Fizzlebert Stump by A.F. Harrold Page A

got to where she’d wanted to be all along: the Big Top.
    Not seeing an easy way between the maze of caravans, she had climbed some cratesand run across Eric Burnes (the fire-eater)’s roof. She’d then hopped across the backs of Miss Tremble’s horses who were grazing on the grass on the other side, using them like stepping stones, before jumping down and, ignoring Miss Tremble’s shouting and the horse’s noisy neigh-saying, running the last few metres to the great striped tent.
    Now, as she pushed her way through the heavy canvas tent flaps the scent of sawdust hit her in the nose. It wasn’t an unfamiliar scent, her gran often smelt of it, but here in the big tent it was different. The lights were dim in the backstage area, focused as they were on the ring itself, and there was a hush in the air. After the chaos she’d caused and the people she’d upset (it wasn’t her fault if they were stupid enough to get upset by herjokes, and few things are funnier than a flying rabbit) she felt a wave of peace and calm and happiness swell up in her.
    This was the Big Top. This was the ring. This was
The Circus
.
    Here magic happened. Here chaos and madness and danger breathed easy, held hands and danced. She hadn’t
really
known that this was what she had been looking for, but she knew it now. People showed off in that ring and everyone loved them for it. People who were different, who were unusual, who didn’t fit neatly into rows and boxes, who didn’t have to write essays or do sums or homework when some old bloke or some old woman told you to. The circus
wasn’t school
.
    Piltdown felt that she had come home. At last.
    Except she wasn’t home really and she knew, sooner or later, she was going to be asked to leave.
    But before that happened she would have some real fun.
    She stepped into the ring and began climbing the metal ladder that led to the high platform where the trapeze was waiting.
    Below her, half a dozen colourfully suited and dripping-with-custard clowns were traipsing out of the ring. Obviously they’d just finished rehearsing. None of them looked up as they passed beneath. (Which was (sort of) lucky for Piltdown, since one of them was the Fumbling Gloriosus, who would’ve most certainly had something to say if she’d seen Fizz, or even ‘Fizz’, climbing the tallest ladder in the circus.)
    Piltdown kept climbing hand over hand, foot over foot. After a while she stopped and looked down. She would never admit it, but she had become nervous. She was higher than she’d ever been before and until you actually get that high you don’t know whether being that high is going to make you feel ill or not and, although she didn’t exactly feel ill, she didn’t exactly feel well either, not now she was up here.
    She reached the tiny platform at the top of the ladder and hauled herself up.
    The ground was so far below her it wobbled.
    In front of her, tied to a pole at the front of the platform was the long bar of the trapeze.
    With one eye she looked behind her at the top rungs of the ladder. They seemed sonarrow and so fragile that she didn’t think she’d be going down them again. The only option was to go on.
    She’d swing, high above the sawdust ring. Swing and glitter and twirl in the air, like a beautiful woman in sequins. Everyone would love her for it. She’d amaze and dazzle them with her bravery and her skill. That was all she wanted. They’d pay her attention and love her.
    Except she hadn’t really thought this through properly (her gran said this about her a lot: ‘Piltie dear,’ she’d shout warmly, ‘you’ve not thought it through properly, have you?’). There was no audience, not yet. The circus wasn’t putting on a mid-morning show. The ranks of empty seats around the ring were just that: empty. But still, she was here now, andPiltdown Truffle was not