My face is wet. I open my lips and water trickles into my mouth, sliding down my tongue to the back of my throat. It is sweet. I swallow and take a deep breath. Smoke stings my nose and finds my mouth, deepening the lingering sweetness of the water with its taste.

I close my lips and open my eyes.

Brown eyes meet mine. I fly upright, then fall back to the ground and knock my head against the dirt, my eyes swarming with dizzy images of brown eyes, large hands, and a fire.

“Whoa, there,” I hear a warm woman’s voice. “Sit up a smidgen slower if you want to stay up.”

I do, wary. A young woman with a large smile across her face looks back at me.  She is wearing a loose turban with cloth of yellow and reddish orange, her hair tucked inside. A few frizzy curls are free against her cheek and forehead.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hello,” I croak. My throat aches.

“So you are a person. Wasn’t exactly sure with that sun and dirt. You’ve got more burn than skin on that body of yours, you know.” She puts her right hand on her hip and smoothes out the front of her reddish-orange dress with her left, fidgeting with the buttons carved as flowers that run down the front. Her eyes are dark and wild and her lips are bright pink beneath them.

I stand, wobbling slightly.

“Go ahead, pace our camp a little. We’ve got a whole afternoon to get friends with one another. But I wouldn’t leave. After this rock it’s just dirt and sunburn for two days, and you don’t got anything to tote water with.” She looks over to the side, and I notice the three necklaces around her neck, two with bright, multicolored beads trailing down to large, shining pendants at her throat, the third just a thin, braided leather rope.

A pan with stringy meat sizzling in cloudy oil sits on a small, smoky fire.  A battered instrument case and a leather pack are on the ground beside an empty bedroll. Two white horses with spotted flanks, nuzzle feed bags tied to their mouths. An ancient donkey shifts back and forth, a bell around its neck tolling dully. Behind him is a cart with rolled blankets, pots, pans, kettles, spoons, ladles, and a few colorful cloth bags.

“My pop was a tinker, I followed him in the trade,” she says, following me. “But I dabble in woodstuff, too. Couldn’t exactly drag tables and gramma rocking chairs through the Rat, so I only brought a few toys and cups along with my tools. They’re in the bags.” She stretches her arm behind her back.

I realize we’re in shade. I look behind her and see huge rock cliffs with a wet pool of water gathered at the bottom of the closest corner. A harsh squeal breaks from my throat. I run to it, fall on my knees, and drop my face into it. I slam my forehead against a sharp stone, but I don’t care. I’m swallowing gallons of water, drinking and drinking and drinking.

I rise up to breathe and I hear, “Slow down!” A strong arm forces me away from the pool. “You’re going to hurt yourself! I already gave you some while you were out and you obviously haven’t had much water in a long while.”

“I dug that out this morning, and it will last us during the day,” she says, holding me still. “This is the way this is going to work. We drink when I say so. We rest when I say so. And we’ll get to Paradise alive.”

“I don’t want to go to Paradise. I want to find Jo.” I say, trying to lick water from my face.

“So you do have sentences in that head of yours.”

“I don’t want to go with you,” I say. She doesn’t let me go.

“Do you know how I found you? You had a buzzard trying to pick out your eyeballs. And look at yourself. You’re three inches deep in burn, your hair is falling out, you’re half mad with thirst, and I can’t even tell if you’re a boy or a girl, or if you’re five or fifteen. I wasn’t even sure if you were human.”

“I’m nine. I’m a girl. I always look like this.”

“You do this often, then?” But her voice has softened.

“I’m a Marvel,” I say. “I’m a circus freak. Was.” I hold out my crippled arm with my good hand. But I know my face speaks for itself.

“Oh,” she says. Her arms are stiff around my waist as she looks down at me, seeing the freak behind the washable ugliness of the desert for the first time. I push at her hands, and they release me. I sit across from her. My stomach sloshes.

She digs into a deep pocket in her dress. I watch her. She holds something small in her hand and examines it before handing it to me. It is a baby elephant.

It has tiny ivory stubs of tusks, just like Princess. Her eyes are round black beads. The rest of her is white, soft wood, wrinkles marked over her skin. She is mid-step, looking like she will break into color and walk across my palm, trumpeting.

“Did – did you make this?” I ask, leaving my palm flat as I hold it out in front of me, scared to hurt it.

“Yes,” she smiles. “You like it?”

“Oh,” I sigh. “Yes.”

She smiles. “When I make things, I always feel like I’m making it for someone. Someone it’s perfect for, a little piece of their own soul to hold in their hands. This one I made for you.”

I pull my eyes away from the elephant and look at the woman.

“Keep it,” she says.

I cannot take this gift but my fingers close around it, not letting it leave me.

“Thank you,” I say.

Her eyes are merry as she nods.

“What is your name?” I ask.

“Rawnie,” she says. “Yours?”

“Tambourine,” I say.

Rawnie puts out her hand for me to take it. I do, and we shake hands.

“A musical name. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Tambourine.” She stands up, her skirt swirling, and runs back to the fire. She takes off the pan and sets it on the ground, then stomps out the flames. Then she beckons me over.

“Desert rat. Want some?”

I am famished. I slide the elephant in my pocket and hurry to the smoking remains of the fire and pause awkwardly beside the pan smelling of melting fat and rich meat.

Rawnie laughs. “Just use your hands. Careful, it’s hot.”

I’m not sure what else I could use beside my hands, but I nod and reach down, taking a small piece. She pushes more toward my hand, and grabs the other half for herself, tearing off little bites with her teeth.

“I could kill for iced peaches,” she says mournfully.

I take a bite, and my stomach flips happily. It is stringy and tastes of dust, but I don’t care. I swallow it all too fast. I lick the oil from my fingers, trying not to beg for more.

