The girl was left alone by the fire. Uncertainly, Millie stepped out of the shadows. "Are you all right?" she asked. Millie herself was shaking. Living with only women in the temple of Asheth had not prepared her for the horror of the threat of male violence.
The girl stared at her with an expression halfway between the usual blankness and dislike. "You don't belong here", she said to Millie rudely. "And you're like as not going to get eaten by a tiger if you stick around".
"That wasn't a real tiger", said Millie. "I couldn't think what else to do. Are you all right? Why didn't you do something to stop that awful man?"
The girl barked a mirthless laugh. "Do something? What d'you think I was doing? You get them still and off their guard and then you drop to a crouch on the floor out their grasp and you run for it. I've never yet failed at outrunning his kind. And that wasn't a man, it was only Ben Goodwin. He's fourteen if he's a day, no older than me. I've escaped worse than him."
"Not that you'll need that kind of trick", she said bitterly after a pause. "No danger comes to the likes of you, unless you're for getting eaten by a tiger tonight, that is".
"I told you, it wasn't a real tiger. I just conjured an illusion that only you two - and me- could see, to make him leave you alone.", Millie said. "And I meant, why didn't you use magic? You could have had a rock drop on his head, or sent him to a distant place never to come back, or even worse and he'd have deserved them all".
It was hard to tell, given her normal blank expression, whether the trapeze girl was really unable to understand Millie's simple words. She shrugged. "I don't know magic. There's a woman used to be a dancer that does some charms and brews. Fat lot of good that would do me. You'd better go. Your fancy people will think you've been eaten by yon tiger. I stay because I'm cold and I don't care if I get eaten by a tiger or not."
Millie felt herself getting cross at the girl's seemingly wilful ignorance. "Not silly hedge-witch charms, proper powerful magic! Don't you know you've got it? You've got a fierce magic simply pulsing from you! I should think you must be an enchantress. And I should know."
The girl looked completely uninterested. She just said "You get back to your carriage and your family and don't worry your pretty little head about what you've seen here" and looked into the fire. "Good luck with the tiger, if you run into him."
"I MADE THE TIGER!" Millie shouted in exasperation. "Why won't you listen to me? It's because you think I don't know anything about what your life is like" she gabbled on "and I don't, of course, but I do know what it's like to be a prisoner and to fear for your life and to have a friend who can save you".
Whether any of this had hit home or not, Millie would never know. At that moment, Millie heard Mordecai's voice softly calling her name, and felt the magnetic tug of his magic pulling her to him. The girl heard it too, gave Millie a scornful look and ran. There wasn't much that Millie could do but follow the pull of Mordecai's spell back towards her friends, waiting by the now nearly deserted entrance to the Big Top. At least I don't have to worry about her getting away from that awful boy, Millie reflected. She wasn't wrong about being able to run! Millie hadn't even had time to see what direction the girl had gone.
