Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti Read online

  She waits for the apex of the swing, lets go and jumps; she tucks in on herself once (touches her toes, then dives, her feet trailing like a comet’s tail), grabbing George’s feet just in time, letting her legs swing around and behind her as they soar backwards.

  “Again,” she says, mostly to herself, already hooking her feet around his ankles so she can swing by her feet for the next jump.

  The tent is quiet after that—just the creak of Big George’s hands against the rigging and the sound of skin on skin when she catches herself on his feet, and once on his shin, from underestimating the speed of the pendulum swing.

  “Sorry,” she says.

  Big George smiles and says, “I don’t even notice.”

  A woman says, “How old are you?”

  Ying looks up—she had been about to jump, but she stops at the last second, wrenching her shoulder to grab at George’s arm to steady herself.

  “Fourteen,” she says. (It sounds old enough to do something like this, anyway.)

  “Come down from there,” says the woman.

  The strongman is standing at the far end of the tent, with the woman, and is making no move to help her. She glances up for a few seconds—then she shimmies up George’s arm, across the rigging to the support pole, slides quickly down. (She sees the strongman smiling; she must have done right.)

  When Ying’s on the ground, the woman says, “I’ll take you to the aerialists’ trailer. Do you have anything?”

  She’s wearing all she owns. She shakes her head.

  The trailer looks like it’s been cobbled together from a dozen other trailers and nailed at the last second to a truck bed. It’s painted gold and green, and the windows have cheap shades in them. (That night, she sees the shades are just paper; when they’re on the road and they want to look out, they have to peel away the dingy tape first.)

  The inside of the trailer has a small open area near the door, studded with tables and a few rickety chairs and some open shelves bolted to the walls. Behind that is the narrow tunnel of bunks stacked three high.

  There are three women inside. Two of them are playing cards at one of the tables bolted to the floor. The third is standing in the back, stretching one foot on the topmost bunk, resting her cheek on her knee. Her face is tight, her eyes closed like she’s dreaming.

  The girl is terrified.

  “That’s Elena,” says the woman in charge. Then, with a small wave that shows in what esteem she holds them, “And these are Nayah and Mina.”

  Elena opens her eyes deliberately, slowly (they’re green and dark and Ying doesn’t like them), and fastens her gaze on the girl. “What’s your name?”

  The girl trembles.

  It’s the woman in charge who answers, “Ying.”

  Ying’s surprised (she’d had another name), but she decides she doesn’t mind. She’s better off keeping her secrets while she can (she knows what it’s like in close quarters), and besides, there’s luck in a new name.

  “You’re kidding,” Elena says at last to the woman, as if Ying isn’t there.

  (Ying will get used to this feeling.)

  “We’ll wait until she’s older for the bones,” says the woman in charge.

  The other two have stopped their game and are looking between Ying and Elena, waiting.

  After a long time, Elena says, “I don’t want her.”

  The woman says, “That’s not your choice.”

  “Well, then she’d better take the open bed,” says Elena at last. She pivots and lowers her leg, looking at Ying as if she’d be a fool to come one step closer. “But she gets the bones. None of us knows how to be that careful any more. We’ll just break her trying to catch her.”

  Ying doesn’t know what she means.

  “Too young,” the woman says. “Wait four years. She’ll be thirteen then; she’ll have grown enough.”

  So much for pretending to be older, Ying thinks.

  “She could be dead in four years,” says Elena, like it’s something to look forward to.

  The boy who takes her to the costume trailer is named Little George, and he’s as young as she is.

  “I’ve been here ages,” he says as they walk. “I’ve already seen three dancing girls come and go, and a juggler. You’ll get used to it if you stick around. Just try to keep the names straight. If you need anything, don’t ask Elena, she’s so cold she could freeze a roach. Come find me. I know everything that happens here.”

  “What do you do?”

  He stops, frowns. “I work for Boss,” he says, like that’s all the explanation he needs.

  She thought everyone here had a special talent. “But I mean—can’t you do anything?”

  He looks at her, and she knows what a stupid question it must be. Even people who can’t do anything need a home.

  But all he says is, “Well, you’d better hope so,” and when he smiles, she smiles back.

  “Tell me about Elena,” she says.

  He laughs and says, “I wasn’t joking about the roach,” and after that the stories never really stop.

  For four years, Ying trains on the bars alone.

  She scurries back and forth along the rigging to set up the trapeze bar or break it down for Big George when it’s his turn to grab the supports; she rolls up canvas with Little George and hauls it out to the waiting flatbed, where the crewmen are waiting to drive it out.

  (“Who are the crew?” she asks.

  Little George shrugs. “Who cares? They don’t stay.”)

  When she is thirteen, Boss shows Ying the workshop and explains what will happen to her bones.

  The pipe is paper-thin, and the copper warms up in Ying’s hand, beating back against her pulse like a living thing.

  Boss explains what the bones mean to her, if she takes them. Ying is ashamed that it hasn’t struck her before (what is she, a fool?), but as Boss explains what the copper bones mean, Ying goes clammy. She half-listens. She thinks about Little George and the dancing girls and the jugglers who will all come and go, untouched and unremarkable, free and plain.

