Chapter Text
i.
“I hear you can make things disappear.”
His eyes traveled up from the cards in his hands, meeting hers, and stopped.
“Well ‘hello’ to you, too,” he replied, his brow rising. When she said nothing in response, he continued, shifting in his seat: “In a manner of speaking, yes.” With the movement, the hard straw beneath him prickled at his skin. “And I hear that you are a sorceress.”
The men seated in the poker circle around him chuckled, but her expression did not change.
“If you really can,” she said, “then meet me later by the stables—alone.”
He blinked, and in a moment she was gone, only a swirl of her blue cloak crossing his line of vision.
“Strange woman,” the man to his right grumbled.
“A witch, not a woman,” the one to his left corrected, and flicked a card in his hand. “She’s only lucky that this whole damn place is full of freaks like her.”
“Freaks like us, you mean,” retorted the man across from him. He glanced at the young man at the head of the circle. “So, Andersen? You going to take the Snow Queen up on her offer?” He revealed yellow, cracked teeth as he spit tobacco on the ground. “You should be careful, you know, getting involved with the likes of her. Nothing but bad luck.”
The young man snorted. “Don’t be jealous, old man. It’s not a good look on you.”
The man frowned. “You may be new here, boy, but we know you’ve heard the stories about her. Arrived here from nobody knows where, and found work with that ice magic, which no one has been able to figure out.” He paused, and added: “Who knows what else she’s hiding? The girl’s been as quiet as the grave since she got here.”
“Must have been pretty desperate to run to the circus,” the younger man replied, running a hand through his auburn hair with a sigh. “A strange place to be for such a pretty girl, though she’s done well for herself, it seems. Practically puts all the other acts out of business, including mine.”
“There are stranger things in this world than pretty girls in the circus,” the man next to him chimed in. “Perhaps she just likes you. Ladies are always fond of you magician types.”
“I’m not so sure about that, but I’ll meet her all the same,” the young man said, and revealed a flush hand to a chorus of groans. He smiled. “It’s useful to know the competition, after all.”
The older man across from him tossed his hand onto the makeshift wooden table with a snap of his teeth. “You’d better hope she doesn’t freeze your heart, then,” he mumbled, “though I don’t think it’d take much effort.”
The young man’s smile tightened, and he said nothing.
He arrived at the stables shortly after the stroke of midnight, side-stepping horse manure, empty whiskey bottles, and juggling pins along the way. One horse released a soft grumble as he entered its domain, and he returned the noise with a tired eyeroll, patting its neck.
“Easy, Sitron. Go back to sleep.”
She stood by the far wall, hooded by her cloak. As he approached, she slid it off with gloved hands, revealing a mane of fine yellow hair that sparkled against the darkness, and a single, decorative fabric snowflake pinned against it.
“If I hadn’t been expecting to see you here,” he drawled, “I might have mistaken you for a shadow.”
Her blue eyes were cool. “I don’t think that’s true. You always see me.”
His cheeks reddened. “As do the others,” he deflected. “In fact, I’m surprised they’re not all here, spying in on us. Your reputation precedes you, after all.”
Her gaze stirred a little. “It’s the smell,” she said. “Not even the old men can bear it in here.”
He nodded, sniffing the air. “Yes, it is… distinctive, to be sure.” He ignored the look of annoyance he was sure Sitron had shot him. “But enough of that. What was it that you wanted to speak with me about? ‘Disappearing,’ if I remember correctly?”
Her face fell. “Yes. Disappearing.”
He waited, watching the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. “I can’t stay here,” she said after a time, meeting his eyes. “But I have nowhere else to go.”
“You and everyone else in this place,” he replied. “I don’t think any of us really wanted to end up here. You just… do, for lack of talent or failing to accomplish anything else. So I’m not sure how I can help you, really.” His lips twitched. “I’m as much of a miserable screw-up as the rest of them.”
Her eyes flashed. “But you can do things that they can’t,” she said. “Like make things disappear.”
