THERE WERE NO FEWER THAN THREE pairs of aerialists flying through the amphitheater. Astley’s setup hadn’t changed since the days an African dancer and her sullen partner had dazzled audiences on a tightrope. This time trapeze artists had caught the crowd’s attention, swinging and catching each other in death-defying tricks above the octagonal circus arena. The musicians plucked their strings and crashed the keys of the piano in the pit behind the circus ring. Audiences screeched in delight from the green-painted galleries as tigers roared on the circus ring, tamed by their master’s whip. Each narrow miss of the aerialists brought gasps of fright and pleasure.
It was the promise of death that had lured the audience here to Astley’s Amphitheatre. The promise of death that kept them seated and ravenous.
The gas jets set off a spring of smoke, and from behind the drawn red curtains, a man with a square, bald head appeared. In a sparkling red tailcoat and black top hat, he slapped his round belly with jolly laughter as he came to meet the crowds. His crowds.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” he cried, stretching out his arms and soaking in the cheers, for the circus proprietor loved attention even more than he loved money. “And even gentler women,” he added with a wink, drawing laughter from whomever in the crowd could hear him above the ruckus. “Jugglers and clowns. Acrobats and ferocious animals!”
The tiger roared almost as if on cue, and shrieks from women and children erupted from the audience.
“Where else will you see such a spectacle? Such grandeur? Except here at the Coolie Company?”
The circus proprietor, George Coolie, rubbed the sweat off his bald head as the crowd roared with the tigers and clapped at the final leaps of the trapeze artists. Only after the artists had completed their sets and the stage had cleared did the audience quiet down.
Coolie waited until he had the crowd’s attention before he spoke again. “Ladies and gentlemen, surely we are not the first circus to ever grace your eyes. Oh yes, there’s Barnum & Bailey Circus, who claim to have The Greatest Show on Earth. There is Cirque Fernando, whose frivolities are considered the crème de la crème of La Belle Époque.”
He spoke of his rivals with a wide grin. But Hiva knew of the jealousy seething underneath.
Hiva knew this man.
“But no circus has ever boasted the marvels the Coolie Company is about to show you. Marvels that will make you believe in gods and demons. Marvels that will change the face of the world as we know it!” Coolie straightened his bow tie and gazed over the crowds with the flare of a showman, a ringmaster. “And when you go home with tears in your eyes and shouts of joy on your lips, you just make sure to tell your friends: Come to George Coolie’s circus, where there’ll be no shortage of wonders you’ll witness!”
He twirled out from behind the red curtain: the first clown, his face painted red like a demon. His wide, smoky black eyes seemed ready to suck in the crowd. His enormous white grin opened to reveal sharp teeth that seemed smeared with blood. All a painted trick. A mere illusion.
Not his magic. For when he flapped his arms like the wings of a crow, skeletons stumbled out from behind the curtains and onto the stage. No strings were attached as they danced upon the stage, much to the mesmerized horror of the audience.
There’ve been a lot of rumors lately moving around the country. Especially in the city. Strange rumors. Strange happenings, as the papers say. Strange, even for me.
This was what Coolie had once told her. And after witnessing those strange happenings with his own eyes, he’d decided on a new moneymaking scheme. He’d gathered the supernatural up and given them the opportunity to serve him. It wasn’t a surprise that he’d put the unnatural on display. It was what everyone drunk on arrogance and avarice did.
Four blond women next appeared in airy white dresses, performing several pirouettes. They danced as beautifully as ballerinas, but nothing was as beautiful a sight as the strange white glow their slender bodies emitted. The crowd cooed—the women were shining bright as fairies, twinkling underneath the still trapezes dangling from the ceiling.
More Fanciful Freaks appeared, and Coolie named them all: Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed. Oleg the Necromancer. Euryale the Serpent Gorgon. Too many names. As they danced, their unnatural bodies twisted and terrified their audiences, and so too did their skeletons and snakes.
And inside Hiva, memories flashed:
A girl who can’t die. An oddity stranger than anything Barnum can conjure up with his cheap parlor tricks. A true oddity confirmed in front of your very eyes. Confirmation that dark powers truly do exist.
