The Girl Who Joined the Circus

Chapter Four

When I whipped around to see to whom the voice belonged, I was surprised to find an old woman standing perhaps five feet from me.

Unlike the other circus people, whose faces I couldn’t see, I clearly saw hers. It was the face of a crinkled, old woman. Hunched over and clad in a clashing ensemble of rags, the woman ambled toward me, a wooden cane clutched in her gnarled fingers. Wisps of thin, white hair jutted out from her hood, bouncing wildly with each faltering step she took.

“Have I? Have I lost my mind?” I asked, my voice coming out winded and afraid.

A hairy mole on her chin moved as her puckered lips opened in an unsightly smile, revealing broken, yellow teeth. “Only the glass can answer your questions.”

“The glass?”

The old crone stretched her contorted fingers behind one of the shawls she had for sale and pulled out a clear glass ball, which she held close to her face. It was about the size of her head. She wheezed out a chuckle, peering up at me with one dull brown eye before her bony fingers skittered across the surface of the magical ball like spiders.

“Your mind is not the thing you lost, young lady.”

“I don’t understand.”

Her fingers stiffened as she traced the top of the ball. A circular plume of smoke billowed across the ball’s surface. “Round and round we go—being born, living life, and settling into death. Our spirit follows this circle for eternity, you know?”

Knitting my brows together, I tried to follow her words. “You’re talking about living again, dying, then living again?”

The old woman nodded slowly.

“Well, I… I don’t believe in that. I believe we’re only given one life to live.” The deeper question was: Why was I engaging in a philosophical conversation with an old hag whom I’d never met before? Especially with whatever crisis was going on in my mind at the moment.

“Are you so certain, young lady?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. Despite her ragged appearance, her boldness and confidence were spooking me.

I didn’t know how to respond. Whatever she was going on about—it sounded insane, like a fortune teller’s gibberish in order to coax coins from someone’s purse. That wasn’t how life worked—that wasn’t how death worked—yet I found a small part of me hoping it might be otherwise. If we actually recycled our souls, maybe we never truly died. Maybe the ground wasn’t our true resting place.

“You seem to know them, just as they know you?” she continued.

“Who?” I asked but I already knew—Laurent and even Rex. Though he’d been gruff and mean, there was still something decidedly familiar about him. Just as it had been with Laurent.

“Walk the circle, Miss Bindi,” the old crone wheezed. “Ask everything you’ve asked before. You never know when an answer might change.”

“How do you know my name?” I demanded as my heart started speeding up, double time. The woman only smiled at me and her expression was knowing. Had she gotten my name from her crystal ball? Or maybe she’d somehow overheard someone else saying it?

My thoughts were spinning in circles once more as I tried to figure out this game she was playing. Nothing made sense—not the shift in time, the location of the tent, the blank canvas of the people’s faces, this old woman...

Where was Amelia when I needed her most?

Panic rose in my chest again.

“I know things, young lady. I know all things.”

“I don’t… I don’t understand,” I said as the tears broke free and I gulped audibly.

My tears didn’t seem to phase the woman. “I have some advice for you.”

“Advice?”

She nodded. “Yes and… it would behoove you to heed the advice I offer.”

I gripped my upper arms, fighting the urge to turn and run. She was scary—there was just something about her, about that strange omniscience that was haunting. She might have just been a crazy, old woman, but even if she were, her conviction in the veracity of her gift was downright eerie.

“Three words of advice for you. Trust no one.”

What on earth was she talking about? Trust no one? What did that mean? At this point, I couldn’t even trust myself—my mind was already playing tricks on me and even as the thought crossed my mind, I began to wonder if this old woman was just another hallucination, another example of the strangeness being painted by my mind.