Authors: Genevieve Valentine,Kiri Moth
Tags: #Fantasy, #Fantasy Fiction, #circus, #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #Imaginary wars and battles, #SteamPunk, #mechanical, #General
Mechanique (25 page)
82.
This is what George sees, years later, when he comes into the city carrying his rolled-up poster and his bucket of glue:
The old poster is still there, though it’s gone yellow with age and the once-rich green has been gnawed away by rain and sun. (“Been a while since we hit that city,” Boss had said when they stopped, and George can only imagine what that means.)
No one has pasted over it or torn it away or scorched the wall; the whole city seems on the verge of being civilized, down to the concrete streets that make it easy for him to walk through it in his brass casts. (No power or amount of his working on them can make them more comfortable.)
Inside the sickly-pale cameo of The Winged Man, someone has drawn with grease pencil over one of Alec’s eyes; now he wears a quarter of a skullcap, and has a wide bright eye that never closes.
George looks at the poster for a long time; then he turns around and peers up into the sky.
It’s a cloudy day, the sky as flat as a sheet of lead, but if he closes his eyes, he imagines he can hear music.
Ying meets him at the edge of camp and takes the bucket out of his hands, and they walk together around the empty, flattened ground where the crew is already setting up the tent.
Ayar and Jonah are helping, driving the stakes so far into the ground that the sound of the hammer is swallowed up by the earth.
(George can never shake the feeling, now, that they move like soldiers. The circus hasn’t been itself since the day in the capitol city. It’s clear now that it’s a shelter for fighters from a war they can’t ever escape.
It’s as if a sharp light has been turned on over the circus that can never go out, and now all their shadows are different.)
Outside her trailer, Boss is talking with Panadrome, sketching plans in the air with her expansive hands—a map, maybe, or a tent with a new shape. Maybe someone has been to audition while he was plastering the poster to the public board. (He doesn’t worry. Boss will tell him later; these days she’s more his partner than his master. She doesn’t tell him why, and he doesn’t ask. If her powers are diminished for being shared, he doesn’t want to know.)
The acrobats are practicing on the grass, and the aerialists in a nearby tree, except for Elena, who stands at the bottom and barks out the orders.
Stenos and Fatima have finished training; they walk back across the camp to the aerialists’ trailer. At the door Stenos nods and keeps going, to the edge of camp and beyond it, out of sight. George can’t see if Stenos looks at the sky or not.
Ying says, “He looked. He always looks.”
George grins at her. “I have to put these inside,” he says, taking back the bucket and holding up the broom. “I’ll meet you at the wagon, I’m starved out.”
The inside of the supply wagon has a window that faces the little trailer, and George looks through the grime and wonders what to do.
(It was right to tell the truth, he knew; but he was learning how to play the truth against the circus. What good would it do Stenos to know she was alive if it would only drive him back onto the road, and then what would happen to him, alone and empty, looking for a bird who might not ever pass this way again?)
When he comes out, Ying is waiting at the food wagon, talking with Ayar. She says something and jerks her head at the tent, and Ayar throws back his head and laughs.
George glances at the sky, and for a moment he watches a little silhouette too far off to see, unless you know what you’re looking for.
Then he joins Ying and Ayar for the meal, on his way to meet with Boss and make plans for the road ahead.
There are things about the circus he is beginning to understand.
T
HE
E
ND
About the Author
Genevieve Valentine’s fiction has appeared in
Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, Subterranean,
and others, and in the anthologies
Federations, The Living Dead 2, Running with the Pack, Teeth,
and more. Her nonfiction has appeared in
Lightspeed, Tor.com,
Weird Tales
, and
Fantasy Magazine
; she co-wrote the pop-culture book
Geek Wisdom
, coming from Quirk Books in summer 2011.
Mechanique
is her first novel.
Genevieve lives in New York, where she has discovered a rather counter-intuitive wariness of the theatre district. Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable, a tragedy she tracks on her blog at: genevievevalentine.com.
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the contributions of many people whose dedication has delighted and amazed me throughout this process. I would like to thank everyone who has been interested in the book, at any stage; nothing pleases a writer like the idea that someone else might actually want to read it.
I’d like to thank Kathy Sedia, who encouraged me to begin. I’d like to thank my agent Jennifer Jackson for her sage advice along the way, Paula Guran for her insightful editing, and Sean Wallace for putting his faith in both the process and the product.
I’d like to thank Kiri Moth, who as able to conjure so much with her artwork.
I’d like to thank John Joseph Adams for believing in the book, and for all his advice and support.
I’d like to thank (and apologize to) all the friends who have been remarkably patient with me long before I started in with specific annoyances related to this book, particularly Eileen Lavelle and Veronica Schanoes.
Special thanks are due to Anna Psitos, Stephanie Lai, and Elizabeth Story, who are the most enthusiastic and dedicated readers and friends in or out of the business, and to whom enough gratitude can never be rendered.
And last of all I’d like to thank my family, who first took me to the circus.
