Prelude: Pre-Introductions

It has become somewhat traditional for Aurel Hansen to visit Paris each summer, to see the seasonal ballets. It first served the purpose of staying in touch with faraway friends, now he feels inspired by the charming atmosphere of the city, the smell of lavender and the warmth of boulangeries and bakeries. He spends weeks among friends, staying in inexpensive hotel rooms or in his companion’s guest rooms, perusing French markets in the day, sitting in mezzanines in the evening, entranced, and returning late at night to a glass of wine and disheveled piles of handwritten notes. His notes take up such an amount of space in the room he has simply opted for them to become the room. Crumpled papers sit on every available chair and desk, and even on the foot of his bed.

He is a great lover of wine and when he is offered invitations to theatrical social conventions, by theatre proprietors he has become familiar with or has performed favours for, he goes for the art, conversation and wine.

He discusses poetry, politics, history, music, and anything else en vogue.

Some years well into his tradition, he receives a card bearing the date and time of a celebration for the opening of a particular ballet, one he has yet to see, and a personal note from the theater’s owner, a man he has contacted many times before, whom he holds in high regards, musically.

He is vexed as to the nature of the celebration, but finally decides upon his second most formal suit, and attends with a rose in his lapel, his smallest notebook tucked safely in his vest pocket. He fiddles with his handkerchief in his coat pocket when he arrives, being swept by the doorman into the opulent theatre lobby, where he receives his ticket gratis and is guided to a private box seat. From his vantage point he can see the great red velvet curtains, their golden tassels, and the collection of brass and wood instruments in the orchestra pit.

The ballet is a masterpiece, he copies down notes of masks and a madrigal for which he wonders if he could receive the sheet music, and what the price of said music would be. He notes down the scene in which it plays before returning his attention to the stage.

The audience is beyond polite, the theatre echoes with applause. He expresses his appreciation, then retrieves his coat from the staff and exits the theatre.

The address for the celebration, a dinner with entertainment, is not far from the theatre. When he arrives at an old townhouse, seemingly divided in two, but renovated internally into one mansion, he is discombobulated by the sheer panache of it.

The staff are dressed in red, they greet his at the door and whisk him away to a parlour where a number of other guests, bedecked in glamorous and colourful suits and gowns that makes him feel not quite colourful in his deep blue pinstriped suit, mill and converse with glasses of champagne and wine.

He turns down the offer of champagne, but receives a glass of wine from the nearest waiter.

He finds himself speaking with all manner of folk, professors and former dancers, artists and archaeologists. He has yet to see Mr.Beaulieu himself, though it was he who sent Aurel the invitation, but he is preoccupied when the ballerina he saw on stage glides into the parlour from a hallway dusky with moonlight, a glass of absinthe in her hand, and smiles warmly at the entire company.

He compliments her on her performance, paying special attention to the way she seems to float, as though her feet beneath the hem of her silver gown do not quite touch the floor. She is incredibly graceful, and her laughter ripples through the party when she jokes that she feels more at home on stage than in such crowds, but the Beaulieu’s would simply not abide her absence at a party thrown specially for the show.

Dinner is served much later than most expect, and while he is not starved he is quite glad to see the first course. The ballerina, Emily, sits several seats away, giving the waiter a polite non-answer when he asks if she is hungry, but manages to betray that she is famished and would like more of the offered cuisine.

The food is exotic, pies with strange spicy meats, in sauces of curry and mango and coconut, with unrecognizable flavours beneath. They often explode with some strange taste that nobody may guess.

Dessert is the same, many share spoons of flavoured ice or mousse and while flavours such as cinnamon and chocolate are obvious, there are sweeter or bitterer undertones.

Aurel especially enjoys the wine, and drinks much more of it than he intends. Emily argues he is more relaxed, and he winds up discussing old French minuets with a retired composer, while they examine a wall lined with artifacts post-dinner, the other guests reclining and lounging in the ballroom with brandy, coffee and tea.

The Beaulieus make an appearance. Ms.Beaulieu is dressed splendidly in a violet gown edged with gold that is quite fashionable without lacking invention. Mr.Beaulieu wears a green suit, bright as emeralds, with a gold vest beneath and continually smokes cigars throughout the remainder of the evening, ones that burst with plumes of rainbow smoke so he is almost always visible by the smoke rising above the crowd. Their daughter, Sage, who does not resemble either of them with her strangely dark hair an contrasting skin and who cannot be more than eleven or twelve, is introduced as well, but she seems to vanish within the crowd, making few appearances or simply remaining more observer than participant in the unfolding events of the evening.

Mr.Beaulieu, currently the theatre proprietor, makes a lengthy speech thanking everyone involved in the ballet, praising its success and Emily, who reluctantly stands by his side, rising en pointe then executing a graceful curtsy for the party. He lifts his glass and those with glasses follow his example, toasting and sipping their drinks.

The conversation is quite mellow after the speech, many guests depart, bidding adieu as they return to their homes and beds. There is much bother in locating and sorting coats, but after some confusion almost everyone is gone.

Aurel glances at the clock, realizes the late hour, and supposes, absently to his companions, that he must be leaving. He is staying in a hotel and is in no danger of waking any friend he may otherwise be staying with, but he would like a chance to read over his notes before bed and if he has had a productive night, the sky will be light when he extinguishes the lamps and takes to bed.

He locates the Beaulieus and they insist on escorting him to the front door.

As he leaves he asks Mr.Beaulieu about the wine, for he has drunk many glasses, and it was quite delicious. The gentleman disappears for a moment as Aurel hovers in the lobby, then returns with the name of the wine, the vintage noted as coming from a vineyard in Corsica he has never heard of.

He thanks them for the invitation and the celebration, remarks how ardently he enjoyed the ballet, and he hopes he will see them again soon. They thank him for attending and close the door once he leaves.

