Circus Mirandus had rarely been as stirred up as it was on its first night in Peal. Most of the performers still didn’t know why they had been dropped onto a new continent so unexpectedly, and the manager was endlessly calling staff meetings to keep everyone up-to-date. Tents had to be set to rights, and schedules had to be rearranged, and of course there was the usual kerfuffle with the menagerie, because no matter how many times they’d done it, the animals still thought that traveling by Door was a rotten idea.

Chintzy was busy as well. When she wasn’t zipping here and there with messages, she was trying to convince everyone to use “Lightbender,” even though the Man Who Bends Light was being stubborn about the new name.

The Lightbender was trying to put his tent in order when Chintzy flew in to share the latest news. Because of the sudden move, his books were scattered everywhere, his clothes were strewn all over the floor, and Chintzy’s perch was missing. She sat on top of his dressing table while he stalked back and forth amid the wreckage.

“It was Victoria,” Chintzy squawked. “In the picture on the old man’s wall. He didn’t want to talk about it, but it was her.”

“That is impossible,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense. How could Ephraim possibly know her?”

“I’m not a liar!”

“I never called you one.” He picked up a lantern, looked at it with a vacant expression, then set it back down in exactly the same place. “But it doesn’t make sense.”

“That’s not all.” She bobbed up and down eagerly.

He didn’t look at her. “Did you deliver the message to Ephraim?” he asked. “Did you tell him—”

“I told him,” Chintzy squawked. “Did you hear me? I said that’s not all.”

“All what?”

She hissed at him. “That’s not all about her. There’s more.”

He tossed his hands up into the air. “I cannot worry about her. Not today. Not right now.”

“That’s new.”

He glared at her. “If you are not careful I will make you look and sound and smell like an ostrich to everyone for an entire week.”

Chintzy froze. “You wouldn’t.”

He started stacking books on the shelves.

Chintzy shuffled back and forth on the dressing table until she thought she might explode. “It’s important!” she burst out. “I don’t care if you turn me into an ostrich.”

The Lightbender sighed, and his shoulders hunched. “What?”

“In the picture, she was wearing a dress with spots on it,” Chintzy said darkly.

“Is that significant?”

“She was wearing a dress.”

The Lightbender had the nerve to look confused. “Victoria was, or is, a girl. They do things like that.”

“It was a pretty dress and he was in a suit and they were standing very close together.” Chintzy nodded sagely.

But the Lightbender still looked baffled. She decided she had better spell it out for him. “I suspect,” she said, “that they might have hatched eggs with each other.”

He stared at her for so long that Chintzy thought he was having trouble coping with the gravity of the situation. She started sorting through the things on the dressing table with her beak to see if he had any smelling salts lying around, but then a sound came out of him that stopped her in her tracks.

That horrible Lightbender, that wretched magician, was laughing his head off.

She had never seen anything like it. He almost never laughed, and now he was actually clutching at the shelves for support while he cackled like a madman. He’d obviously cracked under the pressure of the last few days. “I’m serious!” she shrieked.

“I am so sorry,” he gasped between chuckles. “I know you are.”

“Micah Tuttle might be Victoria’s grandchick!”

That sobered him up. “He might,” he conceded. “But it hardly matters right now. We haven’t even met the boy yet.”

“It will matter to the Head! You know it will.”

“Not as much as you think,” he said. He caught her doubt-filled eyes with his own. “Let’s not mention it to him just yet, though.”

“I can keep a secret. The Head was too busy to listen to me anyway. But no more laughing!” She snapped her beak at him. “I don’t understand why you thought it was funny.”

He held one hand over his mouth to hide what Chintzy was sure was an inappropriate grin. “My dear parrot, I have to tell you, human children don’t hatch out of eggs.”