They had all stopped eating to look at him. Micah had the feeling they were sizing him up.
“We call him String Boy,” said Geoffrey in a jovial voice.
“No, we don’t!” Micah protested, shooting the ticket taker a glare. String Boy was definitely the worst magician’s name he’d ever heard.
Geoffrey grinned at him.
“Well, don’t just stand there with your lunch,” said Pennyroyal. “Pull up a chair!”
Micah soon found his plate piled high with food (most of it dessert) and his head stuffed full of new information. These women were members of the Sisterhood the Lightbender had told Micah and Jenny about over the summer, and they’d been called in to “patch up that little Victoria problem once and for all.”
“It’s always been a sore spot,” Geoffrey explained. “Not knowin’ if she’s alive or dead. Wonderin’ if she’s out there plottin’ some kind of revenge. You usually hear things about a magician with powers as flashy as hers. But she dropped right off the face of the earth after she left the circus. Makes you curious why she’s so keen on hidin’.”
Victoria hadn’t dropped right off the face of the earth after she left the circus. She’d been married to Grandpa Ephraim for a few years before she’d disappeared once and for all. But Micah didn’t see any reason to remind everyone of that.
Instead, he asked how you were supposed to track down someone who’d been missing for such a long time.
“That book of maps,” said Pennyroyal. “Good work finding it. It’s got the locations of all the drakling burrows marked. They ought to be awake by now, thanks to that overgrown tuna in the menagerie. So, if Victoria’s still interested in messing around with dragons, she’ll have to visit one of the burrows eventually.”
They told Micah the search would take a while, since the burrows were in far-flung locations without convenient Doors. And Firesleight would be traveling with them. Her knowledge of dragons would be useful, and apparently, she was old friends with the Sisterhood, who had raised her before she joined Circus Mirandus.
“Young magicians are prone to mishaps,” said Geoffrey, who must have seen the surprised look on Micah’s face. “And Strongfolk heal fast.”
Micah had never thought of Firesleight as a kid magician before, but of course she must have been. And he supposed fiery mishaps would be much worse than the occasional burst ribbon or snapped bracelet.
“What if you don’t find any sign of her at the burrows?” he asked, looking around the table. “Will you just give up?”
“We do not give up,” said Thuja, her voice matter-of-fact. “Ever.”
“But when you do find her . . . if she’s still alive I mean, then what happens next?”
“Nothing,” said Pennyroyal, running her finger over the rim of a glass. “Or something. Depends on her.”
Thuja nodded. “If she is living her life and harming no one, then we have no quarrel with her. We will leave her in peace. If she is harming others, whether human beings or magical beasts, then we will stop her from doing so.”
Micah glanced at the quiver full of strange arrows behind her chair. He decided it was best not to ask how, exactly, the Sisterhood would stop someone like Victoria from doing wrong.
“What if she’s got a dragon?” he said. “A fully fledged one?”
“Then we will need more magicians to handle her,” Thuja said calmly. “Here we have a circus full of allies, do we not?”
The Strongwoman’s certainty lessened Micah’s fears. Even if the worst happened, the Sisterhood and the circus could handle Victoria and a dragon. They would have numbers on their side.
“That’s right,” he said, nodding at Thuja. “We’re allies. We can help one another.”
Geoffrey leaned back in his chair and raised an eyebrow at him. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not fight a dragon. Nasty beasts. Terrible breath. Let’s just hope this is a lot of worryin’ over nothin’.”
LOST AND FOUND
Micah spent every moment of free time he had over the next few days hovering around Porter’s tent, waiting to hear news from the Sisterhood and Firesleight.
“I promise,” said Porter, when Micah showed up for the fifth evening in a row with a hopeful expression on his face, “if they find Victoria, or a dragon, or even an oddly shaped rock that bears a passing resemblance to either of those creatures, someone will tell you.”
“You want me to stop visiting?” Micah said.
“Oh, for—you can keep visiting. But I want you to lower your expectations. They have to travel to northern Canada, Greenland, and a couple different deserted islands just to check the drakling burrows on that list you found. We’re not expecting major news from them right this minute. We’re not even expecting major news this week.”
“I need to hear the minor news, too.”
Porter sighed. “Come on, then.”
Micah followed him to a freestanding wooden wall at the back of the tent. It was covered in mail slots. The newest addition was made of steel, and it didn’t say “Mail” or “Post” or “Lettres.” Instead, it had stylized flames etched on it.
Porter stuck his hand through the mail slot, and Micah heard Firesleight’s voice shriek, “Porter! Shout a warning or something!”
Micah peered through the slot and saw feet. A moment later, Firesleight picked up the matching slot on her end. She smiled at him. “Here for the news again?”
Firesleight was in a tent, but not the magical kind. This one was small and made of neon-yellow fabric, and it was full of Strongwomen in coats and gloves.
“I rode my first snowmobile,” said Firesleight. “And we should reach a drakling burrow tomorrow.”
“Is that all?” said Micah.
“Well, I’m very gifted at riding snowmobiles,” said Firesleight. “A natural, you might say.”
“She fell off,” said Pennyroyal.
