by Kara Silver
“Your choice, but doing that will just get toes added to the fingers.” Kennedy raised her hands and mimed snapping, a twig, say, or a stick of barley sugar—or a bone. “Don’t worry,” she said to the uniformed man stepping between them. “It’s all hers. I’m off.”
She dumped the postcards and stamps in the contributions tub as she exited. Meshing of her former life in Wyebury with her new life as a college student? Yeahno. Not gonna happen. But…she had another new life waiting, didn’t she? Or a new…something, at any rate. Kennedy made a huge effort to throw off everything and focus on the here and now and the fair and her family, and laughed to see her uncle crossing from the other side of the bridge between the waters at the same time she was.
“So, you saw to your beau?” Giacobbe’s hazel eyes twinkled and laughter lines grooved his face.
“My…” She understood Giacobbe’s question as bow as in ribbon, and it took her a second to relate it to Chris as in sweetheart. “Oh, we’re not exactly… It’s early days.” When in doubt, fall back on a cliché. Any second, she’d be saying they were taking it slowly, not rushing into things.
“I see. Well, come on in!” He threw an arm around her, making her rub her shoulder blade against it to scratch it. Not that it itched. It sort of, buzzed? Something. “Let me show you around.”
“I’ll try to remember who’s who and who does what,” Kennedy promised him. But it was difficult, relating people to their roles in the show and their stalls or amusements. The rides and attractions looked small and sad, lonely with no people, but she could imagine the place lit by the lamps strung on cords or swinging from poles and perched in the trees, jaunty with hurdy gurdy and barrel organ music and lively with the exclamations and cheers of happy crowds milling around the mirror maze and coconut shy, the lighthouse slip and the Noah’s Ark merry-go-round. She didn’t think it would destroy the calm and remoteness of the place, though. That was still strong and pleasant.
She squealed as hands covered her eyes from behind. Only the fact that she recognised Tristan’s chuckle, and perhaps his scent—cologne, she amended—saved him from having her elbows jabbed into his ribs. “Never sneak up on me,” she told him, meaning it, but then smiling. She couldn’t not, around him. “Come on then. Let’s do this before I lose my nerve.”
“Nah, you won’t. There’s plenty of drink!” Tris pointed at the champagne booth.
“I’m on the wagon.”
“I wasn’t trying to get you drunk and… Well.” Tristan shrugged, making his curls bounce. Kennedy reached up to push a handful behind his ear for him. She’d intended to make some quip about bringing him some Kirby grips, but didn’t, instead staring into the verdant depths of his eyes. He brought his hand up slowly, giving her time to remove hers, and she did, trailing her fingers down his neck as she dropped her hand.
“Where’s Isabella?” Kennedy asked, hoping that shake in her voice was, say, an earthquake, and not her.
“Here!” The girl poked her head out of the theatre tent. Isabella looked paler than ever, and too thin, sort of ill, or sick. She clutched her stomach and Kennedy stared, a suspicion forming.
“Are you two…? I mean, I know in the play, but—”
“Well, you have to know that the whole play revolves around The Lovers and that we’re in love,” Tristan cut her off, catching her hand in his.
Kennedy…didn’t pull hers free. She liked his warmth and energy wrapping around her. “In love?”
“But…”
“Yep. There’s always a but,” she muttered.
“We’re more in love with being in love with each other. We never actually address each other directly, so don’t tell the other we love them.” Tris passed her a fan as she gaped her confusion. “But we do sort of say it in the dance, which we’ll teach you first.”
“I can’t do this!” Kennedy wailed about ten minutes later, failing to execute the “pas” steps in any way, least of all a courtly way.
“Hmm. Yes. We’ll leave the dance for tonight, go for the comedy?” Tris looked at Isabella, who nodded quickly.
Thank God there’s a lot of variation with the play, Kennedy thought, watching the pair go through some of the stock situations from the commedia. She’d taken part in the mime earlier. That didn’t seem a problem. The dance—forget it. Getting Harlequin and Pierrot, disguised in drag, to court Pantalone and il Dottore to distract them while The Lovers tried to be together only to find they were hiding in separate boxes on opposite sides of the room…well, the physical comedy was fun. Kennedy felt a thrill of triumph as she finally inched her box alongside Tristan’s and they poked their heads out at the same time.
