“We should be there soon,” she said, forcing a note of amiable joviality into her voice. “What do you think a town called ‘The Clearing’ will be like? I’ll tell you this much for free: I’m hoping it’s not meant to be ironic, like that roustabout we had last season who went by ‘Tiny’ when he was near to seven foot tall. I am well tired of trees.”
Adeline, as always, said nothing. Annie glanced at her sidelong. The child’s hands were still, silent; if not for her open eyes, it would have been reasonable to think that she had gone to sleep.
“I’m hoping for a nice field to set up in, or better yet, a prairie. Do they have prairies in Oregon, do you think? They certainly do not want for pine trees, or for mountains. I’ve seen more mountains in these last few days than in all the years before them. Arizona’s mountains are friendlier. They seem to want you to come closer and have a good look at them, while these mountains … it’s as if God tried to build a wall to keep people out, and when He failed, He dropped rocks everywhere in a fit of pique.”
Adeline shifted positions slightly, slanting a suspicious glance up at her mother. Annie attempted an amiable smile.
“It’s not blasphemy if I don’t say that He did it, and if I’m not taking His name in vain. I’m simply saying what it looks like. Do you care for these mountains?”
Adeline shook her head slowly in negation.
“Why not?”
There was a long pause as Adeline thought. Then she sat up, showing more animation than she had demonstrated yet that day, and signed, ‘Bad rocks.’
“They have bad rocks? How can rocks be bad?”
Adeline shrugged. She did not know how rocks could be bad; she simply knew that these rocks somehow were, and that was enough for her.
Annie opened her mouth to ask another question but paused as someone shouted from farther up the wagon train. The message continued traveling back, until it formed words: “Stop ahead!”
“Stop ahead!” she shouted, passing the message back for the wagons behind her, and the moment passed: the trail was sloping downward ahead of them, and there was no more attention to spare for things like asking Adeline what she meant by “bad rocks.” They could return to the subject later, if necessary.
Then the trees receded, and the land opened up, and everything except their destination was washed clean out of her head.
Had Annie been asked to describe her idea of what a town out of a fairy tale looked like, her description might have sounded much like The Clearing. It was built in a natural depression, almost a bowl scooped out of the surrounding land, where there were no trees, for all that they clustered in close on all sides, making the openness of the settlement all the more striking. The woods lurked only feet from every threshold, but the streets were wide and open, the earth that formed them tamped down until they were practically paved.
The construction style was similar to what she’d seen in Montana and Idaho, all low roofs and slanted angles, to prevent the buildup of either rain or snow. The outer ring of the town seemed to be entirely homes, small, compact, and built to survive the weather. There was a band of empty space between them and what she had to view as the center of town—maybe eight buildings, only one of which had a second story, all of which were built of a strange, reddish wood that she assumed grew locally. Maybe those towering evergreens had a purpose to them beyond looming over innocent travelers and frightening them out of their wits.
The wagon train was beginning to wind its way around the outside of the bowl, following a road that had been cut into the curvature of the land. She could see the wisdom in that, even as she questioned the practicality of it all: turning the road into a spiral meant that anyone who came or went would have twice as far to travel before they could be said to be either coming or going. A shorter road would have been steeper. It would also have been faster, and in the long run, easier on the draft animals.
But this was not her town, and these were not her traditions, and she was going to comport herself as a guest in their home. More than a guest—a hired laborer, who had no more right to criticize the way they chose to run their lives than she had to pluck the moon from the sky and give it to her daughter as a plaything.
What a spectacle they must have made for the people of The Clearing! What a marvelous sight! While she might fault their winding spiral of a road for practicality, no one could question the innate showmanship of a town that would choose to make its only available means of passage such a brilliant display of any visitor! They wound down into the town, with Mr. Blackstone’s glorious rainbow of a wagon in the lead, and all the others following, no two quite alike. They were a kaleidoscope, a rainbow, a gilded lily of potential pleasures, and while they might well disappoint—someone was always disappointed when the circus came to town—no one would be able to say that they hadn’t put their best foot forward.
Clowns and contortionists began to appear on the roofs of their wagons, already painted and prettied up for the show. They struck strange poses and did silly dances, and generally worked as hard as they could to attract attention without falling off the roof of the moving wagons. Annie knew that, behind her, the lion-tamer would be opening the side of his wagon, exposing his worn-out old cats to the open air. Tranquility would have been a more impressive sight, if not for the fact that showing her would have required exposing all the oddities, and that was something that required a coin or two.
Adeline sat up straight, practically vibrating as she looked around with wide eyes. She pointed.
Annie followed the line of her finger to a pair of little girls in sunbonnets—sunbonnets? Why? It wasn’t like they’d ever seen the sun—kicking a hide ball between them, and smiled.
“You can play with the town children, if they’ll play with you,” she said.
Adeline ducked her head.
There were always other children around for Adeline to play with. It was one of the virtues of traveling with the circus and its endless supply of orphans. But they formed bonds between themselves, and Adeline’s silence did not always endear her. She often preferred to play with townie children, who would see her as a novelty and not have time to tire of her closed lips before the show moved on again.
