The Lightbender led Micah and Jenny into the main section of the tent a few minutes before his show was due to begin. Micah was still clutching his bottle of orange soda. It was as frosty cold as it had been when the Lightbender had first given it to him, but he was feeling so subdued after learning about his grandmother that he had forgotten to drink it. How could he be related to someone like that? How could someone even be like that?

And Grandpa Ephraim—how had he even married Victoria in the first place? It sounded like after she left Circus Mirandus nobody knew where she’d gone.

“You might want to finish that now.” The Lightbender gestured toward the soda as he ushered them to two front row seats. “I tend to be a little distracted when I am performing. It might disappear on you.”

Micah took a big gulp.

Jenny looked around the tent curiously. She examined the stage and the walls. “Do you really not use cameras? Is what you do really . . .?” she trailed off, but the word magic hung in the air almost as if she had said it aloud.

Micah shot the Lightbender an apologetic look, but he only shook his head at Jenny’s question. “You will have to tell me what you think after you’ve seen it. I do not often perform for children with your particular point of view. The pressure is a novel experience.”

He looked up at the ceiling, and the lanterns hanging overhead dimmed as if he had given them a silent command. Micah heard the excited chattering of the children outside increase in volume as the golden rope began to dissolve.

“Thank you,” he said. “For telling me about Victoria and for Grandpa Ephraim and for, well, everything.”

“Pay close attention to my show, Micah.” The Lightbender began to fade into the shadows of the room. “Remember that I promised your grandfather anything within my power.”

The frigid air stung Micah’s cheeks. He couldn’t understand how it was possible. How could he really be standing beside Jenny in Antarctica watching emperor penguins slide down an icy hill on their bellies? But he was there. He was so very much there that for a moment he forgot he had ever been anywhere else.

The Lightbender’s tent faded from his memory like a dream, and he woke up in a land of ice. Then that became the dream, and he woke up to find that the world was really the sun in his eyes and a crowd cheering and the thunder of racing horses in his chest. That was what the Lightbender’s show was like—waking up again and again only to find that every new waking was more perfect than the last.

Micah woke again, this time to find himself deep in the jungle, and he immediately began exploring. He stepped between two bushes with leaves as large as Big Jean’s ears and found a twinkling green pool. He drank in the lush sight. Flowering vines swayed over the pool from the branches overhead, and a tiny waterfall splashed down into it from the rocks above. Fish as bright as Easter eggs played among the reeds.

Grandpa Ephraim never mentioned this.

Micah was surprised to realize that he hadn’t thought about his grandfather since Antarctica. The jungle was one of his favorite parts, he reminded himself. This is the Lightbender’s show. I’m supposed to be paying attention.

It was more difficult than he had thought it would be to keep that in mind, especially with such a tempting pool right in front of him. Curious, Micah took his shoes off so that he could dip one of his toes in the water. It was just the right temperature for swimming. The moment he decided this, he found that he was wearing swimming trunks.

That’s funny, he thought. Didn’t I have on jeans?

He waded into the cool water, and the fish darted away from him. At its deepest, the pool only came up a few inches over Micah’s head. He swam back and forth under the waterfall and dove down to touch the bottom. When he cracked his eyes open and looked up toward the surface, everything was a blur of shimmering color and light. He rose back up again, and shook his head to get the water out of his ears. Droplets flew away from his hair like sparks.

He would have been content splashing around in the tropical forest forever, but eventually the world around him began to change. This time, Micah forced himself to pay attention to the transition. Between one blink and the next, he was standing not in a humid jungle but in a dry and windy desert, and he stared up at a pyramid as tall as a skyscraper.

It wasn’t like waking up from a dream this time, maybe because he was trying hard to focus. He was disoriented by the shift. He half expected the blowing sand to stick to him. Surely, he was still wet from his swim.

Only he wasn’t wet at all. He was completely dry and wearing a hat with flaps that kept the burning sun from roasting the back of his neck. That was when Micah finally started to understand. That was when he started to worry.

“Anything within my power,” the Lightbender had promised. But what was the Lightbender’s power exactly?

Micah wasn’t wet. He never had been, really.

He bent to pick up a handful of sand, and he let it run slowly through his fingers. It’s got to be real. His thoughts sounded desperate even to himself. It can’t feel like this and not be real.

Eventually, the pyramid faded out of existence, and he found himself standing at the edge of a lake. It was nighttime, and fireworks exploded overhead. The air smelled like gunpowder.

Micah’s hands were empty.

“Usually,” said a sad voice, “this is the part where I show you your heart’s desire coming true.”

The Lightbender appeared beside him. The flashes of light in the night sky painted his face in shadows. “In your case, I fear that is not a good idea.”

“You’re an illusionist,” Micah said. His throat had gone dry.

The Lightbender nodded.

“I knew that. But I didn’t realize . . . None of this lasts. It’s all in my head?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Micah tried to breathe, but he was being crushed from the inside out. “Grandpa Ephraim?” he choked.

“He knows,” the Lightbender said softly. He took a step toward Micah. He lifted one arm, as though he planned to reach out to him, but then he dropped it back to his side. “I am sorry.”

The fireworks were fading. The Lightbender’s tent was coming back into view.

Micah felt like a kite with a cut string, tumbling through the air, the ground falling away beneath him. He barely noticed Jenny trembling in the seat next to him. They were the only children left in the stands.

“He said you could help us, though.” Micah’s voice was hollow. “Grandpa Ephraim said you could help.”

“Not in the way you want me to, Micah. I cannot trick death.”

“What good are you then?” Somehow, Micah was on his feet. “What good is any of this?”

He wanted the Lightbender to argue with him. He wanted him to scream at him so that Micah could scream, too. But the illusionist never raised his voice. “I’m sorry I can’t give you what you want. Go to Rosebud. She lives in the wagon behind Mr. Head’s tent. She will give you something to make Ephraim feel more like himself, for a little while.”

“I don’t believe you! You have to be able to help. All of this . . .” Micah waved his arms to encompass the whole of Circus Mirandus. “It’s perfect and amazing and . . . and it’s everything. You can save him somehow. If you would just come back with me, if you saw Grandpa Ephraim, you would help. I know it!”

He shook his head. “I can’t, Micah. And I try not to leave Circus Mirandus. I maintain the illusions that keep us hidden from the world. If I leave, things become difficult.”

“Please.” Micah’s voice cracked. “Please come.”

The Lightbender looked away.

Micah grabbed Jenny by the arm and pulled her up. He backed away from the Lightbender. “You don’t care,” he said accusingly. “You’re not even going to try.”

He tugged Jenny across the stage and toward the exit. His own fury was burning him alive. As he stepped outside, the night air felt like a thousand points of ice against his skin.

In the dark tent behind him, he thought he heard the Lightbender groan. He thought he heard him say something in his too-quiet voice.

“Dear, dear Ephraim. Could you not have asked me for a smaller miracle?”