The Fortune Teller's Daughter (14 page)

Annabelle
gasped along with several scandalized girls around us. “You dirty traitor! How
dare you stand against your own kind?”

Their
exchange did not rile the lovely, tall assistant who smiled down at me, the tip
of her tongue pressed teasingly against the back of her teeth.

“Words? I’ve
got loads of them. Let’s see…how about
misbegotten
,” she purred. Her
mouth worked the words over seductively. She touched a fingertip to her bottom
lip. “My favorite --
cur
.”

The
ballerina experienced a half second of smugness before I lunged at her. A dozen
hands clamored to grab a piece of me, my arm, my waist, my wrists. Katya
screamed energetically and scrambled backwards so fast she slipped on the grass
and fell anyway. I heard Micah yelling and other girls yelling and Annabelle
hollering her head off. I heard someone call me an animal, a one woman
freakshow, a mutt. I flailed to capture a single one of them, just one that I
could childishly beat up to stake my claim on the playground, but a man caught
me up from behind, lifted me off my feet and spun me away from the gaggle of
girls. I lost sight of them but heard Katya breathlessly recounting, in
hysterical exaggeration, how Rook had allowed a violent psychopath into the
carnival.

The
leprechaun cook turned me out into his pavilion and turned on the girls
hovering around the besieged Katya. They flinched back from the burly cook.
“Break it up! Hells hounds, you all act like a pack of wild dogs. Go back to
work! All of you. My God, women are crazy.”

Micah
shoulder checked another acrobat and scowled her way back to my side, though a
quirk of her mouth at the last minute gave away a bit of a demented streak in
the acrobat. “I don’t care if I get a hundred years on tumbler duty, the look
at Katya’s face when she knocked herself out was worth it.”

“I’ve known
her for five minutes and it was a bit satisfying.” I grinned, then flinched and
grabbed my side where a shock of electricity ripped my injury. The bandages had
come loose, I could feel them scraping my stomach.

Pudgy and
freckled. She wasn’t
wrong
, but I’d never heard anyone say it with such
abhorrence before. As if what she really meant was
kicker of puppies
and
stealer of husbands
.

“Sorry
Horus.” Micah offered an almost repentant look when the cook narrowed his beady
eyes on her. Almost.

“Don’t
bother. I don’t know what it is about you girls when a new female shows up.
I’ve seen it dozens of times, weirdest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen.”

“You okay,
Sera?” Micah asked as I lifted the hem of my shirt to find two popped stitches
across my belly and a new, thin line of blood.

“Damn. So
much for listening to Mama George’s sound medical advice.” I sighed and took
the napkins Horus offered me to press against the wound.

Micah’s
hands flew to her mouth to try and suppress the giggles that bubbled up
inappropriately. “She
did
say no fist fights.”

“Har har.
Laugh it up while I bleed to death.”

Horus gave
us his best disapproving look. He set his fists on his hips and shook his head.

“One thing’s
for sure, you may not look a thing like Cora, but no one will be able to argue
you’re not all hers. I once saw her hike up her skirt, walk right up to the
bearded lady and knock her lights out in one blow. Over a girdle or some
nonsense.”

I grinned,
briefly, between scowling over the pain and the blood and another ruined shirt.

Still.
Totally worth it.

“That sounds
like her,” I told them. “Who do you think taught me how to fight?”

__________________

Mama George
took one look at me, set her hands on her hips, and declared “Why am I not
surprised?” before repairing the damaged stitching without too many lectures on
fighting being the purview of small minds. She stuck me with a small amount of
lidocaine and then Micah proceeded to distract me while standing on her head
and miming riding a bike upside down. When she attempted to thieve items off
Mama George’s supply tray with her toes, we were summarily dismissed before we
were given the chance to destroy the place.

Her troupe
found us after that, though I would have called them a gang if they weren’t all
wearing sparkly leotards. Annabelle was nowhere to be seen but it was clear
that the events had made their way through the gossip tree. Surprisingly, not
all the looks I got were wicked ones. Some seemed curious. A few smiled. They
did not seem to take Micah’s new alliance too seriously either since as soon as
she left my side to join them, she and four others went into a series of exceptionally
timed back flips as some sort of elaborate
hello how are you
for
acrobats.  

