abc prompts; k+s: circus

[fishie]

The tent was beautiful, in a way; a massive patchwork quilt of patterns and colors, frayed and worn in places. When Kirsten ran her fingers over the seams, she could feel the soft stitches, uneven but snug.

"Will you come inside?"

The lightly accented English was pitchy, childish. Kirsten looked down at the little girl standing just inside the tent's opening. She was dressed in something that would have looked right at home sewn into the tent itself, and adorned with metal that jingled when she moved. Her little ears were pierced three times.

"Fifteen euro," the girl prompted.

Kirsten hesitated, glancing beyond the girl and into the tent, where bodies milled and jewelry jangled, and somewhere, a dog barked. There was something patently 'bad idea' about paying a little girl in a costume to get into a tent full of strangers on the outskirts of the city. Her cellphone had service, but she hadn't told anyone where she'd gotten off to, and she wasn't about to.

('Hey, Dad, hanging out by the villages, you know, near the coast. Who am I with? Some little girl and her circus troupe. Oh, damn, you're breaking up; I can't hear you, sorry....')

So basically, if she disappeared into this tent and never came back out, they'd have to track the GPS on her phone to find her.

Digging in her purse, she produced fifteen euros and deposited the money in the girl's hand, where it was counted meticulously before being tucked into her blouse.

An elderly couple shuffled up beside her, and the little girl smiled a missing-toothed smile at them.

"Five euros each," she declared, and the man smiled kindly back as he handed over the money he'd had ready for her.

"Five?" Kirsten echoed as the couple passed into the tent. "You just charged me fifteen!"

"You can afford it, princesa."

The answer, just as uniquely accented as the little girl's, came from within the tent, and when Kirsten dipped her head to look inside, she saw a tall, lean boy who decidedly hadn't been there before. He was pretty, in an exotic way — dark skin, dark hair, gold bangles chingling quietly around his wrists as he braided the hair of another little girl in a charmingly garish costume. He wasn't wearing a shirt and his feet were bare, but his pants were a patchwork of leather, brown and black and tan.

"There you go, sweetheart," he said, nudging the child away. She reached a hand back to pat his arm and then bolted off, disappearing swiftly into the crowd.

He emerged from the tent into the grey light of the afternoon, then, and Kirsten got a first (breathtaking) glimpse of his face: warm dark eyes lined with black, gold cuffs on both ears. There was something foreign about the angles of his cheekbones and jaw, a shape that said he didn't quite belong in Italy, but she couldn't guess where he might have come from.

Relieved of her post, the girl who had greeted Kirsten darted into the tent.

"She stole my money," Kirsten said, affronted.

The boy snorted. "And I'm sure you don't have another fifteen euros in that purse." When she frowned, he said, "Another thirty, or sixty. I should charge you again."

"No!" She ducked around him, into the tent, and from her post-admission safety, declared, "You can't just charge people more because they look rich."

He didn't turn around to talk to her, which offended her further. "If we charge the rich girls like you fifteen euros and the wealthy businessmen twenty, we can let the kids and the homeless in for free. Should we charge them five euros apiece just so you can keep ten?"

When he put it that way, her face warmed with shame. Fifteen euros was nothing to her, but that old couple might have to stop coming if they had to pay more than ten euros for the two of them.

"Fine," she muttered, and turned away to take in her busy surroundings.

Costumed people rushed to and fro, all jingling away. On one side of the tent, the audience had started to gather, settling into folding chairs and onto pillows and blankets. It was a modest crowd, but the disparity was astonishing: there was the elderly couple she'd seen come in, settled in a pair of chairs pulled close together; a small gathering of children shared a blanket in the front of the group, their older sisters on pillows behind them; a family of three sat on folded sleeping bags, the toddler in his father's lap.

Kirsten approached uncertainly. There was space, but the seats were all taken. Most of them must have brought their own, she realized, and she'd come with nothing but her purse, which she was carrying close in front of her.