He tucks the note with the wine vintage scrawled on it in his pocket, where he does not touch it again for some time.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Muses

Muses were waiting for me when I got home. Small ones on the windowledge in the kitchen. Everywhere things were open. Jars unscrewed, boxes un-lidded, even the windows were open and I worried a gust of wind would unbalance them and they would tumble backward into the petunias growing against the wall. They giggled while I tried to close everything, each time a box sprang open or the jars would not screw on properly. I felt their giggles in my ear as I reached past them to pull the shutters closed, but the flew wide once more.
Eventually I gave up and left the kitchen. The door was the first thing closed since I'd come home. When I turned they pointed to the small padlock on the old wooden box my mother had left me, the one I'd refused to open because even in death I could not forgive her.
I am stubborn, soon the need to get work done and to go to the washroom overcame a grudge I'd worked to maintain for years.
Well, the muses were entertained. When I located the lock to the old padlock, and lifted the lid carefully (the latch was quite ancient) they must have been surprised. I'm not sure though, their stitched on smiles never seem to change.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Initiation

She hadn't known, when she'd given herself henna tattoos of animal prints and let her hair loose and dressed in green, what would happen.
She'd walked calmly down the beach to the edge of the woods, where earth was bordered by sea and sky. She smelled moss, ferns, salt, and the algae on wet rocks. With each gust of wind the hem of her pants was stained with salt, her hair more tangled until it hung in a matted curtain before her eyes.
She'd thrown out her arms, eyes bright, and spun slowly as she spoke:
I call on you, spirits of the earth, spirits of the water, spirits of the wind, will you come to me?
It was a wish, a dim hope, a silly impulse. She hadn't known what would appear, that the elemnts had heard her were curious of this girl who spoke to them.
Creatures of wind gathered first, for the breeze had carried her voice to them quite quickly. Sylphs, graceful, lithe, so thin they could spin disappear if she wasn't watching. They were insubstantial, barely there, almost transparent where the sun shone through. They were more like an interruption in the air. They reached for her and before her shock subsided, she felt their touches on her skin.
She stumbled away from the water, when something rose up from the waves. A shadow in white seafoam crests. Black eyes, bottomless, arms lock with black clawed hands. Its bottom half disappeare into a mass of waterweed, it's skin pale, covered with blue ripples like the pattern of light on the waves. Its hair glistened, clinging to its lovely face like seaweed to a rock. It watched her almost hungrily, seemingly unwilling to venture beyond the rising tide.
She backed into the woods, into a copse of trees where the spirits flitted back and forth, becoming a part of the forest. There was a rampant stag, horns twice as long and reared back like a goat's, spirals branching off like twigs on a branch. There was a faun, and some unrecognizable creature, eyes like a forest canopy; green speckled with brown and gold, iridescent as leaves in late sunlight. It was deep brown, blending into the trees, it smelled of earth, young and old. Hooves of a goat, paws of a walf, tuft of a deer's tail.
She didn't call to them again, but it didn't matter. She'd invoked them, they had come, they had been called.
And when she was called on, years later, by a boy with feathers stuff in his hair, a ring of teeth around his ankle, she came.

Art by Abby Diamond

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Crossroads

Crossroads

A Fork in the Road

An In Between

More Trustworthy Than the Flip of a Coin

The addendum, hanging below it as though it is a new addition, reads Please enter alone, for a solitary experience.

One enters, full of excitement and unease. Patrons have explored many tents alone, yet this is the first tent many have encountered in which isolation is requested. New tents are not milestones in the circus, they appear quite often. It is another corner of the circus to memorize, though there will never be a want for corners, and memorizing all of them seems an impossible feat.

The black velvet curtain is pushed aside, revealing the mist beyond. 

Inside the tent the walls are obscured by shadow. A long path stretches ahead of him, dissapearing in the distane. The path is lined with flat black stones, like many panes of inky glass, obscured slightly by swaths of delicate mist. The mist curls around the trunks of the trees, a damp blanket over the entirety of the tent’s floor.

Patrons follow the path, until the door of the tent is no longer visible, as though the canvas walls have become a tunnel. When one has been walking for a considerable amount of time, long enough for their palms to become sweaty in his coat pockets and for the mist to dampen their hair and collars, there is a break in the mist, some protrusion in the silver haze. 

The air holds a sense of foreboding, anticipation that makes many patrons’ skin tingle. The space is taut with mystery, some in-between place, feeling sacred. The path splits at a large tree, unlike any other in this dark forest. It is so pale it seems to glow silvery blue, like some celestial creation, though its branches are bare it feels alive, like some breathing thing. The paths spiral away into shadows and light, one becoming black as the night outside, the other starry with white lanterns. There are no signs to indicate where they may lead, no postage or maps or directions.

Over each path are ornate arches, formed in grey stone. Carved into the centre of each stone is a face, the face of a man surrounded by leaves that seem as much a part of him as wrinkles and beard. The faces seem almost identical, but after a moment of study there are visible differences. Where the path drifts into a sea of white lanterns, the face is softer, more rounded, yet more alive. The eyes are wider, berries hide among the leaves framing the Green Man’s face. Atop a sea of shadows beyond, the face has sharper features, more angular, and creeping in among the Green Man’s leaves are tendrils of thorns, and small flowers like snowdrops. 

The result of one's decision, to turn left or right, is a mystery. Many come out with strangely passive expressions, their journeys an enigma as they seem not to have anything to say. Patrons entering the tent for the first time (which is also the last time, as many cannot find the Crossroads again, no matter how long they search) turn to their companions for guidance, but their companions shake their head. It is impossible to tell if each experiences something different, or if the transition beyond the curtain is a singular experience, a dream made for them, and only them. 

