Ineffable

III

  “Praised be Light, the saviour in my sight; guide me through the darkness - take me home. Lord, take me home, take me home, take me home. Lord take me where my home may be. Lord, keep me safe, keep me sound and protect me, from wickedness abounds, and from devils that beseech me, Lord take me home and set me free.”

  The Young Cripple repeated her prayer over and over. “Lord, take me home and set me free,” she said, throwing each word as if it were a blind, swinging fist.

  And it was more than a mantra, it was a threat; to whatever foul beast, serpent, or darned stinging insect, lurked with no good intent, in the shrubs beside her, and in the cracks in the ground beneath her feet.

  The poor girl was weighed heavily by her exhaustion. It rained sweat into her blisters and provoked her legs into a seismic collapse. Every muscle in her body ached and pained, but still she couldn’t stop - she couldn’t bear the thought of rest. She was urged on by her fright, her sense of obligation, and this blasted contraption that she had been tied to her whole life.

  Her every step sounded like the screeching of worn brake pads as she struggled inside the rusted braces that caged her. She hated the sound just as much as she did the silence. The squealing from the rusted hinges by her knees sounded like the cursing of thousands of bats and banshees, all swearing an oath to peck at and scavenge her eyes, and to make a meal of every inch of her flesh. If she were trying to keep a secret of herself - if she were trying to move like a whisper - then holding her breath or taking her time, the vice of normal folk, would do little good.

  So instead, she prayed.

  She prayed loud and visceral. She prayed with such vigour that the fear mongering in her thoughts vanished, like a grain of salt in the open sea. She didn’t so much pray as she did intimidate and immure. And it didn’t matter where evil lay; whether the wickedness was biding its time in the shadowy shrubs that littered the moors, or hiding there, disguised, in the quiet recess of her mind. It didn’t matter, for the Light that shone within her, it kept her solaced and sound; like the warm refuge of a mother’s embrace, or the might and retaliation in a father’s thunderous and inerrable voice.

  Fear had no chance.

  “Get out of it, you doggone mosquito,” she said, cursing at the dark around her, at what she could not see. “Leave me alone. Please.”

  She had been walking for so long now that it might as well be regarded as forever. It had been so long that she had forgotten where she had come from, and why it was that she couldn’t stop. All she knew was that one leg went in front of the other, and for as long as he was upright and on her feet, she must never give in - she must never ask for what she does not deserve.

  “Lord of Light and Light of love,” she prayed, “let my spirit be, on the Earth as is above, thy divinity. Lord of Light and Light of love, come into my soul. Shine your grace within my heart, and make my spirit whole. Lord of Light and Light of love, all that I revere, lance these devils with your sword, and strike away my fear. Lord of Light and Light of love, knelt before your throne, here I pray, to you I plead, take me to my home.”

  She focused deeply and thought only of Light, and for a great while, it worked. The scary thoughts, and the alone thoughts, and the thoughts she had of being unimaginably lost, they disintegrated in her conscious mind, before they could properly form. She was aloft in a stream of godliness and belief. She was adrift on a mindful current of celestial grace.

  But this poor girl had such terrible focus, and it wasn’t long before Heaven transformed before her. The harmless outlines of small shrubs and bush quickly morphed into a sea of sinister shadows that swayed back and forth under the icy breeze that rasped and shivered her skin.

  She looked to her left and right, and all around too; here, there, and everywhere, not a foot off the ground; she witnessed gangs of deformed oafs that listed from side to side with the gusting wind, their bodies bent over like scarred and scabbed, leathery tables, and their arms, laying over each other’s backs like fraternal ratchet straps.

  They heaved back and forth, and to and fro; like a bulging swell, pressing against an eroding shore. And the levee of this young girl’s concentration, that which had been meant to keep the spooks and spectres at bay, it broke apart and dissolved into the flood of her vivid and exaggerated imagination.

  “You’re not real,” she exclaimed, at first in her thoughts but then, after not being able to console herself, out loud, as loud as she could, to quiet the roar of the devil’s laughter as they crept upon her, painted crudely upon all sides of the moor.

