The Night Circus (7 page)

Her father looks up, annoyed. He lifts a heavy glass paperweight and brings it down on her hand, hard enough to break her wrist with a sharp crack.

The papers unfold and flutter back to the surface of the table.

“You need the practice,” he repeats. “Your control is still lacking.”

Celia leaves the room without a word, holding her wrist and biting back tears.

“And for Christ’s sake, stop
crying
,” her father calls after her.

It takes her the better part of an hour to set and heal the shards of bone.

*

ISOBEL SITS IN A RARELY OCCUPIED ARMCHAIR
in the corner of Marco’s flat, a rainbow of silk ribbon twisted around her fingers as she attempts in vain to form it into a single elaborate braid.

“This seems so silly,” she remarks, frowning at the tangle of ribbon.

“It’s a simple charm,” Marco says from his desk where he sits surrounded by open books. “A ribbon for each element, bound with knots and intent. It’s like your cards, only influencing the subject instead of simply divining its meaning. But it won’t work if you don’t believe it will, you know that.”

“Perhaps I am not in the proper mood to believe it,” Isobel says, loosening the knots and putting the ribbons aside, letting them cascade over the arm of the chair. “I’ll try again tomorrow.”

“Help me, then,” Marco says, looking up from his books. “Think of something. An object. A significant object that I cannot possibly know about.”

Isobel sighs but she obediently closes her eyes, concentrating.

“It’s a ring,” Marco says after a moment, picking the image out of her mind as easily as if she had drawn him a picture. “A gold ring with a sapphire flanked by two diamonds.”

Isobel’s eyes snap open.

“How did you know that?” she asks.

“Is it an engagement ring?” he counters with a grin.

She clasps her hand to her mouth before she nods.

“You sold it,” Marco says, picking up the fragments of memory attached to the ring itself. “In Barcelona. You fled an arranged marriage, that’s why you’re in London. Why did you not tell me?”

“It is not exactly a topic of proper conversation,” Isobel says. “And you hardly tell me anything about yourself, you could have fled an arranged marriage of your own.”

They stare at each other for a moment, while Marco tries to come up with an appropriate response, but then Isobel laughs.

“He probably looked for the ring longer than he looked for me,” she says, glancing down at her bare hand. “It was such a lovely thing, I almost didn’t want to part with it but I had no money and nothing else to sell.”

Marco starts to say he can tell she received quite a good price for the ring, but then there is a knock on the door of the flat.

“Is it the landlord?” Isobel whispers, but Marco puts a finger to his lips and shakes his head.

Only one person ever knocks upon that door unannounced.

Marco waves Isobel into the adjoining study before he answers.

The man in the grey suit does not enter the flat. He has never entered the space since he orchestrated the transition, pushing his student out into the world.

“You will be applying for a position to work for this man,” he says without greeting, taking a faded business card from his pocket. “You will likely need a name.”

“I have a name,” Marco says.

The man in the grey suit does not inquire as to what it might be.

“Your interview is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon,” he says. “I have handled a number of business matters for Monsieur Lefèvre of late and I have put in a strong recommendation, but you should do whatever is needed to secure the position.”

“Is this the beginning of the challenge?” Marco asks.

“This is a preliminary maneuver, to place you in an advantageous position.”

“Then when does the challenge start?” Marco asks, though he has asked the question dozens of times before and never received a firm answer.

“That will be clear at the time,” the man in the grey suit says. “When it does begin, it would be wise to focus your attention on the competition itself”—his eyes move pointedly to the closed door to the study—“without any distractions.”

He turns and exits down the hall, leaving Marco standing in the doorway, reading and rereading the name and address on the faded card.

*

HECTOR BOWEN EVENTUALLY
relents to his daughter’s insistence that they remain in New York, but he does so for his own purposes.

While he makes occasional comments that she should be practicing more, for the most part he ignores her, spending his time alone in the upstairs parlor.

Celia is quite pleased with the arrangement, and spends most of her time reading. She sneaks out to bookstores, surprised when her father does not inquire as to where the piles of freshly bound volumes came from.

And she does practice, often, breaking all manner of things around the house in order to put them back together again. Making books fly around her room like birds, calculating how far they can travel before she must adjust her technique.

She becomes quite adept at manipulating fabric, altering her gowns as expertly as a master tailor to accommodate the weight she has regained, her body feeling like her own again.

She has to remind her father to come out of the parlor for meals, though lately he has refused more and more often, barely leaving the room at all.

Today he will not even respond to her insistent knocking. Irritated, and knowing he has charmed the locks so she cannot unlatch them without his own keys, she kicks the door with her boot and to her surprise, it swings open.

Her father stands by a window, intently watching his arm as he holds it out in front of him, the sunlight filtering in through the frosted glass and falling over his sleeve.

His hand fades completely and then returns. He stretches his fingers, frowning at the audible creaking of the joints.

“What are you doing, Papa?” Celia asks, curiosity trumping her annoyance. It is not something she has seen him do before, either onstage or in the privacy of her lessons.

“Nothing to concern yourself with,” her father says, pulling the frilled cuff of his shirt down over his hand.

The door slams shut in her face.

