"My, my, Tila, look at the newest chit of the circus," she said, licking her lips and glancing at her friend. "Doesn't he just look good enough to eat?"
Tila laughed, looked me up and down. I squirmed under her gaze. "That he does, Sal. My, the poor lad's blushing! Look at how he looks at us. It's as if he's never tapped a pair of cupid's kettle drums before." She laughed and cupped her clothed chest. I swallowed hard.
"Dear, we're not that frightening, are we?" Sal said, running a finger along my arm. I startled at her touch.
"You eating or not?" the cook said. I had not noticed we had reached the front of the queue. Sal and Tila tittered again. My face could not possibly have been any redder.
I held out my bowl. The cook looked me up and down and gave me one solitary spoon of porridge and a lopsided fried egg. The others had received far more. I was too afraid to open my mouth. I could hear the cook chortling as I went to my seat by Arik and Aenea.
"You'll grow thin if you don't ask him to give you more food," Arik said by way of greeting. "And you've not much to spare. He does that to all of the new babies."
"Oh," I said, feeling stupid. I wondered if they had seen the two women teasing me.
"Your thin skin will have to thicken," Aenea warned.
"My skin isn't thin," I said, aware of how defensive I sounded.
She laughed. "We'll find out if you go home in the next month, I suppose."
"Don't have a home to go to," I said, trying not to sound too sullen.
"Then you'll go somewhere else."
"Why does my skin have to thicken?"
"We're a close-knit group in the circus," Arik said. "We're playing a joke on the world. Outsiders aren't in on the joke, and soon you'll start to see them differently, if you stay." The conditional hung in the air like an accusation.
"And so now, to the circus, you're still an outsider. You're still one of the 'normals'. You're going to have to prove yourself to all of them. Until then, they'll have nothing to do with you if they can avoid it. They may even be cruel to you. Don't take it personal, work hard, and you'll become one of us," Arik continued.
I looked around at the circus. A few people would glance at me every now and again and then pretend that they had not. They must all view me as a spoiled, skinny little rich boy who had run away. They all, even Aenea and Arik to some extent, expected me to return home. I ground my teeth together. I would prove them wrong.
"Tell me about the people of the circus, please," I said instead. "So that I don't make too much of a fool of myself."
Arik's eyes twinkled. "The workers will always hate you, and so I would not bother too much with them. Rag is the self-styled leader. He's the man over there with no teeth. His name describes him. He's, to be frank, a shitrag."
I was shocked into a laugh. "Noted."
"Workers don't mix with performers. This is part of your trouble. You're going to start out as a worker, so the performers will look down on you, but you're aiming to be a performer, and so the workers will hate you. You can't win, so don't try."
I nodded, my gut twisting with nerves and making my lone spoonful of porridge and egg look even more unappetizing.
Arik gestured to Aenea, and she took over. I had the feeling that they had gone through similar inductions with other new members of the circus. "Don't try with the Kymri tumblers, either. Most of them can barely speak a word or two of Elladan, and they prefer to interact with just each other, for the most part. Sayid there is an exception. He's a nice fellow and most of us can understand him." She pointed the man on the far right, who had a wide smile and thick black hair tied into a queue.
"In time, you'll probably become friendly with the contortionists, Dot and Mara. They're both sweet, though Mara loves the sound of her own voice, and Dot thinks it's charming to still speak like a child." Dot and Mara were both painfully thin, with pinched faces. Both had blonde hair – Mara's was long and coiled atop her head, and Dot's was short and spiky, almost like a man's. They had the same amount of food in their bowls as I did, I noted sourly.
"And them?" I asked, tilting my chin at the two women who had teased me in the breakfast queue.
Aenea's face tightened. "They're Sal and Tila. The
dancers."
They were two of the most animated of the circus that morning, joking and nudging each other with elbows as they ate. Sal caught my eye again. She winked and stuck out her tongue, wriggling the tip. They both erupted into chuckles.
