Free The Road to Gundagai by Jackie French Page B

turn right and ten more steps to the tent where I tell fortunes.’
    ‘You do that all the time?’ Every day, thought Blue, counting and counting.
    ‘Always, no matter where we go, the tents and the caravans and Sheba’s hay are placed in exactly the same positions, so I can find them. And I listen,’ Madame added. ‘When you are blind — if you are not stupid — you listen. You learn to feel with your skin, to judge by smell. There are no clouds today, I think. Deep blue sky.’
    Blue had seen a cloud when she had looked out the window. But it was a small one, too small to make a blind woman wrong. ‘You weren’t always blind, were you?’ she asked softly. ‘I mean, you said the sky was blue.’
    ‘Even a blind woman can learn the names of the colours. But you are right. I became blind slowly, slow enough to learn how to manage the loss of sight. Slow enough to drink in everything I saw so it would last the rest of my life. Sometimes I think that being blind is almost a blessing, for I see only in my memory now, and my memory is filled with those who I love, those who have gone. But there are more urgent matters. The police will be here soon. We must be ready.’
    ‘The police!’
    ‘Looking for you.’ The voice with its faint foreign inflection was impatient now. ‘What did you think, that you could just sneak away into the night?’
    ‘I … I don’t think I was thinking properly last night.’
    ‘But you feel better now.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘You will keep feeling better, though it will be months, I think, before you are properly well. But now — the police. They will come to the circus. When a hen goes missing, a diamond tiara or a girl, the police always come to the circus first. We of the circus are thieves and vagabonds, you know.’
    ‘Stupid,’ said Blue.
    ‘Of course. Why would we take a tiara? Far too difficult to sell. And by the time someone notices that a hen is missing it has been eaten, and the feathers are already in a quilt.
    ‘So, are you prepared to fool the police? It will be hard, the hardest thing that you have ever done. If you cannot do that, tell me now. Ebenezer can drive you back. As before, you can say you were sleepwalking. In your nightdress you will be believed. It is your choice. Always,’ said Madame Zlosky, ‘it is your choice.’
    Blue weighed the words. Madame hadn’t said, ‘Only a fool would go back to where someone was poisoning her.’ She hadn’t even said, ‘You will be safe with us.’ She had said, ‘It is your choice.’
    It had been six months since Blue had had any choice at all.
    ‘I will do what you tell me to,’ she said slowly. ‘Where should I hide?’
    ‘Hide? In a circus?’ Madame’s thin lips twitched. ‘Under the bed perhaps? Even if Ebenezer drove you into the bush, there would be someone to see him and the truck. A circus is in plain sight, always. There is nowhere here where you can hide from the police.’
    ‘But you said the police will come —’
    ‘And they will see you. There in the ring, this afternoon, rehearsing the Dance of the Seven Veils.’
    Reality crashed on her like a wave. This woman could have no idea of how much the girl she’d rescued was handicapped.
    ‘I can’t dance,’ said Blue desperately. Only a blind woman could have come up with a plan like this. ‘Madame, you don’t understand. I’m crippled. There’s a scar …’ It was hard to say the words without crying. ‘After I was burned the top of my legs sort of stuck together. That’s why I shuffle. The police will see my other scars, my hair …’
    ‘They will not see your scars, or your hair. That is how you will fool them. And you will dance,’ said Madame Zlosky. ‘Or every one of us will be arrested.’
    Mrs Olsen arrived to dress her — a new Mrs Olsen. The dull dress was gone, replaced with the gold harem pants and camisole. Her rabbit face had been given new contours with rouge, the thin little mouth reshaped with