During the summer when the heat seeped through the crevasses of simple homes, the circus came to town. The circus did not arrive with a flashy parade or signs that filled the streets, it simply came during nightfall while the children slept nestled under their cotton sheets dreaming of sweets and sunlight. The circus played one show every day over the span of a fortnight. The performances were deep into the night when not even the chirps of the crickets hummed through the tall grass. The shows were not for the faint of heart, and rumors spread that those who attended experienced hallucinations.
         Before one could even enter the tent, rows of jokers, fortune tellers, and magicians waited for customers and coins to fall inside their stalls. Past the booths and outside of the main tent stood a small ticket post with a short man on a wooden stool who was tasked with collecting admission for the show. Booths filled with spun sugar and popping corn kernels illuminated the pathway leading to the tent, filling the air and the stomachs of customers with treats. Towards the carnival, one might notice a fortune-teller who sat quietly inside her booth. Whispers used to spread about her frightening character, but she claimed that her customers simply could not handle her readings. However, the stalls were not the reason families chose to hand off their weekend coins to the man in the booth; it was the tent that stood tall ahead, with its top practically poking into the clouds. The big top itself was unlike any other circus tent. It had stripes of course, but the inside was something extraordinary. Flowing lengths of fabric hung from the ceiling and pooled onto the ground, creating a reservoir of scarlet satin that the performers dove into. The benches for awaiting customers dripped with adrenaline from those who had sat before and the air was heavy with humidity during warm summer nights.
         The performers were nothing more than a mystery. To the average eye, their acts were beyond the bounds of possibility. The contortionists would pull their limbs above their heads, allowing their fragile bones to twist and bend to fit inside small wooden boxes. Children, no older than ten would walk across wires perched on each other’s shoulders like small birds on a clothesline. Boys slipped shards of metal down their throats, careful not to puncture their diaphragm or any other organs that stood in their way. Acrobats would dance on the main floor as well, throwing up batons and other various objects to catch with their toes and teeth. And who could forget the performers who would wrap their arms and legs in a thin fabric tied in a knot at the ceiling, and then without a warning, fall to the ground, leaving the audience gasping for air. No one knew who they were or where they came from, only that they looked uncomfortably familiar. 
            The Ringmaster was no ordinary man; he was a classic trickster. He would draw people in with nothing more than a flash of his cheap smile and one card from his red felt jacket — the joker. Along with the card, he also carried a small golden pocket watch in his jacket that he pulled out before each show, to keep on schedule of course. He kept his hair underneath the protection of a tall black hat, which was the same color as the gloves he wore to cover his weathered hands. Occasionally he would run his fingers along the rim of his stovepipe hat, which provided shelter for his pale skin as he watched the townspeople walk through his gates. When families stepped into his tent he would smile and pat the children on their heads, but he always managed to keep one eye on the door. He kept his conversations short and spoke as if he was reading off a script, a mechanism made to lead customers into his show. Just like his performers, no one knew his name or where he came from. He was simply the Ringmaster.

  
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            Anastasia, a young girl from the town, was dressing her siblings for the last show of the circus. She was the oldest and therefore responsible for buttoning up shirts and tying the backs of her siblings’ clothes as they ran across the house with their trousers hanging from their heads. As her mother called for each of the children, Anastasia gathered her items and held her sister’s hand tight.
            “Now remember, you must be very careful while we’re gone,” her mother began to pull her coat over her shoulders, “more children have gone missing, and I cannot possibly watch you the entire time, so you must stay near your sister. Alright?”
             Anastasia had told her siblings late last night that fairies had taken the children to their homes in the magical meadow for the weekend, attempting to keep her siblings’ night terrors away. However, that did not make her any more comfortable with the idea of children being stolen from their beds in the night.
            Her mother guided Anastasia and her siblings through the open pastures of their small town that nestled itself in the wheat fields and haze. Once the sweet aroma of spun sugar and baked goods filled Anastasia and her siblings’ senses, they ran toward the open booths. She felt a pull toward the booths filled with mesmerizing tricksters that waited to take shining coins from the unsuspecting guests. Her mother had given each of the children two silver coins, and Anastasia planned to use both her coins on a fortune-telling booth.
            As she walked up to the booth, she noticed that the lady sitting behind the crystal ball was looking her up and down as if she were a piece of bread at the bakery. The woman was wearing fabric of bright colors with jewelry that graced her forearms and head, Anastasia had never seen this type of clothing before. Coins attached to colored strings strung across her outfit, depicting the heads of ancient women and men. The coins went perfectly with her tangerine and plum-colored satin that wrapped around her body like a piece of fruit at the market. The woman must have caught Anastasia staring, as she raised an eyebrow as if to assert that she was not the odd one of the two. This only made Anastasia more determined to take a seat and hear her fortune told. She looked around the booth once more and noticed fog slipping through the edges of the booth, but she chose to ignore it as she sat down and gently set her silver pieces on the table, asking for her fortune to be read.
            “As you wish darling.”
            The woman’s smile was not one of comfort. In fact, Anastasia felt quite uncomfortable sitting in front of the fortune-teller — it was as if the teller wanted something beyond the coins she had placed on the cloth. The teller rested her hands on the crystal ball in front of her and closed her eyes as if to concentrate on the possibilities of the future. Anastasia began to wonder how the woman could predict something that could change so simply, something that even Anastasia herself could change by wearing a blue satin bow tomorrow instead of a green one. The teller then met Anastasia’s eyes with a devious smile.
            “The ball is telling me this my dearest flower: when given the opportunity to take a sip from the fountain of youth, swallow until you can no longer breathe.”
            The woman seemed pleased with her prediction, and as she took her coins and stood to close her booth, she looked back one last time at Anastasia. “The circus is starting soon. You must go and meet your future.”
            Anastasia felt unnerved by the teller’s fortune, and a feeling of weightlessness seemed to overtake her limbs as she stepped through the now dense fog inside the booth. She held her eyes shut for a couple of moments before blinking rapidly — an attempt to try and fix her vision that had suddenly gone blurry. When they opened, she noticed a man behind a booth offering different sweets and refreshments, and Anastasia’s throat was scraping for any liquid it could receive. Remembering what the fortune teller had said, she took the liquid from the man’s worn fingers. The drink’s smell of fresh roses and childhood innocence practically begged itself to her lips, and as the liquid drained from the cup, a sort of numbness started to spread along her limbs. First, it was her fingers and her neck, then she began to feel her legs disappear from underneath her, causing her to sway until she caught herself against an upright wooden beam. However, no matter her attempts to persevere, the world turned dark, and she felt her senseless body fall into a stack of hay that rested beside the booths.

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            The Ringmaster smiled at his performers as they slipped through flames and fell into pools, awing the crowd and leaving him pleased. He waited and watched, making sure the eyes of his customers were always attached to the performance, as this kept most from suspicion. The Ringmaster noticed that his tent had added a new minuscule member. He pulled his golden pocket watch from his trousers and looked at the time.
            The Ringmaster smiled to himself. The circus was on a perfect schedule.