It was the easiest thing in the world to take someone else’s identity for her own. What was harder was trying to prevent all her lies from catching up with her.

Looking back, Maggie supposed it all began with the death of the elephants. The Braun Brothers’ Royal Circus—which had no brothers, nor anything royal about it—was in Parramatta for its annual winter camp. The circus never performed during the cold months. No circus did. If audiences had been willing to sit on hard benches and shiver through a show, the ringmasters and managers would have said to hell with the difficulties and gone through with it. But in July and August, patrons preferred solid buildings to tents whose joins let in sharp slaps of cold air.

Maggie didn’t like these winter months. The days were kept pleasantly busy with breaking in new acts, training the horses, repainting the carts, and sewing new costumes, or repairing split seams, frayed hems and lost spangles on old ones. The ringmaster and manager of the Braun Brothers’ Royal Circus, Rafferty Braun—a falsified showman’s name if Maggie had ever heard one—maintained a watchful eye over them all, pushing, berating and encouraging so that, come showtime next spring, they’d be able to compete with Hyland’s, Wirth’s, FitzGerald Brothers and all the best circuses.

If she found herself at a loose end, Maggie volunteered to walk the children the short distance to the few months’ official schooling they’d have that year. She was always surprised their parents allowed her this task, and kept a mindful distance so as not to frighten the little ones. Even so, she could hear their grumbles and complaints about having to sit still in a classroom for so long. Most would never receive their Sufficiency Certificate.

Unlike Maggie, most would never miss it, or question what else life might have brought them if they’d had that bit of paper. For these children were born to the circus, and it was said that once you’d experienced circus life, the sawdust from the ring got in your veins and you were never rid of it…

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