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On your next visit to the circus, you are irresistibly drawn once more to the Labyrinth. You don't intend to revisit tents this time, but the graceful paths of black and white lead you there, and your curiosity about the rooms you've heard of from other rêveurs is a stronger lure than the tantalizing scents of fried dough and cinnamon that you had been following into the depths of the circus.
The hallway behind the entrance is papered in playing cards, a profusion of hearts and diamonds replacing the clubs and spades you saw before. You walk through the door at the end of the hallway, and choose to descend the wrought iron staircase. There is no trapdoor in the floor to match the one in the ceiling at the top of the stairs; indeed, there doesn't seem to be a floor. Instead, dense coils of fog eddy around you, the faint scent of sugared almonds filling the air.
You reach a landing on the stairs. The lanterns above a pair of doors cast a golden light that shimmers in the fog, and you can see the hazy glow of other lanterns further below. You step through the door on the right, into a gentle snowfall of paper scraps. You catch a few in your palm and discover that each piece of creamy parchment has a word or two written on it in beautiful copperplate script, the elegant loops and downstrokes inscribed in mossy green, deep ruby, clear sunset orange, or a blue that looks like ocean waves in the sun.
"perfume"
"starry sky"
"ghost"
"picnic"
You carefully pick your way through the drifts of words, unsure where the boundaries of the room are. As if from across a vast snowy field, you hear the faint jingle of bells, the air so crisp you are surprised that your breath doesn't come out as a plume, and you are very grateful indeed for the scarf of red wool tucked warmly around your neck. None of the rêveurs have described this room, and you wonder if you're the first of your tribe of dreamers to have opened its door.
Your foot strikes something on the floor, and you stumble to a halt. A book is growing from the floor, scraps of paper fluttering around and knitting together in orderly stacks, a leather cover slowly creeping like a vine around the sheaves. You pick the book up and flip through the pages, but they're entirely blank. Then on one page, tiny dots of ink bloom into whorls of calligraphy, forming the words:
"Four steps to the left, three steps forward."
As you follow the instructions, the air around you grows warmer, the jingling of the bells blending with twittering birdsong, and the snowy drifts of paper melt away, revealing soft green grass. You keep walking forward, unwinding the scarf from around your neck. Above you there is no ceiling, no striped canvas arcing to a graceful point, but a twilight sky of violet and deep blue, the faintest specks of stars glimmering in the growing dark. Tiny white flowers tucked among the blades of grass lift their own starry faces to the sky, and you smell a faint perfume of jasmine, vanilla, and old books.
As you amble through the seemingly endless meadow, you wonder how this illusion is created, how the walls are being hidden so completely. Is the forest off in the distance a cleverly-done painting, meant to add to the sense of boundless space?
"It's like a nutshell. But without the bad dreams." A woman's voice, quiet and amused, from somewhere behind your right shoulder. You whirl to look, but there's no one there. You are still completely alone.
"But it is very much an infinite space," says a man to your left. Again, there is no one there to speak, no sign of any other person in this field of green and flowers.
"No, not infinite," responds the woman's voice. "If it were infinite, we would not be here. But we are not wine poured into the sea, and we are together."
You slowly turn in a full circle, but you see no one. Even the tiny birds that had been darting and chirruping across the sky have flown away to their nests, leaving nothing but a grassy meadow edged with trees, the colors leaking away to become their own darkened shadows as night falls. But to your left, a quilt of black and white squares is spread carelessly on the grass. You spy a miniature reflection of the rising crescent moon held in in the bowl of a silver spoon resting against a plate of gleaming white china, and step closer.
There are two plates set on the black and white quilt, each with a spoon, a fork, a knife, and a short crystal champagne flute set to the side, bubbles still rising from the depths of the glasses to sparkle and fizz in the night air. A tumble of dark grapes partially covers a wedge of cheese on another plate, and a loaf of bread points from a napkin-lined basket up toward the starry sky. Droplets of water bead on the side of the silvery pail packed with ice to hold the bottle of champagne, and you glimpse another plate stacked with chocolate mice. You crouch down and pick up one of the mice; almond sliver ears and a licorice-string tail mark it as the same sort of mice you've purchased before during your nocturnal wanderings through the circus.
A rustle of taffeta skirts comes from behind you, and you stand, startled, and turn to look, but there is no one there, nothing but a breeze gently stirring the petals of the tiny flowers. A clink of silverware on china causes you to turn again to the picnic before you; has a fork been moved? A knife set on the plate of cheese? You cannot be sure, and even if you were, what would it mean? You bend to reach for one of the champagne flutes, then stop. The voices you heard, joined in laughter, faintly whisper through the night air. You think better of your impulse, pull your hand back, search yet again for the owners of the voices, but there is no one to be seen. However, you do see a sliver of black and white striped space between the branches of the forest ahead of you, drawing you toward it. As you come closer, the forest is revealed to be made of cunningly cut and folded papers, sturdy bark and rustling leaves faintly veined with flowing words, and the black and white stripes mark a door.
Before you push it open, you take a final look at the grassy meadow behind you. The moonlight shines on the abandoned picnic -- but is it abandoned? You could stay, see if the unseen guests reveal themselves in time. But there are other wonders awaiting you, and your curiosity about the rest of the circus is, you decide, a fraction stronger than your curiosity about mysterious picnics.
Once through the door, you find yourself back on the path that winds between the tents of the Cirque des Rêves, a chocolate mouse dangling from your hand by its licorice string tail.