The Bootlace Magician

by Cassie Beasley

  Almost.

  “All right,” she said, prying at the knot with her bitten fingernails. “Here it goes.”

  She tugged the knot loose. All the way across the world, the matching shoelace on Micah’s wrist fell off as well.

  “It works!” he shouted. “Eureka!”

  Jenny laughed. “Eureka?”

  “What?” said Micah. “Isn’t that what scientists say when they discover something fantastic?”

  “Sure,” said Jenny, still giggling. “I’ve just never heard anyone say it in real life.”

  * * *

  The success of the emergency bracelets spurred Micah on, and he spent the entire weekend sitting on top of his barrel in the menagerie, working on the locator knot while Fish watched curiously over his shoulder.

  Fish was in a particularly good mood lately, and he had grown again.

  Late Sunday night, Geoffrey came into the menagerie, stared hard at Fish for almost ten minutes, then announced that the Moment would happen sometime this year.

  “This year?” Micah said, placing his palm against the glass. So soon. “How do you know?”

  Geoffrey tapped his forehead.

  “Oh.” Micah guessed that a mind reader must be able to understand an Idea better than almost anyone else.

  “Are you still feedin’ it knots?” Geoffrey asked.

  Micah nodded.

  “It’s an interestin’ notion.” Geoffrey eyed Micah. “Givin’ the Fish an education. You might want to remind it it’s supposed to wait for its Someone, though. It’s startin’ to get restless, and we don’t want it to release its magic too soon.”

  “Fish wouldn’t do that,” Micah said. “He knows how important he is.”

  “It’s happened before,” Geoffrey said, “and it’ll happen again. They get impatient, sometimes, Ideas do. They start to worry their Someone is never goin’ to be ready for them.”

  Micah stared at Fish. “What if he does release his magic too soon? If it happens here at the circus, I mean?”

  “That would be a bit of a waste,” said the ticket taker. “Circus Mirandus has plenty of magic and inspiration flyin’ around already. In some ways, we’re in the same business as the Fish.”

  When Geoffrey finally left, Micah turned to the aquarium.

  “It’s not that I don’t want you to find your chosen person,” he said. “It’s just that I don’t want you to leave. Who else am I going to talk to while I work?”

  Fish thumped the tank with his tail.

  Micah sighed and turned back around, dangling his feet off the side of the barrel, trying to put his mind back on the locator. He had cut two pieces of gray thread off a spool, and he had measured them four times to be certain they were exactly the same length. He tried to reach for the overlay as he tied, to see the knot as it existed in the golden world.

  But all he could see were his fingers working slowly with the threads.

  He tied a simple knot into one piece of thread, precisely in the middle, and then he picked up the other and did the same thing. You’re twins, he told the knots. You’re supposed to be together. You never want to be separated.

  He added a new twist to the knot, and a new thought to go with it. You always know where your twin is.

  As he finished adding the twist to the second piece of thread, something happened. A brilliant spark leaped back and forth between the threads. Micah saw it for a split second, then it was gone.

  But he could still sense it. It was almost like holding two strong magnets together and feeling them pull toward each other.

  “Fish,” he said, staring down at the threads. “Fish, I think I got it right.”

  Fish thumped the tank again, but Micah was already off his barrel. “Chintzy!” he cried, hurrying out of the menagerie. “Chintzy, I need you!”

  He found the parrot in the Lightbender’s tent. She was perched on the back of the illusionist’s armchair while he sat below her, asleep and surrounded by the empty stands.

  The Lightbender had been resting a little more often over the past couple of weeks at Rosebud’s insistence. He took short naps in the oddest of places, somehow never letting his illusions drop all the way. Micah wondered what it was like to be so used to doing magic that you could literally manage it in your sleep.

  He was always careful not to disturb his guardian during a nap, but it seemed Chintzy had different ideas. She leaned over the drowsing magician, intent on preening his hair.

