“It’s difficult to hide when you travel with an entire circus, you know.”
“I have not been hiding,” Celia says.
“You have,” Marco says. “I tried to speak with you at Herr Thiessen’s funeral, but you left before I could find you, and then you took the circus across the ocean. You’ve been avoiding me.”
“It was not entirely intentional,” Celia says. “I needed some time to think. Thank you for the Pool of Tears,” she adds.
“I wanted you to have a place where you felt safe enough to cry if I could not be with you.”
She closes her eyes and does not reply.
“You stole my book,” Marco says after a moment.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“As long as it is somewhere safe it does not matter whether I keep it or you do. You could have asked. You could have said goodbye.”
Celia nods.
“I know,” she says.
Neither of them speaks for some time.
“I am trying to make the circus independent,” Celia says. “To untie it from the challenge, from us. From me. I needed to learn your system to make it work properly. 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?”
“I have that whenever I’m with you,” Marco says. “Let me help you.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“You cannot do this alone.”
“I have Ethan Barris and Lainie Burgess,” Celia says. “They have agreed to assume management for the basic operation. With a little more training, Poppet and Widget should be able to handle the manipulation aspects that Ethan and Lainie cannot manage. I … I do not need you.”
She cannot look him in the eye.
“You don’t trust me,” he says.
“Isobel trusted you,” Celia says, looking at the ground. “So did Chandresh. How can I believe that you are honest with me and not with them, when I am the one you have the most reason to deceive?”
“I never once told Isobel that I loved her,” Marco says. “I was young and I was desperately lonely, and I should not have let her think I felt more strongly than I did, but what I felt for her is nothing compared to what I feel for you. This is not a tactic to deceive you; do you think me that cruel?”
Celia rises from her chair.
“Good night, Mr. Alisdair,” she says.
“Celia, wait,” Marco says, standing but not moving closer to her. “You are breaking my heart. You told me once that I reminded you of your father. That you never wanted to suffer the way your mother did for him, but you are doing exactly that to me. You keep leaving me. You leave me longing for you again and again when I would give anything for you to stay, and it is killing me.”
“It has to kill one of us,” Celia says quietly.
“What?” Marco asks.
“The one who survives is the victor,” she says. “The winner lives, the loser dies. That’s how the game ends.”
“That—” Marco stops, shaking his head. “That cannot be the intent of this.”
“It is,” Celia says. “It is a test of endurance, not skill. I’m attempting to make the circus self-sufficient before … ”
She cannot say the words, still barely able to look at him.