A large man walks into the camp with an armful of cacti. He pauses and looks at me.

“It’s awake?”

Rawnie scrambles to her feet and grabs a basket out of the cart, then holds it to him. He dumps the cacti inside. She hurries to store it in the cart alongside her carving tools.

The man is huge, with wild, dark curls clamped down under a leather hat and black eyes that burn with strength. He stares down at me, stepping closer until his sturdy boots almost stand on my bare toes.

“Can you talk?”

My tongue goes numb. I do not even try to speak.

“A mute, eh?” He stalks over to the fire and scowls. “A dead mouth didn’t stop him from eating, did it?”

“She,” Rawnie says quietly.

“What?”

“Tambourine is a girl,” she says.

“Tambourine?”

“She told me her name.”

He turns back to me. “You think you can ignore me, Tambourine? When I ask you to speak, you speak.”

I try. All that comes out is a croak.

“You – “ he steps toward me. I flinch as his boot hits the ground, dirt spitting out from under his foot.

“No!” Rawnie cries.

He does not stop, but he pauses.

“She’s just a child,” Rawnie says softly. “Please.”

He turns to her.

“Get the water. We walk in an hour.” Then he stomps over to the old donkey and begins picking stones from his hooves with a stick from his pocket.

Rawnie walks silently to the cart and takes out a few large wood jars and skins. I cautiously join her and lift an empty jar. We both walk to the edge of the rock.

I kneel down and dip my jar into the pool. The water slides into its body, ripples and tiny whirlpools bubbling by the jar’s mouth. It swishes teasingly, cooing to my tongue. Saliva wells up in my mouth, warm. I curve my good hand like a cup and push water in, filling the remaining space. The water is lukewarm, but cooler than my skin. As I try to stand and drag the jar back, Rawnie rests her hand on my arm.

“Leave it. He’ll take it.”

I do. She leans down and fills a skin. She is fast. Quickly she lays it aside, it’s belly bulging, and dips another jar into the pool.

The water sparkles with sun, brown with earth and yellow with light. I suck a few lingering drops from my fingers.

I pull out the baby elephant and touch it’s little wrinkling trunk, pulling back in the midst of a high, tremulous trumpeting. Rawnie looks up and smiles at me before lifting her jar out of the pool and setting it beside mine. She walks back to the cart to get more containers, and I follow her.

The man passes us. Before follow Rawnie with a few skins I found, he is back, heaving a full jar into the cart. He turns to me, his face red, and takes the skins from my hands. I notice that he, too, is wearing a turban, but his is plain white.

“You, girl child,” he says loudly. “Pick the spines out of these cacti.”

I look behind me and see the green, prickly vegetables in the cart. I nod and pull the basket out onto the ground and sit down. Gingerly, I bunch my fingers at the bottom of a spine and pull it out. Then I move on to the next one. I try to hold each pad still with my crippled hand, but soon it jerks and is stabbed with a spine. I wince. A small squeeze of blood balls up on my skin, and I drop my hand into my pocket.

By the time Rawnie has finished filling the jars and skins and the man has stored them all, and they both have packed up the rest of the camp, I have only plucked two pads. They look pock-marked and bald. The man stares at my work disapprovingly.

“That’s enough for now,” he says. “We’ll walk until it’s too dark – it would be suicide to move once we can’t watch our feet. Then we’ll be up early moving until it gets high noon again. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to find decent shade like under this rock. Maybe even water, if we pool our prayers. But most likely, we’ll be sweating it out under a blanket set up on a few poles.”

I nod.

He steps beside one of the horses and unties its feed bag. The horse shakes her head and blows out her lips, glad to be free. He pats her side and rubs her neck before turning back to me.

“When you walk, remember a survival tip of the desert: Step around, not over. You never know what’s waiting for your foot on the other side.”

I nod again. He turns away and begins to saddle his horse.

“You’ll ride in front of me on Chicka, Tambourine,” Rawnie says softly as she undoes her own horse’s feed bag and throws a bright, diamond patterned blanket over her back. I stand, pick up the basket of cacti, and slide it back into the cart.

The man has saddled his horse, and now harnesses the old donkey to the cart.

“Stupid donkey,” he says, staring in his eyes as he passes by his face. “We’d be through the desert now if it wasn’t for you.”

Rawnie purses her lips, but says nothing. She beckons to me. I walk over, and she picks me up around my waist and drops me on the blanket, then swings up behind me. She gathers braided rope reins into her hands, her arms coming around me, and looks back.

The man finishes with the donkey, tying a rope from the back of his saddle to a rope around the donkey’s neck, and climbs on his horse. He digs his heels into his horse’s side, and wordlessly he walks forward.

Rawnie clicks her tongue and Chicka follows alongside the man, the donkey and cart trailing slowly behind, hobbling the pace. Soon we have passed away from the shade of the cliffs into naked heat. The sun is lower with late afternoon, but sweat beads on my hairline and my skin itches under my clothes. I touch the elephant through the fabric of my trousers.

Everything looks the same. The same sagebrush, the same pungent greasewood, the same balled up cacti with shriveled fruit, the other kind of cacti with long, flat pads like the kind I was plucking, ugly grass, ugly dirt, ugly sun burning a blinding white hole in the sky.

Rawnie’s body against my back begins to be unbearable. Her sweat mingles with mine, the fabric of our clothes stiff and dripping between us. Every now and then she looks down and says, “You alright, Tambourine?” I say yes.

Every hour we drink from a skin from one of Chicka’s saddle bags. Sometimes Rawnie passes out hard nuts or jerky. Halfway through we take a break to get a new, full skin. The man has not finished his yet, and waits impatiently for us.

The old donkey watches Rawnie with adoring eyes as she pulls out the fresh skin and a scrap of pale blue fabric. She pats his side.