  On the path before her - out on the horizon, and at the crook of a bend - there stood what looked like a wolf, a hell-hound, or a small bear. The hair on its neck pointed upwards, and its head and front paws arched downwards, as if this beast were a sprinter, on the tips of its toes, bastille in a moment between an anxious and jittery wait, and an explosive and savage charge.

  The Young Cripple could see, in the dull light, the dust that burst upwards from the expelling of the beast’s truculent and malodorous breath. It looked like thousands of dotted and grainy stars, circling about its menacing snout, like Light, warped around a black hole.

  She could not see its eyes, just as she could not, those of the heaving oafs in the shadows beside her. But unlike her imagined monsters, she knew that this beast was no trick of her sight and no art of her imagination. It could not be wished into some congenial or innocuous form, like a dandelion, an ant, or a sea otter. And no amount of Light would will it away.

  “I am independent of your good or bad intentions towards me,” the girl said, stopped not ten feet from where the shadowy beast stood.

  She had hoped that, like the cocking of a pistol, this would be enough for this devil to scent her courage and to turn; to retreat to wherever it was that stinking beasts, noisy crickets, creeping crawlies and other small, long-legged, beady-eyed foulness scurried and burrowed themselves, when it was that the morning sun had them at the merciless whim of small coloured birds, and narrow-eyed farmers.

  The beast, though, it barely lifted its head. It had not, for a second, assumed that this crippled girl had nearly half the courage necessary to fend off an attack, or to even cry out her father’s name. Its snout stayed anchored to its bent front paws, and its heavy and musky breath continued to spew from behind its jagged teeth.

  The Young Cripple’s body was frozen in sheer panic. She almost looked composed, as if she were measuring her odds. On the inside, though, near her soul, and inside her skin and bones, she shook feverishly. And it was as if the part of her that made her hands and legs move, the part that could clench her fists and strike like a hammer; the part that could properly form words and curse like clapping thunder, the part of her that wore her body like a sheath or a glove, that part spun uncontrollably inside of her.

  The beast huffed and puffed another plume of dust.

  “I warn you,” she shouted, “I am trained and skilled in the art of war. I might look small but don’t let that fool you.”

  The beast didn’t budge. Its head still bowed to its paws, and ready to charge.

  The Young Cripple tried to think of all the warriors she knew. What kind of things would they say right now? If they only had their words as weapons, what would be the shape and the size of the words they’d use? Would they swear, and make their words as foul and stinking as the beast’s own breath, or would they shout, and exert a forceful yet polite address?

  “I know Kenpo,” she said, barely remembering the name, let alone anything she had learned and since forgotten, in her one and only lesson. “And Muay Thai too.”

  Now that was a blatant lie.

  She closed her eyes and thought of any name that she could as if knowing and naming would suffice, or hoping as such anyway.

  “And I know jiu-jitsu, so… if you try to pull me to the ground, I’ll break all of your legs and I’ll snap your arms in half. Do you hear? Well,” she said, puffing her chest. “Do you?”

  The beast staye
d as it was.

  “You don’t wanna mess with me. I’m tough and I’m mean. And I’ve got a gun too,” she said, reaching behind her back and pretending to holster her right hand onto something so obviously a pistol, a rifle, or a hand grenade.

  The Young Cripple wished she had a gun. She wished she had a jagged knife, a spear, or even a handful of rocks. She wished she had a single pebble; anything except for this stupid fear and these damned metal braces on her legs.

  “This isn’t fair,” she thought, “why do I always end up like this?”

  Her mind instantly inundated with a thought of yesterday morning, and how she wound up so terribly alone. And it could have been so easy to blame everyone else. They did after all, pack up and move on, without so much as a quick glance into her carriage to see if she were being carried along with it. It could have been easy to blame them, seeing as though they so blatantly left her behind, again.

  She could have blamed her father. He should have noticed after all, and he should have cared. She could have blamed too, the bearded women who distracted him so that he didn’t. They constantly bickered, and demanded about as much attention as a foaling horse or a wobbly tooth.

