Flight of a Starling Page 3

  “It’s everything,” Rita says.

  Dean sort of squints at the pair of us.

  “Are you two sisters?” he asks.

  “Rita’s older,” I say.

  “Only by eleven months,” she reminds me.

  “And the sensibilist.”

  “Is that even a word, Lo?” Rita laughs.

  Dean wears a denim jacket that looks battered by too many years. Underneath it, his white T-shirt is clean. His fingernails are cut properly and clean too. Ma would approve, if he wasn’t a flattie.

  “Are you brothers?” I smile at all of them.

  “Nah,” Will says. “I’m too good-looking to be related to them.” A group of girls walk past, their heels clicking on the concrete.

  I like their laughter. It almost swallows them whole.

  “What’s it really like?” The look Dean gives me swoops down into my bones. “Traveling all the time?”

  “It’s what we know,” I say. I won’t tell these strangers how sometimes I wonder if I want more. That maybe the circus isn’t always enough.

  “It’s home,” Ash says.

  “But you’re always moving.”

  “The outside isn’t home. It’s the inside,” Rita says. “Inside the vans and inside us.”

  “We like it,” Ash says from next to her. He hovers like a crow.

  “I think you’re lucky,” Paul says. He’s perched on the end, leaning far enough forward so the conversation reaches him.

  “So do we,” Rita says.

  “What’s it like staying in one place all the time?” I ask.

  “Boring,” chips in Will. “I wouldn’t mind coming with you.” The way his eyes are on me makes me feel naked.

  “We don’t let just anybody in,” Ash says.

  “Were you born into it then?” Dean asks. I feel safer with him looking at me.

  “Yes,” I say. “And our mom and dad before us.”

  “They’re circus born and bred?” Will asks.

  “And proud of it,” Ash tells him.

  “Why wouldn’t they be?” Dean looks up at him. “It sounds like a good way of life.” Ash only pushes his hands back into his pockets and shrugs.

  I put my hand palm down into the water. I turn to kneel on the edge and then tip myself over. I splash into the cold wet, my feet the last to disappear.

  Under here, I can’t see or hear anyone. In the blackness, I feel the grainy floor of the fountain, my fingers brushing past circles of coins. When I can no longer breathe, I go back, my head breaking through the bubbles on the surface.

  “I’ve got one,” I say, holding my hand high in the air.

  “What are you doing?” Paul sounds uncertain as he looks around. I wipe the water from my eyes.

  “I had to get a lucky coin,” I say. I pull my slippery self back onto the ledge and squeeze more water from me, the dragon’s fiery tongue dripping icy wet from my sleeve.

  The coin in my palm is a one pence piece.

  “It’ll protect you from this spooky town,” Rita says, as I close my fingers around it, feeling my jeans cling cold to me now.

  “You think it’s a spooky town?” Dean asks her, but he’s looking at me.

  “I like it here,” I say.

  “You must be freezing, Lo,” Rita says, ignoring him. She links her arm through mine and immediately I feel the fountain’s water sinking through my top.

  “Best get home,” Spider says, and as Rita gets up, she pulls me with her.

  “It was nice to meet you,” Dean says. He’s smiling at me.

  “And you,” Rita says.

  “Will we see you again?” he asks. The boys I know aren’t like him, and I want to pull him with us and keep him close to me as the sky turns light.

  “Come to the show,” I say before we walk away, the fountain’s water dripping from me, my lucky coin curled into my palm.

  Rita

  “Your hair is still wet,” I tell Lo. “Ma would kill you if she saw you going to bed like that.”

  “Then it’s a bit of luck we’ve got our own van,” she says, squeezing her bangs tight in her hand. “Look, no drips. I’ll be fine.”

  She puts her clothes in our tiny bathroom, hanging crooked over the toilet seat.

  “Are you cold?” I ask.

  “You’re fussing,” Lo says, jumping into her bed and running her legs quick under her duvet. “I’m toasty as toast.”

  “What imaginative words you have,” I laugh, pulling myself over the bottom rungs of our ladder to get into the bunk above her.

