The Time Corps Chronicles (Complete Series)

by Heather Blackwood

“Do you have anything smaller? I’ll have to give you a lot of change,” she said.

  “Sorry, no.”

  The woman was looking off to one side, as if studying something inside the arcade. She was dressed like the cartoon schoolgirls Astrid had seen in anime films. The woman had a fake fox tail pinned to the back of her skirt and two little ears pinned in her hair. At least her hair was pinned up in a mature style instead of pigtails.

  Astrid opened her cash drawer and started to count out change. She saw in her peripheral vision that the woman was now watching her. But it was more than that. The woman was studying her. Some people were creepy, and fox girl here was a little extra creepy. She bumped the cash drawer closed with her hip.

  “Where’s the fifty?” said Astrid. The fifty was gone, and a shiny green leaf sat in its place on the counter. It was large and waxy, like something from the rain forest.

  “I gave it to you,” said the woman.

  “No you didn’t. It was on the counter.” Astrid opened her cash drawer. She only had twenties, tens, fives and ones. No fifty. She glanced up, and just for a moment, thought she saw the woman’s eyes flash topaz. But then they were brown again, as ordinary as they had been before. Astrid froze and for a moment, she didn’t hear any of the ambient sounds of the boardwalk or feel the day’s heat.

  “Just give me my change already,” said the woman. She was looking straight into Astrid’s face, not glancing away or varying her expression in any way. It was completely disconcerting.

  Astrid blinked. “Give me the fifty first,” she said. She wasn’t going to be cowed by some manipulative nutjob in a costume. The woman had obviously put the leaf there as some kind of a joke. Did she honestly expect Astrid to be so easy to bully? The illusion that her eyes had changed must have been an accident of the light. Maybe light had reflected off of something and had lit the woman’s eyes from the side. That would make them look strange for a second.

  “I did give you the fifty. Now give me my change or I’m going to ask to see your manager.” The woman took a bite of the pretzel and chewed. The little brat, she hadn’t even paid properly yet.

  “Fine, we can call him. I’ll do it myself.” Astrid looked for signs of uncertainty in the woman, but she held her ground and even seemed pleased.

  “Hey Brad!” Astrid yelled around the corner. Brad worked the counter where children traded arcade tickets for cheap plastic toys.

  “Yeah?”

  “Call Mr. Augustus, would you?”

  “He’s over fixing one of the machines.”

  “A customer needs some help.”

  Thankfully, Brad didn’t ask any questions and summoned their supervisor. A few moments later, Mr. Augustus came out of the arcade. He was covered in sweat and his orange and gray hair was sticking to his forehead along his hairline. When the woman saw him, her lips parted slightly in surprise.

  “May I help you?” Mr. Augustus asked.

  “I gave her a fifty, and now we’re having a little trouble with my change,” said the woman. Her tone was different now. Whereas she had used little inflection with Astrid, now she smiled and shrugged as if this had all been a misunderstanding and she was a little embarrassed to bother him.

  “So why don’t you give her the change?” Mr. Augustus turned to Astrid.

  “There’s no fifty. She put a fifty down, and while I was making change, she swapped it for a leaf.” It sounded stupid when she said it. She glanced down at the leaf, but it was gone. The counter now just had a light dusting of beach sand.

  “A leaf,” he said.

  “Look, I can prove it.” Astrid opened up her cash drawer. “See? No fifties.”

  Mr. Augustus looked into the cash drawer to verify and then looked back at the woman.

  “Give her change for a twenty,” he said.

  “But my drawer will come up short tonight.”

  “I’ll worry about that.”

  Astrid opened her mouth to protest, but the woman crossed her arms and looked deeply unhappy. That pleased Astrid. Let her have the pretzel and the money, as long as she got the hell away from her pretzel cart. The woman was now looking hard at Mr. Augustus.

  “Who are you working for?” the woman asked him.

  “I’m the manager.”

  “You know what I mean. And what about her? What the hell is she?”

  “I’m sorry about the inconvenience miss,” he said and took the money from the cash drawer and gave it to the woman. He turned and walked away, but the woman kept her eyes on him. Her expression was filled with such malice that Astrid was afraid that she was going to yell something at him.

  “You said his name is Augustus, right?” she asked.

  “Yeah. He’s the manager.” Astrid hoped she would go to Mr. Augustus’s office if she wanted to cause any more problems. Let him handle her.

  “How long has he worked here?”

  “I don’t know. A long time.”

  The woman looked her up and down, assessing. “When is the Chumash Legends show?”

  Well, that was an abrupt change of topic. Astrid pulled out the brochure she kept under the cart. She used it to show lost people where the bathrooms were or the locations of various rides. The other side of the brochure displayed the summer show schedule.

  “Noon is the next one,” Astrid said. She wished the woman would go away. She thought she saw the woman’s nostrils twitch.

  “And a woman calling herself Red Fawn runs it, right?”

  “Red Fawn?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Oh, um. I don’t know. I haven’t seen it,” Astrid said.

  “Thanks,” the woman muttered and walked away.

