Circus Mirandus

by Cassie Beasley

  “Ephi wouldn’t lie,” Gertie repeated.

  Victoria set down her broom. She spread her arms wide. “If magic is real,” she said, “prove it.”

  Gertie squinted at her. “How would I do that?”

  Victoria shrugged. “I’m sure I have no idea. If Ephraim’s stories were real, I suppose you could jump off something tall, and I could fly up to catch you before you hit the ground.”

  It wasn’t that Gertrudis was stupid. She just had an inordinate amount of faith in her brother to tell the truth and in Victoria to keep her safe.

  She coiled the bootlace neatly and put it aside. She used the porch’s banister to climb up onto the roof.

  “You’re going to be sorry,” said Victoria.

  Gertie stood on the sharp edge of the tin roof and stared down. “I don’t know why you’re testing me like this. I really do believe in magic. I know you’ll catch me.”

  Ephraim came home just in time to see his sister leap.

  Victoria didn’t catch her.

  She didn’t even try.

  The tree house was quiet for a long while after Grandpa Ephraim finished his story.

  “It was only a broken arm,” he said eventually. “It could have been much worse for poor Gertie. But I’m sure you understand why I had to ask Victoria to leave.”

  Micah privately thought that his grandfather should have had Victoria arrested.

  “I woke up one morning a few months later to find your father screaming his head off on my front stoop. Only a few days old, mind you, and not a stitch of clothing on him. He was wrapped in a bath towel. If she hadn’t tucked a white feather in with him, I might not have known who he was.”

  Possibly, Micah thought, Victoria was the kind of person they didn’t even want in prison.

  “I never found out what happened to her after that. To be honest, I didn’t want to know. I don’t think Victoria ever understood love. Not really.” Grandpa Ephraim coughed. “I am glad I married her.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m glad because she gave me your father.”

  “Oh.” Micah looked up through the branches of the tree. A couple of stars winked at him. “I don’t remember him as well as I should. Or mom. What they were like, I mean. I mostly remember how they looked. Sometimes, I worry I’ll forget that, too.”

  His grandfather squeezed him around the shoulders in a one-armed hug. “Well, they were splendid people, if I do say so myself. And they gave me the best grandson in the whole world.”

  When Grandpa Ephraim said things like that, Micah almost believed they were true.

  They stayed up together to wait for the sunrise, even though the coughing was getting worse. “Your miracle?” Micah had to ask just one more time.

  “I’m waiting for an answer. I hope I’ll have it soon.”

  It took them a long time to climb down the tree house’s rope ladder. When he got to the bottom, Grandpa Ephraim had to hunch over his knees to catch his breath. When he stood up, he said, “Thank you for sharing this night with me.”

  “It was the best I’ve ever had,” Micah said. Even as he said it, he was afraid that there would never be another one like it.

  “It’s the best I’ve had,” his grandfather replied, “since I was ten years old.”

  Grandpa Ephraim shook his head when he saw Dr. Simon’s car was parked on the street out front. Aunt Gertrudis must have insisted that he come over. Right before they walked in the door, Micah’s grandfather looked down at him.

  “I do wish you and your friend had talked the Lightbender into coming for a visit,” he said. “It would have been something to see him standing in my very own house.”

  “I don’t think he would fit in,” Micah replied as they stepped into the living room.

  Grandpa Ephraim chuckled; the blub glub had come back. “That’s the whole point of him,” he said. “That’s the whole point of it all.”

  Then he sat down on the sofa and started to wheeze.

  It didn’t stop.

  Grandpa Ephraim’s eyes were closed, his chest was heaving up and down, but he didn’t seem to be getting enough air. Then a horrible rattling sound joined the blubbing, glubbing, and wheezing.

  Micah wasn’t quite sure what happened next, but he thought he must have called for help because Aunt Gertrudis appeared at the foot of the stairs. “Stop caterwauling.”