  It was this blasted contraption to which she was sentenced, which haunted her. Her mind didn’t wander to the image of the back of her carriage as it slowly pulled away. It didn’t wander either, to the sight of her father’s top hat, the only part of him visible from the half circle of bearded whores that followed him like an indulgent regret, or some opulent venereal disease.

  Her mind made little case of their ignorant tenure and charged none other than herself, and of course, these god-damned-darned-blasted-nincompoop slow and heavy and rusted and painful and cutting and stabbing and breaking and grazing, stupid, dumb prisons for her sore and useless legs.

  And that is what she remembered in her mindscape; sitting on a round rock, staring at that blasted contraption, that prison for her legs, and listening to the near sound of the procession proceeding, and her being left behind.

  The thought that flooded her conscious mind, the one that brought with it, the floating billboard that read, ‘Stupid Old You’, it was the thought of sitting on a round rock, not a stone’s throw from her carriage, and barely hidden by a few overgrown weeds, staring straight at her metal braces and hoping, wishing, and just damned wanting for one day, one darned stupid day, to never have to wear them again.

  And the thought of putting them on was always much worse than the act of wearing them itself. Not to say that the pins and pivots didn’t bother her, nor did the loose screws that cut into her right thigh; or the scores of thick welds that had rubbed at the same spots over the years, so much so that calluses had grown on her legs and her ankles, the size of a boxer’s knuckles. They hurt, as much as anything that caused injury might hurt. But wearing them, there was always the thought of taking them off. That alone was like a mild sedative, and a way to distract from the constant pain.

  The thought of putting them on, though, it was the worst of all. It was worse than anything. It was worse than the cuts and the blisters from all the rubbing. It was worse than how her legs looked, and how useless they were, when she took the contraption off. It was worse than being hungry and tired, and still having to practice and perform. It was worse than juggling knives or fighting alligators. It was worse than any of the dangerous stuff she ever had to do. It was worse than all the worst days she had ever had in her life. And it was worse still, than being loved and thought of in such a way that nobody ever notices when you’ve been left behind. The thought of putting them on was worse than all of that. It was even worse than the thought of that wolf, hell hound, or small bear, eating her alive.

  “I don’t care if you want to eat me,” she shouted.

  This time, there was very little pretending in her voice. “I’m scared of you,” she said, “but I’m scared of lots of other things too. So you’ll just have to deal with that, or…or go away.”

  The beast’s head didn’t move. It seemed unperturbed and unwilling to negotiate. The Young Cripple stared at her feet. She imagined the beast jumping up from where it lay and thrusting upon her, knocking her to the ground, and gnawing off her legs. She thought about this and she smiled.

  Her legs screeched and squealed as she moved slowly up the path, towards a savage fate. The beast lay in wait, its breath, still coarse and wreckful, howled like a galing wind. On she marched, though, step by gruelling step, her legs sounding like rusted winches as she fought with her two hands at a grip above each knee, to lift and thrust each leg forwards.

  “Lord of Light and Light of Love, keep me safe from harm. If darkness ventures to my sight, guide me to your arms. Lord of Light and Light of Love, mine is yours alone, my heart and soul, my skin and bones, take me to my home.”

  Not a foot away, the beast lifted its head. Its snout sucked in the cold air like a drunkard with his first gulp of ale. Focused and unhinged, The Young Cripple continued, chanting her mantra out loud, and in her mind, erasing her fear, as if her thoughts were words and pictures, as if they were insults and defamation, painted upon a flowing stream.

  The beast rolled over onto its back as The Young Cripple approached.

  “Is it a trick?” she wondered, at a louder volume than her continuing mantra.

  What was its intention?

  “I respect and I worship the Light in you,” she said, imaging it were true.

  She lifted her legs and thrust forwards, inch by inch, foot by foot, expecting to be ripped in half. She thought for a second, what it would be like to be eaten alive; whether she would pass out from the pain, or whether she would scream until somebody found her. Inch by inch she moved, until she stood beside the beast, above it and looking down.

  It had not died, not like she had hoped. It lay on its back and it bayed with its front paws as if its intention were not rabid and bloodthirsty violence. It lay there, like an old friend, whose legs were nearly as rubbished as her own, and who, under proper Light, was less like a hound of Satan, and more like the playful and tremoring dog that had kept a constant vigil by her window each night. Its front paws bayed, begging to be patted and tickled and roughly scratched behind its dry, deafened ear.

