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

a whoosh, a dozen women rotated a giant wheel in place at the center of the ring. The women were a strange sight, their otherworldly crimson tresses trimmed to resemble yard hedges—one with a tidy single cone above her head, like a tipped ice cream cone; the other with two cone peaks projected above her ears; their faces ghostly white with exaggerated Cupid’s bow lips to match their hair.

After a flurry of set changes, the spotlight panned and a woman and man emerged holding hands before taking their places.

As Edvard Grieg’s “Hall of the Mountain King” began, a man donned a blindfold while a woman stepped onto the wheel. Without much fanfare, the man gathered his arsenal into a leather satchel that he slung from his left shoulder and in one movement both turned and emptied his collection of knives and axes at the tall, smirking blonde. Metal scraped as the blades left the leather bag and then thunked as each hit the intended target. Rather than savoring each throw, the thrower dispatched his blades much like bullets from a gun. Lara watched as the audience, so sure they knew what was to happen next, settled back in their velvet chairs. Anyone standing in the alcove could hear the clinking of glasses as the bored patrons in the darkened hall took sips of their champagne. In the dimly lit seating area, Lara could make out the faces of the audience—they were bored, as if this act was nothing spectacular. Hell, the opera was better.

The thrower removed his blindfold and admired his handiwork, allowing the dramatic moment to hang for an intended beat too long. Somewhere near the top of the stands, a man coughed as if to prod the thrower to get on with the next reveal—which of course had to be the unveiling of the woman, stepping off the wheel without a scrape on her.

Except it wasn’t.

Like an adjustment the eye makes from light to dark, Lara saw the woman on the wheel come sharply into focus. The patrons in the front row nearest to the spectacle sat forward in their seats, sure their eyes were playing tricks on them. Next came audible gasps, Lara’s included. The scene came into focus, spreading backward and catching the throats of the audience, until the full horror reached the very top. Lara swooned with them, bile rising again in her throat.

The woman had, in fact, been severed like a felled tree trunk. All her limbs, as well as her neck, were chopped with manic precision—a bloodless upper thigh rolling off the board and settling at the feet of the patrons in the front row, causing a delicate lady to scream and then faint. Back on the wheel, the woman didn’t bleed, but rather seemed to separate, her severed head resting at an odd angle with her eyes open.

Lara felt the room spin. Shit, she was going to faint again.

The thrower, upon securing her thigh back in its place, spun the wheel, letting it come to a halt on its own. He then turned his back to the woman and put his hand to his chin, like he was waiting for something to happen. Only then did the woman step off the platform entirely whole to take a deep bow.

The ringmaster entered the ring, his hand sweeping proudly toward the performers. “Louis et Marie.”

The delighted audience roared and jumped to their feet, the sound of their shoes hitting the stands like thunder echoing through the big top.

Lara looked around the arena, horrified. Guests were gripped, staring at the spectacle, pointing and laughing.

Next came a group of synchronized tumblers dressed in aqua-and-gold leotards and pink-and-gold leotards, all striped the same pattern with gold beading.

Through the tumblers came a white horse. The animal was magnificent with a flowing white mane. On the horse’s head was a plume of aqua feathers. From the description in the journal, Lara knew it could only be His Majesty.

Doing a backbend on the horse with her shins on His Majesty’s neck and her hands on the saddle was Margot Cabot of Le Cirque Margot. The entire floor of the circus turned into flames and His Majesty continued his steady gallop as Margot lifted her legs into a graceful handstand and then dipped under the horse, into the roaring flames. Both rider and horse seemed unfazed, but Lara could feel the heat rising from the floor. Like a graceful ballerina, Margot hung off the animal with one leg while swinging her other, then stood up on His Majesty’s back on one leg as he simultaneously leapt in the air. Finally, the flames engulfed both horse and rider until the pair broke through a wall of fire, completely unharmed. The horse made a bow of sorts as Margot jumped off his back to curtsy.

In a flash, the flames were gone and Althacazur was back announcing the next act—the Dance of Death. Twelve androgynous clowns began to waltz, their elaborately beaded costumes a muted color of blush and their hair white. They looked ghostly, but the dance was beautiful. Three elephants made their way onstage and lifted the clowns onto their backs in perfect unison. From the ceiling emerged three Spanish Webs.

While this spectacle was unfolding, the other clowns wheeled out guillotines. Lara began to get apprehensive about this act, ominously called the Dance of Death. In perfect unison, the guillotines lowered as the clowns leapt from the backs of the elephants… and it was revealed that the Spanish Web ropes were not ropes at all, but nooses. As the orchestra played on, heads rolled and necks snapped. Lara put her hand to her mouth. She heard one woman sigh and appear to faint. The entire circus was a macabre spectacle of death played out inside a ring. No wonder some of the artists in Montparnasse had thought it was performance art. And yet, Lara knew it was entirely a dance of the damned.

As the clowns dangled from the ropes, they began to