Idrella had one foot on the ticket wagon's step when her skirt stopped her. A loop of gold braid had caught on a nail. She pulled, remembered what the costume woman had said about pulling, and stood with her knee bent while Rumbit finished serving a customer.
“Two for tonight.” He pushed the end of the roll across the sill with both paws, and the customer gathered up the lot. “No, you've got the whole roll. Just those two. Tear at the red line.”
The customer detached his tickets and departed. Rumbit looked down from the box that raised him to window height.
“Stuck again?”
“Temporarily detained.”
He came out with the ticket scissors. She took them away before he could cut anything and eased the braid off the nail herself. Between performances, with the lamps unlit and a man asleep beneath the drum wagon, it took some effort to remain the mistress of marvels.
“Are you still taking runaways?”
The girl stood on the other side of the wagon step, so close that the wooden dragon in her arms could have bitten Idrella's knee. It was longer than Rumbit, nose to tail, with green paint rubbed away from its back and wings folded along its sides. One yellow glass eye looked up at the ringmaster. The other was pointed at the ticket scissors.
Idrella put the scissors behind her.
“We certainly are.” Her voice came out with the fullness she used to announce the first act. “You have found exactly the right circus.”
The girl relaxed her grip on the dragon's neck. Beneath one arm she had a bundle tied in a dishcloth. A stocking protruded from its knot.
“Both of us?”
“Both of you.”
Rumbit climbed down from the wagon and came to look. His waistcoat was crooked, exposing the patch Idrella had sewn over his chest when she was twelve. He bent to examine a wing.
“Does that open?”
“Carefully,” said the girl. “His name's Matchstick.”
“Mine's Rumbit. Have you got a saddle?”
“He doesn't need one. I hold his horns.”
“Excellent.”
Idrella cleared her throat. Neither of them looked at her.
“And your name?”
“Velzie. I can turn a cartwheel, but not with him, so you'd have to let me put him down.”
Idrella knelt, spreading her burgundy skirt on the sawdust. Close up, Velzie's face was sticky near the mouth. She had come from somewhere with jam. That proved very little; Idrella had once packed a whole pot for an escape and forgotten a spoon.
“You don't have to perform for us. Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Is somebody looking for you?”
Velzie considered this with more attention than Idrella liked.
“Not yet.”
“Who will be?”
“Mother. If I'm late.”
At Velzie's elbow, Rumbit opened the dragon's left wing. Three thin panels of wood spread on little pegs. He whistled.
“Late for what?” Idrella asked.
“Supper. But I shan't be there.” Velzie lifted her chin. “We're leaving.”
There it was: the chin, the bundle, the certainty that a striped tent meant a place entirely outside the world. Idrella had been eight when she told her teddy bear they would run away and join the circus together. She had promised it into his flattened ear, beneath bedclothes hot with her own breath. Twenty years ago. She could still find the place on that ear with her thumb.
“Well,” she said, softer now. “You can stay here while we work out what you need.”
“I'll need a cape. And does he get big all at once?”
Rumbit stopped admiring the wing.
“Who does?”
“Matchstick. When you make him alive.”
Velzie looked from one of them to the other. Idrella recognized the moment an audience discovered that the hat was empty.
“I saw your bear yesterday,” the girl said. “He was eating an apple. My brother said there was a person inside, but nobody's that small, and I saw him swallow.”
Rumbit put a paw over his stomach, evidently pleased that someone had paid attention.
“Very good apple.”
“So you can do it.”
“I don't know how,” Idrella said.
Velzie's eyes went to the great tent, then back to the woman in the gold-trimmed coat. Idrella wished she had answered the first question less splendidly.
“But you did him.”
“The performers did. I was only helping with the horses then.”
She had finally left home at sixteen, with permission obtained through so much argument that she generally omitted it from the story. Rumbit came in her bag. By the end of that first season, the tumblers' living magic followed their hands in threads of light; the singer could hold a note warm in her palm. One wet evening they had passed the bedraggled bear among them, making him bow, giving him their small, impossible gifts. Heat remained in him after their hands withdrew. Then he sneezed on the singer.
Idrella had barely slept for three nights, waking him whenever he stopped moving. On the fourth, he told her to leave him alone. She had been much happier after that.
“He woke up,” she told Velzie. “We were astonished too. We tried with a cloth rabbit afterward, and it stayed a cloth rabbit.”
“I bit it,” Rumbit said. “Nothing.”
Idrella gave him the look she kept for tumblers who came late to parade.
“I was checking.”
Velzie lowered Matchstick until his claws hung against her skirt. “Could you try anyway?”
Idrella glanced toward the tent. The performers were eating or asleep. Calling them together, setting the dragon in the ring, watching this child's face while nothing happened: no. Yet the little pegs had been mended with such care. Somebody had shaved one replacement to fit, and wrapped thread around the end to hold it.
“May I?” Rumbit asked.
Velzie passed him over. The bear sat on the wagon step with Matchstick across his knees, his paws hardly reaching around the dragon's middle.
