Stories PARIS, JANUARY 1903

Stories have changed, my dear boy,” the man in the grey suit says, his voice almost imperceptibly sad. “There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case. There are no longer simple tales with quests and beasts and happy endings. The quests lack clarity of goal or path. The beasts take different forms and are difficult to recognize for what they are. And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister’s story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead. Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl. And is not the dragon the hero of his own story? Is not the wolf simply acting as a wolf should act? Though perhaps it is a singular wolf who goes to such lengths as to dress as a grandmother to toy with its prey.”

Widget sips his glass of wine, considering the words before he replies.

“But wouldn’t that mean there were never any simple tales at all?” he asks.

The man in the grey suit shrugs, then lifts the bottle of wine from the table to refill his own glass.

“That is a complicated matter. The heart of the tale and the ideas behind it are simple. Time has altered and condensed their nuances, made them more than story, greater than the sums of their parts. But that requires time. The truest tales require time and familiarity to become what they are.”

Their waiter stops at their table and converses briefly with Widget, paying no notice to the man in the grey suit.

“How many languages do you speak?” the man asks once the waiter has departed.

“I’ve never stopped to count,” Widget says. “I can speak anything once I have heard enough to grasp the basis.”

“Impressive.”

“I picked up bits and pieces naturally, and Celia taught me how to find the patterns, to put the sounds together in complete sets.”

“I hope she was a better teacher than her father.”

“From what I know of her father they are quite different. She never forced Poppet or me into playing complicated games, for one thing.”

“Do you even know what the challenge you are alluding to was?” the man in the grey suit asks.

“Do you?” Widget asks. “It seems to me it was not entirely clear-cut.”

“Few things in this world are clear-cut. A very long time ago—I suppose you could say once upon a time if you wished it to sound a grander tale than it is—one of my first students and I had a disagreement about the ways of the world, about permanence and endurance and time. He thought my systems outdated. He developed methods of his own that he thought superior. I am of the opinion that no methodology is worthwhile unless it can be taught, so he began teaching. The pitting of our respective students against each other began as simple tests, though over time they became more complex. They were always, at the heart, challenges of chaos and control to see which technique was strongest. It is one thing to put two competitors alone in a ring and wait for one to hit the ground. It is another to see how they fare when there are other factors in the ring along with them. When there are repercussions with every action taken. This final challenge was particularly interesting. I will admit that Miss Bowen found a very clever way out. Though I do regret losing a student of my own in the process.” He takes a sip of his wine. “He was possibly the best student I ever taught.”

“You believe he’s dead?” Widget asks.

The man puts down his glass.

“You believe he is not?” he counters after a significant pause.

“I know he’s not. Just as I know that Celia’s father, who is also not dead, precisely, is standing by that window.” Widget lifts his glass, tilting it toward the darkened window by the door.

The image in the glass, which could be a grey-haired man in a finely tailored coat, or could be an amalgamation of reflections from customers and waiters and bent and broken light from the street, ripples slightly before becoming completely indistinguishable.

“Neither of them are dead,” Widget continues. “But they’re not that, either.” He nods at the window. “They’re in the circus. They are the circus. You can hear his footsteps in the Labyrinth. You can smell her perfume in the Cloud Maze. It’s marvelous.”

“You think being imprisoned marvelous?”

“It’s a matter of perspective,” Widget says. “They have each other. They are confined within a space that is remarkable, one that can, and will, grow and change around them. In a way, they have the world, bound only by his imagination. Marco has been teaching his illusion technique to me, but I’ve not yet mastered it. So yes, I think it marvelous. He thought of you as his father, you know.”

“Did he tell you that?” the man in the grey suit asks.

“Not in words,” Widget says. “He let me read him. I see people’s pasts, sometimes in great detail if the person in question trusts me. He trusts me because Celia does. I do not think he blames you any longer. Because of you, he has her.”

“I chose him to contrast her, and to complement. Perhaps I chose too well.” The man in the grey suit leans into the table, as though he might whisper his words conspiratorially, but the tenor of his voice does not change. “That was the mistake, you realize. They were too well matched. Too taken with each other to be competitive. And now they can never be separated. Pity.”

“I take it you are not a romantic,” Widget says, picking up the bottle to refill his glass.

“I was in my youth. Which was a very, very long time ago.”

“I can tell,” Widget says as he replaces the bottle on the table. The man in the grey suit’s past stretches back a long, long time. Longer than anyone Widget has ever met. He can only read parts of it, so much of it is worn and faded. The parts connected to the circus are clearest, the easiest for him to grasp.

“Do I look that old?”

“You have no shadow.”

The man in the grey suit cracks a smile, the only noticeable change his expression has displayed the entire evening.

“You are quite perceptive,” he says. “Not one person in a hundred, perhaps even a thousand, notices as much. Yes, my age is quite advanced. I have seen a great many things in my time. Some I would prefer to forget. It takes a toll on a person, after all. Everything does, in its way. Just as everything fades with time. I am no exception to that rule.”

