The Real Carnival de la Lune

“Step right up, step right up! The Carnival de la Lune has arrived–come tonight and see the impossible! You there, in the top hat, buy your ticket now at half price! Madam in the yellow dress? Can I interest you in a ticket to a world of wonder? Perhaps you, little lad, would be interested in our lions? Mighty beasts with–no? Not interested? Well…,” Millie, a young trapeze artist, advertised over the din of the bustling street, crowded with pedestrians, horses, and carriages.

Millie had been the trapeze artist for the Carnival de la Lune for two years now, ever since she had decided to run from home. She hadn’t been ready to get married, and the courting rituals bored her almost as much as piano and tea parties did. So, she’d left in the middle of the night with a train ticket, a suitcase full of clothes, and a love for heights. She’d walked up to the ringmaster after several failed interviews and demanded a place in his circus. He’d been a little taken aback but agreed. Millie was the perfect candidate. Pretty enough to attract the men, rebellious enough to intrigue (and horrify) the ladies, and mystical enough to enchant the children. Not to mention, she flew through the air more gracefully than any bird could ever claim. And Millie, for her part, finally got to live her childhood dream.

All Millie received for her advertisements was a few stern glares. Perhaps if I get higher…Millie thought. Maybe they’d listen then. Without a second thought (Millie wasn’t a fan of those), she grabbed the light pole beside her and hauled herself up, one hand above the other, inch by agonizing inch, before she perched on top of the lamp post. Millie grinned out at the world and saw the Ringmaster, her boss, groaning into his hands down below.

“Get your tickets now! Come see firebreathers who never burn, contortionists who bend like pretzels, strongmen who can lift a dozen carriages, and yours truly soar through the sky!” She called to the shocked street. The show was tonight, and so far, it was looking to be pretty roomy.

A policeman walked up to the base of her pole. “Girl!” he hollered up at her. “Get down from there!”

“One second, Officer!” There was no point in annoying the police, so Millie swung her legs off and gripped the lamp with her hands. A few men gasped, and one lady fainted. Millie bit back a smirk. Swinging her legs left and right, Millie managed to catapult herself onto the pole and slide down. One more lady fainted. The policeman rolled his eyes and walked away, muttering about freaks and those bloody carnivals.

“Was that really necessary, Millie?” The Ringmaster asked out of the corner of his mouth.

Before Millie could respond, a young lady ran up to them with a dazzled expression on her face, dragging behind her a disgruntled gentleman. “That was incredible!” She gushed. “Two tickets, please!” The man beside her sighed and handed the ringmaster a few crumpled bills.

“What exactly is your show about?” the man asked.

“I wouldn’t want to preemptively let the cat out of the bag, good sir, but I promise you it will be astonishing!”

After the couple left, Millie turned to the Ringmaster, grinning. “You were saying?”

“Yeah, yeah. Be useful and help clean the building for tonight, ” the Ringmaster grumbled.

Millie scowled but did as she was told. After being a traveling circus for the last few years, Circus de la Lune had finally bought a crumbling old building with a decent stage, questionable seats, and a large but rather atrocious backstage area–to say nothing of the hellish attic.

Millie threw open the back door and scampered into the backstage space. Katrina, the contortionist, was moving the costumes to a more accessible location. Louis, the strongman, was repairing floorboards. Ace, the firebreather, was rearranging props. Other performers were dusting, sweeping, scrubbing, and performing other dull chores. She headed towards the attic, a wasteland of cobwebs, boxes, and hopefully some excitement.

“Hallo, Millie! Whatcha up to?” Katrina called over to Millie.

“Gonna clean the attic!” Millie responded.

“Don’ let it getcha,” Louis added as he tore up another floorboard.

“Ha, ha,” Millie sniped back.

Ace merely smiled at her and then burped up a small cloud of smoke.

Millie climbed up the rope ladder as fast as a monkey and hopped inside the attic. The sheer amount of lay figures, a wooden mannequin used to demonstrate costumes, and spiderwebs almost made Millie backtrack, but Millie never turned back. Not even when she was fifty feet in the air and the rope was unraveling (that was the first time Millie had fallen from a real height and coincidentally the first time she broke a bone…seven bones). Millie batted the webs away from her face and stumbled around blindly before lighting a lantern.

Millie tossed boxes in the corners and got thoroughly coated in spiderwebs. But, perhaps that was a good thing. Tonight, she would not be Millie Lancaster, runaway girl, but instead she would be Arachne, the woman from the ancient legend who was turned into a spider by the Greek goddess Athena so she could weave forever. Tonight, Millie would weave through the air like a spider dancing across its web, and the thought made Millie so excited that she dropped the carpet bag she was holding onto her foot.

“Oww-www,” Millie groaned, hopping up and down. The carpet bag was old and dusty like everything else in the attic, but its faded cloth had the look of something that used to be beautiful, and something about its rustic look appealed to Millie. It was large enough that she could probably have climbed in. Millie nudged it upright again with her tender foot.