She walks over to me and wraps the fabric around my head, and shows me how to pull it around my face to protect it from sunburn. She accidently touches my twisted cheek and jerks away.

“Oh! I’m sorry, I – ” She falls silent.

We ride again.

We do not break until the sun has slipped behind the earth and everything is dim and cooled.

Rawnie and the man free their horses from their riding gear and unharness the donkey.

We have stopped beside a fat butte, not tall enough to grant shade in the morning but long enough to give us a small wall to lean against and feel safer for. The man sets up four poles and ties a tightly woven blanket above them, giving us a roof. Rawnie pins three more around it, making walls.

“Last night was too hot for this,” the man says. “But tonight will be cold.”

Outside the tent, the man starts a fire. Rawnie pulls up the front blanket so that we can sit inside the tent and still warm ourselves next to the flames. The man plucks more of the cacti, then roasts them on the fire with sticks. He hands me one, too, and I try hard not to burn it. When it they cooked through and darkened, the man brings his leaf up to his mouth and bites into it while it’s still on the stick. I pull mine off and hold it in my hand. It’s hot. I pass it back and forth between my good hand and my crippled one, hissing, then push it back on my stick. It looks delicious, my stomach growls. But Rawnie has not even started roasting hers.

I stand up and hand mine to her. I know I go last, even in the desert where I ride together with those who are whole and not freaks.

Rawnie shakes her head, incredulous, glancing over at the man. She doesn’t take it from me, and I am impatient, needing her to take it from my hands before I have to take a bite and am given no more because of my impertinence.

“Eat it. There’s no special treatment for pickiness here,” the man says.

“I’m not picky,” I say. “She eats first.” I’m confused. My head spins with the smell of cactus, hot and good.

“There’s enough for both of us.” Rawnie puts her hands behind her back.

I shake my head furiously. Why does she not understand me?

“But you own a horse. You have money. You’re beautiful. I have to wait.”

“You’re just as important as I am, Tambourine! Eat.” And she walks away, picks up her own stick, and skewers a raw leaf. She sticks it in the fire and watches me, waiting expectantly.

I stare back at her. She smiles. I unwrap my turban from around my face, freeing my mouth to eat.

I take a bite.  It tastes watery like cucumbers and a little sweet, warm and crunchy in my mouth. I take another.

“Do you like it?” Rawnie asks.

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

The man watches Rawnie, looking surprised, as he swallows the rest of his leaf.  “Have another when you’re finished,” he says. “There’s plenty.” He grabs another pad for himself and starts it roasting.

“Thank you,” I say. When I am finished eating my first leaf, I do.

For a while we sit around the fire in silence. Then the man looks at Rawnie and says,

“Where are you from, Tambourine?” his voice sounds fake, like he’s trying too hard to sound warm.

“I was in a circus,” I say. “On the side with no princesses.”

Rawnie smiles at me.

“Why aren’t you there anymore?” the man asks.

Rawnie shoots him an nervous glance.

“I ran away,” I say.

“Why?”

“I – ”  Because the people in the circus brought out the demons in people. Brought out the demons in me. “It was not good,” I say.

“What did you do at the circus?”

Rawnie’s glance turns into an angry glare. He is unseated by it, and his shoulders rise.

“I was in the sideshow. I was a Marvel,” I say. I was. I was. But I feel the shame rising in my cheeks and burning like Rawnie’s cactus leaf. I don’t dare tell her, but it is starting to turn black at the end of her stick. I pull my own out of the fire.

“A what?”

Her glare turns brutal.

“A freak,” I say.

“Oh,” he says. He bites into his cactus, immersed in inspecting it for stray spines as he chews.

Rawnie jerks her own out of the fire and scrapes off the blackness with her fingers. She eats the rest.

I stand up and walk behind the fat butte to relieve myself. I hear the man say,

“A circus freak, Rawnie?”

“Yes.”

“I saw it drooling over one of those trinkets you make. Did you give it to her before or after you found out it wasn’t just the desert making her an animal?

“Stop.”

“She stole it?”

“Swine,” she spits at him. I feel the burning of her glare even though I do not see her.  “It was a gift, because she’s a child, and she’s lost, and she needs some kindness, don’t you think? Just look at her.”

“That’s the problem. I did.”

“You -”

“Look to that loose tongue of yours,” he says. “Give me silence and yes sirs all this time and then finally open your pretty lips to talk to a sideshow animal, then to defend it? Smacks of disrespect.”

“I’ll give you respect,” she says quietly. “The day you deserve it.”

“You couldn’t survive the desert without me.”

“No,” she says. “But while you could face the whole wide hungry desert, you can’t bend down to touch a little child.”

They both fall silent, chewing cactus.

I walk back to the fire, feeling huge. I sit beside Rawnie. She smiles at me to show the man how wrong he is.

I stare into the flames and think of the One Eyed Man, the Smallest Man in the World, the Last Giant, the Conjoined Twins, Mia. I think of them sitting the wagons, drinking from the waterskins, sleeping or watching the moon, exhausted with boredom. I think of my corner, empty. I feel a pang of loss for the unchangingness, the nothingness, because I didn’t have to be afraid. Even the crowds blurred together, so their staring wasn’t the same as this man I have met calling me an animal. I feel the hurt in my face like a burn.

The flames quiver, making the light on the man’s face dance. I curl my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around them. I am ugly.  I felt beautiful walking in the desert alone because no one could see me but the sky and the sky didn’t care, and I was free. Now, once again, I am being moved instead of moving myself.

I do not know how to be with people and move myself. Everyone wants to move me. I watch the man’s eyes, distracted and angry. A feeling big and burning pushes at my chest, and I open my mouth.

“I am not an animal.”

His eyes move to my face.

