Glass-Coveted Furies

Hansen has rented rooms in Cesky Krumlov to attend the circus tonight, an easy trip compared to some other distances he has traveled to for the cirque, thought not as simple as attending it in Denmark.

Hansen traverses the circus for an hour before meeting Pamina, and they greet one another as old friends.

They stroll for some time along the promenade around the Moon Mirror, never straying too far from the fortuneteller’s tent. When she must return to her tent Hansen requests that she meet him again when she next has a break, and she obliges.

Hansen wanders into various tents, occasionally recognizing his own contributions to the cirque, though he still cannot find evidence of his music boxes.

He enters a tent that does not appear to end, walking down a hall smelling of vanilla and sugar, and lines with trees peppered with sugary confections. At the end of the hall he climbs a spiral staircase covered in small frosted lanterns and emerged in a room like a giant elaborate birdcage. Iron bars come together like a canopy overhead, twisting and hanging in a hook, hanging from the hook is a chandelier made entirely of wax. A tangled nest of white feathers is situated in the centre of the cage.

There appears to be no other door but after much searching Hansen discovers it beneath the nest, a trapdoor leading into darkness.

The darkness is a vast desert, dunes of coal black sand reaching the edges of the walls beneath an equally dark sky speckled with stars.

A marble white temple takes him to the next room.

It is filled with mirrors, arranged like an inverted paxinoscope, dozens of reflected planes in a circle, facing inward. Light filters in through the spaces between mirrors.

Hansen comes to stand in the centre of the mirrors, staring into reflections stretched and squeezed. In one mirror he appears younger, the creases around his eyes and mouth gone, his hair darker. In another he is not wearing a rose tucked in lapel, but it reappears in the mirror next to it.

In another mirror the figure of a woman in shadow stands behind him, but when he turns there is no one there.

Hansen searches the ground for his shadow but cannot see it. He frowns. The light is coming from only select angles, and he stares at the ground for some time, expecting to see a thin grey man, turning this way and that, but there is only light. There is not even a shadowy edge around the toes of his boot.

Hansen pauses before the mirror in which he saw the woman, craning his head to look into it at different angles, as though she is hiding behind the edge of the frame. The reflection is empty save for himself and the other mirrors, each reflecting more Hansens and mirrors.

Then the air shudders. Something flashes through the circus, like invisible lightning.

The circus stills, time slowing.

A glass of wine shatters, a starburst of crimson staining the brocade of the tablecloth in the backstage area where the acrobats are resting.

The wind dies down, the leaves on the ground still.

The music boxes all falter, gears and cogs grinding with a horrible scraping noises, before they resume their tunes.

Each clock and watch stops ticking, hands jerking over one number.

Hansen watches cracks tremble across the glass in distorted lines, fissures like rivers on a map. The mirror shatters.

Jagged pieces fly in all directions, hitting the ground and surrounding mirrors as though they were always intended targets.

As he stumbles back Hansen’s eyes fall on a shard of mirror, striking out toward him like a dagger at a bullseye.

The shard turns, edge over edge, catching the light as it spins, before coming to rest in Hansen’s chest. It slides through his breast pocket and the rose tucked in his lapel, and hits his heart mid-beat.

Dozens of Hansens hit the ground, surprised faces turned skyward.

His blood pools in multiple reflections, a rose extending its petals into the dozens of mirrors.

There is no trace of sound in the tent, no soft music box melodies, not even the din of the circus outside. Nothing disturbs the silence. There is no one else in the surrounding space.

Only the surrounding mirrors, bright and refracting canyons of silver light are witness to Hansen’s fluttering eyes as he slips quietly away.

Text by Lucie MacAulay