Circus folk were contentious by nature: they would argue with almost anything, from their portion at supper to the orientation of the big tent’s entrance. It was no surprise that there had been several objections to Mr. Blackstone’s plan to take them into Oregon for their last show of the winter.
It had been more of a surprise when several of the roustabouts and smaller acts chose to stay behind rather than throwing their lot in with the circus.
“Bad things happen in Oregon,” said Adrianne, a knife-thrower, before she packed her bags and slipped off down the road.
“Last circus I was with said that they’d tried to go to The Clearing, and there were no roads, and there was no route on the map, and everyone they’d asked about it told them no one lived there,” said Vlad, a roustabout, before he put his hat on and walked away.
“People there have superstitions I can’t be having with,” said Edgar, his wife’s hand clutched firmly in his, their children arrayed behind them like the spokes on a wheel. “If you make it back this way, we’ll be happy to have our wagon back, Miss Pearl, but I’m not risking my children for a few extra potatoes in the pot.”
“But where will you go?”
Edgar shrugged. “Last town we passed through was nice enough to us, and they didn’t stare as much as some. Daisy’s lacework is good enough to pay for a room, and if I had to stay inside until winter, I’ve done more for less. Be careful out there, will you? Oregon’s too close to California for my liking, and much too close to the sea.”
“You be careful, too, Edgar,” she said. On an impulse, she leaned in and kissed his furry forehead. When she pulled back, she thought that he might be blushing beneath his lush brown coat.
Adeline stepped up to take her hand, and the two of them watched in silence as the dog-faced man and his family started down the road, carrying as many of their worldly goods on their backs as they could manage. They’d been forced to leave so much behind. There was no guarantee that any of the things they’d abandoned would still be there when the show came back this way. Annie could try to defend their wagon’s place in the freak show, but there were always bodies looking for a bunk, especially with the winter coming on, and once people moved into a space, it was hard to keep them out of the closets and the drawers.
“Damn,” breathed Annie. Adeline’s hand tightened on hers. She looked down into the wide, shocked eyes of her daughter, and grimaced. “I’m sorry, my dearest. I just worry about what they’re going to do with themselves, all alone like that. Circus folk look out for their own. They’re still ours. They’ll be ours until the day we die.”
Adeline pulled her hand out of her mother’s so she could sign, ‘Bad words aren’t right.’
“You know, when you say things like that, I question the wisdom of letting Andrew teach you how to sign. Lecturing me! Well I never.” Annie crouched and began tickling her daughter, fingers seeking out the most sensitive spots with an ease born from years of practice. Adeline giggled soundlessly, twisting and squirming, but never quite making an effort to get away.
A throat was cleared behind them. Annie stopped tickling as they both turned to find Mr. Blackstone standing on the path, his hands folded behind his back, watching the picture they presented.
“Are all your people aware of our planned route?” he asked. There was a formality in his voice that made it clear he was speaking in his capacity as head of the show and not as her sometime friend, or Adeline’s honorary uncle. So much about the circus was contextual. Sometimes Annie wondered how they could keep it all straight.
But they did. They had to. The show must go on. “They are,” she said, straightening. Adeline fell into place at her side, standing close enough that she was half-veiled by her mother’s skirts. “Edgar and his family are returning to our most recent stop. The snake-dancers are willing to perform but worry about the chill in Oregon; they’re asking for extra firewood to keep their serpents warm.”
“And you?” he asked. “Will you be returning to our last town, or asking for favors?”
Something was gnawing at him. Annie straightened farther, tilting her chin up until her eyes were locked on his own, and said, “We are far closer to certain territories than I care to be. Anything that carries us farther is a lovely idea as far as I’m concerned. I hear Oregon is splendid in the fall. Now will you stop questioning me like I’m something you just found under a rock and tell me what troubles you?”
Nathanial hesitated. Then he crouched down, dipping one of his long-fingered, clever hands into the pocket of his waistcoat and coming up with a piece of polished quartz. It looked more like bone than stone. He offered it gravely to Adeline.
“Miss Cynthia dropped this on the path this morning. I believe it’s one of her lucky stones. Would you do me the immense favor of returning it to her? She’ll be so pleased to see it again that I expect she’ll have a reward for the one who returns it.”
