Karen Memory

Chapter Eight

After that night, it all got real quiet for a fortnight or so, so’s I weren’t sure whether to be apprehensive about it or grateful. We didn’t hear much else from Marshal Reeves or from Sergeant Waterson, though each one came by once or twice to check on us. We took up a collection for the dead girl — nobody would admit to knowing her name — and got her buried decent, at least. When the constables were finished with her.

The world, I thought, had finished with her firsthand.

Priya settled in right smart and got into the habit of coming out to sit in the library with us girls and read by the fire when the tricks had gone home. By the sixth day, she was helping Merry Lee come downstairs, and Merry sat with us all, too. She was wobbly, sure, but she was standing — and Priya got strong quick, once we started feeding her regular.

I remarked on it to Miss Francina, and Miss Francina gave me a funny kind of look — not sad, but not not-sad, neither — and said, “They’re young yet, Karen.”

Nobody suggested it was time Merry got on home. In faith, she weren’t ready — I didn’t imagine she could climb a ladder yet if her life depended on it, and she sure couldn’t do it without tearing her wounds open again. And she couldn’t do for herself yet, either — though by the end of the fortnight Miss Lizzie had her stitches out and she was healing up right sharp. Anyway, none of us was certain she had a home. We didn’t ask, and she didn’t offer much.

But she was a sister, or she had been; and she risked her life helping women who … well, there but for the grace of God went every one of us in that room. Both of ’em — Merry and Priya — took their turns with the books, too. Since it turned out Priya could read, though not as good as me — not in English, anyway. It turned out she could read Chinese just fine and I guessed probably her own language. She had a knack for tongues, like, and could read a sentence in Chinese and speak it out in English fast as anything.

Merry Lee, though, did the voices and everything. Different accents. She could sound as American as me if she wanted. Or as French as Bea. She said that after she’d escaped the cribs the next place she’d had to escape was the Education House of the Women’s Christian Anti-Prostitution and Soiled Dove Rescue League. Which was maybe better than the cribs, but it were an Improving Workhouse, no mistake. And I’d heard the only way a girl left there was if she could find a Christian man the matrons approved of to marry her — and how many Chinese men are Christians, I ask you?

Anyway, I got the idea pretty quick that Merry Lee was prone to disguise herself. As part of her chosen work, like.

I think she figured I figured. But we held a conspiracy of smiling silence and I don’t think anybody else caught on. In two days’ time, she was in demand to do readings every evening after supper. And we all gathered around to hear her, too.

One night the book she had was a dime novel called Deadwood Dick Defiant! brand-new and already yellowing. It was about Calamity Jane, who was a favorite in our house. Some would say she was nothing but a camp follower, just another new-state whore. But she could ride and rope with any man, shoot better than all of ’em, and she was a hero to us.

The way I saw it, nobody thought the worse of a man who followed his pecker anywhere it sniffed, like a droopy-faced hound dog led on by his nose. So why a woman did the same should be judged different … well, women always is.

Judged different, I mean.

Anyway, Merry Lee was reading on about something Jane had done or was supposed to have done the year previous:

“In the spring of 1877, Calamity Jane was riding her sorrel pony out on the range between Cheyenne and Crook City. She spotted a roil of dust on the horizon and rode hard to investigate.

“Before long, she caught sight of the Cheyenne to Deadwood stage, running flat out with horses lathered and a band of Indians in hot pursuit. The driver was nowhere in sight, the stage horses starting to slow with their reins flapping wild. She reined her sorrel alongside and spotted the driver, facedown in a pool of blood in the boot of the stage, an Indian arrow between his shoulder blades!

“Calamity Jane knew she could waste no time! She jumped up on the saddle of her running sorrel, standing on the horse’s back like an Indian herself. In a hail of arrows and bullets, she leaped across the gap to the stage. Swinging wildly from the rail, she got her foot on the step. Her hat blew back on its laces as she caught the reins of the stagecoach four, found the whip, and urged them on.

“Her rifle was still in the sorrel’s saddle holster. One of the six passengers climbed up the rattling, swaying exterior of the stage to take the reins, and Jane managed to lean out and retrieve the Winchester at risk of her own skin. A bullet creased the running sorrel’s shoulder so close that blood spattered Jane’s shirt cuff.