“Where have you come from?” Idrella asked her.
“Past the green gate. The house with the pear tree.”
“In town?”
“It's only a little way. But my brother won't find us if we go with you tonight.”
“Has he hurt you?”
“He took Matchstick and held him where I couldn't reach.” She spoke fast now. “He said I was too old to carry him, and then he said I could ride him to the circus if he was a real dragon, and he made Mother laugh.”
Idrella kept her face still. Rumbit rubbed a paw along the wooden back.
“Mother told him to give him back,” Velzie added. “But she laughed first.”
“That was unkind,” Rumbit said.
“I'm going to fly over the house. When he sees, he'll have to say he was wrong.”
There was a cape in this plan, and a flight, and a particular person required to stand below and feel sorry. Idrella could supply half a dozen capes. The rest was receding rapidly beyond her abilities.
“I can't promise you that.”
“You said you took runaways.”
“I know I did. I meant—”
Rumbit made a small sound. Matchstick's tail had curled around his ankle.
Idrella stopped.
A thin gold light spread from beneath the bear's paw, following the grain through the dragon's ribs. Rumbit held him closer in surprise, and the light brightened where wood touched the warm patch on his chest. Beneath the sound of the bear's breathing came a second, rasping breath.
“Oh,” said Rumbit.
Matchstick opened his jaw. He worked it sideways, spat a flake of old sawdust onto Rumbit's waistcoat, and blinked both glass eyes.
Velzie dropped her bundle.
“Matchstick?”
The dragon turned his head toward her. His nostrils were only two drilled holes, but Idrella saw them widen. He sniffed the girl's fingers, licked one, and made a noise like a drawer that needed wax.
Rumbit had gone very quiet. Idrella put two fingers on his shoulder.
“Are you all right?”
“I think so. He's warm.” He loosened his hold. “I didn't know I could do that.”
The glow had faded. Matchstick stood on the bear's knees, dragging a claw along the ticket wagon as he stretched. His wings unfolded farther than the pegs ought to have allowed. Still wood, still the size of a large loaf, with a cracked green ridge along his spine. Alive. Idrella pressed her fingers harder into Rumbit's shoulder and felt him press back.
Velzie laughed, a breathless gulp of a laugh that made Idrella want to take off her hat and throw it. Instead she picked up the fallen dishcloth bundle.
“Hello,” Velzie said, bending almost nose to nose with him. “It's me. Look what we did!”
He licked her sticky cheek. She squealed and hugged him, then put him on the ground and stepped back expectantly.
Nothing happened to his size.
“Perhaps it takes a minute,” she said.
Matchstick investigated a discarded ticket. He bit off the corner, chewed, and spat it out. He walked beneath Idrella's skirt, bumped his head on her boot and backed out with an indignant creak. Then he looked toward the road.
“Perhaps this is how big he is,” Idrella said.
Velzie crouched beside him. “You can do bigger, can't you?”
He stretched his neck and scratched beneath his jaw with one hind foot.
Rumbit hopped down from the step. He fitted one leg on either side of the dragon's back and left his feet on the ground.
“Plenty of room for me.”
“Rumbit, get off him.”
“I'm hardly putting any weight on.”
“He has only just learned to stand.”
“And I'm riding him first,” Velzie said. “I hold his horns.”
Matchstick took a step. Rumbit shuffled with him, delighted. The dragon extended both wings, caught the air once, and rose high enough that the bear's feet left the sawdust.
“There!” Rumbit cried.
Idrella reached for him. Matchstick beat his wings again; the bear grabbed both horns, and they lurched over her hand. One wing struck the wagon, sending them crookedly toward the gap between two tents.
“Put your feet down!” she shouted.
He was already too high. His toes bicycled above her head.
The drummer woke as they passed him. Idrella thrust Velzie's bundle into his lap.
“Watch the tickets.”
“Where are you—”
“After the bear!”
Velzie was running ahead of her. Idrella gathered her skirts in both fists, caught up, and steered the girl around a stack of benches. Above them, Matchstick climbed laboriously past the striped canvas. Rumbit's ears streamed backward. For three absurd seconds Idrella envied him so fiercely she could hardly breathe.
Then the dragon dropped a yard.
“Rumbit!”
“Still here!”
She could see that. She needed him to be somewhere else.
Matchstick recovered, bobbed through the gap beside the cook wagon, and headed down the town road. The crowd from the matinee had gone; only a woman carrying a basket stood between the circus and the first houses. The woman ducked. Rumbit waved to her, then clutched the horn again as they tilted.
“Bring him back!” Velzie called. “He's meant to take me!”
Idrella's boots were built for making an entrance down a short flight of steps, and a curl had shaken loose across her mouth. She spat it away.
At the first bend, Matchstick turned late. His wingtip scraped the hedge. Rumbit yelped, and Idrella lunged beneath him, arms out. The dragon's tail slapped her hat sideways; she had a glimpse of the bear's pale soles before another clumsy wingbeat carried him out of reach.
“Catch me on the next one!” he called.
