A Circus of Brass and Bone

by Abra SW

  Leah hopped onto the bench. She launched herself from it and alighted on the hitching post. Her landing was picture-perfect, her balance as perfect as a tightrope-walker’s. She glanced over her shoulder.

  Pamela wasn’t even looking in her direction. She was already paying attention to Michael instead. Leah gritted her teeth and reached up to a branch above her head. A good upward pull with her arms and a swing of her legs, and she sat astride the branch. Her skirt was a hindrance, but she could manage it. She pushed herself up to stand on the branch, hiked her skirt, and tied it up above her knees. Then she reached up for the next branch.

  In that way, she swung herself up the pine tree like a monkey, until she attained a height above any of the surrounding houses and trees. She could see all the way to the horizon. The world seemed very large, and she felt very small.

  The circusfolk gathered below the tree. “Do you see any sign of where the monsters may have gone?” Ginger called up to Leah.

  “I can’t see any other towns nearby,” she said. The words came out so quietly, they were almost a whisper. Annoyed with herself, she cleared her throat. If there were monsters nearby, they would have heard the ruckus raised by the strongman. There was no reason for her to be quiet. Still, she had to force herself to raise her voice enough to be heard by the circusfolk below.

  “I can’t see any other towns nearby that the monsters might have gone to attack. No rooftops. I don’t see any smoke in the distance. No other carrion birds, either.” She felt rather flat as she admitted, “I suppose the monsters really are all gone, after all. Oh, wait—” She squinted. “Is that—? I think I see smoke in the South. Wait. No. It looks like there was a rockslide. I think I’m just seeing dust in the air. That’s all. I’m coming down now—you all better move out of the way if you don’t want pine needles in your face.”

  “Wait!” Leah heard a note of hope in the strongman’s tear-ravaged voice. “What rockslide? Where?”

  “South,” Leah said. “There’s an old run-down shack with a chute coming out of it and some kind of tower collapsed behind it. A granary, maybe? The rockslide is right beside it.”

  Leah heard a scuffle below her.

  “Wait!” shouted the fortune teller.

  “If you’re going to be a damned fool, at least take this!” the Indian mahout said.

  Something thumped against the ground, and then footsteps thudded into the distance. Leah clung to her branch. “Um, what just happened?” she called down.

  When the fortune teller responded, she sounded sad. “The strongman muttered something about finding their hiding place and bolted for the trees. Heading South. He’s not thinking clearly. It’s hardly safe out there. A few monsters could still be lurking nearby.”

  Lacey the equestrienne spoke for the first time. “Should we go after him?”

  “The man needs to be alone. He’ll come back,” said the fortune teller.

  “What if the monsters are in the woods?”

  “Then maybe he won’t come back. Doesn’t matter. Right now, he needs to be alone more than he needs to be safe.”

  “If he runs into a monster, he’s got a fighting chance,” the mahout said. He continued to speak, but Leah stopped listening.

  Something much larger than a squirrel had rustled the branches above her. She wasn’t alone.

  ~ * ~

  Gloria Brehm

  Near Fredrickston, Pennsylvania

  Darkness.

  “I haven’t heard him in a long while,” Gloria ventured. “Maybe he’s gone and left us.”

  “Maybe.”

  Most times, Gloria found her common-law husband’s silent strength reassuring. She appreciated that Bosley didn’t natter on about unimportant things. Buried in a cold, dark hole under the ground, however, she would have welcomed the distraction.

  “Why didn’t he give up and leave with the rest of them?”

  A long silence. “Don’t know.”

  Gloria thought back to what now seemed like an idyllic life, despite growing hardship and her oldest remaining son’s illness.

  “Every time you went up to the mine, you always promised you’d come back,” Gloria said softly. “Maybe some part of him remembers.”

  Bosley didn’t answer.

  She wished she hadn’t said it. She wished she hadn’t thought it. It was easier to think of her son as gone. She’d had three of her six children sold away. She understood the pain of losing a child. This was worse.

  A little voice piped up. “Mama, I’m thirsty.”

