PROLOGUE — I Am Born to Catch Light
I never know what my mother sees in me when she named me Joy—perhaps it is a prayer she cannot keep. She leaves me at the circus gates before I even learn how to hold a smile, before I know the weight of a paper hat or the sound of laughter when it doesn’t belong to me. Wonderhouse takes me in and paints me white. It shows me how to tilt my head just so, how to curl my mouth into a sad Pierrot line, and how to fall softly enough to make the crowd laugh without ever feeling the warmth myself.
But long before I learn the act, I see them: the little sparks.
They are tiny, iridescent flickers people shed like dander when something inside them brightens. A warm hug glows gold, smelling of toasted sugar and sun-warmed hay. A shared laugh flickers pink and white, sharp as shaved ice and wild strawberries. Finding a forgotten hat shimmers soft blue, smelling of rainwater on cold stone. The sigh after crying swirls lavender, cooling like a spring storm. To everyone else, these moments vanish. To me, they hang in the air like floating fire waiting to be caught.
I catch them; I always have. It is the only thing I am good at. I keep them in a glass jar tied with a black ribbon. When a spark hits the glass, the jar vibrates with a low, thrumming notethat only I can feel—a sound like a moth's wings beating against a lantern. At night, the ribbon warms my wrist, as if the jar is trying to remind me that I am alive, even if I do not feel like I am.
My curse is simple and cruel. Beautiful in the way broken glass glitters.
I can gather Joy, I can hold it, and I can give it—but I cannot make my own. Not one spark. Not even a whisper. I have tried. I have smiled until my cheeks ache beneath the greasepaint. I have danced my soft-silly dances, letting the crowd’s laughter fall over me like confetti I cannot touch. Nothing ever blooms. I feel a literal hollow in my chest where my own sparks should be, a cold ache that never truly leaves. Wonderhouse survives because I feed it. The rope lights made of fireflies, the lullaby carousel, the memory-stitched tents—they all glow because I empty myself so the circus can shine.
Some nights, the performers whisper about another carnival. A red-and-black storm that eats more than applause. A place where Joy doesn’t drift—it is taken. We hear its distant whistles on the wind, a sound like a scream trying to be a song. I hear the stories, fold them into the paper hat I still keep, and pretend I’m not afraid that the world might be hungrier than I am.
Then he arrives.The boy without light.
Milo walks into Wonderhouse like a shadow that forgot how to cast itself. No sparks. No color. The emptiness around him is so sharp I feel it in my ribs like a match struck inside me that will not burn. I should stay quiet. I should paint my smile and collect my sparks.
But his silence looks too much like mine.
I reach into my jar. I take a soft gold spark—one that smells of heavy blankets and home—and I press it to his chest, breaking every rule the Ringmaster ever gave me. I break myself a little, too. The spark sinks into him like dawn remembering how torise, and I dim. I feel the cold spill through me, quiet and patient, the way winter takes a field.
He looks at me like he doesn’t understand what warmth is, but it finds him anyway. I gave it to him. I couldn't stop myself. Maybe I wanted proof that I am not just a jar with legs.
Standing here in the glow that isn't mine, I know the truth: some girls are born to gather light, and some are born to break open and become it.
I don’t know yet which one I am. But the jar in my hands trembles, and the lanterns lean toward me. This is the breath before rebirth. This is the last time I will ever be just a girl painted in sorrow.
The next time I fall, I think I might glow.
Chapter 1
Little Mirth
I look into the glass,but the girl staring back isn't me—she’s just the vessel Wonderhouse needs. My brown, ordinary face drowns under the cool greasepaint until my freckles vanish and my mouth becomes a quiet red curve. The white greasepaint is cool as wet clay, a mask of cloying powder and old wax that suffocates the girl beneath. I dip my fingers into it and draw it over my skin in slow, practiced strokes.
A Pierrot should look like she has already heard the punchline,my Ringmaster once told me.Just not the one she wanted. I tilt my head the way he taught me and study the girl in the mirror. Black liner around my eyes, feathered up at the corners. Little diamonds of shadow painted beneath each eye, like permanent tears that forgot how to fall.
Joy is gone. Little Mirth looks back.
Behind me, the dressing tent sighs and creaks. Canvas snaps above, tugged by the night wind. Someone argues in hushed tones at the far end, words blurred by the beats of practice drums. Metal clinks, glass knocks against glass, a trapeze bar swings and thuds lightly against its post. The circus warms up like a body waking.
"Two minutes, Little Mirth."
The call comes from outside the flap, the Ringmaster's voice smooth and bright. The title curls in the air like smoke.
"Two minutes," I echo softly, though he cannot hear me. My breath fogs the glass for a moment, blurring my painted eyes, and then fades.
It is almost time to go onstage. Which means it is almost time to steal. I twist toward the little crate beside my stool. The jar waits there, half hidden under a folded shawl. Ordinary glass. Black ribbon knotted around the neck. The ribbon is fraying; I like it better that way. Things that fray feel honest. Inside, faint threads of light drift and turn, slow as dust in a sunbeam. I can see them even with the lid on, even in the dim tent—gold, pink-white, soft blue, lavender, amber. A quiet storm in a bottle. The jar hums under my fingertips when I touch it—a low note in my bones, not my ears.
"Behave," I whisper, thumb tracing the edge of the lid. The light stirs in answer, like I have said its name. Joy is what my mother called me when she handed me to the Ringmaster and never came back. Little Mirth is what Wonderhouse calls me when I make the crowd exhale.
But this is what I really am: a thief of small miracles.
"Joy," the Ringmaster says now, his voice closer. He never uses my stage name when we are alone. The flap twitches with his shadow. "Places, darling."
I tighten the black ribbon once—a small knot, a small prayer. Then I leave the jar in the crate and stand. I pad barefoot over the straw, each step a small crunch. The scent of sawdust, sweat, and sugar wraps around me in layers: caramel from the popcorn stand, sharp vinegar from pickles, smoke from the torch jugglers. Under it all, a faint metallic tang that never leaves—the taste of rusted tent stakes and old rain.