The tent of the Man Who Bends Light was dim and warm when Ephraim entered. The only illumination came from a few colorful oil lanterns that burned near the roof. Stands for seating ringed the center of the room, where a polished black circular stage dominated the floor. Ephraim found a spot in one of the less crowded sections and waited for the show to begin.

As soon as the last members of the audience had taken their seats, the tent flap closed and all of the lanterns flickered out. Not a speck of light made it through the fabric of the tent for Ephraim to see by. He heard the boy who had waited in line in front of him swear, and a girl sitting nearby whimpered.

“I hate the dark,” she said just loudly enough for Ephraim to hear. “I really do.”

Ephraim wasn’t afraid of the dark, but he wasn’t a great fan of it, either. Fortunately, just a few moments after everything turned black, a pinprick of gold appeared in the center of the tent.

Everyone went quiet, and Ephraim was sure that, like him, they were all staring at the small ball of light with fascination. It grew slowly at first, but then it picked up speed. Within a minute, Ephraim was shielding his eyes from the miniature sun pulsing in the heart of the room. The light was so strong that it filtered through his eyelids and made him see tiny bursts of color.

Then, just when he thought that the radiance was too powerful to bear, it faded. He cautiously squinted through one eye. The sun had turned into a rather spectacular pile of fruit.The fruits were twice the size of Ephraim’s fist, and they were a bright yellow that blushed red on one side. A galaxy of swirling golden pinpricks over the pile made it the brightest spot in the tent. Children whispered curiously to one another as, one by one, they opened their eyes.

“Have you ever tasted the flesh of the mango fruit?” A voice murmured in Ephraim’s ear.

He whipped around, but nobody was sitting as close to him as the voice sounded.

“It tastes like the sun,” the voice whispered in his other ear.

A man appeared next to the pile of mangoes. He was tall with shaggy blond hair, and he wore a battered brown leather coat that swished against the stage even though he was standing still. The man leaned backward into thin air and crossed one ankle over the other, as though he were resting against a solid wall.

He flicked his wrist. A mango leaped from the pile into one of his hands, and a sharp knife materialized in the other. The man slowly cut a wedge out of the fruit, which was the color of an egg yolk inside, and he bit into it. Juice dripped from his fingers.

A strange, sweet smell reached Ephraim’s nose. He had never eaten any fruit more exotic than an orange, and he knew right down to the soles of his boots that the mangoes on the stage would be a hundred times more delicious than anything he had ever tasted. But approaching the man in the leather coat was the sort of idea that was a little too thrilling to be taken seriously.

The others seemed to have the same thought. Many of them were shifting in their seats, and Ephraim even heard a few people smacking their lips, but nobody stood up.

Just when it seemed that they might have to sit there all day, watching the man eat the mango with his gleaming knife, a dark-skinned boy sitting near the stage spoke up. “What’s the sun taste like then?” he asked boldly.

The man’s lips stretched into a smile. “Why don’t you tell me?”

A single mango rolled across the stage toward the boy who had spoken. He stared at it for a moment then bent to pick it up. It fell into neat slices in his hand. He brought one of them to his mouth and took a tiny bite.

His eyes widened.

The man laughed and flicked his hand again. The whole pile of mangoes toppled slowly and began to roll in every direction. Hands reached out from the audience to snatch them up as soon as they came within reach. When Ephraim caught one, it sliced itself for him, and juice ran down his knuckles.

Surprised, he accidentally dropped a couple of slices, and they evaporated before they could hit the ground. He stared at the remaining fruit in astonishment. Was it even real? It looked real and felt real and smelled real. He picked a particularly delicious-looking wedge and bit into it. It tasted mostly like the sun and just a little like his mother’s famous peach pie. That was real enough for Ephraim.

The man strode to the center of the stage, and the gold sparks danced around him. “I am the Man Who Bends Light,” he said. “Watch, and I will show you magic. Watch, and I will show you your dreams.”

Ephraim’s dreams had never been half as wonderful as the things he saw that day.

The tent faded out of existence, and Ephraim opened his eyes to a world made out of sparkling white and icy blue. He breathed sharp air into his lungs. A frosty wind stung his cheeks. Behind him, something made an odd trumpeting sound, and when Ephraim turned to see what it was, his booted feet crunched in the snow.

Ephraim wasn’t alone in this strange new place. A line of stout black-and-white birds waddled past. They were the trumpeters. When he looked around he saw that there were other children nearby as well. The Lightbender, as Ephraim had decided to call him for convenience’s sake, had somehow brought his whole audience to Antarctica to see penguins.

