1
BEFORE
Faith, age ten
BY THE TIME she left the wagon after breakfast, she had almost forgotten about the dream.
Her mother wrapped her up warm and told her to be back at midday to practice with the horses. She’d been learning to stand on the back of her horse, Macha, as he walked, then trotted, cantered, and finally galloped around the ring. She wanted to do the trick her mother did, balancing on one galloping horse, waiting for exactly the right moment before crouching, springing, flipping backward through the air, and landing on her feet on the horse galloping behind. Faith’s legs were not as long as her mother’s; she would need to spring harder, to leap farther than her, but she knew she would get there if she practiced every day.
The sun was low through the woods as she walked, flashing in her eyes so that she closed them, trying to see how many steps she could take with them shut, the sunlight strobing like fireworks bursting on her eyelids. She counted out loud as she walked, her hands out in front so she didn’t crash into a tree. On the twelfth step there was the sound of a twig breaking close by. She opened her eyes and screamed.
The boy laughed in her face. “Scared you.”
“Get lost, Samuel. I don’t want to play with you.” She pushed past him, walked faster through the trees, ducking under bony branches where ice crystals were melting in the morning sun, dripping into silver puddles on the dead leaves of the forest floor. The branches shuddered where her coat caught on them, a shower of heavy drops landing, chaotic drumbeats.
“Stop following me,” she said.
All the way to the lake he trailed her. She could see her brother, Tommy, up ahead, and he was not alone: Samuel’s older brother, Peter, was there too. The boys had been hanging around them like flies ever since the show closed for the winter, since her mother and the rest of the Harrington family parked up at Home Farm the way they always did in the off season. Faith’s circus friends had flown away to the warmer countries they came from: Amara and her acrobat parents; Romi and Remi, the children of the fire-breathers; everyone. She was envious of that. Each winter they got to go to these exciting places while Faith’s family returned here, to what was essentially a field with a fence around it. Her mother said it needed to be simple and calm because the idea was to rest, to regenerate, for the core company members to begin to create a whole new show for next season’s carnival. All Faith saw was that for three months she was stuck in one place with only her brother and her cousins to play with, all of them too old and aloof to play now. Macha would play when they weren’t training, but Faith longed for Amara, the only girl who knew what life was like for an almost eleven-year-old born into a performing circus family. Faith could tell Macha her secrets, but for all of the love he gave, he couldn’t tell his own in return.
Amara did write to her. She’d promised to bring her a surprise, a gift from her country, and the thought of this was enough to brighten Faith’s day whenever she thought of it.
Samuel might have been her age, but he was nothing like Amara. There were no secrets she would share with this boy. His constant questions about the carnival were tedious, and he only ever wanted to play games where they took off their clothes or pretended to kiss each other, activities she would rather die than do. She knew for a fact that Tommy didn’t like Peter either, but every time she or her brother left the yard, there they were, these house-dwelling boys with nothing better to do. She couldn’t wait for February, when the carnival would be on the road again and she wouldn’t have to deal with them. At that moment, the wagons where the circus people lived were parked up with the lorries. In a couple of months, they would be lined up end to end, ready to travel. That’s when her life would begin again. Home Farm wasn’t really home, despite the name. Their home was the road.
At the edge of the lake, she shielded her eyes against the glare. The water was frozen nearly, but not quite thick enough to skate. A light dusting of snow in the night had created a perfect surface, like poured cream. She gasped as a feeling washed over her, the overwhelming certainty that this moment had happened before.
Tommy and Peter were throwing sticks, seeing how far out on the ice they could get them. Peter’s face was red with the effort, but he would never throw a stick as far as Tommy. Her brother drew back his arm and sent one flying, spinning through the air, his body perfectly balanced, strong from years of climbing ropes, of juggling, of pulling himself up on the aerial silks.
Faith’s hand went to her neck, where her grandmother’s necklace should have been, but was not. She cried out, half gasp, half shout, and Tommy yelled, “What is it?”
The words echoed around her mind. “What is it?” He had said that in the dream. Her brother dropped the stick he was holding and started toward her along the shoreline.
He had done that in the dream too.
She had lost Grandma Rose’s necklace, and the terror and panic of that was overlaid on the fear that she knew, before she even turned around, that Samuel would be dangling it from a finger, a look of triumph on his face. She swiveled and there he was, just as she knew he would be. The world slowed down as she tried to snatch the necklace, but in the struggle it flew into the air, the silver chain and the precious ring that hung on it flicking up, arcing, glinting once, and landing on the frozen lake, too far out to reach from the shore.
“You threw my Grandma’s necklace—you lost it!”
Samuel was stricken. His eyes scanned the blinding white surface of the lake. “I didn’t. It was you. I found it for you! You dropped it—you lost it, not me.”
