Micah’s last week at home wasn’t a good one. The Lightbender’s message begged to be deciphered, but Micah had never been much good at riddles. Jenny came up with a list full of ideas, each more unlikely than the last. She wasn’t holding up well. Every time Micah mentioned his departure, she grew tearful.

“I promise I’ll write,” Micah said over lunch one day. “All the time. You’ll probably get tired of me.”

Jenny sniffled. “I always wanted a pen pal.”

It took Micah several days to think of what he could do for Jenny. He wanted to thank her for all of her help. When he finally came up with an idea, he worried that Jenny would think it was embarrassing, or just weird. But he wanted her to have something to remember him by, and he wanted her to have a little magic of her own.

“It’s a bracelet,” he blurted out as he handed her the newspaper-wrapped present on his last day of school.

“You’re supposed to let me open it first.” She tore into the newspaper and opened the box to find the knotted blue string inside.

“It’s like my bootlace,” said Micah. “Only the knot is like me instead of you.” He felt his cheeks redden. “It’s kind of a friendship bracelet. So we won’t really be apart, no matter how far away Aunt Gertrudis takes me.”

Jenny let Micah tie it around her wrist, and then she burst into tears.

“You don’t like it?”

She hugged him so tightly that he almost strangled. “I d-don’t want you to g-go,” she sobbed. “You shouldn’t have to go. Your aunt’s awful.”

Micah sighed and patted Jenny on the back. “It’s okay. Really. It won’t be forever.”

She pulled away from him. “What do you mean?” She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“One day I won’t have to live with Aunt Gertrudis anymore.” He took a deep breath. He’d had the thought for a while, but he hadn’t voiced it aloud. “One day I’m going to go back to Circus Mirandus. Like Grandpa Ephraim always wanted to. I’m going to find them even if I have to steal a hundred gorilla balloons.”

Jenny looked surprised for a moment, but then she nodded. “Good.”

Packing up for the move was depressing. Micah went through Grandpa Ephraim’s belongings and selected things to sneak away from Aunt Gertrudis’s going-to-the-dump pile. He hid his grandfather’s necktie and the ticket stubs from the movies they had seen together the night before he died. He saved most of the photographs. He couldn’t decide whether or not he wanted to keep the picture of Victoria, but in the end he didn’t have to. One day it was simply gone.

Micah wasn’t sure whether his aunt had packed it away or destroyed it. Part of him hoped it was the latter. Maybe getting back at Victoria, even in such a small way, would make her feel better. He couldn’t ask. They hadn’t spoken to each other, except for Aunt Gertrudis snapping a random order every now and then, since the day after the funeral.

They had been packing up the bookshelves in the living room when his aunt spotted the bootlace on his wrist. She left and returned a few seconds later with a pair of scissors. She slapped them onto the dusty shelf in front of Micah.

“Cut it off.”

He saw her distorted reflection in the shiny metal of the scissors. Her lips had disappeared into a stern frown. “Don’t you want magic to be real?” he asked as he turned to face her. “Maybe just a little bit?” If he could find even a shred of common ground with her, the next few years would be a lot easier.

But Grandpa Ephraim’s Gertie was long gone, and Aunt Gertrudis looked at Micah like he had asked her if she wanted to contract a rare disease. “I want my life to go back to normal. I want to make the best of a bad situation. I don’t want to cling to infantile fantasies. Cut it off.”

Micah pushed the scissors aside. “I won’t. Not ever.”

He didn’t know what had changed since their last argument over the bootlace. Maybe it was how he said, “I won’t.” He would have told her that two plus two equaled four in exactly the same way.

She took the scissors back to the kitchen and stopped speaking to him.

It was an improvement in some ways. They didn’t argue anymore. But this new version of Aunt Gertrudis had given up on Micah, and she went about getting her life “back to normal” as though he wasn’t even going to be a part of it. She didn’t mention him in phone calls to her friends. She stopped asking him about school. Micah felt like a piece of furniture.

The trip to Arizona in Aunt Gertrudis’s car was the longest Micah had ever been on, and they had only been driving for three hours. Even mute, she had a special way of making every mile last for an eternity. When she merged onto the interstate, the sun coming through the windshield turned the car into an oven.

“Do you mind if I turn on the air-conditioning?” Micah asked.

When she didn’t answer, he turned the air-conditioning on.

Aunt Gertrudis turned it off.

It was the closest they had come to a conversation in days.