One after another, Ephraim’s group of penguins fell on their bellies and slid across the ice. They were fat and sleek. Ephraim reached out toward the nearest one, and it snapped at him with its beak.

“Honk!”

“All right.” He raised his hands into the air. “I won’t pet you.”

The penguin eyed him suspiciously then went back to skidding on its belly. Ephraim tagged along after it. He had only ever seen illustrations of penguins before, and he’d thought that they looked solemn, as though they had dressed for a funeral. But they were such funny birds in person. They paddled against the ice with their wings and feet just like they were swimming. They trumpeted and nipped at one another while they played a rowdy game of follow the leader right to the edge of the ice.

Ephraim stopped a few feet away from that edge. The ocean was a blue so deep it was almost black. He wasn’t sure what kind of creatures swam in water that dark and cold, but he felt certain they had very sharp teeth. The penguins honked their good-byes and splashed in without a trace of fear. Ephraim waved as the last disappeared beneath the waves.

Before he could feel disappointed that they had gone, the world changed again.

A chariot pulled by four horses roared past. The air was made of dust and heat, horse sweat and sunlight. The children from the Lightbender’s show had joined an enormous crowd of ancient Romans who were cheering for charioteers as they raced around a track at violent speeds. The girl beside Ephraim shrieked as another chariot charged by them.

“Are you okay?” he shouted over the noise of the crowd.

“I’m not sure!” she shouted back.

He understood. They were so close to the track that he could feel every hoofbeat. It was like thunder in his chest. And the charioteers! They drove their horses so wildly around the curves that Ephraim was sure they were going to crash. The chariots would splinter, and the drivers would be ground between hard earth and pounding hooves. It was almost too much, but at the same time, as the screams of the crowd swelled around him, Ephraim wished it would never end.

He opened his eyes as wide as he could, and he tried to take in every bit of it. I am inside history, he realized. And it is so much more than it is in books.

When the race ended, Ephraim found himself watching a meteor shower over a desert at night. Then he stood on the edge of a cliff, looking down at a sprawling city. He watched a fawn being born in a meadow. He tasted strange spiny fruits that were almost as good as mangoes. Sometimes he was with the others. Sometimes he was alone. For a long time, he stood at the prow of an old sailing ship by himself and watched a pod of whales. They breached the roiling surface of the sea and shot white geysers into the air.

Each new experience seemed better than the last, but when Ephraim found himself traveling on a log raft down a wide black river, he knew he must be in the best place of all—the jungle. The air smelled of damp soil and decaying vegetation, and the humidity plastered his hair to his forehead. Giant spiderwebs stretched from tree to tree overhead, and insects hummed in his ears.

Ephraim’s father was a fan of adventure stories, and sometimes before bed, he would read to Ephraim about great explorers of the past. Father liked to learn about famous sailors, but Ephraim’s favorite stories had always been about the deep jungles of the world. Pretty much all of the sea had been sailed, as far as he was concerned. The jungle was different. There were parts of the forests so hidden that no man had ever seen them. And that meant that a brave someone, maybe a brave someone named Ephraim Tuttle, could be the very first.

The raft drifted lazily toward the riverbank, and animals with bright eyes watched from the shadows as Ephraim made his way ashore. Mud sucked at his feet. Leaves as big as umbrellas slapped his face. Real jungle mud, he thought happily. Real jungle leaves!

He found a twisting path through the forest and followed it. When a rustle overhead caught his attention, he looked up to see monkeys swinging through the canopy. They moved through the trees so easily, like it was nothing special at all. They could, thought Ephraim, be a whole new species of monkey. I could be the very first person to see them ever.

This was such a wonderful idea that he decided it must be true.

He walked on, trying to see everything at once and failing miserably. The jungle was the most alive place he had ever been. Centipedes as long as his arm scurried along the ground. The monkeys chattered overhead. Butterflies the size of swallows drank from jewel-colored flowers in the dappled light.

It’s almost perfect, Ephraim thought.

He stopped walking. Almost? he asked himself. He was traveling through the heart of the jungle, just like a great explorer. What could be more perfect than that?

“My father,” he said. The jungle flickered around him like it was trying to decide whether it ought to be something else. Suddenly, Ephraim felt a hand on his shoulder. The Lightbender towered over him, his face expressionless.

“Are you quite certain?” he asked. “It will not be real, you know.”

Somehow, Ephraim knew what he was asking. He swallowed the lump in his throat. “I . . . I’m sure.”