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Chapter One
Stumbling out of the Dubuque Public Library, I was in a complete daze.
Despite all the push and press of the people on the streets, nothing around me seemed real. The outside world felt so far away, like looking through the wrong end of a dusty telescope. I told myself again and again: “Bindi, this is the real world... nothing else. This is the real world!”
I failed, however, to dispel the sense of distance and disbelief that all but swallowed my optimism.
I barely remembered walking out the library door, or hearing the barely audible but fully alarmed calls of the librarian who had helped me earlier. One minute, I was examining the newspaper and the next, I was suddenly back in the populace at large! No one gave any sign they perceived my distress—they just continued on their merry ways, doing whatever it was they were doing.
Yet I… I didn’t know what to think, what to feel.Distresswasn’t even the right word for what I was feeling. And it all came down tothat newspaper. That one picture... thatimpossiblepicture. I could still see it clearly, could still imagine the exact moment I’d found it in the back pages of the July 3, 1900 issue ofThe Dubuque Star.
Proudly posing for a publicity shot to advertise theCirque du Noirstood... me! And there was no doubt about it this time—the woman in the picture was identical to me. But how could it be me? The photo was taken ten years before I was even born!
Brandeis.
The name ricocheted through my tumultuous thoughts, as though it were an answer in and of itself. Brandeis was the same woman I’d seen in the other posters. The same woman who, in every iteration, looked exactly like me. Right down to my...
My unfinished thought made me look from the image in the newspaper down to my left hand and, more pointedly, at the mark on the top of my left hand. The scar was a souvenir from a bout of chicken pox I’d caught during childhood. My mother, God bless her, had done her best to console me, saying how much it looked like a starburst. I supposed it did...
And it was also the same mark as the starburst on my doppelganger’s left hand. My twin from thirty years ago… That one detail had me mystified and no matter how many times I tried to understand, tried to bridge the pieces together, I couldn’t fathom what might possibly be going on. Yes, there was the common belief that everyone had an identical twin somewhere in the world—someone who looked so similar to oneself that others could mistake one for the other. But identical scars? I’d never heard of such a phenomenon.
If only I’d seen this picture before joining the circus, I might not have pursued such a career and definitely not one with theCirque du Noir.
Brandeis—the name haunted my thoughts, ringing a bell from deep within me—one that seemed familiar somehow, yet that familiarity made little sense. The newspaper listed her surname as ‘Winston’. From what little I could gather about Brandeis, she’d been a horsewoman of great skill, and once the featured star ofCirque du Noir.
But that wasn’t the strangest part. No, in the image, Brandeis was flanked by two men I’d come to know very well in the past several weeks, Laurent Elilchelvan, the ringmaster and his brother, Rex, the office manager and ‘The Incredible, Indestructible Man’. There was a minor discrepancy between Laurent and Rex of 1900 and Laurent and Rex of 1930, however. The two brothers looked exactly the same in the photograph from thirty years ago as they did now. And that brought up a very good question: after three decades of circus life, how could this even be possible? Every answer I came up with ranged from the unthinkable to the disturbing.
The rattle of a rapidly approaching carriage snapped me out of my reverie. Barely escaping the horses pulling it, I managed to step back and out of the way. The carriage swiftly passed me in a rush, and the wind that followed, helped clear my head. Slightly disoriented after being so rudely snatched from my thoughts, I had to admit it was just the prod I needed. Regardless of what I’d seen and read in the library, this was no time to falter in my mission. In fact, remembering how I’d managed to get here, I needed my mental faculties at their sharpest now more than ever.
Letting the crowd swallow me up while walking down the street, I reflected on what my next course of action should be. When I fled the circus, I thought I had this part all figured out. I’d ridden the train until I reached Dubuque and then I’d planned to walk back home, something which was only five or so miles from the train station.
Yet, all the while, pangs of guilt over leaving my friends behind continued to plague me. Whenever my mind drifted to them, I couldn’t help but wonder if some or all of them had to pay dearly for their kindness to me. Of all those I’d left behind, however, losing Amelia hurt the worst.