"Do you want to sit with us?" asked a sweet Italian voice. Kirsten looked down into the face of the young mother, sitting legs folded beside her husband and son. "We can unfold the blanket a bit."

"Oh, you don't have to," Kirsten began, but the man was already standing (beaming), moving his boy to his hip to help spread the blanket out.

"Sit," he said, and it was settled.

Kirsten sat cross-legged beside the wife, whose name was Carina. She told Kirsten excitedly about her husband's father bringing him to this circus as a child, and how they'd been so happy to learn that it was still here when they'd moved south again. They wanted their boy to see it, too; they would come on his birthday every year.

The old couple, confided the husband, had been coming here since he was a boy. The look he shared with his wife said that he hoped they'd be the same, someday. Kirsten couldn't help but smile.

The crowd didn't grow much more, though a few more small groups filtered in: a handful of teenagers, a young man and his girlfriend, an old woman and her daughter. Kirsten looked on, feeling more and more at ease as she was surrounded by people who seemed nothing but happy to be here, and not at all worried about their purses being stolen.

Just as she was beginning to wiggle her toes to keep her feet from falling asleep, the last of the costumed people disappeared behind the curtains on the other side of the tent, and the murmurs around her died down.

The first to emerge from the curtains was a tall, thin woman, wearing more beads and bangles than clothing. "Thank you for coming tonight," she called, first in Italian, then in English, more heavily accented than the voices Kirsten had heard earlier. "I see new faces, this is good. I hope you will come back."

She moved with a curious grace, the music of her jewelry accompanying her, and as she drew closer to the crowd, she opened her palm to reveal a large, many-petaled orange flower, the color of her outfit. It brought a glow to her bronzed skin.

"This is just a little magic," she said to the children in the front row, and in a flash, she'd covered the flower and was pulling a string of scarves, gold and red and orange and blue, from her hand. The kids crowed and cheered.

When the scarves finally ended, she flicked her wrist and flames roared from one end of the silk string to the other. It became almost an extension of her arm as she danced away, fire spinning and swirling around her, to the tune of the crowd's applause.

Kirsten was impressed, though she was sure there was a trick to it. The impressive part was that the woman made it look so effortless, so artful. Trick or not, it was beautiful.

The dancer whisked the scarves through her fingers and the flames went out, leaving the colorful silk untouched.

It could have been hours that Kirsten sat captivated by the performance — little girls who flipped and cartwheeled and balanced precariously on each other's hands and feet; a girl her own age who commanded a beautiful wolf-dog through rings of fire and charming tricks with only hand gestures; a man who juggled so many wooden hoops, she was sure he'd eventually knock someone out when he missed. A boy somewhat younger than Kirsten, maybe fourteen, settled in the middle of the empty space and gave a tarot reading to one of the older sisters in the crowd, smiling shyly at her all the while.

The boy she'd seen at the entrance emerged eventually, now wearing a belt heavy with small, handsome knives. He scanned the crowd until his eyes stopped on Kirsten.

Her heart leapt into her throat, and she wasn't sure if it was because he was looking at her, or because he was looking at her with more than a dozen knives on his belt.

"A volunteer," he said, cocking an eyebrow. "Come get your money's worth." He was addressing the crowd, ostensibly, but he never took his eyes off her.

"He's looking at you," Carina whispered, all bright white teeth and vicarious excitement. "Go, go, he's so lovely. It's safe, I'm sure it's safe."

Kirsten found her feet, and the boy's eyes did the rest, drawing her across the space to him. She frowned, glanced down at the knives, and he almost smiled. "Don't worry," he said. "I've been doing this since I was nine."

"And how old are you now?" she asked as he took her arm, guiding her to the tall backboard that stood to one side of the tent.

"Eighteen," he said breezily. "Stand still, princesa."

She leaned her head back against the wooden wall and closed her eyes. God help me, I am actually going to die in a gypsy circus tent.

