Robert, Malkin and Angelique sat together on the dirty floor of the abandoned pharmacy, hoping and waiting for Lily’s return. The others had all fallen asleep on a pile of old blankets under a workbench in the far corner, so the three of them were the only ones who heard the commotion in the hallway before Lily was thrust through the door.

She collapsed next to them, ashen-faced, her eyes red from blinking away the tears. “The police found nothing suspicious at the circus,” she said. “Madame and the others are taking us back later, when the coast’s clear. Along with the X-ray machine.” Fear prickled in her chest. “I wish Papa was here to stop all this,” she blurted out. “The thought of being forced into that terrible machine of Dr Droz’s…” She couldn’t hold her sadness in any longer, and burst out crying. “They’re going to put me in it during the show, Robert,” she sobbed. “I’ve seen it – and it’s so dangerous it might kill me.”

Robert placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “We’ll come up with a plan.”

Malkin jumped up on her lap and licked her face. Lily sniffled and wiped her eyes. “What plan? Madame took everything when she caught us. The lock picks, your note, even my pocket watch. All I have left is these.” She took out the few remaining pages of Mama’s notebook and the two teaspoons she’d stolen earlier and showed them to him.

“They might come in handy,” Robert said.

“Very.” Malkin snorted. “If we decide to have a tea break or do some reading in the next few hours.”

“Malkin’s right,” Lily said. “They’re useless.”

Robert shook his head. “No, we’ll think of something.”

Angelique shifted uncomfortably and folded her wings behind her.

“Maybe you should rest, Lily?” she suggested.

“I’m too churned up inside,” Lily replied. “I can’t think straight. I’ve no ideas left. Madame’s always one step ahead. I don’t know how I’m going to save myself, or the rest of you, and I don’t think I can sleep for worry.”

“Panic never solves a problem,” Angelique said. “Answers will come, I promise. Think of something else,” she suggested. “Why don’t you tell me the rest of the tale of Icarus?”

“What about it?”

“When you stopped he’d plunged into the ocean and I never got to find out what happened next.”

“There was no next. That was the end,” Lily said. “He drowned. That’s it.”

Angelique shook her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s just one ending. That’s the beauty of stories – they’re like clay, you can mould them into whatever shape you like. They don’t always have to be the same. They can change.”

Lily leaned towards her. “No matter what words are written on the page?” she asked.

Angelique nodded. “If they’re stories for telling out loud,” she said, “then who’s to say what the words are? You can rewrite the ending. Like with your mama. It’s not her notebook that’s her legacy, Lily, but you. Through you she lives on, and so does her story.”

Lily sat up straighter. “But this story…it’s been the same for thousands of years, so it must be right. You can’t go changing stories like that, can you? Tweaking them as you see fit? Things are as they are.”

“No, Lily, things are as you choose to see them.”

“Who taught you that?” Lily asked.

“You did, when you forgave my betrayal. And when you opened the door to our cell, you gave us another choice – to go with you, or to stay in our prison.”

“I don’t know if that’s a choice any more,” Lily said.

“It is,” Angelique told her. “You made me see what our choices truly are. That even if they lock us up, if we’re free in here –” she put a hand to her chest – “if we’re free in our hearts, they can never truly imprison us.”

“You could be right,” Lily said. But she still wasn’t sure. Everything over the last few days had confused her, and she was so tired and afraid. Robert and Malkin were slumped down beside her and looked like they’d given up too. Only Angelique’s deep brown eyes still contained a tiny flicker of hope.

“So what do you think happened next in Icarus’s story?” Lily asked her.

“I think Icarus was rescued from the water by—”

“Fishermen?” Deedee suggested. It appeared she’d woken up and had been listening in on their conversation.

“Who nursed him back to health,” Luca added. He was also awake, sitting up next to Deedee.

“Icarus got well again, in their village,” Angelique said, opening her wings wide like a feathered blanket around them all, and then Lily saw that Silva and Dimitri were awake too and listening. “But he never forgot his father,” Angelique said. “And one day he decided he would go and look for him.”

“Daedalus could’ve been anywhere,” Lily said. “He thought his son had drowned, but he couldn’t even stop to mourn Icarus until he reached land on the far side of the ocean.”

