Fading, Like the Stars

My jaw dropped, and I just stared at Cécile, who stood before us, looking more tired than I had ever seen anyone look. Her clothes were torn, her face was dirty, and she looked like she was about to faint. She was by far the last person that I had expected to see here. I did not know why she had travelled all the way to the Fair, but whatever the reason was, it had to be something very, very serious.

“What is it?” Daniel asked again, sounding slightly worried now. “Aimée?”

“Cécile,” I told him, coming back to my senses. “She doesn’t look well.” I loosened Daniel’s grip on my arm somewhat impatiently, and took hesitant steps towards the girl. The closer I got, the more I became aware of how distraught she looked.

“Cécile,” I called quietly. “Cécile, what are you doing here?”

Her eyes flickered from me to her surroundings. I called her name again, not sure what I was supposed to do. She looked like such a mess, and I didn’t even know what I was supposed to say to her. She gave no indication that she wanted to move closer. No, she just stood there, looking like she didn’t really know what she was doing here, or how she had gotten that far. I wished I knew her better, I wished I knew what to say to her to get her to tell us what had happened. But I wasn’t really sure how to do so. She didn’t even react when I called her name. Rufus would have known what to do, I thought briefly. But Rufus was not here.

“Cécile, what happened?” I asked again. I was standing several feet away, but I didn’t dare to get closer. Cécile looked so much like those scared and wild animals that I was afraid that if I stepped to close to her, too quickly, she would just run away.

“Cécile?” Dan asked. “What is going on? Aimée? What’s happening?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t give him any answer. I had no idea what was happening.

“Cécile?” I asked again, taking a step closer.

She looked at me this time and even opened her mouth as if she was going to say something, but no word came out. But at least she wasn’t running away, so I stepped even closer.

“You look exhausted,” I said, because I didn’t know what else I could say. I wished Cécile would just say something because I was running out of ideas. I didn’t know how to make her talk, and Daniel wasn’t really helping. He looked as lost as I was, standing there where I had left him.

“I’m going to take you to Merry,” I told Cécile as calmly as I could, thinking back to the first time that I had arrived in the circus. “She’ll know what to do.”

I turned to look at Daniel. “We’re going to take her to Merry,” I told him. “I think it’s best. She looks in shock and I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do. But, Merry should know, right?”

Daniel nodded slowly. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s do that.”

Since that was now decided, I help out a hand to Cécile, but if she looked at it, she made no move to take it. “Okay, Cécile,” I said as quietly as I could. I couldn’t shake the impression that I was now talking to a small, scared animal rather than to the shy but nice girl that I had met at the library. “We’re going to take you somewhere you will be safe and you can rest, alright. And Merry will take care of you, okay? She’ll know what’s wrong.”

This time Cécile reacted. She very slowly nodded her head, and although she made no move towards me, she didn’t run away when I took her arm. “Okay, we’re going,” I said, still talking very quietly.

Cécile still said nothing, but she nodded and followed me when I went back to Daniel. I wanted to discuss the whole thing with him, but I didn’t feel like it would be very delicate. Cécile might act like she was disconnected from this world, but she could hear everything. It wouldn’t have been right to talk about her while she was just here.

“How are we going to do with the guards?” I asked Daniel when we could see the Fair in the distance.

“Just act like there’s nothing going wrong,” Daniel said. “They won’t pay attention if we don’t look suspicious.”

“Yes, but there were only two of us when they left.”

“I don’t think that they count us,” Daniel said with a smile. “But should someone say something, leave it to me. I’ll deal with it.”

“I hope you’re right,” I said.

“No worries, just ask normal,” Dan said, and then as we approached the entrance, he began to talk about trivial things, as if we had been doing that for a long time. I was a bit taken aback by his sudden change of subject at first, but when I understood, I quickly joined him in his pretend conversation.

Daniel had been right in saying that the soldiers would really pay any attention to Cécile. It was lucky, because as soon as she saw them, I felt her tense next to me, and I prayed that she wouldn’t have any kind of reaction that would be dangerous for us. But the soldiers were too busy talking between themselves, and when we arrived at the entrance, they barely even looked at us. Their gaze briefly flew across our little group, and when they saw that we were not carrying anything, they seemed to decide that everything was fine and let us in.

“You’re just in time,” one said, “half an hour later and it would’ve been dark. You would’ve been forced to wait outside until tomorrow morning.”

That was all that was said, and I marveled at the fact that it was so easy. I knew that the outside world was much more dangerous than that, and we were very lucky that we had happened upon friendlier soldiers this time. It could’ve gone much worse. If those soldiers hadn’t been busy or had asked Cécile direct questions, I had no idea what could’ve had happened. She hadn’t talked to us, but what if she’d said something compromising to them. Since we didn’t know what had happened to her, we couldn’t guess the state that she was actually in.

