Mechanique by Genevieve Valentine, Kiri Moth

come Stenos and Bird. Stenos carries her sitting on his shoulder like a parrot, her good eye scanning the crowd, or she curls into herself, folded up like a sack of flour, and Stenos carries her tucked into the curve of one arm from one end of the city to the other. Her feet never touch ground.
    Next come the Grimaldi brothers, who flip and twist and cause a commotion among the kids.
    The parade ends with Boss in a painted wood throne on the smallest flatbed truck, which is apple-red and covered with banners proclaiming: C IRCUS T RESAULTI. Big George and Big Tom (their daytime metal arms the length of a normal man’s) are driving; Boss sits in her sequin cape, waving and calling out, “The show begins at sundown!” in that voice that carries over the roofs.
    The trailers wait just outside the city center, on any road that can’t be gated shut. The rest of the crew drives the supply trucks along the back roads and parks outside the city, waiting to set up camp. If the performers walk out of the city limits, the crew starts to unload the tent. If the performers come out running from the city square, they leap into the trailers’ open doors and make a run for it. Boss, in her own truck already, will regroup with them outside gun range.
    This is a habit learned from a close call; this is a rescue they still sometimes need. No matter how much time passes, there are some people who don’t like a crowd made of metal, no matter how much they smile.

23.
    Stenos and Bird practice away from the others. Neither one of them likes closed spaces.
    (Sometimes they practice in the rain rather than go inside the tent, her feet wrapped in canvas strips to give him something to hold on to.)
    He kneels, his hand extended; she steps into his waiting palm. He lifts her with one hand, his fingers tight around the sole of her foot. She stands over his head, looking out over the circus yard, unconcerned. Her balance has always been perfect.
    She did not slip from the trapeze.
    Suddenly she bends in half, her head to her knees; he is almost late in raising his other hand, but he is never too late, and by the time her legs are straight above her in a handstand and she is pressing her hands into his palms, he has found his footing and does not tremble.
    She splits her legs front and back, a line so straight you could rest a table on it. He holds the heels of his hands together and watches her.
    (Sometimes, during practice, she will hold a position as long as she can, as if she can punish him by forcing him to bear her weight until he folds.
    He waits for her. She must know it’s no trouble to him to carry her; she’s made of hollow bone. He can hold her as long as it takes.)
    When she gives in, she shoves her arms apart; his arms follow hers, and in the open space she has created her body plummets toward the ground.
    He braces himself and grips her wrists—not a sound out of him, never a finger out of place—and she jerks to a stop with her legs curled over her back like a shrimp’s tail, her face four inches from the ground.
    She does this often.
    He has never dropped her.
    (She keeps hoping.)
    He leans back, pulling her with him; as she rocks back up she opens her legs around his waist, presses her feet into his spine. Later, he will have two marks below his shoulders, angled out like wings.
    He keeps hold of her right wrist as he wraps his left arm around her to keep her from sinking, his palm splayed over her sternum, his fingers just touching her throat.
    His hand burns through to her bones.

24.
    First, I loved Fatima.
    I’d loved her since the moment she walked out of the workshop when I was just a boy. I worshipped her dark eyes, her brown skin, the way she rolled her feet heel-to-toe as she walked from the workshop to the tent, even though the first days of walking on the pipe-bones were never anything but agony and she must have wanted to faint. She was out to prove everything, and I loved her.
    I was young.
    Fatima never gave me