Le Cirque

Chapter One

  The story of Shar Magdelena is one that not many will hear. Of those who do, none will remember half of it. They will grow old, craft their own story, and perhaps, at some point, remember some trivial piece of this, but will ultimately forget. This is her story, though, and a quick deterence from reality.

  Shar’s story begins at the age of six, living in our world. Before that time, not even she could be expected to remember. Sometimes, waking in the middle of the night, she thought she could remember an apple tree, shriveled with age. She wanted to think that she had laid beneath it and peered at the sun through the leaves. But that might have just been wishful thinking.

   The first concrete memory she had was the day she first saw her captor. Shar was running through streets full of multicolored carts, weaving through prongs of tourists. As she ran, a man caught her eye. He was wearing a yellow tuxedo and wild curly brown hair peeked from under his tall hat. And his eyes.

  They were orange.

  Not a shade that could be passed off as natural. They were bright, almost florescent orange. As she stared at him, the man smiled, showing a few too many stark white teeth. She continued to run, on to some destination she couldn’t remember later, but his eyes stuck with her.

  Six months later, Shar's story truly started. It was the next time she saw the man. She was walking the streets late at night. She was homeless, that she remembered vaguely, but she never felt unsafe. Such blithe, ignorant innocence. That night, the man with the orange eyes appeared again. As she turned a corner, he stood underneath a streetlamp, watching her with those strange, luminescent eyes. She stared back, somehow too curious to be afraid. He walked closer, taking in her appearance. Dark hair and skin, blue eyes, and ragged, dirty clothing hanging off her skinny frame, she looked unremarkable and poor. “Where are your parents, child?” he asked. “I don’t know,” she replied with a small frown. “Do you want to live somewhere else?” he asked. Shar frowned. She liked it here, but then again, the man looked rich, so maybe he’d take her to live in a castle. She shrugged. “I guess,” she replied, trying not to sound curious. The man flashed another too big smile. “Good, then all you have to do is sign this, and I’ll take you to live at a circus. Shar was intrigued. She didn’t know what a circus was, but from the way his eyes crackled at the mention of it, it must have been a nice place. She eagerly grasped the paper and made a random scribble. Shar had no clue how to write.

  Bringing up a small knife, he grabbed Shar’s head. Without a pause, he stabbed her eye. Screaming in pain, she tried to run, but he kept his hold on her head, and Shar was only six. Blood poured from her eye, and he frowned in distaste as it covered his clothing. Grabbing a key out of his pocket, he shoved it into midair and… a door opened.

  Shar screamed as he shoved her in, but went silent with awe as her eye immediately cleared. New colors, ones that defied the visible spectrum, danced through her vision. Strange, looming creatures came and went around her. Shar reached out and touched the coat on a woman inhumanly tall, but the woman reared back and screamed. The words were in a foreign tongue, the sounds were more like that of a dolphin then a human, but Shar found that she somehow understood parts of it. The man in the coat reached out and grabbed her. “Never touch anything without my permission,” he hissed, and she nodded, more than a bit afraid of the man’s violent moods. He began to talk to the woman in yet another strange language, completely different than hers, but they both understood perfectly, and a few words could even be understood by Shar. It wasn’t like English, which she memorized until it came almost naturally. The words felt different, felt right, and she couldn’t imagine them meaning anything different. The man pulled her along until they reached a platform. A Long, skinny, armored vehicle pulled up. It somewhat resembled a train, but it was floating on water. It was made of many overlapping steel plates that wriggled and twisted like a centipede as it moved along the curving track. Shar openly stared. The man laughed and pulled her into it, where she found a small enclosed room with a bench in the center as its only furnishing.  He sat down and motioned next to him. “The ride will take three days, but you don’t have to worry about hunger on here. On the way, I’ll tell you everything I can. First off, I’m sorry about your eye, but I think you’ll find the replacement is much better.” Shar reluctantly nodded as she sat down. It was true, the new eye was much better to look out. All around, she felt great, but she didn’t particularly want to admit it. “Now, the important thing to remember isn’t that I killed you, it’s why I killed you. I had to-“  but nothing else he said registered.

He had killed her.

Shar was dead.

No, he had to be lying! She could never be dead if she felt so alive. Every pore, every cell in her felt alive here. And yet, as she raised her hand, she was met with something altogether ghastly.

A subtle glow.

It was hardly visible, but it was there, emanating from her whitened, outstretched fingers. The man sighed and pulled a small mirror out of his pocket. He handed it to Shar, and she winced as his skin touched hers. It was very hot, and she was surprised it didn’t singe her hand. Clutching the ivory handle, she looked into her reflection and gasped.

This girl, with her eerie white skin (it was definitely glowing) and bright pink hair, this girl was not her. This girl looked like some kind of Halloween caricature, like the kids at the peer who dressed all in black, rimmed their eyes with black makeup, and cursed at everyone loudly. She could have wrapped her head around it, had it not been for her eyes. The right one was her normal blue, but the left one, the eye that got stabbed, was the exact same shade of orange as the man’s. She looked… well, like a ghost, but that wasn’t possible. If there was one thing the world had already imprinted on her, it was that you only got one chance. You took it and ran as fast as you could. Anyone older then her would have broken down right there. A man she had met an hour ago was shattering her reality. It wouldn’t have been surprising or uncommon if she had broken down and gone insane right then and there, but  Shar was six years old. Reality hadn’t quite been ingrained into her. So she somehow managed to believe him. The evidence was all right there in front of her. The man took back the mirror and sat back down, Shar at his heels. “The first thing you need to know is that anything you learned before right now is as good as gone. You signed a contract, and it bound it to your new work. It is your life. I might come and go, but your job goes before any other will,” he paused, and an unreadable expression crossed his face. “The work is something you will grow to love. Don’t ever try to leave it. That eye,” he pointed to her left eye, the orange one, “makes you part of this world. And if you ever leave it,” he grimaced and shook his head. “Just don’t.”

“To succeed here, you have to work hard. We are a traveling circus. We go from world to world, put on a show, and everyone comes to watch. Whatever madame chooses for your trade, accept it and work. Your new… err… appearance, I suppose, is to make sure you match everyone else, because very few of the other workers started human.” He paused and looked at her, making sure she understood. She did, at least partly, so he continued. “Call me Hale. I’m the ringmaster from the greatest place you could ever hope to be. Le cirque des âmes” 

And so came another begining. A new story was unfolding in this strange, distant world. Shar was introduced to the place that would ultimately both create and destroy her. The Circus of Souls.