Combine that with the fact that I’d already overheard audience members exclaiming over her beauty in a way that was very different from the “pretty child” they used to call her, and I was sure my twin had vanished behind the two-way mirror of growing up and that I had been left behind.
A long parade of unsuccessful auditioners walked morosely out of the tent and drifted away down the side streets.
I carefully didn’t look at them, both because no one wants to feel judged when they’ve already been found wanting . . . and because I was much more curious about the people who’d remained in the tent, who would be signing their contracts with Mama even now.
When Apple nudged me to keep sweeping, I took up my broom again, but I kept my eyes on the tent, waiting . . .
And the boys exploded out.
They laughed and teased and tackled each other and whooped for joy, a baker’s dozen of boys—Well, young men, I thought—in full stage makeup and the skimpiest costumes I’d ever seen: corsets and thigh-high stockings, some of them, or cropped shirts that exposed long expanses of lean, tight torso, or transparent bits of chiffon tailored as if they were formal suits—except that you could see right through them, skin and limb brushing up against sheer fabric. Some of the boys were tall, some short, some broad and thick-muscled or padded with fat, while others were slender and lithe; all were breathtakingly fit as only dancers can be, every motion of their bodies artful and graceful and deliberate.
I had never given much thought to male beauty before. Outside the tent that day, it overwhelmed me.
I glanced at Rosie, unable even to speak, and I found that she was watching me.
She looked . . . puzzled. But before I could collect myself enough to say anything, she just gave a little sigh and a nod, and went off to find Bear.
In the familiar way of Rosie and me, we never had to talk about it; we both already, and in the same moment, just knew—just recognized another of our many differences.
We knew I liked boys in a way that she very much didn’t.
In the years since, I’d become a kind of worshipper of male beauty: the swoop of collarbones above flat chests, the expanse of wide shoulders tapering to tidy waists, the vee where stomach muscles meet hips. Thoughtful gazes from long-lashed eyes under heavy brows, the sudden flash of a grin that’s just carnivorous enough.
Men were gorgeous. Why women were called “the fairer sex” was entirely lost on me.
And then I’d met Tam, and fe was the most stunning person I had ever seen, and looking at fer and talking to fer sent heat sweeping up through my whole body in a way I recognized from my love of men . . . but fe was no more male than I was. I wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Rosie would say I didn’t need to make anything of it. She’s never felt the need to sort herself into understandable parts the way I do.
Of all the things that people ask me if I envy Rosie for—her easy grace, athleticism, charisma—that fluid self-acceptance never comes up. But it’s the one thing I most wish we had in common.
The other stagehands were already unloading, and between their chatter and the heavy lifting, I soon had no more attention left for my own thoughts. I was grateful. Glad, too, that my place in the stage crew meant I wouldn’t have to be part of the showy main disembarkation. No one should notice us at all as we trolley-pulled the heavy equipment, hidden behind the performers handing out free samples of wonderment to whoever happened to be at the pier that day.
We emerged.
I’d spent just enough time in the darkness inside the airship that I had to squint when we came back outside.
Besides the bright sunlight that had greeted us as we made berth in Port’s End, there was an extra brightness to the warm air. Golden whorls and spirals sparked like fireworks around the airship but made no sound.
Tam herded the lights like a shepherd, murmuring carefully under fer breath and making gentle stroking motions through the air with those elegant hands.
I was transfixed for a moment, until I stumbled into the trolley in front of me.
“Watch it, Ives!” Apple scolded. “I want to live as long as the Lord sees fit, please!”
“Sorry!” I squeaked.
Ahead of us the performers were dancing and sword-swallowing and fire-eating and clowning and contorting, turning somersaults and pirouettes or walking on stilts—and I knew without having to look up that Rosie skimmed the air above all our heads, flitting between the ropes that held the airship to the dock and giving the grandest performance of all. I could tell that just from the faces of the people on the pier, mostly tilted up to watch my sister even though there were so many closer marvels approaching them from the gangplank and on the ground.
Mama’s voice, amplified through a bullhorn I’d designed myself and that Tam had augmented during the trip from Faerie with just a little magic, cut clear through the drums and Toro’s walking xylophone: “Come one, come all, to the grand and grandiose, magnificent and marvelous Circus Rose, opening Friday night in Carter Park! Buy your tickets from any of our per . . . formers . . .”
Mama’s voice drained away.
I wondered for an anxious moment if my bullhorn design had failed.
I bumped into Apple’s trolley again and opened my mouth to apologize—and then I realized that he’d stopped moving because our whole procession had.
The troupe stood still, those on stilts wobbling a little as they found a steady stance, everyone else staring at . . . something at the front of our group.
No one on the pier was looking up anymore, either.
I looked up. Rosie dangled by her knees from a thick rope, and she too stared at something that must be just ahead of Mama. She hung upside down in the air, not even bothering to right herself. And the expression on her face . . .
Well, it told me I’d best be looking too.
I clambered on top of a fellow stagehand’s trolley, steeling myself to ignore her grumbles, but even she was too distracted by whatever was up ahead to scold me.
From the top of the boxes, I could see clear across the crowd that had gathered to watch the circus come in. I could see what they were looking at now too.
A show.
Only one that Mama obviously hadn’t planned. She’d dropped the bullhorn to the ground, and her mouth was open a little in surprise. The point of her beard trembled.
Two men knelt before her at the end of the pier.
One was brown-skinned with a salt-and-pepper queue, the other pale and red-haired. Both were handsome, the first man slim, the second broad.
The sight of them twisted my heart. I had only seen their faces a few times when I was young, but I recognized them straightaway.
My father.
And Rosie’s.
They each rested one arm on a forward knee, and they knelt next to each other, so that their shoulders touched as they lifted . . . something . . . toward our mother. They both smiled at her, and my father was saying something, but I was too far away to hear the words.
Then the ring they held sparked in the sun and the light from Tam’s fireworks, and suddenly I knew.
They were asking our mother to marry them.
Rosie
Oh, my heart—
I usually know,
I’m usually ready—
I can feel it coming, the rush, the overwhelm, the crush,
the world turning into too much, and I can back away, finish my act, release the ropes, push the sky away, be ready be ready be ready for needing the dark and the quiet and a loving arm that will keep me safe, I know who these men are, I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it, I lock eyes with Ivory for one moment and she knows too and she hates it too but she’s grounded she always is she always is and I’m pinned to the air can’t move can’t move need Bear—oh lord, oh Bear, oh Ivory—sick rushing behind my eyes can’t move can’t move—all black all red all too too bright—