The Night Circus
Widget turns to look at her.
“Paint?” he asks.
“Like spilled paint, on the ground,” Poppet answers. She closes her eyes again, but then opens them quickly. “Dark red. It’s all sort of jumbled and I don’t really like the red bit, when I saw it, it hurt my head. The company part is nicer.”
“Company would be nice,” Widget says. “Do you know when?”
Poppet shakes her head.
“Some of it feels soon. The rest of it feels far away.”
They sit quietly sipping their cider for a bit, leaning against the trunk of the tree.
“Tell me a story, please,” Poppet says after a while.
“What kind of story?” Widget asks. He always asks her, gives her an opportunity to make a request, even if he has one in mind already. Only preferred or special audiences receive such treatment.
“A story about a tree,” Poppet says, looking up through the twisting black branches above them.
Widget pauses before he starts, letting the tent and the tree settle into silent prologue while Poppet waits patiently.
“Secrets have power,” Widget begins. “And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it’s really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.
“This is, in part, why there is less magic in the world today. Magic is secret and secrets are magic, after all, and years upon years of teaching and sharing magic and worse. Writing it down in fancy books that get all dusty with age has lessened it, removed its power bit by bit. It was inevitable, perhaps, but not unavoidable. Everyone makes mistakes.
“The greatest wizard in history made the mistake of sharing his secrets. And his secrets were both magic and important, so it was a rather serious mistake.
“He told them to a girl. She was young and clever and beautiful—”
Poppet snorts into her cup. Widget stops.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Go on, please, Widge.”
“She was young and clever and beautiful,” Widget continues. “Because if the girl had not been beautiful and clever, she would have been easier to resist, and then there would be no story at all.
“The wizard was old and quite clever himself, of course, and he had gone a very, very long time without telling his secrets to anyone at all. Maybe over the years he had forgotten about the importance of keeping them, or maybe he was distracted by her youth or beauty or cleverness. Maybe he was just tired, or maybe he had too much wine and didn’t realize what he was doing. Whatever the circumstances, he told his deepest secrets to the girl, the hidden keys to all his magic.
“And when the secrets had passed from wizard to girl, they lost bits of their power, the way cats lose bits of fur when you pet them thoroughly. But they were still potent and effective and magical, and the girl used them against the wizard. She tricked him so that she could take his secrets and make them her own. She did not particularly care about keeping them; she probably wrote them down somewhere as well.
“The wizard himself she trapped in a huge old oak tree. A tree like this one. And the magic she used to do so was strong, since it was the wizard’s own magic, ancient and powerful, and he could not undo it.
“She left him there, and he could not be rescued since no one else knew he was inside the tree. He was not dead, though. The girl might have killed him if she could, after she had coerced his secrets out of him, but she could not kill him with his own magic. Though maybe she didn’t want to at all. She was more concerned with power than with him, but she might have cared about him a little, enough to want to leave him with his life, in a way. She settled for trapping him, and to her mind it served the same purpose.
“Though really she did not succeed quite as well as she liked to think. She was careless in keeping her new magic secret. She flaunted it, and generally did not take very good care of it. Its power faded eventually, and so did she.
“The wizard, on the other hand, became part of the tree. And the tree thrived and grew, its branches spreading up to the sky and its roots reaching farther into the earth. He was part of the leaves and the bark and the sap, and part of the acorns that were carried away by squirrels to become new oak trees in other places. And when those trees grew, he was in those branches and leaves and roots as well.
“So by losing his secrets, the wizard gained immortality. His tree stood long after the clever young girl was old and no longer beautiful, and in a way, he became greater and stronger than he had ever been before. Though if he were given the chance to do it all over again, he likely would have been more careful with his secrets.” As Widget finishes, the tent settles into silence again, but the tree feels more alive than it had before he started.
“Thank you,” Poppet says. “That was a good one. Kind of sad, though, but kind of not at the same time.”
“You’re welcome,” Widget says. He takes a sip of his cider, now more warm than hot. He holds his cup in his hands and brings it to eye level, staring at it until a soft curl of steam rises from the surface.
“Do mine, too, please,” Poppet says, holding out her cup. “I can never do it right.”
“Well, I can never levitate anything right, so we’re even,” Widget says, but he takes her cup without complaint and concentrates until it too is steaming and hot again.
He moves to hand it back to her and it floats from his hand to hers, the surface of the cider wavering with the motion but otherwise moving as smoothly as if it were sliding across a table.
“Show-off,” Widget says.
They sit sipping their newly warmed cider, looking up at the twisting black branches reaching toward the top of the tent.
“Widge?” Poppet asks after a long silence.
“Yes?”
“Is it not that bad to be trapped somewhere, then? Depending on where you’re trapped?”
“I suppose it depends on how much you like the place you’re trapped in,” Widget says.
