Dessert consists mainly of a gargantuan tiered cake shaped to resemble circus tents and frosted in stripes, the filling within a bright shock of raspberry cream. There are also miniature chocolate leopards, and strawberries coated in looping patterns of dark and white chocolates.

After dessert has been cleared, Chandresh makes a lengthy speech thanking all the guests for thirteen spectacular years, for the wonderment of the circus that had been nothing but an idea more than a decade ago. It goes on for some time about dreams and family and striving for uniqueness in a world of sameness. Some of it is profound and other bits are rambling and nonsensical, but it is considered a sweet gesture by almost everyone in attendance. Many take the opportunity afterward to thank him personally, for the party and the circus. Several make a point of commenting on his sentiments.

Excepting, of course, for his remark about how none of them seem to age save for the Murray twins, which was followed by an awkward silence broken only by the sound of Mr. Barris coughing. No one dares mention it, and many seem somewhat relieved that Chandresh himself does not recall most of his comments even an hour later.

There is dancing after dinner in the ballroom, where lengths of colorful, gold-embellished silk cascade over the walls and windows, glimmering in the candlelight.

Mr. A. H— moves along the periphery, going mostly unnoticed and speaking with only a few of the other guests, including Mr. Barris, who introduces him to Herr Thiessen. The three men have a brief yet engaging conversation about clocks and the nature of time before Mr. A. H— makes a polite excuse and fades into the background again.

He avoids the ballroom entirely, save for a single waltz when Tsukiko coerces him onto the dance floor. She wears a gown fashioned from a pink kimono, her hair piled in an elaborate knotted style and her eyes rimmed in a striking red.

Their combined grace puts all the other couples to shame.

Isobel, clad in clear sky blue, tries in vain to catch Marco’s attention. He avoids her at every turn, and is difficult to spot in the crowd since he is dressed identically to the rest of the staff. Eventually, with the aid of several glasses of champagne, Tsukiko persuades her to abandon the effort, drawing her out into the sunken garden to distract her.

Marco’s attention, when he is not being ordered around by Chandresh or hovering over Mme. Padva, who hits him with her cane when he asks her multiple times if she is in need of any assistance, belongs only to Celia.

“It is destroying me that I cannot ask you to dance,” Marco whispers as she passes by him in the ballroom, the deep green of his suit seeping across her gown like moss.

“Then you are far too easily destructible,” Celia murmurs softly, winking at him as Chandresh sweeps by and offers her his arm. The spreading moss is crushed by deep plum and sparkling gold as he pulls her away.

Chandresh introduces Celia to Mr. A. H—, unable to recall if they have met before. Celia claims that they have not, though she remembers the gentleman who politely takes her hand, as he looks exactly the same as he did when she was six years old. Only his suit has changed, updated to fit the current style.

Several people pester Celia to perform. While at first she refuses, late in the evening she relents, pulling a bemused Tsukiko to the middle of the dance floor and making her disappear in the blink of an eye despite the crowd around them. One moment there are two women in petal-pink gowns and the next Celia is alone.

Seconds later, there are shrieks from the library as Tsukiko reappears in the lantern-festooned sarcophagus propped up in one corner. Tsukiko takes a glass of champagne from a stunned waiter, giving him a beatific smile before returning to the ballroom.

She passes by Poppet and Widget, where Poppet is teaching the marmalade kittens to climb onto her shoulders and Widget is pulling book after book from the library’s well-stocked shelves. Eventually Poppet drags him forcibly from the room to prevent him from spending the duration of the party reading.

Guests move in flocks of color from the ballroom through the halls and the library, a constantly shifting rainbow punctuated with laughter and chatter. The mood remains boisterous and bright even into the earliest hours.

As Celia walks alone through the front hall, Marco grabs her hand, pulling her into a shadowed alcove behind the looming golden statue. The rose petals swirl madly with the sudden shift in the air.