“I can't reach! Tell him to land!”
“I've told him!”
The road forked beyond a low spreading tree. Matchstick flew under its branches and disappeared to the left.
Idrella stopped long enough to shove her hat straight. Velzie had stopped too. Her face was blotched, and without the dragon or the bundle she looked much smaller.
“Where?” Idrella said.
“That's our lane.”
A triumphant creak came from behind the hedge, followed by Rumbit shouting, “Not there! Not in those!”
Velzie took Idrella's hand and dragged her through an open gate. They crossed a patch of cabbages, went through a second gate, and emerged among shirts hanging on a line. Rumbit dangled beneath the dragon, his head stuck in a white sleeve and one leg still hooked over Matchstick's back.
Idrella let go of the girl, lifted the shirt with one hand and caught Rumbit's free hind paw with the other. Matchstick's wings beat the hanging sleeves around her head.
“Let go of him,” she said.
“I can't get my foot—”
The dragon tugged forward. Idrella released Rumbit's paw before she could pull him apart. The shirt slipped off his head and slapped her in the face. By the time she fought clear, bear and dragon were departing over the garden wall.
“Velzie!”
“This way. There's a door.”
The girl knew which latch lifted and which gate had to be kicked. Idrella followed her through, and they came out into a narrow yard beneath a pear tree. There was the green gate beyond it. Through the tree's lower branches, Matchstick was approaching an open kitchen window at a determined slant.
“Mother!” Velzie yelled. “Move the things!”
A woman looked up from the table inside. She had time to snatch a jug away before Matchstick came through the window, hit the sill with his back feet and skidded across the table. Rumbit continued without him. A bowl jumped, a white cloud rose, and the bear vanished inside it.
Idrella reached the window. Flour hung on the air. On the far side of the table, Rumbit's head emerged from the bowl. He sneezed, gripped the rim and stood up.
“Excellent,” he said faintly.
Velzie ran into the kitchen through the yard door. Her mother caught her by both shoulders.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. Matchstick's alive.”
Her mother's eyes went past her to the table, where the dragon was shaking flour off his wings. Her hands tightened on Velzie's shoulders. “Where have you been?”
“The circus.”
Her mother did not let go. Velzie looked at the floor, and then, with evident effort, up again.
“I went to run away. But he came back.”
Idrella took off her hat and hooked it over her wrist. She was leaning through a stranger's kitchen window, red-faced, with half a laundry peg caught in her curls. Inside, her bear was trying to climb out of the flour without leaving any footprints. She ought to explain. For once she let the girl finish.
“I wanted to fly over the house. So he'd see. My brother.”
“On that?” Her mother looked at the little dragon.
“I thought he'd get bigger.”
The woman shut her eyes for a moment. Then she drew Velzie against her apron and held her there. The girl stayed, though her cheek acquired a broad streak of flour.
Matchstick stepped around the flour bowl, testing the table with his claws. He stretched his neck toward a blue dish and squeaked.
“What's he doing?” Velzie asked into the apron.
The dragon opened and shut his mouth. His jaw clicked twice.
“Butter,” he said.
Nobody moved. He reached farther.
“Please butter.”
Velzie pulled free and lifted the lid off the blue dish. Matchstick bit into the yellow corner beneath. He closed his eyes as he chewed.
“He sits here when Mother bakes,” she said. “I always put him here.”
Idrella looked down the lane they had run, then back at the small wooden creature eating butter. Rumbit had climbed out of the bowl and was sitting with his legs spread, breathing hard. She went around to the door.
“I'm sorry about your kitchen,” she said when she came in.
“Is that one yours?” The woman pointed at Rumbit.
“We came together.”
Rumbit held his paws up to Idrella. She lifted him into the crook of her arm, her thumb finding the worn place on his ear. His heart was hammering beneath the patch. She had never felt it go so fast.
“I couldn't get off,” he whispered.
“I know.”
“I wanted to at the tree.”
She rubbed flour from his nose with her thumb. “I was trying.”
He pushed his face against her coat, leaving a dusty oval on the burgundy. She kept her hand over his back until his breathing slowed. Velzie was telling her mother about the light beneath his paws. Idrella listened to her get it right: who had held whom, what had happened first, how nobody had known.
Then Rumbit lifted his head.
“You should have seen the tents from up there,” he said.
Idrella laughed. It shook him in her arm, and he put a paw against her chin to steady himself.
“Oh, Rumbit.”
“I could see right into the cook's wagon.”
“You'd better tell me the whole thing.”
“I shall. I had a very good view until the shirts.”
Velzie drew up a chair, blocking Idrella's path to the door. “I saw that bit.”
Rumbit glanced at her, then at Idrella. The ringmaster set her hat on the table and sat down with him on her knee.
“You went in headfirst,” Velzie began.
“I was trying to duck.”
“You ducked into it.”
“Well, it was coming at me.” He considered the girl for a moment. “Was it a very large shirt?”
Velzie held her hands apart. Rumbit took one paw off Idrella's sleeve and nudged the nearer hand a little farther out.