Doll and I only barely managed to fix my costume in time, leaving it stiff and annoyingly damp against my skin. I shivered, cool wind flattening the fabric against me, and wrapped my arms around myself. Arranged in a loose semicircle around Joker, Dagger, and Beast, the circus waited.
"Alright, I know there's been a bit of…uproar…today," Joker began, "but we can't miss this performance. A lot of the nobles are supposed to be coming, and we have to give our best show. Does everyone know the order we go on in?" There was a ripple of mixed answers around the circle. "Jumbo starts off the show. Then we have myself, then Dagger, then tightropes and trapeze, and then Snake and Beast. Got it? Good. Any questions?" There was silence. "Then let's do it." The group shattered, leaving me trembling, alone, in the growing dark.
The wind was blowing back away from me, so I was startled to feel a whisper of breath across my neck. Jumping, I turned to face Doll, who smiled and put her arm around me, white roses fairly glowing in the dim moonlight. I went taut.
"Calm down," she said soothingly. "You look freezing. I should have remembered snakes are cold-blooded." I flinched at that, but tried to relax. "Why are you so jumpy, anyways? No one here's going to hurt you."
"They would have where we were before. It's habit. Says Dan." The speaker slid up across my chest and poked his head out my collar.
"You know I hate how you do that. I told you, I know you can talk, yourself, if you want to."
"We're used to it. Says Wilde. You should learn. Says Goethe."
"Don't pin that on me! If you're too afraid of us to let us know what you're thinking, then it's not my fault." She let go of me and stormed away. I curled back in on myself, already wishing again for the warmth she provided.
After a quarter hour of cold and self pity, I decided to go watch the show. Most of the performers were gathered around one stage entrance, listening in on the jabber of the crowd as the watchers filed in. I pushed through them and went to stand just inside, below one of the rings of bleachers. The tent was full of a sourceless, warm light, and the heat of that and of a hundred bodies packed together was welcome. I trembled, trying to shudder warmth back into my limbs.
All of a sudden, the firelights went out, hurtling the space into oily blackness. The chatter hushed immediately. With a roar, a pillar of fire flashed up from the center of the ring, illuminating the watchful faces of the spectators. It died away with seemingly unnatural languor, leaving the room once again in pitch darkness.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the show began with a shout from Joker in the center of the stage, and then continued with Dagger's, from somewhere across the ring.
"Boys and girls," and then that voice was silent and Doll's clear soprano resumed the introduction from somewhere high in the ropes.
"Welcome to the Noah's Ark Circus!" A cheer rose up, and then softened as the flickering oil lamps came back to life, revealing a selection of members posed across the stage. Doll seemed to hover on the tightrope platform far above the audience. Across from her, Peter held the trapeze bar with Wendy already hanging from it by her knees. Miles below, or so it seemed, Dagger stood poised, one arm back, a glintingly sharp knife in his hand. One of Beast's tigers sat regally by the edge of the ring, immediately drawing all attention. Curled into the classic striking pose, Wordsworth lashed out towards the other semicircle of spectators.
In the very center of it all stood Joker, colored globes in one hand and the other stretched up into the air. Suddenly, the whole thing came to life. Wendy swung across the open air in one direction as Doll sprinted by from another. The tiger roared. Wordsworth hissed and spat. And then they were all gone except Joker, leaving Dagger's knife still quivering, buried to the handle in a wooden target.
The juggling balls began to spin through the air faster and faster, until the colors merged into a single blur. I stared appreciatively. You could hardly tell he was missing an arm.
Acts merged into each other seamlessly in practice, so that there was scarcely time to realize one had ended before another began. I crossed my fingers that the performance could go so well. The whips of fire from Jumbo's act had smoothly transitioned into Joker's juggling, and as he bowed himself offstage I could already see Dagger flitting around the edges, next to unnoticeable, arranging his props.
His or Beast's was the most dramatic act of all, and I was hard pressed to decide which. The silver streaks of blades seemingly hanging in midair drew gasps from the crowd, and left even me figuratively on the edge of my seat for the finale. The classic knife thrower's act, it brought Doll up to center stage against a target slashed by dozens of knife marks. Dagger tied her up against it and blindfolded her, leaving one arm free to wave and glitter at the audience, who edged forwards nervously.
Moments later, the whole board trembled as a barrage of knives slammed into it, perfectly outlining Doll's body in sparkling points. She stepped away from it, to oohs and ahs from the watchers. The daggers had come so close to her skin that they'd sliced apart the ropes binding her there and pinned one of the roses on her headdress flat onto the board, but only a few people seemed to realize how near the knives had actually been. I was close enough to smell the blood leaking from a crimson slash along her neck, leaving a tiny rust stain on the wood, and I knew Dagger saw it, because he flushed and his eyes went wide. With apparent effort, he resumed his normal expression, bowed, and darted offstage.
