We’d both turned sixteen over the summer and exchanged so many letters in our time apart that I had to secret them in a trunk in the attic instead of between the folds of my mattress, where their growing number made it impossible to sleep comfortably. I wanted to bring them with me as I traveled back to London for my second year of study, but there wasn’t room.
I’d brought with me the letters that mattered most—the ones where Henry addressed me as his “dearest Gabriel,” where he spoke of his desire to see me again face-to-face and how that day would be joyful. He spoke of other desires, things that made my head swim with thoughts that I could confess to no one. He said nothing of his father’s experiments or of what we had discovered beneath the London School, though I suspected it was not often far from his mind.
The day had finally come for Henry and me to be reunited, and I settled into my old room at Miss Laurie’s and waited impatiently for him to arrive.
Every time the door opened, I raced to the top of the stairs. There were many familiar faces, but it wasn’t until the sun was almost set that Henry arrived. When I saw him for the first time after a long summer apart, I was undone.
He was taller, and his shoulders were broader, but his smile was exactly the way I remembered it. The same smile that had been emblazoned in my mind all these long months was now right in front of me.
Henry climbed the stairs, and as he looked up and caught sight of me he grinned. If I had not been holding on to the rail, I would have tumbled straight down the steps. I reached for him, but he stopped. He looked at me with an expression I’d never seen directed at me before. There was fear in his eyes—a look that told me I’d overstepped.
I immediately stepped back, shoving my hands in my pockets. Henry glanced back over his shoulder; Miss Laurie and the other boys had moved into the kitchen. When he was sure we weren’t being observed, Henry took my hand and ushered me into my room, closing the door behind us.
He pressed in close to me but kept his gaze downcast, speaking in a voice that had dropped an octave since the last time I heard it. “It’s very good to see you.”
My heart fluttered. “I’ve been driving myself mad waiting for you. What took you so long?”
Henry sighed. “I meant to be here at dawn to make sure I was already settled when you arrived, but my father kept me for quite a while. He’s long-winded, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
I chuckled. “Yes. Sitting in his class for an entire year showcased that perfectly.”
Henry laughed, and it made the heat rise in my face. He pressed his forehead gently against mine and a long, slow breath escaped his lips. “I have missed you, Gabriel.”
I took his hand and brought it to my chest, just over my heart. “You’re never far from me.”
“Can I ask you something?” Henry asked.
“Anything.”
Henry’s gaze darted around the room. “The letters we exchanged. Where are they?”
It was not the question I was expecting. “I left them at home,” I said. “Hidden.”
Henry let out a long, slow breath and gripped my hand.
“I did bring a few with me, though,” I said.
Henry stared at me. “May I see them?”
I shrugged, and even though I never wanted to be parted from him ever again, I broke his grip and went to my bag to fish out the letters. Henry held out his hand and I gave them to him.
“I’m here now,” he said. “We can say aloud all the things we’ve exchanged in these pages.”
“Can we?” I asked. “Those letters are very dear to me.”
The muscle in his temple flexed as if he were clenching his jaw. “We must be careful. You have no idea—” He stopped short and, in one swift motion, tossed the letters into the fire.
“Henry!” I raced to the hearth as if I could somehow save the paper from being consumed, but it was already too late. The flames licked the pages, charring their edges and rendering them to ash in seconds. “Why would you do that?”
Henry gently took me by the arms and turned me around to face him. “If I am being too forward, please tell me, but I had assumed you’d prefer to hear me speak these things to you instead of reading them on paper.”
“Yes, of course, but—”
Henry gently slid his hands down my arms until our hands were almost touching. “You understand how dangerous this will be. I know you do, otherwise you wouldn’t have hidden the letters. I burned the ones you wrote to me.”
I stared into his face.
“I burned them, but not before I memorized every line, every loop and curl of your terrible handwriting. I can recite them by date. They are not lost, but they now exist only where I can access them. Do you understand?”
I did, and as I thought on it, all I could see was my father’s face in my head—his eyes burning with anger and then fear and then pity. It was the sole reason he had pushed me so hard into the field of medicine. It was a respectable profession, something he hoped I would become lost in. He couldn’t have known what I would find there—the tenuous but all-consuming connection with my dear Henry, and how I wanted to be lost in nothing but his arms.
We fell into a routine. Classes in the morning and into the early afternoon, walks in the park when time permitted, and lunch in the courtyard.
