Is rounded with a sleep.
—PROSPERO, THE TEMPEST, ACT IV, SCENE 1
It is late, so there is no line for the fortune-teller.
While outside the cool night air is scented with caramel and smoke, this tent is warm and smells of incense and roses and beeswax.
You do not wait long in the antechamber before passing through the beaded curtain.
It makes a sound like rain as the beads collide. The room beyond is lined with candles.
You sit down at the table in the center of the room. Your chair is surprisingly comfortable.
The fortune-teller’s face is hidden behind a fine black veil, but the light catches her eyes as she smiles.
She has no crystal ball. No deck of cards.
Only a handful of sparkling silver stars that she scatters across the velvet-covered table, reading them like runes.
She refers to things she could not know with uncanny specificity.
She tells you facts you already knew. Information you might have guessed. Possibilities you cannot fathom.
The stars on the table almost seem to move in the undulating candlelight. Shifting and changing before your eyes.
Before you leave, the fortune-teller reminds you that the future is never set in stone.
Blueprints
LONDON, DECEMBER 1902
Poppet Murray stands on the front steps of la maison Lefèvre, a leather briefcase in hand and a large satchel sitting by her feet. She rings the doorbell a dozen times, alternating with a series of loud knocks, though she can hear the bell echoing within the house.
When the door finally swings open, Chandresh himself stands behind it, his violet shirt untucked and a crumpled piece of paper in his hand.
“You were smaller last time I saw you,” he says, looking Poppet over from her boots to her upswept red hair. “And there were two of you.”
“My brother is in France,” Poppet says, picking up the satchel and following Chandresh inside.
The golden elephant-headed statue in the hall is in need of polishing. The house is in a state of disarray, or as much disarray as a house crammed from floor to ceiling with antiques and books and objets d’art can be in its inherent cozy, cluttered way. It does not shine as brightly as it had when she ran through the halls with Widget what seems like more than a few years ago, chasing marmalade kittens through a rainbow of guests.
“What happened to your staff?” she asks as they ascend the stairs.
“I dismissed the lot of them,” Chandresh says. “They were useless, could not keep a single thing in order. I retained only the cooks. Haven’t had a dinner in quite some time, but at least they know what they’re doing.”
Poppet follows him down the column-lined hall to his study. She has never been in this particular room before, but she doubts it was always so covered with blueprints and sketches and empty brandy bottles.
Chandresh wanders across the room, adding the crumpled piece of paper in his hand to a stack on a chair, and staring idly at a set of blueprints hanging over the windows.
Poppet clears a space on the desk to put the briefcase down, moving books and antlers and carved jade turtles. She leaves the satchel on the floor nearby.
“Why are you here?” Chandresh says, turning and looking at Poppet as though he has only just noticed her presence.
Poppet snaps open the briefcase on the desk, pulling out a dense pile of paper.
“I need you to do a favor for me, Chandresh,” she says.
“What might that be?”
“I would like you to sign over ownership of the circus.” Poppet finds a fountain pen amongst the clutter on the desk and tests it on a scrap of paper to see if it is properly inked.
“The circus was never mine to begin with,” Chandresh mutters.
“Of course it was,” Poppet says, drawing a swirling letter P. “It was your idea. But I know you don’t have time for it, and I thought it might be best if you relinquished your position as proprietor.”
Chandresh considers this for a moment, but then he nods and walks over to the desk to read through the contract.
“You have Ethan and Lainie listed here, but not Tante Padva,” he says as he peruses it.
“I’ve spoken with all of them already,” Poppet says. “Madame Padva wished not to be involved any longer, but she is confident that Miss Burgess can handle her responsibilities.”
“Who is this Mr. Clarke?” Chandresh asks.
“He is a very dear friend of mine,” Poppet says, a soft blush warming her cheeks. “And he will take excellent care of the circus.”
When Chandresh reaches the end of the document, she hands him the pen.
He signs his name with a wobbling flourish, letting the pen drop onto the desk.
“I appreciate this more than I can say.” Poppet blows on the ink to dry it before she returns the contract to the briefcase. Chandresh brushes her words away with a lazy wave of his hand, walking back to the window and staring at the expanse of blue papers hanging over it.
“What are the blueprints for?” Poppet asks after she closes the briefcase.
“I have all of these … plans from Ethan and I don’t know what to do with them,” Chandresh says, waving an arm around at the multitudes of paper.
Poppet removes her coat, leaving it draped over the back of the desk chair, and takes a closer look at the blueprints and sketches hanging from shelves and tacked to mirrors and paintings and windows. Some are complete rooms, others are bits of exterior architecture or elaborate archways and halls.
She stops when she reaches a dartboard with a silver knife embedded in the patterned cork, its blade marred with dark stains. The knife vanishes as Poppet continues walking, though Chandresh does not notice.