Without removing the blindfold, Doll twirled across the stage, smiling all the while, until she reached the ladder. I saw her lips moving as she ascended. So that was how she kept track; I'd seen this act a few times before but had never realized she counted the steps and rungs to keep her place. Finally reaching the top, she perched on the precariously narrow platform, grin still spread across her face. I watched one toe reach out to the side, feeling for the cobweb thin line. Locating it, she turned, arms spread, and began to walk, adjusting back and forth without ever taking off her blindfold.
Finally reaching the other end, when the audience had long since consigned her to sure death, she untied the cloth from around her face, tossing it down to the ground below. The roses hid one side of her face, doing an admirable job of concealing the scars that disfigured it.
Back and forth, the spectators' eyes went, as she jumped and spun her way along the almost invisible rope. I watched in awe and horror, gasping along with the rest when she seemed to lose her footing for a moment and then sighing when she regained it. For tonight, I decided, I could put away my emotionless cover. You have to smile when you're onstage.
Doll skittered down the ladder and ran offstage, stopping just to curtsy to the watchers and then duck down to retrieve the blindfold. She was trembling as she dashed past me, and as soon as she got outside I saw one hand fly to her neck and the other to another, deeper, cut along her side. I followed her outside, realizing as I did so that I should probably get ready for my act. Wordsworth had returned sometime during the previous performances, startling me with his cool metallic presence coiled around my ankle.
I joined the other performers in the entrance room between stage and outside. Doll was sitting on a table by one wall, with Wendy bustling around, hands full of bandages and salves that she'd always sworn would heal anything. Dagger was sitting opposite her, head in his hands. Joker knelt next to him, muttering something I couldn't hear. As I watched, he reached out and tucked a strand of hair back behind Dagger's ear, the tiny unexpected gesture making me jump. I looked away.
Soon enough, the cheers came, signaling the ending of the trapeze act, and I moved quietly onstage, setting up my chair in the middle of the stage and allowing Goethe and Keats to slip out my sleeves and spiral around the arms. Far above, Wendy and Peter flew through the air, keeping the audience's attention off me for long enough to get set up. I sat down, and waited a seeming eternity for the thud as they dropped into the safety net, and then the patter as they shot offstage. In an instant, everyone's eyes were on me.
Green filters dropped across the now fast-darkening lamps, turning the welcoming warmth of their light into something strange, something alien. I felt the whispers rush through the crowd, knowing what I looked like under the ivy light, and the answer wasn't human. I reached down slowly, consciously letting all the humanity in my movements drop away, and picked up the wooden flute lying by my feet. Beginning gently, and then speeding up, I began to play an eerie tune, one I'd memorized dozens of performances ago. Above my head, Keats and Goethe rolled smoothly through their symmetrical dance, forming intricate curves and rosettes, turning the simple oak chair into a serpentine throne.
At a simple command, one the audience would hardly bother to see, Emily and Wilde slithered out my collar, showing off their delicately patterned scales as they coiled down my arms and then up and around the flute, almost making the tune stumble as they wove between my fingers. With them, the plain instrument became an elegant caduceus, and I a king.
So focused on the dancing snakes were the watchers that they never noticed Dan, Wordsworth and Oscar dropping stealthily from their places around my ankles and swirling off across the barren plain of packed dirt. Soon, though, the light caught on their scales, and my spectators turned their eyes to the serpents etching patterns into the dirt with sweeps of their tails. I murmured a command in snaketongue, softly so that none but my partners would hear. Agonizingly slowly, the paths the scratched formed themselves into neat, cursive letters. "Enjoying yourselves?" I could almost hear the silence, so deep it was, before cries of astonishment and then a resounding "yes!" burst from the audience. Wide swathes of dust erased the words as I hissed new instructions.
As they worked, I resumed the music that had died out as I commanded them. Goethe, Keats, Emily, and Wilde began their silent dance again, twining down around the legs of the chair and across the floor to continue writing. I murmured an order, smirking. This was my favorite part.
Emily left the ring without a fanfare, sliding up into the stands unnoticed. I glanced around at the audience, selecting a target. An old, refined gentleman far up back caught my eye. He'd be easily visible to almost everyone, and the nobles' reactions were always the best. At another quick word, Emily approached the man, who remained oblivious. That is, until she crawled up behind him and across his shoulders.
The man stood bolt upright, whitefaced and trembling. I heard a most undignified squeak from him. The rest of the watchers took a moment to register what was happening, and then seemed torn between laughter at the terrified man and screams of their own. Most settled on snickering. The snake coiled up and around his neck, making a glistening green collar that he shrank away from, whimpering.