“And how much you like whoever you’re stuck there with,” Poppet adds, kicking his black boot with her white one.
Her brother laughs and the sound echoes through the tent, carried over the branches that are covered in candles. Each flame flickering and white.
Temporary Places
LONDON, APRIL 1895
Tara Burgess does not realize until after she has returned to London that the address on the card given to her by Mr. Barris is not a private residence at all but the Midland Grand Hotel.
She leaves the card sitting out on a table in her parlor for some time, glancing at it whenever she happens to be in the room. Forgetting about it for stretches of time until she remembers it again.
Lainie attempts to persuade Tara to join her for an extended holiday in Italy, but she refuses. Tara tells her sister little about her visit to Vienna, saying only that Ethan asked after her.
Lainie suggests that they might consider moving, and perhaps they should discuss it further when she returns.
Tara only nods, giving her sister a warm embrace before Lainie departs.
Alone in their town house, Tara wanders absently. She abandons half-read novels on chairs and tables.
The invitations from Mme. Padva to join her for tea or accompany her to the ballet are politely declined.
She turns all of the mirrors in the house to face the walls. Those she cannot manage to turn she covers with sheets so they sit like ghosts in empty rooms.
She has trouble sleeping.
One afternoon, after the card has sat patiently gathering dust for months, she picks it up and places it in her pocket, and she is out the door and on her way to the train before she can decide whether or not the idea is a good one.
Tara has never visited the clock-topped hotel attached to St. Pancr
as Station, but it strikes her immediately as a temporary place. Despite the size and solidity of the building, it feels impermanent, populated by a constant stream of guests and travelers on their way to and from other locations. Stopping only briefly before continuing to other destinations.
She inquires at the desk but they claim they have no such person listed as a guest. She repeats the name several times after the desk clerk keeps mishearing her. She tries more than one variation, as the words on the card from Mr. Barris have been smudged, and she cannot recall the proper pronunciation. The longer she stands there, the more unsure she becomes that she has ever even heard the smudged name on the card pronounced.
The clerk politely asks if she would like to leave a note, if perhaps the gentleman in question were to be arriving later in the day, but Tara declines, thanking the clerk for his time and replacing the card in her pocket.
She wanders the lobby, wondering if the address is incorrect, though it is not like Mr. Barris to provide anything less than exact information.
“Good afternoon, Miss Burgess,” a voice next to her says. She has not noticed him approach, but the man whose name she still cannot recall the proper pronunciation of is standing by her shoulder in his distinctive grey suit.
“Good afternoon,” she echoes.
“Were you looking for me?” he asks.
“I was, in fact,” Tara says. She starts to explain that Mr. Barris sent her. She reaches into her pocket, but there is no card within it and she stops, confused.
“Is something wrong?” the man in the grey suit asks.
“No,” Tara says, now unsure if she remembered to bring the card, or if it is still sitting on a table in her parlor. “I wanted to speak with you about the circus.”
“Very well,” he says. He waits for her to begin, his expression bearing something that could be construed as very mild interest.
She does her best to explain her concern. That there is more going on with the circus than most people are privy to. That there are elements she can find no reasonable explanations for. She repeats some of the things she mentioned to Mr. Barris. The concern of not being able to be certain if anything is real. How disconcerting it is to look in a mirror and see the same face, unchanged for years.
She falters frequently, finding it difficult to articulate precisely what she means.
The expression of very mild interest does not change.
“What is it you would like from me, Miss Burgess?” he asks when she has finished.
“I would like an explanation,” she says.
He regards her with the same unchanged expression for some time.
“The circus is simply a circus,” he says. “An impressive exhibition, but no more than that. Don’t you agree?”
Tara nods before she can properly process the response.
“Do you have a train to catch, Miss Burgess?” he asks.
“Yes,” Tara says. She had forgotten about her train. She wonders what time it is, but she cannot find a clock to check.
“I am headed toward the station myself, if you do not mind an escort.”
They walk the short distance from the hotel to the train platforms together. He holds doors open for her. He makes empty remarks about the weather.
“I think it may be in your best interest to find something else to occupy your time,” he says when they reach the trains. “Something to take your mind off the circus. Don’t you agree?”
Tara nods again.
“Good day, Miss Burgess,” he says with a tip of his hat.
“Good day,” she echoes.
He leaves her on the platform, and when she turns after him to see which way he went, the grey suit is nowhere to be found amongst the crowd.
Tara stands near the edge of the platform, waiting for her train. She cannot recall telling Mr. A. H— which train it was she would be taking, but he has deposited her on the proper platform nonetheless.
She feels as though there was something else she meant to ask, but now she cannot recall what it was. She cannot recall much of anything about the conversation, save for the impression that there is something else she should be spending her time on, somewhere else to be, some other matter that is more deserving of her attention.
