For a couple of light-filled hours in a circus tent, anything can happen. People fly through the air; they send impossible numbers of juggling clubs cascading about them; they walk, dance, leap and flip on mere filaments of wire; they eat fire, fling their bodies at exhilarating velocity across space, talk to animals, create heart-melting beauty and, in the next breath, pandemonium. They so command our attention that for a brief period the tent, the ring at its center, and all the people inside are ageless, suspended in time.
Getting to the point where all this can happen, though, takes an epic effort of body and will. That's what this story, which ran in DoubleTake in 2000, is about--a small troupe of kids and their coaches in northern Vermont creating an entire universe out of not much more than effervescence, practice and determination. (The .pdf takes a while to load, so be patient. I hope you'll think it was worth it.)