What happened?" Bailey asks. "That is somewhat difficult to explain," Tsukiko answers. "It is a long and complicated story." "And you're not going to tell me, are you?" She tilts her head a bit ... "No, I am not," she says. "Great," Bailey mutters under his breath... "The bonfire exploded? How?" "Remember when I said it was difficult to explain? That has not changed.

I thought a circus environment would be an interesting venue to explore, where you didn't just have one tent with three rings and a show going on but where you could explore different things in different tents.

Her father picks different names for her as they change locales, but he uses Miranda often, presumably because he knows how much it annoys her.

He reads histories and mythologies and fairy tales, wondering why it seems that only girls are ever swept away from their mundane lives on farms by knights or princes or wolves. It strikes him as unfair to not have the same fanciful opportunity himself. And he is not in the position to do any rescuing of his own.

I worry hope will crush me, the way love has so many times before. Are they so different, hope and love? O & E in the same place, half of the other in each word. Both swimming in unknowns. I’ve been through the big changes. These ones should seem easier in comparison, I should be more prepared, but they don’t and I’m not. Sometimes I feel like a broken-wing butterfly, clinging to a window screen. Afraid to let go. Afraid to stay. Wondering how much wing is enough to fly.

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?

Because I do not wish to know,” he says. “I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark.