Cirque Noir

The cirque leaves Yokohama at 11.32pm on Wednesday night, but doesn't arrive in its new location until 1.26am Friday: more than 24 hours lost somewhere in the shuffle, but this is not unusual. If the cirque leaves and arrives by the cover of night, it has to find night hours to make that possible.

What happens to the cirque in those missing hours is something that many of its inhabitants have talked about, with no definitive answer yet to be found. For them it is like no time passes at all between moves.

But time does pass and the cirque must go somewhere during it.

Perhaps it passes into another reality, another realm, and perhaps it is not always alone when it does. Who is to say what exists beyond the world the cirque usually lives in? Plenty of beings who have joined the cirque come from worlds beyond earth as well.

When the cirque leaves Yokohama it carries 257 beings, all held safe and close and silent. When it arrives, Cirque Noir carries 257 plus 1, a single non-contracted something that has hitched a ride and spends its first hours at the cirque burrowing in while it settles. Undetected as yet to anyone around it, ( the little traveller waits. )

It is 3.16am in Hyderabad.

When the cirque moves it is usually a smooth transition: there one minute, gone the next. But just occasionally, just rarely, it is a messy thing, a series of lurches that everyone feels and that sends unsecured items toppling, like its own little earthquake. It was a lurch just like this, almost twenty years ago, that caused considerable damage to circus buildings and even injured a few of the workers.

The move from Hyderabad is not that intense, but it is uncomfortable and unsettling, especially for those who have been with the cirque five years or less and would have never experienced it before. For 25 long seconds the very ground beneath the cirque shakes and jerks, waking some from sleep and breaking some small unfortunate items. 25 seconds is a long time when the world is shaking, and long enough that people might start wondering if something has gone terribly wrong.

But the cirque doesn't get stuck and it doesn't damage itself, and when the shaking stops it has landed in its new temporary home. Still. Quiet. As though nothing happened at all.

A group of young people who have been winding down their night in the same place the cirque set itself down suddenly find themselves shifted a kilometre to the north. They feel a vaguely strange about it, but each individually chalks the feeling up to the long night they've had. The one of them who looks over at the cirque finds nothing unusual about its presence. Why wouldn't there be a circus there? ( It must have been set up during the day. )

Absolutely no one could blame any of the cirque members who greeted the sudden movement of the cirque with a certain sense of relief. Perhaps in leaving Marrakesh behind, they could also leave behind at least some of the grief and horror that Patric's murder had caused them all.

(But maybe those that had been there long enough knew the truth: there would always be new horrors to be had at the cirque, no matter the change of scenery.)

It is the temperature that people note first, the almost cool night air of Morocco being replaced with something warmer, something a little more sticky. ( Past the closed gates drifts in the sounds of traffic and nightclubs. )

On the final day and night that the cirque is in Helsinki, it seems that whatever magic keeping the snowfall reasonable within the gates has stopped. All day the snow comes down, and by night it is piled up against the spiegeltents and the living quarters. The Big Top practically groans under the weight of it, and some might even worry over a collapse.

Maybe the cirque is choosing to gather its strength elsewhere.

When the move comes it is just before midnight- a disjointed moment passes for everyone and after that the very air is different, warm and dry. Outside the tents there is no sign of snow, instead only a night that is technically cool but feels warm compared to what had come before.

Those that go to look out the gate or take a gander over the fences will see lights from a market not too distant, ( with snatches of music and tourist chatter on the wind. )

After spending months waiting in New Orleans, it seems that the cirque has decided to return to its shorter and more regular cycle, and not long after midnight on Saturday it leaves Athens behind.

When next any of the circus inhabitants are aware of anything, the first thing noticed by most is the sudden drop in temperature and the way each breath now comes out in misty clouds. Wherever the cirque has landed, it is cold.

The acropolis on the hill is gone now, and looking out past the fences of the circus shows ( only the shadows of stone buildings and winter trees, the sky aglow from the snow on the ground. )

For almost three months the travelling night circus had been sitting unmoving in New Orleans and running shows as though this wasn't a highly irregular stillness. It is not the first time that Cirque Noir had spent longer than its expected month in one place, but each of these rare instances always feels a little off.

Then, one night in early November, everyone who lived in the cirque began to feel that strange yet familiar tugging, the feeling that said without words that that would be moving very soon. Those who had been with the circus for years would recognise it easily, and may have even been able to pinpoint in how many days it would happen. Those that were newer might not know what it meant, but even they knew to follow the instinct that told them to stay close.

The circus is leaving. Be here when it happens or be left behind.

The circus does not open at sunset as it should, a further sign that it would not be staying. The lights remain dimmed and no patrons pass into the grounds.

It is almost three in the morning when everyone feels the lurch and the circus disappears. No one in the outside world is watching when it does. Someone who had been walking their dog nearby turned their head away, their interest drawn somewhere else. When they looked back and saw just an empty space where a circus had been, they thought nothing more of it. The circus packed up earlier. They remember seeing the tents coming down. Everything is normal here.

If time passes for the people of the cirque, none of them feel it. For them it is as though they are one moment in New Orleans, the night air humid, and then suddenly they are under a different sky, dotted with shadowy clouds. The air is cooler than it had been and there is the sound of unfamiliar night birds in nearby trees. ( Looking to the west, one can make out the shape of expansive marble ruins, lit up on the rocks above the city... )