The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers (the little red hen ebook TXT) 📕

once, and I told you, that I had been drawn to it for the scholarship. At the time, I believed that answer to be truthful. Now, in the art world, I am famous and you are rich, but I fear the cost for us was far too steep. It was the mystery that I’d loved. But the mystery—the lore—of Le Cirque Secret is gone for me now. Everything we went through has led here—to a beige wall.

How I’d hoped that people would care about these paintings! Yesterday afternoon as I ate my sandwich, bored teenagers shuffled by like ducks with earpieces, corralled by sour tour guides. One group nodded at the duo of our paintings, then had the audacity to ask where the Monets were displayed.

The reason that I write, however, is that after my foul mood at the musée, yesterday I caught a cab back to the institute with the sole purpose of seeing the journals again. As I opened the vault, I found my hands shaking so hard that it took me two attempts before I could enter the correct code. It had been months since I’d seen them, so I went into the vault and pulled the box where they were stored. I’d longed to hold the composition books in my hands. The real story had been contained here—it had completed the works for me—made the paintings come alive!

Once in the vault, I flipped open the lid and breathed easy. The three composition books were still there, sitting in their plastic. It is here that I don’t know how to begin. I picked them up, so desperate to touch them that I didn’t use gloves. I held the first one in my hands, the cover so old it was like thin fabric. I flipped open the first page and it took me a moment to realize what I was seeing—or not seeing. I was turning page after page of dull, faded, blank paper.

Cecile’s words are gone. The loss of them has made me wonder if they were ever there at all. I doubt myself so much now. The pages are blank and my heart is broken.

In all this time, I’ve begun to reflect. Much of the real story of the loss and the love between Émile and Cecile was not entirely told on the three enchanted canvases. In fact, the paintings and the journals complement each other—Émile and Cecile—their art combining to tell the most fantastical story that Paris has never known existed. The fact that the fucking circus was created so that one of the most powerful daemons in history could find a babysitter for his twin daughters is a tale so absurd that, in the end, no one would believe it.

Giroux is back in fashion these days, so I was asked to update my biography on him. At the end, I found myself struggling yet again on the Ladies of the Secret Circus chapter. The three paintings only proved that Giroux had painted a circus; they failed to validate Le Cirque Secret’s existence. Nothing will ever prove that something so truly fantastic and surreal was once a part of Paris’s fabric. How do you really prove magic? And in the end, do you really want to?

I confess that, for me, something was lost in the quest. Some mystery about the world has been answered, but the solution has dulled something deep in me. Solving mysteries didn’t get me closer to anything. For you, I know it was the loss of your mother. I think of her so often. How she came to Paris to rescue you.

And now the journals are lost, too. I cannot help but feel it was for nothing. I miss the man I once was.

I apologize. I know that I sound dreadful. I wanted you to know. You are, perhaps, the only person who would feel their loss as profoundly as I do.

Your friend, Teddy Barrow

Tonight she was working the night shift at the station. As she sat back in the chair, she cued up “Venus in Furs” and Sam Gopal’s “Escalator,” then let Lou Reed’s wave of discordant strings take her back to that glorious moment on the trapeze. She could feel the beaded costume and the flow of the pent-up magic running through her veins. That heady power had infected her.

Teddy Barrow was right. So much had been lost.

Yet, there had been something bothering her, nicking at her—a theory she had.

Althacazur had been the ultimate seducer. He’d lured her to the circus, and when he thought she might die after absorbing Cecile, he was so desperate for a patron that he’d traded her for her mother. But in the seduction, he’d made her stronger than any of them. Even after the deal was sealed and Esmé was returned, Lara’s powers had remained. To prove her point, she stared at the clock on the wall. As she mouthed the words to Sam Gopal’s “Escalator,” spinning on the turntable, she noticed that it was ten minutes past midnight. She watched the second arm struggle to move, and she watched her phone hold 12:10 A.M. for more than two minutes. I stopped fucking time.

She typed a reply to Teddy.

Teddy.

Come to Kerrigan Falls. I have an idea. It’s crazy, but it might work.

—L

While Lara had stood in this field before trying to summon him, she might have missed the point of his instruction. He was always quick to tell her she missed the point. Perhaps he’d been right all along.

When she’d been cleaning her old room at Cabot Farms, she’d stumbled on the Rumpelstiltskin book; inside it was the pressed clover.

Unlike Audrey, she couldn’t lock off an entire part of herself in a desire to be normal. Plus, her mother never would have left her trapped in a circus as the human patron. And so she had resolved to get her mother out. She’d arrange some deal with Althacazur to take the circus. She knew from Esmé