Circus of Silence

Fools and Freaks

~*~

You're on your way back to the Carousel when you encounter a horrible sight.

A man, about your age, with bloodshot eyes and shaking hands.

Of course he gives you a fright.

He begs you for your popcorn, and you can count the kernels in his teeth.

Having just paid a day's wages for the six bags in your arms, you shake your head.

The man lunges at you, frothing at the mouth and snarling.

~*~

         The thick, grey fog that had clouded her mind dissipated when the Pied Piper's humming, his sweet-tongued speaking stopped. A light shining through a cloud. That was what it felt like. A storm tapering out and leaving nothing but mist. Rosalind Maybrush's fog cleared away, and left her in an alleyway made up of that empty tent. The look on Shula's face was of shock and repent. He had his arm on hers, though she'd not given him consent.

The snake charmer opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His lips parted again and again in a way that made him look like a fish out of water, trying to breathe. His eyes too were like a fish's, round and panicked as he tried desperately to scream. As Rosalind watched his white teeth gleam. No sound escaped Shula, and done was his scheme.

Whisper's hand was on his wrist. Whisper, who was less a Silent-Girl than a Silencer, Rosalind realized. She could shatter a glass without making a sound. She could stomp on a piano without having it scream. She could shush singers skillfully... and successfully. Shula shut up.

And Whisper... had come to be her backup?

The corpse-faced girl had no expressions, but something flashed in her eyes. Her grip on the snake charmer tightened.

"Talk," Rosalind demanded, her voice as stern as her mother's was. "Where were you taking me?"

Shula opened his mouth, but Whisper's touch didn't leave his skin. If anything, it grew tighter, his blood flow turning thin.

"Whisper," she said, her voice firm and controlling. Whisper didn't budge, but it was worth a shot. "Whisper, I need to hear his wicked plot." The Silent Girl's lips pressed together, the tiniest bit of glitter glistening like a fallen star. "Whisper, please." Had she ever spoken to the girl before? She should have guessed it would be so one sided.

Storm-cloud eyes narrowed, cresent-moon nails cutting into Shula's flesh. She opened her mouth and her lips and tongue twisted into shapes that seemed wrong, foreign to the Silent Girl. Like an amputee moving a phantom limb. But it didn't look like she expected any sound. And none there, Rosalind knew, would ever be found. She couldn't read her lips.

"I... I beg your pardon," Rosalind tried, surprised at the sadness in her voice. Though she'd encountered the creature in the middle of a circus alleyway in the middle of the night- the waxing moon glowing through the fog overhead, she was not afraid. She may just have been tired, but she found herself pitying poor Whisper. "I don't understand."

Lashes locked together and Whisper emitted what would have been a sigh had there been sound. Her shoulders fell and her breathing cycle continued. One hand slid from Shula's side. She pointed a finger and waved it about the air like a conductor's wand. Music. Song. Why did this feel like they were playing a game of ping-pong?