Chapter One: The Circus Troupe (part one)

A cold breath of wind reached its arm across the slumbering valley, laying down a blanket of tranquility and stillness. Creatures and greenery rested in the deepest part of winter, waiting for the first tell tale signs of a long overdue spring. A ceiling of cloud blocked the sun and left the land cold, gray, and waiting. The wind flowed over and through the branches of the pines, dancing amongst them, stirring their boughs, until finally the playful breeze broke upon the cliff face. It drove against it and climbed up to play in the hair of the boy it found. His green eyes studied the valley with all the restless expectation of any of the woodland creatures, right until the wind blew his blonde bangs into his vision.

Ezra pushed them stubbornly aside and breathed in deeply. He shivered all over as the cold air filled his lungs, letting out a loud sigh and releasing the breeze back into the world beyond, to chase amongst the trees again. Save for the wind, the world was quiet, and eerily still, and somewhere off behind the clouds and fog the sun was shining on their snow-capped world. From where Ezra stood that powerful sun was little more than a light lost behind the vast blanket of gray above him. His breath misted in the air and drifted away from him, leaving him to smile after it. The wind came back to play with the ends of his coat, and he burrowed his arms into his sides at its sudden reappearance. It was colder the second time, he noticed. The coat was made by his mother, years and years ago, with intricate stitches of green thread on the lapels and cuffs. She'd intentionally oversized it at the time, claiming he would grow into it. Seven years later and the sleeves were still too long for him.

“Ezra!” came the voice, climbing up to him on the wind, pulling his thoughts from the snow and the clouds and memories long past from a ten year old self. “Ezra, are you out here?” Shielding his eyes with his hand, Ezra could just make out a dim shape at the base of the rocks he was perched on, through the fog and mist between them. Turning from the gray skies, Ezra descended. Climbing up was always easier, but Ezra's hands and feet were well used to the arduous task. His left hand traced down the rock and found a small hold, rough to say the least, that at a test held his weight. “Ezra, quit fooling around and get down here!” The man called again, a familiar exasperation evident in his tone.

“In a minute!” Ezra called over his shoulder before dropping down several feet, catching on a ledge to his right and bracing his boots against the cliff. Both hands strained on his hold as he caught his breath; to make everything more difficult the wind was still toying with him, the playful innocence of before now insinuating morbid curiosity. The ledge in Ezra's hand crumbled. Dust and shale sent one hand into open air and his back slamming into the wall. The hand he had left tensed and he clenched his teeth, feeling tiny pebbles of gravel dig into his skin.

“Ezra!” His friend’s voice called urgently from below as Ezra felt his second hand slipping from the snow slicked ledge. His feet brushed helplessly against the wall and both arms swung wildly at the open sky and fog. The wind whistled about his head and whipped at his coat as he plummeted through the air, twisting as he fell. Sooner than he expected and with a sharp shock to his left ankle, he tumbled onto the ground. Years of practice and lessons helped him pull off a rolling heap, more or less breaking his fall. Ezra lay on his stomach in the shadow of the rock spire he'd fallen from, shielded from the worst of the elements, and groaned; his ribs ached, his leg hurt, and his shoulder stung. “Ezra, Ezra, Ezra. Are you alright?” The man asked, his concern changing to a chuckle as he knelt beside Ezra and gently rolled him over. The boy groaned louder. “You should’ve been more careful.” Numan said, his face marked with a kind-- if disappointed-- smile. The man put an arm under Ezra’s and lifted him off the ground. “There, lean on me, you’re alright.” He reassured the boy.

“I didn’t expect that to happen, really.” Ezra said, feeling his likely bruised ribs with his free hand. He leaned on the much taller man, letting him support most of his weight.

“Of course not. Fools rarely expect folly.” Numan said, looking up at the rock Ezra had fallen from. Ezra glanced up to catch his friend’s smile, catching a hint of reluctant pride in it. “Still, it could’ve been much worse. You were no more than ten feet up when you fell, and you managed to save most of the landing.”

“It felt pretty rough to me-- ow!” Sharp pain shot through Ezra’s leg as he attempted putting weight on it, falling back against Numan's arm supporting him.

“Easy, easy.” Numan soothed, easily catching Ezra. “Keep your weight off of it. Here.” With one movement Numan had lifted Ezra off the ground, carrying him in his arms as if he'd been a little baby, rather than a boy of 17. The big man set off trudging through the snow that sat in drifts and blanketed the ground, as if he didn't notice the weight of another person in his arms.