Target Practice
LONDON, DECEMBER 1884

T
he dartboard hangs precariously on a wall in the study, between tall bookcases and ornately framed oil paintings. It is almost camouflaged in the shadows despite its bold pattern, but the knife reaches its target each and every time it is thrown, very near the bull’s-eye that is obscured by the newspaper clipping pinned to the board.

The clipping is a theatrical review, an article carefully removed from the London
Times
. It is a positive review; some might call it glowing. Nevertheless, it has been put in this position of execution, and the silver-handled knife is being thrown at it. The knife slices through the paper and sinks into the cork of the dartboard. It is retrieved and removed only to have the process repeated again.

The knife is being thrown gracefully, from the handle so it rotates over and over perfectly until the tip of the blade finds its mark, by Chandresh Christophe Lefèvre, whose name is printed in clear typeset letters in the last line of the aforementioned newspaper clipping.

The sentence that holds his name is the particular one that has incensed M. Lefèvre to the point of knife throwing. A single sentence, that reads thusly: “M. Chandresh Christophe Lefèvre continues to push the boundaries of the modern stage, dazzling his audiences with spectacle that is almost transcendent.”

Most theatrical producers would likely be flattered by such a remark. They would clip the article for a scrapbook of reviews, quote it for references and referrals.

But not this particular theatrical producer. No, M. Chandresh Christophe Lefèvre instead focuses on that penultimate word. Almost.
Almost
.

The knife flies again across the room, over furniture of velvet and intricately carved wood, passing perilously close to a crystal decanter of brandy. It somersaults swiftly, handle over blade, and finds itself buried in the dartboard once again. This time it pierces the now nearly shredded paper in between the words “audiences” and “spectacle,” obscuring the “with” completely.

Chandresh follows in the wake of the knife, pulling the blade from the board carefully but with a fair amount of force. He walks back across the room, knife in one hand, a glass of brandy in the other, and turns swiftly on his heel, letting the knife fly once more, aiming for that horrible word. Almost.

Clearly he must be doing something wrong. If his productions are merely almost transcendent, when the possibility of true transcendence exists somewhere nearby, waiting to be attained, then there is something else that must be done.

He has been pondering this ever since the review was placed on his desk, neatly clipped and labeled by his assistant. Additional copies have been filed elsewhere for posterity and safekeeping, as the desk copies often meet such gruesome fates while Chandresh agonizes over every word.

Chandresh relishes reactions. Genuine reactions, not mere polite applause. He often values the reactions over the show itself. A show without an audience is nothing, after all. In the response of the audience, that is where the power of performance lives.

He was raised in the theater, sitting in boxes at the ballet. Being a restless child, he quickly grew bored with the familiarity of the dances and chose instead to watch the audiences. To see when they smiled and gasped, when the women sighed and when the men began to nod off.

So perhaps it is not terribly surprising that now, many years later, he still has more interest in the audience than in the performance itself. Though the performance must be spectacular in order to coerce the best reactions.

And because he is incapable of observing the faces of every audience member at every performance of every show (shows that range from compelling drama to exotic dancing girls and a few that creatively combine the two), he relies on the reviews.

Though there has not been a review in some time that vexes him the way that this particular one does. And certainly not one in years that provoked knife throwing.

The knife flies once again, this time piercing the word “stage.”

Chandresh goes to retrieve it, sipping his brandy on the way. He regards the nearly decimated article curiously for a moment, peering at the almost illegible words. Then he bellows for Marco.

With your ticket in hand, you follow a continuous line of patrons into the circus, watching the rhythmic motion of the black-and-white clock as you wait.

Beyond the ticket booth the only way forward is through a heavy striped curtain. One by one each person passes through it, vanishing from sight.

When it is your turn, you pull back the fabric and step forward, only to be engulfed by darkness as the curtain closes again.

It takes your eyes a few moments to adjust, and then tiny dots of light begin appearing like stars, lining the dark walls in front of you.

And while moments before you were so close to your fellow circusgoers that you could have touched them, now you are alone as you feel your way tentatively forward through a mazelike tunnel.

The tunnel twists and turns, the tiny lights providing the only illumination. You have no way of discerning how far you have gone or which direction you are moving in.

Finally you reach another curtain. Fabric that feels as soft as velvet beneath your hands parts easily when you touch it.

The light on the other side is blinding.

Truth or Dare
CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS, SEPTEMBER 1897

T
hey sit in the oak tree in the afternoon sun, the five of them. His sister Caroline on the highest branch, because she always climbs the highest. Her best friend Millie perches below. The Mackenzie brothers, throwing acorns at the squirrels, are somewhat lower than that, but not low enough to be considered anything but high. He is always on the low branches. Not for fear of heights but for where he ranks in the group, when he is even allowed to be a part of it. Being Caroline’s younger brother is both a blessing and a curse that way. Bailey is sometimes allowed to join them, but always kept in his place.

“Truth or dare,” Caroline calls from the upper branches. She receives no reply, so she drops an acorn directly on her brother’s head. “Truth. Or. Dare. Bailey,” she repeats.

Bailey rubs his head through his hat. Maybe the acorn makes him choose the way he does. “Truth” is a resigned response, a yielding to Caroline’s abusive, nut-throwing version of the game. “Dare” is marginally more defiant. Even if he is humoring her, at least he isn’t a coward.