Adeline took the stone, casting a hopeful glance up at her mother. Miss Cynthia had a reputation for hiding sugar candy in her wagon, enough that she had, on several occasions, attracted ants. It took an impressive amount of sugar to catch the attention of ants while in a moving wagon, but Miss Cynthia had managed it.
“Yes, go ahead,” said Annie. “Come straight back to the oddities wagon when you’re done. I’ll let you help me feed Tranquility.” The little girl was endlessly fascinated by the big cat. Annie still found it best not to leave them alone together.
Adeline nodded agreement and took off running, bare feet flashing under the hem of her skirt. Even at a dead sprint, she made no sound.
Annie sighed fondly. “I’m going to have to strap her down and nail shoes to her feet like a mule, I swear. I have never known a child so fond of running barefoot through the world.”
“I have never known a child like Adeline,” said Nathanial, straightening up again. He folded his hands behind his back, looking gravely at Annie. “Walk with me, Miss Pearl?”
“Of course.” She fell into step beside him, letting him set the pace as they began walking back toward the wagon of oddities. Her orbit during the day never took her far from her charges, whether human or animal. When not speaking with her freaks, she could always be found near the oddities, which needed more intense monitoring to ensure that they didn’t attempt an escape. The fish were calm enough, and it was cold outside, rendering the snakes dormant and torpid, but those were not the only things her wagon contained.
Sometimes Nathanial wondered whether she realized how dangerous her collection had become, and whether she would care if it were pointed out to her. The oddities fed her daughter and kept a roof over her head, and while they might kill her one day, they hadn’t killed her yet. The future was ever and always another country.
“Miss Pearl, our planned route is a dangerous one,” he said, after they had traveled a few yards from the residential wagons. “While everything I told you before was true, and you know I would never endanger the show without good cause—”
“There is no reward without risk,” she said, sounding almost serene about it. “That is something I have been hearing from the men in my life for as long as I can remember. The Clearing sounds like a paradise. Small and isolated, which will make them desperate for entertainments, while still open enough to outsiders that they pay well when strangers come to town. So why isn’t it spoken of in glowing terms on every route from here to Hampshire? The answer can only be that something is wrong with this magical wonderland.”
“Not with the town itself, exactly,” said Nathanial. “There have been … disappearances, let us say, among the shows that have gone there. Most return unscathed, and speak of generosity and compassion.”
“But some do not.”
“No,” he admitted. “Some do not.”
“How many, would you say, come back complaining of whispers in the dark?”
“One in four, at most. The majority profit well and leave secure in their futures.”
“And how many have told you stories of this haven?”
Nathanial was silent.
“Ah,” said Annie. “Enough that you worry for our safety, that we might be that one in four. I must ask you this, then: If our chances of disaster are one in four, should we undertake the trip to Oregon, what are our chances of disaster if we stay exactly where we are?”
“Much higher.” He gave her a sidelong look. “Our stores are not yet depleted, but the summer was hard for everyone. We added six to our number, and none of them as yet old enough to earn their keep. They take more than they can give.”
“We could always give them back.”
“How? Even if we wanted to track down their people—if we had the time, and the resources, and the bodies to spare—there’s every chance in the world that their people were the ones who boosted them onto our wagons. When the harvest is thin and you have an extra mouth to feed, there are worse things to do than send it away with the circus. Unless the circus is starving.” Nathanial scowled. “I said once that I would never leave a child to go hungry if I had a choice in the matter. Well, it’s still my name on the side of the wagons, and the choice is still in my hands. We keep our family going. If that means a few risks…”
“Every one of us knew, when we chose to follow you, that there would be risks,” said Annie. “We take risks every night, just by climbing into our wagons. The world is dangerous and wild. Those who want safety for the winter have already gone, and the show endures.”
“So you’re not angry that there was more danger than I warned you of?”
Annie actually laughed. “Really, Mr. Blackstone, do you think yourself the first man who felt it was his decision whether or not I risked myself? You are not even the fifth. You may belong to the first ten—I would have to think about it, and I prefer not to. Why should I treat you as anything special?”
“Because I would treat you as something special, if you allowed me to do so.” The admission hung between them, shimmering and simple.
Annie stopped.
Nathanial continued a few feet more before turning to face her. “If you tell me that you’re uncomfortable with this journey—if you are—I’ll move Heaven and Earth to keep you here. I’ll rent you a room in the nearest town. I’ll tend the oddities myself through the winter, and when the thaw comes, you’ll find us riding triumphant over the hill to take you home.”
