Phantasmagoria

Bensiabel is blinded momentarily as he stumbles into the tent. He appears to be in some absence of space until he realizes that everything within the tent is white. Crystals, clear as water, and sparkling like dew and sugar, erupt from the sides of the tent, creating such a canopy of glassy spikes over a path of flat white stones. The crystals are easily as tall as him, though some are even taller. They emit a gossamer glow, as though each holds its own star. The vision is so light and spectral he cannot be certain it is real. Yet the air smells of ice and sugar, and it is sweet to breathe, crisp in his lungs and throat. Bensiabel is hesitant to touch the crystals; they appear so fragile that they might shatter beneath his touch, but they are hard and smooth under his hands.

It is the sensation of half-remembered dreams. Fantasies conceived in fragmented moments of lucidity.

The phantasmagoria seems too sensational, too luscious to exist within a circus tent. It is an entirely different world. Yet Bensiabel senses something deep and ancient beneath it, some arcane power. 

He wants to ask Sage about it, but she would not know. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Fairy Poison

I kept it long after the Gypsy caravan rode away, swaying over the uneven path like a colourful boat on a stormy sea.
It was supposed to summon fairies; that's what the woman said. Promised, even.
I opened it on the moor, with you and the rest back on the precipice, sitting on the picnic blanket with glasses of burgundy and trays of cucumber sandwiches.
The Myst came out right away, frothy and pale like a thin layer of icing on a dark cake. It filled in all the cracks of the landscape; the skeletal branches of the scraggly trees, the bent swamp weeds and brown pools covered with sickly lily pads.
When it had settled over everything like sugar dusting, They rose.
They were graceful, like sylphs and ballerinas. They have no toes, only points at the end of their transparent feet, which they balanced on like the eyes of needles.
They were beautiful one by one, yet altogether, with every grey eye on me, they were terrifying.
Their eyes turned to the empty bottle in my hand, made of their own fae glass and chases with gold they mined. Filled with poison.
I cleared my throat and demanded my wish. It was the way the story went. I opened the bottle, I summoned the fairies, I was granted a wish.
Wishes aren't all gold and glitter. That's what they taught me in the Myst on the moor.
I went back to the picnic, and they did not notice for the longest time that I was Changed. I wouldn't ahve noticed myself, if I hadn't looked in my distorted reflection on the teapot and seen a grey-eyed shadow looking back.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Candy Apples

His expression is as hard and brittle as the coating on a candied apple.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Words and Cement

I warned them. I truly tried to, but they are stubborn at the best of times. They constructed their house out of loveletters. The cardstock is heavy, they said. The words are strong, real, they mean it this time.
When I suggested perhaps they were wrong, perhaps their love was as fragile as rice paper with thousand-year-old faded ink like they laughed. She will understand when she's older. Wait until she's in love. Then she'll see.
I tried to protect them too. I built walls around their hearts, of the thickest glass I could make (though i had really only just learned how to manufacture the stuff and the first few times it was uneven and cracked under the pressure of my palm).
They cemented their paper bricks with words of longing, endearing sentiments, passionate proclamations and heartfelt apologies and vows. I read a lie in each of those letters, but they insisted.
The house was built only a month ago. It held up well at first, better than I had thought. But after the first week the windows were dusty. The roof leaked. The pipes moaned. The drapes are moth eaten now and each morning when I wake up, someone has chipped away even more at the house's foundations.
It won't be long now. Broken hearts don't hold up well.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Siren Song

Skin bluish white, like milk with the cream skimmed off the top. Black hair, thin and clinging to her shoulders like seaweed to a rock. She is haunting, drowned and beautiful, a ghost risen from the sea. She does rise from the water, adorned in only a length of white cloth made thing and clinging by the damp, stretched taut over her figure, each tuck and curve catching her own curves. She watches you openly, face an image of longing and desire, and you wonder if it reflects your own. She seems closer, or maybe you've moved. Those are your fingers reaching out, moving as though to trace her face; her lips that move silently in song. You catch the melody in whispers and lean forward to catch more of it. It is daunting and weaves around the flowers in her hair: yellow poppies, romarin, and white and gold blooming narcissus. You can hear the song clearly now, the music is almost a tangible thing and you lean in to taste. Bloon on the moon, the moon beneath her eyelids, the skin around them green... But her eyes are not the moon. It doesn't matter, her flowers are in your hair, her hands on your face; the skin on them smooth and firm, not cracked and spider-webbed as one would expect by someone emerging from the sea. Cold crawls beneath your skin. She draws a breath and sucks you in.

