Fading, Like the Stars

I was getting used to my life with the circus much faster than I would ever have expected to. I hadn’t thought that I could get used to that kind of life, with people constantly around, always so close, and it was rather strange, actually, that I had gotten used to it so quickly. Even when I was growing up, I was a rather solitary child. Even before everything happened, I was used to often being on my own. I was used to that, and I didn’t mind it the slightest. Now, I have only memories of that time, but I don’t remember one day of sadness.

My parents, and then my mother, on her own, raised me so that I could spend hours and hours on my own, so that I wouldn’t absolutely need others.

Life here was completely different.

Life here was totally different, unlike all that I had experienced before. You could not really be alone for more than a couple of minutes. And even if you happened to find yourself alone, to enjoy a few minutes of solitude, it never lasted long. There was always noise in the background to remind you of where you were, people talking, laughing, shouting, children running around. There was always someone that needed help. Something that needed to be done. And the more we were approaching our next destination, the more there were things that needed to be fixed or cleaned or simply checked.

I had already spent several days with the circus now, and in the days that I spent here, I learned to know the people a little better. It took some time before I could remember their names, or before I understood what exactly they did in the circus, but I was slowly getting to know them. Some of them, of course, were not very talkative. Not that they were unfriendly. But they preferred to keep their lives to themselves; they did not want to share their past with just anyone. It was normal. I was new here. I had only just arrived, and they didn’t really know me. I knew very well that I couldn’t expect them to open their heart like that. I didn’t even expect them to do it. I wasn’t telling them about my life either. It was normal that some liked to keep the past were it was, to keep some matters private. To others, that didn’t seem much of a problem, however.

If some never talked about what sort of life they’d led before they joined Félix and his circus, others made no secret of it. In the two hours that I had spent helping him with his work, Raymond had made me laugh several times with the way he retold the story of his life. A lot of unhappy things had happened to him, but he always retold it with such a smile, that he made you laugh instead of cry. He had grown up in the world of circuses, so he was rather used to that life. But he had been kicked out of the circus in which he previously worked as a knife thrower after he had nearly cut off a woman’s ear an unlucky night.

I ended up learning Carmen’s story too, one evening that I was sitting next to her close to the campfire, watching her as she sewed one of her kid’s shirt back together. She and her three children had joined the circus out of necessity rather than out of interest, after there had been an accident in the factory where her husband worked and that he died, leaving her with nothing at all. Then there was Pierre, the fire-eater, and Cara, the acrobat, who were said to both have arrived one morning and had given as sole explanation that they had a thirst for adventures. They had found each other here, but were arguing every single day, sometimes shouting horrors at each other that everyone else could hear, and yet they were always making up the next second.

Émilie, too, was quite open about her past. She had grown up in the most normal of families and lived the most normal of lives, as she said. She’d gone to school, and had had friends, and a family. She’d been happy at parties and birthdays and every single day that something good had happened, and she’d been sad when her father died and when it rained too much to go outside, and then later when her mother died too. She had lived the most normal of lives, filled with all those little things that make a life quiet and ordinary. And then some day she’d woken up to discover that this wasn’t what she wanted, that she needed more, and she just left. After a whole year of tribulation, she had found the circus. That was three years ago, and according to her, she’d never regretted joining them, not one second. And I think I was starting to understand why, as I too began to feel at home amongst these people.

If Emilie had told me about her life just a few days after we’d met, of Daniel, however, I knew nothing at all. He was a mystery. He never really talked about himself. He was always sweet and kind, though sometimes quiet. He was good company and always seemed to have something to tell when the conversation died down, an anecdote or a funny story, but he never let slip anything about himself. He was, and seemed determined to remain, a complete mystery.

