“My God,” breathed Martin.
They turned, all of them, to face forward, and see what had become of The Clearing in their absence.
The fire that had been threatening to consume part of the circus had been extinguished, although patches of wood still smoked, sending delicate trails curling upward, out of the bowl, like signal flares. There were bonfires down below, set around the edges of the circus. That, too, was strange. Mr. Blackstone usually insisted they intrude as little as possible on the lives of the settlers around them, claiming that a disruptive circus was an unwelcome circus, and an unwelcome circus might as well shut its doors.
“Home,” breathed Sophia, who had last seen the circus when she was carried away in the grasp of a terrible beast—and how many others had been taken? How many had the wendigo slaughtered, while sparing only the love of Martin’s life?
Annie’s stomach was a stone. She knew what Hal had told her, that the wendigo liked to lay traps, and if they had been able to smell the reality of Sophia’s delicate condition—the babe that now grew inside her belly, unaware of the turmoil of its parents—then she must have seemed a perfect honeypot. But if they had been unaware of Sophia’s pregnancy, why had they spared her, rather than any of the others? What had made her the perfect bait to set their trap?
“Damn,” breathed Martin, who had been at the circus when she was gone, and was better prepared to see the damage with clear and open eyes. Perhaps half the wagons were smashed in to one degree or another, from broken roofs to broken axles. Even if they wanted to leave Oregon tonight, there was no possible way. Not without leaving all their supplies and many of their people behind.
Adeline said nothing, and neither did Annie. She merely hoisted her daughter a little higher on her hip and released Sophia, allowing her to move to Martin, who steadied her. Thus prepared, she began the descent down into the shallow bowl, sliding on the sides of her feet when necessary, never quite losing her balance. She felt a steadying hand against her waist once, and looked back to find Hal standing there, a grim expression on his weathered face.
We are going back to the graveyard of your dreams, she thought, and it was perfect, and it was tragic, and they continued to descend.
Someone must have seen them, and no wonder: the shadows in the bowl were once more thin and natural, betraying no trace of the wendigo, and Adeline’s pale hair and tattered gown must have shown as clearly as a candle in the fog. By the time their group had reached the bottom, a crowd had formed there, made up entirely of villagers.
“Villains!” shouted the man at the lead—the man Annie recognized as The Clearing’s mayor. He lunged before she could react, grabbing her by the wrist. “You return here, after what you’ve done? The audacity!”
There was a click behind her. The mayor froze, going pale. He did not, sadly, release her wrist.
“Unhand the lady, friend,” drawled Hal, voice cold and slow. “She didn’t do anything to you or yours, as you damn well know. Stop trying to cover your own crimes by assigning them to her.”
“She went into the wood when the moon was full! She tempted the demons in the mountain! And now she returns here with you, who would have us cosset and tend to them? You prove her villainy more than you could ever hope to deny it!”
There was another click from behind her. Annie didn’t need to turn to know that Martin was holding his rifle aimed at the mayor of The Clearing, ready to shoot the man if he didn’t let her go. That much was obvious from the way several members of the crowd raised their own guns, creating the sort of standoff that never ended well for any of the participants.
“You are aiming your weapons at two women and a child,” she said, voice clear and carrying. “If you fire now, one of us will be hit, no matter how careful you attempt to be. Please, Mr. Mayor, release me. We’ve had a trying night, and would return to our wagons now.”
“Your circus is the reason those monsters attacked us,” he spat. He didn’t let her go.
Annie frowned. “I think you and I both know that not to be true, sir. I’ve been to your forgotten town; I’ve seen what you would rather have unseen. I know things you would rather not be known. If you shoot me, those things might be forgotten, but you will pull the fury of my circus down upon your head. Are you prepared for that? You may believe yourself to be, but I think you’ll find that we can rage more brightly than you can.”
“You took her there?” The mayor let go of Annie’s wrist as if it had changed shape under his hand, becoming horrific to the touch. He turned on Hal, lip twitching in his fury. “That place is a secret and a shame. We do not take outsiders there!”