All of this she had seen before. She stared and stared at Samuel, at the words he had spoken, that she’d heard him say before, exactly like that.
When she’d woken that morning, her mother had asked her what was wrong, why she was shaking, why there were tears in her eyes, but she didn’t say. She couldn’t find the words. “Just a dream,” her mother had said, stroking her hair. “It’s not real.”
And now the nightmare was coming true.
Tommy yelled at Samuel—“You stupid little creep!”—and the world at once had fuzzy edges. She was there, but powerless to do anything except be pulled along by events, the sounds loud but dull, as if her ears were stuffed with cotton wool, her throat tight as if there were hands around it, strangling her, stopping her from speaking, from changing how she knew this would end. Inside, she was screaming at Tommy—Leave it, it’s too dangerous—but she was silent, unable to speak as the scene played out the way it had in the dream.
Her brother inched out onto the ice. Faith was a statue of horror, frozen in place. As she knew he would, Peter waited on the shore until Tommy’s fingers were almost on the necklace before he ran out himself, every reckless step causing a terrible popping sound that reverberated in the valley. Peter stopped dead when he realized, too late, that the sound was the ice giving way. His face changed, from mischievous to horrified. He looked at his feet. It happened so fast that Tommy didn’t even have time to warn him. There was a loud creaking noise, a terrible splash, and both boys were gone.
Wake up, she told herself. This is where the dream ends.
A beat of silence.
Next to her, Samuel was screaming, flapping his arms. She took one step onto the lake, but her foot went through into the freezing water. She pulled it out, turned to run back to the yard for help, but by the time Granddad and the others got there, she knew it would be too late, because she’d seen all this before.
2
NOW
Faith, age twenty-two
FROM THE PODIUM I watch Amara fly through the air, head down on the trapeze, nothing to hold her but gravity and the muscles in her neck. Every member of the audience knows it’s no illusion, that there was no trickery involved as she flipped over the bar and down, hanging by her hands twenty feet above the ring. A second later her legs divided as she went under and back, and up into a handstand, like an Olympic gymnast on the high bar, only more impressive since she’s suspended from a rope slung over a joist in the apex of the tent, rotating in a circle at the same time. Then, as the drums began to build, she lowered herself until her head was in contact with the bar, and carried on spinning.
The benches surrounding the ring are full of transfixed faces tilted up, open-mouthed and silent, eager for what comes next. The danger of it has hit home: there is no safety net. How long can she stay balanced like that; what if she slips? Perhaps they’ve had dreams of doing what Amara does, but they’ll never know what it’s like. This is in my world, inside the ring, while they are beyond it, outside of it, looking in. The circus world and that of the rest of society, those who live in houses, will never meet. Except for here, at the edges of the ring, this sacred space.
To the sound of drums and cymbals, pounding and crashing, she spins for the fifth, sixth, seventh time. I clap my hands in time above my head, and the audience takes the cue, starts to clap along.
I won’t get tired of watching this act, no matter how many times I see it. My friend’s body is all muscle and grace. She’s been training for this since before she could walk. Her father, who first placed Amara on a trapeze as a baby, stands directly below, his face relaxed, his arms tense on the rope that anchors her in the air, high enough that the audience also strain their necks upward. Some of them occasionally glance quickly from Amara to the ring floor, hard ground covered by a bit of sawdust and carpet, a bullseye she could hit should she fall. It’s like the feeling you get looking over a cliff at the crashing rocks, the thrill of being on the cusp of something life-threatening. She’s making shapes with her legs, spinning faster, and there—she lets go with her hands and flings them to the side, so that she’s doing a headstand, still spinning. Every person in the tent breaks into applause.
I’m at the back of the ring, by the velvet drape doors, on a podium we painted at the start of the season, in bold stripes, me painting the red, Amara the yellow. I’m dancing in place, pointing my toes, smiling. My role in this act is to balance the visuals, to engage the audience; the choreography is mainly repetitive stepping, with flourishes at certain points and cues to the audience if they don’t clap in the right places. My routine is a mirror of the dance by Amara’s mother, Stacey, who is at the other side of the doors on the other podium. While in this act we essentially do nothing but smile and step in time, my main skill is horsemanship, and Stacey is a talented aerial silk artist. She and Amara have another act later in the show, a two-hander with hoops and midair juggling. All three of us wear high-cut, kingfisher-blue leotards, and Amara wears ballet shoes for the ropes while we are in knee-high boots and feather headdresses. On the podiums we turn with the music, practiced and smooth, entirely together. Stacey moves like she was bred for it. The choreography is hers; every movement, however small, is deliberate and designed to charm. In the ring nothing goes unnoticed. Uncle Mike’s voice is in my head, mixed with the voice of my mother: “When you’re in the ring, don’t walk backward: flirt with your eyes; smile at anyone looking at you.”