“My name is Tambourine and I have a friend.” My boldness scares my belly into flips. “I have two friends,” I say. “Rawnie is my friend.”  I look over at her, feeling dangerous to be claiming her before she has claimed me. But she smiles, and happiness rises in my chest.

The man’s lips open, dry. His eyes harden, then crack with confusion. His fingers curl and uncurl around his cooked slab of cactus, digging ragged paths in its flesh.

I am suddenly tired and scared. I duck my head, red hot shame crawling up my cheeks and staining my ears, prickling.

“I’m sorry, Tambourine,” the man says.

I look up. He stares straight into my eyes. His are brown like Rawnie’s, but they are still confused.  He smiles.

His teeth are yellow and his smile is shy, his eyes full of clumsiness. A little child’s smile. He needs to be encouraged that his smile is good. I smile back at him.

“You are wearing your turban wrong,” he says roughly, looking down so he can stop smiling. He reaches forward to show me how to wrap it his way.

His great strong body leaning over my face terrifies me. I feel huge hands smashing into me, lifting me hard around my waist and carrying me away, his fingers dragged over my withered cheeks, my rough skin, probing my nose with no cartilage, only stiff bone sticking out and thin holes scalloped alongside it, stretching out the puffy flap of flesh growing from my left eye to my chin, laughing laughing laughing at my eyes wide and red, my twisted arm and its ugly crippled useless hand, my spine bent and crooked like an old man’s, my legs so skinny they are pegs and not legs, my bones so brittle that they are wood and not bone.

“NO!” I scream, and run run run until I feel arms around me warm mother arms, smelling like warm desert dirt and a sweet spice, and I am safe and she will keep me safe.

The panic fades, but my heartbeat runs through my body, afraid of staying in my chest where the fear is. I look up, and see that Rawnie is kneeling on the ground, holding me, her eyes wide. She is looking at the man, who backs away.

“You saw!” he says.

Rawnie looks at me.

“What just happened?”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“Did you hurt her?” She looks back up at the man.

“No! You saw! I was fixing her turban, and she started shouting.”

I lean against Rawnie. The cloth of her dress is rough against my ear.  She breathes in and out quickly.

“He didn’t hurt me,” I whisper.

“Why did you scream?” she whispers back.

“They would hurt me,” I say. “Play with my face. Because I’m so ugly.”

Her breathing stops. “Oh, Tambourine,” she says.

I do not move.

She breathes again, and I start breathing in the same rhythm as her. There is the fire crackling, the man standing silently, and our lungs, pull and release, in and out and in and out and in and out.

