The Bootlace Magician

by Cassie Beasley

  “Well, I have to now,” Micah said, embarrassed. “I’ll help him peel them while you finish Terp’s lunch.” He hunched over the bin.

  “You’re doing great, you know,” said Dulcie.

  Micah clutched an armful of red and yellow potatoes to his chest. “Thanks. It’s hard to hold this many.”

  “Not the potatoes, Micah.” Dulcie stuffed a mango into her overall bib. “I meant you’re doing well with the abandoned foal. I’m glad someone’s finally got her eating.”

  Abandoned. That word again. People used it all the time when they were talking about Terpsichore, and it always rubbed Micah the wrong way.

  He couldn’t say why, since it was only the truth. Maybe it was just that he hated to think of Terp like that—as if she were unwanted, a castoff.

  “She’s really great,” he said to Dulcie. “She’s smart. She likes playing games. She’s funny and sweet and there’s nothing wrong with her at all.”

  “Of course not,” Dulcie agreed in a kind voice.

  “Everyone says unicorns take good care of their foals,” said Micah. “That they’re these wonderful protectors. But I don’t see how they can be so wonderful if a whole herd full of them decided to leave Terp behind.”

  “Aw, sweetie,” said Dulcie, reaching for a melon that had rolled under the shelves. “There’s not always reason. Sometimes it’s just bad luck.”

  Micah knew that as well as anyone, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

  * * *

  Micah spent at least an hour with Terpsichore each day and sometimes more, depending on the mood she was in. An adult magician was always in the paddock in case he needed help. Usually it was one of the Strongmen or Mr. Head, so when he arrived with the food bucket, he was surprised to see the Lightbender standing outside the hidden seam.

  “I just came from a meeting with the manager,” the illusionist explained. “Since I was here anyway, I thought I’d stand watch.”

  “Aren’t you coming inside?” Micah asked, running his fingers in a zigzag down the seam. The fabric split, and an eager blue-green nose shoved itself out.

  “I will if you want,” said the Lightbender. “But the manager feels you have a firm handle on the job. He suggested that you might try it alone today. I’ll be right here if you have any trouble.”

  “I can do it,” Micah said at once. “I’ve had plenty of practice.”

  When he entered the paddock, he was immediately greeted with a happy tootling sound and a friendly jab to the stomach.

  “Oof!” he said. “Hello, Terp. You’re going to be too big to do that soon. And I’ve brought you lunch.”

  He waved the bucket enticingly.

  When the foal sniffed at the bucket and snorted unhappily, he set it down and pulled a strand of knots filled with special food memories out of his pocket. He’d tried many different versions of this project without much success, but he kept at it, just in case it was helping in some way he couldn’t see. Today, he’d tied a line of small knots into a length of silver ribbon and stuffed them with images of frosty soda bottles on hot summer days and long nighttime drives in Grandpa Ephraim’s car, on the way to their favorite pizza restaurant.

  He showed the knots to Terpsichore, and as usual, she ignored them completely. Micah wrapped the ribbon around the handle of the food bucket, figuring it couldn’t hurt. Then, he resorted to less dignified techniques.

  He danced around with the bucket, sniffing the contents and making loud yum-yum sounds. Eventually, Terp decided that it wasn’t fair he was having so much fun without her, and she trotted over to stick her head in the bucket. Dulcie had worked her magic so that the new food didn’t look too different from the melted yellow goop the unicorn was used to, and she dug in with gusto after she’d tasted a bite.

  When she’d finished, they played tag. And after that, sweaty, grass-stained, and with an empty bucket in hand, Micah left the foal to her own devices.

  “Success?” asked the Lightbender, when Micah emerged from the seam.

  “She ate every bite.”

  The illusionist was heading back to his tent for a two o’clock show, and Micah followed him, planning to change into fresher clothes.

  Outside, the drone of rain-forest insects was so loud that Micah could hear it even over the music and the excited chatter of the visiting children. It was a warm, humid day, and earlier it had been sunny. But now dark clouds were gathering in the sky overhead.

