The first bright thing, p.30
The First Bright Thing, page 30
Rin supposed this is what Sparks were; mountains too magical for the mortal realm; solitary, feared, and yet the most powerful beauty. The hope there was more to this life than she’d planned. And maybe, if they kept that standing strong, they could survive, too.
“You see that one little hill right there?” Rin said. “That one, it’s got a whole flock of raccoons on the top of it. And chipmunks. You can climb all the way up there, you gotta take some peanuts. There was an old woman who used to work up there taking care of the animals and she made the best hot chocolate.”
“It’s your Marceline,” Jo said. And Rin was caught by that. Jo crossed her arms and surveyed the mountains. “Who showed you this place?”
Rin looked to Jo, and then back to the mountains. “My mother,” she said quietly. “We came here once, right when I got my Spark. I used to have all these places I wanted to see, explore the world. So she held on tight, told me to choose one of the postcards I’d collected, and I jumped us here.” It was one of the last times they’d spent together.
Jo pulled away, but stood beside Rin. “I didn’t know you had a ma. I mean, everyone has a ma. But you just seem like you’ve been perpetually old.”
Rin laughed. “My mother and I stayed at that little white hotel over there, at the edge of the village in the valley? The one that’s all lit up.”
“Oo, fancy.”
Rin elbowed her. “Yes, fancy. I wore a dress and everything. We all gussied up, listened to brilliant virtuosos in the concert hall, climbed the mountains, steered clear of the elk.” She smiled warmly. “It was a good string of days. We went hiking, sometimes straight up a cliffside in the canyon. Then at night, we sat out on the front porch of the hotel and pointed up at the way the mountains burst out of the clouds after a rainstorm.”
“She knew about your Spark, and she loved you anyway,” Jo said.
“Yes,” Rin said. “She … was a Spark, too. And everyone still loved her.”
There was a beat. A bleat from the elk. Way over on the horizon, the hotel. A small connector between the Ringmaster’s past and the Ringmaster’s present. Some places were just magic like that.
“There’s this thing we believe in called teshuvah,” Rin said. “It’s a sort of repentance, or a redemption. But teshuvah literally means ‘to return.’ To go home. My mother always said … it’s not about who you are becoming, but returning to who you once were.”
“Who we once were?” Jo said dubiously, with a crinkle of her nose. “What about growing? What about learning? We’re supposed to get smarter and better, aren’t we?”
“Well, yes,” Rin said. “But I understood it to mean that…” She paused. “Teshuvah means that the person we truly were all along, they were enough. We get tangled along the way, we make mistakes, but we never need to run from ourselves. We just need to remember who we are.”
She let the thought hang in the air, and it caused discomfort. She wanted to pull those words back into her mouth, swallow them down, berate herself for sharing so much with someone who needed her to be a pillar. But she didn’t. She let her words hang there.
“Not lose yourself,” Jo said quietly.
“Exactly,” Rin nodded, then gave a chortle. “She does listen sometimes.”
Jo let a small smile escape. Rin pulled her in again, patting her arm with her warm hand.
The mountains are safe, Jo, she thought. They’ll always be here. Even after all the wars have ended and everyone is forgotten, there will still be mountains.
“I’m not giving up,” Ringmaster said out loud. “We haven’t given up. We’re going to set everything right.”
“Will you let me help, or am I too much of a loose firecracker?” Jo asked.
Ringmaster breathed, and Jo could probably feel her heart pound in her chest.
“I can help,” Jo said, breaking away, looking straight at her. “I can. Please, trust me to help.”
Rin slowly nodded.
“I trust you,” Rin said. “Of course you can help.”
Jo nodded vigorously. “Thank you, thank you,” she said.
“Let’s start small. I’ll trust you to take over the illusions at night,” Rin said. “I’ll give you the person in need that we’re targeting, this Sikora fella, and you start working on your skills of deciding what will help someone the most. Yes? More independence?”
Jo nodded again. And then she jumped sideways and gave Rin a gigantic final attack of a hug. “Thank you, thank you! So does this mean that I get to zip through time, too?”
