Circus Summer (Circus of Curiosities Book 1) (21 page)

            The roar of the crowd is deafening, and as it comes, Dr. Dex retreats behind the barriers around the ring to join the crowd. That’s when my heart starts to beat faster. By the time some of the circus hands wheel in a large box of a similar substance to my weapons, it’s racing.

            “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, watch our would be champion as she faces… the hydra!”

            The front of the box falls away, revealing darkness within. Darkness in which more than a dozen eyes shine. I stand there for a moment, transfixed by them, and then they’re rushing forward at me. I throw myself aside as a head like a snake’s slams into the spot where I was just standing.

            The creature is huge. Its reptilian body rests on four massive legs, and its scales gleam dully, like armor. Then there are the half dozen snake-like heads swaying above it, fangs like knives in each mouth. Even as I think that, another lunges for me, so that I have to fend it off with crossed swords.

            None of my circus training has prepared me for this. We haven’t been fighting with swords, and the only beasts we’ve been dealing with have been trained ones. This… I throw myself aside from another darting strike of those snake heads, managing to react quickly enough when a second head attacks. I spear it with one sword. Even then, the creature almost rips it from my hands when it pulls back.

            I don’t know how to fight this. The heads weave in constant motion, and I’ve just proved that attacking them doesn’t seem to stop it. The hydra grinds its way forwards, those heads hemming me in with strikes so that soon it will have me pinned against the clear plastic walls of the ring. When that happens…

            I hear people shouting angrily, but I don’t dare take my eyes off the beast. Then someone rushes past me, and it’s only as he hacks at the hydra with a sword similar to mine that I realize that it’s Zachary. He slashes at the hydra, forcing it to turn its attention to him just long enough for me to slip away to the other side of the creature. I thrust at its tail with my swords and it turns back to me.

            We keep going like that, attacking in turns, keeping the hydra confused. Playing it at its own game. I don’t care that Zachary has broken the rules again to do this. I’m just glad that he’s there. If the Circus of Curiosities had a problem with that… well, they would already have thrown us both out. I know we have to end this, though.

            “Distract it!” I yell to Zachary, and he throws himself into a new attack on the creature’s heads, forcing them to go after him, forcing it to concentrate on him. I rush forward.

            The hydra sweeps its tail around, obviously anticipating the move, but I react by throwing myself into a slide, diving directly beneath the beast. I try to gauge where its heart might be, realize that I can’t while I’m moving, and thrust up with my swords anyway. The momentum of my slide tears the swords from my hands as they plunge through flesh and sinew, carrying me to the far side of the hydra without a weapon.  My swords are embedded in the hydra. Right in the heart.

            It starts to turn towards me. It tries, at least, before it seems to realize just how badly hurt it is. Its six heads let out simultaneous hisses of pain, whirling around for a moment or two longer before the beast topples over onto its side. The heads fall still. So does the rest of the body.

            Then people go wild, cheering, applauding, chanting our names. I rush over to Zachary, throwing my arms around him and kissing him. He kisses me back as people continue to applaud.

            “We did it!” he says.

            I smile back at him. “We did it!”

Epilogue

W
hen everyone in the circus has recovered from the shock of seeing the hydra die, when the audience has stopped screaming its approval and the circus hands have hauled the body of the beast back into its crate, Dr. Dex steps out onto the sandy floor of the circus ring. He looks around, and for a moment, it looks like he doesn’t quite know what to say. Maybe that has something to do with the way this has ended.

            Maybe it has something to do with the brief conversation he has with one of the people from the Center, just before he steps out there.

            Whatever it is, he recovers from it quickly, looking around at the assembled crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen of Sea Cliff, we have seen a lot over the past few days. We have seen courage. We have seen hardship. We have seen young people performing feats of death defying ability for your entertainment.”

            He pauses briefly, letting the anticipation build. “Slowly, you’ve seen those who came here tested and whittled down, and here at Sea Cliff, you have shown us some of the strongest contestants we’ve had. I think you should applaud yourselves for that.”

They do. I guess he could have told them anything in that moment and they’d have done it.

“More than that, you have achieved something that no town before you has achieved. You have provided the Circus of Curiosities with not one, but
two
champions. You should remember this day, ladies and gentlemen.”

Dr. Dex gestures to Zachary and me, and the crowd goes wild once more. I put an arm around Zachary, happy just to be close to him. Happy that he’s alive.

“Now, these two young people will go forward to our next stage of performances.”

The Center. The finals.

“They will compete this fall against successful candidates from other towns, going head to head with them until we find the performers to go through to the Center.”

What? He can’t do that, can he? He can’t just
change
things like that. Except of course he can, or rather, the people from the Center can. This is their show, after all.  Which means that for now, all we can do is stand there and enjoy the moment, waiting until Dr. Dex signals for us to walk off back to the dressing rooms.

Zachary kisses me as soon as we’re out of sight of the crowd. He’s so happy in that moment. Happier than I’ve ever seen him, and so obviously relieved. Yet it’s me who should be relieved. He saved me.