“Having retrieved the rifle, she mounted it to her shoulder and from the jouncing seat of the stage, returned fire against the galloping, whooping band of Indians. They fell away, and then under Calamity Jane’s care, the stage and its passengers made it safely into Deadwood.

“The driver survived.”

Merry turned the page and held up the book so we could all see the engraving of the woman on the next page. She leaned back on a bench with one foot kicked up, flourishing a Winchester rifle. She wore buckskin chaps, a fringed coat, an open-creased hat, and a good white neckerchief folded well. I liked her scowl and I liked her freedom to wear it.

Martha Jane Canary, it read underneath. “Calamity Jane.”

Priya bounced on the edge of her cushion, as pleased as a pup with two tails. “I want to be like her!”

“She drinks, they say,” Miss Bethel said, but kindly.

Miss Francina snorted. “A woman in the West? You show me one who doesn’t drink, and I’ll show you one that wants to.”

* * *

Well, as I was saying, Priya settled in right quick, and half the time I’d come down to breakfast to find her in the parlor with Miss Lizzie, taking apart that Singer sewing machine. With all her other smarts, she had a knack for mechanicals, too. Sometimes they had to race to get the thing put back together before the trade showed up, and I know once or twice there were pieces that got left off for a day or two when they ran short of time — because in my spare time I was sewing.

I didn’t tell her what I was sewing on or that it was for her, but I spent all day Sunday on that patchwork coverlid, a wedding ring pattern in orange and red, and with the machines and all it was finished by suppertime. Even quilted. I got to use the big machine for the quilting, stitching spirals with my right hand and measuring with my left. It was easier inside the frame, because the machine did all the measuring and math for you and kept the circles even and whatever they’d done to it made it work smoother even with the thick layers of fabric. I filled the quilt with wool bat instead of cotton, too. Priya being so skinny, I reckoned she wouldn’t mind the extra warmth.

I found some grosgrain ribbon I’d bought to make over an old dress and never gotten around to using and folded the quilt up, then tied it into a fancy package — pretty as you’ve ever seen. I didn’t want to embarrass Priya or make her feel beholden by giving her things in front of others — and also I was a little shy. So after dinner, but before we all gathered in the library, I tracked Priya down in the pantry where she was inventorying flour and cornmeal and suchlike, and I brought it to her.

I must of crept up behind her softer than I meant to, because when I rapped on the open door with my knuckles she about jumped out of her skin and left it straggled out on the boards. She squeaked and pirouetted, arms crossed over her apron.

It threw me off my stride, I don’t mind saying. I stood there gawping at her while she skipped and stared like a startled filly. You could have used her pupils for stove lids.

“Careful, now,” I told her. “It’s just me.”

Slowly, pretending I didn’t notice her chest heaving up and down, I held out the coverlid all packaged up with its bright blue ribbon. Even folded up, it was colorful and pretty. I’d picked the brightest scraps from the ragbag, greens and pinks and purples and reds in addition to the oranges. It mightn’t match much else — it didn’t match itself, in point of fact, though I loved the way the green and the vermilion played off each other on that one patch — but it was a gaudy great, wonderful pile of cloth.

Priya kept her hands at her sides and caught her breath as she looked at it. “That’s beautiful.”

“It’s for you,” I said. I bounced my hands a little. The quilt was getting heavy. “You’re supposed to take it now.”

“Oh!” Her eyes couldn’t possibly have gotten bigger, but they seemed to. She put her hands on her mouth instead of reaching out. “I can’t—”

“You’d better,” I said. “I got no use for it.”

“But the rug — and—”

“I like taking care of my friends,” I told her. I took a step forward, and she didn’t move back. “This isn’t getting any lighter, you know.”

“Oh!”

Priya didn’t so much reach for the quilt as let me put it in her hands when they came down again. But once she had it, she clutched it like the mane of a bucking horse. Her hands made little fists on the fabric. “Karen, I — this is too nice.”

“So you do something for me someday,” I answered. “Friends don’t keep score.”

Because friends don’t have to keep score, my da would of said. Friends just pitch in as needed, as they can.

Thinking that made me notice something else. To wit: she was wearing the same clothes she’d had on since she got here, the cuffed-up trousers and shirt, and they were all starting to get a bit dingy. She’d washed them, I knowed — we all had a hell of a laundry day once a week, boiling big vats of water with lye soap in Connie’s kitchen for all the underthings and the linens tough enough to take more than airing and brushing. Shifts and bloomers and Crispin’s shirts and suchlike. But I knowed Priya’d borrowed a shift from Beatrice to wear while her shirt was being boiled. And that she didn’t have much else.

