Circus Mirandus

Micah and Jenny plan to take turns sleeping so that they can watch the window, but Micah feels too keyed up to sleep, so he doesn’t disturb Jenny, who is asleep in their one sleeping bag. He watches the window fixedly but eventually drifts off himself.

They wake up when Chintzy gets tangled with Jenny and the sleeping bag as she is trying to eat their peanut butter crackers. Jenny screams in fright.

Micah asks Chintzy whether the Lightbender can help his grandfather. Chintzy confirms that the Lightbender promised to help, so he will come.

After Chintzy leaves, Jenny worriedly suggests that she seemed evasive. Micah thinks that Jenny will surely believe his story about the magical circus after having met Chintzy, but instead, she suggests that she could be a genetically modified parrot.

Micah and Jenny wake up to hear Gertrudis yelling about feathers in Ephraim’s room. She concludes that it must have been Micah’s fault.

At school, Micah feels distracted by the excitement of Chintzy arriving. He and Jenny do their presentation.

Suddenly, sitting at his desk, Micah feels the wind ruffle his hair and notebook, although he is inside the classroom, with no windows open. He looks up at the quipu; the knots that spelled the names of his classmates now read, “Midnight. Follow the wind” (148).

The narrative flashes back to Ephraim’s youth. A small ball of light illuminates the darkness of the Lightbender’s tent. It glows in intensity until Ephraim must shield his eyes. The light turns into a bowl of bright fruit, and a voice whispering in Ephraim’s ear tells him that mangoes taste like sunshine. Mangoes roll to the children and slice themselves. The Lightbender appears, leaning against thin air as if it’s a wall.

The children are spirited to a snowy world with penguins and then to a Roman colosseum with horse-drawn chariots. Next, they watch a meteor in a dark night sky. Then, they’re taken to a city, then Ephraim is alone on a ship’s prow, and then they’re in a jungle. He asks to see his father. The Lightbender appears and warns him that it won’t be real.

Ephraim finds himself in his house; his mother says that the war is over. Obidiah Tuttle walks in and kisses Ephraim’s mother.

Ephraim goes to the Lightbender’s show every week, always experiencing the same ending of his father returning. These pretend reunions fill Ephraim with hope and allow him to tolerate his father’s real-life absence.

After the Lightbender’s last show, Ephraim remains behind to thank him but is overwhelmed and tongue-tied. Surprising them both, Ephraim asks to show the Lightbender a magic trick; Ephraim ties his bootlace into a complicated knot that the Lightbender cannot untie but that Ephraim can untie with a single nudge.

They talk about the circus and Ephraim’s life. Ephraim reassures the Lightbender that he understands that the illusion of his father returning isn’t real.

Ephraim senses that it is time for him to leave; it is the end of his seventh day. The Lightbender offers him a miracle of his choice. At first, Ephraim is tempted to ask for his father to return, but then he remembers his father saying that he saved a person’s life; he reasons that the needs of others are important, not just his own. He asks if he can save his miracle for later and the Lightbender agrees.

Jenny suggests that Micah might have imagined the message he saw in the quipu. Micah is frustrated with her skepticism. He’s shocked when Jenny insists that she will sneak out and come with him at midnight.

Micah gets home and goes to Ephraim’s room; he is sleeping, and he looks sick and shrunken. He looks at a photo of Ephraim with his wife, Victoria, who is deceased.

Ephraim wakes up. Micah tells him that he is going to go to Circus Mirandus that night. Ephraim makes him promise to enjoy himself as well as worrying about Ephraim’s miracle. Ephraim gives Micah his bootlace for luck. Micah tells Ephraim about Jenny, and Ephraim wonders if the circus is the right place for her. Micah asks about Chintzy’s visit, but Ephraim is evasive and urges Micah to leave the room to avoid Gertrudis.

Circus Mirandus has abruptly relocated to Peal.

Chintzy tells the Lightbender that she saw a framed photo of Victoria on Ephraim’s wall. The Lightbender tries to silence her, but she insists on telling him more—she believes that Micah might be Victoria’s grandchild. Chintzy says that Ephraim and Victoria have “hatched eggs with each other” (192), making the Lightbender laugh.

The narrative flashes back to when Micah’s grandmother, Victoria, is a child.

Thirteen-year-old Victoria Starling’s father tends to uproot their life in pursuit of his strange goals, such as becoming a milliner of unusual, elaborate hats and then a furrier in a remote part of Canada. Next, he decides to become a missionary to a tribe of “heathens” in the Amazonian rainforest.

Their plane crashes on the way there, but Victoria remarkably survives, floating to the ground uninjured.

Realizing that she can fly, she flies south, looking for fame and fortune. She comes across Circus Mirandus. Mr. Head feels that she is too volatile and overconfident, but the Lightbender says that Victoria is only a girl and that they should give her a chance.

The narrative returns to the present. Jenny meets Micah outside of his house. They follow the wind, as instructed. Jenny suggests that the circus might be at the recreation department complex, as it is a big open space. They arrive there. At first, there is nothing, but then Micah can hear and see the circus. Jenny cannot. Realizing that it is Jenny’s lack of belief in magic that is blocking her ability to see the circus, Micah encourages her to say, “[I]t’s a magic circus,” like she believes it (216). She does and can suddenly see it too.

The ticket taker, Geoffery, is exactly as Ephraim described him. Micah produces the quipu when he asks for a ticket. Geoffery explains that it is an invitation, not a ticket, but concedes that Micah can come in. Micah insists that Jenny should be allowed to accompany him, and Geoffery agrees.

The circus smells delicious and is filled with lights and exotic performers, whom children crowd around. Micah and Jenny eat flowing candies and see fairies. Micah sees the Lightbender’s tent, but they aren’t allowed in. The Strongman guarding the Lightbender’s tent recognizes Micah as “the Tuttle boy” and urges them to go to the menagerie, as Mr. Head wants to see Micah (227).