  “Chintzy, he’s tired,” Micah said. “Anyway, I need you.”

  He held up one of the locator knots.

  “I’m helping him,” Chintzy said, yanking at a strand of blond hair with her beak. “He doesn’t like mail slots better than me.”

  “I don’t either!” Micah said. “You’re much nicer than a mail slot. And you can still talk to Jenny through mine any time you want. But right now, I need your hiding skills.”

  “Hmmph,” said the parrot. “Last time you accused me of cheating!”

  Micah had sent Chintzy out into the circus to hide almost two dozen previous versions of the locator knot. He’d been suspicious of her when he hadn’t managed to find one even by accident.

  “I’m sorry about that. Please will you help?” He showed her the knotted thread again. “Nobody hides knots as well as you do. You’re the best.”

  Chintzy paused, watching the thread closely. Then she gave the Lightbender’s hair a final tug and fluttered over to Micah’s shoulder.

  “Give it to me!” she squawked. “I’m a professional!”

  She snapped up the gray thread and flew through the tent flap. When she returned ten minutes later, she looked smug. “You’ll never find it!”

  We’ll see about that, Micah thought.

  While Chintzy went back to preening the illusionist, Micah wrapped his own locator thread around his ring finger a few times and set off in search of its twin.

  The tug of the thread was so gentle it felt almost like a butterfly had landed on Micah’s hand, but it was definitely real. He focused on the pull and turned left.

  It’s happening! he thought, walking quickly. I did it!

  Then the tug changed directions.

  That can’t be right. It’s not supposed to move.

  As Micah kept following the feeling, his enthusiasm dimmed. He’d been so sure this time.

  When he ended up on the midway, right in the middle of the crowd, the tugging stopped abruptly. He looked around. He didn’t see any likely hiding places, so he knelt down to inspect the ground, waving his hand over the grass.

  The knot had to be here somewhere. Had Chintzy buried it?

  No, she’d hidden it too quickly for that.

  The tug came again, to Micah’s right. He jumped up to chase it, running right into a group of kids who were stocking up on snacks at one of the booths.

  Micah spun with his hand stuck straight out, trying to zero in on the feeling, but it had disappeared again. Frustrated, he turned around too quickly and bumped into another boy.

  “Sorry!”

  The boy was a couple of years older than him, with spiky hair and acne. He shrugged. “No problem, mate.” He gestured at Micah with the bag of popcorn in his hand. “Do you want to come with us? We’re all going to watch those big blokes stack trees.”

  “Yes, come,” said a girl in a fancy school uniform. She was blowing on a mug of chai. “I saw them yesterday. You’ll like it a lot.”

  “Aren’t you the one who hangs around with that giant fish all the time?” a younger boy asked, squinting at Micah through his glasses. “Tying knots and talking to yourself?”

  “That’s me.” Micah shoved up the sleeve of his coat so they could see the bracelets that covered his arm.

  “Whoa. Those are great!” said the girl. “Do you sell them at school or something?”


  “No, they’re all mine.”

  “Bit of a weird hobby,” the boy with the glasses muttered.

  Micah rarely told the visiting kids he was a magician. Some of them were put out that he was allowed to live at the circus all the time, and others wanted him to prove he could do magic. It was easier to pretend he was just a normal guy whose passion was decorating himself with random pieces of string.

  “I’d like a bracelet like that,” the girl said, stepping close and pointing at one of the more elaborate ones. “They didn’t have much jewelry in the souvenir tent. I’ve got to leave in a couple of hours, and I checked, but—”

  “Have any of you seen a parrot around here?” Micah interrupted.

  The tugging sensation was completely gone. The other thread had to be right here. He scanned the grass again, but he didn’t see it anywhere. Surely Chintzy hadn’t stuck it in a bag of popcorn? “She’s big and red and—”

  “Really bossy?” the girl asked, taking a sip from her mug and smiling. “I met her on the way here. I thought she was a boy parrot, though. I called her sir.”