“Tomorrow,” I said, “we’re going shopping. If you’re going to wear trousers, they’re going to be trousers that fit. And you need shoes before winter gets worse, and more than one shirt and one pair of skivvies.”

“I haven’t saved the money yet,” she said.

“We’ll buy cloth. I’ll loan you for it. You can pay me back in cash or chores, your option.”

“I don’t sew that well—”

I waved at the coverlid. “I do. We’ll get you ragged up proper in no time at all.”

The look on her face was the most complicated thing I’ve ever seen. She just stood there, canisters of flour and meal on the counter all behind her, hugging that quilt like a cat with only one kitten. I was afraid she was going to cry, and I was afraid I was going to beat her there.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll get up early.”

* * *

Early, in this case, was before noon. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find Priya when the time came to go — I’d already learned she had tricks for making things she didn’t want to happen not stand a chance of happening without putting up no kind of a fight. But I woke up instead with her bouncing on my bed like a puppy. Connie was just putting the bread she’d risen overnight in the ovens, but there was some stale from the day before, and she dipped it in egg and fried it in dripping for us so there was something to eat for breakfast.

We gobbled it up, and I wish now I’d been more mindful of my gratitude. Connie had a way of doing such — putting herself out to make things a little easier for all while being so quiet about it you never think to stop and appreciate the kindness. But I was too wrapped up in Priya to pay proper attention. Mama would of been ashamed.

I’d noticed Priya didn’t eat beef or pork by itself — she’d eat around it, not making any fuss — but it seemed more of a philosophical objection than a physiological one. Which was for the good, because ten out of every eight things Connie cooks is fried in dripping.

In return for the early breakfast, Connie gave me a shopping list of her own. “And this time, try not to pre-chop the onions.”

I could feel Priya watching. When I looked at her, she gave me a flicker of a smile. I wondered if she was figuring out how, in this house, we lived together mostly by doing one another favors. I mean, I know there’s houses where it’s every girl for herself, and constant knives in the back. But Madame won’t cotton to that, and any girl who tries to import that sort of behavior and don’t take a warning or two winds up plying her trade elsewhere. Madame’s even less keen on mean than she is on drunk. She might forgive a girl who miscalculates how much liquor she can hold, as long as she don’t do it regular.

I loaned Priya a pair of my boots and three sets of socks to keep ’em on her feet. It weren’t perfect, but it was better than nothing. Then we checked the barometer, which was uncharacteristically heartening, and I flipped open the morning paper to check the Mad Science Report. No experiments were scheduled, and no duels had been announced — at least among the Licensed Scientists — but you never knowed when a giant automaton was going to run rogue unscheduled. Mostly the city makes the inventors keep to the edge of town. Mostly. And there’s always those as won’t pay the licensing taxes, and while that’s illegal, it’s hard to track them.

So I guess what I’m saying is that both looked fair for now, but both was always subject to change without notice.

Blinking in the unaccustomed sun and with Crispin for an honor guard and to help haul dry goods up and down the ladders, we set out with baskets and sacks to get some marketing done.

First I took Priya down Threadneedly, in and out of shops that sold gingham and muslin and wool. We had to walk the long way around to get there, as two big construction armatures had the Deucy Street sidewalks blocked off. They was doing the work of six steam shovels, each lifting a block of granite the size of a boxcar into place to shore up one of the raised street walls, and we all stopped to gawk for a minute. They was like the sewing machine’s much, much, much bigger cousins, and you could hardly see the operators embedded inside the framework of the big things’ chests. One operator must of caught us looking, and the hue of my primrose day dress, because once the rock was placed he began cavorting in his armature, making curled arms like I was supposed to fly up there and feel his big machine’s hydraulic biceps.

The Threadneedly end of town was nearer the rich folk’s homes and the airfield than the docks, and one big airship drifted over while we walked, shadowing us from the rare winter sun. It was a gaudy thing, gold and vermilion and peacock blue and parrot green, and as the docking boom reached up into the sky to snag it and it tilted slightly, I read the words Minneapolis Colony appliqued up the hydrogen bag. I spared a thought for if that was a port of registry or the name of the thing — neither seemed likely. Still, it caught the light, and I heard Priya catch her breath at how it glittered.