Art by Guillermo del Toro

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Bensiabel's Tale: The Serpent Charmer

Farrin, Sage and Bensiabel sit on the low stone wall circling the moon mirror, in the comfortable silence that accompanies a party eating. When he had arrived, Bensiabel had found Farrin and Sage at the gates, Sage with two hot chocolates, cloudy with whipped cream and topped with chocolate curls, and Farrin with another in one hand, two bags in the other, carrying sugared violets and spiced chocolate twists.

Bensiabel sips his hot chocolate, crushing the half melted chocolate curls on his tongue and reflecting that he enjoys a drink he can chew.

When they are all satisfied, Bensiabel rolls up the bags and tucks them into his pockets. They discards their star-speckled cups in the black bins nearby, the empty cups sparkle before disappearing into the abyss.

“Farrin tells marvelous stories, he knows so many. I would love to hear one,” Sage added.

Farrin looked at Bensiabel. “Would you like to hear a story?” he asked.

Bensiabel felt as excited as he had when his parents had first given him permission to visit the cirque. It had been at least two years since anyone had given him a book to read, even longer since anyone had told him a story. Even his mother had insisted that thirteen was too old for bedtime stories.

He nods. “Yes, please, if you have a story.”

Farrin pauses, absently glancing into toward a fire breather on an elevated platform not far from them, watching serpentine flames wind in loops of silver smoke into the night sky. While he is silent music floats on the cool wind, drifting from multiple tents across the moon mirror.

He opens his mouth to begin his tale.

“Music is powerful, it is a way of sharing secrets, of passing on stories and weaving legends. It is as insubstantial as light, which is why it is so often dismissed as a weak art. Music can be made by the smallest of things, a chorus of crickets in midsummer, the cooing of a morning dove, the whisper of wine through a grapevine. Yet the most powerful music comes from the human heart. It is influenced by good deeds and bad, and it may cause good deeds and bad.

Once, long ago, there was a young man, a knight, eager to prove himself.

The hero lived in a great land, a land of armour and arms, a land of training and discipline. He was trained among warriors, but he did not care for battle. His sword held no great thrill, even when it flashed silver in the hot sunlight of the morning. Instead, it was the flute that caught his eye. It gleamed to him the way a beautiful woman gleams for other men, he longed for music and melodies, for softness and tempo and fluttering notes that the wind would carry away.

He often could be found far away from training grounds, hidden in canopies of forests, or in the tall grasses of meadows, running his fingers over sticks as though feeling the holes of a flute. He dreamt of lullabies and arias, he dreamt while he was awake, and often came home sore from bruises gained while not paying attention.

He was the topic of gossip for many. His strangeness was spoken of in local markets and forums, in taverns and bathhouses, on sheppard’s’ hills and in perfumed courtyards. Everyone knew of the strange boy who preferred music to swords. But could music cut a foe down? Could music strike armies with the force of a tsunami? They laughed and called him soft, joked and pointed and whispered behind his back.

But he did not care. He only stole more time away from training, more time in meadows and by forest creeks, carving sticks into crude flutes, tossing away scraps of bark and dying leaves.

His father lamented him. The youth was strong, he had the grace of a warrior, but he did not seem to see the reason in war and battle. His father often encouraged him, making his son rise early, giving him tasks of heavy lifting and sending him on errands that passed through training grounds. The youth accomplished all this with indifference and speed; he always strived to have spare time, and continued to spend it in the wilderness, then coming home with an assortment of pipes which he collected in his bedroom.

His mother felt differently. She had come from a land of music and art, she had learned to listen to the river’s song, to hear the buzzards and see the uniqueness in a scarlet pomegranate seed. She cultivated his love for music, quietly asserting to his father that he should have the freedom if he did not refuse to train, and would listen to him humming in the early hours of dawn.

For his birthday she presented him with a flute, a rare gift in this land. ‘It is from my homeland,’ she explained as he unwrapped the flute and widened his eyes. He could hardly bear to touch it, for it seemed so exquisitely beautiful, of rosewood with bands of gold between notes, he was sure it could not be anything less than divine.

When the youth was not yet a man, for though he could grow and beard and had the knowledge and the strength of a man, but the heart of a child, a messenger came to the land, from a far island in the sea.

The messenger was met at the gate of the land, given a home in which to stay, for he had been traveling for weeks and was very tired. He slept for hours while news spread in the land, as quickly as a rising tide, and when he woke he called to the leaders of the people. The messenger told of a great beast, cursed by the gods with hideous features and banished to a lonesome island, in a great stone palace.

The creatures was a woman, he told them, a woman beautiful as the heavens, but boastful and unwise. For her hubris she had been cursed with a head of snakes.

‘Snakes wreathe her head like a crown, coiling in green and black knots, hissing and spitting. She is such a hideous creature, the sight of her face turns men to stone!’ the man proclaimed.

He pleaded with each warrior, begging them for help. The warriors flexed their muscles, polished their swords, and many said goodbye to their families, declaring they would return with Medusa’s head on a spike. Many did not return, and their families mourned their fate, trapped forever in a stone palace, faces frozen in fear and cold marble. Countless warriors left in only three days, long enough for the news to reach the young hero.

The young hero heard he story of the beast Medusa and asked the messenger what he could do to help.

His proposition was met with jeering and mockery. He could not help, he was not a warrior, he was a silly boy with a flute in his hand, the weakest of sword wielders, the slowest of runners. How would his music help now?

Still, the young hero offered his services to the messenger, who gratefully, though with doubt and some hopelessness, accepted his bravery. He told the boy of an island, of the route to take, of the mountain passes and foreign towns, of the currents of wind and tide. When he finished the boy did not pack, he did not strap to his side a sword, he did not bring a bag of food, only a few apples, his flute, and the clothes on his body.