Alone, I
wandered. Everywhere there was activity as booths and tents were erected
amongst the trees, paths planned out and lights lifted into the sky. There were
things I did not see my first night, like a midway full of odd games I did not
recognize and a food court where delicious smells reminded me I still hadn’t
eaten anything. I saw a woman carrying a tray of candy apples so invitingly red
they looked stolen from some wicked stepmother with a penchant for poisoning
princesses. Each food stand was sold out of low, miniature sized gypsy wagons,
done up like the fairy tale drawings and lit by dozens of colorful hanging
lanterns. They each smelled of popcorn and chocolate, caramel and mint. Hot
strawberries boiling in syrup, fudges topped in swirls of cream, homemade
marshmallows dusted in powdered sugar and dipped in swirls of peppermint and
dark chocolate. Every cart celebrated some decadent, rich combination of sweets.

No one spoke
to me, but they all watched me walk past.

I found the
Magician’s tent off the beaten path by itself on the edge of the grove. Erected
between four curving pines, it looked more unscrupulous than it had when I’d
first encountered it. The trees seemed to reach towards each other, never quite
meeting, each covered in spiraling, needle-less branches until the canopy where
they flourished in heavy, dark green tops. In the branches three men and women
strung the fairy lights, each working without nets or ropes with such precision
they looked like a carnival act themselves.

Tiny candle
lanterns had been placed in the ground leading to the tent where he’d rolled
out a shabby blue carpet for guests. Even as I approached I could hear yelling
from inside.

I pushed the
tent flaps back and slipped in just in time to see dozens of colored balls fall
out of the air and scatter across the floor of the room, rolling between seats
and under the stage. Eli stood at center stage with his head bowed, hand
clasped over his brow as if he’d been afflicted with a debilitating headache.
Katya, in short shorts and a pink tank top stood a few feet away with her hands
on her tiny hips looking annoyed and unimpressed.

“That’s the
second drop you’ve made in the last hour. You realize we haven’t actually
finished one full trick yet?”

Eli dropped
his hand from his face, made a fist, clearly wanted to say something to his
assistant, then thought better of it. “Yes,
Katya
, I am very aware.”

“Well. I
can’t wait to see what happens when you try and levitate me, oh great master
magician.”

I slipped
quietly into one of the seats by the door. Eli stalked away from his assistant
and fell into the couch at center stage. Around him several men were building
the backside of the stage and one woman who reminded me a little of Mama George
was pinning Katya’s costume on a dummy near the curtains. They all pretended
not to be listening but they were all definitely listening.

Eli rested
his elbows on his knees and scrubbed both palms across his face. He looked
terrible, exhausted, with blood shot eyes and a sort of sallow color to his
cheeks.

“We’re done.
Everyone get out of my theater.”

No one
moved. The builders shared glances. Katya pouted and jutted one sharp hip out
in protest. He didn’t bother looking up when he exhaled rudely.

“I mean
now
.”

The help
scrambled to grab their tools and head for the middle aisle. When Katya hadn’t
moved he dropped his hands and shot her a scathing glare.

“You too.
Out. I want quiet.”

“Me? This is
my stage too and we haven’t even finished one whole show. It’ll be dark in a
few hours!”

It occurred
to me that the Magician didn’t tolerate defiance well, but even I could tell
Katya was grating a little too close to the nerve that turns mouthy girls into
small, scaly reptiles. She must have sensed the danger zone and retreated,
though she made a show of her irritation by huffing to grab her stuff, sighing
when she put on her coat, glowering and stomping as she came off the stage and
up the aisle with the others.

She saw me
and we had our second chance to glare each other to death.

“You too,
mongrel. Get out.”

“Katya,” Eli
warned.

She glared
some more, then stomped even more dramatically on her way out. I waved.