“Are you going to end up like him?” Widget nods at the window.

“I certainly hope not. I am content to accept inevitabilities, even if I have ways of putting them off. He was seeking immortality, which is a terrible thing to seek. It is not seeking anything, but rather avoiding the unavoidable. He will grow to despise that state if he does not already. I hope my student and your teacher are more fortunate.”

“You mean  …  you hope they can die?” Widget asks.

“I mean only that I hope they find darkness or paradise without fear of it, if they can.” He pauses before adding, “I hope that for you and your compatriots as well.”

“Thank you,” Widget says, though he is not entirely certain he understands the sentiment.

“I sent your cradle when you were born to welcome you and your sister to this world, the least I can do is wish you a pleasant exit from it, as I highly doubt I will be there to see you off in person. I hope not to be, in fact.”

“Is magic not enough to live for?” Widget asks.

“Magic,” the man in the grey suit repeats, turning the word into a laugh. “This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it. Look around you,” he says, waving a hand at the surrounding tables. “Not a one of them even has an inkling of the things that are possible in this world, and what’s worse is that none of them would listen if you attempted to enlighten them. They want to believe that magic is nothing but clever deception, because to think it real would keep them up at night, afraid of their own existence.”

“But some people can be enlightened,” Widget says.

“Indeed, such things can be taught. It is easier with minds that are younger than these. There are tricks, of course. None of this rabbits-in-hats nonsense, but ways of making the universe more accessible. Very, very few people take the time to learn them nowadays, unfortunately, and even fewer have natural access. You and your sister do, as an unforeseen effect of the opening of your circus. What is it you do with that talent? What purpose does it serve?”

Widget considers this before he answers. Beyond the confines of the circus there seems to be little place for such things, though perhaps that is part of the man’s point. “I tell stories,” he says. It is the most truthful answer he has.

“You tell stories?” the man asks, the piquing of his interest almost palpable.

“Stories, tales, bardic chronicles,” Widget says. “Whatever you care to call them. The things we were discussing earlier that are more complicated than they used to be. I take pieces of the past that I see and I combine them into narratives. It’s not that important, and this isn’t why I’m here—”

“It is important,” the man in the grey suit interrupts. “Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift. Your sister may be able to see the future, but you yourself can shape it, boy. Do not forget that.” He takes another sip of his wine. “There are many kinds of magic, after all.”

Widget pauses, considering the change in the way the man in the grey suit watches him. He wonders if all the grand words earlier about stories no longer being what they once were was all for show, something that the man does not truly believe.

While before his interest level bordered on indifferent, now he looks at Widget as a child might look at a new toy, or the way a wolf would regard a particularly interesting piece of prey, scarlet-clad or otherwise.

“You’re trying to distract me,” Widget says.

The man in the grey suit only sips his wine, regarding Widget over the rim of his glass.

“Is the game finished, then?” Widget asks.

“Yes and no.” He puts down his glass before continuing. “Technically, it has fallen into an unforeseen loophole. It has not been properly completed.”

“And what of the circus?”

“I suppose that is why you wished to speak with me?”

Widget nods. “Bailey has inherited his position from your players. My sister has settled the business end of things with Chandresh. On paper and in principle, we own and operate the circus already. I volunteered to handle the remainder of the transition.”

“I am not fond of loose ends, but I am afraid it is not that simple.”

“I did not mean to suggest that it was,” Widget says.

In the pause that follows, a gale of laughter rises from a few tables over, rippling through the air before settling back down, disappearing into the low, steady hum of conversations and clinking glasses.

“You have no idea what you’re getting into, my boy,” the man in the grey suit says quietly. “How fragile an enterprise it all is. How uncertain the consequences are. What would your Bailey be, had he not been so adopted into your circus? Nothing but a dreamer, longing for something he does not even understand.”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a dreamer.”

“There is not. But dreams have ways of turning into nightmares. I suspect Monsieur Lefèvre knows something of that. You’d be better off letting the whole endeavor fade away into myth and oblivion. All empires fall eventually. It is the way of things. Perhaps it is time to let this one go.”

“I’m afraid I’m unwilling to do that,” Widget says.

“You are very young.”

“I would wager that combined, even beyond the fact that Bailey and my sister and myself are comparatively, as you say, very young, if I calculated the ages of everyone I have behind this proposition, the total might trump your own age.”

“Perhaps.”

“And I do not know exactly what kind of rules your game had, but I suspect that you owe us this much, if we were all put at risk for your wager.”

The man in the grey suit sighs. He casts a quick glance toward the window, but the shadow of Hector Bowen is nowhere to be seen.

If Prospero the Enchanter has an opinion on the matter, he chooses not to voice it.

“I suppose that is a valid argument,” the man in the grey suit says after some consideration. “But I owe you nothing, young man.”

