The Bootlace Magician

by Cassie Beasley

  Micah clambered up a hill of tumbled doors as quickly as he dared, then slid down the other side on a battered metal hatch.

  It was still so quiet in the warehouse that Micah’s footsteps echoed as he ran the last few yards to the tent flap. He reached for it, steeling himself for whatever lay beyond, but before his hands touched the fabric, a roar unlike anything he had ever imagined shook the tent.

  The sound broke the air. It pummeled Micah’s bones. His ears throbbed in time with his split lip, and he threw his shaking hands up to cover them.

  The Mighty Conflagration, he thought.

  It was at that moment that Micah realized he’d been wrong about something. After meeting Victoria, he had been so sure that she herself was the biggest threat to Circus Mirandus. But she was only a magician, only human, no matter what she told herself.

  Whatever had made that sound was something more.

  That’s not an animal, he thought, still clutching his head. It’s a force of nature.

  The roaring cut off abruptly, and after a few seconds, Micah stepped cautiously out of the warehouse. He stared around, shocked. Everything looked exactly as it should have.

  Afternoon sunlight pierced the clouds, shining down on the tents. They gleamed, bright as always, and over the multicolored rooftops Micah spied the huge, scarlet menagerie.

  The knot tied around his finger was tugging toward it, and the pull was definitely harder than it was supposed to be. Micah was close to Fish now. The tug should’ve been faint, more of a suggestion than anything else.

  He looked down at the knot. “You’d better not be malfunctioning. Not today.”

  He set out, trying to be smart and sneaky about it. He didn’t want to get himself in trouble when his emergency bracelets were all gone and the whole circus was engaged in a battle.

  But where was the battle? Where was the source of that enormous roar?

  Micah passed the dining tent, storage tents, the greenhouses. He didn’t see a soul. It was eerie, and he had to resist the urge to rip open every single flap he passed. He wanted to shout, to demand that someone appear and explain to him what was going on.

  Suddenly, the ground thumped underneath his feet. He froze, ready to get down in case it was another dragonquake, but it was only a thump.

  He took a few steps, and the thump came again.

  It was a feeling he recognized from moving days, he realized, like the largest of the tent poles falling. Something heavy was hitting the ground in another part of the circus.

  Okay, he thought. No need to panic yet. You don’t even know what it is.

  A shadow fell over Micah. He ducked automatically, and whatever it was passed by. But another shadow came, and then another. Huge dark blots, silent and winged. They skated over the grass, heading toward the menagerie.

  Micah looked up. The dire hawks, nearly invisible, were cutting through the air, only their shadows giving them away. And soaring just above the lead bird, her hair catching the sunlight, was Victoria.

  She did not, Micah noticed, have on her scarf.

  He opened his mouth to shout a warning to whoever might hear it. But as Victoria approached the menagerie, that bone-shaking roar came again.

  And this time, Micah saw where it was coming from.

  The Mighty Conflagration rose up among the rooftops, his iridescent scales gleaming. His head was the size of a dump truck, and as he opened his maw, Micah drew in a breath at the rows of fangs lining his jaws, every one as long as Micah’s arm and turned inward.

  Conflagration didn’t have wings yet, but Micah couldn’t see why he would ever need them. His serpentine body, his roar, that snout full of teeth—it was already too much to fathom.

  For almost half a minute, the dragon shook his head furiously, like he was trying to clear it. Then he bellowed with rage and struck at the menagerie tent, biting at the roof like a snake.

  In an instant, the volume of the day was turned up to full blast.

  Magicians shouted. Animals cried out in panic. Tent fabric creaked. Ropes snapped.

  The Lightbender, Micah realized. He’d been doing what Chintzy had said—calming the dragon so people and animals could make their escape. He must have been using so much power that the illusion had bled out, creating that strange false quiet.

  But that was over now. The Lightbender hadn’t been able to hold the dragon forever, just as he hadn’t been able to trick Terpsichore into eating her dinner when she was a foal.

