Chapter 1
My first memory is from when I was sixteen, or so. I guess. I didn’t really have a good grasp on my age at the time. Still don’t.
I woke up next to my sister’s bed, the morning sun shone straight into my eye. For whatever reason I was sleeping on the ground, no pillow, no blanket, nothing. I was naked.
As I stood up, everything in my body felt stiff, as if I’d never moved anything at all. I could feel my arms and legs had both gone asleep, and as I stood they tingled.
My balance was off that morning, I stumbled as I rose and knocked over a notebook that had sat on a desk in her room.
She sat up with a start and looked straight at me. “Oh my god!” She said as she rose. She was dawning a white nightgown, her dark hair was a complete mess, she looked like she’d been up all night. Dark bags sat under her eyes as a smile grew out of her face. “It worked!”
“What?” I asked. This woman was a stranger to me, yet I still was able to understand she was my sister.
“Oh…” She stopped for a moment. “I am just excited to see you!”
“You said something worked, what do you mean?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it, Willow,” As the name leaves her lips my ear twitches with recognition. Willow, that sounds right. I’m Willow, of course.
“Right, sorry,” I say. “What’s going on?”
“Hmm?” She responded as she rose out of her bed, fetching some clothes.
“I am confused, where am I?” I asked.
“Why, you’re in my bedroom of course, where else would you be, silly?”
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“You’ve forgotten my name?!” A smile ran across her face. To me, if someone as close to me as my sister had forgotten my name, I’d be fairly upset, but the look on her face was hardly that. I could see in her eyes, the way she smiled into them that there were no negative emotions. In fact, if you were to ask me it seemed like pride.
“So you had amnesia, then?” Chuck asks.
“Not exactly,” I shake my head. “I was created.”
“Created?” Chuck raises his bushy eyebrows, and we both lock eyes with each other.
“My sister, Miracle, she had a sketchbook. Given to her from our - her grandmother.” I shrug as I speak. “It let her create things,”
“How do you mean?” he asked. I could see his thoughts racing through his head. ‘Jesus this woman is insane, maybe I ought to turn her in after all,’
“I…” with a slight sigh I looked around. “I don’t know if you’d believe me,”
“Well I don’t, you said your sister created you.” He nodded slowly. “Far as I can tell that’s not possible, unless you got a brother or-”
“Not like that, Jesus,” I rest my hands above the fire as a carriage rides by just outside of our alley. “That’s disgusting,”
“Well, hard not to think that when you said she created you.”
“She created me using the book.”
“The book?”
“Yes,”
“How in the hell did she do that?” Twisting his face into a smile as he spoke.
“I don’t know, she never told me the specifics,” I let out a sigh. “This is why I don’t talk about myself,”
“Because it’s bull shit?” Chuck says with a laugh. I’m not laughing. I know he means well, but it stings to hear that kind of thing. It’s not bullshit. It’s me.
I shake my head and turn to leave the alley. “I’m gonna go find Tylian.”
“Oh now hold on, don’t be like that, just tell me what happened, I won’t interrupt again.” He shuddered. “Not like we got much else to do, most folks are at church.”
I let out a sigh and turn back around. “You know for an old man you have some awful manners,”
“For a homeless man, I’d say they’re pretty good,”
Miracle made me in her image, she wanted a twin. She’d always had a streak of vanity in her, and I was the physical manifestation of that.
In the coming weeks we’d actually grown quite close together, after my initial weariness wore off, of course. We spent some time getting me tailored into some beautiful dresses, and exploring around New York.
There was a war happening in the south, so the city wasn’t nearly as full as it normally was, according to Miracle.
We were walking through Long Island, heading to a thing Miracle kept calling a ‘circus’ that we were going to go see. She told me it was a group of freaks who travel together and put on shows for folks.
“They’ll be big one day,” She said to me.
“Who would ever want to go see a bunch of so called freaks?”
“Everyone loves gawking at the strange, don’t you think, Willow?”
“I don’t know what to think, I’ve never met anyone strange,” I shrugged as we kept walking through the somewhat empty streets. A few carriages rode past, but almost everything had this kind of slow energy to it.
A group of women walking past us stared at me, scoffing as we continued down the road. I turned my head to see them pass, their dresses were held up with wires, their hair done up in a strange way.
“Are they part of the circus?” I asked.
“What makes you say that?” Miracle asked, looking at me with a smile.
“Well their faces are pale and their hair is silly, that lady who stared at me looked like a skyscraper. I thought you said the circus had freaks,”
“Oh it does, but not like that.” Miracle said, chuckling at my naivety. “You’ll see what kind of freaks they have when we get there, some inhumanly strong men, bearded women, dwarves, even-”
“Dwarves?”
“Oh yeah,”
“Like the ones from that story book you had me read?”
“Kind of, they’re a little more interesting than those ones, though,”
“Oh…” I said, and rubbed at my itchy nose. “I thought they were cute,”
“These ones are more entertaining than cute,” Miracle said with a nod.
“How are they entertaining, do they tell jokes?” I asked.
“Oh, come on, let’s just get there, it’ll answer all of your questions!” Miracle said as she grabbed my hand and led me forward. Many of the strangely dressed women seemed to not like us running to the circus, so many side eyes from them, as if we were the circus freaks.
I kept tripping on the green dress Miracle had given me, so I lifted it slightly with my free hand to be able to move. Every building seemed to tower over us, going up to dizzying heights.
