The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern [153]
And the only thing burning brightly within it is Celia.
But it is a flickering brightness. As fragile as a candle flame.
“You’re holding the circus together,” he says.
Celia nods. It is only beginning to weigh on her, but it is much more difficult to manage without the bonfire. She cannot focus enough to keep the details intact. Elements are already slipping away, dripping like the flowers around them.
And she knows that if it breaks, she will not be able to put it back together again.
She is shaking, and though she steadies when Marco holds her tighter, she continues to tremble in his arms.
“Let go of it, Celia.”
“I can’t,” she says. “If I let go it will collapse.”
“What will happen to us if it collapses?” Marco asks.
“I don’t know,” Celia says. “I suspended it. It can’t be self-sufficient without us. It needs a caretaker.”
Suspended
NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 1, 1902
The last time Bailey entered this particular tent, Poppet was with him, and it was filled with a dense white fog.
Then, and Bailey has difficulty believing it was only days ago, the tent had seemed endless. But now without the cover of mist, Bailey can see the white walls of the tent and all the creatures within it, but none of them are moving.
Birds and bats and butterflies hang throughout the space as if held by strings, completely still. No rustling of paper wings. No motion at all.
Other creatures sit on the ground near Bailey’s feet, including a black cat crouched pre-pounce near a silver-tipped white fox. There are larger animals, as well. A zebra with perfectly contrasting stripes. A reclining lion with a snowy mane. A white stag with tall antlers.
Standing next to the stag is a man in a dark suit.
He is almost transparent, like a ghost, or a reflection in glass. Parts of his suit are no more than shadows. Bailey can see the stag clearly through the sleeve of his jacket.
Bailey is debating whether or not it is a figment of his imagination when the man looks over at him, his eyes surprisingly bright, though Bailey cannot discern their color.
“I asked her not to send you this way,” he says. “Though it is the most direct.”
“Who are you?” Bailey asks.
“My name is Marco,” the man says. “You must be Bailey.”
Bailey nods.
“I wish you were not so young,” Marco says. Something in his voice sounds profoundly sad, but Bailey is still distracted by his ghostlike appearance.
“Are you dead?” he asks, walking closer. With the changing angle, Marco appears almost solid one moment, and transparent again the next.
“Not precisely,” Marco says.
“Tsukiko said she was the only living person here who knew what happened.”
“I suspect Miss Tsukiko is not always entirely truthful.”
“You look like a ghost,” Bailey says. He can think of no better way to describe it.
“You appear the same way to me, so which of us is real?”
Bailey has no idea how to answer that question, so he asks the first one of his own that comes to mind instead.
“Is that your bowler hat in the courtyard?”
To his surprise, Marco smiles.
“It is, indeed,” he says. “I lost it before everything happened, so it got left behind.”
“What happened?” Bailey asks.
Marco pauses before he answers.
“That is a rather long story.”
“That’s what Tsukiko said,” Bailey says. He wonders if he can find Widget, so he can do the storytelling properly.
“She was truthful on that point, then,” Marco says. “Tsukiko intended to imprison me in the bonfire, the reasons for which are a longer story than we have time for, and there was a change of plan that resulted in the current situation. I was pulled apart and put back together again in a less concentrated state.”
Marco holds out his hand and Bailey reaches to touch it. His fingers move through without stopping, but there is a soft resistance, the impression that there is something occupying