“And the most important thing about The Lovers is that we’re always together at the end,” Tris whispered, his mouth inches from hers.
“Together…” she murmured, her eyes on his, stretching towards him.
“Kennedy!” Only one person—or being—had that mix of impatience, annoyance and disappointment in his voice.
“The Rock,” she acknowledged Aeth, where he stood tall, hands on hips at the tent flap. She suddenly became aware of what she was doing, what she must look like, and pulled herself free.
“You’re supposed to be working,” he snapped, marching on her.
“Am I? First I’ve heard of it—eergh!” That was the noise she made when Aeth grabbed her hand and pulled her from the tent. She pulled back. “Get off me! What do you think you’re doing? What’s the matter with you?”
“Beatrice?” Tristan hurried after them.
“Who’s Beatrice?” Aeth spat.
“It’s my commedia name.” It sounded silly now, but in the tent, in the play… “I can hardly be Kennedy there, can I?” And it sounded nice, said properly. Beeatreechee.
“So, you’re doing this.” Aeth indicated the fair, the tent.
“I said, let go of me.”
He dropped her hand.
“That’s better.” She shook her arm. He’d tugged her wrist tightly. “Yes. For a while. Just to help out. And what do you mean about working?”
“Now, you’re asking? Why? What do you care about your duties, your obligations?” And, stretching to touch the slim stone pillar of a small sculpture, a tribute to the engineer who’d designed the weir over yonder, he was gone. From one blink of the eye to another.
“Don’t you dare snit and run!” Kennedy yelled, charging after him. She crashed into the plinth…and through. Oh, God. Being able to move through stone and earth—it had happened before when she was emotional. She’d forgotten the sensation, the claustrophobia, the feel of dirt and dark and dank filling her nose, her mouth…
“Where are you?” she cried, swishing her hands in front of her.
“You said to let go of you. Let’s see you manage on your own.” His peeved voice came disembodied.
“Fine!” she yelled. “Tristan, if you can hear me, I’ll be back for the show tomorrow!”
She stilled, forcing her mind upwards to get a read on things. Ha! All that parkour, free-running about and above Oxford—she could see the city laid out like a map. “Above and below,” she chanted, wondering if that was any kind of incantation. A hard-as-gravel snort told her it wasn’t. But she didn’t need his help or disapproval, the later more likely. She was under the river, which was frightening if she thought about the volume and weight above her, so she didn’t.
She knew where Heylel lay and so guided herself that way, bursting, surging—whatever it was, it was a rush. She forced herself upwards and emerged through a stone slab in a quad. She knew the square of grass, bounded by buildings, and knew the square of rock. It was the one Aeth had moved aside for them to shelter underground, the evening of the first day she’d met him. Now, he de-pulverized next to her and she glared.
“See? I can manage. I don’t need your negativity and your, your—”
“And you’re going back tomorrow?”
She nodded, and he turned and walked away.
“And you�
�re jealous!” It wasn’t how she’d thought she’d finish her sentence, and she did it in a whisper, partly amazed and slightly scared. Just when she thought she understood things with him, things between her and him, he had to go and…pull the stone out from under her. She swallowed. This…wasn’t good, and she had no idea how to make things better.
11
Kennedy shook out her left arm, which ached from being held high to point out the way visitors should follow. “I feel like a human signpost,” she bitched. “Wouldn’t it be easier and less painful to just put arrow signs on posts for people to follow, rather than have us standing around like wrong-season scarecrows?”
“Exactly why ‘they’ wouldn’t do it—less painful.” Drew Lytton, her fellow Visitor Liaison, rubbed his cheeks. Kennedy betted his face ached from smiling as much as hers did. “It’s meant to be painful. And humiliating. How else will you learn to be a good little…weirdo?”
Kennedy, cold from standing around just inside the grounds in the December weather, didn’t have the energy or strength to hit him. She took advantage of a lull to stuff her mittened hands into her duffel coat pockets for a minute.
“Interesting choice of coat. Well, the whole sub-fusc in general.” He’d been smirking about it ever since she’d joined him. “I have to ask. It’s been killing me not to. Is it some sort of tribute to Heylel through the ages?”
