The Bones of Ruin Read online

  “I don’t know, I think Larry the Lion Tamer is quite talented,” Iris said.

  “If you don’t wow those cretins in the audience—”

  “We’re aware of that,” said Jinn calmly, though his stiff body betrayed his annoyance. “That’s why it might be better use of our time to practice instead of standing here and—”

  “Do you two recognize what these numbers are?” He lifted little brown pieces of paper off his desk but then crumbled them in his hand and let them flutter back down so quickly that Iris couldn’t really see anything.

  “Practicing our arithmetic, are we?” Iris muttered.

  “This”—Coolie pooled more pieces of paper in his hand and dropped them again as if he were showering his desk with confetti—“is all the money I owe to some very, very frightening individuals. All. The money.” He snorted out a derisive laugh. “Lots of money.”

  Jinn leaned in and whispered to Iris, “They came to visit him while you were out buying Granny’s medicine.”

  “Yes! While you were out! Buying food and treats for all!” His voice peaked to a whimsical, operatic point as he spoke and waved his hands as if he were practicing a magic trick for children. Then Coolie slammed his desk. The portraits of his father and grandfather rattled on the wooden wall behind him. Both of those Coolies, Iris imagined, had likely been better at handling their money than the youngest of their line. “They were kind enough to remind me that unless I pay off my debts in the next two days, they’ll take my fingers instead.”

  Stubby as they were. Knowing where they liked to explore, those debt collectors would likely be doing a service to women everywhere.

  “Perhaps gambling isn’t your strong suit.” Iris shrugged. “Perhaps you should… well, quit? Fresh starts never hurt anyone… if they follow the law.”

  The circus proprietor fell silent. Well, Iris didn’t care. She knew the last thing she should be doing in her situation was to be poking the nasty little bear, but the performers and staff were the ones who worked every night only to have Coolie piss their hard efforts away on horses and hookers. They were the ones right now moving the equipment to Astley’s by carriage or practicing in their tents to get ready for the big show. Instead of screeching at them to make their already perfect routines even more perfect, he’d be better off hiring a rather strict accountant—at the very least, one that would hide his money from him.

  Coolie zeroed in on Iris, his coat sleeve sliding across the paper-filled desk. “You know who else visited while you were away?”

  Iris shook her head in exasperation. “Father Christmas?”

  “The press. The London Evening Standard, to be exact.”

  Iris’s heart gave a little quake. After exchanging a quick look with Jinn, she folded her arms across her chest. “So?” she responded in defiance, if only to hide the fears rising in her thoughts. “Isn’t that a good thing? Don’t we want the attention for our performance tonight?”

  Coolie’s ruddy face turned very serious. “They were asking about you.”

  The trailer fell silent again but for Coolie’s alcohol-labored breathing. Jinn shuffled on his feet and looked sideways at Iris, his eyes asking questions she couldn’t answer.

  “They wanted to know more about the incident this morning.”

  “And?” Iris lifted her head to quash Coolie’s silent accusation. “Like I said, it was all an act. Or do you think I really broke my neck?”

  “A fall from that height isn’t exactly one a lady just walks away from.” Coolie words were fast and sharp.

  “Oh, please. How many cannons has Richter blown herself out of?” Iris shot back. “And she walks away just fine every time. Why can’t I?”

  “You should be dead.” Coolie sat back in his chair, his fingers drumming against his desk. “You looked dead. He thought you were dead. Could hear him hollering from the street.”

  Coolie flicked his head at Jinn, who cleared his throat and shuffled again. Her partner seemed reluctant to raise his gaze toward her, but once he finally did, it was Iris who turned away from him, her face slightly flushed, biting her lip. She wasn’t good with moments like these, though hearing her heart beating in her ears was always a nice reminder that she had a working one. It wasn’t as if she were an undead zombie or Frankenstein’s monster, then—some of her many hypotheses about her true nature.

  With an impatient sigh, she gave her neck a squeeze, pressing against the high collar of her blouse. A soft squeeze, of course. It was still a bit sore. “It seems just fine to me.”