Then it was
just the two of us. Most of the lights were dimmed or not yet installed. It
seemed very quiet in the little theater. I got up and followed the aisle to the
side stairs and up onto his stage.

He followed
me with his eyes, wary and suspicious. Closer I could see the dark circles, the
slight wateriness to his irises. He hadn’t been sleeping or eating enough. I
knew those signs. Guilt. Regret. Old friends of mine.

I nabbed a
deck of playing cards off a table where the seamstress had been working and
headed over to where the Magician waited for me. I sat down, cross-legged, in
front of him and started shuffling the cards.

“You look
like hell.”

“And you’ve
been awake, what, a few hours and you’ve already managed to make enemies and
end up in a childish brawl. Charming.”

“Hey,” I
looked up from my cards. “I also made friends.”

“Ah, well. I
stand corrected.”

“You haven’t
been sleeping.”

“Someone’s
usurped my bed.”

“That seems
a little unfair considering I haven’t been conscious in…”

I searched
for a number and realized I had no idea how long it had been since that night
on the train.

“Two days.”

“Two days.
See. And I was
stabbed
which I think grants me a little leniency.”

The cards
ripped across each other, slapping a cadence as they mixed. I cut the deck
twice more and then fanned them out between both hands.

“You were hardly
more than
scratched.
If he hadn’t hit you on the head, you would have
been up and about in a couple of hours
.
” He nodded to my fingers. “What’s
this?” he asked

“Well,” I
held them up for him, face down, a top hat on the back of each card. “It looks
like you’re all out of magic juice so I figured someone better to save the
show. Pick one.”

He looked
skeptical but played along and chose one roughly from the center.

“Look at
your card. Memorize your card. Got it? Stick the card back in.”

Once in
place I started shuffling again, cutting, shuffling, then set one card on the
floor in front of me and the other to the bottom of the deck. One down, one
under. One down, one under. This went on for a minute while he watched my hands
carefully.

“I can read
your mind. Did you know?” I asked.

“Is that so?
What am I thinking right now?”

I grinned
and stopped my shuffling so that there were two piles, one in each hand.

“You’re
thinking,
wow, that freckled girl is so very talented
.” I looked up and
found his grey eyes on mine. “Also, you were thinking of your card.”

I turned
over the pile in my left hand to show him the bottom card. The five of clubs.

“That,” he
said, “is not my card.”

“No, I
know.” I flipped the other pile in my opposite hand to reveal the five of
hearts. “It’s her lover.”

Eli sat up,
his eyebrows rising together in a look I took as approval. “Where did you learn
how to do that?”

 I shrugged,
feeling a blush touch my cheeks, and started to reshuffle the cards. “We worked
a street market in New Orleans when I was a teenager. There was a boy who used
the trick to get me to kiss him. I bartered kisses for a few card tricks. His
name was Troy, I think.”

“I don’t
think I like this Troy fellow very much.”

I smiled
into my hands as they busily shuffled the deck. “If I remember right, he was a
very talented street gambler, too.”

“But was he
a very talented kisser?”

There was
that voice again. I stilled my hands and tilted my head to look up into his
tired face. There was something there, a spark of amusement I did not think he
allowed himself very often. I smiled. “A girl never tells.”

“The girls
I’ve met love to tell.”

“Maybe
you’ve met the wrong sort of girls.”

“Hmm.”
Without asking he stole the deck from me and took over shuffling. “Did you
really try to claw out my assistant’s eyes?”

“Well, not
both of them, obviously.” He smirked and after a moment of quiet with only the
hushhushush
of cards crossing each other, I added, “She called me a foundling.”

His grey
eyes darkened. “I will see to it she does not make that mistake twice.”

“Don’t. It’s
fine. I get it. I do. Unnecessary suspicion is better than the alternative. I’m
the new girl. It’s that, I can’t tell you how many times my mother and I fought
and I’d win the argument by accusing her of not being my real mother, that she
stole me in the night from my real home to make me work her tent. Sometimes
she’d get into arguments with other street sellers, especially if we got a
really good spot, and they’d call her things like
gypsy trash, gypsy thief
,
and I’d use them too.”