The Nightingale Circus (2 page)

Spinner came to check the readings on the
screen and nodded to himself. “Are we all set here?” He turned to
the chair.

“All set,” Rake said.

“Are you comfortable?” Spinner asked Cielo.
His eyes blinked, huge behind the oversized glasses that made him
look like a giant bee. “Don’t worry, it will only hurt for a
moment. When you wake up, it will be over. Focus on that.” He
patted her arm with a gloved hand.

Cielo struggled to put on a brave smile. Pain
wasn’t an issue. She was familiar with pain. She’d caused it many
times.

“All right, let’s proceed then,” Spinner
said, more cheerful than necessary.

Rake pulled on the lever.

The hammer fell, crushing her leg.

Cielo screamed.

Before the tears streamed down her cheeks and
darkness enveloped her, images flashed through her mind.

* * *

It was happening again. Cielo didn’t remember
the exact moment when she had been abducted, but being bound and
gagged was too much of a familiar feeling. Her wrists and ankles
itched from the rope that held them tied together. The cloth shoved
in her mouth had the faint smelled of gasoline and prevented any
sound from coming out. No surprise there. These people feared her,
as they should. They had also put a bag over her head, either to
keep the destination secret or wrongly assuming she could do
special things with her eyes, too. It wouldn’t be the first time
this happened, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

She wiggled, testing her restraints, and only
succeeded in banging her head against the wall. That would leave a
nice bump. She hadn’t had one in a while as Spinner kept berating
her about the audience preferring singers who looked more like
ladies rather than hooligans. She’d been more careful lately,
although it was hard to be a lady at only fourteen. The lack of
screams to keep still and customary kicks to make sure she did,
plus the vibration of the dusty floor, showed that her captors
didn’t think much of her either since they had locked her in the
trunk. A poor man’s car given the smell of gasoline—most cars ran
on electricity these days.

Not taking her to the town then, but to one
of the farms in the area most likely. The good news was it
shouldn’t be too hard to escape. The bad news, however, made her
squeeze her body into a tight ball. She didn’t speak their
language, so she couldn’t give them a fair warning. There would be
casualties, and that was her fault. When you sang in front of
thousands of people whose presence you could only guess in the
bleachers, it was impossible to alter the melody to fit everyone’s
psyche. For some, it would be too much, and after listening to her
for several nights in a row, something inside them would snap.
Cielo loathed those people who thought they could own her like she
was an old patephone record. They didn’t deserve to die,
though.

Blind, but not deaf, she braced herself for
the impact when the car came to a halt and the engine died, taking
away all signs of movement. Seconds passed until someone opened the
trunk. Fresh air rushed in, smelling of reaped fields, baked bread,
and manure, along with weak rays of light that managed to pass
through the rough cloth wrapped around her head, disorienting her
even more.

Strong hands grabbed her, and Cielo thanked
heaven or whoever was up there for being small and light enough to
be carried by a single person. The grip was tight and uncaring,
typically male, as she bounced in his stride. The squeak of a door
and two more steps passed before she was lowered to a chair. They
didn’t bother to tie her to it. She wobbled, and someone pushed her
against the backrest and held her there until her head cleared
enough to find her balance. The same man? She couldn’t tell.

The whispers turned into hushed voices, at
least five people roaming around her, one possibly a woman. The
dialect made the words come out in a harsh voice no matter who was
speaking. She didn’t understand what they said, so she used her
other senses. Fresh hay and animals huffing. A barn?

Someone removed the bag from her head,
pulling off a few strands of hair in the process. Cielo winced and
narrowed her eyes to adjust to the bright light coming from the top
of a wooden beam. She was in a barn all right. A rusty harvester
waited, parked in the farthest end. Four men stood in front of her,
dressed in overalls, with rifles in their hands. This was what all
that shuffle had been about. They didn’t want to make a mess if
things got out of hand. Not good. For them.