Miracle told me that it takes months for buildings to be finished. They have these burly men climb up and use these brand new machines to place giant rebars down, whatever those are.
She said our - her father was one of those men. He’d apparently died in an accident when she was younger. Some kind of workplace issue. She wouldn’t talk about her father that much. When she did, she always said he was a sweet man, and very thoughtful. Apparently he worked for a union and made a decent living.
Despite telling me good things about her father, Miracle seemed to not like unions that much. She says her grandfather thinks unions are a sham, and ‘don’t do nothin good’.
Apparently he had to deal with a union in his beer distribution company. It caused a lot of problems for him, and whenever Miracle and I ask him about his work it’s the first thing he talks about. ‘That damn union keeps asking for more pay,’
At one point there was even a strike, and they weren’t able to send any kegs out for twenty hours because the union held up delivery. He didn’t tell us why, though. It always made me curious on why they would do such a thing. If I ever ask, he just avoids the question. I don’t think he likes me very much. I once heard him tell Grandma that he thought I was ‘creepy’.
One of the first things I noticed about the circus is that the tents were funny. Not many people were in attendance, and the ticket price was only five cents a person. There were a few families there, but overall it was just a dozen or so people.
Miracle and I sat down in the front row, she said it would lead to the most action. To open the act, some fellow came out with a black top hat and a silly coat laden with gold.
“He wears that so you know he’s the circus leader, I heard a rumor that this all started in Romania, and this man migrated here to start a better life for his family.” Miracle’s words were whispered as to not interrupt the silly dressed man.
“The Carson & Meyers Circus proudly presents our third show for you fine folks in Long Island! Be sure to tell your friends about us if you enjoy the show! To begin, I present to you; the strongest man in the world!”
“His voice matches his silly clothes,” I whisper back to Miracle. She lets out a giggle as we both see some lights turn onto the center of the circus tent.
A massive man in a leotard comes out, his bald head reflecting the light as a beat of sweat rolls down his face. Around his waist is a rope, and behind him he was dragging a boulder so heavy it left a path in the ground. He walked to the center of the room like it was nothing.
The boulder had to have been at least as tall as me, and as wide as a double door like those ones that Miracle showed me in the fancy hotels not too far from there.
“You know, I had hoped you’d tell me more about why you’ve got a bounty, I don’t really care much about you and your sister’s bonding,” Chuck says, his voice cutting my train of thought entirely.
“Chuck, do you want to hear about this stuff, or not? I wouldn’t tell you about this circus trip if it wasn’t important,”
“Why’s it so important?” He asks, as if by magic a bottle of rum had appeared in his hand, and he’d somehow drunk at least a third of it already.
“Well if you’d stop interrupting me, I’d tell you,” I say.
“Sheesh, maybe I should have waited for Tylian to come back,” He takes a massive swig from his bottle. “Alrighty, go ahead, I’m all ears,”
“The way you keep asking me questions, I’d wager you’re all noses.”
“You callin’ me nosey?” He says as he takes another swig from the bottle.
“I am Pasha Pavlov, strongest man to cross the Atlantic. Many people call me Herculean, however I would prefer to be called Atlas, as my strength is limitless, I could carry the earth if I should so please,” The man slowly undid the rope around his waist, letting it fall to the ground.
“If he wants to be called Atlas, then why did he tell us his name is Pasha?” I whisper to Miracle.
“It’s theatrics, the goal is to put on a good show, and to wow the audience.” Miracle said back to me. “Watch, he’ll lift that boulder.”
“He will? That thing is massive!” I say, a little too loud and garner a few glares from one of the families beside us.
He walked a few paces behind the boulder and clapped his massive hands together. Two children carried a bowl of white powder to his feet and set it down. He bent down and covered his hands in the stuff.
“What’s he doing?” I ask.
“He’s putting chalk on his hands to keep a better grip.”
“That seems like cheating,” I say to Miracle. She gives me a strange look, and doesn’t say anything.
Pasha wraps his massive arms around the boulder, his hands are almost able to touch on the side opposite to him, which is saying something, seeing as I don’t think anyone normally could lift something that large.
He gives a calculated squat, and begins to grunt. Slowly, but surely the boulder raises from the ground. His face goes slightly red, but for the most part he doesn't seem to actually be straining himself. You can see the concentration on his face as he masterfully maneuvers the rock on top of his shoulders. Taking a wide stance with his feet now, he holds the rock above him, then looks at the audience with a wicked grin.
“Oh my god,” I say to Miracle. “He’s going to break his back!”
“Just wait, it gets better!” She says back to me.
“Many men throughout history have foretold the destruction of the world, but it has always stayed. This is because of Atlas. The man who carries the world on his back.” He takes a deep breath, and exhales slowly. “Atlas, we are ever grateful for the sacrifice you’ve made, even I, the strongest man in the world, cannot hold this boulder forever.” The strongman takes a deep crouch, and as if it were nothing he launches the boulder into the air at least two feet.
He takes a few steps back as the massive rock plummeted back to the ground. He claps off some of the chalk and folds his arms, smiling at the audience as the boulder crashes onto the ground, kicking up dirt every which way.
The family next to us begins to clap, and so do I, but Miracle doesn’t, she just stared forward with this look of amazement in her eyes. Her jaw hit the floor, and I could see something click in her mind.
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