The crowd had gone eerily quiet, the way people did when something terrible was about to happen and they couldn't decide if they wanted it to or not. The hush was so complete that the first thunk of metal in wood — right beside her right hand — made her jump and scream. The children in the crowd screamed, too.

Cracking an eye open, she saw the boy watching her, head cocked and eyes wide amid their liner, as if to say are you kidding? She put a frown on her face and spread her fingers on the board, then closed them again. She didn't want to invite him to chop something off.

She was determined to keep her eyes open this time, but when he raised the next knife, she squeezed them shut. The blade struck on the other side of her, down near her leg. She jumped again, but she didn't scream.

By the fourth one (just past her left shoulder), she managed to open her eyes again, watching as he prepared the fifth. Her heart was racing. If her hands hadn't been pressed back against the wall, they'd have been shaking, no doubt. Her legs certainly were.

But he hadn't hit her yet. The next one didn't hit her, either.

As she watched his face, she began to notice where his eyes moved — a little flicker, hard to follow at first, but when she could, she'd know where the next knife was going.

Knife number nine almost nicked her blouse, and she lowered her head to look at it with a frown. "Do I get my money back if you ruin my shirt?" she asked.

Number ten whistled past her left ear and stuck in the board behind her.

"Didn't you read the waiver you signed?" he asked.

"Don't ruin my shirt." She leaned her head back again and, daringly, spread her fingers. His eyes flicked down to her hands and that almost-smile surfaced again. Raising both hands, he pitched the last two knives at once. She yelped, but stayed stock-still, and a blade thunked into each of the inch-wide spaces between her middle and ring fingers.

The crowd cheered, and the boy took a bow before he came to free her from the cage of knives.

"You didn't hit me," she observed approvingly. He looked up at her from beneath a fringe of black hair.

"Nine years' experience." He tucked knives into his belt as he went. "I didn't ruin your shirt, either."

As he straightened up in front of her, she said, "I guess nine years' experience isn't enough, then?"

He laughed, reaching for the knife beside her head. "I'm a gentleman. If you want me to ruin your shirt, you'll have to stick around after the show." Pulling the blade free, he turned to walk away, slipping it into the back of his belt as he disappeared behind the curtain again.

Kirsten stayed motionless on legs like jelly, a conspicuous heat creeping into her face, until she was sure she wouldn't fall on her way back to her seat.

When she collapsed beside Carina, she received a companionable shoulder-bump and a mischievous look. "What did he say? You're as red as your hair."

"Nothing!" Kirsten pushed her back, caught between exasperation and sharing in the conspiratorial atmosphere. "Nothing your son needs to hear at his tender young age," she revised after a moment.

Carina's husband covered the boy's ears helpfully, drawing an anguished sound from Kirsten and a giggle from his wife.

"He said — ugh. I said something about him not ruining my shirt, and he said if I wanted him to do that, I'd have to stick around after the show." Kirsten could feel herself flushing all over again.

Carina crowed. "You'd better stay! You're only here to vacation, right?"

"Dad's on a business trip," Kirsten said, tugging lightly at the neckline of her blouse. It was unseasonably warm in the tent.

"Make it a trip to remember," Carina said with an impish grin. "Roma boys are good lovers."

"Are they?" her husband cajoled, jostling her lightly.

"I hear they are!" she amended, laughing.

Kirsten shook her head, looking up into the pitch of the tent. She was not losing her virginity to a gypsy boy at a circus, that was for sure. A girl had to have standards.

They were treated to another round of stage magic, this time from a trio of charming young boys, every one of them with deep dimples. Kirsten had nearly forgotten about the boy with the knives by the time he re-emerged.

He came out this time with the dancer they'd seen first, the dog-trainer, the tarot reader and the juggler from earlier. Seeing them all together like that, Kirsten had to guess they were family — they shared a lean, tall look, the same bronzed skin, dark hair and dark eyes and exotic beauty.

