The fair, golden-haired boy sits in Section E, Row 5, Seat 12 and a half whenever he visits Miracle Circus. It’s specially reserved for him because he’s Dorian’s son—handsome Dorian’s son, ringmaster Dorian’s son, old money Dorian Blimerance’s son—but he doesn’t know that. Ralph Blimerance sits in the same seat because he’s used to it. He doesn’t know that the ringmaster and ringmistress of the circus perform to him, for him, and because of him every summer, when Dorian has custody of him. He doesn’t know that the sun’s warm beams follow him even when he’s strolling down the darkest of alleys because he was always meant to walk in the light. He just thinks that life is wonderful and that whoever is miserable is simply predisposed to gloom.
It’s already five minutes past scheduled showtime and Section E, Row 5, Seat 12 and a half is empty. Another thing that Ralph doesn’t know is that the show doesn’t start without him.
Peterkin had been alternating between apparating and running, charming every minute hand on every clock into turning one degree counterclockwise per every 360 degrees the second hand travels. He can’t find Ralph anywhere, that stupid boy! He’s not in the Tent of Sundials and Mercury or the Tent of Time and Candles or the Tent of Hourglasses and Looking Glasses or any of the other tents that are either time-themed or, for some reason, involve some kind of clock.
Peterkin hates the circus for having so many tents. He’s wasting his time! The mature thing to do would be to tell Dorian, straight-up, that he doesn’t know where Ralph is and that tonight’s show would have to start without him. Ralph is a big boy, now, and he should be allowed to live his life as he pleases. He’s half a year older than Peterkin and he still doesn't understand why he was looking after him.
The harsh air of Empire State’s night weather engulfs Peterkin in a shiver as soon as he exits the Tent of Isolation and Crippling Anxiety. (Actually, it’s just an empty tent. Some of those are thrown in amongst the infinite attractions as a prank. Expect anything—even nothing.) His breaths come out in hot white puffs.
“Dorian,” Peterkin says to himself quietly. Best to practice now. “Ralph is missing.”
He happens to look down at his hands which were, rightfully, shaking—Dorian is going to have his head. His first day officially volunteering as the third magician of the formerly two-magician wonder that is Miracle Circus and he’s already failing miserably. Tonight’s show was supposed to be dedicated to Ralph. But then again, every show is dedicated to him. It doesn’t take much but a heartfelt speech at the beginning of the show to dedicate it to someone. Dorian and Sybil could adlib any other name in their dedication and it wouldn’t make a difference.
“It’s not my fault!” Peterkin insists. He walks and talks, all the while scanning for any sign of Ralph. “Ralph is twelve-and-a-half years old, already. He can take care of himself.”
He pauses in his tracks. “Twelve-and-a-half years old is still a child, stupid. Of course he needs a babysitter.” It’s all because he lost him while repairing the glass menagerie in the Tent of Fragility. The crystal animals, the glass sculptures, the diamond chandeliers, the pottery and the intricate spider webs and the preserved flowers and the porcelain tea sets—all destroyed. He told Sybil to not put that tent next to the Tent of Baseball and Bats, but she never listens. It’s the most vulnerable tent, besides the Tent of Vulnerability, and he’s always the one who has to clean it up. Almost as susceptible as the Tent of Susceptibility. “It’s all my fault. It really is all my fault!”
It’s strange, though, because usually Ralph is eager to drag Peterkin from tent to tent and narrate what elaborate techniques went into designing each and every detail, as if Peterkin were not a son of a ringmaster himself. It’s not as if he took too long un-shattering the shards in the Tent of Fragility. It takes but a flick of the wand. Somewhere, amidst the applause of nosy spectators, Ralph slipped away without a trace.
Suddenly, Peterkin realizes he’s surrounded by fountains and bubbles. He doesn’t remember how he got there or how much time it took, but he refuses to think of it. Sometimes he uses magic without realizing it. It’s not good. Again, he doesn’t want to think about it.
The Tent of Fountains and Bubbles has been his favorite tent ever since Sybil made the pink bubbles pink-flavored. Peterkin says it’s one of the greatest accomplishments of her entire magician career, next to founding the Little Miracles Orphanage. She really captured the color pink in a flavor: bubble gum, watermelon, strawberry, peach, and some other artificial undertones he can’t quite place. The other bubbles taste like soap. Non-toxic for curious idiots like him, but disgusting enough to discourage you from eating it.
Oh, he loves this tent. He can’t be anything but happy when sitting at a fountain and catching bubbles in his hand. It’s all a good time. The bubbles come in all shapes and sizes and colors and opacities. Some become cute bunnies that hop along a pool of water at the bottom of a five-tiered fountain. Some never pop. Some are colorful, foamy bubbles in a bathtub that apparently passes for a fountain just because it has lily pads in them.
The lighting changes according to Pacific Standard Time, the time zone Peterkin was born in. It’s barely glowing a sunset in the Tent of Bubbles and Fountains, though it’s already dark outside. The bubbles near the top of the tent glow auburn and amber and rose and pewter-blue, the same shade as the clouds on the beach. How is he supposed to leave this tent when the fountain water tints to the same darkness as the ocean and foamy bubbles start to look like the white crests of pacific waves?
Peterkin sits at the cupid fountain wondering if he even had the heart to leave the tent. It’s not often that he gets to sit at the cupid fountain without being surrounded by PDA. Sybil says the fountain is made of pearls to strengthen love and protect children. Witchy elements like that are socially accepted as long as it’s for good luck.