“We made it, Leela!” he says.

I shake my head. “Not all the way. Not to the Center.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Zachary says. “We’re
almost
there. And we survived!”

            I kiss him back then. “I wouldn’t have survived if it weren’t for you. If you hadn’t intervened with the hydra…” I can still see those snake heads weaving in front of me.

            “I wish I could take the credit for all that but I can’t,” Zachary says, taking my hand. “If Dex hadn’t put the seed of the idea into my head when we first started, maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe I wouldn’t have dared to do it.”

            I find that hard to believe, but I’m more interested in the fact that Dr. Dex was handing out advice. “What did he say to you that made you do all this?”

            Zachary shakes his head. “He didn’t
say
anything exactly. Hold on.”

            He darts into the male dressing room and comes back with a scrap of paper, which he passes to me. The message on it is simple and stark.

Protect the champion if you want to live.

            I look at him then, not sure what to think. Not sure what to feel. I’ve loved Zachary for so many years now, and I thought that finally, he loved me too. I find myself thinking about all the times he’s helped me, catching me on the trapeze, working with me for practically every act. Was all that just because he wanted to come through this? Can I even blame him if it was? Who wouldn’t want to survive?

            Then I think about the times that he’s kissed me. The times that he’s held me. When I think about those times I know that it can’t all have been for that. Nobody made him kiss me. Nobody made him ask me to his party, or give me a ride home. Small things, but they mean so much here. Especially when I still want to believe that he loves me.

            I look again at the scrap of paper in my hand. “This doesn’t seem like much,” I say. “I mean, the champion could have been anyone.”

            Zachary shakes his head. “It could only have been you, Leela. You’re forgetting my visions. I’ve seen you so many times. You get to the Center. I see you there.”

“You’ve seen me? What did you see?”

Zachary shakes his head. “It doesn’t work like that.” He puts an arm around me again. “But I know. I know it everywhere it matters. You’ll be the one to free us from the Invaders. You’re the one Dex is seeking.”

*****

The Circus of Curiosities continues in

Volume 2 in November 2012

Circus Autumn

Sneak Preview from the YA Dystopian Thriller

FADE

Book 1 of the FADE Series™

By Kailin Gow

ONE

M
y name is Celestra Caine. I am seventeen years old, which makes me a senior at Richmond High. I never thought this would happen to me, but it has… I’m one of those people you see every day, go to school with, remember seeing at the supermarket or the mall, and then one day you don’t hear about them any longer. They’re gone, and eventually, you forget them.

Not that I’m easy to forget, as much as I might occasionally wish that I were. I’m tall, about five-seven, and I’m willowy. Built for running, my mom always says. Then there’s my hair. It’s a bright blonde that always attracts attention, from men and women. The women always want to know what I’ve done with it, and some of them won’t believe that it’s simply my natural hair color. The men… like I said, sometimes I wish I didn’t attract quite so much attention. Sometimes I think it might be better if I blended in a little more.

                It’s not all bad, though. My boyfriend, Grayson, loves my hair. He loves touching it, and I love it when he’s that close to me. I love it when he gives me that look he has that says, not just that he loves me, but that he always will. That I’m the only girl for him. It’s worth standing out a little for a look like that from a guy like Grayson.

                 I first met him running track- he’s the captain of the school team, so it’s probably appropriate that I’m at practice with him on the day it starts. Then again, I’m at practice with him most days, so maybe it was always going to work out like that. We finish up, and Grayson invites me back to his place for dinner, but I can’t. I have to be home, so I tell him that I’ll see him tomorrow and get going.

                It doesn’t take me long to make my way home, since it’s not that far from the school. The house is nice enough, in a neighborhood where there’s no trouble, and there are plenty of families around. Dad’s car is in the drive, so I guess he must have gotten back early from his work as a biochemical engineer. Mom will be there too by now. She teaches kindergarten, and she’s always home before me. Even as I walk through the front door, I can picture her in the kitchen, working away at dinner, maybe yelling at my brother, Bailey, not to spend too much time online before he’s done his homework. It’s just how things are in our house.

                Except today, something is different. I know that from the moment I set foot through the door. I can’t put my finger on it for a second or two, but then I realize what it is. The house is quiet.

                “Mom? Dad? Hello?” I call it out, moving through into the living room, then the kitchen. There’s no sign of either of them. They aren’t there when I check the rest of the rooms on the ground floor, either, which is weird. By 6 pm, at least one of them is
always
there.

Still, maybe it’s nothing. Maybe the sinking feeling I have in the pit of my stomach is just an overactive imagination playing tricks on me. For all that I still can’t help feeling that there’s something wrong, it’s not like the place has been trashed, or anything. It’s not like anything has obviously been stolen, or is out of place. The opposite, if anything. The whole ground floor is neat, tidy.

Maybe Mom and Dad have just gone next door for a moment. I latch onto that thought, heading upstairs. Bailey will know. He might not pay much attention to things that don’t involve computers, but Mom and Dad will at least have told him where they were going.