For us acrobats, it was a circus rule to choose our primary apparatus at the age of thirteen. The doors opened to the Big Top and I entered alone. The leftover sawdust on the floor stuck between my toes, the air scented with rain, instead of the usual smells of animal dung and stale popcorn. Each piece of equipment was illuminated with the magic of the Circus—the only spots of light in the dark space: trapeze, tightrope, hoop, silks, chains. The darkness filling the rest of the tent felt tangible, as if all that existed in the world was me and my choice.

Each apparatus had served me well during my training, suspending me high in the air as I contorted my body. The choice was easy—I wanted the hoop. The perfect circle that supported me, spinning high above the crowds, the comfort in knowing I was the same through and through, no matter how many times I rotated. My hand landed on the hoop and I pulled myself up, settling my body against the wrapped steel. It fit in the curve behind my thighs as if I was born to have it there. A spotlight snapped on, focusing on me, and the light from the other apparatuses extinguished. I rose into the air, and my Circus family streamed in to celebrate. I thought my mom would be the most excited by her only child making the biggest decision of her life; instead, she looked frozen, her brown eyes wide and unseeing, her face pale. She was in stark contrast to the others as they ooh-ed and ahh-ed at my tricks. I didn’t think much of it—tonight was about me and the hoop.

Grasping it with both hands, I flipped upside down and stretched my legs into a front split. Long ago, my body registered this as pain, blooming bruises wherever the metal contacted my golden skin. Eventually, the hoop became an extension of me. I hooked the back of my left ankle onto the bottom curve and released my hands; I released everything, letting the single point of contact hold my weight as my right leg floated back behind my head and into my grasp. I smiled into the warmth of the spotlight, my skin glittering as it did when I was in the air.

The Circus had its own magic system, but there was a different magic that bound us Blackbirds to our art. It made us stand out from the other acrobats. We were unafraid, as if the air would never drop us, as if gravity didn’t affect us. If we fell, maybe we wouldn’t even get hurt, but I didn’t know because I never fell. I was born in the Circus and I would die in the Circus; this was where I belonged.

When my performance finished and I dismounted, my mom was in the same spot. As I approached, a mask came up so quick and convincing that I wondered if I’d only imagined the strange expression on her face. She hugged me. “Congratulations, Althea. Wonderful choice.”

*

It wasn’t until five years later that I thought of my mom’s reaction that night. I was watching Vesper train his new hippogriff, creatively named Griffy. An annoyed flick of Griffy’s tail sent the metal trash can skating across the centre ring, scattering its contents all over. While helping to clean up the mess, I uncovered an amber glass bottle hidden amongst the greasy popcorn bags and peanut shells. My name was emblazoned on the peeling label: Althea Blackbird. The instructions read, Administer three drops once daily to maintain memory suppression. I knew this bottle—I’d seen it on the top shelf of my mom’s belongings, higher than I could reach in our shared trailer. The faded text was too small and faint for me to read from the floor so I never suspected that I was its intended recipient.

“Thea—” said Vesper. His cloven feet sent up little puffs of dust as he tapped them nervously.

“Did you know about this?”

“Um.” Vesper was born into the Circus a few years before me, to the family of Fauns that had existed as the Circus’s animal tamers for as long as my family had been aerialists. Griffy lay down at his feet with an audible sigh.

“What memory is she suppressing?”

“Um,” he said again. “Maybe you should ask your mom.”

*

I didn’t ask her, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out how she was drugging me. Besides the occasional snacks from our vendors, all my meals were prepared by the staff in the Dining Car. The only refreshment my mom ever offered me was a steaming mug of peppermint tea that she brewed nightly. I valued our bedtime tea session, usually on the steps outside our trailer if the weather was nice. Besides this ritual, I hardly saw her—she organized the acts and travel schedule, while I trained or helped the others with their shows. She was once an acrobat too, but she quit long ago, something I could never fathom. Sometimes, she trailed her gloved fingers over the seat of the trapeze, closing her hand around it as if she could feel it through the velvet.

