Erin Morgenstern: The Night Circus

“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.

“This one,” she says.

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 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.