  Micah was surprised the girl still had all her fingers. “Did she give you anything?”

  “Just some thread. Bit strange, really. But my gran has a parrot, and they don’t always make sense.”

  “That’s mine!” Micah exclaimed.

  He was going to pluck Chintzy. She was supposed to hide the knots, not give them to people who were leaving the circus forever. No wonder he’d never found one of the other locators, even accidentally.

  “I mean . . . the parrot took it from me. She wasn’t supposed to give it away.”

  The girl shoved her hand into the pocket of her school jacket. “Trade you for a bracelet?” she said, holding out the thread.

  Micah blinked. “Okay.”

  “I want one, too!” a younger girl who’d just walked up announced.

  “And me,” said the boy in the glasses.

  “You just called him weird,” said the spiky-haired guy.

  “So? He’s giving out prizes.”

  Micah didn’t want to give them the bracelets on his arm; they were each special to him in some way. But he’d left his backpack in the Lightbender’s tent.

  He dug through the pockets of his peacoat and searched his jeans. He’d become something of a magpie, he realized as he pulled stray scraps of fabric and frayed ribbons from every single pocket. He had more than enough material to make half a dozen bracelets for the girl and her friends.

  They were in a rush to watch the Strongmen, so Micah didn’t bother tying magical knots for them. He just tried for ones that looked interesting.

  “Thanks,” said the girl as Micah wrapped a braid of yellow and pink floss around her wrist. “You’re pretty good. You should definitely sell these to the kids at school.”

  When he was done, she gave him the locator knot, and the group set off, arguing about whose new bracelet was the best.

  Micah stared down at the gray thread, feeling a thrill of excitement. It didn’t look like much, but he’d done it. He could track anything now, just by tying a piece of thread to it.

  He wondered if distance would be a problem with these, but for some reason, he didn’t think so. He almost thought the knots would tug harder if they were farther away from each other. After all, they wanted to be together.

  “What are you smiling about?” Dulcie asked. She was walking down the midway, a stack of empty trays balanced neatly on top of her head. As usual, the candy maker’s overalls were covered in powdered sugar and edible glitter.

  “I can do magic,” said Micah.

  Dulcie laughed. “Are you just now figuring that out?”

  TAIL TWITCHES

  Micah was so pleased with the locator knot’s success that he sailed into the Lightbender’s tent, waving his twin pieces of thread over his head.

  “Chintzy, you big cheater! Look what I found!”

  The parrot wasn’t there.

  The Lightbender, his hair sticking up in every direction, was still snoozing in his armchair, and the seam to Micah’s bedroom was open. He could hear the sound of flapping and splashing from all the way out here.

  “Aha!” he said, stalking into his bathroom.

  Chintzy was in his sink, and the whole room was spattered with water. Micah held up the locator knot accusingly.

  Chintzy ignored him in favor of dunking her head under the water.

  “Go away,” she said, when she came up for air. “My tail is twitching.”

  “Is it twitching with guilt?” Micah said, wiggling the thread at her. “You’ve been giving my knots away!”

  “No!” she squawked. “It twitches when someone needs me to pick up a letter. I’m washing off first, because I’m a professional.”

  It was clear from her tone that she thought Micah himself was behaving in a highly unprofessional manner.

  “I just talked to Jenny a couple of days ago,” he said.

  “Ha!” said Chintzy. “It’s not a letter from her. This is major stuff. My tail twitches for important messages.”

  “Really?” Micah said doubtfully.

  “The last time it twitched this hard, your grandfather was writing to the Lightbender!” Chintzy stretched her beak out toward Micah’s toothbrush.

  Micah snatched it away and tucked it into the pocket of his coat. Of course he knew that Chintzy had magic of her own, but since nobody ever sent the Lightbender mail, it was easy to forget she could sense when someone really needed her services as a messenger.