“Icarus imagined his papa had gone home,” Angelique said. “To their old house, where they used to live.”

At this, Lily thought of Brackenbridge Manor, and her own papa waiting for her, and how much he must be missing her. She hoped he was on his way. She took a deep breath before she continued the story.

“His old home was a long way across the Mediterranean,” she said. “Icarus would need a proper ship to sail so far, or some other way of travelling… But the fishermen wouldn’t let him go. They thought he was a miracle when he’d fallen from the sky. He’d brought them luck, fish and money, after a long period of hunger. So they tried to keep him prisoner.”

“But he was the son of an inventor,” Robert said. “He’d watched his papa make the wings in the first place.”

“That’s right,” Angelique said. “They’d defeated one prison together and so Icarus knew he could defeat another.”

“He’d been his papa’s apprentice so long,” Robert said, “helping out on bits of construction, he found he could probably make wings himself from memory, to fly high again like he had with his da.”

Lily realized everyone was working together now to tell the story. “The only thing stopping Icarus,” she said, “was that last time the wings had almost killed him. He’d flown too close to the sun and they’d melted. A risk like that can be deadly.”

Angelique nodded; she knew such things from her own experience. “But not always,” she said. “Failure, especially a big failure – and surviving it – that can make you stronger. You learn from your mistakes. You make better plans. The bigger the mistake, the stronger you become. You come out the other side and, if it’s bad enough, you adjust your path and never make that mistake again.”

“It’s like learning the tightrope,” Deedee added. “Don’t look back and don’t look down. If you fall, pick yourself up and try again. But the most important thing is not to give up, to keep moving forward.”

“So,” Lily said, “Icarus had learned from his father how to make wings and fly, and he’d learned from his own mistake not to swoop too close to the sun. He’d everything he needed. He built his own wings, took off into the sky and didn’t fly too close to the sun this time – instead, he flew home to find his father.”

Angelique smiled. “And that’s the end of the story?”

“It is,” Lily said. “Or maybe just the beginning?”

She sighed. “I wish…Madame had the Lunk’s winding key as well; if I could’ve stolen it, we might’ve been able to force a stop on him, or at least make him malfunction somehow, but I just couldn’t get it.”

“Which pocket did she put it in?” Robert asked.

“What?” Lily said. “I don’t know…the left.”

“Her left or your left?”

“Her left. Why?”

“No reason.” Robert clutched the pair of teaspoons in his fist. “I’ve had an idea that just might work.”

He sounded hopeful. Lily was relieved. Telling the story to the hybrids and having them tell it back to her had somehow lifted all their spirits. It had pulled Lily from the ocean of despair she’d been falling into, deep inside herself, and brought her back to the here and now.

She hoped Papa had got the message Robert had sent in the telegram and was coming for them, but she knew that it was just as likely he had not, especially if the police had been to check the Skycircus site and found no evidence of her there. She thought of what Angelique had said about how people could change their own story while they lived it, and how even failure made you stronger. And she thought about what Deedee had said about not giving up and moving forward.

The X-ray machine was so dangerous there was a strong chance it might kill her in the very first performance. But maybe, just maybe, the circus ring would provide an opportunity for her to speak out, to prove to everyone that humans and hybrids were really no different from each other…

As she looked at Angelique, Robert, Malkin, Deedee, Dimitri, Silva and Luca, she knew that they would help her. She might not be able to rely on the police, or Papa, but she and the other children here had worked together, and she knew they could do it again.

“We need to get away during the show tonight,” she said. “Before they bring me onstage to start my performance. We’ll need to use your wings, Angelique, Robert’s inventiveness, my heart, Malkin’s speed and agility.” She looked to the others. “And the skills of each one of you combined to help make this escape happen. I think we can do it if we join forces, and if we can persuade the others to as well – we didn’t try that before. But we need to succeed, because I mightn’t live to tell the tale if I get put in that machine, and you all deserve a better life than this. I don’t want this to be my very last chance to prove that we hybrids are just the same as everyone else. I need to tell Papa how I feel and I…I mean we…we need to make a stand.”