#smc59

[akaewriter]

Leeuwerik Baudelaire (Hollandse Circus 4/4)

Alouette Baudelaire was twenty-two years old now, and though she had left van Manker’s great Dutch circus a long time ago, it had never quite left her mind.

There were a great many things to remember about it. The gross mistreatment that the performers suffered, was but one horrid thing in a sea of sweet nostalgic things, seaglass memories from a grimy childhood she was sure she would never fully leave behind.

She remembered the shadow plays Dijkgraaf would put on for them, the stories Mr. Chandri would tell about the far east, and how it felt as if she’d laughed all night when she was nine and tried whiskey for the first time, after the guests had long left the circus tent and the kids were free to dance around and draw figures in the shallow sand there. The games of truth or dare that they played, the time Dijkgraaf’s daughter Musetta had dared her to kiss Hendrik Csokas on the cheek.

Oh, the Csokas brothers. She thought about them every day.

Allie had left the Netherlands when the circus tent burned down in 1859. She was twelve, and without a home. There was no more circus, and her friends were scattered to the winds, and there was certainly nothing for her in Haag. 

The only word that came to her mind had been England.  And so, that was where she went. From there on, it felt as if every step along Allie’s way had been a sleight of hand. A trickery.

The trapeze artist who had taught her and the other girls at the circus, Mrs. Rozárka Cristiniy, had been a professional ballet dancer in her youth, and so she had trained her girls with bone hard determination and discipline that would make a soft child crumble.

Not to have them ballet dancing on stage. No, the richest families in Haag were already paying to see that at the Amsterdam Opera. Van Manker had no interest in showing his audiences something they could pay to see elsewhere.

Cristiniy trained the girls to tie themselves up in silk, tenfold of feet in the air, only to let themselves fall and trust that the ties would catch them. She trained them to sit poised in metal rings in the air, holding on with bare hands, grinning, white stars painted around their wide eyes. She trained them to fly in the air from one swing to another with zero hesitation, nothing in their minds but determination that they were more than skilled enough to grab onto the hands of the one who was meant to be catching them. 

In order to teach them that kind of steel hard skill, Cristiniy trained them to be ballet dancers on top of it all. Allie became the greatest among them all. The star attraction, van Manker’s very own Leeuwerik: Little Lark.

Van Manker loved her dearly. And he stopped at nothing to prove his affections to her, every night in her caravan, even when she said no.

She did not tell Mrs. Cristiniy about this, but it was hardly a secret. However, Mrs. Cristiniy was under van Manker’s mercy just as much as any other circus performer. All she could do was push Allie to perseverance, turn her into a diamond in the rough, encourage her to keep becoming greater, no matter what.

Mrs. Cristiniy died only a few months after Dijkgraaf. It was believed that the two of them had a passionate affair, and that perhaps it was the heartbreak that killed her.

And as a result of this hardship, and with all her motivation to live up to Cristiniy’s expectations and to honor her memory, Allie would always be able to do the impossible.

She could tie knives to her ballet shoes with string and dance for hours on the tips of the blades. She could smile through pain other dancers could only dream to hold their poses to. And though she was often the shortest in a crowd, she stuck out because she held her head the highest, held herself with the most poise, and moved in every elegant way imaginable.

And these impossible feats landed Allie Baudelaire in a good ballet academy.

The other girls could not decide if they loved or hated Allie. She was a miserable little underdog orphan outlander from across the sea who spoke broken English, and had learnt everything she knew from a retired, bitter, alcoholic woman who used to be something great in a country none of them had ever visited.

But Allie did not care. Being in the circus, being little Leeuwerik, had taught Allie everything she needed to know about withstanding dirty looks. She could take all of it without breaking a sweat.

At her graduation showcase when she was fifteen, she was pulled aside by a scout from the Royal Ballet in Covent Garden, and asked if she was interested in a job. She’d made a crude gesture at the other girls as she was taken to the Royal Ballet in a beautiful cart.

During Allie’s Christmas break, after she had lived in London and danced for the Royal Ballet for seven years, something was tugging at her heart, telling her to visit Birmingham, as if there was something waiting for her there. Allie thought of what had happened the last time she felt an inclination to go somewhere, and she remembered how successful it had been. Then, she bought a train ticket, headed north.

