The Night Circus

“I thought I’d try something special,” Marco says.

“Should I close my eyes?” Celia asks playfully, but instead of answering, he spins her around so she faces away from him, keeping his hand on her waist.

“Watch,” he whispers in her ear.

The striped canvas sides of the tent stiffen, the soft surface hardening as the fabric changes to paper. Words appear over the walls, typeset letters overlapping handwritten text. Celia can make out snatches of Shakespearean sonnets and fragments of hymns to Greek goddesses as the poetry fills the tent. It covers the walls and the ceiling and spreads out over the floor.

And then the tent begins to open, the paper folding and tearing. The black stripes stretch out into empty space as their white counterparts brighten, reaching upward and breaking apart into branches.

“Do you like it?” Marco asks, once the movement settles and they stand within a darkened forest of softly glowing, poem-covered trees.

Celia can only nod.

He reluctantly releases her, following as she walks through the trees, reading bits of verse on branches and trunks.

“How do you come up with such images?” she asks, placing her hand over the layered paper bark of one of the trees. It is warm and solid beneath her fingers, illuminated from within like a lantern.

“I see things in my mind,” Marco says. “In my dreams. I imagine what you might like.”

“I don’t think you’re meant to be imagining how to please your opponent,” Celia says.

“I have never fully grasped the rules of the game, so I am following my instincts instead,” Marco says.

“My father is still purposefully vague about the rules,” Celia says as they walk through the trees. “Particularly when I inquire as to when or how the verdict will be determined.”

“Alexander also neglected to provide that information.”

“I hope he does not pester you as much as my father does me,” Celia says. “Though of course, my father has nothing better to do.”

“I have hardly seen him in years,” Marco says. “He has always been … distant and not terribly forthcoming, but he is the closest thing to family I have. And yet he tells me nothing.”

“I’m rather jealous,” Celia says. “My father constantly tells me what a disappointment I am.”

“I refuse to believe you could ever disappoint anyone,” Marco says.

“You never had the pleasure of meeting my father.”

“Would you tell me what really happened to him?” Marco asks. “I’m quite curious.”

Celia sighs before she begins, pausing beside a tree etched with words of love and longing. She has never told anyone this story, never been given the opportunity to relate it to anyone who would understand.

“My father was always somewhat overambitious,” she starts. “What he meant to do, he did not accomplish, not as he intended. He wanted to remove himself from the physical world.”

“How would that be possible?” Marco asks. Celia appreciates that he does not immediately dismiss the idea. She can see him trying to work it out in his mind and she struggles with the best way to explain it.

“Suppose I had a glass of wine,” she says. A glass of red wine appears in her hand. “Thank you. If I took this wine and poured it into a basin of water, or a lake or even the ocean, would the wine itself be gone?”

“No, it would only be diluted,” Marco says.

“Precisely,” Celia says. “My father figured out a way to remove his glass.” As she speaks, the glass in her hand fades, but the wine remains, floating in the air. “But he went straight for the ocean rather than a basin or even a larger glass. He has trouble pulling himself back together again. He can do it, of course, but with difficulty. Had he been content to haunt a single location, he would likely be more comfortable. Instead, the process left him adrift. He has to cling to things now. He haunts his town house in New York. Theaters he performed in often. He holds to me when he can, though I have learned how to avoid him when I wish to. He hates that, particularly because I am simply amplifying one of his own shielding techniques.”

“Could it be done?” Marco asks. “What he was attempting? Properly, I mean.”

Celia looks at the wine hovering without its glass. She raises a hand to touch it and it quivers, dividing into droplets and then coming back together.

“I believe it could,” she says, “under the right circumstances. It would require a touchstone. A place, a tree, a physical element to hold on to. Something to prevent drifting. I suspect my father simply wanted the world at large to function as his, but I believe it would have to be more localized. To function as a glass but leave more flexibility to move within.”

She touches the hovering wine again, pushing it toward the tree she stands beside. The liquid seeps into the paper, slowly saturating it until the entire tree glows a rich crimson in a forest of white.

“You’re manipulating my illusion,” Marco says, looking curiously at the wine-soaked tree.

“You’re letting me,” Celia says. “I wasn’t certain I’d be able to.”

“Could you do it?” Marco asks. “What he was attempting?”

Celia regards the tree thoughtfully for a moment before replying.

“If I had reason to, I think I could,” she says. “But I am rather fond of the physical world. I think my father was feeling his age, which was much more advanced than it appeared, and did not relish the idea of rotting in the ground. He may have also wished to control his own destiny, but I cannot be certain, as he did not consult me before he attempted it. Left me with a lot of questions to answer and a funeral to fake. Which is easier than you might suppose.”

“But he speaks with you?” Marco asks.

“He does, though not as often as he once did. He looks the same; I think it is an echo, his consciousness retaining the semblance of a physical form. But he lacks solidity and it vexes him terribly. He might have been able to stay more tangible had he done it differently. Though I’m not certain I’d want to be stuck in a tree for the rest of eternity, myself, would you?”

“I think that would depend on the tree,” Marco says.

He turns to the crimson tree and it glows brighter, the red of embers shifting to the bright warmth of fire.

The surrounding trees follow suit.

As the light from the trees increases, it becomes so bright that Celia closes her eyes.

The ground beneath her feet shifts, suddenly unsteady, but Marco puts a hand on her waist to keep her upright.

When she opens her eyes, they are standing on the quarterdeck of a ship in the middle of the ocean.

Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink.

Tiny lights hang across the sky, like tightly packed stars bright as sun.

“I thought something vast would be nice after all the talk of confined spaces,” Marco says.

Celia walks to the edge of the deck, running her hands along the spines of the books that form the rail. A soft breeze plays with her hair, bringing with it the mingling scent of dusty tomes and damp, rich ink.

Marco comes and stands next to her as she looks at the midnight sea that stretches out into a clear horizon with no land in sight.

“It’s beautiful,” she says.

She glances down at his right hand resting on the rail, frowning as she regards his bare, unmarked fingers.

“Are you looking for this?” he asks, moving his hand with a flourish. The skin shifts, revealing the scar that wraps around his ring finger. “It was made by a ring when I was fourteen. It said something in Latin, but I don’t know what it was.”

“Esse quam videri,” Celia says. “To be, rather than to seem. It’s the Bowen family motto. My father was very fond of engraving it on things. I’m not entirely sure he appreciated the irony. That ring was likely something like this one.”

She places her right hand next to his, along the adjoining books. The silver band on her finger is engraved with what Marco had thought was an intricate filigree, but is the same phrase in a looping script.

Celia twists the ring, sliding it down her finger so he can see the matching scar.

“It is the only injury I have never been able to fully heal,” she says.