Chapter 53: Truth Lies Tears and Laughter pt 1
"You people sure know how to make an entrance."
Kurt opened his eyes very slowly. He felt horrible, almost like he had on the boat across the channel, only worse. He ached everywhere, but a careful inventory told him he was intact, lying curled up on top of his coat under a large oak tree. He mustered the energy to sit up and looked around.
He had expected to see the cluster of trailers and old cars that belonged to Martuska and her family but the clearing was empty. There was no sign of anyone every having lived there. Kurt stretched and without thinking, rubbed his face. He could feel raised ridges that hadn't been there before and for a moment he was confused. Then he remembered the symbols; they were on his face now.
Kurt ran his hands over his skin more gently this time, trying to use his hands to picture in his mind what it looked like. He wasn't sure what he had expected it to be, but this was more than he had anticipated; they were everywhere, more numerous than the tattoos on Kiwi's face. Kurt could feel them on his forehead, cheeks, and chin. There were even marks along the bridge of his nose. Kurt shook his head. Had he really done this to his own face? As Martuska had promised, he couldn't remember anything. He wasn't even sure where he was.
Kurt dropped his hands from his face with a sigh and his breath caught in his throat. There were marks on them as well. Kurt stared at them, tracing one finger gently along the fine lines of scab that had formed when the cuts had been made. No wonder his face itched. Slowly Kurt pushed up his sleeves. There were markings on his arms too. And on his legs. And on his chest. They were everywhere.
Kurt was instantly horrified. Martuska had said they would represent the concealment of a lifetime of sins, past, present, and future. But there were so many. It was hard to imagine how there could be that many. From the looks of it, he wasn't going to lead a very good life. And had it worked? Was he really hidden from Azazel now?
There was no way to know of course. Only time would tell for sure.
Kurt stood up feeling slightly dizzy. He put a hand out to the thick trunk of the oak tree to steady himself as he looked around once more.
"Martuska?" Kurt meant to yell, but his voice came out as a hoarse croak, like he hadn't spoken in a very long time. How long, he wondered. How long had it been since Martuska had rendered him unconscious? He shook his head as though he could shake of the memory of Franco holding him down while he screamed for them to stop.
Kurt cleared his throat and called her name once more, but there was no answer. Martuska was gone. He was alone. Kurt sank back down to the ground and wiped hot tears away from his eyes. It seemed that even in his efforts to free himself of Azazel's influence, he was forsaken yet again. He was lost in the woods and to make things worse he was now covered with strange symbols carved directly into his skin. It was just another thing to set him apart, to make him different. Another thing for people to stare at.
Kurt shivered and he slowly pulled his coat from the ground to wrap around his shoulders. He slumped against the tree, wondering what to do. Tears that he hadn't bothered to wipe dripped onto his coat, forming beads in the wool. The dilemma he'd thought he'd had at after Franco's capture was real now. He really was lost and with no way to find either the circus or Father Dietrich. He thought about giving up, about living in the woods for the rest of his life. He was sure he'd get used to it. He'd probably even make a decent hunter, with his tail and his sharp teeth. Maybe this was his destiny, to be a weird scarred mad beast in the woods, neither animal nor man.
No.
Kurt shook his head, once again trying to physically rid his mind of an image, that of himself gone feral in these woods. That was not what he wanted. He wanted his family and his friends. He wanted to find the circus. He wanted to go home.
Kurt heaved himself to his feet and pushed his hands through the sleeves of his coat. He shouldered his rucksack and set his jaw in a grimace of determination. He would find his way out of this. He had to. But first he needed to find his way out of the woods.
An hour later Kurt dropped to his knees on the concrete, his rucksack pitching forward and dumping its topmost contents onto the road in front of him. He had been teleporting continuously since he'd found the road at the edge of the woods, following it by making a series of jumps to the horizon, each time finding a vantage point where he could see as far ahead of him as possible.
But he couldn't go on forever. He was exhausted, too tired to teleport again even as he tried to. His whole body was trembling and damp with sweat. The strange dizziness he'd felt underneath the tree was ten fold now. Kurt shut his eyes and slumped further forward so that his head was resting on the warm concrete. He lay like that for several minutes and was starting to drift off when the sound of a blaring truck horn woke him.
Kurt picked his head up, registering for the first time that he was in the middle of the road. His brain working faster than his body, Kurt slowly stood up. He could barely find the strength to stuff his few possessions back in his bag before staggering off to side of the road where he'd be hidden in the shadows of the trees. He felt the rush of wind as the truck thundered past, still blaring its horn. He was too exhausted to think about how close it'd been.
He napped in the shade, but his sleep was disturbed by strange dreams, their fleeting images already forgotten when he woke. Still, it was better than nothing and when he stepped back out on the road, he found he had enough energy to continue his journey.
