The Grand Tour

by E. Catherine Tobler

  Beauty wants so much to be good.

  Beast wants so much to be bad.

  We dig our feet into the ground, and from our center we pull—we pulled this way in our youth, trying in vain to part our selves. It is no easier nor more possible now. We are a solid flesh, a thing that cannot be parted no matter how we think we wish it. One would have legs and one would have a construct, and this is as disagreeable as the Hoyts who stand before us. We approach him and our feet print the ground; the grass has not grown because of the construction; there is soft dirt and stones and the debris of building this Hell Gate.

  The little girl fashioned from her leftover skin bolts at the sight of us. She screams and flees into Hell and the lady with her cigarette-burned thighs follows. The men regard us with even stares, but though dead, their eyes have not lost the sheen of lust for whatever it is we are. Angel or demon, perhaps we are not a thing to be named, all desires being equal in the warm dark. Even so, they withdraw, leaving only the Hoyts before us. The mister we have known smiles, mouth slightly crooked from however he has been pressed back together. He extends his hands to us; they are strong still but coated in blood and tattered flesh, the signs of his trade. Sometimes, he says, a thing must be sacrificed so it may properly live.

  And who deems proper, we wonder. Mister Hoyt smiles again and lunges. Hell will have its angels—or its demons. Fine lines and distinctions, things we have never drawn but others always do. We turn our shoulder to him and our broad wings catch the brunt of his impact. Though these wings have never carried us into the sky, they are strong and living and bear him backward, toward the river which snakes from the mouth of Hell. His severed twin cannot move quickly at all; this Hoyt mewls pitifully as we stride past. This is what he would make of us? How he would separate and reduce?

  We are accustomed to working quickly, within the shadows. We are accustomed to silencing our prey so that none come running, and we are upon Mister Hoyt before he can cry out. But Hoyt has been remade by his own hands—be they his own or his twin’s. His crafted flesh is a thing we do not understand, for it comes apart beneath us. He seems many creatures in one, leftovers bound into a whole; they part, they scamper, they reassemble deeper along the river’s path. We pursue the gleaming trails in the red light, the twin’s mewling growing ever more distant.

  Deeper, the halls smell of sulfur and of the hot glow of the glass lights. Mister Hoyt sucks himself back together and flees deeper into Hell’s ever-branching caverns. He keeps to the illuminated riverbank, the freshly-sealed channel below ready to be flooded by the Styx. It is here, when he turns to gauge our distance in pursuit, that his remade body staggers into a row of lighted bulbs.

  The glass shatters and there is a brilliant flare as filaments and shards rain into the fresh tar. There need be only a single spark—the tar comes to quick fiery life. The fire is faster than us or Hoyt; his newly crafted skin browns under the heat as though he is made of bread. The fire appreciates the lines which mark him, running like water to fill every empty valley.

  The burning Mister Hoyt lurches into our arms, begging. While he pulled himself apart moments before, the fire seems to be fusing his flesh into a solid lump, now incapable of escape. His tongue can barely form words before a snake of fire slides into the open hollow of his mouth. He tries to turn toward the river, to fling himself into its watery salvation but there is no water to be had, nor salvation in Hell. We hold him even as the flames stretch covetous fingers toward our wings. No, we tell him, and while Beauty sobs, Beast roars.

  Bit by bit, we feel our selves becoming ash. Small pieces of us lift into the inferno: skin, wings, a string of freckles once tongue-traced in the early morning quiet. Around us, the fire spreads along every fresh line of tar in the hollow of the river channels, deeper through the caverns like some far-ranging sea creature that will devour all in its path. These arms of flame surge through the entire park to ignite buildings, trees, tents. We can hear the screams and they sound so distant, but they are our own as the flames wrap us the way silk once did. They curl around our shoulders, our waist, to lick the cleft between, and tell us that sometimes a thing must die before it can live.

  Beauty arches under the heat and tries to pull away. Beast crisps up, ephemeral dough, unable to pull with arms so withered. A simple severing, so simple, yet Beauty grasps a wasted hand that grasps in return, and pulls. Pulls us upward out of Hell and into the ashy air where we, as one trailing embers, fly.