He dreamed that night a melody, a song fragmented by the lucidity of his vision. He sat nestled in an alcove of peacock silk cushions, playing his flute as two snakes emerged from a basket at his feet, coiled around one another, and began to dance. He watches the snakes’, evergreen with golden eyes, as they wound in circles, flicking their tails and their tongues.

He waited for a day of sunlight and fair winds, and when the sky was cloudless and the ocean rippled and glittered, he hoisted the mainsail upon the mast and set sail.

His journey is another story, with strange favours and deals, with hidden gods and mythical creatures. It is a tale for another day, but by whatever method, the youth arrived in a seaside village, and at the seaport, he bought a ship with the very little money procured from his homeland. He received no letters from home, but could imagine many laughing and believing him dead by now. In his mind’s eye the warriors imitated what they imagined his petrified face to be, immortalized in infantile fear and horror.

He anchored his boat close to shore and called out to the gorgon on the island.

She moved in broad daylight, seemingly unafraid, but he kept his eyes averted and was not turned to stone.

The hero could imagine the serpents glistening on her head, their forked tongues and pearly scales.

She would not speak, for a day and a night she was silent, only the snakes on her head hissed, there was no other sound on the island but the wind and the ocean. When the young hero spoke, he spoke with kindness, occasionally pausing to play upon his flute. So enchanted was Medusa by his music that she emerged from her palace more and more each day, closer to the shore, and began to converse with the young man.

They spoke for many days and nights, him from the sea, she on the land. She spoke of the loneliness of exile, of her yearning for company and change, of her life before the curse, when she was beautiful and loved. He spoke of his home, of the soldiers and their strength, of being alone while among others, save for his music.

At last a dawn came when the youth realized he had fallen in love with Medusa. He was besotted with her intoxicating hiss, with her sorrowful words. He spoke of his love for her, begged that she would allow him on the island, to propose to her.

But she had been promised love before, by another who had whispered sweet words before her curse, and he had left her after.

She refused the youth, who in his desperation turned to his only other love, unable to think of another way to convince her of his feelings.

He raised his flute to his lips and began to play.

He wove a tune, thinking of her sorrow and her loneliness, the melody so sweet Medusa tasted her own salty tears on her cheeks. Her snakes ceased to rear, their luteous eyes sparkled, they coiled away, straining toward the young hero and his music. Their harsh striking movements halted, they swayed gracefully with each crescendo, and stayed still, poised mid-dance with each breath he took.

He lowered his flute and told her again of his love for her.

When she wiped the tears from her face, she granted his her hand, and her heart.

Medusa did not change, she was never beautiful. She wore a veil that hid her snakes and her eyes, but the hero kissed her lips and married her under a bower of roses and lilacs.

Never did another man die for her.

Each night the hero played his flute, with new melodies, hypnotic and sweet as honey. The soldiers praised his music and fell asleep to its tranquility. So the hero proved himself and charmed Medusa. He proved the power of music.”

As Farrin has spoken, Bensiabel had forgotten the circus entirely. Pieces of it were slowly remembered - the growing cold of the autumn air, the shining stars and the scent of hot chocolate – as though he was emerging from a mist.

“I liked it,” Sage said. “It was a little sad at the beginning, but it ended well.”

“Yes, it was very good,” Bensiabel murmurs, still lost in the haze of another world. “Thank you.”

Farrin nods his head. He glances up at the sky, it is pitch dark and alive with stars, but on the horizon it has turned indigo, blushing with distant light. “It is late,” he says, though for him it is considered rather early. “You must be going I suppose.”

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Tempest

“A Huggin and your collection of doves,” her father says, bending down to come eyelevel with one golden cage, then straightening to look up at the bottom of another. Cages almost fill the room, littering the floor with feathers caused by the occasional shaking of a cage by aviator intentions. “Yet no Munnin? Do you know why you prefer birds so much?” he asks as one of the birds in question, Huggin, settles on the back of the armchair she sits in, and caws.

She does not have a response but he doesn’t seem to care.

“You are like the wildcat, like a lynx or a tiger. You are powerful and birds intrigue you. You like to play with them, but ultimately they are weaker than you. I am disappointed, you could such better things with your time.”

She wonders how her habit of bird keeping could be a disapointment, besides, she reasons, they are beneficial for practicing physical changes. She has learned to master changing her snow-white doves to canary yellow and pumpkin orange. She can feel so familiarly from the inside out their network of bones that she could, with very little difficulty, fix them, were they broken. It is all easier with her own birds, she doubts she could even make the most superficial of impacts on any outside creature, and she is certain it would not be permanent.

“I do not have a Munnin because memory is not all that special, father. Thought is more productive, I would think you of all people would approve, wouldn’t you?”

Her memory is a long jumbled passage of tests and challenges, brief moments of respite with Piper, tenderness from her father in the farthest reaches of her recollection, his dark snapping eyes, and black birds.

“Don’t be clever, you should be above such smart remarks. I expect more from you.”

Huggin turns his head to her father, his eyes flashing brilliant blue as he cocks his head. The cages begin to shake, upsetting many birds and causing a new rain of feathers. They swirl madly in the air.

“Stop that,” her father says, frowning.

She signs and closes her eyes. Slowly the cages come to a halt, the tempest of feathers settles. Huggin’s eyes are black once more.

“These creatures amuse you, because you are too easily amused. You should aim higher.”

“You are quite fond of ravens, aren’t you father?” she asks. Her father once bestowed upon her a magpie, from his own collection, a collection that has dwindled to nothing in recent years. “You were once, don’t you remember?”

“You require more study. If you have become too familiar with these birds I’ll get you new ones.”

She picks up one of her newest volumes and opens it to a clean page. “Then I will study. Getting me new birds is not the issue, Father. You haven’t taught me anything new for ages.” The inkwell on the desk lifts into the air and appears at her elbow, accompanied by a long pen.

