The Night Circus

Technicalities LONDON, NOVEMBER 1, 1901

Celia wishes she could freeze time as she listens to the steady beat of Marco’s heart against the ticking of the clock. To stay forever within this moment, curled in his arms, his hands softly stroking her back. To not have to leave.

She only succeeds in slowing Marco’s heartbeat enough that he falls deeply asleep.

She could wake him, but already the sky outside is brightening, and she dreads the thought of saying goodbye.

Instead, she kisses him gently on the lips and quietly dresses as he sleeps. She takes her ring from her finger and leaves it on the mantel, resting between the two hearts emblazoned on the playing card.

She pauses as she puts on her coat, looking at the books scattered across the desk.

Perhaps if she better understood his systems, she could use them to make the circus more independent. To take some of the weight off of herself. Allowing them to be together for more than a few stolen hours, without challenging the rules of the game.

It is the best gift she can think to give him, if they are unable to force a verdict from either of their instructors.

She picks up the volume filled with names. It seems a good place to start as she understands the basis of what it is meant to accomplish.

She takes it with her as she leaves.

Celia closes the door to Marco’s flat as quietly as she can after she slips out into the darkened hall, the leather-bound book tucked under her arm. The locks slide into place behind her with a series of soft, muffled clicks.

She does not notice the figure concealed in the nearby shadows until he speaks.

“You deceitful little slut,” her father says.

Celia shuts her eyes, attempting to concentrate, but it has always been difficult to push him away once he has grabbed ahold of her, and she cannot manage it.

“I’m surprised you waited in the hall to call me that, Papa,” she says.

“This place is so well protected it’s downright absurd,” Hector says, waving at the door. “Nothing could get in without that boy explicitly wanting it there.”

“Good,” Celia says. “You can stay away from him, and you can stay away from me.”

“What are you doing with that?” he asks, gesturing at the book under her arm.

“Nothing to concern yourself with,” Celia says.

“You cannot interfere with his work,” Hector says.

“I know, interference is one of the very few things that is apparently against the rules. I do not intend to interfere, I intend to learn his systems so I can stop having to constantly manage so much of the circus.”

“His systems. Alexander’s systems are nothing you should be bothering with. You have no idea what you’re doing. I overestimated your ability to handle this challenge.”

“This is the game, isn’t it?” Celia asks. “It’s about how we deal with the repercussions of magic when placed in a public venue, in a world that does not believe in such things. It’s a test of stamina and control, not skill.”

“It is a test of strength,” Hector says. “And you are weak. Weaker than I’d thought.”

“Then let me lose,” she says. “I’m exhausted, Papa. I cannot do this any longer. It’s not as though you can gloat over a bottle of whiskey once a winner is declared.”

“A winner is not declared,” her father says. “The game is played out, not stopped. You should have figured that much out by now. You used to be somewhat clever.”

Celia glares at him, but at the same time she begins turning over his words in her mind, collecting the obscure non-answers about the rules he has given her over the years. Suddenly the shape of the elements he has always avoided becomes more distinct, the key unknown factor clear.

“The victor is the one left standing after the other can no longer endure,” Celia says, the scope of it finally making devastating sense.

“That is a gross generalization but I suppose it will suffice.”

Celia turns back to Marco’s flat, pressing her hand against the door.

“Stop behaving as though you love that boy,” Hector says. “You are above such mundane things.”

“You are willing to sacrifice me for this,” she says quietly. “To let me destroy myself just so you can attempt to prove a point. You tied me into this game knowing the stakes, and you let me think it was nothing but a simple challenge of skill.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says, “as if you think me inhuman.”

“I can see through you,” Celia snaps. “It is not particularly trying on my imagination.”

“It would not be any different if I were still as I was when this started.”

“And what happens to the circus after the game?” Celia asks.

“The circus is merely a venue,” he says. “A stadium. A very festive coliseum. You could continue on with it after you win, though without the game it serves no purpose.”

“I suppose the other people involved serve no purpose as well, then?” Celia asks. “Their fates are only a matter of consequence?”

“All actions have repercussions,” Hector says. “That’s part of the challenge.”

“Why are you telling me all this now when you have never mentioned it before?”

“Before, I had not thought you were in the position to be the one to lose.”

“You mean the one to die,” Celia says.

“A technicality,” her father says. “A game is completed only when there is a single player left. There is no other way to end it. You can abandon any misguided dreams of continuing to play whore to that nobody Alexander plucked out of a London gutter after this is over.”

“Who is left, then?” Celia asks, ignoring his comment. “You said Alexander’s student won the last challenge, what happened to him?”

A derisive laugh shudders through the shadows before Hector replies.

“She is bending herself into knots in your precious circus.”

PLAYING WITH FIRE

The only illumination in this tent comes from the fire. The flames are a radiant, flickering white, like the bonfire in the courtyard.

You pass a fire-eater elevated on a striped platform. He keeps small bits of flame dancing atop long sticks while he prepares to swallow them whole.

On another platform, a woman holds two long chains, with a ball of flame at the end of each. She swings them in loops and circles, leaving glowing trails of white light in their paths, moving so quickly that they look like strings of fire rather than single flames on lengths of chain.

Performers on multiple platforms juggle torches, spinning them high into the air. Occasionally, they toss these flaming torches to each other in a shower of sparks.

Elsewhere, there are flaming hoops perched at different levels that performers slip in and out of with ease, as though the hoops were only metal and not encased in flickering flames.

The artist on this platform holds pieces of flame in her bare hands, and she forms them into snakes and flowers and all manner of shapes. Sparks fly from shooting stars, birds flame and disappear like miniature phoenixes in her hands.

She smiles at you as you watch the white flames in her hand become, with the deft movement of her fingers, a boat. A book. A heart of fire.

EN ROUTE FROM LONDON TO MUNICH, NOVEMBER 1, 1901

The train is unremarkable as it chugs across the countryside, puffing clouds of grey smoke into the air. The engine is almost entirely black. The cars it pulls are equally as monochromatic. Those with windows have glass that is tinted and shadowed; those without are dark as coal.

It is silent as it travels, no whistles or horns. The wheels on the track are not screeching but gliding smoothly and quietly. It passes almost unnoticed along its route, making no stops.

From the exterior, it appears to be a coal train, or something similar. It is utterly unremarkable.

The interior is a different story.

Inside, the train is opulent, gilded, and warm. Most of the passenger cars are lined with thick patterned carpets, upholstered in velvets in burgundies and violets and creams, as though they have been dipped in a sunset, hovering at twilight and holding on to the colors before they fade to midnight and stars.

There are lights in sconces lining the corridors, cascades of crystals falling from them and swaying with the motion of the train. Soothing and serene.

Shortly after its departure, Celia places the leather-bound book safely away, camouflaged in plain sight amongst her own volumes.

She changes from her bloodstained gown to a flowing one in moonlight grey, bound with ribbons in black, white, and charcoal, which had been one of Friedrick’s particular favorites.

The ribbons drift behind her as she makes her way down the train.

She stops at the only door that has two calligraphed characters as well as a handwritten name on the tag next to it.

Her polite knock is answered immediately, inviting her inside.

While most of the train compartments are saturated with color, Tsukiko’s private car is almost completely neutral. A bare space surrounded by paper screens and curtains of raw silk, perfumed with the scent of ginger and cream.

Tsukiko sits on the floor in the center of the room, wearing a red kimono. A beating crimson heart in the pale chamber.

And she is not alone. Isobel lies on the floor with her head in Tsukiko’s lap, sobbing softly.

“I did not mean to interrupt,” Celia says. She hesitates in the doorway, ready to slide the door closed again.

“You are not interrupting,” Tsukiko says, beckoning her inside. “Perhaps you will be able to help me convince Isobel that she is in need of some rest.”

Celia says nothing, but Isobel wipes her eyes, nodding as she stands.

“Thank you, Kiko,” she says, smoothing out the wrinkles in her gown. Tsukiko remains seated, her attention on Celia.

Isobel stops next to Celia as she makes her way to the door.

“I am sorry about Herr Thiessen,” she says.

“I am as well.”

For a moment, Celia thinks Isobel means to embrace her, but instead she only nods before leaving, sliding the door closed behind her.

“The last hours have been long for all of us,” Tsukiko says after Isobel has departed. “You need tea,” she adds before Celia can explain why she is there. Tsukiko sits her down on a cushion and walks silently to the end of the car, fetching her tea supplies from behind one of the tall screens.

It is not the full tea ceremony that she has performed on several occasions over the years, but as Tsukiko slowly prepares two bowls of green matcha, it is beautiful and calming nonetheless.

“Why did you never tell me?” Celia asks when Tsukiko has settled herself across from her.

“Tell you what?” Tsukiko asks, smiling over her tea.

Celia sighs. She wonders if Lainie Burgess felt a similar frustration over two different cups of tea in Constantinople. She has half a mind to break Tsukiko’s tea bowl, just to see what she would do.

“Did you injure yourself?” Tsukiko asks, nodding at the scar on Celia’s finger.

“I was bound into a challenge almost thirty years ago,” Celia says. She sips her tea before adding, “Are you going to show me your scar, now that you have seen mine?”

Tsukiko smiles and places her tea on the floor in front of her. Then she turns and lowers the neck of her kimono.

At the nape of her neck, in the space between a shower of tattooed symbols, nestled in the curve of a crescent moon, there is a faded scar about the size and shape of a ring.

“The scars last longer than the game, you see,” Tsukiko says, straightening her kimono around her shoulders.

“It was one of my father’s rings that did that,” Celia says, but Tsukiko does not confirm or deny the statement.

“How is your tea?” she asks.

“Why are you here?” Celia counters.

“I was hired to be a contortionist.”

Celia puts down her tea.

“I am not in the mood for this, Tsukiko,” she says.

“Should you choose your questions more carefully, you may receive more satisfying answers.”

“Why did you never tell me you knew about the challenge?” Celia asks. “That you had played before yourself?”

“I made an agreement that I would not reveal myself unless approached directly,” Tsukiko says. “I keep my word.”

“Why did you come here, in the beginning?”

“I was curious. There has not been a challenge of this sort since the one I participated in. I did not intend to stay.”

“Why did you stay?”

“I liked Monsieur Lefèvre. The venue for my challenge was a more intimate one, and this seemed unique. It is rare to discover places that are truly unique. I stayed to observe.”

“You’ve been watching us,” Celia says.

Tsukiko nods.

“Tell me about the game,” Celia says, hoping to get a response to an open-ended inquiry now that Tsukiko is more forthcoming.

“There is more to it than you think,” Tsukiko says. “I did not understand the rules myself, in my time. It is not only about what you call magic. You believe adding a new tent to the circus is a move? It is more than that. Everything you do, every moment of the day and night is a move. You carry your chessboard with you, it is not contained within canvas and stripes. Though you and your opponent do not have the luxury of polite squares to stay upon.”

Celia considers this while she sips her tea. Attempting to reconcile the fact that everything that has happened with the circus, with Marco, has been part of the game.

“Do you love him?” Tsukiko asks, watching her with thoughtful eyes and the hint of a smile that might be sympathetic, but Celia has always found Tsukiko’s expressions difficult to decipher.

Celia sighs. There seems no good reason to deny it.

“I do,” she says.

“Do you believe he loves you?”

Celia does not answer. The phrasing of the question bothers her. Only hours ago, she was certain. Now, sitting in this cave of lightly perfumed silk, what had seemed constant and unquestionable feels as delicate as the steam floating over her tea. As fragile as an illusion.

“Love is fickle and fleeting,” Tsukiko continues. “It is rarely a solid foundation for decisions to be made upon, in any game.”

Celia closes her eyes to keep her hands from shaking.

It takes longer for her to regain her control than she would like.

“Isobel once thought he loved her,” Tsukiko continues. “She was certain of it. That is why she came here, to assist him.”

“He does love me,” Celia says, though the words do not sound as strong when they fall from her lips as they did inside her head.

“Perhaps,” Tsukiko replies. “He is quite skilled at manipulation. Did you not once lie to people yourself, telling them only what they wished to hear?”

Celia is not certain which is worse. The knowledge that for the game to end, one of them will have to die, or the possibility that she means nothing to him. That she is only a piece across a board. Waiting to be toppled and checkmated.

“It is a matter of perspective, the difference between opponent and partner,” Tsukiko says. “You step to the side and the same person can be either or both or something else entirely. It is difficult to know which face is true. And you have a great many factors to deal with beyond your opponent.”

“Did you not?” Celia asks.

“My venue was not as grand. It involved fewer people, less movement. Without the challenge within it, there was nothing to salvage. Most of it is now a tea garden, I believe. I have not returned to that place since the challenge concluded.”