There’s a lot to say about a cupid fountain that depicts Cupid stabbing himself through the heart with his own arrow. The water gushes out of his wounds and his crying eyes. The main legend is that Cupid was so fascinated by a mortal that he thrusted his own arrow into himself so he could properly fall in love. There’s another variation he’s heard, where the arrow is poisonous to Cupid and he only has a short time before he dies to experience true love for the mortal.
The important part is that Sybil tells people if two lovers toss a chip behind them at the same time and the chips land on the same side, then they will stay in love forever. At the end of the day, she has Peterkin clean up the chips and store them away. Not that money is of much use, nowadays. Inflation in the country is a nightmare.
Peterkin looks down at his reflection in the pool of water, littered with white roses. “Dorian, I’m sorry,” he says to his wavering image. He brushes some foam out of his hair. He tries a more pitiful tone. “Please forgive me, Dorian.” He sure is glad nobody is around to hear him. “Dorian, you’re the most handsome man in this universe and I want to marry you.”
“Peterkin!”
Peterkin doesn’t dare look behind him. Dorian is as stunning as Medusa is petrifying—one thoughtless glance, and he’s done for. The enchantment is insidious, as Freudian as it is Pavlovian. “I didn’t say anything—”
“Where’s Ralph?”
“Um…” The blank white petals on the roses start to dye an inky black. He stands up and faces Dorian. “I’m sorry, sir.” Uncharacteristically, he meets Dorian’s gaze. Better for Dorian to look at his pitiful face than the black roses behind him. Peterkin has to pick his troubles.
And what a devastating trouble it is to look Dorian in the eyes. Dorian is in a pure white ringmaster’s ensemble: a white button-up under a white vest with a white silk bow with a white satin tailcoat and white pants and a white top hat. All fitted perfectly and immune to even the most minuscule specks of dust. Ruffles of white lace adorn his arm cuffs. Raining down his waist are strings of pearls, like icicles hanging down from the edge of a snowy roof. He looks as if he robbed his outfit from a bridal shop. Peterkin assumes Sybil’s ringmaster costume for this show is in pure black, to juxtapose her partner. Pure black and pure white—the trademarked colors of Miracle Circus’ striped tents. Every other non-Miracle Circus-affiliated product or company or production featuring black or white has to settle for an off-colored variant.
Dorian sighs loudly. He crosses his arms and shakes his head in disappointment. As a performer, he has a habit of exaggerating his feelings, constantly broadcasting to an invisible audience. “You had one job, Peterkin.”
“No, you gave me one job! Sybil gave me one job, and then the same job again because she forgot, then she kept on piling more tasks on me, and then eventually she figured out that writing a list would be more efficient...” The list she gave Peterkin was a scroll longer than his height.
Dorian gives Peterkin a sympathetic pat on Peterkin’s shoulder. His reflection is covered by pink roses. “That’s your mother’s revenge for ditching last year’s finale show.”
Peterkin looks away. He never was good at keeping eye contact. Sybil tells him the trick is to look six feet past the person in front of him, but the only trick he wants is a vanishing act. He’d like to be the disappearing milk poured into a dry cone of yesterday’s newspaper.
“Maybe Ralph wants to ditch tonight’s show,” Peterkin suggests. “It gets boring going by yourself all the time. Most kids visit the circus with their parents.”
Dorian ponders the idea. “You’re right, young Peterkin.”
“I am?”
Peterkin can’t believe Dorian is buying his lemon of a pitch. Ralph could be in real danger, maybe kidnapped for ransom by a rival circus. He never misses a show. He spends every summer with his father, and consequently with Sybil and Peterkin, and every summer he’s thrilled to see the same three tricks his father and Peterkin’s mother perform: the impossible, the fantastic, and the miraculous. He’s Miracle Circus’ biggest fan. Even in the off-season, he watches old recordings of Miracle Circus shows and practices behind his mother’s back after he’s done studying. He collects all the merchandise and wears it to every show. He readily soaks in all the propaganda Sybil feeds him of Miracle Circus’ glory, the silver lies of Miracle Circus’ divine right to ruling the circus industry. It’s hard to believe wide-eyed Ralph is capable of a rebellious phase.
“Of course you’re right, young Peterkin!” Dorian ruffles Peterkin’s hair affectionately. “Why don’t you take Ralph’s seat for tonight?”
“Huh?”
“I understand that you don’t have the most maternal of mothers. She treats you more like an equal than a son. That’s not fair to you. Why, just because you’re a child prodigy doesn’t mean you’re not still a child.”
Peterkin glances down at his watch. “That’s kind of you, Dorian.” It’s already twelve-and-a-half minutes past scheduled showtime. They should really be double-timing it to the Big Top, but he doesn’t have the courage to rush Dorian. The more distracted Dorian is by his own tangent, the farther away from the consequences of losing Ralph Peterkin is.
“We’ll change the plans! This show is just for you, Peterkin. Your favorite color is pink, right? And your favorite bird is the rooster and your favorite noise is the jingling of keys and your favorite flower is the daffodil?”
“That’s... right.” Peterkin would fear Dorian had been reading his diary, but he doubts Dorian would be able to look him in the eye if he did. “You’re not going to dedicate it to me, are you? Out loud with a spotlight and all?”
“Of course we will!” Dorian grabs Peterkin by the shoulders. “This show will be un-ditch-able. One hundred percent, money-back guarantee!”
