Squirrel was watching as her brother jumped to his death. She waited, rubbing chalk on her hands, breath tense, heart hammering as her toes gripped the beam below her. She had done this hundreds of times, but never lost the nervous tension. Her brother caught her eye, and a moment later, leapt off the ledge. Her brother caught a bar in mid flight that had been doctored up to look like a ship’s rigging, pulling his legs up and swinging out over open space.

Finn was flying through the air with a grin when the bar slipped from its rope, wrenching sideways, causing Finn’s grip to break as he began to sink through the air. He was falling too soon, Squirrel wouldn’t be able to reach him. Squirrel was already pushing off the bar with her feet, propelling herself straight forward and down, her arms stretching to their limits

They met in midair, hands clasped together. Squirrel desperately reached out and caught the bar that had swung forward with her left hand. The muscles of her arms and back pulled tight, and the two of them swung to the other side of the canopy, riding the bar’s return swing.

Her brother twisted, drawing his feet straight up above the two of them, pulling on her arm with muscle-rending force as he tumbled up and away. It was a familiar strain, and Squirrel tightened her shoulders to give him a little extra spring. Finn spun twice through the air, and landed on the platform, presenting a cleverly concealed rapier to an empty auditorium, following the script despite his panting breath and flushed cheeks.

“Hold!” Bellowed a voice from the stands. “The audience has to fear for the safety of the prince. Was he looking at his wire man and giving him a signal? No! Look at the ground, not at her.”

“But the bar broke,” Finn said, his cheeks red.

“I know the bar broke, I’m talking about before!” The ringmaster, Reginald von Gattson shouted as he pointed at Finn. “I knew it, she knew it, The audience will know it!” The two of them watched as their adoptive father slapped his left wrist, his face flush from yelling. “The audience is on your right, Finn! Don’t make eye contact, and signal with your left hand. Get that bar fixed and get back to your places!”

“I’m glad you’re okay,” The ringmaster said, his voice as reticent and sudden as an unwilling cough.

Finn took a deep breath and began climbing the ladder again, returning to his place and retying his bar to the ropes. Squirrel, like her namesake, nimbly hopped over to her starting bar, unconcerned by the height. Her calloused toes once again wrapped around the bar, and she settled into a waiting position, balanced on the thin pole.

Finn met her eyes for a moment, to be sure she was watching, before looking down, bowing his head as if in sorrow.

“Tie that rope tight if you like your spine the way it is.” Squirrel whispered across the gap between them. Finn winced, and clenched his left hand, before diving off the platform.

After the rehearsal, Squirrel approached Reginald. “I hate using some else’s gear. Someone’s going to get killed.” she said, toweling sweat out of her hair. Reginald grunted, nodding as he crossed his arms.

“We have to be out of here in another quarter hour, then it’s someone else’s problem.” Reginald said.

“Your play, It’s a good story but you have to consider our audience,” Reginald said, making a sour face. “If you want to win, make the villain a disfigured commoner who only managed to best the nobility through sheer bumbling luck. If you alienate a single one of them you’re likely to be arrested, or worse. Pandering to the client is basic sense.”

Squirrel nodded, studying the ringmaster as she took the advice in. Reginald’s hair, which had been coal black throughout her childhood, had begun to streak with grey three years ago. Word around the troupe was that he was looking for a successor, and Squirrel intended it to be her.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Reginald asked. “There are easier ways to prove you’ve got what it takes. Less risky ones.”

“Risky?” Squirrel asked, setting down the towel as she followed her foster father out of the massive tent. The sounds and smells of the fairground assaulted her. The low hanging smoke of breakfast hung over the assembled performing troupes. The cold snap in the air muted the usual smell of horse manure, mixed with the exotic aroma of Florence, the elephant housed in a nearby cage. Florence had been nervous on account of the tiger owned by the troupe on the opposite side of the grounds.

“I get nervous any time those in power round up all the people of a certain nation or creed,” Reginald said as he accepted a bowl of soup from Chef, who nodded to him. Squirrel took a wooden bowl from Chef and sat beside Reginald, draining her bowl quickly, enjoying the warmth that traveled down to her stomach, fortifying her against the early morning cold.

“It’s a summons for a grand festival, there’s even a prize for the winner, what’s there to be afraid of?” Squirrel asked, squinting through the morning glare at her mentor.

“It’s a fine excuse isn’t it?” Reginald said, the worry lines in his face deepening. He glanced back up at his daughter. “This festival worries me, so we’re going to appeal to them more than anyone else in this entire camp. We’re going to suck their dicks so hard our teeth pop out.”

Squirrels face wrinkled as she frowned. “That’s disgusting,” she said.