  Liminal

  1880, silver rush Colorado

  I was already dead when the train came, but still I heard that whistle. Felt the keening wail all the way into my bones that were no longer bones. I could feel, too, the warmth of the railroad track, beneath hands that were not my own. Gemma’s fingers curled around the rail and the last rumbling of the cars rolled up her arm, into her shoulder, to curl around her neck like a scarf. Sombra reached for Gemma, hauled her easily into the car while the scent of old hay and animals rose around us. Horses, I think it was horses, as we three flopped there and waited for the train to lurch into motion. It did not.

  I could feel myself breathing, though I had neither body nor lungs. Could feel myself shaking with exhaustion and cold both.

  “I can’t believe we left Honna—”

  “Ssh.”

  Sombra shushed Gemma, closing a hand tight around hers. I felt both Sombra’s squeeze and the shift of Gemma’s hand under it. I listened to their combined breath, fogging in the cold mountain air, to the patter of the rain on the roof of the railcar, and to the crunch of booted feet over gravel.

  “Don’t take stowaways.”

  Sombra looked up and I focused through her ebony eyes to see the man who stood outside the car on the shoulder of the tracks. He was small, though rounded in the middle, gnarled hands holding onto a long stick. He had a kind face, cheeks rough with stubble, a bright blue cloth around his neck, like he’d stolen a piece of Colorado’s autumn sky and tied it there.

  “Stowaway implies secret,” Sombra said, and I felt each word in her mouth as though they were mine. “Stowaway implies we don’t mean to pay.” The hand that didn’t hold Gemma’s unfurled to reveal a small lump of silver, still coated with dirt.

  The man leaned forward and sniffed. Like he was smelling the metal. Could he do that? Sombra could. She could smell the metal even if it were buried a hundred feet down. Gemma could hear the metal, like someone had struck a tuning fork. I could taste it, even now as it rested in Sombra’s palm that felt like my own and yet was not. Was not ... Could taste the dirt that clung to it, and the sweet silver beyond.

  Confused, so confused.

  Sombra crooked her fingers and the man snatched the silver from her palm. Her mouth parted in a smile, a smile which I felt and also saw through Gemma’s bright eyes. Bright from tears; Sombra leaned into her to kiss them from her cheek and salt water burst across my not-tongue as my not-cheek felt them kissed away.

  Men were the same the world over, Sombra thought. They could be charmed by money if nothing else. But this man, he lifted his eyes back to Sombra and Gemma, taking in their tattered clothing, their cut arms, their tangled hair. He looked beyond all that and saw something that made me suck in a breath.

  Sombra, I thought, he knows something.

  Sombra heard me. She lifted her hand and rubbed at her ear, as though she were trying to dislodge an errant fly. I buzzed again.

  He knows something!

  My elder sister shifted in the hay as if she could get away from me, her skirts sliding up to show a pale length of plump leg. The man, strangely, did not look at that. He was fixed on her eyes, holding her black gaze.

  “Don’t take fools, either,” he said, and slid the sliver into his pocket. “This here is a working train, and you’ll be expected to earn your keep.”

  “We always do,” Sombra said, ever practical. She bowed her head and though she was rain-soaked and filthy from a week at the end of a kidnapper’s rope, she still had something regal abo
ut her. Something I had never been able to pinpoint. Her-my hand tightened on Gemma, who leaned in closer, offering the man a silvered smile.

  The man nodded only once, then moved farther down the tracks, to other cars. Gemma’s silver eyes followed him, widening at the sight of others gathered there. Strangers, with worn faces and clothes alike. The man tapped his stick on every train car he passed and every train car seemed to give him an answer of sorts. I could feel the hum of the metal on my not-tongue, could taste this old machinery, and underneath the rust, there was something sweet indeed.

  It was the bridge that called to me and pulled me back, because that’s where I’d met my end. They used to call it the High Pass Bridge, but now I hear they call it Three Sisters Bridge. After we three.