  Dr. Simon, looking startled, was behind her. He ran to Grandpa Ephraim and checked his pulse. Then he swore and started pulling things out of the duffel bag he always brought with him when he made house calls. He only paused for long enough to point at Micah and say, “Get him out of here, Ms. Tuttle.”

  Aunt Gertrudis took Micah to the kitchen. “You’ll stay right here if you know what’s good for you,” she said before she left.

  He sat down at the table and stared at the daisy-patterned tablecloth for a hundred years. When Dr. Simon finally came into the room, he knelt beside Micah.

  “Now, Micah,” he said, “I know we haven’t talked about this much, but you’re a smart young man and I know you can understand.”

  “Is he gone?” Micah whispered.

  Dr. Simon sighed. “Your grandfather is still with us, but you need to realize that it’s only going to be for a very little while. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Micah said. Even though it wasn’t. Even though it never would be.

  “Your great-aunt and I are going to bring his things down from upstairs and try to make him comfortable right here on the sofa. We’re going to do everything we can, but he doesn’t have much longer. The rest of the day at the most. You understand?”

  “Okay,” Micah said. He couldn’t find another word.

  Aunt Gertrudis appeared. She looked at Micah almost as if she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. She and the doctor headed upstairs to bring down Grandpa Ephraim’s bedding and his breathing machine.

  Micah went into the living room to sit with his grandfather, but he stopped in the doorway. “Chintzy? What are you doing here?”

  The parrot had just flown through the open front door. “I want to state for the record that it wasn’t my decision to make!” she squawked. She landed on the back of the sofa and stared sideways at Grandpa Ephraim. “Is he asleep?”

  “Do you have a message?” Micah asked.

  Chintzy shifted from foot to foot. “I have an answer.”

  “I’m awake.”

  Grandpa Ephraim’s voice was so weak that Micah wasn’t sure he’d actually said it until his eyes opened. He hurried forward and crouched beside the sofa.

  “Answer?” Grandpa Ephraim gasped.

  Chintzy’s feathers puffed. “No.” She took off without another word.

  “No.” Grandpa Ephraim stared at the ceiling.

  “What’s ‘no’ the answer to?” Micah asked.

  “It’s the wrong answer,” he said. “They’re wrong.” It was hard to tell because of how he was breathing, but Micah thought he sounded angry.

  Grandpa Ephraim reached out then and clutched at the front of Micah’s pajama shirt. “You have to go,” he said. “Circus Mirandus. Now.”

  Micah shook his head. “I can’t leave you. Doctor Simon said . . .”

  He trailed off. His grandfather’s eyes were clear and so very serious.

  “Go,” he wheezed. “Bring him back. Lightbender. Miracle.” He released Micah’s shirt. “‘No’ is the wrong answer.”

  The kitchen telephone hung on the wall next to the refrigerator. Jenny’s phone number was as easy to remember as she had said it would be.

  A woman, who must have been her mother, answered. “I’m afraid Jenny’s getting ready for school,” she said. She had a faint accent. “I can have her call you back if you like.”

  “It’s an emergency.”

  “What kind of emer
gency?” her voice was concerned.

  “Homework.”

  “Oh. I’ll get her for you.”

  Micah thought it said a lot about Jenny’s family that homework was considered a valid emergency.

  A minute later, someone yawned into the telephone. “Micah? What’s wrong?”

  “We have to get the Lightbender to come as soon as possible. This morning. You have a plan, right? Can you come with me?”

  “Now? What about school? My parents won’t let me skip.”

  “Just pretend like you’re going to school, and don’t get on the bus.”

  “Micah,” Jenny said. “I can’t. My mom drives me.”

  Micah couldn’t think fast enough. He needed Jenny with her advice and her plans. “Well try, okay? Meet me there.”

  He hung up the phone before she could answer. Dr. Simon and Aunt Gertrudis were on their way down the stairs. They would see him leaving if he ran out the front door.

  So he climbed out the kitchen window.

