Erin Morgenstern: The Night Circus

He will always choose the circus.

“I’ll do it,” he says. “I’ll stay. I’ll do whatever it is you need me to do.”

“Thank you, Bailey,” Celia says softly. The words resonating in his ears soothe the last of his nerves.

“Indeed,” Marco says. “I think we should make this official.”

“Do you think that’s absolutely necessary?” Celia asks.

“At this point I’m not about to settle for a verbal contract,” Marco says. Celia frowns for a moment but then nods her consent, and Marco carefully lets go of her hand. She stays steady and her appearance does not waver.

“Do you want me to sign something?” Bailey asks.

“Not exactly,” Marco says. He takes a silver ring from his right hand, it is engraved with something Bailey cannot discern in the light. Marco reaches up to a branch above his head and passes the ring through one of the burning candles until it glows, white and hot.

Bailey wonders whose wish that particular flame might be.

“I made a wish on this tree years ago,” Marco says, as though he knows what Bailey is thinking.

“What did you wish for?” Bailey asks, hoping it is not too forward a question, but Marco does not answer.

Instead, he folds the glowing ring into his palm, and then he offers his hand to Bailey.

Bailey hesitantly reaches out, expecting his fingers to pass through Marco’s hand as easily as they did before.

But instead they stop, and Marco’s hand in his is almost solid. Marco leans forward and whispers into Bailey’s ear.

“I wished for her,” he says.

Then Bailey’s hand begins to hurt. The pain is bright and hot as the ring burns into his skin.

“What are you doing?” he manages to ask when he can gasp for enough air. The pain is sharp and searing, coursing through his entire body, and he is barely able to keep his knees from buckling beneath him.

“Binding,” Marco says. “It’s one of my specialties.”

He releases Bailey’s hand. The pain vanishes instantly but Bailey’s legs continue to tremble.

“Are you all right?” Celia asks.

Bailey nods, looking down at his palm. The ring is gone, but there is a bright red circle burned into his skin. Bailey is certain without having to ask that it will be a scar he carries with him always. He closes his hand and looks back at Marco and Celia.

“Tell me what I need to do now,” he says.

Bailey finds the tiny, book-filled room without much difficulty. The large black raven sitting in the corner blinks at him curiously as he sorts through the contents of the desk.

He flips anxiously through the large leather book until he finds the page with Poppet’s and Widget’s signatures. He tears the page from the binding carefully, removing it completely.

He finds a pen in a drawer and writes his own name across the page as he has been instructed. While the ink dries he gathers up the rest of the things he will need, running through the list over and over in his head so he does not forget anything.

The yarn is easily found, a ball of it sits precariously on a pile of books.

The two cards, one a familiar playing card and the other a tarot card emblazoned with an angel, are amongst the papers on the desk. He tucks these into the front cover of the book.

The doves in the cage above him stir with a soft fluttering of feathers.

The pocket watch on its long silver chain proves most difficult to locate. He finds it on the ground beside the desk, and when he attempts to dust it off a bit he can see the initials H.B. engraved on the back. The watch no longer ticks.

Bailey places the loose page on top of the book and tucks it under his arm. The watch and the yarn he puts in his pockets with the candle he pulled from the Wishing Tree.

The raven cocks its head at him as he leaves. The doves remain asleep.

Bailey crosses the adjoining tent, walking around the double circle of chairs as passing directly through it does not seem appropriate.

Outside the light rain is still falling.

He hurries back to the courtyard, where he finds Tsukiko waiting for him.

“Celia says I need to borrow your lighter,” he says.

Tsukiko tilts her head curiously, looking oddly like a bird with a catlike grin.

“I suppose that is acceptable,” she says after a moment. She pulls the silver lighter from her coat pocket and tosses it to him.

It is heavier than he had expected, a complicated mechanism of gears partially encased in worn and tarnished silver, with symbols he cannot distinguish etched into the surface.

“Be careful with that,” Tsukiko says.

“Is it magic?” Bailey asks, turning it over in his hand.

“No, but it is old, and it was constructed by someone very dear to me. I take it you are attempting to light that again?” She gestures at the towering bowl of twisted metal that once held the bonfire.

Bailey nods.

“Do you want any help?”

“Are you offering?”

Tsukiko shrugs.

“I am not terribly invested in the outcome,” she says, but something about the way she looks around at the tents and the mud makes Bailey doubt her words.

“I don’t believe you,” he says. “But I am, and I think I should do this on my own.”

Tsukiko smiles at him, the first smile he has seen from her that seems genuine.

“I shall leave you to it, then,” she says. She runs a hand along the iron cauldron and most of the rainwater within it turns to steam, rising in a soft cloud that dissipates into the fog.

With no further advice or instruction she walks off down a black-and-white striped path, a thin curl of smoke trailing behind her, leaving Bailey alone in the courtyard.

He remembers Widget telling him the story of the lighting of the bonfire, the first lighting. Though he only now realizes that it was also the night that Widget was born. He had told the story in such detail that Bailey assumed he had witnessed it firsthand. The archers, the colors, the spectacle.

And now here Bailey stands, trying to accomplish the same feat with only a book and some yarn and a borrowed cigarette lighter. Alone. In the rain.

He mumbles to himself what he can remember of Celia’s instructions, the ones that are more complicated than finding books and tying strings. Things about focus and intent that he does not entirely understand.

He wraps the book with a length of fine wool yarn dyed a deep crimson, bits of it stained darker with something dried and brown.

He knots it three times, binding the book closed with the loose page against the cover, the cards securely pressed inside.

The pocket watch he hangs around it, looping the chain as best he can.

He throws it in the empty cauldron where it lands with a dull wet thud, the watch clattering against the metal.

Marco’s bowler hat sits in the mud by his feet. He throws that in as well.

He glances back in the direction of the acrobat tent, he can see the top of it from the courtyard, rising taller than the surrounding tents.

And then, impulsively, he takes out the remaining contents of his pockets and adds them to the collection in the cauldron. His silver ticket. The dried rose that he had worn in his lapel at dinner with the rêveurs . Poppet’s white glove.

He hesitates, turning the tiny glass bottle with Widget’s version of his tree trapped inside over in his hand, but then he adds it as well, flinching as it shatters against the iron.

He takes the single white candle in one hand and Tsukiko’s lighter in the other.

He fumbles with the lighter before it consents to spark.

Then he ignites the candle with the bright orange flame.

He throws the burning candle into the cauldron.