“Oh, yes, that,” he retorted. “If by ‘disappear’ you mean ‘briefly move someone or something from one location to the next using sleight of hand and distraction,’ then yes—I’m your man.” He raised his gloved hands to her. “Sorry to disappoint, but I can’t do much more for you than pedestrian parlor tricks.”
“I don’t believe that. And I don’t think you do, either.”
He frowned. “Don’t presume to know what I believe,” he snapped. “We hardly know each other.”
“But what if…”
His frown deepened. “‘What if’ what?”
Her hands twisted into knots in front of her cloak, and she bit her lip as her cheeks turned red. “What if we—what if we did try to know each other? Not just as ‘Elsa, the Snow Queen’ and ‘Hans, the Illusionist.’” she said. “Perhaps then, you would see what I see. We could… help each other, in a way.”
He scoffed. “I don’t need help from you, nor from anyone else in this godforsaken place. And besides,” he continued, “there’s nothing you can do for me. Nor I for you. I couldn’t teach someone how to make a bird disappear from their hands, much less a lonely girl from the circus.”
He drew close to her until they were mere inches apart and stared down at her small, freckled nose with a smirk. “Unless you’re looking for a certain kind of company. To be ‘known’ in a… particular way.”
She glared at him. “No, thank you.”
He stepped back, matching her expression. “Well, good. Because I wasn’t interested, anyway,” he replied, eyeing her up and down, “even if you’re prettier than the rest.”
She sighed. “I’d heard you were a difficult man to talk to, but… you’re even worse than I imagined.”
He leaned back against one of the wooden pillars of the stables, and crossed his arms. “A man has to live up to his reputation,” he rejoined. “It’s all he has, in the end.”
“Your ‘reputation’? In the circus? Please, Hans.”
The air around them grew colder, and he stood to attention, shivering. “A man protects what little he has left in this world,” he ground out.
The cold abated as she sighed for a second time. “I don’t know what compels you to act this way, but I don’t buy it.” Her eyes burned holes into him. “There’s more to you than this. There’s—” she paused. “You can help me. I know it.”
His cheeks pinked at the declaration, but his lips turned down. “Fine,” he replied. “If you’re so hellbent on this harebrained scheme of yours, then come and play cards with me sometime. Chat with me and the trapeze girls after the show. Hell, conjure some of your pretty little ice magic while you’re at it,” he said, his voice low. “I don’t care what you do—but don’t expect that I can help you with much more than opening a bottle of gin at the end of a long night. You’ll just end up disappointed, like all the rest.”
She smiled.
“We’ll see.”
She found Hans the next evening backstage, basking in the attention of the trapeze performers and dancers, his arms draped around them as they sat and laughed and drank sour whiskey on a worn red sofa with gold fringe.
He spotted her immediately, and though he did not stir from his seat, his eyes were locked with hers. He ran a gloved hand across the bare shoulder of one of the trapezists with a smile, and she giggled, following his line of sight to its focus point.
She scowled when she reached it. “Ugh. What’s she doing here?”
The others caught sight of the intruder and likewise shot her cold, uninviting looks.
He grinned. “So nice of you to join us, Elsa. Please, won’t you sit?”
Another trapezist on his other arm frowned, hissing: “Hans, what are you doing? We don’t want her here.”
His grin widened. “And why not? Don’t tell me you’re jealous, Asta.”
The girl’s frown deepened. “I am not! It’s just that she’s… strange,” she ended on a whisper, though still loud enough for everyone to hear. “She has strange magic.”
“As do I, or so you all like to flatter me and tell me as much,” he reminded her, and she pouted. “Don’t be jealous, little dove.”
The first trapezist shoved his arm off her shoulder. “She leaves, or I leave.”
Elsa remained quiet during the conversation, her blue-gloved hands neatly placed together in front of her cloak. “I can leave,” she offered.
“Nonsense,” Hans snapped, and frowned at the other women. “Stop being ridiculous, all of you. Can’t you bear to share me, even for a minute?”
Asta shoved off his other arm, brushing off her skirt and standing from the sofa. “Not everything is about you, idiot.”
He sighed and put on a false look of penitence. “No, of course not. I’m wrong, you’re right, I’m an idiot, you’re brilliant. There—better now?”