“You require more study,” he repeats. “When your control has improved, there will be more. You are too strong for this nonsense. For now I suggest you do not divert your attention. No… distractions,” he does not look at the birds as he speaks, but straight at his daughter.

She looks down, wearily regarding the page, as her father wanders toward the bookcase.

They are so silent that she does not realize when he has left the room. When the light has faded from the room and she lifts her head, her neck aching and fingers stiff, she is surprised his lack of presence has escaped her.

She regards the clock in the corner, then the birds suspended in ornate golden cages above her, for some time before opening her book and taking up her pen once more. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Fortune Cookies

"What on earth are you doing?" he asks, as though standing by the train station a rummaging for loose change in my purse necessitates an explanation.
I don't answer until a few wayward coins slip into my palm, grubby with pocket lint and pencil shavings.
When I look up he is a shadow amidst the white landscape of the city, interrupted by too-bright neon signs and the occasional colourful winter coat.
"Is this about that fortune cookie?" he asks.
I cannot look him in the eye. Instead I develop an interest in my boots. The confection in question is in pieces and crumbs in my pocket, the paper crumpled in my fist, blue ink smeared across one side.
He reaches for my hand and retrieves the paper, glancing at it for the second time since that dinner when it was opened.
You will be betrayed, by that who is closest to you. it reads, in sky blue ink on one side, the back scribed with chinese characters.
He looks up through his lashes, now laced with melting snowflakes. "It isn't me, I never would."
I tug the paper from his fingers, trying to control the flush in my cheeks and I turn it over in my palm. Where there had been blue characters, there is now another message. He is lying, he has already betrayed you.
His fingers lace through mine as he smiles and kisses my cheek.
The paper is returned to my pocket, but not forgotten.
The train arrives, he insists he'll take a taxi, rather than making me dig for more change to pay his fare.
The taxi is there as the door closes behind me. The snow covers the license plate before he is gone.
The train battles through the snow, warm and musky, miniature snowstorms appearing where the windows are open.
Clutching the fortune in my pocket, I exit a stop later.
His taxi has gone ahead.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

A Short Biography of the Human Phoenix

The Human Phoenix, otherwise known as Tamas Zindelo, has not the slightest inkling of his origin. Sold to the gypsies, they did not ask his age when he joined their camp, but later when he questioned them, they guessed he was nine. He did not look like the Romani; rather he had the golden skin and sphinx like eyes from North Africa and the angular facial features of the Russian. His interest in fire though, seemed to come from thin air. He could watch flames for hours, looking into the heart of the inferno, wave his fingers through the rippling tips of candle flames.

He slept on soft earth under worn woolen blankets, or in a nest of pillows in the caravan. He was liked for his quietness and small appetite. He wore whatever he was given, often not changing his grungy white shirts and burgundy vests for days.

He stoked the fire and stood in its smoke until he smelled as rich as roasted chestnuts and his eyes watered. His uncle (for there were many in their gypsy family who, while not blood related, gave the care and love of uncles) claimed “you breath out smoke in you sleep.”

He was fortunate to possess some knowledge of the alphabet and with practice from the only of his family who could read, he was literature by the end of his boyhood.

When he meets who he assumes is the proprietor of the cirque, dressed in his best black vest, seeking a venue in town that would cater to the camp for the night, he is surprised to hear of the circus, of her disappointment and growing urgency in her lack of success. When he inquires as to her intentions, she replies she has been unable to find anyone with spectacular skills in fire artistry.

He invites her into the nearest café, his quest for Romani cuisine momentarily forgotten. She insists on buying her own tea, but he pays for his Tuscan coffee.

After a great many cups of coffee, perhaps one or two glasses of bourbon, he accepts the invitation. 

Art by Helen Musselwhite

Text by Lucie MacAulay

An Addition in Fur and Paper

Cats prowl among the hoops and platforms, a sleek jet black panther, a black and white striped tiger, a silver snow leopard and a star white albino lion.

They are joined by precocious kittens that leap and somersault. They purr and nuzzle their larger companions, budding their heads against giant paws, adding a sense of light heartedness to the mysterious act. The tamers, a man and woman in sparkling black attire with white waistcoats, he in a bowler hat, her with a spray of monochromatic feathers adorning her hair, smile at Bensiabel. The lady comes forward and motions for Bensiabel to put out his hand. When he does so she gently places something in his palm, before giving a beatific smile and returning to her colleague. He glances at the object in his hand, surprised to find a small paper recreation of the white lion. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

A Pending Cataclyst

“Today we will learn about separation,” her father begins.

He spends hours explaining something she cannot comprehend, referring with terrible specificity to elements she has yet to put together. He mentions subjects she will not learn for some time, makes notes of long ago lessons she has difficulty recollecting.

For the practical portion of the lesson, a glass of wine rests on the desk.

She is surprised, for though she knows of his fondness for red wine, he has never drunk during their lessons. He does not, however, lift it to his lips. Instead he pours into it, from the clear decanter on his desk, a portion of water. The wine turns from crimson to fuchsia.

“Is the wine as concentrated as it was?” he asks, gesturing to the glass.

“No, it is diluted,” she says.

“And if I desired the wine to be more concentrated, what must I do?”

“The water must be removed.” She does not think it is possible, the two liquids have swirled together so that they feel, to her, to be the same.

Yet her father feels differently. The watered wine swirls, streaks of red becoming darker as streaks of pink lighten to clarity. The water rises in a stream from the glass, leaving only deep red wine, and returns to the decanter at the other end of the desk.

Her eyes widen.

“The wine and the water are never one, the wine can only be diluted.” He says, carefully setting the glass of wine across the desk, inches from where she stands.

“Practice,” he says as he removes his hand, locking both of them behind his back and he regards her.

