“Why’re you so chipper this morning?”
He pointed at her.
“Me? Why me?”
Clown spread his arms wide at the Faire around them. He made a bunch of wild gestures. Something falling apart, being put back together. Then, a circle with his hands. He waited to see if she caught on.
She furrowed her brow and thought it over for a long time. “Everything was broken, but because I’m here, it’s whole again?”
He nodded wildly, clapping. He tapped his finger on his temple and pointed at her, as if calling her smart.
“Simon says I’m slow-witted,” she muttered dryly into her coffee.
Clown let out a loud raspberry and shoved his hands back into his pockets. He had such a frightening exterior, with his morbid face paint and clothing entirely made out of black, white, and green. Emily would have run screaming from him just on looks alone.
But he seemed so sweet. So gentle. So empathetic. They walked in companionable silence as she sipped her coffee. He was leading her out into the park, far away from the staff-only area where the boxcars were located. They passed shuttered rides, concession stands, and game stalls.
It was so painfully quiet that it left her with an overwhelming sense of dread. She clutched her coffee with both hands. The air was perfectly still. There was no wind, no insects. Nothing. The leaves in the trees sat perched on the edges of their branches, unmoving. All the lights were off, save for a few that illuminated the pathways. The only structure that was still lit was the observation tower, stretching high up over the Faire with its hundreds of amber-white bulbs shining against the abyss that was the empty sky.
“I don’t think I like the Inversion.”
Clown sighed heavily and nodded, shrugging sadly.
It was eerie. She shivered, despite the fact that the air was the strange ambient temperature of…absolutely nothing. It wasn’t cold, it wasn’t warm. It wasn’t anything at all.
When they rounded a corner, she pulled up in surprise. This tent hadn’t been here before. She was pretty sure she would have noticed it. And, it seemed, for a pretty damn good reason.
It was about fifty feet in diameter, comprised entirely of bold white and black stripes. It was similar in design to Simon’s, except smaller and with different colors. That wasn’t what was so startling. It was the painted façade on the front, featuring a figure bedecked in colorful swirls of blues, purples, and teals that had made her stop.
The painted figure on the façade was…her. Arched backward, with one leg pointed up at a new moon that was suspended on a wire. The arch of her back created the doorway into the tent. In large, elaborate letters, it read “See the Contortionist, in all her Improbable Forms!”
The representation was wearing the same outfit that she had seen in her reflection in the hall of mirrors.
Then she realized where else she had seen something like the painted façade. It was incredibly similar in style and shape to the deck of cards the Soothsayer had pulled from on her first visit to Harrow Faire.
Everything was connected. Everything had worked together to bring her here.
She groaned and put her hand over her eyes. In all the chaos, she had forgotten about that stupid fortune teller and her reading. She had written it off as being bogus at the time. But now…now she understood. I’m going to have to find that lady and have some serious words with her.
Clown patted her on the back, likely mistaking the reason for her dread. He took her hand away from her face and tried to tug her toward the tent, wanting to take her inside.
Cora sighed, paid him a strained smile, and went along with him. She looked up at the painted image of herself and couldn’t imagine herself performing in front of a crowd. She couldn’t imagine that anyone would want to come see her.
But she wasn’t sure either of those opinions mattered.
Harrow Faire had chosen her from the moment she set foot in the park.
It didn’t matter why.
The only question she had in her mind was…what happens next?
2
Clown watched as Cora stepped hesitantly into her tent. It made him smile every time he got to see someone experience their new world for the first time. Like a baby deer, trying out its new legs. Wiggly, uncertain, but full of the raw potential that came along with anything new. He smiled at death. He also smiled at life.
But through it all, there was a cloud that hung over her. A shadow that nipped at her heels, no pun intended. The Puppeteer would either be her greatest ally or her downfall. It had already come close to being the latter a few times, and he knew it would likely happen again. No matter how long Clown lived in the Faire, it never ceased to amaze him how unpredictable it could be.
What the Puppeteer wanted with her on the surface was very clear. And by her own admission, it seemed she wasn’t averse to the idea. But there was always—always—more to these things than met the eye.
But one thing was certain. Simon would be furious that he was trying to spend time with Cora. Clown’s interest in Cora was very different than Simon’s. He had hopes for Cora. Or, rather, Cora was his hope. It had nothing to do with how pretty she was.
He wouldn’t deny that her large gray eyes, full lips, and lithe body would tempt anyone. Back in his younger years, he’d probably have taken an interest in her himself. He wasn’t surprised in the slightest that she had already turned the heads of a few of the Family.
He had expected Aaron and Jack to chase her tail and wasn’t disappointed. He even expected her to dote on Ludwig, whose emptiness was mistaken for sweetness by so many newcomers and patrons. She might even want to play with Rudy, the Zookeeper, and his notoriously…unique offerings.
But Simon?
Clown never would have expected that.
The glorious thing about life, and death, and rebirth: it was always unexpected. The dice had been rolled again, and new numbers were put into play. Oh, it wasn’t that he didn’t mourn things when they were over. He missed everyone he had ever known, and he missed them all dearly. But new things were going to follow, and new was always exciting.
Even if the death of things made people afraid, like Cora was now. And she had died, no bones about it. He chuckled at his own quiet internal joke, but she was too enraptured by what she was seeing to hear him.
Her life was gone. Her whole world was gone. Everything she thought she knew about herself, except for the core of her seity, had turned to dust. All she was left with was the very essence of her personality.
It was up to her to decide what to do with it.
He sat down on one of the rows of benches. The tent was arranged to be theatre in the round. A two-tiered stage sat in the center. It wasn’t very large. It didn’t need to be, since, unlike the Magician’s or the Puppeteer’s, it only had one performer with very few props. Around it were three decks of stadium seating, able to fit a hundred people in the small space.
And she would pack the benches. She was beautiful. She was charming. There was a fiery nature to her that he couldn’t wait to see blaze to life. He’d heard rumor of it—how she had clonked Simon a good one with a frying pan, which was a mental image that had given him the giggles for hours—but he’d yet to really see it in person.
All he saw was a girl with so much potential it made him smile. She was patient with his muteness. She never once questioned it. She just took it in stride as she had so much else in her life. He appreciated it to no end. There was nothing that annoyed him more than people pestering him about his inability to speak.