They arrived quietly, as if they did not want to frighten the night away. In the square after the old market, where herbs and fish were sold at dawn, a tent grew so big that it could cover half the market. The canvas, embroidered with silver thread, caught the light of the lanterns and gave it back like a breath. Circus Aurora. After so many years on the roads, I have learnt to recognise when the city will be ours and when we belong to the city. Tonight promised the latter. My name is Marta and I am the stage manager. That is to say: I know the layout of the boards under the clown's shoes, I know which spotlights like to go out after the second snare drum, and I can hold the sky backstage when the artists ask for a moment longer. On this day, I was holding a list of entrances in my hand: the orchestra, the jugglers, the trapeze duo, Teo the dog in the little red cape, and in the middle - a number we haven't played in years. 'Passing through the mirror'. - 'I brought it personally,' said Bruno, the illusionist, placing his hand on the mahogany chest as if cuddling a sleeping animal. He had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and that calmness of his, behind which lies a century-old tradition of deceiving the eye. - It will be fine, Martha. The audience will see what silence before the snare means. - Silence is what I know how to do,' I replied, but my gaze fled to Lila. Lila Radwańska, our acrobat, was wrapping her wrists in white tape. Up close, her hands looked like maps - each bruise was a street, each imprint a square, and the thin, fresh scratch on her thumb something that was yet to get a name. She was ten years younger than me, but she could suspend time on a tightrope. And she was the one who was going to go through the glass. I was there when the number was created. I was also there when it disappeared from the programme. At the time, no one said directly why she was on hiatus. It was whispered that Glass didn't always want to cooperate. That the image was sometimes more stubborn than the body. In the circus, every whisper sounds like an announcement - you hold it with your teeth until it becomes a fact or a joke. Director Kędra has decided that this autumn the joke will turn into applause. We unpacked the box in the afternoon. The glass in the frame was dark, almost graphite, like the surface of a river just before a storm. On the back - old, theatrical stickers. Names of towns that had long since disappeared from the schedules, dates from before the wars, seals that no one puts up nowadays. I lifted the canvas that protected the surface, and for a second I saw not myself, but the tent. As if the mirror preferred to reflect the place rather than the face. Bruno smiled, as if he had planned it. - Do you remember the clues? - He asked softly. - 'I remember,' Lila replied, but she took the sketch from him with her notes, even though she knew it by heart. Someone on the sidelines might have thought it a charming caution. I knew it was a pactum: you give me a plan, I give you trust. They were just putting a new mat under the frame when the orchestra came to tune the instruments. The trumpeter dragged the sound so clear it made it brighter under the dome, and the double bass purred like a hyperactive cat. Basia, the juggler, emerged from the back curtain and, without asking, placed two extra balls in the corner. What I love about the circus is the moments when everyone is doing their own thing and everyone is creating something as one. - Did you hear that? - riddled Eric from the lights, hanging from the platform like a vine. - The storm is supposed to pass sideways. But it may press on. - Let it press,' muttered Kędra. - We have our own thunder under the roof. When the first spectators entered, the smell of candyfloss mixed with the grease from the winches, perfume from the first rows and shoe paint from the dressing rooms. Children from towns where the Aurora Circus had not yet visited looked at the tent as if they were trying to count all the stars on the dome. Adults took their seats with a reserve that usually melts away after the second number. I had an earpiece in my ear, a cue sheet in my hand protected like a relic, and that feeling that we were standing on the threshold of something that would either outgrow us or uplift us. The evening started smoothly. Teo stole the heart of the third row with a mere flick of his tail, the trapeze duo held the hall's breath for four long seconds, and Basia juggled six balls and one apple, which she ended up biting with the grace of a fairy tale princess. The snare drum guided us like a thread - a light one here, a heavier one there, until it pounded out a rhythm with Lila stepping in. I heard