The Fortune Teller's Daughter (20 page)

Without a word he stepped off the slow turning
platform and into the drizzling rain. When the carousel came around again, he
was gone.

*  *  *

While most
of the carnival lived for the night shows, the acrobats were made for the day
shows. They lived and breathed for the children that lined the wooden benches,
lips pink from raspberry cotton candy, eyes wide and unblinking, afraid to miss
anything. The children gasped the loudest and felt the wonder more deeply than
their parents or the night guests. I rarely saw the day shows, but they felt
different. More important. This was fantasy realized. These were the guests who
already believed that wonderful things could happen and Micah and her troupe
gave them the proof they needed against the rest of the world.

I snuck into
Micah’s show that afternoon to get away from the burlesque girls and their
barely
there
costumes. It was warm in the Galaxy, the tent packed with so many
bodies I had to stand near the acrobat’s curtains to watch from behind. Micah
walked out across the tightrope and midway bent her body backwards until her
fingertips touched the tightrope next to her toes and then in one fluid motion
the rest of her body followed with exacting control. Another acrobat danced out
across the tightrope on her toes and did a little turning pirouette with Micah
so that they were on opposite sides, the simple, dangerous trick sending the
room into applause. Beneath them the trapeze flung themselves beautifully into
the air, tucking and stretching between hands.

They make it
look effortless. Every time one of them flings themselves through the air,
every time Micah wraps the aerialist’s fabric around her ankle and hangs from it,
arms outstretched in a beautiful upside down spin, every time two girls make a
running leap towards each other with nothing but their ankles perfectly
balanced across trapeze bars keeping them from a long, horrible fall. No one in
the crowd realizes how their muscles tighten to hold them in place, or how many
hours they’ve spent practicing holding to the tightrope with their toes. No one
realizes how fast they trapeze girls have to tuck their body, then bend
backwards as far as they can stretch, fingers and arms in for speed, head arced
and smiling, smiling, always smiling. If they miss their mark, don’t tuck fast
enough, don’t pull their arms forward at the right time or bend their knees
when they’ve reached full momentum, then the whole performance collapses like
so many pink cheeked dominos.

They made
their art look like play so that no one below knew that their lives were always
dangerously hanging balanced from fingertips and toes.

I loved to
close my eyes and listen to the orchestrated sounds of hands clashing with
metal bars, skin whipping through the air at breakneck speeds, the vocal calls
of one bird to the next when a stunt was about to be executed. They made the
whole show look like a dance.

When Micah
shimmied up the silk panels hanging from the ceiling to perform her aerialist
show, a second acrobat ran out to the middle of the ring to set a snow globe
beneath her. I couldn’t see what was happening within the snowstorm inside the
globe, but the base it sat on was ornate gold and white with a large brass key
sticking out the side. The acrobat turned the key and back flipped away as the
music box chords began to play.

 The tent
floor shimmered like a mirage in a circle beneath Micah’s fabric panels. And,
as if by magic, where there was black tarp one moment, a swirling cloud of
white began to fall from the ceiling. Bright when the light struck them, dazzling
and blindingly white as it settled across the floor.

And where
there was only black tarp before, now there were drifts of snow and several
small pine trees reaching up towards the trapeze girls who skimmed their tops,
gliding to knock snow from the top branches in a volley of laughter.

The
temperature dropped and some of the snowflakes fell across the laps of those
seated along the first row of benches. Children stuck their tongues out to
catch the magic snow.

The reaction
was amazing. Some climbed to their feet, then fell back down not trusting their
own legs to hold them. Others held perfectly still and gazed unblinking at the
mirage before them, afraid of what might happen if they closed their eyes.
Despite everything I’d seen at the carnival, even I was clutching the curtains,
one hand covering my mouth to hold back to cry of surprise. Snow continued to
fall from the ceiling in slow, steady drifts and it reminded me of the night I
met the Magician on his stage and the globe of snow he’d created around us.

When Micah
began to perform amongst the trees, spinning and appearing, using the boughs to
push off and swing from her wrists like a swan, then like a dove, then like an
angel.

When Micah
dismounted and fell to a crouch in a bank of snow, kicking up clouds and
sinking ankle deep, everyone in the room found themselves on their feet,
beating their hands bruised in applause.

I was one of
them.

It took
almost ten minutes to clear the tent, everyone straining their neck for one
last look at the trapeze girls or the aerialist. Several children broke off
from their parents to run out and touch the snow to make sure it was real.

(It was.)

I waited
until they’d all gone to find Micah who was waiting in the wings of the
curtains for one of the acrobats to collect the snow globe that sat on the edge
of the little mirage. She turned the key backwards, the music box notes
performing themselves in reverse. As soon as she turned the key she back
flipped three times out of the globe’s area of influence. The world shimmered
once more and disappeared when I blinked against the blinding white light. The
music clicked off and where there had been snow and trees there was now only
the snow globe, glittery snow hovering against the glass.

The snow
globe was collected and delivered into Micah’s hands. She cradled it in her
arms as we headed back into the backstage where a small trunk sat waiting on a
table.

“Carnival
magic?” I asked as she settled the globe into a spot beside two others, all
three of them cradled in velvet.

Micah
grinned as she tucked the snow globe into its bed. “You’re catching on. These
are very old tricks. Some of the original tricks to the carnival. We have six
left, but once upon a time there was more than dozen. They’ve either broken or
stopped working on their own.”

I shook my
head. “They’re beautiful. Like the carousel.”

“Same
magic.” Micah rubbed a little fingerprint with the corner of the velvet
blanket. “They belong to the acrobats now. We have to be careful when putting
the snow back where it belongs. We only have four notes to get out of the way
or risk being pulled in with it. Something I don’t think anyone would enjoy.
Acrobats are the only ones who can make the jump in time.”

