r of performance lives.
He was raised in the theater, sitting in boxes at the ballet. Being a restless child, he quickly grew bored with the familiarity of the dances and chose instead to watch the audiences. To see when they smiled and gasped, when the women sighed and when the men began to nod off.
So perhaps it is not terribly surprising that now, many years later, he still has more interest in the audience than in the performance itself. Though the performance must be spectacular in order to coerce the best reactions.
And because he is incapable of observing the faces of every audience member at every performance of every show (shows that range from compelling drama to exotic dancing girls and a few that creatively combine the two), he relies on the reviews.
Though there has not been a review in some time that vexes him the way that this particular one does. And certainly not one in years that provoked knife throwing.
The knife flies once again, this time piercing the word “stage.”
Chandresh goes to retrieve it, sipping his brandy on the way. He regards the nearly decimated article curiously for a moment, peering at the almost illegible words. Then he bellows for Marco.
With your ticket in hand, you follow a continuous line of patrons into the circus, watching the rhythmic motion of the black-and-white clock as you wait.
Beyond the ticket booth the only way forward is through a heavy striped curtain. One by one each person passes through it, vanishing from sight.
When it is your turn, you pull back the fabric and step forward, only to be engulfed by darkness as the curtain closes again.
It takes your eyes a few moments to adjust, and then tiny dots of light begin appearing like stars, lining the dark walls in front of you.
And while moments before you were so close to your fellow circusgoers that you could have touched them, now you are alone as you feel your way tentatively forward through a mazelike tunnel.
The tunnel twists and turns, the tiny lights providing the only illumination. You have no way of discerning how far you have gone or which direction you are moving in.
Finally you reach another curtain. Fabric that feels as soft as velvet beneath your hands parts easily when you touch it.
The light on the other side is blinding.
Truth or Dare
CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS, SEPTEMBER 1897
They sit in the oak tree in the afternoon sun, the five of them. His sister Caroline on the highest branch, because she always climbs the highest. Her best friend Millie perches below. The Mackenzie brothers, throwing acorns at the squirrels, are somewhat lower than that, but not low enough to be considered anything but high. He is always on the low branches. Not for fear of heights but for where he ranks in the group, when he is even allowed to be a part of it. Being Caroline’s younger brother is both a blessing and a curse that way. Bailey is sometimes allowed to join them, but always kept in his place.
“Truth or dare,” Caroline calls from the upper branches. She receives no reply, so she drops an acorn directly on her brother’s head. “Truth. Or. Dare. Bailey,” she repeats.
Bailey rubs his head through his hat. Maybe the acorn makes him choose the way he does. “Truth” is a resigned response, a yielding to Caroline’s abusive, nut-throwing version of the game. “Dare” is marginally more defiant. Even if he is humoring her, at least he isn’t a coward.
It seems like the right thing to say, and he feels rather proud of himself when it takes Caroline a moment to respond. She sits on her branch some fifteen feet above him, swinging her leg and looking off over the field while she formulates the dare. The Mackenzie brothers continue to torment the squirrels. Then Caroline smiles, and clears her throat to make her proclamation.
“Bailey’s dare,” she starts, making it his own and no one else’s, binding him to it. He begins to feel uneasy before she even says what the dare actually consists of. She pauses dramatically before declaring: “Bailey’s dare is to break into the Night Circus.”
Millie gasps. The Mackenzie brothers stop their acorn throwing and look up at her, squirrels abruptly forgotten. A huge smile spreads across Caroline’s face as she stares down at Bailey. “And bring something back as proof,” she adds, unable to keep the hint of triumph out of her voice.
It is an impossible dare, and all of them know it.
Bailey looks out across the field to where the circus tents sit like mountains in the middle of the valley. It is so still in the daytime, with no lights and no music and no crowds of people. Just a bunch of striped tents, looking more yellow and grey than black and white in the afternoon sun. It looks odd, and perhaps a bit mysterious, but not extraordinary. Not in the middle of the day. And not terribly scary, Bailey thinks.
“I’ll do it,” he says. He jumps down from his low branch and starts across the field, not waiting to hear their replies, not wanting Caroline to retract the dare. He is certain she expected him to say no. An acorn whizzes by his ear, but nothing else.
And for reasons Bailey cannot quite put words to, he is walking toward the circus with a considerable amount of determination.
It looks just as it did the first time he saw it, when he was not quite six years old.
It materialized in the same spot then, and now it looks like it never left. As though it were merely invisible for the five-year period when the field sat empty.
At the age of not quite six, he was not allowed to visit the circus. His parents deemed him too young, so he could only stare from afar, enchanted, at the tents and the lights.