Carnival Magic

by Amy Ephron

  ~ CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR ~

  the brontosaurus at one thirty

  Aunt Evie was waiting for them at the Dinosaur Ride. The brontosaurus at one thirty, as they’d promised. It was obvious from the look on Aunt Evie’s face and the fact that she was practically tapping her foot that they were a little late. How late were they? They didn’t know.

  “Where have you been?” said Aunt Evie. “You missed all the excitement. A baby tiger escaped from the zoo. And they had to send a zookeeper and a net. And people were screaming. And, well, it was very exciting.”

  Somehow that didn’t surprise them.

  Max looked at his iPhone, which was working again and had more than a three-quarters charge. It said: 1:35. “One thirty-five,” said Max.

  He and Tess exchanged a look and both shook their heads. 1:35? But they both knew. They’d had an adventure like this before in England where time and place seem to have an equation of their own.

  “I can’t believe you missed the tiger,” said Aunt Evie. “She was very adorable. The zookeeper said she was a she.”

  “We’re not sure how she found her way in,” said Tara, who’d come up behind them. “It almost seemed as if she was looking for something.” This was said with a funny lilt in her voice as if she was almost teasing them.

  “Aunt Evie, this is Tara. She takes care of, I think this is right, the kids who act in the aerial ballet show. We bought tickets for all three of us. Advance tickets. We thought it would be something you’d want to see. That’s right, isn’t it, Tara? You’re the guardian for the Breathtaking Baranovas? That’s what they’re called, Aunt Evie. And apparently today they’re performing, all three of them together for the first time in almost a year.”

  “Yes,” said Tara. “That’s one of the things I do, that and other things. Oh, my, it’s almost two o’clock,” she said. “You don’t want to miss the show, do you? I hear it’s going to be quite spectacular.”

  Tess and Max were certain she was right.

  ~ CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE ~

  almost show time

  The show was sold-out. The big blue tent was full to the bleachers. Apparently, they had “special” tickets in the first row. That was curious, Tess didn’t remember buying “special” tickets, but their tickets had a star on them, and the usher led them down to the very center of the front row.

  Tess looked around. She saw Julian in the back of the tent stand up from one of the last rows. He put on his backpack and slung his violin over his shoulder.

  She whispered to Aunt Evie that she’d be right back.

  She saw Julian slip out the blue silk curtain of the tent, literally slip out, he just lifted up the bottom and slipped right out.

  Tess ran up the aisle. And then slipped out of the tent herself onto the carnival grounds. Tess didn’t see him at first. But then she did. Up ahead. A solitary figure walking alone. His backpack hanging over his back, his violin hanging jauntily from his shoulder, his long straight hair as shiny as it had been the first day they’d met.

  She’d almost caught up to him.

  He was walking toward the entrance, or in this case the exit, to the carnival.

  “Wait, Julian. Wait.”

  He turned and smiled at Tess.

  “M’work’s done here,” he said. “For now, anyway. And it’s time for me to carry on.”

  “But, but,” she said, almost pleading, “are you sure they’ll be okay without you?”

  “Don’t worry, Tess. It was just my job to take care of Anna until you brought her home. Until we brought her home. Tara’ll find me if she needs me, and she’ll stop by if she wants to. Tara has her ways. And sometimes, I promise,” he said, putting his hand on Tess’s cheek, “I promise this is true, sometimes one of you will look at something that brings back a memory, or hear a song that sounds familiar, and you’ll know I never left you after all.”

  She started to say good-bye to him, throw her arms around his neck, but he shook his head and said, “Remember, sometimes the best way to see someone again is not to say good-bye.”

  He turned then. There wasn’t any stopping him, his violin in its case slung over his shoulder, his backpack on his back, and walked out the carnival gates alone. And, sadly, Tess understood that it was time for him to “carry on.”

