Read Online Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 22 by Kelly Link Gavin J. Grant - Free Book Online

inside a blooming flower of jet, gently floating towards the bottom of the ocean. The camera could feel a single, mute dot of oblivion tugging at him from his very center. He serenely folded in towards it, his thoughts quiet and empty.
    —
    Quiet, quiet, hush my child. All flash andno sound is that thick and heavy cloud of a summer storm, shot through with continuous and unceasing bolts of light. See as it slips away, slips across that ever-darkening, vertical horizon.
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Escape
    Cara Spindler
    Later reports: strolling in downtown St. Paul; once at a winter logging camp up by St. Croix; three years ago on a Sunday afternoon on the arm of a girl who looked like May Jenkins's niece, do you remember her, from over by Duluth; heard tell that he was caught up in a mine explosion out Mohawk way, but really no one, no one could confirm that wavy brown hair, the half-dimple was ever seen again, that whoop of a laugh was really his, that the singed gilt fan in my Great-Aunt Vivian's attic really was the one that had been found in the cannon barrel.
    The end: The crowd stares upward, shocked. Popcorn and roasted peanuts forgotten in palms, mouths slightly open like front doors of abandoned farm houses. Archie has taken flight. Through the star-shaped puncture in the canvas, night's candles glitter in the inky black.
    Five minutes before: A red flash, the ringleader. “Any volunteers?"
    And Archie, who everyone knows is drunk, although not everyone, not yet, thinks just like his dad, just like his uncles, just like his kid brother , because he is a nice kid, Archie stumbles from his third row bench, stomping accidentally and firmly on the parson's new wife's delicate white boot. How would you expect a young man to act when his fiancée had recently and publicly broken their engagement; everyone in town had seen or at least claimed to have seen Philomena throwing his sapphire ring into the road from a moving carriage. These are the thoughts rippling through the crowd, that and their own little thoughts: is she really going to the outhouse or is she sneaking off again with that Judas?; mothers wiping sticky hands and worrying about tomorrow's wash; children fingering the coins left in their pocket and counting off how many more cotton candies, how many throws into the goldfish bowl; while the old men figure next week's grocery money and wonder how much it would take to get into that side show tent with the pretty dancing girl with the Egyptian make-up on her eyes, and Archie pushes his way into the sawdust and lights.
    "I don't believe man can fly!” Archie proclaims, his eyes bright under the gaslights, and crawls into the cannon.
    Ten minutes before: The animals are returned to their menageries, their metal-barred crates, where for a nickel the crowds have been filing past the dozen cages for three days and nights. The families, city-clothed or barefoot, hold hands and peer into the boxes, shading their eyes from the hard sunlight, mostly quiet but for occasional outbursts, like at the size of the elephant's dung pile. At night, drunken groups of men and boys clump in front of the crates and dare each other to dangle soup bones. Reverent silence is found only in the first moments of the Persian girl's tent, or someone's first sip from a flask behind canvas walls. Tonight, the animals crouch in their corners, waiting for the loud laughter that does not come, tonight, blinking in the yellow lights that do not go off. The Asian elephant, unloved by her trainer who she will ultimately stomp to death in front of a screaming and terrified crowd, years from now, is leaning her forehead against the bars; an Amazonian jaguar crouches, still petrified by the wet eyes, wishing only for green; two camels from the Bible-lands contentedly munch oats; a sad fat bear who is not dancing, too old, hears the familiar sound and salivates for day-old pastries; green and red parrots, to the delight of no one, swear clearly and