In 1943 Hell’s Kitchen is a rough place.

Thomas Doyle is on his own at nine years old, mother dead and father unknown. He earns his keep running errands for the Mulligan gang along the waterfront. When young Tom is witness to a shakedown that ends in murder, Mulligan whisks him away to Montpellier’s Electric Circus on Long Island, set up among the ruins of Nicola Tesla’s failed Wardenclyffe Tower. Mulligan makes a deal with the mysterious Marquis de Montpellier to take Thomas on as an apprentice wirewalker, for a price.

Calin Dudgeon sits in the same seat every night, right in front, close enough to touch the circus ring. The electric spectacle and magical performers provide a momentary escape from her sorrows. Even so, she often weeps for her father, killed in the war. Her silent mother sits next to her and hands her a kerchief for her tears. One night, a new performer, a boy her age, reaches across the ring during the final bow and hands her a note.

Meet me behind the tent after the show

Calin and Tom begin a friendship and begin to heal the wounds of grief. Then one day the circus is gone without a trace. Calin is frantic, but there is no one at Wardenclyffe except Mulligan’s workmen, packing crates into the mysterious tunnels rumored to lie beneath Tesla’s deserted laboratory.

Scralig is not her name, it’s a curse. 

It's what the people of Vinesvik call her. Her golden eye is the cause. It’s what makes the old women curl their fingers against its evil and turn their faces away. She has one blue eye. It binds her to her father, and to the fair-haired folk of Vinevik. But her black hair and golden eye bind her to her grandmother, Tasha, and other, distant kin. Once, by her blue eye, Scralig swore she saw two ravens laughing before they few off to whisper into Odin's ear. Once, through her golden eye, she saw a thunder man land in the upper pasture. Black smoke rolled off his wings and nets of lightning flickered along his arms. That was when she was small. Perhaps it was just Grandmother Tasha’s stories that put the visions in her head. Now Scralig is older and she knows better than to trust in visions. Besides, in her small village, a girl with strange looks has other things to worry about.