“What a pity I’m not one of you anymore, to pay attention to your rules.” Hal descended a few feet more down the hill, putting himself—and his gun—between Annie, Adeline, and the crowd. He was a comforting blockade, solid and seemingly immovable. “Let us pass, Johnson. You know you have no power here.”
“They brought the monsters down on our heads,” spat the mayor. There was no strength in his words. It had all been sapped away by the novelty of people actually standing up to him.
“Did we?” Sophia shoved her way forward until she was in front of Hal, until her nose was only inches from the mayor’s own. She was a dainty woman, soft of figure and gentle of countenance, but in that moment, she could have been Medusa, rising up from the bowels of the earth to take revenge on the men who wronged her. “I was taken by those things. You think my people called them on ourselves? I saw none of yours being snatched up and carried away. When the monsters threw me into their larder to lure my loved ones closer, there were none of your innocents there with me. Could we have counted on your kindness to send you to my rescue, while you had nothing on the line? If anyone summoned those things here to look for sustenance, it was not us!”
Her voice had grown louder and louder as she spoke, spiking at the end to a scream. In the woods above The Clearing, the wolflings howled, sending their voices toward the moon.
The mayor stumbled back, eyes going wide. “Witchcraft!” he accused.
“Hell hath no fury, or so they say,” said Annie. She stepped forward, taking Sophia’s hand in her own, and walked, with the utmost calm, toward the gathered settlers. There was a moment where the world held its breath, waiting to see what was going to happen next.
The settlers parted and let them pass. Martin and Hal hurried after, guns still at the ready. No one raised a hand to stop them.
“All bark and no bite,” murmured Hal, falling into step beside Annie. “That’s how they’ve always been around here. They save their teeth for one another, and for the day the forest takes them.”
“Keep walking,” said Annie. “We’ll be safe once we reach the circus.” It was a small lie, but an essential one. She needed to believe that safety was still possible somewhere, even if that safety had been scorched and damaged while she was running through the forest, trying to bring her daughter home. She needed to believe there was a chance, however slim, that they all would live to see the morning.
Adeline leaned back enough to sign something to her mother. Annie smiled despite her weariness.
“She’s asking if you intend to run away with the circus, sir,” she said, glancing toward Hal. “She thinks you might make a good roustabout.”
“I’m too old to change my ways like that,” said Hal. “Besides. My Marie is still out there somewhere, and she’s alone now, with no daughter to keep her company when the sun is high and she goes to ground. I have to find her. I have to show her peace.”
“A pity,” said Annie, and walked on.
The bonfires they had seen from above were spaced around the circus, forming a barrier of heat and light against the townsfolk, ending at the wall of the bowl. As they grew closer to the wagons, bodies appeared through the flames, roustabouts and acrobats, wainwrights and sword dancers, all of them clutching their weapons, keeping watch. Waiting for the people of the town to do something that could not be taken back or forgiven.
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They walked on. The firelight touched their faces, tracing their features, revealing them to their friends and loved ones like a magician drawing back a curtain to reveal the hidden lady. Someone gasped. Someone else shouted Adeline’s name, bright and jubilant and surprised.
“Sophia!” The seamstress to whom Sophia was apprenticed leapt up from her place by one of the bonfires, letting her rifle fall aside as she ran and flung her arms around the girl, sending her staggering back a foot. “You’re alive!”
“Hello, Auntie,” whispered Sophia, words almost swallowed by the other woman’s shoulder, which pressed against her lips in reassuring solidity.
“You came back,” said the seamstress. She looked toward Martin. “You brought her back.”
“I promised I would, ma’am,” said Martin, with the utmost civility. He tugged on his hair with his free hand, eyes still on Sophia, and said, “I think it might be time for us to have a talk, ma’am, if you don’t mind.”
“You brought her back to me,” said the seamstress. “We can have any talk you like.”
