The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern [75]
“Do mine, too, please,” Poppet says, holding out her cup. “I can never do it right.”
“Well, I can never levitate anything right, so we’re even,” Widget says, but he takes her cup without complaint and concentrates until it too is steaming and hot again.
He moves to hand it back to her and it floats from his hand to hers, the surface of the cider wavering with the motion but otherwise moving as smoothly as if it were sliding across a table.
“Show-off,” Widget says.
They sit sipping their newly warmed cider, looking up at the twisting black branches reaching toward the top of the tent.
“Widge?” Poppet asks after a long silence.
“Yes?”
“Is it not that bad to be trapped somewhere, then? Depending on where you’re trapped?”
“I suppose it depends on how much you like the place you’re trapped in,” Widget says.
“And how much you like whoever you’re stuck there with,” Poppet adds, kicking his black boot with her white one.
Her brother laughs and the sound echoes through the tent, carried over the branches that are covered in candles. Each flame flickering and white.
Temporary Places
LONDON, APRIL 1895
Tara Burgess does not realize until after she has returned to London that the address on the card given to her by Mr. Barris is not a private residence at all but the Midland Grand Hotel.
She leaves the card sitting out on a table in her parlor for some time, glancing at it whenever she happens to be in the room. Forgetting about it for stretches of time until she remembers it again.
Lainie attempts to persuade Tara to join her for an extended holiday in Italy, but she refuses. Tara tells her sister little about her visit to Vienna, saying only that Ethan asked after her.
Lainie suggests that they might consider moving, and perhaps they should discuss it further when she returns.
Tara only nods, giving her sister a warm embrace before Lainie departs.
Alone in their town house, Tara wanders absently. She abandons half-read novels on chairs and tables.
The invitations from Mme. Padva to join her for tea or accompany her to the ballet are politely declined.
She turns all of the mirrors in the house to face the walls. Those she cannot manage to turn she covers with sheets so they sit like ghosts in empty rooms.
She has trouble sleeping.
One afternoon, after the card has sat patiently gathering dust for months, she picks it up and places it in her pocket, and she is out the door and on her way to the train before she can decide whether or not the idea is a good one.
Tara has never visited the clock-topped hotel attached to St. Pancras Station, but it strikes her immediately as a temporary place. Despite the size and solidity of the building, it feels impermanent, populated by a constant stream of guests and travelers on their way to and from other locations. Stopping only briefly before continuing to other destinations.
She inquires at the desk but they claim they have no such person listed as a guest. She repeats the name several times after the desk clerk keeps mishearing her. She tries more than one variation, as the words on the card from Mr. Barris have been smudged, and she cannot recall the proper pronunciation. The longer she stands there, the more unsure she becomes that she has ever even heard the smudged name on the card pronounced.
The clerk politely asks if she would like to leave a note, if perhaps the gentleman in question were to be arriving later in the day, but Tara declines, thanking the clerk for his time and replacing the card in her pocket.
She wanders the lobby, wondering if the address is incorrect, though it is not like Mr. Barris to provide anything less than exact information.
“Good afternoon, Miss Burgess,” a voice next to her says. She has not noticed him approach, but the man whose name she still cannot recall the proper pronunciation of is standing by her shoulder in his distinctive grey suit.
“Good afternoon,” she echoes.
“Were you looking for me?” he asks.
“I was, in fact,” Tara says. She starts to explain that Mr. Barris sent her. She reaches into her