The caravan lurches to a stop. Light from the candle above me appears to swing crazily from side to side as my hammock swings gently. A stop means that we're in town. A town means I must set up for the evening's performance. It's a chore. There are too many books in the world to spend your life on chores.
Today's book is an odd book, an old book. It cost most of my tips from our last stop, bought from an irritating old man with a startlingly enlarged forehead. He claimed that the brain was a muscle, which is ludicrous. Sheikah are taught rhymes as toddlers to identify muscle groups, games to strengthen each for acrobatics, and the brain is nowhere in those. The book itself explains the uses and mechanics of electricity - the tame lightning of the Calatians. It is as fascinating as it is obtuse and frustrating.
"Zelda!" comes out of the flickering shadows amongst the clutter inside the caravan. I roll out of the hammock – with some difficulty – managing to replace my bookmark and deposit the book quietly on a shelf as I descend to the floor. "It's time to make camp," grandma reminds me gently, walking out of the sea of oddments, blankets, props, costumes, masks, and rigamarole of performance gear. Her feet creak on the rough wooden slats, and I wonder for the millionth time how I never hear that until she speaks.
"Already, grandmother? Don't you and Alfon need to talk to the guards? Negotiate our way in, discuss taxes?" I stand up from my ready crouch in the corner. Already my hands work the knots to take down the hammock, fingers finding their way by habit even as my eyes search grandmother's lined, brown face. She looks, as always, like an oak tree gnarled by centuries of smiling.
"Girl, we're not in Calatia yet. Maybe we're in their borders," she shrugs, "but in a town they don't know about, eh? Midoro is on no maps. You would know that if you kept half an ear on our plans! Too deep in your book! Like a tree you must reach for the sky –" at this she raises her shawl high above her head, like the wings of a bat – "while keeping your feet on the ground." The shawl flaps forward and down; the candle sputters and goes out. Grandma creaks and cackles good-naturedly along the path between the cacophony of supplies, and out through the curtained door.
I finish with my hammock in the dark, taking time to let my eyes adjust to the near darkness. It must be gloomy outside. It's always gloomy in the Foglands.
The caravan's single rafter is right above me. I can't see it, but I jump up and catch hold of it by memory. I swing once, raise my legs, and hook my knees over the beam. Once sitting on it, I push open the trap door and exit onto the roof.
The sun is shining today, so bright I can even tell where it is through the mists that always cover Calatia's southern plains, and that is not a given. My eyes drink in a veritable vista of nearly a hundred meters of town before the fog cuts it off. It's to the north, the direction we had been traveling. Midoro is a clean-cut place, all sanded wood in light colours, and roofs thatched with giant rhubarb leaves.
I've been here before, but I don't make the connection until I look south over the small field. The rest of our group's wagons slowly jostle into a circle around the periphery. I recognize the poles set up in clusters, ready to have our tents sprawled over and hung from them.
Alfon clambers up the corner post to join me. The wagon creaks and shifts alarmingly as his muscular bulk reaches the roof, and I discreetly move to stand on the opposite corner. "You look eager," he misinterprets through a thick greying mustache. "They do too," he says, gesturing into town. I turn and see he's right – already a dozen people, many of them children, are chattering their way from town to be greeted by my grandmother, who has already set up chairs.
Our first act is about to begin.
"Shall I take the air crew and you take the ground this time?" Alfon winks at me.
"I don't think I could stand to see Impa watch her son break his neck, uncle," I smile back. "Just get the rope crew ready."
Alfon's leap from the roof sends me teetering back to the middle of the cart to restore balance. He lands and rolls with a grace that is shocking for someone of his age and build, and bounces up with a grin and a flourish. Our small crowd gives a susurration of surprise.
I stretch, wait, take mental inventory. My thin leather boots are snug, laces tight and tucked, and their dark blue dye is fresh. My leggings are baggier than I like for this work, but they look right and grandma insists I'll "grow into them". That seems dubious, at age twenty, but I suppose I still look like a teenager to her. I wear my performance gear – a snug shirt of the same dark blue as my boots and trousers, sleeveless, with gold brocade in the form of the Sheikah eye on the chest. The perfect sphere of a pure white gem rests under the pupil of the eye on a homemade necklace, the only possession passed on by my mother. A wide, bright orange sash at my waist gives some contrast and allows everything else to slide around without showing the crowd some belly. The performance must look seamless, after all.