Art by Jacob Sutton

Text by Lucie MacAulay

The Bouquet Girl

Violet resides in New Orleans, in the golden era of jazz, in an alcove of the winding alleyways that border the Red Light District. Left to her own devices, she makes a modest living among the late night cabarets, serving glasses of cloudy green absinthe and brandy. Her real money comes from her deliveries to the bordellos, selling antique clothing and jewelry from her deceased parents’ abandoned flat to the sparkling girls in lipstick and embroidered corsets soliciting from windows and corners. Many girls buy from her, delightedly sorting through glass gems and old-fashioned lace.

            She is popular among the scarlet girls and is frequently offered permanent jobs, but she turns them down, preferring to care for the girls when they get sick with fever, or when their customers mistreat them. Violet often wards them of potentially threatening clientele.

            The girls like Violet for her quiet disposition and gentle demeanor, as they complain that in their line of business, they do a fair amount of listening, and are rarely listened to. They like her habit of humming while she mends their tattered dresses, her cool hands as she strokes their hair on days they are too troubled to sleep.

            Mostly, Violet is known for her unnatural grace, for the way she seems to glide over the paved streets, and because she has no idea how beautiful she is.

            From a distance she is enchanting; up close the shape of her face, the contrast of her ebony hair against her skin, her pale green eyes, is radiant. She smiles like a sphinx and has a regal posture, delicate cheekbones and a cat-like gaze.

            In return for her kindness, the scarlet girls spoil her with stories from their childhoods; tales of runaways, castoffs and dancers. Violet listens and illustrates their stories on a faded painting pad with a box of watercolours and brushes with bent bristles.

Text by Lucie MacAulay 

Eclectia

She was born between times. It was autumn, and inundation, and a great many other seasons. In some areas they blended together, in others there were visible borders. This wasn't unusal, the town often accumulated weather and climate from many eras. Occasionally they would get two summers at once, and then winter from Russia in the 1920s would slip in and mingle with the spring of ancient Greece. By this time (which was unknown, they had collected many years), the townspeople has broadly mapped out different regions, where certain seasons would stay or drift. The colder ones spanned a great length of the town's centre, south of the main street. The hottest summers took residence on main street inself. Here the clouds would divide as well, always on opposite sides of the fissure.
The fissure in the sky was really the source of it. It was a hole, in different parts of time and obects and weather falling through it weren't uncommon. For this reason the town had no name (for it was the only town they knew of).
Emotions were the worst. Sometimes a cloud of contentment blew in from some warm summer night and the town was giddy for days. There had been epidemics though; of anger and depression. In those times the town rode it out, even though there were dire repercussions. Thankfully, emotions were hard to catch and could be avoided by washing ones hands properly.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Bunny Cautions

We have a philosophy.

When your thoughts are heavy.

When you run from the fox with cream on his tongue.

When you hide in the burrow or the tall grasses.

After all, we don’t want to repeat last summer. Poor Peter, we thought he would be alright on his own. The river hadn’t seemed that high, and he had seemed so sure of himself.

We thought a dip in the river would be fun. We will not make that mistake again.

Now we know better. We don’t want that to happen again.

That is why we have the New Philosophy.

Help each other.

No matter what the situation. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Ghost Girls

Mr.Everill glances down the road, through the canopy of trees to the emptiness, spying no messengers in cars, or men in black suits.

He sighs and turns his attention to the patio, to the decanter of brandy, almost empty, from the previous night. The bank manager had managed to drink most of it, and had been jovially anticipating his return the next day to go into further detail with Mr.Everill’s business venture.

Mr.Everill watches his daughter, a glimpse of auburn in the tall grasses, weaving in and around trees, the hem of her blue dress flapping.

