13. Circus Charlie (16)
13. Circus Charlie (16)
The dormitory where the circus school students stayed had originally been a warehouse, so it had no windows. Instead, ventilation openings just below the roof let in light, giving a rough sense of the time outside. When Ella woke, she could tell by that light that it was around noon. She stretched and climbed out of her hammock.
"Uwaaah—tch."
"Ella, did you sleep well?"
Anna had been reading a book in a chair in the corner of the warehouse. She came over when she noticed Ella stirring.
"Mmn... what? What happened? I don't remember lying down..."
Ella smacked her lips and rubbed her eyes.
"You don't remember? You made it to the front of the dorm and then collapsed right where you stood."
"Huh? Oh, right. I think I remember..."
She let out an enormous yawn, then climbed down from the hammock and looked around the warehouse.
"Nobody else is here. They all went out to see the performances?"
"Yeah. Everyone went to enjoy the last day of the festival."
Ella's eyes flew wide open in shock.
"Last day? W-wait! When I got back, it was only the 11th!"
"Right. You slept for over two days straight."
Ella let out a deflated sigh and flopped back onto the hammock.
"Two days? Damn. I missed 'Billy and Betty.'"
Billy and Betty was a circus troupe composed entirely of beast-tamers—the one Ella, who dreamed of taming animals herself, had been most eager to see at this festival. And she had missed it.
Ella had been singing the praises of Billy and Betty for a full month before the festival. Anna, knowing that, couldn't help feeling guilty. The reason Ella hadn't been able to see them was ultimately because of her.
But before she could even apologize, Ella shook her head and called out in a bright voice.
"Nothing to be done about it! I'll get another chance someday."
Her grin wasn't forced. In the span of that short moment, she'd genuinely tidied up her feelings and let it go.
Anna smiled at her. She had always loved that about Ella—that cheerful, refreshing directness.
"Glad to hear it. So instead, how about we go shopping today?"
"Shopping? What for?"
Anna let out an incredulous little laugh.
"Seriously? You promised and forgot? We said we'd buy a joining gift for Troupe Leader Wonderstein."
The moment Wonderstein's name came up, Ella brightened and snapped her head up.
"Oh, right. We did! Great, let's head out! Wait—are you okay with it now?"
"With what?"
"Hmm. Anna, your eyes used to get all fierce whenever I brought up the Troupe Leader."
Had she been that obvious?
Anna masked her fluster and answered evenly.
"That was because I was worried about you. But I've decided to trust you now."
"So you mean you don't trust him?"
"How can I trust someone I've never met in person?"
"Tch. You should trust my eye for people."
Anna cocked her head, a playful smile on her lips.
"I trust your eye for animals. People, though? Debatable."
"Hey, don't sell me short."
Anna watched Ella grumble and get to her feet, swallowing a wry smile. Someone who hadn't noticed Charlie's feelings—or her own—for years could hardly claim to be a good judge of people.
The two of them changed clothes and got ready to go. Anna sat Ella down in front of her and brushed her hair.
"I like it best when you do my hair."
"Master does it for you too."
"He brushes like he's grooming a horse's mane. He keeps trying to scrape something out of my scalp. It kills me."
Anna chuckled at the complaint.
"They say people in the old days were plagued by lice and fleas, so they brushed like that. When you first started raising Gudol, you were covered in bugs. I brushed your hair the same way back then."
"That was ages ago. I taught Gudol to bathe within a few days of taming him. Anyway, I like it when you give me a nice scritch."
"Right here, especially?"
Anna scratched the spot where the tuft of Ella's unruly back hair bristled. Ella let out a little gasp—"Hyaaah!"—and shivered from head to toe.
"Pfft. How are you going to manage after you leave school? You're the one who said you can't get the same feeling scratching it yourself."
"Hoo, tell me about it. If only you could brush my hair every day, Anna."
Ella tossed the words out thoughtlessly. Anna's hand stilled for just a moment. She'd imagined herself waking up beside Ella every morning.
"Uh, um... th-that's..."
"I know, I know. You're going to become an evaluator. You can't come with me."
"Uh, yeah. R-right..."
"So should I ask Troupe Leader Wonderstein to brush it for me?"
"Absolutely not!"
Anna's voice came out as a near-shout before she could stop herself.
Ella, worried Anna was about to launch into another lecture about how she needed to be more careful around unfamiliar men, hastily changed the subject.
"Right, did you submit the evaluator report?"
"I sent it off the day before yesterday. It turned out better than I expected. I might even make it to the interview stage."
"That would be amazing. All your hard work would pay off."
Once dressed, the two left the dormitory and walked the streets. Perhaps because it was the festival's final day, the crowds were thicker than ever. They started in the shopping district, buying Wonderstein's gift first.
Ella held up a whip used by beast-tamers, finished with high-grade leather, but Anna shot it down without mercy.
"You said he doesn't have any animals to tame. What would he do with a whip as a present?"
"What about buying him an animal, then? A puppy—something easy for a first-time owner."