“We’re not touching that,” Rin said. “You have your hands full with the circus.”
The veneer of the lioness had settled across Ringmaster’s face again. She took her stance of a teacher. “Now,” Ringmaster said, pushing Jo back and looking her in the eye, like checking her face for dirt before school pictures. “Did you eat breakfast?”
“Yes.”
“Liar,” Ringmaster said. “Go back to camp and get your porridge. Check in with Mauve. I already did earlier, but you go ahead and tell her how this could work from now on. Tell her we talked and I think it’s a good idea. Get her opinion and what she’s got on Sikora. And eat your damn breakfast!” She playfully swatted Jo’s shoulder.
“Okay, Mother.” Jo laughed as she jumped back up the incline of their little path.
Rin was hit between the eyes with that laugh, those words. She watched Jo disappear back to camp. They were fragile, even with their Sparks. Two girls who had been beaten and left behind, and they’d both found a seat on the hill watching mountains.
In trying to conquer Rin, the Circus King had made one mistake: he never took her memory away. So her bones were still made of mountains and mothers and the joy of sharing sunrises and sunsets with family. She was bruised, she was cracked around the edges, but she was not broken.
And neither was her circus.
43
THE RINGMASTER, 1926
The sun was low in the sky when Rin finally returned from a long hike. Her body ached, but fresh crisp mountain air rejuvenated her like some sort of mikvah.
The circus sparkled with red and blue and green and yellow. The midway with its brilliant lights, like a starry sky coming to life with rainbows; a fairy glow in the valley against the orange lights of the village beside it. Two hours until curtain, they ate dinner together in the cookhouse. The jittering feeling of an opening night after a long hiatus made this place buzz with energy like an electric bulb. The Big Top was going live again, even after everything.
“It’s been a summer,” Mauve said, looking around the cookhouse as she and Rin and Odette took a seat on one of the benches with their grub. She rubbed her face, tired. “I hope he would be proud of us. We’re still here, after all.”
After dinner, the three ladies made their way to the dressing tents with the rest of the company. Rin leaned over her vanity, trying to put on the little bit of makeup over her freckles. Everyone had to wear makeup under those lights, or else they’d all look like ghosts. Rin included, even though it made her feel like a turkey with lipstick on.
“Rin?” Odette said behind her.
Rin turned around. Odette stood there, beside Mauve, against the backdrop of the dressing tent and surrounded by their trunks sitting heavily on the grass under their bare feet. They held up something between them, their four hands clasping a gift: her velvet coat, cleaned and stitched and with a couple of patches, but still her coat.
Rin audibly gasped. “What, how—”
“You’ve never done a show without it,” Mauve said. “Now put it on.”
The patches of fabric were from Odette’s long silk robe and Mauve’s purple shawl. They stood out against the red in a beautiful hodgepodge of stitches. Rin could tell Mauve had chosen purple thread, Odette had chosen red. Their hands had put this together for her.
She felt her lip tremble. “I … thank you.”
Then it was showtime.
Rin settled into her jacket, her hat, her smile. It was going to be a good show, she could feel it. Mr. Calliope’s music struck an opening fortissimo. The spotlights clacked on.
Ringmaster marched into the sight lines of their palace. She took her place in the center. She raised her hands. The nerves of real life fell off her like a cloak as she fell into the rhythm of a performance. In her opening monologue, she relied on the normal pacing instead of experimenting with the delivery. The spec parade surrounded her like a ring of fire. Then the parade left. It was Odette’s turn. As the spotlight passed to Odette, Ringmaster took a moment to breathe.
Then the spotlight passed back to her as Mrs. Davidson pressed the interlude, and Mr. Davidson made his return. Things were going to be okay.
Mauve’s turn, flanked by dancers. Then Boom Boom and the jugglers, then Yvanna and Charles.
Odette usually made it down to backstage by the time Charles was set on fire. Tonight, Odette rushed to Ringmaster off to the side and rubbed her back.
