A Song in Silver

The evening light had travelled 150 million kilometres from where it was born in the combustion of a yellow star, passed from the vacuum of space into the thicker air of the atmosphere, slipped through an opening at the top of the tent, filtered past dust motes floating in the air, and came at last to the thick, imperfect glass of the aquarium. Here, the light slowed and bent, pushing through into the murky water. It sidestepped the waving fronds of water plants, heading towards its final resting site on the white sand covering the base of the tank. But the light never reached its destination. A slight movement swirled in the darkness of the tank, and the light, thwarted in its mission, fell instead on a floating cloud of silver hair.

*

Matthias had never dreamt of leaving his small hometown, until the circus came to visit. Three days of colour and light and music and merriment bombarded a usually sleepy village, replacing the dusty faded palette of daily life with a vibrant and eclectic collection of hues that clashed with the surrounding landscape rather than fading into it.

Matthias had been there for every moment he could. He’d watched the caravans roll into town in the glooming light of dusk. He’d seen the tents go up as the sky faded to darkness, first the small ones, no bigger than the house he’d grown up in, and then, impossibly, a tent larger than even the church or the town hall. This behemoth, striped red and white like a barber’s pole, burst into sudden light, blazing against the darkness, as a clamouring chorus of music kicked up against the silence of the night air. The circus had arrived, and they were letting the entire town know it.

Matthias had bought his ticket to the first night, spending one of his hard owned pennies on the brightly printed piece of paper. That first night had been filled with more wonder and excitement than Matthias knew could even exist. He’d laughed along with clowns, gasped in fear at the high-flying antics of the trapeze act, and surged to his feet with applause alongside the rest of the crowd as the ringmaster made his final bow and ended the show. Matthias dreamed of the sights he’d seen that night.

The next day he’d purchased a ticket again. This time as he watched the show he noticed not only the flash of the acts, but the skill of the performers. He saw the shaking muscles in the legs of the trick riders instead of just beaming smiles. When he left the show that night, Matthias strolled the midway. He watched the carnival games being played. He even spent another penny on a failed attempt to knock down a pyramid of glass bottles. He returned home tired, poorer, but elated.

The third night, the last night of the circus, Matthias bought another ticket. This time he watched the man who directed it all. The ringmaster in his top hat and coat tails commanded the show. Matthias did not pay attention to the acts in their spangled costumes and stage makeup. Instead, he pictured himself, standing in the middle of the centre ring, sweeping a top hat off his head, and bowing to the audience.

As Matthias walked the midway, leaving the circus for the last time and returning to his ordinary, dull life, he felt not elation but despair. His steps were weighed down by loss instead of buoyed by excitement. He walked slower and slower the closer he came to the exit, unwilling to leave this dream behind. To forestall the moment, Matthias wandered off the midway, and for the first time entered dark back alleys of the circus sideshows.

The sounds of merriment faded away as he left the bright lights and found himself among a different set of tents. There was something sinister here. A more dangerous excitement than the high-top. A darker type of beauty. He saw signs for fortune-telling, for spirits, ales, and other substances. And a sign that promised oddities and aberrations. But it was the small sign below that caught Matthias’ attention and drew him inside. “Help wanted. No experience needed. Inquire within.”

A bell tinkled somewhere in the dusky darkness of the striped silk tent as Matthias pushed the flap aside. There were only dim lanterns burning inside, and after the shocking brightness of the rest of the circus Matthias could scarcely make out shapes in the gloom. “Hello,” he called into the tent, “Is anyone here?”

A man emerged from shadows, stepping slowly into the light. He had dark hair and a waxed and curled moustache. He wore a tall hat and a tailed coat, a shabby echo of the ringmaster’s outfit. “A visitor,” the man said, his voice like thick molasses, “How lovely. Here you’ll see the anomalies that nature tried to hide. The beasts. The freaks. The monsters. Only a penny a show, and well worth the price of admission.”

“Actually,” Matthias began, hardly believing he was saying it, “I’m here about the job.”

The man’s eyes lit up. His moustache seemed to curl even tighter. “You don’t say. You’re hired, dear boy.”

“You don’t have any questions for me?”

“Nonsense! You’ll begin at once!” The man exclaimed, gesturing Matthias to follow him into the tent.

Matthias knew that following the man was agreeing to something unknown. Something uncanny. Something that felt like it might even be dangerous. But he still stepped into the shadows.

The circus left his hometown that night. Matthias never even stopped to bid his family farewell. He would write them from the road, would send a postcard once they reached a new, exotic locale, somewhere further away than anyone he’d grown up with had ever been. He couldn’t risk the circus leaving without him and losing his chance to see the world.

