Ringmaster

I throw myself away from the window and run back to

the kitchen door. The light’s funny, and my head feels funny too, as if it might float right off my shoulders. I hear a roar of pain and anger. It goes on and on and I can’t escape it. Because it’s me. I’m howling and I don’t think I’ll ever stop. I run into the kitchen to grab a knife from the block as Mum and Dad hurry in. I don’t even recognize them. There’s a cloud of grief so thick around them that if I go to them I think I’ll suffocate.

“Cale!”

I turn and run blindly out across the garden and jump over the wall into the fields. Mum and Dad call after me, but their voices are snatched away by the wind and the sound of my pounding feet. This monster has done this to us, and I’m going to find him and make him pay.

I run and run, across the farm and into the neighboring fields toward Red Hill. He might still be there, whoever did this, and it will have been a he. Only men do horrible things like fight wars and beat each other up outside pubs and kick you in the calf when you’re trying to change into your sports kit. Girls don’t do that. Girls are nice, like Mirrie.

At the last stile before Red Hill, I skid to a stop, breathing hard. The path slopes up toward a heavy sky, wooded thickly with bare gray trees. There are police cars up ahead and people in uniforms standing in clusters. He won’t be here, not where they might catch him.

But he could be nearby.

I start to walk around Red Hill, still clutching the knife in my fist. It’s eight inches long, and very sharp and with a point. Cattle have churned up the muddy fields and I slip more than once, but I don’t let go of the knife. I walk and walk, my mind full of the awful pictures that the police have put in my head. I go all the way to the next village and around the back roads. I see some people, but they’re just farmers, and I’d know the monster who killed my sister right away, wouldn’t I?

But I can’t find him. I can’t find him anywhere. He did this to Mirrie, and now he’s gone.

I scream in frustration and throw my knife. It buries itself three inches deep in the trunk of a chestnut tree. I stare at it for a moment, sniffling, and I feel a little better. Blinking away my tears, I go and yank it out of the wood and step back a few paces. I throw the knife again, but it bounces off the trunk. It takes me a few goes to get the spin right, and then it sticks point-first into the wood.

I throw the knife again, walk forward to pull it from the tree trunk, then step back and throw it again. Over and over. For a while I imagine the tree is the man who hurt Mirrie, that I’m hurling the knife at his chest and he’s screaming and begging for mercy. I don’t give it to him. Not one little shred.

I keep throwing, and my mind clears. I don’t think of anything. Just the knife. The throw. The spin. The sight of it sticking out from the tree trunk. It gets dark, but I keep throwing, grateful that I don’t have to think about Mirrie dead and naked in the woods, and that I couldn’t find the man who killed her.

Chapter One

Ryah

Nineteen years later

I know that today is going to be a nightmare as soon as I come downstairs.

There’s an open bottle of whisky on the draining board. Amber liquid spills down the sides and pools on the grubby stainless steel, as if someone just took a messy swig and slammed it down. I freeze, and glance around the kitchen: dirty dishes and frypans in the sink and on the stovetop; muddy boots laying beneath the kitchen table; a chair lying on its side on the floor.

No sign of Dad.

I let out the tight, scared breath I’m holding. I’m okay this second. That might change in an hour, a quarter hour, the next minute, but for this second I’m safe.

I hurry over to the draining board, screw the cap back on the whisky bottle and hide it under the sink. I glance guiltily out the window at the front garden and the road, and then behind me to the door onto the stable yard. Dad didn’t see me. Maybe he won’t remember the bottle. Maybe he’ll drink coffee instead.

I make a pot, hoping the smell will distract him when he comes back inside and that my helpfulness will mean he won’t hit me for being useless and in the way. I turn the hot tap on and feverishly start to unload and scrub the dirty sink. Dad likes to fry bacon and sausages at night while he’s drunk and makes an almighty mess for me to clean up in the morning.

It’s a warm July day, and through the open window I hear talking and laughter. The Jones and Symes kids from the farms up the hill seem to be heading to the bus stop. They’ll board the old village bus and grind up the narrow lanes the fifteen miles to the nearest town. I suppose they’re going shopping, or to the cinema. Normal things teenagers do. I turned seventeen four months ago. This September, I should be starting my final year of school but I haven’t attended in two years. Dad says I’m needed here, especially since my slut of a mother abandoned us. His word, not mine. I watch them longingly through the window. Smiling. Happy. Free.

There’s a deep, angry expletive from out by the stables, and I jump and get back to work. If Dad comes back inside and the kitchen’s not clean he’ll start shouting at me. Or worse. I put a stack of dirty plates into the sudsy water and grimace as several cigarette butts float to the surface.

I’ve got the sink tidy and the table cleared and I’m starting on wiping down the counters when I hear the clip-clop of a horse. At first I ignore it, thinking it’s probably Dad with Lester, his gelding, but the sound gets louder and louder and becomes a clatter. I go to the window and see four horses in the road, hitched to a bright red wagon. Behind it is another wagon, and another wagon. They’re painted in bright colors, some emblazoned with Meriful’s Traveling Circus. There are people sitting up front of each one; tanned, happy people in bright, unusual clothes. A huge, muscular strongman. Slender, ballerina-like girls who probably tread tightropes. Lanky young men who might juggle or tumble.

A huge chasm of longing opens in my chest. The circus appears in the village every year around this time. I want to be with them, going somewhere far from here where people are happy to see you and they applaud you and cheer. Where you can smile and do something that you love, and feel loved.

The circus passes on, disappearing from view. A few minutes later even the sounds of the wagons and horses recede.

I want to go out and ride Dandelion, but I don’t dare with Dad somewhere out by the stables. I end up just staring out the window. I hate that this is my life. I hate that I can’t think of any way to make all this fear and misery end. I’m only ever happy when I’m riding Dandelion and we’re performing some complicated move together. Concentrating on the feel of her bare back beneath my legs. I want to run away with her, but no one will take in a girl with no money and her horse.

A door slams behind me and I drop the dishcloth I’m holding. I quickly bend down to pick it up. There are rapid footsteps behind me, and a hand grasps me viciously by the hair and pulls me up.

“What are you doing just standing there?” Dad roars in my ear, blasting me with the stench of bad breath and stale alcohol.

I gasp and come up on my toes. I know better than to try and twist out of his grip. “I thought I saw a spider. On the window.”