I reach down and pick a spine from my ankle. The wagon tracks stamped into the desert earth in the distance, crushed purple thistle blossoms and dented sage brush in their wake, speak a silent goodbye to me as I look back. I am empty. I am a field the day after the circus leaves. All the elephants and ribbons have moved on and there is only footprinted grass.
A jerk of panic pushes me a half-step forward, but I stop myself and turn around. The circus is gone.
My thirst comes crowding back. I know that I will die here on this bristly earth, only a few miles away from these tracks.
I have been stupid.
But my life is mine.
The largeness of what I have done fills my lungs with a burning. The desert opens up before me, endless sagebrush and greasewood and blooming cacti and ferny yellow flowers climbing over the ground with green arms like fingering spiderwebs. Gray mountains smudge the left edge of the sky, the rest of the horizon is clear. It is all my choice, and mine alone.
I feel like I own the sky as I walk beneath it. I can imagine my spine as straight as Mia’s, my face as pure as light. I can remember my dream. I can feel it, even though I am not asleep. I can see myself as someone beautiful, someone perfect.
I will die, but I will die apart from Mr. Cutts’ desires. I will die because I chose to move.
A throb of fear pulses through me, but I smile. This is my world.
The sun shines above me like a flower dropping lemon petals. I walk. I see mounds of tunnels rolling through the dirt, and try to guess what kind of animal lives under a desert. Every now and then I reach down and touch something alive. A fuzzy, strong smelling arm of sage brush. An old mustard colored bloom fighting for growth on the belly of a cactus.
My world becomes gray and poisonously hot as the day grows longer. My stomach growls demandingly, and my mouth dries out until my stomach is sick with thirst as well as hunger and my tongue feels old and shriveled.
I sit down beside a red-gray butte, running my fingers along its rough rocks. The bleeding has stopped in my crippled hand and the cuts have already begun to heal. I want to sleep here, but I won’t. I stand back up, and for a moment everything spins and my head aches. When the dizziness passes, I begin walking again. My head continues to hurt.
I begin to feel ants crawling up my legs, but every time I look, there is nothing but an itchy tingling. I am so hungry that there is acid in my throat. I swallow, but my little saliva is thick with dust.
I pause again. This time I sit in the middle of the dirt. A black wasp with red wings flies by, and I bat at it. The sun bears down over me like an angel of death.
Finally I push myself back into movement. I move slow, like I’m not moving in air but in water. Spines and rough plants cut my feet, and my sandals are heavy with dirt. I trip over an ugly rock and stumble forward, trying to catch my balance before I sprawl into the dirt and rise with my face full of spines and thorns. When I finally balance, I rest a moment before I move on.
The sun falls lower in the sky, making everything a toasted gold. I think of the bread and vegetables passed around in the freak box, of the water skins three times a day, and the greed is so heavy in my chest that I hunch over.
Mirages are shimmering in the distance. I start to follow them all, tearlessly crying out when each one recedes into more sagebrush, more dirty sandy grass. When the day turns to early evening, and the light is tinted blue with night, I see a few heads of prairie dogs sticking out of the tunnels. They look at me and rush back into the dirt. A scampering, black-footed ferret races over a hole and waits for a small nutbrown head to peek out again.
My stomach has turned completely sour. I wonder if I will vomit with hunger. I swallow again, but I have no spit. My little water is on my forehead and in the creases of my elbows and legs and armpits, evaporating fast and smelling loudly of dirt and salt. My urine turns brown.
The sun slides off the horizon and the moon shines cooler and welcoming. I am so tired that I cannot even celebrate day ending, I just I curl up on the side of a hill tufted with rough grass and promise myself not to roll into anything sharp. I fall asleep before I close my eyes.
When I wake, it is to the chattering of my teeth in night and the pounding of my temples. An owl hoots. My stomach roars with hunger. I pull my arms around me, the cold freezing my skin and crawling beneath it into my veins and bones and throat. I long for the hot sun. I watch the moon and hate it, waiting for morning.
I imagine light at the edge of the sky so many times that when the sunrise finally comes, I do not believe it is really there until it melts all over the sky in buttery shades of orange and yellow.
When I start to walk again, my limbs are leaden. I cough acid as I force myself to move, just a little further, just a little further. My muscles are so sore.
The sun begins to heat again in late morning, and I forget my desperate longing for it. I want night again, ice over fire. Each step feels heavier with sweat and slower with heat. Finally, I crumble to the ground and cry tearless sobs. What am I doing? Where do I think I’m going?
I hear heavy wings batting the air, then folding. I look up and see the huge black bird, the vulture. It still looks like it’s smiling with its white beak and eyes scrunched up and on its bald red head. I see now that it’s wings are brown, too, not only black. He looks at me, then to the side, then back at me, then the other side. He steps forward. I sit up, and he backs away, his wings out.
“Wait,” I croak. He backs away more, then settles. I crawl toward him. He scuttles to the side. I drag myself to standing and my head spins wildly, black spots shivering in my eyes and almost blinding me. I slide back to the ground.
He hisses softly.
“I’m not dead yet,” I say.
He looks away, then back.
“I’m alive,” I say.
He leaps into the air and flies away. I miss him as I sit alone in the middle of the desert. I am used to hearing voices, seeing movement, everyone always shifting, whispering, talking, walking.
“I’m alive,” I repeat to myself, just to hear my voice. “I am not at the circus. I am alone.”
I feel like the rocks are listening. I stand and begin to walk again through the haze of dizziness.
“I am in Rat Valley,” I say. “I am tired. My throat hurts. I am walking. I am walking to find water. I am walking to find help. I am walking to find Jo. I like Jo. Jo was my friend, but he left, and his letter was burning like the cook’s meat and Mr. Cutts hates me but I wish…” I stop talking. I think I see people wavering like flames crouching behind brush out of the corner of my eyes. I turn, but see no one.
“Hello?” I ask. “My name is Tambourine. Are you hiding?”
They grow closer. They are blurry men and women, all laughing at me.
“Stop,” I say.
They laugh harder. They are wearing brown capes and play fiddles, and now they are shrinking, shrinking, and their hair is spreading and turning into fur, and now they are rats scurrying away.
I shiver and try to run, but now the ants I felt before are back, scurrying up my legs and along my spine and down my arms and up my neck into my hair. I slap myself, shaking, trying to make them stop. I don’t see any of them. They are tiny and invisible and all over me.
I scream. My throat burns like fire as the ants crawl into my open mouth. They pour into my eyes, now, too and my sight is covered with shuddering black bodies and I feel my head being sucked down and I see a gypsy snapping a fiddle bow and pouring glasses of water over me and a doe with wings of a thousand burning letters that all say the same thing, Come come come come come come come come come come with me.

In the morning the land begins to grow in stuttering spurts, choppy buttes and hills breaking through the flat scrub. The circus feels its way around them. Dirt changes colors, painted with layers of rust, pale tan, brown. The air is stiff against our faces, too dry to breathe deep.

Low water skins are passed around three times a day. My tongue is only teased.

The oxen’s mouths hang open as they heave the wagons upward, then stumble over each other’s hooves as the circus swings down fast enough for a breeze to skim my face.

The wagons rumble to a stop. My legs are loose and shaky as I lurch out of the freak box and scramble behind a stunted tree to relieve myself. Everyone stumbles else out into the spiky brush, stretching their bodies. Then I walk a few paces, my muscles uncoiling, rough greasewood scrub and knobby cacti scraping my bare ankles. My sandals give little protection.

“Watch out for snakes,” whispers a thin voice beside my cheek. “They’ll rattle behind your ankles and bite your toes.”

I flinch, but do not look up. I recognize the voice, a sharp faced fire-eater.

“Your blood will run cold with poison,” a woman says, joining him. I am still, staring hard at a scrawny yellow thistle with thorny petals.

“Ksst,” he hisses right by my mouth, his spit wetting my chin. I jump. They laugh and step away, arm in arm, hooting at friends and laughing louder.

A shiver curls in my stomach. I check the rocks I can see from where I stand, looking for a reptile’s slick skin on one of their bald faces. I see none. I do not look further. The fire-eater and the woman are standing with a group of five, one in the middle telling a roaring story. I hear him from here,

“–dragons with hot eyes and slithering tongues,” he is saying. “They banded together like a flock of bats, chasing the travelers through this very desert, shrieking so high that all the men went deaf with the timbre of it.

“But one night the dragons’ shadows disappeared from their backs, and they felt something soft and honeyed. They all fell to that gentle ground in exhaustion, praising the gods. When they woke, the sweetest dew was laced over them, and they were surrounded in a field of flowers smelling like pretty women. And beautiful barefoot princesses with long yellow hair came to them, took their hands, and led them into a shining city called Paradise.

“The tired travelers ate wet red apples right from trees, and were given royal purple and gold for their necks. They drank the finest wine and full bellied stout from dusk until the sun rose high and clear, then fell into huge beds swaddled in silk. The men thought they had been consumed by the dragons’ fire and had come to live among the gods’ children!

