by Leanne Leeds
“I don’t know why I would be relevant to the Witches’ Council at all,” Mark told us as we crowded around him. “Why me and not Fortuna? I have no idea. I’m just a mind-reading human, not all that valuable at all. I can’t even read the minds of other paranormals, so I am certainly no threat to them.”
“And yet you are a threat to them,” I pointed out.
“My sister never specifically said Mark was a threat. Just that he was somehow key to whatever solution there is to get the Witches’ Council off our backs.”
“Well, they like to be on our backs, so that’s a threat to them,” Fiona said. Ningul nodded. “They didn’t give her a condo in Impy because of her delightful personality. She pledged to do something for them.”
“Something serious enough to risk getting blamed for this,” Uncle Phil agreed. “The Witches’ Council isn’t supposed to kidnap paranormals.”
“You keep telling me what the Council is supposed to do and not supposed to do. What happens if the Council does something it’s not supposed to do? Does fire rain from the sky? Does a Titan rise out of the earth and scold them?”
“People would lose all regard for the Council,” Fiona replied.
“Would the Council care?”
Everyone gawked at me.
I was often astonished at how my rational and straightforward questions caused such consternation and bewilderment in my friends. I cared about everyone here, but for goodness sake, these guys had blind spots you could drive a Mack truck through.
They have lived this way for hundreds of years, Charlotte, Samson said. You are coming from an altogether different approach than they have had. They’ve had no opportunity in their lives to question how their world works. You are awakening questions they have never had. It’s unsettling for them. Have compassion, Ringmaster.
I have tons of compassion!
You are incredulous. Try being understanding.
You know, you are not the most exceptional example of empathy and understanding, Samson.
Do as I say not as I do. There’s a reason that a cat is not the ringmaster. Though believe me, I pleaded for it. Vociferously.
“Look, all I’m trying to say is I think you guys are making presumptions about what the Council would or wouldn’t do that may not be true,” I said as I sought to sound patient and less judgmental. “Take nothing off the table, and assume nothing.”
Better.
Bite me.
Samson’s claws unsheathed slightly into my leg in response.
“I get it,” Mark said and nodded. Of course, Mark got it, he was a human. “I honestly can’t think of any reason I would be important, Charlotte. I mean, I’ve only known about the paranormal world for a year, really. Before, I was just a nerdy college professor.” I raised my eyebrow.
“A professor of what?”
“Palaeography & Manuscript Studies. I have a Ph.D. in it, actually. Like I said, I was just a big nerd.”
“So, ancient documents?” Mark nodded.
“I studied medieval documents connected to folklore regarding changeling children. I guess even before I knew what I was, something in me leaned toward those old stories.” Mark shrugged. “I always knew I was different, I suppose. Even when I didn’t really know.”
“Refresh my memory. What’s changeling folklore?”
“Many cultures believed elves or fairies would exchange their own children with human children. There are stories in Ireland, Germany, Cornwall, the Isle of Man. Some people theorize it was used to explain children born with disabilities. Now, I wonder if some of the stories were due to halflings like myself.”
“Halflings, changelings—are these terms the ones generally used? Like, are they the proper terms?”
“I think so,” Fiona said. Serena nodded.
“That’s how I have always heard those terms used. And though there are other words, those are the most common, I think,” Anya agreed.
“There are stories, less known and less common, that marks changelings as human children that have been turned into elves or fairies.”
“That’s it!” I shouted.
“What’s it?”
“I know how to beat the Witches’ Council. And holy glitter mounds, are they going to be ticked off.”
12
Despite requests from the assembled group, I didn’t tell them what my idea was that night. It had been a long day, and I wanted to talk to Roland Makepeace before divulging my plan. Alexa was safely locked away where she could do no further damage, but the clock was ticking down on our confrontation. I needed sleep.
My dreams were fitful. I rarely had vivid, intense dreams. Often my sleeping hours were filled with images of home. I relived moments with my parents playing in green fields with happy dogs, dinner out with my friend Tabatha. Movies with my friend Aiden. They were muted images in my head, comforting memories I could snuggle into while I slept.
This dreaming? This was something else.
I was draped in a soft white robe. Gentle white light glowed from everywhere and nowhere. It danced on the dense fog that curled around me.