She squints at the glass, feeling for the wine, probing for a disturbance in the consistency of the mixture, like a loose thread in a tunic. She cannot find it, though she strains such that she feels dizzy and must hold the edge of the desk.

Her father is silent, but a basin of water appears on the desk, as though it has always been there. He holds out his hand over the water, closed into a fist, his fingers tight together.

“As I’ve said before, practice with something more basic.”

He opens his hand, letting sand fall into a grey heap at the bottom of the basin. It darkens with wetness.

She focuses on the sand and the water, using a control unknown to her until now. She is so preoccupied she does not notice when her father crosses the room to the door, opens it and leaves, letting it swing shut behind him.

In the days that follow, numerous basins are filled with water and sand.

She scribes sequences of familiar symbols, as wells as new ones she takes upon herself to learn, that make the system and the intentions hard to decipher.

She stares at coal grey piles of sand in basins of slowly evaporating water.

It requires a concentration she has never used before, even years ago in the foreign arena, fighting the red-haired girl.

It is over a week later that she emerges from her father’s study. Her fingers are stained with ink and calloused from the pressure with which she has held her pen. Her father is in the professor’s office, a book in his hand. He doesn’t raise his head s she approaches, not when she sets a basin of water on his desk. The water sloshes over the edges, staining his frilled lace cuffs. When she holds out the grey pile of dry sand in her palm, he nods his praise. She has received higher praise from him before, and this minimal reaction from him provokes her the drop the sand directly overtop the pages of the volume he is reading. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Birthdays in Canvas and Silver

His presents are not bound in shiny paper or silk bags, except for a deck of tarot cards he receives on his ninth birthday from the fortuneteller, but in canvas tents, labeled with signs instead of cards. Though new tents are constantly appearing, special exhibitions are born each april thirteenth, and though patrons do not know of the correlation between the new tents and his birthday, he has suspected long before learning to read the sparkle in the fortune teller’s eyes. He is given snowflakes and fire; indeed, the Snow globe is a gift for his fourteenth birthday, after his particular delight with the Bone Forest is taken note of. New pastries are introduced in the vendor’s stalls around the Moon Mirror, exotic flavours that become quite popular, though he is always the first to taste them. One birthday results in an underground cavern, filled with mist and tubers, a waterfall that leaves each patron dry, as though they have passed through a curtain of silk instead of water. Another birthday he discovers a tent with a jar, named after Pandora’s Box. The contortionist is chaperoning him this evening and smiles sadly while he reads the sign, perplexed when he encounters the earthenware vessel beyond the curtain. “Your sister would have been thirteen as well, today,” the contortionist, Paikea, says. “This jar, while it held all the evils of the world, including death, which took your sister, also held hope. You will be the first to hope here.”

Art by Jamie Caliri

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Engagements of Kindred Spirits

Birthdays are spent at the cirque; occasions normally spent at family dinners are spent in the labyrinth of tents and caravans and platforms of the cirque. Treats from vendors selling in the mirror crescent are wrapped as present in tissue paper and carefully tucked away in pockets, brought to eager children or saved for festivities at all hallow’s eve and Christmas. Wedding proposals take place in the Ghost Grove with engagement rings of silver, moonstone and diamond. The circus is more than an attraction to these ardent patrons, it is an escape, a home away from home, and their hearts call to it. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Lighthouse Dreams

A Voyage Across the Seven Seas

A Nautical Enterprise
the sign reads.
Sage pushes aside the heavy black curtain, only to find a second on beyond it. For a moment, between the curtains, with the light of the circus stolen away, it is pitch dark. Then she emerges through the second curtain.

Sage stands on a dock, the wood creaking and damp beneath her boots. The dock is suspended over a black expanse of water, under an equally black sky studded with tiny lanterns bright as stars. 

Sage gasps. She has imagined so often in her mind standing by the sea again, it has been too difficult to visit the ocean cities of her travels, for she is always only days behind the circus and it never travels anywhere seaside. Not it is here, within the confines of a tent, smelling of salt and sand. 

The thought appears that the tent may have been created for her.

Tethered to the end of the dock is a ship, a frothy white sale against ebony wood, a rearing black horse the figure head, its glassy black eyes flashing with the undulating starlight. The railings are painted with silver spirals, the deck ringed by velvet benches. The mast is tied with black ropes, they crisscross like a net over the ship, tied around silver knobs on the railing. A gangplank rests against it, awaiting her she makes her way slowly down the dock. 

The ship does not wobble under her weight, it is steady as she climbs in and sits on a white velvet bench.

The ship embarks from the dock of its own accord. It sways gently on the waves as the dock grows smaller and she floats beneath the lantern lit sky.

Before long Sage is alone on the waves, the dock out of sight. She fears if she were to put out her hands she would feel the walls of the tent and the illusion would be shattered, but the ship continues to float in the darkness. Sage peers over the edge of the ship. 

The sea is black as night on the horizon, but misty white around the ship, like waves of melted wax.

On the horizon, rising like a great silver tower, stands a lighthouse. 

The lighthouse shines as bright as the sun, tendrils of ivory rippling on the sea’s calm surface.

Suddenly the sea quivers. 

The water churns, rocking the boat and creating black eddies around the bow. Sage clutches the mast for support, though it sways with the sudden force of the wind. Her hair whips her face, salt sprays her dress.

She has been through rapids, has seen gargantuan waves, but the wave that rises now, blocking out each lantern, fills her vision. She panics as it looms, shuts her eyes and clings to the mast. Yet the impact of the water does not come. 

When she opens her eyes again the wave still looms, but as it does it becomes smaller, and on the horizon the dock is getting bigger, while the lighthouse is fading away. 

The ship nears the dock and when a thud sounds from the side of the ship, the gangplank has been positioned, Sage quickly composes herself and climbs carefully onto the dock. Her knees shake as she stares out across the waves. 