  The game was up. The battle was starting in earnest.

  Micah ran for the scarlet tent, trying not to imagine what must be going on inside.

  * * *

  The rest of Victoria’s flock came before Micah reached the menagerie—a storm of rainbow-colored birds descending all at once.

  Micah saw a small green parrot drop an egg that sizzled and hissed when it hit tent fabric, eating through like acid, and he spied a giant eagle dragging what he was afraid was one of the pangolins into the air. But most of the birds began to circle over the menagerie, swirling in tighter and tighter rings.

  Micah kept looking up as he ran, but he couldn’t spot Victoria. She’d left two of her dire hawks behind. They were diving toward the ground again and again—fighting magicians, Micah assumed.

  But Victoria must have flown off with the third hawk. No doubt she was trying to stay out of sight and out of range. The drakling, so close to the menagerie, was such a threat that nobody could afford to hunt down the Bird Woman yet.

  Micah dashed around a tent, approaching the menagerie from behind. He could see his fellow magicians now, fleeing and fighting and trying to round up frightened animals. But in the chaos he couldn’t make sense of who was doing what. He had no idea how to help.

  He dove under Rosebud’s wagon and paused for a few seconds with his forehead pressed to the ground, trying to catch his breath. Then, he crawled forward on his belly to get a better look at what was happening.

  No, he thought. No way.

  Conflagration was so massive Micah could barely believe he was real. The drakling had burst out of the ground on the midway. Half the booths and stalls and a couple of neighboring tents had disappeared into the pit he’d left behind in the soil. It looked like he had slithered straight to the menagerie, but the Strongfolk had intercepted him before he made it inside.

  They were still holding him off. Five of the Strongmen and Pennyroyal had grabbed the drakling by his massive tail, and they stuck to him like burrs no matter how he thrashed. Other members of the Sisterhood were dealing with his head.

  They had thrown nets over Conflagration’s crest—a comb of flattened spines that started on top of his head and ran halfway down his powerful neck. They almost looked like feathers, but hard and razor sharp.

  Not sharp enough to cut through my nets, Micah thought with satisfaction.

  The Strongwomen were using the netting to scale the drakling’s spine. As Micah watched, one of them made a powerful leap for one enormous green eye, swinging with her sword. But even though she landed a blow on the eyelid that would have felled a tree, the sword barely left a scratch in Conflagration’s scales.

  The real damage was coming from Thuja.

  The Strongwoman stood a couple dozen yards away from the drakling, nocking arrow after arrow into her bow. She fired them methodically, her face so calm she might have been shooting at a wooden target. Sometimes, she took a shot at Conflagration’s head to distract him, but most of the greenish arrows buried themselves with sickening thwacks in the beast’s side. They all hit a small spot over what Micah assumed must be the heart.

  Thuja’s plan seemed to be to punch through the wall of thick dragonflesh one arrow at a time.

  The rest of the fight was harder to understand.

  Micah looked everywhere for the Lightbender, but he couldn’t see him. He spied Rosebud, though. She
was helping a magician who’d been hit by one of the acid eggs.

  And there was Firesleight. She crouched behind Thuja, her face intent, her eyes fixed on the arrows digging into Conflagration’s hide. If she was trying to set the drakling on fire, it wasn’t working at all.

  Almost everybody else raced around the menagerie tent, dodging the drakling’s crushing coils as they went. They were trying to protect the circus’s animals from dive-bombing birds and the enraged Conflagration, but it wasn’t an easy task. The frightened creatures had scattered in every direction.

  Micah gasped when Big Jean stomped out of the tent, a dozen smaller animals clinging to her broad back. She was too large and too slow; there was no way she could escape without attracting the drakling’s attention.

  But the world’s most intelligent elephant waited for one of Thuja’s arrows to bite deep. As Conflagration rounded on the archer, Big Jean made a break for it. She ran right toward Rosebud’s wagon and then past it, not pausing for a second.