  The Lightbender looked up. “Perhaps we will take a shortcut,” he said, beelining toward the busy midway.

  If Micah had been with any of the circus’s other performers, they would soon have been surrounded by eager kids hoping to see some magic. But the Lightbender must have been using his power to hide them from the crowd. The magicians who ran the midway stalls waved at Micah, but none of the children even glanced in their direction.

  Micah sped up to keep pace with the Lightbender. “I wanted to say thank you.”

  “Whatever for?” The Lightbender sounded bemused.

  “For telling Mr. Head I would help with Terpsichore,” said Micah. “I’m doing my best. The knots full of happy food thoughts don’t work, but she’s still eating.”

  The Lightbender nodded. “You are doing well,” he said. “And you should not be disheartened about the knots. At least they have not been so disastrous as my own, similar attempt.”

  Micah remembered the scene he’d walked in on that first day, when the Lightbender had been hiding against the wall of the paddock. “You said she didn’t approve of you trying to alter her mind.”

  The Lightbender’s illusions didn’t have anything to do with bending light; it just sounded nicer than the truth.

  He’d told Micah that playing tricks with the light was something people had always understood, even long ago when he first discovered his power. A torch held at the wrong angle in the darkness could turn an oddly shaped rock into a beast. A stray shadow could make a man vanish.

  But what the Lightbender did was much more than that. He tweaked something in your brain, so that for you, the rock was a beast. And if the beast growled you would feel it in your bones, and if it chased you, you would hear its footfalls on the earth, and if it bit, you would feel sharp fangs sinking into your skin.

  Which was unbelievably scary if you thought about it, so Micah mostly didn’t.

  “I was trying to encourage Terpsichore to have ‘happy food thoughts’ myself,” the Lightbender said. “Most animals barely respond to my illusions, so I didn’t realize she would react badly. It appears unicorns take such things personally.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Micah had assumed the Lightbender’s illusions worked on pretty much anything.

  “There are exceptions. Creatures with human, or near-human, intelligence are susceptible. Chintzy is particularly easy to persuade.”

  Micah could guess how much that annoyed the parrot.

  “I am glad I never had occasion to try my magic on an adult unicorn,” said the Lightbender.

  “Are they really as strong as everyone says?”

  The Lightbender nodded. “I saw a stallion charge into the face of a cliff once.” He sounded amused. “I think he must have done it for the sheer pleasure of it. A boulder the size of our tent broke free, and he crushed it beneath his hooves until it was sand.”

  Micah couldn’t imagine Terp doing something like that.

  Moments later, they reached the Lightbender’s tent, and Micah blinked at the sight of all the kids waiting to get in. It was always strange to be reminded that he lived somewhere people were willing to line up to visit.

  The Lightbender’s tent was small compared to many of the others at Circus Mirandus, but in Micah’s opinion, it was the most attractive.

  Golden sunbursts glittered against the black fabric. And the tingle that filled the air around the tent was
particularly interesting right now, with a storm building and the wind picking up speed. Even on sunny days, the feeling was electric and strange, like the ghost of a lightning bolt that had struck moments before.

  Micah shivered even though he knew it was a special effect. The Lightbender had offered once to exempt him from the sensation. It was only decoration, he’d explained, and there was no reason for Micah to experience it since he was a resident at the circus instead of a guest.

  But Micah had asked him not to.

  He thought it was special to live with someone who used illusions the way most people used wallpaper. And the tingle made the Lightbender’s tent feel separate from the rest of the circus, the way your home felt separate from every other house you’d ever stepped inside.

  Micah also liked that the tent was the only one at Circus Mirandus with a guard stationed beside it.

  “Hi, Bowler,” he said as he passed by the Strongman on his way inside.

  Bowler’s heavily muscled arms were crossed over a chest twice as wide as Micah’s whole body. He didn’t have on a shirt, but he wore black suspenders that matched his bowler hat. The hat was tipped low over his eyes when they arrived, but he lifted it to wink at Micah.

