“She must be mad,” Henry grumbled. He had found the woman nearly dead in the road, not at all dressed for a blizzard. Scolding his soft heart, he had gone to the pub and rallied a couple of men to help move her. They were loud, drunk as lords, and stunk to high heaven, but they had the muscle for the job and made quicker work of it than he would have done alone.

  Now, in the small main room of his cabin, the girl was naked and wrapped in a bedsheet on the hearth while he slowly went about warming her up. Henry was no stranger to hypothermia and knew that slow was key. Thaw a person out too fast, and they were liable to go funny in the heart and die anyways.

  He started with her core and worked his way out towards her extremities, not stopping to rest until she began to shiver. That was a good sign she would make it, and Henry felt a bit proud in spite of himself. Morality might not be a common trait amongst his peers, but his ma and pa had raised him a good man, and he intended to stay that way.

  When Jo came to, it was in pain. Her muscles ached all over from the chills wracking her body. But she felt sharper, and certainly warmer than she had when she’d collapsed. She thought suddenly of Tumble, remembering how she'd left him, and jumped to her feet. The bedsheet slid down and she realized she was naked. Panic clawed to life in her chest. She looked around, carefully, listening for any sign of movement.

  The room was small, and warmed to a cozy temperature by a woodstove. She noticed her clothes were all draped upon that to dry. Her relief at waking up warm and -seemingly- safe had fizzled out already, but the pair of beat up men’s boots resting by the door sparked fear anew. She could hear the sounds of a faucet running somewhere farther off. The water sound stopped, and heavy footsteps replaced it. Someone was approaching.

  In a blind panic, Jo grabbed the sheet, plucked her wet clothes from the stove, and bolted out the door. She was not about to stay in that strange house where some man had dragged her unconscious and stripped her down. Stories of Northmen’s doings had filled her childhood nights with fear of the dark, and she knew better. Not today! She told herself silently.

  The storm outside had, unfortunately, not yet begun to abate. Joanna winced as the cold air hit her barely-covered skin, but she felt energized now that the hypothermia had been driven from her body. She spotted a road and ran to it, knowing at some point there would be a public house or inn where she would be safer. Somewhere with women, if she was lucky.

  Wind howled through dark sky and lashed the sheet out behind her like a sail, making each step a chore, but she didn't stop moving. She realized too late that she had, in her haste, left her shoes behind in that strange house. Her feet went from aching to so numb she felt like she was walking on the stumps of her ankles. When they began to shift from beet red to a blueish-purple, panic returned, and she began to regret leaving without any forethought.

  The lack of trees in the wastes meant that there was absolutely nothing to break the wind. It swept across the snowfields like a giant's hand, pushing the powdery snow into waves as if it were liquid water. It was nearly thigh-high in places, though the road had mercifully been shoveled recently enough to keep it visible. The snowbanks on each side of it also protected the wind from just blowing a whole new layer of snow over it.

  Still, Jo was seriously considering turning around when she noticed a glow of light emanating from a hill up ahead. It became her beacon of desperate hope. The snow was falling faster and faster, and the wind raked it against every inch of her exposed skin. It stung like a blade. She struggled forwards in the dark until she got to crest of the hill and looked down. It was a huge valley, a natural bowl-shape protecting the bottom from the worst of the storm. Light poured out from a bunch of buildings at the lowest point. Maybe it was a town. Laughing with relief, Jo started down, half-walking, half-slipping most of the way. The wind grew quieter as she went.

  The lights were easier to make out now, but the structures they belonged to didn’t seem to make sense in the snow. She headed doggedly towards the largest one, and when at last she stood close enough to see the doors she found that it still didn’t look like anything she’d seen before.

  It was a massive, steep-roofed warehouse of a building, with one set of double doors that looked comically small by comparison. The closer she got the more menacingly large the building seemed, and when she hesitated by the entrance on her numb feet she found she was scared for the first time since she'd left Nate. Not anxious, not angry, but genuinely terrified. Her aching feet bore her forward regardless, and she heaved the door open.

  She found herself facing a large, dimly lit lounge with a group of around twenty people gathered in a loose circle on various stools, chairs, and sofas. She could tell she had interrupted something rather private by the way they all looked up at her sudden intrusion.

  Cold air and snow rushed in around her ankles, and warm air from the room blew into her face as it flowed out. The heat felt so good she wanted to cry.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “What the hell?” Someone asked at last, and the words seemed to break the tension. All at once the room erupted into chaos. So many voices overlapped that it was hard to keep up with who said what.

  “Her feet!” A high, childlike voice this time.

  “Sweet hell, are you okay?” A young woman in a yellow dressing gown was the first to her feet. She was lean and muscular, and about a head shorter than Jo. A few others began to stand, looking at each other in confusion and exchanging whispers.

  “Cold,” Jo managed to stutter out between her rattling teeth. “I got lost. Saw… Your lights.”

  “Well, kick her out!” A black-haired man with a hat had spoken. He wasn’t even looking up at her.

  “Extra points if you do, I’m sure.” someone else added.

  “It’s murder,” An accented, deep voice from the farthest corner of the room.

