“What will happen to us if it collapses?” Marco asks.
“I don’t know,” Celia says. “I suspended it. It can’t be self-sufficient without us. It needs a caretaker.”
Suspended
NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 1, 1902
The last time Bailey entered this particular tent, Poppet was with him, and it was filled with a dense white fog.
Then, and Bailey has difficulty believing it was only days ago, the tent had seemed endless. But now without the cover of mist, Bailey can see the white walls of the tent and all the creatures within it, but none of them are moving.
Birds and bats and butterflies hang throughout the space as if held by strings, completely still. No rustling of paper wings. No motion at all.
Other creatures sit on the ground near Bailey’s feet, including a black cat crouched pre-pounce near a silver-tipped white fox. There are larger animals, as well. A zebra with perfectly contrasting stripes. A reclining lion with a snowy mane. A white stag with tall antlers.
Standing next to the stag is a man in a dark suit.
He is almost transparent, like a ghost, or a reflection in glass. Parts of his suit are no more than shadows. Bailey can see the stag clearly through the sleeve of his jacket.
Bailey is debating whether or not it is a figment of his imagination when the man looks over at him, his eyes surprisingly bright, though Bailey cannot discern their color.
“I asked her not to send you this way,” he says. “Though it is the most direct.”
“Who are you?” Bailey asks.
“My name is Marco,” the man says. “You must be Bailey.”
Bailey nods.
“I wish you were not so young,” Marco says. Something in his voice sounds profoundly sad, but Bailey is still distracted by his ghostlike appearance.
“Are you dead?” he asks, walking closer. With the changing angle, Marco appears almost solid one moment, and transparent again the next.
“Not precisely,” Marco says.
“Tsukiko said she was the only living person here who knew what happened.”
“I suspect Miss Tsukiko is not always entirely truthful.”
“You look like a ghost,” Bailey says. He can think of no better way to describe it.
“You appear the same way to me, so which of us is real?”
Bailey has no idea how to answer that question, so he asks the first one of his own that comes to mind instead.
“Is that your bowler hat in the courtyard?”
To his surprise, Marco smiles.
“It is, indeed,” he says. “I lost it before everything happened, so it got left behind.”
“What happened?” Bailey asks.
Marco pauses before he answers.
“That is a rather long story.”
“That’s what Tsukiko said,” Bailey says. He wonders if he can find Widget, so he can do the storytelling properly.
“She was truthful on that point, then,” Marco says. “Tsukiko intended to imprison me in the bonfire, the reasons for which are a longer story than we have time for, and there was a change of plan that resulted in the current situation. I was pulled apart and put back together again in a less concentrated state.”
Marco holds out his hand and Bailey reaches to touch it. His fingers move through without stopping, but there is a soft resistance, the impression that there is something occupying the space, even if it is not completely solid.
“It is not an illusion or a trick,” Marco says.
Bailey’s brow furrows in thought, but after a moment he nods. Poppet said nothing is impossible, and he finds he is beginning to agree.
“I am not interacting with the surroundings as directly as you are,” Marco continues. “You and everything here appear equally insubstantial from my perspective. Perhaps we will be able to discuss it at greater length another time. Come with me.” He turns and begins walking toward the back of the tent.
Bailey follows, taking a winding path around the animals. It is difficult to find places to step, though Marco glides ahead of him with much less difficulty.
Bailey loses his balance stepping around the prone figure of a polar bear. His shoulder knocks into a raven hanging in the air. The raven falls to the ground, its wings bent and broken.
Before Bailey can say anything, Marco reaches down and picks up the raven, turning it over in his hands. He moves the broken wings and reaches inside, twisting something with a clicking noise. The raven turns its head and lets out a sharp, metallic caw.
“How can you touch them?” Bailey asks.
“I am still figuring out the logistics of interacting with physical things,” Marco says, flattening the raven’s wings and letting it limp down the length of his arm. It flaps its paper feathers but cannot fly. “It likely has something to do with the fact that I made them. Elements of the circus I had a hand in creating seem to be more tangible.”
The raven hops off by a mountainous pile of paper scales with a curling tail that looks as though it might once have been a dragon.
“They’re amazing,” Bailey says.
“They are paper and clockwork wrapped up in fairly simple charms. You could do the same with a bit of study.”
It has never crossed Bailey’s mind that he could do such things himself, but having been told as much so simply and directly, it seems strangely achievable.
“Where are we going?” Bailey asks as they approach the far side of the tent.
“Someone would like to speak with you,” Marco says. “She’s waiting at the Wishing Tree; it seemed to be the most stable.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen the Wishing Tree,” Bailey says, mindful of each step as they approach the other side of the tent.
“It is not a tent that is stumbled upon,” Marco says. “It is found when it is needed, instead. It is one of my favorite tents. You take a candle from the box at the entrance and light it from one that already burns on the tree. Your wish is ignited by someone else’s wish.” They have reached the wall of the tent, and Marco indicates a break in the fabric, a barely visible row of ribbon ties that reminds Bailey of the entrance to Widget’s tent with all the strange bottles. “If you go out here you will see the entrance to the acrobat tent across the way. I’ll be right behind you, though you might not be able to see me until we’re inside again. Be … be careful.”
Bailey unties the bows and slips out of the tent easily, finding himself in a winding path between tents. The sky above is grey but bright, despite the soft rain that is beginning to fall.
The acrobat tent looms higher than the tents surrounding it and the sign that reads DEFIANCE OF GRAVITY swings over the entrance only a few paces away.
Bailey has been in this tent several times, he knows the open floor with the performers hanging above it well.
But when he steps through the door he is not met with the wide-open space he expects.
He walks into a party. A celebration that has been frozen in place, suspended the same way the paper birds had been in the air.
There are dozens of performers throughout the tent, bathed with light from glowing round lamps that hang high above amongst ropes and chairs and round cages. Some are standing in groups and pairs, others sit on
