This isn't right! Layla is playing Jeanne! Sora raised her hands weakly in front of herself. This was all wrong! She came to help Layla, not steal her role! Then Layla herself had said, "Take it, Sora," but in a cold voice that meant something was wrong. Of course something was wrong! Then Layla had left the training room. Sora did not know where she was now.

"You stabbed her in the back," Fool told her cheerfully, "your friend invited you to heat up the stage and you stole her part."

"Stop it, Fool!"

"I am only saying what you think." He spun in a circle around Sora's head. "Cathy Taymour was born in the year of the Tiger. She is constructively selfish, stubborn, courageous, and a deep thinker...and she has realised that the Jeanne she wrote is more like Sora than like Layla. Do you wish Cathy's play to be less glorious than it should be?"

Sora did a frustrated series of handsprings across the carpet. "I do not know, Fool! I'm going for a walk—"

She was wandering vaguely in circles, either subconsciously or consciously looking for Layla. There was Layla's dressing room, the door opened by a crack, and Sora's feet walked toward it. But there were voices already in there, a man's voice and Layla's.

Mr Hamilton, Sora remembered. The pale middle-aged man with the harsh, pencil-thin moustache, extremely wealthy and always busy; he cared deeply about his daughter when he was able to show it.

"I warned you, Layla," he said. "You will be replaced by new young stars. I picked that girl out years ago. Then you commit career suicide by inviting her to steal your role!"

Layla said something that Sora could not hear.

"If you like I'll take you away from this travesty," Mr Hamilton said. "There's a casting call for Leonides' latest movie. Though you're aging out of the business, you can get by a little longer in films..."

Aging out? Sora was horrified and angry. Layla was not very much older than she was, and Sora was still an age where people went to college...but she did not think that the exact age was the point...

I am a little older than Jeanne was when she died.

And suddenly Sora thought of when she would be as ancient as Layla's father—he'd always seemed much older than her own father, either of them. Your body slowed as you became older and you couldn't do the same stunts any more, but she'd always thought of Sarah and Kalos as quite old and Sarah was still singing. She and Layla would find performances for then.

Then quickly Sora's mind turned to more—she and Layla shrivelled white-haired old women at ninety with long yellow fingernails, but still doing something, standing to give people in an audience something they wanted to see and hear. For a moment, a small part of Sora wondered that her heart should instinctively place Layla always with her in her imaginings of the future.

Everyone is mortal, everyone is vulnerable in their body, but their soul and heart...

Then there was Alice—the original Alice in Wonderland, her real name Donna Walker. She inspired Sora to join Kaleido Stage, when Sora came to the show with her first parents. She was the same star who inspired Layla. Sora met her a long time later when she was training a seeing eye dog called Love. Donna Walker grew older and she was beautifully happy.

It wasn't something to be afraid of, and for a moment Sora had the feeling she stood on the cusp of a shining realisation beyond.

Layla's father said something, and she answered him back in a voice that sounded like a polar bear's teeth looked, and then Layla opened the door and came face to face with Sora outside.

She didn't have to say anything. Sora had eavesdropped, and she was sorry for eavesdropping, sorry for it all. She watched Layla go.

Mr Hamilton walked out a moment later. He looked at her.

"Don't take it personally," he said. He reached into his jacket pocket for a business card. "When this play needs additional sponsors, call this number and we'll talk about what you can do for Hamilton Hotels."

Sora shook her head. She watched him go, then started to run. She caught up with Mr Hamilton as he reached his chauffeur and car.

"You're wrong," she said, "about Layla, Layla will never be worn out, not in my eyes. She will always be amazing, no matter how old we grow together—"

"Miss Naegino," Mr Hamilton said sharply, his voice as clipped as the tight neatness of his moustache, "do you think that I'm not a busy man? Excuse me." The impassive-faced chauffeur closed the car door.

Sora walked away, the pain growing in her heart all the while, and tears building behind her eyes.

—

"This time," Kalos said from the screen of the video phone, "I'm not going to say that you must accept the role or never return to Kaleido Stage. It's entirely up to you, Sora."