She is wondering what that might be when a flash of grey on the opposite platform catches her eye.
Mr. A. H— stands in a shadowy corner, and even with the distance and the shadows Tara can tell that he is arguing with someone she cannot see.
Other people pass by without even glancing in their direction.
When the light from the arching overhead windows shifts, Tara can see who Mr. A. H— is arguing with.
The man is not quite as tall, the top of his hat sits leveled like a step down from the grey one, so much so that at first Tara thinks the man is only a reflection and finds it odd that Mr. A. H— would be arguing with his own reflection in the middle of a train station.
But the other suit is distinctly darker. The reflection’s hair is longer, though it is a similar shade of grey.
Through the steam and the crowd, Tara can make out the bright spots of lace at the cuffs of the shirt, the dark eyes that catch the light more than the rest of the man’s face. Aspects settle temporarily and then vanish into distorted shadows once more, never remaining steady for more than a moment.
The light filtering in from above shifts again, and the figure quavers as though she were watching through a heat haze, though Mr. A. H— remains comparatively crisp and clear.
Tara takes a step forward, her gaze fixated on the apparition on the opposite platform.
She does not see the train.
Movement
MUNICH, APRIL 1895
Herr Thiessen is always pleased when the circus arrives in his native Germany, but this time he is particularly delighted that it has arrived quite near Munich, so there is no need for him to secure rooms in another city.
Also, he has been promised a visit from Miss Celia Bowen. He has never met her, though they have been exchanging letters for years, and she expressed an interest in seeing his workshop, if he would not mind.
Friedrick replied that of course he did not mind in the least, and she would be welcome at any time.
Despite so many letters, each carefully filed in his office, he is uncertain what to expect when she arrives.
He is astonished to find the woman he knows as the illusionist standing in his doorway.
She is unmistakable, though she wears a gown of dusty rose rather than the black-and-white creations he is accustomed to seeing her in. Her skin appears warmer, her hair softly curled, and her hat bears no resemblance to the distinctive silk top hat, but he would know her face anywhere.
“This is an honor,” he says by way of greeting.
“Most people don’t recognize me outside of the circus,” Celia says as he takes her hand.
“Then most people are fools,” he says, lifting her hand to his lips and lightly kissing the back of her glove. “Though I feel a fool myself for not knowing who you were all this time.”
“I should have told you,” Celia says. “I do apologize.”
“No apology is necessary. I should have guessed you were not merely a rêveur from the way you wrote about the circus. You know every corner, better than most.”
“I am familiar with a great deal of the corners. Not all of them.”
“There remain mysteries in the circus even for its own illusionist? That is impressive.”
Celia laughs, and Friedrick takes her on a tour of his workshop.
The workshop is organized so that the front is occupied mostly by blueprints and sketches, moving on to long tables covered in various parts and a great deal of sawdust, drawers full of gears and tools. Celia listens with rapt attention as he describes the entire process, asking questions about the technical aspects as well as the creative ones.
He is surprised to learn that she speaks fluent German, though they have only written each other in English.
“I speak languages with more ease than I read or write them,” she explains. “It is something in the feel of the sounds. I could attempt to put them on paper but I am sure the result would be appalling.”
Despite his greying hair, Friedrick looks younger when he smiles. Celia cannot keep her eyes from his hands as he shows her the delicate clockwork mechanisms. She pictures the same fingers inscribing each letter she has received and read so many times that she has committed them to memory, finding it strange that she feels shy with someone she knows so well.
He watches her with equal attentiveness as they traverse the shelves of timepieces in varying stages of construction.
“May I ask you something?” he says as she looks at a collection of detailed figurines waiting patiently amongst curls of wood to be housed in their proper clocks.
“Of course,” Celia says, though she fears he will ask her how she does her magic, and she dreads having to lie to him.
“You have been in the same city as I on so many occasions, and yet this is the first time you have asked to meet. Why is that?”
Celia looks back at the figurines on the table before she responds. Friedrick reaches out and rights a tiny ballerina that has fallen sideways, returning her to balance on her ribboned slippers.
“Before, I did not want you to know who I was,” Celia says. “I thought you might think of me differently if you did. But after so long I felt I was being dishonest. I had wanted to tell you the truth for some time, and I could not resist the chance to see your workshop. I hope you can forgive me.”
“You have nothing to be forgiven for,” Friedrick says. “A woman I should like to think I know rather well and a woman I had always considered a mystery are, in fact, the same person. It is surprising, but I do not mind a good surprise. Though I am curious as to why you wrote me that first letter.”
“I enjoyed your writings about the circus,” Celia says. “It is a perspective that I am not able to view it from properly, because I … understand it in a different way. I like being able to see it through your eyes.” When she looks up at him, his soft blue eyes are bright in the afternoon sunlight that shines through the windows, illuminating the speckles of sawdust in the air.