“But I didn’t pay—”
Before he can finish his sentence, he appears at Section E, Row 5, Seat 12 and a half with a surprised yelp from the boy in Section E, Row 5, Seat 14. He’s the only one bothered by Peterkin’s abrupt existence. The rest of the crowd is busy orchestrating the cacophony of excited chatter.
“Geez, you scared me!” the boy in Seat 14 exclaims. He’s clutching at his chest, as if he were trying to keep his heart from leaping away. “But I’ve got to admit—that’s a wicked clean appearification. I’d poof around everywhere too, if I were that clean.”
The cogs in Peterkin’s mind are turning too fast for him to come up with a proper response to his undeserved compliment. He swears both of Dorian’s hands were grabbing him, in that split second moment before he poofed them both away. Far from the wand in his back pocket. He can still feel the warmth of those strong, soft, handsome hands on his shoulders, like a phantom’s touch—a ghost of a memory of a feeling that he was going to be dazzled against his will. He wouldn’t forget anything Dorian makes him feel.
He just used wandless magic. Didn’t he?
Complete darkness swallows the Big Top. The white stripes of the canvas become indistinguishable from the black stripes. Light manipulation is one of Miracle Circus’ many specialties, under the broader umbrella of passive magic. There’s a difference between active light manipulation and passive light manipulation that Peterkin hasn't figured out, yet. A single pink spotlight befalls Sybil and Dorian. Peterkin looks up to try and locate its source, but the point at the top of the cone of light has no blinding shining circle of origin. The pink light seems to come from higher than the ceiling of the Big Top, as if it were sent by the heavens above.
Any half-smart magician would be immediately impressed by that pink spotlight alone. Peterkin notices that the boy beside him has his chin turned up, wondering about the source of the light instead of cheering for the ringmasters under it. Ralph would be doing the same, if he were here. Peterkin tries to look around for Ralph’s specific hue of blond, but every mop of hair he finds are all the wrong shades.
Sybil and Dorian’s ringmaster costumes have been dyed pink. Sybil’s bodice has strings of pink pearls cascading in loops, drooping down just until the poof of layered pink lace on her skirt, which flares out just below her sheer pink tights-clad knees. Her tailcoat is pink satin, the same as Dorian’s, with the same ruffled lace at her cuffs and the same pink silk bow at her neck. Her tophat is adorned with pink lace and pink daffodils and a pink bow. If there’s any consolation to Peterkin for being stuck watching another tedious show, it’s knowing that Sybil will be in a bad mood later from having to wear her least favorite color.
Contrasting Sybil’s pink ensemble is her infamous waterfall of dark, silky-straight hair that spills over her shoulders and down to her lower back. It’s not her natural hair texture. Peterkin thinks she must have wavy locks like his own, but he has no proof besides his genetics. More eye-catching, though, is the length of her hair. She doesn’t respect the hair protocol in the Magician’s Code, which states that all female magicians must have their hair worn up and out of the way during performances. Her excuse is that she’s not a “female magician”, but a “real magician”.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Both and neither!” Ringmaster Sybil calls out.
Her voice projects around the stadium surrounding her as if she were only a couple feet away from every audience member. She doesn’t need the assistance of a microphone. Passive sound manipulation is another specialty of Miracle Circus.
“Welcome to Miracle Circus! Home of the impossible, the fantastic, and of course—the miraculous! You’ll never find magic as pure, nor as powerful, nor as potent as ours! But there is another thing that’s just as pure and just as powerful and just as deathly potent… Dorian, do you know what that is?”
Peterkin knows he’s about to be publicly humiliated. He reaches for the wand in his inner coat pocket, but it’s missing. He frantically checks every other pocket to no avail. Dorian took his wand.
“Of course I know, dear Sybil! That would be…”
A new beam of pink light illuminates the poor idiot sitting in Section E, Row 5, Seat 12 and a half. The boy beside Peterkin yelps in surprise again. The spotlight is hot and heavy, but unfortunately not hot enough to burn Peterkin to a crisp and release him from his eternal suffering.
“... our love for little Peterkin-pumpkin!” the two ringmasters declare in unison.
The crowd erupts in an adoring coo and proud applause. Everyone likes a family business. It gives them the illusion of a moral high ground for supporting a mom-and-pop operation while still enjoying the luxury of a multi-million corporation. Sometimes Peterkin wonders if he was only born to be a marketing strategy, but he couldn’t deny that Sybil and Dorian’s grandiose gestures come from their idea of love. He could only cry in the restroom later from sheer embarrassment.
But if they dare call him up as a volunteer, Peterkin will not hesitate to cry right then and there.
“This show is dedicated to my darling Peterkin! My son! My pride and joy! You might have seen him earlier, helping Mommy maintain some of our more difficult tents, and you can bet a pretty chip that it only takes him a flick of the wand!”
Peterkin tries not to focus on the audience members below him, craning their necks to gawk at Ringmistress Sybil’s son. The energy is better spent trying to convince his nervous system to not shut down.
“That’s right,” Dorian says. “Young Peterkin is an heir of talent! A prince of purity! A claimant of genius!”
Peterkin slumps into his seat. He doesn’t like being Ralph’s replacement much. Only Ralph has the ego to soak up overinflated praise with a smile. This certainly is his punishment for losing Ralph.
“So, without further ado, let us begin our program, ‘Peterkin’s Show’!”
Peterkin is floored by the creativity of the title. Truly an inspiration. With that kind of eloquence, Sybil could be a wordsmith.
