Ellen Datlow - Teeth - Vampire Tales

“Why not?” the ropewalker said. “Might be time for new blood.”

The sword swallower giggled. “Boris is right.”

The acrobats exchanged looks. “Can we trust her?” one of them asked.

Battina glanced at the strong man. “Hector?”

The strong man examined Lenka, his deep-set eyes glinting under the shadow of his heavy brow, then leaned toward her. Not sure what he was up to, Lenka stiffened but held her ground. He sniffed delicately at her hair, then straightened and nodded.

Just like that, she was in.

“In” is a relative term.

The snake girl’s name was Rima — “like the bird girl,” she explained, and then had to explain that it was the name of a character in an old book. Battina’s real name was Madam Oksana Valentinovna. The Vaulting Sokolovs were Evzen, Kazimir, and Dusan, the equilibrist was Cio-Cio, and the sword swallower was Carmen. The ropewalker said his name was Boris from Leningrad, but Lenka thought he sounded more like Bert from Idaho.

None of them was remotely interested in making friends.

In Lenka’s experience, all circus people were family. Even when they hardly had a language in common, they shared everything: war stories, opinions, meals, personal histories, shampoo, detergent.

The performers of the Cirque des Chauve-souris, not so much. They didn’t chat among themselves. They didn’t hang out, they didn’t even eat together. On the road from Cleveland to Columbus, Madam Oksana filled Lenka in on the terms of her engagement. Lenka must keep to the office truck, not only to work, but to sleep and eat. Lenka must watch the show from the front of the house, keeping an eye on the local bartender and ushers hired for each venue. Lenka must never, ever bother the performers. Practices were closed; the backyard was off-limits. If she objected to any of these conditions, she could go back to Cleveland.

Lenka gritted her teeth and agreed. Papa had told her about the hoops First of May circus virgins had to jump through, back in the old days. Jumping through hoops was better than going back to Cleveland.

Things Lenka learned in Columbus, Ohio:

Circuses need a lot of permits.

You can do almost anything if the support staff likes you.

Madam Oksana’s cats fed themselves.

In Lenka’s experience, animal acts were incredibly work intensive. Animals have to be groomed, fed, and watered, their cages cleaned, repaired, and hauled into place. A cat act should mean, at the very least, tiers of cat carriers stacked in the backyard and bags and bags of kitty litter and cat chow.

Not at the Cirque des Chauve-souris.

When they weren’t onstage, Madam Oksana’s cats were free to wander where they pleased. Lenka saw them lounging on coiled ropes, sleeping on banquettes, prowling the backyard, perched on the artists’ trailers. One night, she saw the big gray tom with a rat in his jaws, trotting toward the tent. A couple of nights later, she was about to climb into bed when she saw a young calico stretched luxuriously across her pillow. She scratched Lenka when Lenka tried to cuddle her, then licked the scratches penitently and settled down to spend the night in a furry coil by Lenka’s feet, purring like a boiling kettle.

Lenka had never had a cat of her own. And she was lonely. She shared her bed with one or another of Madam’s cats almost every night, ignoring their scratches and love nips even when she woke with a throbbing ear or nose, blood on her pillow, and a rough pink tongue busily licking her clean. It was a small price to pay for the company.

The second week in Columbus, the audience started to trickle away like coffee through a filter. People who liked highly produced glitz were bored. Even people who liked boutique circuses came once and didn’t return.

Madam Oksana didn’t seem to care.

“They do not appreciate true art,” she said. “The fashion now is crude humor, terrible music, costumes that show everything. It is the same in Europe. Still, we will contrive.”

Lenka cared very much.

“It wouldn’t kill you to buy new costumes. Hector’s bear suit is going to totally fall apart one of these days.”

Madam Oksana shrugged liquidly. “New costumes are expensive.”

“If you could attract better houses, you could afford them. Your open is flashy, and Rima and Hector’s act totally rocks. But the Vaulting Sokolovs are, like, stuck in the last century, and Cio-Cio’s routine is totally lame. Here.” She turned to her laptop, searched, and opened a YouTube video of a Cirque de Soleil equilibrist. “Look,” she said, turning the screen to Madam Oksana. “Cio-Cio could do that with her hands tied behind her.”

Madam Oksana watched the tiny blue-clad figure moving from backbend to handstand while balancing on a giant red ball. “The music is like dogs barking. And the ball is not dignified.”

Neither is walking on your hands, Lenka did not say. “The music’s negotiable. And it doesn’t have to be a ball. She could use a teeter-totter. Or a flexible pole. The point is, she needs more props. There’s only so far you can take a unicycle if you don’t juggle.”

Some time later, after watching dozens of videos of tumblers and ropewalkers and sword swallowers and static trapeze artists, Madam Oksana looked thoughtful and Lenka was exhausted. Watching the trapeze acts was torture, especially one in which two women and a man twisted, swung, and maneuvered their way around a rigid rig like a giant skeletal cube.

There wasn’t a trick she saw that she couldn’t have done before she got sick.

If she could just get in shape again. If she could just practice.

Everyone slept late at the Cirque des Chauve-souris. With no matinees, there wasn’t any reason for the performers to be awake before two or even three in the afternoon, and as far as Lenka knew, they never were.

At eleven one morning, Lenka crept across the parking lot to the tent, telling herself there was no reason to be nervous. Madam Oksana had never said the tent was off-limits, or even the rigs, if nobody was using them.

The tent was dark and smelled of dust and rosin. Heart beating and palms sweating, Lenka turned on a work light, checked the guy ropes on the static trapeze, then chalked her hands and leapt up to grab the bar. Her shoulders screamed as they took her weight, and her belly muscles protested as she beat her legs up and over. She hung there a moment, then hauled herself up to sit on the bar, where she sat, swinging gently, getting her breath back. Her muscles were unhappy, and she should definitely put on a safety harness before she tried anything fancy. It wouldn’t do any harm, though, to throw one simple trick.

Lenka slid her butt forward, arched her neck and back, and spread her arms stiffly along the bar in a crucifix. As she swung, staring up into the peaked roof, she thought she saw a shadowy stirring among the lights. Her vision sparkled and faded. Her ears buzzed.

I’m going to fall, she thought calmly.

When Lenka woke, her mouth tasted of metal and she hurt all over, but in a strained-muscle way, not a broken-bone way. She opened her eyes to a ring of faces.

Madam Oksana was annoyed. “You are not obeying the rules.”

Lenka rolled herself to her side, pushed herself weakly upright. “I wasn’t in the backyard,” she said. “And nobody was practicing. I checked.”

Madam Oksana’s snarl made her look very like one of her cats. “You are a lawyer now, you argue with me? You kill yourself, maybe that is the end of your troubles, but not for us. You are here to make things easy, not bring police to ask questions. You practice, you must wear a belt, ponimaesh ?”

Lenka grinned. “I got it, boss.”

Madam Oksana threw her hands to the heavens and disappeared into the shadows.