  “Chintzy,” he said, “I’m not doubting your tail twitches—”

  “You’d better not!” She climbed out of the sink and started shaking herself dry.

  Micah held up a hand to fend off flying water droplets. “You know if whoever is writing to the Lightbender is anywhere near Victoria, you can’t go. Right?”

  “It’s not a letter for the Lightbender,” said Chintzy. “It’s for you!”

  “But you said it wasn’t Jenny.”

  She was polishing her beak on her damp chest feathers. “I don’t know who the message is from. I just know where it is. And it’s not in Peal.”

  Micah racked his brain, trying to think of who else might be writing to him. “Where is it?”

  “Arizona.” Chintzy looked up at him. “Is that near Victoria?”

  “Yes. And it’s . . .” Micah froze.

  “Are you okay?” Chintzy squawked. “You look like you ate bad seeds.”

  “Arizona’s where Aunt Gertrudis lives.”

  * * *

  Micah stood outside Porter’s door, knocking so furiously that Chintzy was having trouble clinging to his shoulder.

  “All right, all right!” Porter called. “I’m coming.”

  He opened the door. “Why are you . . . What’s wrong?”

  Chintzy squawked, “I need to fetch a message!”

  At the same time, Micah said, “Someone needs to check on my great-aunt.”

  “Gertrudis?”

  “Chintzy says someone’s trying to send me a letter from Arizona, and she’s the only person I know there. And she doesn’t even like me, so it’s got to be—”

  “Urgent.” Porter rocked back on his heels. “Right. We’ll take care of it.”

  The magician closed his eyes for a few seconds. “I’m shouting at Geoffrey,” he explained to Micah. “In case he doesn’t already know what’s going on. He’ll put together an away team.”

  “Can I do something?”

  “Stand there. Don’t panic. I’ve got to get a door.”

  “You could just send me through a cat flap!” Chintzy squawked. “I’m tired of being stuck in England!”

  But Porter was already disappearing around a tower of doors.

  Chintzy flapped off, muttering about people who
didn’t appreciate her tail twitches.

  Micah was left on his own, wringing his hands and trying to come up with reasons for Aunt Gertrudis to be contacting him that weren’t completely horrible.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that the Bird Woman had helped raise Aunt Gertrudis. She’d practically been her mother.

  Micah should have warned Aunt Gertrudis that Victoria was still alive. She wouldn’t want to hear it, but he should have tried.

  You’re getting ahead of yourself. She hasn’t seen Aunt Gertrudis since she was a little girl. Why would she decide to bother her now?

  A few minutes later, the Lightbender strode into the warehouse with Bowler, Firesleight, and Geoffrey on his heels.

  “Why ever didn’t you wake me?” the illusionist asked Micah. His freshly preened hair was all sticking straight up.

  “You look so awful lately. I thought you needed the nap.”

  “You do look awful,” Bowler offered helpfully.

  The Strongman had completely recovered from the incident with Terpsichore. And to Micah’s relief, he’d refused to quit being the Lightbender’s bodyguard, though patrols of the meadow were taking up a lot of his time.

  “Terrible,” Firesleight agreed, reaching up to mash the Lightbender’s hair flat.

  “I think he looks the same as always,” said Geoffrey. “And I think Porter’s ready for us.”

  Sure enough, Porter had just finished setting up the sliding glass door that would lead to Aunt Gertrudis’s retirement community. They all gathered around it, and Micah waited, electric with nerves, to see what was on the other side. He half expected Victoria herself to step through, storm clouds and sharp-beaked monsters in her wake. But when Porter pressed his hand to the door, the glass shimmered, and someone’s back patio appeared.

  The most exciting things in sight were a pair of potted succulents and a dusty charcoal grill.

  Geoffrey poked his head out the Door first. He was silent for a moment, apparently listening to the surrounding minds, but finally he nodded. “No Victoria nearby,” he said. “Let’s go.”