Circus Mirandus

by Cassie Beasley

Micah’s eyes snapped open, and he scrambled to his feet. The tree house was bright with early morning sunshine. “What was that?” he asked.

  “Who was that?” said Jenny.

  Then Micah realized that Grandpa Ephraim’s window was open. Aunt Gertrudis appeared a moment later. She held a dustpan full of dingy red feathers at arm’s length, as if they were contagious, and tipped them outside. She spied Micah in the tree.

  “You,” she said. “I don’t know how you did this, but I’ll find out. I’ll deal with you after school.” She slammed the window.

  Jenny stared at Micah with eyes as round as quarters. “Your aunt can’t be serious, can she? You weren’t even there.”

  Micah shrugged.

  “But that’s not fair!” she protested.

  “It’s fine,” said Micah. “She’ll be gone as soon as Grandpa Ephraim gets well.”

  “If you say so.” Jenny peered through the branches of the oak. The sky was pale blue and cloudless, and the sun peeked over the rooftops across the street. “What time do you think it is?”

  Of course there wasn’t a clock in the tree house, but Micah spotted something just as good. “Five minutes before the bus comes.”

  Jenny blinked. “You have a watch?”

  He pointed across the street. A mop of familiar bright red curls was visible between two houses for a moment before a neighbor’s privacy hedge hid it from view.

  “Was that Florence?” Jenny asked. “That wasn’t Florence was it?”

  Micah nodded. “She always shows up five minutes before the bus comes.”

  Jenny made an odd squeaking sound and flung herself at the rope ladder. “We have a presentation today!” she shouted as her feet hit the ground. “I can’t get dressed for a presentation in five minutes!”

  Micah wasn’t sure why she needed to change clothes when she was wearing a mostly clean outfit from the day before, but he didn’t have time to ask. She grabbed a bundle from the wagon attached to her bike and shot toward the house.

  Micah suspected that if his aunt hadn’t unlocked the door yet, Jenny Mendoza would burst right through it.

  Micah scuffed his feet against the floor of the school bus. He tapped his fingers against his knees. He checked the quipu for any tangles, and when he didn’t find any, he checked it again. He looked out of the finger-smudged windows. A lot.

  Surely, the ride to school had never taken this long before. Surely, something important was about to happen. Any second, they’d turn a corner, and the Lightbender would be there, or Chintzy would appear, or Micah would hear the circus music over the grumble of the bus’s engine.

  But all he heard was Jenny, who was rehearsing their report under her breath, and Florence, who was making annoyed huffing noises and kicking the back of their seat.

  “I think I’d better go home with you after school today,” Jenny said suddenly. She looked up from her notes. “Your great-aunt sounded upset. I’ll explain to her that we were in the tree house all night, so she won’t be mad at you about the feathers.”

  Micah’s feet stopped scuffing. “No.” Aunt Gertrudis was not the kind of grown-up who appreciated explanations.

  “Don’t you want me to come over? I have to go back to get the bicycle anyway.”

  “You can come over, but you ought to avoid Aunt Gertrudis. I do.” He stole another quick glance out the window. Nothing.

  Jenny crossed her arms over her chest. “She shouldn’t be allowed to throw you out of your own house. You need to tell someone.”

  “I like sleeping in the tree house.”

  “Seriously, Micah,” she said. “Your grandfather would want to know.”

  He would. But, Micah didn’t want to upset him, especially not when Circus Mirandus was about to arrive.

  “Hmmmkay?” It was a good sound in his opinion. It might have meant yes, and it might have meant no, but it satisfied Jenny. She went back to her notes.

  As the bus pulled into the elementary school’s drive, Micah searched for something out of the ordinary. The leaves hung limp from the branches of the spindly trees in front of the school. A wisp of cloud sat frozen overhead. The teachers’ parking lot was still. The view was the same as everywhere else. Circus-free.

  Micah felt like he was smothering.

  When he and Jenny reached the classroom, they saw that the order for presentations had been posted on the board.