Something is bothering me, and my eyes move from Amir to the audience. Scanning the shadows at the back of the tent, I feel someone watching me. No one should be paying attention to me when Amara is performing this trick. Then I see the person, intensely staring at my face. I stare back. The lights are angled in my eyes—all I can see is the outline of a closely cropped haircut, but the sensation of eye contact makes my neck itch. He might be wondering about my eye patch. I give a twinkly smile and look elsewhere.
People are going to stare; they always stare, in awe and wonder when I’m performing, for other reasons when I’m not. But this man, staring at me, this feels different from the usual gaze. It has intention, and something else—perhaps knowing—in it. The man’s looking chills me. I let my eyes wander the back row, and when I glance back, the outline of the man has gone.
Amir, at the anchor end of Amara’s rope, rolls his head, and despite the sound of the band right behind me and the applause in front, I hear his neck crack.
There’s a shift in the music, the next section beginning. “One, two, three,” Amara says, loud enough for Amir, but not for the audience, transfixed as they are on her body, its tautness, the strength of her, her beauty. On three, her father lets the rope slide through his leather gloves to the second knot. She drops, and swings her legs down, grips the pole so that her body goes under the trapeze, flips around and up and suddenly she’s standing on it, one arm stretched in a flourish, hip thrust out: “See this? Be impressed: I survived. I am beautiful, and impossible. I am magical.” The audience gasps, the applause reaches a crescendo. But I freeze in place on my podium.
Stacey hasn’t seen yet. My breath has stopped because of what’s happening at the anchor end of the rope: Amir is on his knees, face contorted. Something is very wrong. Amara is still ten feet above the ring, and the danger, measured and controlled by the combined skill of these two, the unbroken trust between the father and his daughter, is suddenly very real. The line to stop her falling from the trapeze is held only by Amir; it’s not tethered to anything else—that’s part of the act. His grip is loosening. I run; a second afterward so does her mother, though I’m closer. I get there first, grab the rope just as Amir lets go, and his body falls in a heap. He’s moaning, clutching his arm. Two of the tumbling boys appear from backstage, where they’ve been watching. They take his arms, one each, and carry him through the ring door to the back of the ground. Stacey glances from me to Amara and then to the sides of the ring, looking for my uncle, Ringmaster Mike, but I nod, reassure her I’m okay to hold it for now, so she follows through the curtains.
The whole episode took probably ten seconds, two rotations of the trapeze, and now it’s just Amara and me. I have her full weight in my hands. My body strains to hold the rope. Amara takes in the scene as her circling allows. She sees I’ve gone from my podium before she sees that I’m on the end of the rope, and not her father. She does a double take. I smile, a circus smile, for her and for the punters. “Look at me, I can do anything.” But this time the confidence is all false.
I’m not heavy enough to be her anchor, and without gloves the rope burns my palms. I’m digging my heels into the sawdust of the ring, but I can only fight gravity for so long. Amara has hooked her legs over the pole and is swinging in a large circle, upside down, holding a pose I know she usually moves straight through. The circle is getting smaller, momentum lessening. Amir would control it from here, but it’s all I can do to hang on. There is a ripple of uncertainty in the audience, growing by the second. Soon all their trust in us will be lost, and with it the show too. There’s no question of stopping; I’ve never heard of a show being abandoned for any reason except fire. Horse kicks a dancer: dance with one down! Rope breaks: pick them up, move along, next act! Aerialist collapses: the show must go on!
My arms strain against the rope and my feet slip. Amara slips too, dropping by a foot, almost losing her grasp of the pole. Some members of the audience inhale audibly; there are one or two stifled shrieks. They’re not sure if this is part of the act. I wrap the rope around my back, feel the rough tautness of it dig into my skin where my costume is cut away. Uncertainty builds again; Amara is at the center of it, her own uncertainty on show now, affecting everyone inside the tent. I don’t know this act the way Amir does. Watching them practice, seeing it every night for all this time—none of that’s going to turn me into an anchorman. Amara’s wondering where her father is, what’s happening, and I catch her questioning eyes as she flies past.
“I’ve got her,” murmurs a voice by my ear, and the strong arms of Fyodor, the bigger of the two Russian acrobats, encircle me to take the rope.
“Thank God.”
“Do not thank Him yet,” he says. “Pray first for Amir.”
I make sure he’s got a good grip before I let go and head for the back of the ground where Amir was taken. I run across the ring with poised spine and dancer’s toes, face stretched into a smile, one arm held gracefully behind me, moving as if through water. The curtain is drawn back, and I curtsy to the audience as I leave the stage. They applaud. Amara stands up on the trapeze, focused now, ready for her final few moves, the one-handed spin, the neck balance, the dismount with the triple somersault. She must push away her anxiety to make it work, be in the moment and nowhere else. Like all good circus artists, she does this with ease.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
