Part V DIVINATION

I find I think of myself not as a writer so much as someone who provides a gateway, a tangential route for readers to reach the circus. To visit the circus again, if only in their minds, when they are unable to attend it physically. I relay it through printed words on crumpled newsprint, words that they can read again and again, returning to the circus whenever they wish, regardless of time of day or physical location. Transporting them at will.

When put that way, it sounds rather like magic, doesn’t it?

—FRIEDRICK THIESSEN, 1898

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

—PROSPERO, THE TEMPEST, ACT IV, SCENE 1

It is late, so there is no line for the fortune-teller.

While outside the cool night air is scented with caramel and smoke, this tent is warm and smells of incense and roses and beeswax.

You do not wait long in the antechamber before passing through the beaded curtain.

It makes a sound like rain as the beads collide. The room beyond is lined with candles.

You sit down at the table in the center of the room. Your chair is surprisingly comfortable.

The fortune-teller’s face is hidden behind a fine black veil, but the light catches her eyes as she smiles.

She has no crystal ball. No deck of cards.

Only a handful of sparkling silver stars that she scatters across the velvet-covered table, reading them like runes.

She refers to things she could not know with uncanny specificity.

She tells you facts you already knew. Information you might have guessed. Possibilities you cannot fathom.

The stars on the table almost seem to move in the undulating candlelight. Shifting and changing before your eyes.

Before you leave, the fortune-teller reminds you that the future is never set in stone.