  “Oh. We’re next to last,” said Jenny. She sounded disappointed.

  “At least we’re not first,” Micah replied.

  She sighed.

  “You wanted to go first?”

  “Everyone will be tired of listening by the time we go! They won’t pay any attention to us.”

  He would have thought that was a good thing. Much less pressure.

  But Florence stepped into the room a moment later and grimaced when she saw her name at the very bottom of the board. She shot Jenny a ferocious look. As he headed for his desk, Micah decided that being very smart must also make you just a little bit crazy.

  The presentations started right after the Pledge, with Nathan giving a failed indoor boomerang demonstration that Mrs. Stark didn’t appreciate at all. Micah tried to focus, but he was fighting a losing battle. He mulled over his conversation with Chintzy, trying to figure out whether Jenny might have been right last night. Had the parrot been holding something back? Why would she?

  He slouched in his desk and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. The knots from last night were still there. He didn’t pull them out. They were all the same sad Grandpa Ephraim knot, except for one.

  The knot he’d been fiddling with when he’d fallen asleep had been transformed. It was no longer fraying at the edges. Instead, it was as tight as a clenched fist, and when Micah held it, he could almost hear someone whistling. He let his fingers brush against it now, and he took a shuddering breath.

  This knot was his grandfather, too, but not the Grandpa Ephraim who was stuck in bed all day long. This was him at his best, whistling and telling jokes, swinging Micah around in dizzy circles and tying a perfect rope ladder. This was the Grandpa Ephraim that Micah missed every minute of every day, and only the Lightbender could bring him back.

  He forced himself to let go of the new knot. If he kept rubbing it, it wouldn’t be long before it was just a puff of fiber.

  What if I miss something? Micah thought, not for the first time. Or, even worse—what if I’ve already missed it?

  “And this is an example of an Incan quipu.”

  Jenny delivered their presentation in a clear, almost-not-nervous voice. Micah shifted his weight from foot to foot and tried not to look out of place standing beside her. “Micah created his own alphabet out of knots and made a strand for each of you.”

  It wasn’t completely terrible, as far as presentations went, but Micah was glad that he didn’t actually have to say anything except for, “Thank you for your attention.”

  A minute later, Jenny cleared her throat, and Micah realized that it was his turn. He lifted the quipu’s poster board up over his head so that the kids in the back row could see it. “Thank you for your attention,” he said.

  The whole class, except for Florence, applauded. Micah propped the quipu against the wall beside a dreamcatcher, and he and Jenny returned to their separate desks.

  Back in his seat, Micah finally saw the quipu he’d made from his classmates’ perspective. It did look impressive, he guessed, especially if you didn’t know much about knot tying. The multicolored knots made a bright, elaborate fan against the white background, and though Micah suspected that his classmates wouldn’t be able to, he could read the quipu from here without even touching the knots. The little G knots really did look like G’s somehow, and the little R knots looked like R’s. He examined it for a while, trying to feel happy about it, but his eyes were inevitably
pulled toward the classroom window.

  Still no Lightbender, still no Chintzy, just half-opened blinds and sky.

  Jenny caught his eye. “What’s wrong?” she mouthed.

  Micah shook his head. Disheartened, he stared down at his notebook. Florence and her partner were talking about how the ancient Egyptians would stick little spoons up people’s noses and stir their brains into goo before they turned them into mummies. Micah had the feeling that this should have been riveting, but he couldn’t quite make himself care enough to take notes.

  Instead, he drew a picture of a spoon at the top of his sheet of paper. Maybe Chintzy had forgotten to tell him something important. She seemed very smart, but she was a bird after all.

  He scribbled until the spoon was a dark gray blob. Maybe she hadn’t explained to the Lightbender how urgent the problem was. Grandpa Ephraim had to have his miracle right now. Not in days and days. Or maybe—

  Something brushed against Micah’s ear.

