The Nightingale Circus

Broken People:

The Nightingale Circus

IOANA VISAN

Copyright
©
2014
Ioana Visan

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s
imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.

Broken People:

The Nightingale Circus

Copyright © 2014 by Ioana Visan

All rights reserved.

Cover Art by Cristina Birtea

http://adorael.deviantart.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal
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person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If
you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not
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and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work
of this author.

First eBook Edition: December 2014

Don’t be shy and come inside!
The
Nightingale
is waiting to take flight!

Welcome to The Nightingale Circus! Listen to
the singer with an enchanting voice. Watch the knife throwers who
are also prosthetic builders. Here is a telecharger on the run and
a ballerina with no lungs. There is a broken pole dancer and an
Asian bot. You’ll be amazed by a regular girl who becomes exquisite
and frightening at the same time.

They’re better known as the famous
Nightingale, the Blade Masters, the Magician, the Swan, the
Firebird, the Rocket Girl, and the Golden Lady.

They are all waiting to tell you their story
about how they came to the circus and why they stayed.

This is a companion short story collection to
Broken People.

The Nightingale

The Blade Masters

The Magician

The Swan

The Firebird

The Rocket Girl

The Golden Lady

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Books by Ioana Visan

Each morning, Cielo faced the new day with
dread. Would they come for her today? Days passed, and the circus
moved to another town, but she never forgot about the danger she
was in, even if she sometimes foolishly dared to hope. After all,
some people still considered her a child, though she had stopped
being one a long time ago. After the first abduction.

She went on with her day, doing the morning
chores, only to become completely occupied in the afternoon when
the fair opened. In the evening, the circus came to life, and she
got to sing and feel powerful for a couple of hours until the
lights went off and the night surrounded her. She didn’t fear the
darkness; she feared the voices echoing in the night when the
entire circus slept. And then, if she were lucky, another day
came.

“Cielo!” Rake’s voice startled her, bringing
her back to the present. “They need you at the candy apple
stand!”

She nodded at the tall knife thrower and
dashed in the direction of the stand. She didn’t mind helping, and
she liked candy apples. Rake probably knew that and had sent her
there on purpose, so she turned and waved back, granting him the
smile he was lacking.

Selling things was easy, though a little mind
numbing. She needed something more demanding to keep her thoughts
occupied. Whenever the line was slow, she studied the faces of
strangers, wondering about their reason for being there. That man
with a straw hat had stared at her too long, hadn’t he? She
couldn’t be sure. Too many times she had panicked in vain. She
wished she could read people’s minds, but that wasn’t a skill
anyone in the circus possessed.

In the evening, Cielo wore her best costume
when she headed to the stage. Wrapped in silk and glitter, she
added an extra edge to her singing, just in case the man from the
line was up to something. The notes sang about peace and
contentment, with enough excitement appropriated for each act she
accompanied. And of course, as always, she increased the audience’s
awe at what they had witnessed and their desire to come back
again.

After she’d earned her keep and the last
visitor left, she retired to the train car she shared with the
dancers. The girls were busy checking their prosthetics the way
they did at the end of each show, and their cheerful chatter
covered the sounds of hammering coming from the other car. Rake and
Spinner worked in the forge on their latest project. Not something
for the circus, a new kind of prosthetic most likely.

She peeked through the shutters, and there
they were. Shadows moved along the railway tracks. She hated the
idea of anyone being hurt because of her, so when no one was
looking, she slipped out of the car. The fresh air surrounded her,
making goose bumps appear on her bare arms. It was one of those
nights…

* * *

Big Dino paced the floor of the deserted
circus arena, one lonely spotlight illuminating his way. The empty
bleachers, partially hidden in the darkness, would have looked
frightening to anyone else but not to him. He’d built this circus
from the ground up, adding more cars to the train as the business
grew and more people joined the crew. He didn’t like to see the
arena empty. The dirty yellow and blue stripes of the tent looked
sad without the vital force of an audience inside.

He grumbled under his breath and let his
massive body flop down on an upturned crate abandoned in the middle
of the floor. He knotted his fingers on his round belly and let out
a sigh. He would have been able to join the hunting party not so
long ago, but it seemed the weight added to his already big frame
was in direct proportion to the expansion of the circus. He had a
lot of things on his mind, and the new cook was
that
good.

The source of his biggest worry entered the
tent, accompanied by Rake and Spinner, who both walked at a
leisurely pace a few steps behind her. The knife throwers, covered
in grime and sweat, towered over the scrawny kid who, except for a
nasty bruise on her forehead, looked untouched. The way her jaw
worked was a clear sign of how furious she was.

“We found her,” Spinner said, stating the
obvious.

Found
, not saved.

“I can see that.” Big Dino nodded and wished
the well-being of the circus didn’t depend so much on their trophy,
but it did.

Pushing the blonde wisps of hair away from
her face with both hands, Cielo thrust her pointed chin up. “I
refuse to live like this any longer.”