“The circus could continue, after this challenge is … concluded,” Celia says.

“That would be nice,” Tsukiko says. “A proper tribute to your Herr Thiessen. Though it would be complicated, making it completely independent from you and your opponent. You have taken on a great deal of responsibility for all of this. You are vital to its operation. If I stabbed a knife in your heart right now, this train would crash.”

Celia puts down her tea, watching as the smooth motion of the train sends soft ripples through the surface of the liquid. In her head, she calculates how long it would take to halt the train, how long she might be able to keep her heart beating. She decides it would likely depend on the knife.

“Possibly,” she says.

“If I were to extinguish the bonfire, or its keeper, that would also be problematic, yes?”

Celia nods.

“You have work to do if you expect this circus to endure,” Tsukiko says.

“Are you offering to help?” Celia asks, hoping she will be able to aid in translating Marco’s systems, as they shared the same instructor.

“No,” Tsukiko says with a polite shake of her head, her smile softening the harshness of the word. “If you are unable to manage it properly yourself, I will step in. This has gone on too long already, but I shall give you some time.”

“How much time?” Celia asks.

Tsukiko sips her tea.

“Time is something I cannot control,” she says. “We shall see.”

They sit in meditative silence for some of that uncontrollable time, the motion of the train gently billowing the silk curtains, the scent of ginger and cream enveloping them.

“What happened to your opponent?” Celia asks.

Tsukiko looks not at Celia but down at her tea as she responds.

“My opponent is now a pillar of ash standing in a field in Kyoto,” she says. “Unless wind and time have taken her away.”

Escapement CONCORD AND BOSTON, OCTOBER 31, 1902

Bailey walks circles around the empty field for some time before he can convince himself that the circus is well and truly gone. There is nothing at all, not so much as a bent blade of grass, to indicate that anything had occupied the space hours before.

He sits down on the ground, holding his head in his hands and feeling utterly lost though he has played in these very fields ever since he was little.

He recalls Poppet mentioning a train.

A train would have to travel to Boston in order to reach any far-flung destination.

Within moments of the thought crossing his mind, Bailey is on his feet, running as fast as he can toward the depot.

There are no trains to be seen when he gets there, out of breath and aching from where his bag has been hitting against his back. He had been hoping that somehow the circus train he was not even entirely certain existed would still be there, waiting.

But instead the depot is all but deserted; only two figures sit on one of the benches on the platform, a man and a woman in black coats.

It takes Bailey a moment to realize that they are both wearing red scarves.

“Are you all right?” the woman asks as he runs up to the platform. Bailey cannot quite place her accent.

“Are you here for the circus?” Bailey says, gasping for breath.

“Indeed we are,” the man says with a similar lilting accent. “Though it has departed, I trust you have noticed.”

“Closed early as well, but that is not unusual,” the woman adds.

“Do you know Poppet and Widget?” Bailey asks.

“Who?” the man asks. The woman tilts her head as though she did not catch the meaning of the question.

“They’re twins, they do a show with kittens,” Bailey explains. “They’re my friends.”

“The twins!” the woman exclaims. “And their wonderful cats! However did you come to be friends with them?”

“It’s a long story,” Bailey says.

“Then you should tell it to us while we wait,” she says with a smile. “You are off to Boston as well, yes?”

“I don’t know,” Bailey says. “I was trying to follow the circus.”

“That is precisely what we are doing,” the man says. “Though we cannot follow Le Cirque until we know where it has gone. That should take about a day.”

“I do hope it turns up somewhere manageable,” the woman says.

“How will you know where it is?” Bailey asks, in a state of mild disbelief.

“We rêveurs have our methods,” the woman says, smiling. “We have awhile yet to wait, that should be plenty of time to exchange stories.”

The man’s name is Victor, his sister is Lorena. They are on what they call an extended circus holiday, following Le Cirque des Rêves around to as many locations as they can manage. They normally do this only within Europe, but for this particular holiday they have decided to chase it around the other side of the Atlantic. They had been in Canada previously.

Bailey tells them a shortened version of how he came to be friends with Poppet and Widget, leaving out the more curious details.

As it creeps closer to dawn they are joined by another rêveur, a woman named Elizabeth who had been staying at the local inn and is headed to Boston as well now that the circus has departed. She is greeted warmly, and they appear to be old friends though Lorena says they only met her a few days ago. While they wait for the train Elizabeth takes out her knitting needles and a skein of deep red wool.

Lorena introduces Bailey to her as a scarf-less young rêveur.

“I’m not a rêveur, really,” Bailey says. He is still not entirely sure he grasps the meaning of the term.

Elizabeth looks at him over her knitting, sizing him up with narrowed eyes that remind him of his sternest teachers, though he stands much taller than she does. She leans forward in a conspiratorial manner.

“Do you adore Le Cirque des Rêves?” she asks him.

“Yes,” he says without hesitation.

“More than anything in the world?” she adds.

“Yes,” Bailey says. He cannot keep himself from smiling despite her serious tone and the nerves that are still keeping his heart from beating at a steady rate.

“Then you are a rêveur,” Elizabeth pronounces. “No matter what you wear.”

They tell him stories of the circus and of other rêveurs. How there is a society of sorts that keeps track of the movement of the circus, notifying other rêveurs so they might travel from destination to destination. Victor and Lorena have followed the circus as often as their schedules allow for years, while Elizabeth typically only makes excursions closer to New York and this trip is an extended one for her, though there is an informal club of rêveurs based in the city that holds gatherings from time to time, to keep in touch while the circus is away.

The train arrives shortly after the sun has fully risen, and on the way to Boston the stories continue, while Elizabeth knits and Lorena props her head up sleepily on her arm.

“Where are you staying in town?” Elizabeth inquires.

Bailey has not considered this, as he has been taking this endeavor one step at a time, attempting not to worry about what might happen once they reach Boston.

“I’m not entirely sure,” he says. “I’ll probably stay at the station until I know where to go next.”

“Nonsense,” Victor says. “You shall stay with us. We have nearly an entire floor at the Parker House. You can have August’s room, he went back to New York yesterday and I never bothered to alert the management that we have an unoccupied room.”

Bailey attempts to argue but Lorena stops him.

“He is terribly stubborn,” she whispers. “He will not take no for an answer once he has set his mind to something.”

And indeed, Bailey is swept into their carriage almost as soon as they step off the train. His bag is taken along with Elizabeth’s luggage when they reach the hotel.

“Is something wrong?” Lorena asks as he openly stares around the opulent lobby.

“I feel like one of those girls in fairy tales, the ones who don’t even have shoes and then somehow get to attend a ball at the castle,” Bailey whispers, and she laughs so loudly that several people turn and stare.

Bailey is escorted to a room half the size of his entire house but he finds he cannot sleep, despite the heavy curtains blocking out the sunlight. He paces the room until he begins worrying about damaging the carpet, and then he sits in the window instead, watching the people below.

He is relieved when there is a knock at the door midafternoon.

“Do you know where the circus is yet?” he asks, before Victor can even speak.

“Not yet, dear boy,” he says. “We sometimes have advance notice of where it is headed but not as of late. I imagine we will have word by the end of the day, and if our luck holds we will depart first thing in the morning. Do you have a suit?”

“Not with me,” Bailey says, remembering the suit packed in a trunk at home that was only ever pulled out for special occasions. He guesses he has likely outgrown it in the interim, unable to recall exactly what the last suit-worthy occasion was.

“We shall get you one, then,” Victor says, as though this is as simple a thing as picking up a newspaper.

They meet Lorena in the lobby and the two of them drag him around town on a number of errands, including a stop at a tailor for his suit.

“No, no,” Lorena says while they look at samples. “These are entirely wrong for his coloring. He needs a grey. A nice deep grey.”

After a great deal of pinning and measuring, Bailey ends up with a nicer suit than he has ever owned in his life, nicer even than his father’s best suit, in a charcoal grey. Despite his protestations Victor also buys him very shiny shoes and a new hat.

The reflection in the mirror looks so different from the one he is accustomed to that Bailey has difficulty believing it is really him.

They return to the Parker House with a multitude of packages in tow, stopping by their rooms for hardly enough time to sit before Elizabeth comes to take them down to dinner.

To Bailey’s surprise, there are almost a dozen rêveurs waiting in the restaurant downstairs, some who will be following the circus and others who are remaining in Boston. His anxiety at the fanciness of the restaurant is eased by the casual, boisterous manner of the group. True to form, they are clad almost entirely in black and white and grey with bright touches of red on ties or handkerchiefs.

When Lorena realizes that Bailey has no red, she surreptitiously removes a rose from a nearby floral arrangement to tuck in his lapel.

There are endless stories from the circus related over each course, mentions of tents Bailey has never seen and countries he has never even heard of. Bailey mostly listens, still rather astounded that he has stumbled upon a group of people who love the circus as much as he does.

“Do you … do you think anything is wrong with the circus?” Bailey asks quietly, when the table has fallen into separate conversations. “Recently, I mean?”

Victor and Lorena glance at each other as though gauging who should respond, but it is Elizabeth who answers first.

“It has not been the same since Herr Thiessen died,” she says. Victor frowns suddenly while Lorena nods in agreement.

“Who is Herr Thiessen?” Bailey asks. The three of them look somewhat surprised by his ignorance.

“Friedrick Thiessen was the first of the rêveurs,” Elizabeth says. “He was a clockmaker. He made the clock inside the gates.”

“That clock was made by someone outside the circus? Really?” Bailey asks. It is not something he had ever thought to ask Poppet and Widget about. He had assumed it was a thing born of the circus itself. Elizabeth nods.

“He was a writer as well,” Victor says. “That is how we met him, years and years ago. Read an article he wrote about the circus and sent him a letter and he wrote back and so on. That was before we were even called rêveurs.”

“He made me a clock that looks like the Carousel,” Lorena says, looking wistful. “With little creatures that loop through clouds and silver gears. It is a wonderful thing, I wish I could carry it around with me. Though it is nice to have a reminder of the circus I can keep at home.”

“I heard he had a secret romance with the illusionist,” Elizabeth remarks, smiling over her glass of wine.

“Gossip and nonsense,” Victor scoffs.

“He did always sound very fond of her in his writing,” Lorena says, as though she is considering the possibility.

“How could anyone not be fond of her?” Victor asks. Lorena turns to look at him curiously. “She is extremely talented,” he mumbles, and Bailey catches Elizabeth trying not to laugh.

“And the circus isn’t the same without this Herr Thiessen?” Bailey asks, wondering if this has something to do with what Poppet had told him.

“It is different without him, for us, of course,” Lorena says. She pauses thoughtfully before she continues. “The circus itself seems a bit different as well. Nothing in particular, only something … ”

“Something off-kilter,” Victor interjects. “Like a clock that is not oscillating properly.”

“When did he die?” Bailey asks. He cannot bring himself to ask how.

“A year ago tonight, as a matter of fact,” Victor says.

“Oh, I had not realized that,” Lorena says.

“A toast to Herr Thiessen,” Victor proposes, loud enough for the entire table to hear, and he raises his glass. Glasses are lifted all around the table, and Bailey raises his as well.

The stories of Herr Thiessen continue through dessert, interrupted only by a discussion about why the cake is called a pie when it is clearly cake. Victor excuses himself after finishing his coffee, refusing to weigh in on the cake issue.

When he returns to the table, he has a telegram in his hand.

“We are headed to New York, my friends.”

Impasse MONTRÉAL, AUGUST 1902

After the illusionist takes her bow and disappears before her rapt audience’s eyes, they clap, applauding the empty air. They rise from their seats and some of them chatter with their companions, marveling over this trick or that as they file out the door that has reappeared in the side of the striped tent.

One man, sitting in the inner circle of chairs, remains in his seat as they leave. His eyes, almost hidden in the shadow cast by the brim of his bowler hat, are fixed on the space in the center of the circle that the illusionist occupied only moments before.

The rest of the audience departs.

The man continues to sit.

After a few minutes, the door fades into the wall of the tent, invisible once more.

The man’s gaze does not waver. He does not so much as glance at the vanishing door.

A moment later, Celia is sitting in a chair across the circle from him, still dressed as she had been during her performance, in a black gown covered with delicate white lace.

“You usually sit in the back,” she says.

“I wanted a better view,” Marco says.

“You came quite a ways to be here.”

“I had to take a holiday.”

Celia looks down at her hands.

“You didn’t expect me to come all this way, did you?” Marco asks.

“No, I did not.”

“It’s difficult to hide when you travel with an entire circus, you know.”

“I have not been hiding,” Celia says.

