The Circus of Time - Short Story

I heard of an abandoned circus on the face of the Moon. Left there by a time long ago or was it a time yet to come? I muddle that part up sometimes. The circus once boasted tall makeshift tents, woven together by clothes from all times and places. A parade of loud colors and patterns flowed through this tapestry, whispering of the worlds and the peoples they’ve left behind. Broadcasting the tales of civilizations that once were, to the civilizations that were yet to come. The circus of Time they called it! Because despite the cacophony of faces that set eyes on it, or the circus’ dissonant makeshift cloaks, there was a resounding order to it, something that spun at the center of all those passing by and most of those passing through. A drumming beat that circled at the heart of the Moon, and bumbled in the cool air, it babbled on the children’s mouths, and sounded at the bursting of trumpets, a sort of...oneness. Apparently if you stood real quiet back in its Day, as still as you can get, and waited persistently patient, you would hear all these floating waves align in One, single..Beat. I’d wait ages for a harmony like that.

The air of this great Circus was once filled with the electrifying words of storytellers, and the wondrous laughter and whimpers of their audiences. Today however, the silence was deafening, and those once waving sheaths of living linen had sunk under their own weight, left to crust at the edges and crumble into lunar dust. The ruins layed there lazily, floating like a golden ring taunting for it’s precious, or a silver crown waiting to imprison its naked king. And in the middle of this paper colosseum, a small barred cage open at both ends was poised dead centre, waiting.

See whenever that cage saw the light of morning, a different being would wake up in chains to that incessant waltzing circus music that propounded in the void. On the First morning, a bee buzzes past its dangling chains and bumbles around clumsily before slipping in between the iron bars. It looks up, admires the Sun briefly before shying away, and lays on the iron ledge, its front legs hanging over the rusty red paint, waiting.

On the Second morning, a dog wakes up squealing from the heat of his scorching collar. He rustles his droopy snout to the shady corner of his cage and chews on his wonky opponent until the clasp unbuckles into sweet freedom. The dog stares down the open gates of his beguiling hold and slowly but surely finds his way to the surface of the Moon. He played in the warm glow of the Sun all afternoon and explored the wreckage of the once great Circus of Time. He laid at the opening mouth of the beached circus cart, and watched as the light faded into the tenebrous night.

The Third morning was a little more bizarre. The cage was filled to the brim with dark blue water, and at the first sight of dawn, a dolphin popped her head to the observing planets and Sun, and laughed! She pondered at her framed prison and spent her time building castles in the dark and talking to the stars.

The Fourth Day, a frazzled horse woke up running past his shattered iron constrictor. Straight past the gates, trampling over the textile spirits that sang the songs of his predecessors. He ran with blinding speed, so fast in fact, that between his first and last breath, he found himself at the edge of the dark side of the Moon. He stomped onto the ground and watched the dust disappear into the abyss. He looked over the ledge of the unknown, tilted his muzzle up, and finally noticed the Sun. The stubborn soul waited there until the dark of night, expecting his uncharted predicament to change.

On the Fifth Day, the indomitable horse huffed at his chains, and reared them into submission. Hoof after hoof, he stomped on his silver stage with the determination and arrogance of an amateur boxer. The smoldering crowds cheered for the feat he boasts to brave. He stared down his opponent across the horizon, and sneered at his respected foe. Before you knew it, the world melted and it was only him, the edge of darkness, and a point to make. The horse hoofed his hind legs, bullishly bobbing his head, and BOOM, he burst for the finish line. He runs past the blistering darkness, and through to the light again. Looks around the circular arena and parades into a victory lap around the parthenon of his approving judges. The ghosts of the past cheered for their favorite gladiator while the phantasmes of the future stared, displeased and bitterly critical of the right-leaning trajectory he took at the starting line. The horse huffed and puffed and took his rest in his creaky damp cage.