The juggler was carrying an armful of wooden hoops, and the wolf-dog followed the girl as they arranged themselves: the dancer and juggler to one side, the knife-thrower and tarot reader across from them, and the girl and her dog opposite the crowd, behind the four others.

The hoops were divided amongst the four of them, two each, and as they worked, Kirsten started to notice the crowd buzzing louder around her. She could make out the old woman behind her, talking to her daughter in slow Italian: "They used to do this with the two of them, the dancer and her brother, and their parents, too. That was when I was a girl."

Suddenly, one of the hoops was set aflame. The noise around her grew even louder as one by one, all eight hoops were lit.

Then the show began.

Between the four of them, they juggled the flaming hoops, back and forth in dizzying criss-crosses, arcing higher and higher in the air, then coming back down again until they were passing between them at waist-level in rapid-fire.

Kirsten wasn't watching the girl in the back anymore; she was hard to see beyond the hoops of flame. She didn't miss the dog, though, when it came hurtling through the center of the action, clearing the hoops in pairs until it was safely on the other side. The audience whooped and cheered.

When the dog's acrobatics had been exhausted, the girl moved around the outside and came up beside the dancer — her mother, Kirsten guessed. In one quick motion, they traded places, the girl slotting herself neatly into the juggling routine. Her mother turned to face the audience, beginning to sway and dance in place.

One of the hoops soared up from the center of the square of flames and came down over her head. It caught on her hip and she swung it, like a hula hoop. By the time it finished one revolution, the flames were out.

She kept it moving around her waist as the second one came down, the third, and all the way to the eighth. Kirsten couldn't imagine how exhausted she must have been by the time the other four crowded around her, taking turns lifting hoops from around her until she was free of them again.

Then she bowed, and the crowd burst into applause. The performance space was soon filled with the children as well, who bowed and curtsied and pranced excitedly.

Kirsten clapped until her hands were sore, when the sound of applause had been replaced with the din of conversation. Some of the audience was packing up to leave, but others lingered, mingling with the performers and the other Roma from backstage, who were furnishing the space with folding tables, food and drink.

Carina seemed reluctant to go, but her son couldn't be kept up too late, so she kissed Kirsten's cheeks and hugged her tightly, leaving her alone in the busy tent again.

She approached one of the tables, peering into a jar that was filled with something fruity and gold-colored. Picking up a cup, she ladled the drink into it and tried a sip. It burned like liquor, but the taste was pleasant, and she kept it with her as she circled the tables, examining their contents. There were two kinds of soup, a basket of fruits and a plate of some kind of spiced caramel in formless lumps.

Weighed down with her purse, three caramels and her refilled drink, Kirsten followed the flow of people behind the curtain, into the 'backstage' where the performers had stayed between acts. There were more curtains back there, affording privacy to small corners of the space. Kirsten could see the silhouette of the dancer behind one of them, lit by a flicker like a candle. She wasn't alone, and Kirsten quickly looked away, wide-eyed.

Maybe the knife-thrower had really meant what he'd said. She found herself looking over her shoulders, like he might be sneaking up on her to destroy her clothes any minute now.

"Lost?"

She jumped, turning to face the tarot card reader from earlier. "No," she said quickly. "Just — um. Just looking around, I guess. Am I allowed to be back here?"

"Sure," he said with a small smile. He was a full foot taller than she was, she realized, now that they were so close. "Come with me."

He turned, leading her deeper into the room, to heavy blue brocade curtain. Sweeping it aside with one arm, he gestured her into the dimly lit interior.

Uncertain again, but a little too tipsy to be properly wary, Kirsten stepped through. A lantern hung overhead, dim, but when the curtain fell closed again, it was enough to light the small space and its occupants.

The knife-throwing boy lounged in a canvas camping chair in the back, holding a cup of his own. She couldn't see what was in it, but she could see the lantern light raking over his lean muscles, and she caught her lip in her teeth.

"You found me," he remarked. "You must really hate that shirt, princesa."

"I didn't find you," she said, belligerent. "That kid — the tarot kid. He brought me here, and I didn't ask him to. By the way."

