The Night Circus(41)

Isobel pushes the veil that is slipping over her face back behind her head again.

“Well,” she says, “now you know about it, and you can do whatever you want to it.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Marco says. “I cannot use anything she does for my own purposes. The sides need to remain separate. If we were playing a game of chess, I could not simply remove her pieces from the board. My only option is to retaliate with my own pieces when she moves hers.”

“But there can’t possibly be an endgame, then,” Isobel says. “How can you checkmate a circus? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s not like chess,” Marco says, struggling to explain something that he has finally begun to understand even though he cannot properly articulate it. He glances at her table where a few cards remain laid faceup, one in particular catching his attention.

“It’s like this,” he says, pointing out the woman with her scales and sword, La Justice inscribed below her feet. “It’s a set of scales: one side is mine, the other is hers.”

A set of silver scales appears on the table between the cards, balancing precariously, each side piled with diamonds that sparkle in the candlelight.

“So the object is to tip the scales in your favor?” Isobel asks.

Marco nods, turning through the pages of his notebook. He keeps flipping back to the page with the tree.

“But if you both keep adding to your sides of the scale, increasing the weight on each side in turn,” Isobel says, watching the gently swaying scale, “won’t it break?”

“I do not believe it is an exact comparison,” Marco says, and the scales vanish.

Isobel frowns at the empty space.

“How long is this going to go on?” she asks.

“I have no idea,” Marco says. “Do you want to leave?” he adds, looking up at her. Unsure of what response he wants to the question.

“No,” Isobel says. “I … I don’t want to leave. I like it here, I do. But I would also like to understand. Maybe if I understood better I could be more helpful.”

“You are helpful,” Marco says. “Perhaps the only advantage I have is that she does not know who I am. She only has the circus to react to and I have you to watch her.”

“But I haven’t seen any reaction,” Isobel protests. “She keeps to herself. She reads more than anyone I have ever met. The Murray twins adore her. She has been nothing but kind to me. I have never seen her do a single thing out of the ordinary beyond when she performs. You say she is making all these moves and yet I never see her do anything. How do you know that tree is not Ethan Barris’s work?”

“Mr. Barris creates impressive mechanics, but this is not his doing. Though she’s embellished his carousel, I’m certain of that. I doubt even an engineer of Mr. Barris’s talent can make a painted wooden gryphon breathe. That tree is rooted in the ground, it is a living tree even if it does not have leaves.”

Marco turns his attention back to his sketch, tracing the lines of the tree with his fingertips.

“Did you make a wish?” Isobel asks quietly.

Marco closes his notebook without answering the question.

“Does she still perform on the quarter hour?” he asks, drawing a watch from his pocket.

“Yes, but … you’re going to sit there and watch her show?” Isobel asks. “There’s barely room for twenty people in her tent, she’ll notice you. Won’t she think it strange that you’re here?”

“She won’t even recognize me,” Marco says. The watch vanishes from his hand. “Whenever there is a new tent, I would appreciate it if you would let me know.”

He turns and walks away, moving so quickly that the candle flames shiver with the motion of the air.

“I miss you,” Isobel says as he leaves, but the sentiment is crushed by the clatter of the beaded curtain falling closed behind him.

She tugs the black mist of her veil back down over her face.





*


AFTER THE LAST of her querents has departed in the early hours of the morning, Isobel takes her Marseilles deck from her pocket. She carries it with her always though she has a separate deck for circus readings, a custom-made version in black and white and shades of grey.

From the Marseilles deck she draws a single card. She knows which it will be before she turns it over. The angel emblazoned on the front is only a confirmation of what she already suspects.

She does not return it to the deck.





Atmosphere

LONDON, SEPTEMBER 1891




The circus has arrived near London, the train creeping in just after nightfall without drawing any notice. The train cars collapse, doors and halls sliding apart, silently forming chains of windowless rooms. Canvas stripes unfurl around them, uncoiled ropes snapping taut and platforms assembling themselves amongst carefully draped curtains.

(The company assumes there is a crew that accomplishes this feat while they unpack their trunks, though some aspects of the transition are clearly automated. This was once the case, but now there is no crew, no unseen stagehands moving bits of scenery to their proper places. They are no longer necessary.)

The tents sit quiet and dark, as the circus will not be open to the public until the following evening.