“Can I ask you something?” he says, his gaze flicking to the jar I carry under my shawl. “You said you gather Joy. You can see it. But you can’t make it?”
I freeze as Madame Lys’s words echo in my mind:You were shaped to never claim Joy for yourself.
“No. I can’t,” I tell him.
“That sounds lonely too,” he murmurs. My breath hitches. He recognizes my landscape of loneliness.
He asks if giving people Joy takes something from me. I admit that it makes me weak, always costing a little at a time.
“Then don’t give it to me,” he says firmly. “I don’t want to take more from someone who already gives too much.”
No one has ever said that to me before. They worry about the circus or the show, but never about me. When I tell him that sometimes giving isn't about being asked, he looks at me with eyes like the quiet surface of a winter lake.
“It’s strange,” he whispers. “When I stand near you… the emptiness feels less heavy.”
It isn't a bright spark, but it's the closest thing to one Milo has felt in years.
“Stay close,” I whisper back.
The circus breathes differently now, as if it senses the start of something it was not built to survive. I began to hum the melody of the Wonderhouse lullaby, the words barely more than a breath:
“Close your eyes, don’t let it go
If your heart feels small and cold
We will warm it soft and slow
With a story made of gold.”
Milo didn't say anything, but for the first time, his shadow didn't look quite so heavy.
Chapter 7
The Ringmaster’s Burden
By late afternoon,Wonderhouse feels stretched thin.
Not broken. Not collapsing. Just… strained. Like a violin string tuned one note too high. The performers sense it in small ways—they snap at each other over nothing, they drop props, they practice longer than necessary. Even the fireflies flicker unevenly along the ropes, blinking in jittery rhythms.
And I know why. Milo’s emptiness is changing the air. Not infecting it, but reshaping the space around him the way cold reshapes breath. The circus is alive enough to notice.
The Ringmaster finds me near the backstage washbasins. I hear his footsteps before I see him—deliberate, measured, wrapped in the faint metallic jingle of the charms on his coat.
“Joy,” he says gently. He never uses that tone unless something is wrong. “You spoke to him.”
It isn’t a question. I nod as we begin to walk through the side paths, weaving between support poles and crates. Wherever we walk, he carries a deliberate silence, one loaded with knowledge.
“Joy,” he says, “do you remember the day I found you at the gates?” I remember everything—the cold, the fear, the way my mother didn't look back. “You were so quiet. But the air around you was alive.”
He stops and turns to face me. “Wonderhouse survives because of you.” I look around and see it clearly: the rope lights are dimmer, the tents sagging, the lanterns flickering like tired hearts. “Tonight, the circus is hungrier than usual. And it is because of the boy you met.”
“Milo,” I say, my throat tight.
“Yes. Milo. He carries nothing. “And Wonderhouse does not know how to breathe around that.” He warns me that Milo's emptiness leaves a space the circus feels compelled to fill—with my Joy. “You must be careful. If you give too much?—”
“I won’t,” I interrupt.
“Joy,” he warns, his eyes softening in a way I hate because it means he sees the truth. “You are the vessel. Not the lantern.”