“‘Home’ is a funny word, don’t you think?” asked Annie. She started walking again, more slowly now, like she had to consider each step before she made it. “It implies belonging; it implies a connection. There’s a thing about home that you don’t seem to have considered.”
“What’s that?”
“If you run away from it, it isn’t home anymore. Even if you come back later, something will have been changed, and changed forever.” She shook her head. “I don’t run. Not from my homes.”
“You ran from—”
“I know what I ran from.” Her voice was the crack of a whip, the closing of a door; it was a fortress of a voice, firm and implacable. “Believe me, I know better than you will ever, ever know what I ran from. You weren’t there. No one who had been, be they man, woman, or child, could blame me for running away. But when I ran, what I ran from was no longer home. If it ever truly was. The past is a broken mirror, and all it reflects are regrets.”
Nathanial sighed. “My apologies. I misspoke.”
“You did.”
“I only wished to protect you.”
“And I appreciate that impulse, believe me. Protecting Adeline has been my life’s work, and I am still learning how to best accomplish it.”
“You might protect her better by staying behind.”
Annie’s lips twisted in the parody of a smile. “Oh, lovely work, Mr. Blackstone. Turn my own argument against me. Very nicely done. But what you haven’t considered is that this is the only home she has ever known, and she spends the majority of her time with your circus orphans. If I attempted to remove her to the town, she would run from me, even as I once ran; she would run for the promise of home. I have all faith in her ability to make it back to our wagon before I even knew that she was gone. I have less faith in my ability to catch up with the train before the first frost comes and I am shut out by the weather. Protecting my daughter means staying with her. It means knowing which battles I can win. This is not one of them.”
“Which means my battle is not winnable either, if I fight to make you stay behind.”
Annie’s smile was brief. “There, you see? You can be taught.”
“The Clearing—”
“Sounds like a perfectly lovely place for a final show of the season. I’ve always liked Oregon. Such a verdant country. Sometimes America astounds me with its diversity of climes.”
The wagon of oddities came into view ahead of them, the painted filigree gleaming in the morning light. As was almost always the case, the area around the wagon was clear. Even the bravest of the roustabouts had cause to fear the collection of monsters Annie had accumulated.
(Some few had quit the show entirely after a trip through Annie’s wagon. Human freaks, sword-swallowers, and weary tigers imported from the Far East were all normal, workaday things for the circus-oriented mind. Bloodwire and wasps the length of a man’s forearm were something else altogether. Those men went on to spread dire warnings of the Blackstone Circus and its convoy of monsters, expecting that they could stop the show. Instead, they had enhanced its profile immeasurably, until even scouts from other shows had been known to buy tickets to walk through the oddities and admire them in all their terrible glory.)
“If you’ll excuse me a moment,” Annie said, and moved away from Nathanial, climbing the wagon steps and slipping inside. She left the door open behind her. He waited on the ground nonetheless. There had been only a few injuries stemming from Annie’s collection of monsters, and all of them had come about because of someone failing to listen when she told them how to keep themselves safe.
It was difficult to imagine, but when Annie had wandered into his life with a dirty baby on her hip and a half-grown lynx slung around her neck like a fashionable lady’s shawl, the wagon of oddities had been a few dead things in jars of formaldehyde and two tired rattlesnakes in a cracked fish tank. Most folk didn’t care to pay to see a rattlesnake; not when they could see one for free just by flipping over a few rocks out in the yard. They had been talking about emptying the wagon and turning it into something more productive, like storage or a rolling costume rack.
But then Annie had come along with her lynx, which wasn’t going to be able to share a bunk with its humans for long. Even if Annie didn’t seem to realize how large the cat was going to be when it finished growing, Nathaniel knew, and more, knew that avoiding tragedy would require a cage and a separate place to sleep. He had suggested she move Tranquility into the wagon of oddities, and when she had objected to the seeming special treatment—if only she had known how much special treatment he had been prepared to extend her, even then—he had asked if she would tend the wagon as a whole.
He had offered her a task. He had offered her legitimacy. He had expected her to tire of feeding the aging rattlesnakes before the end of the season, and that after that, the wagon would have become nothing more than a rolling home for the lynx.