He frowns. There is another girl with slightly darker hair, mahogany almost, a paler skin, flitting among the trees with his daughter. He cannot heart her laughter but the fleeting glimpse he captures of her face suggests she is smiling. He can hardly see her, where the sunlight hits her she seems almost transparent. Ghost-like. He takes out his lighter and a new cigar, specially manufactured to spout plumes of royal blue smoke. He turns from his daughter in the meadow and strides across the patio, tapping his cigar against the frosted glass of the double doors, the ash drifting through the air as it descends.

The trees are bare black shadows against the twilit sky when Hazel emerges from the woods, a speck of dusky blue and glimpses of red hair. She hums lightly, twirling a bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace. There is a grass stain on the hem of her cream white dress.

He places a hand on her shoulder and drops a kiss on her forehead. She smiles but does not relinquish her bouquet. “How was it?” he asks.

“Wonderful,” she replies with a voice strangely deep and earthy for a girl of her size. “We played hide and go seek, but she knows all the better spots than I do.” Her smile falters.

“Who is she, sweetheart?” He asks, having forgotten the strange girl in the meadow.

Hazel fiddles with the leaf before answering. “She’s my friend.”

In his mind he conjures the blue bedecked girl, yet he cannot remember her face. He had supposed she was a figment of his imagination, the result of a fatigued and idle mind. Knowing she is real makes him feel slightly at unease. At the time she had seemed barely substantial, in the interim he has almost forgotten her presence right beside his daughter.

“Your friend? What is her name? Where does she live?”

Hazel seems uninterested by the questions, as though she has already explained the presence of her almost imaginary friend. “Her name is Miranda. She lives in the forest. Sometimes.”

“She lives in the forest?” He is beginning to wonder if Hazel is telling her one of her fanciful ideas, but she does not seem to be in a storytelling mood as she twirls the stem of the leaf between her thumb and forefinger.

“Sometimes,” she repeats.

“Sometimes.” She does not offer further information, rather she becomes distracted with a crystal vase half filled with water and begins artfully arranging her bouquet inside of it. When it has is to her satisfaction she steps away and cocks her head to the side. She turns to her father, his silhouette looming before her against the patio’s lantern light.

“Goodnight sweetheart,” he says, patting her head affectionately.

She rises onto her toes and kisses her father’s cheek. “’Night Papa.” She walks down the hall, the candleholder in her hand casting dancing shadows on the wall, her white nightgown swaying around her ankles.

Her father follows some hours later, when the papers on his desk have been organized into somewhat less disheveled piles. His cuffs are stained with ink; his eyes are sore. He rubs them and reaches for his glass of brandy, yet it is empty when he raises it in the light. There is a photo album with a blue pearlescent cover on the edge of his desk in a circle of lamplight. Sepia photographs of a woman’s smile or hand raised in a gesture peek from the pages, yellowing pyramids of paper he tries unsuccessfully to push back into the bindings. He does not like to think about it, not at night through the bottom of a shot glass. When he extinguishes the lamps the photo album becomes a shadow.

Mr.Everill prepares for bed with a haunted expression, the feeling of something eluding him, on the surface of his conscious, too airy to grab. Something with dark colours, surrounded by flowers. He ponders his daughter’s story; he can only blame himself for indulging her so. She is young, he believes, she will outgrow such fancies.

He dismisses thoughts of foreign girls in familiar meadows and familial secrecy. He pours out another glass of brandy before retiring to his apartments for the night, the photo album shining in the moonlight. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Fragments of Truth

“His address in London does not exist. Or rather, he does not exist at the address. He has not lived there for a long time, much too long a time for his business cards not to have been changed. Which means he has lied about his whereabouts. I have not seen a single document baring his signature. I have received no mail since joining, no postage whatsoever.”

Tamas raises his eyebrows. “Do you mean to suggest that our Mr.Sarastro is hiding from us?”

Paikea meets his eyes with an inscrutable gaze. “Not at all. I am suggesting that Sarastro does not exist. We have seen no official documents, we have not met him, spoken to him. He has never attended the circus, or any auditions. He has never signed any cheques that I have seen. I believe he is, to put it rather fancifully, a ghost. He is a distraction, and we are being carefully monitored so as not to notice that he is a distraction. He is there to prevent us from seeing who is really in charge.”

