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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Death, Fortune, and the Circus

D
anya's heart beat
wildly in her chest. As she and Pia raced across the walkway, she whirled around to see if anyone was watching them. But the wind blew her hair over her eyes, and the next thing she knew she and Pia were stumbling into the shed, slamming the door behind them.

“Whoo!” Pia said with a sigh, slumping against the door. “That was close.”

“Close?” Danya said between gasps for breath. “Pia, we're still on the run, we're wasting time, and we have to find a way back to Sancho. We just traded one bad hiding place for another!”

“I'm working on that.” Pia's eyes were already narrowed, scanning the contents of the dimly lit shed. “Hey, aren't those from the parade?” she said, pointing to a pile of scaly fabric on a shelf over her head. Danya shrugged, and Pia quickly climbed on top of a wooden sign of an alligator wearing sunglasses and pulled the fabric off the shelf. It fell to the floor in a heap.

“What are we going to do with those?” Danya said, nudging the fabric with her foot.

“I have a plan,” Pia announced, wobbling a bit on the alligator sign as she jumped back to the ground. She snatched a hat shaped like an alligator's long, tooth-filled mouth. “We're going incognito.”

A few short minutes later the girls crept across the parking lot, dressed in oversize reptilian costumes. Pia was covered head to toe in green scales, an alligator nose poking out from her head like a visor, while long, pointy teeth hung down over her face. Her tail swept behind her lethally—it'd almost knocked Danya over twice.

Danya was less excited about her own snake costume, which was little more than an oversize, scaly silver tube sock. Her legs were bound together awkwardly, which meant she had to kind of hop along instead of walking like a normal person. At least there were two armholes, so she could use her hands.

“Sancho!” Danya called when they reached the clearing where they'd hidden him. She wasn't quite used to her snake costume, and as she tried to rush forward, she stumbled over her own tail and ended up crashing, face-first, into the half-eaten dandelion patch near Sancho's feet.

“Ugh,” she muttered, spitting out a mouthful of weeds. She couldn't see Sancho, but she felt a tug on the top of her snake costume and suddenly she was being lifted to her feet. As soon as she was standing, Sancho started licking her face with his scratchy tongue. Horsey kisses.

“Ew,” Danya said, giggling as she swatted Sancho away. “I missed you, too, buddy. Can't believe you recognized me in my costume!”

“What's next on the map?” Pia asked. Danya pulled the map out of her back pocket. She squinted down at it, studying the trail that stretched across the page.

“It looks like we need to get to Orlando,” Danya said, following their trail across the map with one finger. “It's probably too far for us to ride Sancho. Maybe we should find some sort of—”

“What about that?” Pia interrupted, pointing past the tree grove where they were still hiding and across the parking lot. Danya squinted through the tree branches, seeing a large, charter bus parked near the entrance. Curly red words on its side read
TALLAHASSEE SCHOOL FOR THE CIRCUS ARTS
.

“You want to join the circus?” Danya asked.

“No.” Pia shook her head. “Well, I mean, not today. But it looks like they have a bus big enough to fit Sancho.”

“Tallahassee
is
closer to Lake Buena Vista. . . .” Danya chewed on her lower lip, studying her map. “But what if they aren't headed back tonight?”

“They have to go back
sometime
.”

Danya supposed that was true, though there was still the question of how they were going to sneak on board a circus bus with a pet pony without being recognized as nationally famous runaways.

A trio of performers stood not far from the bus's back tires. One of them juggled seven different multicolored bottles, while another walked in circles around him on her hands. The third—dressed like a clown—was hunched over, trying to pin a plastic flower to his shirt. Before he could get it right, the flower squirted a stream of water directly into his face.

Danya giggled. Pia pulled her alligator mask back down over her face. “Come on,” she said, and started across the parking lot. “Let's go talk to them.”

“Why would we talk to them? Wait, do you think we can convince them we're part of the circus, too?” Danya trailed after Pia, giving Sancho's reins a tug to get him to follow them through the trees and across the parking lot. He snorted, and when Danya looked down to see what was wrong, he licked her upside the face, pushing her curls back beneath the snake mask.

“Oh, thanks, buddy!” Danya said, making sure the rest of her hair was carefully tucked beneath her mask. Sancho was right. If they ran into Violet again, she might recognize them.

“Hi,” Pia said, approaching the performers. The juggler looked up, startled, and dropped one of his bottles. The acrobatic girl who'd been walking around on her hands caught it with her foot seconds before it hit the ground. As she wrapped her toes around the glass, Danya saw that her toenails were painted sparkly orange.

“Hi,” the upside-down girl said, tossing the bottle back to the juggler. She turned on her hands so she could face Danya and Pia, and her thick, brown curls trailed on the ground behind her. “You guys need help or something?”

“Are you really in the circus?” Pia took off her alligator head and turned awkwardly in her suit. Her long, scaly tail trailed behind her, and static electricity made her already spiky hair stand straight up.

“Pia!” Danya hissed. “Your
mask
.”

Sancho whinnied and kicked at the concrete, causing the clown to look up from his plastic squirting flower, but Pia just waved their concerns away.

“We're studying to be performers with the Tallahassee School of the Circus Arts,” the clown explained. He flicked the flower, and a sad stream of water dribbled onto his shirt. “You two look like performers. Are you with Gatorville?”

“Not
exactly . . .”
Danya explained. “We're actually looking for a ride to—”

“We're both really curious about circus school,” Pia interrupted. “Like, did you guys have to go to high school first? And do you get to pick your specialty right away? I think I'd be a wicked lion tamer.”

“Pia, come on.” Danya shook her head. “We actually need to get to Lake Buena Vista. Could we ride with you?”

