Grandpa Ephraim opened the drawer of his bedside table to reveal balls of crumpled paper. Micah uncrumpled them one by one until the bed was covered with letters, letters made up of impossible words.

Lightbender, the letters said.

Circus Mirandus, they said.

And they said one more thing, one very crucial thing. You promised me a miracle.

Micah knew about the promise the Lightbender had made to his grandfather. It came at the very end of the story, and it was one of Micah’s favorite parts. But . . . it was only a story.

His grandfather placed his hand on top of one of the crinkled sheets of paper. “It took me quite a few drafts to get it right.”

“I don’t understand,” said Micah. “Circus Mirandus isn’t—”

“Real?” Grandpa Ephraim said quietly. “But it is.”

A smile was tugging up every wrinkle of Grandpa Ephraim’s face. It wasn’t a teasing smile.

Micah stared at all of the letters spread across the crocheted blanket. “If it’s really true . . .”

Grandpa Ephraim laughed his blub glub laugh and beckoned with one arm. When Micah reached for him, he pulled him close in a weak hug and wheezed in his ear, “It’s the truest thing ever. I’m so sorry I never told you.”

Micah hadn’t realized there was a fist in his chest until his grandfather’s words made it unclench. Grandpa Ephraim would never lie about something so important. And that meant . . . that meant magic was real. And, more importantly, a real magician had made a promise to his grandfather. Micah wouldn’t have to be alone. The Lightbender could save Grandpa Ephraim. The world would go back to being the way it was supposed to be.

Micah hugged his grandfather so tightly that his arms hurt. “Everything’s going to be all right,” he said. “It is.”

Grandpa Ephraim lay back on his pillows and nodded. “I think it might. I finished the final draft of the letter last night, and a messenger came for it.”

“What?”

“It was the most astonishing thing. I wish you could have been here to see it. I had no idea how to get the letter to the circus, but the messenger flew in through the window a few hours after I had finished writing it.”

“Wait. Did you say flew?”

Grandpa Ephraim’s grin widened. “Yes. It does sound strange, doesn’t it? Apparently the Lightbender uses a parrot for his mail. She said she preferred to take phone calls, actually, but I’m really not sure how that would work. I should have expected something fantastic.”

“Phone calls?” Micah rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. “This . . . it’s so . . . wow!”

He looked around the bedroom and realized that everything had been transformed. This wasn’t a room where Grandpa Ephraim had been sick; it was a room where he was going to get well again. Even the afternoon sunbeams that shone through the window seemed brighter.

“And this mail parrot—she was going to give the Lightbender your message? She was going to tell him to come here?”

“Yes,” Grandpa Ephraim said. He bent over and coughed a couple of times. Micah started to pass him a tissue from the box on the bedside table, but he waved it away. “I hope,” he said, “that he’ll agree to help us.”

“He has to.” If this was real—and it just had to be—then the Lightbender would help them. Micah didn’t see how he could refuse. In Grandpa Ephraim’s story he was a very powerful magician, a good magician, and he had promised.

“I can’t wait for you to meet him.” Grandpa Ephraim coughed again. “The messenger said Circus Mirandus was in La Paz right now.”

“Where—”

“It’s in Bolivia. So I’m not sure how—” Blub glub.

Micah handed him a tissue, and this time he coughed into it.

“Do you think it will take long?” Micah asked. “For the Lightbender to fix you, I mean.”

Aunt Gertrudis would have to move out of the spare bedroom to make room for their guest, he decided. She would be glad to be going back to Arizona without Micah anyway. She’d been saying just the other day how difficult it would be to find room for him in her apartment.

“What?” Grandpa Ephraim was coughing so hard that he barely got the word out.

“Are you okay?”

Blub glub. “I think I need . . .” Grandpa Ephraim’s face was turning pale. His eyes were clenched shut. His mouth was opening and closing like a fish’s, and all of his words had turned into nothing but blub glub, blub glub.

Micah was on his feet in an instant. “Grandpa? What should I do?”

That awful, dying-kettle sound was lasting for much too long. He was about to ask if he should fetch a cup of water, or the breathing machine that the doctor had given them, but hands were on his shoulders, jerking him away.

Aunt Gertrudis’s nostrils flared. “Out!” she said. “Get out. Getting him excited for no good reason.”

Her eyes landed on the letters spread out on the bed. They narrowed into slits.

“This again,” she hissed. “I should have known.”

Micah didn’t know what possessed him in that moment, but it was something with a lot of bravery and almost no good sense. Instead of leaving, he ducked around his aunt and made a wild grab for the letters.

He managed to snag one of them before Aunt Gertrudis caught him by the back of his T-shirt. “I said out!” she shouted. “Go to your room!”

She snatched at the letter in his hand as she shoved him toward the door. Micah’s fist was closed too tightly around the paper, though. It ripped, and he stumbled out into the hall, nearly colliding with the wall. The door slammed behind him, and the lock clicked.

“Grandpa Ephraim!” he yelled. “Are you all right? Aunt Gertrudis? Please let me in!”

Nobody answered.

Micah slid down the wall and sat, staring at the door, wishing that it would burst into a thousand splinters. The silence from the other side seemed to last forever before he heard the breathing machine turn on. The grinding sound of it made him feel like he might never be able to move from that spot again.

The half of the letter that he had managed to rescue from Grandpa Ephraim’s room trembled in his hands. Micah pressed the creases out as best he could, running his fingers across the words over and over again until the paper began to feel soft.

You have to get up, he told himself.

He had to be ready to meet the Lightbender when he came. He had to make sure that Grandpa Ephraim got his miracle before it was too late.