The Odd-man (Matthias never seemed able to remember his name, no matter how many times he was told) showed him the ropes. He swept the floor of the tent, cleaned the cages, and provided food to the animal exhibits, beasts with too many limbs, or not enough heads.

There were other “exhibits” as well, humans with bizarre features enhanced or created wholesale from makeup and clever costuming. They didn’t socialize with the Odd-man, or Matthias, and would disappear into the circus at the end of each day.

And there was one other exhibit, that fell somewhere in between. In the very back of the tent, where it was often overlooked by customers, there was a large, grimy tank of water. It was grimy because Matthias was not asked, or allowed, to clean it. He wasn’t allowed to be alone near the tank at all. He wasn’t even supposed to look at its inhabitant.

But he did look. He couldn’t help looking. In the tank lived a beautiful, and sad, young woman. She had a cloud of silvery hair that floated about her elfin face, and a silvery tail of fish scales instead of legs. She was a mermaid. A siren. And she was, as far as Matthias could tell, the only real wonder in the Odd-man’s entire charade of a sideshow.

But he tried to keep her a secret. Hidden.

Matthias snuck peeks of the mermaid, without the Odd-man seeing. He would scratch half-heartedly at the dust on the ground near the tank with a fraying broom, darting glances through an opening in the curtains at the mermaid as he worked. She was sad, he never saw her smile. She would float, with her pale face glowing through the murky water, and stare dolefully out at the world around her. If the Odd-man came near she would vanish into the aquarium depths with a flick of her tail. Matthias could understand why she was afraid. The few times that the Odd-man referred to the tank or its inhabitant he always seemed to be brimming with anger.

It was only at night that he felt he truly saw her. In the darkest hours of Matthias’ second night with the circus, when they had set up in a new town, when it was nearly quiet, and when Matthias was supposed to be asleep in the workers’ tent, he had gone for a stroll to clear his mind. And as he passed near the sideshow tent, he’d seen another figure moving slowly through the shadows.

Matthias had crept in behind the figure, following all the way to the back of the tent, where the aquarium was. It was the Odd-man, and he wasn’t alone. He was pushing a wheelchair where an old man sat, liver-spotted hands folded on his lap and a corona of soft white hair around his bald head.

The Odd-man set up a lantern, pushed the wheelchair in front of the tank, tenderly tucked the blanket tighter around the old man, and then strode away, jaw clenched, and shoulders set with anger.

Matthias watched him walk away, but quickly turned his attention back to the tank. The mermaid had moved up close to the glass, smiling. And then she started to sing.

The mermaid was beautiful, but her song was extraordinary. It was the loveliest thing Matthias had ever experienced. A lilting, looping, unearthly sound, like a comforting lullaby and the whispered promises of a lover in one. The old man in the wheelchair was smiling now, face rapt with adoration as he stared at the mermaid.

Matthias watched from where he was hidden, unmoving. It was only when he heard the Odd-man returning, he had no idea how much later, that Matthias slipped out of the tent and made his way back to the sleeping tent.

As time went by, Matthias would creep out every night to hide at the aquarium before the Odd-man came with the old man in the wheelchair. He would forego sleep to spend as many moments as he could listening to the mermaid’s song. Soon the mermaid took note of his visits. She would watch him, her dark eyes, so beautiful, meeting his with a slight smile. During the day, as he worked and snuck glances at her, he sometimes noticed her looking back from behind the aquarium glass.

His heart ached as he fell asleep, thinking of the mermaid, languishing in her glass prison. He had done nothing to help her. He fell asleep each night to dreams of waving fronds of hair and plants, and to half-forgotten music, like a distant, distorted lullaby.

The circus continued its slow, meandering march about the countryside, and Matthias grew used to its strange rhythms and routines. The rise and fall of the tents, an entire city built or dismantled in the span of mere hours. It grew predictable, expected, comforting.

The claustrophobic interior of the sideshow tent was a different story. The Odd-man was unpredictable and bad-tempered. He would arrive each day perfectly groomed but reeking of booze. He would yell at Matthias or his human performers for small mistakes, but laugh off incidents of greater importance, like letting the two-headed python escape its cage. And he was always smiling, good-natured, and enticing when a paying customer came to visit. Matthias’ routine grew to be on edge while he worked, at ease as he strolled about the midway, and entranced as he listened by lantern light to the mermaid singing to the old man.

The old man remained a mystery. Matthias never saw him during the daytime. He had not heard that the Odd-man had any family. None of the circus workers or performers seemed keen to speak of the Odd-man at all, as if afraid that they would summon him if they mentioned him by name.

One day, as the circus wagons crested a rise, Matthias caught a new scent on the wind. One he’d never smelled, metallic and sharp and cloying and refreshing all at once. It was the sea.