  “Bowler.” The Lightbender sighed. “It’s about to rain. And I will not die during this afternoon’s performance. I promise. You do not have to stand out here in a downpour.”

  “Hi, Micah,” said Bowler, ignoring the Lightbender completely. He had an English accent and a cheerful face. “Did you have fun with our little Terpsichore?”

  Micah grinned. “We’re getting along great.”

  “No one has ever sneaked into my tent to assassinate me,” the Lightbender said. He gestured at himself, as if to prove how alive he was. “And if they did, I could deal with the situation myself. I am more than capable.”

  The Strongman glanced at the illusionist and then tipped his hat back down over his eyes.

  Micah tried not to laugh.

  It was true that the Lightbender didn’t need a bodyguard, but he had saved Bowler’s life almost a hundred years before, and the Strongman insisted that he had to return the favor. Whenever he wasn’t busy doing other work around the circus, he took up his post and refused to budge.

  Micah followed his grumbling guardian into the main section of the tent. The circular black stage at the center of the room was spotless, and so was the floor beneath the bleachers. Micah suspected Chintzy had been grubbing around for all the dropped candy and popcorn even though the parrot knew it wasn’t good for her.

  “Maybe you should do something dangerous,” Micah suggested. “You could let Bowler save you, and then he would feel like the debt was paid.”

  “Tempting,” the Lightbender said. “But I have learned that life holds enough danger on its own. I prefer to let it come when it must and avoid it otherwise. Are you staying for the show?”

  Micah shook his head.

  He opened the seam to his bedroom with a special combination of finger wiggles and stepped inside.

  While he was changing clothes, the show started in the main section of the tent. If Micah listened, he could hear the muffled sounds of the audience taking their seats in the stands. But not long after, they fell completely silent.

  Illusions weren’t a noisy magic.

  He flopped down on top of his patchwork quilt, clutched his pillow to his chest and wondered, as he often did lately, about Terpsichore. He kept turning the foal’s story over in his mind, trying to come up with a version that felt right. Unicorns were protectors. And foals were rare. So why hadn’t they protected Terpsichore?

  Why had they abandoned her?

  Dulcie had called it bad luck, but Terp’s luck couldn’t be all bad or she wouldn’t have ended up here, at Circus Mirandus, with Micah and other people who were trying to take care of her.

  She must have been so scared, he thought. If she hadn’t wandered into the circus’s meadow, anything might have happened to her.

  She’s like me. She’s lost her family, but it could be worse.

  He sat up.

  She’s like me.

  Suddenly, Micah knew what was bothering him.

  RESPONSIBILITY

  Micah waited for the Lightbender’s show to end. He was sure it had never taken so long before.

  To distract himself, he reached for a pile of black cord and gold ribbon he’d left on top of his bookcase the previous night.

  Micah had decided a few days ago that he was going to tie a knot bracelet to represent every single magician, tent, and show at Circus Mirandus. It would be good practice, and he liked how it felt when he finished a new one and got it just right. It was like capturing a little piece of the circus in string or thread, and he’d begun to keep his favorite ones tied around his left wrist. (He wore the bootlace bracelet on his right.)

  But no matter how many times he tried, Micah could never seem to tie a bracelet that properly represented the Lightbender.

  For this latest attempt, he had chosen two strands of black cord and a bright gold ribbon, and he had wound them over and around each other in a series of tiny, complicated knots. These knots were supposed to hold an impression of the illusionist—memories of his performances and his oddly formal way of speaking and his old leather coat—but for some reason, none of it was ever quite right.

  Micah sat on the foot of his bed and tied knot after knot. He felt like his hands were doing battle with the cords and the ribbon. His fingers clenched, his knuckles popped, and sometimes he made such sudden, painful twists with his wrists that it was a wonder he didn’t sprain them.

  Almost there, he thought. I’ll get it this time.

