Fading, Like the Stars

The circus was exactly what it had been when we had left it. Nothing or so very little had changed, that, upon seeing it, a lot of recent memories emerged to the surface.

The return journey had taken us four complete days, and we had left a day after Pierre had arrived. Daniel, of course, had wanted to leave as quickly as possible, as soon as the very few belongings that we had taken with us had been packed. But Arnaud, more reasonable, certainly, and also perhaps less emotionally involved, had insisted that it was better to wait until the following morning, something that we had thus done, because everyone came to the conclusion that it was the best thing to do, even if it took more time for some than for others. The days were still short, Arnaud had insisted, and we would only be out that night would fall. He had a good point there, even Daniel had had to admit it, and it didn’t take too long before he agreed with him.

The last evening passed quickly, and I daresay that each one of us was too anxious or impatient to really enjoy it to its maximum – with the exception of Pierre who was still looking at everything with such intensity that it seemed he was trying to engrave it all in his memory. And soon morning came, and we were on our way just after Arnaud had spoken his last words – which sounded, I must say, much more like a warning than a goodbye to my ear. All the snow was gone, but the cold remained, stinging and biting, and the days were still short. We hurried along the way. No one even looked back, which was sad, in a way. But we all thought that we were going to see the place again. Not soon, perhaps, but in a year or so we would be back. There was nothing to be nostalgic about.

If the journey to the library had been strange and silent, the journey back was of a completely different nature. Everyone was much more relaxed, and after four days we saw again the caravans and all these other things that we had missed so much, I now realized.

“It’s strange, don’t you think?” I murmured to Dan, who was walking next to me, holding my arm.

“What is strange?” he asked. We had now come within distance of the circus, and ahead of us, we could see the camp, with the colored caravans, dispersed in a field like they always were, with the horses around, with the familiar sounds. I could even see the cage for the tigers in the distance. Nothing had changed. It was like we had only left yesterday, and not weeks ago.

I rolled my eyes, rejoicing in the fact that Dan could not see my reaction. “To be back here,” I said. We could hear the children play outside, exactly like they had done so many times before. Even to Dan, this had to sound familiar. “All that happens to us. Those wonderful times at the library, and now we’re back here, and it’s almost as if nothing has changed.”

An enigmatic smile appeared on Dan’s face.

“What?” I asked.

Daniel chuckled lightly.

“What makes you laugh?” I insisted.

Daniel shook his head, smiling like I had not seen him smile in days. It was great to see him happy, and I realized, with some surprise, that it made me happy too. And I wasn’t simply happy because we were going to see everyone again. I was also happy to see all the others so happy. And the feeling was incredibly new, or to be exact, it was an ancient feeling that was coming back, but an ancient feeling that had disappeared for so long that I had even thought that it had completely disappeared.

“You’re really happy to be back, aren’t you?” I said softly, the smile on Dan’s face illuminating everything around us.

He breathed in softly. “Yes. I am. I really am.”

“Well, we’re going to be there soon,” I said, squeezing his arm affectionately.

“Good thing.”

I smiled, amused by Daniel’s enthusiasm. He wasn’t even trying to hide it. Yet I hadn’t noticed that he was particularly annoyed to be at the library. Yes, he had seemed impatient to leave, once he had known we could, of course he had. But he had not showed it before, not much at least, and there was the proof that Daniel was able to hide what he was feeling, from time to time.

“You’ve really missed Émilie, haven’t you?” I said.

“And everyone else,” Daniel replied, but then a smile graced his face. “Yes, I really missed her. It’s been a particularly long winter…”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure that this winter had been a whole lot longer than all the previous winters I had done, but there had been an element that, in a certain way, had made it seemed tougher than the previous ones. Perhaps it was the snow. I could not imagine how hard it would have been if I had not been inside. I didn’t want to think about it – I had the circus now, I had Rufus and all these people around me – but if I had been somewhere else, if I hadn’t had them, then perhaps this would have been the one winter too much.