“Twice,” said Thuja.
“Don’t listen to them,” said Firesleight. “They’re just jealous because I can keep myself warm without a parka.”
“It’s sweltering here,” Micah said, sticking his face even closer to the slot to feel the cold air on the other side. “And nobody can drag the Strongmen away from the pool.”
* * *
A week later, Micah stepped out of the Lightbender’s tent and found the ground covered with a thin layer of frost. Surprised, he scuffed his sneaker against the grass, watching the frost dissolve into a wet trail.
For a moment, he wondered if the Inventor had come up with some new way to cool everything off. He’d asked her once if she could air-condition the whole circus, and she hadn’t said no. Only that it was impractical.
But he figured she hadn’t had time to do something like that with everything else they had going on. The nights had been colder lately anyway, and the sun had just risen.
Micah inhaled, and the air pricked his lungs. His breath clouded in front of his face. Even his ankles were freezing.
He had grabbed a random pair of jeans this morning, and when he looked down, he saw bare skin peeking out below the hems. And now that he was paying attention to his clothes, he realized his T-shirt had collected a few holes in it, thanks to a certain unicorn.
He went back to his room to change into something warmer, but as he dug through his chest of drawers, a surprising theme emerged. The pants were all at least an inch too short. The long-sleeved sweaters left his wrists uncovered.
Micah hadn’t given a single thought to his wardrobe since moving to the circus, and now that he finally was, he saw that the only things he owned that fit properly were his sneakers. Rosebud had bought him a new pair in December, after the two of them had spent the day visiting friends of hers in Bogotá.
Micah went to the Lightbender’s door seam and tugged on the bellpull.
“Come in,” the illusionis
t called.
Micah stepped inside. His guardian was fiddling with the silver coffee service by Chintzy’s perch. The parrot wasn’t there at the moment.
“Hello,” said the Lightbender, pouring cream into his cup. “You’re up early today.”
“I’ve outgrown all my clothes,” Micah reported. “And it’s cold.”
The Lightbender turned around. He looked Micah up and down, the expression on his face distinctly puzzled. “So you have,” he said. “Come with me.”
He left his cup steaming on the table and led Micah from the tent, pausing as soon as they stepped outside to stare at the frost and scuff it with his boot, just as Micah had.
“Is it weird that it’s so cold?” Micah said.
“It seems unusual,” said the Lightbender. “But brighter minds than mine will be trying to figure it out by now. The Inventor has a number of weather instruments in her tent.”
They headed to the Staff Only section, then turned toward Porter’s warehouse.
Micah wondered if they might actually leave the circus together and go to a store. He left often enough himself, with Rosebud and others. But the Lightbender always stayed at the circus to keep up the protective illusions.
Once, on a particularly slow day, Micah had worked up the nerve to ask his guardian if he might consider leaving, just for an hour, to get pizza. Instead, the Lightbender had taken Micah to the dining tent and shown him the chalkboard in the back of the pantry where anyone could write down special requests for the kitchen magicians. They’d added pizza to the board, and sure enough, sausage pizza had been one of the dinner items a few days later.
Micah still wasn’t sure if the illusionist had missed the point of the invitation, or if he had just been saying no in the nicest way he could.
They passed by the entrance to Porter’s warehouse, and the Lightbender nodded toward the storage tent next door. “In here.”
Micah had glanced in this storage tent before, but it had looked so similar to all the others he hadn’t bothered going in. Apparently, he had missed something.
“Have you ever been to the Lost and Found?” the Lightbender asked.
He clapped his hands rapidly three times, and the walls of the tent began to glow. Crates filled the tent, stacked into roughly cubic blocks. Every block was neatly wrapped in ropes as thick as Micah’s arm.
“To keep them all together when the tent is packed up on moving days,” the Lightbender explained, gesturing to the ropes as they strode through the tent. “We do not access these often, and you know how terribly things get jumbled.”
Each of the crates had some kind of code painted on the side. Micah tried for a second to decipher them, but quickly gave up. “What do they say?”
The Lightbender stopped and pointed at a nearby crate. “Geoffrey dated these, and he is a stubborn creature. It annoys him that the Latin language is no longer in vogue. This says ‘November 2443.’”
“It’s a box from the future?”
“It’s from 1943. Geoffrey starts his calendar on the day he met Mirandus—Mr. Head—in 500 BC. The group consisted of the manager and four others back then. Geoffrey and Rosebud are the only founding magicians left.”
“That is a really complicated way to keep track of time,” said Micah.
“I think he means for it to be amusing,” said the Lightbender. “His attempts at comedy are often inconvenient. Do you mind getting the ropes?”
Micah reached for the thick ropes wrapping the pile of crates. He tapped his hand against them. Come loose.
The big knots the Strongmen had tied slipped apart in an instant, and the ropes fell to the dirt at Micah’s feet.
The Lightbender twitched as if startled, even though he’d just asked Micah to do it. He eyed the ropes. “You are more adept at that than you were a few months ago.”