Furniture, he reminded himself. Ugly furniture that she never wanted in the first place.

He watched the other cars pass by. A little girl wearing a hat with bunny rabbit ears on it waved at him from a minivan. Micah waved back gloomily. He hoped the girl was going to wherever Circus Mirandus was. She would fit in there.

After a while, the other cars stopped passing them. Traffic crawled down the highway. When Aunt Gertrudis had to hit the brakes to avoid rear-ending the truck in front of them, she hissed like an angry old cat.

“People are so inconsiderate here.”

Not long after that, traffic stopped completely. They were caught in a jam.

Micah watched the families in the cars around them while his aunt muttered under her breath. The car grew warmer and warmer in the sun, and his eyelids grew heavier and heavier. He let them fall shut. He was almost asleep, right on the edge of a thought that looked like it might be a dream, when he heard pipes.

And drums.

Micah jerked forward so quickly that his seat belt caught and yanked him back. He unbuckled it and whipped his head around. They were still stuck in the traffic jam. Some people were getting out of their cars and stretching. Others were climbing on top of their vehicles to look ahead toward where the problem must be.

“Ridiculous,” Aunt Gertrudis grumbled.

Micah saw one of the climbers, a teenager in a T-shirt covered with skulls, point. He started to shout.

Micah reached for the handle of the car door.

“It’s probably a wreck,” said his aunt.

“No,” said Micah. “I hear music. The music.”

He got out of the car. When she didn’t tell him to get back in, Micah hesitated. “Don’t you want to see?” he asked her. “You could give it one more chance.”

She looked at him. For a moment, Micah thought she was considering it, but then she turned away. She gripped the steering wheel like it was a life preserver.

Micah started walking. Aunt Gertrudis never called him back.

Micah passed minivans and tractor-trailers and cars, and he still couldn’t see anything but traffic. But the music was getting louder. He started to jog toward it, then to run. Please, oh please, he thought as his feet beat the pavement.

When he reached the cause of the traffic jam, he stopped dead.

“It was an earthquake, man,” said a pale guy standing next to him. “It has to have been an earthquake.”

Micah was too shocked to say anything at all. A chasm had been torn across the interstate and as far as he could see in either direction. It was so deep that it looked like it went to the center of the planet, and craggy rocks jutted from the walls. A Greyhound bus was so close to the edge that the asphalt under its front wheels was crumbling.

Across the gap, a hundred yards away, Micah could see other interstate travelers staring back at them. Everyone looked as amazed as he felt.

“Man,” said the pale guy. “Dude, this is going to be all over the news. It’s like the new Grand Canyon.”

The music was still calling Micah from the other side of the chasm. He couldn’t possibly reach it. He walked right up to the edge and stared down. It was so far it made him dizzy, so far that it should have been impossible. It reminded him of how much it had hurt to fall from the gorilla balloon, and he took a step back.

The drums pounded in his ears. The pipes filled the air. It was too cruel. Why would Circus Mirandus be calling him if following the music meant walking over the edge of a canyon?

Maybe, thought Micah. Maybe I’m just imagining it. Was it possible to want something so much that you could hear it even when it wasn’t there?

No, he decided. He knew he wasn’t imagining the music. Circus Mirandus was out there somewhere beyond this cliff. The Lightbender was out there. Micah inched forward until the toes of his sneakers were over the edge. He could feel the empty underneath them.

His stomach clenched as though he’d already fallen. Don’t look down there, he told himself. He started to take a step back, but then he paused.

“Don’t look down,” Micah said aloud. His voice echoed off the canyon’s walls.

Micah knew this was one knot he couldn’t untangle. Whatever he chose, he would be taking a huge risk. Stepping forward might mean falling to his death. Going back to Aunt Gertrudis might mean never seeing Circus Mirandus again.

Was it worth it?

Micah closed his eyes. He heard the pale guy shout, “Dude! That kid’s gonna jump. Someone grab him!” But nobody did. Part of Micah waited for the ground to drop out from under him, but it never happened. He just kept moving forward with his eyes shut tight until the music stopped.

He listened. It was very quiet now. He couldn’t hear the roar of people or cars. His chest started to ache. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it out in one big gasp and opened his eyes.

In front of Micah was an almost-empty stretch of interstate. Almost empty, because a man in a long leather coat stood in the center of it beside an elephant. The Lightbender spread his arms wide and smiled.

“Hello, Micah,” he said. “How do you like my miracle?”