Erin Morgenstern - The Night Circus

“I am always amazed that no one recognizes me out of context,” Isobel says. “I’ve read for a handful of people in this very room over the past few nights and not one of them has so much as given me a second glance. Perhaps I do not look so mysterious when not surrounded by candles and velvet. Or perhaps they pay more attention to the cards than they do to me.”

“Do you have your cards with you?” Celia asks.

Isobel nods. “Would… would you like a reading?” she asks.

“If you do not mind.”

“Not once have you ever asked me to read for you.”

“I am not usually in the mood to know anything about my future,” Celia says. “Tonight I am feeling a tiny bit curious.”

Isobel hesitates, glancing around at the clientele, a mostly bohemian crowd sipping absinthe and arguing about art.

“They will not even notice,” Celia says. “I promise.”

Isobel turns her attention back to Celia, and then she pulls a deck from her bag; not her black-and-white circus cards but her original Marseilles deck, worn and faded.

“Those are lovely,” Celia says as Isobel starts to shuffle, watching the shifting blur of cards.

“Thank you.”

“But there are only seventy-seven of them.”

Isobel’s hands falter only momentarily, but a single card falls from the deck onto the table. Celia picks it up, briefly glancing at the two cups upon the surface before handing it back to Isobel, who replaces it in the deck and resumes shuffling, the cards falling seamlessly from one hand to the other.

“One of them is… somewhere else,” Isobel explains.

Celia does not question her further.

The waitress brings Celia’s mint tea, not even glancing at the cards before departing again.

“Did you do that?” Isobel asks.

“I diverted her attention, yes,” Celia says after blowing gently on the surface of her steaming tea. It is not exactly what she means, but the invisible veil she has drawn over the table seems too difficult to explain. And the fact that the feeling they are being watched has not faded despite its presence bothers her.

Isobel stops shuffling and places the deck facedown on the table.

Celia cuts the deck in three without waiting for Isobel to instruct her, holding the edges of the cards carefully as she places each pile in a row across the table.

“Which one?” Isobel asks.

Celia regards the three piles of cards thoughtfully while she sips her tea. After a moment she indicates the center pile. Isobel stacks the deck once more, keeping that section of cards on the top.

The cards that she places on the table have no immediate clarity to them. Several cups. The two of swords. La Papessa , the enigmatic Priestess.

Isobel only barely manages to contain her involuntary intake of breath as she lays Le Bateleur over the already placed cards. She covers it with a cough. Celia appears not to notice anything amiss.

“I’m sorry,” Isobel says, after staring silently at the cards for a few moments. “Sometimes it takes awhile for me to translate properly.”

“Take your time,” Celia says.

Isobel pushes the cards around the table, focusing on one and then another.

“You carry a great many burdens with you. A heavy heart. Things you’ve lost. But you are moving toward change and discovery. There are outside influences that are propelling you forward.”

Celia’s expression reveals nothing. She looks at the cards and occasionally up at Isobel, attentive yet guarded.

“You’re… not fighting, that’s not really the right word for it, but there’s a conflict with something unseen, something shadowed that’s hidden from you.”

Celia only smiles.

Isobel places another card on the table.

“But it will be revealed soon,” she says.

This catches Celia’s attention.

“How soon?”

“The cards do not make for the clearest of timelines, but it is very close. Almost immediate, I would think.”

Isobel pulls another card. The two of cups again.

“There’s emotion,” she says. “Deep emotion but you are only on the shore of it, still near the surface, while it is waiting to pull you under.”

“Interesting,” Celia remarks.

“It’s nothing that I can clearly see as good or bad, but it is… intense.” Isobel pushes the cards around a bit, Le Bateleur and La Papessa surrounded by fire-tinged wands and watery cups. The crackle of the fire next to them mingles with the rain pattering against the windows. “It almost contradicts itself,” she says after a moment. “It’s as if there is love and loss at the same time, together in a kind of beautiful pain.”

“Well, that sounds like something to look forward to,” Celia says drily, and Isobel smiles, glancing up from the cards but finding little to read in Celia’s expression.

“I’m sorry I cannot be more clear,” she says. “If anything comes to me later I will let you know, sometimes I need to ruminate on the cards before I can make any real sense of them. These are… not unclear, precisely, but they are complex, which makes for a great deal of possibilities to consider.”

“No need for apologies. I cannot say I’m terribly surprised. And thank you, I very much appreciate the insight.”

Celia changes the subject then, though the cards remain on the table and Isobel does not move to put them away. They discuss less substantial matters until Celia insists that she should be getting back to the circus.

“Do wait until the rain lets up, at least,” Isobel protests.

“I have monopolized enough of your time already, and the rain is only rain. I hope the someone you were waiting for turns up.”

“I am doubtful about that, but thank you. And thank you for keeping me company.”

“It was my pleasure,” Celia says, rising from the table as she replaces her gloves. She navigates the crowded café with ease, pulling a dark-handled umbrella from the stand by the door and giving Isobel a parting wave before bracing herself for the walk back to the circus in the pouring rain.

Isobel pushes the tangled path of the cards on the table around a bit.

She did not lie, exactly. She finds it near impossible to lie about the cards.

But the competition is clear, so much so that everything else is tied to it, past and future.

At the same time, it seems to be more of a reading for the circus as a whole than for Celia in particular, but it is so emotional that it overwhelms the details. Isobel piles the cards and shuffles them back into the deck. Le Bateleur floats to the top as she shuffles, and she frowns at the card before glancing around the café. While there are a few scattered bowler hats amongst the patrons, there is no sign of the one she is looking for.

She shuffles until the Magician is buried deep within the deck and then she puts her cards away and returns to her book to wait out the rain alone.

OUTSIDE, THE RAIN IS HEAVY and the street is dark and almost completely deserted, glowing windows dotting the streets. It is not as cold as Celia had expected, despite the chilling wind.

She cannot read the tarot well herself, there are always too many possibilities, too many meanings. But once Isobel pointed out specific elements, she could see the complicated emotion, the impending revelation. She is unsure what to make of it, though despite her skepticism, she hopes it means she will finally be certain who her opponent is.

She remains distracted as she walks, considering the cards, but she slowly realizes that she is rather warm. At least as warm if not warmer than she had been sitting near the fire with Isobel. More than that, her clothes are still dry. Her jacket, her gloves, even the hem of her gown. There is not a single drop of rain upon her although it continues to pour, the wind causing the rain to fall in several directions beyond the standard gravitational pattern. Drops splatter upward from pond-like puddles and blow in sideways but Celia does not feel any of them. Even her boots are not the slightest bit damp.