One afternoon, Henry met me in the front room of the boardinghouse and handed me a piece of paper. I looked it over and found it to be an advertisement for a traveling circus that was being held in Sanger’s Grand Amphitheatre. The creased paper showed an elephant walking a tightrope, assisted by a clown in a polka-dotted outfit. Bold black lettering stretched across the page:
SANGER’S GRAND AMPHITHEATRE
SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN TWICE DAILY
SHOWCASING BLONDIN! THE GREATEST PERFORMING ELEPHANT IN THE WORLD!
“I am weary, Gabriel,” Henry said. “Let’s have some fun.”
His eyes were alight, and still what he’d said troubled me. I am weary.
“Well?” Henry asked quietly. “Are you up for it?”
I nodded, and Henry raced off to change his clothes.
Sanger’s Grand Amphitheatre sat on London’s Westminster Bridge Road. When we arrived, the sun had ducked out of sight and the dark of nighttime closed in around us, but the festivities continued on. Outside the building people milled about. A man played a lively tune and some people danced, others drank. An atmosphere of anticipation permeated the air as a man in a bright red jacket with gleaming black buttons and a tall, black top hat emerged from the entryway of the amphitheater. He climbed a pedestal and brought a speaking trumpet to his mouth.
“Come one! Come all! My name is Pablo Fanque, and I welcome you to the grandest night of the season!”
In the crush of people, I found Henry’s hand and grasped it tight. I looked into his face and his wide smile lit me up inside. We pressed forward as the man who called himself Pablo Fanque tipped his hat and ushered us through the grand entryway.
Inside, a crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, directly above a large circular ring enclosing a dirt floor. Four tiers of seating in the round soared high above our heads, and patrons hung over the balconies, whooping and hollering as Pablo Fanque came to the center of the ring. In one bounding leap, he positioned himself atop a narrow platform.
We’d arrived too late to find seating on the upper tiers, so I pressed my hand to Henry’s back and guided him to a spot by the rail on the lowest level.
“Utterson?” a voice asked suddenly.
At the rail was a familiar face—Lanyon. An upperclassman at the London School and a full two years older than Henry and me, he often palled around with my cousin Enfield in his off hours. We had only interacted a handful of times, but he’d always been kind. He smiled warmly and pushed aside his companions to make room for us.
“It’s good to see you,” Lanyon said. He eyed Henry. “And you as well, Jekyll.”
Henry nodded, and I stood at the rail between him and Lanyon.
“This is shaping up to be quite a spectacle,” Lanyon said, running his hand over his chin. “I was regretting allowing my cousin and his friends to drag me here, but now I’m very glad they did.”
I looked at him, and he raised one finely shaped brow. Henry was staring into the center of the ring, and I was glad because my face flushed hot.
“Don’t get yourself worked up,” one of Lanyon’s companions said to him. “Doctor said you’re meant to be resting. We shouldn’t even be here.”
“Are you ill?” I asked.
Lanyon waved his hand dismissively. “My heart. I’m supposed to be keeping it beating in a slow, steady rhythm. But then you show up and well, there’s not much I can do to keep it steady in your presence.”
I was taken aback but I suddenly began to question any trivial interaction I’d ever had with him. I had clearly been so distracted by my adoration of Henry that I hadn’t been able to see anyone else.
“Let us begin!” the ringmaster announced.
I was happy for the distraction. The ringmaster introduced a series of performers; a woman in a cream-colored costume walked a tightrope high over the ground as a troupe of clowns juggled sticks, some of which were on fire. With each new act, Henry and I clapped and cheered when we were prompted, and stayed absolutely silent when a young girl balanced atop another’s shoulders, both of them balanced on a large canvas ball.
“This is magnificent,” Henry said.
There were so many people crowded around that no one seemed to notice our intertwined hands, our shoulders pressing against one another. The heat, the smell of hundreds of warm bodies—under any other circumstances it would have been a miserable situation, but it was all worth it for the anonymity we enjoyed in the crowd.
“And now, if you would be so kind as to dim the lights,” said the ringmaster.
Someone put out several of the torches, and a hush fell over the crowd. The amphitheater became shadowy and still.
