The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern [79]
Later, long after midnight, she appears by his side as he walks, wearing a cream-colored coat and a deep green scarf.
“Your scarf should be red,” Friedrick remarks.
“I am not a proper rêveur,” Celia says. “It would not feel right.” But as she speaks, her scarf shifts in hue to a rich, wine-like burgundy. “Is that better?”
“It is perfect,” Friedrick says, though his gaze remains fixed on her eyes.
She takes his offered arm and they walk together along the twisting pathways, through the dwindling crowd of patrons.
They repeat this routine in the following evenings, though the circus does not remain in Munich long, once the news arrives from London.
In Loving Memory of Tara Burgess
GLASGOW, APRIL 1895
The funeral is a quiet one, despite the number of mourners present. There are no sobs or flailing handkerchiefs. There is a smattering of color amongst the sea of traditional black. Even the light rain cannot push it down into the realms of despair. It rests instead in a space of thoughtful melancholy.
Perhaps it is because it does not feel as though Tara Burgess is entirely gone, when her sister sits alive and well. One half of the pair still breathing and vibrant.
And at the same time something looks strikingly wrong to everyone who lays eyes on the surviving sister. Something they can’t quite put their finger on. Something out of balance.
An occasional tear rolls down Lainie Burgess’s cheek but she greets each mourner with a smile and thanks them for attending. She makes jokes that Tara might have quipped were she not inside the polished-wood coffin. There are no other family members present, though some less familiar acquaintances assume that the white-haired woman and bespectacled man who seldom leave Lainie’s side are her mother and husband, respectively. While they are incorrect, neither Mme. Padva nor Mr. Barris mind the mistake.
There are countless roses. Red roses, white roses, pink roses. There is even a single black rose amongst the blossoms, though no one knows its origin. Chandresh takes credit only for the white blooms, keeping one pinned to his lapel that he toys with distractedly throughout the service.
When Lainie speaks about her sister her words are met with sighs and laughter and sad smiles.
“I do not mourn the loss of my sister because she will always be with me, in my heart,” she says. “I am, however, rather annoyed that my Tara has left me to suffer you lot alone. I do not see as well without her. I do not hear as well without her. I do not feel as well without her. I would be better off without a hand or a leg than without my sister. Then at least she would be here to mock my appearance and claim to be the pretty one for a change. We have all lost our Tara, but I have lost a part of myself as well.”
In the cemetery there is a single performer that even some of the mourners who are not part of Le Cirque des Rêves recognize, though the woman bedecked from head to toe in snowiest white has added a pair of feathered wings to her costume. They cascade down her back and flutter gently in the breeze while she remains still as stone. Many of the attendants seem surprised by her presence but they take their cues from Lainie, who is delighted at the sight of the living angel standing over her sister’s grave.
It was the Burgess sisters, after all, who originated the tradition of such statues within the circus. Performers standing stock-still with elaborate costumes and painted skin on platforms set up in precarious spaces between tents. If watched for hours, they sometimes change position entirely, but the motion will be agonizingly slow, to the point that many observers insist that they are cleverly crafted automatons and not proper people.
The circus contains several of these performers. The star-speckled Empress of the Night. The coal-dark Black Pirate. The one that now watches over Tara Burgess is most often referred to as the Snow Queen.
There is the softest of sobbing as the coffin is lowered into the ground, but it is difficult to pinpoint who it is coming from,