Across the floor, the snakes had spelled out an invitation for the man to come down to the ring. He obeyed, nearly paralyzed. Emily curled closer to him, making him wince as he came closer to me. I extended a hand to retrieve the serpent, who rather reluctantly spiraled up my arm and around my throat, the same way she had to the man. He flinched when he saw it, or possibly it was the scales decorating my face; I wasn't sure. I bowed, and Emily ducked her head. "Go on, take a bow," I muttered to the man, omitting the "says Emily". Warily, he bent stiffly at the waist and then bolted away from me.
Meanwhile, the other snakes had finished their current project, an enormous portrait of the whole cast that we'd spent ages perfecting. I left while the audience was distracted, listening to the confusion of cheering. The serpents shot out the door. I collected them, happy to hear the applause. "Come on, let's go watch," Emily suggested enthusiastically.
I followed her lead back into the entrance tent, peering through the crack in the curtains to watch. There wasn't much to watch, as the lights were still out. As I stared, not without anticipation, they dawned back to their ordinary brilliance, revealing a silent tableau of Beast and her tigers.
I wondered if Beast could speak with her tigers the same way I spoke with my snakes. Her control over them seemed so absolute, so precise; I'd often thought she had to. And yet, I didn't think she could. To be so cruel to those whose lives you shared so closely was unimaginable.
The tigers' amber fur shimmered under the stage lights, now returned to their ordinary gold, as they padded carefully around the figures in my drawing. It remained intact through their entire performance, save a delicate paw print placed carefully on Beast's cheek, drawing a laugh from the watchers.
After an eternity, during which the snakes had become increasingly bored and begun twitching around me, she finally curtsied her way out into our crowd to wild applause. The lights went out, throwing the room into suffocating black once more. "Go!" someone called quietly, I wasn't sure who, and we flooded out the path onto the stage into our positions. We knew them all by heart, for it was the same vignette we ended each show with. I waited until I'd heard the ladder creak as Doll bolted up it, and then scrambled halfway up, snakes coiling onto the rungs around me. As the lights returned for the last time that night, I smiled, filled with pleasure that the show had gone so well.
After a thousand rounds of applause, the spectators finally began to leave. We waited until they were gone, and then sprang out of our positions. I collected the snakes and walked outside, for once grateful for the chill of nighttime. Doll walked by without meeting my eyes, costume still slightly bloodstained, and I wondered how long she would be mad at me.
Performances are tiring. You never realize it when you're onstage, with the lights and audience and adrenaline. It hits afterwards, like a ton of rock, so all you want to do is fall asleep and never wake up. Except for the knowledge that there will be another show tomorrow night, and then the next day, and the next, with hardly a break to change locations. Those thoughts can keep you going through anything, because the stage is addictive and the habit's impossible to break.
For the whole of the afternoon and evening, I had forgotten my upset in the morning. Then it all came back, in a wave that nearly swamped me. Freak. That was all I was. I wasn't the one who got all the applause; hell, they hardly noticed me leave. No, I was the creature to be pointed and whispered at, to later tell stories of to friends and relatives. Half snake and half human. Animal. The words repeated themselves incessantly through my head, winding like the steady chant of an old pipe organ, until I was ready to start screaming just so I wouldn't have to hear them anymore.
I sat down on my bed and rolled over, burying my face in the pillow. A familiarly serpentine body slithered across my back and up my neck, accompanied by a quiet voice. "You know you're worth more than that," Emily hissed.
"Worth? What am I now, goods to be bought and sold? Not even animal?" I refused to raise my head, concealing the hot tears I was ashamed to feel leaking from my eyes.
"If you don't want to feel better, then I won't try," she said, and went silent. I immediately regretted my anger.
"I'm sorry," I managed to say through a mouthful of fabric.
"Accepted," Emily responded, curling up on the sheets next to me. "Now get outside for a while. I don't want you to kill yourself or something because you felt too sorry for yourself to do anything." I hesitated. "Just go. Leave me alone." She yawned, if it were possible for snakes to yawn, and turned her head away from me.
Sensing a dismissal, I left.
Evening is ridiculously cold to a serpent. Stepping out of the stifling heat of a circus tent it may be pleasant, but under no other circumstances. I stretched again, already shivering in the wind, and turned aimlessly around, trying to figure out what I was going to do.
Voices close by caught my attention. Dagger and Doll, still costumed, were facing each other across an alleyway between tents. I moved towards them, trying to catch their conversation.
"Dagger, what's wrong?" Doll asked, stepping closer to him.