“You know what I mean,” Reginald snapped back. Her father heaved a sigh, his breath disturbing the steam rising from his bowl. “This is an opportunity, it’s true, but it takes a younger man than me to arrange a more fantastic performance than the rest of this rabble.”

“Man?” Squirrel asked, her brow arched.

“A younger girl than me,” Reginald corrected himself. “Now get to work, I’m going to take the morning off.” Reginald stretched his knees out under the table with a hiss of discomfort, the rigid aura of command slipping from his shoulders as he slouched forward, sipping his soup.

Squirrel nodded before standing. The cold air took the last of the morning’s sweat away as she patrolled the camp looking for leaderesque things to do. Squirrel stalked through the tents, stopping to chat here and there, asking about the preparations for the festival. Florence’s handler brushed her off, repeating that everything was alright, but Squirrel resolved to work out a schedule with the troupe on the far side of the fairground, to keep the tiger and elephant as far apart in the rotation as possible.

Squirrel was on her way to the other side of the camp when she spotted Tom and Hardy, their carpenters, happily talking with two men from another troop as they worked on the rigging that they would be performing on in the palace. Squirrel’s brows furrowed as she watched the strangers pass beers to the two men, laughing amiably.

Her feet swerved before he body followed, and Squirrel strode toward the two drunkards with a suitably menacing expression. She came to stand before them, looking down at the piles of polished wood poles, with chalk marks denoting where they would need to be cut to match the dimensions of the stage in the palace.

“How goes it?” Squirrel asked pointedly, her gaze travelling to the pristine wood.

“We were just about to get started, don’t get your panties in a twist,” Tom said, tilting his beer back, taking a long, insolent swig while Hardy chuckled. Furious, Squirrel grabbed the beer and kicked Tom in the stomach, sending him reeling back. The mug of beer jerked, and Squirrel caught the splash in the mug before draining it in one gulp.

“You have absolutely no Idea when we are going to perform, and you’re sitting on your asses here,” Squirrel said, matching their indignant glares with an even more fierce scowl. “I swear to all the gods, if you two weren’t Nadine’s brothers, Reginald would have tossed you out on your backsides. Ages ago.”

Tom stood there silently, the muscles in his jaw and shoulders tense. He looked like he was about to charge her. “We’re not going until most of the way through the festival, we’ve got time.” Hardy chimed in, his voice dismissive.

“Oh,” Squirrel said, her brow raised. “How do you know that?”

“Those fella’s over there-“ Hardy started speaking. Squirrel glanced over her shoulder and found the two men who had been chatting with the carpenter’s moments before had disappeared.

“And you believed them?” Squirrel demanded, interrupting Hardy. She looked between the two brothers and narrowed her eyes. “Get to work, with the assumption that we’ll be up first. The only person who can tell you when we perform is Reginald, got it?”

Hardy nodded, while Tom glared at her silently. Squirrel turned to leave, and saw a wooden plank with charcoal markings beside Hardy’s seat as he rose to get back to work. “Wait,” She said, raising her hand to stop them. She stared down at the charcoal drawing. “What is this?”

“It’s the measurements of the Hall,” Tom said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Did you think we magically knew big our setup should be?”

Squirrel saw the half full mug resting beside the drawing, and looked up at Tom. “Did those measurements come from the men you were talking to as well?”

Tom’s shoulders stiffened. “Well, we didn’t…”

“Go get the measurements yourself!” Squirrel screamed at the two, shaking the charcoal drawing in front of them. “If, on the one in a million chance these are real, I’ll give each of you a gold coin, and you can spend the weekend up to your balls in hookers, but if they aren’t, I’ll have you running laps around the camp chanting ‘I do my own work’, in the nude.” Squirrel looked at the two of them, standing in front of her with pale expressions. “Get the fuck over there!”

The two men jumped, and started running toward the palace, a moment later, Hardy ran back and snatched up a plank of wood to draw on, and a measuring stick. Squirrel watched him run away and sighed, letting the demonic expression fade from her face, rubbing at her cheeks and eyebrows where they had begun to cramp. “What did I do to deserve them?” she asked herself quietly.

The stiff ground crunched under light feet, and Squirrel turned to see Finn standing beside her. “I dunno, they’re fun to have around sometimes,” he said, before lifting the wooden bowl of soup to his lips.

Squirrel squinted, picturing the two dressed in fool’s clothes, set loose on the stage and prodded with farming implements, forcing them to dance. It brought a little sunshine into her life. “They would make excellent fools,” she said, her voice distant, as they fell over each other in her imagination.