Annie’s own mother had often told her that women were meant to be seen and not heard. She wondered what her mother would have made of her perpetually silent granddaughter, who was so good at fading into the background that she was sometimes neither seen nor heard. She rather suspected the old woman would have liked her. She had enjoyed being a mother. She had never been fond of the parts that required her to interact with children.
Maybe if she had been, Annie would have been more prepared for her own attempts at motherhood. She sadly doubted it. All children were unique, and while she had been blessed with a sylph of a girl, silent and sickly, that didn’t make her either easier or more difficult to raise than others of her kind. She was simply Adeline. To make her into anything else would have been to grant her too much credit and not enough grace.
People were beginning to emerge from their homes and places of business as they spotted the circus train wending its way down the spiraling road. Some of them pointed. Others removed their hats, holding them against the back of their necks as if that were some universal sign of awe. Annie raised a hand and waved, as grandly as she could. Beside her, Adeline mimicked the motion.
“Look lovely, my dearest; there’s only one chance to make a first impression.” So far, her impression of The Clearing was a favorable one. There was plenty of space outside the town proper for them to set up, and she could see several wells, which meant there would be no shortage of water. If the people were half so friendly as they were supposed to be, the show would do well, and be more than halfway to the town where they’d be camped until spring before the winter came on in earnest.
It took the better part of an hour for the entire train to wend its way down into The Clearing. They rolled into the open stretch of land behind the town—presumably intende
d for some future expansion and hence wisely set aside—before rolling to a halt, the show wagons toward the front, the personal wagons tucked, as much as possible, in the rear.
They would all have to be moved, of course, arranged and rearranged until the right configuration could be achieved, the one that left them with space for the tents and easy access to the entertainment wagons and privacy for the boneyard. But that would all come later. For now, they had work to do.
“Best face forward,” Annie said softly, and slid down from the running board, walking at an unhurried pace toward the front of the cluster of wagons.
Mr. Blackstone was already there when she arrived. Of course Mr. Blackstone was already there. Sometimes she thought the man knew how to ride the wind when it stood a chance of depositing him in front of a crowd. Several of the performers were there as well, lounging in the grass as if they did everything in greasepaint and sequins, and didn’t spend the majority of their time looking exactly like everyone else.
Annie stepped up next to Mr. Blackstone. She had no official authority within the show: she could speak for herself, for Adeline, and for her oddities, both human and otherwise, but she could no more commit the circus to a course of action than she could turn back the hands of time. That didn’t matter. She looked respectable. There was a mannerly set to her shoulders that she would never, no matter how long she lived, be able to fully shake. By standing her next to Mr. Blackstone, the show sent the message that they were good, honest people, not rapscallions looking for families to destroy and women to abduct.
(Annie had never encountered a single person who had actually been stolen by a circus, although she knew more than her share who had chosen to run away. Still, she was sure that her estranged husband, if he had known of her eventual fate, would have sworn to the heavens that she’d been stolen, rather than allowing her the freedom of choosing to flee. Black Jack Davy, indeed.)
“That is a fascinating road,” she said quietly.
“One good flood and they’re a fish tank,” agreed Mr. Blackstone, equally quiet. “We’ll be out of here before the storms come, and they can all turn to mermaids without us.”
“Really? You’re so sure of when the storms come to Oregon that you feel you can make me that promise?”
Nathanial was saved from needing to answer by the appearance of a round-bellied man in a bowler hat and waistcoat. He looked as if he had just been transplanted in from Boston or Philadelphia or some other fine, cultured town, full of business and luxury. Even his shoes had been shined, so bright that they seemed to be struggling to make up for the lack of sunlight. Annie blinked. Beside and behind her, she heard the faint exhalation of air that served Adeline as laughter.
“My,” said Nathanial.
The man came closer. When he was near enough to speak without shouting, he hooked his thumbs into his belt, stopped, and said, “Why, hello, friends, and welcome to The Clearing.” The way he pronounced the town’s name left no question that both words were capitalized. “Might I ask the nature of your business here?”
Annie had to fight not to turn and look at the side of the nearest wagon, where BLACKSTONE FAMILY CIRCUS AND TRAVELING WONDER SHOW was painted in large gilt letters.
Nathanial smiled, bowed, and said, “My name is Nathanial Blackstone, and this is my circus, sir, the finest assemblage of human talent, natural oddity, and practiced skill to be seen this side of the Mississippi River. We heard that you were a township in dire need of a show and thought that we would come in answer to your prayers.”
“A little late in the season, aren’t you?” asked the man. “I’m Mayor Young, and while I’m delighted to see you—a little joy is always wanting around these parts—I’d be lying if I didn’t say I thought you should turn and go back the way you came. The roads will be impassable soon enough, and you don’t want to overwinter here.”
“It seems a nice enough town to spend some time in, and it’s scarce September,” said Nathanial. “I promise we can offer you a few nights of entertainment and still be on our way well before the ice comes.”