“They are meant to be renovations to the house,” he says as she tours the room, “but they do not fit together properly.”
“It’s a museum,” Poppet says, overlaying the pieces in her mind and seeing where they match up with the building she has already seen in the stars. They are completely out of order, but it is unmistakable. She pulls down a set of blueprints and switches it with another, arranging them story by story. “It’s not this building,” she explains as Chandresh watches her curiously. “It’s a new one.” She takes a series of doors, alternate versions of the same possible entrance, and lays them side by side along the floor, letting each lead to a different room.
Chandresh watches as she rearranges the plans, a grin spreading across his face as he begins to see what she is doing.
He makes adjustments to the flood of Prussian blue paper himself, responding to her arrangements, surrounding replicas of ancient Egyptian temples with columns of curving bookshelves. They sit together on the floor, combining rooms and halls and stairs.
Chandresh starts to call for Marco, but catches himself.
“I keep forgetting that he’s gone,” he says to Poppet. “Left one day and did not come back. Didn’t even leave a note. You would think someone who was constantly writing notes would leave one.”
“I believe his departure was unplanned,” Poppet says. “And I know he regrets not being able to properly settle his responsibilities here.”
“Do you know why he left?” Chandresh asks, looking up at her.
“He left to be with Celia Bowen,” Poppet says, unable to keep from smiling.
“Ha!” Chandresh exclaims. “Didn’t think he had it in him. Good for them. Let’s have a toast.”
“A toast?”
“You’re right, there’s no champagne,” Chandresh says, pushing aside a pile of empty brandy bottles as he lays out another string of sketches along the floor. “We’ll dedicate a room to them, which one do you think they would like?”
Poppet looks over the blueprints and sketches. There are several that she thinks either or both of them might like. She stops at a drawing of a round, windowless room illuminated only by light that filters through the koi pond enclosed in glass above it. Serene and enchanting.
Chandresh takes a pencil and writes “Dedicate to M. Alisdair and C. Bowen” along the edge of the paper.
“I could help you find a new assistant,” Poppet offers. “I can stay in London for a while.”
“I would appreciate that, my dear.”
The large satchel that Poppet had placed on the floor nearby suddenly falls to its side with a soft thump.
“What’s in that bag?” Chandresh asks, eyeing it with a certain amount of trepidation.
“I brought you a present,” Poppet says brightly.
She rights the bag, opening it carefully and pulling out a small black kitten with splotches of white along its legs and tail. It looks as though it has been dipped in cream.
“Her name is Ara,” Poppet tells him. “She’ll come when she’s called and she knows a few tricks but mostly she likes attention and sitting in windows. I thought you might like the company.”
She puts the kitten gently on the floor and holds her hand above it. The kitten stretches up on its hind legs with a soft mew and licks Poppet’s fingers before turning its attention to Chandresh.
“Hello, Ara,” he says.
“I’m not going to give you your memory back,” Poppet says, watching Chandresh as the kitten attempts to crawl onto his lap. “I don’t know if I could even if I tried, though Widge could probably manage it. At this point, I don’t think you need that weight on you. I think looking forward will be better than looking back.”
“Whatever are you talking about?” Chandresh asks, picking up the kitten and scratching it behind the ears as it purrs.
“Nothing,” Poppet says. “Thank you, Chandresh.”
She leans over and kisses him on the cheek.
As soon as her lips touch his skin, Chandresh feels better than he has in years, as though the last of a fog has been lifted from him. His mind is clear, the plans for the museum becoming cohesive, ideas for future projects aligning themselves in ways that seem completely manageable.
Chandresh and Poppet spend hours arranging and adding to the blueprints, creating a new space to be filled with antiques and art and visions of the future.
The black-and-white kitten paws playfully at the curling paper as they work.
Stories
PARIS, JANUARY 1903
Stories have changed, my dear boy,” the man in the grey suit says, his voice almost imperceptibly sad. “There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case. There are no longer simple tales with quests and beasts and happy endings. The quests lack clarity of goal or path. The beasts take different forms and are difficult to recognize for what they are. And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister’s story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead. Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl. And is not the dragon the hero of his own story? Is not the wolf simply acting as a wolf should act? Though perhaps it is a singular wolf who goes to such lengths as to dress as a grandmother to toy with its prey.”
Widget sips his glass of wine, considering the words before he replies.
“But wouldn’t that mean there were never any simple tales at all?” he asks.
The man in the grey suit shrugs, then lifts the bottle of wine from the table to refill his own glass.
“That is a complicated matter. The heart of the tale and the ideas behind it are simple. Time has altered and condensed their nuances, made them more than story, greater than the sums of their parts. But that requires time. The truest tales require time and familiarity to become what they are.”
Their waiter stops at their table and converses briefly with Widget, paying no notice to the man in the grey suit.
“How many languages do you speak?” the man asks once the waiter has departed.