  “Shadow!” she screamed elated.

  Her mind was awash with the feeling of assurance that felt like a net, wrapping around her falling body. Instantly, the spectres and spooks in her head all vanished. The shapes the lined the path - those brutish oafs that swayed back and forth across the moor - they were now just shapes, nothing more. She did not judge them any different to what they were, now, in the present. And the fear in her mind, that which felt as real as the wind against her skin, it vanished and left her feeling light; light enough to lift her heavy legs in this stupid contraption, for as long as she needed to take herself home; wherever that was.

  Down along the path, not an hour’s walk, The Young Cripple could see the encampment. She whistled and called the dog with her, and together they slowly hobbled along the stony path, towards the dim light and the smell of whiskey, cologne, and burning pig skin.

  There were bodies strewn across one another, and others laid out in crosses on the dusted earth. There were some, leaned over barrels, and half hanging off collapsed and broken chairs, and there were others, stuffed, like cumbrous luggage, into the trunks of carriages; their arms lightly swaying in the early morning breeze, as if they had just recently been placed.

  There were bodies everywhere.

  The Young Cripple tried not to step on any hands or feet. It was hard to be precious inside these clunky metal braces. She tried, though, heaving each leg high and placing each foot gently down in oddly shaped patterns and patches of ground.

  When she reached her carriage she looked back, as she always did before she went inside. She stared at the piles of bodies. She stared at their grim expressions, and at the scratches and digging in the sand, beneath some of their still fingers. She stared at the bodies, all of them, and she sighed
.

  “A funeral,” she said to herself, in bitter realization.

  Then, as she thought of these blasted metal braces and what joy they took from her, and the great disappointment they gave her in return, her depression set in. She wrestled for a second with the screen door of her carriage, freeing it from its bent hinge. The noise it made, as she wrenched it open, was only slightly less abrasive than the sound of her own legs carrying her inside.

  On her bed, she stared out the window for a while, as her hands unwound the nuts and bolts holding her braces together. It was maybe an hour before her legs were free and then pained with thousands of stabbing pins and needles.

  The Young Cripple gazed out her window at a giant, gaunt and skeletal tree. She had never seen anything like it before. It made her not want to look away, in case it should creep any closer.

  “Lord of Light and Light of Love….” she said, squinting and squirming as pain shot up from her toes to her knees and rang out like a deranged monk’s bell in her conscious mind.

  Her eyes were fixed on the crooked tree, with its hunched and contorted spine, and its weaving and mangled limbs; outstretched like some perverted and disease-ridden old man, out for one last hug and tickle before death set in. At the bottom of the tree, she saw what looked like a pair of red boots, and it was such an odd thing to see, sticking out like wing-shaped roots. But when she nudged closer to the window, they were gone.

  The Young Cripple sat on the edge of her bed, staring out into the dark. She felt no safer on her own bed, covered in her own blankets, and surrounded by the many trinkets she had collected that made this carriage so rightfully her home.

  The danger, though, was not what lurked in the shadows - that from which she could abscond or be girded against by a dozen locks, a senile dog, or an alarming screen door. The danger was inside her mind. And she projected it everywhere.

  It was in the shadows that, at night, were like a murky bog; stank, stale and still - and so very fathomless. It was beneath every stone and at the crook of every blade of grass; and it was so infinitely small and so unimaginably large at the exact same second. Danger was everywhere. Devilish danger and dastardly devils were in every ‘thing’, and they were in every ‘where’.

  “Lord of Light,” she said, staring into a gaping hole in the tree, as if she were watching a cunning stranger’s smirk. “Light of Love,” she said, her inner voice crackling. “Let my spirit be,” she shouted.

  The screen door banged.

  The Young Cripple jumped, her fingers clutching the end of her mattress with her useless legs, dangling like folded tassels in front of her body. She looked to the door, and then back to the tree again, with its wretched limbs swaying back and forth.

