Mille could think of nothing but the trapeze girl as the carriage clattered the 5 mile distance back to the Castle. Was it possible for the girl really not to know that she had a vast amount of magical power at her fingertips? Millie thought of Christopher had spending years using extraordinary magic to travel to different worlds at night, and being unable to do simple spells by day, and could believe it. And - more importantly - was the girl's life as thoroughly miserable as that glimpse of it had suggested?
The conversation in the carriage was sleepily desultory. Bernard had given up altogether and was nodding with his head on Flavian's shoulder.
"Did you notice the extraordinary magic from the trapeze girl?" Millie asked the others. There was a murmur of mild agreement, nothing more.
"I thought they were all grown ups" said Jason, "and they were all jolly good".
"Oh, one was certainly just my age, I think, it was clear when you saw her close up" replied Elizabeth, "you know, when she landed right near our seats at the end, after all those somersaults. And she was by far the best: do you mean that one, Millie? I felt a sense of power coming from her, I think. A bit, anyway."
"A lot of these circus people probably use magic," Mordecai agreed. "I didn't see any poles holding up the structure of the Big Top, for a start. And what about the strong man?"
A lively debate broke out about whether the strong man had been assisted by magic, and whether or not that was cheating. "Nobody's arms are that strong" protested Jason, in opposition to Flavian's insistence that it was all real. Millie smiled, thinking of Christopher fooling with her case at the station.
"Yes, but this girl was different", she broke into the conversation again. "It wasn't so much what she was doing as the feel of magic. It was a bit like when I first met Christopher and I could just feel there was something about him that made him, well, like me."
Flavian and Mordecai exchanged glances. "I agree, I felt a strong sense of magic from one of the trapeze artists too", said Flavian. "But without having met the person in question, it's hard to know whether that sense is right or whether it was deflected from some other magic, for example. And although enchanter level magic is rare, there's no reason why a circus person couldn't have it. Good luck to her, I say!"
Millie sighed. This was perfectly true, and there must be hundreds of people in unhappy living situations, so there really wasn't any reason in the related worlds for her to carry on thinking about the trapeze girl all night. And yet, somehow, that was exactly what she did.