“I’m not entirely used to that, you know,” Celia says. She takes her hand from his but does not move away, though there is not a great deal of room between the wall and the statue. The color of her gown settles into a deep, solid green.

“You look just as you did the first time I saw you,” Marco says.

“I take it you wore that color on purpose?” Celia asks.

“Merely a fortunate coincidence. Chandresh insisted on putting the entire staff in green. And I did not anticipate the ingenuity of your attire.”

Celia shrugs her shoulders. “I couldn’t decide what to wear.”

“You are beautiful,” Marco says.

“Thank you,” Celia responds, refusing to meet his eyes. “You are too handsome. I prefer your actual face.”

His face changes, reverting to the one she recalls in perfect detail from the evening they spent in the same rooms three years ago under much more intimate circumstances. There has been little opportunity since then for anything more than too-brief stolen moments.

“Isn’t that a bit risky to wear in this company?” Celia asks.

“I’m only doing it for you,” Marco says. “The rest of them will see me as they always have.”

They stand watching each other in silence as a laughing group moves through the hall on the other side of the statue. The din echoes through the space though they stay far enough away that Celia and Marco escape any notice, and Celia’s gown remains mossy and green.

Marco lifts his hand to brush a stray curl away from Celia’s face, tucking it behind her ear and stroking her cheek with his fingertips. Her eyelids flutter closed and the rose petals around their feet begin to stir.

“I’ve missed you,” he whispers softly.

The air between them is electric as he leans in, gently brushing his lips against her neck.

In the next room, the guests complain about the sudden increase in temperature. Fans are drawn from colorful bags, fluttering like tropical birds.

In the shadow of the elephant-headed statue, Celia pulls away suddenly. It is not immediately apparent why until the clouds of grey begin swirling through the green of her gown.

“Hello, Alexander,” she says, dipping her head in acknowledgment to the man who has appeared behind them without a sound, not even disturbing the rose petals strewn across the floor.

The man in the grey suit greets her with a polite nod. “Miss Bowen, I would like to speak with your companion privately for a moment, if you do not mind.”

“Of course,” Celia says. She leaves without even glancing at Marco, her gown shifting from grey dawn to violet sunset as she walks down the hall to where the Murray twins are tempting their marmalade kittens with shiny silver coffee spoons.

“I cannot say I find this behavior appropriate,” the man in the grey suit says to Marco.

“You know her,” Marco says quietly, his eyes still on Celia as she stops at the entrance to the ballroom, where her gown is cloaked in crimson as Herr Thiessen offers her a glass of champagne.

“I have met her. I cannot rightfully say that I know her in any particular fashion.”

“You knew exactly who she was before any of this started and you never thought to tell me?”

“I did not think it necessary.”

A bevy of guests wanders into the hall from the dining room, sending the cascade of rose petals adrift once more. Marco escorts the man in the grey suit through the library, sliding the stained glass open to access the empty game room and continue their conversation.

“Thirteen years with barely a word and now you wish to speak with me?” Marco asks.

“I did not have anything in particular to speak to you about. I simply wished to interrupt your … conversation with Miss Bowen.”

“She knows your name.”

“She clearly has a very good memory. What is it you would like to discuss?”

“I would like to know if I am doing well,” Marco says, his voice low and cold.

“Your progress has been sufficient,” his instructor says. “Your employment here is steady, you have a suitable position to work from.”

“And yet I cannot be myself. You teach me all these things and then you put me here to pretend to be something I am not, while she is center stage, doing exactly what she does.”

“But no one in that room believes it. They think she is deceiving them. They do not see what she is any more than they see what you are, she is simply more noticeable. This is not about having an audience. I am proving a point. You can do just as much as she does without passing it off as flamboyant spectacle and trickery. You can maintain your relative anonymity and equal her accomplishments. I suggest you keep your distance from her and concentrate on your own work.”

“I’m in love with her.”