“But no. They had passed through the desert to the side of the rich and the powerful, the generous and the wise, and the most talented princesses!”

Everyone laughs.

“And this, my friends, is where we too are traveling. But beware of the dragons!” He bows and his friends clap cheerfully, thinking of Paradise.

The shiver falls from my stomach to my feet, because I am thinking of the dragons. I cradle my crooked arm against my chest and check the sky. It is empty of even clouds. It looks like yards of blue cotton left on a mother’s line too long, bleached and rigid.

Mr. Cutts emerges from his box. He is dressed in a suit even in all this heat, pale gray with a scarlet carnation bright in the jacket’s pocket. He strides over to a man who is wiping back sweaty hair from his forehead with a ragged striped handkerchief and says a few words I can’t hear. The man hurries his cloth into his pocket and rushes off.

Mr. Cutts looks up at the sky and frowns. Then he takes in his entire motley crowd with a glance. I duck my head.

A dancer with long legs and a bright red smile jumps into the air and kicks her legs into a split, close enough to me for me to feel the air she displaces flutter briefly on my cheek. When I turn to look at her, she’s already landed and grinning at her companions. Behind her, three men, one with a nose as big as my fist, talk quietly among themselves, flicking reproachful glances at Mr. Cutts’ wagon as it stands stationary at the head of the circus.

I stare back at Mr. Cutts. He walks over to a young boy fiddling with the bars on one of the animal’s boxed wagons. He pats him hard on his shoulder and says something loudly, but I don’t make out the words, just the sound – sharp and crossing from teasing to mocking. The boy jumps, then tries to smile, shifting away from the box.

I look back to the dancer, now immersed in whispering about the Roberts Sisters’ latest trysts.

I am standing in a crowd of freaks, dancers, clowns, acrobats, a fire-eater, boys who ran away for glorious circus life and now shovel tiger dung, all talking and performing for one another, stretching, leaping on tiptoe, racing out their shut up energy, and none of them are looking at me.

Seeing, never seen. The thought feels old, like a yellowing bruise.

I realize I have been lonely a long time before Jo left me.

I drop my head, not wanting to see anymore. And right at my feet there is a little red bud unfurling between the spines of a hard green cactus. I can’t breathe, just reach down to stroke it, testing if it is really as gentle as it looks. It is velvet and sweet and on the verge of opening its whole face to me.

I close my eyes and think, thank you, Jo. This is something he would have brought me over to see, something so small but filled with a lovely future I can taste on my tongue.

An elephant trumpets. The head trainer walks by me, his monkey chattering giddily on his shoulder. I smell his ripe sweat sticky with dust as his thick-heeled boots scatter dirt over the cactus flower. I recoil. He doesn’t look back.

I reach down and gingerly pick the bud from the among the spines, bring it up to my lips, and blow off the dirt. A pang of guilt pulses in my chest. It will never bloom now. I curl my fingers around its soft petals.

The animals are being taken out for exercise. An elephant, Princess, is shying away from the woman trying to pull her to her food, trumpeting. Princess still hates crowds, I’ve seen it in her eyes and everyone else knows it too from the way she performs.

I walk to the freak box again, not wanting to see the men dragging her by ropes and the head trainer shouting at them to punish her with a stick or to take her food.

Mia is already at the freak box, and Mr. Cutts is with her. She’s standing erect, her hair loose and wild, her eyes icy. He’s there with balled fists and an ironly masked expression.

“Don’t embarrass us both by begging,” she says.

He chokes on a short laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself with the idea.” Then he sees me, and his jaw hardens. We stare at each other. Then he walks away, wiping sweaty hands on his suit pants. I feel bare, like his eyes stole something from me.

Mia brushes her hair back behind her ears and leans against the side of the wagon. “Hello, Tambourine,” she says.

Princess trumpets louder and her mother begins to call back.

“Hello,” I say, rubbing the bud between my fingers.

“The animals are loud today,” she says.

“Just Princess,” I say, walking slowly around the freak box to get to the entrance.

“Is Princess an elephant?”

“Yes. The baby one.”

“Ah.”

I climb into the wagon and sit in my corner. Then I look at her, still standing outside the wagon. Her fingers are trembling, and she swallows twice.

“Are you afraid of him?”

“What?” she looks up at me.

“Are you afraid of him?”

She watches me like there’s something hiding in my face and she thinks she can find it. “I am not afraid of Edgar Cutts.”

A brittle breeze rattles around us. She tilts her face into it and sighs, her nostrils flaring as she breathes it in so deep that she must have breathed it all inside her, and now it is tumbling behind her skin keeping her cool.

I wrap my arms around me and cradle the back of my neck with my good hand and let my crippled hand hang beside it, leaving the bud beside my foot.

The wagon rocks and Mia comes to sit beside me. I look up, and she smiles.

“Yes, I am afraid of him,” she says. “I’m afraid of him because he doesn’t love anything.”

I stare.

“Jo loved things,” she says, and looks out at the circus set loose on the desert. “He brought out the angels in everyone. Cutts brings out demons.”

I imagine demons slithering out of the fire-eater’s mouth like snakes. What would angels look like coming out of a person? Like trees, I decided, with branches reaching to the sky, feathered with shivering leaves.

“Does everyone bring out something?” I ask.

She is surprised. “I don’t know. I suppose they do.”

I stand up. I feel the wood bolted into wheels and the oxen shifting wearily, still bound up in harnesses. I see above everyone, the tops of hats and hair and scalps frying in the heat. I look for snakes and trees.

I see the Ringmaster shouting at a man who scurries away, flattening his shoulders. Then he turns, looks, and stalks over to a woman laughing with friends. She flinches when he touches her, then smiles thinly and excuses herself. She seems smaller when she walks with the Ringmaster, her fingers twitching.