  Coolie raised his eyebrow. “You wouldn’t be trying to con a conman, would you?”

  Iris’s free hand flew to her chest. “Have I ever?” Silence. “I’m telling the truth!”

  “I’ve been in the business my whole life. And with the acts I’ve seen and paid, if something seems off to me—”

  “Then it’s probably because you’re a bit too fond of the bottle,” Iris said before she could stop herself. She hadn’t even meant to yell, but the walls of the trailer seemed rather closer than they had before.

  Without taking his eyes off her, Coolie drew out a newspaper from one of his desks. The Evening Standard. “Says here a man exploded with electricity and walked away clean.”

  “You can’t possibly believe that nonsense, can you?” Iris let out a laugh that wasn’t at all as confident as she’d hoped. She looked up at Jinn. “Can you?”

  Jinn didn’t answer. His lips parted but then shut once more indecisively.

  “There’ve been a lot of rumors lately moving around the country. Especially in the city. Strange rumors.” Coolie snatched one of the little slips of paper on his desk and examined it. “Strange happenings, as the papers say. Strange, even for me.”

  At this, Jinn’s expression was unreadable, and yet the Exploding Man headline had clearly caught his attention. He balled his hands into fists but couldn’t take his eyes off the cover story. Finally, letting out a puff of breath, he looked away. There was just no telling what he was thinking.

  Iris had to come up with something fast. “Good. We’ll use it.” Satisfied that she’d gotten Coolie’s attention, she continued. “You know how obsessed some people are with the strange and the supernatural. Honestly, the occultism people practice in these parts behind closed doors would make one wonder why there are any churches here at all except to act as a cover for their base private lives. People are bored, thirsting for entertainment, so we’ll do what we do best: we’ll give it to them.”

  “Give it to them.” Coolie stroked his chin as he examined her like a slab of meat at a butcher’s shop. It made her skin crawl. It sounded like Coolie was getting an idea. But the sly smile splitting his face felt more like a warning—that his idea was a dangerous one. A horrid one. The goose bumps on her arms told her the same.

  “Give it… to them,” he repeated, and grinned that evil grin of his. “Yes…”

  Iris gulped. Quietly, secretly, and despite her best efforts to keep everything together, she sensed the situation was unraveling nonetheless. Even as a tightrope-dancing African, she’d never felt so exposed. Her uncanny instincts still mystified her, but she knew well enough to trust them.

  Coolie was not safe to be around—now more than ever. And though she desperately wanted to keep her fears at bay, that was becoming increasingly clear.

  “I’m glad we agree. Come on, Jinn.” She grabbed his slender, muscular arm and turned him around. “Coolie doesn’t need us here. We should practice for tonight.” Jinn stumbled over his feet, his waist smacked by her wicker basket as she pulled him toward the door.

  “My dear Iris.”

  Iris’s hand on the doorknob froze the moment she heard Coolie’s voice.

  “We’ve worked together for a little over ten years,” he told her. “You know me. You should be able to trust me too.”

  Iris let out a silent, bitter scoff as he continued. “You can tell me anything. Anything at all. And I’ll understand.” Coolie paused before de
livering a line that might have felt sincere if she hadn’t worked with him for a little over ten years. “You have nothing to fear.”

  “Good.” Iris turned her head slightly. “Then with that in mind, I have an announcement to make: for no reason in particular other than my terrible pay, this will be my final show for the Coolie Company.”

  “What?”

  Both Jinn and Coolie had said it, but Coolie’s was more like a roar that shook dust from the ceiling and rattled the walls.

  “Well!” Iris’s face perked up. “It feels great to get that off my chest. I’ll see you tonight, then, George! Come on, Jinn, let’s practice.”

  A slammed door separated Coolie’s screaming from Jinn’s confused protests.

  3

  YOU’RE LEAVING THE COMPANY?”

  “I hope these apples aren’t too ripe.” Iris peered into her basket. “Never can tell with those costers and their barrels of fruit. Bet they keep the rotten ones at the top.”