Ella went up to a row of cages set out in front of the market. The puppies inside swarmed toward her, tails wagging.
"Do you think he even wants to raise one? It might just end up being a burden."
"How about this? A beast-tamer's whistle. It's got a mechanism that lets you adjust the tone five different ways. He could use it even without an animal."
"You just want that for yourself! For something like this, you're supposed to go with something safe, like a tie pin or a necktie."
After wandering around for a good while, they eventually managed to buy a necktie at a clothing shop in the district. Ella accepted the carefully wrapped gift from the shopkeeper, then noticed Anna was still lingering near the back of the store.
"What's up? Something you want to buy?"
Anna stared at Ella for a moment, then spoke.
"Ella, is it okay if I get you a present too?"
"Huh? Why?"
"You went out of your way for me these last ten days. I feel like I need to give you something to set my mind at ease. And anyway, your birthday's in a few days."
"Oh, well, I certainly won't say no! What is it? What are you getting me?"
Ella's eyes sparkled and she bounced on her heels. Anna looked at her and spoke in a resolute tone.
"At the very least, it's not a whip or a whistle."
"Aw, that's mean..."
"You don't need those right now anyway. There's something more urgent."
Ella followed Anna's pointing finger to a shelf. Rows of cylindrical hats in brilliant colors were lined up there.
"The hat you're wearing now is completely worn out. You're about to start working in a new place—it wouldn't do to show up in shabby clothes."
And so Ella received a new hat. It was crimson, a perfect match for her tailcoat. It even had a plume of precious silver pheasant feathers in blue-green, lending it elegance and flair at once.
"Gudol, how's the new home?"
"Coo-roo!"
The pigeon let out a pleased warble and burrowed into the hat. Ella seemed fond of it too—every time they passed a mirror or a shop window, she adjusted the hat and admired herself in the reflection.
"Thank you, Anna. It's a seriously wonderful gift."
"Don't mention it. I had leftover savings I'd set aside to see performances anyway. That's all this was."
"Come on, let's go! Dinner's on me!"
Their shopping done, the two wandered the night market and ate their fill of street food for dinner. Then they headed to the fairgrounds and enjoyed the street acrobatics and shell games.
Before they knew it, the time had come for the street parade at the Christian Memorial Hall. The tradition was for actors dressed as every character from Christian's twelve works to march a full circuit through the theater district.
On the festival's first day, performers well-suited to each character took the roles, but on the final day, it was tradition for performers utterly unsuited to the characters to dress up in their place. Ella and Anna burst out laughing when a middle-aged man with a patchy beard appeared in the princess costume from The Princess Who Bakes Cookies; they squealed over how adorable it was when a cute foal bounded around in the demon costume from Faded Away; and they stared, entranced, when a beautiful woman came out dressed as the golden knight from The Dyeing. The performers paused here and there to sing the most famous passage from each play, then resumed the march.
The boisterous parade came to an end, and then the festival's final event—the fireworks—began.
The two sat side by side on a dim bench in a corner of the street, gazing up at the fireworks embroidering the sky. At last, the final golden firework burst—the one that soared highest, spread furthest, and lingered longest—and all around, people flung their arms up with a roar. With that, the festival drew to a close.
"What did you wish for?"
Anna asked the question while watching the golden firework's afterglow, which still lingered in the sky more than a minute after it had burst. Ella looked up at it too and returned the question.
"What about you?"
"I asked first."
"Mm, I wished for our circus troupe to do well. So, you?"
"Me... shh, I'm keeping it secret."
"Oh, you're going to do that? Come on, what was it? Now I'm curious."
"I'm not telling."
"No fair, no fair, no fair!"
Listening to Ella's grumbling beside her, Anna looked up at the sky one last time and cried out in her heart.
That someday, Ella will understand how I feel.
They returned to the dormitory, and at dawn the next day they packed their belongings and left the city. Loading their luggage onto camels rented from the relay station, they crossed the desert route, passed two more stations, and made it back to Alamo in three days.
In this era, relay stations also handled mail storage. The mail for Alamo was managed by a few local merchants who had contracted post office boxes and handled delivery themselves. But this time, on their way back to the village, Willy picked up the mail from the station directly.
"Charlie sent you a birthday present, Ella."
Inside a large package was an assortment of famous pastries from the region where Charlie lived. Ella shared them with all her friends on the way back to the village.
Veronica popped a candy into her mouth and clicked her tongue.
"Charlie's so hopeless. Did he not realize if he sent something like this as a present, Ella would just share it all out like this?"
"Eh, who cares? It's delicious. Let's egg Ella into asking for more later."
August crunched down a handful of the pastries with a guffaw.
"Ella might be leaving in a few days, though..."
Viola hid her pleased expression and spoke carefully.
"I'm telling you, it's a scam. A hundred percent, either he won't show up, or Master will beat him and send him packing. That's my bet."
Mickey gnawed on a jelly and shook his head.
And two days later, the day Ella picked up her pen to write Charlie a reply thanking him for the pastries—that day was her sixteenth birthday.