I knew that Merry had been there when the circus had started, but that was only because Rufus had told me so. She had never said more about it, and I had never dared asking. Another person whom I would never dare to ask anything to, was Félix. He seemed to have accepted me as part of the circus, although a negligible part of it, and he was never paying me much attention, but I still didn’t know how to act in his presence. I barely dared to speak when he was there, and I would never, absolutely never, have dared to ask him about his past.

And then there was Rufus.

Unlike Daniel, Rufus actually talked about himself. That did not happen often, though, but perhaps it was because Rufus did not talk often in general. I had thought, the first days, that it was because we were still strangers, that he didn’t really know me, but it seemed that this was just the way Rufus was. He did not talk often. But sometimes, if I was lucky, he would mention something about himself. And I did consider myself lucky to be hearing it, because it seemed to me – although I might have been wrong – that he didn’t just go round telling it to anyone. And so, I learned a little thing about him every day; by observing him, or because he would tell me. And yet I had the impression that I didn’t know him at all. Or at least, that I didn’t know as much about him, as I would have liked.

I was slowly getting more attached to Rufus, and to everyone here in general, than I would have thought possible, and even than what I would have liked. Leaving them, at some point, was still lingering somewhere, in the back of my mind, and it would make me feel guilty each time I found myself enjoying my stay a little too much, and that I found myself thinking that staying a few more weeks, a few more months, with them, would not be that much of a disaster. I tried to push those thoughts aside, to silence that guilt, and after a few days I became quite good at it. I wanted to enjoy the time that I was spending here. I did not want any morose thoughts to spoil my days here, because this would end at some point, and there was no point tainting the moments with worries. Or at least that was what I was telling myself. Because deep inside I think I knew that the only thing I wanted was to just forget about the future, to just think that things would remain forever like this.

Because honestly, despite the difficulties that came with an itinerant life, this was the closest thing to perfection that I’d know since a long, long time. It was not much. Oh, hell no, it was not much. It was difficult, at times, and it was not much. But I was happy. Among these people, I was happy, and carefree. And I didn’t think that anything could ever have gone wrong. Not with everyone else around me, not with Rufus who always seemed to guess when there was something wrong. I didn’t think that anything could happen, actually.

That’s why it came as such a surprise when the caravan travelling just before that of Rufus came to a abrupt halt in the middle of the road, and stayed immobile for a few seconds before the driver maneuvered so that his horse would draw the carriage to the wild field on the side of the road.

There had been no halt intended. I was almost sure of that. No word had been passed that we needed to stop for one reason or another. It was still morning, and we’d barely been on the road for half an hour. I had not spent much time with the circus, but in the several days that I’d been here, something like that had not happened.

“What’s going on? Why are we stopping?” I asked, as Rufus joined all the other caravans that were parking themselves on the side of the road.

I was sitting next to him as he led the horse on the small dirt road, and I turned my head slightly to observe his reaction. Although he seemed as surprised as I was by what was happening, he didn’t seem much alarmed.

“Hmm… I don’t know,” Rufus muttered, waving at those who were behind us to indicate that they had to stop too.

I observed his face, scrutinized him to see if I could find a sign of what was going on, a crease that would indicate worry, or narrowed eyes that would tell me that he wondered what was going on. But there was nothing of that sort. Rufus showed no particular emotion – he never really seemed to. He was perfectly calm, as if the situation, although unusual, was not something that had never happened in the past.

“Probably a patrol or something,” Rufus muttered under his breath.

The effect of his words was immediate. I barely even heard what he added after that. My head was buzzing. I felt cold and warm at the same time. I could not think. I could not pay attention to things around. The world could have exploded, I wouldn’t have noticed. I could hear the blood pound in my ears, and my heart seemed to have adopted a rather irregular pace. There was a disagreeable sensation, like a prickle, in the back of my neck. Fear, that old, familiar friend of mine, had finally caught up with me again. Just when I’d thought that nothing could turn wrong, when I’d started to lower my defenses and stopped being careful, something like this happened.

“A – a patrol?” I repeated weakly, hoping that it was not what I thought.