The ringmaster removed his hat and pressed it to his chest. “Ladies and gentlemen, friends and foes. You have seen a great many acts this night and I hope you enjoyed them all, but now I present to you something unlike anything you’ve seen before.” The rest of the torchlight was extinguished, and then a beam of brilliant light streamed from somewhere over our heads, illuminating a crouched figure near the rear of the performance area.
A fiddle began to play a slow, somber tune in notes that felt wrong. I tightened my grip on Henry’s hand and he pressed close to me. The figure rose up and only then did I realize it was a person. But their face was covered by a mask of some sort. It looked much like a human face—eyes, nose, and a wide, smiling mouth showing teeth—but it was made of some painted material. The only parts of the performer visible were their shining eyes. The figure contorted their body, twisting and turning around. I stepped back from the rail.
A woman gasped as the figure approached the rail in front of her and bent their back so that their hands and feet were on the ground at the same time. Not a moment later the woman fainted.
I could not take my eyes off the mask—the face rendered there was smiling, but it gave no feeling of comfort. It was not like the clowns who’d come out with their painted faces and bumbling ruckus of a routine.
Suddenly the figure scampered over and stood directly in front of Henry.
It was only then that I realized he was gripping the rail, and sweat had gathered on his furrowed brow.
The strange performer stood in front of him and then, in the blink of an eye, whipped their head around, revealing a second mask plastered on the back of their head. This was no smiling human face—it had large yellow eyes painted on, a gaping hideous mouth with thin lips, and a blackened tongue.
Henry stumbled back and crashed into me. I gripped his jacket and tried to steady him, but soon realized he wasn’t trying to right himself; he was trying to run—to escape.
Lanyon caught Henry by the arm. “Are you all right, Jekyll? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Henry broke his grip and pushed past me. I barely managed to keep my own feet under me as he careened through a mostly silent crowd of onlookers who seemed unsure of what to make of the circus act. I shoved my way through the crowd and followed Henry out into the street, but he didn’t stop.
“Henry!” I called as he dashed through the parked carriages and horses and into a park directly across the street.
When I finally caught up, I found him doubled over, his hands on his knees, chest heaving.
I gently rested my hand on his back. “Are you all right?”
Still trembling, he straightened and looked at me. His skin had a sickly pallor to it, and his eyes were wild and wet. “No,” he said. “I—I don’t know.”
A fog had rolled in and laid across the ground like an undulating blanket of gray. Lamplight lit the small green space, and music wafted in from somewhere along Westminster Bridge Road. A slow tune, but nothing like the terrible music that had played as the performer in their dual masks stalked the amphitheater. As I attempted to console a shaken Henry, little dots of light danced in the fog.
“Henry,” I said. “Henry, look.”
Henry glanced up as dozens of pinpricks of yellow light tumbled through the dark.
“Fireflies,” Henry said. He inhaled deeply and let his shoulders relax. “They shouldn’t be out this time of year.”
I’d never seen fireflies in the city. In the countryside they were everywhere. A pang of homesickness gripped my chest. I watched the lights dance and soon found myself reaching for Henry, who, after a quick glance, slipped his hand into mine.
“What happened in there?” I asked. “You looked so frightened.”
Henry peered into the dark as more and more fireflies descended from the surrounding trees, filling the mist with an ethereal glow.
He shook his head. “I was scared. I’d never seen anything like that before. The mask, it … unsettled me.”
I leaned on his shoulder. “Let’s not speak of it. Let’s just watch these fireflies and pretend we never saw it.”
“I wish it were that easy,” Henry said. “To just close my eyes and not see the terrible thing that’s staring me in the face…”
I turned to him. “Henry—”
He pressed his hand to the side of my face. “I don’t want to talk about it, if that’s all right?”
I nodded, losing myself in the warmth of his touch. The music still played and the warm glow of the damp fog wrapped itself around us. Henry slipped his hand around my waist and began to sway with the music.
“Henry, I’m sorry, but I can’t dance. I’m awful at it.”
He laughed and pulled me closer. “It’s easy. Just follow my lead.”
I stumbled over my own feet, but Henry didn’t miss a single step. As the fiddler in the distance began another tune, I began to pick up the movements.
Suddenly Henry stopped, squaring his shoulders with mine.
“I’m very bad at this—” I said.
Henry slipped his hand under my chin and pulled my face close to his, pressing his lips against mine.
Everything else disappeared. Nothing else mattered. It was only us and the fireflies and the night.