By a Charm and a Curse(57)

Marcel steps into the circle of light, a stark, dark shape dressed in all black. Orange gilds his cheekbones and highlights the tops of his shoulders and arms. He stands straight and tall but relaxed, the very picture of competence. He extends an arm to Gin and leads her into the light. Visually, she’s the polar opposite of Marcel. The light catches the beads and the sequins on her riding costume and throws off glints like sparks. She moves her long legs and arms with strength and precision, making a fluid, graceful contrast to Marcel’s sharp, controlled movements.

He pulls Gin into his arms to dance, and it’s so personal, so tender, I almost feel guilty for looking. They sway in place for a moment and then he spins her. Their fingers part and she follows the spin until her back is pressed against the throwing board.

The light shifts from orange to bright scarlet. A white spotlight is lit over Gin, leeching all the color from her until she’s glowing silver and blond. She strikes a pose, her arms bent elegantly, and she’s only still for a second before the first knife is lodged into the wood behind her. She moves and has barely settled before another knife quivers beside her. They play at that game for a while until all of Marcel’s small silver knives sit gleaming in the painted wood. The crowd applauds as Gin yanks the blades from the wood and throws them back to Marcel, who catches them neatly.

But before they move to the next part of the act, I catch Marcel shaking his arms out as if to loosen up. Gin strikes another pose, curving sinuously against the board, one arm raised up in the air. Marcel returns the smaller knives to the holster at his waist and picks up knives that are bigger, long blades with heavy, ornate wooden handles. He throws the first knife. He’s so fast that I barely even see him move. The blade quivers in the board less than a centimeter from Gin’s outstretched fingers. The next goes in by her wrist, splintering the wood with its impact. The blades work down the length of her arm, each one so close that if Gin were to take a big breath and exhale, she’d touch them.

In his dark pool of red light, Marcel shakes out his arm again, flexing his fingers wide. Then he lets the next blade fly.

The sound it makes as it hits Gin in the shoulder is a terrible, meaty noise. Someone quicker than me has already run outside to get the clowns to distract the patrons from the sight of the blood pulsing from Gin’s wound. Someone even quicker than that has already begun to scream.

The shriek gets me out of my seat and into Gin’s white circle of light. She tries to pull the knife out of her shoulder, but she knows not to scream. We all know to never let the audience know how bad the mistake is.

Taking the knife out of her seems like the logical thing—we can’t help her until we get her off this board, and we can’t get her off the board until we get the knife out—but I’m petrified of hurting her further. What muscles will I rip by pulling out that blade? Is it nudging up against the bone, ready to crack it? Blood, far more of it than I saw after Whiskey fell, more blood than I’ve ever seen before in my life, pulses out from the wound, and I know that I have to do something.

The clowns have come in and formed a protective circle, shielding the patrons from the worst of it. Some distant part of my mind hears Emma shouting for people to step out of the tent, shooing them from the gruesome sight. Marcel stands at Gin’s other side, paralyzed with shock. He reaches out to grab Gin’s hand, and somehow, underneath all the noise buzzing around us, I can hear him chanting, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

There’s nothing else to do. I take off my flannel shirt and ball it up. “Gin,” I say, glad there’s no tremor in my voice like there is in my heart, “I want you to look at me.”

All she can do is look at the steady spurts of blood gushing from where the metal enters her skin. “It’s my arm, Benjamin, I need my arm, I can’t perform—” Tears she’d held back finally slip free to trail down her cheeks. She pushes at them with bloodied fingertips, leaving streaks of red on her pale skin.

“Gin!” I say. She looks at me, her wide blue-gray eyes full of panic. “I’m going to take it out on three, Gin.” Please let someone else get to us before I get to three, someone who knows what the hell they’re doing. “Ready?” I am so not ready. She nods, though. “Okay. One.” I grip the handle of the blade and ignore the way drying blood has made it sticky. “Two.” She seems like she’s about to look away, but I raise my eyebrows at her, and she holds my gaze. “Three!”

Gin screams. As the blade slips free, another gush of blood pours out of the opening, hot over my fingers, before I can press the fabric of my shirt to the wound. I help her to the ground, where she brings her knees to her chest, curling up around her pain.

I press on the wound and gently prod the back of her shoulder. A roll of nausea hits me when I find the exit wound. I wrap some of the shirt to the cut back there and try to position myself behind her, so that I can elevate her up onto my knees. Does it even matter trying to get the wound higher than her heart when it’s so close to her heart to begin with?

Everything is slick and salty and there’s a metallic bite to the air. There is so, so much blood. It creeps up the fibers of my shirt, making the blue a purple so dark it seems black, and the red a deep, rich crimson.

“I can’t move my arm, Benjamin.” There’s a tremor in Gin’s voice I’ve never heard before. “I can’t move my arm and—” Her eyes roll back in her head and her body goes limp.