Maneuvering through the sea of tents and caravans with Daniel and Cécile, trying to be as quick and discreet as possible, was not the easiest thing. The day was drawing to a close, and everyone was done with their official business. They had exchanged things that they had for things that they needed, they had bought pieces to repair what was broken, they had successfully repaired these things, they had filled in their applications to get the authorization to continue their business for another year. All that they had set out to do that day was done. Now they were all coming together to relax, talk with friends that they hadn’t seen in weeks. It was hard to not attract attention. Not that they would have reacted to Cécile’s state in a particularly inquisitive way – these people had long learned not to ask too many questions. But people were people. If some noticed that we were with a girl that they had never seen before, who seemed I shock and like she had crossed half the country by foot, there would be some gossip. And whenever there was gossip, you could ever be sure that it wouldn’t fall I the wrong ear.

We left Cécile with Merry, who ushered her inside her caravan and promised to take care of her. There was nothing more than either Dan or I could have done. But Merry would certainly know what to do. If there was one person who could do something, it was Merry. Cécile just followed her without protesting. She still hadn’t said a word. I sat down on the steps of the caravan and looked at Daniel.

“Dan? What do you think happened to her?” I asked quietly.

Daniel shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “If I knew…” he whispered. “But Merry will take care of her, just like she takes care of all of us. You did the right thing by bringing her here.”

“Probably, but that still doesn’t explain what happened to her. Why is she here and not in her home? I can’t imagine that Arnaud would have let her go out in the wild on her own like this, and that scares me, Dan, it really does.”

“I know,” Dan agreed. “It’s a rather unsettling thought. But as long as she isn’t telling, we can’t guess…”

“Yeah but, just think about it… She’s in shock, and seriously, what happened to shock her that much?”

“Do you think I haven’t thought about it?” Daniel sighed. “Can you even imagine how long she must have been out there, before she found us? I’m terrified of what it implies, because I’ve been out there – and you’ve been out there – and we know that no one in their right mind would ever go on such a journey alone without a good reason. It’s a tough world if you don’t have the safety of your home, and people sure get suspicious of wanderers.”

“Do you think something happened to her grandfather?”

“Well, he certainly wouldn’t have let her go out on her own like that, especially for such a long journey. Which really makes me wonder, you know…”

“Yeah, what the Hell happened…”

Daniel winced. “I think we’ll know, in due time. But you can’t force the truth out of Cécile, and she doesn’t look like she’s going to speak for the moment.”

I ticked. “Well, obviously, that was never my intention. I know what it’s like to have things that you don’t want to talk about and that you don’t want to share. But she hasn’t said a single word, and even at my worst, I never came into such a state of shock. I’ve wandered out there for a while, as I’m sure you have, and sure, it made me distrustful of pretty much the entirety of the human race, but I was never in a state where I could not even speak out of shock. If I refused to talk to people, it was a choice. But with her it’s clearly not a choice. And it makes me worried, you know, because… what could have happened? And also, like you said, where is Arnaud?”

Daniel didn’t look like he had an answer to give. He was silent for a moment, before he eventually shrugged his shoulders and shook his head slightly.

“D’you think we should go?” I asked him.

“Well… I get that you’d feel responsible after finding her…”

“I don’t feel responsible for her,” I cut him, “She’s old enough to be responsible for herself. I’m just concerned, that’s all. And, besides, we didn’t find her, I think that she found us. I think she’s been waiting out there until she came across someone familiar. But how long as she been waiting?”

Daniel smiled slightly. “Anyway,” he said, amused. “As I was going to say, we might feel a certain responsibility after having brought her here, but we’re not going to be of any help. She’s not going to talk to us, and Merry certainly doesn’t need any help. It’s not that I don’t want to stand here and talk some more, but there’s really nothing that we can do for the moment, except, you know, what we normally do…”

I stood up. “Well, I suppose you’re right.”

I was about to leave when Merry opened the door and quietly stepped outside. I looked at her expectantly.

“She’s asleep now,” Merry said once she had closed the door. “She’ll be alright. She’s just shocked and exhausted, but I think that she’ll be fine.”

“Has she said anything?” I asked.

Merry shook her head. “She needed to rest,” she simply said.

I was a bit surprised by the shortness of her answer. It was almost as if she didn’t want me to ask anything more. “Alright,” I said. “I’ll just go then. If there’s anything…” I didn’t finish my sentence, because it felt completely useless to say anything else.

“Wait a minute,” Dan said. “What do we tell everyone else? Do we even tell everyone else?”

Merry smiled. “I think they’ll find out by themselves,” she said. “There’s no need to make a big announcement…”

I nodded in agreement. “Yes, plus that would only draw attention to her, which doesn’t seem like the best idea since we don’t know where she comes from or what exactly happened.”