Though, what she can’t achieve with her words she compensates with her magic prowess. She flips her wand high up into the air, where it twirls and sparkles gold out of the white tips on either end. Underneath the wand, she does an aerial and lands in time to catch her wand, which triggers a burst of thick pink smoke and iridescent glitter that expands out into the audience. A light tinkling of metal keys ring out like sleigh bells. Underneath the high tones of the tinkling metal is the sound of many stringed instruments bending their pitch up.
Instinctively, Peterkin flinches at the smoke and glitter, but there’s no tangible residue to creep into his corneas. On the tip of his tongue, he tastes sweetness. A light aroma of peaches and cream wafts about. He already knows what’s to come: when the smoke clears, the stage will proclaim some dazzling display of roosters and daffodils and some random surreal element you wouldn’t usually associate with roosters and daffodils, like the twinkling of a galaxy or silvery clouds that project images of winged angels frolicking in lush fields or dancing bronze sculpture-people. It’s the classic Miracle Circus opener that the crowd swoons for every time. Sybil always likes to open with strong symbolism to give the audience members something to grasp onto before ripping away the familiarity and sending them spiralling down a rabbithole of spectacles.
When the smoke clears, the stage is revealed to be teeming with absolute emptiness. Nothing has changed. Sybil and Dorian are standing in the very middle of it, the same spot they were in before, gesturing to the invisible grandeur around them. Peterkin had to admit, his expectations are defied. He’s amazed. Not impressed, but thoroughly on the edge of his seat wondering what’s to come. It’s a risky move building up to a reveal and then disappointing hundreds of eager, money-paying spectators right off the bat. Anticlimacticism is hard to pull off. But he likes it. It’s a bold statement that asserts dominance, as if Sybil were saying outright, You know who I am, I don’t need to impress you.
Sybil is the first to break character. That’s when Peterkin realizes this isn’t some avant-garde act of defiance against consumer culture. She whips her head around, a quick motion emphasized by the twirling of her long, dark locks all around her, looking for someone hiding in the shadowy backstage. The show is being sabotaged. Peterkin picks his posture up and shifts his weight to the edge of his seat. No one has ever dared to sabotage a Miracle Circus Big Top show, before.
Dorian takes over and summons the growth of pink daffodils, peeking out of the crevices in between the floorboards. Green spathes unfurl yellow petals, cradling dew-kissed coronas spewing out puffs of glowing pollen, like millions of tiny fireflies. The distinct smell of burning canvas, a reminder of a lesson in creating fireworks gone wrong, distracts Peterkin from the light floral scent. Someone has set fire to the tent. In response, Sybil waves her wand and sprinkles water upon the audience. The sparks of fire at the bottom of the canvas sizzles out. She sends out an eclectic blue jolt of lightning into the air, which branches in all directions and hisses at every drop of water it meets.
When a deafening boom of thunder reverberates, Peterkin looks down and finds that Sybil has been replaced by a clucking rooster. The sprinkling of water has stopped. Dorian is similarly alarmed by his partner’s disappearance. In a panic, he resorts to distracting the audience with bright bursts of colored smoke streaming into the air and exploding in chrysanthemum bursts. Shades of cobalt, tangerine, violet, magenta, and dandelion swirl about. Behind the rainbow of cloudy smoke, a bright white orb of light shines. The shrill scream of a lime green stream of smoke popping into the air covers up yelling below.
All at once, the multicolored smoke gets absorbed into the orb of light, which collapses in on itself. Peterkin tries to blink away the spots in his vision. When he looks down at the stage again, he sees Sybil and Dorian gliding around on an ice rink on ice skates. In one corner, Dorian lifts up into a quadruple toe loop. The audience claps at his perfect landing. He meets Sybil at the center of the rink and lifts her up onto his shoulders. She uses the momentum for a backflip.
Before she lands, Dorian casts a large dome of opaque ice around them just before a gunshot. The bullet shatters the dome, revealing a flock of roosters underneath. There are screams from Section J, stage right. A pink spotlight flashes there for a moment, highlighting Sybil dragging a gunman out of his seat. The spotlight darkens and is replaced by a different spotlight back on stage, where Dorian juggles bowling pins. The ice rink has been replaced by a white marble floor. Dorian narrowly avoids the sudden addition of a bowling ball to his juggling act, but before the bowling pins and bowling ball come crashing down, the attention is once again replaced when yet another spotlight redirects the audience back to Sybil, who is crossing a tightrope up high that wasn’t there before, balancing the bowling pins and bowling ball from Dorian’s act on her outstretched arms in two precarious towers.
There’s a final moment of relief as the spotlight follows her, in silence, across the tightrope. It is more of a quiet exercise in introspection than it is a gravity-defying act. As she is suspended in the air by only a rope and her balance, the audience, too, has their disbelief suspended with the knowledge that Sybil isn’t known to play games she can’t win. She will meet the end of the tightrope as easily as she met the beginning of the tightrope. But it is doubt that makes the journey through the middle of the tightrope tantalizing, the .01% of uncertainty that removes absolute perfection as easily as 10% would. It isn’t hers. The doubt could only belong to the envious onlookers, whose everyday lives are so infinitesimal with doubt, made so microscopic with every fluctuation between black and white and even more minute whenever wrong crosses paths with right, that the grains spill out and manifest as bias. If Ringmistress Sybil of Miracle Circus could only teeter to the left a bit, not even fall, but just give her onlookers the sharp inflation of a gasp into their pudgy stomachs and thus succumb to their doubt shamelessly, then absolutism could be abolished and absurdism may abscond.