A dancer sitting behind him stood with a huff, then glowered at Elsa. “He’s all yours, witch,” she spat, and gathered up her costume from the performance. “Not that that’s worth much.”
The trapezists and other women followed suit, staring daggers at Hans as they walked out of the tent, one by one, leaving him with his new guest. He blinked as the final woman’s pink, feathered tail shook behind her on the way out, and turned his gaze to Elsa.
“You really know how to clear out a room.”
A hint of a smile played on her lips as she unbuttoned her cloak and slung it over the back of a makeup chair before sitting down. She glanced at the mirror for a moment, and replied: “I like to think of it more as knowing how to make an entrance.” Her attention turned back to him. “But why did you send them away? You didn’t have to.”
Hans rolled his eyes. “I didn’t send anyone away—they left of their own free will. You saw that with your own two eyes.”
She crossed her arms. “They left because you were provoking them. On purpose.”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, and suppressed a smirk. “They were just being jealous, as usual. If not of each other, then of you for stealing their crowds.” He wore a knowing look. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
Elsa shrugged. “I’ve noticed,” she acknowledged, “but it’s none of my concern.”
He snorted. “Of course not; yours are not the concerns of mere mortals, after all.”
She frowned, and then sighed, leaning back against the chair. “You’re making me regret coming here tonight.”
Hans smiled. “But wasn’t that the whole point of coming? To ‘know’ me, Elsa?”
“Yes, but…” she trailed off, and her frown grew. “You don’t make it easy.”
“Because that wouldn’t be any fun,” he returned, adding: “And since you’ve scared off my one reliable source of entertainment around here, I’ll have to make do with what’s left.”
She stared at him. “You won’t drive me away like them.”
“Because you’re ‘different,’ I suppose?” he retorted. “Because you can ‘see through’ me? Is that it?”
“Something like that,” she replied, her gaze falling to his hands slung over the top of the sofa. “I’m surprised you’re still wearing your gloves. Didn’t your act finish over an hour ago?”
“My act is never ‘finished,’” he answered, and gestured at her gloved hands in her lap. “Just like yours.”
She stiffened. “That’s not—” she paused, and breathed. “Nevermind. It doesn’t matter.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed, earning a glare from her. “We both have our reasons. And as a fellow magician,” he continued, “I wouldn’t ask you to share your secrets. Even if I desperately wanted to know them.”
Elsa’s brow rose. “Do you?”
Hans chortled. “No.”
She relaxed at this reply somewhat. “Even if you did, I… I wouldn’t know how to begin.”
He shot her a quizzical look at the remark, but then held his hands up in surrender. “Like I said—I don’t need to know,” he said. “Nor do I want to, particularly.”
“I know,” she said, her eyes still shut. “You’re not like the others, in that way.”
He shifted on the sofa to draw nearer to her, and it groaned in protest under him. His gaze was fixated on her soft features, and he rested his chin in his palm. “But you want to know me, and my secrets. Isn’t that right?”
Her eyes snapped open, catching him off-guard. “In a way, yes.”
He shook his head at her. “They were right, you know—you are a strange one.” He lay back on the sofa with a plop, his hands resting on his stomach. “So, now that you have me all to yourself, what is it exactly that you want to know?”
She glanced at his hands, and then met his stare.
“Everything.”
“Everything?”
“Yes. Everything.”
“That’s a lot to know.”
“Not once you actually start telling me, as opposed to what you’re doing now.”
“Fair enough. Though I still don’t understand how any of this helps you to, you know—‘disappear,’ as you said.”
“You don’t have to understand. You just have to believe that it’s possible.”
“Like magic?”
“Yes. Like that.”
He came to watch her act the next evening, and the evening after, and the evening after that.
He’d seen it before – the flurries dancing in the air, swirling into funnels, transforming into icicles and snowmen and miniature castles – but now he watched them with an avid attention for detail, committing each wave of her hand and hollow smile to his memory.
At the end of each performance, she found him in his dressing room, and they talked.
“You have how many brothers?”
