Excerpt of Angel on the Ropes by Jill Shultz

When she was eleven, a crazy old man taught Amandine how to breathe backwards. This trick made all else possible, launching her sideways journey through the bright and shadowed places of Penance. The encounter was not what she hoped for—or feared.

* * *

Amandine's stomach quivered as the train settled onto the station, the last stop before the circus grounds. She cued her music and closed her eyes, mentally running through her routine again.

What if I'm not good enough?

She glanced at Elsbith, who'd chosen to be her mother against all common sense. Elsbith held her hand without talking and for once Amandine was grateful that Seekers kept silence in their pockets, next to the tissues and noter. A legacy of their Earth Quaker ancestry.

Amandine took a deep breath.

I will be great.

But even if she amazed them, would they let a leopard into the troupe?

"Sweet Light, will you look at that," said Elsbith.

Amandine bit back a scowl, hating to be interrupted mid–routine. She glanced at the plum flowers of a cottonball shrub, one of nine evenly spaced between fatal–snout trees, no more remarkable than all those square ponds they'd seen earlier, with their lone gazebo trees on a diamond–shaped central island.

"This far out, we should be seeing native plants and wildlife," said Elsbith. "The aliens only disneyed the settled areas. We did that—"

"Mom."

(Sorry), Elsbith answered, her gesture right over her heart. Like everything else she did, her body speech was quietly potent. "No lectures. I promise."

Amandine returned to her rehearsal. When she finished and looked up, Elsbith was staring out the window, knuckles pressed against her lips. Twenty kilometers later they passed a circular break in the woods, followed in due measure by an identical picnic area. Elsbith's frown deepened.

"What is it?" Amandine asked, squeezing the end of her scarf. The rest of it was wound around her face and head, leaving only her eyes exposed.

"Nothing, Dearheart."

Nothing dangerous, then. She cued the music for her best move, the split pinwheel around the trapeze. She'd messed it up yesterday.

"I was really looking forward to showing you a natural forest." Elsbith sounded like she'd been expecting a warm buttered muffin and received a bowl of overcooked kale instead. Amandine paused her noter and looked out. This woodland wasn't as dark as the one back home, with oak or whatever interspersed between the tall bottlebrush pines.

"How can you tell it's not real?" she asked, actually curious.

"Natural forests don't have built–in picnic areas or topiary."

"What's topiary?"

"A bush shaped to look like a creature. Like the trail markers in Drunk Goat Woods."

No dragons in Earth forests? How sad. Amandine drummed her fingertips on her noter. She stopped a moment later, smiling sheepishly.

Elsbith smiled back, then sighed. She turned Amandine's noter back on. (Go on).

An hour of silence followed, with Elsbith's nose so close to the window field Amandine expected to see sparks. Unfathomable. Amandine had expected so much more. After all, the section of Penance they inhabited was larger than Jupiter. How could it be so empty and boring between cities? She tugged her scarf lower on her forehead and dug her hand into her pocket, bunching the fabric in her fist.

After another hour, Amandine began to scan the landscape, desperate for a safe distraction: her face, warm and prickly when they first set out, now itched fiercely, but she couldn't scratch. If she smudged her makeup, everyone would see she was a leopard.

A boy across the aisle said, "Papa, look!"

Five equilateral peaks frosted with laser precision: the Penance version of the Alps, welcoming them to the city of Trump Point. The train slowed as it swung around the base of the staircase–staggered range, past strips of barrel cacti, prairie grass, and swamp oak. Perched on the oaks' highest branches, Japanese macaques hurled cacti at the dingoes circling below. A grazing Galápagos tortoise craned his neck, trying to catch one of the missiles.

Grinning madly, Amandine rose and stood by the door as they approached the station, tapping her fingers against her leg. They slipped out before the door fully opened, into a crowd that was a hundred times larger than any she'd ever seen. She stopped short. Someone pushed her from behind. Amandine jumped.

"This way, Dearheart," said Elsbith. Snippets of conversation snagged Amandine's attention as they shuffled through a sea of coats, momentarily pulling her focus away from the ground and the dreaded sound of thick–heeled boots. Holo ads popped out of every support beam, adding to the din. Her shoulder blades tingled with the awareness of all the bodies behind her. A gap opened to their right. Amandine saw a flash of white. She held her breath until the crowd shifted and she saw it was a hat, not a Plaguellant's hooded cape. Idiot. It's too crowded here for Plaguellants. They might be touched by accident. This station was probably one of the safest places for a leopard in the whole colony.

The crowd shifted, revealing eight exit doors. Amandine breathed easier.

Just a few steps short of the exit, a man stepped in front of them, thrusting his hand toward Elsbith. "Jom Merkel, medical genealogist." He flashed a plastic smile at Amandine. "I help smart young people like you evaluate their medical risks."

Not people like me. She said, (No thanks), with a reasonably polite gesture. She didn't need to worry about which organ to select for lifetime coverage. Though entitled to the colony's universal health care of immunizations plus one organ, she'd never use it; a hospital meant too much risk of exposure.

Out on the street, the crowd was much thinner and she could see all around her. Amandine took a few calming breaths. She squeezed and released her hands in her pockets.

"The circus is only five kilometers from here," said Elsbith. "Should we jog, to help you warm up?"