“You have,” Marco says. “I tried to speak with you at Herr Thiessen’s funeral, but you left before I could find you, and then you took the circus across the ocean. You’ve been avoiding me.”

“It was not entirely intentional,” Celia says. “I needed some time to think. Thank you for the Pool of Tears,” she adds.

“I wanted you to have a place where you felt safe enough to cry if I could not be with you.”

She closes her eyes and does not reply.

“You stole my book,” Marco says after a moment.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“As long as it is somewhere safe it does not matter whether I keep it or you do. You could have asked. You could have said goodbye.”

Celia nods.

“I know,” she says.

Neither of them speaks for some time.

“I am trying to make the circus independent,” Celia says. “To untie it from the challenge, from us. From me. I needed to learn your system to make it work properly. I cannot let a place that is so important to so many people fade away. Something that is wonder and comfort and mystery all together that they have nowhere else. If you had that, wouldn’t you want to keep it?”

“I have that whenever I’m with you,” Marco says. “Let me help you.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“You cannot do this alone.”

“I have Ethan Barris and Lainie Burgess,” Celia says. “They have agreed to assume management for the basic operation. With a little more training, Poppet and Widget should be able to handle the manipulation aspects that Ethan and Lainie cannot manage. I … I do not need you.”

She cannot look him in the eye.

“You don’t trust me,” he says.

“Isobel trusted you,” Celia says, looking at the ground. “So did Chandresh. How can I believe that you are honest with me and not with them, when I am the one you have the most reason to deceive?”

“I never once told Isobel that I loved her,” Marco says. “I was young and I was desperately lonely, and I should not have let her think I felt more strongly than I did, but what I felt for her is nothing compared to what I feel for you. This is not a tactic to deceive you; do you think me that cruel?”

Celia rises from her chair.

“Good night, Mr. Alisdair,” she says.

“Celia, wait,” Marco says, standing but not moving closer to her. “You are breaking my heart. You told me once that I reminded you of your father. That you never wanted to suffer the way your mother did for him, but you are doing exactly that to me. You keep leaving me. You leave me longing for you again and again when I would give anything for you to stay, and it is killing me.”

“It has to kill one of us,” Celia says quietly.

“What?” Marco asks.

“The one who survives is the victor,” she says. “The winner lives, the loser dies. That’s how the game ends.”

“That—” Marco stops, shaking his head. “That cannot be the intent of this.”

“It is,” Celia says. “It is a test of endurance, not skill. I’m attempting to make the circus self-sufficient before … ”

She cannot say the words, still barely able to look at him.

“You’re going to do what your father did,” Marco says. “You’re going to take yourself off the board.”

“Not precisely,” she says. “I suppose I was always more my mother’s daughter.”

“No,” Marco says. “You cannot mean that.”

“It’s the only way to stop the game.”

“Then we’ll continue playing.”

“I can’t,” she says. “I can’t keep holding on. Every night it becomes more difficult. And I … I have to let you win.”

“I don’t want to win,” Marco says. “I want you. Truly, Celia, do you not understand that?”

Celia says nothing, but tears begin to roll down her cheeks. She does not wipe them away.

“How can you think that I don’t love you?” Marco asks. “Celia, you are everything to me. I don’t know who is trying to convince you otherwise, but you must believe me, please.”

She only looks at him with tear-soaked eyes, the first time she has held his gaze steadily.

“This is when I knew I loved you,” he says.

They stand on opposite sides of a small, round room painted a rich blue and dotted with stars, on a ledge around a pool of jewel-toned cushions. A shimmering chandelier hangs above them.

“I was enchanted from the moment I first saw you,” Marco says, “but this is when I knew.”

The room around them changes again, expanding into an empty ballroom. Moonlight filters in through the windows.

“This is when I knew,” Celia says, her voice a whisper echoing softly through the room.

Marco moves to close the distance between them, kissing away her tears before catching her lips with his own.

As he kisses her, the bonfire glows brighter. The acrobats catch the light perfectly as they spin. The entire circus sparkles, dazzling every patron.

And then the immaculate cohesion stops as Celia reluctantly breaks away.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Please,” Marco says, refusing to let her go, his fingers holding tightly to the lace of her gown. “Please don’t leave me.”

“It’s too late,” she says. “It was too late by the time I arrived in London to turn your notebook into a dove; there were too many people already involved. Anything either of us does has an effect on everyone here, on every patron who walks through those gates. Hundreds if not thousands of people. All flies in a spiderweb that was spun when I was six years old and now I can barely move for fear of losing someone else.”

She looks up at him, lifting her hand to stroke his cheek.

“Will you do something for me?” she asks.

“Anything,” Marco says.

“Don’t come back,” she says, her voice breaking.

She vanishes before Marco can protest, as simply and elegantly as at the end of her act, her gown fading beneath his hands. Only her perfume lingers in the space she occupied moments before.

Marco stands alone in an empty tent with nothing but two rings of chairs and an open door, waiting for him to leave.

Before he departs, he takes a single playing card from his pocket and places it on her chair.

Visitations SEPTEMBER 1902

Celia Bowen sits at a desk surrounded by piles of books. She ran out of space for her library some time ago, but instead of making the room larger she has opted to let the books become the room. Piles of them function as tables, others hang suspended from the ceiling, along with large golden cages holding several live white doves.

Another round cage, sitting on a table rather than hanging from above, contains an elaborate clock. It marks both time and astrological movements as it ticks steadily through the afternoon.

A large black raven sleeps uncaged alongside the complete works of Shakespeare.

Mismatched candles in silver candelabras, burning in sets of three, surround the desk in the center of the room. Upon the desk itself there is a slowly cooling cup of tea, a scarf that has been partially unraveled into a ball of crimson yarn, a framed photograph of a deceased clockmaker, a solitary playing card long separated from its deck, and an open book filled with signs and symbols and signatures procured from other pieces of paper.

Celia sits with a notebook and pen, attempting to decipher the system the book is written in.

She tries to think the way she imagines Marco might have as he wrote it, picturing him inscribing each page, rendering the delicate ink branches of the tree that winds throughout the book.

She reads each signature over and over, checking how securely each lock of hair is pasted, scrutinizing each symbol.

She has spent so much time repeating this process that she could recreate the book from memory, but she still does not fully comprehend how the system works.

The raven stirs and caws at something in the shadows.

“You’re bothering Huginn,” Celia says, without looking up.

The candlelight catches only the edges of her father’s form as he hovers nearby. Highlighting the creases of his jacket, the collar of his shirt. Glinting in the hollows of his dark eyes.

“You should really get another one,” he says, peering at the agitated raven. “A Muninn to complete the set.”

“I prefer thought to memory, Papa,” Celia says.

“Hrmph” is the only response.

Celia ignores him as he leans over her shoulder, watching her flip through the inscribed pages.

“This is a god-awful mess,” he says.

“A language you cannot speak yourself is not necessarily a god-awful mess,” Celia says, transcribing a line of symbols into her notebook.

“This is messy work, bindings and charms,” Hector says, floating to the other side of the desk to get a better look. “Very much Alexander’s style, overly complicated and covert.”

“Yet with enough study anyone could do it. Quite the contrast to all your lectures about how I was special.”

“You are special. You are beyond this”—he waves a transparent hand over the pile of books—“this use of tools and constructs. There is so much more you could accomplish with your talents. So much more to explore.”

“ ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ ” Celia quotes at him.

“Please, no Shakespeare.”

“I am haunted by the ghost of my father, I think that should allow me to quote Hamlet as much as I please. You used to be quite fond of Shakespeare, Prospero.”

“You are too intelligent for this behavior. I expected more of you.”

“I apologize for not living up to your absurd expectations, Papa. Don’t you have anyone else to bother?”

“There are very few people I can converse with in this state. Alexander is dreadfully boring, as always. Chandresh was interesting enough but that boy has altered his memory so many times that it’s not much better than talking to myself. Though it might be nice for a change of scenery.”

“You talk to Chandresh?” Celia asks.

“Occasionally,” Hector says, inspecting the clock as it turns within its cage.

“You told Chandresh that Alexander was going to be at the circus that night. You sent him there.”

“I made a suggestion to a drunk. Drunks are highly suggestible. And nicely accepting of conversations with dead people.”

“You must have known he could do nothing to Alexander,” Celia says. The reasoning makes no sense, not that her father’s reasoning often does.

“I thought the old man could use a knife in the back for a change. That student of his was practically screaming to do it himself, so much so that the idea of it was already in Chandresh’s head, all of that rage sneaking into his subconscious from being exposed to it over time. All I had to do was give him a push in the right direction.”

“You said there was a rule about interference,” Celia says, placing down her pen.

“Interfering with you or your opponent,” her father clarifies. “I can interfere with anyone else as much as I please.”

“Your interfering got Friedrick killed!”

“There are other clockmakers in the world,” Hector says. “You could find a new one if you are in need of additional timepieces.”

Celia’s hands are shaking as she picks up a volume from the pile of Shakespeare and hurls it at him. As You Like It passes through his chest without pause, hitting the wall of the tent beyond and falling to the ground. The raven caws, ruffling its feathers.

The cages around the doves and the clock begin to quiver. The glass over the framed photograph cracks.

“Go away, Papa,” Celia says through clenched teeth, trying to control herself.

“You cannot keep pushing me away,” he says.

Celia turns her attention to the candles on the desk, concentrating on a single dancing flame.

“You think you are making personal connections with these people?” Hector continues. “You think you mean anything to them? They are all going to die eventually. You are letting your emotions trump your power.”

“You are a coward,” Celia says. “You are both cowards. You fight by proxy because you are too cowardly to challenge each other directly. Afraid that you will fail and have nothing to blame except yourselves.”

“That is not true,” Hector protests.

“I hate you,” Celia says, still staring at the candle flame.

The shadow of her father shudders and vanishes.

THERE IS NO FROST UPON THE WINDOWS of Marco’s flat, so he inscribes lines of symbols in the shape of a letter A with ink, pressing his darkened fingers against the panes. The ink drips down over the glass like rain.

He sits staring at the door, twisting the silver ring around his finger in anxious circles until the knock comes early the next morning.

The man in the grey suit does not admonish him for calling. He stands in the hall outside the door with his hands on his cane and waits for Marco to speak.

“She thinks one of us has to die in order for the game to end,” Marco says.

“She is correct.”

Having the confirmation is worse than Marco had expected. The small glimmer of hope he had held that she might be mistaken is crushed in three simple words.

“To win would be worse than losing,” he says.

“I did inform you that your feelings for Miss Bowen would make the challenge more difficult for you,” his instructor replies.

“Why would you do this to me?” Marco asks. “Why would you spend all that time training me for such a thing?”

The pause before the response is heavy.

“I thought it preferable to the life you might have had otherwise, regardless of the consequences.”

Marco closes and locks the door.

The man in the grey suit lifts his hand to knock again, but then lowers it and walks away instead.

CHARMING BUT DEADLY

You follow the sound of a flute into a hidden corner, the hypnotic melody beckoning you closer.

Seated on the ground, nestled in an alcove on striped silk pillows, are two women. One plays the flute you heard. A burning coil of incense sits between them, along with a large black-lidded basket.

A small audience is gathering. The other woman carefully removes the lid from the basket before taking out a flute of her own and adding a countermelody to the first.

Two white cobras coil around each other as they rise from the woven basket, in perfect time with the music. For a moment they seem to be one snake and not two, and then they separate again, moving down along the sides of the basket, gliding onto the ground quite close to your feet.

The snakes move back and forth together in motions resembling a strikingly formal dance. Elegant and graceful.

The music increases in tempo, and now there is something harsher about the way the snakes move. Waltz morphs into battle. They circle each other, and you watch for one or the other to strike.

One of them hisses, softly, and the other responds in kind. They continue to circle as the music and the incense rise into the starry sky above.

You cannot tell which snake strikes first. They are identical, after all. As they rear and hiss and jump at each other you are distracted by the fact that they are both no longer stark white but a perfect ebony black.

Precognition EN ROUTE FROM BOSTON TO NEW YORK, OCTOBER 31, 1902

Most of the train’s passengers have settled into their respective cars and compartments to read or sleep or otherwise pass the journey. Corridors that were bustling with people at departure time are now nearly empty as Poppet and Widget make their way from car to car, quiet as cats.

Tags hang by each compartment door, marked with handwritten names. They stop at the one that reads “C. Bowen” and Widget lifts his hand to knock softly on the frosted glass.

“Come in,” calls a voice from inside, and Poppet slides the door open.

“Are we interrupting anything?” she asks.