  Red Fawn. It had been so long since Astrid had seen the Indian princess with that name, surely it couldn’t be the same person. But how many people went around with a name like that? She counted back. If she had met the woman when she was about six, that was only twelve years ago. It could be the same woman. She didn’t know if she would recognize Red Fawn if she saw her, but it couldn’t hurt to take a look.

  Chapter 11

  Yukiko balled up the pretzel wrapper and tossed it into a trash can. She turned a corner toward the stage and paused. The stage for the Chumash Legends show was a simple raised platform surrounded by a half circle of hay bales that served as seats for the guests. The entire area was enclosed and shaded, which was a mercy. Someone had rigged a red curtain, but from the look of it, it wasn’t part of the original setup.

  She hopped up on stage and parted the curtain. A hilly yellow landscape had been painted on panels that were tacked together as a backdrop. She slipped backstage. It had been a full day since she had lost her spirit ball, but her sense of smell was still good. She had needed to work extra hard to make the fifty-dollar bill, especially since her illusions broke so quickly here. Presumably the pretzel girl had something to do with that. Yukiko was furious that she had only received change for a twenty. Paying for another week at the Seaside Inn was going to be tough. But that was a minor problem compared with her eventual enslavement to the holder of her spirit ball.

  The area backstage was devoid of people, but then, it was still almost an hour before the show would begin. She could wait. Her sniffing and exploration of the park had yielded nothing other than the knowledge that Mr. Augustus was the manager of the park and the person who had given her the drugged red slushie. There was still no clue as to why he had done it, or if he understood the magnitude of his deed.

  The blonde girl who ran the pretzel stand was troubling. She was the source of the strange smell that she and Santiago had found, but she was human. A strange human, but human. She had no trace of the spirit ball about her, and judging from her interaction with Mr. Augustus, he was not subservient to her. Of course, that could have been an act to throw
her off. But she had sensed nothing from the girl to indicate that she was malevolent or manipulative, nor that she had been in any way involved with her attack.

  When Yukiko had used a little of her remaining power to make the fifty-dollar bill and convince the girl to see it, she found resistance, but not an enormous amount. It had been when the girl had opened the drawer to check for the fifty that she had given off the distinctive scent that matched the one in the haunted house. It had shocked Yukiko so much that she had felt a little of her fox nature surge forward for a moment.

  Yukiko was young for a Myobu, and she was still learning about otherkind, but she hadn’t run across anyone she couldn’t identify in decades. The girl was trouble, and it couldn’t be coincidence that she was creating a disturbance at Luna Park while otherkind were being attacked.

  She opened the door to the backstage area to find it lit with a single, bright bulb attached to an ancient metal fixture on one wall. Boxes of stage makeup, colored scarves, wigs and masks covered folding chairs and tables. One box overflowed with props. Seven large paper mache dolphins leaned against a wall beside a wooden rainbow and other pieces of landscaping, including green and yellow hills and light and dark blue waves. Yukiko rummaged through things, smelling. If someone had come to the park with the performance group, they could easily leave town with her spirit ball. But what good would that do them? Its only purpose was to enslave the Kitsune to whom it was attached.

  “Excuse me,” said an old woman. She was glaring at Yukiko.

  “I’m looking for Red Fawn. Are you she?”

  “What do you want?”

  “I was sent to speak to you.”

  “I told Augustus that I’m not taking tips from the audience. So he can back off. There’s no cut for him.”

  “I’m not here for that. It’s something else.” How could she explain? She wasn’t about to tell a mere human what she was or what had happened to her, but maybe Red Fawn could help her in another way as well. “Does Mr. Augustus do things, strange things?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, does he speak with people who seem off, somehow? Like they’re not normal people?”

  Red Fawn’s face relaxed a little, and oddly, she seemed relieved. “I don’t know who he associates with. But he can be a pain in the neck. And he’s been on my back since I brought my show.”

  “I want to see the show, but I needed to talk to you first. There’s something …” Yukiko decided to take a chance. “Do you know Santiago?”

  “I’ve dealt with him. Are you a friend of his?”

  “No. Not a friend. He’s a bastard and a liar.”

  “Well then, we are in agreement.” Red Fawn grinned.

  Yukiko noticed that Red Fawn was looking at her feet. No, she was looking a little to the side of her feet, at the place where the single bulb caused her shadow to fall. Yukiko looked down, and though the shape of her skirt and the plush tail partially concealed it, if one was looking for it, a person would see the shadow of a fox’s tail.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” said Red Fawn. “And tell me why you’re here. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting one of your kind before.”

  Yukiko noticed that Red Fawn had not asked her name, but had offered her own readily enough. It was a small act of courtesy. Among some otherkind, giving your name from your own lips allowed another to have some degree of power over you. Kitsune had no such problem. Their original name was known only to Inari, their god. And he had been dead since World War II. Even Yukiko herself did not know her true name.

  “Is there somewhere else we can speak?” asked Yukiko.

  “There’s an office down the hall. It’s this way.” Red Fawn led her to the office and closed the door behind them. The room had once been used for whatever administration the stage shows of bygone days had required. But now, it was empty but for an old desk with some of the drawers missing. Any chairs were long gone.