  Mirandus Head had suspected from the beginning that the answer to Ephraim’s final request wouldn’t be the one he’d hoped for. He had come to Peal to appease the Man Who Bends Light and to see if there was any outstanding reason to change his mind.

  It hadn’t been easy for him to refuse. He had watched Micah carefully during his visit to the circus. He had liked the boy right away, just as he had Ephraim, and in his own way, he was sympathetic to their plight. But his first responsibility was always to Circus Mirandus. He couldn’t afford to make emotional decisions.

  The answer was no.

  The manager thought that Micah would accept that. He felt sure that he had the boy’s measure. With the difficult decision made, he turned his thoughts to other matters, and Circus Mirandus went back to business as usual.

  As if anything could be usual when Micah Tuttle’s grandfather had given him a mission.

  Circus Mirandus was every bit as beautiful in the daylight, but there seemed to be fewer people around, maybe because of school. Other than Micah, only two children waited in front of Geoffrey’s stand to have their tickets examined. Neither of them was Jenny. Micah knew it wasn’t fair to expect her, but he was so surprised not to see her that he realized he must have been counting on her even more than he’d thought.

  Geoffrey let the other children in. He squinted at Micah through his monocle, looking just as alert as he had last time. Micah wondered when he slept.

  “Ticket?” Geoffrey asked, as though he had never seen Micah before that moment.

  “I’m Micah Tuttle. I have an invitation.”

  “Oh, an invitation,” he said. “Let’s see it then.”

  Micah frowned at him. “You saw it just the other night. Don’t you remember?”

  Geoffrey drew himself up to his full height and pointed at the entrance sign over his head. “I’ve been here since the very beginnin’,” he announced. “The very beginnin’. And I remember everythin’.”

  “Right,” said Micah. He didn’t have time for this. “So I can go in?”

  “If you have a ticket.” Geoffrey had a bored look on his face, but there was something in his eyes that was paying close attention to Micah.

  Micah stared at the tents. They were so close. “Was the invitation only good for one night?”

  Geoffrey scowled so that his monocle looked like it was cutting into his eyebrow. “The invitation is good for as long as Mr. Head wants it to be,” he said. “And Mr. Head doesn’t want it to be anymore.”

  No. Micah’s stomach dropped all the way to the soles of his feet. “I need to come in. I’ll apologize to Mr. Head. I’ll do anything you want.”

  The ticket taker looked unimpressed, and Micah suddenly knew that he wasn’t the first person who had begged. How many people must have tried, over thousands of years, to be let in once their tickets had expired? How many had succeeded?

  “More’ve tried than you can imagine,” Geoffrey said, as though Micah had asked the question out loud. He switched his monocle to the other eye. “And none get one minute more than they’re given. That’s my job.”

  He pointed again at the sign over his head. “And I’ve got a perfect record.”

  A teenage girl holding a jack-o’-lantern appeared behind Micah. Geoffrey didn’t even blink. “Two hours,” he said without looking at her.

  To Micah, he said, “No ticket, no entry.”

  Micah shook his head stubbornly and stepped forward. Before he could take a second step he heard a low growl. Something white flashed at the corner of his eye.

  Bibi.

  Micah backed away, but the growling didn’t stop. It got louder. Micah kept walking.

  The invisible tiger didn’t go quiet until he reached the edge of the recreation complex. There, he stopped to think. Knowing that nobody had made it past Geoffrey and Bibi since 500 B.C. was the opposite of encouraging. On any other day, Micah might have given up, but this wasn’t any other day.

  He looked around for inspiration. There had to be something that would turn all of the noes into yeses. There had to be a way to make things right, if only he could find it.

  And he did.

  Micah had three things that none of those other people trying to break into Circus Mirandus had ever had—orders from Grandpa Ephraim, Jenny Mendoza for a friend, and a really big gorilla.