Allie liked Birmingham. Where London was quiet, busy, and in denial about the grime within its own city walls, Birmingham was little and loud and dark and it embraced its griminess fully. Flickering gas lanterns were hung out on lines over the roads, horses pulled carriages with bells that sang gently in their harnesses, old men walked hunched over along the roads and nodded at everyone they saw. The landlady of the apartment Allie was renting for the week was a middle-aged woman who talked too much and forbade any men in the house, even though she seemed to bring home a new gentleman every night. Allie did not mind. She was used to sleeping through noise.

After a childhood in the circus, of owning almost nothing, Allie had developed a fondness for small trinkets, pocket-sized, rings and lockets and hairpins and brooches, anything she could hold in the palm of her hand. Therefore, most of her days were spent wandering the streets, entering almost any shop she could find, looking for nice little trinkets for herself.

Until one day, she came across a little building, a frostbitten sign dangling above the door, which read “DR. CSOKAS’ PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC.” That had made her stop dead in her tracks.

Because surely, the Csokas she once knew, was not the only Csokas in the world, and surely the chance of him being here was miniscule.

But a chance was a chance, no matter the odds. And so, Allie Baudelaire opened the door - a bell rang as she did - and stepped inside a quaint little room. There were neat paintings on the wall, benches that looked somewhat uncomfortable, a pretty persian rug, and a small fire dancing in the brick fireplace. Towards the other end of the room, there was a front desk and a great hardwood door next to it, and Allie had her back to it, trying to read the signature on one of the paintings, when she heard footsteps from the door. She spun around, and there he was, and what could she do but grin?

“My God,” Siebren said slowly in Dutch, a small smile widening into a grin across his lips. “Alouette. You’re aliv-”

He did not get to finish, because she was already there, wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug, and he laughed, easing his arms jankily around her, as though he were a robot.

“Goodness, goodness, goodness,” she said as she pulled back to look at him, grinning. “You’re taller than last, Siebren.”

“Well, you aren’t,” he replied, raising one eyebrow, smiling. For that, he received a gentle punch to the arm. He laughed, pulling his old friend into a second hug. They stood like that for a little while. Perhaps they were both very lonely in the real world, after growing up in the circus pack. Perhaps they’d both needed this for a long time.

“This clinic- it’s all yours?” she asked after a little, pulling back to look around, admiringly.

“Yes,” Siebren said, brushing dust off one of the painting frames and crossing his arms. “The old owner, Dr. Constantinescu, taught me everything he knew. So now, I’m a professional headshrinker. Isn’t that nice?” he asked, humming quietly, suddenly obsessed with making sure the room looked presentable.

“It’s great,” she said, looking at him, nodding as if she’d known all along that something like this was going to become Siebren’s reality, eventually. “I always knew - we all did - that there’d become something good out of you one day. Looks like we were right, hey?”

“Oh, shut up,” he muttered, cheeks slightly red, grinning crookedly up at her. “What about you, Alouette? What’s become of you?”

“I’m a dancer now,” she said, almost braggingly, raising her eyebrows at him, grinning when his smile widened. “At the Royal Ballet. Would you believe it?”

“Yes, actually,” he said, leaning back against the front desk, laughing quietly. “I would believe it. If anyone could pull off a feat like that, it would have to be you.”

“Stop it,” she grinned, running her fingers along the edge of the leaf of a large plant that stood potted in the corner.

“Have they let you do your knife number yet?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.

“I am working on it, actually. I could try and secure you a ticket,” she said, smirking.

“Oh, I expect nothing less, Alouette, now that I know not only that you’re alive, but that you’re going to be a star the way we all believed you would be,” he grinned. “Here, why don’t we discuss this more over dinner? I know a nice little place. We’ve a lot to catch up on,” he suggested, and Allie brightened like a flame.

“Oh, I’d love that, Siebren.”

Then, Siebren locked up his clinic while Allie waited for him. 

Messenblok and Leeuwerik linked arms and walked off in the snow, perhaps the two most unlikely friends in the world, talking all the way, brought together by a past that neither of them deserved. And even so, they were both laughing and smiling, because they had made it out alive, because they had honored every memory they had sworn to honor. Because finally, they had both broken even. 

[akaewriter]

To Those We Lost (Hollandse Circus 3/4)

One late summer night in 1860, there was a mysterious fire on the grounds of De Fantastische Meester Mankarij's Hollandse Circus. The circus tent burnt to the ground, and so did several caravans, but most of the performers came out of it with minor injuries at worst.