The Sixth Day was different. The horse rose to the finish line with a calm and collected snare. Like the voices of his critics inflated into little grey clumps and bloomed into daisies. And right before those petals touched the clear white surface, they evaporated. A grass runway unfolded before him and the Sun smiled at her stubborn moonchild. The horse unfurled into a white coat of gleaming hair, whistling as it grazes the wind. The audience evaporated into white hot sparks firing into the still of the night, and then landing onto our hero’s stage. He steps up, bows his head at the Sun, and places his steady hoof at the edge of his starting line.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Time slowed down, and the horse thundered through space. While his radiating husk shed sound like a wave splitting around a sword, his spirit soared in front of him, behind him, through him! He looked up with a fiery stare, and sneered at the flaming Sun, and plundered into a crater as wide as the eye could see. Engulfed with the rubble and the blackened snow, he tilted his head up to the edge of whatever light he could brave, and layed in the tomb of his own making.

The Seventh Day lasted an eternity. A wide eyed and rosy cheeked child wakes up to the disorienting barrage of sounds emanating from her disquieted cosmos. The stars were anxiously whispering to each other, the Moon softly interrogating the child, and the Sun, patiently waiting. WHO WAS THIS CHILD? What was it? And why was it different? She stood her ground, noticed her shackles, pursed her lips, and got to work. She pulled a long splinter from the bristling wooden floor, and fiddled with the crafty snare. Freedom. Or was it? She marched forward, caressing the placid metallic ground with the sole of her shaking foot. Her hand pulls back on the stark frame of her prison, and finds the warm touch of the Sun.

The Child smiled at the glowing embrace of the light before making her way to the abandoned wreckage of the floating circus. Her gaze shot around at the nebulous void, “is anyone there?” it called. To which the stars sent back a resounding rolling whoosh. They smiled at her, consoling her lonely pout casting at the empty terrain. Where was everyone? A little light like hers could easily get lost in the blend of dancing ribbons swirling and twirling around the stars. A little voice like hers stood no chance against that bubbling primordial song which hues at the substrate of the singing cosmos. Who was she to stand so tall at the precipice of such a vast Universe, alone?

Time slipped by, with no extra hands to help in her ventures, no shoulders to carry her weary swing, no souls to laugh along with hers… Her sight lifted from its shadowy crater, escaping the gravitational well of her mortality, and faced the droning webs of circus cloth closing in on her, murmuring at her. The tents began undulating, blowing at her scathing winds shedding the beguiling whispers of shrouded pasts and uncertain futures. The swooping sirens blew past her fluttering scarf, piercing into the unimpressed visage of a curious child: “Who are you little girl with the drooping helm, to garner enough light as to be worthily felt by your neighboring Universe?” But, before she could babble a cohesive syllable, the wind tripped her at the legs, sending into the gawking future from which it so merrily came. “Who are you young lady to carry yourself with such stupendous courage on your shoulders? Why should any wanderer hear what YOU have to say?” The gales began circling each other in a frenzied deluge of torrential winds, pooling around her, and bubbling into a droplet of coarse air stifling to escape.

The bubble dipped at the center, seeping through the crown of her skull and coursing down to the sole of her foot, blinding her entire being from the light it so ardently strove to protect, the light she so eagerly seeks to find. With every ounce of radiating courage she looked up at the cimmerian expanse and uttered: “I am Her, and I will not yield. My light will be felt by the gazing stars and my song will be heard by the travelling celestials and their trailblazing rocks, I swear it by the Moon and the Sun. I am Her, as I have always been, and will forever be.” The winds pierced and shrieked with the quivering clothes in all their symphonic doom and gloom. They fell in on themselves and around the mesmerized heroine, engulfing her like a falling tulip engulfs its nestled seed. But before She could find the Sun, the circus began calling louder, like a siren maddening the sane, and comforting the hysteric.

The raging winds whirled and whirled, faster and faster, sending their flying monkeys on their marches against the winds. Droning the woman’s fears and doubts on their buzzing wings, dropping their rattling shells of clumping soot. Round and Round, the winds ran, but against all odds... She smirked at the Zephyr. She closed her eyes, breathed in, in, in and expunged out. The Moon was beating at her feet, waving through the skin of an unhinging young woman. With every breath the bouncing beat blossomed through the sole of her vibrating bones, pushing through to the edge of her essence and refracting all that she is to the outer frontier of her foot. In fact that soft lunar glow dissolved through the streams of her body, building up, until every crevice of her blew out gleaming beams of incandescent light. Her hairs began to rise as the moonbeams shot out the pins of her floating feathers, lifting her toes to a hover above her undeniable celestial guardian.

