The Nightingale Circus (14 page)

“That isn’t my problem,” Uncle Tem said.

“Nor are Miss Aurore’s arms and legs
mine.”

“Still, you came.”

“I did…” Big Dino murmured.

“Why?”

“Because it hasn’t been done before, not at
this level. If done right, it will be a work of art.”

“It is a challenge. So rise up to it. I’ll
pay you as agreed, and you can have the satisfaction of doing
it.”

“You can’t pay me that much, not for a whole
summer.”

“All right … then find a lucrative way to
make more money while you stay here. If it doesn’t break too many
laws, I’ll make sure the municipality doesn’t get in your way.”

“We
could
offer repair services to the
locals. We’ve got a car full of spare parts.” Big Dino’s eyes
narrowed. “Would you let us do that? The new laws don’t encourage
the reuse of second-generation prosthetics.”

“They don’t outright forbid it either … and
if that’s what it takes…” Uncle Tem raised his shoulders.

“We could work with that. Very well. We have
a deal.”

“Anything to get her back to normal.”

Big Dino and Uncle Tem shook hands above
Aurore’s body.

“Oh, speaking about normal,” Big Dino said.
“We don’t have the right materials to give them the look and feel
of normal skin. No matter how hard we try, they won’t look human
enough, not from close. At this point, it would be easier to make
them any other color.”

A long pause fell between the two men.

“Make them golden.”

* * *

They hadn’t let her see them, neither the
arms or the legs. Aurore knew hers were gone because the burning
pain had stopped. They hadn’t let her see the stumps either. The
prosthetics had been attached right away, and they were still
working on them. She followed the progress on the screens that
showed the inner working mechanics as the prosthetics lacked the
cover.

Coming up to mid-thigh, the left leg promised
to be a beauty when finished. She used to have nice legs, but this
was outstanding. If her math was right, she’d gained at least two
centimeters in height. She had already managed to make the joints
work, the knee and the ankle, but wasn’t quite ready to use the
toes. Big Dino had asked her to be patient. They had other things
to figure out first.

There was still no sensation below the right
knee. Something blocked the sensors’ input access to the brain,
despite the scans being clean. They worked on finding an alternate
path via the unaffected nerves. She couldn’t do anything about that
while left by herself. The last time she tried to make her right
leg move, she’d sent half of the installation that kept her
connected to the bed flying and still hadn’t felt a thing. They had
made her stronger than intended.

The hands worked, though, and in between
tweaking sessions, Aurore’s job was to learn how to use them. Fine
motor skills took time to master, but it wasn’t like she had better
things to do with her time. She’d cared little about the piano
lessons abandoned in early childhood, but now she wondered if she
were ever going to be able to play again. So she watched the
screens and moved each finger independently, again and again. If
she pressed too hard, the oval-shaped, never-growing,
never-changing-shape fingernails would embed themselves in the
armrests of her chair where they had already left several sets of
indentations. She didn’t know which would break first if she pushed
them, the nails or the chair.

Sometimes, a random move misfired and pain
shot up her arm, making her scream. No one came running to check on
her. She had to remind herself this wasn’t a hospital with a flock
of nurses waiting at her beck and call. It was a train car parked
at the end of a railway track, and it had soundproofed walls. She
could scream as much as she liked without anyone bothering her. But
even the pain was good if it kept her from thinking about Mom and
Dad. She only wished they had removed the sheet that hid her limbs
from sight, firmly convinced she would be more successful if she
saw what she was doing.

“You’re not doing it right.”

Aurore’s head snapped up and turned in the
direction where the voice had come from. Focused on the activity on
the screens, she hadn’t paid attention to the door.

A skinny little girl, not older than eight
perhaps, stood in the doorway. Green eyes watched her from a tanned
face surrounded by unruly, sandy-blonde hair.

“What are you doing here?” Aurore asked,
recognizing her from the show footage playing in the corner of a
screen. She sang each night, though Aurore had never heard her
voice due to the audio being muted. “Shouldn’t you be on the
stage?”

“I have a sore throat. They’re playing a
recording today. It’s not the same, but it will do.” She walked
into the room and looked at the monitors. “I’m Cielo.”