“Colors like home,” she said when I glanced at her.

The homesick in her eyes made me wonder if I could live in India. And it made me think maybe I’d been right to pick those bright, bright colors for her quilt. I know I’d meant to do the curtains first … but the ring pattern was more fun, anyway.

Priya’d need a coat, I reckoned, and two pair of trousers. A pair of boots that could stand up to the wet. Shirts. There was a good wool check in black and yellow that I liked and she liked, too. We smiled over it conspiratorially: we’d both seen the dime-novel covers with Tombstone cowboys wearing shirts of that stuff. She liked a bright pink gingham with little green sprigs, too, which was more ladylike than I would of taken for her. I decided I could make a shirtwaist of it, for fancy, and there was no law saying she couldn’t wear a woman’s shirtwaist with men’s pants.

Actually, there was a law saying so, but the same law said she couldn’t wear trousers at all — and Miss Francina couldn’t wear sixteen yards of crinoline and skirting. I didn’t see it as about to slow down either one of ’em.

The boots were harder, but in the third shop we found a pair ready-made that were narrow enough for her. They was boy’s boots, for walking, not for riding, in dark blue leather. They cost about the earth, but I didn’t let her find that out. I just paid while she still had ’em on her feet and was admiring. She wore ’em out of the shop. She seemed to have given up protesting.

Crispin winked at me conspiratorially while I handed him loaded baskets and my old pair of boots Priya’d given me back, along with four out of six socks. I wasn’t getting nothing past Crispin. But then, he knows pretty well that I feel exactly the way about women he don’t, and I didn’t think most anybody could have missed me mooning over Priya. Except possibly Priya. Who was pretty and clever and a wit … about everything except me being falling-down in love with her, apparently.

We was only halfway down the block and hadn’t yet found the right wool for trousers when she stopped stock still on the boards and stared. I followed her line of sight, and I ain’t ashamed to say I cussed as well as staring. There on the wall beside a barbershop and dentist’s was a big printed placard in two colors of ink, advertising the mayoral candidacy of Mr. Peter Bantle, Democrat and local businessman.

I liked to have turned my head and spat, but I remembered at the last minute that I was out on the street and ought to comport myself as a lady. Cussing aside, but it was too late to rein that wagon.

Crispin, coming up behind us, didn’t seem too much more pleased. He lifted a sagging basket out of Priya’s shocked hand, though, and made a little production of redistributing his loads. I thought it was probably intended to hide whatever he happened to be thinking.

“Can he do that?” Priya asked, waving her now-freed hand at the sign.

“He can’t win,” I said. I looked at Crispin, and I knowed my face was begging for him to offer an opinion backing mine. He made an attempt at it, but I could tell the encouraging expression was spackled on. “Madame pays more in taxes than he does. Half the city council are her customers. She…”

“Greases the right palms?” Priya asked, grinning wickedly.

“So to speak.” I laughed softly. Even in my desperate denial, I felt better for her humor.

But then her face fell. “Bantle can win.”

I glanced at her for an explanation. No explanation was forthcoming. Just tight lips and a curt, quick shake of her head.

Crispin said, “There’s them as would give Bantle money. Just to spite Madame. Or because they think it’d be good to have the mayor owe them. Or for half a dozen other reasons. Who’s running for the Republicans? Is it going to be Mr. Stone again?”

It was a good question, and I wished I’d thought of it. The Republicans were the party of President Hayes, and I knowed a lot of people didn’t like him because of the way he’d been elected. But they were also the party of President Lincoln, who people still talked about in hushed tones as a martyr. Of course, here in the Washington Territory we couldn’t vote for President and being a woman and under twenty-one, I couldn’t vote at all.

I didn’t know a lot about politics. But I did know that even just within the confines of Rapid City, we elected a lot of Republicans. “He can’t win,” I said. “He’s a Democrat.” A sick thought came up in me like water up a drilled well. “He’s just doing this to get back at Madame.”

Priya’s brows bunched up over her nose, shading those deep-textured eyes. “How does this … get him back at Madame?”

I winced and looked at Crispin. He was studying on rearranging those baskets, still. None of us was supposed to know about Mayor Stone and Pollywog. If my mouth was a mare, I’d put her on a curb bit.