Now Tamas relinquishes his hold on his tea. Both cups sit on the table, cooling despite the warmth of the fire near them.

“I think you know quite well who is in charge. While I know you and Pamina are close, I should wonder what she is or is not telling you.”

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Lingering Shadows

Everyone dreads the thought of finding another illusionist and mutually agrees, sans verbal exchange, to put it off as long as they are able.

Eventually another illusionist is found, a stage hand working backstage a theatre in New York, discovered from a series of auditions held and attended by Pamina and Paikea, occasionally joined by Tamas.

The new illusionist, Robin, is well like but the young lady’s memory lingers and he is hardly visited in his tent, as many find it feels like reopening a wound to step inside. He is invited to the acrobat’s tent frequently for matcha green tea, or takes walks with the hula dancers around the perimeter of the tents. He is escorted almost everywhere, feeling almost as though the company is watching him protectively, as though his environment has malicious intentions toward him. In his tent he is rarely left alone.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Pre-Suspicions: Incendiary Visit

She does not mention her departure to anyone as they unload the train, setting their bags and suitcases and trunks in a large tent where it will be distributed to the back stage areas deemed theirs. She does not plan to be long. They are only right outside London, and no one notices when she purchases a return ticket at the station, nor when she takes boards the next train.

The train is early, though it is already getting dark and a light rain is beginning to fall. She steps off in a station surrounded by residential streets, though one road does have a string of cafes and a bookstore.

The address if for a flat across the city. By the time she steps off the train and only to darkened rain-wet streets the sky is black, barely scattered stars shining through the smog. She squints at each flat number in the dark, pausing and double checking the address on the faded card from the ticket booth now in her gloved hand, when she comes to the one she has been searching for.

The flat looks identical to the tall buildings surrounding it, but the windows are boarded up, covered with planks of rotting wood, the arch over the door hung with cobwebs, the doorknob is blanketed with dust. Nobody has occupied the flat for a long time.

She stands in a pool of lamplight for some time, regarding the house and clutching the polished wooden handle of her umbrella long enough for the cold rain to wane to a fine drizzle. 

When she tucks the card into her pocket once more, among a handful of dried scarlet petals stained with something dark and brown, she emerges onto the busy street, drifting back in the direction she came, a black shadow in the thinning crowd. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

In Memorandum

Word spreads, as word does, throughout the circus that a new tent has appeared, and each member of the circus is eager to step inside the tent with no name, though they quickly discover what it is for.

Inside the tent it is night, the starry black ceiling and walls echoing the sky outside. It begins with a hallway lined with trellises, and on the trellises are networks of vines and roses, blossoms ranging from white to pink to deep crimson, that leave blankets of petals on the floor, their scent permeating the air when they are crushed underfoot.

The passage of roses, too thickly intertwined to see through, leads to an open space, circular with the same dark walls. But from the ceiling hangs a pair of great white wings, feathery and snow-bright as an angel’s, spanning the entire diameter of the room. Occasionally the wings will move, as though with a sudden breeze, and feathers drift down onto the ground of shimmering white grass.

A fountain occupies the centre of the tent, bubbling softly with crystalline water, cascading over white statues of doves and flowers. On the very top of the fountain is a black top hat, shining and dour against the white of the wings suspended above it. The water is cool and crisp, something refreshing and numbing. The only sounds come from the rustle of grass as patrons walk through, pausing at bowers of red roses, and the trickle of the fountain. There is something melancholy about the silence and most patrons prefer not to stay long. They year for something fantastical to relieve them of the sorrow in the air. But some pause to read the silver plaque that rests on the brim of the hat, small enough it does not need to curve to fit around the hat. It reads IN MEMORANDUM and specifies a name that no one recognizes, though if they saw the face to which the name was put, they would realize why there is a new illusionist in the circus. There are two dates, and many patrons remark that the poor girl, whoever she was, was too young to pass.

Patrons insist on staying, to pay their respects to a friend of the circus, some anonymous spirit that may have at some point stood in her very own tent or sat in her own caravan. They leave soon after, even those who find the tent calming, the fountain serene and roses spellbinding.

