Alfredo Codona and Lillian Leitzel fell in love while working as performers for Ringling Brothers and were married on July 20, 1928. Alfredo performed on the high wire and the flying trapeze, while Lillian's apparatus was the corde lisse and Spanish web. Less than three short years after their wedding, however, Lillian fell to her death while performing. Alfredo remarried but never got over Lillian's death. Six years later, when he arrived at a meeting to discuss a divorce with his lawyer and second wife, he shot his wife and then himself.

When Lana woke up, she was in Lilly's tent again. Lilly sat at the bedside, reading a book. She looked up when Lana's eyes finally fluttered open. With a finger to mark her page, she started speaking, staring down at her book as she did so.

"When I was alive, I was a very famous performer with Ringling Brothers," she said. "My favorite trick was on the straps, throwing planges. The whole audience would count as I did them. You cannot imagine the power of an entire audience counting up to one hundred, two hundred, as you perform a trick most of them couldn't even do one repetition of. One night, I was in the middle of doing this trick when suddenly I was falling – Alfredo told me later that it was part of the rigging that snapped, the strap had been too worn out, or something.

"I don't remember dying. Apparently I lived for two days before death arrived. Before that I was already here." Lilly looked up at Lana. "I haven't performed that trick yet, here. I cannot do it. Part of me thinks that if I do this trick, that will allow me to move on. The other part of me doesn't want to move on. My Alfredo is here. I love the circus. I love performing. I don't want to leave."

Lana felt very tired.

"I'm dead, then," she said. It was not a question.

"Yes."

"Is this hell?" she asked.

Lilly thought for a moment. "I don't believe it is. How could someplace as magical as a circus be hell?" After a minute she added, "I don't believe it is heaven, either. It is a place we stay until we are ready for whatever is next."

Lana nodded. She had one hand on her stomach. The bandage had been removed, and she felt the edges of the knife wound through the sequins of her costume. "That's why this doesn't hurt. Why it doesn't bleed, unless I try to leave here."

"Yes."

"And why I heal so quickly. Why everyone heals so quickly."

"Yes."

"Charly died in a fire, didn't she?"

"You will have to ask her about it," Lilly said. She stood. "Come, you have work to do."

"Are you sending me on a mission?"

Lilly laughed. "No, no. But you are still responsible for the horses, aren't you?"

***

Walking through the fairgrounds, Lana saw everything in a new light: the mix of old and even older, the scars borne by those passing by. Bettina would look just as lovely as ever – only the memory of having her head crushed by horses' hooves would remain. So many, like Bettina, appeared unscarred, however, and Lana could only wonder how they might have died. Though she supposed no one could see her own scars, beneath her costume.

"Mitch!" she cried when she saw him, pitching muck into a wheelbarrow. He stood, wiping sweat away as flies swarmed around him. She flung her arms around him, surprised at her own fierceness of feeling. His smell might have put off someone more delicate, but to her it was lovely. He felt real and solid.

"You're back," he said into her hair. He gripped her back just as tightly. "I saw you. I saw you go into the darkness."

"I came back," she said, her voice breaking into a sob.

Mitch allowed her to cry for a time, then picked her up and carried her into the horse car, where he sat down on his cot and held her in his lap.

Tenderly he kissed away her tears. Her lips ached for him and she pressed them against the salty sweat of his neck. The loneliness and sadness inside of her was a huge hole and she felt like he could fill it. She clutched at his shirt and pulled away just long enough to get her mouth near his.

They were both hungry.

She pressed herself against him. Her stomach throbbed and ached with emptiness along the length of the hole in her belly. She wanted him to love her; she needed him to love her despite what she had done.

Breathless, she twined her fingers into his hair, pulled on it. Moved her fingers through it –

He yanked her hands away.

His hands held her wrists hard like manacles. She stared at him, breathless and questioning.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

She couldn't bear for him to hate her. But he refused to let go of her wrists. He held her captive.

"I can't do this," he said, his voice breaking.

"What do you mean?" She just wanted to hold him and he wouldn't let her. "Please. Please, Mitch."

"I can't."

With that he lifted her off his lap by her wrists, then released her so that she staggered back. By the time she had regained her balance, he was gone.

***

The night was long from over. Lana wandered aimlessly, past clusters of ghosts near campfires, drinking and laughing and juggling. She was still in her costume. She imagined she looked like a tattered street urchin, her costume in shreds and blood seeping out. She rubbed her arms, yet she didn't feel cold. She just felt like she should feel cold.

She wasn't looking for Mitch – she wasn't looking for anyone or anything. She was dead. This was the end. There seemed no reason to enjoy herself in any way. This had to be what the preachers would call purgatory. She had died full of sin, and now she had this to look forward to for all eternity. Lilly made it sound like there was something else beyond the circus, but how?

Lilly was dead.

Mitch was dead, too. How had Mitch died? Lana hadn't seen a mark on him. Not that he would even tell her. He did not want to be with her, that much was clear. Not even Freddy, that cheating bastard, wanted her – had pushed her away when she was feeling frisky. Maybe all she had done to Bettina – even though it was an accident! – had changed Mitch's mind about her.

"Hey, girly!"

Lana turned. Charly extracted herself from a group of happy circus folk and ran over. She had a blanket thrown over her shoulders and was also still in costume, a flashy red, white, and blue number.

"We was all worried about you," she said. The glow from the fire cast strange shadows over the burn marks on her face. "Jack said you went over the line again."

"I'm fine," Lana replied woodenly.

Charly peered into Lana's face. "Are you?" She tucked her arm into Lana's. "Come on, let's sit by the fire."

The fire gave Lana something to look at, so she didn't have to see all those dead faces around her. They were all gaping toothy mouths and rotting skin. The fire was alive and warm and made her feel alive and warm.

Around her, the crowd was loud and noisy, but the instant she asked Charly how she died, silence crept in.

Charly, still clinging to Lana's arm, rested her head against Lana's shoulder. "I worked for the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus. That was the big time, for me. I had started out working the cooch tent in the Walter L. Main circus, tassel-twirling. I started doing some contortion stuff, and on the sly I started learning how to do trapeze. Things went south with that show, and I took off, and landed myself a spot in Hagenbeck-Wallace as a trapeze artist. Big time.

"And then I died. We were all on the train, sleeping, it seemed like the train had made a stop or something. Next thing I knew another train was slamming into us. I couldn't figure out what was going on, only that I was trapped in my bunk, and so were a lot of the others."

A few burned faces around the fire nodded.

"Back in those days, we lit the train cars with kerosene lanterns... I guess it was what people might call 'instantaneous,' my death. But I can recall those lanterns exploding, and watching that fire come at me, and the heat and the pain was unbearable in those last seconds. For a long time I was afraid to go near any fire, all of us were who were on that train. My skin smoked for days. All I smelled was burning."

"That sounds like a horrible way to die," Lana said quietly.

"It was," Charly said. "But look! I just have this little burn. I can still do trapeze. Heck, Tigra – she was on that train too – she breathes fire! It was horrible, but it wasn't the end of the world, you know?"

Lana looked at her.

"Just think about it. You don't get any older. You can't get permanently hurt doing any tricks. This is heaven right here."

"Amen to that!" called out Tom the dwarf, who raised a glass bottle.

"Cheers!" shouted several others. Glass bottles and metal flasks lifted into the air.

Lana tried to smile, but couldn't quite force herself.

___

The above video is from "The Greatest Show on Earth" and features an act inspired by the one Lillian Leitzel did.