***

Colorful banners waved and flapped overhead as Ezra and Numan approached camp, the bright fabric streaming from posts that rose from the ground. Numan carried Ezra under the broad red and gold banner strung across the main entrance, a space marked by two large posts, and they entered the camp. Tantalizing aromas from dozens of cooking fires wafted to them, threading in and out of the gaudy colored tents, carrying to the noses of friends and families, making mouths water and minds fancy. Numan turned off of the main street and down a lane to the east, away from the setting sun, until he halted outside a round, purple tent that Ezra knew very well. There he set Ezra down to lean against a support post.

The top of the tent came to a point around a tall central post, a purple flag fluttering from it in the cold mountain air. A pair of wooden rails ran outward under a raised canopy, forming a covered porch at the tent’s front door with enough space to hold a gathering or a dinner with room to spare. At the center of this porch was a fire in a wrought iron basin burning with full-gusto against the Northern chill; the smell of pine logs carried on the blue smoke, rising in plumes and puffs to join the gray sky. Today, unlike most other days the front-porch stood empty, not a soul in sight.

“Vincent!” Numan called, looking into the tent. “Vincent! I need to see you.” It didn’t take long for a short, elderly man to appear, a loose leather apron hanging from his neck and gray wispy hair tossed by the wind, a whistled tune preceding the lopsided gait of his arrival.

“Ey, Numan, it’s good to see you.” The little man said with a gap-toothed grin. He wrapped his arms about Numan’s waist in a hug, not even coming up to his chest. “What can I do for you today?” Ezra smiled at the man’s accent. Vincent called himself a ‘Cajun,’ a lost people, so the old man said. Ezra imagined they were all a lot like him, listing speech, good humored, with soft eyes and missing teeth. “Yah,” he would tell Ezra. “We all used to be aroun’. We’woulsing aroun’ the campfire and make music late into the night.”

“It’s,” Numan said with a rueful sigh, ruffling Ezra’s hair and bringing the boy’s thoughts back to the present. “Well, Vincent, it’s Ezra.”

“Hmm,” Vincent mused, looking up at Ezra and wrinkling his eyes in a squint. “Young master Ezra…” The old man turned his attention back to Numan. “Wha’ di’ he do thi’time?”

“Lost his footing,” Numan explained, turning sheepish under the Cajun’s examining eye as if Numan were the one who’d done something embarrassing. “Coming down a rock wall.” Vincent nodded solemnly, clasping his hands behind his back.

“An’then I s’pose ‘e din’t fin’ it’again.” Vincent surmised.

“I did,” Ezra protested. “On the ground, at the wrong angle.” Both men looked at him with disapproving severity. Ezra assumed it was in good humor, but you never could tell with Vincent. The man liked jokes, but he could turn serious at a moment’s notice.

“Tha’ joke’is’in po’ taste, Ezra,” Vincent said, his expression darkening. “‘specially when poor’ ol’ me has gotta make you a crutch to hobble ‘round on.” Vincent turned to Numan. “That’s what you brought him here for, amiright?”

“I’m afraid so,” Numan replied, fixing Ezra with a stern look that told him to behave himself. “I was hoping to leave him here while you work, if it’s not too much trouble to keep an eye on him.” Ezra was about to protest that he wasn’t a kid who needed to be babysat, but Numan’s eyes told him that if he was going to act irresponsibly he was going to be treated as irresponsible. Ezra hopped on one leg over to the bench at the side of the porch and sat down, his arms crossed.

Numan flashed Ezra a smile and turned and left, his back disappearing quickly around the corners of the camp. Vincent turned back into his tent, returning a moment later whistling through missing teeth. He had a few pieces of wood under his arm and assorted tools tucked into the pockets and belts of his apron. Vincent was at his work quickly, perched on a three legged stool at the edge of the fire pit. Now and then he would glance over at Ezra, or size up measurements with his eye.

Ezra looked about the awning and into the tent. All of the tent’s support posts were carved with pictures and symbols which Ezra didn’t understand; Vincent had told him once that they were from his people, long lost to the mists of time. The old man told Ezra once– only once– that he hadn’t met another Cajun for years and years and years. It felt like he was the only one left to tell their stories and continue their traditions. Carved wooden mobiles hung from the rafters of his tent on braided ropes, interlaced with pieces of bone, antlers, even a chicken foot or two. Ezra loved Vincent’s tent; he’d never properly been inside, so it was always a little game to see what he would catch sight of from the outside.

Everytime Ezra stopped by the Cajun’s tent there was something new peering out from the rafters; a bauble, a trinket, or some new thing for Ezra to ask the man about. And in the corner of the tent, on a wooden stand, he could see the small, stringed instrument. Ezra had lost count of the times he’d heard the enchanting melodies, traveling on the wind, and he would find himself carried here on wandering feet, drawn by the music; he’d always find the Cajun in the same place, sitting on his three legged stool, within his tent or lit by embers smoldering in the iron basin outside. He never noticed Ezra approaching, the instrument crooked beneath his chin as his fingers moved across it with practiced ease. A sweet singing escaped, filling the tent, floating into the street and the sky beyond. Haunting sounds that could almost calm a storm, or move a stone to tears. No one else in the camp could play a thing like it; amongst all their instruments this was Vincent’s alone. He would play on it night after night, often alone, with the bow in his right hand strumming and gliding across the four strings.

