Chapter Text
He comes late to the circus the next night, and the moment he walks through the entrance, he’s met by red hair and a reproachful, accented voice.
“Showing up at almost midnight is just your way of tormenting me, isn’t it? A punishment, devised by my sister?”
Eric can hardly suppress the grin that pops up on his face. He turns to Widget. “My mom had tickets to the symphony. She bought them months ago. I think she might have killed me if I’d tried to get out of it.”
“Even if you told her it was to set right a shameful wrong you had committed? Making amends to someone who waited all night for you to approach, and was utterly heartbroken when you didn’t?” Eric concentrates on Widget’s grin and ignores the strange little flutter the words send through his stomach.
“I can’t even begin to imagine my mother’s reaction to telling her I had to skip out on the symphony to visit the circus of a boy I met in a graveyard,” he admits.
“Now, now,” Widget says, pushing away from the fencepost with a flourish and standing straight, “we met in a cemetery. Graveyards have churches attached. So, Eric. Now that you have finally arrived, it is time for you to see the circus the way it is meant to be seen.”
He links his arm in Eric’s rather forcefully, and Eric decides to call the strange fluttering in his stomach anticipation rather than think about other names that may or may not be more appropriate.
“And what does that mean, exactly?” he asks in what he hopes is a casual voice. “The circus the way it’s meant to be seen?”
“Why, with a proprietor by your side, of course. Now tell me. What did you manage to see last night as you stumbled around on your own?”
Eric ducks his head, hiding a smile. “Everything,” he tells Widget. Widget chuckles.
“Forgive me, Eric, but I rather doubt that.”
He’s just a little bit condescending, and that bugs Eric, so he decides to regain the upper hand by showing off. “You have forty-eight tents of varying sizes as part of your circus, spread out over, what is this? Four acres? Five?”
“Sure,” Widget says in a tone that makes it clear to Eric that whatever his duties as ‘proprietor’ may encompass, they don’t include finding a space for the circus to inhabit.
“Fourteen of your tents are for live performances. Eleven are food and drink stalls. The remaining twenty-three are rides or exhibitions or experiences that stand on their own. You also have nine performers that work without a tent, here in the open walkways. That’s counting all six of your living statues as one, though.”
“All right, smartypants, but can you name them all?”
“The Ice Garden, the Stargazer, the Memory Room, the Hall of Mirrors---”
“Fine, fine,” Widget interrupts with an easy laugh. “I believe you. You saw everything last night.” Eric grins. Widget doesn’t need to know he can’t actually list more than ten or so tents off the top of his head. “Tell me your favorite, then.”
“Oh, I don’t have a favorite. I didn’t actually visit any of the tents, apart from your sister’s.”
“You didn’t---” Widget stops walking and peers at Eric, who blushes slightly under the power of that intense scrutiny. “You continue to be a fascinating enigma, Eric Applebaum.”
“Why, thank you,” Eric says and takes a little bow.
“So what did you do, just circle the place like a vulture all evening?”
“I wouldn’t use the vulture comparison, personally,” he counters, not able to deny it since that is, essentially, what he did. “I like to get to know places and people from the outside in,” he admits. “I start big and fill in the details later.”
“Mmmm,” Widget says, a hum of consideration as he once more fixes that intense scrutiny on Eric. “Is that what you do at your toy store? Circle the perimeter and observe?”
“Yes, but that’s different,” he replies with a shake of his head.
“How so?”
“I’m observing the people there. I hold a position of authority, so I’m looking for places I’m needed. Here, I’m just another patron. I was mostly getting to--- getting the lay of the land.”
“That’s not what you were going to say,” Widget says suddenly, pouncing on Eric’s correction. Mentally, Eric curses. Widget really is too perceptive by half. “You were getting to what, Eric?”
Eric doesn’t answer for three seconds, but then he finishes his original thought. “I was getting to know the circus,” he says softly.
Widget holds his gaze for another second, then a slow smile spreads across his face and he relinks his arm through Eric’s and strangely says nothing at all about Eric’s answer.
“I amend my original question,” is all he says. “Instead of your favorite tent, I would like to know which tent intrigued you the most as you journeyed through the circus last night. What are you most anxious to explore?”
“Honestly?”
“I rarely ask to be lied to.”
“I’m most intrigued by the circus itself. How it works. How it functions. How it came to be.”
He thinks he sees Widget smile at that, a satisfied sort of smile that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but in the blink of an eye, the look is gone and Widget is simply nodding. “There’s a tent around here that will tell you that,” he says, craning his neck as if he doesn’t quite remember where he put it.
“I’d rather hear it from you.”
Widget definitely smiles a satisfied sort of smile at that, but when he turns to Eric, his face is all casual curiosity. “And why might that be?”