There was one performer who was not accounted for, however, and that was the scarred young boy who had become the circus’ main moneymaker.

The funny part was, Messenblok’s great escape plan had really been quite easy. 

Every now and then, very rarely, he was let out of his cage in order to stretch his legs. It was one of these nights when suddenly, he just happened to knock a torch over as he was walking by. It had not been an accident, but he had definitely made it look that way. He’d cried out “fire, fire,” and then ran for the circus tent, as if he meant to hide from the fire in there, but at the very last minute, he’d turned for the stables, grabbed the reins of one of the horses, and ridden for the docks.

And so, Siebren Csokas was free.

He got on the first boat bound for England. There - he ended up in a lousy little place with a name that ended with Thorpe - he hung around in the markets and listened to conversations between the merchants, listening for any word of anyone bound for further away, away from the coast. After a lifetime in Haag, Siebren was sick of coasts.

He hid in an Irish merchant’s cargo wagon, and after a few weeks of bumpy riding, he ended up in Birmingham.

An ugly place indeed, but heaven on earth for a hard bastard of a boy, like Siebren had become. And from there on, all the only remaining Csokas brother had to do, was find someplace to live, get a job, and work his way upward.

He’d wander the streets during the daytime, entering anything that looked like a business and asking - in fairly broken English - if there was any work for him. And again and again and again, he was turned away.

After a whole month of disappointment, scouring the streets for buildings he had yet to have entered, he was just about to give up. But then, he spotted a sign he did not think he had seen before, a sign that read “DR. CONSTANTINESCU’S PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC.”

And so, with nothing to lose, he entered, and that night, Siebren won bigger than he’d ever won before. 

It turned out that Dr. Constantinescu actually needed an assistant to help him keep order in his patient files. 

Csokas was a Romanian surname, which was something Dr. Constantinescu pointed out. Siebren explained the situation, omitting as many details as possible; he was abandoned as a little child along with his late brother Hendrik, and all he knew about his mother, was that she was from the city of Gheorgheni, Romania. He took care to greatly express his distress over not having been able to reconnect with his Romanian roots. Dr. Constantinescu, born and raised in Gheorgheni, Romania himself, was won over immediately.

Siebren had started the day homeless, jobless, broke and freezing, and ended it with a job, a bed to sleep in - an old guest bed in the doctor’s apartment on the floor above his clinic - and some hope that his life might finally become something good.

Dr. Constantinescu was an old widower with no children save for a daughter he regretted having lost touch with, which meant his life, now, was devoted to no more than two things: his work, and teaching his apprentice well, perhaps even well enough to inherit the little clinic someday. 

He reminded Siebren of Douwe Dijkgraaf, and there was something lovely and safe about that. 

The doctor taught his young apprentice everything he could teach about the science of psychology, he taught him to speak both English and Romanian like a native. But most importantly, he taught him to adjust and become an almost normal teenage boy in the Birmingham society, without asking questions about Siebren’s past. The young boy who was once a freak, though he might never stop feeling as if he was morbidly out of place, was turned into a sophisticated gentleman, well versed in the workings of a society he had never before been a part of.

Dr. Constantinescu’s teachings kindled a fascination in Siebren, a fascination with the inner workings of the human mind. He would “borrow” patient files from the cabinets to read at night, guess at a prognosis and possible details that might arise in later sessions, and then check back later to see whether or not he was right. And most of the time, he was.

He would dissect the way people looked and acted and spoke on the street; their body languages, the tones of their voices, the looks in their eyes, their choices of words. The boy learned to pick people apart. Not because his calling was to help them. Just because he wanted to understand them, because he felt he might never be quite like them.

When Siebren eventually decided he wanted to pursue the study of psychology at Birmingham University, Dr. Constantinescu made sure his young apprentice would ace the entrance exam like no other student.

Thanks to the fact Siebren had, in the doctor’s fond Romanian words, “a shining and brilliant mind,” and probably also as a result of the doctor’s good help, he passed with flying colors.

After his studies were finished and Siebren Csokas received a doctorate in psychology, he and Dr. Constantinescu ran the clinic together for a good few years, until the old man passed away, peacefully, in his sleep.

That could have broken Siebren’s spirit. He’d grown very close to this old man, he’d even thought of him as some kind of father, - it was strange, the old doctor always said Siebren was the spitting image of him in his younger days, - and to have him gone like that, for Siebren to be alone once again, it felt unbearably heavy.