  He tied, faster and faster, until his fingers nearly blurred. Then, all of a sudden, the gold ribbon burst. It didn’t break neatly in two. It exploded.

  Like a dandelion puff caught in a sudden gale, the tiny fibers that made up the ribbon blew apart, flurrying around Micah’s hands.

  He clutched at the destroyed bracelet. His fingers moved of their own accord, as if they thought some particular combination of twitches or tweaks might bring the gold ribbon back. Micah forced them to stop.

  “Seriously?”

  He’d never made a ribbon fall to pieces before. And now his fingers stung in a way that meant it would probably be a bad idea to try again. Sighing, he dropped the snarled black cords and the palmful of golden fluff on top of the bookcase.

  Outside, it had started pouring. Micah could hear the rumble of thunder and the whoosh of heavy rain against the roof, though both sounds were muffled by the magical protections woven into the tent fabric.

  The Lightbender’s show had just ended, but Micah waited for an interminable half hour before he left his room. The performers almost always stuck around to talk to fans after their shows; it was an important part of the experience. All the kids in the audience right now would be leaving the circus soon (no one’s ticket was ever good for more than a week), and they would never be back. For some of them, this would be their one and only chance to speak to the Lightbender.

  Micah wouldn’t ruin that for anyone. So, he paced a trail across the rug, and when the time was finally up, he let out a sigh of relief and hurried out the seam into the main section of the tent.

  The stands were empty, but the Lightbender hadn’t left yet. He sat on the stage in the homely, comfortable armchair his audiences never knew existed. A plate with a half-eaten fish sandwich balanced atop the armrest. The illusionist was staring thoughtfully up at a patch in the tent’s dark ceiling.

  The patch was Micah’s fault. It had seemed like a good idea, as his grandfather lay dying, to break into Circus Mirandus and demand that the Lightbender come visit him. When Geoffrey and Bibi had refused to let Micah past the ticket stand, he’d stolen a giant gorilla balloon to mount an aerial assault. He’d fallen through the roof during the middle of
the Lightbender’s show.

  It had been dangerous and horribly painful.

  Micah didn’t regret it.

  “Hello,” said the Lightbender as Micah stepped onto the stage.

  “Everyone’s wrong about Terpsichore,” said Micah.

  The Lightbender’s brow furrowed. “In what way?”

  “She’s not here by accident. I think her mom must have brought her to the circus for an important reason.”

  “Micah, I do not think it likely—”

  “Listen,” said Micah.

  The Lightbender fell quiet.

  “Something’s been bothering me,” said Micah, walking back and forth along the stage in front of the Lightbender’s chair. “Terpsichore’s story doesn’t make any sense. Unicorns are good, and their foals are really rare. Even Mr. Head says so.”

  Micah didn’t believe the manager would get the basic facts about any magical animal wrong.

  “But everyone keeps calling Terp abandoned. And that’s even worse, in a way, than what happened to me. Because Grandpa Ephraim couldn’t help dying. He would have stayed with me if he could.”

  Micah didn’t usually talk about his grandfather so openly with people who weren’t Fish, and it made him feel awkward and raw. But he had to make sure the Lightbender understood.

  “He tried so hard to make sure I would be okay after he was gone. You offered him a miracle when he was ten, and he saved it for his whole life. But then he spent it on me, just to give me a chance to live here at the circus.”

  Micah touched his bootlace. “Even though he’s gone, I’m . . . I guess I’m whatever the opposite of abandoned is.”

  The Lightbender didn’t say anything. He sat very still in his chair.

  “I know that Terpsichore wasn’t abandoned either,” said Micah. “Because this isn’t the kind of place where someone gets abandoned. Circus Mirandus is really hard to find. Terp couldn’t have made it here all on her own; she’s too little. Her mother must have brought her here. And that would have been dangerous—leaving her herd and tracking you down and traveling who knows how far just to reach you. She wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble if she didn’t care about her foal.