And she meant it. The hollow spaces in Esmé had been filled with evil. In her purple kimono, she even resembled Father when he wore his signature robe. Shaking my head furiously, I said, “I’m so sorry, Esmé. You must believe me. Had I known he would send you there, I would never have done that foolish thing. It was awful. I was awful. I didn’t know, Esmé. I’m sorry.” I began swaying back and forth and repeating the words “I didn’t know.” I wasn’t sure that I could ever forgive myself for my part in this. She was right. I had been so young and it was clear that she had been hurt.
“I know you didn’t know,” she said coolly after letting me babble for an eternity. “Father wants it that way. He’s made that clear.” She began to close the door. “Oh, I’ve requested my own dressing room. You can share our old one with Sylvie. While the circus is small, I don’t want to see you, Cecile. If you’re truly sorry, please do me the kindness of staying out of my way.”
The door slammed in my face.
I found my way back to practice that afternoon and missed all my handoffs as I attempted to twist into a roll out of my bar into Hugo’s waiting hands. It was the best trick I had, but it wasn’t a move that I could land each time; I plummeted to the net below if my timing was off.
“You’re missing your transitions.” Hugo met me at the bottom.
“It’s my sister—” I stopped. My sniveling was exactly the thing that had sent Esmé to the White Forest. I needed to grow up. “It’s nothing.” I lifted my head. “I’ll do better.”
As I climbed the ladder again, Hugo called to me, “I’d like to use you in the show tonight.”
“I… I can’t.” I was overcome with a creeping sense of dread. Practice was one thing; a performance was beyond my skills.
“Of course you can. You’re ready to do the basics.” With his hand, Hugo drew a net under me. “Just do what we practice. The net will be there to catch you. We’ll just enchant it so they can’t see it’s below you. Don’t worry. They’ll love you. Michel and I can handle the rest of the tricky parts.” He moved around under the net and climbed to the other side, facing me, then clapped his hands and rolled his muscular shoulders. His voice was sure and steady as he barked, “Come on, Cecile. This is the very thing that you need to do tonight, and you know it.”
And he was right. Hugo was always right when it came to me. Almost innately, he understood my fears and my motivations before I could even begin to comprehend them. I suppose, as a catcher, he needed to hone that fine sense of his target, just as I could tell when he and Michel were out of sorts. From across the trapeze, I don’t know how, Hugo knew what had happened between Esmé and me. He could tell that my confidence was shaken and that I didn’t like myself very much.
I’ve often wondered about Hugo. Who had he been in his life? What on earth did he do to earn a lifetime serving his penance on a trapeze with Althacazur’s daughter?
Later, seeing the patrons all dressed in their finest dresses and coats made me nervous. In past performances, I just stood and watched. And I guess I’d thought that performing was easy. I’d envied everyone their jobs but didn’t realize that performing was a responsibility. I needed to deliver a solid performance tonight.
Esmé went on right before us.
There had been an inspiration for Esmé’s act. While walking on Boulevard Saint-Germain, she’d seen a postcard that featured a German lion tamer named Claire Heliot. Dressed in a silk gown, Miss Heliot had assembled a rather sophisticated dinner party complete with bone china and eight of her lions, who sat dutifully at attention as she sipped tea and fed them horsemeat from her fingertips. Esmé was entranced with this act, but Father refused to let her bring real lions onto the stage with her. My sister had shown an interest in illusion, so she began to toy with her own pets, changing their appearances. The first time he saw her ragtag act, even Father was fooled into thinking she was about to be devoured by Hercules, so good was her magic. But Father adored her performance, so he spared no expense for props and costumes.
She’d copied Claire Heliot’s act, the one where she walked a tightrope opposite her lion. In this case, the cat is the lithe Dante. It’s a rather difficult illusion to achieve because there is no tightrope and there is no panther, simply she and a cat walking on the arena floor toward each other, but the audience thinks she is balancing on a thin piece of twine opposite a six-hundred-pound animal. As the audience jumped to their feet, it was clear why she was the star of our ensemble.
Next, it was my turn. As I climbed the ladder, the spotlight followed me. My hands were sweating, which was not a good start. Gripping the chalk, I wiped my hands on my legs and looked at Hugo standing on the perch opposite me. Unbeknownst to the audience, he’d enchanted an invisible net under me.
To the patrons, it looked like there was nothing between me and the ground. If I fell, however, they’d see that something had, indeed, caught me and realize they’d been duped. Whether they’d admit it or not, our patrons would be disappointed that we’d cheated and tipped the risk in our favor. That is the thing about the circus. Our potential for death is the entertainment, whether by fire, knife, lion, or trapeze. From my time of watching from the side stage, I could tell that