  Iris tugged Jinn along the crowded grounds and headed for Granny Marlow’s tent. Coolie had tried to follow her, but in his drunken stupor, he’d tripped over his own feet and banged his head on the trailer floor and was now being attended to by one of his assistants. Staff and circus members stomped about, moving stage equipment, carrying water troughs for the animals, and practicing tricks, though the smell of nicotine meant some were on break. Iris looked up from her basket just in time to notice a staff member carrying three metal beams.

  “You’re leaving?” Jinn spat out again as they both, unlike Coolie, skillfully avoided a head injury.

  Barley, one of the clowns, stopped testing his water-squirting flower to stare.

  “Will you lower your voice?” The only time she wanted to be gawked at was during a performance for which she was being handsomely paid.

  Jinn yanked his arm out of her grasp and placed his hand on her forehead. His touch had the unavoidable side effect of stopping her breath, just for a second—though certainly not long enough to kill her and confirm Coolie’s suspicions right there. “You’re feeling sick. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “I’m dying of consumption.” Iris batted his hand away.

  “This morning you snapped your neck, and now suddenly you’re leaving the company?”

  “I didn’t snap anything,” she whispered furiously.

  “I thought you’d died.”

  “You were wrong.”

  “Iris!” Jinn gripped her slender arms. She could feel her veins pulsating beneath his fingers. “Iris,” he repeated quietly, though with just as much intensity. “Tell me what’s going on.” He hesitated. “I’m your partner. You… you can trust me…”

  Partner. Iris couldn’t ignore the thump in her heart. Jinn had barely said one kind word to her during their first few months together. She wasn’t sure when exactly it was that they began to casually speak. To fight. Both felt natural.

  He didn’t know her secrets, nor she his. But their partnership was the one thing that didn’t need elaboration. She knew his body’s rhythms as surely as she knew her own.

  In the ten years she could remember, she’d forged close bonds with so few people. And now, because she couldn’t overlook the anxiety growing in her heart, she’d have to break one of them. Iris hid a smile remembering how Jinn would threaten to drop her whenever she teased him about his leotards. If only she hadn’t revived in front of so many people—in front of Coolie—then maybe she could still stay.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Iris whispered. Even she didn’t fully understand the pull of that vibrant instinct screaming that it was time to move on.

  “But what if I did?” Jinn drew her closer to him. “Tell me and let’s see for ourselves.”

  People were watching them. Iris bit her lip. She felt as if she’d been stripped of her clothes. Jinn’s narrowed eyes betrayed a kind of vulnerability that made Iris blush. This was the most persistent she’d ever seen him.

  Iris pushed him away and took the wicker basket in her hand, squeezing the handle. “If… if it’s our act you’re worried about, I’ll help you modify the choreography before I leave,” she said, continuing through the grounds as the heat rose up to her face. Granny’s tent was a few strides away. Iris could hear her coughing.

  Jinn followed after her. “That isn’t what this is about,” he said. “I—”

  “Egg!” The moment Iris entered Granny Marlow’s tent, she set down the basket on the sewing table and spread her arms wide. The goose waddled to her from the pile of fabrics on the grass. Likely because she smelled of figs, but Iris preferred to think they’d gained a rapport since she rescued him in Paris last year after a fussy magician almost set him on fire in a hat trick gone wrong.

  “Granny!” After picking Egg up, Iris rubbed his fire-blemished white feathers in her arms. “Your food and medicine has arrived!”

  The old woman was hard of hearing with a terrible cough. Though her sight was not as sharp these days, her brown hands worked nimbly as she sat on a faded blue blanket in her gray dress and hemmed one of Iris’s many costumes. She didn’t stop working when Iris came in, but at the sound of Iris’s voice, her dark violet lips stretched her wrinkled skin in delight.

  “What’s that, darling?” Granny Marlow said in a hoarse voice, her tied bonnet betraying strands of coiled gray hair. “You’ve brought something for me?”