  Those early nights, I would dream of it, and so Sombra and Gemma dreamed, too, tangled together on a thin mattress the trainman—Jackson—had given them. I remembered the wood of the bridge, slick with rain under my fingers. Sombra’s own fingers curled in her sleep as though she touched the old wood, hard after countless decades in the weather. It had not splintered, but had become like iron after surviving the storms. Gemma’s toes flexed as I remembered setting foot on the bridge slats. We’d all been barefoot, my toes had curled over the edge of one slat, watching the river far below. It was spring, and the rivers of the valleys were already starting to swell with snowmelt even though the days could still hold a chill to them.

  “Come on.”

  Franklin Roberts had a sandpaper voice, every word sounding cut in half, like someone had taken a blade to his throat at some point. I couldn’t see a scar if they had, though, but that meant little. Sometimes, deep wounds left no physical mark.

  He tugged the rope which bound we three, taking our hesitation for fear, though it was more curiosity. We had seen this bridge before, but from the ground. To be up here was nearly a wonder. Roberts’s St. Bernard pressed his nose against my leg before trotting out onto the bridge himself. A soft exhalation of warm breath and then he was on his way.

  We didn’t like what we could do, didn’t understand it, but had taken men into the mountains before. Still, it had never been like this. At the end of a gun, tied with ropes, beaten and cut. But then, the world changed, a mother died, and men took advantage. Men took ...

  The metal train car vibrated around us as the stick beat against the door. Sombra turned over and I watched the world shift around me as my perspective within her changed. Then Gemma moved and the scene shifted again. I saw through both eyes this morning, bright and dark both, a blur of shapes and colors.

  “Up, you.”

  The train had weaved its way out of the mountains and onto the plains of Colorado. Small towns or no, people came to the carnival when the tents were set. Kids came to watch them pitch the tents, pointing to one and then another, whispering about what they might contain. I tried to move closer to the kids, to listen more, for it reminded me of my sisters and the trains. But whatever I was now, I was bound to move as Sombra and Gemma did.

  There was a great clatter as cargo was off-loaded, a burble of delighted voices that seemed to say the train was staying awhile. Sombra and Gemma moved through the tents as they went up, feet barely seeming to skim the short spring grass, leaving a murmur in their wake as other members of the carnival got a look at them. Still tattered and bruised, but beyond that there lingered a mystery, a sense that each woman harbored something magical inside. My sisters’ cold fingers caressed the sides of the train cars every now and again, drawing from the metal we had for so long wondered about.

  Ever since I can remember, we heard the trains. We always dreamed of where they went and who they carried, having no good idea. We often thought our father had left us on a train, thought he might come back on one, too.

  Mother said we didn’t need to know him, that he was an angry son of a bitch from up north. She told us of our birth—the three of us together in the dead of winter, sprung from a drop of Father’s blood in a circle of greenery that should never have been, and hadn’t been since—we stopped asking questions. It was clear to us that Mother didn’t want us asking, though when Sombra found a circle in the woods where nothing would grow and where animals would not venture, we all had to wonder.

  Mostly, we thought about those trains. One might bring him back any moment, so we looked for that puff of smoke in the sky and the sharp whistle that could signal him.

  A train never did bring him. Ended up taking us away, instead.

  Jackson ran a tight train. He was a business man, first and foremost, a showman second, though it’s possible only the slightest breath separated first and second, truth be told. He was good at what he did, and the people who traveled with him loved him for it.

  Jackson had said we needed to earn our keep, but our talent was seemingly nothing that could entertain the masses who came to the carnival. He called Sombra and Gemma to his own train car one evening to see exactly what their potential was. I wondered if they would tell him what they were capable of. What we were.

  The train car was sparsely decorated, faded posters on the walls, faded rugs tossed on the floor. A roll of tenting huddled against one wall, scarlet and cream, while a small desk sat in a green pool of light from a lantern. Jackson had a lockbox before him, a pile of receipts spread across the battered wood desktop. There was but one chair in the room other than that which Jackson claimed, blue and gold striped, but neither Sombra nor Gemma sat. Sombra kept an arm wrapped around Gemma, who was shaking. Gemma could barely lift one foot in front of the other to get to Jackson’s desk.