“Ooooh,” she gasped, quietly. The bag’s cloth was made of dozens of clown faces, elephants, red and white tents, and yes, there in the right corner, a trapeze artist. What luck!

Millie decided that this bag had to be hers…if she could open it. There appeared to be a large copper lock holding the bag closed. Something copper glinted and caught her eye. In a small pocket on the side of the back, a copper key lay, waiting to be used. Millie eagerly dug the key out, a sense of anticipation building in her gut. Millie slid the key in the lock and turned it with a small click. She quickly put the key in her pocket.

The bag sprang open and lay at her feet. Aces and spades, Millie thought, staring wide-eyed at the bag.

Inside the bag, there was a vast, black hole. All Millie could see was a ladder that led into the blackness. She looked over her shoulder at the other ladder that led down to the backstage area and then back to the ladder in the bag. This is probably a bad idea, Millie admitted. But running away from home to join a circus hadn’t exactly been Einstein material either. She placed one foot in the bag. She really shouldn’t be doing this; she should finish moving the boxes and prepping for the show. But Millie didn’t do second thoughts, so she slipped into the bag.

As Millie descended, the darkness slowly took shape until Millie leaped off the ladder and stood…in the backstage area.

“What?” Millie asked indignantly about the empty room. “I’m back here?”

However, it did seem odd that there was no one there. Shouldn’t it be crowded with bustling performers trying to clean and practice all at once?

Looking around, Millie realized that wasn't the only thing wrong. The backstage area was spotless beyond Millie’s wildest dreams. The ceilings seemed higher, too, and the walls were somehow covered in intricate gold details that had certainly not been there an hour ago. Lay figures were in various poses and costumes around the room. Just how long had Millie been in the attic?

“Hello?” Millie called out. “Helloooo-ooo?”

Just as Millie was about to run outside (and perhaps to the cafe next door for a tasty pick-me-up) to escape the creepy atmosphere, a voice responded.

“Hello, yourself!” A jolly figure called back.

“Ringmaster?” Millie asked. It did sound like him, but something was off.

“Who else!” Then a man in a red and gold suit slid down from one of the rafters so that he was hanging by his arms.

“Oh!” Millie gasped. “Hold on, Ringmaster! I’ll come get you!”

“Get me? No, no, no, silly!” The Ringmaster said, letting go with one hand and somehow lifting a little in the air. “It’s me that's going to get you!”

Millie was now thoroughly stunned. “H-how are you doing that?”

“This? It's easy!” And then he let go of the rafter and hung in the air, suspended by nothing. Millie gaped at him, and the man, who she was now convinced was not, in fact, the Ringmaster, let out a long giggle. A poltergeist! She’d heard stories before but never really believed them.

“Where am I?”

“Don’t you know? This,” the poltergeist spread his arms out wide, as if revealing the grand space, “is the real Carnival de la Lune!”

The poltergeist dived down towards the floor and hovered a few feet above the ground. “Come see firebreathers who never burn!”

A jet of flame erupted from one of the glitter cannons, and Millie dove onto the floor. An unfortunate lay figure wearing Ace’s costume was consumed in flames, only to stand back up and chase after her.

“A contortionist that bends like a pretzel!”

A lay figure in Katrina’s dazzling purple outfit threw itself at Millie, who barely managed to duck and avoid being clobbered by the strangely twisted mannequin.

“A strongman who can carry a dozen carriages!”

Millie didn’t wait for Louis’s lay figure to emerge and attack her. She leaped onto the closest makeup dresser and then, from there, clambered onto the lantern holder fixed on the wall above it. She felt a sense of Deja vu as she swung her legs and catapulted herself upwards onto a lantern for the second time that day.

“Oh-ho-ho-ho!” The poltergeist cackled behind her. “Don’t forget to see yours truly soar through the sky!”

Millie was about to climb from her lantern to the rafters when the curtains reached out and wrapped her in their fabric.

“Let—go—of—me, you stupid rag!” Millie growled. The curtains let her loose, and she rolled onto a platform above the floor of the Carnival de la Lune’s marvels stage. Millie jabbed her hand in her pocket to make sure the key was still there; it was.

All the spotlights were on her, and she squinted to see hundreds of red velvet seats filled with mannequins all dolled up, ready for a show. Another glance had Millie’s heart beating faster than a hummingbird. The only part of the stage that was not grand was the swing in front of her. The rope was a frayed red, and the pole was rubbed until the shine wore off. Oh, bloody heck, Millie thought. Not this. Please, not this.

A giggle from below.

“Poltergeist!” She bellowed to the wooden audience. “Is this some sort of joke?”

The poltergeist, in his fabulous red cloak, raced up until he was the only spot of color in front of the darkened crowd. “Of course it is! Everything is a joke at the Carnival de la Lune! Now fly, little spider! FLY!”

