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The greatest freedom Anne ever felt was when she was in the air.
Spinning, soaring forty feet from the ground held only by a rope and her own firm grip, hair blown back by the breeze and legs stretched behind her. She felt like an eagle, flying above her and her brother’s dwindling money, her rumbling stomach at night, the sneers on the street, the dismissive slap on the back that showrunners gave WD when they told him that they were sorry son, but they simply didn’t have a place onstage for black trapeze artists. Everything that trapped her with every step she took. How she felt when she looked up towards the night sky and saw the speckling of stars through the buildings, so small and so distant.
None of it mattered when Anne was up on the trapeze. She owned the sky there.
And when she finally flung from the ropes, heart in her throat, breaths caught, mind reeling in the exhilaration, WD would catch her. They’d fly together, laughing and free. Just as they had ever since she was a child, after he burst in their room, eyes dancing, to tell her about this new European art of trapeze that he saw perform in the park.
“The man was from France,” he’d said, and pulled a red silk scarf from inside his shirt, “He saw me watching, and he handed this to me right off his neck!”
From that day on, the bars felt safer than any home ever had. From the first moment that Frenchman lifted her towards them, Anne took the sky in the palm of her hand. No one could touch her there. No one could pull her down.
That is, until that night. Where Anne swung through the air as high as ever, only to be met with the kind, awed eyes of a beautiful strange man. Her heart leapt in her chest for a whole other reason. Time seemed to slow, the air itself stilling. And then he was gone as she fell back again, the image blurring like a strange dream.
There was something there from the moment they met. That she could not deny. There stood the man, white and wealthy as he was, wide-eyed and blubbering to her like a lovesick schoolboy. “Everyone has an act,” Anne told him, eyeing him as keenly as she liked. Because in here, she still owned the skies, and his gaze followed her everywhere she walked.
“He likes you a lot,” WD teased as he caught up with her. “Written all over his face. Should I deal with it, little sis?” He broke out into chuckles. Anne only hummed in response, ignoring the thud in her chest.
It didn’t take long for Mr. Carlyle to make the trapeze an even greater refuge.
Only on the trapeze was she not staring up at him from the ground. Only on the trapeze could she swing out of his reach as he grasped desperately up to her. Only on the trapeze did he not have the power to break her heart, because on the trapeze was it him that could never catch her, where she was the one who could fly up and away from this world as soon as she pleased.
But he pleaded. And he ran after her. And before long he learned, and he was swinging up there with her. Yet she loved it. Anne was still on top of the sky, conquering gravity and reeling through the air, but now Phillip was there wrapped around her. Her heart raced, beating in rhythm with his. His smile and those same awed eyes pressed so close. And just for a moment, she started to think that she could actually have him too.
But gravity always wins eventually, and as her feat hit the ground, the truth hit just the same. There was no helping the inevitable.
Damned if that boy wasn’t persistent. Damned if that boy didn’t do the stupidest, most unexpected things. And damned if she didn’t watch him sleep there bruised and burned, praying that she’d give up all the skies if he would only open his eyes. And when he did, when she saw that familiar awed stare once more, the scandalized scoffs of the nurse fell on deaf ears as she kissed him.
Something about the tents made the air seem even fresher, more open, more free. She could soar as she always did, feeling like she never needed to land. But when she did, Phillip was there. Sometimes, when the stage dimmed, lights from the outside would filter through the fabric of the tent, scattering across them all like starlight.
Anne had already owned the skies. But with Phillip, she managed to conquer the stars as well.