my own voice in the headphone: - After the clown A enters, the transition to four black. Lila enters at twilight, spotlight on centre, Bruno on the left, frame already standing. Erik, give the spotlights a breather. Let's do it softly. - Roger," replied Erik. - Twilight soft as bread. After three blacks, a silence settled on the tent so thick I could hear someone in the lodge tearing up a caramel paper. Then the entrance of the strings - one drag, as if someone was opening a door in an empty house. Lila came out in a costume that didn't play first fiddle: a simple silver bodysuit, hair tied in a high bun, bare feet, wrists wrapped in white. Bruno walked a step behind her, carrying something that looked like a scarlet ribbon but was just a prop for a little game with the audience. The frame was already standing in the middle of the arena, on its own feet, weighted down so that it wouldn't budge. - 'Ladies and gentlemen,' Kędra's voice sounded, honeyed and assured, as it should. - Before you is a number you have never seen in our city. We ask for silence, we ask for your attention. We ask you to believe in what you will see, although we do not ask you to believe in the impossible. He did not usually add such a punchline. I looked at him through a gap in the curtain. He shrugged his shoulders. "Let them have it." - his eyes said. Lila faced the mirror. Bruno untied the ribbon in the air so that for a moment it really did look like twisting smoke. He let it go and it fell and unfurled at Lila's feet, who took a step forward. The reflection was sharp - as if the glass was not glass, but a second scene, a hair's breadth away from ours. In this second scene, Lila was just as calm, just as straight, only there was something in her gaze... I couldn't find the word. Not "fear". Not "delight." Maybe "recognition". - Touch," whispered Bruno. His whisper filled the tent as if it were made of velvet. Lila raised her hand. She did not tremble. After so many years with her, I knew that when she trembled, she only did so under her costume. With her fingers she tinkled the glass. A soft, glassy sound played, as if someone had nudged the glass in the distance. A child in the third row laughed, someone in the first blinked, someone else grunted. The lighting engineer gave a half tone darker. Me - I wasn't breathing. The mirror... responded. First I thought it was the spotlight's shadow. Then that it was my imagination. But no: on the other hand, exactly where Lila had touched, there was a handprint. Such a tiny chill on the glass, vapour like after a breath. Only Lila wasn't blowing. And the trace... shifted, as if something was applying the hand from the inside. The orchestra, well trained, played a note lower. The audience leaned forward as if on command. Bruno did not budge. I saw his pupils dilate from the light. I also saw Erik suspend his hand over the zipper and retract it, leaving us in that midnight flash. - 'Slowly,' I muttered into the microphone. - Like the first step on a new bridge. Lila pressed gently and the glass bent like water. Seemingly nothing out of the ordinary - after all, that was the point of the number. But I've never seen a surface so warm to the touch, so palpable, as if there was no mechanism behind it, just breath. Bruno took a half step to the side. His hand rose, ready for a movement he had practised a thousand times. Director Kędra rested his hands on the railing of the lodge, with a smile that could hold a herd of horses. And then, before Lila had put her other finger through, before the muscles of her arms had time to form the familiar arc, I heard a sound I couldn't immediately name. It was not a clatter. It wasn't a bell. It was something like a knock - three quick, even beats from inside, in response to our silence. Lila moved her hand back a millimetre, too little for the audience to notice. I noticed. Bruno blinked. Erik froze over the light. The orchestra, as if communicating without words, suspended the sound on an invisible string. Then something else appeared in the reflection - a second profile, barely a sketch, the shadow of an outline that could not be attributed to anyone in the arena. It stood a step behind Lila, but only in the glass. And I realised that it was not the ribbon, not the frame, not our skill that told the story of the night. Something else that was just about to lift the curtain on our side. - 'Now,' said Bruno so quietly that only Lila and I could hear it. Lila put her whole hand on the taffy. The glass vibrated. And from the depths of the reflection, right next to her fingers, someone - or something - responded with a movement that cut into the silence like the blade of a snare drum, just before the baton dropped.