Peterkin’s hope for his mother to make a mistake shines the brightest of them all. He doesn’t live in a reality of crooked lines or scraped knees or spilled half-empty cups of milk. There is no vicarious escapism for him at Miracle Circus. As he was telling Dorian earlier, he didn’t pay to get in, just as he didn’t ask to be the son of a ringmistress, and thus a refund wouldn’t be possible. And if he’s not the consumer and he’s not the producer, process of elimination would have it that he’s the product. Peterkin hopes to gain some form of pleasure from the show dedicated to him, to prove that he can be a consumer, but he can only indulge in schadenfreude when it comes to the pure black matriarchal shadow he lives in.
Peterkin can only be disappointed, but at the same time, impressed by the true ending. Not amazed, but impressed. Ringmistress Sybil places every high-heeled step in front of the other with the same ease and poise and dead-set intent that brought Miracle Circus to its current prestige. That’s what Sybil tells Peterkin magic is derived from: ease and poise and deadset intent, especially intent. She tells him that one doesn’t try to pull a rabbit from a hat—one does pull a rabbit from a hat and both the rabbit and the hat are made from magic. All magic is intentional, she says, and she also says that nobody’s intent is stronger than hers. She crosses the tightrope from start to end without a wand because she’s so good at magic she doesn’t even need it. She is impervious to the sabotages of her worst enemies and the ill intents of her closest loved ones.
The breath everyone else had been holding is released, but not Peterkin’s. When Sybil is at the end of her rope and the bowling pins and bowling ball balanced on her arms vanish into nothingness, Peterkin is still suffocating within the vortex of an airless tornado because his doubts continue to bloom as plentifully as a meadow of pink daffodils. Sybil’s path, both across the tightrope and to success, was a straight line. She was so good that she became the best; that much is dumbfoundingly simple. Outside of that strict straight line, Peterkin thinks he sees an extraneous dot: a careless residue of a careless pencil stroke. He only thinks he sees it, but it doesn’t appear in isolation. Like stars in the night sky, the harder he looks, the more of them he sees.
Peterkin remembers himself suddenly surrounded by fountains and bubbles.
And he recalls the warm weight of Dorian’s hand on his shoulders.
And he also wonders why someone trying to sabotage the show wouldn’t have taken that perfect opportunity to shoot Ringmaster Sybil down during that unguarded lapse of time between the beginning and the end of the rope, because even Sybil has admitted to Peterkin that it’s faster to shoot a gun than to pull a wand out.
But Sybil isn’t an Impressionist, she’s a perfectionist. She wouldn’t dapple her pure white canvas with ugly little dots, yet Peterkin is seeing the work of another artist, and that artist can only communicate in dots, like Braille constellations warning Peterkin of the wool over his eyes.
The roar of applause dims down before Peterkin gains the capacity to register it. Sybil’s voice announces, “And there you have it, folks! The conclusion of the first act of Peterkin’s Show: ‘Peterkin’s Show’s First Act’! We’ll be back shortly after intermission!”
Light fills the Big Top. The usual chatter and stretching of limbs and hurrying to get to the snack bar before the intermission is delayed. No one can deny that an intermission felt deserved after such an odd, eventful first act, but it is only after the first act and it hasn’t been specified how long the intermission will be. Miracle Circus has defied yet another expectation. Ringmistress Sybil can declare intermissions whenever she wants and for however long she wants.
The boy in Seat 14 isn’t shy of expressing his surprise, again. “What!” he exclaims.
Peterkin isn’t sure who the boy is trying to address, anymore, because he and the boy are total strangers and the boy didn’t seem to expect any kind of response. As the only willing witness to the boy’s outburst, he felt obliged to take his exclamation as a conversation-starter. “What?” Peterkin asks, and a part of him hopes that the boy is frustrated for the same reason he is. Peterkin wanted to believe that the non-sequitur dots he saw in Sybil’s tightrope act weren’t invisible to the sane.
“I was trying to—she just—why couldn’t I—”
The boy trails off into a strangled scream. In the light, Peterkin can now see the boy’s features clearly: round almond eyes, a stout nose, and a nervous, frowning expression that looked to be his default. He’s thin, and it would seem to anyone else that his figure is simply good genetics, but as someone who’s known him for more than five minutes, Peterkin can already guess that weight is hard to stick on a boy who’s always burning calories with his tenseness. Every line on his body seems to be tapering inwards, like he’s constantly collapsing in on himself. More prominent to Peterkin is the crimson red pocket square in his suit jacket and a wand clenched in his left fist.
The pocket square inexplicably catches Peterkin’s eye more than the wand does, although there should be no reason for a magician in the audience to have his wand out during another magician’s performance. Peterkin recognizes that shade of crimson red as Phantasm Red, and so he begins to connect some dots. The wand should have been a deader giveaway, but the conclusion is still the same. The boy in Seat 14 was trying to sabotage Sybil during her tightrope act and couldn’t, even though she was wandless.
Experimentally, he taps a bouquet of roses into his hand, then taps it away.
“You’re the son of Ringmistress Sybil,” he says to Peterkin, but also more to himself. “Tell me, can magic go defective?”
“Um… Uh… I don’t know?” The real answer is no, magic is always intentional and always in control of the magician, but Peterkin isn’t good with being put on the spot. He tries to muster a more coherent response. “I think it has to be your intent.”