  He looked over his shoulder. All of his classmates seemed to be focused on the presentation or on their notebooks. Desks squeaked and creaked as they shifted in their seats. Nobody was paying attention to Micah. He went back to his spoon.

  He would have to see Grandpa Ephraim this afternoon no matter what Aunt Gertrudis said. Chintzy might have explained more to him. They had talked for hours.

  Micah’s ear tickled again. Both of his ears tickled. Because . . . because his hair was moving in the—

  His pencil lead snapped. I’m inside, he thought. It’s impossible.

  But Micah was sure that the feeling against the back of his neck, the thing stirring his hair around his ears, was a faint breeze. He took a shuddering breath and let it out. The breeze didn’t stop. Slowly, as though he might scare it off, he turned in his desk.

  All around him, pencils were scratching against paper and feet were tapping against chair legs. No one else had noticed. No one else felt it. But the pages of Micah’s notebook were rustling in the tiny breeze now, and it wasn’t his imagination.

  Fresh air filled his lungs as he gasped. This must be it. This is it! What do I do?

  His notebook rustled again, and he looked down. The sketch of the spoon unraveled, every line Micah had scrawled coming apart from every other and flowing into a new shape before his eyes.

  An arrow, pointing toward the front of the room.

  Micah looked past Florence and her partner and their perfect pyramid to the thing that the arrow was pointing at. The wind wasn’t just blowing through the classroom, he realized. It was doing something. And it was doing it to Micah’s quipu.

  The strands of the quipu shivered in the breeze. They braided themselves in and out of one another. They twirled and snaked until the strands didn’t say Giles Darby or Micah Tuttle or Nathan Borgle, or any of the names of his other classmates. The breeze rearranged Micah’s very own knots to write a message that only he would be able to read:

  Midnight.

  Follow the wind.

  In the time it took for him to blink, the quipu went back to being a quipu, but it didn’t matter. Micah had seen it.

  His eyes locked on the window, where, at last, there was something worth looking at. Leaves and twigs and old gum wrappers zipped past, caught up in a gale of wind that might have come straight out of Grandpa Ephraim’s story.

  The tent of the Man Who Bends Light was dim and warm when Ephraim entered. The only illumination came from a few colorful oil lanterns that burned near the roof. Stands for seating ringed the center of the room, where a polished black circular stage dominated the floor. Ephraim found a spot in one of the less crowded sections and waited for the show to begin.

  As soon as the last members of the audience had taken their seats, the tent flap closed and all of the lanterns flickered out. Not a speck of light made it through the fabric of the tent for Ephraim to see by. He heard the boy who had waited in line in front of him swear, and a girl sitting nearby whimpered.

  “I hate the dark,” she said just loudly enough for Ephraim to hear. “I really do.”

  Ephraim wasn’t afraid of the dark, but he wasn’t a great fan of it, either. Fortunately, just a few moments after everything turned black, a pinprick of gold appeared in the center of the tent.

  Everyone went quiet, and Ephraim was sure that, like him, they were all staring at the small ball of light with fascination. It grew slowly at first, but then it picked up speed. Within a minute, Ephraim was shielding his eyes from the miniature sun pulsing in the heart of the room. The light was so strong that it filtered through his eyelids and made him see tiny bursts of color.

  Then, just when he thought that the radiance was too powerful to bear, it faded. He cautiously squinted through one eye. The sun had turned into a rather spectacular pile of fruit.The fruits were twice the size of Ephraim’s fist, and they were a bright yellow that blushed red on one side. A galaxy of swirling golden pinpricks over the pile made it the brightest spot in the tent. Children whispered curiously to one another as, one by one, they opened their eyes.

  “Have you ever tasted the flesh of the mango fruit?” A voice murmured in Ephraim’s ear.

  He whipped around, but nobody was sitting as close to him as the voice sounded.

  “It tastes like the sun,” the voice whispered in his other ear.

  A man appeared next to the pile of mangoes. He was tall with shaggy blond hair, and he wore a battered brown leather coat that swished against the stage even though he was standing still. The man leaned backward into thin air and crossed one ankle over the other, as though he were resting against a solid wall.