Priya was just looking at me like it was a matter of life and death that she understand what I was talking about. And I couldn’t tell her. “Just,” I said, “the city council owes her favors. Just what we said before.”

“Ah,” she said. She thought about it for a few seconds and looked satisfied, like she’d figured something out. Priya’s not just smart as a whip. I bet she got no end of practice reading between the lines, working for Peter goddamn Bantle.

“Anyway,” I said, hoping to change the subject without letting on that I was changing the subject. “He can’t win.”

“He can win if nobody runs against him,” Priya said.

“That’ll never happen!” I said. “Mayor Stone would never give up without a fight, even if nobody else was running!”

Priya cocked her head at me, her braid falling over one shoulder. “No doubt,” she said, “it shall be as you say.”

* * *

But she was right, of course. We tracked down a fresh hot copy of the Rapid City Journal Miner Republican from a newsboy crying the afternoon edition in the street. He looked to be about eight years old, and I slipped him a silver quarter, which was exactly double the price of the paper. But newsboys paid for their own papers and most of them were orphans, like me — or had homes such as you wouldn’t send a child back to under any circumstance.

We gathered around that rag and skimmed past stories about a gold ship sunk coming back from Anchorage and a splintercat that had done some damage up at a logging camp near Shasta. We quickly discovered that not only was Priya absolutely correct — Bantle was running unopposed — but there also was a full column of editorials discussing how Peter Bantle was undoubtedly the man for the job. In sickening and laudatory detail. And wishing Mayor Stone well in his retirement.

It weren’t raining, for a mystery. But the day felt pretty dark to all of us just then, notwithstanding.

I crumpled the paper in my fist, more or less by accident, and hastened to smooth it out again. “How did you know?” I demanded of Priya.

She gave me the bleakest look imaginable. “I know Bantle. He’s got his ways.”

Our previous merry mood was shaken, and I hoped to recapture it. We were by that time down by the opera house, which was about the grandest building in town. It was dark green with white and brick-red trim, all gussied and hung with elaborate jigsaw work in the English style, and it was about as big as three banks put together. It was dark on a Monday afternoon, but I wandered over to look at the bills anyway.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers were prominently billed, and somebody called Anna Bichurina — we were getting a lot of Russians over, with the new fast steamers and the airship route from Vladivostok. “Who’s Ram Shankar Bhattacharya?” I asked, no doubt mangling it terribly.

Priya reached out to touch the posted bill with one fingertip. The touch lingered. I noticed that she chewed her nails and loved her a little bit more than I had already. “A court musician,” she said. “Very famous in my homeland.”

I wondered, suddenly, how long she had been in the territories. How she had come here and where her family was. What had happened to them. When you meet someone in our line of work — or, I guess, my line of work, as she’s out of it now — you sort of assume that if they had any family they’d be doing something else with their lives.

I thought again about the stable, about my idea for a little business of my own. I wondered if Priya liked horses.

For her, I bet I could stand to be around them again.

“How long have you and your sister been in America?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “Since last winter.”

Ten months, then. Twelve at the outside. She must of seen my expression and read it flawlessly, because her spine got longer and her chin came up. “I’m quick with languages.”

Crispin elbowed me. I looked at him, and he was grinning.

“Yes,” I said to him. “She slapped a brand on me, all right. How kind of you to point that out.”

I turned back to Priya. “I noticed,” I said.

Priya was looking at Crispin and me in slight confusion of her own now, though. “He laid hands on you.”

“An elbow,” I said. “Not exactly the same thing.”

But she looked wounded, and I took pity on her. “Among the things Madame don’t tolerate is lording it over people on account of their skin.”

“She was a — an abolitionist?”

Crispin patted her on the arm. He glanced around; there was nobody nearby. As I said, the opera house was dark Mondays.

“She’s black,” he said. “Just very fair complected. We’d say that she ‘passes.’ But she’s got a black great-grandma, and that makes her black, by American law.”

It was an interesting thing, watching the procession of emotions dawning and fading across her face like the sequence of the seasons, each replacing the last. Consternation gave way to surprise, which gave way to something else.

“She’s low caste, then. But she can employ people of higher caste?”

I didn’t know what a caste was, then. Now I know it’s like classes, in Priya’s homeland — lords and commoners and gutter scum.

