Circus of Silence

Round In Circles

~*~

You dream the nights away

You're not sure if you ever wake up

But, really

Do you want to?

~*~

                   The globe turned. Seasons passed like slides in a projection show, round and round and round again. Summer. Spring. Summer. Spring- and nothing else. It was just as it had always been: all of them listening to the Carousel's cruel, clever din.

Nothing had changed.

Or... almost nothing, at least.

Except for that this circus had proved itself even more of a beast.

"What...is that thing?" Harrison asked, leaning back to take in its magical, malicious, magnificence.

"I don't know."

She skirted the thing's circumference, looking for a sign. For the name of this thing that up in lights looked so fine.

She didn't find one. But she found she didn't need to.

A wee girl came whizzing by, pointing with a gaping mouth. "Mommy! They have one! They have a Ferris's wheel!"

"What? How could that be? It was just exhibited in Chicago last we-" The stilt-walker pulled both mother and daughter's attention away. The Marquee got better at that every day. She wandered off, letting Rosalind shed her Witch's disguise with little more than a gross, phlegmy cough.

Two years had passed since they'd lost Ferran in that dreadful way.

Since then, she'd practiced her magic every night and day.

"-Week," Harrison finished, coming to her side. "For the World's Columbian Exposition, 1893."

"And we have one... why?"

A bullet screamed past her head, blowing bland, brassy hair behind her ear as it charged to meet its mark.

Annie the circus sharpshooter blew smoke from the butt of her pistol. "Because when the Circus Everlasting eats, it grows. Just like everything else."

Just like Harrison's tent, springing suddenly from the soil the second she'd assigned him a job.

Fantastic, thought Rosalind, frowning. That would make this whole establishment a lot more difficult to dismember.

Whisper's looking, remember?

She turned her frown on the fortune teller.

"She'll find a way," he said out loud, putting a hand on her shoulder. "We'll find a way together.'

Doubt weighed on her newly revitalized shoulders. Rosalind realized it might be best to change the subject before her precious mind-reader got nosy. Looping an arm around his, she asked if he would care to try out Ferris' wheel with her. See if it would take them high enough to escape the Circus Everlasting's savage song.

"We can call Whisper," she said quietly, waving to Annie as she left.

"She wouldn't come."

"I can make her."

Harrison blinked, stepping slowly away from her like he always did when these things came out of her mouth and reminded him of her awesome, terrible power. Her beautiful, lethal voice.