Seven years ago
Atticus had been twenty-three when the acrobatic troupe advertised for a new aerialist. Diona Green had finally decided to retire; an event that was not unexpected given that she was well into her forties, and the circus needed another woman to take to the ropes. Micajah Bell, the ringmaster and the man who had taken a chance with Atticus all those years ago, decided upon a more conventional route this time round and poached a performer from one of the few other shows that travelled the galaxy.
It was Atticus, not Will, who met her first. Having narrowly beat his friend to the position of male lead the previous year, it was Atticus who interviewed her with Micajah, Atticus who watched her turn on the ribbons, Atticus who caught her wrists as she swung from the trapeze, the ringmaster watching skeptically from the stands.
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“I suppose you put in a good word for me.”
Atticus looked over at her. Her name was Ruth and she had eyes like polished mahogany which mirrored the dancing flames of the bonfire and a small lithe body that was all angles and neat dewdrop curves.
“What makes you think that?” he said, raising an eyebrow. He’d introduced her to the troupe then to the other performers as they ate their evening meal by firelight.
“I could tell you liked me,” she said, pulling her coat further over her shoulders.
“How?” said Atticus, grinning now. “Micajah barely let me speak in your interview.”
“Just from the way you caught me on the trapeze, I suppose.” Ruth’s lips leapt into a smile of her own, a smile with an undercurrent of challenge. “You’re not denying it.”
“That I put in a good word or that I like you?”
“Either. Both, I hope. I’m glad I’m here, anyway,” she said, looking up at him. “Let’s go sit with the rest of the troupe…”
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“Of course I do,” grunted Atticus, as he lifted himself up with his left arm which gripped the handle of the pommel horse. His right arm extended out, reaching for the ceiling of the practice room. “You’re telling me you’d say no?”
“Keep your leg straight- Well, no I guess not… Definitely not,” said Will, who was standing back, his arms crossed over his chest. “But I don’t think it’s something to fight over.”
Atticus exhaled and brought his right hand back down again to flip deftly back onto his feet. “Me neither,” he said, clapping the chalk off his hands. He looked across at Will. The two of them had known each other since Atticus had first shimmied through the dust to sneak into the big top when he was ten years old. They’d held each other’s lives in their hands, literally, so many times over the past decade that they could judge each other expertly from the grip of a trapeze bar or the wobble of a foot on a rope. They didn’t need to discuss this.
Will grinned and proved Atticus right. “May the best man win. She probably won’t want either of us,” he said, with gentle humour. That was Will all over; he’d always been more reserved than Atticus, gentler, softer, acting more in moderation, not as sharply witted, not as obsessive.
Picking up his bag, Will left him alone to silently perfect a few poses he’d been working on for the trapeze. As a precaution, the bar itself had been lowered from the ceiling so it hung only ten foot or so above the floor since there was no spotter to stand below him. It was unnecessary, of course, but Atticus had done it anyway. He glad he had, when Ruth walked into the practice room.
“You’ve missed dinner,” she said, dark hair falling away from her face as she turned to look up at him. Atticus let go with his hands and kept his feet entwined in the rope so he dropped down to hang, upside-down, in front of her. “Will said you’d still be in here.”
He shrugged, breathless and elated at his success at a pose a few moments before.
“You came over here to tell me that?” he said. Compulsively, he reached out to draw a lock of hair away from her temple and for the first time since he’d met her, she seemed wrong-footed by the physical contact.
“No. He said-“ She stopped and Atticus took her waist in his hands and lifted her up to bring her face level with his. Their lips met and he kissed her until his arms couldn’t hold her any longer.
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He loved her, madness lay at the end of any path that would make him go without her. And yet he’d lost his mind already, could barely think when his skin was against hers, could never get close enough even when he was inside her.
Training was no longer foremost in his mind but he’d never performed better because every night when he was up in the vaults of the big tent, the story they acted out through every catch and hold and pose wasn’t a fiction any more. The rest of the troupe were merely bit parts in a performance that revolved around the two of them. Whichever planet they happened to be on at the time, even the circus itself, faded into monochrome against her laughter, the quick conversation that seemed to fly between them, the smell of her dark hair.
He should have been terrified that he’d lost himself so easily but it didn’t even occur to him to be scared. He wondered, sometimes, when he woke in the middle of the night to find her awake and staring at the ceiling but she always heard him and turned and smiled and kissed him and the wondering fled from his mind.
A year slipped past like silk through his hands and when she said yes after he’d asked her to marry him, he felt invincible.
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The night before a show. Micajah and his tedious but necessary accountant had called a meeting with the leads for all the acts. The recent bout of domino-like revolutions on the Inner Rim planets close to the gas belt mining fields had sent the price of fuel sky-rocketing and the plan was to spend more time on each planet. But to do this and keep selling tickets, the performers would have to draft up new acts and routines; more variety between each show meant more tickets, more money, more fuel for the next jump.
After an hour spent tossing ideas to and fro, Micajah adjourned the meeting half an hour early, frustrated with Atticus’ dismissiveness, the jokes of the tumblers and the hostile reluctance of the strongman who seemed reassured that audiences would return every night to see him lift weights when he barely drew anyone in as it was.
Unable to find Ruth or the rest of the troupe (someone had said a few of them were out drinking in the local town), Atticus went backstage to make sure everything was in order for the act the next night. The trapezes had been arranged along the metal tracks in the vault of the big top and lowered to the correct height. The silks had been washed and tested and were tied neatly by the walkway. All that was left was the costumes.
In a way, he wished he hadn’t bothered to go below the stage into the cave-like costume cupboard. It would have ended a few months, maybe a year, down the line and he wouldn’t have known. Blissful ignorance would have been preferable to the oblivion that followed. As it was, he knew even before he saw them; he’d thought those moans, those sighs had been his and his only but he heard them then, mingled with the breathing of another. He didn’t need to pull back a curtain of feathers and satin to see Ruth and Will moving together but he did anyway. Atticus was paralysed not by the fact of the act that he’d unwittingly caught them in but by the [i]way[/i] she looked at him. He realised he recognized that look, but only in himself. He’d never seen it in her before.
Without making a sound, he left. Until he got back to his quarters, he felt nothing. There was a black hole somewhere in the centre of his chest and everything was falling into it. It seemed to suck the light from the lamps in the campsite, the heat from the bonfire, it drowned out the cheerful calls of the other performers and into it fell the thoughts from his head. Once he was alone, he allowed his anger to create another kind of oblivion and ripped the contents of his quarters to shreds, not stopping when the tears came or when he drew blood. He stopped when there was nothing else left to destroy. It was then he knew what he was going to do.