The Butterfly Circus Read online

  “I don’t know how I know,” she whispers, her eyes brighter than ever. “I just do.”

  The words are scarcely off her lips when we’re suddenly plunged into darkness as the train rushes into a tunnel carved through one of the mountains. The shadow instantly presses as close as she can to me, making my side ice-cold. Her hand entwines with mine, and as the train rattles on and the dark deepens, her fingers tighten. I look for the glint of her eyes, but when I can’t find it I realise she must have them screwed tight shut. The wagon’s wheels clatter on the tracks and my shadow gives a little squeak, burrowing deeper beneath my cloak, cowering like the circus dogs do in a thunderstorm. I hold my cloak down tight around her.

  Soon the air begins to smell of sweet pine again and we burst out of the smoky tunnel into the crisp night. It’s still summer but snow always falls in Gala’s mountains and a flurry of snowflakes swirl into the wagon, dusting the hay white. Immediately, my shadow springs out from under the cloak and slips up the edge of the wagon, her face tilted to the moon, her mouth stretched open as if she’s trying to drink the light.

  “Are you scared of the dark?” I ask. If she hears me, she pretends not to and lifts her head proudly so that her nose is in the air. I suddenly realise I know nothing about her. “What’s your name?”

  “Rosa. It’s a flower. It smells pink,” she answers. I’m about to correct her, because pink isn’t a smell, when I realise I have no idea what a rose smells like because I’ve never even seen one. They can’t grow on Gala; it’s too hot in the daytime and the nights are always freezing.

  She slides down and starts kicking the hay, bunching it up around me. “You ought to get some sleep,” she says. “You look tired.”

  “Shadows should be used to the dark,” I mumble to myself, shaping the hay into pillows, but Rosa’s hearing is so good that she hears me over the racket of the train.

  “I am used to it, because you’re always in the light!” she retorts.

  “But that’s how you’re made!” I parrot what Belle told me when I was little. “Shadows happen when light is blocked.”

  “I am not a blockage!” Rosa replies indignantly, extending one arm into the moonlight, turning it elegantly for me to view. Then she yawns loudly and flops down, crooking one arm behind her head for a cushion and patting the hay next to her.

  “I can’t sleep,” I say, “I’ve got too much on my mind.”

  “So tell me about it,” she murmurs sleepily, snuggling down and tucking her knees up against her chest. She’s so round and black that she could be a well; so deep I could tell her all my secrets and she’d never fill up.

  And suddenly, I am. I’m telling her everything; about Belle and me being found in the forest by Alfredo Fratellini, about how much I love the trapeze, about the fall that should have killed me and the silks that saved me, about how my bad arm isn’t the real reason I don’t fly the trapeze. Then I tell her how sometimes I think Belle doesn’t love me any more and how I’m terrified I’ve lost her for good. I’m telling Rosa things I thought I’d never tell anyone when I hear a little snort from the hay. I give her a nudge, but she’s fast asleep; all my secrets have fallen on deaf ears. I sigh and curl up next to her, pulling the cloak up around her shoulders. Then I close my eyes. The last thing I hear is the soft tooting of Rosa’s snores over the rattle of the train.

  6

  Sanctuary’s Grand Station

  It’s happening again. The nightmare. Belle is telling a story, but I can hardly hear it; I’m so warm and sleepy. She suddenly stops. Her heartbeat quickens. Outside, a scream punctures the dark. Now, Belle is standing by the door, a stick in her hand like she’s about to go looking for mushrooms in the forest. I tell her she mustn’t open the door. I’m begging her not to go outside. Something bad is on the other side. Something bad is waiting for her.

  I wake up sweating and open my eyes to sunshine. I put my glasses on and look up. The sun is glinting through a glass roof perched on a web of beams, dotted with masses of white doves. Purple and gold bunting – the colours of Sanctuary’s flag – flap between enormous marble columns. We’re here already: Sanctuary’s Grand Station.

  I clamber up the hay and peep over the side. The station is huge – bigger than I could have ever imagined it would be – with dozens of trains coming and going, and hundreds of holidaymakers and circus performers bustling about. I gawp in amazement at all the people, the brightly coloured gypsy caravans and kiosks, and the huge arched entranceway with a vast clock above it, flanked with yellow, trumpet-shaped flowers. It’s late; I don’t know how I slept so long. I slide back to where Rosa is still asleep beneath the cloak, but before I get a chance to wake her, I hear voices outside. A beady eye appears at the side of the wagon where a knot of wood has popped out.