  “Yeah well I don’t do murder,” the woman who had first stood retorted, turning towards whoever had spoken.

  “Only by inaction, though, so it hardly counts.” The man with the hat again.

  “Someone should get Zeph.”

  Jo glanced instead back towards the still-open door. The icy night outside was not ideal, but these people didn’t sound friendly. She would try somewhere else, and then get back to Tumble as soon as day broke. He might still be alive.

  “Wait!” The woman in yellow called out as Jo turned heel to head back outside. “Just… Wait. You’ll die out there.”

  Jo hesitated. It was a compelling point. She looked around at the gathered people and felt a thrill of inexplicable fear. They hadn’t done anything to make her feel threatened, but something deep in her gut was screaming at her to run.

  A curly-haired man with narrow features stood then, with a protracted sigh. Everyone’s eyes turned to him. He stretched, took a drag off the cigarette resting in the corner of his mouth, and crossed the room to Jo. “I’d say you’re lucky to be alive,” he told her. “But you’re here.” Guiding her further inside with one hand gently on her shoulder, he kicked some of the snow back over the threshold and closed the door. Then added: "So you might actually be the most unlucky person I’ve met.”

  There was a rumble of upset through the group of people, and murmured disgust as a number of them stood and left. There were glares thrown at Jo and at the man who had spoken to her. A few of those who didn’t leave cast conspiratorial glances at each other.

  “Sending someone out to their death is beyond my wheelhouse,” the curly haired man told the room. “I can sin plenty without blood on my hands.”

  “We know you can,” the yellow-robed woman said. “They don’t mean anything by it.”

  He nodded curtly. “Then she’s off-limits. I’ll see she gets warm and send her out.”

  A couple disappointed noises from the onlookers, but they seemed cowed.

  “Three days,” the man with the hat called out in a sing-song voice. “Don’t forget, people. Lots of work to do despite this little distraction.”

  There was some general jeering at that, but it seemed everyone had moved on from their intense focus on Jo. She allowed herself to be led from the room and down a short hall to a set of washrooms.

  “I’m Merrick,” the man said, offering a hand that Jo noticed was one finger short. She shook it uncertainly.

  “Joanna. Jo for short.”

  “Get in there and use one of the towels to dry off, we’ve got plenty of spare clothing for you to wear while yours dry. There’s a heater vent in there by the shower, too. Switch it on and get your feet warm. You’ll lose a toe-” Here he held up his hand and wiggled the stump of his missing finger. “-if you don’t thaw them out quick.”

  Seeing no real good reason to disobey, Jo did as he said, stepping into an undecorated room with a single shower, sink, and a wooden bench stacked with folded white towels.

  The heater was right where he’d said it would be, and it was wonderful, cocooning her in the first real warmth she’d felt in days. Drowsiness set in as her exhausted body finally stopped shivering. She was nearly asleep when a knock on the door startled her out of it.

  “Just me,” Merrick’s voice came through the door. “You done?”

  Jo hurriedly gathered the sheet around her again met him outside in the hall. “Yes, sorry. Thank you.”

  He peered down at her feet and nodded. “Lucky again. I think your toes will live to see another day. Now c’mon, costume department is just this way.”

  Together they went through what felt like a maze of strange, narrow hallways and doors that seemed to be sized at random. The paint on the walls was garish. They went down one that was the ugliest shade of mustard yellow Jo could have imagined. She must have made a face at that one, because Merrick followed her gaze to the wall and chuckled.

  “They’re color-coded. It’s not for looks; we need to be able to navigate quickly and with other things going on. Not a lot of light back here during shows.”

  Finally they came to a hall that was painted green. Merrick slid open a rolling door in the wall and revealed rack after rack of clothing going back impossibly far. Jo wondered, not for the first time, what the hell kind of place she’d stumbled into.

  “Grab whatever you want, but nothing off the bottom middle racks or the leftmost rack. The door on the right end is the ladies’ changing room.”

  “Th-thanks,” Jo stuttered. “And, if you don’t mind me asking, what the hell is this place?”

  Merrick raised his eyebrows. His eyes, easier to see under this light, were mismatched. One dark, and one light.

  “Have you heard of Umbra? Or- maybe of Kaamos?”

  Jo shook her head. His eyebrows climbed even higher. “Ah, well. We’re a circus. But not the traveling kind. This,” he gestured to indicate the wider building around them. “Is our permanent location. We’re quite famous in most Northern circles. Although… I suppose, not so much with young ladies such as yourself.”

  “I’m not a Northerner,” Jo said. “So maybe that’s why. I know of circuses, but I’ve never been to one. They have a few shows at the Middle festivals that I’ve heard are similar. Clowns and lions and such.”

  Merrick grinned at this. “Well, then you know the important bits!”

  “Why would anyone want to put a circus out here?”

  The grin faded to a frown. “That’s harder to explain, I’m afraid. But get dressed. I have to make sure you’re at least fed before I send you on your way.”

  “Alright,” Jo agreed. She began to rife through the second-to-middle rack of clothes, not really caring what she found so long as it more or less fit. A circus, she thought. What are the odds I seek shelter in such a strange place.