  There was another loud bang. “Help,” she screamed, as part of the door flew past her window, clanging as it knocked against the old tree. “Someone help me.” She looked back to the door and held her breath as the handle slowly turned. “Please God,” she said, in a soft and desperate weep.

  The Young Cripple imagined black shadowy bears, boars, and monoliths. She imagined one monster that was all these things at the very same time. It had hundreds of tusks and razor sharp teeth, and its head was shaped like a bed sore. It was as small as a spider, so it could creep up under her covers and bite her in places that she could never find. And it was as tall and wide as a mountain, so that no matter where she hid, it would always see it.

  There was a clicking sound – the turning of a key, and the door opened.

  “Father,” she said, as this great weight of imagination fell away like sand.

  Relief drenched her conscious shore.

  “Where were you?” asked The Ringmaster.

  He could barely squeeze through her front door, having to tuck in his stomach and weave his body like an exotic dancer to partition through the small opening. “I was worried sick,” he said.

  He looked down at her legs and, as if caught off guard, he smiled, but only for a second. His usual air of disappointment soon spilled across his face as he looked upon the crippled girl’s bent and folded legs with blatant disgust.

  “Why did you take it off?” he asked.

  The girl looked at her legs. They looked like two long sheets of paper that had each been folded a dozen times, and they dangled and sprang like two fleshy slinkies. It was as if her bones had been replaced with elastic. She sighed heavy, turning her attention, like a magnet of depression, to the mechanical leg supports beside her bed.

  “Please, father,” she said.

  “Don’t you ever call me that,” The Ringmaster said. “Never ever call me that. You call me Sir, or Master, or you call me by my profession. But you dare use that word again,” he said, his hands squashing her face so that her lips pouted like an asphyxiating fish. “And I’ll expulse you. Do you understand?” he asked.

  The girl nodded. She couldn’t move her head, on account of it being stuck in her father’s burly clutch. Her eyes wobbled, back and forth, between the horrible braces that imprisoned her in such a great deal of discomfort and pain, and the horrible bastard who tightened their screws.

  “Look at these,” exclaimed The Ringmaster, pointing at the young girl’s legs as if they were a defaulting commodity. “Do you want perfection?” he asked, forcing her to nod. “Well? Do you?”

  “Yes…sir” she said, fighting to remember the words.

  “I won’t have my prized display looking….”

  He too struggled for the right word.

  “Shabby,” he said, holding her feet lightly and springing her legs up and down. “If I see you outside of this brace again…” he said, as he bound the first leg and began tightening the rusted screws.

  He paused for a second while he wrenched hard on the screwdriver, cracking the girl’s bone. The Young Cripple moved to scream, but she was trained enough to cover her mouth and yelp, no louder than the springs in her mattress.

  “If I see you outside of this brace,” he continued, pausing again as he took a long breath. He wheezed horribly when he got worked up like this. “If I see you…Fuck it,” he exclaimed.

  “But it hurts,” said the girl.

  The Ringmaster turned to her with a sour expression.

  “You ruin my show and I’ll beat you to death. I‘ll make leather soles out of your face and bracelets for my whores from your crooked teeth. I’ll fucking kill you. Do you understand?” he asked.

  The girl nodded, quickly.

  “Now go to sleep. I love you.”

  “But I’m scared.”

  “You’re always scared. It doesn’t change a goddamn thing. Go to sleep.”

  “But father…”

  “Don’t you ever fucking call me that you little freak,” he said, slapping her across her whimpering face. “Never use that word.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sir.”

  “Good,” said The Ringmaster. “Good. Now shut up and get some sleep. I’m busy.”

  The Ringmaster left her carriage and shut her door gently; hardly as brutish as when he had arrived. The girl wound him up. She wired his adrenaline. She always did; like her damned mother, always niggling for some inch of control. He took another long breath and this opened his lungs much better than the last. The air was thick and icy. You could almost snap a piece off and drop it in your whiskey.

  When he left, The Young Cripple curled as infant-like as she could on her bed, and snugged into the tightest corner that she could fit. Now that he was gone, she could hear sounds outside again - the sound of a stick or a knife scraping against the wooden floor of her carriage, and what sounded like a runner’s breath, at the end of their fiftieth mile.

