Nicoleta has a knack—a compulsion, really—for saying the wrong thing. This is the Festival’s first night in Frice, a city-state known—like many others—for its strict religious leaders and disapproval of the Gomorrah lifestyle. Three years ago, a minor rebellion in the Vurundi kingdom ousted the Frician merchants from power there. Despite quickly reclaiming its tyrannous governorships, and despite Gomorrah’s utter lack of involvement, Frice decided to restrict the Festival’s traveling in this region. I can’t have Nicoleta scaring away our few visitors by reminding them that their city officials disapprove of them being here, even at an attraction as innocent as a freak show.
“For those of you with weaker constitutions, I suggest you exit before our opening act,” Nicoleta says. Her tone rises and falls at the proper moments. The theatrics of her performance in our show are the opposite of Nicoleta’s role in our family, which Unu and Du have dubbed “stick in the bum.” Every night, she manages to transform—or, better put, improve—her entire demeanor for the sake of the show, since her own abilities are too unreliable to deserve an act. Some days, she can pull our caravans better than our two horses combined. Others, she needs Tree to open our jars of lychee preserves.
“The sights you are about to witness are shocking, even monstrous,” she continues. A young boy in the front row clings to his mother, pulling at her puffed, apricot sleeves. “Children, cover your eyes. Parents, beware. Because the show is about to begin.”
While the audience leans forward in their seats, I prepare for the upcoming act by picturing the Strings, as I call them. I have almost two hundred Strings, glowing silver, dragging behind me as I walk, like the train of a fraying gown. Only I can see them and, even then, only when I focus. I mentally reach down and pluck out four particular Strings and circle them around my hands until they’re taut. The others remain in a heap on the wooden floor.
“I’d like to introduce you to a man found within the faraway Forest of Ruins,” Nicoleta lies. Backstage, Hawk stops playing the fiddle, and Unu and Du reduce the tempo on their drums. I yank on the Strings to command my puppet.
Thump. Thump.
The audience gasps as the Human Tree stomps onto the stage. His skin is made entirely of bark, and his midsection measures as wide as a hundred-year-old oak trunk. It’s difficult to make out his facial features in the twisted lumps of wood, except for his sunken, beetle-black eyes and emptiness of expression. Leaves droop from the branches jutting out from his shoulders, adding several feet to his already daunting stature. His fingers curl into splintery twigs as he waves hello.
From backstage, my hand waves, as well. If I don’t control Tree, he’ll scream profanity that will make half these fancy ladies faint. If he works himself into a real tantrum, he’ll tear off the bark on his stomach until blood trickles out like sap.
His act begins, which is mostly him stomping around and grunting, and me yanking this way and that on his Strings to make him do so. I crafted him when I was three years old, before I considered the performance potential of my illusions.
The six other illusions wait with me backstage.
Venera, the boneless acrobat more flexible than a dripping egg yolk, brushes rouge on her painted white cheeks at a vanity. She pouts in the mirror and then pushes aside a strand of dark hair from her face. She’s beautiful, especially in her skintight, black-and-purple-striped suit. Every night, the audience practically drools over her...until they watch her body flatten into a puddle or her arms roll up like a croissant.
Beside her, Crown files the fingernails that grow from his body where hair should be. He keeps the nails on his arms and legs smooth, giving him a scaly look, but he doesn’t touch the ones on his hands and head, which are curled, yellow daggers as long as butcher knives. Though Crown was my second illusion, made ten years ago, he appears to be seventy-five. He always smokes a cigar before his performance so his gentle voice will sound as prickly as his skin.
Hawk plays the fiddle in an almost spiritual concentration while what’s left of a chipmunk—dinner—hangs out of her mouth. Her brown wings are tucked under her fuchsia cape, where they will remain until she unfolds them during her act, screeches and flies over the—usually shrieking—audience. Her talons pluck at the fiddle’s strings at an incomparable speed. Her ultimate goal is to challenge the devil himself to a fiddle contest, and she figures by traveling with the world’s most famous festival of depravity, she’s bound to run into him one day.
Blister, the chubby one-year-old, plays with the beads dangling off of Unu and Du’s drum. Rather than focusing on their rhythm, Unu and Du bicker about something, per usual. Du punches Unu with their shared left arm. Unu hisses an unpleasant word loudly, which Blister then tries out for himself, missing the double s sound and saying something resembling a-owl.
Gill snaps at them all to be quiet and then resumes reading his novel. Even wearing a rusted diver’s helmet full of water, he manages to make out the words on the pages. Bubbles seep from the gills on his cheeks as he sighs. As the loner of our family, he generally prefers the quiet company of books to our boisterous, pre-show jitters. He only raises his voice during our games of lucky coins—he holds the family record for the most consecutive wins (twenty-one). I suspect he’s been cheating by allowing Hawk, Unu and Du to forfeit games on purpose in exchange for lighter homework assignments.
“Keep an eye on Blister,” I remind the boys. “Those drums are flammable.”
“Tell Unu to stuff a drumstick up his—” Du glances hesitantly at Gill “—backside.”
“That’s your backside, too, dung-brain,” Unu says.
“It’s an expression,” says Du. “I like its sentiment.”
It would hardly be a classic Gomorrah Festival Freak Show if the audience couldn’t hear my brothers tormenting each other backstage.
“I’ll stick it up both your assholes if you don’t shut it,” I say. They pay me no attention; they know I never follow through with my threats.
“A-owl,” Blister says again.
“Language, Sorina,” Gill groans.
“Shit. Sorry,” I reply, but I’m only mildly chagrined. Blister’s been hearing all our foul mouths since the day he came to be.
One by one, they perform their acts: the Boneless Acrobat; the Fingernail Mace; the Half Girl, Half Hawk; the Fire-Breathing Baby; the Two-Headed Boy; and the Trout Man. The audience roars as Hawk screeches and soars over their seats, cheers at each splash of Gill flipping in and out of his tank like a trained dolphin. They are utterly unaware that the “freaks” are actually my illusions, projected for anyone to see.
The only real freak in Gomorrah is me.
“For the finale,” Nicoleta says, as I hurriedly smooth down my shoulder-length black hair, “a mysterious performer who’s been with Gomorrah since her childhood. She’s the Girl Who Sees Without Eyes, and if you remain in your seats, she’ll reveal wonders you can see, hear, smell and even touch.”
I greet the audience as Unu and Du wheel Gill’s massive glass tank offstage. The hem of my black robes swish across the floor, and a hood drapes over all but my violet-painted lips. Count Pomp-di-pomp murmurs to the plump woman beside him, perhaps his wife. Another person Jiafu will need to sneak around during my act.
The room holds its breath as I remove the hood, only to reveal my mask.
“Take
