The Night Circus
Page 5

“I can believe quite a lot of things,” Isobel says. Marco says nothing, but watches her as intently as he had regarded her cards. Isobel holds his gaze and does not look away.
It is too tempting. To have found someone who might even begin to understand the world he has lived in almost his entire life. He knows he should let it go, but he cannot.
“I could show you, if you wish,” he says after a moment.
“I would like that,” Isobel says.
They finish their wine and Marco settles their bill with the woman behind the bar. He places his bowler hat on his head and takes Isobel’s arm as they leave the warmth of the café, stepping out once again into the rain.
Marco stops abruptly in the middle of the next block, just outside a large gated courtyard. It is set back from the street, a cobblestone alcove formed by grey stone walls.
“This will do,” he says. He leads Isobel off of the pavement and into the space between the wall and the gate, positioning her so her back is against the cold wet stone, and stands directly in front of her, so close that she can see each drop of rain on the brim of his bowler hat.
“Do for what?” she asks, apprehension creeping into her voice. The rain is still falling around them and there is nowhere to go. Marco simply raises a gloved hand to quiet her, concentrating on the rain and the wall behind her head.
He has never had someone to try this particular feat on before, and he is uncertain he will even be able to manage it.
“Do you trust me, Miss Martin?” he asks, watching her with the same intense stare from the café, only this time his eyes are barely inches from her own.
“Yes,” she says, without hesitation.
“Good,” Marco says, and with a swift movement he lifts his hand and places it firmly over Isobel’s eyes.
*
STARTLED, ISOBEL FREEZES. Her vision is obscured completely, she can see nothing and feels only the damp leather against her skin. She shivers, and is not entirely sure it is due to the cold or the rain. A voice close to her ear whispers words she has to strain to hear and that she does not understand. And then she can no longer hear the rain, and the stone wall behind her feels rough when moments before it had been smooth. The darkness is somehow brighter, and then Marco lowers his hand.
Blinking as her eyes adjust to the light, Isobel first sees Marco in front of her, but something is different. There are no drops of rain on the brim of his hat. There are no drops of rain at all; instead, there is sunlight casting a soft glow around him. But that is not what makes Isobel gasp.
What elicits the gasp is the fact that they are standing in a forest, her back pressed up against a huge, ancient tree trunk. The trees are bare and black, their branches stretching into the bright blue expanse of sky above them. The ground is covered in a light dusting of snow that sparkles and shines in the sunlight. It is a perfect winter day and there is not a building in sight for miles, only an expanse of snow and wood. A bird calls in a nearby tree, and one in the distance answers it.
Isobel is baffled. It is real. She can feel the sun against her skin and the bark of the tree beneath her fingers. The cold of the snow is palpable, though she realizes her dress is no longer wet from the rain. Even the air she is breathing into her lungs is unmistakably crisp country air, with not a hint of London smog. It cannot be, but it is real.
“This is impossible,” she says, turning back to Marco. He smiles, his bright green eyes dazzling in the winter sun.
“Nothing is impossible,” he says. Isobel laughs, the high-pitched delighted laugh of a child.
A million questions rush through her head and she cannot properly articulate any of them. And then a clear image of a card springs suddenly into her mind, Le Bateleur. “You’re a magician,” she says.
“I don’t think anyone has actually called me that before,” Marco responds. Isobel laughs again, and she is still laughing when he leans closer and kisses her.
The pair of birds circle overhead as a light wind blows through the branches of the trees around them.
To passersby on the darkened London street, they look like nothing out of the ordinary, only young lovers kissing in the rain.
False Pretenses
JULY–NOVEMBER 1884
Prospero the Enchanter gives no formal reason for his retirement from the stage. His tours have been so sporadic in recent years that the lack of performances passes mostly without notice.
But Hector Bowen still tours, in a manner of speaking, even if Prospero the Enchanter does not.
He travels from city to city, hiring out his sixteen-year-old daughter as a spiritual medium.
“I hate this, Papa,” Celia protests frequently.
“If you can think of a better way to bide your time before your challenge begins—and don’t you dare say reading—then you are welcome to it, provided it makes as much money as this does. Besides, it is good practice for you to perform in front of an audience.”
“These people are insufferable,” Celia says, though it is not exactly what she means. They make her uncomfortable. The way they look at her, the pleading glances and tear-streaked stares. They see her as a thing, a bridge to their lost loved ones that they so desperately cling to.
They talk about her as though she is not even in the room, as if she is as insubstantial as their beloved spirits. She must force herself not to cringe when they inevitably embrace her, thanking her through their sobs.
“These people mean nothing,” her father says. “They cannot even begin to grasp what it is they think they see and hear, and it is easier for them to believe they are receiving miraculous transmissions from the afterlife. Why not take advantage of that, especially when they are so willing to part with their money for something so simple?”
Celia maintains that no amount of money is worth such an excruciating experience, but Hector is insistent, and so they continue to travel, levitating tables and producing phantom knocking on all manner of well-papered walls.
She remains baffled by the way their clients crave the communication, the reassurance. Not once has she ever wished to contact her departed mother, and she doubts her mother would want to speak with her if she could, especially through such complicated methods.
This is all a lie, she wants to say to them. The dead are not hovering nearby to knock politely at teacups and tabletops and whisper through billowing curtains.
She occasionally breaks their valuables, placing the blame on restless spirits.
Her father picks different names for her as they change locales, but he uses Miranda often, presumably because he knows how much it annoys her.
After months of it she is exhausted from the travel and the strain and the fact that her father barely lets her eat, as he claims looking like a waif makes her seem more convincing, closer to the other side.