“Maybe I just want to hear how you’ll tell it,” he answers, throwing Widget’s words from the cemetery back at him.
Widget does not answer right away. He takes Eric in, from the tips of his scuffed converse to the red beanie on his head. “Are you a reveur, Eric?” he asks, an utterly incomprehensible question.
“I’m sorry?”
“How did you choose your outfit tonight?”
“There seems to be a dress code,” he says, bewildered by the turn the conversation has taken. “Black and white and red.”
“A decision made purely on the basis of your observations?” Widget pushes. “Or have you done your research?”
He thought about it, earlier today. Got so far as pulling out his laptop and typing “Le Cirque des Reves” into Google, searching for a Wikipedia article or a dedicated website or a string of Yelp reviews. But something had stopped him from doing anything beyond looking for a translation of the French.
The Emporium didn’t have a website. It didn’t have a Facebook page or an Instagram or any real online presence. He’d asked Mahoney and the Mutant about setting them up, but they’d declined. “We should be stumbled upon,” Mahoney had said. “I worry it’ll ruin the magic otherwise.”
He isn’t sure if he agrees with that or not, but it’s that same feeling, that same worry, that stopped him this afternoon. Would reading about the circus on the Internet ruin its magic?
“I’d prefer to learn about the circus from the circus,” he finally says in response to Widget’s question. “I might look into its reputation later, but for right now, I want the circus to speak for itself.”
“Through me,” Widget confirms, and when Eric nods, he returns the gesture, but then says, “I’m not going to answer that question tonight.”
“You don’t need to entice me back,” Eric says with a laugh. “I don’t spend an entire night mapping a place if I don’t intend to keep returning until I’ve seen every nook and cranny.”
“Thrilled to hear that,” Widget says with a grin. “But patience is a virtue, and I need to make sure that everyone is ready for the story to be told.” Eric’s eyes narrow at that comment, but Widget does not see fit to explain it. “Now then! When you say you did not visit any tents last night, I dearly hope that does not include the food stalls.”
“I was unable to resist the caramel corn,” Eric admits.
“Ah,” Widget says in a tone of great satisfaction. “My invention, you know.”
“Really,” Eric drawls, voice heavy with skepticism. “You invented caramel corn.”
“Within the confines of this circus,” he amends. “But yes I did.”
“And when was that, exactly?”
Widget gives him a sly sidelong glance and does not answer the question. “Our cider is to die for,” he simply says. “And we have a cinnamon pastry that is utterly heavenly.”
The food is obtained, and Eric has to acknowledge that it is better by far than most fair food he has eaten in his lifetime. He loves a good funnel cake and cone of cotton candy as much as the next kid, but there is something elevated about the food for sale here, just as there is something elevated about the circus in its entirety.
“Now then,” Widget says when their food was consumed, effortlessly brushing powdered sugar from his fingers and getting not one speck on his dark tailored pants -- as sure a sign of magic as any Eric has ever seen -- “Where to?”
“What’s your favorite?” Eric asks.
“I don’t have one,” Widget replies after a moment. “There’s too much of me in this circus. I’ve designed and built so many of these tents and had a hand in most of the others. And the ones I didn’t help with were here when I was child, so pure nostalgia prevents me from choosing any one over another.”
“Did you visit the circus often, then?”
“I was born in the circus,” Widget tells him then, startling Eric.
“Really.”
“My parents had an act, with snow leopards and panthers. Poppet and I grew up here.”
“And when did you take over the running of the place?”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Widget says with narrowing eyes, waving a finger in Eric’s direction. “You are trying to wheedle information out of me that I have sworn to keep secret for the time being. It will not work.”
“All right then,” Eric relents with a laugh. “When you were little, what was your favorite?”
“It’s been retired, I’m afraid,” he says with a tinge of sadness. “It was called the Cloud Maze, and it required just a bit more upkeep than we could manage when we first took over. Come on. This is a good one.”
Eric lets himself be dragged inside the tent Widget indicated, and that is how they pass the next few hours. They stroll through the circuitous paths of the circus, talking as Eric tries to pull some sort of solid admission of what he already knows out of Widget, who verbally dances just out of reach and then pulls him into a new tent.
He lets Widget direct their path because it tells him more about the other young man than Widget might believe. Widget never picks live performances, always gravitating instead toward the experiences, which start out mundane but slowly get more and more extravagant and undeniably magical. As if he’s easing Eric into the idea, which is equal parts hilarious and exasperating.
“You really don’t have to do this, you know,” he says as they exit the Paper Menagerie.
“Do what? Show you around? Are you not enjoying our time together, Eric?”
Eric smiles and shakes his head. “I work in a magical toy store, Widget. I know when I’m surrounded by it. To say nothing about the fact that your sister basically confirmed it yesterday. You can admit that this is a magical circus. You are not going to shock me.”
