The Night Circus

by Erin Morgenstern

“Secrets have power,” Widget begins. “And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it’s really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.

Widget and Poppet are, writing-wise, the oldest characters in the book. They existed before anyone else and their names were inspired by a conversation I had about good names for pairs of cats. They always had a yin & yang, light & dark, storyteller & story listener relationship and this storytelling scene was one of the earlier ones that managed to survive revision after revision. This advice about secrets is good advice that I should remind myself of more often. The rest of the story about the wizard in the tree is, of course, a variation on the mythology of Merlin.