~*~
Without another word
they flee
Hand in hand
Arm and arm
the Witch, the Cat, the Psychic
who always meant you harm
~*~
Sitting in her Witch's Circus, they made a miniature coven. Five in all sat hand in hand, and for whatever reason, it made Miss Rosalind Maybrush's face heat like an oven.
"I'm staying," Ferran was saying, the French accent of his voice tearing and fraying. "This is where I belong."
"You're taking that from her god-awful song."
"I'm not!" snapped soon-to-be soldier, baring his fangs. Out of his flashing eyes, he blinked his fiery bangs. "You don't understand. I have been searching for years to find my family, and now that I have, I cannot possibly leave them-"
"Your family is dead!"
Silence. Complete and utter silence, if such a thing was truly possible without the influence of Whisper. If she could have gotten any paler, the Silent Girl did.
Harrison dragged a shaking hand down his face. "Because of her family," he said, jabbing a finger at Algernon Maybrush, at the not-so-new Circus Witch. "Because you and Whis... um..."
"Echo. Our dad was a bit of an eccentric, and so was mum."
Stars shook, singing like little bells as Harrison sighed. As he dragged a painted hand down his skin, contorting his features curiously. "And now they're gone," he said quietly, grimmer than the grave. "You've outlived them by generations longer than you should've. If you stay here, Ferran, you give up the family you've made and-"
"The family I've what?"
"Juliette, your fiancee."
"What did you say?"
Harrison heaved a heavy sigh, knocking his head against a pinstriped tent. Rosalind could have sworn that it bent. "Juliette! Good Lord, Ferran! Don't let yourself forget!"
"I haven't," he grumbled, gritted, growled. He had that look in his eyes he'd once had when he'd prowled. "I'm just starting to remember."
"Ferran, I know this life seems appealing to you, but-"
"I'm sick of circuses, sick of show. But unless Rosalind herself sings me out, I swear I won't go-"
Tight lips popped open, trying to protest, but Ferran put his head in his hands and silenced the rest.
"Because I've found my family. I have my sister," he said, glancing at Whisper with a fond smile on his face. "I have my sweet lady of ethereal grace... and I have you," he said, grinning at Harrison, "who gently lets me know when I'm coming on too strong."
"Ferran, you're coming on too strong."
"See!" cried the ex-carny, slapping his knee, "with him around, I can't go wrong!"
Harrison rolled his eyes, looked to Rosalind and deciphered her thoughts like the best of spies. "Yes, you can, you-"
"It's not fair to make you choose."
The Forever Song itself seemed to waver at those words. She wanted, wanted so badly for him to stay and live out the rest of his life with his sister, but-
"What is Romeo without his Juliet?"
"Alive and pining over Rosalind... sorry, Rosaline," answered Algernon Maybrush, sending blood to Ferran's matured face in a rush. He shook it off like a cat banished water.
"Perhaps I don't want to be Romeo? What if I wanted to be Orlando, instead?"
"What if you wanted to be Ferdinand and find your Miranda instead?"
"I don't want to be Prospero's fool," he shot back. "Nor do I want to spend all my time with a silly Miranda!"
"We don't insult Shakespeare's plays in this circus, young man," griped Algernon.
"Who even are you?"
"Prithee, relax," she said with her hands in the air, as opposed to Whisper, who had hers raking through her hair. "Ferran, why don't you just be yourself?"
"He can't," Harrison hissed, "when he's stuck in a magic Circus where everything changes but us."
"We can add new performers."
One dark brow lifted.
"Ferran," she said, looking away from her closest friend and confidante, "I can bring Juliette here, if that's what you want. She can be the spider that spins the trapeze."
Harrison let out a noise that sounded more like a pig's squeal than it did anything else. Whisper caught him before he fell faint.
"I don't remember a thing about Juliette."
"Love is not a thing even magic can make you forget."
All fell still. Five in all turned to Harrison, who had freed himself from Whisper's silencing grip. All of this to deliver Whisper's sweet, sharp quip. One that drew Ferran's gaze to Whisper's, Rosalind's to her father's.