  She did the only thing that brought her calm. She closed her eyes and imagined a world less concerning than this; one where monsters and madmen didn’t lurk about in the shadows or in the recess beneath her carriage, waiting to savage and torture her. She imagined a world where nothing had teeth or claws, and where there was no reason for sneaking about,
or in bad people, doing bad deeds. She invented a world that was fun and full of colour; and with it, she invented her protagonist.

  And just like that, The Young Cripple invented a story – one that had never been told before. And when she was done with that story, she told several more. Some of them she wrote down and others she forgot, not long after she made them up.

  And it was working, for a while. Her fear vanished, and she stopped imagining devils and monsters, lurking beneath her bed.

  Back in his carriage, The Grieving Mother sat a stool where he had left her. She was still holding a small cloth in her hands and pulling it up to her nose every now and then, so as not to forget the smell of death, for which she had prescribed as being that of her only child.

  The Ringmaster sat on a stool in front of her. There was maybe an inch of room between the two. The Grieving Mother looked pale and her expression stretched, like the tape at the end of a cassette. The Ringmaster took her hands and held them in front of her chest so that one palm faced upwards and the other down. He then rested his palms against hers; not so they were holding, but merely so they were touching, and so that the energy of his kind hearted love and Light, warmed her panicked and cold sweat.

  “I’m going to ask you some questions,” he said. “And I want you to answer truthfully and with open heart. And I want you to stay forever looking into my eyes as if you were looking into your own; which you are. I am and you and you are I. We are mirrors of one another, and so, we can feel whole and honest, as we look into ourselves. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” said the grieving mother.

  “Then let’s begin,” said The Ringmaster.

  Still touching palms, one up and one down, both parties held their stares; The Grieving Mother slowly drifting into meditated vacancy while The Ringmaster, with his musky allure and eyes like gluggy tar, maintained an impassioned glare, keeping the woman from drifting further than he would allow.

  “What do people call you?” he asked, smiling as he waited for her response.

  “Rita,” she said.

  “And the people who love you and obsess over you; who need you and rely on you, to whom you are a mirror unto which they can see themselves as an empty canvas, and from you, draw inspiration upon themselves. Those whose ease and pain rises and falls like the tide, whether you are near or far. What do they call you?”

  The Grieving Mother closed her eyes for a second. Her hands stayed where they were, but they trembled. The Ringmaster steadied his own hands as if to assure her that she wasn’t alone. And it worked. The Grieving Woman inhaled deep and profound and in the silence between one breath and another, she opened her eyes and met those before her; those strong and assailing eyes.

  “MaiMai,” she said, hearing herself say it for the first time.

  The Ringmaster widened his smile. He sat in quiet and comfortable stare, the kind that would have most common folk cringe. And he didn’t at all look itchy or edgy, as The Grieving Mother did, still holding her stare and pretending there wasn’t some invisible itch under her skin or in the back of her mind that was willing her to grimace, blink, or bury her face in the ground with some wayward gesture - to break this moment of intense calm.

  “My child, he called me MaiMai. It was silly, something my husband had said. I can’t really remember what, but we were joking and fooling around. It was in the kitchen. I remember clearly, seeing my son leaning against the wall and smiling. We’d been fighting a lot, my husband and I, about stupid things; about nothing really. But it had been getting messy and real mean too. The name calling, the abuse, and the breaking of things. Just, it felt like it was building to something, you know?”

  The Ringmaster nodded and continued to smile, willing her to continue.

  “I don’t know. I guess we were fighting all morning, and my husband, he said something stupid, nothing I can remember off hand. But it was the first time we had laughed in so long. And I remember looking up,” she said, her voice now crackling under the swell of love and depression that rose from neath her subconscious. “And I saw my boy smiling. He looked kind of nervous as if he didn’t know if we were hugging or killing one another. And my husband said something, joking, playing, but I was so caught up in my son, in Eli, and I started to laugh and cry. I don’t know how, but I got stuck with the name MaiMai. You know, that time, that moment, with my husband drenched on my neck and Eli, wrapped around my legs, that was when everything turned - it was the apex of my happiness.”