“Oh, you're with Disney, then?” The upside-down girl flipped back onto her feet and shook out her bushy brown curls. “We could probably fit you in back. We're leaving in . . .”

“Half an hour, I think,” the juggler said.

“That's right—in half an hour. Do you need help loading up your pony?”

“That would be great,” Danya said. She smiled at Pia before realizing her friend couldn't see her beneath the giant snake head. Too bad. If Pia hadn't noticed the circus bus, they'd have been stranded for sure.

The formerly upside-down girl led Sancho up the steps to the bus while Danya and Pia struggled to get their costumes through the door. They followed Sancho all the way to the very back. Danya got stuck between the seats a few times; snake costumes were not designed to easily slip down bus aisles—even Sancho didn't have as much trouble as she did. They angled their tails beneath the seat so they could sit down. Sancho plopped down in the middle of the aisle, letting out a huff of air that made the hair hanging over his eyes flutter.

“I feel sorry for you, buddy,” Danya said once she was in her seat. “Tails are really difficult.”

Sancho's head popped up, and he blew air out from between his lips indignantly. He swished his long tail back and forth.

“Right, right,” Danya said, giggling. “I forgot,
your
tail isn't difficult at all.”

Sweaty after her climb up the steps, Danya pulled her snake head off and set it down on the seat next to her. She glanced out the window, still nervous that Violet or someone from the Gatorville audience would manage to track them down. But the parking lot was empty.

“I'm Da . . . Dakota,” she lied to the acrobat girl, using the same fake name Pia had given her before, even if they hadn't been recognized yet. “And this is, er . . . Polly.”

She motioned to Pia, who grimaced.
“Polly?”
she whispered to Danya when the other girl had her head turned. “My fake name was
Prissy
!”

“And that's better?” Danya hissed back. “Anyway, thanks so much for all your help,” Danya added loud enough for the acrobat girl to hear.

“Don't mention it.” The girl shook her head. Her hair seemed to get bigger and curlier every time she moved. “My name is Penn. Make yourselves comfortable. The other performers will start boarding soon.”

Pia and Danya sat at the back of the bus, huddled in their alligator costumes, watching as the performers filed up the stairs. First were the tightrope walkers in their skintight, sparkly spandex uniforms. They took the seats near the door, and instead of sitting down like normal people, they balanced on the backs of the seats, rising to their tiptoes and doing back bends. They looked graceful, Danya thought. Like ballerinas.

“Show-offs,” Pia muttered, and Danya laughed.

Next, a group of clowns crowded onto the bus. Danya tried to count them, but there were just too many—fat clowns and skinny clowns, sad clowns and happy clowns, clowns so tall that they had to crouch down to get into the bus and clowns short enough to walk beneath the bus seats without crouching at all. All of the clowns—every last one—piled onto the same seat near the window.

Danya watched as they fit together like a jigsaw. Two tall, skinny clowns sat down first, and three short, fat clowns climbed onto their laps. A sixth clown stretched out on the back of the seat. Two tiny clowns huddled on the floor, and another tall, lanky clown slid below the seat, with only his head still in the bus aisle. He placed his head on his folded arms and immediately fell asleep.

“Wow . . .” Danya said, not turning away until they were all seated. “Do you think they're practicing?”

“Why else would they sit like that?” Pia added, wrinkling her nose. “It looks really uncomfortable.”

After the clowns, were more performers in bright, sparkling outfits—lion tamers and jugglers and a group of trapeze artists who Penn sat next to and started talking with animatedly.

“You know,” Danya said, “no one else is dressed like an alligator.”

“It got us onto the bus, didn't it?” Pia said. Before Danya could comment, one last performer climbed on.

This performer didn't look like the others. She wore a flowy dress with long sleeves, and she was very small and very old. Her arms and legs were so thin that Danya imagined her bones must be the size of pencils, and she walked with a cane, hobbling a little as she made her way down the aisle. Despite her size, she didn't seem frail—her energy seemed to fill the entire bus. Rings glittered from each of her fingers, and gold and pearl necklaces were strung around her neck.

The old performer grinned at the others as she made her way to the back of the bus. She settled into the seat right in front of Danya and Pia.

Danya nervously clutched her snake head in her lap, trying to decide whether she should wear it for the entire trip. Someone could still recognize them after all—you could never be too careful. Before she could decide, the woman turned in her seat and smiled at Danya. Her eyes were huge and rimmed in thick, long eyelashes.

“Hello there,” she said. “My, what beautiful reptile costumes.”

“Thank you,” Danya and Pia said together. When the old woman didn't turn back around, Pia cleared her throat.

“What do you do in the circus?” she asked.

“Oh, I'm retired,” the old woman explained. “But I used to do a bit of everything. I started on the tightrope, and when my bones got too old for that, I did a little clowning and lion-taming. Now I teach at the school.”

The woman's thin, brightly painted lips twisted into a smile. She slipped a deck of cards out of one of her sleeves so gracefully they seemed to appear out of thin air.

“I also do this,” she said, spreading the cards out across the back of the seat. Danya and Pia leaned forward in awe.

The cards didn't look like the normal red and blue playing cards Danya had at home. These were larger, for one thing, and they weren't covered in numbers and symbols. Instead they displayed beautiful, elaborate pictures. One showed a blindfolded woman in a white dress holding two crossed swords. Another showed a single golden cup balanced on a man's palm.

The bus started to move, and the old woman swept the cards back up into one wrinkled hand.

“I am Madame Angelica,” she explained, shuffling the deck. The bus rocked back and forth a little as it pulled out of the parking lot, but Madame Angelica held fast to the cards, shuffling them easily. “I read the tarot. Tell people's futures.”