The Night Circus
Chandresh looks at the ground as though he has lost something, not seeming to register the conversation at all.
“If you insist,” Tara relents.
“He’s in perfectly good hands, Miss Burgess,” Marco says, and then he turns before she can say another word, and he and Chandresh walk off into the crowd.
“There you are,” Lainie says, appearing at her sister’s shoulder. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Did you see the lighting? Wasn’t it spectacular?”
“Indeed,” Tara says, still scanning the crowd.
“Whatever is the matter?” Lainie asks. “Did something happen?”
“How much do you know about Chandresh’s assistant?” Tara asks in response.
“Marco? Not very much,” Lainie says. “He’s worked for Chandresh for a few years, specializes in accounting. Before that he was a scholar of some sort, I believe. I’m not entirely sure what he studied. Or where, for that matter. He’s not particularly talkative. Why do you ask? Seeking another dark and handsome conquest?”
Tara laughs, despite her distraction.
“No, nothing like that. Only curiosity.” She takes her sister by the arm. “Let us go and seek out other mysteries to explore for the moment.”
Arm in arm they navigate the crowd, circling around the glowing bonfire that many patrons are still gazing at, mesmerized by the dancing white flames.
In this tent, suspended high above you, there are people. Acrobats, trapeze artists, aerialists. Illuminated by dozens of round glowing lamps hanging from the top of the tent like planets or stars.
There are no nets.
You watch the performance from this precarious vantage point, directly below the performers with nothing in between.
There are girls in feathered costumes who spin at various heights, suspended by ribbons that they can manipulate. Marionettes that control their own strings.
Normal chairs with legs and backs act as trapezes.
Round spheres that resemble birdcages rise and descend while one or more aerialists move from within the sphere to without, standing on the top or hanging from the bars on the bottom.
In the center of the tent there is a man in a tuxedo, suspended by one leg that is tied with a silver cord, hands clasped behind his back.
He begins to move, extremely slowly. His arms reach out from his sides, first one and then the other, until they hang below his head.
He starts to spin. Faster and faster, until he is only a blur at the end of a rope.
He stops, suddenly, and he falls.
The audience dives out of the way below him, clearing a space of bare, hard ground below.
You cannot bear to watch. You cannot look away.
Then he stops at eye level with the crowd. Suspended by the silver rope that now seems endlessly long. Top hat undisturbed on his head, arms calmly by his sides.
As the crowd regains its composure, he lifts a gloved hand and removes his hat.
Bending at the waist, he takes a dramatic, inverted bow.
Oneiromancy
CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS, OCTOBER 1902
Bailey spends the entire day willing the sun to set, but it defies him and keeps its usual pace across the sky, a pace that Bailey has never really thought about before but today finds excruciatingly slow. He almost wishes it were a school day so he would have something to help pass the hours. He wonders if he should take a nap, but he is far too excited about the sudden appearance of the circus to possibly sleep.
Dinner passes the same way it has for months, stretches of silence broken by his mother’s attempts at polite conversation and Caroline’s occasional sighs.