The Funambulist

Circus performers are a strange lot. More than a few of them still practice the old ways of the hex and the deck and the augur. “There are still gypsies in these tents,” warned Maksim Morozov’s mother when he was very young. “And their mad ways are still a currency of note in the realm behind the world.”

His mother was a dancer, the kind that men paid money to see, but Maksim knew that she had been something more at one point. Her advancing years could not hide the grace and the skill that coursed through her veins. Sometimes he would sit up late, watching her through the curtains that divided his bedroom and the rest of their trailer, in that twilight hour when she thought nobody else could see. It was during these times that she would dance for herself, moving to an ancient rhythm that only she could hear. He had once seen a leaf caught in an updraft, dancing like a fairy cast in candy apple red and sunrise gold. It was of this leaf that Maksim thought when he saw his mother dance.

Life in an American circus in the 1920s was no doubt difficult, but Maksim never knew want or worry. Indeed, there could be no greater place for a boy to grow up. The life of a circus boy was full of adventure and excitement. While other boys had dogs for pets, young Maksim had elephants and monkeys. Most children had aunts and uncles of a fairly dull disposition, but young Maksim was raised by such oddities as bearded Aunt Helga and Uncle Tobias the Terrible. And where most children were made to sleep in beds so stationary they must have been like unto rocks on the banks of a rushing river, young Maksim made his bed in the belly of a lumbering iron giant. It was all so terribly exciting.

Maksim’s mother worried it was too exciting. By the time the boy was fourteen and puberty was beginning to usurp what had once been the simple rule of mother’s love, Maksim was too interested in the world he’d grown up in to be dissuaded from becoming a living part of it. You see, for Maksim’s mother, the circus was a means to an end. After Maksim’s father had been taken from them during the Revolution, Maksim’s mother had managed to ferry them out of the country and into the brave new world of America. She had been a ballerina in the Mother Country, young Russia’s rising star, Alena Morozov. The revolution had changed all that, had changed everything, and had driven her to the shores of this mad land where her skill mattered far less than the curve of her body. So she danced, amongst other things, to keep meat on the bones of her young son.

So when Maksim told his mother that he was going to join the circus as a tightrope walker she was disappointed but not surprised. Her first instinct was to forbid him, and if that did not work then to simply run away with him. Anything, she thought, to keep him from this life she’d been forced into. But she saw the look of happiness in the boy’s eyes when he talked about the wire. And she could remember back, as early as his first steps, Maksim had been of excellent foot. He was like his mother more than a bit. She had hoped one day to save enough money to take them away from this, to perhaps enroll her son in a school somewhere, but she knew in her heart it was not to be. Maksim Morozov, Maksim Morrison since passing through the cold yet welcoming arms of Ellis Island, was destined to touch the heavens. What sort of mother would stop him?

So at the young age of fourteen Maksim began his training. He apprenticed under the circus’ resident tightrope walker, Giovanni the Great. Giovanni had been balancing on high wires for over twenty years. He had talent, but he never mastered much beyond the tightrope. He had once, years before, attempted to juggle scimitars on the slack wire. The results were bloody and embarrassing, costing him two good fingers from his right hand. So it was the pole and the high wire for Giovanni the Great, who really was no more than Giovanni the Adequate. Still, his tutelage proved invaluable. For what Giovanni lacked in skill he made up for in charisma. Audiences loved him, women loved him, even men seemed to love him. Giovanni recognized very early that Maksim was of superior skill, that there was something truly magical about the boy. So he sought to teach him what he knew best; the art of seduction.

In a relationship that can only be described as Dionysian, Giovanni taught the beautiful young Maksim all he knew about pleasure. Under Giovanni’s watchful eye, Maksim learned to appreciate wine, good food, fine tobacco, the rigidness of a man’s arms, the firmness of a woman’s supple breast, the taste of sweat beading on flesh. By age sixteen, when Maksim would first climb the tall ladder, the wire was the only thing in that circus he had yet to conquer.