  ~ CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX ~

  the breathtaking baranovas touch the sky

  The crowd was cheering. The show hadn’t even started and the audience was already giving a standing ovation to an empty stage. And then a somewhat familiar face appeared. It was Ben the grill master. Except he wasn’t a grill master any more. He was wearing a top hat and carrying a cane, his curly ringlets cascading around his smiling face. He seemed to be the new owner of the carnival, as the sign behind on the curtain read:

  BEN’S FANTASTIC FUN FAIR

  Certainly Ben was the one in charge. He was holding a bullhorn, painted in circular swirls of red and white stripes, like a festive candy cane.

  “Announcing,” Ben said excitedly through the bullhorn, “reunited for the first time in a year . . . Alexei, Tatiana, and Anna, The Breathtaking Baranovas . . . performing again on the same stage!”

  The curtain pulled back, and the aerial trapeze set was revealed with a dark blue sky painted on the ceiling dotted with silver stars that glowed and sparkled.

  Alexei was already up on the platform. Tatiana was already across from him on another platform.

  As Anna took the stage in a somewhat familiar costume, decorated with stars. She climbed the silver rope ladder, so quickly it was almost as if she was already flying. So delicate. So graceful. And at the same time so extraordinarily powerful that it was hard to keep your eyes off her.

  Except that Alexei executed a triple somersault from the platform and grabbed on to a silver bar. He did that same thing again, pulling himself into a pretzel, sitting on the bar, and then flipping over so that he was hanging by his knees. Tatiana followed. Flew from a bar into a triple somersault and landed perfectly, grasping on to Alexei’s hands as the two of them flew through the air, almost as if they were one. A drumbeat. And then the unmistakable sound of a violin, one note. Just for a moment, that pure clean sound, that Tess knew she would recognize always.

  Anna took to the air, holding on to a silver bar, and vaulted through the air herself as if she was flying, bathed in a halo of light, and an orchestral soundtrack started slowly, violins, the shrill high note of a saxophone, punctuated by a deep bass drum.

  As if from nowhere, a silver tightrope dropped from the ceiling—a tightrope that was an absolute circle, like a hula hoop or lasso, framing Tatiana and Alexei as they continued to swing through the air.

  With a dancer’s extraordinary poise and grace, Anna let go of the silver bar and landed on one toe on the edge of the tightrope, walking on pointe, her ballet shoes’ heels never touching the silver cord as she performed a prima ballerina’s dance, with an abundance of twirls and pirouettes around them on the thin edge of the tightrope, spinning so quickly that all of them seemed washed in a sparkle of silvery light.

  “It’s amazing what they can do with special effects and spotlights these days,” said Aunt Evie.

  Neither Tess or Max said a word, but they both knew it was simply Carnival Magic . . .

  ~ CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN ~

  the sound of a violin

  That was amazing,” said Aunt Evie. “Really amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it,” she said. “They were so graceful, almost magical. To think someone could run on pointe like that on a tightrope. And they were so young.”

  Max was very quiet. Wistful almost. It occurred to him that he wasn’t going to see the twins again, or Anna. There was something about this that made him sad, mournful, even though he was happy about the way everything had turned out. But Anna was so brave and fearless and extraordinary. His sister was fearless. But ev
en on a good day, he couldn’t imagine Tess wing walking. Well, maybe he could, but he wasn’t going to try to imagine that.

  Tess was quiet, too. She couldn’t believe that she might never see Alexei and Tatiana and Anna again. Is that what England was going to be like, a place where you made friends who you were never going to see again? She stopped herself from thinking that. It truly had been a magical adventure. At least she thought it had. Maybe she’d imagined it, after all. Her head hurt. Maybe she’d really hurt her head when she’d rescued that kid from the Ferris wheel.

  “Do you think we should go back and . . .”

  Tess interrupted Max before he could even finish the sentence, the end of which was “go backstage and say good-bye.”

  “No,” said Tess. “I definitely think we should not do that.” She echoed Julian. “Sometimes the best way of making sure you might see someone again is by not saying, ‘good-bye.’ Besides, they did that thing with us when they were on the stage.”

