Chapter 18
Little Mirth’s Final Performance
The world collapses wrong.
Not like buildings falling, or tents tearing, or storms breaking the sky. It collapses inward—like someone is folding the circus back into its own heart, crumpling Wonderhouse into a tight, trembling knot.
Milo clutches me to his chest as he stumbles across the tilting ring. Canvas snaps overhead like a cracking whip, and a support beam crashes inches from his heel. Performers scream as the ground tears open beneath the calliope wagon.
The Ringmaster shouts orders no one can hear over the storm. And all the while, my jar glows brighter and brighter, as if the Joys inside are waking up for the first time in years.
“Joy!” Milo shouts over the roar. “Tell me what to do!”
He expects direction, but all I feel is the dam inside my chest—the dam built by the curse—splintering like brittle glass. Shards of light and pain fall through me.
“Milo…” I whisper, my voice thin. “I’m… slipping.”
“No,” he growls, clutching me tighter. “No, no, stay with me—”
But the world tilts again. The tent buckles. A rope snaps above us, spiraling down like a striking snake. Milo twists his body to shield me.
“Stop protecting me,” I gasp. “You’ll be crushed—”
“I don’t care!”
I believe him, and that terrifies me more than the storm. A deafening crack splits the air as one of the central poles gives way. The canvas sinks, heavy with rain, static, and magic unraveling.
Performers flee the ring. The Barker drags a trembling tightrope walker toward an exit. Fireflies drop from their ropes like dying embers. Everyone runs. Except me.
Something pulls me forward—not physically, but from inside my ribs. A pressure. A calling. The shards of the dam inside me align into something sharp and inevitable.
“Milo,” I breathe, “put me down.”
His eyes widen with panic. “Absolutely not.”
“Milo…”
“No.”
Lightning strikes the pole beside us, exploding wood into shrapnel. The ground bucks beneath us like a living beast. Canvas tears, and a lantern crashes into the sawdust, flames licking hungrily across the floor.
The circus is dying. Not slowly. Not metaphorically. Dying. And the call inside me grows louder.
“Milo,” I whisper again, quieter this time. “Please.”
His breath catches. He stares at me, and something in him recognizes the look on my face. This is not a request; this is resignation. He lowers me to my feet, trembling and terrified.
“Tell me what you’re doing,” he whispers.
I swallow hard. Rain seeps through the torn roof, running down my cheeks like cold tears.
“I’m going to save Wonderhouse,” I say softly. “Just this once.”
Milo’s breath breaks. “No. Joy, no. That’s not your job.”
“No,” I agree. “It’s my curse.”
I step forward, each footfall wobbling. Milo grabs my wrist. “Joy, you’ll die.”
The Ringmaster appears like a shadow torn from the storm. “She’s right,” he shouts. “Let her go.”
Milo spins on him. “You don’t get to choose her death!”
“I’m not choosing it,” the Ringmaster screams, his voice breaking. “But she is the only one who can do this! Only Joy can return the magic to balance. This storm is the dam inside her breaking.”
I turn back toward the center of the ring—the exact spot where I first learned to be Little Mirth. The place where I learned how to give Joy without ever feeling any. I lift my jar, and the black ribbon flutters loose.
“Let me go!” Milo roars as the Ringmaster holds him back.
“One last time, Little Mirth,” I whisper as the storm swallows my words.
I raise the jar above my head, and I prepare to shatter the only thing I’ve ever held close.