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.

Celia." he says without looking up at her, "why do we wind our watch?" "Because everything requires energy," she recites obediently, eyes still focused on her hand. "We must put effort and energy into anything we wish to change.

...have a theory that she is in love with the dream of someone and not an actual person.

I cannot let a place that is so important to so many people fade away. Something that is wonder and comfort and mystery all together that they have nowhere else. If you had that, wouldn't you want to keep it?

It is destroying me that I cannot ask you to dance.

I find I think of myself not as a writer so much as someone who provides a gateway, a tangential route for readers to reach the circus. To visit the circus again, if only in their minds, when they are unable to attend it physically. I relay it through printed words on crumpled newsprint, words that they can read again and again, returning to the circus whenever they wish, regardless of time of day or physical location. Transporting them at will. When put that way, it sounds rather like magic, doesn't it? p.369

It is perhaps both a blessing and a curse that fictional worlds spring into my mind nearly fully formed and it takes quite a while to sift through everything to find the story.