The last five words swept over Portia like a blanket made of ice.
“You see, Portia?” Mister hissed. “It is not that I want you to stay. But I cannot let you leave. You are still a work in progress.”
He slowly opened a desk drawer, and her notebook appeared in his hand. He set it down, flipped through the pages until he came to her list of names. He tapped the paper with one long finger. “Like so many others, Portia, you have resisted my efforts. And like them, you must be dealt with.”
“Are you going to kill me, then?” she asked. “Like you killed them?” She tried to make her words sound hard, tried to fire them like a bullet. Her only weapon.
Mister started, his hand twitching on the notebook’s open face. Then he laughed, the same dead, dry sound as before. “I didn’t kill anyone. Those girls are every bit as alive as you and I. At least, I think they are. Not many of them have kept in touch, you see.”
“What did you do to them?”
He smiled. “I gave them new lives,” he crowed. “It’s the perfect arrangement, really. There are so many enterprising men out west, farmers and miners and general store owners. And they all need hard-working women at their sides. I simply bring them together. For a small fee, of course.”
“But,” Portia sputtered, “the graves—”
“Empty, my dear. Just in case the families come looking for their girls.” He leaned forward a bit. “Of course, they never do.”
Finding out that Mister wasn’t actually a serial murderer was quite a bit less comforting that she might have expected. Portia called up what little bravado she had left. “You won’t get away with this,” she told him. “You can’t just send me wherever you want and marry me off.”
“But there’s no one to stop me,” he said. He reached into the drawer again. Pulled out a thin folder. Tossed it at Portia.
The folder caught the edge of the desk and spilled its contents on the floor. She saw her name in Sophia’s handwriting, the letter her aunt had written so long ago to ask Mister to take Portia in. She saw other notes in Mister’s writing, spiked and gnarled like winter branches.
Saw the blood-red word stamped across the front: DECEASED.
“No,” she whispered.
“They’re dead,” he replied, savoring the word. “Your aunt knew your parents could never come back for you. She knew it even before she brought you here. And she didn’t live much longer, either. Terribly unlucky, your clan.”
“You’re lying.”
Mister waved his hand at the scattered pages on the floor. “It’s all there. Parents: deceased. Aunt: deceased. Rest of the gypsy-wagon clan: whereabouts unknown.”
Her throat felt full of hot stones. All this time, all of the faces she had examined, and the notes she’d made, and the searching. She had never had a chance of finding Max. She had come back, given up her only chance of freedom, for nothing.
“There is no one left, you see. You are—”
A flash outside the window.
A face, far above where a face ought to be.
It was Jim.
Mission of Mercy (and a Bit of Revenge)
It had taken four days for them to find her. And their arrival produced the one and only genuine scream Portia ever heard come out of Mister’s mouth.
Within minutes, they were all lined up in the living room, like some otherworldly army battalion, standing at attention. Mrs. Collington and Mrs. Murphy and the Lucasies (even a glowering Joseph), Jim, Jimmy, Mosco, and Marie. Mister was pressed against the wall at the far end of the room, waving a fireplace poker like a sword.
“Stay back!” he bellowed. “Don’t come any closer!”
“Oh, honestly,” said Mrs. Collington, “I do wish you’d stop that.”
“Making a damned fool of himself,” muttered Jimmy.
Portia couldn’t resist kissing Marie on the cheek, for effect, though she did restrain herself (just barely) from climbing onto the couch to greet Jim the same way. Then she took her place next to Mosco. Looking down, she could see the pearly handle of the knife he’d tucked into his belt.
“What’s that for?” she whispered.
“Just in case this doesn’t go as planned.”
“Where’s Gideon? And Jackal?”
“Guarding the trucks. And we thought we’d get a better reaction if we left the normals out of it. No offense.”
“None taken.”
Mister finally regained a bit of his composure and seemed doubly angry for having lost it on account of anyone connected to Portia. “What is the meaning of this? Who are you . . . people?”
“Never mind who we are,” Mrs. Murphy said tartly. “We’ve come for Portia.”
“Go get your things, darling,” said Mrs. Collington.
But before she could take a step, Mister found another hefty dose of bravado. “She’s not going anywhere.” It was that low and steely voice he used, the one that made Portia’s hairs stand on end. She froze.
“We expected you might object,” Mosco said. “That’s why we came prepared to buy out her contract.”
“Contract?” Mister spat. “There’s no contract. She belongs to me.”
“But you are a businessman, no?” asked Marie.
Mister glared at her.
“You would be foolish to refuse such a deal,” Marie went on. “We will give you a fair price and”—she winked at Portia—“you will be rid of this troublesome girl.”
“But you see,” said Mister, “I do not want to be rid of her. I missed her terribly while she was gone. The house was so quiet without her. So empty. So dead.”
Portia felt the ghosts of Caroline’s hands in hers.
Smooth-voiced and calm as milk, Mister said, “I am not finished with her yet. And when I decide it’s time for her to go, I can get a very good price for her through . . . other channels.”