“Aurore…”

“I know.” Cielo walked around the room,
humming quietly to herself. A sea of calm spread through Aurore’s
veins. “Your family is paying for a new car.”

Aurore hadn’t known that, though she imagined
some kind of payment had to be made. The effort Uncle Tem put into
helping her was hard to ignore, but there were moments when she
still hated him for what they had done to her. Brief moments, like
late at night when she lay alone in bed with only the images on the
screens for company. Aunt Olivia never visited her because she was
scared of clowns, but Aurore forgave her.

“Careful with that—” she said when Cielo
approached a spine prototype resting on a table. She’d witnessed a
lab assistant knocking it over by mistake then cursing for two
whole hours while putting the vertebrae back together.

“Don’t worry,” Cielo said, holding her hands
to herself. “I’ve been here before. I know my way around the
factory.”

Aurore was getting tired of being told not to
worry, but if Cielo broke something, it wouldn’t be her fault. She
could certainly not stop her since she was so numbed from the neck
down she could barely breathe.

“Everyone’s talking about you, you know?”
Cielo turned to face her, her hands clasped behind her back. “They
think you’re very brave.”

Or stupid
. But it was out of her
hands, literally since she didn’t have any. Under the cover, her
fingers twitched as if trying to prove her wrong.

“May I…?” Before finishing the sentence,
Cielo lifted a corner of the sheet and peeked underneath. “Wow.
Where’s the skin?”

“I assume they’ll add it later. Will
you—”

“No. Big Dino said you don’t need to see
this.” Cielo shook her head. “You don’t want to upset Big
Dino.”

“Why? What can he do?” Aurore huffed,
frustrated.

“He can take them away,” Cielo said
matter-of-factly and dropped the sheet. She turned her attention
back to the screens. “Are you doing your exercises?”

“I’m
trying
.” Aurore let out a
strangled laugh. It wasn’t the same as succeeding.

“Show me.”

Aurore arched an eyebrow at the commanding
tone, but amusing her helped kill time, and it
was
exercising. She moved her index then her middle finger. The wrist
of her left hand did a clumsy rotation but failed to make a
fist.

“Hmm. I told you you’re doing it wrong.”

“How so?” Aurore asked.

“You’re trying to move
that
hand.”
Cielo pointed at the screen. “You should be moving that one.” Her
chin turned to the sheet.

“But I need to see what I’m doing,” Aurore
said. “The sensitivity isn’t working that great yet. If I don’t see
them, I can’t be sure they moved at all.”

“Can you see your lungs?”

“No…?”

“And still you’re breathing just fine, even
when you sleep,” Cielo said. “They’re part of you. It’s the same
with the prosthetics. They’ll do what they’re told because that’s
their job. So, forget seeing. Trust that the prosthetics are good
and tell them what to do.”

Aurore rolled her eyes at the lecture but
turned her gaze from the screens. Without putting much hope into
it, she began playing
Fur Elise
.

Soon, Cielo was humming along and only
stopped to say, “You missed a note.”

“It’s been a while,” Aurore said. On the
screen, her fingers tapped on the armrests like a virtuoso. “How
did you know?”

“Music is what I do.”

“No, I meant how did you know it would work
on me?”

“I’ve coached people before.” Cielo shrugged.
“It’s not much different from what I do every day.”

Aurore wanted to ask her what that was, but a
flash of pain made her clench her jaw to prevent the scream from
scaring Cielo.

“Does it hurt?” Cielo asked.

“Some … times,” Aurore said between gritted
teeth.

“Do you want me to sing for you?” Cielo
brought a stool next to her chair.

“I thought your throat hurt.”

“Not that much.” Cielo grinned. “It’s hard to
sing for so many people every night, especially when we stay so
long in one town, but singing for one person … it’s like singing to
myself.”

She sat on the stool, hands folded in her
lap. When she sang, Cielo used no words. The notes coursed through
Aurore’s brain, easing the pain and strengthening her confidence in
herself while she did her exercises.

“Tomorrow, I’ll bring a deck of cards so we
can play,” Cielo said before leaving that night.

