Excerpt from The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Hush now," said North, as from the stage came the boom of Red Gold introducing the wondrous bear-girl, fearless and fierce. She shrugged her shoulders out from under the acrobats' arms, then made a show of fussing with her bear's collar until she felt them leave. Her bear always went onstage shackled, though if he decided to use his strength, the fine gold chains would snap like strands of hair. The chains were decorative, meant only for the eyes of the crowd. Spectacle is grounded in the illusion of control. The crowd think they want safety, but what they really crave is the trick gone wrong: the fall from a trapeze, the uncovering of bone.

Earlier, when the Excalibur had docked, North had spied on the landlockers from under the canvas top of her coracle. They all seemed haggard and hunched in their hard-won finery, as if even the crust of soil they'd allowed the circus was too much. It didn't matter that damplings outnumbered landlockers ten to one; they had land, and land meant food, and food meant power, and no one was allowed to forget that.

For their act, North and her bear would mime a courtship: her kisses on his sharp teeth, the two of them in a clumsy waltz, then a musty-furred swoon in his arms and the slight lifting of her dress as the applause swept them offstage. It was always a crowd-pleaser: the female side of the big top loved the romance, the male side appreciated the reveal of flesh, and everyone was thrilled by the danger of the bear. North could still do her act. She would let out her costume when she needed to.

From the stage Red Gold's voice grew even louder, HERE TO TAME THE TERRIFYING BEAST WITH TEETH SHARPER THAN RAZOR-SHELLS, CHILDREN AVERT YOUR INNOCENT EYES, and North darted her hand under the curtain and groped around in the dust for the apple slice. She ate it in one bite, sucking her lips inward so she wouldn't miss any of its juice. As she wrapped her bear's chain around her fist and stepped out from behind the curtain, she let her tongue prod at the shreds of appleskin between her teeth, and swallowed them too. She had to. For the baby.



With the crowd's shouts and claps still echoing in her ears, North settled the bear in the shell of their boat. After a performance he needed to be groomed, fed, soothed. She'd worked hard to get him used to the golden chains, but he knew they weren't natural and shuddered back from them every time. North had never hurt him, and never would. Other animals could learn by cruelty: jewelled whips for ponies, kicks and slaps for dogs. But that would not work on bears. They learned steadily, through rapport, a dialogue built up over years. The problem was that her bear seemed hardly to remember her from day to day. She believed that he loved her, but he sometimes looked at her as if she were a stranger.

Faulty memory, like everyone said, and that's why North's job was so hard, but also why she had a place in the circus at all. There were many circus boats--all of them less decrepit than the Excalibur--but none of the others had a bear-girl. In a world with so little land, mammals were rare outside the landlocker farms. Because North's bear was a rarity, that meant that North was a rarity too.

Before she could begin his grooming, he would have to eat. There was no point in grooming him first, as bears are not known for being tidy eaters.

The main circus boat had been pulled ashore, as with various unfurlings the mast became the center of the big top, the striped sails became the canvas, the deck the stage. Some circuses left their ships in the water and performed up on the dock. North shuddered at the thought. She found it hard enough to walk on the islands. She could never find the balance and concentration to perform there.

Luckily, the brightly painted coracles where the crew lived didn't need to touch land. They had only to tighten the chains between them and the convoy became one long, snaking raft. North used the salt-crusty chains as a handhold to giant-step between the coracles. The swaying chains and bobbing decks felt steadier to her than walking on ground.

Reprinted from The Gracekeepers Copyright © 2015 by Kirsty Logan. To be published by Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, on May 19, 2015.