  “Well, well, well. What have we here?”

  The eye blinks for several seconds before disappearing, only to be replaced by another eye, bleary and bloodshot. A moment later, that eye vanishes too.

  “Wake up!” I hiss, kicking the cloak. I scramble over the hay and look through the hole.

  On the other side, I see a neat little man in a red uniform, with a fez balanced on his head like an upturned flowerpot. His black moustache is waxed to two points and his eyes shine as bright as the buttons on his jacket. Standing next to him is an old man in a velvet suit, cornflower blue, faded at the elbows and in need of a good clean. Fraying gold braids glint across his chest. He must be a ringmaster. He is standing in the shadow of a huge man in a stripy leotard with muscles like knotted ropes: the circus strongman.

  “See this?” says the button-eyed man, jabbing a finger at a brass badge on his fez. The strongman nods gloomily. “What’s it say?”

  The strongman steps up close and scrutinises the badge. He mouths the letters with a puzzled frown.

  “Grud?”

  “Guard!” the guard snaps. He prods the ringmaster’s chest with his pencil. “Didn’t want the authorities seeing who you’re sneaking in, did you, Sarrasani?” He thumps the side of the wagon. “Get this open!” he barks.

  “The bolt’s jammed.” Mr Sarrasani shrugs.

  The guard looks pointedly at an enamel sign screwed into one of the marble columns.

  LICENSED ENTERTAINERS ONLY

  He licks his pencil and pulls a notebook from his top pocket. “You know the rules,” he mutters. “The fine for smuggling performers in is three hundred florins!”

  By now a small crowd has gathered by the wagon, craning to see what all the fuss is about. I grit my teeth; I’m trapped.

  “Should have guessed a rag-and-bone show like yours would try to cut corners!” the guard grumbles.

  “I swear I didn’t know she was in there!” protests Mr Sarrasani, stepping up to the wagon and looking in again. I only just manage to scramble back as his mottled eye presses to the hole. “Besides, who’d pay to look at her?”

  “Description,” the guard continues, elbowing old Sarrasani out of the way and scrutinising me. “Female. Small. White. Very white!” His eye disappears and his moustache arrives at the knothole. “You’re so pale,” he tells me, like I hadn’t noticed. “Are you ill?”

  Belle says there’s nothing more dangerous than a Stupid with a badge, so I clamp my lips shut. He raps his pencil on the wagon, the same way Mrs Fratellini taps the goldfish bowl to get the fish’s attention when she’s talking to them.

  “Where are your parents?” he shouts, the way I’ve heard Stupids shout at foreigners when they can’t speak their language. The moustache disappears; it’s safe to look through the hole again.

  “Runaway orphan,” he concludes, grinding his pencil to make a full stop and snapping his notebook shut. “I’ve wasted enough time,” he grumbles and tries the bolt again but it still won’t budge. I hitch my bag over my head and scramble over to Rosa.

  “Rosa!” I hiss, pulling the cloak off.

  My heart flips. She’s not there.

  For a second I wonder if when I slept every
thing went back to how it should be. Wrong can sometimes be slept back to right. I close my eyes and step onto a patch of sunlit hay, praying Rosa will spill out from my feet, willing her to be my shadow the way she used to be, the way she ought to be. I open my eyes and look down: there’s just empty yellow hay. For the first time in my life I’m properly alone. First I lose my sister, now I lose my shadow! I squint into the corners of the wagon, wondering if she’s hiding. The men are hammering at the bolt. That’s when I hear the gentle giggling.

  There’s a drape of deep black in the shadows where the wagon walls meet. Rosa is hanging from the bolt, stopping the men from opening it on the other side. One of her eyes disappears for a second and I realise she just winked at me.

  “I’ll hang on a bit longer. Get ready!” She giggles again.

  I tie my cloak back on and peep through the spyhole again. Mr Sarrasani and the guard are tugging on the handles, while the strongman tries pushing the bolt in the opposite direction to Rosa, sweat pouring from his brow.

  “Ready?” Rosa whispers.