That night the circus camped on a wide strip of beach, waves crashing darkly at the edges of the lantern light. Matthias felt a tingle of excitement running through his veins. He had never dreamed that he would see the ocean with his own eyes, and now he would sleep within a stone’s throw distance of it.

But first, he would visit the mermaid. There was something different about this visit. The mermaid was not waiting, floating patiently at the glass. She was swimming in circles frantically, hands pressing at the corners of the tank like she was looking for a way out. When she saw Matthias she paused and pressed her palms against the glass, looking deep into his eyes. Tentatively, Matthias pressed his own hand over hers, separated by only a cold, transparent barrier. She opened her mouth like she was trying to speak, but only silver bubbles came out.

He nearly didn’t hide from the Odd-man in time, the edges of the curtain were still swaying slightly as he arrived with his wheelchair-bound companion. That night, as the mermaid sang her wordless song, Matthias heard the meaning for the first time. “Help me.” The mermaid was begging. “Free me.” Fear and heartbreak turned to iron resolve within his chest. He would do what she asked. What she needed him to do.

When the Odd-man returned for the old, the chair’s wheels sticking in the sand, Matthias slipped back in front of the tank. The mermaid looked at him. Her eyes seemed bigger tonight, almost hungry, reflecting the moonlight eerily behind the glass. “I’m going to help you.” Matthias said. He was rewarded with an almost smile.

The mermaid swam to the top of the tank, waiting below the locked hatch. Matthias had pulled up a metal tent peg to wedge into the lock as a lever. With a great amount of effort, and a small amount of cursing, the lock broke free and the hatch was opened.

The mermaid lifted her arms, twining them about Matthias’ neck as he pulled her from the water. She was light as a child, her skin cold to the touch and surprisingly rough. Outside of the tank Matthias’ could see small scales all over her body, not only on her tail. Her hair, a silver cloud in the water, was almost green in the moonlight, snaking down her back like thick ropes. She was trembling, struggling to breathe in the open air.

Hurriedly, Matthias slipped out of the back of the tent and made his way to the ocean, so near at hand. He worried that he wouldn’t make it on time, that she would die in his arms. The shock of cold water, lapping over his ankles, was as welcome as a deep breath of fresh air. He charged into the water until it was up to his waist, the current pulling at him urgently, and he lowered her gently into the water.

The mermaid writhed and seemed to grow more solid as she touched the ocean. She paused for a moment, looking up from beneath the waves, and smiled fully at Matthias for the first time. Unlike the rest of her, this smile was not beautiful. It was frightening. Predatory. Sharp jagged teeth glinted like knives in the moonlight. And then, with a flick of her tail, she was gone.

As the cold of the ocean seeped into his bones, a feeling of loss and dread washed into Matthias’ heart. He had made a mistake, but he did not know what it would cost.

The Odd-man was waiting on the beach, hatred oozing him. “What have you done?” He spat at Matthias. “You let that demon go.”

“I freed her.” Matthias stated, the feeling of dread growing stronger.

“You fool.” The Odd-man growled, “She tricked you. She tricked my son, too, years ago. She sang him a song that stole his heart, his mind, his youth. But I could not keep him away from her or he would not eat, or drink, or sleep. So, every night I bring him to her, so he does not perish of despair, and she slowly drains his life instead. You have done him a favour I was too afraid to do,” The Odd-man continued. “You killed him, but you freed him from her first. Leave,” he added, throwing a bag of money at Matthias’ feet. “I would kill you, but there’s no need. You have doomed yourself already.”

Matthias, the money in hand, walked away from the ocean and the lights of the circus, the Odd-man’s voice ringing in his head. Lies, he thought, meant to scare me. To punish me for letting her go. For helping her escape. He kept walking until he found an inn. And a pub.

On the other side of the long brass bar, Matthias saw a familiar looking, older man. The man held his stare, unblinkingly, until Matthias noticed with a flash of embarrassment and confusion that he was looking at his own reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Maybe it was the hard work from setting up circus tents in the sun, or the mirror was foggy, but Matthias looked years older than he had the last time he’d seen his reflection, whenever that was. A memory. An old man in a wheelchair. The Odd-man's voice echoing. My son...

Matthias shook his head, turning to his beer. It was weak, and salty. Maybe it was the brine from the ocean in the air. It turned his stomach over. It was late. Time for bed. Eat in the morning. As he lay down on the hard inn mattress, eyes closed, Matthias could not sleep. He tossed and turned all night. A boat adrift on ocean waves. A haunting refrain, a remnant of the mermaid’s song repeating in his head. If only I could finish it, Matthias thought, if only I could hear the full thing. Then I could fall asleep.