Chapter 83: Perfected Beast
“They didn’t use the trick ropes,” Tulland moaned as he watched the traveling carnival do its best job. The carnival that made the circuit between Tulland’s island, the mainland, and every other island on the way had missed the last year, victim of storms that had kept the entire island on half-rations of anything but fish for months. That meant that eight-year-old Tulland was, for the first time, finding himself a critic of what once had been a non-stop parade of wonders rolling past his young eyes. “Did they forget how?”
“Of course not, Tulland.” His uncle had patted his shoulder. “You don’t like what they are doing now?”
“It’s fine.” The carnival man was vaulting obstacles on the floor, sliding in the dirt under various large animals, and telling jokes. It wasn’t like it wasn’t fun. But it also wasn’t flying. The trick rope act took the man into the sky, and it was that part of the show that had stuck in Tulland’s mind for the last few years. “I like it. I just want the flying.”
“Hmm,” his uncle said. “Well, I’m sure it will be here. And it might turn out even better than you think. For now, can you guess what he’s going to try and jump next?”
The game of guessing what the man would or wouldn’t do as the next step in the performance held Tulland’s attention just long enough for something he really found interesting on its own to start happening. A man was in the support poles of the tent, near the top of the structure and throwing down clubs to the performer. As they came down from the sky, the man was catching them and effortlessly adding them one by one to a complex juggling pattern, putting the clubs up into the air, passing them around his back, and flipping them over his shoulder in a whirlwind of colorful motion.
Tulland’s breath was caught in his throat as the man, who was visibly at his limits, was thrown just one more club by the man on the roof. Throwing all his clubs high, he got hands on the new item, only to let every single club he had been keeping aloft fall clattering to the ground, juggled no longer.
Tulland didn’t care because it wasn’t a mistake. He gasped as he looked back up from the clubs to find the man was gone, then followed his uncle’s finger to find him once more. He was in the air, flying around the tent, drawing cheers from every soul in his presence. The last club was the trick rope, hooked to whatever manner of ropes, pulleys, and gears behind the scenes that made it do what it did.
“What did I say?” Tulland’s uncle laughed and clapped him on the back. “What do you think? Better, right?”
Tulland couldn’t argue. He was ready for the rope trick. He had been all year. But he wasn’t and couldn’t be ready for being surprised, and that had stripped off every bit of jaded mental preparedness he thought he had.