  Ying cries, suddenly overcome. The end of the pipe digs into her palm as she presses the backs of her fists against her eyes.

  Boss leaves her alone in the trailer.

  It’s Alec who comes back inside.

  He smiles, his whole being seeming to understand her, and holds out a hand.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he says.

  She flushes as if he’s courting her, takes his hand. (She loves Alec. They all do. Any one of them would take Alec’s hand any time he offered it. He was true magic, everybody knew.)

  It’s winter. As she walks down the steps beside him, Alec pulls her close with one arm and wraps his wings around them both. The metal warms from the heat of their bodies into a comfortable cocoon, and with every step the wings shake, a little rain of notes.

  He doesn’t try to convince her of anything; he just walks with her around the yard like they’re working off a cramp. They pass Jonah, who’s washing the red truck. His head is bent to his work, but his face is stormy.

  “Poor Jonah,” Alec says, laughing quietly. “He’s had a fight with Ayar.”

  She doesn’t say anything. (“He won’t listen,” Ayar had told her, “he’s going to hurt himself if he strains his lungs like that, and what if one of these days Boss’s magic doesn’t work?”

  “Tell him you’ll replace him,” said Ying, because she knew that was the cruelest thing you could do to anyone, replace them.

  Ayar looked at her and said, “I forget you’re still a child,” and that was how Ying got the first idea that something would happen soon that would make her no longer young.)

  They pass the tent, where through the open flaps Ying can see Elena and Nayah and Mina practicing. (Ying looks at them hard, like she can see their copper bones if she tries.) They pass Ayar, who is dragging the trailers into a smaller half-circle where the trucks nearly touch. It will snow soon; they’ll want the protection from the wind.
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  After they have walked nearly around the yard, Alec says, “You don’t have to do anything. You can stay with us just as you are.”

  “On the trapeze?”

  There is a little pause before Alec says, “No. That’s not safe for you.”

  What he means is: Elena insists they all have the bones, so they’re all mangled alike. Ying understands; sometimes you have to be one of the troupe, and not yourself. (She wanted a home. She found one.)

  “And Little George always needs help,” Alec is saying, and Ying thinks about Little George strapping on the brass legs that are too big for him, thinks about running errands and barking at the gates, staggering from city to city and pasting the Tresaulti posters on any walls that haven’t been blown in.

  “I’m frightened of the bones,” she says. Her voice shakes, but it can’t be the cold, because his wings are so warm.

  He stops and kneels in front of her; his wrapped-around wings lock them in together, the bottom feathers sinking into the soft ground.

  (Ying will never forgive him for doing this now; not after she sees his wings trying to burrow into the ground after he falls, not after being reminded of the cocoon he made for her, once.)

  His feathers are so close to her that if she turns her face she can look into their warm, bright mirror. His eyes are a deep clear blue, like chips of glass, and she sees herself in them—eyes wide, face drawn, looking frail and breakable against the metal cage.

  Tenderly, as only monsters are tender, he asks, “Are you afraid to be like us, Ying?”

  “No,” Ying says. (How can she be afraid of anything, when he is so beautiful?)

  She turns her head. Her breath fogs over the copper petals, until nothing is left of her but a dim reflection in his wings.

  26.

  This is what they understand:

  After the audition, Boss takes them to the workshop, sets out her bone saw. She says, “I’ll have to operate. You might die.”

  Some have turned her down at that. The idea of this woman performing surgery is no comfort, and though a lot of people are dying these days, it’s one thing to go down in a firefight and another to throw yourself away.

  The rest stay.

  (These are circus folk; these are the ones who have nothing to lose.)

  She sets out the pipes and the wrenches. Then she says, “You’ll die.”

  This is their first measure. Everyone feels something; no one is that resigned.

  Ayar cried. It was a horrible thing to tell the friend he’d carried two miles to save.

  Elena had said, “Well, that’s one thing over with,” and stretched out on the table.

  After the worst of their terror is over, Boss says, “You can never leave the circus. It will keep you alive after I finish fixing you.”

  After they have accepted this, they each, eventually, lie down on the table and have their last moments of fear. Then Boss touches them, and they sink into the dark, waiting to be made new, waiting to be woken.

  (When her turn came, Bird blinked up at the ceiling for several seconds, fighting the dark without knowing it. “I wonder what you did to get this kind of power,” Bird said, just before sleep took her.

  She did not live long enough to see Boss’s hands shaking.)

  It is no secret to the circus who has the bones, who has the lungs or the springs. When they come out of the workshop, when they stagger finally in their new skeletons from the trailers out to the practice yard, they are welcomed back without comment. Even the living, who have not been asked for their bones, can imagine what it takes to lie down on a table and agree to suffer.

  But those who have gone into the workshop, those who are dead, look at one another and know.

  For some it is worth it. (Ying is allowed to sleep through the night at last; with her copper bones, Elena is satisfied). For some, there is only the knowledge of time sliding past them, a sense of being nailed to the ground.

  Those who have gone into the workshop glance from one to another, looking for signs of aging that never appear. None of them wanders far from camp; magic this deep should not be tested, and no one wants to be the first to fall down dead because he wandered too far from Boss’s keen eye.