“Does Bantle know?”

Crispin shrugged. “Maybe suspects. It’d be hard to prove out here in the middle of the wilderness, especially as none of us knows where Madame came from, or even her right name. We ain’t never lied about it, to my knowledge. Just let people assume.”

“He called her Alice,” I remembered with a twist of unease. “Bantle called her Alice. He knows something. Or he thinks he does.”

Priya nodded, and I could about see that glittering brain of hers work and spin. She said to Crispin, “You shouldn’t of told me. You trust me too much.”

He winked. “You was going to tell anybody, either way?”

She shook her head, but she didn’t seem appeased. I could almost feel her thinking what a weird country we had. Rather than remarking on that, though, she seemed to steel herself and seize an opportunity for conversating. She turned to me. Quietly, she asked, “Have you … you’ve been so kind other ways. Have you learned anything about my … about Aashini?”

Damn. I’d been hoping she wouldn’t ask. And the way she had to sneak up on her sister’s name about broke my heart.

I had tried. The problem, it turned out, was finding ways to slip it into conversation. Natural like. Men liked to brag, true. But they didn’t always like to be distracted.

“Not yet,” I said. “I’m thinking there has to be a way to find out where she is, and maybe get her a message. But I haven’t found it.”

Her face fell like Connie’s soufflés don’t. Like when you put your lips against a vacuum tube, except as if somebody had done it to her expression from the inside. “I’ll think on it, too,” said Crispin. When Priya cocked her head at him, he said, “Slaves had families, too, miss. Sometimes it ain’t so easy to keep in touch. We had our ways of getting word around, and keeping track of kin.”

When the air came out of Priya and her shoulders fell, that was when I realized how twisted up inside she’d been and how much courage it had taken to ask that question. I thought about the burn scars on her arms.

Bantle had dozens of girls in his cribs. Surely he didn’t have time to give that sort of attention to each and every one of them.

Priya, I surmised, might of been a special favorite. And the special favorite of a man like Bantle … well, in her shoes I would pretty fast get so I didn’t let anybody know what I did or didn’t care for, I imagined. Because vulnerability … that’s the sort of thing that a man like Bantle would use against you.

Well, a man like Bantle would use anything against you that he could. And — it occurred to me — a man like Bantle might have ways of getting hold of somebody’s sister, if he wanted to hurt that somebody. And, like Crispin’s relatives, he might have ways of making sure word reached that somebody. Sooner or later.

“Hey,” I said. “Friends do things for each other.”

She stared at the toes of her new blue boots, frowning on one side of her mouth. That long face of hers made all sorts of complicated whimsies happen when she wasn’t careful to guard it. I could see the leather flex as her toes wiggled restlessly beneath.

When she looked up, though, her eyes were bright. Her expression impulsive. “Let me make you a new rug,” Priya said, bouncing on her toes a little, swinging her arms like a boy of seven bursting with so much excitement he has to share.

Friends do things for each other. So were we friends, or was I courting her? Did they have to be exclusionary? How did I find out which she wanted it to be? It bothered me for a whole half a second before I realized that if I was only being her friend because I wanted to get into her bloomers then I was a pretty lousy friend and a pretty lousy romantic prospect.

And maybe if we spent enough time being friends, I’d study out for myself if she had some kind of interest in making more of it. Or at least I’d study out if that was the sort of thing she might not care to be asked about. Because I was pretty sure I could ask … but I wouldn’t if it would chase her away. Because I wanted Priya in my life any way she’d have me, so scaring her as to my intentions just wasn’t in the plan.

I … grinned. And said, “I’ll show you where the ragbags are. And how to work the sewer.”

Best of all, when we were leaving Threadneedly Street we saw the elephants. Five of them, arranged in size from biggest to littlest, walking in a line. They wore bright blankets and caps, alternating blue with red borders and red with blue, and each one carried a man in spangled tights or a woman whose short skirt resembled a bicycle costume.

They were gray and enormous, and the patterns on their skin was like the tiny triangles on the backs of your wrist only magnified a hundred times.

Priya stood beside me, squeezing my hand until I thought my fingers might pop off. “Those aren’t real,” she said. “They can’t be real!”

“Aw, miss,” Crispin said, laughing pleasantly. “It’s just that the circus is in town.”