“No,” Celia says. “Do come in.” She closes the symbol-filled book she has been reading and places it on a table. The entire compartment looks like an explosion in a library, piles of books and paper amongst the velvet-covered benches and polished-wood tables. The light dances around the room with the motion of the train, bouncing off the crystal chandeliers.

Widget slides the door closed behind them and latches it.

“Would you like some tea?” Celia asks.

“No, thank you,” Poppet says. She looks nervously at Widget, who only nods.

Celia watches both of them, Poppet biting her lip and refusing to meet Celia’s eyes, while Widget leans against the door.

“Out with it,” she says.

“We … ” Poppet starts. “We have a problem.”

“What kind of problem?” Celia asks, moving piles of books so they can sit on the violet benches but the twins both remain where they are.

“I think something that was supposed to happen didn’t happen,” Poppet says.

“And what might that be?” Celia asks.

“Our friend Bailey was supposed to come with us.”

“Ah yes, Widget mentioned something about that,” Celia says. “I take it he did not?”

“No,” Poppet says. “We waited for him but he didn’t come, but I don’t know if that’s because he didn’t want to or because we left early.”

“I see,” Celia says. “It seems a very big decision to me, deciding whether or not to run away and join the circus. Perhaps he did not have enough time to properly consider it.”

“But he was supposed to come,” Poppet says. “I know he was supposed to come.”

“Did you see something?” Celia asks.

“Sort of.”

“How does one sort of see something?”

“It’s not as clear as it was before,” Poppet says. “I can’t see anything as clearly as I used to. It’s all bits and pieces that don’t make sense. Nothing here has made any sense for a year and you know it.”

“I think that is an exaggeration, but I understand how it can seem that way,” Celia says.

“It is not an exaggeration,” Poppet says, raising her voice.

The chandeliers begin to shudder and Celia closes her eyes, taking a deep breath and waiting for them to return to a gentle sway before she speaks.

“Poppet, there is no one here who is more upset by what happened last year than I am. And I have told you before it is not your fault, and there is nothing that could have been done to prevent it. Not by you, not by me, not by anyone else. Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” Poppet says. “But what’s the use in seeing the future if I can’t do anything to stop it?”

“You cannot stop things,” Celia says. “You can only be prepared for them to happen.”

“You could stop them,” Poppet mumbles, looking around at the multitude of books. Celia puts a finger under Poppet’s chin and turns her head to look her in the eye.

“Only a handful of people on this train have any idea how integral I am to the running of the circus,” she says. “And as much as you two are amongst them and you are both extremely clever, you do not comprehend the scope of what goes on here and you wouldn’t particularly like it if you did. Now, tell me what you sort of saw.”

Poppet closes her eyes, trying to concentrate. “I don’t know,” she says. “It was bright, everything was on fire, and Bailey was there.”

“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Celia says.

“I can’t,” Poppet says. “I haven’t seen anything clearly since before—”

“And that’s likely because you don’t want to see anything clearly after that, and I can’t say I blame you. But if you want me to do something to prevent whatever this is, I am going to need more information.”

She unclasps the long silver chain that hangs around her neck, checking the time on the pocket watch that hangs from it before she holds it up in front of Poppet’s eyes.

“Please, Poppet,” Celia says. “You don’t need the stars for this. Just focus. Even if you don’t want to.”

Poppet frowns, then turns her attention to the dangling silver watch as it sways in the warm light.

Her eyes narrow, focusing on the reflections in the curve of the watch, and then they soften, looking at something beyond the watch, beyond the train.

She starts to sway as her eyes flutter closed, and she falls backward. Widget leaps forward to catch her before she hits the floor.

Celia helps him move Poppet to one of the velvet benches by the table, while on a nearby shelf a cup of tea pours itself, steaming and brewing instantly in a flowered china cup.

Poppet blinks, looking up at the chandeliers as though seeing them for the first time, before turning back to Celia to accept the cup of tea.

“That hurt,” Poppet says.

“I’m sorry, dearest,” Celia says. “I think your sight is getting stronger, which makes it even more troublesome for you to be suppressing it.”

Poppet nods, rubbing her temples.

“Tell me everything you saw,” Celia says. “Everything. I don’t care if it doesn’t make any sense. Try to describe it.”

Poppet looks into her tea before she starts.

“There’s a fire,” she says. “It starts with the bonfire but … bigger and there’s nothing containing it. Like the whole courtyard is on fire, there’s a loud noise and this heat and … ” Poppet pauses, closing her eyes as she attempts to concentrate on the images in her head. She opens her eyes and looks back at Celia. “You’re there. You’re with someone else and I think it’s raining, and then you’re not there anymore but you still are, I can’t explain it. And then Bailey is there, not during the fire but after it, I think.”

“What did the someone else look like?” Celia asks.

“A man. He was tall. In a suit, with a bowler hat, I think. It was hard to tell.”

Celia rests her head in her hands for a moment before she speaks.

“If that is who I think it is, I know for a fact he is in London at the moment, so perhaps this is not as immediate as you think.”

“But it is, I’m sure of it,” Poppet protests.

“Timing has never been your strong point. You said yourself that this friend of yours is also present for this incident, and your first complaint was that he is not here. This might not happen for weeks or months or years, ’Pet.”

“But we have to do something,” Poppet says, slamming her teacup down on the table. The tea stops before it splashes onto an open book as though there is an invisible wall surrounding it. “To be prepared, like you said.”

“I will do what I can to prevent the circus from going up in smoke. I shall fireproof it as much as possible. Is that enough for now?”

After a moment, Poppet nods.

“Good,” Celia says. “We’ll be off the train in a matter of hours, we can discuss this more later.”

“Wait,” Widget says. He has been sitting on the back of one of the velvet benches, staying out of the conversation. Now he turns to Celia. “I have a question before you shoo us away.”

“What is it?” she asks.

“You said we don’t comprehend the scope of what goes on here,” he says.

“That was likely not the best choice of words.”

“It’s a game, isn’t it?” Widget asks.

Celia looks at him, a slow, sad smile tugging at her lips.

“It took you sixteen years to figure that one out,” she says. “I expected more from you, Widge.”

“I’d guessed as much for a while,” he says. “It’s not easy to see things you don’t want me to know, but I’ve been picking up bits of it lately. You haven’t been as guarded as usual.”

“A game?” Poppet asks, looking back and forth between her brother and Celia.

“Like a chess game,” Widget says. “The circus is the board.”

“Not exactly,” Celia says. “It’s not as straightforward as chess.”

“We’re all playing a game?” Poppet asks.

“Not us,” Widget says. “Her and someone else. The rest of us are, what, extra pieces?”

“It’s not like that,” Celia says.

“Then what is it like?” Widget asks.

In response, Celia only looks at him, staring directly into his eyes without wavering.

Widget returns her gaze silently for some time while Poppet watches them curiously. Eventually, Widget blinks, the surprise evident on his face. Then he looks down at his shoes.

Celia sighs, and when she speaks she addresses them both.

“If I have not been completely honest with you, it is only because I know a great deal of things that you do not want to know. I am going to ask that you trust me when I tell you I am trying to make things better. It is an extremely delicate balance and there are a great many factors involved. The best we can do right now is take everything as it comes, and not worry ourselves over things that have happened, or things that are to come. Agreed?”

Widget nods and Poppet reluctantly follows suit.

“Thank you,” Celia says. “Now please go and try to get some rest.”

Poppet gives her an embrace before slipping out the door back into the hall.

Widget lingers a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Celia tells him.

“I’m sorry anyway.”

He kisses her on the cheek before he leaves, not waiting for her to reply.

“What was that about?” Poppet asks when Widget joins her in the hall.

“She let me read her,” Widget says. “All of her, without concealing anything. She’s never done that before.” He refuses to elaborate as they walk quietly back down the length of the train.

“What do you think we should do?” Poppet asks once they have reached their car, a marmalade cat crawling onto her lap.

“I think we should wait,” Widget says. “I think that’s all we can do right now.”

ALONE IN HER BOOK-FILLED CHAMBER, Celia begins tearing her handkerchief into strips. One at a time she drops each scrap of silk and lace into an empty teacup and lights it on fire. She repeats this process over and over, working until the cloth burns without charring, remaining bright and white within the flame.

Pursuit EN ROUTE FROM BOSTON TO NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 1, 1902

It is a cold morning, and Bailey’s faded grey coat does not look particularly elegant paired with his new charcoal suit, and he is not entirely certain the two shades are complementary, but the streets and the train station are too busy for him to worry much about his appearance.

There are other rêveurs headed to New York, but they end up getting tickets for a later train, so there is a round of farewells and the confusion of sorting dozens of bags before they manage to board.

The journey is slow, and Bailey sits staring out the window at the changing landscape, absently gnawing at his fingernails.

Victor comes to sit by him, a red leather-bound book in his hands.

“I thought you might like something to read to pass the time,” he says as he gives the book to Bailey.

Bailey opens the cover and glances through the book, which he is surprised to see is a meticulously organized scrapbook. Most of the black pages are filled with articles clipped from newspapers, but there are also handwritten letters, the dates ranging from only a few years previous to more than a decade ago.

“Not all of it is in English,” Victor explains, “but you should be able to read most of the articles, at least.”

“Thank you,” Bailey says.

Victor nods and returns to his seat across the car.

As the train chugs on, Bailey forgets the landscape entirely. He reads and rereads the words of Herr Friedrick Thiessen, finding them both familiar and entrancing.

“I have never seen you take such a sudden interest in a new rêveur,” he overhears Lorena remark to her brother. “Especially not to the point of sharing your books.”

“He reminds me of Friedrick” is Victor’s only reply.

They are almost to New York when Elizabeth takes the empty seat opposite him. Bailey notes his place in the middle of an article that is comparing the interplay of light and shadow in a particular tent to Indonesian puppet theater before putting the book down.

“We lead strange lives, chasing our dreams around from place to place,” Elizabeth says quietly, looking out the window. “I have never met so young a rêveur who clearly feels as strongly toward the circus as those of us who have been following it for years. I want you to have this.”

She hands him a red wool scarf, the one she has been knitting on and off. It is longer than Bailey expected from watching her knit, with intricate patterns of knotted cables at each end.

“I can’t accept this,” he says, part of him deeply honored and the other part wishing people would stop giving him things.

“Nonsense,” Elizabeth says. “I make them all the time, I am at no loss for yarn. I started this one with no particular rêveur in mind to wear it, so clearly it is meant for you.”

“Thank you,” Bailey says, wrapping the scarf around his neck despite the warmth of the train.

“You are quite welcome,” Elizabeth says. “We should be arriving soon enough, and then it will only be a matter of waiting for the sun to set.”

She leaves him in his seat by the window. Bailey stares out at the grey sky with a mixture of comfort and excitement and nervousness that he cannot reconcile.

When they arrive in New York, Bailey is immediately struck by how strange everything looks. Though it is not that different from Boston, Boston had some passing familiarity. Now, without the comforting lull of the train, it strikes him how very far he is from home.

Victor and Lorena seem equally discombobulated, but Elizabeth is on familiar ground. She ushers them through intersections and herds them onto streetcars until Bailey begins to feel like one of his sheep. But it does not take long for them to reach their destination, a spot outside the city proper where they are to meet up with another local rêveur named August, the same whose room Bailey had inherited in Boston, who has graciously invited them to stay with him at his home until they can find rooms elsewhere.

August turns out to be a pleasant, heavyset fellow and Bailey’s first impression is that he resembles his house: a squat sort of building with a porch wrapping around the front, warm and welcoming. He practically lifts Elizabeth off the ground in greeting and shakes hands so enthusiastically while being introduced to Bailey that his fingers are sore afterward.

“I have good news and bad news,” August says as he helps them lift their bags onto the porch. “Which should come first?”

“The good,” Elizabeth answers before Bailey has time to consider which would be preferable. “We have traveled too long to be met with bad news straight off.”

“The good news,” August says, “is that I was indeed correct in predicting the exact location and Le Cirque has set up less than a mile away. You can see the tents from the end of the porch if you lean properly.” He points down the left side of the porch from where he stands on the stairs.

Bailey rushes to the end of the porch with Lorena close on his heels. The tops of the striped tents are visible through the trees some distance away, a bright punch of white against grey sky and brown trees.

“Wonderful,” Elizabeth says, laughing at Lorena and Bailey as they lean over the railing. “And what is the bad news, then?”

“I’m not certain it is bad news, precisely,” August says, as though he is not sure how to explain. “Perhaps more disappointing, really. Regarding the circus.”

Bailey steps down from the railing and turns back to the conversation, all the elation he had felt moments before draining away.

“Disappointing?” Victor asks.