With the poker still in his hand, he took a few steps toward the group. Jimmy growled like a dog, but Mister kept coming. His fear had been scattered by his fury, and this talk of setting Portia free, even for money, was bringing him back to life. “You may leave,” he said, “the way you came in.”
“You’re out of your mind if you think we’re leaving her here with you,” Mosco informed him.
“Portia”—Mister almost sang her name—“there is more. About your family.”
Even though she didn’t believe him, the word, that one word, brought a wave of longing that nearly knocked her over. But it wasn’t the same longing she’d felt all summer, looking for Max on the midway in town after town. It was for something else.
“I will tell you. As soon as you send these . . . people away. You know you belong here. You have nowhere else to go.” He smiled and took a step toward her. Just her. “We need you here, Portia. You won’t be so selfish again, will you? Not after what happened to Caroline?”
Another step.
“She trusted you, Portia. She trusted you, and you betrayed her.”
And another.
“You killed her, my dear.”
“Nonsense!” shouted Mrs. Collington.
“No,” said Portia, “it’s true.”
And it was true. But it didn’t matter anymore. Portia felt her mind open, as if she had found a clearing in the woods, and she remembered what she hadn’t been able to while she’d been locked in the secret room. Her reasons.
“It’s why I came back,” she told them. Told herself. “I did want my file, but I think I needed to see this place again, too, to make sure it was real. To make sure it really happened.”
“What did, dear?” asked Mrs. Collington.
“All of it,” Portia told her. “Everything. My life.”
This was what she had wanted: the chance to go back to the place where life had turned to face the wrong direction, the chance to pull it back like a headstrong pony and take it where it should have gone before. She could not bring Caroline back. She could not even save Delilah now. It was too late.
But she would no
t throw herself away to atone for her sins.
Mister would be the end of her. And she was not ready to end.
She turned to Marie. “Help me,” Portia said, and Marie nodded.
“How sweet,” Mister sneered. “But you should have stayed where you were.”
Portia felt the air around her crackling like radio static, pushing her, pulling her, trying to decide, stay, go, run, scream, something, anything, move.
“Time to do your penance,” said Mister, and he raised the poker.
She reached behind Mosco, snatched the knife from his belt.
She dropped to Marie’s feet, set the handle of the knife in place.
She made a wish.
She watched the knife fly, saw it pierce Mister’s forearm, thrust itself deep into his flesh. He staggered back, dropped the poker, clutched his arm to his stomach.
“Wicked girl,” he gasped. “Murderer.”
“Maybe I am,” Portia said. But his words had no teeth anymore, and he couldn’t keep her here.
“You have nowhere to go,” Mister hissed.
“Yes, she does,” Joseph said quietly.
“She’s coming home with us,” said Mrs. Murphy.
“Keep the knife,” said Mosco. He picked up the papers, stuffed them back into the folder, and tucked it under his arm. He nodded to Marie. “Let’s go,” he said.
And they ushered Portia out of the house on the hill—the strongman, the armless girl, the bearded woman, the fat lady, the giant, the dwarf, and the wild albinos of Bora Bora.
Sophia’s Letter
Dear Sir,
I am writing to request your assistance with my niece. Portia has been in my care for four years, and though I promised my brother that I would care for her until his return, I have recently learned of his untimely and tragic death. (Though I could have told him that working with circus elephants was ill advised, had he asked my advice, which he never did.) Portia’s mother passed away some years ago—the circumstances of her death have never been entirely clear, and Portia herself does not know that both of her parents are now residing with Our Heavenly Father. It is my own burden that I cannot bring myself to tell her. If you should choose to share this information, I will, of course, defer to your expertise in the matter.
Portia has a generous heart and a wild imagination—she comes by these qualities through our ancient bloodline, and someday they will serve her well. I regret to say that I was born without these traits, and I find that I am unable to encourage or even manage the child. A life with other girls, some of whom may become as sisters to Portia, must surely be better. I pray for your kind intervention, dear sir, and I remain your humble servant,
Mrs. Sophia Remini Stoller
Graveyard Girls
Gideon was waiting by the trucks with Jackal and Doula and Anna. “Are you all right?” he asked Portia. “Is that blood on you?”
“Not mine,” she said wearily.
“Sorry we weren’t there to help. I guess we weren’t exciting enough to come along for the adventure.” He put a hand to her cheek and said, “You’re all right?”
She nodded. Then she turned to Mr. Lucasie. “I thought you said you never changed direction, that you always follow the route card. But coming here . . . it was completely out of your way.”
He smiled. “Rescuing damsels in distress is a different matter altogether,” he said. “That calls for drastic measures.”
“Anyway,” Mosco said gruffly, “damned circus is coming apart at the seams. Too many clowns, by far. I think we may join up with another outfit next year.”
Portia stood in the cool-edged evening air, reveling in the sheer absurdity, the unexpected thrill, of everything that had just happened. Gideon’s hand had found hers, and he tapped her palm gently with one finger.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “Can we make one stop before we go?”
“Sure,” said Mosco. “Where to?”