  A moment later, Terpsichore burst out of the menagerie.

  Unlike the other animals, the young unicorn hadn’t seen fit to use the entrance. She’d charged right at the patch of tent wall nearest the wagon. Her sharp horn ripped through the fabric, and the rest of her followed.

  Run, thought Micah. Run away. Go.

  But Terp snorted and turned back to the hole she’d made in the tent.

  “No!” shouted Micah, scrambling out from under the wagon. “No, Terp! Go! You have to leave!”

  He ran toward the menagerie, swatting at something feathery and shrieking that flew into his face. But before he reached the hole in the wall, Terpsichore emerged again. She had the tail end of the Lightbender’s coat clamped in her mouth. The unconscious illusionist was dangling upside down, his head trailing on the ground, only one arm still caught in a leather sleeve.

  Terp dragged him easily, apparently unaware that she was scraping the Lightbender’s face along the rough ground. When she spotted Micah, she dropped the illusionist and started chiming, trumpeting, and tootling for all she was worth, like she was trying to explain that there was a dragon here and they really must get away from it.

  “I know, I know!” shouted Micah, dodging sideways as she tried to grab on to him with her teeth. Apparently, Terp was in a rescuing mood, and she thought Micah would do just as well as the Lightbender.

  Micah fell to his knees beside his guardian and reached for his neck. Rosebud had taught him how to check pulses as part of their first aid course, and he was so relieved to find the Lightbender’s that tears sprang into his eyes.

  He wasn’t sure what had knocked the magician out. It might have been the dragon breaking free of the illusion, or it might have been Terpsichore herself. The unicorn was stamping her feet and whistling shrilly at Micah. He had a feeling she wasn’t going to stick around for long even out of loyalty.

  “I need you to help me,” Micah said, fumbling for his ball of twine. “Please lie down.”

  He’d thought it would be difficult, calming Terp enough to get her to cooperate, but he managed it quickly. “Good girl,” he said. “Thank you. Just hang on a second.”

  He grabbed the Lightbender’s coat and heaved, dragging his limp body onto the unicorn’s back.

  Terp froze. Her ears twitched. She stared at Micah, a look of such utter offense in her eyes that he was sure she had forgotten about the battle altogether.

  Unicorns did not do horseback rides.

  “He’s not really riding you,” Micah said breathlessly. He strung twine around Terp’s neck and then started securing the Lightbender in place, his hands shaking. He didn’t even know what kind of knots he was tying; he was just trying to hurry. “He’s totally unconscious. Think of him like a package.”

  Terpsichore looked like she was thinking about bucking the Lightbender right off.

  In less than a minute, Micah was done. He broke the twine and stuck what little was left back into his pocket. He decided against making the knots holding the Lightbender unbreakable. After what had happened with Bowler, he couldn’t risk it.

  “Go,” said Micah. “Please, go. Take him away from here.”

  Terp stood. She shifted her weight. She was going to buck the Lightbender off.

  “It’s a game!” Micah blurted.

  Terpsichore loved games. She tootled at him questioningly.

  “I’m giving the Lightbender to you,” said Micah. “He’s your new toy. And you have to keep him away from everyone else. Now go.”

  He swatted the unicorn’s rump. She didn’t even notice.

  “Go!” Micah yelled, pointing in the direction Big Jean had run.

  The raised voice brought Terp back to her senses. She tossed her head once, then trumpeted and took off, horn aimed down like a lance to threaten anyone in her path. As she galloped away, her tail streamed behind her and the Lightbender bounced against her back.

  Before Micah could call out a good-bye, before he could tell the unicorn to stay safe and run fast, she was already out of sight. She’ll be halfway to London in a minute, he thought. And he was so relieved he almost cheered.

  But not all of the animals had Big Jean’s good sense or Terpsichore’s speed and determination. Too many of the creatures were confused. They snarled and roared and shrieked with fright, some of them fighting the very magicians who were trying to save them, others fleeing aimlessly through the melee.

