Faire Monter les Enchères

Farrin has gone off to the menagerie, a nameless tent filled with origami beasts that move like real animals. Sage and Bensiabel spend the majority of the earlier evening perambulating around the less busy parts of the circus.

They enter a tent almost completely taken up with a dreamcatcher strung with beads and crystals and silver bells. They take turns plucking at strands of the web, watching the motion pass through each wire, rattling pieces of quartz and ruffling black feathers. 

Bensiabel tries to memorize their path from the tent to the Moon Mirror, in the case that they may wish to revisit it, but Sage convinces him to abandon the effort when a new tent catches her attention.

The sign invites them to Uncover What Is Secret and the addendum below warns them to mind their heads. It is a useful suggestion, as upon entering the tent Bensiabel almost walks into a myriad of stars hanging level with his forehead.

The tent is full of small paper stars hanging from the ceiling. The stars are affixed to diamond threads, as fine as the veins in a leaf.

They cover the floor, appearing clusters on black metal frames that twist and twine like windblown trees.

On each wall is a small shelf holding an inkwell and quills stained with silver. Small signs instruct them to Disclose Secrets on the strips of paper stationed beside the quills.

The tent is illuminated by flickering silver flames in metal sconces.

Hundreds of paper stars, secrets in black and silver cursive and print, sway in the white light on the ends of strings.

Bensiabel steps between the trees of stars protruding from the floor, weaving his way to the centre of the tent and gently touching the soft paper wishes.

“Bensiabel,” Sage’s voice comes from behind him, soft and hesitant. He looks up and finds the expression on her face lightly distressed. Before he can ask if something is the matter she asks, “Have you ever thought- has anyone told you that everything that happens in the cirque is real?”

“What?”

“I mean…” Sage trails off, her eyes on the floor, keeping her gaze from Bensiabel as she decides what to say. “I know you can do things. Illusions and such. I know you travel with the circus, with the fortuneteller.” She looks up, then quickly down, averting her gaze. “I travel with someone too, I follow the circus.”

Bensiabel watches her, feeling dumbstruck. He has had inklings of suspicion, and idea that she is more involved than she has said, but hearing the words from her lips is different, far more shocking. He cannot think of anything to say.

“Has she, has she ever shown you things? Like magic?”

“Who?”

“The fortuneteller.”

Bensiabel thinks back to all of his encounters with Pamina. Their lessons are so contained and involve so much concentration it seems they never do anything. But he has seen small things occur, things appearing and disappearing, that he is certain would not be possible for anyone but Pamina.

“Yes,” he answers.

“So has Tamino,” Sage says, taking a step forward, her eyes meeting his for the first time since they have entered the tent.

“Who is Tamino?” Bensiabel has never heard the name before, but the mention of a ‘him’ tugs at his memory.

“Tamino is the one I… work for?” Sage shakes her head. “The way you work for Pamina. But I do something else, and it is for Tamino.”

She watches silently while Bensiabel tries to reconcile the knowledge that there is another in the circus with a secondary motive, and that it is Sage. When he has been silent too long, Sage shifts uncomfortably.

“Would you like to…” Sage trails off, gesturing to the canopy of paper stars suspended above them.

He does not ask what she means.

Sage focuses on a string of stairs before them they drop off of their thread, hovering in mid air. Several other stars follow suit. Sage clasps her hands behind her back as the stars, one by one in a garland of silver and jet streak in arcs and loops in the space between them. They pause in a circle, a halo of glittering patterned paper, bobbing in the air as Sage raises an eyebrow at Bensiabel and smiles playfully. The stars line up and ascend to the empty strings hanging suspended from the ceiling.

“You can do the same thing, can’t you?” Sage asks as the stars settle on their respective strings once more.

Bensiabel is not sure he could. He has never tried to influence an object in such a way. He has not received as much education as he had initially anticipated he would and manipulation has not come up before. “I don’t know. I haven’t really tried before.”

Sage tilts her head, regarding him steadily. “I’ve seen you though and you can. I wouldn’t know much about it, but Tamino insists on honing my abilities, though I have no idea what it has to do with my responsibilities, as he calls them. It is like being caught in a wind and waiting for a storm that never comes, though you can hear thunder and feel the first rain drops.”

Sage walks around a circle of star speckled trees, widening the distance between them, holding his gaze. “What are you meant to do?”

Bensiabel follows her, circling in the opposite direction, his eyes occasionally returning to the stars around them. “Pamina said I was supposed to watch the circus. She did not specify what for, only that I should watch the patrons and the tents and for anything, or anyone, unusual.” He pauses uncertainly. “For the wellbeing of the circus,” he recites. It now strikes Bensiabel as odd that he had been given such vague instructions, and that while Pamina expressly told him that only a handful of people understood the true inner workings of the cirque, she has emphasized the observation of suspicious characters within the circus.

