When Phil had returned just a few minutes later, brushing green glitter out of his hair and muttering under his breath, he had taken Dan’s arm with a grin. A warmth had spilled through Dan’s body where their skin touched, and Phil’s smile was contagious to the point where Dan’s cheeks ached.

Not many visitors got a guided tour, and certainly not from a magician quite as extraordinary as Phil.

Was there a limit to happiness? Dan kept expecting to bubble over and explode. Arm in arm, they set off together into a night brighter than any day.

~

Every other tent and every space occupied by the circus workers was, unsurprisingly, impressive in its own way.

There was an artist that painted bright colours on a canvas while the public watched on in awe, for the images on the stretched cloth did not stay still for long. Giraffes galoped across the painting without moving from their spot. High grass moved in the direction of the wind, birds flew over the savannah in circles and in no time at all there was a scene straight from a nature film painted in brush strokes on woven linen. Before the audience had had time to applause, he erased the lines with the end of his brush and began anew, painting with colours Dan wasn’t sure he’d seen even in a rainbow.

In another tent, the visitors squatted on the ground to play with miniature dragons. Each animal had its own colour and personality, and the two seemed to be connected. The pink dragon was in love, or at the very least best friends, with every other dragon in the room; the orange dragon refused to be caught as she flew around the room; and the green dragon busied himself making sure everyone was safe. Black sat in the corner, high on top of a closet, and spat fire at everyone that came close to him. Phil couldn’t help but laugh when he saw that Dan had tried to approach the black dragon, and in return the dragon set a little bit of his hair alight. Luckily the dragon’s fire wasn’t persistent and faded out quickly enough.

“He doesn’t like visitors,” Phil noted.

“Yeah, I noticed..” Dan tried to sound serious and a little miffed, but Phil’s laugh was as contagious as his smile and got him laughing too.

Each and every room was filled with light, but nothing matched the tent that was alive with purple fire. Dan stopped to read a sign that said: “Please note that only purple fire is touchable. Do not try to play with fire at home as it will not compare favourably.”

“Is there a story behind this sign?” Dan wondered aloud.

“There kind of is,” Phil admitted. “There was this little girl who couldn’t get enough of this room but her parents made her leave. So she took her dad’s lighter and wanted to play with the fire. Obviously it hurt and burnt her skin, and the parents personally went to find the creators of the circus and sued them. They didn’t want it to happen again so…”

“How can people be so trusting with fire anyway? I’m definitely not touching it,”

Even though there were people playing around with the dancing, purple flames as if they were firebenders from avatar, Dan was not touching the fire.

“It’s not going to hurt you,” Phil reassured him. “It only feels warm on your skin, like you’re sitting close to a campfire, and it tingles like your hand is asleep.”

Phil reached over into the fountain of fire and scooped up a handful of flames. They glided over his skin like a stone on ice and didn’t leave a single mark behind. No burns, not even red skin. As if it had never been touched by fire.

Phil held out his burning hand to Dan. “Just try to touch it lightly.”

Of course Phil had been right. The flames didn’t hurt, they tingled and they glided. It was lighter than a feather and oddly soothing to hold.

“So,” Phil said with a grin, “now that you’re fairly comfortable with fire… how about water?”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not suggesting we go get a drink.”

Phil laughed with a shake of his head and led him on. And why would he? In a circus where seemingly everything was possible, it could mean anything. There didn’t seem to be a limit to the possibilities.

In the room across from the fire room was a small tent. At first glance, it was empty, but as Dan got closer he realised that the very ground dropped away suddenly into a blue-black pool of water.

He stood hesitantly at the edge, searching for a bottom to this tiny lake. Either it was too dark to see or, more worryingly, there wasn’t one. The only object in the tent was a sign that read:

Why don’t you take a dive?

“This looks even less reassuring than the room full of purple fire.” He muttered.

Phil smiled at that. “This circus isn’t here to kill its visitors. You can breathe in it, but you will have to swim.”

“What’s in it?”

“Everything wonderful you could ever imagine from the deep, dark sea.”

Dan had never really put much thought to how it would feel to breathe underwater, but apparently, it wasn’t all that different to breathing on air.

At first there was this little bit of panic. There was water everywhere. His mind and body were completely aware of the fact that his complete body was beneath the surface. His instincts told him to panic the moment he took a breath but the water didn’t even enter his lungs.

Any feelings of panic slowly faded after that first breath.