And conquer it he did. Within six months of walking the wire Maksim had surpassed his teacher. Within a year, Giovanni was all but a memory, content to smoke opium with the Chinese coolies hired to help strike the tents and to engage in various acts of debauchery with Maria the Tattooed Lady. The wire, the audience, belonged to Maksim. It was a meteoric rise to fame. He did everything Giovanni never could. He juggled fire and swords on the slack wire and rode the unicycle across the high wire. Each performance brought something new, something daring. His legend spread throughout the country and his coffers grew fat with the money of the tossers. By nineteen, his mother never had to remove a stitch of clothing for money again.

This wild ride continued for two more years, until three weeks after his twenty-first birthday, Maksim’s mother collapsed from exhaustion. For three more weeks he stayed by her side, his hand in hers, crying soft tears when he remembered her grace. On the seventh week after his twenty-first birthday, she passed. Three months later, Maksim Morozov, Maksim Morrison, Maximus the Magnificent, made unto her a grand tribute.

Maksim had a wire constructed from New York to Canada, spanning the roaring, churning power of the great Niagara Falls. It was to be his greatest feat of balancing skill. Newspaper and radio reporters from across the country, indeed from across the world, came to follow Maksim’s most dangerous performance yet. At the outset, Maksim discarded the long pole, the tool of high wire walkers, choosing instead to try to conquer the falls with his own natural skill. All in attendance thought him mad, but if you could have asked Maksim he would have told you he’d never felt calmer in his life. On October 7, 1930, Maksim Morozov walked the falls and all who saw it were forever changed by his grace.

When he reached the other side of the wire and stepped off into Canada, a reporter was waiting to ask him the question on everyone’s mind.

“Maximus, before you walked the wire you decided to disregard the pole, your guiding tool. What made you decide you no longer needed it?”

“My mother,” was the answer he gave. “She taught me the only thing I ever needed to know.”

“What was that, Maximus? What did she teach you?”

Maksim paused for a moment, taking a long look at the falls beneath him and the great expanse of light blue sky above. Then he answered.

“Balance. She taught me balance.”


--This is my most recent piece for the guild workshop. In my opinion it's the best thing I've ever written. It was extremely well-received by my peers. Their responses to the piece have inspired me to revisit the character in my mind. This week I've been thinking of ways to stretch this into a full length work of fiction. The working title is Maximus the Magnificent and the Devil's Arcade. Who wouldn't want to read a book with that title, right? I am aware that the main character's name is repeated a bit too much and that in further edits I should try and correct that. Still, I think this is a very strong short story. It took me an hour to write, slightly less than that for first edit.--

Brett

General Shiva

The reporters sounded like the quacking of hungry water fowl to Supreme Commander Darius Jackson. He felt for all the world like some sort of abomination when he looked out at the sea of muckrakers in the auditorium. Their digi-recorders sucked up every sound, their hover-cams every movement. He was a monster on display, a killer with five gold stars, and the madding crowd was screaming for the blood of answers. Commander Jackson leaned heavy on the podium, laughing to himself that the most difficult part of his job, dealing with the press, was something they barely covered in officer school. He was a man of unparalleled tactics, but when it came to a mass of desperate writers he was as lost as a first year cadet. Finally, one of the reporters' voices shot through the noise with a question so challenging that it silenced the crowd.

"Commander, your decision to use kinetic bombardment against the Shoap homeworld quite likely saved the human race. How does it feel to trade our lives for theirs?"

Jackson glanced at his digital reader, at the list of prepared responses illuminated there. The response to this particular question was simply No Comment. He mouthed the words silently as his eyes passed over them. No comment. Then the Commander looked up at that collection of curious writers and their hovering, unemotional companions and gave them an answer that his superiors would certainly not have approved of.

"Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds."


--This was the first piece I wrote for the writers guild I'm currently a part of. It was a quick, 250 word exercise that had to use the word Shoap (the name of the guild). Surprisingly, this is the only thing I've written so far that could be qualified as science fiction. It's the weakest piece from the stuff I've done recently, but I do like that it at least hints at a larger, richer story. Also, kinetic bombardment is cool.--

Brett