  “Are you like Santiago?” asked Red Fawn. “He doesn’t have a shadow tail, but I know his other nature.”

  “I’m Myobu. A fox. My name is Yukiko.”

  Red Fawn was surprised at her forthrightness. “I see.”

  “Do you know of my kind?”

  “I know of fox spirits from Asia. Is that where you’re from?”

  “Japan. I am one of the Kitsune.”

  “So you are like Santiago, a trickster.”

  “No. The Nogitsune are the tricksters. My kind are lawful. And I have had something stolen from me. Something very valuable.”

  The look on the old woman’s face was skeptical. She had no way of knowing that Yukiko was not lying. Yukiko wished she could let the woman see that she was telling the truth, but she had nothing other than her good word.

  “Let me see your hand,” Red Fawn said.

  Yukiko put out her hand, and the old woman studied the back of it. Yukiko thought she would flip it over to read her palm, but she did not. She pressed on one of the bluish veins twice, then released her. “I know your kind have a lightning ball. Is that what was taken?”

  “A spirit ball. And yes. Santiago said that you might know where it was. Mr. Augustus is involved with it.”

  “Is he?” Red Fawn’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, well. I didn’t give him enough credit. The greasy bastard.”

  “Do you know anyone here who would take it? Who here would know what it is?”

  The old woman hesitated, and for a moment, Yukiko wondered if she wanted to strike some kind of deal. Few people, human or otherkind, would pass up the opportunity to have another being in their debt, especially one of her kind.

  Red Fawn shook her head. “I have no idea. But tell me something. Will you be enslaved to this person?”

  “Yes, more or less.”

  “But how did they do it? Did they win it in a game, guess your real name or what?”

  “No. I was drugged and it was stolen while I was asleep.”

  “I see. I think you’ll find out soon who did it,” said Red Fawn. “It can’t be long.”

  “Do you sense that? Can you See?”

  Red Fawn laughed, showing yellowed teeth and dark gums. “No, nothing like that. But if someone took it to enslave you, the slave master is going to show up soon and claim you. And then you’ll know who it is. Your real question is how to get it back, and as to that, I have no idea. How have other Myobu retrieved their stolen spirit balls?”

  Yukiko did not know. There were tales of trickery, of bargains made and infants and maidens traded. But without knowing who stole her spirit ball, she was helpless.

  “So you haven’t seen or felt anything?” Yukiko asked. “You can’t help me at all?”

  “Well, I can help you, yes. But not with the ball.”

  “Then I don’t require your assistance,” Yukiko said and opened the office door.

  “Now hold on. Your spirit ball is how you get your magic, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “But your kind have another source. People.”

  “I’m not going to kill.”

  “No, no. Not that way.”

  “I’m not going to become a prostitute either.”

  Red Fawn sighed and put her hands on her hips. “I have a stage and an audience. You’re not Chumash, but you can work with us.”

  “You’re offering me a job?”

  “Well, seeing as your new master is going to collect you soon, it won’t be a long one. And I won’t pay you either.”

  But Yukiko understood what she meant. There was a reason that Santiago teased her about playing geisha. She had lived in Japan, but also in San Francisco. She had danced, and done other things, to survive in those early days. Red Fawn was offering her a willing audience.

  “Why are you helping m
e?” she asked.

  “It’s what I do. I like lost children.”

  Chapter 12

  Astrid sat on a hay bale and drank her bottled water. It was still nice and cold from being in the fridge with the rest of her lunch, and she was grateful for it. A breeze rustled through the leaves of the potted jacaranda trees on either side of the stage, sending down a few lavender petals.

  “Hey, Astrid,” said Elliot and plopped himself down next to her. He was in his Luna Park uniform also, and she hoped that the park patrons wouldn’t bother either of them for help or directions. “Have you seen the show before?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve been coming to see it as often as I can. It’s amazing.”

  Astrid wasn’t sure if he was using artistic hyperbole and liked it because it was campy and silly, or if it was truly good. Elliot loved old horror movies and low-budget science fiction, so his definition of “good” could vary sharply from her own.

  “Hey, Elliot? You remember when I was a kid and I saw that homeless woman named Red Fawn?”

  “Yeah. You said she was an Indian princess. It was cute.”

  “Well, I heard that the woman who runs this show is named Red Fawn.”

  “And you came to see it for that?”

  Astrid shrugged. Why was she here anyway? To catch a glimpse of a woman she barely remembered?

  The hay bales filled up with sweaty patrons carrying cold drinks and melting ice cream cones. They talked and laughed, and something about their noise bothered Astrid. She was there for a reason, a serious one, while they were just messing around. She glanced at Elliot. Of course they were all there for fun. Why couldn’t she just relax and enjoy herself too?

  A few minutes later, the curtain parted.

  She felt a rush of cool air come over her, delicious and refreshing. But then she found that there was no breeze at all. She had experienced the feeling of coolness inside, not the actual physical sensation. Her skin was as hot and sticky as ever.