"You should stay away from them, Micah," Aenea said. "They're nice enough girls, but they're bobtails and that's a fact. They've gotten many a circus member into trouble." She would not elaborate on what sort of trouble. "I'm sure you'll be able to find nicer girls." I was not sure if she was teasing me or flirting. Not sure how to respond, I smiled shyly, which I felt would soon be my trademark. I had never had a girl flirt with me, or many boys for that matter. And did I want a girl to flirt with me? My head wasn't sure.
"What of the clowns?" I asked, looking at the clowns, who had not yet changed into their motley, so I only recognized Drystan by his tousled near-white hair.
"The clowns are a mixed bag," Arik said. "I quite like Iano, Rian, and Drystan; they're the blue, green, and white. But the red and yellow, Jive and Fedir, are total tossers."
"So the earthy colors are alright, and the bright colors are not."
They both chuckled. "Yes. Should be easy to remember," Aenea said, nudging my shoulder. I blinked, focusing again on my plate.
"Who else to introduce?" Arik said.
"The freaks, animal trainers, and management."
"Oh yes," Arik continued "Madame Limond, the woman with the extra pair of legs, and Bethany, the quasibearded woman, are good folk. They'll probably warm to you fairly soon. Bethany especially hates the 'harrowing' of new recruits, as she calls it. You can call on her if you're in a pickle."
"Good to know."
"Nina, the snake charmer and sometimes our psychic, is good, though she can be a little…" Arik made a woozy face and twirled an index finger by his ear. "Juliet, the Leopard Lady, is lovely, but keeps to herself most of the time. Tauro, the bull man, is sweet but won't understand a word you're saying. Karg, the strongman, likes to read philosophy, which you wouldn't expect looking at him. Tin can be alright, but he suffers from being short – he'll be more aggressive than he needs to be, most times.
"Who else… Karla and Tym are the animal trainers. You'll work with them some, I expect. They're not too bad once you get to know them."
My head was swimming with names and professions. It would take me weeks before I'd be confident enough to address anyone by name.
"That leaves management. Always be beyond polite to Bil. He can be magnanimous when he wants, but you do
not
want to cross him. Same goes for his wife, Frit. She's not here, but if you see a scrawny woman who looks like she's just bitten into a sour plum, that'll be her. She runs the books and the circus would never have taken off the ground if not for her." Arik took the last bite of his breakfast.
"All right. I think I got that."
"We'll remind you if we have to. But of course, I'm the person in the circus you must fear the most," Aenea said, straight-faced.
"Oh?" I said.
"I'm the one you're going to curse each night before you go to bed and when you wake up each morning. I'm the taskmaster, and no animal trainer in this circus cracks a whip as cruel as mine!"
I pretended to cower and tug a forelock. "Please, have mercy."
She laughed. "No chance. Come along. Time to see what you're made of."
My own confusion only expanded as I pretended not to notice Arik's knowingly amused look at the both of us as we made our way to the big top.
Watching Aenea and Arik practice did not tempt me to sneak away from the tent and make my way home. It tempted me to run home. The morning passed slowly and painfully.
For over an hour, I stretched every muscle and ligament of my body, until I felt as if I were made of rubber. Next, I performed calisthenics, jumping in place until I was panting, squatting until my leg muscles were afire, and pressing myself to the floor until my arms shook. By the end of it, I was drenched in sweat and certain the trainers' animal tent smelled better.
Aenea and Arik could bend nearly as well as the contortionists. They stretched and flipped to warm up and, perhaps a little, to show off to me. Aenea always shot me a smug, triumphant smirk after landing from a flip or a cartwheel, chin high, arms held above her head. I would attempt to copy them, and usually fail. I would exert too little force and lose momentum mid-roll, or I would propel myself so hard that I would slide off the mat and across the rock swept free of sand, leaving my skin and my dignity shredded. I had the strength and balance to hold myself on my hands, but my legs waggled in the air like twigs in a breeze, while theirs pointed toward the top of the tent, unmoving as stone.