“It’s been called such before,” Widget agrees amiably.
Eric huffs. “All right, fine,” he says. “You have a process, clearly, and I can’t rush it. Which I suppose means you also won’t tell me how old you actually are?”
“That does seem a rather personal question.”
“Well, Mr. Magorium was 243 when he died, and he didn’t look more than 70. You don’t look much older than I am, so you’re maybe a hundred?”
“I’m going to leave you to do this one on your own, I think,” Widget says then rather than respond to Eric’s comment. They’re standing outside the illusionist’s tent. “I have a bit of circus business to attend to, but I will find you when the show is over. You’ll enjoy it. He’s quite good.” And in the time it takes Eric to blink, Widget has disappeared into the crowd.
Eric is slightly surprised to find himself feeling disappointed by Widget’s abrupt exit, but at the same time, almost relieved because it gives him a chance to catch his breath. He does not go to the illusionist’s performance. He needs a quiet place to sit and think and process the evening. The last two days, really.
He looks around for a tent that doesn’t have a lot of foot traffic in and out, and ends up in one called The Wishing Tree. It houses a rather magnificent iron tree, branches alight with small candles and open flames. The sight rather takes his breath away. It’s nearly empty when he enters, just one small girl and her father, who light a candle and slip out. Eric stands just out of the small pool of light cast by the overlapping flickers from the candles and thinks.
Why has he drawn the focus of the circus’s proprietor? He’s an 18-year-old kid and he’s not really anything special. Certainly nothing that would draw the attention of a young man who surely has a million other duties that need attending to. And instead, he has spent the entire night at Eric’s side, playing coy and keeping secrets.
If it felt wrong or sinister in any way, he’d have been gone long ago. But it feels weirdly natural, like he’s somehow known Widget his whole life, even though that’s ridiculous because he just met the guy 48 hours before. But he feels like Mahoney and he feels like Mr. Magorium, and the sense of magic is so strong around him that it makes Eric ache.
Idly, as he thinks, he wanders closer to the branches and the candles and the flames. There’s one candle on one branch that sits just at eye level, and he reached out for it, running his fingers oh so carefully through the very tip of the candle’s flame.
“Careful,” a female voice says in his ear, and he startles, pulling slightly too-warm fingers to his chest and pressing them against the back of his other hand. He thinks he sees a flicker of a dark skirt out of the corner of his eye, but when he turns, there is no one in the tent with him. He frowns, but does not doubt for a second that he heard the voice.
The flap to the tent opens and Widget’s head pokes inside, looking around until he spots Eric with a look of consternation. “This is not where you’re supposed to be,” he says conversationally, and the rest of him makes its way through the opening. “Did you make a wish at least?”
“Oh,” Eric says, looking back at the tree and the candles and only just now reading the plaque that announces the tent’s purpose.
He feels quite suddenly nervous and uncertain, and he doesn’t know what to do. Should he light a candle? Light a candle and wish for clarity, purpose, magic? A miracle solution to all his problems? Will it even work if he knows that there’s magic involved? Will it change his wish’s outcome?
“Do the wishes really come true?” he asks, even though he knows that Widget won’t answer. And Widget doesn’t. “I think . . . I think I’ll circle back around,” he finally says. “Make a wish later. Your circus business all sorted?”
Widget smiles his secret smile and seems, for a moment, to be focused on something behind Eric. But then he nods. “Quite satisfactorily, actually. If you’re sure?”
Eric smiles and nods and lets himself be ushered out of the tent and back into the main thoroughfare of the circus, now far less crowded than it had been even before he’d gone to visit the Wishing Tree. “Where is everyone?” he asks Widget.
“Oh, the dedicated circusgoers stay until dawn, but most people start to trickle away around two in the morning.” Eric’s eyes go wide.
“Is that the time?” he asks, fumbling for his phone to check. 2:15am.
“Do you have to run?” Widget asks in a voice that doesn’t sound quite as casual as he’s probably aiming for.
“I promised Mom I’d be home by three,” he says. “I’d like to stay til dawn one night, though. See the circus in all its forms. Tonight, though, I think I have time for one more thing before I need to head out.”
“Well,” Widget says with a smile. “That’s rather perfect, then, as I have one thing left to show you.”
But he won’t say anything more about whatever his last thing is. He only leads Eric around and around in circles until he feels quite lost, and then holds an arm out toward a small tent that makes Eric frown. The sign hanging over the entrance only says The Circus of Dreams, and Eric has never seen it before.
“I saw every tent last night,” he says, indignant. “Where did this one come from?”
That secret smile appears again, tucked into the corner of Widget’s mouth. “I told you earlier that this tent was around here somewhere. But it doesn’t appear unless we want it to.”
