Circus Mirandus

by Cassie Beasley

  So they stayed for another.

  After the theater closed, they tiptoed crazily back to the car because they were trying to see who could avoid the most cracks in the pavement. When they climbed in, Grandpa Ephraim smiled at Micah. “Sleepy yet?”

  “Not even a little.” He would never be sleepy again if it meant that this night could last forever.

  They went to a place that had putt-putt golf 24/7. They didn’t keep score. They never did when they played games together. That way, when the game was over, they could agree that they had tied.

  On the drive back home, Grandpa Ephraim turned the radio up loud, and they sang along to all the songs they knew. When his grandfather tried to make up the lyrics to the songs they didn’t know, Micah laughed so hard that he started snorting.

  It was so perfect, so magical, that Micah almost believed it would last forever. How could something so right ever stop? Then they pulled into the driveway, and Grandpa Ephraim coughed. Just once.

  He shut off the radio and sighed. “I think that might be our cue.”

  “Everyone coughs once in a while,” Micah said in a small voice.

  “Maybe so,” Grandpa Ephraim said. “But I think it’s your turn. You have your own Circus Mirandus story to tell now.”

  “It’s not as good as yours.”

  His grandfather smiled at him. “Maybe it’s not over yet.”

  When Micah finished describing his trip to Circus Mirandus, Grandpa Ephraim had tears in his eyes. At first, Micah thought he was crying because he was disappointed, but then he wiped his face and said, “Oh, Micah, I remember. I’m so glad you’ve seen it. Wasn’t it beautiful?”

  He reached over for a hug, and Micah returned it as hard as he could. “But I haven’t convinced the Lightbender to help you yet. You’re going to . . . to leave me.”

  Grandpa Ephraim shook his head. “I’m afraid that you were asking too much of the Lightbender, Micah. I already told him what I wanted for my miracle, the second time he sent his parrot to see me. I never expected him to pull me back from death’s door.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Micah. “What did you want from him? What did you ask for?”

  His grandfather looked at him seriously. “For something very important and very difficult. For something stranger and more magnificent than anything he’d done before.”

  “What?”

  “That’s not something I can tell you yet. The Lightbender is still trying to make it happen. It’s something that he can’t do all by himself, you see.”

  Micah didn’t see at all. What could possibly be more important than making sure that Grandpa Ephraim didn’t die? “We could go to the circus,” he said suddenly. The idea was so simple. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before. “We could ask Rosebud for more medicine. For gallons of it!”

  But Grandpa Ephraim shook his head again. “I like to think,” he said slowly, “that I could go one more time to Circus Mirandus. I like to think I have kept myself open enough to magic for that. But even if I can, I don’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  Grandpa Ephraim was staring out the car window as if he could see something more beyond the glass than their ordinary street. He coughed again. “Because when you try too hard to hold on to something, you break it.” He opened the door and motioned for Micah to do the same. “Sometimes, we need to let go so that other people can have their chance at the magic.”

  They decided to spend the last few hours of the night in the tree house they had built together.

  Grandpa Ephraim laughed when he sat on half of a squashed tuna sandwich. “What’s this?” he asked as he pulled it out from under him.

  “Jenny and I must have left it.”

  Even in the dark, Micah could tell his grandfather’s eyes were sparkling with interest. “Jenny,” he said. “Your new friend. I wish I could meet her.”

  “You can,” Micah said. “She’ll visit if I ask. Tomorrow even. I know she will.”

  His grandfather didn’t say anything.

  Micah tried to push away the memory of how Grandpa Ephraim had been before Rosebud’s potion, but it wouldn’t let go of him. “You have to meet Jenny,” he said. “We could call her right now.”

  “Good gracious, Micah! At this hour?” Grandpa Ephraim’s voice was amused. “I doubt her parents would appreciate that.”

  “I . . .” Micah was at a loss. Then, he had a flash of inspiration. “Do you have any string?”

  Grandpa Ephraim tipped his head to the side. “You’re still wearing my bootlace.”

  Micah looked down at his wrist. “I know how you can meet Jenny,” he said. The lace that Aunt Gertrudis had tried so hard to pry off that morning came away in his hand with a single tug.

  He didn’t worry about whether or not it would work. It was for Grandpa Ephraim, so it had to work. The knot began to take shape under his fingers. Here was a curve for how smart Jenny was, and there was a twist for their argument in the craft supply closet. Here a loop for the late night ride to Circus Mirandus, there another for the way Jenny pulled her braids when she was upset. Micah tied and tied, and when he was finished, he saw that he’d made exactly what he wanted.

  He held it out to his grandfather. “This is Jenny.”

  Grandpa Ephraim cradled the knot in the palm of his hand. He closed his eyes and ran his fingers over it. When he opened them again, he was smiling. “Micah,” he said, “do you know what you’ve done?”

  “It’s supposed to be like Jenny.”

  Grandpa Ephraim nodded. “It is. Your friend is truly one of a kind. You’d better take good care of her.” He looked back down at the knot. “I have never seen anything like this in all my days. You’ve put memories into a bit of leather. Don’t you see how remarkable that is?”

