The Bootlace Magician Read online

  Micah gazed up. It seemed like ages had passed since the fire show started.

  As he watched, the flames morphed, shaping themselves into a mythical creature with a spike-crested head, a long tail, and bat-like wings. The dragon roared silently.

  The Lightbender hmmed. Micah looked over at him and saw the corners of his mouth lifting mischievously. All at once, the fiery dragon turned a deep blue-green.

  “That’s my favorite color,” said Micah.

  “Is it?” The Lightbender gave him a knowing look.

  Micah wondered if everyone could see the teal flames, or if his guardian had spun the illusion for him alone.

  The Lightbender turned to go.

  “Are you sure I shouldn’t stay?” Micah asked. “I could shovel sawdust with the Strongmen. Or fetch water buckets to help refill Fish’s tank.”

  He figured if an Idea wanted to look like a fish, then it probably wanted plenty of water to swim around in, too.

  “A generous thought. But the Strongmen can shovel more wet sawdust in a moment than the two of us could manage if we worked until dawn. And we will let the Inventor deal with the aquarium. It is one of her magical creations, and she no doubt has a clever way of refilling it.”

  These were good points, but they left Micah feeling deflated.

  He kept running into the same problem. Whenever he tried to lend a hand around Circus Mirandus, there was always someone who could do the job quicker and better than he could. Of course, it was smarter to let the magicians who knew what they were doing take care of things, but never being able to help in any real way reminded Micah that he was still an outsider.

  And it was even worse when the mess that needed cleaning up was one he’d made himself.

  The Lightbender was watching him closely. He cleared his throat. “I realize the Idea did not respond in the way you expected,” he said, “but it was clearly enthused by your offer of friendship.”

  Micah considered the way Fish had whacked the wall of the aquarium with his tail. That could have been a friendly gesture, couldn’t it? And perhaps he should think of Fish’s decision to eat the knot as a compliment.

  “That’s true,” he said, smiling. “Maybe he did appreciate it.”

  Buoyed up by this happy thought, Micah followed the Lightbender back to his tent.

  Over their heads, the teal flames flickered and died. When Micah looked up one last time, nothing was left of the magnificent dragon but a drifting skeleton of smoke.

  TERPSICHORE

  Micah slept until noon the next day, and even then, it was only the sound of loud splashing that woke him.

  Fish! his sleep-addled brain thought. Not again!

  He fought to get out from under his covers, struggling against the weight of the oversize patchwork quilt the Strongmen had given him as a welcome-to-the-circus present. He fell out of his bed and flopped around on the floor for a few seconds before he realized that the splashing sound couldn’t possibly be coming all the way from the menagerie.

  In fact, it was coming from his own bathroom.

  “Chintzy,” he groaned, his face smooshed into the soft blue rug. “You’d better not be in my sink.”

  He was answered by the familiar whom-whom-whom sound of the messenger parrot beating her wings to dry them off. His bathroom would be completely splattered.

  “Don’t use my toothbrush on your toenails!” he shouted.

  “Mind your business!” Chintzy squawked back.

  So, she was definitely using his toothbrush.

  “Yuck,” Micah muttered, finally extricating himself from the quilt. He stood and saw that his bedroom must have been trying to wake him for a while. The lamps were shining at full brightness, illuminating a cozy space that was starting to look familiar, if not quite like home.

  Micah hadn’t had many possessions when he moved in with the Lightbender, just a couple boxes full of clothes and knickknacks. He’d been touched when he arrived to find that everyone at the circus had pitched in to decorate his new room.

  The magicians had given him odds and ends from their own tents. A small bookcase doubled as Micah’s bedside table, and two green glass floor lamps turned themselves on whenever they thought he needed light. The chest of drawers in one corner folded anything you put in it, which was so convenient he didn’t even mind the odd creases it left down the fronts of his shirts. And, of course, there was the patchwork quilt, so large that even after Micah had spread it back out over the bed it trailed off the edges and onto the rug.