“What is the Ringmaster’s name?” I ask.

“Richard,” Mia says, and kneels beside me. She sits straight, perfect balance, perfect spine.

“What do you see?” She tilts her head toward me, waiting. Her face is as perfect as her posture.

“Nothing,” I say, and sit again.

She looks at me and the circus. Then she rises and leaves the wagon. Before she walks away she pauses and says, “I’ll talk to you later.”

I nod but do not meet her eyes. She doesn’t leave.

“Tambourine?”

I do not want to think about what her eyes are seeing, the Original Fruit of the Devil curled up like an ugly, forgotten doll. Why does she pretend to want to be my friend?

“Joseph left a letter for you.”

I sit up, stare Mia full in the face, and start to cry. Just three tears trembling at the corner of my left eye, slipping along my nose, and wetting my lips with warm salt. Then I can’t stop. My face twists and puckers, making me even more ugly. I hide behind my good hand and weep.

I am sad.

I hate Jo. I hate him for leaving me here. I hate him for not saying goodbye and for not staying and for every hour he spent with me because he changed me and now I am crying when I never ever cried. I hate him. I hate him.

Mia’s hand is awkward on my shoulder, not like a hand but like a stone. “I’m sorry,” she says.

Air sticks in my throat, hiccupping.

“He and I – Cutts – But Jo didn’t – “ I feel her shaking her head through her hand. “He had a wife once, you know, and a little boy who would be your age.”

I wipe my face with my fist, my lungs caving. “Where is the letter?”

She stares guiltily into my raw eyes. “Cutts has it.” Her hand falls back to her side as her eyes dart to Mr. Cutts’ wagon.

Mr. Cutts.

“Did he make Jo leave?” I ask.

The world freezes. It is just my heartbeat and Mia’s voice, pinned halfway through the air.

“No.”

Jo chose to leave me.

Mia walks away. She must have said goodbye, I’ll talk to you later, smiled very politely. But I didn’t hear her.

I pull myself out of the freak box, then stumble toward Mr. Cutts’ wagon. My crippled arm begins to shudder. I try to hold it still, but the shake is stronger than my good hand.

“I don’t hate him,” I say. “I don’t hate Jo.” Nobody hears me.

I am jerking like a puppet swung by a distracted child. I move so slowly. My spine aches, the vertebrae loose and colliding. My bad arm begins to hurt, the muscles burning with the unexpected attack. When I try harder to hold it still, my good hand’s fingers begin to burn too.

I want the letter. I need the letter. If I’m holding it, Jo will be with me, still talking to me even though he’s gone. He could always calm me. Always. I’m breathless with the pain and the need to have it quenched.

Mr. Cutts’ wagon is blue like the berries I found once growing wild on bright green bushes beside a road, filmy white barely veiling a robust blue crossing over into purple. The scalloped scarlet and gold trim dresses it up wealthy and festive. Brilliant gold letters laced with red curls and loops fill its faces. I never asked Jo to read them to me.

I move to the door painted the same blue as the rest and softly lay my hand on the handle, leaving my bad arm quaking at my side. A shudder runs through my body. I open the door.

It is cool inside. A sprig of mint floats in a glass of water that rests on a table bolted to the floor. Bookshelves with doors line the walls, also bolted to the floor. A fat chest with clean locks sits at the far end.

My crippled arm flails. I hate it for being outside my control.

I open the bookshelf doors one by one. The books have spines inlaid with stamps of hourglasses, coins, numbers, but most of the spines are shining with paint depicting smoke, glass balls, twisting clouds. I pull a few out. Their covers are glossy with paint, showing man-animals, fortune tellers with hands streaming with colored incense, but most of all, people sleeping. Dreamers with their heads full of tigers and cloaked figures, dreamers being haunted by demons with hollow faces and bleeding teeth, dreamers unaware and vulnerable as dreams pull out their heads and prod their brains. I shiver and try not to see any more as I look for a slip of paper, an envelope, a scrap of parchment. I see none.

There seems to be no paper anywhere, not even records of money made, money spent.

I look at the chest.

“Do you like my collection?”

I swing around and see Mr. Cutts sipping the glass of mint water. He sits at the table, regarding me coolly.

“A man should know his dreams,” he says.

I turn away. The door is still closed.

“I know my dreams,” he says. “And therefore my mind is utterly clear. I see you transparently.”

I look back at him. His lips twist into a small smile.

“Come here, Tambourine.”

I step toward him. My bad arm begins to shake harder, first a rising quiver close to the bone, then a ripping quake rolling under my veins and pushing them so near my skin that I can see them wanting to break it.

He reaches out and takes my crippled arm. His hand is hot and sweaty. He holds it until it’s convulsing so wildly that his hand is moving along with it. His fingers feel like they’re trying to reshape my arm, digging deep grooves on my bone and branding my skin forever.

Then he lets go. My arm falls completely still. My muscles ache for only a breath, then they rest.

“You want something from me. Something I cannot give you.”

I stare at my arm. I have to speak.

“Jo – ” I croak. My throat is balled up in my neck.

“Joseph,” he says, his voice chill. “I warned you about people like him.”

“His letter,” I say. “You have it.”

“Who would read it to you?” he asks. His thin eyebrows rise.

I look down. “Mia.”

“Mia.” He coughs. “Oh, child.”

“I want my letter,” I say, still staring at my feet.

“What?”

“I want my letter.” I stare at him. My heart beats loud.

“Joseph didn’t love you,” he says, fast and poisonous.

“I want my letter.” I don’t look away.

“He wrote that letter because he wanted you to worship him. He was dragging you along, his little lovesick disciple, feeling like a god every time he gave you a little treat and you erupted in pig squeals.”

