The palace of curiosities

the long version

"Before Eve is born, her mother goes to the circus. She swears she hears the lion sigh, just before it leaps... and nine months later when Eve is born, the story goes, she doesn't cry - she meows and licks her paws. When Abel is pulled from the stinking Thames, and the mudlarks search his pockets to divvy up the treasure, his eyes crack open and he coughs up a stream of black water. But, how has he survived a week in that thick stew of human waste? Cast out by Victorian society, Eve and Abel find succour from an unlikely source: they soar to fame as star performers in Professor Josiah Arroner's Palace of Curiosities. And there begins a journey that will entwine their fates forever."--Publisher description.