She shut off the message and stretched into a backwards cat on the bed. She held the pose with the rocking of the mattress, taking in a deep breath. A flip later and she stood balanced on one leg, touching the ceiling with the toes of the other. The room's air currents were heavy and too warm.

"No decision is a decision," Fool announced.

"I know that!" Sora shook her head wildly. She moved her leg into an arabesque, then jumped backward to the floor. Surely Layla is—I have betrayed her without meaning to! "The only thing that Jeanne feared was treachery and she was right."

"Sounds like you know the play already," Fool muttered, but by then Sora was away to the practice rooms.

—

Layla balanced between her parallel beams. She swung herself up into a one-handed handstand in a single fluid motion, then somersaulted into her trapeze bars.

Old. Fired. Unable to perform. She rose into the air in a half-Angel position. At that time, Layla competed with Sora to help bring the full Angel to the Kaleido Stage.

In the first days after we met I saw you as a pursuing threat, Sora.

The girl thrust herself into everything. She was impulsive and audacious. In the beginning Layla saw Sora as nothing but a nuisance, and then she began to see a fire in her. Her father reminded her that here was a potential successor, but Layla found a partner. Together they conquered the Mystical Act and flew a hundred feet above the ground.

Then Sora would not compete to win better parts. That caused their last great quarrel: when Sora refused to descend to the level necessary to win the Circus Festival and follow in Layla's exact footsteps. Instead, Sora traced her own path to become the Kaleido Star. She became the Angel and Layla, for a time, her Devil.

For an Angel cannot be raised without a Devil...

Layla brought her legs up and over a hoop, balancing herself steadily atop it. The old injury in her right arm shook by a fraction, but her left was perfectly steady. She and Sora had grown and changed since the night of the Mystical Act, where they united all their dreams in the air together. She closed her eyes, knowing all her equipment by touch, and landed on the next bar.

When she opened them, she blinked once.

"Fool. It seems I've accomplished your prediction." The theatrical doll hovered before her eyes. The first time I saw him, perched upon Sora's shoulder... "Will you fade, since I have failed?"

"It's always unwise to trip over the toes of a dragon with injured pride," Fool said. "Will you leave the theatre?"

"Perhaps. If I take a role in a film then I will have to." Layla lowered her body, carefully stretching. "Will you fade at last if I do, Fool?"

"Is it foolish to cherish an impossible dream, or more foolish to leave it behind in the dust?" the Spirit of the Stage asked. He did not seem to expect an answer, as he became clouded and vanished from Layla's view. She swung herself up into a split handstand on the trapeze bar.

Then her right shoulder gave way, and she plummeted down with a soft cry.

—

The shimmering silver ball almost broke as it slipped past her! Sora windmilled backward as she struggled to catch it in time. Then she flicked it back to the juggler, who laughed and flung her another. Catching it in a one-legged twirl, she laughed when she heard laughter. She played with Hans Ueda, who was a very skilled juggler indeed; a former circus clown who had worked in a lot of different shows—including one stint with the Theatrical Camp and Sora's other friend Dio. Clarrie laughed behind them.

Sora had now met Clarrie properly, an Italian character actor with an india-rubber face who reminded her of Anna. Then there was stuntman August Huang, who said that he'd competed with May Wong back in her ice skating days and was a family friend; Eugene, the good-looking tap dancer who was to play the Dauphin; and many others.

When Sora was still in school in Japan and dreaming of the Kaleido Stage, every year she'd get a copy of the audition results and read the names of the amazing new entrants and imagine what it would be like to become friends with them. She liked to be part of a crowd and listen to everyone else's amazing ideas.

"When I was a servant girl in Layla Hamilton's Salome in Vegas," the girl called Farnice said, "she wasn't like you. I thought that you would be the same, since you are both Kaleido Stars. But it's fun—you talk to people!" Farnice reminded Sora of Mia, a little; she had the same quickness and mongoose-like eager eyes, her frizzy red hair pulled back in beaded braids. "The big star who talks to the little people!"