The men parted to make room for the woman. A
scarf covered most of her hair, and with the way she held her head
low, it was hard to take a good look at her face. What caught
Cielo’s attention was the bundle in the woman’s arms.
Oh no, not
one of those.
She had been mistaken for a healer before. Minor
illnesses and deficiencies didn’t count because there were
prosthetics available for just about anything, but terminally ill
patients still appeared here and there. It was hard to convince
them she couldn’t help them. It was harder when she didn’t speak
their language, but the circus travelled all over Europe, and she
couldn’t learn all of the languages for one week spent in each town
in case some of the locals were desperate enough to pull a stunt
like this.

The woman must have been one of those, but
she also had hope in the lines surrounding her tired eyes when she
showed Cielo the baby. The skin on the small hand holding onto the
blue-checkered blanket had a green tinge and the crusts had already
started to appear, spread like freckles along the bare arm. It
reminded Cielo of the affliction that plagued Big Dino. She didn’t
know much about it—people stared at first sight, they didn’t dare
to ask questions—but she was certain that while the baby wouldn’t
die, it was also incurable. Otherwise, Big Dino would have gotten
rid of it long ago and stopped being the big circus freak aside
from being the circus owner. But how could she explain that to
them
?

“Cursed,” the woman said.

Yes, cursed, if he didn’t develop a
personality strong enough to carry the physical signs of the
disease with dignity. Had Big Dino also been a toddler with green
skin and the look of a toad? Cielo couldn’t help but wonder.

“Please…” As limited as her vocabulary was,
the woman made herself clearly understood.

Cielo shook her head. They hadn’t removed the
gag so she couldn’t speak, though she didn’t know what she could
have said.

The man standing near the woman gave the
signal with a brisk wave of hand, and Cielo stared at the four gun
barrels aimed at her. Her eyes opened a little wider. Did they
think she could perform miracles only with the power of her mind?
Apparently they didn’t. The man who seemed to be the leader leaned
forward and pulled down the gag.

“Sing.” The woman offered her a hopeful
smile.

Cielo licked her lips. “I can’t … I can’t
heal him…”

But they didn’t understand. Or they didn’t
want to. One of the hardest things was to give up hope because then
you had nothing left. Cielo perfectly understood that. She also
knew how this unfortunate meeting was going to end. Better finish
it sooner, before Rake and Spinner found her. Her punishment was
kinder than their knives and hammer-like fists.

When the woman repeated her plea in a
whisper, Cielo nodded.

She opened her mouth and sang. The rifles
trembled in the men’s hands. They didn’t notice. All their eyes
were on her. They also didn’t notice when the barrels rose, aiming
at each other. The singing went higher up a note.

They fired.

Left alone standing, the woman screamed,
cried, and cursed her, all this time cradling the baby against her
chest. Since she wasn’t armed, Cielo had planned on letting her go,
but things rarely worked as planned.

The woman bent to pick up a rifle lying by
her foot.

Later Cielo would tell herself she’d had no
choice. Of course, there was always a choice. She could die or …
She altered her tune.

Before she could reach for the rifle, the
woman stumbled backward. Her arms waved, nearly dropping the baby,
horror painted on her face.

She could have made the woman run for the
still-open door, but there was a chance she would alert someone.
Cielo didn’t want to be found there when the massacre was
discovered. It wouldn’t end well. She made the woman slam against a
distant wall, hidden in the darkness. A blow to the head would keep
her unconscious long enough for her to escape.

The woman sagged against the wall, still
holding onto the baby who, woken up by the commotion, began to
cry.

Cielo jumped to her feet in an instant. With
her hands and ankles still bound, she stumbled towards the
harvester, her eyes repeatedly darting towards the door. The
machine’s blades were hard to reach, but at the expense of several
shallow cuts, she managed to free herself.

It was time to run. Being in the middle of
the night and away from the town, she had a long walk ahead of
her.

