Young Writers Society

25 THE CROSSING

The Fair was as raucous as ever. Christian was so jumpy from the encounter with the harpies that the crowds and smells, the laughter of children and the shouting of vendors overwhelmed him. A burst of fire from a juggler scared him so badly that he leapt backward into a circus tent to escape it, losing his grip on Minerva’s hand. A group of minstrels wandered past the tent’s entrance, blocking his view of the crowd, and when it cleared he had lost sight of her.

“Minerva,” he called. “Minerva!”

A hand landed on his shoulder as he started forward. It pulled him back into the tent, where he heard a familiar voice saying, “Oho! Not leaving my show so soon, are you?”

Christian turned around unwillingly and found himself face to face with the purple-clad, tawny-eyed ringmaster he had met on his first night in the park. He looked around but did not see her blue-coated counterpart.

“Your—your sister isn’t here, is she?” he asked. He did not intend to be used as a tug-o-war rope between the two ringmasters again. He would never catch up with Minerva if they waylaid him.

“Good heavens, no,” the ringmaster said. “She never comes to my show. I’m sure she’s out in the crowd at this very moment, trying to steal my customers before they can even come to the door. Now, my dear fellow, I do apologize, but I cannot recall your name from when we met the other day. Not one jot, and it’s been bothering me so, for I’m good with faces, you know. Never forget a face, never forget a name, that’s what I always say! What was it, again?”

“Christian Abernathy,” the accountant said before he could stop himself. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to—”

Minerva materialized out of the crowd, her face white and drawn. “There you are. This is no time for circuses.”

“No time for circuses!” the ringmaster said. “Nonsense, good lady. Any time is a good time for the circus—my circus, anyway. My sister’s, of course, is a complete waste of time. Come, I’ll show you.”

“We can’t, thank you,” Minerva said, shepherding Christian toward the exit. (He went gladly.) “I’m sorry, ma’am but—”

“Rowan, my dear, call me Rowan,” the ringmaster said, clasping Minerva’s hands between both of her own. “I insist. The best seats in the house, I promise you.”

Minerva extricated her hands from the ringmaster’s. Hesitation flitted across her face, but then she leaned close to Rowan’s golden curls and said, “We have to see the Guardian. It’s a matter of some urgency.”

The smile died on the ringmaster’s face.

“I quite understand,” she said quietly, her expression somber. “By all means, be on your way.”

She seemed unable to resist shouting after them, however, for as they made their way back outside they heard her voice floating over the crowds: “But be sure to come back to my show when everything’s settled—not my sister’s, you understand—mine!”

“Incorrigible,” Christian said. “She and her sister both.”

Though Rowan’s blue-clad sister accosted them outside her tent and tried to draw them inside, they continued on without stopping until they reached the edge of the fairgrounds, where the crowds thinned and the Rover caravan was silhouetted against the firelight.

Balloon-animals spilled from the door of Imelda’s wagon. As Christian and Minerva neared it, they heard her shouting, “For the love of God, stop with the balloon-animals! There’s barely enough room in here for one of us—”

There was a response from Conrad, too low for Christian to make out the words.

“Horse shit,” Imelda said. “This is my home. Oh, what I wouldn’t do to you if your leg was healed—”

The curtain in the wagon doorway was flung aside, upsetting the balloon-animals on the stairs. They moved of their own accord, butterflies and ladybirds flapping upwards, frogs leaping away through the grass. They must come alive like the statues, the accountant thought vaguely, but then Imelda appeared in the wagon doorway and scowled at him.

“Good, you’re here,” she said. “How about you take care of him for a change? Mulish man.”

Without another word, she stomped down the stairs and stalked off to join the other Rovers.

The interior of the wagon was crowded so thickly with balloon-animals that they blocked the view to the bunk on the back wall. Christian pushed them aside as he made his way through the wagon. When Conrad came into view, his brow was puckered with worry or stubbornness; his friend wasn’t sure which. As urgent as the situation was, the accountant couldn’t help but ask, “How are you feeling?”

“Nearly out of my skull with boredom. Wish my leg would hurry up and heal, but it keeps opening up.”

Christian remembered Aurelia’s troubling comment about Conrad living “after all,” but the matter of the harpies breaching the park wall pressed more heavily on his mind.

“What’s more,” Conrad continued, “it’s my anniversary tomorrow, and Liza’s going to be all by her lonesome. Poor woman. I meant to take her to the Aquarium.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll take her,” Christian said shortly. “Conrad—”

His friend’s eyebrows crept upwards in surprise at his tone. “What’s eating you, lad?”

“There are harpies in the gardens,” Minerva said.

Conrad’s face sagged. He took in a long breath, but when he spoke, all he asked was, “You’re the Caretaker?”

“Yes. My name is Minerva. Christian says you can help.”

The balloon-artist’s glasses flashed in the blaze of the fire outside. Christian’s hands were trembling; he clasped them together, hoping no one would notice, but Minerva saw him out of the corner of her eye and laid her fingers on his forearm.

“Christian,” the balloon-artist said at last, “I think you should go.”

Christian blinked at him. “What—what do you mean?”

Minerva’s fingers tightened on his arm.

Conrad sighed and looked up at the ceiling as he spoke. “Look, lad. I know you like it here, and I’m glad you’ve made some friends—” with a sideways glance at the woman clutching the accountant’s arm—“but things are getting—shall we say—out of hand. Harpies should not be able to get into the gardens. You saw them?”

“With our own eyes,” Minerva said. “They couldn’t touch the roses, but—”

The balloon-artist nodded. “But they shouldn’t be able to get in at all.”

“Conrad—” Christian’s mouth had gone dry. “Conrad—”

“It’s too dangerous, lad. I never would have brought you into all this in the first place if I hadn’t needed help, and I—”

“Conrad—”

“—I want you to give me the key and leave, and I want you to stay away until you see me walking out of this park on my own two feet.”

It felt as if a band had tightened around Christian’s lungs.

“Conrad—” he whispered, but he didn’t know what else to say.

“Please, lad. I need to know you’re safe, you and Liza.”

The accountant looked at Minerva, but she said gently, “He’s right.”

She released his arm. Without her fingers, his skin felt cold.

“But—” he started. Leave the park? The harpies had frightened him, it was true, but how could they ask him to leave? How could he bear going to the accounting firm each day, knowing he would be just across the street from his friends when he got home yet unable to visit them? How could he sit in his silent house, alone except for his books and his cat, when he knew there was a bigger world outside? They might as well ask him to shut himself inside dark closet.

Conrad pushed himself up in bed with difficulty. His muscles strained, but he ignored Imelda’s shout through the window and remained upright.

(“Don’t come crying to me when your leg opens up again! If you think for one minute that I’m going to patch you up after the way you’ve cluttered up my home with your nonsense—”)

“Not until I walk out of here myself,” he said. “Promise me, lad.”

His arms trembled with the exertion of holding himself up, his face was the color of putty, but Christian was arrested by his expression. It was the same look his father had worn when his mother was diagnosed with lung cancer ten years after her husband stopped smoking.

“Promise me, lad. Promise.”

Christian promised