Do you think that by being honest with me, it would change our relationship? On the contrary, my dear, I would be ridiculous if I didn’t make you and you alone my star attraction: The Immortal Woman. The Daughter of Osiris. Princess of Death.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you our Nubian Princess Nefertiti, the Deathless.
Too many names.
Laughing, soaking in the voracious enjoyment of his spectators, Coolie raised his arms. “And now, ladies and gentlemen! The star attraction. The grand finale—”
Before he could finish, applause erupted from the crowd. They pointed above Coolie’s head, drunk with the pleasure of spectacle.
Her leap was perfect. Her feet had touched the trapeze bar so lightly, the swings did not budge. Coolie’s top hat fell from his head as he turned and saw her. He stumbled backward on the stage, his tailcoat crushed beneath his bottom. The skeletons stopped dancing. The snakes stopped hissing. The fairies stopped shining.
For Hiva had arrived.
“I-Iris!” Coolie peered up at her, his mouth agape and his fingers twitching. “You—You’re here! What are you doing here?”
But Hiva did not speak. She pulled one of the shamshir blades off her back.
As Hiva took in the sight of the crowd, she remembered another life. A life in which spectators had clinically scrutinized her body, gaping with the hunger of hunters spotting their prey. A lustful kind of voyeurism from those who refused to acknowledge her humanity.
They were right, it seemed. For she was not human.
She was more.
“Iris!” Coolie got to his knees. “Iris! You’re back! After that bastard Jinn threatened my life, I thought I’d never see you again. Does this mean you’re not mad at me anymore? Can we finally bury the hatchet and put you back to work?”
And then he suddenly looked over his shoulder at the crowd. His eyes shifting nervously, he nodded at the performers, waving his hands, gesturing for them to keep the show going.
As his Fanciful Freaks danced, Coolie got up to his knees.
“And now for the grand finale! The return of the Coolie Company’s greatest act. A woman for whom death is but a trinket of the gods, to be toyed with at her mercy.” He spread out his arms once again, as if to hug the entire audience. “I give you the one, the only—”
Hiva jumped down from the trapeze and onto the stage.
Hiva could not speak. That was the pact she had made with the One who’d created her.
But she could be cruel. With the shamshir blade in her hand, she hacked off Coolie’s left arm. And while he was screaming and crying, she hacked off the other.
The audience was in disarray. Blood pooled against her feet. And though she couldn’t speak, when she pulled the circus proprietor off the floor and made him face her—when she remembered his cruel sneer, his depraved appetites, his lies, and his betrayal—one word somehow did slip from her ancient lips. She placed her hands upon Coolie’s face so that she would no longer have to look upon his gaping, howling mouth. And out of the depths of her rusted throat, rotten air from deep within her escaped her lips. Had she the ability to talk, it would have carried out a single command. The word echoed in her mind instead:
Die.
Coolie’s life force bubbled and burned. His anima ignited until the man’s body incinerated from the inside.
Hiva spared no one. Not the performers. Not the crowd. Astley’s Amphitheatre sang with their ashes.
And so she carried on backstage through the hallways. Every performer. Every clown. The stagehands carrying props. The passersby who stuck their heads out of their rooms to see what all the screaming was about. Hiva spared no one.
Until she came to a room. A little room in a lonely little corner of the hallway.
She opened the door. And inside that room, a goose with fire-blemished white feathers looked up at her and squawked.
“Is that Iris?” came the voice of an old woman.
Hiva… wasn’t sure what had happened to her in that moment she’d pushed the door open. She didn’t have a name for the confusing flicker of emotion that made her eyes hot when she saw the old woman’s coiled gray hair. The woman sat in the rickety wooden chair placed in the white room’s corner, piles of costumes upon her lap. Each dress fell upon the floor when she rose from her seat. Her aged knees buckling a little, she held on to the counter table beside her to keep herself steady. But neither her weak limbs nor her bad sight would keep her from stretching out her arms toward Hiva with tears in her eyes.
“Iris? Iris! Ọkọ mi, oh you’ve returned!”
