The Orphan's Tale(16)

“There has to be something else,” I say, a note of pleading creeping into my voice.

“Herr Neuhoff wants you to learn the aerial act,” she replies firmly. “The trapeze is actually easier than many of the other acts.” I can’t imagine anything more difficult. She continues, “I can guide you, put you where you need to be. Or not.” She looks at me evenly. “Perhaps we should go tell Herr Neuhoff that this isn’t going to work out.”

And have him cast you out into the cold, seems her unspoken conclusion. I’m not sure the kind-faced circus owner would actually do that, but I don’t want to find out. More important, I’m not going to give Astrid the satisfaction of being right.

Reluctantly, I begin climbing rung by rung, trying not to tremble. I tighten my grip, wondering when the bolts had last been checked and whether it is sturdy enough for both of us. We reach a tiny ledge, scarcely big enough for two people. I wait for Astrid to help me onto it. When she does not, I carefully squeeze myself on, standing too close beside her. She unlatches a trapeze bar from its catch.

Astrid leaps from the platform, sending it rocking so that I grasp for something to hold on to to keep myself from falling. I marvel at how she swings easily through the air, somersaulting around the bar, twirling with just one hand. Then she opens her body like a diving gull, hanging upside down beneath the bar. She rights herself and returns, aiming for the platform and landing neatly in the tiny space beside me. “Like that,” she says, as though it were easy.

I am too stunned to speak. She hands the bar to me. It is thick and unfamiliar in my hand. “Here.” She adjusts my grip impatiently.

I look from her to my hands, then back again. “I can’t possibly. I’m not ready.”

“Just hang on and swing,” she urges. I stand frozen. There have been moments when I have acknowledged death—during childbirth when life seemed to rush from my body, when I saw the babies on the train, and as I struggled through the snow with Theo just days earlier. But it lies before me more real than ever now in the abyss between the platform and the ground.

An image of my mother pops improbably into my mind. In the months since I had been gone, I’d struggled to push away thoughts of home: the patchwork quilt on my bed tucked in the alcove, the corner nook by the stove where we used to sit and read. I have not allowed myself to think of such things, knowing that if I allowed even a trickle of memories I would be drowned in a flood I could not stop. But homesickness washes over me now. I do not want to be here on this tiny platform about to leap to my death. I want my mother. I want to be home.

“Are there other aerialists?” I ask, stalling for time.

Astrid hesitates. “Two others, and one of them will help us when we get further along. But they will primarily be working on the cradle swing, or the Spanish web, which is my other act. They will not be working with us.” I am surprised. I imagine that the flying trapeze is the centerpiece of the show, the goal for any aerialist. Perhaps they do not want to work with me either.

“Come now,” she says, before I can ask further. “You can sit on the swing, if you aren’t ready. Pretend you are on a playground.” Her tone is condescending. She takes the bar and draws it close to me. “Balance just below your backside,” she instructs. I sit on it, trying to get comfortable. “Like that. Good.” She lets go. I swing out from the platform, grasping the wires on either side so tightly that they cut into my hands. There is a kind of natural flow to it, like getting your feet under you on a boat. “Now lean back.” Surely she is joking. But her voice is serious, her face unsmiling. I lean back too fast and upset my balance, nearly slipping from the seat. As I swing back closer to the platform, she reaches out and grabs the ropes above the bar, pulling me onto the board and helping me off.

She sits on the bar and swings out, then lets go. I gasp as she starts to fall. But she catches herself by her knees and swings upside down. Her dark hair fans out beneath her, and her inverted eyebrows arch toward the ground. She rights herself and climbs back onto the platform. “Hock hang,” she informs me.

“How did you come to be with the circus?” I ask.

“I was born into a circus family nearby,” she replies. “Not this one.” She hands me the bar. “Your turn, for real this time.” She puts the bar in my hand, adjusting my grip. “Jump and swing by your arms.”

I stand motionless, legs locked. “Of course if you can’t do it, I can just tell Herr Neuhoff that you quit,” she taunts once more.

“No, no,” I reply quickly. “Give me a second.”

“This time you will swing by your arms. Hold the bar down here.” She indicates a spot just below my hips. “Then raise it above your head when you jump off to get height.”

It is now or never. I take a deep breath, then leap. My feet flail and I flop helplessly like a fish on a line, the furthest thing from Astrid’s own graceful movement. But I am doing it.

“Use your legs to take you higher,” Astrid calls, urging me onward. “It’s called the kick out. Like on a swing when you were a child.” I shoot my legs out. “Keep your ankles together.” It is working, I think. “No, no!” Astrid’s voice rises even louder, her dissatisfaction echoing across the practice hall. “Keep your body in a line when you return. First in the neutral position. Head straight.” Her instructions are rapid-fire and endless and I struggle to keep them all in my head at once. “Now kick your legs back. That is called the sweep.”