“I used to work in this other show. People paid to try to kill me. You can imagine why I was eager for a new position.”
This only gets a few laughs, one being from Luca. He’s the only one who finds his morbid jokes amusing.
“My next friends come in a pair. They actually believe they’re funnier than I am,” he says, straightening his cloak. “But I’ll let you decide for yourselves.” He stands up in an almost-jump. “Unu, Du, I think the audience could use some lightening up.”
Unu and Du step onto the stage to begin their new comedy routine, which has proven much more popular than their previous dancing one. They tell their jokes in a rhythm to match their drumbeats.
Luca steps off the stage for a few moments and stands beside me. “How am I doing?” he asks. He grabs a cup of water and chugs it.
“You’re marvelous,” I say and kiss his cheek. “You really are quite the performer.”
“I still think we could have a dancing routine. Once, you know, you obviously practice up a bit—”
“Hey, I’m a fantastic dancer,” I say, elbowing him in the ribs.
“You’re terrible. But it’s all right,” he says. Behind us, the audience laughs at one of Unu’s jokes. Most of their punchlines involve insulting each other. Shockingly, their routine was not difficult for them to come up with.
“I thought, after this, we could go watch the fireworks,” he says. “All of us. You, me, the whole lot.”
“First you join our show, and now you’re planning family outings,” I tease.
“But it will have to be fast. The Leather Viper wants to have tea again. He claims he has a juicy secret about the ex-lover of the Cougar that I’d love to hear—”
“Tell Ed I’d love to go, but I promised Nicoleta I’d meet her new girlfriend.” Over the past few months, Luca has been steadily introducing me to more and more people in Gomorrah, particularly in the Downhill. Gomorrah is my home, and I should know more people in it. It’s nice to wave at the man who provides my family with produce or to stop for a conversation with the palm-reader across the path.
“I heard she’s a charm-worker with a successful shop in the Downhill—”
“She doesn’t look like she’d be from the Downhill.”
“We all know Nicoleta prefers a bit of the wild side when it comes to her romantic interests.”
The audience claps as Unu and Du’s act ends. The second they are offstage, they resume their bickering. Their latest argument is about a lucky coin they recently commissioned—the Illusionist. The attack stats are rather pitiful, but the defense leaves little to be desired. And, as the only one of its kind in existence, it’s a collector’s piece. They forgot to ask for a second, so they keep debating about who it belongs to.
Luca quickly breaks apart from me and returns to the stage. “And now, for the final act, I’d like to introduce you to the Girl Who Sees Without Eyes.”
I make my grand entrance, wearing my floor-length black cloak, red sequined mask and brilliantly violet lipstick.
“How do we know she doesn’t have eyes if we can’t see under the mask?” a woman in the front row asks haughtily. “She should take it off.”
“Honestly, you should at least take her to dinner first,” Luca scoffs.
I hold my breath. This isn’t the first time the audience has asked, and I’ve done it before. But I will freely admit that it still scares me.
I untie the ribbon in the back, let the mask slip off and shove it in my pocket.
The audience gasps, and then the room goes quiet. My back sweats a little. I remind myself that my face isn’t a deformity. It’s magic. I am magic.
“Where would we like to go today?” Luca asks the audience. “A rainforest? To the stars?”
Before he can make another suggestion, I put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “No, I have something special planned. Tonight, I’m going to take all of you on a tour though Gomorrah.” The planning part is a lie. I never plan out my routines. But I did have the idea ten minutes ago, which, to my mind, counts as preparing.
The audience quiets, waiting for my act to begin.
The room around us changes to the field just outside Skull Gate. It’s nighttime, and the black glittering eyes of the skull twinkle in the starlight. Its mouth gapes open wide, and we enter in a rush through the dark tunnel, soaring past the ticket booth and into Gomorrah. Vivid colors of pink, purple, red and black greet us all around, from the flags that wave above the tents to the costumes of the performers around us—jugglers, beast-tamers, shadow-workers. The night sky is invisible, cloaked by the cloud of smoke that always covers Gomorrah like a mist. But it’s a mist that smells of licorice and cigars, spiced cider and rum. We speed and spiral around the Uphill, past the Menagerie tent, where the roars of a dragon thunder over the festivities, past the caravans of jewelers and fortune-workers, past the fence of spikes and bones separating the Uphill from the Downhill.
In my mental sweep of Gomorrah, I pass the tents and caravans of people I now know. The owner of the Menagerie. Kahina. The Leather Viper. Yelema. Zhihao. But to the visitors, they are merely nameless silhouettes in the ever-present smoke. Before I met Luca, that’s what they were to me. I felt like an outsider in Gomorrah, never a participant.
I could show the audience this part of Gomorrah, but I know they’re not here to learn about the secret lives of orphans and businessmen, prettywomen and charm-workers. They’re not here to learn about what happens backstage. My Gomorrah is a home. Their Gomorrah is a show.
The Festival comes alive in a rush of opium smoke, the blinking lights of dancers, the smell of pastries that stick to your fingers, the thundering of the fireworks. We spin around Gomorrah as if on a carousel, going faster and faster until even I am dizzy, and the world has become a kaleidoscope of purple, pink, red and black.
But soon the colors fade, because dawn is drawing closer, and the light of the sun peeks through the smoke shrouding Gomorrah. The fortune-workers pack away their spirit boards. The fire-workers change out of their glittering costumes. Gomorrah children run home with leftover sweets in their hands, waving to their neighbors and any remaining visitors. The Festival quiets as morning arrives, settling into bed, still windswept with the feeling of desire and anticipation for the next night, when Skull Gate will open once more.
*