  Jackson looked them up and down when they came in, his eyes seeming not the least bit tired behind the half-moon spectacles he wore. His mussed brown hair needed a brushing; it looked like he’d been digging in it with his gnarled fingers. I tried to reach a hand out, to smooth an errant lick of it down, but couldn’t guide Sombra’s or Gemma’s fingers that way. Still, Gemma curled her hand into a fist at her side, as if she were resisting. Sombra’s hand shook. Was it harder for her?

  “Surely there is some talent you possess,” Jackson said, drawing his glasses off to regard them across the desk.

  My sisters had cleaned up well. Gone were the tattered dresses they had come in; Miss Delilah Chase, a lady with a good deal more beard on her face than one might normally expect, had loaned them satin skirts and corsets, and while the corset laces were let out as far as they might be, Gemma and Sombra still looked quite the ladies. We had never owned such finery ourselves, and as they’d dressed, I had felt those laces under my very own fingers. Could feel the swell of breast and hip alike, and the slip of satin against thighs.

  Gemma leaned against the desk for a moment, which steadied her shaking. Her silver-blonde hair slipped over one shoulder. “You might find many uses for us,” she said. “Do any of your ladies share pleasures with the male patrons?”

  Jackson blinked, as though such a thing had never occurred to him. I caused Sombra’s eyes to flutter—I couldn’t simply blink, it seemed. I was surprised by Gemma’s offer and I think Sombra was, too. Once, our mother had been asked if she would rent our services—not those in finding metal—and she’d answered the man with her shotgun. Such things should not be given for any price, Mother said. Now, to have Gemma offer it so freely ...

  Take it back, I wanted to scream, but it came as a rush of only air, air that filled the train car and ruffled my sister’s skirts; air that blew across Jackson’s desk and scattered every receipt there. Jackson tried to capture them, but the damage was already done. Whatever order he’d placed them in was destroyed.

  As the pressure within the train car built, I could feel each side of the car as though I were pressed against each with hands and feet. Could feel the roof against my back as I bowed up. Near to exploding.

  “H-Honna, stop it!”

  I tried to stop, I really did, but couldn’t. My anger burst out of me like a small tornado, sending every bit of paper into the air. The door to the train car flew o
pen on a rusted track that squealed a protest. The light in the room slanted; the lantern on the desk toppled over, the wind from my anger extinguishing the flame before it could catch the rest of the oil and set the entire place ablaze.

  “Honna!”

  Sombra's scream deflated me. The pressure in the car eased and I felt only the floor then, as I curled around Sombra’s feet, lost in her magenta skirt.

  Jackson peered up from over the edge of his desk, hands spread in the debris of receipts. “Who ... is Honna?”

  Gemma leaned into Sombra, curling her pale hands around Sombra’s darker arm. Light and darkness, and me the air between them. “Our dead sister,” Gemma whispered.

  You might think a man would panic at that. Dead sister, here in the room with them? Responsible for the outburst that had ruined the small office? Jackson only grinned. It was a slow thing, calculating. I did not think then that this man was as kindly as he seemed. Oh, he could be, but deep down, he knew what his circus needed. Knew what the people would pay to see. And right then, that was us.

  Jackson took his time with us, wanting to know exactly what we were. Trouble was, we didn’t exactly know ourselves. The things we could do, we’d simply always done them. Our mother said even as infants we’d gravitated toward metallic items, rooting them out from even the ground when we were outside. Metal called to us. She was forever finding spoons under our beds, small coins planted in pots.

  Metal still called to me, even though I was ... not. I had no physical body left to me, and yet could still taste the metal of the train cars on Gemma’s tongue as though it were my own. As though I’d walked up to each train car and licked it to fully know the taste. The red cars tasted stronger than the green; the little blue caboose tasted like the memory of a place I had once been but could no longer find.