“Well, the weather is not ideal, as I’m certain you’ve noticed,” August says, gesturing up at the heavy grey clouds. “We had quite a storm last night. The circus was closed, of course, which was odd to begin with as in all my time I have never seen it set up only to be closed the first night for inclement weather. Regardless, there was some sort of, I don’t even know what to call it, a noise of some sort around midnight. A crashing sound that practically shook the house. I thought perhaps something had been struck by lightning. There was a great deal of smoke over the circus, and one of the neighbors swears he saw a flash of light bright as day. I took a walk down there this morning and nothing appears to be amiss, though the closure sign is still up on the gates.”

“How strange,” Lorena remarks.

Without a word Bailey leaps over the porch railing and takes off in a full run through the trees. He heads toward the striped tents as fast as he can, his red scarf trailing out behind him.

Old Ghosts LONDON, OCTOBER 31, 1902

It is late and the pavement is dark despite the streetlamps dotting the line of grey stone buildings. Isobel stands near the shadowed stairs of the one she called home for almost a year, what now seems like a lifetime ago. She waits outside for Marco to return, a pale blue shawl pulled around her shoulders like a patch of day-bright sky in the night.

Hours pass before Marco appears at the corner. His grip on his briefcase tightens when he sees her.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “You’re supposed to be in the States.”

“I left the circus,” Isobel said. “I walked away. Celia said I could.”

She takes a faded scrap of paper from her pocket, bearing her name, her real name that he coaxed from her years ago and asked her to write in one of his notebooks.

“Of course she did,” Marco says.

“May I come upstairs?” she asks, fidgeting with the edge of her shawl.

“No,” Marco says, glancing up at the windows. A dim, flickering light illuminates the glass. “Please, just say whatever it is you’re here to say.”

Isobel frowns. She looks around the street but it is dark and empty, only a crisp breeze blowing through, rustling the leaves in the gutter.

“I wanted to say that I was sorry,” she says quietly. “For not telling you that I was tempering. I know what happened last year was partly my fault.”

“You should apologize to Celia, not to me.”

“I already have,” Isobel says. “I knew she was in love with someone, but I thought it was Herr Thiessen. I didn’t realize until that night that it was you. But she loved him as well, and she lost him and I was the cause.”

“It was not your fault,” Marco says. “There were a great many factors involved.”

“There have always been a great many factors involved,” Isobel says. “I didn’t mean to get so tangled up in this. I only wanted to be helpful. I wanted to get through … this and go back to the way things were, before.”

“We cannot go backward,” Marco says. “A great deal is not how it used to be.”

“I know,” Isobel says. “I cannot hate her. I have tried. I cannot even dislike her. She let me carry on for years, clearly suspicious of her, but she was always kind to me. And I loved the circus. I felt like I finally had a home, a place I could belong. After a while I didn’t feel like I needed to protect you from her, I felt I should protect everyone else from both of you, and both of you from each other. I started after you came to see me in Paris, when you were so upset about the Wishing Tree, but I knew I had to continue after I read Celia’s cards.”

“When was this?” Marco asks.

“That night in Prague when you were supposed to meet me,” Isobel says. “You never let me read for you, not even a single card before last year. I had not realized that before. I wonder if I would have let this go on so long if I’d had the opportunity. It took ages for me to truly understand what her cards were saying. I could not see what was right in front of me. I wasted so much time. This was always about the two of you, even before you met. I was only a diversion.”

“You were not a diversion,” Marco says.

“Did you ever love me?” Isobel asks.

“No,” Marco admits. “I thought perhaps I could, but … ”

Isobel nods.

“I thought you did,” she says. “I was so certain that you did, even though you never said it. I couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and what I wanted to be real. I thought this was going to be temporary, even when it kept dragging on and on. But it’s not. It never was. I was the one who was temporary. I used to think that if she were gone, you would come back to me.”

“If she were gone, I would be nothing,” Marco says. “You should think better of yourself than to settle for that.”

They stand in silence on the empty street, the chill of the night air falling between them.

“Good night, Miss Martin,” Marco says, starting up the stairs.

“The most difficult thing to read is time,” Isobel says, and Marco stops, turning back to her. “Maybe because it changes so many things. I have read for countless people on innumerable subjects and the most difficult thing to understand within the cards is always the timing. I knew that, and still it surprised me. How long I was willing to wait for something that was only a possibility. I always thought it was just a matter of time, but I was wrong.”

“I did not expect this to go on as long as—” Marco begins, but Isobel interrupts him.

“It was all a matter of timing,” she says. “My train was late that day. The day I saw you drop your notebook. Had it been on schedule we never would have met. Maybe we were never meant to. It was a possibility, one of thousands, and not inevitable, the way some things are.”

“Isobel, I am sorry,” Marco says. “I am sorry that I involved you in all of this. I am sorry that I did not tell you sooner how I feel for Celia. I do not know what else you want from me that I can give you.”

Isobel nods, pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders.

“I read for someone a week ago,” she says. “He was young, younger than I was when I met you. Tall in the way of someone who is not yet used to being tall. He was genuine and sweet. He even asked me my name. And everything was in his cards. Everything. It was like reading for the circus, and that has only happened to me once before, when I read for Celia.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Marco asks.

“Because I thought he could have saved you. I didn’t know how to feel about that; I still don’t. It was there in his cards along with everything else, as plain as anything I have ever seen. I thought then that this was going to end differently. I was wrong. I seem to be wrong quite frequently. Perhaps it is time for me to find a new occupation.”

Marco stops, his face going pale in the lamplight.

“What are you saying?” he asks.

“I am saying that you had a chance,” Isobel says. “A chance to be with her. A chance for everything to resolve itself in a favorable manner. I almost wanted that for you, truly, in spite of everything. I still want you to be happy. And the possibility was there.” She gives him a small, sad smile as she slides her hand into her pocket. “But the timing isn’t right.”

She removes her hand from her pocket and uncurls her fingers. In her palm sits a pile of sparkling black crystals, silt as fine as ash.

“What is that?” Marco asks as she lifts her palm to her lips.

In response, Isobel blows softly, and the ash flies at Marco in a stinging black cloud.

When the dust clears, Marco’s briefcase sits abandoned on the pavement by her feet. Isobel takes it with her as she leaves.

Aftermath NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 1, 1902

Though the surroundings have changed, the circus looks exactly the same as it did in his own fields, Bailey thinks when he finally reaches the fence, holding a stitch in his side and breathing heavily from running through an area that is more woods than fields.

But something more than that is different. It takes him a moment of trying to catch his breath by the side of the gates, staring at the sign that reads:

Closed Due to Inclement Weather

hanging over the normal sign denoting the hours of operation.

It is the smell, he realizes. It is not the smell of caramel blended perfectly with the woody smoke of a warming fire. Instead it is the heavy scent of something burned and wet, with a sickly sweet undertone.

It makes him nauseous.

There is no sound within the bounds of the curling iron fence. The tents are perfectly still. Only the clock beyond the gates makes any motion, slowly ticking by the afternoon hours.

Bailey discovers quickly that he is not able to slip through the bars of the fence as easily as he did when he was ten. The space is too narrow, no matter how he tries to shift his shoulders. He half expected Poppet to be there waiting for him, but there is not a soul in sight.

The fence is too high to climb, and Bailey is considering simply sitting in front of the gates until sundown when he spots a curving tree branch that does not quite reach the fence but comes close, hanging above the twisting iron spikes at the top.

From there he could jump. If he got the angle right he would land in a path between tents. If he got the angle wrong he’d likely break his leg, but that would be only a minor problem that could be dealt with, and then at least he would be inside the circus.

The tree is easy enough to climb, and the limb closest to the circus wide enough to manage until he gets closer to the fence. But he is unable to balance well and while he attempts a graceful leap, it ends up being something closer to a planned fall. He lands heavily in the path, rolling into the side of the tent and taking a large amount of the white powder on the ground with him.

His legs hurt but seem to be in working order, though his shoulder feels badly bruised and the palms of his hands are a mess of scrapes and dirt and powder. The powder brushes off his hands easily enough, but sticks like paint to his coat and the legs of his new suit. And now he stands alone inside the circus again.

“Truth or dare,” he mutters to himself.

Dry, fragile leaves dance around his feet, drawn in through the fence by the wind. Spots of muted autumn color disrupting the black and white.

Bailey is not certain where to go. He wanders through paths expecting to see Poppet around every corner, but he is met with only stripes and emptiness. Finally, he heads toward the courtyard, toward the bonfire.

As he turns a corner that opens up into the wide space of the bonfire courtyard, he is more surprised by the fact that the fire is not burning than he is to find that there is indeed someone waiting for him.

But the figure standing by the cauldron of curling iron is not Poppet. This woman is too short, her hair too dark. When she turns she has a long silver cigarette holder at her lips, and the smoke curls around her head like snakes.

It takes him a moment to recognize the contortionist, having only ever seen her upon a platform bending herself into impossible shapes.

“You are Bailey, yes?” she says.

“Yes,” Bailey answers, wondering if absolutely everyone in the circus knows who he is.

“You are late,” the contortionist tells him.

“Late for what?” Bailey asks, confused.

“I doubt she will be able to hold on much longer.”

“Who?” Bailey asks, though the thought pops into his head that the contortionist might be referring to the circus itself.

“And of course,” she continues, “had you arrived earlier it might have played out differently. Timing is a sensitive thing.”

“Where’s Poppet?” Bailey asks.

“Miss Penelope is indisposed at the moment.”

“How can she not know that I’m here?” he asks.

“She might very well know you are here, but that does not change the fact that she is, as I have mentioned, indisposed at the moment.”

“Who are you?” Bailey asks. His shoulder is throbbing now and he cannot quite pinpoint when everything stopped making sense.

“You may call me Tsukiko,” the contortionist says. She takes a long drag on her cigarette.

Beyond her, the monstrous bowl of wrought-iron curls sits hollow and still. The ground around it, usually painted in a spiral pattern of black and white, is now nothing but darkness, as though it has been swallowed up by empty space.

“I thought the fire never went out,” Bailey says, walking closer to it.

“It never has before,” Tsukiko says.

Reaching the edge of the still-hot iron curls, Bailey stands on his toes to peer inside. It is almost filled with rainwater, the dark surface rippling in the breeze. The ground beneath his feet is black and muddy, and when he steps back he accidentally kicks a black bowler hat.

“What happened?” Bailey asks.

“That is somewhat difficult to explain,” Tsukiko answers. “It is a long and complicated story.”

“And you’re not going to tell it to me, are you?”

She tilts her head a bit, and Bailey can see the hint of a smile playing around her lips.

“No, I am not,” she says.

“Great,” Bailey mutters under his breath.

“I see you have taken up the banner,” Tsukiko says, pointing her cigarette at his red scarf. Bailey is unsure how to respond to this, but she continues without waiting for an answer. “I suppose you could call it an explosion.”

“The bonfire exploded? How?”

“Remember when I said it was difficult to explain? That has not changed.”

“Why didn’t the tents burn?” Bailey asks, looking around at the seemingly never-ending stripes. Some of the closer tents are splattered with mud, but none are burned despite the charred ground surrounding them.

“That was Miss Bowen’s doing,” Tsukiko says. “I suspect without that precaution there would have been more extensive damage.”

“Who is Miss Bowen?” Bailey asks.

“You ask a lot of questions,” Tsukiko responds.

“You don’t answer very many of them,” Bailey retaliates.

The smile appears in full then, curling up in a manner Bailey finds almost disturbingly friendly.

“I am only an emissary,” Tsukiko says. “I am here to act as convoy to escort you to a meeting, for a discussion of such matters, I suppose, because at the moment I am the only living person who has any idea of what has transpired, and why you are here. Your questions are better saved for someone else.”

“And who might that be?” Bailey asks.

“You shall see,” Tsukiko says. “Come this way.”

She beckons him forward, leading him around the bonfire to the other side of the courtyard. They walk a short way down an adjoining passageway, layers of mud sticking to Bailey’s formerly shiny shoes.

“Here we are.” Tsukiko stops at a tent entrance, and Bailey moves closer to check the sign, knowing which tent it is as soon as he glances at the words upon it.

Fearsome Beasts and Strange Creatures

Wonders in Paper and Mist

“Are you coming with me?” Bailey asks.

“No,” Tsukiko says. “Only an emissary, remember? I shall be in the courtyard if you need me.”

With that she gives him a polite nod and walks back the way they came, and as Bailey watches her go he notices that the mud is not sticking to her boots.

After she disappears around a corner, Bailey enters the tent.

Incendiary NEW YORK, OCTOBER 31, 1902

Marco’s back slams against the ground as though he has been roughly pushed, leaving him coughing both from the impact and the cloud of black ash surrounding him.

