Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

You have my whole heart. You always did.

He'd half meant to speak but those eyes had altered the world forever in the space of a heartbeat.

He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.

She looked up at him and her face was pale and austere in the uplight and her eyes lost in their darkly shadowed hollows save only for the glint of them and he could see her throat move in the light and he saw in her face and in her figure something he'd not seen before and the name of that thing was sorrow.

From daydreams on the road there was no waking. He plodded on. He could remember everything of her save her scent. Seated in a theatre with her beside him leaning forward listening to the music. Gold scrollwork and sconces and the tall columnar folds of the drapes at either side of the stage. She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of her summer dress. Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned.

Word gets around when the circus comes to town, don't it?