Rufus turned his head to look at me, his brow furrowing when he realized that something was wrong. I realized that it was not normal to be that terrified, or at least not normal to show it, but there was nothing I could do to hide it. Not after what had happened last time I had come across a patrol. There had been a time when I had thought myself safe, foolishly thought that nothing worse than what had already happened could happen, but that time was gone. Now I realized the danger. Oh, yes, I was very well aware of it. I’d been lucky when Rufus had come to my help, but I doubted to be lucky enough to escape the authorities twice, and certainly not twice in such a short space of time.

“You mean… that…” I stuttered, struggling to find the right words to interrogate Rufus without showing more of the confusion and fear that I was feeling.

“Nothing to worry about,” Rufus said in a somewhat reassuring way, though he was now watching me quizzically.

I did not see how there could possibly be ‘nothing to worry about’. I looked at him with a frown. He had seen what I had seen last time. He’d been coursed by those soldiers too, and they’d not only fired at me, but at him also. I could not understand how he was not more worried about the fact that we could have met an armed patrol. His lack of worry, stress, or any other sort of frightened reaction was starting to annoy me a little. I hadn’t thought that Rufus was the sort of people to just being ignorant of the danger. I still didn’t think he was. But the way he just sat there, all calm and relaxed… it wasn’t just a pose. Rufus really was not overly worried about what was going on. And I could not understand that.

“But how…” I protested.

His lips stretched into a tiny, tiny little smile. “It’s not the first time that it happens.” Rufus eventually explained.

That didn’t serve to reassure me. Whatever Rufus would say wasn’t going to reassure me. It was impossible for me to feel reassured when there were possibly, only a few meters away from me, half a dozen armed men serving a government that thought that my mother had been some kind of criminal and had executed her as such. I didn’t want to be next. I would have tried to escape, had it been possible. But the road was deserted, save for the circus, and if it was really a patrol that had stopped us, then if I took a running, it would look awfully suspicious.

“We’re quite used to this, now,” Rufus added. “Félix solves this in seconds, I have to give him credit for that…” He extended a hand, reaching out to me in the hope that it would make all worries go away, I suppose. But I was a lost cause when it came to that. I was petrified. So much so, that I wouldn’t even have been able to run, had there been need to.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Rufus repeated. He smiled again, a smile that was wider this time, warm and bright. A smile that made me forget, even if just for a moment, the situation. “You think,” Rufus murmured, looking at me, his eyes piercing through my being, “you really think that I would be so confident if there was anything dangerous.” He seemed so very conscious of what I was feeling, so aware of what I was thinking, and it wasn’t the first time that I saw that look of understanding in his eyes. “You can trust me when I tell you that this will solve itself.”

I had to be mental, I thought to myself. I had to be completely mental to trust him on this, to just take his word and believe that there was indeed nothing to worry about. But… yeah, somehow I did. Perhaps I was going mental, perhaps I was careless. But I believed him. There was no reason not to. He’d saved my life before. And he seemed so sure that there was nothing to worry about. There wasn’t really any reason for me not to trust him this time too, there was no reason not to believe him. Or maybe I really was mental.

“I do trust you,” I said softly after a moment. “I do.”

Rufus flashed me another quick smile. “Good,” he said with that smooth voice that made my heart flutter. “Good, ‘cause you’ll need that.”

“How… what?” I questioned, but he just jumped off the caravan, on the ground, and patted the horse on the neck.

“No moving, Rita, be right back,” he muttered to the horse as he walked to the other side of the caravan, my side.

Rufus held out a hand to help me come down.

“Uh, what exactly are we going to do?” I asked, letting him pull me down.

“Doing what everybody else does. Trying to look normal,” Rufus answered quietly. I stared at him with wide eyes, trying to understand what he meant to say with that. “Just continue to trust me. And just pretend that you’ve been here for ages.” He said very seriously.