  “All the better to eat you with.”

  “Words don’t eat, Lo.”

  “The knife and fork ones do.” Her laughter fills our bedroom. There’s something different about her since we went out and met those boys, something fizzing under her skin.

  “Which one was it then?” I ask.

  “Which what?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know. Which boy did you like?”

  “Which boy where?”

  “Lo.”

  She pauses. I hear her scratch the slats of my bed as she always does before she tells me a secret.

  “Dean,” she says.

  “The one with the hat?”

  “Mm.”

  “Just mm?”

  “Mm mm.”

  “I see.”

  In the silence, I can hear the water from Lo’s clothes dripping onto the toilet seat. They’ll be hanging there, dark from the wet, and I know they’ll never be dry by morning.

  “What did it feel like?” I ask. “When you first saw him?” I want to know if burning hearts are true.

  “It felt like the air stopped.”

  I don’t want to be jealous, but I am.

  “But he’s a flattie.”

  “I know.”

  I click off the lamp that Dad fixed to the edge of my bed, the lead hanging down all the way past Lo.

  “I want to see him again, Rita.”

  “You know Dad won’t approve.”

  “I won’t tell him.”

  I hear her turn over in her bed. She’s stopped kicking her legs, so I hope the cold has left her.

  “Does it feel different? To you and Spider?”

  “Yes, completely,” she says. “More like you and Ash.”

  “I’ve told you, I don’t like him right now.”

  “But why not? Anyone can see you’re meant to be together. You’re lucky.”

  “Am I?”

  “Of course you are,” she says, yet the happy parts have gone from her voice. “At least you can be with Ash if you want to be.”

  “Don’t be sad, Lo.”

  “I’m not.” But I hear her breath weighed heavy in the dark.

  Chapter Two

  Lo

  “Your breakfast is getting cold. Hurry up, the pair of you.” Ma throws my jeans onto the bed. “Or Dad will start eating it,” she says over her shoulder as she goes out of our bedroom and closes the front door behind her.

  “We should take her key away,” I say.

  “What, ban her from Terini?” Rita asks.

  “It’s our space. What’s the point of moving out of Mada if they can just come in when they want?” I poke my hands into the wooden slats of her bed above me.

  “You try telling Ma that,” Rita says. Her mattress huffs, and I imagine her pulling the duvet tight around her.

  “Maybe not.”

  I bring my legs around the bottom of the ladder, touching it three times with my thumb to keep the witch in there sleeping. She walked straight out of a storybook Ma read us one day, and now she sits too often waiting to scratch our ankles.

  “Those boys last night,” I say, standing on tiptoes and reaching to the ceiling.

  “Are you still thinking about him?”

  “Girls!” Dad shouts from the steps of their van.

  “Keep your hair on,” Rita muffles into her pillow. But there’ll be bacon frying, and that’s enough to make me dress quick and take me out of T
erini and into Mada’s kitchen.

  “Morning, Gramps,” I say. He’s always the first person we go to, sitting deep in his armchair. He puts down his book to give me a kiss.

  “Morning, love.”

  “What was the town like?” Ma asks. She’s washing up hurriedly in the sink.

  “Quiet,” I say.

  “Just quiet?”

  “Everything was shut. We just walked around.”

  “Just you and Rita?” She stops to look over her shoulder at me.

  “And Spides and Ash. We met a couple of locals. And I went swimming in the fountain.”

  Ma doesn’t react. I wonder if she’s even heard, as she scrubs the sponge so hard around the mug that I’m surprised she doesn’t wear the china away.

  ★ ★ ★

  The rain pounds on the roof of our empty big top, its noise echoing heavy inside, filling up even the tiniest spaces.

  “It better have stopped by later,” Rita says. “Or the music will get swallowed.”

  “By a rain beast?” I ask, raising my eyebrow at her.

  “Exactly,” she says.

  Between us, her costume sits on the ground, the snagged material needing to be tucked under and sewn. I’m unpicking a feather stuck in the way of the thread and don’t notice Rob before he’s standing next to us.

