Úna O'Malley
Celeste, The Shooting Star
It would be her last walk across that tightrope.
Finally.
The buzz of the crowd had travelled all the way to her rickety trailer, claps and cheers carried on the chill autumn air. But the excitement of those awaiting to see her great feat was nothing compared to her own anticipation. In the small trailer that had acted as her dressing room, her bedroom, but mainly her prison cell, her hands shook as she finished applying the final touches to her costume. Her hair was already woven into braids that sat securely to her head, and as she painted the last brushstroke of blue shimmer to her cheekbone her door opened to reveal her escort.
“He really thinks I might try to escape when my freedom is one performance away?”
Her escort, Charlie, shrugged. A small, brass horn swung on its cord around his neck. “He didn’t tell me to do anything different tonight.”
Nothing different. Indeed, Charlie had been following the same order for four years. Every show, he knocked on her door and walked her through the grounds of their travelling circus. All the way to the massive red and white tent.
She rose from her dressing table after one last glance into her mirror, the last glance she’d have of that caged woman. Then she followed him. As they’d done nine hundred and ninety-nine times before, they walked between the trailers of the other performers, the roaring lions and the rumbling elephants. The acrobats and the fortune teller paid her no heed, remaining in their trailers as she passed, the lions were as loud as usual…but the elephants.
Their rumbles and snorts seemed different, like those great, grey beasts were agitated. Excited. And yet, she could have sworn they dipped their heads in a sort of bow, respect.
A voice she was too familiar with interrupted her ridiculous thoughts as it was carried on that chill wind. Something colder than an autumn breeze, fear, slithered down her spine. It was the final time she’d have to hear his introduction of her and still she felt the same dread as she had that first night, as she had every night since.
But she reminded herself anyway. This was it. Her last walk across that rope. This was the fourth and final autumn she would spend bound to this travelling circus, bound to…him.
“Congratulations, Celeste.”
She looked at Charlie, her surprise at his words distracting her from the familiar anger rising at the thought of their circus master.
He shrugged. “You’ve done every performance. You’ve never tried to run. You’ve earnt it.”
“Not yet.”
He gave her a wry smile. “Not yet.”
They passed under the brightly coloured archway that would have guided the queue of patrons towards the tent before the performances had started. Across the archway the words Billy’s Circus of Wonders were written in a reflective gold paint that caught the flicker of the lamplights dotted around the circus grounds.
Red and white stripes loomed before them as they came to a stop in front of the tent. Charlie fumbled for his brass horn before going in ahead of her. The tent flap closed behind him, and she watched those red and white stripes ripple as the fabric settled into place. It was all there was to look at as she waited for them to signal her in. She hated those stripes. All she could see were the bars of a cage. It was why she had fashioned her own costume around shades of blue. A quiet rebellion she waged every time she stepped up to that ladder. The shimmering blues of her costume and makeup, along with her name, was what had coined her stage persona.
Celeste, The Shooting Star.
None other had walked a tightrope as quickly as she. Twenty feet from the ground. Twenty feet long. In mere seconds. Fearless.
They had to leave it until last, had to have all the other performers build the crowds excitement for the fact her own performance didn’t last long.
And though her swift footing had made her famous across the land, the brevity of her act, of each performance on that rope didn’t make her happy as it did her audience. She wished it took longer. She wished, in those early days, she had built near-misses into her act, fooling the crowd into thinking she would fall only to miraculously make it across every time. That way she could spend longer up there. Longer up with the other stars, up away from Billy, up in the eyes of the crowd, in their awe-struck gazes. That thrill of performance, of standing where so few dared to stand, fizzing through her veins, vibrating through her bones. The only time she felt a reprieve from her cage – enacting the very performance she was caged to do.
A muffled chorus of brass horns sounded from inside the tent. Followed by an equally muffled ‘Celeste, The Shooting Star!’.
Her signal.
She felt the eyes’ of over a hundred townsfolk on her as she walked into that tent and along the path carved through the crowd. Her own eyes, though, were fixed on that ladder. There were twenty-two rungs between her and her tightrope. Twenty-two rungs between her and freedom.
No. Wait. That can’t be right. That looked taller than usual.
One, two…twenty-two…she was only halfway through the rungs, it couldn’t possibly be double the height…forty-three, forty-four!
Her eyes snapped to Billy, who she usually ignored upon entering the tent. He watched her approach with a smug smile.
“You might be wondering if you heard me right,” he gave the audience a mock gasp, “‘Did he really just say forty feet?’”
Forty feet. Twice what she usually did.
And he had already promised it to the crowd.
“Indeed! Our Celeste is very talented, so much so that today she is performing for you at a height she hasn’t even practiced!”