Their practice continued long after mine. Instead, I was handed over to the workers and given the most menial of tasks to prepare for the circus act that evening. I scrubbed stains from benches under the big top, holding my nose and trying not to think about what the foul crusts might be. The workers barked instructions at me, calling me "boy" and expecting me to know where the brooms and rags were as if I had been working there for years. By noon, I had stocked the entrance booth that Frit would man later on with rolls of tickets, and arranged the props for the show neatly in the backstage area.
At lunch, I asked the cook for a second helping of dry roast beef and vegetables. He laughed and motioned for me to move along. With hunger in my stomach and my limbs aching and trembling, I refused to move until he gave me another slice of beef. To me, it was a moment of triumph.
The relief was short-lived, however. Jive, the red clown, had been standing behind me in the queue, as I turned to leave, he stuck his foot out. I tripped and fell, my plate tumbling into the sand. I stood, wiping sand from my much-patched clothing. Jive leered at me. He was an ugly fellow, with eyes too small, mouth and teeth too big, and a crooked nose and sallow skin.
I took a deep breath and resisted a growing urge to reach out and strike him.
"Won't be much of a trapeze artist if you bumble about like that, will you, boy?" he asked.
I brushed more sand from my pants and shirt. A boy would hit him, and not even hesitate at the thought of a brawl. But the clown was much larger than me, and I had no confidence in my ability to throw a punch. He'd fight dirty. My only option was to lash out with a cutting, witty barb. But my tongue was blunt and thick in my mouth and nothing came to mind. Instead, I picked up my plate from the sand, dusted it off as well as I could, and held it out for more food. The cook gave me two helpings. Jive tried to trip me again, but I nimbly hopped over his foot, balancing the plate in my hand. His eyebrows rose and he cocked his head to the side. I nodded to him and sat down alone at table to eat my meal mostly free of sand, hoping that that would be the end of it.
After lunch, all I wanted to do was fall asleep. I had never been so exhausted, even after a day of playing in the forest with Cyril and Oswin or after an afternoon climbing scaffolding.
Instead, I was thrown to the lions.
Tym, the animal trainer, stood in front of the animal tent and said just enough to be understood.
"Karla's in town. Horse colic."
"Fetch water for Saitha."
"Bring food for the otters. Food's in the cook's tent."
I trekked to the other side of the circus, bringing back a dripping, squirming sack of frogs. I nearly dropped it more than once.
Feeding the otters quickly became one of the highlights of my day. Needle, Thimble, and Pin stayed in a shallow, collapsible metal pool. Platforms just above the water gave the otters a place to sprawl and sun themselves underneath a low-hanging glass globe. The area stank of fetid kelp, frogs, fish, and brackish seawater. The water needed changing, and I had a sinking feeling I knew just who would be doing it.
I overturned the sack and dumped the frogs into the water and watched the ensuing melee. The otters dove and twisted through the water. I was first horrified as I watched them dismember the live food. They chirped and squawked. Unable to frolic and swim in rivers and lakes or stretch and sun on riverbanks and beaches, their lives must have been boring and so unlike their wild kin, only having a brief taste of the wild at mealtime. Within moments, the pool had no more frogs, and the otters blinked contentedly at me.
When I returned for my next task, Tym was plucking pebbles out of the pads of Saitha's enormous feet. He said to her, "I tell Bil every year that this rock and sand is murderous for your feet and for the horses, but does he ever listen? No, Saitha, he doesn't." His voice was much softer and warmer than when he spoke to me.
I coughed and he glanced at me. "Meat for the cats is in the cook's tent," he said, turning back to Saitha.
I gaped at his turned back. I had just been to the cook's tent! Had he only told me that was my next task, I would not have been walking across the circus a second time for nothing.
"Will I be feeding any other animals this afternoon?" I asked, hoping the anger wasn't too clear.
"Maybe. Come back after."
And what nonsense would he have me do after that? But I knew fussing would earn me nothing, so I swallowed my pride and returned to the cook's tent and came away with a bag of almost rancid meat of indeterminable origin. I wondered if it was the same meat we had eaten at lunchtime, and my stomach churned.