11-24-2025, 05:42 PM
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Eighteen days ago, they loaded the wagons in the dead of night and slunk away from Nice on the sloping back of some trouble, species unknown. Typical. But that’s how it goes with them: one man’s trouble becomes everyone’s trouble, take it or leave it.
“One man” is more often than not Emil.
The villages have all begun to bleed together since then. Same little houses huddled together like beggars; same church peeping up above the houses’ narrow shoulders by a belfry’s height; same sun-weathered villagers drifting to the edge of town when the troupe drops anchor and begins to unpack.
When Elif first fell in with the Herrmanns, she hadn’t meant for the arrangement to last longer than a few weeks. She was scared and needed to separate herself from Malaga, and pleading for the couple to take her on as they wound their way up the coast was cheaper than a train ticket and safer (she presumed) than going alone. She wasn’t used to being alone. How hard she would work! They wouldn’t have to pay her! And they didn’t. And she did, hauling and shoveling and scrubbing without complaint. And something unexpected happened. She had seen a handful of cities in her life but was never anything that could be called a *traveler* – not the way these people were travelers. Their rhythms were disorienting, the setting up and the tearing down, the flow of endless unfamiliar faces, the leaving and the leaving and the leaving – it was exhausting and impossible, and then, near Barcelona where she had planned on disappearing, some loose part inside of her slipped into place like the pin of a lock and she realized leaving and leaving and leaving had grown on her.
Here she is now somewhere in the hills of Liguria, perched on a crate painted with a florid “EH,” watching as the moon floats up behind that same village church she’s seen half a dozen times now. Does it hike up its foundations and walk from town to town?
The night is a pleasant one, all things being equal. Horses nicker in the corral. Woodsmoke twists through the air from where some of the troupe are dog-cackling at a story told around a campfire behind the wagons. The rest are scattered. Asleep. Prowling. Herrmanns are of course holed up in their caravan, shouting at one another about money or whatever it is that presently divides them. The nocturnal quarrels are an odd source of comfort: they stir up a silty feeling of home in half-formed memories of parents she didn’t think about for years.
A flutter of her hand catches moonlight in the beaded necklace twined and dripping between her fingers. The woman she lifted it off of was too enthralled by The Armless Amazon to notice she was being robbed. They have a rule against stealing from customers, but no one follows it, and she is *careful*, only takes what she’s sure she can get away with, always holds onto it for a few stops before fencing it, hasn’t been caught yet. She grins and shoves it deep into her jacket pocket, comes back up with a stashed-away orange that she stops short of peeling, crooking her ear to a barely-there click-and-trill from the menagerie. The parrot must be awake.
The menagerie is notably different from the freakshow, in that the freaks are employed and free to come and go as they please. Current menagerie residents: one very pale snake, one tired-eyed tiger, one parrot that occasionally pronounces a few thoughtful words in German, and one vampire. Elif, free to come and go, is technically not employed, and has accordingly developed an affinity for – or at least considers herself to have a respectful working relationship with – all of the captive beasts, with the exception of the vampire, who spooks her. And if anything close to that thought had crossed her mind six months ago, she might have taken it for a sign that she had fallen into madness. But there you are: a vampire is being kept in the Herrmanns’ menagerie, and he spooks her. Spooks and fascinates her – the effect the tiger is supposed to have, except their tiger is old and tame and mewls to have its ears scratched like a kitten. She isn’t the only one who’s uncomfortable with the vampire, but Emil is adamant that it’s going to make them all rich. How, Elif can’t imagine. It doesn’t seem to have made any difference yet.
It’s guard duty for her tonight, a task that involves as much or as little as staying awake and vigilant enough to ensure no brave locals try to sneak into the menagerie tent or the Cabinet of Curiosities (the collection of specimens, exotic masks, the stuffed two-headed calf) across the way. When the bird calls, she rises and slips into the stuffy dark held in by the canvas walls, listening for anything that might be amiss.
“One man” is more often than not Emil.
The villages have all begun to bleed together since then. Same little houses huddled together like beggars; same church peeping up above the houses’ narrow shoulders by a belfry’s height; same sun-weathered villagers drifting to the edge of town when the troupe drops anchor and begins to unpack.
When Elif first fell in with the Herrmanns, she hadn’t meant for the arrangement to last longer than a few weeks. She was scared and needed to separate herself from Malaga, and pleading for the couple to take her on as they wound their way up the coast was cheaper than a train ticket and safer (she presumed) than going alone. She wasn’t used to being alone. How hard she would work! They wouldn’t have to pay her! And they didn’t. And she did, hauling and shoveling and scrubbing without complaint. And something unexpected happened. She had seen a handful of cities in her life but was never anything that could be called a *traveler* – not the way these people were travelers. Their rhythms were disorienting, the setting up and the tearing down, the flow of endless unfamiliar faces, the leaving and the leaving and the leaving – it was exhausting and impossible, and then, near Barcelona where she had planned on disappearing, some loose part inside of her slipped into place like the pin of a lock and she realized leaving and leaving and leaving had grown on her.
Here she is now somewhere in the hills of Liguria, perched on a crate painted with a florid “EH,” watching as the moon floats up behind that same village church she’s seen half a dozen times now. Does it hike up its foundations and walk from town to town?
The night is a pleasant one, all things being equal. Horses nicker in the corral. Woodsmoke twists through the air from where some of the troupe are dog-cackling at a story told around a campfire behind the wagons. The rest are scattered. Asleep. Prowling. Herrmanns are of course holed up in their caravan, shouting at one another about money or whatever it is that presently divides them. The nocturnal quarrels are an odd source of comfort: they stir up a silty feeling of home in half-formed memories of parents she didn’t think about for years.
A flutter of her hand catches moonlight in the beaded necklace twined and dripping between her fingers. The woman she lifted it off of was too enthralled by The Armless Amazon to notice she was being robbed. They have a rule against stealing from customers, but no one follows it, and she is *careful*, only takes what she’s sure she can get away with, always holds onto it for a few stops before fencing it, hasn’t been caught yet. She grins and shoves it deep into her jacket pocket, comes back up with a stashed-away orange that she stops short of peeling, crooking her ear to a barely-there click-and-trill from the menagerie. The parrot must be awake.
The menagerie is notably different from the freakshow, in that the freaks are employed and free to come and go as they please. Current menagerie residents: one very pale snake, one tired-eyed tiger, one parrot that occasionally pronounces a few thoughtful words in German, and one vampire. Elif, free to come and go, is technically not employed, and has accordingly developed an affinity for – or at least considers herself to have a respectful working relationship with – all of the captive beasts, with the exception of the vampire, who spooks her. And if anything close to that thought had crossed her mind six months ago, she might have taken it for a sign that she had fallen into madness. But there you are: a vampire is being kept in the Herrmanns’ menagerie, and he spooks her. Spooks and fascinates her – the effect the tiger is supposed to have, except their tiger is old and tame and mewls to have its ears scratched like a kitten. She isn’t the only one who’s uncomfortable with the vampire, but Emil is adamant that it’s going to make them all rich. How, Elif can’t imagine. It doesn’t seem to have made any difference yet.
It’s guard duty for her tonight, a task that involves as much or as little as staying awake and vigilant enough to ensure no brave locals try to sneak into the menagerie tent or the Cabinet of Curiosities (the collection of specimens, exotic masks, the stuffed two-headed calf) across the way. When the bird calls, she rises and slips into the stuffy dark held in by the canvas walls, listening for anything that might be amiss.