  The Breathtaking Baranovas had still been doing curtain calls. The crowd was wild and this was the fourth time they’d come back on stage to take a bow. And all three of them looked directly at Tess and Max this time and put their hands up in the air, Anna in the middle, Alexei and Tatiana on either side, and linking pinkies executed a pinkie swear. Tess and Max, as if by instinct, did the same thing back. A pinkie swear meant forever. And in that extraordinary acknowledgement, there wasn’t any reason to say a formal good-bye.

  The gatekeeper had let them out, and as he did, he said, “Thank you again, M’Lady,” to Tess. She looked at him and realized it was the same gatekeeper who had been at the zoo.

  Aunt Evie hurried them to the car. The Bentley was parked in the first spot. “I tipped the ticket taker,” said Aunt Evie, quite proud of herself. “Well, at least I tried to, but he wouldn’t take five pounds from me, insisted he’d saved me the spot. Didn’t make much sense really, since how could he have known that I was coming?”

  But Tess, who’d met the ticket taker before, wasn’t at all surprised he’d said this.

  Aunt Evie had put the top down, even though the sun was setting. It was remarkable to look up at the clear sky, the proper shade of blue, exactly the way it was supposed to be, Aunt Evie and Max in the front seat, and everything comfortingly normal.

  “I bought a roast chicken,” said Aunt Evie. “Roast chicken’s very good,” she announced, “when it’s almost room temperature. It’s one of those foods you don’t even have to heat up. And we have fresh rolls, a little bit of potato salad. I bought an interesting peach chutney that I thought we should try.”

  But Tess wasn’t paying attention to her at the moment. She had looked over to the side of the road, and there was the traveller’s wagon and a gentleman who looked a lot like Julian, sitting in a folding chair and playing the violin, and next to him, as if by magic, a horse that looked an awful lot like Coco. And sitting on the branch of a white birch tree, outlined against the dark brown edge of the peeling bark, a white dove, quietly flapping its wings almost as if it was dancing in a soft accompaniment to the violin. She remembered when Tara had seemed to morph into a dove when Alexei told them the bedtime story and now Tess was sure she hadn’t imagined it.

  Tess tapped Max on the shoulder. Max turned around and nodded, confirming he was seeing it, too, the white dove flapping its wings softly in the air almost as if it was dancing quietly to the music. Tess remembered what Julian had said to her when he was leaving, “Tara knows how to find me if she wants to.” Tess looked carefully at the white dove so that she would always remember it.

  The sound of the violin reverberated through the air, like a soft melody, a wistful tune and, in that moment, Tess knew that one day she might have the chance to hear it again.

  acknowledgements

  I want to thank John Pearce, my high school science teacher, a master of physics, astronomy, and an understanding of the science of ecology almost before its time. I wish he was able to read this, but I am certain he knew that he deeply influenced the ways in which I see the world and—I can’t be sure of this—but I also think he believed in magic; my own sisters, Nora, Delia, and Hallie and ditto the amazing and informative sibling relationships of my own children, step-children, nephews, and nieces, who, despite all our differences and occasional fights over a monopoly board, deeply know that we have each other’s backs, pinkie swear; the extraordinary Jill Santopolo, whose remarkable acumen, attention to detail, no matter how much might be going on, elegant and exacting eye, and enthusiasm, are immeasurable, and I feel enormous gratitude for having her in my life; Michael Green, whose humor, warmth, and support mean more to me than he will ever know, not to mention his kindness for allowing me to publish under his umbrella; my husband, Alan Rader, whose unflagging belief in me and love I carry with me everywhere; also my friends Sally Singer, Holly Palance, Laraine Newman, Allison Thomas, Nick Pileggi, and John Byers for their love, kindness, generosity, and guidance; Kari Stuart, Amanda Urban, Bob Myman, Lindsay Boggs, and Talia Benamy, whose attention to detail, constant support, and sparks of brilliance have made these books a total delight to write and to publish; and to all the kids out there who sometimes believe in magic, believe in themselves, and vow to try to touch the sky!

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