“Annie?”
The voice was querulous, trembling; surely it couldn’t belong to their ringleader and master of ceremonies. Mr. Blackstone was their unflinching wall against the rest of the world, never frightened, never beaten-down. But when Annie turned toward the sound of her name, it was Mr. Blackstone she saw, standing in the open space between two bonfires, eyes wide and face slack with shock and relief.
Adeline tugged on her mother’s sleeve. Annie bent and put the little girl down, smoothing her skirt with the heels of her hands as she straightened. Nothing could have mended the tears in her sleeves or undone the tangles in her hair, but if there had been a way, she would have witched herself to perfection in that moment.
He deserves nothing less, she thought, and he already finds me perfect, she thought, and she was exactly right, in both regards.
She took a step forward. So did he, and then they were running, the both of them, their feet churning against the sour Oregon earth, to collide in the space between the fires, his hands going to her waist, hers to his shoulders. He lifted her bodily up into the air, swinging her around with such joy that it seemed her heart must stop from the revelation of it all.
Slowly, he lowered her back to the ground. Her toes touched down first, followed by her heels, and still he was staring at her, his face gilded golden by the fire, and she had never seen anything so beautiful, or so precious, since beholding her daughter, still alive, in the company of winter’s wolves in the Oregon woods. It was a small distance between those two moments, and yet she had truly never expected the first to be surpassed.
“Miss Pearl,” said Mr. Blackstone.
“Nathanial,” said Annie.
His eyes widened a fraction of an inch more in his surprise before he leaned forward and, almost cautiously, kissed her.
Rare indeed are the kisses that can maintain their heat—their mystery—through the whooping and applause of circus folk, or the silent cheering of little girls. If they heard the ruckus being kicked up around them, neither Annie nor Nathanial gave any indication. He kissed her, and she kissed him, and his hands on her waist had turned into arms encircling her entirely, and her hands on his shoulders had become fingers tangled in his hair, and for a single shining instant, Annie truly understood her daughters as they had been born to her, not as they had been reshaped by science and hubris. She felt as if she and Nathanial were on the verge of becoming a single soul split into two bodies, and those two bodies straining to become one again, to shrug off the petty divisions that had been foisted upon them and fully reunite.
Martin laughed. “This is a good ending for a bad show,” he said. “You need that, you know. Nobody comes back if you have a bad ending for a bad show. That’s too much badness for anyone to tolerate.”
“Hush,” said Sophia, and he hushed.
Annie and Nathanial finally pulled apart, separating themselves with a reluctance born as much of hunger as of etiquette. Her cheeks were burning. His skin was darker than hers, but she rather thought his cheeks were burning, too. It seemed only fair that they should be.
“So,” she said.
“You found her,” he said. “You found both of them.”
“Yes, and I found that the people of this town have been keeping rather more secrets from us than I like.” She stepped back, away from the safety and promise of his arms, and beckoned for Hal to come and join her. “Hal, I would like you to meet Nathanial Blackstone, the proprietor of this circus. Mr. Blackstone, I would like you to meet Hal, who helped us to survive the woods and the dangers they contained, and who can tell you the truth about The Clearing.”
“You should go,” said Hal, approaching the pair. Adeline followed close on his heels, silent as ever. “The mayor isn’t going to like that you’ve managed to reclaim some of your people. He’s going to see that as an insult to his position, and more, as tempting the wendigo.”
“The what?” asked Mr. Blackstone.
“We have a great deal to discuss, and Sophia has been wounded, as has Martin,” said Annie. “Are you needed on the watch?”
“No,” said Mr. Blackstone. “I’ve been keeping a watch of my own.”
No one said that his watch had been only ever in Annie’s name. No one needed to.
Looking flustered once more, Annie said, “Adeline is well past due for her medicine. Does our wagon yet stand?”
“It does,” said Mr. Blackstone. He paused then, and said, “Where is—”
That was as far as he got before Annie shook her head, and realization dawned.
