“About that . . .” Jenny dumped the towels in the wash and stood on her tiptoes to reach the knob. “It’ll be way easier not to bother them with all this. They’re both busy today, anyway, and I told them I’m going to hang out with Florence Greeber.”
“You lied to them?”
“Sort of,” said Jenny. “But we’ll be in Florence’s backyard if you think about it from a certain standpoint.”
Micah didn’t believe Jenny’s parents would be thinking from that standpoint.
She saw the look on his face. Her own smile drooped. “I know. I was going to tell them. I swear. I almost said something over breakfast. But, Micah, I just couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because!” she said. “They wouldn’t let me go!”
“Of course they would,” Micah said. “They like me.”
Jenny rolled her eyes. “Yes, they like you. But if you think about it from a parental perspective, which I’ve been trying to do, it sounds kind of extreme to step through a secret portal to visit a bunch of magical strangers in Brazil.”
She hesitated. “And if they did say no, I couldn’t stand it. I want to see the circus again. So much. And I need a break from . . . stuff.”
From jerks on bicycles and blueberry energy drinks, Micah thought.
“Okay.”
“Really?” she said, relieved. “You don’t mind?”
Micah shook his head. “I figure pretty much nobody tells their parents they’re going to the circus, right?”
“Right.” Jenny smiled at him. “And I’ll tell them sometime soon. I promise. I hate keeping secrets. But for now, we’ve got a Door to catch!”
AFTERIMAGE
Jenny bounded through the Door into Porter’s warehouse so quickly she nearly bowled the magician over. “Sorry!” she said. “You must be Porter. I’m Jenny. It’s good to finally meet—WOW!”
She’d brought a tote bag full of colorful markers and a roll of Christmas wrapping paper with her, and she dropped both onto the stone floor as she spun in circles. Her eyes widened as they took in the towers of stacked doors and the walls full of mailboxes. The skylights, high overhead, showed dark clouds.
“This place is wonderful!” Jenny beamed at Porter. “And your magic is amazing!”
“Thank you,” Porter said, looking startled. “I’m fond of it.”
As Micah stepped through the Door, clutching his rope ladder, Jenny was already hastening to unroll the wrapping paper. She held it up so Porter could see the chart she had drawn on the back. She had come up with magical categories ranging from Artificers (which included magicians who made magical objects) to Zoo Mages (which was for people whose talents involved animals).
Porter shut the shed Door behind them and listened with amusement as Jenny explained her plan to classify magical powers by type. “It will be interesting, don’t you think?” she said. “And it will help Micah figure out what he can do with his knots besides memories.”
Porter scratched the back of his neck. “It will be interesting,” he said. “But I wouldn’t let your hopes get away with you. Magic is more complicated than that.”
“This is just a starting place,” said Jenny. “I’ve already put you under Travel Magic, but if you want to change that or add any details about yourself, you can.”
He took the marker she offered him, and she spread the chart on top of a short stack of closet doors. Porter made a number of notes under his name, including doors must match and difficulty increases with distance.
“Is that the kind of thing you had in mind?” he asked, passing the marker back.
“It’s perfect!” Jenny said. “Thank you so much. Are there other magicians who can do what you do?”
“Not exactly. There’s a man in Texas who can teleport. He can’t carry other people with him, though.”
Jenny made an excited noise and bent over the chart. Micah leaned over her shoulder to see what she was doing. Teleporting Texan! she had written. No passengers.
She capped the marker with a pop. “Let’s go, Micah!” she announced. “We’ve got a lot of circus to see.”
* * *
Micah left the rope ladder behind in the warehouse, and they set out, Jenny craning her neck as she walked, trying to see over rooftops and around corners. She was fascinated to be in the Staff Only section of the circus. “Are all of these storage tents?”
“A lot of them are,” said Micah. He pointed to a cream-colored tent. “But that one over there belongs to Symphony. She does something that makes the circus’s music. And that big gray tent is for the animals who don’t want to be in the menagerie. It’s got all kinds of habitats, and they can just hang out with no people to bother them.”
“The menagerie!” said Jenny. “I want to be sure we leave time for that. You’ve written so much about Terpsichore that I feel like we’re old friends. And I’ve made a card for Mr. Head.”
“A card? Like a greeting card?” Micah couldn’t imagine giving the manager a card himself. What would you even write on it?
“It’s a thank-you note,” said Jenny, as if that should be obvious. “I was afraid he wouldn’t want me to come back because of how I behaved last time I was here. It was so hard for them to convince me all of this was really magic. I want him to know I appreciate the opportunity.”
Micah had planned to start the day at the circus’s maze, which was run by a woman named Mistsinger who could summon and shape fog. He was sure it would be one of Jenny’s favorite tents, since she loved puzzles, but looking up at the glowering clouds overhead, he changed his mind.
“We need to get you an umbrella hat.”
Jenny looked worriedly at her roll of wrapping paper. “I don’t want my chart to get wet.”
“It can have an umbrella hat, too. Come on. Geoffrey’s always got a big stack behind the ticket stand.”