  He dressed and threw open the flap that led into the bathroom, where he found his toothbrush lying suspiciously in a puddle. Chintzy, who didn’t look even a little bit guilty, was standing on the edge of the sink, carefully rearranging her bright red tail feathers with her beak.

  “Is this going to be an everyday thing?” Micah asked her. “Why can’t you use the birdbath in the menagerie?”

  “Ha!” Chintzy squawked around a mouthful of feathers. “Me! Use public facilities! Why don’t you go use one of the other humanbaths if you don’t like sharing?”

  “But . . .” Micah didn’t know which he should address first—the fact that humanbaths wasn’t a word or the fact that he would like sharing fine if the person he was sharing with didn’t leave wet feathers and bird poop on the floor.

  “Anyway,” said Chintzy, shaking her tail at him, “I should be allowed to take a bath because I brought you mail.”

  Micah’s annoyance evaporated. Mail meant a letter from Jenny Mendoza. When he had left her behind in Peal, she had promised to write him weekly, and of course she had proven better than her word. She’d written him a long letter every other day, and she had even come up with a way of keeping Chintzy happy about making so many deliveries.

  “What was it this time?” Micah asked.

  “Guava jam!” Chintzy said. “A whole spoonful of it! And she used my special plate and . . .”

  Micah nodded politely while Chintzy described, for the dozenth time, the ceramic plate Jenny had bought for her at a thrift store. Jenny had painted the parrot’s name on it, and when Chintzy was scheduled to arrive she filled it with treats and left it on her nightstand beside her latest letter.

  The treats were always different, and Jenny refused to tell Chintzy what they were going to be in advance. This made the parrot intensely curious. Just last week she’d sneaked into Porter’s tent in the middle of the night and woken the magician to demand that he open the mailbox Door he always used to send her to Peal.

  Micah brushed his teeth as best he could with his fingers while Chintzy waxed poetic about her plate and her jam and her favorite human, Jenny, who she was sure wouldn’t mind sharing a bathroom with a highly important parrot.

  “And when I got back here, I flew straight to the kitchen to tell them about guava jam, and do you know what I found out?”

  Micah spat into the sink. “What?”

  “They have guava jam,” she said. “Right here! At our circus!”

  She peered at Micah through one bright yellow eye, clearly expecting him to be flabbergasted.

  “Wow!” he said, trying to look impressed. “That’s great news, Chintzy!”

  The kitchen magicians at Circus Mirandus could whip up pretty much every food you had ever heard of. But Chintzy was excited, and Micah didn’t want to burst her bubble. “I’d better ask if they’ll let me try some of that jam before they run out.”

  “Yes,” she said, bobbing her head. “And you should hurry because they’ve only got three and a half jars. I counted. You should bring me one of them. With a spoon. And a plate with my name on it. And the spoon could have my name on it, too.”

  “Right,” Micah said.

  “But not now, because the Head was in the kitchen when I flew in. He said he wanted to see you in the menagerie, and I told him you would come right over.”
/>   “You—when was this?” said Micah, hastily drying his hands on his shorts. “Was he upset?”

  “No. It was before my bath. Hey, don’t run away! I brought mail!”

  * * *

  When Micah arrived at the menagerie, he found it as bright and busy as ever. The daytime animals were all out and enjoying the company of dozens of jubilant children. A little boy was riding the two-headed camel. A trio of girls were running their fingers over a llama’s glittery golden wool. And Big Jean the elephant was at her chalkboard, writing trivia questions for a competitive group of teenagers.

  The sawdust was dry, and Fish swam peacefully around his aquarium, which was filled to the rim. It looked like last night had never happened.

  Micah spent a couple of minutes trying to spot the manager in the crowd, but then he heard a happy chuffing sound beside him. He squinted, and sure enough, he spied pawprints the size of Frisbees in the sawdust.

  “Hi, Bibi,” he said. “Long time no see.”

  Micah thought this was a funny joke, but it was hard to tell if the invisible tiger agreed.