“The cemetery.”
No one asked why. And when they arrived, no one followed her through the gate. They did not try to stop her tears when she knelt at Caroline’s grave, or when she walked between the rows of empty graves behind Caroline, trailing her fingers across the tops of the headstones, saying goodbye. They did not hush her, or hold her, or tell her everything was as it should be. They knew better than that. They simply waited for her to return to them, wrapped her in a blanket, and drove into the ink-black night.
Her saviors.
Her family.
At last.
After All Is Said and Done
The August heat reminds everyone that the end of the season is not far away, the time of year when the circus makes the trip to winter quarters, and the carnival breaks apart like mercury.
Marie and Anna go home to their father, who is still throwing knives in the backyard, though he has to move his targets closer each year.
This year they are taking Mosco with them.
Polly and Pippa have tickets on the Atlantic Coast Line’s Champion train to Miami with Mrs. Collington and Mrs. Murphy—they’ll spend the winter working the indoor circuit, saving up their money for the house with the library. The Lucasies have a winter home in Gibsonton, but they’ll be late going down this year, as Portia convinced them to employ the Kimble brothers to help find Violet.
“Everybody’s lost someone,” Short will tell them, as they reunite him with the business card he gave to Portia in the car. She has written a note on the back: You never know who your next client might be.
No one really knows where Jimmy goes, and Jim usually hibernates in a boarding house somewhere, but this year they got an offer for winter work at a movie studio in California that’s making a series of short reels about human oddities. They both hate the idea of being filmed, but they couldn’t pass up the money.
And Portia . . .
“You’ll like New York,” Gideon tells her. “I’ve never seen Jackal so excited to take someone back with him.”
“I guess I still have a lot to learn about the bally,” says Portia.
“Seems like the show doesn’t change much, year to year, but there’s always something new. New act, new route.” He scuffs his shoe into the dust. “New friends.”
She smiles. “I’ll write to you in Boston.”
“No,” he says. Then he smiles, too. “Save your stories for when I see you.”
“And when will that be?”
“I have some family business to take care of,” he tells her. “It won’t be long.”
She has heard this before, from Max, from the others. Hollow promises echoing through the spaces between them, spoken by people who were already half-gone. But Gideon is different.
“I’ll make sure you find me,” he says.
Portia touches her shoe to Gideon’s, to the place where he has been digging, and presses her toes to make an impression. Their tracks will not stay—they cannot hold against the elements and will be erased almost immediately by the unsettling August wind. But for now, their story is before them, printed in dust that only they can read.
And it is only the beginning.
Portia
Does the story start with how I got here? Does it start before that?
Lives begin only once. Stories are much more complicated. They can pick up, leave off, pick up again a thousand times. There is no beginning or end that way. And don’t even get me talking about the middles.
But I have to start somewhere.
Begin at the beginning.
The first time I saw Gideon was on the lot, when I rode my stolen bicycle up to his truck and he was sitting in the bed and he looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Which he hadn’t.
Gideon says the first time was when the carnival passed us coming back from the graveyard. But he’s wrong. That was the first time he saw me.
Gideon also says letting his route card fly out the window of his truck was an accident. I believe he’s wrong about that, too. Because s
ome things that look like accidents are really stories finding their own beginnings, and if I hadn’t picked up that route card, how would I have known how to find the Wonder Show?
Author’s Note
Though most of the characters in this story, and all of the events that take place, are entirely fictional, several of the performers and human oddities whom Portia encounters are based on real people. After discovering such fascinating personalities and reading about their lives as performers, I found it impossible to resist casting them as part of Portia’s story. I hope their fans and descendants forgive any liberties I have taken in adopting them to populate my novel.
The Lucasies—Rudolph, Antoinette, and Joseph—were a family of albinos “acquired” by P. T. Barnum in 1857 and exhibited for three years in Barnum’s popular American Museum in New York City. They went on to tour with various circuses for another forty years, until Rudolph and Antoinette died unexpectedly in 1898. Joseph had learned to play the violin as a child and continued performing as “The Musical Albino” until his death in 1909. There is no record, however, of the Lucasies having a nonalbino daughter like Violet.
Jim is based on a variety of real-life giants, particularly Robert Wadlow and Jack Earle, both of whom were still alive when this story takes place. Both Wadlow and Earle were reluctant circus attractions, both appearing (though not together) as part of the Ringling Brothers show. Earle reportedly befriended several of the midgets who were part of the circus, and it was not uncommon for giants and midgets to become inseparable companions.
Polly and Pippa are based on Daisy and Violet Hilton, a very famous pair of conjoined twins who were born in England in 1908. They were managed throughout their childhood by unkind relatives motivated by financial gain; Daisy and Violet were eventually granted legal independence and went on to star in vaudeville shows and even played themselves in Tod Browning’s movie Freaks in 1932. They made their final public appearance in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1962 and were subsequently abandoned by the agent who had set up the show. Ever resourceful, Daisy and Violet found employment at a local grocery store, where they worked until their deaths from Hong Kong flu in 1969.
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