She breathed in, and all these quakingly impatient fireflies crashed into the core of her being, contracting into each other, collapsing on one other, and all our wide-eyed lady of the Moon could do was watch. Amidst the raging cyclone, the core of light took to the heavens and burst into waves of irradiant color painting the hurtling winds with hues unseen. This stellar explosion revealed a most inconspicuous blessing for our heroine, she stood in the Eye of the storm, she did all along. She burst into hearty laughter and heckled with a mockingly Shakespearean accent: “Try ye may you cowardly gales. None of you can touch me here on my island in the Sun!” On the walls of her storm, the dancing auroras brought forward blurred images of...herself?

She couldn’t explain it but rotating around her were visions of lives she’s never lived before, and some that she remembers vividly living. Does she remember a time before this place, could she? An image of a surely pair of new-wed parents holding a rosy cheeked child devouring a pizza against the race of a ticking photo timer. Why did it warm her stomach? Another one floats by, this one is, more vivid. The whisper of a memory of her piloting a Spitfire fighter jet into a rifling dark cloud of unusually thickened red smoke. Was that her? All that she ever was before this form, and all that she could be.. There were flashes of a cool summer night launching fireworks above the lake, falling sparks on a cushion of ambient noises from the nearby village fair. Melodies waltzing under the Moonlight to the sandy water-front and moving their orchestral ball to the centre of the electrified lake. A hand grazed against her shoulder and butterflies shot out at the horizon of her stomach lining. Then in a thundering crash it all falls under the overwhelming weight of love’s tumultuous history.

The rain drops at the crumble of her knees, and showers down the melting astral windows into muddy marchlands of glimmering foam. She towers from her pit and is welcomed by the swelling Sun. For from the floating moss sprouted teetering seeds of glowing blues and greens hanging from springing stems. Blooming into snickering spores of familiar light, hovering above the swamp and mimicking its waves’ every push and pull. In the eerie still of the insufferable silence, the night watched as our heroine waded the waste-deep water mirroring the myriad of stars and nebulas that came out to watch. She bowed her lids and waited in the sinking sands until a beaming rod came trickling down from the Sun’s reserves. At the touch of her certain clutch the slithering rope hardened into a swooping umbrella plopping her onto drylands. With a bow and a nod she thanked the Sun and the universe with it.

She looked out to the ocean as it nestled cozly in the cradling water enveloping her tiny little rock. And, strangely enough, longed for the taste of adventure on the cold sea air. She plodded around her strip of sand, tinkering with the streams of bamboo, teaching the birds how to fetch, and admiring the infinite Expanse. The Sun bellowed on the air like a well aged trumpet spilling its blues on the late hours of night, and just before it hits the pavement of the overpass they burst into bolts of flooding melodies washing ashore her sandy isle, bopping on the oceans of a barren Moon. The Moon leaped its refracted lights into swimming streams of grooves to intercept the quaking chorus of trembling strings rushing to meet themselves on the faces of all those that give it the time to meet Them. And the STARS, Ohhhh the Stars, those chattering diamonds sang all night on every bandwidth and frequency that fields the walls of this galaxy. Drumming from their cores rained shimmering droplets, weighing down on the rippling waves of the standing Universe.

The Lights smiled at her, and she courted with a bow, tipping her hat to their most magnificent Forger. For in his furnace He supples the molten beams, pours them into his perpetual mold, and hammers at the coarse star until it has shed the crust of Time that kept from its boundless core. With one fell swoop her thought escaped her, and the core cowered behind her back.

As the hairs on her neck preemptively stood, she felt a creeping bone clawing at her turned shoulder. She bolted at the figure and found a growling pile of gushing mud, shadowing over Her. It unveils a beedy set of examining eyes casting into Hers. But before it could open it’s sludging mouth, She stared down the tentacled beast, sized her up and down, and with the slashing stare of an old Western folkhero, She disarmed the growling pile of muck with a thundering smile exploding with the full weight of loving innocence. It uncloaked its layers of moss and smut and revealed a trembling little child, rocking with her hands thrown over her knees. The pile of muck wasn’t a pile of muck after all, but a pile of forgotten softness, hammered away by the blizzards of change. Underneath all the wear and tear, a clam unveiled a core of Her own.

To be continued....