The tent remains nameless, and no patron makes any attempt to change this. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Smoke and Mirrors

Bensiabel has never seen an illusionist, though he knows an illusion is some sort of trick. “A tired trick, they use mirrors and ropes and draw your attention away while they flash their capes and do ‘magic’ on stage,” his father has always told him.

He has mixed feelings upon entering the Illusionist’s tent.

The space smells of velvet and embers, but also faintly of wisteria perfume. There is a star studded black platform in the centre of the tent, white chairs circling it in three rings. Merry flames dance in candelabras around the interior perimeter of the tent, casting shadows on the empty stage.

Bensiabel takes a seat and awaits the illusionist. He runs his fingers along the seam of his jacket, combs them through his hair, and stifles a yawn while he sits. He is about to rise when the curtain of the tent is pushed aside and an ebullient group emerges from the shadows. They sit in the front row, quite near Bensiabel though still a few chairs away. He catches snippets of conversation while he waits, hearings half-descriptions of tents he has no seen, and recommendations of paths to take or delicacies to taste.

The conversation dies to a low murmur, voices low as though the boisterous party has suddenly become solemn.

It is unclear to Bensiabel at first why the tent appears to darken, until he realizes the flames topping candles around them are dying down.

In the dim light voices rise again, first out of wonder and bemusement, then out of confusion and slight fear. His own heart is beating so loudly in his ears he can barely hear them.

In the centre of the platform stage a white light is raising, a wisp of smoke with a gossamer glow.

The smoke increases and the light darkens, like a light shining through the black smoke rising from a fire. The smoke bursts suddenly across the platform, sending cinders cascading over the stage’s edge.

The smoke clears, revealing a figure standing in the centre of the stage, a young woman with ebony hair piled on her head under a stiff black top hat.

She wears an oversized black coat that hangs on her narrow shoulders.

She extends her arms, creating a rippling wingspan of black silk, and then shrugs the coat off, letting it fall unceremoniously to the ground.

The illusionist removes her top hat and bows/makes a dramatic bow.

Beginning from the bow, in which she straightens, holding a pearl earring in her hand that causes a patron several rows back to gasp and put a hand to her ear where the pearl is no longer, the performance is continuous.

The pearl shatters into sparkling white sand that hovers in the air as it floats down. The patron to whom the earring belongs to seems too stunned to exhibit anything but dazed disbelief.

The illusionist steps forward, reaching out a hand to a member of the audience in the front row, a young man who cannot tear is gaze from hers as she wraps a length of white ribbon around his hand. When she unwraps it, the trinket sits in the palm of his hand.

The earring intact, a luminescent drop of pearl once more.

At another point in her performance she curtsies lowly, taking the opportunity to retrieve her black coat and drape it elegantly across her shoulders once more. At first it is not noticeable, only a small flicker of heat radiates from the fabric, as though amplifying the warmth of her skin. When she removes the coat, small flames are dancing across her skin, increasing in height and becoming more blindingly bright with each passing second.

Several patrons move forward, ready to smother the flames with their coats, one patron picks up her own bolero jacket from the chair. She smiles calmly as the fire licks further up her arm.

The fire begins to move as though in synch, swirling in one direction or another, leaping in arcs of sparks, landing on her shoulder or in her palm. Yet is does not burn her.

Each act following is continuous, melding together into a thread of magic and impossibility. Bensiabel rubs his eyes so many times, to assure himself what he sees is real, and pinches himself so often, to be sure he is not dreaming, that is is almost sore by the end of the performance.

She reads the twinkle in their eyes, the delight and disbelief, conjuring creations and wielding light to enchant her audiences.

At one point his chair begins to rise, hovering inches above the ground. His toes brush the ground as he clutches the sides with unease. The chair stops only a foot above the floor, and even digging his fingers into the velvet of his seat, Bensiabel feels weightless.

Later, the illusionist presents a silver hoop , turning it in her hand as though its rotation brought it into existence, from thin air.

She passes her hand through the hoop, flourishing it with showmanship and revealing there are no strings. She passes it to a man who grasps it, to prove its solidity. She holds the hoop out, flat in the air, and removes her fingers. The hoop stays suspended in the air.

Slowly the hoop begins to spin, rim flipping over rim, gaining speed until it is a silver blur in the air.