“Then why are you here?” Widget asks.

The man smiles, but he says nothing.

“I am negotiating for what is, essentially, a used playing field,” Widget continues. “It is of no further use to you. It holds a great deal of importance to me. I will not be dissuaded. Name your price.”

The man in the grey suit’s smile brightens considerably.

“I want a story,” he says.

“A story?”

“I want this story. Your story. The tale of what brought us to this place, in these chairs, with this wine. I don’t want a story you create from here”—he taps his temple with his finger—“I want one that is here.” He lets his hand hover over his heart for a moment before sitting back in his chair.

Widget considers this offer for a moment.

“And if I tell you this story, you will give me the circus?” he asks.

“I will pass on to you what little of it remains for me to give. When we leave this table I will have no claim over your circus, no connection to it whatsoever. When that bottle of wine is empty, a challenge that started before you were even born will be over, officially declared a stalemate. That should suffice. Do we have an agreement, Mr. Murray?”

“We have an agreement,” Widget says.

The man in the grey suit pours the last of the wine. The candlelight catches and bends in the empty bottle as he places it on the table.

Widget swirls his wine around his glass. Wine is bottled poetry, he thinks. It is a sentiment he first heard from Herr Thiessen, but he knows it is properly attributed to another writer, though at the moment he cannot recall who, exactly.

There are so many places to begin.

So many elements to consider.

He wonders if the poem of the circus could possibly be bottled.

Widget takes a sip of his wine and puts his glass down on the table. He sits back in his chair and steadily returns the stare aimed at him. Taking his time as though he has all of it in the world, in the universe, from the days when tales meant more than they do now, but perhaps less than they will someday, he draws a breath that releases the tangled knot of words in his heart, and they fall from his lips effortlessly.

“The circus arrives without warning.”

There are very few people wandering through Le Cirque des Rêves with you in these predawn hours. Some are wearing red scarves that are particularly vibrant against the black and white.

You do not have much time before the sun inevitably rises. You are faced with the conundrum of how to fill the remaining minutes of the night. Should you visit one last tent? One that you have already entered and particularly enjoyed, or an unexplored tent that remains a mystery? Or should you seek out one last prebreakfast caramel apple? The night that seemed endless hours before is now slipping from your fingers, ticking by as it falls into the past and pushes you toward the future.

You spend your last moments at the circus as you wish, for it is your time and yours alone. But before long, it is time for Le Cirque des Rêves to close, at least for the time being.

The star-filled tunnel has been removed, only a single curtain separates the courtyard from the entrance now.

When it closes behind you, the distance feels greater than a few steps divided by a striped curtain.

You hesitate before you exit, pausing to watch the intricate, dancing clock as it ticks down the seconds, pieces moving seamlessly. You are able to watch it more closely than you had when you entered, as there is no longer a crowd obscuring it.

Beneath the clock, there is an unobtrusive silver plaque. You have to bend down to make out the inscription engraved onto the polished metal.

IN MEMORIAM

it reads across the top, with names and dates below in a smaller font.

FRIEDRICK STEFAN THIESSEN September 9, 1846–November 1, 1901

and

CHANDRESH CHRISTOPHE LEFÈVRE August 3, 1847–February 15, 1932

Someone is watching you as you read the memorial plaque. You sense their eyes on you before you realize where the unexpected gaze is coming from. The ticket booth is still occupied. The woman stationed inside is watching, and smiling at you. You are not entirely sure what to do. She waves at you, a small but friendly wave as if to assure you that everything is fine. That visitors often stop before they depart Le Cirque des Rêves to stare at the clockwork wonder that sits by the gates. That some even read the inscribed memorial for two men who died so many years ago. That you stand in a position that many have stood in before, under already fading stars and sparkling lights.

The woman beckons you over to the ticket booth. While you walk toward her, she sorts through piles of paper and tickets. There is a spray of silver-and-black feathers in her hair that flutters around her head as she moves. When she finds what she is seeking, she hands it to you, and you take the business card from her black-gloved hand. One side is black and the other is white.

Le Cirque des Rêves

is printed in shimmering silver letters on the black side. On the reverse, in black ink on white, it reads:

Mr. Bailey Alden Clarke, Proprietor bailey@nightcircus.com

You turn it over in your hand, wondering what you might write to Mr. Clarke. Perhaps you will thank him for his very singular circus, and perhaps that will suffice.

You thank the woman for the card, and she only smiles in response.

You walk toward the gates, reading the card in your hand again. Before you pass through the gates to the field beyond, you turn back to the ticket booth, but it is empty, a black grate pulled down over it.

You tuck the card carefully in your pocket.

The step through the gates that takes you from painted ground to bare grass feels heavy.

You think, as you walk away from Le Cirque des Rêves and into the creeping dawn, that you felt more awake within the confines of the circus.

You are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.