He laughed and took a drink. "Our destinies must be intertwined."

"My ass."

When he laughed the second time, she decided she liked the sound. There was a wooden box beside the curtain's opening, and she perched there, popping a caramel into her mouth.

"He doesn't do anything without a reason," he said, sitting forward and holding out a hand. She looked blankly at him until his intent caught up with her, and she surrendered a candy.

"Mysterious," she remarked around the chewy mouthful. "So we're soulmates?"

"Probably." He didn't sound like he believed it, or more importantly, like he cared. "Your chauffeur know you're at a gypsy circus?"

"I thought you preferred 'Roma.'"

He shrugged. "I'm reclaiming."

"We didn't bring our chauffeur." She worked her tongue around her molars, trying to dislodge a piece of caramel. "I told my dad I was going out today. Left out the gypsy circus part."

Surveying her, he asked, "So is this some kind of rebellious rich girl thing? Find yourself a dirty foreign boy and have a fling; make your dad track you down and drag you home?"

"You don't look dirty," she said in reply.

"I showered this morning." He raised an eyebrow.

"You have showers in here?" She looked over her shoulder at the curtain.

He was rolling his eyes when she looked back at him. "I have a shower at my house."

She almost said 'you have a house?' but realized just in time the profound stupidity of the question, and tried a different route. "Where do you live?"

He drained the last of his drink and set the cup on the ground. "There's a little village up the coast. It's like a fifteen-minute drive. Yeah," he said, catching her surprised look before she could cover it, "in a car."

It changed her perspective a little, the idea that these people lived in houses and drove cars and probably went to school and had jobs when they weren't in the circus. "Are you guys even real gypsies? I mean, like... what is a real gypsy?"

He waved a hand. "Mom's Spanish, Greek, some other stuff. Her parents were legitimate traveling gypsies; she grew up half-'civilized,'" he paused for effect at the air quotes. "Dad was German, she tells us.

"You're American?"

She nodded. It didn't sound very impressive next to a Spanish-Greek-German mix. "Born in Turin," she offered. "My parents were there on business."

After a minute, she said, "My name's Kirsten."

"Shane," he said, looking up from — what had he been looking at? She glanced down at herself, and when she glanced back up at him, he was looking away entirely. She twisted her mouth briefly, but it morphed into a smug smile before she could stop it.

"You were checking me out," she declared, crossing one leg over the other.

"Fair's fair, princesa."

She debated being embarrassed, but decided against it. "You're not wearing a shirt," she pointed out. "That's not fair."

"I don't have a shirt. Guess you'll have to lose yours."

It appealed to her instantly, as terrible ideas often did. Taking off her shirt in a dark tent with a strange and stupidly attractive gypsy boy was one of the worst she'd had since 'I'm going to chauffeur myself to school' day in seventh grade. But whatever that fruity drink was, she'd had two cups of it, and the repercussions of a bad decision like this one seemed pretty negligible from where she was sitting.

So she stood, to his evident surprise, and pulled her blouse off, hanging it over the cord that held the lantern. Settling back onto the box, she said, "Your turn."

"I'm not taking my pants off," he replied, incredulous and almost laughing again. "Are you drunk?"

"Not yet," she answered decisively. She watched him look at her, not look at her, look at the cup at his feet and then at her heels on the dirt floor. "Fair's fair, right?" she prompted. "Come on, I wouldn't take my shirt off if I didn't want you to look."

With an exasperated sound, he raised his eyes to her, flicking them right past her electric blue bra to her face.

"You really are a gentleman," she marveled, feeling a little flutter in her stomach. "How sweet."

"I should kick your tipsy ass right out of here before you embarrass yourself," he said, but he hadn't moved.

"I'm not having sex with you," she informed him, and then he stood up.

"Let's get you out of here." He reached for her arm, so she stood up as well, bringing them almost face-to-face.

"What, if I won't have sex with you, you're gonna kick me out?"

