Mechanique by Genevieve Valentine, Kiri Moth Page A

the time of day. She spent most of her time in the air, practicing under Elena’s sharp eye, and she spent her time on the ground inside the trailer with the others, fighting whatever little battles a group of false siblings have. (The Grimaldis seldom fought that way, but then, they didn’t have to live with Elena.)
    Ying didn’t like Fatima. “Too much like Elena,” she said, whispering—we were unloading the trapezes, and she was at the far end of the long bars.
    “I think she’s beautiful,” I said.
    Ying didn’t like her chances of being overheard, I guess, because she didn’t answer me.
    Fatima came to us in better shape than most. The only scars on her were the small ones Boss makes when she’s putting in new bones: behind the knee, the small of the back, the top of the neck, the wrists. Back at the beginning, I thought Fatima must have had a pretty easy life until she came to us, to be without any scars.
    I was young.
    I was in love with Fatima for years before I got up the nerve to speak with her.
    I waited outside the tent for her to leave practice; Elena walked ahead, and I ran to catch Fatima while she was alone (I would never speak in front of Elena). The words were out of my mouth before I could even greet her.
    “I love you.”
    Fatima looked over her shoulder, lowered her gaze from her full height down, down, down until she met my eyes.
    “I’m sure you do,” she said, and while I was still blinking through her answer she had caught up with Elena and was out of hearing.
    I thought she was being cruel. I found Barbaro and Focoso and nagged them for a real drink until they gave me one, and they toasted me for going above my station.
    “A woman like her,” said Barbaro, “a woman like her . . . ” and when his words gave out he made a low, half-afraid whistle.
    “A man must look to his own kind,” added Focoso, and nodded over at the mens’ trailer, where Ayar and Jonah lived together. “Don’t aim above your head, boy. Water finds its level.”
    It wasn’t the kindest advice I ever got. I only took it because it came with drink, and the advice burned more than the gin.
    Of course, like most unkind advice, it was correct, eventually, somehow.
    I don’t speak much to her now. “Will it hold?” when she’s testing the lock on the trapeze. “Look out, it’s snowing,” when she leaves the tent in winter.
    She’s as beautiful as ever, has hardly aged, but I long ago stopped thinking of her as mine, thank goodness. I see men on the road who do it, and it’s never pretty.
    (“No one is anyone’s,” said Boss, when I told her, but it was a lie, and we both knew it. She had a pair of wings tied up in her workshop that gave her away.)
    Fatima at least believed I loved her, which was more than I deserved.
    I fell in love with Valeria when the knife thrower cut off her hair.
    Something about her unconcern touched me as much as Fatima’s pride had done; when the knife sliced through the ponytail Sarah only blinked and sighed, as if she wasn’t looking forward to growing it back.
    When Boss offered her a job, she changed her name to Valeria. She didn’t get less shy, but she seemed to open her eyes to the world once she was away from the knives and had a fresh name. She painted her short hair with bootblack and wove her lost locks into a thick braid of hair and ribbons that she tied to what was left of her ponytail.
    Boss fashioned Valeria a shoe of brass and copper that fastened at the ankle—it was a pointed foot, so she limped when it was on, but it peeked out from her skirts and she looked like a clockwork coquette. It was a good effect even if, up close, she always smelled faintly of boots.
    Not that I ever minded what she smelled like. She was sweet, and I was young—sixteen, by then, I thought. By then, I was the one with something to prove.
    (I was not sixteen. The circus was making an enemy of time, but I was young, and blind, and all I saw was Valeria’s dark braid swinging