Aurore had no idea how that was going to work
out, but for once, she looked forward to the challenge.

* * *

“What is it? I got your message. What
happened?” Uncle Tem rushed into the factory half an hour after a
clown had been sent to deliver a handwritten note.

Aurore pictured Jacko the clown strolling in
his brightly colorful jacket through the corridors of City Hall,
looking for the mayor, but it couldn’t be helped. The circus was
shielded against any type of phone access, and Aurore hadn’t dared
to ask Big Dino for access to his private line. In fact, she had
worked behind his back on this one, and while she was a little
worried, she didn’t regret it. It had to be done. People didn’t let
their friends suffer if they could prevent it, or at least they
shouldn’t.

“I want to go home.” Aurore stepped away from
the monitor where she watched the activity from outside and walked
gracefully across the lacquered floor. Since it was early morning,
her strength wasn’t affected by the use of prosthetics. Uncle Tem
rarely saw her at the end of the day when she could barely move
because of exhaustion.

“They’re still working on a smaller power
source,” Uncle Tem said. “You’re not ready to leave yet.”

“Yes, I am. I can move, and it doesn’t hurt
anymore. I’ll work on it, and in time, I’ll get stronger. The
weight will quit bothering me. It will be fine.”

Uncle Tem’s furrowed eyebrows disagreed.
“Sweetheart, what happened? Why do you want to leave?”

“Because it’s time. These—” Aurore held up
both hands. While inside, she wasn’t wearing any gloves. “—won’t go
away. It’s time for me to stop hiding and face the world.”

She didn’t believe any of it, but these were
all words Uncle Tem needed to hear. It didn’t cost her anything to
say them, and it wouldn’t be the first time she lied. She hadn’t
wanted to lose her arms and legs, she hadn’t wanted the
prosthetics, and she had most definitely hadn’t wanted to live
after her parents’ death. But time had passed, and things had
changed. She needed to stop being selfish.

“Oh, sweetheart … of course, Olivia and I
would be happy to have you home, but…” Uncle Tem rubbed his face,
clearly overwhelmed by the situation. He knew nothing about raising
a child, especially one burdened with the emotional and physical
problems she had. “I don’t know…”

“I’ll go to the stupid party!” Aurore
snapped.

Uncle Tem stared at her, taken aback by her
outburst. Aurore’s sweet sixteen party had never been officially
canceled, but no one in their right mind still expected her to
attend.

“Is this because of last night?” Big Dino’s
voice coming from the corridor startled both of them.

Uncle Tem’s eyes narrowed. “What happened
last night?”

“Nothing to concern you with, Mr. Mayor,” Big
Dino said, eyeing Aurore.

She held her chin up. “It
is
time for
me to go.”

“Yes. It is,” Big Dino said pensively,
stressing every word. “We should have left long ago. But…” He
turned to Uncle Tem. “Just like you wanted her to be perfect, so
did I. This is my best work so far, and it will remain so for quite
some time. Unfortunately, it’s not finished yet. You understand my
reluctance to part ways. However, Miss Aurore is right. It’s time.”
Big Dino’s heavy head lowered as much as his short neck allowed
then it rose back up. “So, to make everyone happy, I will provide
you with a different power source. It’s not portable, not in the
way she needs it, and you won’t find anything like it on the
market, legit or not, so you need to keep it hidden. Can you do
that?”

“If it’s hidden, how does it work then?”
Uncle Tem asked.

“You don’t need to bother yourself with the
mechanics.” Big Dino waved a hand. “It’s foreign technology. All
you need to know is it will power the prosthetics from a distance,
within a hundred-kilometer radius, and it won’t run out of juice,
not in her lifetime.”

Uncle Tem needed a moment to absorb all that
before nodding. “In that case, I know just the place for it.”

“Good. I’ll need a couple of hours to make
the adjustments, but after that, you can go. You can use the time
to finish the payment. It just increased by half.”

Aurore winced but didn’t cower. The memories
of Cielo being abducted in the middle of the night by those thugs
and her sobs when she returned hours later, all because the circus
had stayed in one place for too long and people got greedy, were
too much to bear.