“And how does that work, exactly?”
Widget’s eyes twinkle but he doesn’t answer. Instead, he says, “This is where I leave you, Eric,” he says, and Eric tries not to panic at the finality of those words. Of course, Widget has more important things to do that constantly show some high school kid around. Of course he was thinking not that long ago that he should tell Widget that he was fine on his own. It’s fine, if this is the last he sees of the strange older boy.
“Inside this tent,” Widget continues, “are the answers to your questions. And rest assured, no matter how much time you spend inside, you will be able to get home before curfew. You have my personal guarantee of that. I will not see you again tonight. I hope that you take the time to ponder what you will learn here. Once you have, if you wish it, you can seek us out. But unless and until you do, this is where we part ways.”
Eric is still trying to wrap his head around all this when Widget’s eyes go wide with recollection and he lets out a startled, “Oh!” Patting down his pockets, he quickly unearths a silver card, much like the black and white card he gave Eric in the cemetery.
“What’s this?” Eric asks.
“That, my friend, is a free pass to the circus. Just present it at the gate, and you’ll be admitted. No charge.”
“Why?” is his immediate question. Widget only smiles.
“Good night, Eric. Enjoy the tent.”
Even though Eric watches Widget leaves, the older young man disappears seamlessly into the crowd, thin as it is at this time of night. Eric blinks, and can no longer see him. Frowning, puzzled, but deciding to figure it all out later, he turns back to the tent.
He feels very much as he did the day not long ago that Mahoney took him to the basement, when he read the volumes of Mr. Magorium’s life. There was potential in this moment, potential for the questioning places of his life to be filled with answers, potential for his future and his purpose to finally slot into place. But at the same time, he couldn’t get his hopes up again. He’d wanted that from Mr. Magorium, and he hadn’t gotten it. Would he be disappointed again?
It is, strangely, the Mutant’s voice he hears in his head. “No way out but through,” is one of Henry’s favorite sayings.
“No way out but through,” he mutters, nodding with decision and taking that step through the tent’s flap.
He emerges into the entryway of a townhouse, an entryway that is taken up by a giant golden statue of a man with the head of an elephant. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks he recognizes the figure as someone from Indian mythology.
There is a path inlaid in the floor in front of him, black and white tiles leading off into the next room. There are no instructions posted anywhere, but following the path seems intuitive, and a good place to start.
Later, he is utterly unable to say how long he spends in the circus’s museum. When he finds himself back in the entryway and reemerges into the circus proper, perhaps ten minutes have passed. But the time he spent immersed in living memories, meeting Celia and Marco and Chandresh and a very young Poppet and Widget, seeing the circus’s full, varied, complicated history play out . . . it could have been years.
He feels dazed and unsteady when he returns to cool night air. He’s not entirely sure why. Perhaps it is the sheer amount of information given to him. Perhaps it is the display of magic so much more overt than any he’s experienced before. Perhaps it is the strange echoes of Mahoney taking on the Emporium’s running that he saw in that final exchange between Marco and Celia and Bailey.
Whatever it is, he's glad Widget is not there while he sorts out this new understanding of the breathtaking reality around him.
It feels like the store because it is like the store -- imbued and infused with magic and vibrancy and near-sentience. Eric doesn’t know if Mr. Magorium ever knew any of these people, ever crossed paths with Mr. A.H-- or Prospero the Enchanter. He was certainly old enough to have done so, and his magic feels related to theirs, but nowhere were they mentioned in the record of his life.
The circus started in 1886. The store started in 1894. Was it possible they were connected? Mr. Magorium had been 243 when he died. The circus and the twins were 129 years old. Like Mr. Magorium, the magic they worked with and were a part of had slowed their aging. Like the Emporium, that same magic had given the circus a life and consciousness of its own.
He had somehow, naively thought that all the magic in the world had belonged to one man and had been poured into one toy store. But now, here is this circus, in all its living wonderful magical glory. And though he’s barely scratched the surface of this place, though he’s spent all of ten hours within its fences, he is halfway in love with it already. He does not want to leave.
But it’s late, and he has a curfew, and as countless mothers have said to countless children in his hearing, the place will still be here the next day. So he takes a deep breath and heads for the exit, walking alone through the wrought iron gates.
Just under the emblazoned Le Cirque des Reves , however, he pauses, reaching out to lay a gentle hand against the iron. It is a familiar gesture, one he does at the toy store all the time. And much to his surprise (though in truth, once he’s had a chance to prod his feelings, it doesn’t actually feel as if he is surprised), the circus feels the same under his hand. Aware. Engaged. Listening.
“I’ll be back,” he whispers. “Don’t you worry.”
He swears the iron warms under his touch, and he’s already counting the hours until his return.