“It’s been a tough one,” I agreed quietly. “I hope everything was alright for them…”

Daniel smiled. “Oh, don’t you worry about that…” he said. “You know Félix enough now. It’s not a bit of cold and snow that’s going to stop him. He knows exactly what to do…”

I nodded, and let out a small sigh. Daniel had a way of putting everything back into perspective, always. And he always brought back the serious things into the conversation. “No, the weather and the cold is not the primary danger,” I muttered. I shook my head. “How wrong things are when you have more to fear from those who govern you than from an unusually cold winter…”

Daniel nodded, but brought a finger to his lips, shushing me. “Careful,” he said quietly.

“You’re one to talk,” I muttered, amused. “How many times have I heard you say things like that?”

“Alright, I talk, I talk,” Daniel said quietly, with a smile, “but I pay attention where I talk.”

I sighed. “Okay, let’s say that I still have a lot to learn.”

“You do. But I’ll bear in mind that you’re new to this.”

“So very kind of you.”

Daniel smiled. Our little talk had brought us to the edge of the camp, and it didn’t take long before we were spotted. If the children rushed to see what it was about, the adults knew better and simply nodded, not paying us much attention until we reached the inside of the camp. But once we were in there, it was completely different. It had been a long time since someone had been happy to see me again. Oh, of course, I knew that it wasn’t just me that they were welcoming. They were happy to see the others again after all this time, probably more than they were to see me. It was logical, because they had known each other for far longer than they had known me. And it didn’t really annoy me. And I was thinking that the situation might change some day and that at some point they would know me as well as they knew Daniel or Rufus, and that they would welcome me as warmly as everyone else. And it was no longer scaring me. In fact, I was warming up to the idea, much more than I would have thought. I was even… how to say it? Impatient perhaps. Being here was like having a family – again. And it was good. Contrary to what I had thought, having a family didn’t necessarily mean losing people and finding yourself alone. It also meant people welcoming you home after you’ve been gone. I liked that.

Perhaps they had after all been quite impatient to see us, or perhaps they thought that the journey that we had undertaken had been far more exhausting than it was in reality, because we had only just arrived and been greeted, that everyone seemed to be in a hurry to feed us. Not that I should be complaining. It quickly turned into a real feast, and feasts were too few and rare to be frowned upon. But it was strange nonetheless.

The festivities didn’t last long, unfortunately. They ended, predictably, when Félix showed up. I don’t think that Félix had intended for his appearance to end the party, but that was the effect that it had, because as a rule, everyone was much more careful whenever Félix was around. So the conversations were tamed, and the laughter died out, and soon it was just people eating in the middle of the afternoon and feeling a bit silly for it. I didn’t think that it had been Félix’s intention to ruin the moment, but even he couldn’t ignore the fact that his appearance had quite dampened the situation. Everybody was eying him quite carefully, and they had reasons to. I thought I knew what they were all thinking. Félix hadn’t seen any of us for a long time – though it was probably not about Daniel or me that people were worrying. Everyone knew that the relation between Félix and Rufus was… well, a strange one, to say but that. And Félix hadn’t necessarily been pleased with Rufus the last time that he had seen him, so no one knew what to expect now that the two of them were in each other’s presence again.

“We weren’t expecting you so early,” Félix said.

Pierre nodded seriously. “Yes. We walked fast.”

There was a short silence. We all watched, careful not to look like we were watching – but careful not to speak to loud so that we would hear.

“I trust that you did not encounter any particular difficulties during the journey back, then,” Félix spoke again, somewhat stiffly.

“As smooth as it could possibly go,” Pierre replied. It was obvious that Félix’s interrogations were not really making him feel at ease, but he answered with a smile anyway.

“Good,” Félix said, “welcome back.”

Everyone was a bit surprised to see him stop there. Not that it was a bad thing, because it wasn’t. It was good that everything had gone smoothly. But nobody had been expecting that. If that was what they had expected, they wouldn’t have been watching so carefully.

“Where’s the drama?” murmured a voice to my ear, and I turned my head, not at all surprised to see Émilie standing there. “We’ve had weeks without it. I was hoping for at least a bit of shouting and throwing insults at each other,” she shouted.

I shook my head. “Don’t say such horrible things,” I muttered.

