From a High Tower (18 page)

Well, everyone here knew the story of Wilhelm Tell and the apple. She could hear the collective intake of breath as the bandit leader dragged her, kicking and screaming, to be tied to a . . .

...rather large piece of wall that had been set up as the bandits emoted. That just happened to have convenient wrist and ankle straps built in. Just loops, really, she could pull free any time she cared to, which was completely on purpose.

“Kick me iff'n I hurt ya, missy,” the “bandit leader” whispered as he slipped the loops around her wrists. Then he bent and held the ankle loops for her to slip her foot into, far too polite to actually
touch
her leg.

Well, no one in the audience minded that the “ties” were only loops. They were all very excited, anticipating what was about to happen. Bad acting notwithstanding.

But, of course, the first thing that happened was that Fox made an outline of her body with thrown knives.
Both
of them were using their power over air to make sure the knives missed, so she was never in the slightest bit of danger, but every time Fox drew back his arm to throw, there was a collective intake of breath, and when the knife hit in the “safe” zone, there was a sigh of relief and a cheer.

Not trusting the sylphs to keep their minds on the task, Giselle was creating strong eddies between her body and the spot where each knife was
supposed
to hit. She knew from experience that these eddies would provide a cushion that would force the knife away from her body if Fox somehow lost his concentration. To the part of her that actually saw magic, each of these eddies was a little whirligig of white sparks that pushed outward rather than drawing inward. She was so intent on creating them and keeping them going that she actually didn't see much of what Fox was doing. They had practiced this at every opportunity when the troupe stopped to camp for the night, using every minute of daylight.

It wasn't that Captain Cody was worried about her safety . . . it was that he had been worried about audience perception. Evidently, back in America, he would have been drawn and quartered if he had dared to put the safety of a white girl in the hands of an Indian.

Well, that wasn't the case here. The German audience
loved
this, that much was clear from the time the first knife thudded into the board.

And when he had finished with his outline, the audience screamed its approval.

Now was going to come the fun part.

All the while this had been going on, Fox's fellow Pawnee had been “creeping up” on the bandits. The audience could see them, of course, and if the bandits had bothered to turn around, they would have seen the Pawnee too—but of course, they didn't turn around. Now Giselle had to fight to hide her smile. Of course the audience didn't
expect
them to turn around—that would have spoiled everything!

Fox turned to make a threatening gesture at the bandit chief, and Two Crows waved a hand at him. There was an expectant murmur from the audience, who knew this meant that rescue was at hand.

But what they did
not
expect was that Fox would pull four more knives at once, and send them sailing in rapid succession at Giselle—
so
rapid that the first was hitting its target as the last left his hand. With four loud
thuds,
the knives cut the straps binding her to the target! And as the Pawnee swooped in on the bandits, she bent and retrieved a small handgun from the top of each boot and shot the bandit chief, who “died” with a bloodcurdling scream.

The audience roared its approval.

Had one of the knives failed to cut its target—unlikely—she still could have pulled her hand or foot free without the audience realizing the knife had missed.

The bandit camp erupted in gunfire, every man firing at once, just as a string of the Pawnee horses were driven into the arena. Each of the Pawnee performed jaw-dropping running mounts on his horse, including Fox.

She wasn't capable of that, of course, but she was light and small enough that Fox could stop his horse beside her and pull her up behind easily. They had practiced this as well, and she managed the trick not
too
ungracefully. Then they were off, leaving the cursing bandits behind, including the miraculously resurrected bandit chief. The bandits ran in futile pursuit. As the last of them vanished out through the curtains, the audience went wild.

That was the last of her official turns. Captain Cody performed his trick riding and shooting. There was wild-horse riding—“bucking broncos,” they were called, and the goal was to stay on as long as one could. All the rest of the remaining acts from the original show were fitted into this final third of the new show, then there was the repeat of the Grand Parade and the show was over.

But her work wasn't over yet. Like everyone else, she had to rush to her part of the “camps”—in this case a little tent set between the Indian encampment and the cowboys. There she sat down in a camp chair not unlike Captain Cody's, and prepared to meet the audience.

Or at least as many of them as were prepared to pay the extra for the “special” ticket.

Kellermann was conducting the “official tour,” of course, which meant that only those who were independently minded approached her on their own. There were not that many of those; most people, however excited they had been by the show, seemed to prefer standing behind the guide. When they asked her questions, they did so diffidently, and with immense politeness.

Well, except for the children and young adolescents.

“How did you meet Chief Leading Fox?” blurted one lanky boy at the front of the group, looking as if he was likely to burst.

“Oh, that is a long story, would you like to hear it?” she replied, amused that not one of the group seemed to question the fact that she spoke perfect German although she was allegedly an American.

Then again, it probably never occurred to any of them that she wouldn't, even though Kellermann had to translate for the others in the show.
But perhaps they haven't asked questions of anyone else.

“Yes, please, Fraulein Ellie!” the lad said eagerly. The adults, just as eager to hear but thinking themselves too dignified to show it, still leaned forward a little.

“Well, my father died when I was only seven. I was the oldest child, and we needed food, so I took his old gun and went out to try and shoot something. I was very lucky that I ran into Chief Leading Fox in the forest before I hurt myself. He did
not
tell me to go home, as a white man might have. Instead, he asked me why I was all alone in the forest with a rifle that was as tall as I was.”