  Gloria wrapped her arm around her youngest son. “I know.” She gingerly explored the floor until she found their water pitcher. It weighed almost nothing. “Here, child. Open your mouth.”

  She didn’t want to risk spilling even a drop in the transfer between pitcher and cup, so she placed the pitcher spout against her son’s lips and tilted the pitcher for him to drink. After he pushed it away, she upended the pitcher above her own mouth to catch the last precious drops of water.

  Her parched throat made it hard to speak, but she managed. “Bosley, this mine is mighty damp. Is there water down here somewhere?”

  “Mine water ain’t good for drinking.”

  “It’s all we’ve got. There’s no more water in the pitcher.”

  A long silence. Then, “Tear up your petticoat. I’ll put rags against the dampest spots. We can wring ‘em out to get a little bit.”

  She rustled about in the dark, untying her muslin petticoat and slipping it off. Tearing the thin material was pitifully easy. “It’s ready.”

  A lucifer match rasped against sandpaper and hissed to life, a sound Gloria cherished after the long dark days of their confinement underground. She shielded her eyes against the bright little light and squinted until she could make sense of the illumination.

  Bosley lifted his lantern’s glass, lit the wick, and then turned it down to preserve precious lamp oil.

  Gloria’s daughter blinked at her from the other side of the mining chamber they’d settled in. Coal dust coated Louisa’s already dark skin, but it didn’t hide the gauntness of her cheeks or her cracked and bleeding lips.

  Gloria gasped. Her thoughts churned as she tried to remember when her daughter had last asked for the water. “Louisa! Why didn’t you say you were thirsty?”

  Louisa gazed back at her with steady dark eyes. “The baby needs it more. I know you and Daddy weren’t drinking.”

  “Yes, but—oh!” Gloria pressed her fingers against her eyes to stop the tears. Moisture was too precious to lose. Once the threat receded, she picked up the pile of torn petticoat rags and handed them to Bosley. “We need any bit of water you can find,” she told him.

  He nodded and took the rags. In that moment, she hated him a little for not offering false reassurances.

  “I have to stoke the ventilation fire, too. I’ll be back in a while.” He hunched forward and pushed himself to stand.

  The rustle of his clothes as he moved almost covered the other sound. Gloria put out her hand and caught his arm. “Wait. What’s that?”

  The scraping sound came again. Bosley’s shoulders slumped. “He’s back.”

  “I don’t think so. Listen.”

  Dislodged pebbles rattled. Something metal clanged against the rock blocking the mine’s entrance.

  “Is he able to think well enough to use a shovel? He couldn’t earlier.”

  Thud. Clang. Thump. Rattle. Thunk-ka-thump-bump. Thud!

  Gloria wrapped her arms around her waist and hugged herself.

  Bosley reached out and patted her shoulder. She caught his hand and held it.

  “Don’t fret yourself,” he said. “A shovel alone won’t do it. The rocks will just tumble down to fill the gap. You need to brace it.”

  “With timbers?”

  He nodded.

  “Like the ones lying beside the mine?”

  He nodded.

  “But you’d have to be thinking clearly to use those,” she said. “Our boy wou
ld have to be himself again.”

  The scrape of something heavy being dragged carried clearly into the mine, as did the thump and creak of it being wedged into place.

  Bosley nodded again. “Timbers.”

  Gloria tightened her grip on his hand and reached out with her other arm to embrace her daughter. Her little son buried his face in her skirts. At the mine entrance, the sounds of heavy labor continued. The shovel clanged against stone. Rocks thudded into the ground. Timbers groaned as they were wedged into place. As the digging sounds grew louder and nearer, the sound of harsh panting echoed through the mine. Gloria pulled her children closer. Part of her wanted to call out to their rescuer, to hope that her son had returned to his senses and come back to help his family. The larger part of her feared what might answer her call.

  They huddled silently in the dark, quiet as church mice. Without a word, Bosley turned up the lamp wick to its full brightness. There was no need to save lamp oil now. They all stared at the blocked-up entrance to the mine, as the sounds grew closer and closer.