“It’s retro?” Kennedy tried, yanking her long black socks up over her knees once more in lieu of tights and brushing dust off her maxi skirt. The white blouse looked and felt like some scratchy chorister’s nightmare and the black ribbon tie fought with the blouse’s ruff, and both clashed with the wide black headband holding her hair back from her face. But at least it was all present and correct.
“Yeah, looks like you struggled into a disguise while on the run. In a stolen TARDIS,” came Drew’s next witticism.
“I’m surprised you can see what anything looks like from up there.” Kennedy winced at herself. “Sorry, as comebacks go, that kinda went, didn’t it? And yeah. I more or less did get changed on the run. And from the Lost Property box. Which is a time machine, of a sort.” Kennedy stamped her feet to warm them. “I mean, there’s everything in there from, like, flared pants about a yard wide to sleeveless white T-shirts with RELAX written on them.”
“I’ve seen Terminator—did you materialise somewhere nekkid?”
Any reference to her materialising had Kennedy on edge. She covered it with a joke. “Mr Lytton! Are you imagining a first-year student nude?” Kennedy clapped her hand over her mouth when a pair of parents, entering ahead of their son, heard her. They stared at her, then each other, then their boy. “A female first year,” she reassured them, raising her arm to indicate the route, her gesture a conditioned response by now, her point an automatic whole-hand one, lest the use of one finger or another offend any nationality or culture.
“The principal gave Walt Disney the idea,” Drew had told her earlier. Drew who was now laughing until his eyes streamed. “So, you rocked up at the Lodge sans clothes and—”
“No. Just in jeans and a sweatshirt. I didn’t realise I had duty today until I saw the message waiting for me. Seems the porters had orders to make sure I was suitably attired for my tasks, so they shoved an old mildewed box at me and made me help myself.” She sneezed again. The mothballs were strong.
“And do you get to keep the groovy threads?” Seemed Drew wasn’t done yet having fun at her expense. She couldn’t blame him. The ridiculous outfit she’d had to cobble together was amusing.
“Drew, what exactly are you here for?” she asked suddenly. “I mean, why weren’t you on top of your work? You’re bright.”
He shot her a cool look. “Same as you, I’d wager. Pursuing more extra-curricular than curricular activities, which leaves little time for studying.”
Hmm. “And would one of those extra-curricular activities be…the Spire?”
“Kennedy. You seem like a cool weirdo, but I have no way of knowing you’re not a narc. A snitch,” he added, when she frowned. “Think about it. You’re asking pointed—pun fucking intended—questions about an underground newspaper that’s the bane of the authorities’ existence?”
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I guess the mind-numbing cold has numbed my mind.”
“’S’okay.” He turned aside to light a cigarette, as if knowing she wouldn’t be censuring him this time. “One day maybe we can talk. Away from here. Not now. And haven’t you got a fellow shit listee to swap duties with halfway through the shift? No? So you’re stuck here for the duration. Bummer.”
She wrapped her college scarf tighter around her neck and chin. “I didn’t know about that dodge.” And I doubt anyone would swap with me even so.
“Yeah. I’ll be off to conduct tours of the nice warm dining hall soon. The haunted dining hall, I should say.” His eyes gleamed. Kennedy could just imagine the tales he’d weave. “Changing over with Maisie.”
“Maisie?”
“You know her. Second year. My better half.”
“Right. Well, I guess I could be showing people round the museum.”
“Nah. Strawberry Short-Stuff’s doing that.”
“Huh?”
Drew blew out a plume of smoke as he laughed. “Your pal. First year. Same subject. Emma Newsomething-Something?”
Kennedy smirked. So, even Emma the strawberry-blonde golden girl couldn’t wriggle out of the ‘up in the vac; you’re doing chores’ rule.
“Yeah, she’s working about fifteen whole minutes a day.”
The smirk dropped. “She would be. Her sort always the best deal. Oh, you know what I mean. Like those lists for best-dressed? She’d be at the top if there was one for best-connected,” Kennedy grouched.
“Who?” asked a voice behind them. Maisie.
“Emma Newman-Smythe,” Kennedy grunted.
