“Don’t be frightened,” said the figure. He moved around the room. Angela, lying in bed, wearing flannel pajamas, a sheet pulled up to her chin, couldn’t see his feet, but she knew that they weren’t encased in giant, floppy shoes; the click of his footfalls made that clear. “I’ve come to help you.” The voice was smooth, and with an accent that didn’t so much sound foreign as it sounded ancient.
“Help me how?” asked Angela.
“You live in fear, don’t you?” He paused. “Fear of falling, no?”
“Yes.”
“I fell once,” said the clown. “It’s not as bad as you might think.”
“It was that bad for Carlo.”
“That’s because he refused me.”
Angela felt her eyes go wide. “What?”
“I offered Carlo what I’m about to offer you; he turned me down.”
Angela knew she should abjure the being, but ... but ...
He’d said he wanted to help.
“Help me how?” she said again, her voice small, wavering, uncertain.
“I could make sure that you never fall,” said the clown. “Make sure that you will never hit the ground, never end up like Carlo.”
“You could do that?”
The clown cocked his head. “I can do anything, but ...”
“But what?”
“There would be a small price, of course.”
“I don’t have any money,” said Angela. Poppa said he was saving her money, her share of the circus take, until she turned eighteen.
“It’s not money I want,” said the clown.
For a horrible instant, he was looking at her the way Poppa sometimes did, as though he were hungry all over, eyes seeing beneath her clothes.
“Not that ...” she said, softly. “I ... I’m a virgin.”
The clown roared with laughter, a torrent of molten metal. “I don’t want your flesh,” he said.
“Then—then what?”
“Only your soul.”
Ah, thought Angela, if that was all—
“No tricks?” said Angela.
The clown looked sad; clowns often did. “If you are true to me, I promise, no tricks.”
Two years passed. The Amazing Aerial Renaldos formed their pyramid another seven hundred times. Angela had come to enjoy doing it; now that the fear was gone—now that she knew she would never fall—she could relax and actually enjoy the applause.
And, yes, she realized, when you’re not afraid, the applause was wonderful. Poppa had been no older than she was now when he had first heard it, back in the Old Country. She understood, finally, why it captivated him so, why he had to hear it every day of his life. When you had no fear, it was a wonderful, incredible thing.
And Angela really did have no fear of falling, and yet—
When she was younger, she had wedged herself against the wall whenever she slept; she had to, or else she would wake up in a cold sweat, arms flailing, certain she was plummeting to her doom.
Now, she no longer had that fear, but ...
But, each night, as she lay awake, trying to get to sleep, she wondered if she had given up too much, if bargaining away her soul had been a mistake. She still went to mass every Sunday, the family finding a new wheelchair-accessible church in the Yellow Pages. She’d seen hundreds of Jesuses nailed to hundreds of crosses above hundreds of pulpits; she used to stare into the face—whatever visage the artist had given the Son of God this week—but now she couldn’t meet his eyes.
She couldn’t meet him, period. Her soul belonged to another.
She was seventeen, going on eighteen, and—
Going on eighteen ...
Yes, she thought.
Yes, indeed. That was it.
But how to plead her case?
Another day; another performance. A crowd, like every crowd—thousands of excited children, thousands of parents who looked fatigued after hours of trying to win prizes for their kids on the midway, of lining up for the roller coaster and Ferris wheel. Angela paid no attention to the individual faces; the Renaldo family was a single entity, and it played to them all collectively.
She positioned the chair on the crossbeam supported by Mario and Momma, lead weights in the square base helping it to balance on the beam, and then she herself stood upon it—a girl, atop six other people, high above the ground. The crowd cheered, a myriad of voices raised in unison.
It was intoxicating, the cheers—enough to quell, at least for the time being, the unease that haunted her, enough to—
No!
God, no.
Angela felt the chair moving under her. Dominic, in the base of the pyramid, had lost his footing, just for an instant. He had shifted left; Mario, on his shoulders, had shifted right to try to compensate. Antonio, he moved right, too, but perhaps a centimeter too far. And Momma, feeling the pull on her yoke but unable to look behind her, she let out a small yelp—never a scream, not from one of the Renaldo family, the fearless, the brave. The metal chair leaned far back.
Giving the bird to the Almighty ...
Angela’s heart was pounding, just as it had before she’d made the deal, before she’d been protected. Adrenaline surged within her.
The chair teetered, and, for an instant, it seemed as though it might right itself.
But no.
No.
The chair resumed going backward. She felt it come free from the crossbar between Mario and Momma’s shoulders, felt it come free from her own feet.
Angela fell backward, too, falling separately from the chair, which, she imagined, must be turning end over end.
Time was attenuated; seconds became eternities.
Angela was indeed falling, too, but—
The adrenaline continued to surge.
She felt something happening to her body, her face. Her features felt as though they were contorting, and—
No. No, that wasn’t it. They weren’t contorting.
They were changing.
Her face was drawing out, into a muzzle. She could feel it. Flat nosed, wide-nostrilled; an animal’s face.
And her ears—
Her ears were spreading, growing larger. She couldn’t see them, but she could feel them.
And her arms, her fingers—
Those she could see ...
Her fingers were elongating. Each segment was growing, each phalanx extending. And, as they grew, something spread between them, gossamer thin at first then growing more substantial, a membrane of thick, rough skin, stretched between the bones of the hand.
Wings. Wings like those of a bat.
He’d promised her she’d never hit the ground, promised her that she’d be spared the same fate as Carlo.
If her hands had become bat hands, then her face must have become the face of a bat—the muzzle, the ears, doubtless even the shape of her eyes.
Air was flowing by her like transparent jelly; she could feel it pushing her enlarged ears back against her skull.
At last the wings were beginning to catch the air, beginning to break her fall. She looked down. She was still wearing her usual get-up, the tiny pink dress and the gold lamé top. More like a ballerina, really, and—
And now she was dancing on air.
She brought her arms forward, pushing against the air with the wings—her wings—gaining altitude instead of losing it.
Below, the chair hit the ground, metal legs twisting and breaking. The crash, with her attenuated time-sense, seemed low and warbling.
Surely her metamorphosis would be temporary. Surely once she was safely on the ground, she would regain her normal proportions; surely her youthful beauty would be restored. After all, he’d promised no tricks ...
She beat her wings again, rising higher still. The rest of her family was now below her. They’d managed to keep from falling, thank God—