“What about my intent?” the boy demands.
“It’s—I don’t know, but it comes from your intent. I’m sorry.”
“What are you saying sorry for?”
“I don’t know.”
Peterkin turns to leave, but he’s met face-to-face with the elusive blond he had been trying to track down all night. Peterkin grabs him roughly by the shoulders and shakes him.
“Ralph!” Peterkin yells. “Where have you been?”
“Cheater, cheater, Peterkin-eater,” Ralph sings to him. He brushes Peterkin’s hands off of him. “Nice show, isn’t it? All for you and all. Some odd parts, but I’d say that’s fitting for a show with your name in it. And you’ve got the best seat in the house.”
Peterkin lets Ralph avoid the question. He knows he can’t enforce any consequences. All the responsibility, but none of the authority. “Just take your seat back, already.”
“Who’s to say it’s my seat? It looks like it’s yours. Your show, your seat. All for you.”
“You can take my seat if you’d like,” the boy with the Phantasm Red pocket square offers. “I’m done trying to sabotage the show.” He picks up Peterkin’s hand, pries open Peterkin’s fingers, and places his wand in Peterkin’s palm. “You can have my wand, even. I’m certainly not putting it to good use. I don’t have the right intent, or something.”
Peterkin watches the boy excuse himself as he crosses the row, disappearing into the crowd going upstream for kettle corn refills. At his hands is a shiny black steel wand with Phantasm Red tips. Engraved in gold, is a declaration of ownership: Property of Phantasm Circus™. It’s weighted heavily on the end with the engravement.
“You just let the kid next to you try to sabotage the show?” Ralph asks.
“I didn’t notice!” Peterkin says.
Ralph laughs at that and holds onto Peterkin for support while mirth wets his eyes. “Of course you didn’t! Who can ruin a Miracle Circus show? Only a Miracle Circus magician, right?”
“Right…”
“Right!”
All is right with Ralph returned. Ralph can disappear but not be lost, can have his seat taken and then have another one offered, and break the rules without getting into trouble. In that way, Peterkin thinks Ralph to be more of a Miracle Circus magician than himself: impervious. He sees, in Ralph, the same easy balance that brought Ringmistress Sybil across the tightrope. There is no doubt that the rest of the show will continue smoothly, with Ralph now sitting in Section E, Row 5, Seat 14. And if there is, the doubt can only belong to Peterkin.
Slowly, the lights flicker on and off to signal that intermission is ending. The bleachers refill steadily. Peterkin slumps into Seat 12 and a half and laments, in his head, that the second act won’t be nearly as interesting as the first. No risk, no stakes, no bad guys to root for. Peterkin thinks a tone shift into the usual perfection would be too discontinuous. And isn’t the show “Peterkin’s Show”, not “A Show For Peterkin”? Meaning, the show belongs to him. With a Phantasm wand, he might be able to turn his doubt into certainty.
The Phantasm wand has a nice weight in Peterkin’s hand. It’s heavier and much more solid than a Miracle Circus wand, with a tip that follows the flow of its path smoothly, like dragging a finger across a lake’s surface. It feels more like a weapon than an instrument and Peterkin intends to take advantage of that.
The lights dim, then go pitch black. A rooster cries out, then a pink spotlight illuminates Sybil and Dorian, hanging off of either side of a swinging trapeze. At his lap, Peterkin slices his new wand horizontally. The trapeze’s strings are cut. Sybil screams—she actually screams out of undeniable fear and everyone hears it. Her illusion of invincibility has shattered and everyone sees it in how fast gravity works on her. Even the best circus magician to ever exist is subservient to the laws of physics.
In those few seconds where all of Sybil’s weight is working against her and plummeting her helplessly towards the ground, Peterkin finds certainty. It’s the same certainty he recognizes from when he lost Ralph—the certainty that he is a very bad person and everything is his fault. He didn’t have to do that. He really shouldn’t have.
But she recovers quickly, with a frilly pink parasol with enough air resistance to float her gently to the bottom. That makes Peterkin feel even worse. He discovers how shallow his regret was when Sybil arrives safely on the ground, but the only cure for his chagrin is to try again at matricide. And what if he fails again? Or what if he succeeds? Peterkin doesn’t see a happy ending in witnessing the rest of Peterkin’s Show, which is really just A Show For Peterkin and not A Show Belonging To Peterkin.
Peterkin makes like a banana peel and slips away.
***
For everyone’s safety, Dorian takes care to rush all the circus-goers out of the gates as soon as the Big Top show is over. The premiere was a disaster, by Miracle Circus standards. Dorian knows how bothered Sybil must be. First impressions are everything. And to make their first impression for the season a sabotaged show dedicated to young Peterkin—if Dorian were superstitious, he would fear a similar corruption to occur in or involving Peterkin, during his 12 and a halfth summer…
But Dorian isn’t superstitious, because according to the Magician’s Code, superstition is for witches. The ringmasters of Miracle Circus do not fear a bad premiere out of some contrived, non-sequitur correlation to the events for the rest of their season. They fear a bad premiere only due to their miraculously high standards.