It was nearly another hour before Kurt saw anything but farms. The landscape was a patchwork of fields broken up by the low stone walls and rows of poplar trees that were a staple of European agriculture. He could have been anywhere so when he saw what looked like a fenced in fairground in the distance, he changed his course.
It was only a few hops before he was standing outside the gates looking at a row of familiar posters plastered onto the wooden fence.
"Limited Engagement. Les Chansons de la Forêt. Circus Gehlhaar."
It seemed too unbelievable, but he was looking at himself, poised on the bar of a swinging trapeze in Wolfgang's familiar swirling oils, repeated over and over again. These were the posters Wolfgang had made, before they had changed the show so that he was no longer in it. Kurt looked down and saw a stack of the posters sitting loose with a rock on top of them to keep them from blowing away. With shaking hands he slid one from the pile.
Could it be that he had found his way home? Kurt dropped to his knees in a combination of fatigue and gratitude but then a horrible thought struck him. What if they had already played there? What if they were gone already? What if he'd missed his chance?
"Excusez-moi! Vous là! Que faites-vous?" A woman's voice said.
Kurt jumped to his feet and turned around only to see an old woman who screamed and then took off in the other direction, yelling in incomprehensible French.
He sighed. It was so typical, but he was too tired to care. He stared down at the poster where the dates had been written in by hand. The information was useless though since he had no idea what day it was. He would have to ask. Still looking down at the poster and fighting the urge to simply curl up on the ground and sleep, Kurt pushed open the gate to the fairground and started towards a small building that looked like an office.
Kurt had been teleporting steadily since the incident with the truck and crossing the yard seemed like a nearly impossible task. Even keeping his tail aloft was too much work so he let it drag on ground behind him as he made slow progress over the uneven ground. He was nearly there when a man burst from the building.
"What are you? What are you doing here?" The man demanded in French.
Too exhausted to speak, with shaking hands, Kurt held the poster out in front of himself like a shield, hoping the man would understand.
Wolfgang pulled the trailer to a stop inside the gate and cut the ignition. He turned to say something but Maria was out of her seat and out the door before he could open his mouth. Wolfgang sighed and gathered up his paperwork from the back before exiting out the side door to follow her.
It was obvious from Maria's stiff legged gait that she was angry and so the rest of Circus Gehlhaar cut her a wide margin, except for Wolfgang who trotted behind her calling her name.
"Maria! Maria, how long are you going to be mad at me? You've been giving me the silent treatment since Spain," he said as he caught up.
Maria stopped and turned on one heel. "Germany," she said and started walking again.
"Germany? Germany! But we're in France now?" Wolfgang said. "We won't be in Germany for another two weeks. You can't stay mad at me that long!" He trotted after her again and caught her arm. Maria yanked it out of his grasp.
"Leave me alone or it will be Italy." She said.
"We're not going to Italy."
"Exactly." Maria crossed her arms over her chest.
Wolfgang sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "Would you be less mad if I told you I was on edge because I'm worried about Kurt?" he asked.
"No, Kurt's been missing for two weeks." Maria said.
"All the more reason to be worried."
"But you only started acting like an asshole yesterday." Maria finished.
"Yesterday?" Wolfgang asked, confused. "What did I do yesterday?"
"It's not Father Dietrich's fault that Kurt got lost." Maria said.
Wolfgang threw up his hands. "Is that it? Because I got pissed at him on the phone? I thought you were angry because I was wrong about that turn you wanted to take and the one I took got us all lost."
"That too." Maria said. "If you'd looked at the map like I said instead of being all high and mighty about it. And you didn't need to pull the attitude with Father Dietrich either. It's not his fault."
"It's not?" Wolfgang asked. "Last I remembered Father Dietrich promised to look after him. I'd say that makes it his responsibility."
"What is he supposed to do?" Maria argued back. "He's a priest, not a detective."
Wolfgang threw up his hands. "How else do you expect me to find him? It's not like I can put up signs all over Europe that say 'Lost: Blue circus acrobat. Reward if found.' As if I don't have enough to do."
"Why is it always about you?" Maria started to say, but stopped abruptly as an elderly man with stooped shoulders approached them.
"Êtes-vous du cirque?" the man asked.
Maria turned to Wolfgang expectantly with arms crossed over her chest. He was the big master linguist, not her. Wolfgang nodded. "Oui. Circus Gehlhaar. Nous serons ici pour les deux semaines suivantes."
"You people sure know how to make an entrance." The man said to Wolfgang. Wolfgang looked back at their colorful trucks and laughed.
"I guess we do." He agreed. He tried to give Maria an apologetic glance as the three of them started walking towards the office for the small fairground. She looked away.
