She put on the wig before leaving her tent. Astonished silence greeted her as she passed. The haulmen who had been busy carrying materials to the various attraction locations came to a halt to gawk. Pahula watched with wonder in her eyes.
“So bootiful …” she said. “How do you do this, Maria? Is it magic?”
The Cyclops did not know what to say. She supposed it was a kind of magic: that someone as handsome and larger than life as D’Arbignal had somehow noticed and taken an interest in her. If that was not a miracle, then she didn’t know what would qualify.
Pahula fell into step next to her, heading for the Freak Show. As they approached it, the midget twins joined in the gawking.
The last time the Cyclops had felt this many interested eyes on her, she had been sixteen and beautiful. She had gotten used to being invisible: worthy of a disgusted glance, perhaps, but not a good, long look. The similarity of the situation to those horrible days when she had ruined her life made her feel queasy, but she kept walking.
They made their own decisions. She kept repeating the sentence in her head. She had done wrong, but it had been a mistake, and children make mistakes all the time. Everyone else had made their own decisions. She didn’t make them do it.
She probed inward, trying to figure out how guilty she should feel. How much of what happened was her fault? She obviously wasn’t innocent, but how much of the blame for Hernando’s death should she carry?
Her stomach roiled. In a way, it had been easier to blame everything on herself. It had simplified things. Now, reality seemed more fluid, more complex, more complicated.
A feminine gasp snapped her from her contemplation. Conchinara looked at her, eyes wide with astonishment. She started to point and laugh, but quickly noticed how everyone else was looking at the Cyclops and her face went blank for a moment.
Conchinara tossed her long black hair and looked at the Cyclops with her chin raised imperiously. She pursed her lips into a taunting pout, and waved a mockingly sad bye-bye to her.
The Cyclops suddenly felt ill. In the whirlwind of emotions and action, she had forgotten that Marco was kicking her out of the circus. She felt dizzy. There was no future for her. How would she live?
Conchinara’s pout turned into a vindictive smile, and the Cyclops knew that it had been she who had convinced Marco to abandon her. Why? How could someone be so cruel?
Conchinara smiled sweetly as the Cyclops entered the Freak Show tent.
DU LIEST GERADE
A Lesson for the Cyclops
RomantikDare to Hope? Maria leads a lonely existence of silent misery. Horribly disfigured, she earns a meager living as a sideshow freak. Her very existence is one of mockery, contempt, and ridicule. She has no hope, no dreams. No future. But when a dashin...