Dorian leads Miracle Circus’ lovely fans off the premises like a pied paper, schedules an exclusive interview with the Cirque du Chronicles reporters addressing the future of their season in their current economic climate, and prepares a sweet cup of mint tea before knocking on Sybil’s dressing room door. With magic, it all only takes him five minutes total. Three of those minutes were spent preparing the tea. Even the best magical skill a Miracle Circus magician possesses cannot replace the care spent in preparing anything drinkable or edible. A magician’s magic is simply not capable of conjuring anything drinkable or edible. Thus, all snacks and beverages at Miracle Circus have zero calories, for they are but well-crafted illusions no other circus is capable of: from the crunch of a caramel apple to the tangy splash of pink lemonade. True food magic is impossible.
When Dorian knocks thrice on the grand cherry wood door, the door reveals its true nature and shatters into paper-thin shards of glass that have been deceptively painted with the facsimile of a grand cherry wood door. Beyond the remaining shards of the door is Sybil, sitting at a vanity mirror lit with red bulbs. The lights dye all it reaches the color of candy apples and ladybug wings, of lipstick and rubies, of blood and a dozen passionate red roses yearning to be cradled with the affectionate touch of someone enamored by true love. Phantasm has their own bright bastardization of red copyrighted, but this shade, as deep as the ocean and as rich as the Blimerance fortune and as true as an infant’s unfiltered babble, has been owned by Sybil as soon as it touched her. It isn’t a frivolous claim for the sake of competitive branding. The fact is inherent in her dark gaze at her reflection, which sees past the mere self-image in front of her and into a truth Dorian may never know.
Then, the color changes to cyan.
Then, the color changes to banana yellow.
“Remember when we thought it would be a good idea to have a light-based show? And then your ex-wife had to save us from the lawsuits?” Sybil asks. “We were so close to folding.”
Begrudgingly, Dorian recalls that show: “In Full Technicolor”. Show concepts were much simpler back then. They played improv with crystal prisms and refracting light beams and gave every spectator a complimentary pair of sunglasses. But having to pay for a hundred hospital bills wasn’t nearly as humiliating as having to explain to a much younger Ralph that, no, Daddy wasn’t visiting Mommy because they loved each other again. Daddy was begging Mommy for help because Daddy and Auntie Sybil induced seizures at their circus show. Somehow, Miracle Circus survived, on the basis that epilepsy fell under the umbrella of the impossible, the fantastic, and the miraculous.
Being on the forefront of innovation means taking risks. It was the first circus show to rely primarily on light manipulation. Miracle Circus used to show off the magical prowess of their ringmasters by demonstrating their mastery in every magic skill ever thought of: light manipulation, sound manipulation, space manipulation, animal summoning, botanokinesis, pyrokinesis, hydrokinesis, aerokinesis… Everything that magic was capable of, they mastered it and focused a show on it. There were enough magic skills to last them an entire season of shows. In Full Technicolor taught them that too much raw power was dangerous, though. That was when Sybil and Dorian discovered the true advantage of illusions, and that was sensory manipulation. No more seizures if your body doesn’t perceive the flashing lights as a disregulatory signal.
“We came out of that stronger than ever,” Dorian reminds her. “We always will.”
“Oh, save your pretty words for the press!” Sybil scoffs. The lights return to red. She stands up from her armchair and approaches Dorian. Although her high heels are off, her shorter stature does nothing to diminish her domineering presence. “That second-act-sabotage caught us both off-guard. With our wands in our hands. While we were already expecting a sabotage! How is that possible, Dorian?” The lights flicker. “Answer me that, Mr. Blimerance!”
Dorian winces at the flickering light. With a simple flick of his wand, he changes the light to bright white. He would’ve gotten sick if he had to tolerate those flickering lights any longer. Though he fears Sybil, and rightfully so, he is not scared of her. He hands her the steaming hot cup of mint tea.
“It’s impossible,” Dorian answers. “It’s fantastic. It’s miraculous.”
“We’ve been out-miracled in our own Big Top.” Sybil sips on the ice cold tea. She dumps it out. “And by Phantasm, at that. They’re not even world class!” She tosses the porcelain tea cup over her shoulder without a care. It poofs away.
“Sybil… do you realize what that means?”
Sybil nods.
They grab each other by the shoulders.
Their smiles are wide and gleeful.
“A witch hunt!” they declare in unison.
***
After the show, Ralph wanders around the empty circus grounds just as he did before the show. He calls it walking a mile in Peterkin’s shoes. In Ralph’s mind’s eye, Miracle Circus is a bright wonder of endless amusements, always teeming with toothy smiles and boisterous laughter. He thinks of Miracle Circus and its sweets that never give you a stomachache; he thinks of colored fire that won’t burn you; he thinks of water that doesn’t soak your clothes.
He thinks of his father ruffling Peterkin’s hair as if Peterkin were his own son.
He thinks of Auntie Sybil denouncing all lesser magicians.
He thinks of infinity.
Before tonight, Ralph has never thought to see Miracle Circus in its rawest form: a collection of tents. Sybil and Doran don’t produce the tents until the very second before the circus opens—thus, the only time to see the circus empty is during the Big Top show. Only Peterkin would ever think to ditch a Miracle Circus Big Top show and Ralph wants to get closer to how Peterkin thinks. Ralph’s hypothesis is that understanding Peterkin will help him understand why he’s lesser than Peterkin.
The circus is suddenly inanimate. Usually, the circus would’ve stopped existing as soon as the circus-goers left, and usually the circus-goers also wouldn’t be gone by now. Ralph has a lucky second chance at experiencing what Peterkin feels when he’s ditching a Big Top show, but this time, it feels different. The circus isn’t simply empty, because an empty circus feels like a relief after pushing through crowds all day. It’s desolate. Ralph has never noticed it before, but there’s an energy in Miracle Circus that is now missing that reminds him of the protective gaze of a parent while they’re watching their child at the playground. Miracle Circus is dead without Sybil and Dorian, whose ambition to be the best is the lifeblood of the circus.