"Yes. You do. It was the craziest thing I'd ever seen. Scared the hell out of my wife." The man continued.
Wolfgang furrowed his brow. "It did? What do you mean?" he asked. Evidently the man wasn't talking about their trucks.
"I've never seen anything like it, except on your posters of course." Said the man. He opened the office door and ushered them inside.
"Our posters?"
By now Wolfgang was mystified. He gave a confused glance at Maria who was straining catch the gist of the conversation, their argument forgotten for the moment as she registered Wolfgang's confusion.
"Didn't say much. I think he's sick." The man said.
"What?" Wolfgang said. "What do you mean…"
"Kurt!" Maria shouted.
The office was small and homey with a small desk and a few tattered looking armchairs. Sitting in one of the chairs was a dark figure who was unmistakably Kurt Wagner. Wolfgang opened his mouth in shock.
"So he's with you?" The man said, "That's what I thought."
"We know him." Wolfgang said in a daze. How on earth had Kurt gotten to France? "He's with us," Wolfgang repeated.
Maria crossed the room and knelt down beside where Kurt was sitting. Getting over his initial shock of seeing him there, Wolfgang realized that Kurt hadn't moved or even acknowledged their arrival. He was sitting with his head down and wrapped in his old hooded coat, the same one that he had been wearing when they saw him off in Brighton except now it was tattered and mud stained. He looked terrible, like he'd been wandering around for those weeks that he'd been missing. But why Kurt would want to do that, he didn't know.
"Kurt? Kurt, are you alright?" Wolfgang asked as he took up a spot besides Maria. Up close he could see that Kurt was shaking, his eyes half closed, and it reminded him of how Kurt had looked after teleporting with him for the first time. But there was something else too. The fine fur that covered Kurt's skin was matted with blood. At first Wolfgang thought that Kurt had scratched himself like on tree branches, but on closer inspection he could see fine lines had been cut into his skin. They were symmetrical, deliberate.
"What happened to you?" Wolfgang asked, tentatively reaching out a hand to trace the lines along Kurt's cheek.
Kurt opened his eyes slowly, looking at them feverishly, without a spark of recognition. "I'm early," he said, "but the circus is coming."
"Yeah, we're here, Kurt." Wolfgang said. His voice softer as he pushed a lock of stray hair away from Kurt's face. "The circus is here." He looked over at Maria who had taken one of Kurt's trembling hands in her own. She returned Wolfgang's glance, echoing the same confusion he felt. What was Kurt doing here? And moreover, what had happened to him?
"He must have teleported here. I think it's hard for him sometimes, takes him a while to recover, like if he goes a long distance or takes something heavy with him." Wolfgang said to Maria, ignoring the elderly couple behind him. Hopefully they didn't speak German.
"What about these?" Maria asked, tracing a finger along the one of the cuts on Kurt's hand. He flinched and pulled away.
Wolfgang shook his head. "I don't know. Can you find Margali?"
Maria nodded and left quickly.
"He's been missing for two weeks." Wolfgang told the old man before turning his attention back to Kurt. He watched Kurt shut his eyes again, slumping further down into the chair, still trembling. "What's the matter Elf?" He asked Kurt in German. " Did you try to teleport too far? Who did this to you?"
"So tired," Kurt said, not bothering to lift his head.
"Hang in there okay. You can rest in your trailer." Wolfgang said.
"He showed up out of nowhere about 10 minutes ago." The man said. "Right outside the gate."
Wolfgang looked at Kurt's hands, trying to hold them in his own to keep them from shaking but he was distracted by the markings on them. They were like the ones on Kurt's face, carved into his skin all the way up his wrist and arm. Who would do such a thing? He shook his head again.
The door opened. Maria had returned with Margali. Wolfgang moved aside. He wasn't sure how Margali would react; she had been so distant with Kurt before he left Brighton. But so had he to be honest. It was like every time he saw Kurt it was a reminder of how he had let him down, he saw his friend lying bleeding in the ditch below the pier. And so he had avoided him. Looking at Kurt now made Wolfgang feel even worse. He should have done something. He should have been looking for Kurt after Father Dietrich's first call, when Kurt had only been gone for a few hours.
But he hadn't. He'd left it to Kurt to find them. And somehow, Kurt had. But at what cost?
Wolfgang turned to see that Margali was as curious about the markings that had been cut into Kurt's skin as he had been. She looked him over in silence before laying a hand on his forehead.
"You did it. You found us." She told Kurt and then turned to Wolfgang. "He's sick." She announced. "He needs to rest, that's all."
"But what about all these cuts?" Wolfgang asked, forgetting where he was, that they were being watched. "Have you even seen anything like them? Who would do such a thing?"
