Read Online Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top by Ekaterina Sedia - Free Book Online

door and knock and so I did.
    “Come in, dear sir,” came Kally’s voice from inside, as sweet as honey poured over sadness.
    She sat as she would always sit if she remained in that place: fingers resting lightly on keyboard, skirts arranged around her in a bell of pleats and folds. The gas-lamp lit her face with soft, warm light, flickering shadows across the walls of the carriage.
    I closed the door and took the stool beside her, not daring to say a word until I’d given McKenzie a chance to leave. We sat like that for a while, in silence, me simply staring into her eyes and waiting for the right moment to speak.
    “Kally,” I said eventually, never taking my eyes from hers. “You don’t need to stay here any more. I’ve found a way.”
    A twitch of gears, and a smile appeared on her face. Her eyes glowed with a fresh light: hope , I thought, hope is what I see in her eyes .
    “I knew you could help me,” she said, one hand reaching out to rest on my knee. A hot flush rose through me at her touch. I could not speak, only nod and smile the same grin I’d worn all afternoon. “You, sir, are my knight in shining armour, my Galahad. With your help my Belgian friend’s tasks will be so much shorter, my release so much swifter. Maybe years instead of never. I don’t know how to thank you, sir.”
    I found my voice then, spurred forward by my desire to make her even happier than I’d already made her.
    “No, Kally. It’s so much better than that. You won’t need your Belgian friend anymore. I have something better! The plans for a new engine. A smaller steam-engine that doesn’t need coal. Doesn’t need anything except water and some radium and it will run for decades!”
    She looked at me curiously then, as if this was not at all what she had been expecting. On a woman I would have called that expression “concealed disappointment.” On Kally, it marred the perfection of her features so severely that I sat back, startled and confused, and took a very deep breath.
    “This is a way out for you, Kally,” I said. “I thought . . . I thought it would please you.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said, her hand leaving my knee, voice filling with sorrow. “I do not mean to seem ungrateful. You have done so much for me, and your plans sound wonderful, but I have no money to build an engine. Those plans would only be a false hope to me. To know they exist . . . to not have the means of making them a reality . . . it would be too cruel to me, sir.”
    She had turned again to face the Calliope’s keyboard. Her hands rested lightly on the keys, head downcast, eyes closed. I sat there for a moment in the silence, wondering if McKenzie had turned off her boiler. Not yet , not yet, I thought. Please not yet! I haven’t told you everything yet.
    “Kally?” I said softly. “Kally, are you still there?” I reached out and touched my fingers to her cheek, caressing its contours gently, slowly. I sensed movement beneath the surface, machinery turning, ticking away like the workings of a clock. If she were real I believe she would have been crying.
    “I have money. Enough money to build the engine. Enough money to get you out of here,” I said and her eyes opened. Her head turned to me on well oiled bearings, slowly, and a smile returned to her face.
    “You do?” she asked and I reached into my jacket pocket. I first laid the plans out on the keyboard and placed the bundle of notes atop.
    “I do. I haven’t counted it, but I guess there’s five hundred pounds there. That’s more than enough for someone to build an engine from those plans, Kally.”
    She stared down at the money: more, I was sure, than she had ever seen. It was more than I had ever seen.
    “You must tell me your itinerary,” I said. “I’ll organise an engineer while you’re away. Get things started.”
    Kally laughed, a sound like a tree full of twittering birds.
    “Yes, yes, it’s wonderful,” I said. “By the time you return to Sydney it