She reads her audiences like books, feeding from their reactions, responding with enchanting tricks and mysteries.

A second hoop appears, midnight blue and spinning in the centre of the silver sphere, rims flipping perpendicular to those of the first hoop. The hoops slow, so they can be seen as individual circles rather than blurs, and now a third hoop, ebony black, spins around the second hoop.

Bensiabel watches closely, looking for strings tied tightly around the moon-coloured rims, and when they begin weaving in and out of each other, growing and shrinking in size, he begins to think perhaps they aren’t being held up at all.

While the hoops levitate, the illusionist spins in a circle, smiling alluringly at the audience. Bensiabel grins back and is rewarded when her smile grows. She tips her hat, mostly in his direction, before stepping toward the hoops. They slide over her head, settling around her waist, hips and shoulders. They begin to spin, passing through her as though she is made of water.

Several audience members look around the perimeter of the tent, as though the real illusionist is hiding in a darkened corner, the one on stage simply some strange distorted reflection.

The hoops shatter, disintegrating into sparkling dust that blooms like a silver tempest, and drifts through the air. It settles on an empty stage, the illusionist has vanished in a whirl of silver dust and black silk.

The audience members wait several seconds, some full minutes, before deciding the show must be over. They slowly rise, musing over this and that feat as they file out the door at the side of the tent.

During the mass exodus Bensiabel looks over the stage, finding no edges of trap doors or uneven floorboards. He spots a feather, white and under a glittering layer of dust, in the centre of the stage.

It must have fallen from her hair, unnoticed by the preoccupied audience and performer.

He is unsure if he should go on stage to retrieve it. He looks toward the tent door but the last of the patrons are not watching him.

Quickly he jumps on stage, hurrying to the centre of it and bending down to pick up the feather. He straightens and turns to the door, half expecting a patron to emerge through the curtain and admonish him for standing on the illusionist’s stage, but he is alone.

He stuffs the feather into his coat pocket, keeping it secure between his tickets and handkerchief, before quickly descending the stage stairs and striding to the door in the shadows. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Mice Advice

Please do not disturb the mice.

The mice can be vicious, when provoked.

They stand like an army; they spread like troops, covering ground for potential threats. It is best to avoid being one of said threats.

Maintain an air of friendliness; mice make very bad enemies.

When approaching them, do not appear small or discreet, make yourself known, discretion evokes a sense of prey.

Do not approach among large groups; this can overwhelm them.

Refrain from speaking, they can use your words against you and any insult will be direly regretted.

There is no avoiding them.

Do not feed the mice, it only makes them hungrier.

Text by Lucie MacAulay 

Primordium

Steam curls from the surface of her tea and she wraps her hands around the blue cup to keep them warm. The weather has been chilly of late and she has resorted to thick gloves and a wool coat. Frost shines on the windowpanes, icy rime on sill of the doors and windows. The light that shines in distorted columns on her table and the chair across from her is yellow and warm, however, and the scarlet velvet plush of the empty seat reminds her of the embers of a fire.

She waits patiently for many minutes, watching the other patrons mingle and murmur quietly, which she sips. When the minute hand of the clock above the door has moved almost a quarter of a circle, she reaches into her jacket and retrieves a small book that was not there a moment ago.

The book is old, an antique with a pearly black cover, faded to a dull soot-grey at the edges, and embossed with a silver title, but it has been her favourite for ages and she loses herself in it so completely that she is startled when she is joined by a young man.

He looks no different than he did the last time she saw him. Perhaps there is one more line in his face, a permanent furrow to his brow, and his hair is slightly longer, but he fixes her with the same grey gaze.

“You still love to read. I am glad. I was beginning to think I knew nothing about you anymore,” is how he greets her.

Celia closes her book, not bothering to mark her page; she will find it again with ease, and picks up her cup of tea again. “I believe there is much you don’t know about me. But it is fair; for there are many things I don’t know about you. Why you asked me here, for instance.”

Instead of answering he calls over a waitress and orders a bottle of burgundy, a vintage he knows is her favourite. He regards her while he waits, taking in the features he has always found striking, the darkness of her hair against her pale skin, her girlish eyelashes and lips.