“I’ve never stopped to count,” Widget says. “I can speak anything once I have heard enough to grasp the basis.”
“Impressive.”
“I picked up bits and pieces naturally, and Celia taught me how to find the patterns, to put the sounds together in complete sets.”
“I hope she was a better teacher than her father.”
“From what I know of her father they are quite different. She never forced Poppet or me into playing complicated games, for one thing.”
“Do you even know what the challenge you are alluding to was?” the man in the grey suit asks.
“Do you?” Widget asks. “It seems to me it was not entirely clear-cut.”
“Few things in this world are clear-cut. A very long time ago—I suppose you could say once upon a time if you wished it to sound a grander tale than it is—one of my first students and I had a disagreement about the ways of the world, about permanence and endurance and time. He thought my systems outdated. He developed methods of his own that he thought superior. I am of the opinion that no methodology is worthwhile unless it can be taught, so he began teaching. The pitting of our respective students against each other began as simple tests, though over time they became more complex. They were always, at the heart, challenges of chaos and control to see which technique was strongest. It is one thing to put two competitors alone in a ring and wait for one to hit the ground. It is another to see how they fare when there are other factors in the ring along with them. When there are repercussions with every action taken. This final challenge was particularly interesting. I will admit that Miss Bowen found a very clever way out. Though I do regret losing a student of my own in the process.” He takes a sip of his wine. “He was possibly the best student I ever taught.”
“You believe he’s dead?” Widget asks.
The man puts down his glass.
“You believe he is not?” he counters after a significant pause.
“I know he’s not. Just as I know that Celia’s father, who is also not dead, precisely, is standing by that window.” Widget lifts his glass, tilting it toward the darkened window by the door.
The image in the glass, which could be a grey-haired man in a finely tailored coat, or could be an amalgamation of reflections from customers and waiters and bent and broken light from the street, ripples slightly before becoming completely indistinguishable.
“Neither of them are dead,” Widget continues. “But they’re not that, either.” He nods at the window. “They’re in the circus. They are the circus. You can hear his footsteps in the Labyrinth. You can smell her perfume in the Cloud Maze. It’s marvelous.”
“You think being imprisoned marvelous?”
“It’s a matter of perspective,” Widget says. “They have each other. They are confined within a space that is remarkable, one that can, and will, grow and change around them. In a way, they have the world, bound only by his imagination. Marco has been teaching his illusion technique to me, but I’ve not yet mastered it. So yes, I think it marvelous. He thought of you as his father, you know.”
“Did he tell you that?” the man in the grey suit asks.
“Not in words,” Widget says. “He let me read him. I see people’s pasts, sometimes in great detail if the person in question trusts me. He trusts me because Celia does. I do not think he blames you any longer. Because of you, he has her.”
“I chose him to contrast her, and to complement. Perhaps I chose too well.” The man in the grey suit leans into the table, as though he might whisper his words conspiratorially, but the tenor of his voice does not change. “That was the mistake, you realize. They were too well matched. Too taken with each other to be competitive. And now they can never be separated. Pity.”
“I take it you are not a romantic,” Widget says, picking up the bottle to refill his glass.
“I was in my youth. Which was a very, very long time ago.”
“Do I look that old?”
“You have no shadow.”
The man in the grey suit cracks a smile, the only noticeable change his expression has displayed the entire evening.
“You are quite perceptive,” he says. “Not one person in a hundred, perhaps even a thousand, notices as much. Yes, my age is quite advanced. I have seen a great many things in my time. Some I would prefer to forget. It takes a toll on a person, after all. Everything does, in its way. Just as everything fades with time. I am no exception to that rule.”
“Are you going to end up like him?” Widget nods at the window.
“I certainly hope not. I am content to accept inevitabilities, even if I have ways of putting them off. He was seeking immortality, which is a terrible thing to seek. It is not seeking anything, but rather avoiding the unavoidable. He will grow to despise that state if he does not already. I hope my student and your teacher are more fortunate.”
“You mean … you hope they can die?” Widget asks.
“I mean only that I hope they find darkness or paradise without fear of it, if they can.” He pauses before adding, “I hope that for you and your compatriots as well.”
“Thank you,” Widget says, though he is not entirely certain he understands the sentiment.
“I sent your cradle when you were born to welcome you and your sister to this world, the least I can do is wish you a pleasant exit from it, as I highly doubt I will be there to see you off in person. I hope not to be, in fact.”
“Is magic not enough to live for?” Widget asks.
“Magic,” the man in the grey suit repeats, turning the word into a laugh. “This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it. Look around you,” he says, waving a hand at the surrounding tables. “Not a one of them even has an inkling of the things that are possible in this world, and what’s worse is that none of them would listen if you attempted to enlighten them. They want to believe that magic is nothing but clever deception, because to think it real would keep them up at night, afraid of their own existence.”
The Night Circus Page 38