A light rain is falling as he pulls himself up, and as the air around him clears he sees a row of tiny trees and stars, surrounded by silver gears and black-and-white chess pieces.

It takes him a moment to realize he is standing next to the Wunschtraum clock.

The clock is ticking toward midnight, the harlequin juggler at the top balancing eleven balls amongst the twinkling stars and moving pieces.

The sign announcing the circus’s closure due to inclement weather clatters in the wind. Though for the moment, the rain is not much more than a heavy mist.

Marco rubs the shimmering powder from his face, which has reverted to its true form and he is too disoriented to change it. He tries to get a better look at the dark ash on his suit but it is already fading away.

The striped curtain beyond the ticket booth hangs open, and through the haze, Marco can see a figure standing in the shadows, illuminated by the sharp spark of light from a cigarette lighter.

“Bonsoir,” Tsukiko says cheerfully as he approaches, tucking her lighter back in her pocket as she balances her cigarette in its long silver holder. A rush of wind howls across the space, rattling the circus gates.

“How … how did she do this?” Marco asks.

“Isobel, you mean?” Tsukiko replies. “I taught her that particular trick. I do not think she understood the nuances of it, but it appears she performed fine regardless. Do you feel unsteady at all?”

“I’m fine,” Marco says, though his back is aching from the fall and his eyes still sting. He watches Tsukiko curiously. He has never spoken at any great length with the contortionist, and her presence is almost as confusing as the fact that moments ago he had been somewhere else entirely.

“Here, come out of the wind at least.” Tsukiko motions him into the curtained tunnel with her cigarette-free hand. “That is a better face than the other one,” she says, scrutinizing his appearance through mist and smoke. “It suits you.” She lets the curtain fall once he has entered, leaving them enclosed in darkness studded with dimly sparkling lights, the glowing tip of her cigarette the one spot of color amongst the dots of white.

“Where is everyone?” Marco asks, shaking the rain from his bowler hat.

“Inclement-weather party,” Tsukiko explains. “Traditionally held in the acrobats’ tent, as it is the largest. But you would not know that, as you are not truly a member of the company, are you?”

He cannot see her expression well enough to read it, though he can tell that she is grinning brightly.

“No, I suppose I am not,” he says. He follows her as she walks through the mazelike tunnel, moving deeper into the circus. “Why am I here?” he asks.

“We will get to that in due time,” she says. “How much did Isobel tell you?”

The conversation with Isobel outside his building is almost lost in Marco’s memory, despite occurring only moments ago. He recalls fleeting pieces of it. Nothing coherent enough to articulate.

“No matter,” Tsukiko says when he does not respond immediately. “It is sometimes difficult to gather one’s senses after such a journey. Did she tell you that we have something in common?”

Marco recalls Isobel mentioning Celia and someone else, but not who, exactly.

“No,” he says.

“We are both former students of the same instructor,” Tsukiko says. The end of her cigarette glows brighter as she inhales in the near darkness. “Temporary cover only, I am afraid,” she adds as they reach another curtain. She pulls it back and the space is flooded with glowing light from the courtyard. She gestures for Marco to step out into the rain, taking a drag from her cigarette as he obediently walks through the open curtain, trying to make sense of her last statement.

The lights that adorn the tents are dark, but in the center of the courtyard the bonfire burns brightly, glowing and white. The soft rain falling around it glistens.

“It is lovely,” Tsukiko says, stepping into the courtyard with him. “I will grant you that.”

“You were a former student of Alexander’s?” Marco asks, not certain he has understood.

Tsukiko nods.

“I tired of writing things in books, so I began inscribing them on my body instead. I am not fond of getting my hands dirty,” she says, indicating his ink-stained fingers. “I am surprised he agreed to such an open venue for this challenge. He always preferred seclusion. I suspect he is not pleased with the way it has progressed.”

As he listens to her, Marco notices that the contortionist is completely dry. Every drop of rain that falls on her evaporates instantly, sizzling into steam as soon as it touches her.

“You won the last game,” he says.

“I survived the last game,” Tsukiko corrects.

“When?” Marco asks as they walk toward the bonfire.

“It ended eighty-three years, six months, and twenty-one days ago. It was a cherry-blossom day.”

Tsukiko takes a long drag from her cigarette before she continues.

“Our instructors do not understand how it is,” she says. “To be bound to someone in such a way. They are too old, too out of touch with their emotions. They no longer remember what it is to live and breathe within the world. They think it simple to pit any two people against each other. It is never simple. The other person becomes how you define your life, how you define yourself. They become as necessary as breathing. Then they expect the victor to continue on without that. It would be like pulling the Murray twins apart and expecting them to be the same. They would be whole but not complete. You love her, do you not?”

“More than anything in the world,” Marco says.

Tsukiko nods thoughtfully.

“My opponent’s name was Hinata,” she says. “Her skin smelled of ginger and cream. I loved her more than anything in the world, as well. On that cherry-blossom day, she set herself on fire. Ignited a pillar of flame and stepped into it as though it were water.”

“I’m sorry,” Marco says.

“Thank you,” Tsukiko says, with a shadow of her normally bright smile. “It is what Miss Bowen is planning to do for you. To let you win.”

“I know.”

“I would not wish such pain on anyone. To be the victor. Hinata would have adored this,” she says as they reach the bonfire, watching the flames dance in the increasing rain. “She was quite fond of fire. Water was always my element. Before.”

She holds out her hand and watches as the raindrops refuse to reach her skin.

“Do you know the story of the wizard in the tree?” she asks.

“The Merlin story?” Marco asks. “I know several versions.”

“There are many,” Tsukiko says with a nod. “Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her mark upon it. Whatever truth the story once had is buried in bias and embellishment. The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself.”

The rain continues to increase, falling heavily as she continues.

“Sometimes it is a cave, but I like the version with the tree. Perhaps a tree is more romantic.”

She takes the still-glowing cigarette from its holder, balancing it gently between her graceful fingers.

“While there are a number of trees here that could be used for this purpose,” she says, “I thought this might be more appropriate.”

Marco turns his attention to the bonfire. It illuminates the rain falling over it in such a way that the droplets of water sparkle like snow.

All of the versions of the Merlin story he knows involve the magician being imprisoned. In a tree or a cave or a rock.

Always as a punishment, the consequence of a foolish love.

He looks back at Tsukiko.

“You understand,” she says, before he can speak.

Marco nods.

“I knew you would,” she says. The light from the white flames brightens her smile through the rain.

“What are you doing, Tsukiko?” a voice calls from behind her. When Tsukiko turns, Marco can see Celia standing at the edge of the courtyard. Her moonlight gown is soaked to a dull grey, its crisscrossing ribbons stream out behind her in trails of black and white and charcoal, tangling with her hair in the wind.

“Go back to the party, dear,” Tsukiko says, tucking the silver cigarette holder in her pocket. “You will not want to be here for this.”

“For what?” Celia says, staring at Marco.

When Tsukiko speaks, she addresses them both.

“I have been surrounded by love letters you two have built each other for years, encased in tents. It reminds me of what it was to be with her. It is wonderful and it is terrible. I am not yet prepared to give it up, but you are letting it fade.”

“You told me love was fickle and fleeting,” Celia says, confused.

“I lied,” Tsukiko says, rolling her cigarette between her fingers. “I thought it might be easier if you doubted him. And I gave you a year to find a way for the circus to continue without you. You have not. I am stepping in.”

“I am try—” Celia starts, but Tsukiko cuts her off.

“You continue to overlook a simple fact,” she says. “You carry this circus within yourself. He uses the fire as a tool. You are the greater loss, but too selfish to admit it. You believe you could not live with the pain. Such pain is not lived with. It is only endured. I am sorry.”

“Kiko, please,” Celia says. “I need more time.”

Tsukiko shakes her head.

“I told you before,” she says, “time is not something I can control.”

Marco has not taken his eyes from Celia since she appeared in the courtyard, but now he turns away.

“Go ahead,” he says to Tsukiko, shouting over the growing din of the rain. “Do it! I would rather burn by her side than live without her.”

What might have been a simple cry of the word “No” is distorted into something greater by the wind as Celia screams. The agony in her voice cuts through Marco like every blade in Chandresh’s collection combined, but he keeps his attention on the contortionist.

“It will end the game, yes?” he asks. “It will end the game even if I am trapped in the fire and not dead.”

“You will be unable to continue,” Tsukiko says. “That is all that matters.”

“Then do it,” Marco says.

Tsukiko smiles at him. She places her palms together, curls of smoke from her cigarette rising over her fingers.

She gives him a low, respectful bow.

Neither of them are watching as Celia runs toward them through the rain.

Tsukiko flicks her still-glowing cigarette toward the fire.

It is still in the air when Marco cries out for Celia to stop.

It has barely touched the flickering white flames of the bonfire when she leaps into his arms.

Marco knows he does not have the time to push her away, so he pulls her close, burying his face in her hair, his bowler hat torn from his head by the wind.

And then the pain starts. Sharp, ripping pain as though he is being pulled apart.

“Trust me,” Celia whispers in his ear, and he stops fighting it, forgetting everything but her.

In the moment before the explosion, before the white light becomes too blinding to discern precisely what is happening, they dissolve into the air. One moment they are there, Celia’s dress fluttering in the wind and the rain, Marco’s hands pressed against her back, and the next they are only a blur of light and shadow.

Then both of them are gone and the circus is ablaze, flames licking against the tents, twisting up into the rain.

Alone in the courtyard, Tsukiko sighs. The flames pass by her without touching, swirling around in a vortex. Illuminating her with impossible brightness.

Then, as quickly as they came, the flames die down to nothing.

The bonfire’s curling cage sits empty, not even a smoldering ember remains. The rain patters in a hollow echo against the metal, drops evaporating into steam where the iron is still hot.

Tsukiko pulls another cigarette from her coat, flicking open her lighter with a lazy, practiced gesture.

The flame catches easily, despite the rain.

She watches the cauldron fill with water while she waits.

Transmutation NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 1, 1902

If Celia could open her mouth, she would scream.

But there is too much to control between the heat and the rain and Marco in her arms.

She focuses only on him, pulling everything that he is with her as she breaks herself apart. Holding to the memory of every touch of his skin against hers, every moment she has spent with him. Carrying him with her.

Suddenly, there is nothing. No rain. No fire. A stretch of calm white nothingness.

Somewhere in the nothingness, a clock begins to strike midnight.

Stop, she thinks.

The clock continues to chime, but she feels the stillness fall.

The breaking is the easy part, Celia realizes.

The pulling back together is the problem.

It is like healing her sliced-open fingertips as a child, taken to an extreme.

There is so much to balance, trying to find the edges again.

It would be so simple to let go.

It would be so much easier to let go.

So much less painful.

She fights against the temptation, against the pain and the chaos. Struggling for control with herself and her surroundings.

She picks a location to focus on, the most familiar place she can think of.

And slowly, agonizingly slowly, she pulls herself safely together.

Until she is standing in her own tent, in the center of a circle of empty chairs.

She feels lighter. Diluted. Slightly dizzy.

But she is not an echo of her former self. She is whole again, breathing. She can feel her heart beating, fast but steady. Even her gown feels the same as it did, cascading around her and no longer wet from the rain.

She spins in a circle and it flares out around her.

The dizziness begins to fade as she collects herself, still amazed at the accomplishment.

Then she notices that everything in the tent around her is transparent. The chairs, the lights hanging above her head, even the stripes on the walls seem insubstantial.

And she is alone.

FOR MARCO, THE MOMENT of the explosion lasts much longer.

The heat and the light stretch endlessly as he clings to Celia through the pain.

And then she is gone.

Nothing remains. No fire. No rain. No ground beneath his feet.

His sight begins to shift continuously from shadow to light, darkness replaced by expansive white only to be consumed by darkness again. Never settling.

THE CIRCUS SHIFTS AROUND CELIA, as fluid as one of Marco’s illusions.

She pictures where she wishes to be within it, and she is there. She cannot even tell if she is moving herself or manipulating the circus around her.

The Ice Garden is silent and still, nothing but crisp, cool whiteness in every direction.

Only a fraction of the Hall of Mirrors reflects her own countenance, and some contain only a shimmering blur of pale-grey gown, or the motion of the billowing ribbons as they float behind her.

She thinks she catches glimpses of Marco in the glass, the edge of his jacket or the bright flash of his collar, but she cannot be certain.

Many of the mirrors sit hollow and empty within their ornate frames.

The mist in the Menagerie slowly dissipates as she searches the tent, finding nothing concealed within it but paper.