“Oh, she’d be on a best-dressed too! Have you seen that teal-coloured Fendi fall bag she’s got? It’s like, so next week! I’d steal it, but it’d be obvious who’d done it when I used it, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t say no to those fringed boots, either.”
Kennedy turned away as Drew bent his head to kiss Maisie.
“Here.” Maisie juggled chocolate bars. “I love Japanese visitors. You get a bow at the start and a Kit-Kat at the end. I told them there were three of us, so…”
Kennedy took the bar Maisie passed her. “Thanks. Wait. Potato flavour?” She examined the one Drew held. “Wasabi?”
“Mine’s ginger ale.” Maisie showed her. “They have them when they need good luck, like now, when their kids are trying to make a good impression. Kit-Kat sounds like ‘Kitto Katsu’, which means ‘you will surely win’.”
“Huh.”
Drew, cigarette finished, crammed half of his chocolate bar in his mouth. “Hey, don’t worry about Emma getting all the breaks, getting ahead, or whatever. Okay, so her family connections and family money get her special treatment, and gives her a head start, and she looks like a fashion mag come to life, but you’ll catch up. Well, maybe not with the clothes…” With a final kiss to Maisie, he ambled off.
“I’m not bothered about Emma,” Kennedy assured Maisie, who was settling her earmuffs in place. She was hungry, but decided to keep her special good luck chocolate bar for later. She’d need all she could get for her first performance.
It was a good job it wasn’t summer; the chocolate would have been a disgusting mess in the pocket of her leather duster coat, the way she fingered it on her way to the fair, muttering, “I will surely win.” Even without this season’s bag and boots.
“What?” Isabella, waiting for her, asked as she hugged her. She pulled back, looking into Kennedy’s eyes.
“Nothing. Well, just wondering what life must be like for Emma Newman-Smythe.” Kennedy waved a hand. “Another student at the college. A frenemy, if you know the word. Forget it. Let’s do this. Before my chocolate melts. Oh, hang on a sec. I’ll catch you up.” She stood in front of the
pillar Aeth had used earlier, making sure she prevented Isabella seeing the letters that had sprung to life around it.
“I’ve been expecting you, Mr Stone,” Kennedy murmured, reading I TOLD YOU NOT TO DO THIS. She pulled the stick of pink chalk from her pocket and held it aloft, in case Aeth was watching. TOUGH, she wrote back, pleased the colour looked so garish, and using all caps, to shout as loudly as Aeth had. She leaned low. “This isn’t helping. You’re not helping,” she whispered into the apex of the abstract design. “Ready!” she called to Isa.
Isa was still asking her what as she led her away.
“Nerves?” Kennedy tried. But in fact, she didn’t really feel them. Oh, not from being such a natural performer, but because it was hard to say when the performance started: the players, costumed, masked and made up, circulated amongst the fair-goers, interacting, acting out little skits and bits of business, all the time. Theatre in the round? Living theatre? Kennedy felt sure the style or technique or genre had a name. She’d look it up tomorrow.
The buzz of the crowd as she and Tris playacted, play-flirted and play-romanced by the games tents and through the Penny Arcade to the performance tent had her almost floating and the applause inside the big top when the commedia actually started, the audience drawn there by following the various players from all over the fairground, acted like a drug, enhancing everything. Heightening everything, from Harlequin’s mischief-stirring to Pierrot’s clumsy-sad acrobatics, from Pantalone and la Signora’s all-too-recognisable everyday marital dilemmas and love of their daughter Beatrice to il Dottore’s lofty ambitions and hopes for his only grandson, Tristano.
And when she and Tristan acted together…their love and longing was palpable. The audience held its breath as Tristano drew closer and closer to the window of the room she was in just as she inched nearer and nearer to it to, to release a collective ohhhh when the lovers’ lips failed to make contact before Beatrice was called away.
Which was when, looking out into the audience, Kennedy spotted Chris. She couldn’t make out his expression, but he sat stiffly, not laughing now at the comic relief of the zanni, or servants, preparing food and drink. The scene changed to the garden, The Lovers’ parents eating and drinking—and trying not to react to the odd-tasting refreshments—while The Lovers strolled among the fountains and floral displays.
