The Night Circus

image of a card springs suddenly into her mind, Le Bateleur. “You’re a magician,” she says.

“I don’t think anyone has actually called me that before,” Marco responds. Isobel laughs again, and she is still laughing when he leans closer and kisses her.

The pair of birds circle overhead as a light wind blows through the branches of the trees around them.

To passersby on the darkened London street, they look like nothing out of the ordinary, only young lovers kissing in the rain.

False Pretenses JULY — NOVEMBER 1884

Prospero the Enchanter gives no formal reason for his retirement from the stage. His tours have been so sporadic in recent years that the lack of performances passes mostly without notice.

But Hector Bowen still tours, in a manner of speaking, even if Prospero the Enchanter does not.

He travels from city to city, hiring out his sixteen-year-old daughter as a spiritual medium.

“I hate this, Papa,” Celia protests frequently.

“If you can think of a better way to bide your time before your challenge begins — and don’t you dare say reading — then you are welcome to it, provided it makes as much money as this does. Besides, it is good practice for you to perform in front of an audience.”

“These people are insufferable,” Celia says, though it is not exactly what she means. They make her uncomfortable. The way they look at her, the pleading glances and tear-streaked stares. They see her as a thing, a bridge to their lost loved ones that they so desperately cling to.

They talk about her as though she is not even in the room, as if she is as insubstantial as their beloved spirits. She must force herself not to cringe when they inevitably embrace her, thanking her through their sobs.

“These people mean nothing,” her father says. “They cannot even begin to grasp what it is they think they see and hear, and it is easier for them to believe they are receiving miraculous transmissions from the afterlife. Why not take advantage of that, especially when they are so willing to part with their money for something so simple?”

Celia maintains that no amount of money is worth such an excruciating experience, but Hector is insistent, and so they continue to travel, levitating tables and producing phantom knocking on all manner of well-papered walls.

She remains baffled by the way their clients crave the communication, the reassurance. Not once has she ever wished to contact her departed mother, and she doubts her mother would want to speak with her if she could, especially through such complicated methods.

This is all a lie, she wants to say to them. The dead are not hovering nearby to knock politely at teacups and tabletops and whisper through billowing curtains.

She occasionally breaks their valuables, placing the blame on restless spirits.

Her father picks different names for her as they change locales, but he uses Miranda often, presumably because he knows how much it annoys her.

After months of it she is exhausted from the travel and the strain and the fact that her father barely lets her eat, as he claims looking like a waif makes her seem more convincing, closer to the other side.

Only after she genuinely faints during a session, rather than perfectly executing the choreographed dramatic swoon, does he relent to a respite at their home in New York.

At tea one afternoon, in between glares at the amount of jam and clotted cream she is slathering on her scones, he mentions that he has contracted her services for the weekend to a weeping widow across town, who has agreed to pay twice her normal rate.

“I said you could have a rest,” her father says when Celia refuses, not even looking up from the pile of papers he has spread across the dining table. “You’ve had three days, that should suffice. You look fine. You’re going to be even prettier than your mother someday.”

“I’m surprised you remember what my mother looked like,” Celia says.

“Do you?” her father asks, glancing up at her and continuing when she only frowns in response. “I may only have spent a matter of weeks in her company, but I remember her with more clarity than you do, and you had her for five years. Time is a peculiar thing. You’ll learn that eventually.”

He returns his attention to his papers.

“What about this challenge you’re supposedly training me for?” Celia asks. “Or is that just another way for you to make money?”

“Celia, dearest,” Hector says. “You have great things ahead of you, but we have relinquished control of when they will begin. Our side does not have the first move. We will simply be notified when it is time to put you on the board, as it were.”

“Then why does it matter what I do in the meantime?”

“You need the practice.”

Celia tilts her head, staring at him as she puts her hands on the table. All of the papers fold themselves into elaborate shapes: pyramids and helixes and paper birds with rustling wings.

Her father looks up, annoyed. He lifts a heavy glass paperweight and brings it down on her hand, hard enough to break her wrist with a sharp crack.

The papers unfold and flutter back to the surface of the table.

“You need the practice,” he repeats. “Your control is still lacking.”

Celia leaves the room without a word, holding her wrist and biting back tears.

“And for Christ’s sake, stop crying,” her father calls after her.

It takes her the better part of an hour to set and heal the shards of bone.

* * *

ISOBEL SITS IN A RARELY OCCUPIED ARMCHAIR in the corner of Marco’s flat, a rainbow of silk ribbon twisted around her fingers as she attempts in vain to form it into a single elaborate braid.

“This seems so silly,” she remarks, frowning at the tangle of ribbon.

“It’s a simple charm,” Marco says from his desk where he sits surrounded by open books. “A ribbon for each element, bound with knots and intent. It’s like your cards, only influencing the subject instead of simply divining its meaning. But it won’t work if you don’t believe it will, you know that.”

“Perhaps I am not in the proper mood to believe it,” Isobel says, loosening the knots and putting the ribbons aside, letting them cascade over the arm of the chair. “I’ll try again tomorrow.”

“Help me, then,” Marco says, looking up from his books. “Think of something. An object. A significant object that I cannot possibly know about.”

Isobel sighs but she obediently closes her eyes, concentrating.

“It’s a ring,” Marco says after a moment, picking the image out of her mind as easily as if she had drawn him a picture. “A gold ring with a sapphire flanked by two diamonds.”

Isobel’s eyes snap open.

“How did you know that?” she asks.

“Is it an engagement ring?” he counters with a grin.

She clasps her hand to her mouth before she nods.

“You sold it,” Marco says, picking up the fragments of memory attached to the ring itself. “In Barcelona. You fled an arranged marriage, that’s why you’re in London. Why did you not tell me?”

“It is not exactly a topic of proper conversation,” Isobel says. “And you hardly tell me anything about yourself, you could have fled an arranged marriage of your own.”

They stare at each other for a moment, while Marco tries to come up with an appropriate response, but then Isobel laughs.

“He probably looked for the ring longer than he looked for me,” she says, glancing down at her bare hand. “It was such a lovely thing, I almost didn’t want to part with it but I had no money and nothing else to sell.”