But he reminded himself that now, he had another person dear to him, a new someone to make proud. He had not come this far for nothing. Now that he had inherited an entire clinic, a roof under his head, a business to keep in check, and a job that meant he could do some semblance of good. And now that he had something handfast right in front of him, it was easier for him than ever to make all of them proud; Hendrik, his mother, Douwe Dijkgraaf, Dr. Constantinescu… He’d pull through for them, and whatever he’d done until then to earn himself a doctorate, he’d keep doing it even better.

Though Siebren Csokas wasn’t bright-spirited in any way as a person, he was adored as a psychologist. Sometimes it was good for broken people to be faced with someone who could bring the truth down upon them, even if it was not a truth they liked, and Siebren, cynical as he was, was excellent at that. 

On a good day, he had eight hour-long sessions back to back, and a good week consisted of six good days and Sunday to rest. The past few months had been nothing but good weeks, and by the looks of it, the following months were going to be just the same.

One day, as Siebren was dusting off the front in his waiting room, arranging the files behind it, he heard the shopkeeper’s bell ring, and then he heard the door close.

“Tijd niet gezien, Messenblok,” said an all too familiar voice.

Siebren felt something drain from him as he turned around, but it was not courage. No, he felt calm and still and ready, for whatever was about to happen.

“Good evening, van Manker,” he said politely, smiling as his visitor took off his hat, and Siebren registered immediately that van Manker’s manner was far from aloof; on the contrary, he seemed almost relaxed and friendly. This was a man visiting an old friend, it seemed. It was obvious that he was under the impression there was no bad blood at all between them, and that Siebren had no reason at all to want to see van Manker’s brains splattered across the floor.

“I saw the sign, kid, and I recognized your name,” said van Manker, grinning as he looked around. “I figured it was too good to be true, but by my beard, it’s you!” 

He laughed, spinning his hat around in his hands, and Siebren smiled with him.

“Indeed it is me,” said the younger man. “I bet you thought you’d never see me again, huh? I certainly thought I’d seen the last of you,” he added, and there was nothing friendly in his voice, but van Manker did not seem at all fazed.

“Some place you’ve got yourself here, isn’t it?” van Manker said, and if Siebren was any self control poorer, he would have decked the man on the spot. But Siebren was smart, far smarter than he’d been when he was little Messenblok, and far, far smarter than van Manker.

“Want to see where the magic happens?” Siebren asked, smiling crookedly as if he was offering a treat to a dumb dog. “As a special treat for an old friend.”

“Boy, do I!” van Manker laughed heartily, and at Siebren’s gesture, he followed the younger man into the main office.

The main office would have been a cozy little room, but the large reclined hardwood chair in the middle sort of ruined the atmosphere. It was a prototype that an old friend of Dr. Constantinescu had developed; a nice and comfortable chair, with wrist and ankle shackles that could be activated at the press of a pedal, in order for the doctor to be able to restrain a possible violent patient.

It wasn’t a contraption he’d ever used before, mostly because he didn’t believe violence or physical restraint had anything to do within a psychologist’s office.

Today, the chair was not a trap to be used against an innocent, troubled person. Today, it was an excellent, symbolic opportunity to bring vengeance down upon the man that broke him all those years ago, using the second chance he’d been granted through the kindness of a complete stranger.

“You can sit down in the chair if you want,” Siebren said, feigning sheepishness, as if he was a shy newlywed young woman showing off her grand new home to all of her friends. And van Manker, ever the idiot, took the bait.

Siebren pressed the pedal down immediately, and so, van Manker was locked in place. The younger man smiled at his old ringmaster, and then he stepped away to lock the door.

“Kiddo,” van Manker laughed quietly, all humor gone from his voice now, “what are you doing?”

Siebren didn’t see fit to answer that question.

“Do you ever think about vengeance, van Manker?” he asked, calmly, watching the ringmaster as he crossed the room to open a drawer. “What a pretty thing it is,” he hummed as he pulled a knife out of the mess of tools in there. Van Manker seized up immediately, his face going white.

“Messenblok, you don’t have to-”

“That’s not my name,” Siebren said, eyes wide and patient as he walked back to the reclining chair, holding the knife in his steady, scarred hand. “Go on, mister ringmaster. You know what my name is.”