The wave is gone, the sea as flat as glass. Sage hugs her elbows and shivers, looking down at her salt stained gown. She walks briskly up the dock to the velvet curtain, the shape of a looming wave imprinted behind her eyelids, like the wingspan of a great black bird.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

An Early Excerpt of the Journal of a Music Box Maker

March 28th, 1902

"The unsolved mysteries of the cirque are whimsical and seductive. They are like unnamed islands hidden in the black spaces of old maps, like dark shapes glimpsed descending the far wall of a chaos into the abyss. They draw us forward and stir strange apprehensions. The unknown and prodigious are drugs to the unfed imagination, stirring insatiable hunger with a single taste. In our hearts we hope we will never discover everything. We pray there will always be another world to discover, that we always wander in darkness, awaiting the light of these mysteries to guide us onward. The cirque in its secrecy is one of the last reserves on earth of that timeless dream."

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Interlude I: Jaggery

The pale lady removes something from her bag, something that clinks against her nails, and places it on the countertop.

A green-tinted jam jar holding a yellow round brick. The faded label on the front reads, in hastily scribed cursive, Jaggery.

The old woman picks it up and turns it around in her hands, inspecting it as a miser inspects his gold. The pale-eyed lady seems on edge as the silence stretches on, punctuated by the clock ticking in the corner.

“Yes, very hard to find sugar from palm sap,” the shopkeeper decrees.

The lady’s shoulders sag in relief, tension in them vanishing, dissipating in the air like smoke. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

An Illusion of Flesh

She idly turns her hand before the window. Where the black sunlight touches it, illuminating it in a smoky haze, it appears like an apparition, a pale shadow of her hand. She turns her hand and it becomes solid again. She inspects it thoroughly, the soft skin on her palm, the spider web cracks on her calloused fingers. It looks no different than it always has been.

She has not noticed that her hand has faded, a pale shadow with the pigment of her skin. Where the sunlight hits it, it is gone completely, disappearing beyond her wrist, catching the edges of it softly when the light shifts. 

Art by Tere Arigo

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Shades of Grey

The castle looks dirty surrounded by sparkling white snowflakes, as grey as the sand buried under snow. The sky is a white flurry; the sea frosted as though covered with sugar crystals, crests frozen before the waves break.

If she hadn’t been standing close to the fireplace indoors moments before, soaking up the heat from the bright flames, she would be shivering with cold. She wears no shoes or hat, no scarf or gloves or coat, only her white gown and the ribbons that are a permanent embellishment on her attire.

It is so rare she is allowed out in broad daylight, but no shadows of people move about in the flurry, everyone has escaped to their houses or offices, or their friends’ houses or crowded cafes to wait out the storm. It is the pinnacle of Austrian winter, and far harsher than many can remember. Though the castle is seen by few, for their attention is diverted from the shape looming out of the mist on the innocuous grey beach. It simply fades into the background, to the extent in which it may be a trick of the light out of the corner of one’s eye.

Despite her best efforts, she cannot say the same about herself.

She has diverted others’ attention before, though she has never been able to divert her fathers’, but the blend so well into the landscape that she is a part of it, unnoticeable, would take a skill she does not possess. Indeed, a skill she does not believe her father possesses, either.

She enjoys the occasion, despite the warmth that is slowly dissipating into the air like smoke. She focuses on the water, the feel of it beneath the ice, and wonders if she could separate it from the salt through the ice; how much time it would take, how much effort, down to the second and the amount of respite she would require after. She decides it would depend on the thickness of the ice.

She stands on the seashore, digging her toes into grey sand and ice crystals. Plumes of white clouds billow from her mouth, snow laces her hair like a net of white.

The hem of her gown is moving, lace floating up and down in ripples. She steps back slowly, her gown trailing over the snow. It takes a moment for her to spot the bird against the snow, as its feathers are just as sparkling and white, but it is nestled in the cold, flapping and cooing with the cold.

She stand in momentary shock that a dove would be out in the snow in Austrian winter, even more that it would find the castle on the beach, never sighted by any person or creature outside the white marble residence. She bends down to scoop it up out of the snow.

The dove coos with fear, and as it warms it begins to flap its wings. She waits, patiently, for it to calm, coercing it to trust her. Strangely, her fathers’ skill would be useful here, as he has always been able to earn others’ trust with a wave of his hand and a piercing gaze, but he is not fond of doves. They are too pretty, he declares, too showy and frivolous, as opposed to the ravens he has raised her to keep in his study, dark with watchful eyes, always learning and thinking.

She holds the dove in her cupped hands, focusing on passing her warmth to its shivering body. The snow on its feathers begin to melt, sparkling like dew.

It would be a very bad idea, she thinks, to bring it home. Her father would only cast it out into the snow, or it would become a test she is incapable of passing, at the expense of the bird.

She narrows her eyes at the dove, as though squinting through its feathers and into its rapidly beating heart. Her eyes soften, as though she sees through the bird, into some cosmos in the snow before her.

Slowly an inky blackness, beginning at its beak and ending at its tail feathers, bleeds over the dove. Where it is still changing in hue, its feathers are grey, like that of a newborn sparrow.

When she carries the dove inside, black as night, it is silent. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Prerequisites

She has seen her father pour over piles of paper before, many of which she had not been able to understand when she was younger, and some scripts and volumes she still doesn’t. Yet these aren’t the organized chaos she is used to, these papers have been piled so high they have become the desk. Stacks of books and leather cases with the curling ends of parchment protruding from them are lined around the desk, supporting large sheets of blueprint paper, or scraps with delicate sketches in black ink. The blueprints and sketches are held down with a number of objects plucked off the shelves around the study; a butterfly encased in glass, a black widow trapped in amber, a paperweight resembling a black knight from a chess set, a heavy ancient silver coin with fading archaic Greek letters, a tarnished silver pocket watch engraved with F.I. They are layouts of something large, a structure of some sort with protrusions, potential lengths and measurements listed in the margins, various materials and tools scrawled at the tops of each page. There are more blueprints of a room; with so many sides it is almost completely circular. These blueprints have symbols around the edges, some of them, she reads, regarding intent and sizes of empty space.

