Something about the circus stirs their souls, and they ache for it when it is absent.

The circus arrives without warning.

You look like a ghost," Bailey says. He can think of no better way to describe it. "You appear the same way to me, so which of us is real?

I draft quickly and then revise, a lot.

I couldn't tell the difference between what was real and what I wanted to be real.

Taking his time, as though he has all of it in the world, in the universe, from the days when tales meant more than they do now, but perhaps less than they will someday, he draws a breath that releases the tangled knot of words in his heart, and they fall from his lips effortlessly. "The circus arrives without warning.

I mean only that I hope they find darkness or paradise without fear of it, if they can.