I peek behind the curtain at the audience from a southern town in the Up-Mountains, a quiet place used to the comings and goings of Gomorrah but no less delighted with our visits every few years. They wear simple clothes and, due to the harsh mountain winter, coats buttoned all the way up from their knees to their necks. They chatter about the last time they visited Gomorrah and other acts they’ve seen earlier tonight, like the fire-juggler who wears all black or the swan dragon at the Menagerie.
I search the front row for Nicoleta and then spot her at the end. She wears her light brown hair down and wavy, and she laughs and whispers into the ear of her date, a gorgeous girl of mixed background, a charming smile and delicate, feminine features. Whatever joke Nicoleta told must have been crude, as several visitors around them turn to glare, which only makes the pair laugh harder. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Nicoleta grin like that.
The patrons have no reason to expect a young woman in such casual clothing to be the Festival’s proprietor.
On the opposite side of the backstage stands Hawk with her fiddle and Unu and Du with their drums. Beside them, dressed in scarlet satin robes, is Luca. He nods at me, my cue to raise the curtain.
The music plays. The curtain rises. And Luca struts onto the stage, his cloak swinging behind him. The silver piercing he usually wears in his nose has been replaced by a deep amethyst for the show. “Welcome to the Gomorrah Festival’s famous Freak Show,” he says in his practiced performance voice, meant to project across the tent. “I’m Luca, the show’s manager, and I’d advise anyone of faint constitution, or those who’ve recently filled their stomachs with treats, to leave now. The show is filled with horrors, and there’s no need to add to them by overturning your food in the second row.”
He pauses to let the music fill the tent. Hawk, in addition to playing her fiddle, sings an eerie aria. The audience members watch the stage with apprehension and curiosity, exactly the way Luca wants them.
“And now, without further ado, let the show...begin!”
Thump. Thump.
“I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine,” Luca says. He sits on the edge of the stage and casually crosses his legs, as if completely unconcerned by the near-earthquake thundering behind him. He smiles the dimpled smile that I’ve pined over agonizingly for the past six months. “He comes from the Forest of Ruins. A rare half man, half tree.”
Tree emerges on the stage, and most of the audience leans back in their seats. Tree glances at me for a moment, and I smile at him as if to say, Go on, you’re doing magnificently. He waves at the audience without me needing to control him. He even grins.
“Wonderful, isn’t he?” Luca says. “You’ll notice that, even in winter, his leaves are still a vibrant green. Could I have a volunteer to come onstage, then?”
No one raises their hands. No one ever does.
Luca jumps off the stage. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. You, there.” He points at a frumpy woman with his walking stick. “You look like you could do with some flowers.”
She shakes her head vehemently.
“Nonsense.” He takes her hand. “I simply won’t allow it. My friend Tree will be upset, as he would very much like to present you with a flower.” He hoists her up and leads her onstage. She trembles from the attention and more so the closer she walks toward Tree. Luca points his walking stick up toward Tree’s head, at his impressive mess of branches and leaves. “There, see, there are flowers. Would you like to pick one?”
The audience cheers. Encouraged by their enthusiasm, the woman nods. She reaches up and plucks off a pink blossom from one of Tree’s branches.
Adding more participation to the show was Luca’s doing. It’s been one of his better ideas. His other idea involved having his old assistant pretend to run up to the stage to kill him, only for him to miraculously come back to life, but that had our audience screaming and running out of the tent. Now Luca remains alive throughout the entire performance.
“Thank you, Tree,” Luca says. “And now, I’d like to introduce my next friend, who I assure you is gentler than he looks. Crown, would you come out and greet our cheerful audience?”
While Tree joins me backstage, Crown walks out, leaning against his cane. He carries two heavy wooden boards with his other hand.
“You were great,” I whisper to Tree, who smiles. I sit on the ground at his feet, looking up at the shade of his leaves and recalling a time when he could pick me up and swing me around. When it was only me and Tree. “You’re still my bud, you know.”
He picks off a flower and hands it to me. I slip it behind my ear.
“Now, I’m looking for two volunteers this time,” Luca says. He chooses two small boys sitting near the back, who look more than pleased to have been chosen. “Each of you, take a board. This one is thicker, you see. Knock on them. Hit them. They’re quite solid, aren’t they?”
“What’s he gonna do with them?” the one boy says.
“Crown, tell them, what are you going to do with them?”
In his feeble, elderly voice, Crown says, “I’m going to punch straight through them.” I love that line.
The first boy, with the thinner board, holds it out for Crown. Crown takes off his glove, revealing his long fingernails, and slices clean and straight through the board. The boy gapes and shows the hole to the audience.
Crown moves on to the second, heavier board and does the same. The audience claps.
“That’s wicked,” the first boy says, and Crown winks at him.
“My next friend goes by the name of Hawk because...well, you’ll see why.” Luca peers backstage. “Hmm, we seem to have misplaced her. Where—”
Hawk screeches from outside the tent and then flies in through the visitors’ entrance behind the audience, swooping onto the stage. The audience shrieks and then chuckles nervously and straightens their hats once they see her, a young girl no more than fourteen.
“Hawk is a very talented fiddle player,” Luca says, “but her greatest virtue is her singing voice. So we’re going to have her sing for you.”
While Hawk sets up her act, I slide into the dressing room, where Kahina sits, as she does during all our shows now that her snaking sickness has finally cleared. She brings baskets of treats.
I pop a licorice cherry into my mouth. “He’s improving.”
“He’s been delightful,” she says. “And did you see Nicoleta’s date? I ran into them outside. A really sweet girl, she seems like.”
Hawk clears her throat and begins her song. It’s a sad one, the same she sang at Blister’s funeral, which serves as a memorial during our show for Blister, Gill and Venera. Her lyrics speak of friends who have gone for the night but will return in the morning, and every time, I need to fight back my urge to cry. Until I see Luca onstage, with Hawk, Tree, Crown and Unu and Du watching from backstage, and I’m reminded of the family that I still have here with me. It’s what Kahina has often told me to do.
I return to my spot behind the curtain just as Hawk makes her exit. Luca sits again in the center of the stage, dangling his legs off the edge. “How am I doing as the manager?” he asks. “I’m rather new. The previous manager is on to bigger and brighter things.”
The audience claps for him, and Nicoleta laughs from the front row.