Never before has anything Marco said or did elicited a visible response from the man in the grey suit, not even when he once accidentally set a table aflame during his lessons, but the expression that crosses the man’s face now is unmistakably sad.

“I am sorry to hear that,” he says. “It will make the challenge a great deal more difficult for you.”

“We have been playing at this for more than a decade, when does it end?”

“It ends when there is a victor.”

“And how long does that take?” Marco asks.

“It is difficult to say. The most recent previous challenge lasted thirty-seven years.”

“We cannot keep this circus running for thirty-seven years.”

“Then you will not have as long a time to wait. You were a fine student, you are a fine competitor.”

“How can you know?” Marco asks, his voice rising. “You have not even seen fit to speak to me for years. I have done nothing for you. Everything I have done, every change I have made to that circus, every impossible feat and astounding sight, I have done for her.”

“Your motives do not impact the game.”

“I am done with playing your game,” Marco says. “I quit.”

“You cannot quit,” his instructor replies. “You are bound to this. To her. The challenge will continue. One of you will lose. You have no choice in the matter.”

Marco picks up a ball from the billiard table and hurls it at the man in the grey suit. He steps out of its path easily and it crashes instead into the sunset of stained glass.

Without a word, Marco turns his back on his instructor. He walks out the door at the back of the room, not even noticing Isobel as he passes her in the hall, where she has been close enough to hear the argument.

He goes directly to the ballroom, making his way to the center of the dance floor. He takes Celia’s arm, spinning her away from Herr Thiessen.

Marco pulls her to him in an emerald embrace, so close that no distinction remains between where his suit ends and her gown begins.

To Celia, there is suddenly no one else in the room as he holds her in his arms.

But before she can vocalize her surprise, his lips close over hers and she is lost in wordless bliss.

Marco kisses her as though they are the only two people in the world.

The air swirls in a tempest around them, blowing open the glass doors to the garden with a tangle of billowing curtains.

Every eye in the crowded ballroom turns in their direction.

And then he releases her and walks away.

By the time Marco leaves the room, almost everyone has forgotten the incident entirely. It is replaced by a momentary confusion that is blamed on the heat or the excessive amounts of champagne.

Herr Thiessen cannot recall why Celia has suddenly stopped dancing, or when her gown shifted to its current deep green.

“Is something wrong?” he asks, when he realizes that she is trembling.

*

MR. A. H— STORMS THROUGH THE FRONT HALL, somehow avoiding tripping over Poppet and Widget, who are sprawled on the floor teaching Bootes and Pavo how to turn circles on their hind legs.

Widget hands Bootes (or Pavo) to Poppet and follows the man in the grey suit. He watches as he crosses into the foyer, retrieves his grey top hat and silver cane from the butler, and leaves by the front door. After he exits, Widget presses his nose to the nearest window, watching him as he passes beneath the streetlamps before disappearing into the darkness.

Poppet catches up with him then, the kittens perched on her shoulders purring happily. Chandresh follows close behind her, making his way through the crowd in the hall.

“What is it?” Poppet asks. “What’s the matter?” Widget turns away from the glass.

“That man has no shadow,” he says, as Chandresh leans over the twins to peer out the window at the empty street.

“What did you say?” Chandresh asks, but Poppet and Widget and the orange kittens have already run off down the hall, lost in the colorful crowd.

Bedtime Stories

CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS, OCTOBER 1902

Bailey spends much of the early part of this evening with Poppet and Widget exploring the Labyrinth. A dizzying network of chambers, interspersed with hallways containing mismatched doors. Rooms that spin and rooms with glowing chessboard floors. One hall is stacked high with suitcases. In another it is snowing.

“How is this possible?” Bailey asks, melting flakes of snow sticking to his coat.

In response, Poppet throws a snowball at him, and Widget only laughs.

While they traverse the Labyrinth, Widget tells the story of the Minotaur in such detail that Bailey keeps expecting to encounter the monster around every turn.