The Night Circus
Page 48

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.
Part V
DIVINATION
I find I think of myself not as a writer so much as someone who provides a gateway, a tangential route for readers to reach the circus. To visit the circus again, if only in their minds, when they are unable to attend it physically. I relay it through printed words on crumpled newsprint, words that they can read again and again, returning to the circus whenever they wish, regardless of time of day or physical location. Transporting them at will.
When put that way, it sounds rather like magic, doesn’t it?
—FRIEDRICK THIESSEN, 1898
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
—PROSPERO, THE TEMPEST, ACT IV, SCENE 1
It is late, so there is no line for the fortune-teller.
While outside the cool night air is scented with caramel and smoke, this tent is warm and smells of incense and roses and beeswax.
You do not wait long in the antechamber before passing through the beaded curtain.
It makes a sound like rain as the beads collide. The room beyond is lined with candles.
You sit down at the table in the center of the room. Your chair is surprisingly comfortable.
The fortune-teller’s face is hidden behind a fine black veil, but the light catches her eyes as she smiles.
She has no crystal ball. No deck of cards.
Only a handful of sparkling silver stars that she scatters across the velvet-covered table, reading them like runes.
She refers to things she could not know with uncanny specificity.
She tells you facts you already knew. Information you might have guessed. Possibilities you cannot fathom.
The stars on the table almost seem to move in the undulating candlelight. Shifting and changing before your eyes.
Before you leave, the fortune-teller reminds you that the future is never set in stone.
Blueprints
LONDON, DECEMBER 1902
Poppet Murray stands on the front steps of la maison Lefèvre, a leather briefcase in hand and a large satchel sitting by her feet. She rings the doorbell a dozen times, alternating with a series of loud knocks, though she can hear the bell echoing within the house.
When the door finally swings open, Chandresh himself stands behind it, his violet shirt untucked and a crumpled piece of paper in his hand.
“You were smaller last time I saw you,” he says, looking Poppet over from her boots to her upswept red hair. “And there were two of you.”
“My brother is in France,” Poppet says, picking up the satchel and following Chandresh inside.
The golden elephant-headed statue in the hall is in need of polishing. The house is in a state of disarray, or as much disarray as a house crammed from floor to ceiling with antiques and books and objets d’art can be in its inherent cozy, cluttered way. It does not shine as brightly as it had when she ran through the halls with Widget what seems like more than a few years ago, chasing marmalade kittens through a rainbow of guests.
“What happened to your staff?” she asks as they ascend the stairs.
“I dismissed the lot of them,” Chandresh says. “They were useless, could not keep a single thing in order. I retained only the cooks. Haven’t had a dinner in quite some time, but at least they know what they’re doing.”
Poppet follows him down the column-lined hall to his study. She has never been in this particular room before, but she doubts it was always so covered with blueprints and sketches and empty brandy bottles.
Chandresh wanders across the room, adding the crumpled piece of paper in his hand to a stack on a chair, and staring idly at a set of blueprints hanging over the windows.
Poppet clears a space on the desk to put the briefcase down, moving books and antlers and carved jade turtles. She leaves the satchel on the floor nearby.
“Why are you here?” Chandresh says, turning and looking at Poppet as though he has only just noticed her presence.
Poppet snaps open the briefcase on the desk, pulling out a dense pile of paper.
“I need you to do a favor for me, Chandresh,” she says.
“What might that be?”
“I would like you to sign over ownership of the circus.” Poppet finds a fountain pen amongst the clutter on the desk and tests it on a scrap of paper to see if it is properly inked.
“The circus was never mine to begin with,” Chandresh mutters.
“Of course it was,” Poppet says, drawing a swirling letter P. “It was your idea. But I know you don’t have time for it, and I thought it might be best if you relinquished your position as proprietor.”
Chandresh considers this for a moment, but then he nods and walks over to the desk to read through the contract.
“You have Ethan and Lainie listed here, but not Tante Padva,” he says as he peruses it.
“I’ve spoken with all of them already,” Poppet says. “Madame Padva wished not to be involved any longer, but she is confident that Miss Burgess can handle her responsibilities.”
“Who is this Mr. Clarke?” Chandresh asks.
“He is a very dear friend of mine,” Poppet says, a soft blush warming her cheeks. “And he will take excellent care of the circus.”
When Chandresh reaches the end of the document, she hands him the pen.
He signs his name with a wobbling flourish, letting the pen drop onto the desk.
“I appreciate this more than I can say.” Poppet blows on the ink to dry it before she returns the contract to the briefcase. Chandresh brushes her words away with a lazy wave of his hand, walking back to the window and staring at the expanse of blue papers hanging over it.
“What are the blueprints for?” Poppet asks after she closes the briefcase.
“I have all of these … plans from Ethan and I don’t know what to do with them,” Chandresh says, waving an arm around at the multitudes of paper.
Poppet removes her coat, leaving it draped over the back of the desk chair, and takes a closer look at the blueprints and sketches hanging from shelves and tacked to mirrors and paintings and windows. Some are complete rooms, others are bits of exterior architecture or elaborate archways and halls.
She stops when she reaches a dartboard with a silver knife embedded in the patterned cork, its blade marred with dark stains. The knife vanishes as Poppet continues walking, though Chandresh does not notice.
“They are meant to be renovations to the house,” he says as she tours the room, “but they do not fit together properly.”
“It’s a museum,” Poppet says, overlaying the pieces in her mind and seeing where they match up with the building she has already seen in the stars. They are completely out of order, but it is unmistakable. She pulls down a set of blueprints and switches it with another, arranging them story by story. “It’s not this building,” she explains as Chandresh watches her curiously. “It’s a new one.” She takes a series of doors, alternate versions of the same possible entrance, and lays them side by side along the floor, letting each lead to a different room.