“How are you?” Odette asked, her voice energized with the sweat of being in the middle of a show.
Ringmaster nodded. “It’s a good show. Five-star night.”
She had but a moment to go backstage, to see Jo in her Oracle outfit. Jo looked nervous.
“Are you ready?” Rin said.
Jo nodded. “Yeah, I got this. Absolutely.” She jumped up and down, from foot to foot, like she was about to run a race.
Rin put a hand on her shoulder. “Just remember,” she said, “don’t ever imagine anyone in their underwear. It’s distracting and an old wives’ tale and no one does that.”
“Get off, I’ve been out here all summer,” Jo said.
“Okay, all right, big-timer, headliner,” Rin said, throwing her hands up in surrender. “Best go make introductions for the great Oracle of Delphi Josephine Persephone.”
A short introduction for the Dreamweaver and Ringmaster stepped to the side. Tonight she would stay close, right off to the side of the ring, and watch Jo from the dark. She was the Ringmaster, it would make sense dramatically for her to be watching so closely.
The spotlight turned from Ringmaster, spun to the ring, where the confident girl had already hit her mark.
Jo had grown so much, even since the beginning of summer. And for a moment, Ringmaster smiled.
Jo reached into the air and pulled out colors. She spun them around, painting the peanut-dusted air.
It came too fast.
The colors conglomerated together, reds and yellows and oranges, and then formed a small speck. Could the audience make out what was happening, Rin wondered? This wasn’t like anything she and Jo had rehearsed previously. Then Jo raised the red speck high above her head, past the bleachers, up to the high crow’s nest of the tent where Kell was in place. The audience’s eyes followed excitedly. She’d conjured a sun.
Then she dropped the sun down, down, down.
An explosion.
It tore into a thousand pieces.
Something unearthly, something cruel and evil, flew out in a shock wave that rippled the air.
Ringmaster lost her breath.
No. No. No.
The light erupted upward.
A mushroom cloud, filling the tent.
The ripple slowly rushing the audience.
Their skin was gone.
They all looked down to see their organs, their bones, their eyes melting onto their laps.
Ringmaster looked at herself.
The velvet coat ripped apart beyond the seams.
Her hands slipped off like gloves.
Her white bones dissolved to ash.
She disappeared.
She was dead.
Rin saw Odette. Odette’s eyes melted, disappearing, too. Nothing left.
The crowd. Everyone was dead.
The tent disappeared, blown over in ash and dust. Odette erased.
No, it was an illusion. It wasn’t real.
Ringmaster tried to scream. But a rancid, burning smell choked her, clogged her throat like a hot fist.
She heard something that sounded like her voice beating back against the wind of Jo’s clouds.
She heard the terror-stricken screams of the audience. People thinking they were burned alive. People watching visions of their children charred into skeletons.
Ringmaster shoved forward, jumping over the curb, stumbling, her knee stabbing in pain, but she just closed her eyes and ran to Jo. She opened her eyes and tackled Jo to the ground.
Jo’s hands lost the painting. The cloud dissipated. The skin of the audience returned. The skeletons and ashes disappeared as quick as they’d come.
Ringmaster’s heart and head pounded as the audience stood in shock and silent screams. She felt like lead as she lay sprawled on the dirt floor of the ring, Jo underneath her.
“What … why…” Jo started. “But I didn’t get to the catharsis!” Ringmaster grabbed her by the arm and, using all the energy she had left to find her footing, she stood. She had to stand for the audience.
“Ah, autumn is close enough to show you a preview of our Hallow’s Eve show!” the Ringmaster tried to smile, tried to laugh. “But now we’ll show you something more family friendly…”
But the connection was broken.
Parents grabbed their children and ran screaming out of the tent. Others shouted obscenities from their seats as they backed away. They wanted to fight, but they did not dare get close.
They’d just survived the unsurvivable. And they didn’t know it wasn’t real.
Fear throbbed through the tent as it cleared.
There was now something more horrific than the disaster march squawking from the tin man; the absence of Mr. Calliope’s music cut Ringmaster’s ears like a switchblade.