Sora felt herself flush beetroot-coloured. "No, no! I am not above anyone! I see everyone do amazing things at the Kaleido Stage. That is why I perform!"

Farnice laughed. "So it is just Miss Layla, then! Was she this intimidating when she was at Kaleido Stage? The golden ice maiden without a word to say except to tell people they're doing it wrong."

"No!" Sora said fiercely. Farnice did not know Layla properly, that was the difference! "Layla is a person with a kind heart. You don't know how much she encouraged me, how much she gave when she was my partner!" Sora had too many memories to count: their swords at night above the roaring sea and then the stage pirate ship in flames, the training for the Mystical Act and all the pain that Layla put herself through, Layla coming to save her Swan Lake performance twice, everything else since then and before. And then there were the other sides to Layla's personality: when she spoke of her father always being too busy to come and see her plays, when Layla remembered her past as a little girl who always cried, when she revealed that she was starving herself and risking injury for the Mystical Act. "Layla is not that kind of person."

"I guess," Farnice said, "Layla's the kind of person who only a few get to know. I didn't mean there was anything wrong with that." She shrugged.

Sora wished Layla—that she hadn't betrayed Layla, that Layla was here. Layla always inspired people to give an amazing performance, such as May. "She is an amazing inspiration."

"Then why is she sulking?" Farnice said. "Look, I'm sorry—let's talk of other things. I guess my style is closer to yours. So did you hear the joke about which circus performers can see in the dark? Acro-bats can. When the trapeze artist's accountant asked her what her net worth was, she said, Every penny! Did you hear about the trapeze artist who caught his wife in the act?"

Sora found herself laughing at Farnice's jokes, though inside she was wondering.

Yes, I am different from Layla, she thought. She had never realised so clearly before that her dream of being a Kaleido Star followed a different path. Layla was a distant amazing star to the supporting performers, but Sora liked to be surrounded by many friends and laughter. And because of our differences we became partners, who each gave something new and amazing to each other.

Please, Layla, forgive me...

—

Layla was crying uncontrollably into her green dress. The white rabbit had meant everything in the world for her, and now the Tweedledum figure had given the last toy to the last child and gone away. She didn't have a white rabbit. Her mother hugged her.

This was her outing with both her parents to the Kaleido Stage, where Alice in Wonderland was the most wonderful thing in the world. Layla was utterly captivated by the way that Alice could fly through the air. But words couldn't explain the tears she shed that there was no white rabbit left for her to hold in her arms, something that would make Alice in Wonderland last forever...

Layla was clutching the toy in her bed. No, it was a white pillow. She was lying on the floor.

"Macquarie, get me my white rabbit," Layla said firmly though in a muffled tone. Her maid was bending over her with a look of great concern.

"Now, Miss Layla?" Macquarie looked uncertain. The white rabbit was far away at the moment, Layla remembered. She had placed all of her old favourite objects in storage on the day she had finished her schooling and auditioned for the Kaleido Stage. "I think that old thing is..."

"Don't worry about it," Layla said. She found that she could sit up. "Tweedledum couldn't give me a rabbit and I cried, but I know where my rabbit is now." Macquarie knew it too. Once she had sewn the white rabbit's ear back on for Layla, and packed it away herself.

"You fell and you're hurt, miss. Do you have a concussion?" Macquarie said. "I thought that you were lucky not to be badly hurt, but if you feel confused, I'll call an ambulance just this second. I think I should to be sure!"

"You've always worried too much about me." Layla got to her feet. She carefully checked her right shoulder; though it had given way when she fell, she seemed not to have fallen on it. She had managed to slip out of her net and land on her left side. "If you like, Macquarie, we'll check in with the first aid staff. Then I think I will practice some more."

"Have you decided...?" Macquarie said, knowing what had happened. "If you want I will hand in my resignation too! Sora is likeable enough, but these people have no excuse to treat you this way!"

Layla raised a hand. They were both silent on their way to practice.

—