“Siebren,” van Manker gasped. “Siebren Csokas. You don’t have to do this, you- I did you a favor, you know. I didn’t want you leaving us, you know that,” he said, rambling panickedly as if he knew exactly what the star of his freakshow was going to do to him.

“Oh, van Manker,” Siebren chuckled, placing the knife down in the ringmaster’s lap, well aware he would not be able to reach it. He had to manually fasten the belt around van Manker’s skull, to keep his head dead still, but that allowed him a little demonstration of strength as he held the ringmaster’s head in place, as if to say, careful, you old fucker, I could break your neck if I wanted to. Siebren took the knife again. “Look at me, why don’t you?” he said patiently, stepping back. “I mean, really look at me. Look what you did to me, look what you turned me into. Does it not haunt you? It doesn’t haunt me, not in the way you think. I think it suits me, you see. But oh, if you only knew, the nights I’ve lain awake, thinking of all the things I’m going to do to get back at you for it.” He laughed, and when he really listened to himself, he sounded just a little insane. Even if that were the case, it was well justified.

“It doesn’t have to be like this, kiddo,” van Manker tried, edging away from the knife, even though it was far, far from his face. “You can- you can be nice about this. See it from the good side. Yeah?”

Siebren smiled again, taking a step closer, resting the cold blade on van Manker’s cheekbone. “You know, I’m not really surprised that you’re making it sound like this here, what I’m doing now, is me choosing bad when I could’ve chosen good,” he hummed, voice calm, almost sweet. “No, no, it’s not that simple. You see, this was me, all those years ago, choosing to survive when you fucked up my face and locked me in a steel cage. Because a soft child wouldn’t have lived through that, would he, Martin?”

Van Manker swallowed, sweat forming in beads at his temples. “No.”

“No, that’s right. I had to become the hard, terrible bastard I am today in order to make it through that shit in one piece. This is him, the bastard, repaying your oh-so-kind favor,” Siebren grinned, dragging the knife across van Manker’s cheek.

The ringmaster said nothing. A good choice.

“Do you still think I am being cruel? Fine. I don’t care. I will not pretend to be a saint, van Manker,” he said, and his voice turned steelier and steelier, and it was freezing cold when he hissed, “I have done my share of performing for you.”

Van Manker croaked out a “please.” Siebren did not know, nor did he care, what he was asking for, and so he ignored it.

“You took everything from me,” Siebren said, raising his eyebrows. “Hendrik is dead because of you. Dijkgraaf is dead because of you. If I am a monster, then it is because you created me that way.” He was almost out of breath, lightheaded, his hands shaking as adrenaline washed over him in bursts. This was what he’d been waiting for. “Look at me. Is it the scars, Martin? Is it the deep rifts in my poor, poor face that blinds you from seeing the earthly good in me? Am I condemned to be seen as a demon for the rest of my life, because of what you did to me in order to earn your precious coin?” he asked, tilting his head, the knife shaking. “Do you really not see, ringmaster, what an angel I am compared to you? Because I could have sunk to your level, but I did not?”

“If you kill me now,” van Manker panted, because somehow, he must have known, “you will have sunk to my level. Beneath it, in fact.”

“No,” Siebren said, and it sounded as if he was at the gates of peace. “If I kill you know, I will simply break even.”

He waited for the ringmaster to interject, and when he did not, Siebren kept talking. “I will have avenged my brother and Dijkgraaf, and that has been my life’s mission since I burnt your tent down in ‘59. I will have repaid my debts. My wretched soul will at last be redeemed.” 

The light behind van Manker’s eyes was draining, even before Siebren had lifted the knife, and when he angled the tip in right under the ringmaster’s chin and jabbed it upward into the man’s brain, it gave off an odd sensation, like an empty bottle, sinking and hitting the ocean floor.

“I’ll mention your name in my nightly prayers, van Manker.” Siebren hissed, hair disordered and sweaty and falling into his wild eyes as he watched the ringmaster die. “Come any gods, I hope they rip you apart. I hope they make you ugly.”

[akaewriter]

Messenblok Csokas (Hollandse Circus 1/4)

On the cold fifth night of January in the year 1847, Martin van Manker, the ringmaster of De Fantastische Meester Mankarij's Hollandse Circus, found a heavy wooden crate outside his caravan.

It was spilling over with woolen blankets, and something within it seemed to be crying.