“Twelve. Two of every kind to fill a second ark: spiteful, apathetic, bitter, arrogant, jealous, cruel.”
“And you’re… what? ‘Not like them’?”
“Oh, I am very much like them. Which is exactly why I want nothing at all to do with them.”
“Is that why you came here?”
“… not exactly.”
“Then why did you?”
“For the same reason everyone else comes here. For the same reason you came here, probably.”
“And what do you think that is?”
“To start over.”
Sometimes, the conversations lasted only an hour; other times, they stretched on and on until both had lost track of when they had started, and when they should end.
“You seem too well-bred to have ended up in a place like this.”
“So do you.”
“I am—well, I was. I suppose I can’t lay claim to those old titles anymore, in my current line of work.”
“Do you regret that?”
“Do you?”
“I… I don’t have the luxury to feel that way. This is all I have left.”
“No family?”
“No.”
“Not even some distant, wealthy cousins in France? Even I’ve got a few of those.”
“Not that I know of. But even if I did, it wouldn’t matter. I can’t go back to that life, and I—I don’t want to, either.”
“Fancy parties and well-dressed lords and ladies isn’t your cup of tea, I take it?”
“More like I’m not their cup of tea.”
“Funny, that… I feel much the same way.”
“You do?”
“I always have.”
Late in the fourth evening, he sat in the poker circle with a faraway expression, and laid his hand down to a raucous chorus of laughter.
“You’ve taken a shine to her,” one man said next to him.
“She’s bewitched him, more like,” said another.
“Bewitched him out of his money, that’s for sure!” guffawed a third man, and scooped up his earnings from the table. “You’re off your game, Andersen. That’s three nights in a row.”
The younger man looked up, only to shrug and stand from his seat, patting his wallet inside of his waistcoat. “Have to let you all win once in a while, lest you gentlemen start to think I’m cheating.”
“We already thought that, boy,” the oldest man snapped, prompting chuckles from the rest. “It’s like I told you—that girl is bad luck. And it’s showing.”
“Of course. It’s her that’s making me lose at poker,” Hans scoffed. He turned to leave, giving the men a brief gesture of goodbye over his shoulder. “Until next time.”
“Boy! Wait.”
He turned halfway around with a sigh. “What is it, Leif?”
The older man frowned, opening his mouth—and then closed it again, glancing back at the others before speaking in a quieter way. “Come with me.”
He led Hans back to the stagehands’ quarters, where two or three men were already in their beds, drunk and snoring away. Once they reached a small corner of the room where the hands usually socialized before bed, he sat down, gesturing for the young man to follow suit.
Hans did so with an uncertain expression, trying to contain his lips from curling at the smell of spilt wine, beer, and liquor. “So, Leif,” he asked, “what are we doing here?”
The older man took his pipe from his pocket and lit it, drawing a long breath before speaking again. “There’s something you should know about her,” he began, “something which I hope discourages you from associating with her further.”
“Well, when you say it like that,” Hans returned with a grin, “how can I refuse to listen?”
“I’m serious, boy,” Leif said. “You don’t understand what you’re getting yourself into, by hanging around that… that… “
“That what?” the younger man cut him off. “Girl? Witch? Sorceress? I hope you know how ridiculous you all sound when you talk about her.” He leaned back in the hard chair, taking an open bottle from a side table nearby and sniffing it. He made a face, but took a sip of it nevertheless. “I’ve been watching her act pretty closely the last few nights – well, even before then, actually – and yes, while I admit her magic is unusual and would probably be difficult to replicate, it’s certainly not real ice or snow she’s conjuring—”
“It is.”
Hans set the bottle down hard again on the table. “Don’t be absurd, old man.”
“I’m telling you, boy—it’s as real as the snow that falls from the skies and the ice that covers the rivers in winter,” Leif replied, gripping his pipe. “They’re one and the same.”
Hans shook his head. “That’s impossible. You know that.”
“I thought the same as you, once,” Leif said, sighing. “We all did. But you can only chalk up so many strange things happening in mysterious ways to chance for so long.”
Hans leaned forward, and his gaze narrowed.
“Like what?”