  “For what?”

  Rosa doesn’t answer. Instead she twitches slightly at the very ends of her feet, like a cat’s tail, flicking before it pounces.

  “Now!”

  She lets go and springs away. Immediately the bolt shoots back. The ramp slams down, knocking the men off their feet as an avalanche of hay pours over them. Rosa grabs my hand and, under the slew of dust and hay, we tumble down the ramp and plunge into the crowd.

  “Catch that girl!” the guard bellows. He’s the first to scramble back to his feet, but he doesn’t seem to have seen Rosa. No one does.

  A tourist in a floral shirt, unbuttoned to reveal a thick carpet of chest hair, shouts, “Thief!” and lunges for me, but he trips over his luggage. The guard blows his whistle again, but I’m far enough ahead for people not to realise his whistle is for me. We slip in between a waddle of black-and-white robed nuns and just about keep up with them, hiding behind their cloaks. We make it to the end of the platform. There’s a turnstile with a depressed-looking ticket collector, pale as a limp stick of celery. I realise that without a ticket we can’t get through. I hear the whistle again and look over my shoulder to see the guard thundering towards us, his face as purple as pickled beetroot. I’m trapped between two vegetables.

  “In here!” Rosa giggles, pulling me into an empty compartment of a passenger train waiting nearby.

  “There’s nothing funny about this!” I shout, jumping after her.

  “Isn’t being chased fun?” Rosa asks innocently. “This way!” She laughs and opens the opposite door. She reaches over to a door on the train next to the one we’re on, opens it and hops neatly from one train onto the other. I leap after her and land in the middle of a family who have just unpacked their picnic. They are so busy squabbling over who wants what, they can’t have noticed Rosa, but I’m more obvious; I knock ginger beer and sandwiches everywhere and shout “Sorry!” about a million times. The family stop quarrelling with each other and unite to shout at me instead, just as the train shudders into life.

  “Quick!” Rosa chirps, pulling me out onto the platform. The train whistles as I slam the door shut. At that exact moment I see the guard, stuck in the first train, shaking his fist at me through the flickering windows as the second train shunts slowly past. His mouth is making ugly shapes around uglier words. It takes me a couple of seconds before I notice I’m not looking at him at all. I’m gazing at my own reflection and I’m grinning from ear to ear.

  “Told you!” Rosa whispers in my ear.

  7

  Les éléphants intelligents

  We run hand in hand down the deserted platform, slippery with spilt ice cream and drinks, but then I see there is a second turnstile. It’s either the same ticket collector or Celery Stick has a twin, because there’s an identical man punching holes in small pieces of card. I skid to a halt, wondering how to escape, when I catch sight of a yellow sign:

  ALL ANIMALS

  DISINFECTED

  HERE

  We veer right and run up to the marble walls, keeping within the shadows until we reach a gated tunnel. Crouching behind a heap of fat mail sacks marked for Scoria, we watch as a stubble-chinned porter hauls the wooden gates open. The stench of chlorine hits us. A moment later there’s loud trumpeting and three Indian elephants, led by Sarrasani’s strongman, sway their way towards the tunnel. Their huge flanks are painted with beautiful swirls of blue and gold, and the word SERCUS picked out in orange. They really should have let their clown do the lettering.

  “We’ll sneak out with them!” I say.

  Rosa tightens her grip on my hand and I feel her tense. Just as the elephants trudge past, the middle one hesitates. She’s an old lady; her trunk, blotched pink with age, quivers slightly in our direction.

  “Allez!” I whisper.

  I’ve lived next to circus elephants long enough to learn every order the bullhands use with them; I can ask them to shift a heavy bale for me or shush them when they chatter too late at night. Elephants always know what you want them to do, like the night Belle and I woke in a wagon full of smoke and they arrived to put the fire out, their trunks already full of water. They understood the single note Belle whistled; that’s how smart they are. This one knows exactly what I said, but it’s not me who’s stirred her curiosity. Her amber eye rolls with interest towards Rosa crouching behind me and I wonder if she can see her. The very tip of her trunk trembles inquisitively and she lifts it in a sort of greeting, then knocks an enormous mail bag out of the way to investigate.

  “Oi, you!” bellows the strongman, spotting me hiding. He drops the elephants’ leash and rushes at me. “You owe us three hundred florins!”

