The Fearless Mother-Daughter Duo Who Tamed Lions to Save the Circus

When the Great War sent the men of Europe to the front lines and left a legendary family business on the brink of bankruptcy, two brave women stepped into the ring.

Edited by Farah Mohammed

The moment Priscilla Kayes hit the dust, she knew the clock was ticking. Around her, she could hear the gasps and shouts of the onlookers beyond the enclosure, and the sound of feet — her brothers’, maybe — running to find a way to intervene. If she wasn’t back up in a few seconds, she would face certain death.

Callito had done it. He was her favorite of the seven lions she worked with, but today he had surprised her as she turned to rearrange their pedestals, and now she was lying in the dirt with two bloody claw marks on her thigh. She heard the lions’ guttural voices and smelled that familiar aroma: sawdust, grass bruised by many feet. It was the smell of the circus, of her childhood. The smell of home.

She would not die here.

Priscilla pushed herself up off the floor. The audience had hardly had time to blink. Her whip in hand, she corralled Callito back onto his pedestal, the only evidence of her fall the scuff marks in the dust and the vivid redness of blood…