She covered
them with another piece of cloth then closed the trunk and locked it with a
large, silver key.

“Where would
you go if you didn’t get out of the way?”

She shrugged
and slid the key into her pocket. “Wherever the carousel goes? We’ve never been
foolish enough to find out. Carnival magic is unpredictable and unmanageable,
like Eli said. It usually works in our favor, but we have to be careful.”

Eli. Even
his name made my heart act foolishly. I absently touched the spot on my chest
over my heart and willed it to settle down. “But he got the carousel to work
for us earlier.”

“Oh, sure,
but probably because he asked really nicely, not because he has any influence
over it. Some things around here are even outside Eli’s power. Including the
snow globes. He’d never use them in his own acts because they would likely
backfire.”

“You realize
you sound like a crazy person when you talk about the carnival that way.”

“Might I
remind you that you blackmailed the magician in order to gain entrance? Who’s
really the crazy one here?” She looped her arm through mine and pulled me
towards the exit.

“You hang
upside down by your ankle twelve feet above the ground.” I gave her arm a
squeeze. “So it’s still you.”

__________________

This was what I learned about
Imaginaire
from
Lily - there were actually two carnivals. One performed during the day -
acrobats, tumblers, and the sideshow performances of sword swallowing and fire
eating. Midway games and candied apples and cotton candy.

The night carnival catered to private individuals who
came to witness impossible wonders and dark, beautiful women who pretended to
love them for the few minutes they took the stage. The carnival stayed solvent
because of the wealthy investors who came to be seduced by Lily.

The show that night was to be for these special guests,
men in masks and suits who watched unblinking and hungry from their velvet
seats. I watched from the curtains between changes as Eliza, a brunette with a lingering
crush on the Beatles, was tied to a ring suspended from the ceiling, her body
contorted into impossible shapes to expose her tan, naked stomach as melted wax
was dripped along her belly.

The theater was quiet except for her gasps and sobs.
Her hands clung to the ropes that held her, clawing at the hemp, writhing and
pleading for mercy. Her captor, a male dancer I did not know by name, masked
like the devil wearing soft, weathered jeans and no shirt, ignored her protest
and drew patterns on her tight abdomen muscles until they glistened an opaque
white. Before our eyes she turned into a sculpture of herself, twisted in
something like pleasure and something like pain and I found myself gripping the
curtain cords with such desperation I nearly accidentally pulled them down.

This was not their usual playful, flirty performance.
These were dark and lovely and reminded me of the Magician’s hands, his
intensity, and the way he tied Katya before he levitated her or contorted her
into painful, gorgeous shapes. I could not take my eyes off the dancer’s hands
when he touched Eliza, when he knelt and spread her knees until she almost
touched the floor, tears in her eyes, begging for more.

When the male dancer released her bound wrists and let
her collapse at his feet, bent over, her forehead touching the floor beside his
feet, I heard her whisper a shuddering
thank you
. He petted her and
urged her to stand. When she did he took her by the hand to the edge of the
stage where one of the men in the front row stood and reached up to run his
hand over the cooled wax. She shuddered under his touch, almost fainted into
the dancer’s arms, and was carried off stage.

Lily, small and ethereal, was brought onto the stage
by the hand of the dancer, whose body rivaled the Magician’s for power, his
muscles thicker and hardened over. She was ceremonially stripped of the costume
I’d painstakingly laced her up in, and then laid out on a platform, surrounded by
mirrors. The dancer bound her in rope, lovingly twisted and tied and knotted
down her spine, her body spread, arced, reclothed by hemp coils. Contorted.
Controlled. Craved.

I couldn’t watch after that because even taken in
supplication she was too lovely, my envy too much. She moaned and gasped and
jumped under his administrations and even though it was just a story, a play, a
performance, it was so real and vivid that I couldn’t enjoy it because all I
saw was the Magician in the dancer’s place and my reaction to the image was
visceral.

Why wouldn’t he want that? I didn’t even know how to
do these things, had never even imagined them. But she knew them all, knew how
to make something so brazen seem sophisticated and refined.

Whatever they did out there next brought the audience
to an ovation that rivaled one of the Magician’s shows.

I finished my duties that night, cleaned up the
dressing room, and left the dancers’ tent confused and jealous and overwarm
everywhere.

Fully intending to go to my tent and spend the night
overanalyzing my head and trying to turn off everything that was turned on,
Micah placed herself directly in my way. She met me outside the red velvet
tent, already changed from her costume into tight black pants and a slinky,
pink and black striped dress.

“How’d the show go?” she asked, knowing full well how
the show went.

I blushed and scowled at the same time. “It was
enlightening
.”

She grinned, “Welcome to the real
Imaginaire
.
That’s what the VIPs come to see. The clientele in the boss’s little black book
come here for Lily.”

We fell in step together, though I had no idea where
we were going since I doubted she’d gotten all prettied up to go hang out in my
tent and brood.

“Lily is certainly something to watch.” I knew better
than to ask, but I did it anyway because I was clearly glutton for punishment.
“Is she and Eli…have they been…are they now…?”

Micah laughed. “Are you going to finish any of those
questions, or shall I infer?”

“Infer, please. I am not saying it out loud.”

“I have no idea. Not in any public way, although there
are always rumors. Not that you can believe them a bit. There are so many
rumors about you and him going around, you might as well spend your days tied
to his bed. So who knows?” She paused dramatically. “You’re not spending your
days tied to his bed are you? Because if you were and didn’t tell me and I had
to hear about it from Katya, I’d have to ask for my friendship bracelet back.”