Only after she genuinely faints during a session, rather than perfectly executing the choreographed dramatic swoon, does he relent to a respite at their home in New York.
At tea one afternoon, in between glares at the amount of jam and clotted cream she is slathering on her scones, he mentions that he has contracted her services for the weekend to a weeping widow across town, who has agreed to pay twice her normal rate.
“I said you could have a rest,” her father says when Celia refuses, not even looking up from the pile of papers he has spread across the dining table. “You’ve had three days, that should suffice. You look fine. You’re going to be even prettier than your mother someday.”
“I’m surprised you remember what my mother looked like,” Celia says.
“Do you?” her father asks, glancing up at her and continuing when she only frowns in response. “I may only have spent a matter of weeks in her company, but I remember her with more clarity than you do, and you had her for five years. Time is a peculiar thing. You’ll learn that eventually.”
He returns his attention to his papers.
“What about this challenge you’re supposedly training me for?” Celia asks. “Or is that just another way for you to make money?”
“Celia, dearest,” Hector says. “You have great things ahead of you, but we have relinquished control of when they will begin. Our side does not have the first move. We will simply be notified when it is time to put you on the board, as it were.”
“Then why does it matter what I do in the meantime?”
“You need the practice.”
Celia tilts her head, staring at him as she puts her hands on the table. All of the papers fold themselves into elaborate shapes: pyramids and helixes and paper birds with rustling wings.
Her father looks up, annoyed. He lifts a heavy glass paperweight and brings it down on her hand, hard enough to break her wrist with a sharp crack.
The papers unfold and flutter back to the surface of the table.
“You need the practice,” he repeats. “Your control is still lacking.”
Celia leaves the room without a word, holding her wrist and biting back tears.
“And for Christ’s sake, stop crying,” her father calls after her.
It takes her the better part of an hour to set and heal the shards of bone.
*
ISOBEL SITS IN A RARELY OCCUPIED ARMCHAIR in the corner of Marco’s flat, a rainbow of silk ribbon twisted around her fingers as she attempts in vain to form it into a single elaborate braid.
“This seems so silly,” she remarks, frowning at the tangle of ribbon.
“It’s a simple charm,” Marco says from his desk where he sits surrounded by open books. “A ribbon for each element, bound with knots and intent. It’s like your cards, only influencing the subject instead of simply divining its meaning. But it won’t work if you don’t believe it will, you know that.”
“Perhaps I am not in the proper mood to believe it,” Isobel says, loosening the knots and putting the ribbons aside, letting them cascade over the arm of the chair. “I’ll try again tomorrow.”
“Help me, then,” Marco says, looking up from his books. “Think of something. An object. A significant object that I cannot possibly know about.”
Isobel sighs but she obediently closes her eyes, concentrating.
“It’s a ring,” Marco says after a moment, picking the image out of her mind as easily as if she had drawn him a picture. “A gold ring with a sapphire flanked by two diamonds.”
Isobel’s eyes snap open.
“How did you know that?” she asks.
“Is it an engagement ring?” he counters with a grin.
She clasps her hand to her mouth before she nods.
“You sold it,” Marco says, picking up the fragments of memory attached to the ring itself. “In Barcelona. You fled an arranged marriage, that’s why you’re in London. Why did you not tell me?”
“It is not exactly a topic of proper conversation,” Isobel says. “And you hardly tell me anything about yourself, you could have fled an arranged marriage of your own.”
They stare at each other for a moment, while Marco tries to come up with an appropriate response, but then Isobel laughs.
“He probably looked for the ring longer than he looked for me,” she says, glancing down at her bare hand. “It was such a lovely thing, I almost didn’t want to part with it but I had no money and nothing else to sell.”
Marco starts to say he can tell she received quite a good price for the ring, but then there is a knock on the door of the flat.
“Is it the landlord?” Isobel whispers, but Marco puts a finger to his lips and shakes his head.
Only one person ever knocks upon that door unannounced.
Marco waves Isobel into the adjoining study before he answers.
The man in the grey suit does not enter the flat. He has never entered the space since he orchestrated the transition, pushing his student out into the world.
“You will be applying for a position to work for this man,” he says without greeting, taking a faded business card from his pocket. “You will likely need a name.”
“I have a name,” Marco says.
The man in the grey suit does not inquire as to what it might be.
“Your interview is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon,” he says. “I have handled a number of business matters for Monsieur Lefèvre of late and I have put in a strong recommendation, but you should do whatever is needed to secure the position.”
“Is this the beginning of the challenge?” Marco asks.
“This is a preliminary maneuver, to place you in an advantageous position.”
“Then when does the challenge start?” Marco asks, though he has asked the question dozens of times before and never received a firm answer.
“That will be clear at the time,” the man in the grey suit says. “When it does begin, it would be wise to focus your attention on the competition itself”—his eyes move pointedly to the closed door to the study—“without any distractions.”
He turns and exits down the hall, leaving Marco standing in the doorway, reading and rereading the name and address on the faded card.
*
HECTOR BOWEN EVENTUALLY relents to his daughter’s insistence that they remain in New York, but he does so for his own purposes.
While he makes occasional comments that she should be practicing more, for the most part he ignores her, spending his time alone in the upstairs parlor.
Celia is quite pleased with the arrangement, and spends most of her time reading. She sneaks out to bookstores, surprised when her father does not inquire as to where the piles of freshly bound volumes came from.
And she does practice, often, breaking all manner of things around the house in order to put them back together again. Making books fly around her room like birds, calculating how far they can travel before she must adjust her technique.