They headed for the circus’s entrance, Jenny walking so quickly that Micah could barely keep up.
“I can’t believe I forgot Geoffrey,” she said as they strode past the arboretum. “I don’t have him anywhere on the chart. I hope he’s not offended. What’s his magic, anyway? Ticket-taking isn’t a power, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Micah, you’ve been living with him for months!” she exclaimed. “Didn’t you ask?”
“He says he can talk to Fish,” Micah offered. “But I’m pretty sure he was just kidding. I think his power must have something to do with his monocle. He’s always swapping it from eye to eye.”
The ticket taker’s back was turned when they approached his stand. He was in his tailcoat and a pair of galoshes, bowing politely to a newcomer. The girl was a couple years older than Micah and Jenny, and she had brought a ripe papaya as her ticket.
She passed it to Geoffrey as he finished his bow, then hurried past him, no doubt eager to explore.
“This is what I like to see!” Geoffrey said, when Micah and Jenny walked up. He hadn’t yet turned around. “Comin’ to visit the ticket taker first thing even though you sneaked in the back way.”
“How did you know we were here?” Micah asked.
Geoffrey pointed up at the sign over his head.
CIRCUS
MIRANDUS
MAGNIFICENT SINCE 500 B.C.
“I’ve been here since the beginnin’,” he said. “I know things.”
He turned to face them, squinting through his golden monocle.
“Hi, Geoffrey,” said Jenny. “It’s good to see you again. I was wondering if I could ask you a question about your magic.”
“It’s good to see you, too, Jenny Mendoza. And nope.”
“Thank—oh,” said Jenny, looking flummoxed. “I can’t ask you a question?”
“You can ask me all sorts of questions,” Geoffrey said in a cheerful voice. He tucked the papaya i
nto a hidden compartment in the ticket stand and pulled out a purple ball cap for Jenny. “But I’m not goin’ to answer any about my magic.”
“I didn’t mean to be nosy,” said Jenny as she took the hat from him.
“It’s not that you’re nosy.” The ticket taker raised his bushy eyebrows when Jenny put the umbrella hat on top of the chart instead of her own head. “I just don’t need you two to run screamin’ into the jungle when you find out I’m the scariest magician there is.”
Jenny looked concerned, but Micah had been around Geoffrey often enough to know he was only being serious half the time.
“Really?” he asked. “Are you scarier than Firesleight?”
“Yep,” said Geoffrey, reaching for a yellow cap. “And you can tell her I said so, too.”
“Are you scarier than the Lightbender?” asked Jenny.
“Ha!” said Geoffrey. He set the yellow hat on Jenny’s head, as if he didn’t trust her to do it herself. “That old trickster? Absolutely.”
Micah was almost positive now that Geoffrey’s power was something harmless. “Are you scarier than Yuri?”
“Oho!” said Geoffrey. “Fishin’ for information on our mysterious young chef, are we?”
Micah hadn’t meant to, but he was curious about Yuri’s power. And he didn’t want to ask the Russian magician about it since it had upset him before.
“Scarier than Yuri,” Geoffrey said. “That is a good question. And it’s one I’m not gonna answer for now. I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
“How old?” Micah asked.
“At least a hundred.” Geoffrey switched his monocle to the left eye. “You might be mature enough by then.”
Micah was a little offended to be called immature, but he was more grateful that the ticket taker thought he might still be at the circus a century from now.
“Enough about me.” Geoffrey held out his hand toward Jenny. “Ticket?”
“Pardon?” said Jenny.
“She’s my guest, Geoffrey. You know that.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Geoffrey waved his hand under Jenny’s nose. “Ticket?”
Jenny was gripping her chart extra tight, as if she thought Geoffrey might be planning to grab it. “I didn’t bring anything.”
Geoffrey didn’t put his hand down, and after a moment’s thought, Jenny held out the tote bag full of markers. “Here?”
Geoffrey made a great show of examining the bag, then he plucked out a thick red marker and held it up to his monocle. “An extraordinary ticket!” he announced. “Have fun.”
He tucked the marker into the stand beside the papaya and gave Jenny a particularly melodramatic bow.
Micah thought Geoffrey was being absurd, but the longer the ticket taker stood with his nose almost brushing the grass, the more Jenny smiled. By the time they left the ticket stand she was practically skipping.
“What was that all about?” Micah asked.
“It was just nice of Geoffrey to do that.”
“He stole one of your markers.”
“I wanted to do the ticket thing,” Jenny admitted. “It’s a big part of the Circus Mirandus experience, isn’t it? I thought it would be silly to ask, but Geoffrey must have guessed anyway.”
“Do you think his magic is something embarrassing?” Micah asked. “And that’s why he won’t tell us?”
“Maybe he makes umbrella hats,” said Jenny, touching the bill of her ball cap.
Micah shook his head. “No. The Inventor makes these. Do you want to meet her? The souvenir tent’s close.”
* * *
The next few hours blurred past, no matter how much Micah and Jenny wished for time to slow down.