On her way to the door, she stopped to check
on the woman. She hadn’t seen the tools that hung on the wall. Some
of them were sharp and twisted, a real hazard for those who didn’t
know they were there. Maybe the woman had known, but what good had
it done for her anyway? The metal had still pierced her back in at
least two places, and blood stained the front of her shirt. She
wasn’t breathing.

Cielo picked up the baby from her arms and
laid him down on a bale of hay. She considered taking him with her,
rescuing him from the mad family, but only briefly. While he would
have found a good place at the circus, Cielo’s experience was
anything but good when it came to taking children away from their
home. Without glancing back at the bloodied bodies, she walked out
into the night.

By the time Rake and Spinner found her,
striding along the side of the road and guided only by the distant
city lights, she’d long wiped the tears from her cheeks.

* * *

The pain stirred in her thigh when she woke
up. It wasn’t too bad, certainly not worth screaming or even
whining about, less than a bump on the head, and at least it didn’t
make her mind hazy. All in all, she assumed the procedure had gone
well since she woke up alone in the back compartment of the car.
Only clients who required complicated procedures and privacy were
received here. There were no clients around because they were
already moving, heading east for their summer tour.

The sound of the wheels rolling on the old
railway tracks and the faint huff of the engine gave her comfort.
They had probably started it the moment the metal plates had been
put in place, before even closing her up. They couldn’t stay in
that town any longer, not after what she had done. Hopefully, it
would all turn into a rumor by the time they came back. It didn’t
have to be sooner than a couple of years. There were lots of ways
to cross Europe. They didn’t have to stop in the same towns each
time.

Sighing, Cielo leaned her head back and
stared at the empty ceiling, expecting to be trapped in that chair
for a few more days until the incision healed. Big Dino had
insisted they do it the old way—no speedy recovery treatments. If
she were ever tempted to reveal her identity in the future, he
wanted her to remember what she had been willing to give up and
what it had cost her. He wanted her to remember the pain, hence the
hammer. Of course, Rake and Spinner cheated and gave her drugs to
keep her numb as long as possible. As technicians, inventors, and
sometimes healers, they didn’t care for torturing a child. Cielo
was quite happy with their services.

It was Rake’s turn to check on her that
morning, so she made sure to compose a serene face when he came in.
The floor screeched under his weight. With all that metal inside,
the knife throwers must have weighed a ton each.

“Slept well?” he asked, going straight to the
monitors.

“Not bad,” Cielo said.

“Bad dreams, huh?” He threw her a glance over
the shoulder, eyes returning quickly to the readings.

Cielo shrugged, not surprised that he knew.
They had walked back with her to the barn that night and taken care
of the bodies. The cleaning up part was just as bad as the killing,
only that it was … well, cleaner. The knife throwers didn’t seem to
mind, but then again, they had more experience with dead bodies
than she did.

“They won’t stop,” Rake said, and Cielo
struggled to focus on his words. “But you’ll get used to them. It
will get easier.”

Cielo doubted it despite being used to the
dreams already. It didn’t look like the adults knew any better,
more insurance that she’d done the right thing.

Unlike Spinner, Rake didn’t fuss around the
monitors. He brought over the scanner and positioned it near her
leg. “Let’s see how it looks. Try not to move.”

He pressed a switch and the contraption that
kept her leg in place opened, revealing pink skin and a scar so
thin, it was barely visible.

“It will look even better in a few more
days,” Rake said.

It didn’t matter. It wasn’t like she was
going to show off her legs, not after this.

Rake moved the scanner right on top of her
thigh. He turned it on and nodded at the largest monitor for her to
watch. The screen blinked, replacing the command system with the
X-ray image of her thigh. No, that wasn’t right.

Cielo tilted her head. There should have been
a human femur with a clean cut where the two centimeters of bone
had been removed and metal plates were holding the two pieces
together. Instead, the image showed a long metal piece shaped like
a femur. She’d seen similar images before when Rake and Spinner
were fixing their arms after the tent had collapsed. Their
prosthetics were more complex, with tons of add-ons, but followed
the same basic principles.