Martin, extremely confused, took the crate and dragged it inside, before unwrapping the blankets as though it was a gift he’d been given. And beneath the wool, there were two little boys, one of them so small Martin would consider him an infant, and a sealed letter.

The ringmaster, a businessman first and a human second, took the letter first. He saw no address on the envelope, and there was no indication that the seal represented anything important, and so he opened it.

The letter was written in black ink, by a hurried hand, in stilted and poor Dutch. Ink was overflowing on low quality parchment, splotched with sooty tears, (“Only sooty-eyed prostitutes weep black tears,” Martin muttered to himself,) but he could easily make out what it said.

In the letter, it was clarified that the boys were brothers. The youngest, black-haired and green-eyed, was named Siebren Mihai Csokas, and he was born May 20th, 1846. The oldest, light-haired and blue-eyed, was named Hendrik Gavril Csokas, and he was born January 3rd, 1844. 

The letter’s author went on to explain that she was their mother, a “lady of the nightly pleasures” (Martin, who never claimed to be a good man, caught himself celebrating the fact he’d guessed right) who’d gone and fallen in love with a Dutch merchant who was visiting her hometown of Gheorgheni, Romania. This merchant promised her that they would start a life together, which was a con she fell for. He even took her with him to Haag, where the two of them lived in a little apartment together and had two sons: Siebren and Hendrik.

Then, one day, the lady woke up, and the merchant was gone without so much as a note for her, leaving her flat with their two children. And that was where the letter ended. The lady gave no name for herself at the bottom of the page.

Martin van Manker furrowed his eyebrows and put the letter down, squatting down to look at the two boys. 

“I’ll make use of you two somehow,” he smirked.

Siebren and Hendrik Csokas, once they were old enough, became The Liontamer Brothers. They spent their time out of the spotlight, taking care of and training the lions when they weren’t in the manege. 

The brothers never knew exactly what they were going to meet when they approached the two lions’ comically small enclosure. On some days, they would be almost docile, and on other days, the lions would scratch up the brothers’ hands so badly they had to be bandaged. A certain temperament was to be expected, at least from lions that were beaten and whipped and harassed in the manege all day long, and though the Csokas brothers thought the poor animals might be happier if they were treated with dignity, training them through beatings was all they had ever known, and so that was all they did.

The other circus performers loved Siebren and Hendrik. The two of them were everyone’s precious little brothers, and the trapeze girls would stop at nothing to smuggle away tarts and small glasses of wine from the kitchen to the Csokas brothers’ caravan. One of the youngest trapeze artists, Allie Baudelaire, who was Siebren’s age, even called herself Hendrik’s girlfriend, and the two of them would go on little walks together when they had free time.

Douwe Dijkgraaf, a wise and educated old man who stood for all of the fire-breathing and the sword-swallowing in the manege, would come by the caravan every night on the weekends, to teach the boys things other children would learn from a teacher or tutor. He taught them to read and write, arithmetics, history and economics and the basics of certain sciences. Dijkgraaf told them stories, brought them books to read and understand, and if he had had the time, he might have turned them into good, gentle young men.

Alas, he did not.

Dijkgraaf, as one of the gossiping trapeze girls explained to Siebren and Hendrik, was van Manker’s old uncle. Since the circus was opened, Dijkgraaf had encouraged his nephew to be smart and careful in his operations, and to not bite over what he could not chew. 

In the year 1854, van Manker had started to consider expanding his reign, and attempting to team up with Monsieur Bastarache, who owned four or five of the greatest circuses in the north of France. Dijkgraaf knew his nephew well enough to know that taking on such a great operation would be no good for his nervous disposition, and even if this expansion did go well, van Manker would likely get too overzealous, lose control, and plummet to bankruptcy, turning Monsieur Bastarache into his enemy in the fall.

But van Manker was a greedy, twisted man who did not like being contradicted.

What happened to Dijkgraaf was described as a fatal heart attack, but Siebren and Hendrik both heard the shouting from van Manker’s caravan, the order for someone to “run straight to the well and clean this now, you little bitch, or I’ll do away with you too,” and watched as a crying trapeze girl came out, carrying a bloody spade.

Since then, Dijkgraaf was no more, Martin van Manker became crueler than ever before, and the banter between the performers was never the same again.

