When the Circus of Mirror Dreams arrives on the edge of town, Kuba and Lena are drawn into its secret Mirror Maze, where the reflections start behaving as if they know them.
The Circus of Mirror Dreams arrived on the edge of town without warning. No one had seen the trucks rumbling into the clearing, no one had watched the tents rise against the morning mist. By noon, the field was blazing with colour: striped canvas, spinning lights, the sweet stink of candyfloss, and music that seemed to slip under the skin.
Kuba and Lena stood at the school fence that afternoon, staring through the gate at the flood of people heading in. Laughter floated out in bursts, but so did the quieter sounds - the sharp murmur of adults, the restless creak of something large moving beneath the music. Everyone in town seemed to be talking about one thing: the Mirror Maze, a new attraction no one had been allowed to see before opening night.
"We should go tonight," Lena said.
She held up the ticket she'd found under a school bench, as if it had been waiting for her all along.
Kuba took it from her and felt the paper tremble in his fingers. The print on the back was smudged, but one line was still clear: the maze would only open once.
That was enough to make his stomach tighten.
By dusk, the circus grounds had changed. The lights were brighter, harsher now, throwing long shadows across the mud. Jugglers crossed the paths with flaming torches. A man in a silver coat bowed without smiling. And beyond the striped tents, half-hidden behind a curtain of coloured bulbs, stood the entrance to the Mirror Maze.
Its walls glimmered with a cold green light. The mirrors were too smooth, too tall, stretching deeper into the tent than should have been possible. Above the door, etched into the frame in narrow black letters, was a warning:
Know thyself if you dare.
Lena gave a short, uneasy laugh. "That sounds dramatic."
Kuba didn't answer. Something about the entrance felt wrong, as if the maze were already looking back at them.
They stepped inside.
At once, the noise of the circus fell away. Their footsteps rang out thin and strange. Reflections multiplied around them - Kuba on the left, Kuba on the right, Lena ahead of him, Lena behind him, both of them breaking apart and recombining in the glass. The corridors twisted where they should have ended. Some mirrors clouded over as they passed, while others flashed with brief, impossible shapes: a hand pressed against the glass from the other side, a figure standing just out of sight, a dark shape that seemed to move when they did not.
"Lena?" Kuba whispered.
She turned, and froze.
Her reflection had turned with her a second too late.
Then it smiled.
Kuba stepped back so fast that his heel struck something unseen. The floor lurched, the mirror wall gave way beneath him, and the world dropped out from under both of them.
Lena's scream vanished into the dark.
A voice, close as breath, whispered from everywhere at once: "Time for the strangest show of the night."
Then the darkness split open, and a new set of lights flared around them - bright, unreal, and far too close.