“What is all this?” Celia asks, turning her attention to the books on the desk. They contain endless pages of glyphs and symbols, ringed in text ripped from other sources, affixed to one another and inscribed over and over. In the middle of the desk there is a large leather volume. Pasted inside the front cover, surrounded by an elaborately inscribed tree, Celia can barely make out something that must once have been a newspaper clipping. The only word she can discern is
“This is how I work,” Marco says. “That particular volume is the one which binds everyone in the circus. It’s the safeguard, for lack of a better term. I placed a copy of it in the bonfire before the lighting, but I’ve made adjustments to this one.”
Celia turns through the pages of names. She pauses at a page that holds a scrap of paper bearing the looping signature of Lainie Burgess, next to a space where an equal-sized piece has been removed, leaving only a bright blank void.
“I should have put Herr Thiessen in there,” Marco says. “I never even thought of it.”
“If it had not been him it would have been another patron. There is no way to protect everyone. It’s impossible.”
“I am sorry,” he says again. “I did not know Herr Thiessen as well as you, but I did admire him and his work.”
“He showed me the circus in a way I had not been able to see it before,” Celia says. “How it looked from the outside. We wrote letters to each other for years.”
“I would have written you, myself, if I could put down in words everything I want to say to you. A sea of ink would not be enough.”
“But you built me dreams instead,” Celia says, looking up at him. “And I built you tents you hardly ever see. I have had so much of you around me always and I have been unable to give you anything in return that you can keep.”
“I still have your shawl,” Marco says.
She smiles softly while she closes the book. Beside it, the spilled ink seeps back into its jar, the glass fragments reforming around it.
“I think this is what my father would call working from the outside in rather than the inside out,” she says. “He was always cautioning against it.”
“Then he would despise the other room,” Marco says.
“What room?” Celia asks. The bottle of ink settles as though it had never been broken.
Marco beckons her forward, leading her to the adjoining room. He opens the door but does not step through it, and when Celia follows him she can see why.
It may once have been a study or a parlor, not a large room, but perhaps it could be referred to as cozy were it not for the layers of paper and string that hang from every available surface.
Strings hang from the chandelier and loop over to the tops of shelves. They tie back upon each other like a web cascading from the ceiling.
On every surface, tables and desks and armchairs, there are meticulously constructed models of tents. Some made from newsprint, others from fabric. Bits of blueprints and novels and stationery, folded and cut and shaped into a flock of striped tents, all tied together with more string in black and white and red. They are bound to bits of clockwork, pieces of mirror, stumps of dripping candles.
In the center of the room, on a round wooden table that is painted black but inlaid with light stripes of mother-of-pearl, there is a small iron cauldron. Inside it a fire burns merrily, the flames bright and white, casting long shadows across the space.
Celia takes a step into the room, ducking to avoid the strings that hang from the ceiling. The sensation is identical to entering the circus, even down to the scent of caramel lingering in the air, but there is something deeper beneath it, something heavy and ancient underlying the paper and string.
Marco stays in the doorway as Celia navigates carefully around the room, mindful of the sweep of her gown as she peers into the tiny tents and runs her fingers delicately over the bits of string and clockwork.
“This is very old magic, isn’t it?” she asks.
“It’s the only kind I know,” Marco responds. He tugs a string by the doorway and the movement reverberates throughout the room, the entire model circus sparkling as bits of metal catch the firelight. “Though I doubt it was ever meant for this purpose.”
Celia pauses at a tent containing a tree branch covered in candle wax. Orienting herself from there, she locates another, gently pushing open the paper door to find a ring of tiny chairs representing her own performance space.
The pages that comprise it are printed with Shakespearean sonnets.
Celia lets the paper door swing closed.
She finishes her tentative tour around the room and rejoins Marco in the doorway, pulling the door closed softly behind her.
The sensation of being within the circus fades as soon as she has crossed the threshold, and she is suddenly acutely aware of everything in the adjoining room. The warmth of the fire fighting against the draft from the windows. The scent of Marco’s skin beneath the ink and his cologne.
“Thank you for showing me that,” she says.
“I take it your father would not approve?” Marco asks.
“I don’t particularly care what my father approves of any longer.”
Celia wanders past the desk and stops in front of the fireplace, watching the miniature pages turning through time on the clock upon the mantel.
Next to the clock there sits a solitary playing card. The two of hearts. It bears no sign that it was once pierced with an Ottoman dagger. No evidence that Celia’s blood has ever marred its surface, but she knows that it is the same card.
“I could speak with Alexander,” Marco suggests. “Perhaps he saw enough to provide a verdict, or this will result in some sort of disqualification. I’m certain he thinks me a disappointment at this point, he could declare you the win—”
“Stop,” Celia says without turning. “Please, stop talking. I don’t want to talk about this damned game.”
Marco attempts to protest but his voice catches in his throat. He struggles against it but finds he is unable to speak.
His shoulders fall in a silent sigh.
“I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held,” Celia says when he approaches her. “Trying to control what cannot be controlled. I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix. They will break no matter what we do.”
She leans against his chest and he wraps his arms around her, gently stroking the back of her neck with an ink-stained hand. They stay like this for some time, alongside the crackling of the fire and the ticking of the clock.
When she lifts her head, he keeps his eyes locked on hers as he slides her coat from her shoulders, resting his hands on her bare arms.
The familiar passion that always accompanies the touch of his skin against hers washes over Celia and she can no longer resist it, no longer wants to.
“Marco,” she says, her fingers fumbling with the buttons on his vest. “Marco, I—”
His lips are on hers, hot and demanding, before she can finish.
While she undoes button after button, he pulls blindly at fastenings and ribbons, refusing to take his lips from hers.
The meticulously constructed gown collapses into a puddle around her feet.
Wrapping the unbound laces of her corset around his wrists, Marco pulls her down to the floor with him.
They continue to remove layer after layer until nothing separates them.
Trapped in silence, Marco traces apologies and adorations across Celia’s body with his tongue. Mutely expressing all the things he cannot speak aloud.
He finds other ways to tell her, his fingers leaving faint trails of ink in their wake. He savors every sound he elicits from her.