  Micah shrugged. “You can tie knots, too.”

  “Not like this.” Grandpa Ephraim reached out to Micah’s wrist and carefully looped the bootlace around it. He turned Jenny’s knot so that it was against Micah’s pulse and tied the lace firmly into place. “This is something very special.”

  “I’m not special,” said Micah.

  “Don’t you want to be?”

  Micah thought about it for a minute. “Doesn’t everybody?”

  Grandpa Ephraim chuckled. “I suppose. But some of us aren’t brave enough to find our specialness, and some of us make mistakes along the way.”

  He looked up at the stars through the oak’s branches. “I’m glad you asked the Lightbender about Victoria. I never knew her whole story.”

  Micah frowned. Something about Victoria’s tale had been bothering him. “I don’t get how you married someone like the Bird Woman. How did you even meet her?”

  “There’s one story I never told you,” his grandfather said. “It didn’t have a happy ending, so I thought it was best to keep it to myself.”

  “I thought you’d told me everything.”

  “I told you everything about my first trip to Circus Mirandus.”

  Micah’s eyes widened, and his grandfather nodded.

  “When I was a young man, I tried to go back.”

  No one at Circus Mirandus knew the part of Ephraim’s story that he revealed to Micah that night in the tree house. How could anyone have suspected such an astounding coincidence? The day Victoria fell, the day she left the circus forever—on that very same day, Ephraim Tuttle was trying to find it.

  His father had survived the war, and the Tuttles had spent a few blissful years getting on with their lives. Gertrudis had been born a happy, squalling baby, and the family had moved into a larger house in a better part of town. Ephraim had gone back to school and had even managed to stay long enough to graduate.

  But life can be unkind. When he was nineteen, Ephraim’s mother died of a sudden illness, and after his father fell into grief, Ephraim foun
d himself responsible for his seven-year-old sister. He handled the situation with a great deal of fortitude for his age. He didn’t let it derail his plans. He was finally ready to ask the Lightbender for his miracle.

  Ephraim had been searching for news of the circus for several months, and the investigation had become something of a personal quest. He spent a great deal of time listening to the gossip of children at the local park and visiting every traveling carnival and fair that he could find. It never occurred to him that something as simple as a letter might gain anyone’s attention.

  Eventually, he heard a rumor that the circus had been seen near Chicago. He packed his sister up and made his way there, certain that he had finally tracked them down. He was right to be confident. He was only a few miles away from his goal.

  Ephraim pulled his sister up onto his back to jump across a dirty stream that ran right down the center of the wood-block street. The day was miserably hot, and Gertie stuck to Ephraim’s sweaty back like she’d been glued there. He didn’t mind. Finally, after so long, he could hear the music.

  “And you’re going to be a magician?” Gertie asked for the third time that afternoon. “You’ll do tricks with your knots in front of hundreds of people?”

  “I will,” said Ephraim. “If they’ll have me. I’m going to ask the Lightbender to teach me magic properly.”

  “I bet he doesn’t have to teach you anything at all. Your knots are the best magic there is.”

  “You only think that because you haven’t seen any other kind yet.” Ephraim had an inkling, just the faintest idea, of what he could be with proper training. Knots were such a versatile thing really, especially once you started thinking beyond string. They were everywhere you looked and in many places that you didn’t, and then there were knots that were completely invisible, like the ones that held families together.

  He shifted her on his back. “We’re almost there,” he said. “I can feel it.”

  Then he turned a corner and found himself face-to-face with the Amazing Amazonian Bird Woman.

  Ephraim had no way of knowing that Victoria had just left Circus Mirandus for good. He had no way of knowing how angry she was with the Lightbender.

  “Good gracious!” Ephraim exclaimed. “You’re the Amazing Amazonian Bird Woman.”

  She stopped dead. “I prefer Victoria.” She looked him up and down. “Who are you?”

  “Ephraim Tuttle,” he said. “And this is Gertie.”

  Gertie peeked over the top of her brother’s shoulder. “We’re going to a magic circus,” she chirped. “My brother’s going to be a magician.”

  To Ephraim, the hot day suddenly felt twenty degrees warmer. The Bird Woman, who he had once thought was the most beautiful woman in the world, was twice as pretty as he remembered.

  “I’m just going to ask if they can help me learn,” he said. “I know a few things. Tricks. But the Lightbender, I mean the Man Who Bends Light of course, offered me a miracle.”

  “Oh did he?” said Victoria. Her eyes narrowed. “He doesn’t do that often.”

  “I’m hoping instead of a regular miracle, so to speak, he might agree to teach me,” Ephraim babbled.

  “He must have seen a lot of potential in you.” Her voice was contemplative. “He must have thought you had something special to contribute.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I would call what I do special—”

  “Nonsense.” Victoria smiled then, and to Ephraim it was like the sunrise. “So you’re going to Circus Mirandus to meet the Man Who Bends Light. You’re going to learn to be a . . . what is it you do exactly?”