  Rosa grabs the huge mail sack and hurls it upwards. A blizzard of postcards and letters fills the air and the strongman disappears from sight. The elephants trumpet excitedly, then bump against him, almost as if they’re trying to stop him catching us. We dodge past and into the dark tunnel, where a pool of disinfectant stretches between its walls. But before we can take another step, there’s a pitiful wail. Rosa grabs me tightly in the blackness.

  “Hop on!” I shout.

  In a flash she’s on my back. My knees buckle; it’s like she’s made of lead. Her arms are squeezing my neck and I can hardly breathe, let alone tell her to loosen up. Instead I let her strangle me as I splash towards the light. I stagger out of the tunnel, wheezing, my eyes stinging from the chlorine and the bright sun. I wipe my glasses clear and see we’re surrounded by high bars. We’re in the enclosure where the animals’ ear tags are checked to see that they’re licensed before they’re allowed out into Sanctuary.

  “Oh, that’s better!” Rosa says, like she’s arrived at a garden party, slipping down and smoothing herself out. Her blackness blossoms in the sunshine until she’s as glossy as blackcurrants.

  “No, this is terrible!” I snap, wincing as the sunlight hits my skin. I pull her towards a small, shadowy archway, we scamper up some steps and find ourselves in the station entrance hall. We’re hit by a wave of noise and colour, surrounded by a confusion of kiosks and caravans; this is where Sanctuary’s circuses catch their trade as it arrives. Ticket touts and street performers throng to free the holidaymakers from their hard-won florins. Sweet traders sell from long trestle tables covered in lollipops, toffee apples, bottles of sweets and mounds of chocolate.

  “That way!” Rosa points to an arched entranceway. Now that we’re close enough to the clock, I see that instead of numbers, there are paintings around the face: different circuses, a helter-skelter, a Ferris wheel, a pier and a pair of theatre masks; one happy face, one sad. The clock hands are hammered out of etched brass, inlaid with purple and green enamel to look like peacock feathers. One of the feathers settles on the pier and there’s a spurt of sparks as a bell jangles. The holidaymakers slow their ice-cream-licking to hear better as a metallic voice crackles out from one of the flowers.

  “Take a peer from the
pier!” says the tinny voice.

  Just then the guard’s whistle cuts through again. I look back. He’s waving his fist furiously at me as he pushes through the turnstile, followed by Celery Stick. The street hawkers instantly pack up their trinket-stuffed suitcases and scram.

  “Bye!” warbles Rosa, waving sweetly. I snatch her arm down, pulling her under the toffee-apple table and we scramble along in the dark towards the opposite end. I wait a moment, then poke my head out.

  The guard has vanished. Between us and the exit stand dozens of caravans pulled by ponies and donkeys, all offering rides down to the seashore. The nearest caravan to us is painted the colour of fireworks, with a beautiful dappled cob standing patiently between the shafts. In each wheel, gilded spokes beam out from hubs embossed with zodiac signs. Cross-legged on the caravan’s footboard sits a hunched-up woman, as wrinkled and freckled as an old Cox apple, wrapped in a ratty green shawl. She’s stroking a crystal ball in a theatrical way to attract customers. A fortune teller. I have a hazy memory that there used to be one at the Butterfly Circus, but Mrs Fratellini said she wasn’t very good because she never knew about the tiger. Whatever that means.

  The guard reappears and blows his whistle. The old lady must be there without a licence, because she quickly grabs the pony’s reins. My eyes land on the caravan’s belly box and I wonder if it’s big enough for Rosa and me to escape in.

  Before we can move, Celery Stick runs past, checking under the caravans. I pull Rosa under the next stall, hung with garlands of pink marshmallows. We squat in the gloom and spilt icing sugar, keeping watch, waiting for our moment. Suddenly a huge red shoe crashes down next to me and I look up. A twenty-foot-tall man, wearing long striped trousers, a top hat and a spangled waistcoat, lopes over our heads and into the crowds. He’s a Peggar – a stilt walker who sells circus tickets. Dozens more throng through the archway like a herd of giraffes, their wooden feet clacking on the polished marble floor as they jostle for trade, baskets of lollies hooked over their spindly arms to lure children.