“No.”

“Why else would he befriend you? Think.”

“He liked me,” I say.

“He liked you,” he repeats.

“We were friends,” I say, my voice small.

He doesn’t reply.

I stand still, my heart beating. Jo, telling me stories about gypsies. Jo, telling me the names of colors, bigger than red – scarlet, crimson, cherry, rust; more than yellow – gold, mustard, blond, lemon. Jo, with his dusty caramel eyes smiling even when his lips were still. Jo, who I thought I hated for changing me. But I didn’t hate Jo. I hated Mr. Cutts.

“You are a liar,” I say.

He sets down his glass on the table. There is mint in his teeth when he smiles.

“Then there is no reason to be concerned with what I am about to say.”

I take everything I hate about Mr. Cutts inside me, every time he has smacked me when I cried, laughed at me when I begged for the smallest freedoms, forced me to stand from when I was three years old on my show box while my feet throbbed with fatigue and my eyes stung under the bright yellow lamps until the moon was out and every paying customer was gone and satisfied, and let the anger spit from my eyes like fire.

He merely smiles. “I burned it.”

A pause. “No.”

“It was easy. Mia left it here on my table, and when we made camp I let it fall under the cook’s spit. He was roasting a doe, I believe.”

“No.”

“I did you a favor.”

My heart stops beating. “I hate you.”

“Thank me.”

“No.”

He grabs my good hand and twists it toward him, dragging me up against his face. I smell the mint on his breath. His mouth opens, and I hear the saliva pulling back as his tongue moves to form words. “Say thank you.”

He twists harder, and I cry out in pain. My fingers pop out of their sockets.

“Thank you!” I scream.

He drops me. I hit the floor with my shoulder, my hand throbbing as my fingers snap back in place.

“Go.”

I crawl to the door, then stand as fast as I can, push the door open, and run.

The dry heat hits me in the face like an attack. I push through it. I see the freak box. All the Marvels are there, even Mia. The animals are being loaded again. Princess has been silenced, already tethered inside her wagon with her mother. I wonder if she was fed, or if they are punishing her for being scared.

Soon I am scrambling into the freak box. I crawl on my knees, trying to keep my balance, smacking each knee hard against the wood. The wagon shakes under my movement.

Then I am in front of Mia. I scream at her.

“Tell me what happened!”

“What?”

“Tell me!”

She looks at me, her eyes scared. “About Jo?”

“About everything!”

She watches me for a moment, looking like she’s drowning. “He left…”

“I know he left,” I say, my voice so deadly with sarcasm that it frightens me. There is a monster in my throat.

“He left because of me, Tambourine.”

I fall utterly still.

“I’m so, so sorry.” She looked nervously at the other Marvels.

Jo was mine. Jo was always mine. Every free moment he was there beside me, teaching me, being my friend, showing me beautiful things even in a place as ugly as this circus.

“I fell in love with him, Tambourine. And Cutts wouldn’t have that, not while I was in his room… I was so shallow, Tam, and suddenly there was Jo, and he… he showed me who I was, who I could be. Someone beautiful.”

I feel my heart swelling up with blood that burns in my chest like acid.

“You are the one who made him leave.” I do not care if it is true. I want my accusation to hurt her. I can see in her eyes that it did.

“He left because he is in love with his wife. And their son. Both of them dead. He was trying to escape them here, but he couldn’t. He thought he could stay anyway, make a new life, but he couldn’t love me and I… I begged him and… I said some things I hate myself for… and Cutts threatened to kill him.” Her eyes plead with me.

And he couldn’t even say goodbye. Except with the letter.

“And you left Cutts my letter?”

“I forgot it.” She looks up at the sky like she’s asking it to swallow her. She looks back down when she hears my quiet choke. “Cutts tried to… he … I’m sorry.”

I gape at her. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you still here?”

She looks at me, burning with shame. “What else do you think I have?”

I glare.

“Please. Don’t.” She twists her arms all the way around twice, her tendons popping on the inside of her elbow, her jaw hardening with bitterness. “Where else does anyone want my skills?”

I don’t move, just watch her growing flustered, trying to defend laziness. Trying to defend fear.

“Isn’t that what you’re doing?” she demands, her voice rising. “Staying? Because no one wants a freak.”

I fall back into my corner.

“I didn’t mean it.”

The Smallest Man in the World scratches his chin, never takes his eyes off Mia. The One Eyed Man is watching me with his eye wide. The Twins are ignoring us. The Last Giant is staring stupidly at the floor. None of us know how to have fights here in the freak box, here where we rot with inertia, never talking, never leaving, waiting for something to move us.

Someone calls for everyone to get in wagons. I stand.

“I’m sorry,” Mia says.

I walk to the door.

“Where – ” she starts to ask, but stops.

I step down onto the stubbly dirt. Shutting my eyes, I turn my face away from the circus. I want to stand here forever. I want watch the wagons ride away until they are only puffs of dust against the rim of the sky. I want to be alone. The craving strangles my gut, my fingernails cutting my palms, my legs buckling and sending me to my knees.

My crippled fist crushes a thumb of cactus and my skin bleeds red. My other hand is swelling, the fingers still dislocated from Mr. Cutts’ hands. The ground is gritty against my knees.

The wagons start to move. I stand.

“Tambourine!” I hear from Mia’s throat. “Stop the wagon, idiots!”

I start running.

“Tambourine!” Mia shouts. The crunch of oxen’s hooves does not pause and I do not look back.

I ignore the scratching weeds and the scattering lizards and beetles. My ears fill with the sound of my feet hitting the dirt, wheels turning behind me, oxen lowing and gritting their teeth, horses neighing, people talking energetically.

Mia doesn’t follow. Every sound fades except for my own feet pounding like a heartbeat as I run further and further away.