“So we tell no one?” asked Daniel, who seemed to be a little bothered by the idea.

I frowned, and Merry seemed to think about it for a moment. Said like that, it didn’t seem like the best idea. Not that I had a problem with keeping secrets. I had lived with secrets all my life. I was no stranger to hiding just about everything to just about everyone. But it wasn’t the way the circus functioned. You were not asked about your past or your secrets. Nobody asked anything personal, and you didn’t have to share if you did not want to, but that was not the same thing as hiding something, especially a person. You didn’t hide a person from everyone else. That was simply weird. People in the circus accepted everyone and they never asked any questions, so there was no point in hiding someone.

“It seems a bit extreme,” Dan continued. “We’re not going to hide her completely, there would be no reason for that.”

“Nobody would bother her, at least,” I said.

“You don’t even know how long she’ll stay here,” Daniel said.

“From the look of things, she’s not ready to leave just now,” I countered.

“Exactly,” Dan said, “there’s no point hiding her now if she’s going to stay. It’s meaningless, not to mention practically impossible.”

I searched for an answer to give him, but I could not find one. I wasn’t even sure where this entire conversation was going. I was sure that it had all made sense when we had started it, but now I wasn’t even sure what argument we were going for. Daniel and I both seemed to be saying the things we said just for the sake of it, but now that I found myself without an answer to give and that I actually thought about the whole conversation, I realized that I wasn’t even sure what point I had been trying to make.

“I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore,” I said.

Merry chuckled lightly. “I think that the two of you have been overthinking this a little. It has never been a real question, what we are going to do. It’s not about telling everyone or telling no one. There’s always a point somewhere in the middle, you know… When I say that there is no need to make a big announcement, I don’t mean we have to hush it up, sillies. I just meant that you don’t have to rush to everyone to tell them. They’ll find out by themselves. Now, you two, do whatever you want. I’ll go and find Félix and tell them about our unexpected visitor.”

I had not even for one second thought about Félix. “What’s he going to say?” I asked Merry. I looked at her and frowned. “What is he going to say?”

Merry shrugged her shoulders. “What would you want him to say? I’m just going to inform him, so that he knows what is going on. He doesn’t really have anything to say about it, it happened.”

I looked at her, trying to see what she meant, but Merry didn’t add anything. She just smiled and left. Daniel shook his head.

“I’m not even sure what happened,” I said, “this day just, sort of, spiraled.”

“Yes,” Daniel agreed. “Not exactly what I expected when I woke up this morning. Still, that’s life for you, full of the unexpected.”

“Yes, probably. But you’ll excuse me if this has me wondering what other kind of unexpected things life might be throwing at us.”

“So you’re not only worried about what happened to Cécile,” Daniel said after a short silence. “You’re worried about everything. You’re thinking that it might bring something else along. You know that there is no reason to worry, right? You live with a circus now. Things change pretty much every day.”

I looked at him, trying to read his face, though it was very difficult, as always with Daniel. “You’re trying to reassure me,” I stated. “But I’m not even sure you don’t doubt yourself. Things have been going too well lately, and in my own experience, when things are going to well, it only means that it’ll get worse soon.”

“You’re forgetting where you are,” Daniel said kindly. “You’re not living alone out there anymore. We are a family. We look out for each other.”

“I don’t know,” I said quietly. “Perhaps it’s because you’re all used to this, and that I’m very new, but I look at this, at the Fair and the way it functions, and quite frankly I’m scared because it evokes dark things.”

“How can a Fair evoke dark things?” Daniel asked, a slight irritation in his voice.

I sighed. How could assembling people who lived on the margins of society in the same heavily guarded place not evoke dark things? “Fine, maybe I am overreacting. What are you going to do now?”

Daniel smiled. “Find Émilie and tell her about Cécile,” he said.

I nodded vaguely, wondering what Émilie was going to make of the news. She would be worried for the girl, mostly. I didn’t think that she would find things as worrying as I did. She would probably agree with Merry in saying that there was no need to overreact and that we would get our explanation in due time. Rufus, on the other hand... Well, I didn’t know what Rufus would make of it, it was still so difficult to know what he thought, sometimes. But I hoped he would take it more seriously than the others.

“Of course, Émilie. Do you need help locating her?” I offered.

“Nah, I know where she is and I know how to get there. I’ll see you later.”

I watched Daniel walk away slowly. I was wondering if he really didn’t need my help, or if he simply wanted to avoid continuing this conversation. Whatever he said, I was worried that the event that had shocked Cécile so much that she was left speechless would wreak havoc here to. I would have liked to discuss it further, but I couldn’t see who would want to talk about it. If Daniel, who was by far the most concerned about politics and repression, was not concerned about it, then I couldn’t see one person who would be.