“What are you looking for?” Bensiabel asks, curious as to what else there is to seek if not for the safety of the cirque.

“Cracks.”

“Cracks?”

“Nightmares, is what he also calls them. Places where the circus becomes dangerous or dark. He says those are the cracks, where no one is controlling them.”

The stars quiver; strands of them swaying with the motion, as though a short breeze has disturbed them. Sage closes her eyes, appearing to compose herself, and the stars settle.

“What does that mean?” Bensiabel asks.

Sage seems to struggle with a way to explain it. She has never been given the chance to relate it to someone in a similar position, and it makes her feel both relief and anxiety.

“Has Pamina explained energy to you?”

Bensiabel nods.

Sage continues, looking away from Bensiabel, focusing on a path lined with silver stars before her, emitting soft incandescent light. “Everything requires energy. Every manipulation needs a power source, a conduit. Power can be obtained from within yourself, it is called working from the inside out. The opposite is called working from the outside in, drawing power from an external source. Other people, fire, wind,” Sage glances up, as though gazing through the canvas ceiling to the sky beyond. “The moon. Something as complicated as the circus requires a great amount of energy, too much to work within oneself. Tamino believes the circus uses power from the moon, as an indirect energy source.”

“Indirect?”

“The moon reflects the sun’s light. The way energy works is parallel. But whoever is controlling the circus cannot control the energy. Cirque de la Lune is too big to control alone, so there are cracks. Excess of energy, like a fire with too much wood that flares out of control.”

Bensiabel pictures it in his mind, a set of scales in which the energy on one side outweighs the effects on the other side.

“How did you know it was me?” Bensiabel asks. It bothers him that perhaps he was not as inconspicuous as he had thought.

“When Tamino suggested you were the other I began to watch you more, though I hardly suspected you. But you seem so at home in the circus, as though you belong in it. And the circus is different with you in it. It’s almost sharper. After you mentioned… Pamina I was sure.” She pauses. “I hadn’t mean to confront you about it. There seemed no point. How long have you known?”

Bensiabel shakes his head. “I didn’t know until now.” He feels suddenly exposed, aware that she has known much longer than he that they both have roles within the circus. That she has possibly witnessed far more amazing things in the tents surrounding them, and been able to explain them all. That every conversation they have had, she has been aware of where they stand. “Has it been easier to look for nightmares, knowing what I’ve been looking for?”

Sage smiles.

“I believe neither of us have has had any advantages like that.”

Bensiabel turns to the stars between them, countless lights bound in paper and ink. The focus is immense, beyond what little he has practiced before. The stars rise en masse and tremble in the air.

Sage circles around the field of stars until she stands next to Bensiabel. She reaches for his hand, her fingers brushing bare skin.

The air ripples, the stars expand and shift in a flurry of reflective paper folds and corners. A sensation, the same sense of wonder and magic he feels in the circus, begins at Bensiabel’s palm, spreading up his arm and through his veins.

“I’m focusing for you,” Sage breathes next to him. She sounds breathless with the strain of controlling her own energy as well as his.

Bensiabel can feel her own energy, palpable and sharper than his, pinpointing his intent.

Sage sends a star soaring across the abyss and Bensiabel responds in kind.

Sage laughs delightedly as shooting stars collide in bursts of silver ink.

“Your parents don’t really follow the circus, do they?” Bensiabel asks.

A star falters, plummeting several feet before halting and reversing direction, following its companions into the air. A tempest of stars.

“That I was adopted by the Beaulieus is the truth. I have never lied, I just evaded.”

Bensiabel decides against pursuing the subject. He does not feel as though she has lied.

“What can you do with other inanimate things? Bensiabel asks, returning to the stars still quivering in the air, and curious as to how their instructors’ methods might overlap, and how they differ.

“Not much,” she replies. “Not with intent. I impact my surroundings more than I actually control them. My biggest effects occurred in the orphanage. Before Mr. Mrs.Beaulieu plucked me from it and brought me to live with them.”

It is not the straightforward answer Benisabel has been asking for but he does not press the subject.

“Do you remember you parents?” he asks her.

“No,” she responds quietly. “I have a theory that Tamino orchestrated the adoption.” She seems about to add something more, then falls silent.

Bensiabel feels suddenly unsure. He had assumed Sage was chosen as randomly as he, as a patron of the circus who met with some unspecified criteria. Knowing she may have been chosen long before him, from before her first encounter with the cirque, he wonders what other dimensions there are to this conflict between their instructors.

“My earliest memory is of the orphanage,” Sage continues, though when he turns to her she is looking away, focused on a star of such supple blue paper that is caves under her gaze, points and edges folding in until it is two dimensional and has innumerable points. “A man in black approached me with the mistress of the orphanage, and she looked nervous. I had never seen her look nervous. He asked me strange questions and I answered. I could not tell what he was thinking, but the air around him felt odd. Different. As though he was more aware of the very air than everyone else. He left and I had not seen him for seven years after that.”