Alfon gets all the middle-agers from the wagons together, oils stuck springs on one caravan's spool of rope, has a backslapping reunion with a villager, checks canvas for tears, and generally gives the appearance of doing everything at once. He saunters back.
"Feeling limber, Zelda?" he booms, at ringmaster volume. Our crowd has grown.
"Like I could fly!" I reply. That is the other half of our starting cue. Every wagon roof is now populated with young Sheikah; they exchange nods and woops. I am silent and focused.
"Let's put that to the test!" Alfon cries, and the crowd gasps as I fling myself into the air. As I leave the roof I push into a round-off. At the apex of my leap my head is down, hand outstretched to catch the rope end Alfon has flung up to me. In that surreal moment, with the ground far above and my feet in the sunlit mists, I notice that grandma serves tea in steaming mugs and wonder how she heats it.
The second half of my leap ends with my feet on the first pole, and I'm already crouching and running it through a metal loop. Alfon madly cranks the spool to give me the slack I need for the next jump.
As my hands secure the line and yank enough through for my next jump, I make eye contact with the boy one pole to my right. He nods back. I raise my eyes heavenward for a split second, and he nods again. This exchange is a quick code; it means we will trade places on the next jump, and I will go high so as to go over him.
Our band has set themselves up by this point, and my next take-off is marked by an explosion of drums. Again, I flip forwards in the air, but this time I tuck my head and roll into a ball. I carve a tall parabola through the air to give my partner room -
All the air is knocked out of my lungs as I collide, backwards and upside down, with the boy. I am a cannonball into the taut sailcloth of his chest. I hear the unhealthy "uhhh!" of a pair of lungs trying to expel more air than they contain, and then we fall. I was faster, he is heavier, and we descend straight down to the springy earth. In desperation my feet find his shoulders, I push off, and reverse my half flip to avoid a head first plunge. He lands on his back, me on my face, the golden Sheikah eye unblinking as my chest splats into the moist turf.
The crowd laughs, the music goes on, and Alfon booms "Up and at 'em!" in an amused voice. Something along these lines happens every show. I read in a book once the phrase "the show must go on". It seemed strange to me that it needed to be said. That's what shows do. It's not like anyone was hurt. The fall was barely three meters, and no one would survive childhood if a fall like that could hurt you.
I roll to my feet and offer my incompetent partner a hand up. "Why did you jump high?" I hiss as he struggles to his feet.
"You told me to!" he whispers back fiercely.
"That's not how the code works!" I reply. He's found his feet, so I put my hands on his shoulders and jump up into a handstand. The crowd coos appreciatively, and I roll over him so we stand back to back.
"Well excuuuuse me, princess!" he mocks. I roll my eyes. I don't know where that nickname started, but it did, and it stuck. We take off running in opposite directions towards each other's poles, and scale them with the deftness of long practice.
The intricate dance of the tents gets more and more complicated as more of us fall off, collide, or get out of step. There is a pattern the Sheikah are taught as children, a technique for the efficient and orderly set up of a circus tent. It has never happened that way in our entire history. When the band's song ends several minutes later, a dozen muddy, panting performers line up to take our bow in front of a multi-coloured, misshapen boondoggle of fabric and moorings. It looks like a giant's laundry pile.
The Sheikah youth scatter; it's late afternoon, and we aren't needed again until the evening's main event. For now, our elders meet with their old friends in town and share stories to circles of villagers; our children disperse in uncontrollable glee to make new friends (and small enemies); the adults will mingle, trade, and set up. What do you get for hosting Sheikah? Free circus shows! What's the hidden cost? Teenage acrobats running over your rooftops, playing tag up and down the village walls, wrestling and throwing each other off of high places.
In truth, that's losing its appeal to me. I strongly consider going back to the caravan and picking up my book again, but there is far too much time for that when we're on the road. I opt to circumnavigate the village instead.