Émilie smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s good to see you,” I added quickly, smiling more frankly. “Where’ve you been all that time? We thought you were going to be the one to get us. You should’ve seen the disappointment on Dan’s face when he saw poor Pierre…”

Émilie smiled. “Yes,” she said simply. “I would have liked to come with him, too, but I couldn’t undertake the journey.”

I looked at her for a moment, waiting for some more explanation, but nothing came. Émilie smiled at me, but said nothing more.

“So, what happened here?” I asked after a short silence.

“Oh, same old,” she replied evasively. “Not that much. But we’ll talk about it all later, right? I absolutely have to hear about what happened to you during all those weeks.” She left with the promise that we would talk again soon, and then quickly slipped away in the crowd.

Left alone, I returned my attention to Félix, only to see that he was taking Rufus aside to talk to him. I sighed. The improvised party seemed truly over, and everyone drifted back to their usual occupations. With Félix monopolizing Rufus, and all my other travel companions busy reuniting with their loved ones, there was not much left for me to do. I spent some time wandering around, waiting to see if Félix was going to let go of Rufus – something that he didn’t seem that set on doing, perhaps they were having that conversation that everyone in the circus had been both waiting and dreading to hear, except that this time Félix had decided that there would be no witnesses of it, unless one of them started shouting.

My footsteps led me to Rufus’ caravan, and I couldn’t help but smile upon seeing it. There was one place that right now felt like home to me. It felt even more like home than the library, despite the much more modest size and the lack of prestigious decoration. It made me happy to see it there in the field, a little behind all the other caravans, just sort of waiting there. It had been a long time, and I hadn’t paid the caravan much thoughts, but as it stood there, waiting for me, I came to realize that I had missed it. I climbed the three steps to the door with a sort of apprehension knotting my stomach. It was nothing more than the fear that it would appear different once I opened the door, that I wouldn’t like it as much as I had before, but I had no idea where this fear came from. From the fact that the caravan was nowhere as grand as the library? It couldn’t be. It had never been what mattered to me.

Inside, nothing had been touched or, if something had been touched, everything had been carefully placed back where it should be, because I recognized the neat state in which Rufus usually kept it. I busied myself putting the few things that we had taken with us on our journey to the library back in their place, trying not to think too much. Then I had nothing more to do and it was much more difficult not to think about the decision that I had taken, and whether or not I was ready to assume it. I thought I was, and I hoped it even more, but it still worried me because it was in my nature to worry about such things. It was in that state of deep thought that Rufus found me when Félix eventually let him go.

“Hey,” he said quietly, making me look up.

Just seeing him made me smile. “What did Félix want?” I asked curiously.

Rufus sighed. “Oh, same as he always does,” he replied with a wince. “Pointing out my mistakes and telling me what I need to do better, stuff like that.”

“It’s only because he cares about you that he does that.”

“I’d say it’s more because he’s pissed because of half the things that I do,” Rufus replied.

“No, he’s not that way with any of us, and I think that the only reason he wants you to do everything perfectly is because he wishes you could take his place in the community once he gets too old for it.”

Rufus stared at me with a frown on his face. Then shrugged his shoulders. “No, really not,” he said, but he seemed to give it some thought. “Anyway. What are you all pensive about?”

I sighed. “Something I did. Back at the library. Could you sit down?”

Rufus’ eyes widened a little, but he did as I asked, looking quite curious. “Is something wrong?”

“You tell me,” I mumbled. “You remember my books?”

Rufus nodded in silence.

“Well,” I continued, “I … I took them with us when we left, because I thought that it would be too dangerous to leave them here when we weren’t going to be there to see what happens. So I took them with me and I, well, I gave them to Arnaud. Just before we left, I suddenly understood that it was better to leave them behind. They’re where they’re meant to be, in the library, right?”

“If it’s your decision, of course it’s alright. But can I ask why? I thought that this was all that you had left…”

“It is. But it was dangerous. It was what forced me to keep moving all the time too, because it’s too dangerous to stay in one place with these things around, and… Well, it’s not what I want anymore. And it’s dangerous to everyone around me. And I couldn’t have danger around anymore because, if it’s alright with you, I would like to stay here. Like, really stay. Not stay until I decide to leave but… but I need a home and I think this is it. I think I’ve found the place where I want to spend the rest of my life.”