By the end of that first season, she had purchased Oscar from a fisherman, installing the great white catfish—officially “the River’s Ghost”—in the front of the wagon to attract townies. They might not have cared about the rattlesnakes, but the wise-faced, fast-moving fish had been something else altogether. Less than a month later, another fisherman had rolled up, saying cagily that he’d heard “the miss” liked unusual river things, and would she look at his bucket?
The bucket had been full of listless, half-dead red fish that perked right up after being fed an entire opossum. The nibblers were even more popular than Oscar, drawing crowds from two towns over to gape at the oddities in open-mouthed awe. If he had wanted to nip this rolling house of horrors in the bud, that would have been the time, before it had gained the mass or notoriety to become an essential part of the show. But he hadn’t. The money was nice. The added cachet it brought to the human freaks was nicer. “Freak” was just a way of saying “somebody who isn’t like the folks around them,” and they deserved the same respect and fair treatment as the rest of the show. The oddities were officially a part of the freak show. The more money they made for the show as a whole, the better the other workers treated the freaks. It was social economics, and it worked in everyone’s favor.
Annie emerged from the wagon and back into the present, Tranquility padding at her heels. The vast cat had a joint of some unnamed meat clasped in her jaws; she descended the wagon steps and flopped onto her side in the mud, gnawing at the bone with teeth the length of a grown man’s thumb.
Nathanial liked to talk about how safe they were from robbers and the like when they rolled through bad country. Publicly, he attributed that to fellow-feeling and not wanting to damage one of the few sources of pure joy left in the West. Privately, he thought it had rather more to do with Annie’s habit of letting Tranquility sun herself when they were stopped. No man with half a brain in his head would attack a show that thought a lynx was a lapdog. There was simply no way of knowing what horrors they had locked away.
“Adeline should be here in a few minutes,” said Annie, sitting down primly at the top of the wagon stairs. “Are you quite done playing the doom crow, or would you like to say a few more dire things about our coming show?”
“Only that I worry for your safety.”
Annie sighed heavily. “Leaving me here would do nothing to enhance my safety, I assure you. As long as we keep moving, I am safe. Settle me this close to Deseret, even for a season, and there is every chance that someone would carry back a tale of the lovely widow with the silent daughter.”
“Why don’t they do that anyway?”
“I suppose because no one who knew me before you did would believe that I would lower myself so far as to live beneath a moving roof, by lantern light.” She looked toward Tranquility—not out of fondness, as he had once assumed, but out of a sort of pensive melancholy. It was like the lynx represented her lost home, which could be looked upon but never reached for. “I’ve changed my name. My child is older, and she was young enough when we ran that it was unclear whether she was quiet or speechless. I have taken all precautions not to bring danger down upon this show. But leave me alone, without the glitter and mirrors to distract, and I’ll be lost.”
Annie looked back to Nathanial, smiling sadly. “If you try to save me, you sacrifice me—and I warn you, I will not go quietly. There are worse things in the world than a few dire rumors about dark things in the wood. I’ll accompany you to Clearing.”
“The Clearing,” Nathanial corrected.
Annie raised an eyebrow. “Come again?”
“The name of the town—The Clearing. Like ‘New York,’ I suppose. Why they would choose to put ‘the’ in their name, I have no idea, but there it is, and being respectful guests means we should admit to it.”
“The Clearing, then. I’ll accompany you. We’ll put on the finest show they’ve ever seen. We’ll bleed their coffers dry and spend the winter living high on their coins. Come spring, we’ll be back out on the road, older and wiser and with another stop on our itinerary. You’ll see. I have faith in your ability to lead us into and out of even the darkest places.”
Nathanial’s smile was a pale thing. “Why do you have such faith in me? I rarely do.”
“Because you saved me once, and as no one else has ever felt the need to do such a thing, I must regard you evermore as a prince among men and hence worth believing in.” Annie leaned over and clucked her tongue. Tranquility dropped the joint of meat and rose, pacing over to sit next to her mistress’s knee. Annie busied herself with scratching behind the lynx’s ears, looking up at Nathanial as she did. “We’ll be fine, Nathanial. You worry too much.”
Nathanial Blackstone, who sometimes felt that he didn’t worry nearly enough, looked away and said nothing at all. Under the circumstances, it didn’t feel as if there was anything to say.
A cold wind blew past them. Summer was coming to an end, and they had far to go before the freeze.