Chapter Text
‘Nathaniel, listen carefully. You need to pack your bag quietly and be ready to leave in 20 minutes.’
Mary had been drilling him on what exactly to do if she ever said this to him, so Nathaniel went straight into autopilot. He already had a section of his drawer with the clothes selected for this purpose that he dumped into a duffel. He then put his stuffed dinosaur (called Bean) into the bag, and finally, he gently placed the set of fancy training knives that he’d just gotten for his 7th birthday in the middle of all of the clothes so that they weren’t easy to see. After a final double check of his childhood bedroom, Nathaniel crept down the stairs and met his mother in front of the entrance to the tunnel.
‘Ready?’
Nathaniel nodded. He wasn’t sure where they were going, but he trusted his mother. Plus, anywhere was better than Baltimore.
-
Hatford Circus was apparently run by his uncle Stuart. Nathaniel didn’t know that he had an uncle, but this man with too much around his middle and greying hair had kind, smile-wrinkled eyes despite his harsh sounding voice, so Nathaniel figured that he could be trusted.
‘You will be safe here Nathaniel.’ His mother and uncle repeated this phrase every time Nathaniel jumped because he thought he heard his father’s footsteps, and they repeated it every time Nathaniel woke up in a trailer screaming because his dreams contained his father’s knives, and they said those same words every time Nathaniel flinched away from his uncle’s hands that had the same callouses and age as his father’s.
Nathaniel started to believe those words as the weeks went by and there was still no sign of his father’s heavy footsteps and hands. He began to interact with the other people working in the circus, taking sweets when they were offered to him, and even petting the animal handler’s trick dogs.
Hatford Circus had begun to feel a million miles away from Baltimore, and Nathaniel could pretend that he had never even lived there in the first place.
-
Nathaniel crept up to the door-flap of the ringmaster’s tent as he heard his mother speaking in a more urgent voice than he had heard since their midnight departure all those months ago.
‘I can’t keep letting you look after me! I’m a good trapeze artist, you should know that more than anyone!’ said Mary.
‘I know that you’re good, but I’ve only just gotten you and Nathaniel back here and safe; we can’t risk giving away your position.’ Stuart shot back.
‘I’ll use a stage name or something. Nathan doesn’t even know that you or this circus exist, and he certainly doesn’t know that I can perform in a circus. Trust me when I say that he will be sending men out to look for me in back alleys and in the shadows where we both know how to escape, he will never be attending a circus for one performer with a name that he doesn’t recognise!’
‘Fine. But you will not be performing when we are putting on the show near Baltimore.’
Nathaniel tried to take all of this in. It did make sense that Mary would’ve had a past with the circus, and he thought that it would be nice for his mother to have something to do that wasn’t mindless circus admin. However, no matter how hard Neil tried to focus on these facts, his mind just kept going back to the fact that the circus would be going back to Baltimore. Would his father be able to spot them when they helped put the tents and trailers up? Would his father’s men be in the shops when they went to buy things, waiting to take him and Mary back to his father’s mansion? Nathaniel started to nervously twist a knife around in his hands, flipping it over knuckles and spinning it with ease, and he began to wish that this nervousness was bravery that the knives were supposed to give him, and that the power that his father seemed to get when holding a knife would also flood through Nathaniel so that he wouldn’t be so scared at the prospect of going back to his hometown.
-
Nathaniel helped Mary put up posters on the street that haunted Nathaniel’s sleep every night. Baltimore had not gotten prettier over time and Nathaniel couldn’t wait to leave so that he could finally get rid of the itching feeling that Nathan was hidden in every alley, dark corner, and dingy shop around the grime-covered city.
As they finished putting the posters up and headed home, Nathaniel tried to shake the feeling off by telling himself that Baltimore is a big place and that he’s safe, but suddenly Mary’s eyes locked onto something behind Nathaniel. Something was wrong.
‘Nathaniel, do you remember where the circus is pitched?’
Nathaniel nodded.
‘Go back there sweetheart, I’ll be back there soon.’
Nathaniel headed back and really hoped that his mother would be safe. He conjured up the images of his mother being strong and larger than life as she soared far above the world every night at the circus, defying gravity. Somebody that didn’t have to obey the rules of physics could never be hurt by something as trivial as a man with a knife, so Nathaniel tried not to be scared.
...
Gashes and cuts covered Mary’s arms and face as she entered Stuart’s tent, and Nathaniel was sent away by Stuart straight away.
After that, things changed.
Nathan seemed to have started to track them, as his men were waiting for Mary and Nathaniel at every possible turn. Nathaniel learnt quickly how to treat knife and bullet wounds, and his collection of scars and nightmares steadily grew at every encounter with Nathan’s men. Mary’s paranoia also grew, and soon Mary’s and Nathaniel’s shared tent turned into a shared bed and a gun under the pillow. Nathaniel training on the tightrope and trapeze also went from a fun way to pass the days not spent in online schooling to something that his mother forced him to spend all of his spare time on, with punishments being dealt out by her hands for not making enough progress.
At least the circus never visited Baltimore again.