Phil pulled a sprig of seaweed for him that tasted like sugared candy and dissolved in his mouth. Swimming in a relaxed front crawl, they explored a city that might as well have been Atlantis because it looked so very ancient. It was covered in mossy growth and parts of the houses and the towers were strewn across the streets, but it was alive with friendly mermaids and humorous mermen. The older merfolk gave tiny seaweed sculptures to the children passing by and shimmering pearls to the adults.

A mermaid with a particularly vibrant tail swam past, and Dan stared in awe. The scales were a shimmering, translucent pink, lit by the fires that burned inexplicably in the many torches that lit the water. The size of the pool from above had, apparently, been a little misleading. As far as Dan could see, there was no edge to this lake.

After a ride from a friendly dolphin and a visit to a large octopus whose suckers gave a most unsettlingly pleasant massage, Phil was tugging Dan onwards once more.

This way, he mouthed. I want to show you something special.

A stream of bubbles poured bulbous and white from their mouths whenever they tried to speak, and although their voices were just about audible it was easier to gesture and mime.

Phil led Dan diving right down to the very bottom where the rocky floor was covered in a fine layer of pale pink sand. The water was surprisingly easy to swim through, which Dan guessed was part of the enchantment, and they needed no weights to stand upright on the rocks.

With a wide grin, Phil pointed to a large hole in the ground that looked somewhat like a spout. Every few seconds, a huge, billowing bubble was squeezed out of the opening with a satisfying ‘pop’, before making it’s way lethargically to the surface. Once he was sure he had Dan’s full attention, Phil stood over the hole and promptly disappeared.

Dan let out a gasp of surprise (two small bubbles shot up in front of his eyes almost in time with his eyebrows). Had Phil jumped down into the abyss? It was completely black and Dan had no way of seeing the bottom, but as Phil had said, the circus didn’t want to kill its visitors. It must be safe, right? There was only one way to find out and, with much trepidation, Dan lowered himself slowly into the hole.

The underground chamber was very dark, but for a strange green light coming from straight ahead of him. Dan couldn’t see Phil anywhere, so he struck out slowly towards the lightsource, squinting into the shadows. Where was the blue-eyed magician? The cave was eerily silent, the water still but for the movement of Dan’s arms.

As he drew closer, he could see that the light was coming from a gap in the rock wall that led into a much larger, brightly lit chamber. Phil was just a few metres ahead of him, treading water as he waited patiently for Dan to swim closer, that smile still firmly attached to his face.

Just as he was about to reach his bobbing companion, something bright green and glowing flashed past his face so suddenly that he tumbled over backwards in the water. He righted himself in alarm. To one side of him, Phil was doubled over in laughter, a stream of bubbles pouring out of his mouth, and to the other he could see the culprit swimming away. A small fish, lit head to tail with green stripes.

Bioluminescence, Dan breathed (although it came out more like ‘bubble lubble esble bubble’). As he spun in a slow circle, his jaw fell open, a movement that was really starting to ache now.

In the darkest depths of the Earth’s oceans, all manner of sea life have developed ways to light up the world around them. This cave was filled with just such creatures; eels and squid that flashed bright colours as if electrified, patterned fish that darted in and out of the crevices in the rocks, jellyfish of all shapes and sizes that looked like floating, pulsating flowers in blue and purple and pink. Dan knew that deep sea creatures could be scary, but these were all relatively small and paid the humans little attention, busying about the cave at varying speeds.

Gently, Phil dragged him onwards, as Dan could easily have floated there gazing for hours. Phil was pulling them upwards towards a surface that Dan assumed must be an air pocket in the grotto, for they were far too far down to be back at ground level.

Their heads broke the surface of the water and now Phil could really laugh.

“It’s quite something, isn’t it?”

“I never would have found this without you. Thank you so much.” Dan said happily.

“It’s my pleasure, they’re very friendly and peaceful but they don’t get a lot of visitors. People don’t expect to find anything down a deep, dark hole. It’s The Circus of Light after all, but sometimes light is found in the darkest of places. Or is it hope? I forget.”

“Both, I think,” Dan laughed.

They pulled themselves out onto the rocks and looked down at the glowing water. There were no lights in the cave, but it didn’t need them. It was almost more beautiful from up here. All the colours merged together in a swirling, rippling rainbow of light. The water slipping over the rocks and a mellifluous drip somewhere in the back of the cave were the only sounds to break the silence of this little grotto, and Dan felt very peaceful. He made to lay back, but Phil stopped him.