  The Grieving Mother heaved a long breath that sounded like churning gravel.

  “The next day my husband was sick. It was so quick. In three days, he was gone. Then it was just Eli and me. And pretty soon, the whole town started to get sick. There were rumours of this and that; something in the water, something in the air. Some people stopped eating altogether, thinking the food was poisoned. No matter what, though, people got sick. And it was always three days. That’s all it took. It’s like forever though you know; watching the person you love, die. And there’s nothing you can do except to say, ‘It’s alright, it’ll be over soon’. And then Eli…”

  The Grieving Mother’s hands started to shake and The Ringmaster felt this. He pulled his hands away, letting hers fall to her side. Then he shushed her as he slowly walked behind her. It sounded like shushing, but really, he was blowing waves and wind across her neck and back, and down over her breastbone. The Grieving Mother stood in shivery awe as behind her, The Ringmaster swept away with his fingers, the sticky and soiled aura that perspired from her skin. He flicked vigorously to and fro, and he breathed heavy and billowing, his exhaling breath sounding like great waves, smashing against reefs and rocky shores.

  And then when he was done, he returned to her front and lifted his hands once more; one palm up and one palm down, and he invited The Grieving Mother to join him in loving stare.

  “If you could live to a hundred,” he asked, “and have either the body or mind from your youth, which would you choose?”

  The Grieving Mother paused.

  The Ringmaster smiled.

  “If I chose my body and forgot my mind, would I be any different to my youth? Then again, what good is an ending if it comes as little surprise? How would a young mind serve me at such an age? I might as well be deaf and dumb and entrenched within a choir. The young me, wouldn’t reason very well with a centurion’s kind of thoughts. I’d take the body,” she said, “and try for one more child.”

  “Describe the perfect day,” said The Ringmaster, smiling.

  The Grieving Mother closed her eyes once more. She thought about the countless times she had woken to find her husband lying silent and warm beside her, and their son curled around his neck. There were many days like this, but one, in particular, the one she could remember, had heavy rain falling outside her window, and an icy breeze rasping against her arm and the back of her neck. And there was nothing more inviting than pulling the blankets over their heads, and cosying up with her child and her lover.

  “Lazing about,” she said.

  “If you could wake tomorrow different, with some innate talent that was completely new to you, what would it be?”

  “To be able to not feel, if I don’t want to, or if I don’t need to.”

  “What are you grateful for?” asked The Ringmaster, pensive.

  The Grieving Mother paused, thinking for the time in a very long time, about now, about what she actually had, as opposed to what she had lost or had taken from her.

  “Love,” she said. “Even though they’re gone, I still have love for them. And I’d never have that if they’d never come, and so too I guess if they’d never gone. But it’s a sad type of love,” she said.

  “How do you feel about your mother and father? Did they love you enough? Did they love you too much? Did you feel listened to and heard? Did they ask of you what was fair? And did they give you the time, the time that you deserved?”

  “I love them I do, and I don’t blame them at all. It’s not easy
raising kids. It’s not easy being a parent. There are no rules or guidelines. It’s not straightforward. It’s not like making a bed. I don’t blame them, though, even though they didn’t do much good. They left me alone a lot. They pushed me towards it, doing things by myself. They said I’d grow up faster, and I did. I never made much of a fuss. I never said it before. But I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to grow up so fast.”

  “When was the last time you cried in front of a stranger?”

  “Now,” she said, tripping over her smile and snivelling nose.

  The Ringmaster smiled back.

  His hands were so warm.

  He continued to ask The Grieving Mother questions in this way for a great deal of time. He asked her about her favourite memory, and he asked her about her worst. And they were in fact almost the same. She talked about the moment that life officially stopped in her son’s body; that infinitesimal second between him existing and not, when his lips stiffened, his pupils dilated, and even the colour in his skin lightened, as if a warm Light that had been surreptitiously glowing inside of her all these years, just lightly and swiftly turned off. And though she was not aware of it, she gave the same answer for both the worst and most treasured moments of her life.

  When they were done, The Grieving Mother kissed The Ringmaster on the lips and she lay down in bed. She invited him to bed with her and to make love to her, which he did so willingly, several times.

