I had kept my promise. As I waited by her stand, I only hoped that the mystic had kept hers. Nevertheless, my doubt was unfounded, and as the sky began to grow light and the darkness that was bearing down on the now desolate circus began to lift, she appeared across from me. I did not like meeting her on her terms, and at the time the only two points I knew of her were that she was a thief and that she held some connection to the ringmaster. Yet I knew I could not stop this inhumane affair without her compliance, and in exchange I would have to give her mine.

     I long ponder what would have happened if I never stopped to help her in the fog. Glancing over the luminous crystal ball and other various tools of the psychic’s trade, I could not help but fall prey to them. Perhaps it had been a coincidence that I stumbled upon the old woman. That I had witnessed the ringmaster’s wicked deeds and was now drawn into the senile psychic’s schemes. Or perhaps it truly was fate. That I was meant to come to their aid all along. No matter what brought me there, to that place and that predicament, I knew I had to follow it through.

     Once again catching the gaze of those bright, mysterious green eyes, a curiosity lit within me. They were odd eyes that had seen much. As I realized how much weight my own eyes must carry as a witness, I succumbed to the fact that I was now an inseparable part of the affair. With dread of conspiracy hanging over my head, I waited for an explanation for it all to finally be given. The old woman spoke first, her eyes breaking our gaze and darting back and forth. She whispered at first, as if someone could be listening in, but her voice grew steady as time passed.

     “You have returned. You realize the consequences your meddling may have?” she asked solemnly. I replied without pause.

     “I do. Though I don’t understand why you have brought me into this mess, I can hardly abandon it now.” She seemed satisfied with the response. As I continued, she nodded compliantly. “Now, I have some questions that need answers. Questions that I’m hoping don’t take a mystic to solve. How did this circus come to its sorry fortune? Tell me all you know. What is your position in all of this? From the sound of it, you are against the ringmaster, but from the looks of it, you have done nothing to stop him.” The mystic shrugged off my accusations.

     “Well, sir, I must answer not by foretelling the future, but by retelling the past.” With that, my eyes were drawn back to the glinting crystal ball. Her tone grew soothing and immersive. I found myself easing into her narrative like a reader into a novel. Soon the scene began to unfold in front of my eyes, quite literally, as the crystal ball gleamed, and I became trapped within its light.

     As the past was revealed to me, the present case began to grow clearer in my mind. Thus, I will include what I know of the ringmaster’s beginnings. While my summary of the circus’ history will do nothing to recreate the passion in the voice of the old woman’s voice, that of one who knew him well and truly witnessed it all unfold in horror, and the imagery I was immersed in, like a magical blanket wrapping me in times long past, I have taken it down as accurately as memory shall have it.

     It started long before the One-Man Circus was assembled. It was another circus then, though hardly different, with a similar background of corruption hidden behind bright lights. The ringmaster had not always been on top in the big top and, in fact, had long ago been in the lowest of positions. He was a lost boy with no true start. No one knew of his past, and if it was not for the circus taking him in as a baby left in one of the train cars, he probably would not have lived to the present.

     They assumed him to be an orphan, though a jest always went around the tent. The troupe would joke about how the poor, orphaned boy looked indisputably akin to their showrunner. They would go so far as to call him the ringmaster’s boy, though the cantankerous man would grow angry at their comparison and take it out on the child. He would beat him until the only comparison that could be made was the boy’s face to a bloodied bruise, and the joke would dissipate into the uneasy air. If he was indeed the showrunner’s son, he was not treated so.

     He was never given a name. His heartless master ordered and yelled at him without proper address, depriving him of any real identity. He was treated like a slave, forced to do the undesirable jobs for the circus. He helped with the tent’s rigging, fetched props, cleaned the stables, and did other such work. Yet the work itself was not the torture, but rather the crudeness of his master.

     The showrunner would whip him if so much as a hair on the clown’s wig was out of place. He would force him to climb up the high trapeze platform and test its durability without a net or anything to catch him if he should slip. Yet it was all he had ever known. With nowhere else to go, no name and no ambition, he was raised in neglect and abuse. He hardly understood the meaning of love, for he had none…except for the mystic.

     While the troupe avoided him and he hopelessly tried to avoid the wrath of his master, there was always one the boy longed to be near. It all began one day when he was called over by the showrunner.