  “That doesn’t exactly need two of you,” he says.

  “It’s because of her arm,” I tell him, smiling up at him. “She can’t possibly do this on her own.” He knows it’s not true. Lil insisted on curing Rita with one of her creams and the skin is healing quick.

  “Join us if you like?” Rita asks, though he wouldn’t be much help.

  “No time,” he says. “Tricks is making me double-check the bike engine.”

  “I could help you when we’ve finished this,” Rita says, but she’s talking to the back of his coat, as he’s already walking away from us and through the ring door curtains.

  I hold the needle careful in my fingers, wet the end of the thread with my mouth before looping it through. The rain still beats down above us.

  “Do you really think we’re lucky?” I ask Rita. “That we live like this.”

  “Of course,” she says. “Why would you ask that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking, that’s all.”

  “Then don’t,” she says, sounding just like Ma. “Because we don’t fit anywhere else.”

  I twist the thread into a knot and don’t say any more.

  My make-up is so heavy I can barely open my eyes, gold glitter dancing across my cheekbones. I’ve threaded the feathers into my hair and stepped into the sequined suit of my changeling skin.

  For this part, I put the thin white dress over the top, its sleeves dipped in beads, and I loop my arms into the elastic of my purple wings so that they stretch out across my back.

  I never look in the mirror when I’m in my costume—I once told Rita that the reflection of the fallen angel would step out and stick to her forever, and I made myself believe it too.

  I run across the muddy ground and up the wooden steps of Lil’s van. Inside, it’s almost dark. She’s sitting behind her table in her little wicker chair, the end of her cigarette glowing a pinprick of color.

  “Lucky I wasn’t Tricks,” I say. “Finding you smoking when customers are about to come in.”

  “What customers?” The smoke twists and bends into the deep lines of her skin.

  “He’d sooner set you alight than see you smoking in front of them,” I say.

  She flicks ash into the bowl of water before her, her laugh collapsing into a cough that gets stuck in her closed mouth. When she opens her lips, it’s to spit phlegm into her handkerchief, which she tucks into her sleeve.

  “You wouldn’t tell though, would you, little Laura?”

  “What’s it worth?” I laugh, and she swats at me with a hand spotted with rings. I click the lamp on by her feet, and a small light shivers up toward her face, leaving her eyes as hollow holes.

  “Get the customers in, girl. Let’s get the cash rolling and grow rich enough to live like queens.”

  Outside, the sky is thick with clouds, but my eyes sting slightly in the daylight. We’re next to the entrance of the big top, and I beckon to strangers with my long fingernails dipped in color. There are droplets of fear in their eyes, before they look away, and I want to tell them that I’m nothing like this really, that if they looked carefully, they’d see just me.

  I’m spreading my wings high above me in an arc, watching the feathers mingling with the beads, when I hear people speaking.

  “It is one of them,” a voice says. I turn, and it’s two of the boys from the fountain. Dean and Will. They come right up close.

  “You look different,” Dean says to me, making my heart quick.

  “You don’t,” I say, and I smile back at him, even though our angels are meant to keep a face blank of everything.

  “What’s this then?” Will points his thumb to the closed van behind us.

  “It’s your destiny,” I say, and they both laugh.

  “A fortune teller?” Will asks.

  “More than that.” I look steady into Dean’s eyes.

  “What do we have to do then?” he asks.

  “You’re not going in?” Will pokes his arm.

  “Why not?” Dean says. “It’s always good to know what the future has in store.”

  “It’ll be a load of nonsense.”

  Dean ignores him. “How much is it?”

  “Three of your finest gold coins.”

  “Three pounds!” Will says.

  “I’ll meet you here,” Dean tells him.

  Within my angel costume, I can watch as he puts his hands into his jeans and pulls out some money.

  “Suit yourself,” Will says. “I’ll just be here alone while you waste your money.”

  I lead Dean up the steps, open the door, and we go inside. Lil sits motionless.