Van Manker, as well as being the ringmaster, performed as a liontamer in the manege. To the audience, he was the one who trained the lions to jump through fiery rings, who whipped them until they did his bidding. And after Dijkgraaf’s supposed “heart attack”, van Manker’s already poor mental state seemed to be somehow deteriorating. And he was treating the animals worse and worse.

Siebren and Hendrik entered the lions’ cage every night to give the animals their food and their water, as well as to try and pet them into some semblance of calm sleep.

Normally, neither of them were afraid to enter the cage. That particular night, however, they were nervous. But Hendrik, being the older brother, at eleven years old now, the courageous one, insisted that they’d be okay. And so, they climbed inside. 

And it was exactly as Siebren had feared.

The lions, enraged and tired and afraid after months upon months of abuse at the ringmaster’s hands, lunged for the brothers, and only Siebren managed to dodge. The youngest Liontamer watched his brother get crushed against the grill of the cage, heard the sound of bones breaking, watched blood pour in a line from the corner of his mouth. Then, he watched the largest lion start to eat its prey, and as he heard the sounds of his brother’s skull crush under the lion’s jaw, Siebren started to scream. That was when the other lion tackled Siebren by the shoulders and tried to bite his head, scratching the little boy’s face with its claws and its teeth, and Siebren screamed and screamed and screamed as blood poured into his eyes. From that moment on, he remembered nothing.

It was explained to him when he woke up in his caravan bed, that van Manker had heard the commotion and came to haul him from the lion’s vice grip. Hendrik was dead, Siebren was told, and there was no body that could be salvaged. The lions had devoured his brother whole.

The animals had both been shot for that. Siebren had no idea how he felt about that particular detail.

Though he wanted to scream and weep and cry and be held forever by the sweet mother he had never met, whom he knew from the letter alone, Siebren could not cry. It hurt too much, because his face was damaged so horribly.

The trapeze girls took turns sitting with little Siebren. They’d read him stories, sing him songs, tell him little things about their lives, hold his scarred hands, gentle in their movements so as to not make his broken shoulders hurt any more, anything to make their brave little Liontamer smile. But he did not. He was nothing but broken, in every way he could be.

Siebren was in that bed for a few months while the rifts that covered his porcelain skin became scabs, while his broken bones slowly got better. Then, when he was healed mostly, his shoulders still giving off clicks when he moved them, his wounds starting to scar nicely, van Manker came to sit with him. 

It was explained to Siebren that now, there would no longer be any Liontamer Brothers. Siebren was the only one left, - the little boy felt the urge to break the ringmaster’s nose when he reminded him of that fact, - and besides, there were no lions to tame. But, he reassured Siebren, he would not lose his place among the performers. 

On the contrary, there was something else about him now, something that van Manker could monetize. 

All across Siebren’s pretty face, there were wounds now, long and deep rifts crossing his cheekbones and his bright eyes and his lips and his nose. He was a freak now, in van Manker’s eyes, or at least he could become one. 

Before Siebren could understand what was happening, van Manker had taken a rope from his belt and tied the boy’s hands with it. Then, he took his knife out, and Siebren’s blood froze as it dawned on him, exactly what the ringmaster was about to do to him.

Martin van Manker, with the knife that his late uncle Douwe Dijkgraaf had gifted him on his eighteenth birthday, carved along the lines of Siebren’s face, reopening and widening his almost healed wounds, creating new scars that might never heal right.

And so, Siebren was given a new name.

Siebren was told to abandon his life as a Liontamer. From now on, he was Messenblok Csokas. Knifeblock Csokas. The scarred boy, the cutting board, the boy who survived, the lion cage mouse, the angel ripped apart, the lamb to slaughter.

And so, Siebren became what the lions once were; a creature to be gawked at by paying customers. Van Manker shaved his hair off and locked him in a cage, and so, he was a beast.

After the manege shows, when little Messenblok Csokas’ cage was put out among the animals’ cages, to allow the audience members to wander and to look, and Siebren felt as alone as anyone could feel with two hundred eyes trained on them. And there, hidden beneath his fear and his anger and the things he wanted to do to van Manker and everything else, he started to forge a new promise for himself.

He would get out of there someday, to a new country, Siebren promised himself. He would become something great, something that took brains and skill and precision. He would become something real, in the name of Dijkgraaf and Hendrik and the trapeze girls and the mother he never got to meet. 

He didn’t know what yet. All he knew, was that he was going to be anything but Messenblok Csokas.