  He flicked his wrist. A mango leaped from the pile into one of his hands, and a sharp knife materialized in the other. The man slowly cut a wedge out of the fruit, which was the color of an egg yolk inside, and he bit into it. Juice dripped from his fingers.

  A strange, sweet smell reached Ephraim’s nose. He had never eaten any fruit more exotic than an orange, and he knew right down to the soles of his boots that the mangoes on the stage would be a hundred times more delicious than anything he had ever tasted. But approaching the man in the leather coat was the sort of idea that was a little too thrilling to be taken seriously.

  The others seemed to have the same thought. Many of them were shifting in their seats, and Ephraim even heard a few people smacking their lips, but nobody stood up.

  Just when it seemed that they might have to sit there all day, watching the man eat the mango with his gleaming knife, a dark-skinned boy sitting near the stage spoke up. “What’s the sun taste like then?” he asked boldly.

  The man’s lips stretched into a smile. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  A single mango rolled across the stage toward the boy who had spoken. He stared at it for a moment then bent to pick it up. It fell into neat slices in his hand. He brought one of them to his mouth and took a tiny bite.

  His eyes widened.

  The man laughed and flicked his hand again. The whole pile of mangoes toppled slowly and began to roll in every direction. Hands reached out from the audience to snatch them up as soon as they came within reach. When Ephraim caught one, it sliced itself for him, and juice ran down his knuckles.

  Surprised, he accidentally dropped a couple of slices, and they evaporated before they could hit the ground. He stared at the remaining fruit in astonishment. Was it even real? It looked real and felt real and smelled real. He picked a particularly delicious-looking wedge and bit into it. It tasted mostly like the sun and just a little like his mother’s famous peach pie. That was real enough for Ephraim.

  The man strode to the center of the stage, and the gold sparks danced around him. “I am the Man Who Bends Light,” he said. “Watch, and I will show you magic. Watch, and I will show you your dreams.”

  Ephraim’s dreams had never been half as wonderful as the things he saw that day.

 
The tent faded out of existence, and Ephraim opened his eyes to a world made out of sparkling white and icy blue. He breathed sharp air into his lungs. A frosty wind stung his cheeks. Behind him, something made an odd trumpeting sound, and when Ephraim turned to see what it was, his booted feet crunched in the snow.

  Ephraim wasn’t alone in this strange new place. A line of stout black-and-white birds waddled past. They were the trumpeters. When he looked around he saw that there were other children nearby as well. The Lightbender, as Ephraim had decided to call him for convenience’s sake, had somehow brought his whole audience to Antarctica to see penguins.

  One after another, Ephraim’s group of penguins fell on their bellies and slid across the ice. They were fat and sleek. Ephraim reached out toward the nearest one, and it snapped at him with its beak.

  “Honk!”

  “All right.” He raised his hands into the air. “I won’t pet you.”

  The penguin eyed him suspiciously then went back to skidding on its belly. Ephraim tagged along after it. He had only ever seen illustrations of penguins before, and he’d thought that they looked solemn, as though they had dressed for a funeral. But they were such funny birds in person. They paddled against the ice with their wings and feet just like they were swimming. They trumpeted and nipped at one another while they played a rowdy game of follow the leader right to the edge of the ice.

  Ephraim stopped a few feet away from that edge. The ocean was a blue so deep it was almost black. He wasn’t sure what kind of creatures swam in water that dark and cold, but he felt certain they had very sharp teeth. The penguins honked their good-byes and splashed in without a trace of fear. Ephraim waved as the last disappeared beneath the waves.

  Before he could feel disappointed that they had gone, the world changed again.

  A chariot pulled by four horses roared past. The air was made of dust and heat, horse sweat and sunlight. The children from the Lightbender’s show had joined an enormous crowd of ancient Romans who were cheering for charioteers as they raced around a track at violent speeds. The girl beside Ephraim shrieked as another chariot charged by them.