The old woman who’d come to be called Granny Marlow by the circus seemed to grin with her whole body, her face crinkling, her coal-black eyes wet with joy. Hiva stood very still as the goose waddled in between them, pecking her feet lightly before nudging her legs.
“What happened to you? Where have you been? Oh my darling, you’re wearing so little; you must be cold!”
Hiva was neither warm nor cold. But as the old woman hobbled toward her, she suddenly felt flushed and aware of her own body. They were not family. They were not even the same species. And yet Granny Marlow inspected her with the care and love of a mother.
“There’s so much I’ve wanted to tell you, girl. I’ve kept your letter all this time.”
Letter? Hiva struggled to remember. For the first time since awakening, she struggled.
From the top of her green dress, Granny Marlow pulled out a parchment. And Hiva’s crystal heart shook as Granny held it up and began to read:
“Dear Agnus, I have a confession to make.”
In her mind’s eye, Hiva suddenly saw a brown girl at a splendid mahogany desk, crying as the ink spilled from her quill.
“You were right. I was once a military woman of the Dahomey. Decades ago, I tried to kidnap you and your sister, Anne, in the middle of a raid. It was what we did.”
Yes. Back during the early days of her past life, she had fought under a powerful king. She’d obeyed his command as She Who Does Not Fall while wandering the world—all to experience the folly of mankind. To gauge them. To gather the information she needed to validate her judgment to kill them.
“But as fate would have it, the three of us had another foe. And after an unsuspecting attack, we all ended up being taken to England as Marlows. As entertainment for Europeans.”
Granny Marlow shook her head, lowering the letter. “Oh dear, I remember. I remember now. I’m sorry I ever shouted at you when you tried to tell me. I just wasn’t ready to hear it.”
Shouted, yes. Hiva remembered that battle, like peering through a window veiled in fog and sheaths of ice. But now Hiva fought a battle of a different kind—the one within her. As the old woman gripped her bare arms, an urge rippled through her, surging up without remorse until she was prying her ancient lips open.
There, in the room filled with fabrics, needle, and thread, as a goose named Egg toddled around the room, Hiva tried to speak.
The sound was labored. Painful. The air lacerated her throat. Coughs, gurgles, and croaks. It was as if she were drowning.
“Oh, Iris!” Granny Marlow gripped her face in sorrow. “What has happened to you?”
Hiva gripped her throat and tried again, but to no avail. Granny. Granny… Words of another her buried deep inside, tortured and filled with regret. The “her” that should have no longer existed.
By the time saliva began dribbling down her lips, Hiva gave up.
“You were never satisfied with who you were,” Granny Marlow said. “You had a fire in you, girl, a desire to know yourself. Your past. Your kin. You always looked to me as if you’d do anything to discover the truth. But this…”
Granny Marlow wiped the saliva from Hiva’s lips. “Is this what you wanted, Iris?”
Hiva’s hands shook. Judging mankind required no words. She’d had no desire to dialogue with the creatures she hunted. Pure will—the will to create a better world. It was all she needed. So why now? Why did the silent words, dead upon her tongue, hurt her so?
“I’ve known so many versions of you now. The military woman who tried to capture my sister and me. The caged specimen who shared our exhibit. The innocent tightrope dancer who called me ‘Granny.’ ” The old woman’s eyes sparkled. “And now this.”
Hiva’s fingers twitched as Granny Marlow stroked the side of her cheek.
“But no matter what, my dear.” Tears glistened in her dark eyes. “No matter who you are or who you choose to be, I forgive you. And I will always, always love you.”
And the old woman hugged her.
Everything was wrong. Such a weak embrace, and yet Hiva felt as if her body would break apart at the woman’s touch. Hiva shouldn’t have felt anything.
Something between a whine and a whimper escaped Hiva’s lips. She still couldn’t speak. She didn’t want to desire freedom anymore. Her mission was just. Her mission was absolute.
The end of humanity.
Hiva’s mind reached deep within the old woman. She felt Granny’s anima flowing within her.
No. The voice of the troublesome “her” whispering from deep within the shadows of her heart pulled Hiva away from the woman. It wasn’t the woman who burned, but Hiva’s own chest from her raspy, frenzied gasps as she struggled for air again. Hiva stumbled back, afraid.