Ralph walks through a few tents looking for either his father or Auntie Sybil. The circus is smaller and easier to navigate now that it’s not constantly rearranging itself. He visits all of his favorite tents, the clock-related ones, and notices all the clocks in the clock-related tents are hours off and out of sync. He assumes it’s one of Phantasm’s petty attempts at sabotage and moves on to the other tents: the Tent of Vibrations and Storms, the Tent of Waterfalls and Canyons, the Tent of Temperature and Mercury, the Tent of Spring and Jumping, and many other tents that seem as if their themes were lazily pulled out of a hat at random.
Ralph has never had so much trouble finding the two ringmasters before. They like having their presences known, but now, they seem to be in hiding. He closes his eyes and tries to hone in on whatever energy he can pick up on. It’s a witchy method, because really you shouldn’t be able to sense someone’s presence unless through supernatural means, but he does swear he can usually feel Dorian and Sybil’s presence. Any half-smart magician is aware of the sheer power they radiate.
He opens his eyes and heads toward the Tent of Void and Nothingness (one of the empty tents). He thinks Sybil is in there, though he has no proof other than a vague feeling.
“Auntie Sybil?” Ralph calls out. Ralph pushes through the flaps of the black-and-white-striped canvas. It’s dark, but not pitch black. He makes out Peterkin’s small frame, made smaller by the fact that he was curled into himself, sitting with his head buried into his knees. “Oh. It’s you.”
Ralph shivers. He gives out a long exhale to test the coldness in the tent and it comes out in a white cloud of condensation. It’s summer in the rest of the circus besides the tent he has entered. He thinks it odd. The empty tents in Miracle Circus are supposed to have no magical effects on them. But anything is possible in Miracle Circus, so there’s no way to be sure of any anomalies. It could be another one of Sybil’s pranks.
Peterkin lifts his head up. “Hi, Ralph.”
“Where’s my father and your mother?”
“What do you mean? They’re just around.”
Peterkin is right; the circus can’t exist without Sybil and Dorian around. Ralph isn’t sure why he gets the impression they’re gone. He wants to look for them some more, but he’s scared to leave the relief of Peterkin’s presence. He sits down next to Peterkin and wonders how he’s not cold and also why he would choose such a frigid place to isolate himself in.
Peterkin, after a long moment spent riling up the courage, finally gets around to saying what’s on his mind. “Ralph, can I ask you something?”
“You just did.”
“Never mind.”
Ralph doesn’t mean to bully Peterkin. He thinks Peterkin makes it too easy. A magician shouldn’t ask to ask a question. He should simply ask it. A better magician would already know the answer, thus eliminating the need for asking unless for rhetorical purposes, but they had the excuse of youth to fall on. Although Ralph knows he is not the better magician, he takes responsibility as the older magician. He must lend his wisdom.
“Tell me what you want to ask,” Ralph demands.
“I wanted to ask what happens if you’re a witch.”
Ralph hesitates. His first instinct is to call Peterkin stupid, but he’s trying to be nicer to Peterkin and also it’s not Peterkin’s fault he doesn’t know. He’s surprised his father hasn’t told Peterkin, yet. After all, Peterkin gets to see Dorian all year round. Ralph is only 30% Dorian’s son, but Peterkin is 100% Sybil’s son, and Dorian and Sybil—they’re contractually bound together. That contract is more soul-binding than Ralph’s parents’ marriage ever was.
With Ralph’s surprise comes pride. It gives him the reassurance he’s been looking for that he is his father’s son. A Blimerance. His mom almost had him change his last name to her maiden name after the divorce, but decided it would be too troubling for his paperwork. Ralph thought convenience was the only reason he stayed a Blimerance, until now, with his heritage shining through his unique connection to the history of witches, a connection that Peterkin lacks.
“Do you know how the Blimerances came to their affluence?” Ralph asks.
“I don’t know. Stealing from the poor?” Peterkin guesses.
“What! No! The Blimerances were the best witch-hunters, back when this country was still a collection of colonies. And they were so good that witches don’t exist anymore. The end!”
“But what happens if you find a witch nowadays?”
“You’d burn ‘em at the stake, of cour—oh, what are you crying for?”
“That’s awful! Why should we kill anyone?”
“You don’t get it, Peterkin.” Ralph tries to phrase himself as if he’s speaking to a child, which he is. “Witches are bad. Their magic has gone corrupted from their ill intent. They hurt people, Peterkin. Magic isn’t for hurting people! It’s for making miracles. That’s why we have to get rid of witches, so they don’t hurt anyone. And they’re already gone, so what’s there to cry about? There’s nothing to cry about.”
“You think I need a reason to cry? I don’t!”
Ralph listens to Peterkin cry himself out in the empty tent, as he had many summers before. The temperature continues to drop. He expects, at any second, for the tent to poof away and for the summer air to coalesce into the cold air around them, but the night sky above them is never revealed. It’s anomalous, though that in of itself was also a part of the routine. Sybil and Dorian are hiding somewhere, brewing up another innovative spectacle, and then Miracle Circus will monopolize the circus industry so triumphantly that every other circus will fold in shame.
(TO BE CONTINUED)