"It is beautiful, and very impressive. And it must be hard to maintain," says the gentleman, changin the subject, as he takes his seat across from her. He removes his bowler hat and the shadow that covered his eyes is gone. They stare directly into hers. 

"Thank you. It isn't all my doing, though. The performers are splendid on their own; I simply manage the trickier aspects." She closes her book and sets it aside, then takes a sip of tea.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Bookkeeping

Hansen carries a small leather bound note book in a pocket specially stitched in the seam of his jacket, a pen in an exterior pocket. He records sights in detailed drawings, with scrawled notes in small margins alongside, ideas to incorporate in his music boxes. He has a collection of these notebooks, hundreds of sketches of flora and mythological creatures, filigrees or names of favourite songs performed in avante garde theatrics, and the names of their directors, to be contacted at a later date for the acquisition of sheet music.

Upon entering Cirque de la Lune, he tucks his notebook under his arm, anticipating a striking of inspiration throughout the evening.

He is entirely wrong. Within minutes it is apparent there is too much to capture in a single night, in a single book.

He has no plan, no destination in mind as he has nothing to expect. He wanders, taking slow steps as though to slow the passage of time and capture each detail of the circus in mind. The dancing silver flames, the breath of cinnamon and chocolate and autumnal breezes in the air, the blend of each element seamlessly with another so his journey between tents and caravans is dazzling.

He is amazed by the size of the circus, by the multitude of tents and the acts within them. He is further amazed when, at the blush of dawn and the disappearance of the stars, when he is ushered out among crowds, herded beyond the gate, he has not traveled farther than a hundred metres from the Moon Mirror. He will have to come back another night.

He tries to slow his exit as much as possibly, lingering at vendors’ stalls for a last chocolate bird or sugared flower, reading the signs that hang from the front of only a few tents, with looping script and sometimes warnings or precautions. He finally departs, intoxicated by the enchantment of the Cirque, besotted and vowing ardently that he will return.

He pauses at the ticket booth, asking the young man stationed there, wearing a suit of midnight blue stitched with silver stars so it appears to be out from the slowly brightening sky, how long they will be staying. The young man replies in a French accent that he cannot know for certain.

Hansen asks where they will next travel, hoping it will be somewhere closer to Denmark, an easier travel, but the young man only smiles and shakes his head. He reaches into the ticket box and rummages around, rattling Francs and rustling paper, before coming up with a small piece of paper.

Hansen thinks at first it is a ticket, but the edges are heavily embossed with silver, the card black on one side, blue on the other, and cut in the shape of a circle. The young man hands him the paper and he thanks the ticket seller and walks away, before turning the card over to read the script on the back.

Cirque de la Lune

Sarastro

Proprietor’s Office

There is an address listed below, and he guesses the proprietor’s office is stationed in London. He tucks the card into his pocket, patting it affectionately. He has forgotten his notebook completely, it sits in his jacket pocket against his chest, untouched since he placed it there earlier in the evening.

He returns to his hotel room just after dawn has broken, and as he changes into his bedclothes, discovers his notebook tucked safely away, no new inkblots dotting its pages, no scrawled notes. There are no ink stains on his fingers.

He is now sure there is too much to capture in any amount of time, that his notes and illustrations could never do justice to the wonders of the circus. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Correspondance

The paper has collected dust, tucked under the corner of a small brass statue on the desk of his office at the back of his workshop in Denmark. He does not notice it until one afternoon, while clearing off his desk to prepare for a potential customer’s visit (he has been increasingly busy this fall, as many a requesting custom music boxes for yuletide gifts), it is caught in the tempest of upset papers and diagrams and flutters to the floor.

Hasen retrieves it and glances the address. While he cannot make the trip right now, he could write a letter.

When his client leaves he composes a letter inquiring as to the acquisition of a case of wine from the vineyard in Corsica. He posts the letter the next morning and returns his attention to his work.

A letter arrives some weeks later with a response inquiring as to the number of bottles he would like to request, and the payment of wine. The letter notes that the particular vintage he has chosen is not frequently requested and as such his order may be as large as he wishes.

He smiles and begins, Dear Mr.Griffin.

Art by Vera Teresa Gomes

Text by Lucie MacAulay