“They’re ordinary knots instead of magical ones,” Micah said with a shrug. He’d been practicing so much and failing at everything; even the locator knot had turned out to be a complete waste of time. But he had gotten even better at the everyday sort of knots. He liked to tie his shoes in the morning by flicking the ends of the laces.
The Lightbender picked up a couple of the smaller crates and gave them a sharp shake. The first one rattled, and the second clanged. But the third one he selected didn’t make any sound at all. He pried it open to reveal an assortment of neatly folded clothes.
“For a time, in the 1940s and ’50s, the souvenir tent held versions of the performers’ costumes. We discontinued the practice when we realized how many children were leaving their everyday clothes behind in hopes that they would be allowed to wear circus uniforms to school.”
“That would be a lot of fun, though.”
“I don’t disagree,” said the Lightbender, “but I imagine the children’s parents and teachers did.”
The clothes weren’t strange looking, as Micah had worried they would be. And they didn’t smell like they’d been stuck in a dusty crate for decades, which was the important thing.
“Take whatever you like,” the Lightbender said. “Traditionally, we wait a century before removing anything from the Lost and Found, but I have never heard of anyone going to the enormous trouble of finding us just to reclaim an old pair of mittens.”
The illusionist sat on top of another crate with his elbows propped on his knees, watching Micah pick through the clothes. Sweater vests must have been in fashion . . . or maybe not, considering how many had been left behind. Micah took a dark blue one that looked like it would fit. He found a couple of striped shirts with long sleeves and two pairs of pants that wouldn’t leave his ankles bare.
At the bottom of the box was a red scarf that looked homemade. Some of the fringe had worn off on the ends, but Micah decided if someone had cared enough to knit it by hand, it would be wrong to leave it forgotten in a storage tent.
He wrapped it around his neck and looked up at the Lightbender. The magician held a gray peacoat out toward him.
“It’s too big,” said Micah.
“It is cold out,” said the Lightbender. “And you will grow into it.”
Micah took it and added it to the pile of things he was keeping.
When he began folding everything else back up, the Lightbender knelt down to help. He was not a good folder, and Micah wondered if his guardian just illusioned everyone into thinking his clothes weren’t wrinkled.
“Micah,” he said suddenly, not looking up from the dress shirt he was arranging, “have I missed your birthday?”
Micah dropped a stocking hat into the crate. “Oh. No. I didn’t tell anybody when it was.”
The Lightbender looked dismayed. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s no big deal,” said Micah. “I’m the one who didn’t mention it.”
“But I could have known if . . . You see, I left legal matters concerning you up to those better suited to the task. I have no legitimate identity in the outside world. Most of us do not bother.” He shook his head. “Porter has adopted you from your great-aunt, as far as the authorities are concerned. I assume he has papers of some kind. A certificate of birth. I should have asked him for it.”
Micah stared at the Lightbender. It had never occurred to him to wonder what the government might do about him going missing. What if the police had thought that Aunt Gertrudis murdered him and buried his body in the desert?
She was bad, but not that bad.
“I do understand that such things are important,” the Lightbender was saying. “I would not want you to think I did not—”
“June third,” Micah interrupted. He’d been at the circus a month then. “But it’s okay. Nobody here celebrates birthdays.”
“Nobody else is eleven years old.”
Micah didn’t know what to do. The Lightbender seemed to feel guilty, but he shouldn’t have. “I wasn’t in the mood f
or a party anyway.”
At that point, it would only have made him miss his grandfather even more.
The Lightbender said nothing while they finished packing up the crates. They put them back into their proper places, and Micah secured them with the ropes while the Lightbender watched.
It was harder this time, but only because the heavy ropes were awkward to lift into position around the crates. Micah was going to have to have a talk with the Strongmen about their choice of materials.
He finally finished and shook his hair off his sweaty face. It fell right back over his eyes.
“Your hair is getting long,” the Lightbender said.
“I want a ponytail,” Micah explained, hopping off the crates and collecting his new clothes. “Like Yuri.”
“Yuri will be flattered, I’m sure.”
“My hair doesn’t tangle,” Micah pointed out as they headed for the tent flap. “So, it won’t be any trouble.”
The Lightbender stopped walking. He reached out and put a hand on Micah’s shoulder, shifting his head from side to side as if he were listening for something. “Wait here.”
He strode to the Lost and Found’s entrance.
Something wasn’t right, Micah realized. Sounds from outside were dampened in many of the circus’s tents, and this one was no exception. But now that he was on alert, he could hear a rushing noise.
Then the Lightbender opened the tent flap, and the sound became a ferocious howl. Snow blasted through the door. The whole tent shuddered, fabric snapping in the wind, the air suddenly icy. The Lightbender fought with the flap and barely managed to close it against the driving snow.
The roar was muffled in an instant.
“We seem to be caught in a blizzard,” he said, brushing snow off his leather coat.
Micah’s cheeks stung with cold. “But this is summer.”
“Yes,” said the Lightbender.
“Are blizzards something they have here in the summer?”
The Lightbender looked up at the roof of the tent, his eyes narrowing as if he could see through it to the storm raging outside. “No,” he said. “No, they are not.”
The Bootlace Magician Page 13