“What are these for, Father?” she asks, compelled by her curiousity to take a step closer.

Her father does not seem to hear her at first, then he puts his hands on the desk and looks her in the eye. “You need not concern yourself with these. Go study, or practice. You need it.”

She does not retreat, instead, she moves closer, craning her neck to see the angle of a particular plane-

When her father lifts the black knight paperweight and brings it heavily down on her hand, resting on the edge of the desk. She pulls it back quickly, toppling a tower of books which rest on their spines and covers, or open on bent white pages. She cannot bring herself to care, as she cradles her injured hand, feeling the shattered bones in her fingers.

The books right themselves, coming to rest under the corners of blueprints they had previously held aloft. Her father returns to the blueprints.

“You need to practice. Begin with that, and do not attempt to glance at these papers again.”

She turns on her heel, still cupping her crushed fingers, and marches out of the room, biting her lip to keep from crying. Her cheeks are salt burned before she can calm enough to set her shattered knuckles back together again. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Suspicious Sentiments

Thrice a month, a single piece of black cardstock arrives in a black envelope, bearing Sage’s name in silver ink, but no address. The card within has a date and an address, no embellishments or notes. No well wishes or comments. The staff are convinced Sage has a secret admirer, though they cannot be certain from the passive expression on her face when she receives the letters, then disappears to her room or the library to read it in private. It is at these times that the nosiest of staff find excuses to enter the room she occupies, to sweep or dust or to ask if she would like tea. She takes no notice of them, and seems to read the cards so swiftly that whenever a staff member should pass her and cast a glance over her shoulder, she puts it face down, concealing whatever sentiments they suspect is embossed on it.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Unusual Gift Giving

His presents are not bound in shiny paper or silk bags, except for a deck of tarot cards he receives on his ninth birthday from the fortuneteller, but in canvas tents, labeled with signs instead of cards. Though new tents are constantly appearing, special exhibitions are born each April 13^th, and though patrons do not know of the corrolation between the new tents and his birthday, he has suspected long before learning to read the sparkle in the fortune teller’s eyes. He is given snowflakes and fire, indeed, the Snowglobe is a gift for his fourteenth birthday, after his particular delight with the Bone Forest is taken note of. New confections are introduced in the vendor’s stalls around the Moon Mirror, exotic flavours that become quite popular, though he is always the first to taste them. One birthday results in an underground cavern, filled with mist and tubers, a waterfall that leaves each patron dry, as though they have passed through a curtain of silk instead of water. Another birthday he discovers a tent with a jar, named after Pandora’s Box. The contortionist is chaperoning him this evening and smiles sadly while he reads the sign, perplexed when he encounters the earthenware vessel beyond the curtain. “Your sister would have been thirteen as well, today,” the contortionist, Paikea, says. “This jar, while it held all the evils of the world, including death, which took your sister, also held hope. You will be the first to hope here.”

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Moon Child

Farrin is cirque-born. Or moon born as the more wistful of the circus folk decree. Born on the very first opening night in Prague, beneath a full moon shadowy with craters. It is a joke among the circus folk he is as pale as the moon he was born under, skin white as paper, hair silver blonde like the crescent of moon still visible in a coming dawn.

A pelt of silky snow-white fur is sent to his parents, a note attached mentioning only that it is meant for Farrin. There is no indication as to the identity of the gift-giver.

His cradle is a piece of dark ebony, hung with a mobile of shaped and sanded pieces of mirror that send lights flickering over his blankets and the walls, like silver fireflies. He smiles but remains quiet, watchful with his dark eyes.

His twin sister, Artemis, whose birth follows seven minutes after his, dies six minutes later. In thirteen minutes he has been a brother, and then not.

It is a delicate situation for all, the mother torn between grief and unbridled joy, other members of the cirque offering both condolences and congratulations.

Artemis is cremated, her tiny body turned to ashes that are swept into an urn, provided by someone anonymous, as nobody will confess to sending it to them. The urn is pale green and decorated with dragonflies in iridescent silver, the word mutationem running around the rim in such italicized and looping script they are almost unable to discern the sentiment.

His birthday is a bittersweet affair, as his parents must celebrate with cake and his favourite warm apple cider and mint lemonade, while the anniversary of their second child’s death looms over them.

He is raised not only by his parents, but by the rest of the circus folk; escorted around the circus when they do not have any scheduled performances, shown this trick or that. They become an extended family and he is well liked for his quiet and clever disposition.

Attempts are made to school him with private lessons, but these lesson times become so few and far between that they are abandoned within the year and he is left to his own devices.

He devoured books, listened with rapt attention to patrons who sat around the moon mirror, discussing business of recent trips abroad or across the Atlantic.

He is immersed in new languages every week; Farrin collects languages like he collects books, learning new dialects in a manner of days. By the time the circus has left Barcelona and embarked on the journey to San Francisco, he is fluent in Spanish and Catalan. He is so gifted that by the age of thirteen he can grasp the basics of a language between breakfast and supper, and know the nuances by the next evening. 

Farrin learns his silence from the circus itself, when he emerges in the shadows of tents mid-performance and holds back any sound, though each circus performer always acknowledges him with a nod. He does not frequent the tents, as he knows the company is busy all night, but if the crowds are very large or he is too tired, he will take a short cut from the Cross Roads or the Bone Forest, passing by fire eaters and jugglers on his way.

Text by Lucie MacAulay