  Ephraim carried his old bootlace with him everywhere. He showed Victoria the knot he had tied for the Lightbender years before.

  “How wonderful!” she said when he was finished. “That is just the kind of magic we’re looking for at Circus Mirandus.”

  “Really?” Ephraim asked. “I’ve always worried that it was too little a thing.”

  “Really,” said Victoria. She fluttered her eyelashes at him. “Surely you’re not going right now, though?”

  Ephraim was still staring at her eyelashes.

  “We are,” Gertie said.

  “Oh dear!” Victoria shook her head. “I’m taking a short vacation from it all, myself. It would have been nice to have some company.” She bit her lower lip. “I don’t suppose you want to come with me.”

  “We don’t,” Gertie told her.

  “You can always join Circus Mirandus later.” Victoria laughed merrily. “Why, it’s been around for thousands of years! I doubt we have to worry about it disbanding.”

  Ephraim was sure he hadn’t been so lucky since Fish swam into his boot. “Of course,” he said.

  Victoria held her arm out, and Ephraim shook off his stupor. He set his sister on the ground and took Victoria’s arm to help her across the street.

  “But, Ephi!”

  Victoria bent down to her. “It’s not such a tragedy, darling,” she whispered. “You would have been terribly disappointed in the end.”

  By the time Ephraim realized that Victoria had misled him, he was already very much in love with her. When she begged him to forgive her, he did.

  “But I want you to understand that I’m going to keep looking for it,” he told her. “I belong at Circus Mirandus. Sometimes I think I always have.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Really, I am. I do love you. We could be a great team, you and I.”

  He believed her, and they were married soon after.

  Ephraim found a job as a shoe salesman. It was supposed to be a temporary position, but money was in short supply. Gertie was growing up so quickly. She always seemed to need new stockings or shirts or skirts. Ephraim looked up one day to discover that his sister was eleven years old, and he was farther away from Circus Mirandus than he ever had been.

  He could hardly let his wife and his little sister starve while he chased the circus all over the world. So, he stacked boxes of shoes and measured feet and dreamed of pipes and drums.

  For her part, Victoria seemed content enough. She kept the house in order and directed Sunday choir, and if she was difficult to get along with now and then . . . well, at least Gertie had come to adore her. Once or twice, Ephraim caught his wife looking out the window at the birds with a calculating expression on her face, but he dismissed it as something he had imagined.

  Then came the day when he spotted her hovering a few inches above the living room carpet. Victoria was staring out the window again, but this time she looked pleased.

  “Your magic is back!” Ephraim was delighted. She had told him that she had lost her magic because of an accident. She didn’t like to talk about it, and he didn’t blame her. He couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for her. “This changes everything.”

  “Yes,” said Victoria. “It certainly does.”

  She ran a slender finger down the glass pane. “Ephraim,” she said, “have I ever told you about the other magicians? The ones who don’t work for Mirandus Head, I mean. They might be very interested in meeting us, you know.”

  “That’s good, I guess,” Ephraim said.

  “It is good, Ephraim. I’m talented. You’re talented enough, though of course you need some training to reach your full potential. It’s a thought, isn’t it?”

  “But Victoria—Circus Mirandus. It’s waiting out there for both of us now. For all of us.”

  “Mmm, yes,” Victoria said. “Gertie’s still eager for the place, isn’t she? It won’t be easy to take her along if she’s outgrown the idea, though, will it? The manager does tend to be selective.”

  “You know she’s still dying to see it! And I can’t wait to tell her about your magic.”

  Victoria stepped over to kiss him on the cheek. She smiled. “I can’t wait either.”

  One S
aturday not long after that, while her brother was at work, Gertrudis Tuttle was lying on the front porch of the house when Victoria came out to sweep. Gertie had her tongue between her teeth, and she was staring intently at something in her hands.

  “What have you got there, darling?” Victoria asked.

  “It’s the bootlace. I don’t know why it won’t work for me. Ephraim does it like it’s nothing.”

  Victoria laughed. “Oh, Gertie, that’s a good one! I didn’t know you still believed your brother’s old stories.”

  “Of course I do.”

  Victoria rolled her eyes. “Do you really think his silly knot hobby is magic?”

  “Yes. I’ve seen him do it. He’s going to be a great magician one day.”

  “Honestly, sweetie, you’re smarter than that. He says I can fly!”

  Gertie looked up at her calmly. “You can. I don’t know why you never do it, but Ephi wouldn’t lie to me.”

  There was a strange glint in Victoria’s eye. “He did,” she said. “Think about it. If I could fly, I wouldn’t be sweeping this porch. I would be doing, oh I don’t know, a hundred other things.”

  “But—”

  “Think,” said Victoria. “If I could do magic, if anyone with any sense could do magic, would they really squander their time putting on shows for children?”

  “Ephraim says they do. It sounds nice.”

  Victoria leaned against the railing. “It sounds foolish. Real magicians would be powerful people. They would be rich and famous. They would control entire countries. If Circus Mirandus existed, it wouldn’t be a good thing. It would be a huge waste of talent. That’s not the sort of place you should believe in.”