  It shouldn’t have been easy for a kid to steal a giant gorilla balloon in broad daylight, but to Micah’s surprise, getting to the big ape was simple. It wasn’t as if the park had full-time balloon guards. Micah ignored the locked gate and climbed right over the short fence onto the ball field.In the sunshine, the balloons looked much less mysterious. He checked the knots that held the gorilla’s ropes to metal stakes in the ground. They weren’t secure by Tuttle standards. So the problem wasn’t getting the balloon; the problem was attaching himself to the balloon. Micah didn’t want to be stuck floating through the air for hours, but he also didn’t want to fall.

  He thought about Bibi’s fangs and shivered. Grandpa Ephraim’s counting on me, he reminded himself. I have to risk it.

  It took several minutes to undo three of the four ropes, and Micah’s hands were sweaty with nerves. The gorilla had tipped onto its side in the air overhead, and it would be pretty noticeable even from a distance.

  Micah took the laces out of his tennis shoes. Not long enough, but maybe . . . He took off his pajama shirt and rolled it into a long tube. He wrapped it around his chest and tied it, using a shoelace to secure the ends with the strongest knot he knew. Now he had his own pajama harness. Well, actually it was more like a pajama sash, but Micah decided that thinking of it as a harness made it feel safer. He attached the harness to the gorilla’s final tether and bent to unknot the rope from its stake.

  It was tighter than the others had been. Micah jammed his finger while he was loosening it, but it came undone for him just like the others had. For an instant, he was excited that he’d done what he’d set out to do. Then, his pajama harness caught him under the armpits and yanked him off the ground. He yelped and clamped his eyes shut.

  Micah stretched his toes down and felt nothing. The wind was at his back. It’s okay, he told himself. You can do this for Grandpa Ephraim.

  He forced himself to look around only to discover that things weren’t going quite the way he had expected. He had thought he would be up a lot higher and moving a lot faster. The gorilla was so big. He’d assumed they would rocket toward space together and toward Circus Mirandus, and at just the right moment, Micah would let go so that he could land in the circus and not go splat.

  It sounded ridiculous, now that he reconsidered it.

  Since wind always blew toward Circus Mirandus, he was going the right way. The problem was that he was only about eight feet off the ground, and even though he was rising steadily, it didn’t seem to be happening quickly en
ough. At this rate, Bibi would eat him from the ankles up.

  He held on to his harness with both arms as he and the gorilla drifted over a chain-link fence. All right, Micah, he thought. There are a couple of things you can do now.

  Should he hang on and hope for the best? Or let go? He probably wouldn’t hurt himself too badly from this height, and he could try to get into the circus some more normal way. His shoulders were already aching. He decided to let go.

  Unfortunately, it had taken him quite a while to decide, and when he looked down to see what he would be landing on, Micah realized that eight feet had turned into fifteen feet. Now, letting go seemed like a very bad idea. The wind picked up speed, and Micah gripped his harness tighter.

  He lost a shoe as he sailed over the bleachers beside one of the soccer fields. He stared down at it. It was tiny. He drifted higher and higher, until the sight of the ground made him dizzy and he had to look up at the balloon. He tried to swallow his nerves, but his mouth was so dry that they got caught in his throat.

  It was the music spiraling up that finally made him look down again. He was passing right over the ticket stand now, and the little man that was Geoffrey never glanced skyward.

  Micah soared over Circus Mirandus. He couldn’t see the faces of the people below him, but they were obviously all having a wonderful time. The children were running from tent to tent. Performers were turning somersaults. He was so far away from them and so worried for Grandpa Ephraim and so sure that he had just made the biggest mistake ever by tying himself to a space-bound gorilla. He felt like he was part of a different species.

  It’s okay, he told himself. You’ve got a plan.

  The plan was for Micah to let go of the harness when he was right over the center of Mr. Head’s menagerie. He would fall through the roof of the tent and land in the giant fish tank. He was fairly sure that Grandpa Ephraim’s fish wouldn’t attack him. He would splash down in all that water, and he wouldn’t even be hurt.

  Jenny had said an aerial assault on Circus Mirandus would work. Micah trusted her judgment.