Circus Mirandus: Chapters 1–7

The only thing that kept Micah from talking back was the knowledge that she’d keep him up to his elbows in chores for the rest of the day instead of letting him visit with his grandfather. He hadn’t been allowed to “pester” Grandpa Ephraim since this morning, when he had hinted that he had something important to tell Micah.

A tendril of steam curled out of the bird’s silver mouth.

He gave his aunt the worst glare he could muster.

Maybe you can see Ephraim once you’ve proven that you are responsible and sensible about your obligations.

When Micah trudged upstairs, Grandpa Ephraim’s door was shut tight.

Jenny Mendoza, the smartest girl in the whole fifth grade, was expecting Micah to bring a model of an Incan artifact to school tomorrow so that they could rehearse for their presentation.

One of the pictures in their textbook was of a thing called a quipu, which just looked like a bunch of strings tied into fancy knots, and Micah could do that with his eyes closed.

A five-gallon pickle jar full of shooter marbles and tarnished coins sat in one corner.

And they said one more thing, one very crucial thing. You promised me a miracle.

Grandpa Ephraim laughed his blub glub laugh and beckoned with one arm.

Aunt Gertrudis’s nostrils flared. “Out!” she said.

Instead of leaving, he ducked around his aunt and made a wild grab for the letters.
He managed to snag one of them before Aunt Gertrudis caught him by the back of his T-shirt.

The messenger’s name was Chintzy, and she returned to Circus Mirandus just before the sun set on a dreary afternoon.

“All this rain!” she squawked once she was safely atop her perch. “I don’t know why the Head allows it. Gray, cold, wet. Ruins the mood of the place.”

She ruffled her damp red feathers and glared with one beady yellow eye at the Man Who Bends Light, who was fiddling with an ornate silver coffee service beside her perch.

You’re just in a snit because you wasted your day on a fool’s errand.

She shook her tail feathers at him. “You won’t be insulting my tail twitches anymore, will you?” she said smugly.

“I almost perished of fatigue, you know.”

She drooped on her perch in an attempt to look terribly forlorn and dramatic.

“Ingrate.”
He sighed. “I know. I am sorry, Chintzy. I do appreciate your hard work. Would you please give me the message?”

The letter disintegrated in this rain you insist upon defending, but I memorized it for safekeeping.

The Man Who Bends Light furrowed his brow.

She cleared her throat to acknowledge the formality of the situation, and then she recited Ephraim’s letter.

The Man Who Bends Light stood as still as a petrified stump.

The Man Who Bends Light flinched. “Dying? What if he wants something impossible?”

Chintzy turned her head around to preen a few feathers that had been mussed by the rain.

Chintzy fluffed herself to threatening proportions.

There were doors, and then there were Doors. They were exactly the same thing, except one kind of door led from, say, the living room to the kitchen, and the other covered considerably more distance. Porter was Circus Mirandus’s expert on the latter, and it was thanks to him they could travel so quickly when they had need.

She had a beautiful smile and a voice like a foghorn, and as best as her son could tell, her job during those dark days involved bellowing encouraging things to young men who were leaving on the big ships to fight in the war themselves.

Obviously, Ephraim’s parents were very important people. Both of them being vital to the effort, he was left with a lot of free time on his hands.

It was midmorning, and he had spent a pleasant hour scraping together moss from the rocks and some frail twigs in order to build a small, mossy soldier with a thin, twiggy gun.

The smallest pebbles, the ones that were almost sand, skittered across the beach.

He promptly set about trying, and he was just as promptly disappointed.

The words didn’t sound right coming out of Micah’s mouth. They were muffled and flat, like he was trying to talk with a pillow shoved against his face.

Not classical music, not choir music, not even the dire wails of a hurdy-gurdy. The music that calls a person to magic is always the same.

From somewhere beyond the dunes, the pipes skirled and the drums thrummed, and Ephraim followed them.

“My partner’s bringing paint so that we can do hieroglyphics today during group work, and then it will be done,” she said.

Florence tottered to the back, and Micah waited while she set the model up in its own seat and brushed a speck of lint off one of her miniature statues.

The knot was soft and smooth. It was almost as big as Micah’s thumbnail. And though it felt warm against his fingers, the edges of it were beginning to fray.

Someone who had had this desk before Micah had gouged a sharp letter V into the corner of it.