“Nah, you know how hard it is to be a good fool,” Finn said, glancing at his adopted sister. “They’d break their necks.”

“Yesss,” Squirrel hissed, shivering in delight at the idea.

Finn rolled his eyes and strode away, yawning. his light step taking him back to his tent. Squirrel shook the visions of the two brothers laying dead from falling improperly from her mind. Taking a steadying breath, she once again began striding toward the troupe on the opposite side of the grounds.

“Let me get this straight,” Randall the Savage said, as he looked down at her. The giant with the curly black hair was the ringmaster of the troupe across the ground that used a tiger in their acts. “you want me to give you my slot in the schedule, because you asked nicely?”

Squirrel looked up at him squarely. “Because your cat is making the other animals nervous,” she said matter-of-factly. “You should go last, out of respect for the other performers. If your cat sprays in that palace, not a single act involving other animals will be able to perform.”

“And how is this my problem?” Randall asked, crossing his arms. Squirrel glanced over at the tiger, who reclined lazily against the iron bars of its cage. A horse being guided past the cat shied away as it yawned, exposing palm-length fangs.

“Because if you don’t, I’ll spread hind blood all over your performers costumes,” Squirrel said, staring at the giant towering above her. “Then we’ll get to see them act skittish when they smell like prey.” Randall lunged forward with a snarl, catching Squirrel by the throat and slamming her against the tent pole.

Squirrel’s vision went white for a moment, and Randall’s voice faded back in through the ringing in her ears. “…Test me little girl, I’ve made people disappear-“ Squirrel decided she’d heard enough, and twisted in his grasp, bracing her spine against the tent pole to deliver an unnaturally strong kick to the giant’s balls. Randall turned red and sank to his knees, his lungs seizing.

“Go last or suffer the consequences,” Squirrel bent down and whispered beside his ear. The giant took a ragged breath, and Squirrel dodged out of the way of a meaty fist.

“Fuck you,” Randall groaned, struggling to stand. He lunged forward, intending to catch her. Squirrel slipped around the tent pole like she was made of water, and the giant slumped against it.

“We’re going first, you hear me!” Randall’s shout followed her as she pranced out of his tent. The other members of his troupe sent her cold looks, and Squirrel hurried back to her own camp, where she found Reginald inspecting a pile of pins, check each for metal fatigue.

Squirrel knew it was an excuse for the old man to rest, but the task was a necessary one, so no one complained when Reginald did the tedious chore. “How’d it go?” Reginald asked, running his thumb over a smooth pin that would hold a support fixture together.

“Randall is dead set on going first, and thinks I’ll sabotage him sometime during the night,” Squirrel said, sitting beside her mentor. “And I spotted a few people trying to give Tom and Hardy the wrong numbers for the palace hall.”

“Good job,” Reginald said, moving to the next pin. “Randall’s going to stay awake all night worrying about it, and be unable to give it his best. Out of spite, he’ll probably encourage the tiger to mark the palace, or somewhere near, to unsettle our Florence.”

“Who we won’t be performing with,” Squirrel continued for him. “Because he’s gotten too old… and fat, and old.”

“I hear you, girl,” Reginald said bitterly. “But don’t get too proud of yourself for foiling one plot. Somebody’s going to get the better of us, in some way or another. You can try to stop it all you want, but it’s going to happen. How you deal with it will determine how qualified you are to do my job.”

“I’ve been doing your job for two years, Reginald Von Gattson,” Squirrel said with a chuckle. “I still like The Great Von Bugler better.”

Reginald shook his head. “Name was getting old with the crowd,” he said with a frown, focused on the next pin. “That being said, have you decided on a stage name yet? How about ‘The Flying squirrel’?”

“Hah,” Squirrel said humorlessly. “I’ll come up with something.” Squirrel shifted in her seat, hesitating a moment before standing to leave.

“I know why you’re pushing yourself to win the competition, girl,” Reginald said, finally meeting Squirrel’s eyes. “You want to know your name. Don’t think I didn’t notice your sudden burst of enthusiasm when the prize was announced. One question from the King’s oracle. I know you didn’t forget about your name, Squirrel. That’s all well and good, but I want you to know, a name is just air. To us, you’re Squirrel, and a different name’s not gonna change anything about you after twelve years.”

Squirrel looked down at the old man, emotions roiling up inside her. “I have to know, Reginald, I can hear my name being called every night in the dream, and when I wake, it disappears like smoke. I’ve had people listen to me while I’ve slept. I learned to read and write, so I could write it as I woke, and yet, every time, it disappears on the tip of my tongue.”