Margali shook her head. "They mean nothing." She said as she reached toward Kurt again.
Kurt opened his eyes. He was still so tired. What had Martuska done to him? She had said that the symbols cut into his skin would "negate" sin, but what if they affected him in other ways too. She had spoken of mystical life forces intertwining with nature, the kind of things he didn't really believe in. But what if they were real? What if she had somehow cut him off from his and now he was destined to wither away to nothing. What kind of life was that?
Kurt gasped. He wasn't sure how it was possible, but Margali was standing in front of him. She didn't know. She didn't know what he'd done, what Martuska had done.
"No!" Kurt tried to push her hand away.
Margali stepped back in surprise as Kurt jumped to his feet. He had to find Wolfgang or Christian. Margali still thought he was responsible for pushing her from The Way, still thought he'd tried to kill her, and he was in no condition to explain things. He needed to rest, to gather his strength if he could. He had to find someone who would protect him until he was ready.
Margali reached out and put her hand on Kurt's shoulder. "It's alright," she said. "You're safe."
Kurt shook his head and grabbed hold of her arm. The room was spinning worse than before, darkness closing in on the corners of his vision. He was losing consciousness, it was the same as it had been beside Martuska's fire. Margali was responsible. She had to be. Kurt struggled to stay on his feet but he knew he was swaying.
"Please don't hurt me. I can explain everything," was all he managed before consciousness left him entirely.
Amanda and Christian came through the door in time to see Kurt swoon to the floor, still grabbing on to Margali's arm.
"Dude, is that Kurt? What's he doing here?" Christian was so surprised he actually said it in English. He didn't bother to repeat himself. As far as he knew, Kurt was still in Germany, staying with Father Dietrich.
Wolfgang was kneeling on the ground with Margali, helping slide his folded up jacket under Kurt's head. It was strangely like the night he'd found Kurt under the pier, but different. This time Kurt had found them, not the other way around.
"Christian, can you bring Magali's trailer around?" Wolfgang asked as he stood up.
"What? I don't get it. What happened? How did Kurt get to France?" Christian asked.
"I'll explain everything later," Wolfgang said. He looked panicked, almost desperate. "I don't want people to see him like this."
Christian shook his head. "Explain it now," he said crossing his arms over his chest. He didn't know what to say. Wolfgang obviously knew something he didn't. Margali and Amanda were both sitting beside Kurt engaged in an intense whispered conversation that he couldn't quite hear.
Wolfgang looked back at Maria who shrugged. Then he explained to Christian the events of the last two weeks, starting with the call from Father Dietrich that Kurt had wandered off on his own on some kind of personal errand and ending with his mysterious appearance in the office of their next venue, apparently just a few minutes before the circus pulled up.
"You didn't tell us?" Christian asked in disbelief. "How could you not tell us?"
"I didn't want people to worry." Wolfgang said, running his hands through his hair to smoothing it back. "I didn't know what to say. Not while everything was up in the air."
The truth was that he was afraid of what would have happened. Traveling these last few months without him, Wolfgang had come to realize that within Kurt existed the heart and soul of Circus Gehlhaar and that they were incomplete without him. Sure, they performed each night, and the performances were jaw dropping as always, but there was a spark missing. They were going through the motions of being Circus Gehlhaar, it was a facsimile. And when Wolfgang exhausted all the possibilities, he realized that the only thing truly missing was Kurt. He wasn't sure what telling them that Kurt was off on his own lost in the wilds of Europe would do to them. He didn't know what this would do to them.
"You could have told us the truth." Christian said.
"No, I couldn't have." Wolfgang said. "What would you have done?"
"I…" Christian paused. He would have wanted to go look for him of course.
"Would you have wanted to perform?" Wolfgang asked.
"Of course not." Christian said.
"Would anyone have wanted to?"
Christian shook his head. He doubted it.
"That's why I didn't say anything. But he's back now; it doesn't matter. Please, get the van." Wolfgang said, his voice practically pleading.
"You're an asshole." Christian said, shaking his head.
"No, I'm trying to run a business. And do what's best for the circus." Wolfgang said matter-of-factly, even though in his heart he agreed with Christian. It was the kind of thing his father would have done. He was an asshole. He'd been an asshole ever since Brighton.
"Do what he says Christian."
It was Margali's voice. Christian looked down at her. She had Kurt's head cradled in her lap. He looked bad, sick, but not as bad as it had been in England. Christian looked back at Wolfgang, still not sure what to do.
"He'd be all right. Do what Wolfgang asks." Margali said. "He found his way back to us. Everything is going to be all right now."
Something about the way Margali said it Christian knew she was right. He nodded
"I'll be right back," he said.