It wasn’t hard to hear, drifting through the lanes of the camp, in and out between tents, stilling the night, lulling little ones to sleep, soothing the minds of parted lovers. He never played for them. No, not for them. The old man walked with a limp, crippled by pain that ransacked his leg. Stories and rumors abounded about the source of his pain, and everyone was certain they knew the definitive version.

“It happened as a boy, surely. Wandering marauders destroyed his home and…” Their voices would drop to a whisper. “...slaughtered his people. That’s why he never talks about the Cajuns.”

“No, no, surely he was a marauder himself! Look at him, at one time he was very strong, he must have been.”

“Nonsense; that’s foolishness. Surely he was a military man, a noble soldier! It was in the wars that it happened.” Ezra used to listen intently when gossip turned to Vincent, the people of the troupe going back and forth shamelessly. The presence of someone like Numan or the Master of the camp would usually cause them to falter and trail off, and Numan would always turn to Ezra and say something.

“Don’t listen to them, Ezra.” He said. “They don’t know much more beyond the walls of their own tent. Vincent was no soldier.” An unspoken sentiment always hid in the way Numan said that; a kind of compassion, admiration. “Vincent will never tell a soul, so don’t believe anything these gossips say. Until the day you can get him to tell you himself, don’t believe any story.”

That was a loaded statement– no one could get Vincent to speak about it, not even the Master, the man who oversaw their travels and protected them. Ezra asked Numan if Vincent had ever shared how he was hurt, or why he played like he did, but Numan hadn’t given a straight answer. He explained that Vincent played because it eased his pain. His leg didn’t hurt so much when he was sawing on his fiddle.

“Ezra? Oh boy,” the voice of a young man brought Ezra back to the snowy pavilion he sat in with Vincent, the old man intently focused on his work. Ezra twisted to look over his shoulder and saw the young man attached to the voice, Ezra’s best friend Daniel. Daniel had dark skin and brown eyes, with tightly curled black hair. He was slim, though solidly built, slightly older and taller than Ezra, with a quiver of arrows slung over one shoulder and a recurve bow in his hand. He hadn’t come alone; Ezra’s younger sister came with him, shorter than both boys, with dark brown hair falling in waves down her back, and skin that was nearly inhumanly pale. Now, as it had done many times before, her appearance reminded Ezra that she wasn’t entirely human, and that although they were siblings, they didn’t share any blood.

“How does it look, Daniel?” Emma asked looking down at the ground, her eyes hiding in the curtains of her hair. Ezra searched for them, the pair of pale white eyes, barely blinking, never seeing. Emma had been blind since she was five years old, nine years ago this spring. The story behind the accident wasn’t told much. In fact, Ezra wasn’t sure he knew exactly what happened.

“Well,” Daniel finally answered, scratching his chin and staring fixedly at Ezra’s foot. “It looks like an ankle, Emma.”

“That’s because it is an ankle,” Emma elbowed Daniel lightly in the ribcage. Daniel let out a small grunt, Emma smiling at the sound, evidently pleased with herself.

“Hey guys,” Ezra said, giving a half-hearted wave. “Did Numan send you two over?”

“Oh yeah,” Daniel responded, his face breaking into a big smile. “He said he was taking a hunting party out and told me to grab my bow.” Daniel held up the mentioned weapon to show he had it. “I was hoping you could…” Daniel trailed off and glanced at Emma.

“I didn’t want to go sit at home alone,” Emma cut in. “Mind if I sit with you?”

“That’ll be fun,” Ezra said, smiling. “At least until my crutch is ready, then we can go to dinner.” Daniel grinned and gave a small hop.

“Oh thanks Ezra,” he walked off at a quick pace, throwing a wave over his shoulder. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow!”

“Daniel!” Vincent’s voice cut across the clear air, making the eager young man wince. “Donchu think you bettah show the young lady to her seat?” Daniel slouched his shoulders, embarrassed, and retraced his steps to Emma’s side, guiding her by her arm to Ezra’s bench.

“Okay, is everyone comfortable?” Daniel asked, shouldering his bow. Ezra nodded and shooed him off, the young man’s embarrassment suddenly traded for an infectious grin and a wink, and then Daniel hurried off and out of sight.

“I swear,” Vincent mused, returning to his work. “Sometime that boy would lose hi’ own head if it weren’t bolted on.”