  When the first chink of light appeared, Gloria flinched as if from a blow. She’d spent the last few dark days longing for sunlight, but now she feared what it would reveal.

  Another seam of light joined the first, and another, as fallen rock was cleared away. Sunlight shone through a hole in the stones. A large, callused hand reached through and began clearing the last layer of rocks away.

  Gloria swayed. Her son had inherited his grandmother’s narrow, delicate hands. Their rescuer’s hands were large and blunt-fingered, calloused and scarred from fieldwork.

  “Hello?” she called. “Hello? We’re in here!”

  Those large hands cleared out more stones. Rock fell and timbers groaned, but their rescuer’s pace didn’t slow. Finally there was enough of an opening for a man to fit his head and shoulders through—even a man as large and bulky as their rescuer.

  He thrust his head through and looked at them. Despite the sunlight seeping in and the brilliance of the oil lamp turned up to its full strength, he squinted as if he couldn’t quite make out their faces. The mine shaft must seem shadowed and dim to him, Gloria thought. After days in pitch-dark, she felt like she was being flooded by light.

  “Who’s there?” he asked, his voice as ragged as if he were the one who had gone without water.

  “Gloria Brehm and my man, Bosley Gravel, and our children, except for—”

  “And the others?” he interrupted.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The others! The others who are with you. I know some of my family must have gotten away. I’m Bradley Roberts. You must know the Roberts family. Surely some of them are with you? They know how to run, you see, and how to hide. They must have gotten away.”

  “I’m very sorry.” Gloria felt a sinking sensation in her chest, as if she’d swallowed an anchor that was pulling her down. “We’re all there is. Is the town—?” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. She knew the answer anyway. If anyone had been left alive, they would have come up to clear away the rockslide days ago.

  “No. No.” Bradley turned his head from side to side and squinted into the shadows, as if he could conjure his family up through force of will alone.

  “I’m very sorry,” Gloria repeated.

  Bradley pulled back, sending a shower of pebbles rattling down. Gloria stepped closer to the hole. Fresh air swept past her, sweet and cold. The light blinded her, and tears streamed from her eyes as she peered out.

  Bradley stood about ten feet away from the mine entrance, his back to them, his shoulders heaving. He muttered something that Gloria couldn’t hear.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t come back in time,” he repeated. “I didn’t come back.” He collapsed to sit on the ground, his head buried in his arms. “I didn’t come back.”

  “I knew your family,” Gloria called through the hole in the rock. “They were so proud of you, for going out and making something of yourself.”

  He shook his head.

  Her mouth tightened. They had all lost family. They had all known pain. Even before the killing storm had swept down on Fredrickston, Gloria’s life had held more loss and sorrow than any person should bear. You went on, that was all. You gritted your teeth and you took it.

  “Bradley Roberts!” she said sharply. “You can’t lie down and give up when something bad happens! If your family had done that, they would have died slaves. We’ve all lost family. I bet every single person still alive in this country has lost people! My own son—”

  A chill seized her. In the relief of rescue, she’d forgotten something crucial. If her son wasn’t the one digging at the mine entrance, where was he?

  She pressed herself against the opening. “Listen!” she shouted. “Bradley! Bradley, you have to listen to me! Our son has the madness. He’s been hanging around the mine entrance for days. You’re in danger! Do you hear me?”

  The big man straightened his shoulders. He turned around to look at her. He opened his mouth, as if to finally answer—and a growling fury struck him from the side and bowled him over.

  Gloria backed away from the hole in the rock-slide, the back of her hand pressed against her mouth. The tears in her eyes were no longer from the bright sunlight. Her boy had come back.

  Gideon growled through a mouth twisted into a perpetual snarl. Overgrown teeth sprouted from his mouth like the petals of an exotic flower. He moved awkwardly, without the grace that Gloria remembered her older son possessing. He had been tall and slim, a good-looking young man who sauntered on his way. Now, overgrowths of bone locked him into a lopsided hunch. Knots of muscle made his movements jerky, though inhumanly strong and fast. His clothes were torn. His hair was matted. His ribs showed through the holes in his shirt. He was so emaciated and dirty that Gloria’s heart went out to him even as she backed away.