“When were you asked to watch the circus?”

“Only a month or so before I met you. When he told me of the circus and the magic behind it, he was a stranger. He was still a stranger when he asked if I would take to watching the circus,” Sage says.

“But why did you say yes?” Bensiabel asks, mystified.

Sage does not look at him as she speaks, but at a star hanging in the vast chasm of space between them. “He was the first person I met who could do the things I do. I wanted answers. I cannot say he has been very helpful thought. And I fancied the idea of learning magic in secret. I didn’t anticipate it would take such concentration. I have been taught more of containing myself than of actually manipulating things. I am not very god at manipulating people. And you hardly need that talent. People always seem to like you.”

“People like you too,” Bensiabel says. “Farrin and Mr.Hansen and Pamina. Pamina even knows who you are. I don’t think I could enchant people that way if I tried.”

“Tamino, before I truly knew who he was, had the same charm. It is probably in part why I chose to follow the circus. I am not sure I would have chosen the same way I did if he had explained it all to me. If he had told me I would have an opponent. I wasn’t even aware there was someone working within the circus. I was only told what I should do; I didn’t know there would be another.”

Bensiabel pauses at a mobile of stars that emit flickering silver light, like some sort of celestial chandelier. He glances at Sage, who is watching the slowly spinning spectacle. Her face seems softer, as though a barrier between them has been lifted and she is closer that before. “When did you know I was the other?”

Sage turns her dark eyes on him and a curl of her hair falls across her cheek. “Not log ago. I had the impression you were involved with the circus more than you let on. You were also close to the fortuneteller. That’s how he knew. But I didn’t truly start to suspect it until you started following the circus too.”

Some of the stars unravel, long ribbons of paper inscribed with hundreds of wishes in varying sizes and calligraphy.

“I’ve always been told since I met him that balance is the most important aspect of manipulation. Among other things.”

“Pamina always stresses intent and meaning,” Bensiabel replies.

“He has mentioned that. Free will as well. Or, the inability to take away free will.”

“When did she explain it to you?” Sage asks, keeping her distance from him while she smiles.

“I still don’t understand it all,” Bensiabel confesses.

“They aren’t exactly forthcoming with their answers, are they?” Sage remarks. Bensiabel only nods, agreeing once he realizes that while he has a collection of answers to questions asked over the past year, he has only ever gotten obscure answers and clues, nothing concrete or outwardly informative.

Bensiabel continues. “Until a few days ago I knew only that there was another, some other chosen person told to watch the circus in almost precisely the same way as I. I considered everyone, every patron I saw or performer I watched. Though you aren’t watching the circus in the same way, are you?” He looks up to see her shake her head. When she does not speak he continues, curious and edging closer to her in the snow. Their boot prints have left a trail of counter directions and paths circling the trees. Sage stays on the opposite side of the fire, her face glowing, her eyes catching his only when she is not looking at the bright red flames. “I am meant to be watching you, though that isn’t exactly what I was told. I was told you were my opponent.”

Sage looks up, her eyes as dark as the swan-black sky around them, dancing with glints of gold. “Are we opponents?”

He is silent for some time. The idea of being at odds with Sage fills him with a frozen horror. He had not imagined sides in this nameless ordeal, only the circus as a whole. “I would not like to be. And I don’t think they have specified our roles in relation to one another. Before they do, in the interim, I would like to be friends. I will be honest with you.”

“I cannot see you as antagonistic, no matter how I try. It would break my heart if I had to,” Sage admits. “I would like to be honest with you as well.”

They glance at each other and do not look away, silently regarding each other with small smiles.

Sage turns her attention back to the stars revolving on the ends of their strings.

“Does it ever feel dangerous to you, Bensiabel?” she asks as the stars descend.

“Dangerous?” Bensiabel has felt elements of the circus act alone, separate from everything else. Yet he has never thought it unsafe.

“Like two winds pushing at one another so everything between is caught in it,” Sage elaborates.

“No,” Bensiabel answers, curious as to whether she has felt that way, to how her experiences within the gates have differed from his. He wants to hear her stories. He feels that now they are aware of their positions in respect with one another they can discuss aspects of the circus more freely. Though Sage seems to take into account the manipulation aspect of the circus, something Bensiabel has only considered in passing.

Sage breathes deeply, as though the entire conversation has made her anxious. Without the concern over their respective roles in the circus she can more easily enjoy herself. “Thank you Bensiabel,” she says, and leans forward to kiss his cheek, lingering. His ears feel rather warm.

They retrace their steps around garlands of stars, between secrets and whispers, making their way to the tent door. Bensiabel pauses as Sage pushes through the door, looking back at the space they occupied, starry with ink blots among wishes wrapped in gilded paper, secret hopes and dreams encased in stars and silver.

Text by Lucie MacAulay