo!”

  “And I meant it,” Bess insisted. “We’re not here for poo. We’re here for demolition!”

  “What?” Annis asked, taking in the sight before her. It was reminiscent of her neighbor’s tree house, with its mismatched wooden slats for walls and its odd shape that one tends to end up with when working with scraps for building material. Also, it was clear that additions had been made after the original structure was built and there’d been either no measuring tape on hand, or Homer had been the one to craft it all. Somehow, in its chaotic construction, it managed to appear perfectly suited for monkeys.