The Pool of Tears does not even ripple, the surface calm and smooth, and she is unable to grasp a stone to drop within it. She cannot light a candle on the Wishing Tree, though the wishes that hang on its branches continue to burn.

She moves through room after room in the Labyrinth. Rooms she created leading to ones he made and back again.

She can feel him. Close enough that she expects him around each turn, behind each door.

But there are only softly drifting feathers and fluttering playing cards. Silver statues with unseeing eyes. Chessboard-painted floors with vacant squares.

There are traces of him everywhere, but nothing for her to focus on. Nothing to hold on to.

The hallway lined with mismatched doors and covered in fallen snow bears traces of what could be footprints, or might only be shadows.

And Celia cannot tell where they lead.

MARCO GASPS AS AIR FILLS HIS LUNGS, as though he had been underwater and unaware of it.

And his first coherent thought is that he did not expect being trapped in a fire to feel so cold.

The cool air is sharp and stinging, and he can see only white in all directions.

As his eyes adjust, he can discern the shadow of a tree. The hanging branches of a frosty white willow tree cascading around him.

He takes a step forward, the ground disconcertingly soft beneath his feet.

He stands in the middle of the Ice Garden.

The fountain in the center has halted, the normally bubbling water quiet and still.

And the whiteness makes the effect difficult to see, but the entire garden is transparent.

He looks down at his hands. They are shaking slightly but they appear to be solid. His suit remains dark and opaque.

Marco lifts his hand to a nearby rose and his fingers pass through its petals with only a soft resistance, as though they are made of water rather than ice.

He is still looking at the rose when he hears a gasp behind him.

CELIA HOLDS HER HANDS TO HER LIPS, not quite believing her eyes. The sight of Marco standing in the Ice Garden is one she has imagined so many times before while alone in the icy expanse of flowers, it does not seem real despite the darkness of his suit against a bower of pale roses.

Then he turns and looks at her. As soon as she sees his eyes all her doubts vanish.

For a moment, he looks so young that she can see the boy he was, years before she met him, when they were already connected but still so far apart.

There are so many things she wants to say, things she feared she would never have the opportunity to tell him again. Only one seems truly important.

“I love you,” she says.

The words echo throughout the tent, softly rustling the frozen leaves.

MARCO ONLY STARES at her as she approaches, thinking her a dream.

“I thought I’d lost you,” she says when she reaches him, her voice a tremulous whisper.

She seems to be as substantial as he is, not transparent like the garden. She appears rich and vibrant against a background of white, a bright flush in her cheeks, her dark eyes brimming with tears.

He brings his hand to her face, petrified that his fingers will pass through her as easily as they had with the rose.

The relief when she is solid and warm and alive to his touch is overwhelming.

He pulls her into his arms, his tears falling onto her hair.

“I love you,” he says when he finds his voice.

THEY STAND ENTWINED, each unwilling to release the other.

“I couldn’t let you do it,” Celia says. “I couldn’t let you go.”

“What did you do?” Marco asks. He is still not entirely certain he understands what has happened.

“I used the circus as a touchstone,” Celia says. “I didn’t know if it would work but I couldn’t let you go, I had to try. I tried to take you with me and then I couldn’t find you and I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’m here,” Marco says, stroking her hair. “I’m here.”

It is not what he expected, being liberated from the world and reinstated in a confined location. He does not feel confined, only separate, as though he and Celia are overlapping the circus, rather than contained within it.

He looks around at the trees, the long frosted willow branches cascading down, the topiaries that line the nearby path like ghosts.

Only then does he notice that the garden is melting.

“The bonfire went out,” Marco says. He can feel it now, the emptiness. He can feel the circus all around him, as though it hangs on him like mist, like he could reach out and touch the iron fence despite the distance from it. Detecting the fence, how far it is in every direction, where every tent sits, even the darkened courtyard and Tsukiko standing within it, is almost effortless. He can feel the entirety of the circus as easily as feeling his shirt against his skin.

And the only thing burning brightly within it is Celia.

But it is a flickering brightness. As fragile as a candle flame.

“You’re holding the circus together,” he says.

Celia nods. It is only beginning to weigh on her, but it is much more difficult to manage without the bonfire. She cannot focus enough to keep the details intact. Elements are already slipping away, dripping like the flowers around them.

And she knows that if it breaks, she will not be able to put it back together again.

She is shaking, and though she steadies when Marco holds her tighter, she continues to tremble in his arms.

“Let go of it, Celia.”

“I can’t,” she says. “If I let go it will collapse.”

“What will happen to us if it collapses?” Marco asks.

“I don’t know,” Celia says. “I suspended it. It can’t be self-sufficient without us. It needs a caretaker.”

Suspended NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 1, 1902

The last time Bailey entered this particular tent, Poppet was with him, and it was filled with a dense white fog.

Then, and Bailey has difficulty believing it was only days ago, the tent had seemed endless. But now without the cover of mist, Bailey can see the white walls of the tent and all the creatures within it, but none of them are moving.

Birds and bats and butterflies hang throughout the space as if held by strings, completely still. No rustling of paper wings. No motion at all.

Other creatures sit on the ground near Bailey’s feet, including a black cat crouched pre-pounce near a silver-tipped white fox. There are larger animals, as well. A zebra with perfectly contrasting stripes. A reclining lion with a snowy mane. A white stag with tall antlers.

Standing next to the stag is a man in a dark suit.

He is almost transparent, like a ghost, or a reflection in glass. Parts of his suit are no more than shadows. Bailey can see the stag clearly through the sleeve of his jacket.

Bailey is debating whether or not it is a figment of his imagination when the man looks over at him, his eyes surprisingly bright, though Bailey cannot discern their color.

“I asked her not to send you this way,” he says. “Though it is the most direct.”

“Who are you?” Bailey asks.

“My name is Marco,” the man says. “You must be Bailey.”

Bailey nods.

“I wish you were not so young,” Marco says. Something in his voice sounds profoundly sad, but Bailey is still distracted by his ghostlike appearance.

“Are you dead?” he asks, walking closer. With the changing angle, Marco appears almost solid one moment, and transparent again the next.

“Not precisely,” Marco says.

“Tsukiko said she was the only living person here who knew what happened.”

“I suspect Miss Tsukiko is not always entirely truthful.”

“You look like a ghost,” Bailey says. He can think of no better way to describe it.

“You appear the same way to me, so which of us is real?”

Bailey has no idea how to answer that question, so he asks the first one of his own that comes to mind instead.

“Is that your bowler hat in the courtyard?”

To his surprise, Marco smiles.

“It is, indeed,” he says. “I lost it before everything happened, so it got left behind.”

“What happened?” Bailey asks.

Marco pauses before he answers.

“That is a rather long story.”

“That’s what Tsukiko said,” Bailey says. He wonders if he can find Widget, so he can do the storytelling properly.

“She was truthful on that point, then,” Marco says. “Tsukiko intended to imprison me in the bonfire, the reasons for which are a longer story than we have time for, and there was a change of plan that resulted in the current situation. I was pulled apart and put back together again in a less concentrated state.”

Marco holds out his hand and Bailey reaches to touch it. His fingers move through without stopping, but there is a soft resistance, the impression that there is something occupying the space, even if it is not completely solid.

“It is not an illusion or a trick,” Marco says.

Bailey’s brow furrows in thought, but after a moment he nods. Poppet said nothing is impossible, and he finds he is beginning to agree.

“I am not interacting with the surroundings as directly as you are,” Marco continues. “You and everything here appear equally insubstantial from my perspective. Perhaps we will be able to discuss it at greater length another time. Come with me.” He turns and begins walking toward the back of the tent.

Bailey follows, taking a winding path around the animals. It is difficult to find places to step, though Marco glides ahead of him with much less difficulty.

Bailey loses his balance stepping around the prone figure of a polar bear. His shoulder knocks into a raven hanging in the air. The raven falls to the ground, its wings bent and broken.

Before Bailey can say anything, Marco reaches down and picks up the raven, turning it over in his hands. He moves the broken wings and reaches inside, twisting something with a clicking noise. The raven turns its head and lets out a sharp, metallic caw.

“How can you touch them?” Bailey asks.

“I am still figuring out the logistics of interacting with physical things,” Marco says, flattening the raven’s wings and letting it limp down the length of his arm. It flaps its paper feathers but cannot fly. “It likely has something to do with the fact that I made them. Elements of the circus I had a hand in creating seem to be more tangible.”

The raven hops off by a mountainous pile of paper scales with a curling tail that looks as though it might once have been a dragon.

“They’re amazing,” Bailey says.

“They are paper and clockwork wrapped up in fairly simple charms. You could do the same with a bit of study.”

It has never crossed Bailey’s mind that he could do such things himself, but having been told as much so simply and directly, it seems strangely achievable.

“Where are we going?” Bailey asks as they approach the far side of the tent.

“Someone would like to speak with you,” Marco says. “She’s waiting at the Wishing Tree; it seemed to be the most stable.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen the Wishing Tree,” Bailey says, mindful of each step as they approach the other side of the tent.

“It is not a tent that is stumbled upon,” Marco says. “It is found when it is needed, instead. It is one of my favorite tents. You take a candle from the box at the entrance and light it from one that already burns on the tree. Your wish is ignited by someone else’s wish.” They have reached the wall of the tent, and Marco indicates a break in the fabric, a barely visible row of ribbon ties that reminds Bailey of the entrance to Widget’s tent with all the strange bottles. “If you go out here you will see the entrance to the acrobat tent across the way. I’ll be right behind you, though you might not be able to see me until we’re inside again. Be … be careful.”

Bailey unties the bows and slips out of the tent easily, finding himself in a winding path between tents. The sky above is grey but bright, despite the soft rain that is beginning to fall.

The acrobat tent looms higher than the tents surrounding it and the sign that reads DEFIANCE OF GRAVITY swings over the entrance only a few paces away.

Bailey has been in this tent several times, he knows the open floor with the performers hanging above it well.

But when he steps through the door he is not met with the wide-open space he expects.

He walks into a party. A celebration that has been frozen in place, suspended the same way the paper birds had been in the air.

There are dozens of performers throughout the tent, bathed with light from glowing round lamps that hang high above amongst ropes and chairs and round cages. Some are standing in groups and pairs, others sit on pillows and boxes and chairs that add flashes of color to the predominantly black-and-white crowd.

And each figure is perfectly still. So motionless that it seems they are not even breathing. Like statues.

One near Bailey has a flute at his lips, the instrument silent in his fingers.

Another is pouring a bottle of wine, the liquid hovering above the glass.

“We should have gone around,” Marco says, appearing like a shadow by his side. “I’ve been keeping an eye on them for hours and they haven’t gotten any less disturbing.”

“What’s wrong with them?” Bailey asks.

“Nothing, as far as I can tell,” Marco answers. “The entirety of the circus has been suspended to give us more time, so … ” He lifts a hand and waves it over the party.

“Tsukiko’s part of the circus and she’s not like this,” Bailey says, confused.

“I believe she plays by her own rules,” Marco says. “This way,” he adds, moving into the crowd of figures.

Navigating the party proves more difficult than walking around the paper animals, and Bailey takes every step with extreme caution, afraid of what might happen if he accidentally hits someone the way he knocked down the raven.

“Almost there,” Marco says as they maneuver their way around a cluster of people grouped in a broken circle.

But Bailey stops, staring at the figure the group is facing.

Widget wears his performance costume but his patchwork jacket has been discarded, his vest hanging open over his black shirt. His hands are lifted in the air, gesturing in such a familiar way that Bailey can tell he has been stopped mid-story.

Poppet stands next to him. Her head is turned in the direction of the courtyard, as though something pulled her attention away from her brother at the precise moment the party was halted. Her hair spills out behind her, waves of red floating in the air as if she were suspended in water.

Bailey walks around to face her, reaching out tentatively to touch her hair. It ripples beneath his fingers, undulating slowly before settling back into its frozen state.

“Can she see me?” Bailey asks. Poppet’s eyes are still yet bright. He expects her to blink at any moment, but she does not.

“I don’t know,” Marco says. “Perhaps, but—”

Before he can conclude the thought, one of the chairs hanging above them falls, its ribbons snapping. It comes close to hitting Widget as it crashes to the ground, splintering into pieces.

“Bloody hell,” Marco says as Bailey jumps back, almost colliding with Poppet and sending her hair into another brief wave of motion. “Through there,” Marco says, indicating the side of the tent that is some distance away. Then he vanishes.

Bailey looks back at Poppet and Widget. Poppet’s hair settles again, unmoving. Fragments of the fallen chair rest on Widget’s boots.

Turning away, Bailey moves carefully around stationary figures to reach the edge of the tent. He casts nervous glances upward at the additional chairs and the round iron cages suspended by nothing but fraying ribbon.