“I’m not saying it’ll be a bad thing,” Reginald said, getting back to work. “I’m saying don’t expect it to change who you are. You don’t need this much drive every day when you become Ringmaster, but I hope you’ll remember how hard you pushed yourself this week when the going gets herd.

Squirrel nodded, and patted Reginald on the shoulder before moving on with her duties. Reginald grunted and followed her with his gaze for a moment before he returned to his already shiny pins.

Squirrel went back to work, managing the troupe as she had seen Reginald do a thousand times before. The members didn’t respond to her the same as they did to him, but she pressed on, keeping everyone on task, and warding off the outside influence of other ringmasters, who each subtly tried to weaken the competition. Squirrel found a band of musicians who had been paid to keep them up that night, and threatened to break their legs, snapping a guitar over her knee for emphasis.

Cook called her over, waving his meaty arms to garner her attention. Cook was a simpleton whose meager talents had been wholly focused on food preparation. When he found himself with a problem he’d never had before, he became lost. That being said, he was honest, and good at his job.

“What is it?” Squirrel asked, coming to stand in front of the fat man. It was a common joke among the troupe that in lean times, Cook’s last meal would be himself. Squirrel felt it was her job to discourage that kind of talk, and more than one troupe member had suffered bruises for disrespecting Cook in front of Squirrel.

“Somm’on shat in the food.” Cook said, sweat running through his short-chopped, greasy hair.

“Just lift it, and a few inches of the grain around it out,” Squirrel said with a frown. “Use a board or something.” Cook opened his mouth, and stood there for a moment, as if his response was on the tip of his tongue. Finally, he closed it and shook his head.

“It’s all mixed in,” Cook said, his voice pitched in a whine. “Can’t even use the barrel no more.” Squirrel gritted her teeth, her jaw aching. Reginald had warned her that something like this would happen, and now was when she started acting like a Ringmaster. It didn’t matter who did it, she needed to fix the problem before identifying the culprit. An idea for that was fermenting in the back of her mind, but for now…

“Here,” Squirrel said, reaching into the pocket inside her leather vest, where she kept currency. Adorning her hip was a small burlap sack filled with rocks with diseased bird shit on them. Ideally, a cutpurse who poured the rocks out on his hand would be wracked with parasites within a month.

Squirrel handed two silver coins to Cook. It was a significant amount, enough to buy food for the small troupe for the weekend. “Take these and go buy a large sack of flour, we can get by until the end of the festival with that.”

Cook took the coins, and turned away, nodding. After a few steps, however, he turned back to squirrel and stopped in front of her with a plaintive look on his face. “Where?” he asked.

Squirrel pursed her lips and thought better of sending Cook to buy food. “Nevermind,” She said, holding out her hand. “I’ll do it.” Cook was not exactly a haggler. Some merchants might be intimidated by his size, but others would see the confusion and naievette in his eyes and send him back with a magic chicken or some such nonsense. Cook dropped the silver coins back into her palm.

“Dump out the barrel and get it clean,” Squirrel said, glancing at the tent where Finn had presumably gone back to sleep. “tell Finn about the shit, and to use the clean barrel to bait people who might have done it.”

Cook nodded, and turned away, and Squirrel found herself hoping that he would at least remember to tell Finn. Cook, to his credit, understood his limitations better than most, and went straight toward Finn’s tent before he forgot.

Squirrel nodded to herself and turned away, heading toward the gate that separated the fair grounds from the main city. Stalls lined the worn path to the gate, where vendors competed tooth and nail to have the booth closest to the entrance. The smell of food and raucous music overloaded her senses, becoming louder and louder as she approached the gate. She saw a few people from her own troupe, tumbling for a few coins in the clearing at the center of the vendors.

Squirrel was watching Leyland and Phantom do handstands on top of each other as she walked, and a hard shove nearly knocked her down. Squirrel danced away, letting some of the force dissipate with a spin. “What the-“ she started to snarl.

“What the fuck does a plebe think he’s doing speaking to my wife!” a voice boomed from across the street. Squirrel’s eyes widened as she spotted a wizard with a lovely young woman standing beside him. Squirrel choked back her shout and created space between herself and the man who was now lying face up in the mud, the wizard’s sole focus.

“It was a misunderstanding, sir!” the man pleaded, groveling before the wizard. It was fair to say that all wizards are nobles, and so the peasant threw himself into the mud on the ground, begging for mercy. “I said she was beautiful and asked if you were her father is all, sire.”

The wizard stroked his white beard, somewhat mollified by the man’s sniveling. “it is true, she is lovely, and I am older, so I suppose you spoke nothing but the truth, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Squirrel shrugged and turned to leave. The man on the street wasn’t a part of her troupe, and she had business to attend to. “However!” the wizard said, holding up a gnarled finger. “I can’t abide by what you were thinking when you approached her.” The wizard glanced at his wife, who blushed and looked downward. “It cannot be uttered in good company.”