He had taken my hand to help me get out off the caravan, and was still holding it. And I was thankful for that. Because I had no idea what was going on, and I didn’t what to expect, and I wasn’t reassured at all.

I followed Rufus as we left the caravan where it was, observing with surprise as many others did just the same as us. I wondered what we were doing, what we were going to see, and that incertitude only made my apprehension rise.

As we passed the caravan that had been hiding what was going on from our view, I saw with a increasing annoyance that Rufus’ assumptions had been right.

We had been stopped by armed soldiers that composed some sort of patrol. There were five men, standing in the middle of the road, near two large, dark cars. At the sight of them, my first reaction, my first reflex, was to back away, to try and flee. Luckily, Rufus’ pressure on my hand increased, and he held me back.

“Don’t,” he grumbled. “Don’t do anything that looks even a little suspicious.”

And with these words, he dragged me even closer to the small crowd that had gathered around to see what was going on. It was easy for him to say that, to say that I mustn’t do anything that might have looked suspicious. But my heart was pounding so loudly within my chest that I was sure that, even from where they were standing, the soldiers could hear it. We joined the rest of the circus, and I tried to blend in their small crowd, to hide as much as possible. Rufus, on the contrary, was observing the scene with much interest.

Soon, someone broke out of the crowd, grumbling loudly. It was Félix, and he stopped in front of the soldiers, alone, standing quite tall and staring at them with head held high.

“You’ll see,” Rufus whispered to my ear, and I shivered although I did not want to, “he’ll solve this in a few seconds.”

Almost against my will, and certainly against my reason, I tried to get a better view.

“Is there something wrong, gentlemen?” Félix said in a calm and steady voice. “What is going on?”

The soldiers moved a little, then one of them came to stand in front of the others, just in front of Félix. For a moment the two men just stood there, facing each other, and I couldn’t help fearing that things, somehow, would end up pretty badly. I hoped that it wouldn’t, but there was that strange feeling, that horrible weight that made it difficult for me to breathe.

“Anything we can do for you, gentlemen?” Félix repeated, speaking much more politely to them than I’d ever heard him talk to anyone in the circus, save perhaps Merry.

“Just a routine control…” the soldier that seemed to be the head of the brigade said, his voice not friendly at all, and the frown on his face not reassuring, not in the smallest way.

“Of course, of course,” Félix said, still in that very weird polite tone that seemed to me to be so unusual for him. “Absolutely necessary to keep an eye on things that happen on the road, I agree with you.”

That side of Félix, that slightly irritating complacent side, seemed to be completely opposed to everything I’d ever seen of him. But the soldier didn’t notice anything. He just gave Félix a satisfied smile. He didn’t suspect any treachery there. That part, was one that Félix seemed to have well rehearsed.

“You’ll find, however, that there is nothing wrong with our company,” added Félix, very seriously. “We’ve got all necessary authorization.”

Félix handed the man a bunch of papers, and the soldier spent some time reading them.

“It seems alright,” the soldier eventually muttered, “but you must understand that we need to give it a closer look.” Having said that, he looked up from the papers, and gazed at the crowd. I felt myself shrink as all of their eyes were now on us, and the fear that had diminished a little to be replaced by curiosity, came back, more powerful than it had been before.

“Of course,” Félix said quietly. “Feel free to look around, we have nothing to hide.” He then dug his hand in his pocket, and extracted something that I could not quite see from where I was standing, trying to hide as I could behind the crowd.

“Money.” Rufus whispered to my ear.

Félix counted the notes, and then placed them in the soldier’s awaiting hand, a complacent smile still plastered on his face.

“Well, everything seems to be alright,” said the soldier in a strong voice, casting one last glance towards the crowd. Then, to my relief, he saluted Félix, and turned back to his car.

A few seconds later, the soldiers were gone.

“This is crazy,” I muttered.

Next to me, Rufus shook his head. “No. It’s corruption.”