Amelia had preceded me in her audition for the circus, but by the time I’d arrived, she was gone. Laurent had told me she’d received a telegram alerting her to a family emergency, which puzzled me but I’d naively accepted it as the truth. Eventually, the real truth, the awful, fantastic, terrible truth did emerge. Somehow, Amelia had been turned into a porcelain-faced doll.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t alone in her fate. More members of the circus whose contracts came to an end suffered the same destiny. Tucked away safely in The Dark Room, inside a gypsy caravan next to The Hall of Oddities and The Menagerie, their transfigured bodies filled the myriad shelves. Some of them could still interact with me, but all were forever denied the chance to be human again.
Even worse, several members of the audience that had been invited onstage, later suffered untimely deaths from freak accidents. All it took was a touch from Laurent, Rex or—God forgive me—myself, and a sigil would leave our wrists and suddenly appear on the wrists of the victims. The newspapers reported all these sudden deaths, which always occurred after their brief appearances onstage. Still more puzzling was how some of them wound up in the posters that filled the walls of Laurent’s office and The Dark Room.
Even now, as I pondered this again in the clear light of day, I was surrounded by people that knew nothing of these perils. What did it all mean? Was it possible I was related to Brandeis? Had my parents deliberately forgotten to tell me I was related to her? Did they even know? And how could we have matching scars? All these questions swirled inside my head like a pit of restless vipers. And the thought of snakes reminded me of Valida and her charming boa constrictor, Balthazar. I smiled until I remembered that both of them now sat inertly on a shelf in The Dark Room. As dolls.
As always, my thoughts once more turned to the question of what I could possibly do. Not for the first time did I consider going back to the family farm and forgetting this part of my life ever happened.
Suddenly, I realized my footsteps had taken me back to the train station. Acknowledging that reality, I picked up my pace as I realized this was a mystery I wouldn’t allow to escape me. I had to understand—to get to the bottom of what was happening. And there was only one place to do that.
I had to return toCirque du Noir.
I was walking up to the platform when my steps began to slow, my uncertainty creeping back into my thoughts and slackening my pace. I had no idea where the circus could be right now. I’d barely had the vaguest notion ofCirque du Noir’snext stop before fleeing for what I thought was forever. By now, I’d put many miles between myself and Olathe, Kansas, where I’d spent my last day with the troupe.
And now you want to return? I thought to myself, swallowing hard as I thought about all the reasons I’d escaped. Mainly because I seriously feared becoming a doll myself. Was my porcelain countenance being painted in The Dark Room in anticipation of my possible return? Did I dare risk such a terrible doom?
I truly shouldn’t have let my worries distract me. Maybe then I would have sensed that there was someone behind me before a cold, hard column of steel pressed into the right side of my rib cage. I glanced down at the source: a shiny revolver. I looked over my shoulder at its owner, a man wearing a broad Stetson hat with deep, brown wrinkles in his face. He was scowling at me. Clad in filthy chaps with heavy leather gloves on his hands, he was covered in so much dust from head to toe that even his eyes were bloodshot, ostensibly from the grit.
I opened my mouth to tell him I had nothing valuable—which was true—before I felt another hand grab me by the forearm and twist me away from him. My brief moment of relief instantly evaporated when I saw who this particular hand belonged to.
“There you are,” Rex grumbled, his great bulk hidden by an ill-fitting suit. From his immense height, he looked down at me with an expression that denoted equal parts of anger and relief.
“How dare you!” I yelled at him, outraged to see him here and while doing my best to twist out of his grip, I struggled. Which was ironic since I wasCirque du Noir’sresident contortionist. Regardless, Rex’s iron grasp held me tight, and no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t extricate myself. After a while, the cold, steel barrel of the revolver pressed into my spine once more. When I looked up at Rex, he glared at the other man and the dirty cowboy backed off.