Squirrel glanced back as the wizard tilted his ear toward his bride as if straining to listen to something. As far as Squirrel could tell, she had said nothing. “My wife has begged for lenience, to let the punishment fit the crime, as it were,” the wizard said, pointing his finger down at the man who lay tensed in the street.

“For the crime of thinking like a horny dog, you shall become one for…” The wizard glanced up at the sun, just past its zenith. “The next four hours.” With a gesture and an arcane word, the groveling man jumped up and began walking on all fours. The watching crowd watched, stunned.

The wizard held his arm out to his wife, and the two left in peace. A moment later, an unsuspecting woman walked by, her hips swaying in time to the music permeating the festival. She walked unconcernedly through the crowd of people who backed away from the man who even then was sniffing around the mud. The man spotted her, and crawled behind her and began to smell her rear.

Chuckles began emerging from the people around Squirrel, and when the man leapt upon the lass and began humping her leg, they turned into gales of laughter. The young woman shrieked as the mud covered man grinded against her ankle, looking up at her with wide, unthinking eyes. The girl slipped a short iron chain from beneath her skirt, striking the man across the face before running away.

The people around devolved into howls of laughter as the man whimpered, trying to shake the pain away from his face. Squirrel looked around, and her eyes widened. She had never seem a performance so spontaneous achieve such an effect. You gotta do something different, Squirrel. Something nobody’s ever seen before. The words of her mentor echoed in her mind.

She had been handling the simple business of the troupe, backstabbing others, and dealing with it in turn, but in order to win she had to make an act that would be head and shoulders above any other. Squirrel looked the direction the wizard had gone, her eyes narrowing in thought as an idea began to ferment.

Squirrel began to head towards the gate, and spotted the enchanted man crawling towards her, staring up at her with soulful eyes. Squirrel lunged toward him and boomed “Scat!” The dog-man turned and ran, yipping as the crowd bellowed. Squirrel hurried to chase after the wizard.

Squirrel sprinted down the muddy street, and spotted the Wizard’s flamboyant robe, being given a wide berth in the crush of foot traffic. Squirrel pushed through the crowd, closing in on him. In the distance, she saw the wizard’s head tilt again, and glance over his shoulder at her.

Squirrel slipped between the last few people, and stopped in front of the wizard, her breathing steady despite the run. “Sir wizard-“ she began.

“No,” The wizard said dismissing her. “And before you say anything, I already know what you want to ask, and-“ The wizard listened for a moment. “No, it’s too dangerous. You know what’s going to happen.” He sighed. “Well of course.”

Squirrel glanced over to the woman beside him, who stood with her hands folded over each other, her gaze directed down. Not a single word escaped her lips, but the wizard appeared to be arguing with her. “I need the help of a wizard in my act!” Squirrel shouted over the wizard, who appeared to be mumbling, lost in thought.

His gaze snapped back to Squirrel and his eyes widened, and he began stroking his long white beard. “Oh, that’s not what I thought you wanted at all,” he said, his brows furrowed. “I thought you wanted to know your name.” Squirrel stood still, her jaw slack at the man’s insight. “Well, normally I would welcome any distraction from my duties as Headmaster, but my morning divination and coffee warned me not to join the circus.”

The wizard nodded at Squirrel’s dumbstruck face. “Now if you’ll excuse me, my wife has offered to treat me to a sponge bath.” The demure women standing beside the wizard, without any change in her stance, reached out and pinched him viciously. The wizard began to howl in pain in the middle of the street, sinking to his knees and crying.

Squirrel shook herself and leaned forward, taking the weeping wizard by the shoulders. “Can you tell me my name?” she asked, staring into his eyes.

The old man pried his wife’s pale fingers from his arm, and she returned them to being folded in front of her. He cast a deliberate gaze at the hands on his shoulders, and Squirrel stepped back, suddenly reminded of what had happened to the man before her.

“Don’t worry,” the wizard said, pushing himself to his feet. “The man was thinking some truly rude thoughts. But as I said, No, I cannot help you with either of your requests, my morning divination clearly said that any wizard involved with tumblers this week would be-“ The wizard stopped speaking, and began to stroke his beard again, and his lips split into and enormous grin. Out of the corner of her eye, Squirrel saw the corners of his wife’ s lips turn up, ever so slightly.

“Actually,” the old man said, the gaps in his teeth apparent behind his white beard. “There is one particular student of mine who might be able to help you.”