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By Root 908 0

of me after all those months of moping and mooning, letting the world go dull and blank. I had never been more alone in my whole life. I could die right then, I realized, and no one would know or care. I thought of Mary healing my wounds and putting me on the trapeze, offering me this world that was just as closed to me as everything else, and I sobbed and thrashed over the ground, wearing myself out. I was a freak. Every single person had been right, except Mary, and she had locked herself up in a library, then drowned herself in a river. She didn’t know anything, I thought. I kept remembering my last visit to Mercy Library and the choice I’d made, foolishly, not knowing anything of the world. I imagined the river, the blackness surrounding me, entering my body until the whole world just disappeared, and me with it.

The next thing I knew, I found myself blinking my eyes open and staring up at the sun. I didn’t even remember going to sleep. My eyes ached and watered, and my skin was caked with dried tears. Grassy dirt stuck to my legs and arms. Scenes from the night before flooded through me, filling me with grief and anger. For a few minutes I lay there with the sun pounding over me, keeping my eyes closed. My head throbbed. I imagined myself staying there forever, in that same spot, pressing my cheek against the grass. My heart was just an ache in my chest. There was no point in moving, I thought. No point to anything at all.

Finally, after an hour or so had passed, I sighed and started rubbing the grass from my legs. I reached into my bag, pulling out the first bit of material my hands landed upon, and did my best to clean myself up with the lacy skirt, wiping it over my face and rubbing myself pink. I winced at how sore I was, how much it hurt to move. Suddenly I felt something scrape against my cheek, heard a rip, and I stretched out my arm and stared at the ripped-open hem, the thing inside it. I shifted my skirt and the sun caught hold of it, making it burn so brightly I had to shut my eyes.

The ring, I thought. Mary’s ring.

I pulled the skirt into my lap and crept into the shade, under a tree. My breath was short. I could feel my heart fluttering as I pulled the hem back again and let the colors—every color in the world, it seemed, all packed furiously together—shine out. It was everything beautiful, honed down to the size of a penny.

It hit me then: this was what I needed. To show the ring to Lollie. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner.

I tucked the ring into the pocket of my skirt, and clasped my palm around it. I stood up and gathered my things.

I walked back to the train, rubbing my eyes and blinking against the light. My grief and anger had exhausted me, hollowed me out, and each step felt like twenty. I could already hear the circus music starting up. In the daylight the Ferris wheel seemed a shadow of its nighttime self, but it still glowed with color. I walked straight through the midway, through the tent, and into the backyard of the lot. I knew people were watching me, that I might get kicked out at any moment, but I was too tired to care. I needed to try again, just to know I’d really done it. There was always the factory, I thought. Always other circuses. Always the river.

I moved past the gathered families, the performers all relaxing, sipping coffee, laughing and talking in the grass with bare faces and ordinary, everyday clothes.

I saw Ana sitting on the steps of one of the many Vadala train cars—white horses galloping across them, one after another, so that ten cars strung together seemed like a whole herd—and waved. She sat with another young girl, larger than she was and maybe slightly older, who otherwise could have been her twin.

“Hello!” she screamed, waving at me. Right away I saw her turn to the larger girl and start talking, pointing.

I saw the flying woman on the side of Lollie’s train car and was lit with a new sense of purpose. I walked even more quickly. More and more people turned to watch as I walked by; there must have been something in my face, I thought, something