Real gasps sounded now, all from the audience.
She reached the base of the ladder just as Billy finished circling the stage. He stopped beside her.
“I didn’t agree to this.” Though her tone was sharp, her smile was wide, unfaltering for the audience looking on.
“You agreed to a thousand performances. This is the thousandth performance.”
“That’s not what I mean. The height -”
“If the height is too much you don’t have to do it. Of course, the audience will be disappointed, all our future audiences will be disappointed, if you never walk that height.”
Never leave.
She met his dark grin with her fake smile, questions circling her mind like the wheels of Clive’s unicycle. The clown always opened the show and, just like the rest of the troupe, was nowhere to be seen. Safely tucked away in his trailer.
None of her questions were worth voicing. Why are you doing this? Have I not delivered what I promised? Will you never let me leave?
Never leave.
The thought was enough to make her grasp the ladder rung at eye level.
Billy glanced to her hand, doubt casting a shadow over his grin.
“I agreed to a thousand performances. This is the thousandth performance.”
At her repeating of his earlier words his grin vanished altogether.
One foot connected to the bottom rung, then the other. She began her climb.
She passed rung eleven, what used to be her halfway point, and felt no closer to the platform at the top than she did before she started her ascent. When she breached rung twenty-two, Billy announced it. Announced she was halfway there, that that was the height she usually conquered the tightrope at.
When she was three quarters of the way up, she realised something she had not considered. Tiredness. Her limbs began to ache as they heaved her body up that vertical distance. Panic reared its head then. What would she do if she was too tired by the time she reached the top? How could she use her body in the way she needed to - the control of her muscles, the concentration of her mind – if it were too weary from the climb.
Celeste focussed on her breathing, matching it to the rhythm of her climb. Left foot up, Left hand up, breathe. Right foot, right hand, breathe. Each time breathing with the push upwards of her leg, the pull of her arm. Until there was a wooden platform where she was expecting there to be another rung. She grasped the handles either side of the platform as her legs conquered the last few wooden rungs.
The buzzing of the crowd evaporated as she planted two feet flat on the wooden planks.
Silence.
She could not help but look down. All around her the world stretched too far away. The ground further than it had ever been before. The height, and the fact her body had worked so hard to get her up here, had her swaying. The faces of the crowd, she was used to being blurred, but the rope before her, if she could not focus her vision on that line…this would not end well.
Celeste kept her grip on those wooden railings, remaining still for a few heartbeats, enough for those heartbeats to quieten, to stop thundering through her body. When her eyes still didn’t focus on that rope, she glanced down to where Billy stood.
She kept her eyes on him until she could see him clearly. Until she could see that vicious smirk, those knowing eyes. He didn’t think she would do it.
When she returned her gaze to the rope before her, it was a sharp line in her vision. As sharp as the knives Leonardo would have juggled halfway through the show.
The throbbing of her heartbeat in her ears slowed to its usual steady, quiet patter. She stepped up to the edge of the wooden platform. Billy stood, holding her balancing pole, just a step in front of her. Forty feet below. After he threw the pole up in a vertical position, after she caught it in a tight grasp, she made herself meet his hard stare. That drop didn’t seem so scary then.
She placed her remaining fear aside and stepped onto that rope.
At first, she focussed solely on her technique; her footing, her grip on her balancing pole. But then she was a quarter of the way across the twenty-foot rope, that was when she realised forty foot was no harder than twenty. It was merely worse if she fell.
But she wouldn’t fall. She was The Shooting Star. No tight rope walker crossed that space faster than her. She would fly through the sky, a blur of blue glitter above their heads. That familiar thrill thrummed through her veins. A joy that Billy could not quash.
Too soon her foot landed on solid wood. Too soon after she had remembered how to lose herself to that thrill, to embrace the fear, it was over.
A cheer erupted where there had been silence. The audience had no idea the real victory that had just occurred. Freedom. She could climb down that wooden ladder and walk away.
The next time she walked a tightrope…it would be in her own circus. Her own performance. She would never again be confined to a trailer whenever she was offstage. Never again have to be escorted whenever she passed from her trailer and the tent.
These thoughts flew though her mind, shooting stars, just like her, as Billy closed the show. The lights went down, the audience filed out. The tent flaps closed behind the last smiling family, and lights, gentler than the harsh spotlights used during the performance, flickered to life.
Celeste could hardly concentrate on her climb down the ladder, her mind racing ahead of her through the circus grounds and back to her trailer. She could see in her mind’s eye the bag she had packed the night before; it was all she needed before walking away from Billy and his circus forever.
She stepped off the last rung and turned away from the ladder, the tightrope, to find Billy waiting for her.
