The rain increases and umbrellas sprout like mushrooms amongst the graves. The damp dirt turns quickly to mud and the remainder of the burial is hastened to accommodate the weather.
The ceremony fades out rather than ending properly, the mourners shifting from neat rows to mingling crowd without a distinct moment to mark the change. Many linger to pass additional condolences on to Lainie, though some move off to seek shelter from the rain before the last of the dirt has settled.
Isobel and Tsukiko stand side by side some distance from Tara’s grave, sharing a large black umbrella that Isobel holds over their heads in one black-gloved hand. Tsukiko insists she does not mind the rain but Isobel shelters her anyway, grateful for the company.
“How did she die?” Tsukiko asks. It is a question that others have asked in hushed whispers throughout the afternoon and has been met with various answers, few of them satisfying. Those who know the details are not forthcoming.
“I was told it was an accident,” Isobel says quietly. “She was hit by a train.”
Tsukiko nods thoughtfully, pulling a silver cigarette holder and matching lighter from the pocket of her coat.
“How did she really die?” she asks.
“What do you mean?” Isobel says, looking around to see if anyone is close enough to overhear their conversation, but most of the mourners have dissipated into the rain. Only a handful remain, including Celia Bowen with Poppet Murray clinging to her gown, the girl wearing a frown that seems more angry than sad.
Lainie and Mr. Barris stand next to Tara’s grave, the angel hovering over them close enough to lay its hands upon their heads.
“You have seen things that defy belief, have you not?” Tsukiko asks.
Isobel nods.
“Do you think perhaps those things would be more difficult to reconcile if you were not part of them yourself? Perhaps to the point of driving one mad? The mind is a sensitive thing.”
“I don’t think she stepped in front of the train on purpose,” Isobel says, trying to keep her voice as low as possible.
“Perhaps not,” Tsukiko says. “I contend it is a possibility, at the very least.” She lights her cigarette, the flame catching easily despite the dampness of the air.
“It could have been an accident,” Isobel says.
“Have you had any accidents recently? Any broken bones, burns, any injury at all?” Tsukiko asks.
“No,” Isobel says.
“Have you taken ill? Even the slightest of sniffles?”
“No.” Isobel racks her brain for the last time she felt under the weather and she can only come up with a head cold she had a decade ago, the winter before she met Marco.
“I do not believe any of us have since the circus started,” Tsukiko says. “And no one has died until now. No one has been born, either, not since the Murray twins. Though it is not for lack of trying, given the way some of the acrobats carry on.”
“I … ” Isobel starts but cannot finish. It is too much for her to wrap her mind around, and she is not sure she wants to be able to understand it.
“We are fish in a bowl, dear,” Tsukiko tells her, cigarette holder dangling precariously from her lips. “Very carefully monitored fish. Watched from all angles. If one of us floats to the top, it was not accidental. And if it was an accident, I worry that the watchers are not as careful as they should be.”
Isobel stays silent. She wishes Marco had accompanied Chandresh, though she doubts he would answer any of her questions, if he consented to speaking to her at all. Every reading she has done privately on the matter has been complicated, but there is always the presence of strong emotion on his part. She knows he cares about the circus, she has never had any reason to doubt that.
“Have you ever read your cards for someone who could not understand what they were dealing with, even though to you it was clear from only a short conversation and pictures on paper?” Tsukiko asks.
“Yes,” Isobel says. She has seen them hundreds of times, the querents who could not see things for what they were. Blind to betrayals and heartbreak, and always stubborn, no matter how gently she tried to explain.
“It is difficult to see a situation for what it is when you are in the midst of it,” Tsukiko says. “It is too familiar. Too comfortable.”
Tsukiko pauses. The curls of smoke from her cigarette slide between the raindrops as they wind around her head and up into the damp air.
“Perhaps the late Miss Burgess was close enough to the edge that she could see it differently,” she says.
Isobel frowns, looking back toward Tara’s grave. Lainie and Mr. Barris have turned and are walking away slowly, his arm around her shoulders.
“Have you ever been in love, Kiko?” Isobel asks.
Tsukiko’s shoulders stiffen as she exhales slowly. For a moment Isobel thinks her question will go unanswered, but then she replies.
“I have had affairs that lasted decades and others that lasted hours. I have loved princesses and peasants. And I suppose they loved me, each in their way.”
This is a typical Tsukiko response, one that does not truly answer the question. Isobel does not pry.
“It will come apart,” Tsukiko says after a long while. Isobel does not need to ask what she means. “The cracks are beginning to show. Sooner or later it is bound to break.” She pauses to take a final drag off her cigarette. “Are you still tempering?”
“Yes,” Isobel says. “But I don’t think it’s helping.”
“It is difficult to discern the effect of such things, you know. Your perspective is from the inside, after all. The smallest charms can be the most effective.”
“It doesn’t seem to be very effective.”
“Perhaps it is controlling the chaos within more than the chaos without.”
Isobel does not reply. Tsukiko shrugs and says no more.
After a moment they turn to leave together without discussion.
The snow-white angel alone remains, hovering over Tara Burgess’s fresh grave, holding a single black rose in one hand. She does not move, does not even bat an eyelash. Her powdered face stays frozen in sorrow.
The increasing rain pulls stray feathers from her wings and pins them to the mud below.
LABYRINTH
You walk down a hallway papered in playing cards, row upon row of clubs and spades. Lanterns fashioned from additional cards hang above, swinging gently as you pass by.
A door at the end of the hall leads to a spiraling iron staircase.
The stairs go both up and down. You go up, finding a trapdoor in the ceiling.
The room it opens into is full of feathers that flutter downward. When you walk through them, they fall like snow over the door in the floor, obscuring it from sight.
There are six identical doors. You choose one at random, trailing a few feathers with you.
The scent of pine is overwhelming as you enter the next room to find yourself in a forest full of evergreen trees. Only these trees are not green but bright and white, luminous in the darkness surrounding them.
They are difficult to navigate. As soon as you begin walking the walls are lost in shadows and branches.
There is a sound like a woman laughing nearby, or perhaps it is only the rustling of the trees as you push your way forward, searching for the next door, the next room.
You feel the warmth of breath on your neck, but when you turn there is no one there.