The thin cables of the wooden platform she had been standing on snapped, and Millie instinctively jumped forward, grabbing the pole of the swing with both hands. It was fortunate that the spiderwebs coating her body were so sticky; otherwise, the sweat on her hands would have made her slip. Slip fifty feet and break seven bones, Millie thought, because she knew this swing and she knew this trick. It had been two years ago on the last night of her first show with the Carnival de la Lune, and she’d wanted to do something new, something bold, something dangerous, to shock the crowd. Well, they’d been shocked all right.

Snap!

Beads of sweat dripped into Millie’s eyes, and she didn’t even need to look up to see what was happening. The red rope was unraveling, strings snapping, and soon she would fall fifty feet.

The poltergeist was dancing a jig on the stage below her, chortling at her predicament. “Uh-oh! The birdie’s gonna fall!”

Take a breath. That was the first thing the Ringmaster, the real one, had told her after she had fallen. She was no longer that scrawny, desperate runaway, happy to do anything her mother wouldn’t approve of. She wasn’t Millicent Lancaster from the nice side of town, trying to evade increasing attempts for her hand with people she did not love. She wasn’t even Millie, a trapeze artist for a failing circus. She was Arachne, a beautiful spider, weaving through the air, and this swing? It was merely her web.

Millie swung her legs back and forth until the swing rose and fell to alarming heights. The air hit her face, and Millie felt the thrill of risk in her gut. Bits of red rope fell to the ground, and the light caught a small copper item as it fell from her shirt. “I’m a spider, dimwit,” she grunted. There was a reason she had chosen to be a spider when the Ringmaster suggested she try something elegant like a swan or perhaps a dove. Spiders didn’t have bones.

Millie let go of the swing just as the ropes unraveled completely. But this time was different! This time, she was in control of the fall, and she managed to grab the bar of the curtain behind her. Scampering on top of the bar, she quickly made her way to the other side and slid down the curtains into the backstage area, aware of the disgruntled wooden audience members standing from their seats and clambering after her as their joints creaked and hissed.

“NO!” The poltergeist screamed, whizzing through the curtains so that he was also backstage. “Stupid, girl! Get back on that swing! Get her,” he called to the mannequins.

“Not girl, spider!” Millie called over her shoulder. She knocked into “Katrina” as she ran, but luckily, the lay figure was stuck in a pretzel-like position.

“Ace” sent a line of flame in her direction, and Millie dodged. A cacophony of squeaks told her that the lay figure audience had gotten past the curtains, and the wicked laughter announced that the poltergeist was shooting her way as well.

Millie could see the ladder on the other side of the room, and she could see the black bottom of the bag on the distant ceiling above her. Unfortunately, “Louis” had also spotted it, and he stood at the base of the ladder wrenching it off the wall. Surrounded on all sides, covered in webs, bruised and battered, Millie had two options: Run or die. Well, Millie didn’t do second thoughts, so she ran.

Dodging a swipe from a passing lay figure and ducking to avoid the chairs and props a hysterical poltergeist was tossing at her, she ran like she had a train ticket in one hand and a dream in the other. Millie vaulted onto a flying chair, sprang off “Louis’s” broad back, and lunged for the ladder–climbing like her life depended on it (which it did), each rung a heartbeat closer to escape.

The poltergeist howled and threw another mirror at the ladder above her, which shattered into a million glittering pieces, taking chunks of the ladder with it. “You can’t leave!” The poltergeist said, outraged. “You're ruining the show! The real show! You're the star!”

“Heck yeah, I am!” Millie taunted before jumping upwards a few feet to the next rung. A thousand scrambling piles of wood were knocking against each other as they climbed onto the ladder, too, but Millie was so close. Her fingers were inches from the top!

“Noooooo!” The poltergeist shrieked.

“Yes!” Millie all but threw herself into the hole and landed in the cobwebby, dusty attic. The circus carpetbag was lying at her feet, its cavernous mouth daring her to climb back in. Millie quickly closed the bag and shoved it into a dusty, dark corner. How long had it been? Had the show started?

Millie climbed down the ladder to the real backstage area and felt her heart rate jump when she didn’t hear anyone. It had been too easy. She hadn’t really escaped.

However, there was a tense quality about the silence. Something was off. Millie walked towards the curtains and peeked through. The Ringmaster was standing at the front of the stage with his back to her, his arms wide. Millie let out a relieved sigh. She was back, and the show was starting.

A hand covered in purple sparkles grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her onto the stage.

“Look what the cat dragged in. Where have you been?” Katrina hissed in her ear. She looked Millie up and down. “Are those cobwebs?”

“Well, I am a spider,” Millie whispered back before turning back to the Ringmaster. The lights were dim, the curtains moldy, the chairs a little questionable, but Millie would take that over the other version any day. Millie placed her hands in her pockets.

“Welcome!” The Ringmaster called to the small crowd in his show voice. “To the Carnival de la Lune!”

Millie froze, not at his words, but at the sudden realization of exactly what the copper object that had fallen from her pocket had been. The Ringmaster always says not to let the cat out of the bag, Millie thought, looking down at the empty pockets turned inside out. But what if it claws its own way out?

She had a feeling that the “real” show would be here very soon.

The end.