“Ah,” he said. “Well, then. Come with me, all of you. I’ll see what can be done to get some coffee in your hands, and some liniments for your injuries.”
He turned and strode into the midnight circus, backlit by the fires, and there had never been a ringleader who looked more proud, or better able to protect his own. Annie followed, with Adeline beside her. Sophia came after them, leaning heavily on her aunt’s arm, with Martin and Hal bringing up the rear, their guns once more held defensively, as if they feared attack at any moment.
Perhaps they were not wrong to do so. Many of the windows in the nearest houses were open, and shadows moved beyond the bonfire’s reach, shadows that looked suspiciously like settlers with their hats drawn down to hide the glitter of their eyes.
Behind the group, the watchers at the bonfire line shifted back into position, closing the holes in their defenses. When the attack came—and the attack was coming; there was no question of that—it would need to go through as many bodies as the circus could muster.
On the other side of the line, in the circus proper, the smell of char and wet wood hung over everything, eclipsing the usual smells of old velvet and sweat. Annie found herself cleaving closer than her norm to Mr. Blackstone. For his part, Mr. Blackstone stole glance after glance in her direction, drinking her with his eyes.
They passed the wagon of oddities, still closed up and no more damaged than it had been when last she had seen it. Annie heaved a sigh of deep relief.
“We would have burned it ourselves, if it had been further damaged,” said Mr. Blackstone. “You would have had my deepest apologies, but the things you keep—”
“I understand,” said Annie.
“What do you mean?” demanded Hal, voice rich with suspicion.
“Miss Pearl is our freak mistress,” said Martin.
Annie winced a little. “They are oddities, Martin, not freaks. Afford them the dignity nature denied.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” said Martin, sounding abashed.
“Freaks?” asked Hal. “What manner?”
“All kinds,” said Annie. “Some human unfortunates, who will no doubt be at the bonfires or abed at this hour, waiting for their own watch; some natural wonders of this blighted West. If you remain until morning, I can show them to you then.”
“Why not tonight?”
“They’re strongest at night.
” Not all of them. The serpents did best in strong sunlight, when the heat could bake through their scales and quicken their torpid blood. But the nibblers, the corn stalker, so many things would find the moonlight rejuvenating.
She had saved them from the fire. She had no desire to lose them to the rightfully horrified.
Hal was quiet for a time before he said, “You frighten people, then. For your profession.”
“I suppose you could say as much.”
“Fear’s a tool of them like the wendigo. It’s not for such as us.” He looked at her, sorrow and judgment warring for the ownership of his eyes. “You serve the night things when you truck in fear. How much of this do you think you brought down on yourself, by putting your hands so plainly in their service?”
Annie said nothing. It felt like there was nothing to say. A fight would do neither of them any good, and what was done was done: she had frightened people all across the West for the sake of a full belly and a warm fire. All that mattered now was surviving to the morning.
The wagon she shared with Adeline appeared before them, perfect, untouched: as pristine and welcoming as it had been when she had left it behind. Annie blinked back sudden tears, realizing just how much she had come to depend on the constancy of her traveling home. This, not Deseret, not a rich man’s private palace, was where she belonged. Was where she should have been from the beginning.
Everything else had just been the world arranging things so that she could have her Delly, and Tranquility, may she rest in whatever peace waited for the best of beasts after their days on Earth were done.
“I’ll get the door,” she said, and hurried forward, mounting the short steps with a quick, half-mincing stride. It would be a tight fit, getting all seven of them inside, but if they were willing to sit on the beds, and not be too shy about one another, it should work.
The thought of being … not too shy … about Mr. Blackstone was more appealing than it had been ever before, even just that past morning. She had known herself to be interested in him as a man for quite some time. She had suspected him to be interested in her as a woman. To have it confirmed was not enough to make the trials of this past night worthwhile, but oh, it soothed the sting. It made the shadows that still clung to everything a little less deep.