After that, I stopped drinking her tea. I’d cradle the mug in my hands, warming my callused skin and taking small sips to appease her, but I’d spit it into a handkerchief hidden in my sleeve when she wasn’t looking. The remainder was discretely poured on the ground between my shoes.

Memory was an odd thing. The smell came first—I woke with the echo of perfume in my nose, like a word on the tip of my tongue. There should have been this scent in our trailer, honey-sweet and floral, swirled in with sandalwood from Mom’s soap and the mothball musk of our costumes. I found the broken bottle in the back of a cabinet full of old cosmetics. The aroma of osmanthus flowers filled me, and I cradled the etched glass, wondering how a smell could make me feel so safe.

That same day, as I inspected the carabiners of the outdoor rigs, I remembered a slender hand, callused and long-fingered, directing mine over the metal links. A female voice said, “Don’t forget—always screw them downwards, never up.”

A shiver travelled down my spine, and my hands shook too much to continue the task. I didn’t know what to expect when I stopped taking that potion, but it wasn’t this sense of emptiness, of missing.

The next morning, I watched the trapeze artists from the bleachers. Across the tent, the movement of air sent an empty hoop swaying, and my mind supplied the vision of a girl in that clear black circle. She could have been me with her long black hair and shimmering skin, dancing effortlessly high above. The differences were subtle—a heart-shaped face instead of my oval one, thinner eyebrows, and a single freckle on her cheek that she absolutely hated. I knew those details were there without seeing them. A wave of nausea hit me, and I keeled over, vomiting into the space between the seats. I yelled an apology before dashing to the cleaning closet and locking myself inside to be alone. Part of me rejected the memory of her, because there was no remembering without hurting. But I couldn’t fight it; the floodgates were open.

Her name was Elyse, and she was my sister. Once the Circus’s star performer, Elyse was one with the hoop. Her skin sparkled as she flipped and hung and twisted, sometimes with other acrobats, suspending each other in ways that made the audience hold their collective breath. She was weightless when she flew through the air; I wanted to be just like her. I thought the aerial hoop was my autonomous decision, but maybe deep down I remembered.

I didn’t notice when it first started—Elyse always looked dreamy when she was performing, but one night she held a particularly ethereal quality. It took me a moment to realize she was translucent. It wasn’t an illusion; the spotlights refracted through her like foggy glass.

She was Fading—something else my mom made me forget, something she herself suffered from, hiding her see-through fingers inside her ever-present velvet gloves. The first night when it was clear Elyse was Fading, she and my mom had a vicious argument. I was outside our trailer, watching their quivering silhouettes scream at each other through the thin curtain, Elyse’s shadow fainter than Mom’s. Their heated words were muffled through the wall, but I heard a smash, the sound of glass breaking. I didn’t dare go in, so I sat under the window with my knees tucked beneath my chin until their voices ceased with one final shout. Elyse ran out, slamming the door behind her, and I followed.

She climbed to the tightrope platform where she curled up and sobbed. She was seven years older than me, and I thought she knew everything. I didn’t think her self-assuredness and calmness could give way to a sadness so profound. She startled when I wrapped my arms around her trembling form. She still felt solid.

“Thea.” She held me tight, and I buried my nose in her hair, breathing in sweet osmanthus. “Mom wants me to quit before I fully Fade.”

“Why do we Fade?” I asked, examining the shape of my hand through hers.

“Humans weren’t meant to surpass gravity.”

Back then, I didn’t understand what she meant. Now I knew that magic was a changing quality that grew the more we mastered it, the closer we got to true weightlessness. But our mortal bodies weren’t made to hold a magic so strong.

“Are you going to quit?” The tears that collected in the corners of my eyes spilled over; I knew her answer.

“I can’t.” She sobbed and I wished my grasp on her could be enough to hold her in my life forever.

*

Once I remembered Elyse, the looks my mom gave me made sense: the expression on her face the day of my thirteenth birthday when the hoop carried me high into the air, the way her gaze blurred every time she watched me until she stopped coming to my shows entirely. I looked too much like Elyse on the hoop, tan skin sparkling, black hair plaited into endless loops behind my head, a mirror image of the daughter she’d lost.