And here they went again. One day she would
turn into a beautiful woman, but for now she was a skinny kid, only
joints and bones, dressed in a too big shirt and faded shorts, and
on the verge of a tantrum.

Rake’s chuckle didn’t help improve the
situation.

“You were told not to leave the train,” Big
Dino said in a reasonable voice. “You are safe there, and we can’t
run around chasing after you to protect you.”

“I wasn’t safe the last time.” Cielo held his
gaze without blinking. “No one was.”

“We fixed that glitch,” Spinner said, voiced
subdued and head lowered between his shoulders. It had been his
fault for not taking into consideration that particular scenario.
The security system was new, and they still worked on figuring out
all of its quirks.

Big Dino nodded in his direction.
See?

“They would have hurt people.” A stubborn
crease formed between the girl’s eyebrows. She was too young for
wrinkles.

“We would have gotten to them in time,” Rake
said, and Cielo glared at him. Not too young for holding a
grudge.

“Not good enough,” Cielo said, her small
fists clenching by her sides. “I want this to stop. I can’t keep
killing people.”

So this was what the whole fuss was about.
Big Dino often forgot to think of them as people. They were
wrongdoers who tried to kidnap and enslave a child and deserved
what they got for it. Unfortunately, Cielo didn’t see it that
way.

“We try our best,” he said. “The only way to
be safer than this is to either leave the circus or stop singing.”
Those weren’t reasonable options as far as both of them were
concerned.

“I’m not leaving my home.” Cielo drew a line
on the ground with the tip of a dusted sneaker. “And I won’t give
up singing. Think of something else.”

They stared at each other in a standoff.
There was no alternate solution.

“Erm…” Spinner coughed into his fist. “I
might have an idea.” He winced. “It’s quite extreme but … it will
take care of the problem.”

Big Dino arched an eyebrow, inviting him to
speak further. He liked extreme.

“What’s the catch?” Cielo asked.

“You won’t have to leave the circus, and you
won’t have to quit singing,” Spinner said. “But you will have to
give up everything else.”

Cielo’s nose wrinkled. She needed less than a
second to decide. “What do we have to do?”

But she wasn’t the one in charge, so two
pairs of eyes turned to Big Dino. He took his time, scratching his
chin while avoiding the dark crusts spread over his greenish skin,
long enough for Cielo to become impatient.

“
Let’s do it
!” She stomped her foot on
the floor.

Big Dino narrowed his eyes as he watched
Cielo starting for the exit. Faint, but she had used the voice.
Rake and Spinner were already turning to follow her. This wasn’t
right. They had a strict agreement that she wouldn’t use her voice
on the circus’s employees. At the end of the day, she was still a
kid. He couldn’t stop her since the voice worked on him too, but he
could teach her a lesson.

“No anesthetic this time,” he said.

Rake’s eyes flared wider when he glanced back
over his shoulder, but he didn’t protest. Big Dino was the
boss.

* * *

Strapped to the surgery chair, Cielo
fidgeted, anxious to have the procedure done as soon as possible.
The testing machines covering the wall to her left blinked quietly
while they checked her vital signs. All the readings stayed on the
green scale, but Rake and Spinner still had adjustments to make in
the other room. She studied the prosthetics that hung on the wall
to her right. Left in various stages of completion, more than half
of them were old and barely holding together. They wouldn’t have
passed the current standards, but since they were usable, they were
good enough for people who couldn’t afford the real thing.

Watching Rake and Spinner design prosthetics
from scratch or repair old ones used to be one of Cielo’s favorite
activities. She had stopped coming over once she’d become old
enough to realize that her presence endangered their work. She
didn’t worry about the knife throwers who were always armed and,
thanks to their implants, stronger than the average human, but it
would have been a shame to have the prosthetics stolen or
destroyed. Many people needed them. It made for good, lucrative
work for the circus, a side business that brought a considerable
income, never put in the books.

Although Cielo was one of the few circus
members whose skill didn’t rely on prosthetics and was relatively
healthy, all this was about to change. They had explained the
procedure in great detail—twice, to make sure she understood—and
then Big Dino had tried to talk her out of it. But Cielo was a
stubborn child, and she knew what was right. She accepted the
consequences, including the pain. Anything was better compared to
the constant state of fear that she lived in.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Rake
asked a short while later, securing the last part of the equipment
above the chair, angled towards her right leg. His wide back
completely blocked the light when he towered over her.

Cielo pursed her lips and nodded.

The severe lines of Rake’s face told her he
didn’t approve. It was ironic, because they were used to cutting
and reattaching limbs, but apparently breaking a girl’s leg for no
medical reason was too much for them.

They didn’t understand. Despite living with
the circus since she was four, Cielo had never felt like she was
part of the crew. She held the circus together with her singing,
magnifying the show’s appeal tenfold, but she still didn’t belong.
She wasn’t like them, wired in more parts than they could count.
But now she would be. She would finally fit in.