  “Is there anyone there?” she asks. Dean looks at me, a half smile on his lips. I have to look away.

  “She’s blind,” I tell him, but for the first time ever I don’t like the lie. “She feels the future with her soul.” I’ve said the words a hundred times before.

  “Right,” Dean says.

  “A boy,” Lil says, her voice lower than before, a whisper in her lamplight.

  She holds out her hands, palms up. Dean only looks at me.

  “I can’t touch your money,” I tell him. “You need to give it to her.” He steps forward hesitantly, and I hear the sound of his coins settling onto her skin and dropping into a pocket lost in her skirt.

  He’s awkward as she holds his hand. In her other, she takes mine. I look away from Dean again. He’s made everything feel different, and now we’re linked, almost touching.

  “Your angel will choose a number,” Lil says.

  “Six,” I reply.

  Lil stares deep at him with her cave-like eyes and counts out the cards onto the table. As always, it’s the picture of an angel’s wing. Dean studies it so earnestly that I want to tell him that none of this is true.

  “There are obstacles in your path, but you have hidden wings that will help you,” she says, as Dean nods solemnly. “But worry is weighing you down.” Lil looks at nothing. “Am I right?”

  “Um. Kind of,” Dean says.

  “I feel there is light, though,” Lil says, her voice hazy. “Yes, there is light.”

  Dean looks at me. “Three pounds,” he mouths, but he doesn’t seem angry.

  I take his hand before Lil can stop me. She’s meant to be blind, so she can’t pretend she can suddenly see. There is a painted door at the back of her van, and I lead him through. Inside, it’s no bigger than a cupboard, and it’s completely dark. Any outside sounds are muffled into almost silence.

  “What are we doing here?” Dean asks. He has the remnants of a laugh in his voice, but it’s unsteady.

  “Are you scared?” I ask, the angel dropping fro
m me.

  “No.” His voice is so close to me, sitting just on my skin as he speaks.

  “I want to know what frightens you.”

  The air has never felt like this. If I move, I think it might burn me.

  “What frightens me?”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “Is this in the old woman’s script?”

  I wonder if he hears my heart beating.

  “Name three things.”

  “OK,” he says. “Cotton wool.”

  “Cotton wool?”

  “I don’t like the way it sounds when I touch it.” I can tell he’s smiling, his words tipping up.

  “Lo?” It’s Lil’s voice, drifting urgent through the door.

  “A bigger fear than that,” I tell him.

  There’s a pause, where the darkness swells tight between us.

  “I’m frightened that something will happen to my mom.”

  I struggle to find an answer.

  “Nothing will happen to her,” I say, as if I know, as if I really can read Lil’s cards.

  “How are you so sure?” he asks.

  “I just am. She won’t die before her time.”

  I move slightly, and I think the feathers of my wings brush against him.

  “Lo.” Lil sounds angry now. “His time is up.”

  “The third thing you’re scared of?” I ask quickly. I can feel him pause.

  “You,” he says.

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  The door opens and dim light scuttles in, bringing Lil with it.

  “Enough,” she says, her eyes clearly seeing into the room. Dean looks awkward, unsure what to do. I know he watches me as I walk past him, and he follows me to the van’s front door. Outside, Will is leaning against the steps.

  “Did you get your money’s worth?” he asks, smiling wide at Dean.

  “Of course,” I say, before Dean can reply, and I leave them and go back in.

  Lil is sitting in her chair in the silence, laying her cards of angel wings face down on the table. When she looks up, her eyes cloud with the future.

  “Be careful, Lo,” she says.

  ★ ★ ★

  The audience doesn’t know that Rita and I are here, crouched like lions way above their heads. The curtained ledge we’re hiding on barely fits us both, tucked high into the roof of our big top.

  “I think you should just marry Ash,” I whisper, even though the music filling the tent will easily cover my words. “Say you will, or I’ll dive from here.” I pull back the curtain until a small slice of light streaks steady across Rita’s face. “Say you will.” I shuffle closer to the edge, her red fairy wings brushing like water against my arm.