  He stuffed his hands into his pockets and leaned toward Bibi’s footprints. “Chintzy said Mr. Head wanted to talk to me. He’s not mad, right?”

  The Lightbender had said the manager wouldn’t be, and Micah knew his guardian wouldn’t lie to him. But he couldn’t help feeling a little nervous when Bibi snorted and the sawdust shifted. New pawprints appeared, heading across the menagerie.

  Micah followed the trail, waving at Fish as he passed the aquarium. Fish whacked the glass with his tail.

  Definitely a friendly gesture, Micah decided, feeling pleased.

  He was surprised when Bibi’s footprints led him to the seam that hid Terpsichore’s private paddock. Terpsichore was the only unicorn at Circus Mirandus—a sweet, aqua-colored foal. Micah knew everyone, especially Mr. Head, was worried about her. She had been found wandering the circus’s meadow a couple weeks before Micah arrived, and she was too young to be away from her mother. Sometimes, the foal refused to eat, and she wasn’t growing as she should.

  “Am I supposed to go in there?” Micah asked Bibi uncertainly. He’d never been invited before.

  A second later the seam opened, and Mirandus Head himself stepped out. He snapped the fabric shut behind him.

  “Ah,” he said, nodding to Micah. “I see Chintzy is more reliable than I thought. Hello, Micah Tuttle.”

  Micah swallowed. “Hello, Mr. Head.”

  The manager of Circus Mirandus looked a little like a military version of Santa Claus. His white hair was cropped short, and when his sleeves were rolled up for work, as they were now, you could see the compass rose tattooed on one of his muscular biceps.

  Mr. Head was always kind to Micah when their paths crossed, but it was hard to forget that he hadn’t been eager to let Micah live at his circus.

  “I’m sorry about Fish.” Micah tried to keep his spine straight in case good posture mattered to the manager. “I shouldn’t have given him the knot without asking you if it was all right.”

  Mr. Head reached down and stroked Bibi’s head. It looked like he was petting a particularly firm patch of air. “That would have been best,” he said. “But it was all right, and no harm was done.”

  “I thought I’d poisoned him,” Micah admitted.

  He expected Mr. Head to say that such a thing was impossible. Instead, the most peculiar expression crossed his face. It was like he was looking right at Micah, only deeper. As if he could see beyond skin and blood and bone to something else. The look lasted for less than a moment, but Micah could feel it, like a layer of frost against his skin, the cold sinking in further than it should have.

  Then the feeling passed.

  “No, Micah Tuttle,” the manager said. “You’re not the kind of person who can poison an Idea.”

  Micah wasn’t sure what to say to that.

  The manager acted as if nothing unusual had happened. “Your guardian and I had a talk about you this morning.”

  Micah tried not to look alarmed.

  “You’ve been traveling with us for long enough now to settle in, and we both think you’re ready for some new responsibilities.”

  “Of course!” Micah said at once. “I’ve been practicing my knots every day.”

  “I’m glad you’re eager,” said the manager, “but the chore the Lightbender has volunteered you for doesn’t involve knots.”

  “I’ll do anything,” Micah said earnestly.

  “I like enthusiasm in a young magician.” Mr. Head smiled. “Follow me.”

  * * *

  Terpsichore’s paddock was one of the most beautiful places Micah had ever seen. It was pleasantly warm, with springy emerald-green grass underfoot and piles of sweet-smelling hay in every corner. The tent ceiling was transparent, so that the midday sun shone down into the room, the light mingling with a soft glow coming from the walls themselves.

  Music played, but it wasn’t the song Micah usually associated with Circus Mirandus. This was classical music instead of pipes and drums—all fluting and tinkling and merry little trills.

  The music dissolved Micah’s worries in an instant. For a few blissful seconds, he forgot that he was trying to prove himself to Mr. Head. He could just lie down in this soft grass and sleep—

  A furious trumpeting sound blasted through the music, and Micah looked across the paddock to see an angry baby unicorn charging toward him. Terpsichore might have been small, but in that moment, she didn’t look anything like a sickly, motherless infant. Her head was lowered and her stubby horn gleamed in the sunlight.

