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“The circus?”
She grinned at me. “Well, you know,” she said, raising her eyebrows and leaning
toward me, “I was in one before I came here. I performed on the trapeze. I wore
glitter all along my cheeks and down my arms, and turned circles in the air.”
She drew out the words, filling them with flourishes. I forgot all about
Beatrice.
“Trapeze?” I repeated.
“A long bar and two pieces of rope,” she said, “hanging from the sky. Like a
swing. You can sit on it or swing from your shoulders or ankles or knees. You
can even hang on it from your chin.”
My eyes were enormous as I stared at her. “What was it like?” I breathed. “What
did you do?” I pictured Mary in the air then, like a bird. Her chin resting on a
bar the way she rested it in her hands and peered down at me, sitting behind her
desk.
“It was like flying,” she said, smiling and widening her cat’s eyes. “Like
having no weight to you, no bones, no skin. It was like melting right into air.
And I did flying-trapeze acts, too, with a catcher.”
“What’s that?”
“You swing out, holding the bar with your palms, and just let go.” She stretched
her arms in front of her, pushing away the air. “You just fly, Tessa, and in
those moments you can twist or do somersaults or just keep your body pressed
into one straight line until the catcher catches you. But in those moments, time
stops completely.”
I laughed. “Time can’t stop!”
“Of course it can,” she said, pretending to be offended. Then she leaned down
and whispered in my ear: “Because it’s magic. Up there, that high, there are no
rules!”
I was still giddy that night at the dinner table, bursting with it. I was so
desperate to share my news and excitement that I actually looked around the
table—at my mother’s worn face, my brothers’ smirking mouths, Geraldine’s hulk
on the other side of the table. I imagined telling them all about Mary and the
circus, releasing the words and letting them explode over that table like
fireworks. For a minute I imagined that we would all laugh together. Then my
father glanced up and met my eyes, and the words died in my throat.
Later, in the quiet of the bedroom, I looked over at Geraldine. Her bed was
parallel to mine, on the other side of the room. A faint bit of moonlight
streamed in the window, illuminating the squares on the quilt that covered her.
Her dull brown hair spread over her pillow.
“Guess what?” I whispered.
“What?” I heard, a second later.
“I know a secret.”
Geraldine threw off her quilt and sat up. She glared at me. “Tell me.”
“You have to promise you won’t tell Mom and Dad,” I said. I wanted so badly to
tell someone. The words were bubbling out of me; I could practically see them
floating in the air.
“I don’t have to do anything, munchkin. Tell me now!”
I sat back on the bed and crossed my arms. After a moment, she sighed loudly.
“Fine,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, my pulse racing, my heart in my stomach. I lowered my voice.
“Did you know that Mary Finn was in the circus?”
“What are you talking about?”
I squinted in the dim light, focusing on her face. “No, really,” I said. “She
flew on the trapeze. She said she knew people who could eat fire!”
She looked at me suspiciously. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”
“No, no,” I said. “She knew boys covered in fish scales, girls with wings! She
said she knew men with bodies as tall as skyscrapers or as short as daffodils.”
The words spilled out on top of each other.
Excerpted from Rain Village by Carolyn Turgeon. Copyright © 2006 by Carolyn Turgeon. Excerpted by permission of Unbridled Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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