  (She says it’s the circus, but they know what she means; they know Boss is the thing keeping them from falling to pieces.)

  Little George was slated to be fixed, but Boss keeps him out of the workshop even after he asks, and so he keeps moving slowly through time until he’s older than Ying, until he’s nearly as old as Jonah, who has been twenty-five since the day he came to the circus and was gifted with his clockwork lungs.

  Slowly, Little George begins to wake up to the world in a way he cannot name.

  He does not know that Ying will never be older; he does not know why he takes such care not to anger the Grimaldi brothers. He is not aware, only awake.

  He knows nothing for certain; he only sees that when the government man is gone, the circus gathers in two groups to see what Boss will do: those who are alive, and those who have survived the bones.

  27.

  The illusionist has no truck of his own. He follows the Tresaulti parade on foot, walking in the tracks of the red-painted trailers after they pull away from the city borders, and out to the top of the hill two miles out from town. He can see them forming a half-circle on the far side of the hilltop; he can see the first tent poles going up against the flat grey sky.

  On his back is the heavy bag with his tricks in it, and he carries the hoop around his shoulders. It bangs the backs of his legs with every step, but that’s the price you pay for walking. The little cage with the bird in it dangles from his belt. The bird protests at first, but after the first mile it just clings to its perch and waits.

  From their position on top of the hill they can see him coming, so the illusionist is not surprised when there’s a knot of people waiting for him when he reaches the top.

  He sets the hoop down on the ground and slings the bag off his shoulders, crouching to unpack it. Out comes the pack of cards, the scarves, the silver balls that flatten out when they hit his palms so it looks like they disappear. (A lot of his act is about things disappearing. People don’t put much faith in a beautiful transformation these days; a disappearance, they believe.)

  The crowd is bigger now. There are some acrobats, looks like, a juggler with clubs in each hand, and a couple of haughty girls in pretty rags.

  “A magician?” says a woman from the edge of the crowd, and without looking up he says, “Yes, sir,” because he knows what authority sounds like.

  “Well,” she says. “Go on and show us.”

  He unhooks the birdcage, sets it on the ground at the far end of his tricks, and stands up, taking a step back and throwing his arms wide to introduce the act.

  Someone says, “Don’t.”

  It’s not the boss, so he shouldn’t pay it any mind (there are always hecklers), but he glances over at the woman who spoke and is struck dumb.

  She has an iron plate bolted over some peach fuzz on her skull, and one glass eye that’s looking blankly at him. The other eye is dark and fixed on the cage at his feet.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he begins.

  “He’s going to kill it,” the woman with the glass eye says, not really to anyone. No one speaks.

  “Go on,” says the woman in charge.

  He nods and clears his throat and starts his act.

  The handkerchiefs materialize in his ears, and the hoop makes his legs vanish, and the silver balls slide into invisibility in his hands. All the while, the circus people watch him, neither applauding nor drumming him out.

  At last he says, “For my final disappearing act,” and fiddles in his sleeve for the bird that’s inside his cuff, waiting.

  “No,” says the strange woman, and in two steps she’s reached the cage, stepping between him and it.

  He reaches to snatch it out of her grasp, but she catches him by the throat, an iron grip. Her eye burns.
/>   The illusionist knocks her arm away, staggers backwards. A man is already waiting behind him and catches his arm, flipping the illusionist neatly onto his back. (The sky is pale blue and flat, like glass.)

  Someone is opening the latch of his cage, and the illusionist watches the small dark silhouette of his bird as it shoots past all of them and sails out of sight.

  After a moment there’s a scuffle, and his arm is freed. When he stands up he sees a man with a set of brass ribs holding the other man back, shoving him into his place in the circle.

  The strange woman is standing a few feet away, gripping the empty cage in her hands, her gaze fixed on the sky where the bird can no longer be seen. The others in the circle seem to have drawn back, as if the cage is poisoned and she’s picking victims.

  “Bird,” says the woman in charge, “give the man back his equipment.”

  She sets the empty cage on the ground, turns away, walks into the crowd without another look around her.

  “Not bad,” says the woman in charge, not unkindly. “We’d have to make some changes to the act if you stayed.”

  He can imagine.

  He looks around at the impassive crowd. It’s not the quiet that bothers him. It’s that they didn’t hold back the one-eyed woman, like they felt she had a reason for doing it, like this is just the sort of thing that happens here.

  He wants a circus troupe to belong to so he can have a roof and some steady meals; if he wants to be worried about war, he can stay where he is.

  “Thank you for your time,” he says finally, and no one seems surprised when he kneels and packs up his tricks.

  Halfway back, he shakes the dead bird out of his sleeve; the other man crushed it, and there’s no point in carrying a dead thing all the way home.

  28.

  When Bird fell, it was Stenos who Boss called to come carry her out.

  It was Stenos who lifted Bird from the ground, who watched the blood oozing in sticky rivulets through the dirt. He looked at her face, what was left of it, and down her body, where her chest had caved in under her shirt. The few ribs that had pierced her skin gleamed in the dark.