His fingers shake as he undoes the ties in the wall.

As soon as he passes through, he feels as though he has walked into a dream.

Inside the adjoining tent there is a towering tree. As large as his old oak tree, growing right out of the ground. The branches are bare and black but they are covered with dripping white candles, translucent layers of wax frosting over the bark.

Only a fraction of the candles are burning, but the sight is no less resplendent as they illuminate the twisting black branches, casting dancing shadows over the striped walls.

Beneath it, Marco stands with his arms around a woman Bailey recognizes instantly as the illusionist.

She appears as transparent as Marco does. Her gown looks like mist in the candlelight.

“Hello, Bailey,” she says as he approaches. Her voice echoes around him, softly, as close as if she were standing next to him, whispering in his ear. “I like your scarf,” she adds when he does not immediately reply. The words in his ears are warm and strangely comforting. “I’m Celia. I don’t believe we were ever properly introduced.”

“Nice to meet you,” Bailey says.

Celia smiles, and Bailey is struck by how different she seems from the way she did when he watched her perform, even beyond the fact that he can look through her at the dark tree branches.

“How did you know I was coming here?” he asks.

“Poppet mentioned you as part of the series of events that occurred earlier, so I hoped you would arrive eventually.”

At the mention of Poppet’s name, Bailey glances over his shoulder at the wall of the tent. The suspended party seems farther away than just beyond the canvas stripes.

“We need your help with something,” Celia continues as he turns back. “We need you to take over the circus.”

“What?” Bailey asks. He is not sure what he was expecting, but it was not this.

“Right now the circus is in need of a new caretaker,” Marco says. “It is drifting, like a ship without an anchor. It needs someone to anchor it.”

“And that someone is me?” Bailey asks.

“We would like it to be, yes,” Celia says. “If you are willing to make the commitment. We should be able to assist you, and Poppet and Widget would be able to help, as well, but the true responsibility would be yours.”

“But I’m not … special,” Bailey says. “Not the way they are. I’m not anyone important.”

“I know,” Celia says. “You’re not destined or chosen, I wish I could tell you that you were if that would make it easier, but it’s not true. You’re in the right place at the right time, and you care enough to do what needs to be done. Sometimes that’s enough.”

As he watches her in the flickering light, it strikes Bailey suddenly that she is a fair deal older than she appears, and that the same is likely true of Marco. It is like realizing someone in a photograph is no longer the same age as they were when it was taken, and they seem farther away because of it. The circus itself feels far away, even though he stands within it. As though it is falling away from him.

“All right,” Bailey says, but Celia holds up a transparent hand to stop him before he agrees.

“Wait,” Celia says. “This is important. I want you to have something neither of us truly had. I want you to have a choice. You can agree to this or you can walk away. You are not obliged to help, and I don’t want you to feel that you are.”

“What happens if I walk away?” Bailey asks. Celia looks at Marco before she answers.

They only look at each other without speaking, but the gesture is so intimate that Bailey glances away, looking up at the twisting branches of the tree.

“It won’t last,” Celia says after a moment. She does not elaborate, turning back to Bailey as she continues. “I know this is a great deal to request from you, but I do not have anyone else to ask.”

Suddenly the candles on the tree begin to spark. Some of them darken, curls of smoke replacing the bright flames only momentarily before disappearing themselves.

Celia wavers, and for a moment Bailey thinks she might faint, but Marco steadies her.

“Celia, love,” Marco says, running his hand over her hair. “You are the strongest person I have ever known. You can hold on for a while longer, I know you can.”

“I’m sorry,” Celia says.

Bailey cannot tell which one of them she is speaking to.

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Marco says.

Celia holds tightly to his hand.

“What would happen to the two of you, if the circus … stopped?” Bailey asks.

“Truthfully, I’m not entirely certain,” Celia says.

“Nothing good,” Marco mutters.

“What would you need me to do?” Bailey asks.

“I need you to finish something I started,” Celia says. “I … I acted rather impulsively and played my cards out of order. And now there is the matter of the bonfire as well.”

“The bonfire?” Bailey asks.

“Think of the circus as a machine,” Marco says. “The bonfire is one of the things that powers it.”

“There are two things that need to happen,” Celia says. “First, the bonfire needs to be lit. That will … power half the circus.”

“What about the other half?” Bailey asks.

“That’s more complicated,” Celia says. “I carry that with me. And I would have to give that to you.”

“Oh.”

“You would then carry it with you,” Celia says. “All of the time. You’d be tied very tightly to the circus itself. You could leave, but not for extended periods of time. I do not know if you would be able to give it to someone else. It would be yours. Always.”

It is only then that Bailey realizes the scope of the commitment he is being asked for.

It is not the handful of years committed to Harvard. It is, he thinks, an even greater commitment than inheriting responsibility for the family farm.

He looks from Marco to Celia, and knows from the look in her eyes that she will let him go if he asks to leave, no matter what that might mean for them or for the circus.

He thinks of a litany of questions but none of them truly matter.

He knows his answer already.

His choice was made when he was ten years old, under a different tree, bound up in acorns and dares and a single white glove.

He will always choose the circus.

“I’ll do it,” he says. “I’ll stay. I’ll do whatever it is you need me to do.”

“Thank you, Bailey,” Celia says softly. The words resonating in his ears soothe the last of his nerves.

“Indeed,” Marco says. “I think we should make this official.”

“Do you think that’s absolutely necessary?” Celia asks.

“At this point I’m not about to settle for a verbal contract,” Marco says. Celia frowns for a moment but then nods her consent, and Marco carefully lets go of her hand. She stays steady and her appearance does not waver.

“Do you want me to sign something?” Bailey asks.

“Not exactly,” Marco says. He takes a silver ring from his right hand, it is engraved with something Bailey cannot discern in the light. Marco reaches up to a branch above his head and passes the ring through one of the burning candles until it glows, white and hot.

Bailey wonders whose wish that particular flame might be.

“I made a wish on this tree years ago,” Marco says, as though he knows what Bailey is thinking.

“What did you wish for?” Bailey asks, hoping it is not too forward a question, but Marco does not answer.

Instead, he folds the glowing ring into his palm, and then he offers his hand to Bailey.

Bailey hesitantly reaches out, expecting his fingers to pass through Marco’s hand as easily as they did before.

But instead they stop, and Marco’s hand in his is almost solid. Marco leans forward and whispers into Bailey’s ear.

“I wished for her,” he says.

Then Bailey’s hand begins to hurt. The pain is bright and hot as the ring burns into his skin.

“What are you doing?” he manages to ask when he can gasp for enough air. The pain is sharp and searing, coursing through his entire body, and he is barely able to keep his knees from buckling beneath him.

“Binding,” Marco says. “It’s one of my specialties.”

He releases Bailey’s hand. The pain vanishes instantly but Bailey’s legs continue to tremble.

“Are you all right?” Celia asks.

Bailey nods, looking down at his palm. The ring is gone, but there is a bright red circle burned into his skin. Bailey is certain without having to ask that it will be a scar he carries with him always. He closes his hand and looks back at Marco and Celia.

“Tell me what I need to do now,” he says.

The Second Lighting of the Bonfire NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 1, 1902

Bailey finds the tiny, book-filled room without much difficulty. The large black raven sitting in the corner blinks at him curiously as he sorts through the contents of the desk.

He flips anxiously through the large leather book until he finds the page with Poppet’s and Widget’s signatures. He tears the page from the binding carefully, removing it completely.

He finds a pen in a drawer and writes his own name across the page as he has been instructed. While the ink dries he gathers up the rest of the things he will need, running through the list over and over in his head so he does not forget anything.

The yarn is easily found, a ball of it sits precariously on a pile of books.

The two cards, one a familiar playing card and the other a tarot card emblazoned with an angel, are amongst the papers on the desk. He tucks these into the front cover of the book.

The doves in the cage above him stir with a soft fluttering of feathers.

The pocket watch on its long silver chain proves most difficult to locate. He finds it on the ground beside the desk, and when he attempts to dust it off a bit he can see the initials H.B. engraved on the back. The watch no longer ticks.

Bailey places the loose page on top of the book and tucks it under his arm. The watch and the yarn he puts in his pockets with the candle he pulled from the Wishing Tree.

The raven cocks its head at him as he leaves. The doves remain asleep.

Bailey crosses the adjoining tent, walking around the double circle of chairs as passing directly through it does not seem appropriate.

Outside the light rain is still falling.

He hurries back to the courtyard, where he finds Tsukiko waiting for him.

“Celia says I need to borrow your lighter,” he says.

Tsukiko tilts her head curiously, looking oddly like a bird with a catlike grin.

“I suppose that is acceptable,” she says after a moment. She pulls the silver lighter from her coat pocket and tosses it to him.

It is heavier than he had expected, a complicated mechanism of gears partially encased in worn and tarnished silver, with symbols he cannot distinguish etched into the surface.

“Be careful with that,” Tsukiko says.

“Is it magic?” Bailey asks, turning it over in his hand.

“No, but it is old, and it was constructed by someone very dear to me. I take it you are attempting to light that again?” She gestures at the towering bowl of twisted metal that once held the bonfire.

Bailey nods.

“Do you want any help?”

“Are you offering?”

Tsukiko shrugs.

“I am not terribly invested in the outcome,” she says, but something about the way she looks around at the tents and the mud makes Bailey doubt her words.

“I don’t believe you,” he says. “But I am, and I think I should do this on my own.”

Tsukiko smiles at him, the first smile he has seen from her that seems genuine.

“I shall leave you to it, then,” she says. She runs a hand along the iron cauldron and most of the rainwater within it turns to steam, rising in a soft cloud that dissipates into the fog.

With no further advice or instruction she walks off down a black-and-white striped path, a thin curl of smoke trailing behind her, leaving Bailey alone in the courtyard.

He remembers Widget telling him the story of the lighting of the bonfire, the first lighting. Though he only now realizes that it was also the night that Widget was born. He had told the story in such detail that Bailey assumed he had witnessed it firsthand. The archers, the colors, the spectacle.

And now here Bailey stands, trying to accomplish the same feat with only a book and some yarn and a borrowed cigarette lighter. Alone. In the rain.

He mumbles to himself what he can remember of Celia’s instructions, the ones that are more complicated than finding books and tying strings. Things about focus and intent that he does not entirely understand.

He wraps the book with a length of fine wool yarn dyed a deep crimson, bits of it stained darker with something dried and brown.

He knots it three times, binding the book closed with the loose page against the cover, the cards securely pressed inside.

The pocket watch he hangs around it, looping the chain as best he can.

He throws it in the empty cauldron where it lands with a dull wet thud, the watch clattering against the metal.

Marco’s bowler hat sits in the mud by his feet. He throws that in as well.

He glances back in the direction of the acrobat tent, he can see the top of it from the courtyard, rising taller than the surrounding tents.

And then, impulsively, he takes out the remaining contents of his pockets and adds them to the collection in the cauldron. His silver ticket. The dried rose that he had worn in his lapel at dinner with the rêveurs. Poppet’s white glove.

He hesitates, turning the tiny glass bottle with Widget’s version of his tree trapped inside over in his hand, but then he adds it as well, flinching as it shatters against the iron.

He takes the single white candle in one hand and Tsukiko’s lighter in the other.

He fumbles with the lighter before it consents to spark.

Then he ignites the candle with the bright orange flame.

He throws the burning candle into the cauldron.

Nothing happens.

I choose this, Bailey thinks. I want this. I need this. Please. Please let this work.

He wishes it, harder than he has ever wished for anything over birthday candles or on shooting stars. Wishing for himself. For the rêveurs in their red scarves. For a clockmaker he never met. For Celia and Marco and Poppet and Widget and even for Tsukiko, though she claims she does not care.

Bailey closes his eyes.

For a moment, everything is still. Even the light rain suddenly stops.

He feels a pair of hands resting on his shoulders.

A heaviness in his chest.

Something within the twisted iron cauldron begins to spark.

When the flames catch they are bright and crimson.

When they turn to white they are blinding, and the shower of sparks falls like stars.

The force of the heat pushes Bailey backward, moving through him like a wave, the air burning hot in his lungs. He falls onto ground that is no longer charred and muddy, but firm and dry and patterned in a spiral of black and white.

All around him, lights are popping to life along the tents, flickering like fireflies.

MARCO STANDS BENEATH THE WISHING TREE, watching as the candles come alight along the branches.

A moment later, Celia reappears at his side.

“Did it work?” he asks. “Please, tell me that it worked.”

In response, she kisses him the way he once kissed her in the middle of a crowded ballroom.

As though they are the only two people in the world.