Gaining Traction

The troupe visited Edinburgh, Carlisle, and York. They were headed to Leeds when he finally decided to put the thought of the red-haired girl and her butterflies from his mind. He refused to admit, as the weeks went by, that he was waiting to see another star, that he believed in the map and, by extension, in her. How foolish was he to believe she would remember him, would alter the stars for him?

The circus was picking up traction. Word spread that they were travelling south, and the audiences in each city had gotten bigger and bigger. He rarely saw his parents when they weren’t practicing, unless his father stopped to ruffle his hair and his mother insisted that he needed to find an act, or something to do on stage, if he wasn’t going to read the cards for the audience. He’d been approached by Maurice, the magician, who was looking for an assistant. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be a magician’s assistant, but when asked what he did want to be he only shook his head and refused to reply. What he wanted was very unlikely, and it had nothing to do with the circus at all.

He stargazed less and less each night; in part because the larger cities were so bright it was difficult to make out any stars. In the country stars flared like flames, but still he did not look. He resented the stars, and the fact that a new one hadn’t yet appeared. The stars did not care about a little boy lying in the tall grass outside a circus tent in York. They had better things to do. Except tonight, the only matter that required their attention was the making of space for a new star. Beside the constellation of Castor, one of the Gemini twins, it was red, as red as the Garnet star. It was so small he thought for a moment it was a spot of light in his vision, as if he had stared at a too-bright light too long. It had the impression of the arcane, of atavistic power. It was as red as her hair.

He took off toward the backstage tent. He knocked over several pieces of the contortionist’s paraphernalia as he rummaged for the map in his bag. He sprinted back outside and opened it on the grass. The light from the big top painted shadows across it like spilled ink, but he could make out the new star, in red ink, very clearly beside Castor. Tibia. The flute. A half a world away from his serpent charmer star.

Inside the tent the audience burst into applause. Probably the trapeze swinger had finished his routine and was taking a bow from a great and terrible height.

The boy suspected that somewhere, the red-haired girl was taking a dramatic bow, just for him.

Art by Adam S. Doyle

Text by Lucie MacAulay