There was a secret flap in the back of the big tent that led to the shadows under the bleachers. Sasha ducked under the fabric and made her way through a tunnel of audience members, who clapped and shouted for the tricks they were watching, and skirted the area where Mr. Ticklefar raised and lowered, raised and lowered the music so that swells of trumpets and rolls of drums trembled in every body in the tent. The thunder outside was louder, though. Sasha felt the electricity of the lightning as her hairs stood at attention on her arms. There was something wrong about tonight, and she didn’t know if it had caused her to say those terrible things to her mom, or if the wrongness had all started when she’d said them.
Dad was already performing, twisting his dark body through the air as the lights flickered every color in the rainbow. Aunt Chanteuse was on the floor, in front of where the net used to be, her green-and-gold dress shimmering under the lights, her voice soaring above all the other noise. Mom stood where Sasha should be, waiting for the right moment to send the bar across the air for Dad to catch.
The new flip was coming up soon; Sasha would have to fly up the ladder to get there in time to take Mom’s place and do the job herself. Her head told her to stay where she was; her body, though, moved automatically, drawn to the platform. She sprinted, pumping her arms and legs across the back of the stage. With the lights directed above, the ground was as black as a starless night, and Sasha collided with the corner of a box, slamming her shin into the wood.
“Oww!” she hollered. With the music so loud, no one could hear her, but she clapped one hand over her mouth anyway and squeezed her eyes shut until the first waves of sharp pain subsided.
That horrible smell surrounded her again. She knew the Smoke was swirling near, even though she couldn’t see it. Part of her was glad—the part that didn’t want to go up the ladder. The rest of her made her body get up again, reach for the ladder, and clamber over each rung.
Aunt Chanteuse’s voice nearly lifted the roof off the big tent. Mom squeezed her knuckles around the bar, her eyes focused on Dad, flinging himself nearly to the tip-top of the big tent. He twisted, flipped. The audience gasped. Sasha’s foot slipped off the rung, shaking the pillar. Mom looked down. Their eyes caught, and the deepest sadness Sasha had ever seen filled her mom’s face. Then Mom let go of the bar.
A second too late.
“No! No!” Sasha screamed.
The audience screamed with joyful anticipation. Mom looked in horror, frozen to her spot with her arms still high. Dad flipped again and raised his arms out for the bar that was supposed to meet him, his bright grin confident and sure. But there was only air.
Smoke rose quickly from under the tent, obscuring the ground. It brought a low, menacing laughter with it. Sasha’s eyes watered, and her nose began to run. Aunt Chanteuse’s voice cut off abruptly. And there were Dad’s hands, palms open, waiting, expecting, counting on Sasha to have done her job correctly. There was nothing to meet him.
The audience’s yells of delight changed to screams of terror as Dad fell . . . fell . . . fell all the way past where the net should have been and into the waiting arms of the Smoke billowing up from the ground. Mom reached for Dad, as though her arms were long enough to catch him, and tumbled off the platform.
“Dad!” Sasha screamed. “Mom!”
She raced back down the ladder, but the lower she got, the harder it was to see. The Smoke kept growing, blinding everyone in the big tent with its sinister darkness. Sasha stumbled left and right. She bumped into adults and children and animals, all fleeing for the exits. Aunt Chanteuse reached through the Smoke for Sasha, but Sasha pushed her away. She didn’t need help.
Sasha searched and searched, tears streaming down her face as the Smoke pecked and itched at every inch of her skin. Finally Sasha saw a large, black-and-white bird battling through the Smoke, its oily feathers beating furiously for the door at the side of the big tent. The Smoke coiled around its wings and pulled the bird down, pinning the animal to the ground. The bird’s fierce beak snapped and gnashed until the Smoke retreated, but only long enough for the Smoke to gather into an even larger ball of darkness and attack again.
This was what Sasha had wanted, but now that the Smoke was here, now that it was claiming people before their time, Sasha’s anger and sadness twisted with a new burst of terror. She leaped in between the ball of Smoke and the bird. The Smoke pushed her down furiously, but Sasha’s movement gave the bird enough time to lift itself with one last, great stretch of his wings and push from the tent and into the night sky. Within seconds a wind fluttered past Sasha’s ear and a second bird, this one a flash of brilliant colors, chased the black-and-white bird into the ether. Sasha ran for the exit to catch a last glimpse of her parents soaring into the dark of the storm. She paused. Picked something up.
“Mom. Dad.”
All that was left of them was a feather.