Amos Walks the Wire

One paw, one breath, one quiet star, the lanterns glow from near and far. He does not fall. He does not run. He simply walks, from none to one.

Below him, sequined hats and held-in air, the murmur of an audience that almost dare. Above him, only ceiling, only night, and one slim wire, the colour of held light.

He'd practised in the attic, on a thread strung between a chimney and a bed. He'd fallen — many times — into a sheet, and learned the small, soft grammar of his feet.

Now: the wire. Now: the long applause of hush. Now: the slow important push. One paw set down. The next, just so. The lanterns leaned to watch him go.

Halfway across, a draft. A waver. A bow. He steadied with a thought he'd kept till now: the kettle whistling in his sister's room, the kindness of a known and lighted gloom.

Balance, he had learned, is not a stillness — it is a tiny constant willingness to lean, and lean back, and to lean again, the way a wheat-stalk answers to the rain.

Three-quarters home. The lanterns held their breath. The wire hummed a hymn the colour of beneath. He heard, far off, the small percussion of his heart — a drum that knew its part.

And then: the platform. Then: a paw set flat. The roar arrived, the way a wave arrives at sand. He bowed once, briefly. Then he raised his hand. The lanterns, kind, applauded him to that.

Later, in the dressing-room of cloud and rope, he sat with tea and an enormous quiet hope. A wire is just a question, end to end. The answer is: you walk it, friend, and bend.

— end of preview —

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