"Not truly," Harrison finished, nodding at the Silent Girl.
"I.... Shallow as it may be, I think I must have been looking for someone else in Juliette. Looking for some ideal..." Again, his eyes flashed to Rosalind, then quickly fell away. "Or looking as someone else entirely. I know who I am now." He sat up a little straighter. "And I don't believe Stripes the Tiger has taken his last bow."
The Carousel whirled faster, faster at those words, its cheery song picking up into a crescendo. Sparks flew from the horses' hooves. Fireworks fizzed from its fixtures.
Harrison went pale. "But will he ever?" he asked no one, nothing but the night sky. "Rosalind, you promised to close the Circus Everlasting. Just now, you told us you knew how to let us go."
There.
There it was, that answer that so burned her throat. Fermented as it had, the answer took the form of a sticky, black ball of bile. A hairy bezoar full of lies and pus.
"I can't close the circus," she said, picking the words off her tongue.
"But you said-"
"I know how to get us out. Us."
"But you said-"
"I knew you would make a fuss. I don't like it either but...I can get us out. No one else."
"Why-"
Colour leaked from her clothes, the fireworks long since exploded. No other pattern, texture, or colour could henceforth be goaded. Black and grey, boring as a cloudy day. With the thought, her skirt began to rain. It splattered her shoes that became a grey drain. "The information isn't easy to obtain. In fact, I had surrendered myself to the possibility that there was no answer. That we'd stay here until the end of time. Then, Ferran walked in, alive and well after two decades."
"You thought I was dead."
Harrison nodded. "You were orange sparks and ash from your toe to your head."
"And that made me realize... that after my Grandmother- who dissolved into bone- when the Forever Song stopped and some of the carnies dissolved-"
"They weren't dead," Algernon finished. "Just... fired?"
So Shula hadn't gotten the release he'd desired...
"Freed," corrected Rosalind, swallowing the thought. "And if I sing the Other-ing song to you..."
"We'll be made Other to the Others.... So... normal?"
"In a way, yes, but slightly more formal."
"And what about you?" Ferran asked with a frown. "Are you going to barricade yourself in the Hall of Mirrors and-"
"Don't worry about me," said Rosalind. "What I have to do, I hope you don't have to see."
"We're in this together, Witch."
The word made the Circus mistress' eye give a twitch.
"So, when are we gone?"
"You seem to forget there's a war going on."
Right. One that might diminish their chances, put a hold on her magical advances. Or perhaps, it would give her time. Time to find a better way. Time to pick a better play. Rosalind nodded grimly.
Harrison folded his hands in his lap primly. "When you said they were conscripting..."
"For not just infantry soldiers. They'd rope you into something." He looked at Rosalind, looked at Whisper. "All of you would be expected to do something for whatever side the circus spits us out in."
"So we stay."
The Carousel grew ever more excited, whizzing and popping and spinning, vomit slopping.
"We draft-dodge. All of us."
"Stay....?"
"Perform. The witch, the cat, the psychic, and the Silent Girl."
Tension- taught between them like a rope. Her father sat bolt upright, killing all of her hope. "And what about me?" asked Algernon, leaning over her shoulder so into the glass pane of a dunk-tank, he could preen and fawn.
"We should have someone on the outside to tell us when the war is over. Someone who can find their way back to the circus."
"I'm sure the patrons would let you know."
"But I can't control where the Circus decides to go."
"It could be years before we end up in a country that knows the ins and outs of the war."
Ferran dragged a hand through his hair, rumpling his uniforms as he hissed through his teeth. "You Victorians!" he cried, his tone a biting chide. "You. Don't. Understand. What. This. War. IS! It's not England and France or Crimea or whatever. It's THE war. The GREAT war. Everyone's in it."
"You say 'Victorian' like you and Whisper weren't living under bloody George the fouth!" Rosalind grumbled.
"Wait... Queen Victoria died?" added her father.
And Ferran just shook his head. "You're going to hear about it when this war ends. You don't need to send someone out there to... test to see if my miracle can happen again."
"But we can. So we should."