"Nothing," he said stubbornly.
"We've done that act for years and you've never hurt me before. I know something's up."
"It's none of your business!"
"I think it might be. If you're going to stab me every time we do that then I'm not being your target anymore." She folded her arms.
"It won't happen again. Look, I know, and I'm sorry, but…" He stopped, turning pink.
"But what?"
"But I'm not telling you. Let well enough alone."
"No."
His voice dropped to what would have been a roar if it hadn't been a whisper. "Doll! Leave be."
"Fine, then. But I'm not doing that again without an explanation," she said, shooting a glare at him and stalking away. He didn't appear to notice.
I hurried after Doll, catching up with her just as she reached her room. "What was that about?" I asked, and then added, "Says Goethe." She didn't have to know there was no one else with me.
"Nothing," she said angrily, and vanished inside the tent. I turned back towards where Dagger had been, and found him absent.
His tent was a dozen yards or so further down the alley. I walked towards it, thinking about the argument I had just witnessed. Doll understandably wanted to know why he'd hurt her. But why was he being so reticent?
There was only one person in the tent when I reached it, and it wasn't Dagger. Rachel sat in a back corner of the room, buried in a thick book. A lamp glowed softly behind her, casting just enough light for me to make out the title. The Arabian Nights.
"Hello," I said, not wanting to disturb her. She looked up, eyes widening briefly before she registered my identity.
"Oh. It's you," she said. "What do you want?"
"Has Dagger been here tonight?"
"No. Why?"
"I want to talk to him. See you tomorrow." I left more confused than when I entered.
Beast's tent was right next to his. I steeled myself to enter the combative, irritating woman's domain.
"What do you want?" she demanded immediately.
"Do you know where Dagger is?" She looked surprised.
"…no," she said at last, looking away.
"You're lying," I said flatly. "He was here just a few minutes ago. I can smell him."
"Yes, he was here, but I don't know where he went!" she confessed, still not meeting my eyes. I wondered what she was trying to hide.
"You're lying again," I whispered. "I'll find him myself, then."
"As you like. Just get the hell out of my tent."
Author's Note: Shounen ai begins in a few paragraphs. Go ahead and skip down to the bottom if you don't want to read it.
I was glad to be out. Her thick perfume and the heat from several lamps she had set up were almost unbearable. There were only a few other places Dagger could be. My tent was unlikely; we were friends, but he had no reason to be there. Wendy and Peter's was equally doubtful. Doll lived in the second tier tents, where he would probably not be, and Jumbo's room was also improbable. That left…
"Joker," I hissed, and set off. The flaps on his tent were tied shut when I reached it, and in retrospect I probably should have left him alone, but I ignored that and entered anyways.
The cool night air went suddenly, oppressively hot. I froze as my brain registered what my eyes had been watching for several seconds. Two figures stood intertwined in the center of the tent, quite obviously kissing. One's hand slid down the other's back, and then, to my shock, further down. I coughed loudly, face flaming. One of the room's occupants tilted his head up, eyes still shut. "Leave us alone, Beast," he muttered, not opening his eyes. "Can't you see we're busy?"
"It's me. Snake," I said quietly, and the spell shattered. The figures leapt apart. Joker's shirt hung open, revealing a lattice of scars across his ribcage. A furiously blushing Dagger looked everywhere but at me.
"Oh," we all said as one. I took a step back.
"I'll just…be going now," I choked out. Dagger grinned a familiar grin, flush fading, and looped his arm lazily around Joker's waist. Joker looked at him sternly and stepped slightly away.
"Don't leave. I wanted to talk to you," he said. "Dagger, give us a few minutes? I have something to ask him. We'll resume where we left off." He winked. Heat rose in my face.
"You're sure he won't tell?" Dagger asked suspiciously.
"I helped Snake out with something a while ago, something I'm quite sure he wants kept between us, and was never compensated." A half smile formed across Joker's face. "I'll take silence as payment."
"You can't blackmail me!" I spluttered.
"Watch us," Dagger said cockily. He kissed the redhead on the cheek and left.
Author's Note: Oops. Poor Snake didn't need to see that. And I cry your pardon for the lateness; the universe conspired against me. So, for those of you who skipped that last bit, Snake walks in on Joker and Dagger kissing. He's about to leave when Joker tells him that they need to talk about something. Because I'm such a nice person, I'm leaving you with this lovely cliffhanger. What's Joker going to ask? And what favor does Snake owe him? Also, I am terribly sorry for any out of character bits and for the probably chronologically inaccurate profanity. Turns out people didn't swear much in Victorian England, and yes, I researched this. The next chapter will probably be very innuendoful but with nothing explicit. Author out.