  Bosley ran forward and began pulling at the rocks around the entrance. “Got to help him!”

  Gloria couldn’t bring herself to ask which him.

  Outside the mine, Bradley rolled and heaved himself up. He’d barely gotten to his feet when Gideon snarled and lunged forward, sinking his teeth in the big man’s shoulder. Bradley yelled with pain. He raised one massive fist and slammed it against Gideon’s ear. Gideon howled and let go.

  Inside the mine, Gloria collapsed to the ground and covered her eyes with her hands. She heard the clang of metal and then the thud-crunch of the shovel hitting something soft. She shuddered as if she’d been the one struck.

  Gideon wailed.

  Another thud.

  A low growl.

  Bradley yelled, “Get down!”

  Gloria heard her son yelp in surprise, and then her husband’s arm was around her shoulders, bearing her to the ground. Her hands were knocked away from her face. Her eyes flew open.

  Whompf! The day outside exploded into fire.

  ~ * ~

  Dainty Leah Eads, Who Flies Through the Air Like a Bird of Paradise!

  Fredrickston, Pennsylvania

  Pine needles rustled. Leah froze. She stared up. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

  The branches above her parted to reveal a small face staring down at her. Leah’s breath gusted out in a sigh of relief. The little boy clinging to the tree above her couldn’t have been more than three years old.

  “Oh, little one,” Leah cooed. “It’s a miracle you’re still alive!” Never mind how you got this high up a tree to begin with! “Come here. Let Leah take care of you.” She wrapped her legs around the tree trunk to anchor herself and stretched her arms out to the boy.

  He launched himself at Leah so quickly that she barely caught him in time. She pulled him into an embrace, her heart pounding. “Hold on tight, little one,” Leah told him, shifting his weight to her hip so that she could carry him with one arm. “We’ll climb down very slowly. Then you’ll meet the circus! You’ll like us. All children like the circus. Our strongman will be so happy to—agh!”

  T
he child sank his teeth into Leah’s arm and worried at it like a dog at a bone. Leah screamed again. Tears of pain rolled down her cheeks. She grabbed at the boy’s face, trying to pry him loose. He growled. She jammed her fingers into the side of his mouth to force him to open up.

  The child opened his mouth and let go so suddenly that he was falling before Leah knew what was happening. She grabbed for him too late. He struck a branch below her, rolled off, and kept falling. His eyes widened. He wailed in terror. Her last glimpse was of little, flailing hands reaching for something to cling to.

  Leah clung to the tree trunk, weeping, as she listened to the child’s fall. Below her, branches rustled and snapped until finally there was a decisive, sickening thud.

  “Out of my way!” Doc Janzen shouted.

  Leah leaned her forehead against the trunk. No child could survive a fall from that height. Her body shook with sobs. Her mind insisted on revisiting the moment when she’d tried and failed to save the boy, over and over again. She was deaf and blind to all else.

  When her tears had run dry and she’d stopped shaking, she wiped the back of her hand against her nose and used her skirts to blot her tears. Her shoulder ached. Though she dreaded seeing the boy’s crumpled body, she had to climb down before it became so inflamed that she couldn’t support her weight with her arm.

  She climbed slowly down the pine tree, wincing every time she saw snapped branches or blood on the bark.

  Nobody looked at her when she jumped the last few feet out of the tree. Everyone had gathered into a huddle around Doc Janzen, who knelt beside the child’s still body. She must have made a sound—a groan, perhaps—because Pamela looked over and saw her.

  “Leah!” Pamela cried, abandoning Michael’s side and running over to fling her arms around her.

  Leah winced, bringing her hand up to protect her wounded arm, but it felt good to have proof that her sister aerialist still cared.

  Pamela pulled back. “Oh, you’re hurt! We’ll have to make sure Doc sees you once he’s done with the boy!”

  “Done with?” Leah repeated numbly.

  “Oh, yes! Doc says he’ll live. It’s a miracle! Whatever happened to your arm, anyway?”