“Hey, careful! You’ll squish him.”

Dan turned around to see Phil carefully unsticking a starfish from the rocks. “Hey there little buddy,” he said softly. “Mind if we relocate you?”

All of a sudden Dan was overcome by the wondrousness of this night. He had just about been holding it together, but this man was too much. This magical, sweet, gentle, hilarious man. He launched himself forwards and pulled Phil into a hug.

Phil laughed breathlessly in surprise, wrapping his arms around the younger boy. “Woah, you okay?”

Dan nodded into Phil’s jacket. “Just a bit emotional,” he mumbled. “This is great. You’re great. And there aren’t words nearly great enough to explain how great it all is.”

Phil curled himself around Dan’s body and rested his head gently on Dan’s shoulder. “Good, I’m glad. You’re pretty great too, you know. Otherwise I wouldn’t be spending time with you.”

Dan wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, wrapped in each others arms in the peaceful silence of the chamber, watching the water ebb and flow, but eventually Phil straightened up.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Not much night left. Lots of things left to see though, if you want?”

With a sigh, Dan nodded. “Yeah. Okay. There’s too much, though. I could stay here, exploring this one tiny cave, for month. Then I could spend years and years exploring the rest of this lake-sea thing. And this is only one tent in the whole circus!”

Phil nodded. “I guess that’s why I joined. I do have years and years to explore, to see everything. No two nights are ever the same.”

Dan stared up at him through wistful eyes. “I would give anything to join you. To travel with the circus.”

That comment turned the conversation more serious, and Dan knew that it had. He could pretty much see the look on Phil’s face change a bit.

“Would you though?” Phil scrutinized him. “It’s a big commitment. Would you leave your life behind - your friends, your family, your school or job or whatever - to travel with us?”

This caught Dan off guard. “I didn’t think of that. I’m not sure. Maybe, at least, for a while.”

“That would be a big decision to make and besides, you would need the magic,” Phil smiled sadly. “Acts come and go, unless your whole family is magical it’s not really a place to bring up a child. They wouldn’t get a proper education, and there’d be no other kids to make friends with. At least, not lasting friendships. Hundreds of kids, but only for one night. How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” Dan replied.

“I’m not much older. Four years. You’ve probably got a lot of friends at home that would miss you then, if you were to go gallivanting off with a travelling circus.”

Dan shrugged. “They’re all going to uni in a few months anyway, it’s not so different.”

Phil squeezed Dan’s shoulder. “Regardless, it’s a magic circus. You need a degree of magic just to be able to travel with us, because we don’t use conventional methods. I’m sorry. Maybe you’ll find us again in many years. A few do. If it’s their destiny.”

“What do you mean?” Dan asked.

“People find the circus in a number of ways,” Phil explained. “We don’t need to advertise. Word of mouth, a strange light on the horizon, little blue lights in their back garden…”

“Did you send them? The lights?” Dan asked eagerly. Was Phil about to explain the mystery of the will o’ the wisps?”

“I thought so,” Phil mused. “You were brought here by wisps. No, we didn’t. But every now and then they bring us a visitor. I suppose it’s fate. You had something to learn, perhaps, from your visit.”

“But what? How do I find out?”

“You don’t,” Phil said simply. “You may never figure out what it was, but it will have happened. You were meant to be here tonight, Dan Howell. To have played a part in the destiny of another human, even if it was only a tiny one, makes me very glad.”

“You make me very glad.” Dan said stupidly, blushing red immediately. “I didn’t mean, like..”

Phil laughed good naturedly. “I’m glad we make each other glad, in our round about ways. Shall we head off, then?”

Dan was paying little attention to Phil’s word, starting desperately into his eyes. The colours of the cave danced off his pale skin, spilling into curves and highlighting the subtle protrusion of his cheekbones. His eyes sparkled just as brightly as ever and his hair blended into the shadow of the cave. He was a part of the circus, and Dan was infatuated. The circus, the magicians, the animals, the lights, PJ, Phil…

Without thinking, Dan leaned forwards and pressed his lips to Phil’s cheek. “Thank you,” he said softly. “For everything.”

Light was in his hair and on his skin and in his heart.

Phil’s cheeks glowed pink, and he reached for Dan’s hand. “Any time. Shall we?”

Together, they dived.