Mechanique by Genevieve Valentine, Kiri Moth Page A

steps were careful over the mud, but he was in a hurry to be gone.
    I realized suddenly that he meant Bird. He had seen Stenos and Bird; their act had run him right out.
    Bold and stupid with glee, I said quite seriously, “That’s what happens to some, sir. No predicting how the madness will come upon you.”
    He shot me a look Elena would have been proud of, and then he was gone, down the crest of the hill where (I saw as I followed) the black car was waiting for him.
    I ran, slipping, to the back of the tent, where Stenos was walking out toward the camp, Bird tangled against him.
    “He’s gone,” I said, my relief as overwhelming as my panic had been. I embraced them, my arms circling Bird and just reaching Stenos. Bird accepted it like a statue accepts it; after a moment, Stenos patted my shoulder.
    I pulled back and explained what had happened. I stopped short of telling them Bird’s madness had driven him away. (I wasn’t a fool; if she didn’t kill me for saying it, he would.)
    Bird said, finally, “How soon do you think he’ll be back?”
    I blinked. “He’s gone,” I said, as if to a child.
    The pair of them looked at me so pitying that I took a step back, excused myself, and went to the main entrance, where I could thank the rubes as they left, where I couldn’t see Bird if I tried.

37.
    You’re quick to leave the tent when the aerialists have finished.
    What is there to keep you? After the last applause, the magic is already over, the tent shrinking around you until you can see the bare bulbs again, the worn-through canvas, the bits of mirror glinting like sharp glass eyes. You leave your beer glass under the bench (or smuggle it out under your coat), and you gather the people you came with, and you wander out through the mostly-empty yard on your way home.
    Now the boy in his brass legs seems sad, waving goodbye as if he’d like to follow you. Sometimes there are a couple of dancing girls, swaying halfheartedly to imaginary music. But most likely you are alone in the dark, and your shadows walk ahead of you like they’re anxious to be gone, until you’re far away from the circus.
    It unnerves you, and you don’t know why.
    By the time you get home you are tired, and on your way you have passed the shabby walls around your city and the sharp-smelling lemongrass growing through the cracks, and just ahead your house is locked up tight waiting for you—things that remind you of the real world, things that annoy and welcome and shake away the creeping unease of some dark circus yard.
    By the time the door is shut behind you, you are thinking again of how joyful the tumblers seemed, how fast the jugglers tossed the torches back and forth. You talk about the aerialists—some of them, under the makeup, seemed even pretty. You joke at dinner, tossing rolls back and forth over the table.
    Everyone will laugh and pass the rolls high in the air and clap along, until someone starts whistling the sharp-note tune from the circus act.
    Then someone (you) will say, “Stop it, I’m hungry, pass me one,” and the trick will suddenly settle down, and the meal will take up again. The joke never lasts after someone reminds you of the music.
    It’s one thing to see a mechanical man, but the Panadrome ruins the meal for everyone if you think about him long enough.

38.
    Panadrome was an accident.
    Boss had been an opera singer.
    There was already a war, of course; there was always war. But a good war was like a good spice, and flavored everything. That season the ticket sales of the opera had soared, as the government men named it one of the things the barbarian enemy did not respect. Their people had not thought to respect it either, before, but it’s amazing what a government man can do.
    The opera managers made the season a dark, lush one, the sort of thing to stir the deep pride of a nation at war; they lined up Three Soldiers of the Green, The Sorcerer, Queen Tresaulta, Haynan and Bello.
    Boss was an alto;