  He froze.

  A second before the unicorn speared him, a strong hand grabbed Micah by the elbow and yanked him out of the way.

  “Mr. Head!” said Micah. “What’s going on?”

  The manager ignored him and called out in a cheerful voice to someone across the paddock. “You seem to have lost control of her!”

  Terpsichore ran right into a wall of tent fabric. It stretched, then bounced back like a trampoline, sending the aqua-colored foal reeling. She was unharmed but obviously enraged, and she plunged forward again, jabbing at the fabric with her horn.

  “She disapproved of my attempts to alter her mind,” said the Lightbender.

  Micah had been so focused on the unicorn that he hadn’t realized his guardian was here, too. The Lightbender stood with his back pressed against the opposite wall of the paddock. His leather coat didn’t seem to have any new scuffs or scratches, but his hair looked even more like a scrambled bird’s nest than normal.

  “I’ve barely managed to conceal myself from her.” The illusionist had an unusual note of frustration in his voice.

  “That’s because she’s a clever young lady.” Mr. Head smiled proudly at the unicorn.

  Micah inched himself behind the manager. The clever young lady was making sharp whistling noises and attacking the tent fabric as if it were her most hated enemy.

  “I fear she is more ill-tempered than clever,” the Lightbender replied, “but Micah can handle her.”

  “Me?” said Micah, wondering what he had done to give his guardian the impression that he was some kind of expert unicorn wrangler.

  The manager pulled him forward and clapped him on the shoulder. “It was good of you to agree to help.”

  “Noble even,” the Lightbender murmured. He hadn’t moved away from the wall, and he had a distant look in his eyes that made Micah think he was still trying to use his magic on the foal. “Micah, just walk over to Terpsichore and offer to pet her.”

  “What? No!”

  “Unicorns like children,” the Lightbender said.

  “They do,” Mr. Head agreed. “And they are herd animals. Perhaps what Terpsichore needs is a friend.”

  Suddenly, Micah understood how he had ended up in this position. He�
��d been trying to make friends with a fish last night. No doubt the Lightbender thought he could do with another animal pal.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Of course,” said Mr. Head.

  “At the moment,” said the Lightbender.

  “She needs to eat. See if you can persuade her to take a few bites of this.” Mr. Head steered Micah toward a wooden bucket that lay on its side a few feet away. The bucket’s contents had spilled, and a mass of something that looked like half-melted yellow marshmallows covered the grass.

  Mr. Head scooped a double handful of the food into the bucket and passed it to Micah. Then he pursed his lips and whistled an elaborate tune.

  Terpsichore stopped jousting with the wall. She tilted her head.

  Mr. Head whistled again, and before Micah could say, “Are you sure about this?” the foal rounded on him.

  * * *

  Unicorns did not like children. They liked chasing children.

  This was a very important distinction, and Micah wasn’t sure he should forgive the Lightbender or the manager for not mentioning it.

  Micah dashed around the paddock, the bucket swinging awkwardly from one arm, while Terpsichore capered in circles around him. Every time he thought about stopping, the unicorn would lunge, her horn pointed at the center of Micah’s tender stomach.

  The Lightbender was still hiding against the wall, calmly giving advice that just had to be wrong. He was saying things like “Hold still.” And “Just stroke her mane.” And “Micah, I promise, you are completely safe.”

  Meanwhile, the manager seemed to think it was helpful to explain the unicorn’s feelings—“Oh! She’ll enjoy her lunch much more after some exercise.” Or, “She’s so proud her horn has come in. Let her jab you a little. It’s not sharp yet.”

  It might have gone on until nightfall, but on his next circuit of the paddock, Micah tripped and sprawled across the grass. He clenched his eyes shut and waited for the inevitable pain of being trampled and speared.