![]() The circus wasn’t anything Elisandra thought it would be. The mass of tents and booths reminded her of market day from a distance, albeit far more brightly colored and decorated. The throngs of people flowing in past the ticket booth reminded her of worship day at the temple, or the rare spectacles in the amphitheater. She could rarely afford to go to those, but the tickets to the circus were wonderfully affordable. She expected throngs of loud, sweaty people and cheap food. She expected hawkers and gawkers and perhaps a good show, but of the mundane, predictable variety. (read more) She didn’t expect the circus to be magical. Magic was a thing spoken of, but rarely seen. Whispered about in adult conversations with apprehensive superstition but never embraced when encountered. It was something “other”, uncanny, that made most people uncomfortable and yet helplessly fascinated. Somehow, the circus managed to take that which people mistrusted and strip it of all anxieties, laying bare the magic for the masses to embrace with consummate awe.
Elisandra was not immune to the effects of the circus, even if she could recognize it in some intuitive way. Most of the town turned out to see the circus, yet it didn’t feel crowded. The smell of fried dough or the sizzle of seasoned meat had a deep, saturated smell that permeated her senses unlike anything at market day. She bought a piped cake, a mass of fried dough strings jumbled together like a pile of yarn. She asked it to be topped with clotted cream and sugared strawberries and couldn’t remember a time fried dough tasted so clean and wholesome. As she picked at the pipe cake, savoring every crisp bite, the sound of collective gasps caught her attention. Inside a high-topped tent, ribboned in festive streamers down its entire length, was a large crowd gathered around a hay-bale ring. In the center was a festively decorated juggler, deftly tossing pins and balls into the air with the same effort as smooth breathing. He entertained the crowd with increasingly more complex and dangerous tricks: executing flips and cartwheels without ever dropping a pin, next swapping them for butcher’s knives and hatchets. The further he pushed the boundary, the more captivated his crowd became. Even Elisandra felt herself inextricably pulled into the performance, her piped cake forgotten in her hands. So focused was the crowd on the items and the juggler’s hands, that none spared any attention to his face. Yet, for an inexplicable reason, Elisandra felt her eyes pull to look at his. The shock of it caused the magic of the performance to collapse within her mind. His eyes were blank, emotionless, like a spider whose only motivation was the hunt. Without warning, the juggler’s nimble fingers caught a butcher’s knife from the air, turned it and let it fly through the crowd. It struck a tent pole, a bare hair’s breadth from a patron’s head. The man was so shocked by what happened, all he could do was stare and gape, and the crowd as well. In the sudden silence, the juggler caught all his objects and set them down, turned on his heel, and left the ring. Before the crowd could fully process what happened, a showman appeared to thank the crowd for their attention and to please come to watch the juggler perform at his next show and tips were always welcome… His words seemed to erase what happened from everyone’s minds. They left the tent calmly, even excitedly, extoling the juggler and his skill and eagerly searching for their next source of entertainment. Elisandra watched them go with a mix of excitement, confusion, and fear. She still remembered what happened, and she couldn’t shake the image of the juggler’s dead eyes from her head. But the warmth of the piped cake in her hands felt comforting, and the siren call of magic beckoned to her from outside the tent. She left without another word or thought, losing herself in the crowd.
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