Leona painted her face with trembling hands. White greasepaint smeared across her cheek like fog crawling over glass. She didn’t look in the mirror long. She was afraid of recognizing herself, and afraid of not.
Outside, the circus stirred like something drugged but dangerous. The calliope screamed its crooked lullaby. Lights buzzed. The smell of animal musk and hot sugar thickened the air.
“Button,” came a voice, dripping sarcasm. “You're on in ten. Let’s not make it political tonight.”
Vico DeLaurentis. Ringmaster. Architect of ruin. His red velvet coat clung to him like a memory of dignity. His breath smelled of whiskey and resentment.
He leaned in, too close.
“And Button,” he sneered, “try not to pop a tit onstage. The kids don’t need the trauma.”
Leona didn’t answer.
He smiled wider. “You know, some nights I watch you from the wings. All that paint, those hips, that new little girl voice. You almost pass. Almost. It’s fucked up.”
He lingered.
“I dream about you, you know. Hate sex, mostly. I know you're still packing down there.Does that make me the freak, or you?”
He touched her wrist.
She stepped back. “Don’t,” she said, quiet as a blade.
He grinned like a infant god who’d never been told no. "Look at you. You’re pretty sexy when you’re angry.”
The show went on. Leona juggled and danced, made balloon animals and took a pie to the face. The children laughed. But inside, she felt the shape of a scream she hadn’t yet made. Something building, brimming, ready to burst.
Later, in the tent of velvet shadows and candle smoke, Ramona laid down the cards.
The Moon.
“I keep pulling this one,” Ramona murmured. “Like it’s stitched to your shadow.”
Leona stared. The card shimmered—two beasts howling at a pale, unblinking moon. A path ran between towers. No end in sight.
“It means illusion,” Ramona whispered. “But also madness. Memory. Masks. You walk the path in the dark and no one sees you walking—but it’s still real.”
Leona touched the card. It was warm. Faintly wet. Almost... breathing.
“They talk to you,” she said. "They hum. They warn. They bleed, if I listen too long.”
She turned another card without looking. The Tower.
“Trouble’s close,” she muttered. “But you knew that already.”
Ramona leaned in, voice low and reverent.
“You ever hear the story of Kali?” she asked.
Leona shook her head.
“She wasn’t born in a cage,” Ramona said. “She was born under a blue eclipse in the forests of Assam. The locals called her Bhairavi, the Fierce One. Said she spoke only to widows and ghosts. She once dragged a poacher into a pond and left only his belt buckle.”
Leona blinked.
“She was free,” Ramona said. “Until Vico bought her from a dying zoo for cheap. Told everyone he’d tamed her, but that’s not true. He broke her. Beat her until her eyes dimmed. Now she performs. But she’s not there. She’s dreaming of the jungle. She paces like she’s tracing a map back to it.”
Leona swallowed hard.
“She watches you,” Ramona added. “Like she sees the same chain around your neck.”
Then Ramona leaned in even closer, voice lower, like a ritual whispered in the bones of the earth.
“You ever hear of Vepar?”
Leona blinked. “No.”
“Third spirit in the Goetia,” Ramona said, eyes unfocusing. “Appears as a mermaid, lovely, gleaming. Rules over the wounds of sailors. They can rot a man from the inside, but slowly. With beauty.”
Leona shivered.
“My grandmother used to say: Everyone’s born with a Vepar inside them. A demon that learned to survive by hiding behind our charms. Our sweetness. Our masks.”
She tapped the Moon card. “Some of us just learn to name them early. Most don’t.”
Leona’s mouth felt dry.
Ramona smiled, gently. “You named yours. That’s why you’re still here.”
They kissed that night behind the tent, slow at first, then not so slow. Straw in their hair. Greasepaint smudged across jawbones. Ramona’s hands beneath Leona’s shirt, skin damp with sweat and heartbeat. Leona’s lips trembling against the hollow of Ramona’s throat.
It wasn’t just tenderness, it was possession. Not of each other, but of themselves. A claiming. A remembering.
Leona moaned, quiet and long. Ramona whispered something soft in a language Leona didn’t recognize. The world narrowed to heat, wet mouths, salt, friction, breath.
It was the kind of kiss that leaves a mark on the year.
But magic costs.
Days later, after a show, Leona wandered to Kali’s cage. The tiger rose to greet her like a silent cathedral.
“You’re too holy for this place,” she whispered.
Then she heard him.
“You keep whispering sweet nothings to that beast, someone’s gonna think you’re kin.”
Vico again, stinking of lust and threat.
“I saw you and the bearded witch behind the tent. Real romantic. Real tragic. You really think you get a fairytale ending?”
Leona turned, spine straight. “You don’t get to ask.”
“You think you’re above all this?” His voice cracked. “You think a wig and hormones make you a woman? You’re a dress-up doll with a dick—”
He lunged.
She backed into the cage bars with a cry. He grabbed her arms. Hot breath. His mouth twisted. “You want me to stop? Then say it like a girl. Say it in that new cute little voice."
A wind ripped through the field.
“I said,” came a voice behind them, “don’t touch her.”
Ramona. Barefoot. Glowing. Her eyes were stormglass, unblinking.
In one hand: a tarot card, held like a blade.
The Tower. It trembled with heat. Edges curled, smoking.
“I read it earlier,” she said, stepping closer. “Didn’t know who it was for. But now I do.”
Vico turned, laughter dying in his throat.
“You’re both sick—”
Kali roared from behind the bars.
Ramona smiled. “And she’s hungry.”
The air thickened. The earth seemed to sigh. The candle in her tent blew out, though no one was near it.
“I don’t curse people,” Ramona said. “I just read what’s already coming.”
She reached forward. Placed the Tower card on Vico’s chest.
He flinched. It burned. And then, he ran. A shadow dissolving into shadows.
Leona fell to her knees. Ramona dropped beside her.
“He was going to—” Leona started.
“I know, baby.”
Leona looked down. “He’s not going to stop.”
“No,” Ramona said, voice calm. “But we are.”
That night, they opened Kali’s cage. She stepped out slowly, with the dignity of an ancient queen. Stretched once. Vanished into the woods without sound.
They packed what they had. Left the tent, the sawdust, the smell of gasoline and shame.
They drove through the night in Ramona’s rusted truck, neither speaking. Only the road sang—humming its low, mournful, holy tune.
When they woke, it was to birdsong. Real birdsong.
They had arrived.
The city was nothing like the world they’d known. There were no maps. No gates. Just gardens. Endless gardens. Wild lavender growing from lamp posts. Vines curling around street signs. Fig trees splitting open sidewalks. Bees, fat and unbothered. Children barefoot and unafraid.
They stepped out of the truck into sun-warmed stone. A breeze touched their skin like a promise.
They walked without direction. No one stared. No one asked. A man with no arms offered them tea. A woman with horns sold peaches from a cart made of bone and moss. Someone played a harp from the roof of a cathedral with no walls.
Ramona turned to Leona.
“I think this is it.”
Leona blinked. “Heaven?”
Ramona smiled. “Not quite. Just a place where no one flinches.”
They found a garden behind an ivy-covered door. Slept beneath the fig trees, their bodies still smelling of earth and each other. When they woke, still dark, Ramona kissed her again—deeper this time. Mouths open. Fingers in hair. Skin pressed to skin. A kind of devotion that tasted like sweat and honey and stars.
The Moon hung high overhead. And somewhere in the distance, a Fool stepped onto the road again. But not alone.