She paused, and the boy immediately asked “What did you say?”

“I told him the truth, of course. That my father was dead and if I didn't hunt, we would all starve, because my mother could not leave the babies.” She smiled as the youngster nodded solemnly. “So he said, ‘Then perhaps you will allow me to come along.' He didn't say that he would help me, although that was what he did. From then on, until I was as good a sharpshooter as I am now, he met me every day to hunt together. He became like the father I had lost.”

She knew that Kellermann was committing all of this to memory, and would probably use it in the show. She made a note to tell it to Fox so that they had the same story—although his version would probably be better than hers.

A few more people began to ask questions—if the Indians were Apache, or Navaho, or any of the other tribes they had read about. What her home had been like, and had she hunted grizzly bears or buffalo. Did she know Annie Oakley, Buffalo Bill, or Sitting Bull?

When they finally moved on—urged by Kellermann, since he needed to move them through in a timely manner—she thought she had satisfied them. And she took the chance when no one was crowding around her to go over into the Indian Village to tell Fox the story she had concocted. He invited her to sit beside his fire with a nod, and she sat cross-legged on the grass and related her story.

I do like this clothing,
she thought, and not for the first time. The Western clothing was so much easier to sit on the ground in, and so sturdy she didn't need to think about grass or dirt-stains.

He was amused when she had finished, and chuckled, his eyes crinkling up at the corners. He had a fine, strong face: older than the way she had imagined Winnetou, more like Winnetou's father. “It is a good tale,” he told her. “And what happened to this mother and your siblings in this tale?”

“My mother remarried a shopkeeper and took the family to St. Louis, because she did not wish to try to keep the farm going,” she decided on the spur of the moment. “Everyone who has read those books is familiar with that city. I remained with the old cabin, now that I was able to hunt and fish and supply what I needed for myself. Then I joined the show.” She shrugged. “We don't need to get any more elaborate than that.”

“It is best if we do not,” he agreed. “Although you have never told us much of your past, you know.”

“Oh!” she realized he was right. “Well, there is not a lot to tell. My real parents traded me to Mother for food. Mother was an Earth Master; her name was Annaliese Bundchen, and she wanted me because she knew I would grow into magic.”

Fox looked startled at that—the first time Giselle had ever seen him look unpleasantly surprised. It was an odd expression on his generally stoic face. “Your parents . . . did what?” He shook his head. “I have difficulty with this.”

“It's not common, but it's not uncommon either; more often an unwanted child is left on a doorstep, or at a convent,” she said, a little bitterly. “But sometimes, if a childless couple sees a pretty baby they like . . . it can happen. But most often, instead of being outright sold or
traded,
a child is sent off into servitude at a very young age, as young as five or six. Too many children, not enough food, and there are many laws about hunting and fishing, but few about what you may do with your children.”

“. . . and you say
we
are the barbarians.” Fox looked as if he had bitten into something nasty. She didn't blame him.

“On the other hand, I was one more mouth to feed when my father could not feed the children he had, and by that, I mean they were literally starving, in the dead of winter.” It was her turn to make a sour face. “I likely would have died anyway, and possibly my mother and more of my siblings with me.”

Fox shook his head. “We would never permit a child to starve. The parents, perhaps, if they were too lazy to hunt, fish, or grow food, but never a child.”

Giselle sighed. “Yes, but you live in very small tribes, when you compare your tribe to a whole city. You've seen what cities are like. People often do not even know one another, and they have few bonds. There is no place to grow food, even if there were no laws about hunting, there is nothing to hunt. If one wants food, one must earn it with labor. But there are more unskilled hands than there are jobs to be done. My father was one of those sets of unskilled hands.”

Fox frowned. “Surely, there must have been somewhere he could have gone if his children were starving.”

She thought about telling him about workhouses—and that you could starve there, too—but decided that was getting too complicated.

“Well, really, although he didn't know it, my father did me a great favor,” she pointed out. “And . . . instead of dying of hunger, I was taken by someone who, I think, loved me more than either of my parents ever would or could have, given that they had eight other children.” Her voice softened at that last. “I called her Mother until the day she died. She truly was my mother in every possible way.”

Fox was silent for a while. “Then, perhaps it was for the best, after all.” He sat there, deep in thought, while Kellermann brought another group by and she answered questions.

“Well,” he said when they were gone, “I think your story of how you and I met is a good one. It is very much the sort of thing I would have done, I believe. How
did
you learn to shoot so well?”

She felt her stomach clench up, even after all these years. Too much to want to tell Fox anything about the attack by that horrible young man. “To explain that, I will have to begin with something else. The Bruderschaft, which I should tell you about anyway, since we are in their lands and one or more of them might turn up here.”

By the time she got done explaining about the Brotherhood of the Foresters, and how two of their number had taught her to shoot and fight, they had been interrupted several times by more people touring the camps, had made a mad dash to get their supper eaten, and it was time for the second performance.

If anything, the second performance went better than the first. People were confident now that the changes were going to meet with audience approval, so they threw themselves into their parts with great enthusiasm. Almost
too
much, but after all, this wasn't on a stage, it was in an arena, so perhaps at that distance “too much” was just about enough.