  In the darkest part of eve, The Ringmaster hugged his new adoring love. He kissed her gently on her cheek and confessed his infatuation with her, and she confessed hers of him. They were in love; she to him, and he to another of his whores.

  The Grieving Mother dressed quickly and blew a kiss to her beau before slipping out of his trailer, her body so oblivious to the cold by the rush of warm loving blood that flowed like lava through her veins. Before she made her way back into town, The Grieving Mother rested against the crooked curve of the old Sycamore tree. Her hands drew up and down along the bark, feeling the grooves and letters, hearts, arrows, and names that had been carved into its withering bark. She thought of the man she loved, feeling for a second, the surge of his swollen sex inside of her. Her neck shivered, her knees shook and a lump grew in her throat. She couldn’t wait to see him again.

  She turned to the tree and kissed a spot, where no name had been carved.

  “I love him,” she said. “I swear this it’s true. I love him, I love him, I love him, I do.”

  And she carved her initials into the tree with a heart and an oath of her love. There was a sound, much like the slithering of a snake that came from within one of the black and fetid cankers of the old twisted tree. The Grieving Mother stepped back. Her heart was beating so fast. All she could think about was him. She didn’t notice at all, the pair of red boots sticking out from the tree, not an inch from where she stood. And she didn’t notice either, the willowy sigh that the tree made, as she skipped away.

  In his carriage, The Ringmaster stood in front of the mirror masturbating. He had to lift his stomach with one hand so he could see the end of his penis being picked and pulled with the other. It was hard to keep balance, and he nearly tripped the moment he ejaculated.

  Instead of going to bed, he sat down on a stool in front of a mirror, and he opened a box full of jewels. From the box, he took a set of emerald earrings which he placed on his ears, and a studded red gem, in his nose. Then he took from another drawer, a long black wig and he placed it gently over his balding head. He spent a great deal of time brushing and then combing the wig, stopping time and time again to gaze at his reflection as he gently ran his fingers in long strides through the silky, black hair.

  Finally, he dressed his face in blush and shadow, and earthy lipstick. He pouted once or twice and kissed the back of a tissue, to dry off any wet remains. He stared at himself some more, and he thought with soft and delicate address. And before he left his carriage, he dressed himself in cotton panties, a long brightly coloured dress, and around his neck, a beautiful woollen shoal.

  And tied in his hair, beside his left ear, he wore a yellow ribbon.

  The Ringmaster stepped into his favourite heels and then made his way out of the carriage into the chill of the early morning air. It sent shivers across his arms and almost had him scream with sheer fright. He kept his calm, though, cupping his hands to his mouth and blowing warm air over his freshly painted nails.

  He walked slowly across the dirt. Heels were impossible in sand, but he shifted most of his weight to the tips of his toes and managed to quickly shuffle across without much ado, and luckily, without an embarrassing stumble, even if it was only he about.

  The whole encampment was asleep. The Ringmaster looked around and felt a wave of pride swelling in his heart. He felt warm and giddy. He just wanted to hug everybody, at once. But it was cold and early and he was tired; not to mention they all smelt so unsavoury.

  The Ringmaster gently opened the broken screen door on The Young Cripple’s carriage. He carefully turned the handle, so as not to make any kind of sound. He stood there for a second in the darkness watching her sleep, and he looked with such sad address at her bent and folded legs, and at the contraction to which they were arrested.

  He sighed lightly.

  “It’s for the best, though,” he thought, hoping it was true.

  Then he climbed into The Young Cripple’s bed and curled up beside her, pulling a lock of her hair from her face, before kissing her cheek and saying, “I love you, my dear. I’m sorry I’m not here as much as you need, or would like. I’m sorry. But I love you.” Then he kissed her cheek once more and rounded his face into the back of her neck before pulling the covers over them both and falling asleep.

  The Young Cripple stirred, feeling The Ringmaster’s soft hands pressed against hers and seeing, in the moonlight, the glow of her painted nails, just under her chin. The young girl smiled and squirmed giddily. It had been so long.

  “I love you, mother,” she said.