The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers (the little red hen ebook TXT) 📕

felt the bar’s cushion squeeze beneath her fingers even as she realized that this image could not be real. Still, she felt the sensation of jealousy wash over her again as he vaguely glossed over the details of what had happened with the widow.

The next image felt like a slap: her dinner with Ben Archer months before. The illusion was so real that she slid her arms around the carousel horse’s neck to stabilize herself and found that she was gripping smooth, silky hair. With a rhythmic beating noise, the horse was cantering backward on the platform with its head down. The strange sensation made her sick to her stomach, like when she’d ridden on a train with her back to the front car. She looked around to see that all the animals—the lion, the tiger, and the zebra—were also running in reverse and in unison, like a herd stampede being rewound on film.

The carousel lights flashed again and Ben’s face morphed. Now she saw him on the steps of the old stone Methodist church, shaking his head. She wore the ivory lace dress.

Lara gasped loudly at the next scene. Todd stood in front of her, hazy like he was in the sun; she squinted to see him. Todd. She gasped when she saw his face again. He was like the illusion she’d seen at the gala, but this Todd was in a memory—the scene familiar to her. Up close, after all these months, she’d forgotten so many details about his features—the lines next to his mouth and the blue flecks in his hazel eyes. Perhaps her pain was so bad that she’d had to erase him. And now it felt as though a weak seam had begun to rip again at the fabric of her insides. The carousel lights flashed and the music was loud, but inside the image it was just them. They were in his Jeep with the top down; he was looking at her and smiling. The wind was blowing in her face, stray hairs of hers getting snagged on her recently applied lip gloss. She stared at Todd’s face, so grateful to be seeing it again and ashamed that she’d forgotten the way he brushed his brown hair back with his hand. He was so beautiful.

“Don’t go.” She put her hand out to touch him.

He looked over at her and laughed. “What are you talking about?”

She remembered this drive. Two weeks before the wedding they’d been on their way to Charlottesville. She’d stared at his profile as he drove, but in this exact moment, they hadn’t said this to each other. He lifted his sunglasses and pulled the Jeep over, then leaned in and kissed her. These images were beautifully assembled, like lines of poetry. To touch Todd’s face again—knowing in her heart that he was lost to her—had such a purity and beauty that it took her breath away. This had been her wish: to see him again knowing the significance of the moment and the loss that was to follow. She held his face in her hands, studying every line and stray hair.

The carousel began to slow. She could see flickers of light showing through him. Todd was fading.

“I love you.” She choked the words out quickly, her hands still holding on to his face, a little hard so his face shook as she spoke.

“I love you, too.” He dissolved in front of her, his voice echoing.

Lara began to sob, hugging the horse’s neck tightly. It, too, had changed, returning to a smooth polished wood. Its tail gave one final flick that brushed against her thigh.

When it stopped, it wasn’t the pair of clowns waiting for her anymore. She recognized the familiar blue-and-green uniform of Shane Speer, the fortune-teller from the Rivoli Circus.

Had she been transported back to Kerrigan Falls? At this point, anything was possible. She climbed down off the horse, dizzy and slightly sick. Her head and stomach were not in unison. She’d never been one for rides.

“Hello, Miss Barnes.” In this wild French circus, his American Southern accent was terribly out of place.

Oh Jesus. This was like those dreams where strange things in her life merged—her kindergarten teacher replacing her father onstage at a Dangerous Tendencies gig and not knowing the words to the set list they were about to play.

“I know.” Shane was leaning against the control booth, smoking a cigarette. He took a final drag before extinguishing it on the ground with a black Puma sneaker. “You’re thinking, What is he doing here?”

“You?” She was wobbly and pointed to him as she stepped onto the ground. Well, her hand was trying to point at him, but she stumbled.

“I really work here,” he said, catching her, “but I had to make sure you had the desire to join us inside our little circus, so I was forced to come to you.”

“All that stuff you said to me. Was it bullshit, then?”

“Hardly.” He stood her up and then walked backward down the Grand Promenade, nodding toward the merry-go-round. “What do you think of her?”

She followed behind him, staggering a bit and looking back at the carousel, taking in the ride. The carousel was aqua with a seascape scene painted on the top marquee, surrounded by ornate gold livery and round lights. She remembered her old carousel that sat rotting behind the barn and all her attempts at getting it to move with magic. This was the carousel that Althacazur had tried to teach her to pull through to her world; she’d caught enough glimpses of it when she’d come close to conjuring it up.

“It goes back in time. Trippy isn’t it? Most people can’t stay on here for long. If they do, they go back to before they were born and then they kind of…” He snapped his fingers. “… go poof.”

“They go poof?” Lara nearly shouted.

He shrugged. “I guess it should come with some kind of warning… like one of those YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE signs.”