He exhaled, turning his head away. "I don't want to have sex with you," he articulated, his accent almost disappearing into the meticulous syllables.

Kirsten felt her figurative feathers ruffle. "Well, why the hell not?"

"Because I don't even know you!" He was looking at her again, the low light catching in his dark eyes, and she noticed for the first time how long his lashes were.

"Do you have to know me to kiss me?" she asked. Immediately the fantastic idea showed itself to be a wolf in fantastic idea's clothing. She closed her eyes. "No, don't answer that. Am I drunk?"

"Getting there," Shane confirmed in a tone rising with exasperation. "You wanna go now?"

Opening her eyes again, she offered a wincing look up at him. "You're mad at me."

"I'm not — Jesús Cristo, estás loca. Sit down," he said.

She sat, feeling vaguely chastised, and he disappeared out the curtain, leaving her to contemplate where she'd landed herself: in a tent with no shirt, a strange boy and a caramel candy melting in her fingers. She put that in her mouth. At least there was one thing she could remedy easily.

A large part of her wanted to stand by her decision to lose her shirt. What did she have to be ashamed of? She was attractive, he'd all but invited her... but she wished she hadn't done it, so she stood up and pulled her shirt down, tugging it back on.

As she sat back down, Shane returned, a bowl in his hands. He passed it to her. "It's warm," he warned.

It was almost hot, but she didn't mind. She settled it into her lap and picked up the spoon, using it to stir through the soup. There might have been chicken in it, and there were definitely some kind of beans, some corn and peppers. The smell promised something spicy. She took a tentative taste.

It was spicy and rich, and she was pretty sure that was chicken. She had several spoonfuls before she said, "I thought — you might have been, like... legitimately propositioning me. Back there."

He had the grace to look embarrassed. "That line about your shirt? I thought you'd get shy about it and leave."

"Did you want me to leave?"

"Well, no, I — I just didn't expect you to find me. Didn't expect Teagan to help you find me," he amended.

She swallowed. "I wanna eat this with a ladle."

He laughed, and she smiled. "It's pretty good, isn't it? Teagan's dad makes it."

"Don't tell me what's in it." She raised the bowl to her lips, holding the spoon in place with a finger, and drank some of the broth.

"Sure." He was relaxing again, leaning back in his chair.

"You called me crazy," she said.

He didn't seem fazed. "You speak Spanish?"

"Not really, but a guy named Ricky taught me what 'loca' means," she quipped, and won another laugh from him.

"I guess I should've said estás borracha?"

"Which is what? 'You're hot?'"

"You're drunk," he clarified, rolling his eyes.

"I'm not that drunk," she confessed. "I got carried away." She stirred her soup.

"Forgiven," he said airily. "Easy to get carried away with a hot guy."

"Oh my God, shut up." Now it was her turn to laugh. "You're not that hot." He was that hot, but she didn't think she needed to say so. Instead, she said, "I'm flying back next Saturday."

"Private jet?" he asked dryly.

"First-class," she said with a shrug. "But I was kinda wondering what you look like in normal clothes."

He stole a glance at her before he answered. "How's your dad going to feel about you going on a date with a gypsy boy?"

"Did I say 'date?'" She looked up from her soup.

"I said 'date.'" He held her gaze. "You're leaving next Saturday, right?"

"Right," she said carefully.

"Doesn't leave us much time to waste."

She bit the inside of her lip, searching his eyes from across the tent. Finally, she said, "My dad'll be too busy for the next couple weeks to worry about who I'm dating."

"We'll be over with before he knows it." The words had a rueful note to them, and Kirsten wasn't sure if it was in her ears or his mouth.

Setting her bowl aside on the box, she stood up, ducking around the lantern to come stand in front of him.

"Well," she said, "if we don't have much time to waste, I'll take that kiss now."

"Oh, will you?" He looked up at her, amused, as she leaned her hands on the arms of his chair. "Come and get it, princesa."

She wasted no time.