  It was Jinn who quietly picked the basket off the table and brought it to the old woman in the center of her tent. Iris always imagined that Granny had been a stunner in her younger days; even more so than those erotic, pearl-colored beauties in Pre-Raphaelite artworks, like the ones Coolie would buy so he could spend hours in his trailer alone with them. Granny had a narrow face, the coal eyes of a deer, and a kind smile—one that always brought peace to Iris’s troubled heart, though looking at it now only drummed up her guilt.

  Jinn glanced over his shoulder to Iris before handing Granny her medicine, almost as if he knew what she was thinking. Leaving the circus meant leaving her, too.

  “It’s your medicine, Granny,” Iris told her in a small voice. “Should last you a month.”

  Granny stopped sewing and took the bottle. “Another one of these,” she said with a frustrated sigh. “They taste like they were excreted from the devil himself.”

  Granny had a way with words. Iris noticed, with a warm feeling, the soft, lovely expression Jinn showed the old woman as he laughed in amusement.

  “Don’t be so fussy.” Iris hugged Egg as he squawked in her arms. “See? Egg agrees.”

  “Only because you won’t let me cook him.” Granny laughed and picked Iris’s costume back up—a bright white-and-yellow number meant to be her Egyptian headpiece, as she was supposed to be a Nubian… and from the Congolian jungle. Coolie didn’t much care about cultural and geographical details, and alas, neither did his audience.

  Granny was far more comfortable with natural ingredients like the ones she’d used for ailments as a child living in Western Africa than with the medicine Iris brought her. Indeed, her roots could still be heard mixed in with the patchwork English accent she’d acquired while working overseas for decades.

  Ibadan, a city sprawling with forests and hills. Every night, Iris would lie on the grass as the old woman told her stories about her childhood—the games she played, the gods she worshipped, the food she ate. The markets, the houses. The military warriors she would sometime see while gathering water at the well.

  Iris was always fascinated by Granny’s stories, especially after she happened across an old issue of a foreign newspaper, Iwe Irohin, years ago. A sooty-faced street boy was demanding a high price, and she paid it after she realized she could read it, even though it was entirely in Yoruba—one of the native languages spoken in the area where Granny grew up. The old woman had one day decided to teach it to Iris, only to discover that although Iris didn’t speak it well, she already understood it. Iwe Irohin. The literal translation was “book telling news,” or “newspaper.” T
hat she already knew the language was the kind of unexplainable oddity that drove her desire to know herself. She’d hoped Granny would provide some clues, but there were things the woman didn’t remember about her own past due to old age.

  “Iris.” Granny held up the headpiece. “Come, dear. Tell me what you think of this. It won’t interfere with your dancing tonight, will it?”

  “Doesn’t seem to matter either way, Agnus.” Sitting on the ground next to her and crossing his legs, Jinn bit into an apple and eyed Iris. “She won’t be needing it for more than one show.”

  Iris scowled at him. It wasn’t his childish challenge that shook her but Granny’s innocence, her obliviousness to the mess Iris found herself in.

  Granny depended a lot on Iris, especially as she aged. The medicine Iris just brought her was a month’s supply, but where would Iris be in a month? What would she be doing? Although she’d decided to leave, she had no plans as to what to do next. Would she ever see Granny again?

  Iris was dependent on her too, for friendship—and for knowledge. She knew in her heart that Granny held the key to unlocking many of her own memories buried deep within her. It was Granny whose essence she’d sensed the day she came to Coolie’s circus, Granny whose soul had felt so familiar… as if Iris had followed it like an unraveled ball of yarn straight to her.

  They even understood the same language. Iris’s senses told her they’d known each other in the past. But Granny couldn’t recall ever meeting her before her circus days. And Iris quickly realized that asking her anything concrete was pointless.

  “I really don’t believe we’ve ever met before,” Granny had told her the day Iris had finally worked up the courage to ask, and immediately afterward, the old woman was overtaken by a fit of coughing and a sudden terrible headache. Iris didn’t want to cause any more.

  Granny knew her now. Cared for her. Spoiled her. And now Iris was leaving her.

  “This headpiece is fine.” Iris set Egg down and let him waddle around the tent. “I can always pin it down to make sure it doesn’t fall off tonight.”