“Congratulations, Celeste. You are a free woman.” His voice conveyed none of the celebration his words implied.
“Thank you.”
Charlie appeared at his side; he gave her a worried expression before flicking his eyes to the circus master.
Something twisted in her gut.
“Although…hindsight is an enlightening thing, is it not?”
She tried to calm the building pound of her heart. “Is it?”
“Four years ago, I thought one thousand shows would be enough to pay me back for the opportunity you lost me. But now…now I think of all the investment opportunities I’ve missed out on. All the money I could’ve made by hiring new acts.”
The twisting in her gut worsened, and there was nothing she could do to stop the pounding in her chest, the harsh echo of that beat throughout her body.
“I’ve decided you need to stay longer. One thousand shows aren’t enough. You owe me at least another year of work, perhaps two.”
Freedom had been so close to her grasp. It had slipped through her fingers like no more than the autumn wind swirling around the tent.
“Of course, the cost of upkeep increases every year, so you’ll likely need to stay for closer to four years.”
Her own circus. Her own show. Keeping her wages. Staying in a village for longer than a day so she could explore its markets, its hills. Gone. All that choice, gone.
“The rise in food alone -”
“No.”
Billy stilled. Mouth parted, already forming his next word. He closed it, then swallowed. His voice sharp with irritation. “What?”
She wasn’t sure how she had formed the word, the rebellion. The thrum of her heart and the twist in her gut had seemed to ignite something. The fear of staying, of remaining trapped, had become stronger than her fear of him. Of speaking against him.
Still, she had to rally her strength again to go on. “We agreed on one thousand. I’ve done one thousand. I’m done.”
He sighed, “No, you’re not. You still owe me.”
“Yes, I am. I’ve paid you for the duke. I’m free and there’s nothing you can do or say about it.”
He clenched his jaw. “You will stay. You will stay because I can still do what I threatened to the day you ruined that booking with the duke.”
She shook her head.
“I will tell every circus in this land, not to hire you. That you are not to be trusted.”
“You’d be a liar.”
“Who do you think they’d believe?”
This wasn’t fair. She’d fought so hard for her freedom. Gotten so close.
“It’s for the best, really. I know you want to start your own circus someday. How long will it take you to save up for that? How hard will you work for something that might never come to pass?”
Fear. Again. He was trying to use her fear against her. Just as he always had. She had been so scared of ruining her career before it started. Scared of the name she would make for herself as a liability to a troupe. He was trying to convince her with other fears now. Why? Why bother convincing her if he held all the cards?
“You’re afraid of losing me.”
His anger, his confidence, stumbled. “I – what?”
“You know my performance draws a big crowd. It puts more coins in your pocket. You’re terrified of losing me, aren’t you?”
One glance at Charlie’s grim smile was all she needed to know she was right.
“You’re all lies, Billy. You always have been. It’s unfortunate for you I know that now.”
“Are you willing to risk your career, one you’ve worked so hard for, are you willing to lose Celeste, The Shooting Star on the chance I’m lying? Because you will lose her. I’m not lying. I’ll tell all the circus masters what you did.”
“Then do it.”
Billy stumbled a step back. As if her words carried a physical blow.
“And I’ll tell them you forced me to work unpaid for four years. Never allowed to leave my trailer for anything other than my act. Never seeing a single coin of my earnings. Fed the leftovers of the troupe’s dinner and charged full price for it. Supposedly, so I could pay you back quicker.”
Billy paled.
“I didn’t know you gave that duke permission to beat an elephant calf. I didn’t know the deal I’d ruin when I stopped him. So, perhaps other circus masters will agree I needed to pay you back. Perhaps they won’t. But they’ll all agree the way in which you enforced that debt was wrong.”
She turned to the opening in the tent. “Goodbye Billy.”
***
A horn heralded her arrival. She was carried in on a great, grey elephant. The frenzied crowd almost drowned out the sound of her name as the circus master, Elliot, announced it through a cone-shaped amplifier. The elephant stopped in the middle of the circular stage and Freddie swooped down on his trapeze to clutch her arms and swing her up into those heights where she landed on a wooden platform.
It was then that the circus silenced. The cheering crowd, the trumpeting elephants, all but the tense beating of the drums that accompanied her steps through the sky.
Halfway across she thought of the thanks she would give Elliot and the troupe later. For taking her in a year ago today. She thought of the thanks she would give herself later for being brave enough that day. All while savouring the chocolate cake Elliot made for everyone’s circus-anniversaries. And she thought, as she looked down at the forty-foot drop, the thanks she could give Billy. For giving her the push to make her act even more spectacular.
Thank you for reading!