  Micah spotted the two-headed camel standing petrified not far from Rosebud’s wagon, and he hurried over to give it directions. As soon as he approached, one of the heads butted him in the stomach, and he ended up on the ground, clinging to the spokes of a wooden wagon wheel while he waited for the world to stop spinning.

  He’d gotten the camel moving, but it almost trampled the reading goat in its haste to leave. The goat, not a tower of courage in the first place, panicked and turned, running straight for the dragon, bleating in alarm.

  Micah was sure the goat was a goner. It had no magical powers that could save it, only a passion for reading magazines and newspapers. But to Micah’s surprise, one of the Strongmen flung himself off the drakling’s tail and raced toward the goat, tackling it out of the way at the last second.

  It seemed like a terrible risk to take. Then Micah realized—they were all afraid to let even a single animal, no matter how small, fall prey to the drakling’s jaws.

  They didn’t want Conflagration to eat. He was so big that any magical meal—be it magician or goat—might give him the last bit of power he needed to grow his wings.

  And then how would they stop him?

  Suddenly, Conflagration dropped his head to the ground and rolled, over and over. None of the magicians expected the maneuver, and several of the Strongfolk were thrown off. Bowler skipped over the grass like a stone across the surface of a lake, sending up fountains of dirt with every strike until he landed a couple of yards from Micah.

  But the rolling motion drove the arrows in the drakling’s side deeper. He hissed as his own dark blood stained his scales.

  He rose up again, his head soaring over the top of the tent, and Micah poked his own head around the side of the wagon to see better. He covered his ears, expecting another roar, but instead, Conflagration made a plaintive, whistling sort of hiss. It was almost cute.

  Micah didn’t understand what it meant, but then a bird with feathers the color of a sunset flew into the drakling’s mouth and down his throat.

  Conflagration made the noise again, more insistently this time, and five golden swans flew into his mouth in a glittering V.

  “Why that rotten, foul . . .” Bowler muttered as he got back to his feet.

  Micah knew how he felt. The drakling was tired of trying to catch the menagerie animals, so Victoria was feeding it her own birds. It was an obvious thing to do, but it was so revolting that Micah couldn’t quite grasp it.<
br />
  The drakling didn’t even chew the offerings. He just let them fly down his gullet, and then he reached up to beg for more.

  Wherever she was, Victoria gave in. The huge flock circling the menagerie began to funnel down, not to attack but to pour themselves into Conflagration’s waiting mouth. One after another after another, the birds’ lives winked out of existence so fast Micah couldn’t count them.

  This is it, he thought, dread taking root in him. They can’t stop it now.

  Micah watched, unable to look away, until suddenly something gave his ring finger a sharp yank. Ow! He blinked down at the locator knot. What was that about?

  The knot pulled so hard that Micah’s hand was jerked out from under him.

  It’s not supposed to do that.

  Then, something happened inside Micah’s head.

  It was like hearing a voice, but not quite. Like having a dream, but not exactly. A certainty blossomed inside him, and he knew it as deeply and clearly as his own name.

  Fish was scared.

  And he wanted Micah to come save him.

  THE DIRE HAWK

  Micah raced past Conflagration’s coiling scales and whipping tail. He didn’t look up to see if some awful bird was about to fall on him, and he didn’t glance to the sides to find out if worried magicians were trying to stop him.

  Speed, he figured, was as good a tactic as any under the circumstances. And anyway, if you ran hard enough, then you couldn’t think about being afraid.

  The locator knot wasn’t tugging toward the menagerie. It had changed direction during the battle. Which meant someone had taken Fish, either to protect him or . . .

  Micah pumped his arms. He forced his legs to go faster.

  Tents and animals and magicians flashed past, and he didn’t have the presence of mind to recognize any of them.

  Where are you? he thought. Fish, tell me.

  But he didn’t get that jolt of certainty again. All he could do was follow the locator’s pull.