“Iris?” Granny Marlow called her again. The goose nuzzled up to the old woman’s leg.
Hiva turned and ran out of the room. Away from the theater.
Hiva had awoken inside the core of the planet as a killing machine. Perfect. Complete. There should not have been another version of her alive in her heart.
She had to bury it. For good.
Her weakness had all begun when she’d met that girl again in the Coral Temple. It’d begun when she’d let her live. It would have to end with that girl.
Hiva knew where she was. She could feel her anima, taste it, and smell it. The girl was nearing that shrine—the base where the Naacal hid the key to their greatest weapon. Hiva did not know how she’d discovered its existence, and it didn’t matter. The girl’s presence there made her intentions clear.
What Hiva had to do next was also clear.
Hiva purged her mind of any doubt and fear. She calmed herself and once again became firm. One of the Solar Jumps that the Naacal had built lay up north. Hiva knew them all intricately, for the mightiest of the Naacal’s generals and the most powerful among their priests had shown her in a former life—back when they had believed her to be their god. It would not take long for her to get to her destination.
But as she stepped onto the lonely London Bridge, one man stood in her path.
That man.
His black cape flowing, his dark hair fluttering upon his head with the heavy wind.
His face twisted into a crazed, gleeful smile.
“I knew it. Iris… it’s you,” the young man said, clutching his chest as if his heart might fall out of it. “It’s you…. It’s—”
He threw his head back and laughed, tears in his eyes, before he ran to her, enveloping her with slender arms. Hiva did not move.
“As soon as I saw the eclipse, I knew. You’re alive!” The young man’s blue eyes shimmered wetly with so much relief, it must have overwhelmed him. “And you… you’re…?”
The young man cupped her face with both hands and stared deep into her eyes. He waited for something. For what, Hiva did not know. A reaction? A word? She only stared blankly at him. But this seemed to please him so greatly, the tears finally began to fall.
“You’ve finally returned. The true Iris. The one I read about in my father’s research. The one I’ve been dreaming about since my boyhood. Hiva…”
His tears dripped down his grinning lips. And in that moment, he was overcome with emotion—so much so that he grabbed the back of her head and forced those wet lips upon hers.
“You’ve done it. You’ve answered your call! You’ve become who you were always meant to be. My Hiva! Once I found out what that wretch Maximo had done to you, I had your exhibit inside the British Museum burned. Your bones are gone. Now nothing can be used to kill you. Now we are truly partners. Now we are truly one!”
But when he leaned in to kiss her again, Hiva placed her palm upon his face and pushed him away from her.
Truthfully, she had wanted to kill him. She couldn’t. He was the only one she was not allowed to kill. It was the bargain she’d made with the One who’d created her. How unfair after everything he’d put her through. His crimes went without repeating. How unfair… or so she thought.
But now she saw the weakness and cowardice behind his ecclesiastical ecstasy, and her stomach lurched with disgust. Now she knew he was not worth murder.
Hiva did not know this man.
“Iris! Iris? What are you doing?”
She said nothing, her eyes blank, her expression hollow. He was a strange lump of human flesh blocking her path for reasons she couldn’t fathom. She did not look at him. She looked through him.
The longer she stayed silent, the more irritated and impatient the man became, until his eyes were flaring with desperation.
“I’m talking to you, Iris!” He gripped her shoulders and violently tugged at her. “Me! What kind of game do you think you’re playing?” And when she didn’t respond, his anger finally burst. “Who do you think you are? Who do you think made you?” Silence. “Answer me!”
His violent shaking didn’t faze her. Brushing him off with ease, she began on her way.
“Where are you going?” the man yelled frantically as she walked away. “Where are you going, now that you’ve come back to me? After everything I’ve done to get you to this point? Everything I’ve sacrificed. There’s too much we’ve yet to do to see this world burn!” He ran after her. “Iris! Don’t ignore me! I am the one who brought you back. I demand that you—”
The moment the young man touched her waist, Hiva broke his arm. She did not know him.
Even as he twitched upon the bridge in pain, the man howled that name into the night.