“You’re not from around here, son,” said the Mayor—not unkindly. That was the interesting thing, Annie thought. He was warning them off, but there was no harshness to it. It was more like he was fulfilling an elected duty than anything else.
“That’s true, sir, but I am well-traveled, and I have never seen the snow fall before October.” Nathanial’s smile was like the unseen sun, almost too bright to look upon. Even the cadence of his words was changing, falling into the easy showman’s pitch that he used when dealing with townies. “I’ve heard such wonderful things about your town. Why, almost unbelievable things until we got here and saw it with our own eyes. Best of all, I heard that you welcome a traveling show, from time to time.”
“The trees are deep and entertainment is often wanting this far from the big cities,” said the mayor.
Annie, who couldn’t think of the last town she’d seen that she would call a “big city,” said nothing.
“So allow us to stay and delight you,” said Nathanial, wheedling a little as he took a half-step forward, closer to the mayor. The differing height between the two men was almost startling. It was difficult to look at the two of them and recognize them as members of the same species. “We are a fully self-contained show. We have our own tents, our own wagons; we’ll need no lodging in your town and will disrupt no daily routines. But oh, in the evenings! We have entertainments galore, and all for your town.”
The mayor looked at him with a gleam in his eye, and Annie realized with slow dismay that they, the show people, had been played by this seemingly harmless little man. He’d known exactly what he was doing when he told them to leave.
“You’re here because the season is ending and your coffers aren’t as full as you’d like them to be, aren’t you?” he said, in a tone that was suddenly much sweeter and substantially less sincere. The trap, such as it was, was swinging closed. “It’s always nice when a show comes to town already understanding the situation.”
“Sir?” said Nathanial, with unfeigned bemusement.
“We’re happy to have you. We’re delighted to have you, especially now that you’ve given me your word not to disrupt our lives. Some of our widows can be a mite delicate, and they don’t care for strangers in the streets.” The mayor turned to look frankly at Annie. “If you’ve need for things in town, this lovely lady can serve as your ambassador. She looks respectable enough.”
“Charmed,” Annie said frostily, visions of shopping lists dancing in her head. She was going to wear out her shoes running back and forth between the boneyard and the town once they started getting paid for their performances: there wasn’t a single wagon in the train that didn’t need something for its supplies. If the rest of them were banned from The Clearing proper for being “disreputable,” or whatever fancy word the mayor would use to paint them all, then she was going to have a lot of running to do.
“Sir—” began Nathanial.
“You may set your show here, outside the town’s borders; we’re always happy to have visitors. I can pay you fifty dollars for the week. That’s less the land use fee, of course.”
“Of course,” said Nathanial.
“Welcome to The Clearing,” said the mayor, with another sunny smile. It died quickly, blowing out like a candle. “Be sure you’re out of here before the snow comes down, or you’ll be wintering with us. I doubt you’d enjoy the process. And keep your children out of the wood. Even the people who live here can get lost in there. You’d be sorry to lose them.”
He turned on his heel and walked away before either Nathanial or Annie could respond. Annie wasn’t sure what she would have had to say to him.
“What a strange little man,” she murmured, once she was sure he was too far away to hear her. “You’ve brought us to a lovely paradise, Mr. Blackstone. Truly, I don’t know how I could have questioned you for even a second.”
“Fifty dollars is nothing to sneer
at,” he said. “That should pay for supplies enough to repair anything that’s broken and buy the basics for the chuck wagon. Anything after that is extra and can go toward wintering over.”
“And there will be extra,” admitted Annie. She sighed a little. It would almost have been better if the mayor had ordered them to get out, had treated them as invaders instead of as semiwelcome guests. The thought of spending even a day in the shadow of these trees was …
It was unsettling. Something about the way their branches caught and gathered the shadows beneath them didn’t sit well with her.
“I’ll tell the roustabouts to start setting the tents,” said Nathanial. “Tell anyone you see that they’re not to go into town without permission, and that we’ll open on the morrow.”
“Do we have the supplies for dinner?”
“Most of them,” said Nathanial. “I’ll send a few men into the wood to bring back a deer, and then we’ll have the rest of it. Chin up, Annie. Things are turning around for us, you’ll see.”
He turned and trotted off into the maze of wagons, waving to someone unseen. Annie watched him go, unable to stop the feeling of discontent that was spreading through her, like a drop of wine diffusing into water. She looked back toward the town and barely suppressed the urge to jump.
There were people watching her from what looked like every window and doorway in sight. Women held their brooms tightly, frozen in the act of sweeping the porch; men rested hands on their hats, standing on the sidewalks or in the doorways of their homes. There was something oddly intimate about their eyes crawling over her, like they were judging her and finding her wanting in the same instant.
She was Annie Pearl, keeper of the oddities, and she was not theirs to judge. Straightening her spine, she offered them a bright showman’s smile and curtseyed before turning to follow Nathanial’s route into the wagon train. It was time to begin establishing the boneyard. For tonight—for a little while—this was going to be their home, and it needed to be treated accordingly.