Odette rushed onstage, trying to touch as many of the crew as she could, but touching was not the right thing to do right now.
Kell stayed above.
Maynard tried to control the crowd as they escaped.
Ringmaster did not let go of Jo’s arm.
She marched her back to the dressing tent.
“Is this some sort of wiseass trick?” Ringmaster demanded. “You think this is a game?”
“No,” Jo said. “I did what you told me to do. I showed them what they needed to see, and you told me enough the night it happened that I was able to do it! Why didn’t you let me finish?!”
“What the hell was the finale going to be?!” Ringmaster said. “What the fuck were you thinking!”
“I was showing them what was going to happen, so it didn’t happen!”
“That’s not what we do! We don’t manipulate with fear!”
“So we manipulate with cotton candy and teddy bears?!” Jo said. “It hasn’t worked so far! This is war, we can’t just paint a bunch of pretty pictures, that does nothing.”
“You are so wrong, where the hell did this stupid-ass idea come from?! Are you stupid, Josephine?!” Her voice did not sound like hers, and she knew that. She felt the fire roar up in a way it had not in years. In a way she thought she’d forgotten, but the fire, the fire and the explosions and the bodies—
“You said you trusted me!”
“And what a mistake that was!” Ringmaster snapped. Jo slunk back. “You idiot girl! What the hell sort of damage have you done?”
The ashes. The small skeletons. All of the circus had blown away. Her eyes had melted, she could still feel them, oozing a hot trail down her cheeks. Odette was gone, just fucking gone.
Ringmaster whipped away and tried to concentrate, tried to breathe. It wasn’t real.
“I was in control!” Jo barged onward.
“You will never be on that stage alone again,” Ringmaster said. “You will do exactly what I say from now on.”
“I’m not a child!”
“You are!” Ringmaster tore her own hat off and threw it against the mirror. The mirror clattered. Jo jumped. “And you are going to get us all killed! You’re lucky I don’t throw you out of the show!”
The words were out. She couldn’t stuff them back in. They hit Jo hard, like Rin had smacked her across the face.
No, no no no no.
Jo stared at the hat, and then her blue eyes shot to Ringmaster. Ringmaster wanted to take it back.
But Ringmaster couldn’t hear anymore.
She could only feel her hands slipping off like gloves.
The burns on her body, as if too much sun had gotten under her skin and now it erupted and boiled out. It popped, it burned, it …
Odette held her in a tight embrace. The pain disappeared.
“Shh, dearest,” Odette whispered in her ear. “Shh, it wasn’t real. It’s over.”
But Jo was gone.
44
THE CIRCUS KING, 1926
The Circus King’s Midnight Illusionatories always arrived in the black of night. It plunged its roots into the land near the tracks, usually in the heart of town. Its wagons and Model Ts were black and red, ghosts amidst the gnarled fingers of Midwestern trees tangled in shadows. Some thought it was beautiful. Others thought it was a nightmare. All were afraid.
The townspeople would learn of the Midnight Illusionatories’ arrival from the bills they’d wake up to find pasted to all the farmhouses and city halls and schoolhouses. Even if no one had booked him, the Midnight circus would come. Its three black tents were denser than the night sky, like black holes among the stars. Lanterns lit high on poles bathed the midway in bloodred light, like skeletons of starved prisoners dangling from the air. Drums would pound, coaxing the locals to the spiked gates, like a spider weaving a dangerous web. It was magic.
No, it was Sparks.
When the townsfolk rubes walked down the rows of lanterns, they would be bathed in red light. Everything was red except for the stars above, but most people forgot about anything other than the circus by the time they’d stepped onto the midway.
Music blasted, loud drumbeats leading an army of violins and woodwinds. It sounded like the heartbeat of an army. Like something otherworldly was about to happen. Every single rube would feel powerful, the sort of power that comes with being in the right place at the right time and being in charge of everything in their lives. They were in charge of nothing now, it was too late for them, but they all seemed to grin in their drunkenness. A musical stupor.