In the distance, circus-goers chattered and creepy carnies chanted cantos. Women cried tears of blood and men died and revived on stage. Everyone lived, nobody aged. People forgot about the war for an hour or a few. Rosalind wished she could forget what she'd have to do.
Or at least... wished the last dregs of pity wouldn't find their way through.
"We need to make sure, for certain, that the world outside post-war is one we'd want to live in."
"Anywhere's better than here." Whisper- again- through the mouth of her mediator. But the Circus Psychic seemed to wholeheartedly agree.
"We won't know until one of us is free. And that's why I need to go," said Algernon Maybrush. "I'll be able to find my way back. Bonds of love, remember? I'd-"
"You did forget about me."
"What?"
"Not once did you seek me out. You couldn't see, but you had to have known I was-"
"Yes, that's because-"
"I know that you love me, father. But you haven't been around! The bond isn't strong enough, it's-"
But they stopped short. Stopped because a white willow wound round their arms. Whisper held of their gazes with a sure storm in her eyes. She nodded to Harrison.
"Whisper would like a word. Whisper wants me to let you know, that she is the one who will go."
"What?" gasped Ferran, falling forward. "But- no! You-"
"She wants to see the outside."
"Whisper, you..."
"She's a girl. She won't be drafted, and she's the strongest of any of us. She'll find her way back."
Rosalind felt like she'd been stuck through with a tack. What was the circus without its Silent Girl? What was its witch? The one constant she'd had since she'd come here, years ago, was leaving. She'd never imagined that Whisper's loss, she'd end up grieving.
Slowly, slowly, sister squeezed brother's hand. She gave a small smile as tears pricked Ferran's eyes.
"She promises."
Stars whizzed by, unclaimed from the sky- because there would be no piano dance tonight. No silently shattering goblets or ghostly interventions. They would all take the night off- black slugs be damned.
They'd make sure that by fate, they wouldn't be scammed.
Rosalind nodded. Algernon Maybrush sat back in surrender.
And Harrison, eyes gleaming too, quietly delivered his quiet friend's last decree. "She's not coming back until she'd older than you."
And with a smile, their soon-to-be unretired tiger replied, "Yes, I found that a little uncomfortable too."
~*~
They gathered in the Repaire de la belle bête, where this had all begun. Where Whisper had dragged Rosalind, Shula on her tail, to tell her of her past and future in a long-since-burned tale. She showed Ferran where they'd slept and where they'd played. Showed him wrappers she'd saved for crafts and collected to cure boredom.
And then she took him to the chest she kept locked with a key, and showed him its contents: a book to whose existence Rosalind Maybrush hadn't been privy.
Voice.
She'd recreated it, or perhaps just created a second installment in the years she'd spent alone. Years ago, Rosalind had returned her literacy. It now was evident that Whisper had used it vigorously.
She took the little, leatherbound book in one hand and her brother's hand in the other. Harrison had tears in both of his. Rosalind just let them trickle down her cheeks, washing the artificial blush away like wet paint scraped from a canvas.
"I think it's for you," she said of the book. The book full of drawings and notes, scribbled songs and pleas. Diary entries.
"But," squeaked Ferran, stepping forward with a face like ash beneath the flames of his hair. "Won't you need it? To remember?"
Whisper withdrew and laid her hands over her heart, shaking her head at every word, every detailed bit of art.
"Nearly a century of love isn't easily forgotten," said Harrison, and whether he spoke Whisper's words or his own, Rosalind didn't know. All she knew was the song in her veins and the way it rattled her bones and pickled her skin.
She fought the Forever Song's cruel, mocking din.
"Are you ready?" she asked, and Whisper took a step back.
She got her brother to lean down and pressed a kiss to his brow and then, to everyone's surprise, to Harrison's cheek. She took turns hugging them all- twice, and then thrice. And then she nodded and with a graceful drag of her finger, beckoned for the witch to begin her song.
So with tears in her eyes and such pain in her heart, Rosalind returned those stolen stars to where they belong.
~*~
Chaos ensues
People sprinting lose their shoes
And with a song on your breath that you somehow already know
You try to drag them back
They can't abandon
Their show
~*~