The Inventor added herself to the Artificer category of the chart before giving the two of them a special tour of her tent. Jenny spent more time admiring the workshop— a room full of beakers, burners, clockwork, and clever gadgetry—than the souvenirs that filled the tent.
The toys, games, and mementos the Inventor created for the souvenir shop were magical, but only a little bit so. The tops spun for longer than they should have. The balls bounced higher. The golden bells tinkled with a slightly different sound every time you shook them.
After browsing for a few minutes, Jenny chose a pen that would always write in the perfect color of ink to suit her mood, and she took it up to the counter.
Everyone who came to the circus could choose one souvenir, and they were always free. But the Inventor liked to check them one last time before they left her tent. She examined Jenny’s pen through her jeweler’s loupe, then she wrapped it neatly in silver paper and sealed it with a drop of orange wax.
“Thank you for coming to Circus Mirandus,” she said formally, holding the package out to Jenny. “Carry it with you.”
It sounded like she was talking about something more important than a pen.
Jenny tucked the parcel into her tote bag.
When they left it was drizzling, and the umbrellas blossomed out of their ball caps automatically. The Inventor’s umbrellas were better than normal ones because they would fold and shift of their own accord to keep themselves from getting in the way in tight or crowded spaces. And no matter how hard the wind blew they would never fly off.
Micah and Jenny explored the midway, talking to every magician they could, then they headed to the mist maze. They wandered foggy corridors that twisted in endless spirals, and they might have been at it all day if Micah hadn’t reminded Jenny there were other things to see.
He showed her how to get into the tent that held the nocturnal garden, even though it was officially closed to the public, and they sat on a big flat rock in the middle of one of the luminescent pools, eating a bag of chocolate sweets called brigadeiros that Dulcie had given them earlier.
After that, they caught the tail end of Firesleight’s show, and by the time they left, it was raining in earnest. When Firesleight poked her head out of the tent flap to insist that Jenny come back for the full performance sometime, the raindrops sizzled in her hair and turned to steam.
“Do you think we could say hello to the Lightbender next?” Jenny asked Micah.
They headed for the black-and-gold tent. There was no line out the door, even though a show was just about to start. Bowler, who was wearing a waterproof poncho the size of a tablecloth, was letting everyone in early so they didn’t have to stand out in the rain and mud.
The Lightbender spotted Micah and Jenny in the audience, and he included a couple of new experiences in the performance just for them. Jenny loved the tour of late- nineteenth-century Paris, complete with dinner at the newly built Eiffel Tower.
When the show was over, the two of them waited while the crowd filed out, several kids stopping to talk to the Lightbender on the way. As usual, the illusionist was sitting in his ugly, comfy armchair while he spoke to them.
Jenny leaned over and whispered in Micah’s ear, “He didn’t have that chair last time I was here.”
“Yes, he did,” Micah whispered back. “He just doesn’t let most people see it.”
He explained that the kids talking to the Lightbender probably saw him doing something terribly impressive—like floating in midair.
“That’s just cheating,” said Jenny.
The last member of the audience to leave was a small boy who asked the Lightbender to sign the back of his T-shirt. After he was gone, the illusionist said, “It is good to see you again, Jenny.”
“You too,” she chirped. “Thank you for the show. Paris was my favorite. Will you help with my chart?”
She grabbed the roll of wrapping paper, which was looking a little the worse for wear after being hauled all over the circus, and headed to the stage.
Micah watched the Lightbender’s face carefully while Jenny explained how the chart worked. He didn’t think his guardian
would disapprove of the project, but what if he did? What if he thought it was rude of them to question all these magicians just to get ideas about Micah’s own magic? Maybe it was the sort of thing Micah was supposed to be figuring out by himself.
But the Lightbender leaned forward in his chair to see the wrapping paper better and said, “How ambitious! Let us see what I can add to your endeavor.”
Soon enough, the chart was spread across the stage. Micah was tasked with standing on one end to keep the paper from rolling back up while the armchair held down the other side. The Lightbender got down on his hands and knees beside Jenny and started making notes with a green marker.
Bowler came inside to watch.
“It’s Strongfolk,” he said, shaking water off his poncho. He pointed at the category where his own name was listed alongside the other Strongmen at the circus.
“Yes,” the Lightbender agreed, making a note. “You have not met the Strongwomen because they only visit us from time to time. They are a part of their own Sisterhood with its own goals.”
“They are?” Jenny said, eyes bright.
“What kind of goals?” Micah asked.
“They are peacemakers,” said the Lightbender. “They travel to some of the most dangerous places in the world to help bring an end to violence. When necessary, they are formidable warriors.”
“Very good at arm wrestling,” Bowler added. “We have competitions.”
“What kind of names do the Strongwomen have?” Micah asked. He leaned over to see what the Lightbender was writing. Rather than choosing more traditional magicians’ names for themselves, Bowler and the other Strongmen had all named themselves after the hats they wore. “Do they like hats, too?”
The Lightbender blinked. “No. The members of the Sisterhood customarily choose plant names for themselves. As for the hats . . . the Strongmen are going through a phase.”
“My hat’s not a phase!” Bowler protested.
The Bootlace Magician Page 9