*

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know what was coming. The first day I noticed the tips of my toes were faint, I cancelled my show. The Circus was unhappy with me—I could tell from the way my trailer lights flickered and how the animals walked wide circles around me like I repelled them. A knock sounded at my trailer door after the show, and I prayed that it wasn’t my mom.

Vesper stood in the doorway with two candy apples, an offering I couldn’t refuse. We sat on the floor, eating our treats in silence. Once we were half done, he asked, “Are you going to quit?”

I can’t, was Elyse’s answer when I had asked her the same question. The ghost of her words hung on my lips. Instead, I said, “I don’t know.”

This was why my mom made me forget—so I could enjoy the art for as long as possible before I faced this turmoil. I could take the route that she took, hanging up her invisible wings to continue on in this world and start a family, or I could take the route of Elyse.

True to her word, Elyse never quit. She kept spinning that endless circle night after night until I could make out the striped inside of the Big Top through her. I watched her until one night, she was so transparent that I could see everything behind her with perfect clarity. It was then I realized she was no longer there. She was gone, and that hoop continued to spin without her. Murmurs rippled across the audience and then they stood, thrilled by the seamless vanishing act, their deafening applause drowning out my sobs.

“If I quit,” I twirled the stick of the apple between my palms, “would I stay here or would I leave the Circus?”

“Where would you go if you left the Circus?” The Circus was the only life we ever knew.

I shrugged. “Where would I go if I disappeared?”

Vesper chewed, cleverly waiting for the moment to pass, then he changed the subject and gave me his take on tonight’s show, the first I’d ever missed, and it was a welcome distraction from the inevitable choice that awaited me.

*

If I said aloud that I was quitting, the circus would write me out forever. I told my mom it was a break, and she nodded knowingly. When I watched the other aerialists, my heart folded in half. The idea that my mom turned her back on her trapeze and stayed here, watching them every night for years, was unfathomable to me.

The acrobats danced above me while I set up the magician’s equipment on the ground below. Even though I kept my eyes downcast, their shadows taunted me with their tricks.

One night, Vesper approached me with a furrowed brow. He said, “You’re fading.”

“What?” I dropped the cables I was carrying to look down at my body. My toes hadn’t reverted to opacity but there were no new signs of Fading since I stopped doing hoop.

“You never smile anymore.”

“Oh,” I said. “Don’t scare me like that.”

“Well, it is scary, isn’t it? To think that you would live the rest of your life like this?”

Like this. Flightless. I felt heavier lately, the pull of gravity stronger than ever before. Maybe it would get so strong that I’d be dragged into the earth as I continued to reach for the sky.

“I don’t want to Fade,” I whispered.

Vesper folded his goat legs beneath him and sat down. “I was glad when you said that you’d stop, because I didn’t want you to disappear, but this is worse. You’re fading on the inside. You were meant to be up there.”

I followed his gaze. An acrobat launched himself from the platform, sailing through the air until he grasped the metal chains waiting for him, and my heart ached to watch. My hoop hung empty, the tape wrapping around steel worn from my frequent use. It grew closer and closer until I realized that I was walking toward it. My feet carried me to the ladder’s base. I climbed rung after rung until I was on the platform, level with the hoop.

Without thinking, I discarded my shoes and leapt. The distance was farther than usual, and I doubted myself for a moment. Did I still have my magic? Or was I earthbound now? I missed my catch, fingers grazing the base of the ring. Gravity was a force that I underestimated.

As I started to fall, I remembered Elyse’s last show. The thought of her spinning, bound by the love of her art until the very end, slowed my descent, and I stretched one inch higher to grab the bottom curve. I steadied my hold and pulled myself up. Everything was right. My skin glittered. I was grounded, as the circle reminded me that with every rotation: I’m still here. I’m still here. 

One day I wouldn’t be, but for now, I kept spinning.