“Are you going to take your first step, Charlotte? Will you join them?” The words sounded as if they were coming from twenty voices layered on top of one another. Harmonious and musical, they didn’t frighten me.
“I don’t understand.” My voice sounded hollow compared to the rich, layered texture of the voice coming at me through the fog. “I’m walking. I don’t know where I’m going. I can’t see anything.”
“You can see more than is before your eyes. You can hear more than sound. You know more than you think. You are connected to more than you know.”
“You’re confusing me. Is this a dream? Or is this real? Who are you?”
“Are you going to take your first step, Charlotte? Will you reach out?”
As the question echoed in my mind, the voice faded away along with the light.
I awakened the next morning feeling troubled by the odd dreams. When I laid my head down on my pillow the night before, I was confident I had solved the riddle. I would beat the Witches’ Council at their own game and had hit upon a solution that would solve everything. I was sure of it.
Then the dream came. Now, I felt like I was missing something.
“Back to the Makepeace Circus this morning, my girl?” Uncle Phil asked as he stomped into my yurt without asking. “It’s almost 9:30 in the morning, sleepyhead. The Witches’ Council will return tomorrow evening. While I have no doubt you have solved the entire affair, I will feel a lot better once you explain how you’ve done it.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” I said as I crawled out of bed. Uncle Phil handed me a coffee cup, and I sipped it. “Just plain coffee? Really?”
“Sometimes the traditional serves the purpose. How long do you think you’ll be gone?”
“Two hours at most, I think,” I told him as I stepped into my changing booth. Anya had enchanted a shower box for me a month ago. As soon as my clothes were removed, it blasted me with water from every direction. Admittedly, it felt a little like being a car in a car wash, but in a mere six seconds I was cleaned, coiffed, and perfumed. There was something to be said for quick convenience.
“Do you want me to go with you?” my uncle called as I slipped on my clothes.
“No, I’m fine,” I told him. “I don’t think I’ll have any problem whatsoever. Gunther’s expecting me, and I imagine he’s talked to his father by now.”
“I wouldn’t assume that,” Uncle Phil mumbled.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, dear girl, nothing at all,” he hollered.
“We need to get my parents here.” I emerged from the cleaning box and sat down in a chair to put my shoes on. “Frankly, I may have screwed up by not getting them here to start. The closer we get to the deadline and the more we learn, the less I trust Mina’s word about respecting the seven days.”
“I’ll talk to Jeannie and get them here,” Uncle Phil nodded.
“Call them on the cauldron first.”
“Why, Charlotte, what fun would that be? I haven’t made my younger brother upset with me in a while. It will be just like old times.” I sighed and shook my head. “It’s all in fun young lady, all in fun. In times like these, we should find our fun where we can. We are circus people. It’s in our nature!”
“I don’t know that my Dad at the same view of what’s fun, Uncle Phil,” I told him as I stood up. “Okay, I’m going to get out of here. Is there anything you need from me as the duly authorized supply closet for the Magical Midway before I go? Hay? The redecorating of a yurt? Chocolate from Paris? I can do it all.”
“No, you just—actually, chocolate from Paris sounds wonderful. Maybe just a bar before you go? It would make a wonderful gift for Jeannie.”
“She’s a genie. She can magic up a chocolate bar from Paris anytime she wants.”
“But if I bring it to her, it’s completely different,” Uncle Phil pointed out.
He had a point.
I held out my palm and concentrated, asking for the most delicious, expensive bar of Parisian chocolate to appear in my hand. Before I could even blink, it appeared, and my uncle snatched it up with a bow.
“Thank you, dear girl.”
My last thought before I transported myself to the Makepeace Circus was that I would probably get very fat now that I discovered how easy it was to magic chocolate into existence.
Parisian chocolate.
Yum.
Ambom glared at me as I turned up at the gate of the Makepeace Circus.
“Wish I could attack you,” he grunted. “You big disappointment as intruder, witch.”
“Sorry about that, dude,” I grinned. “I’m glad that you won’t attack me, though. I would much rather be your friend.”
“Friend? You want be Ambom friend?” The dark monster with the glowing red eyes asked me as he walked up. The slobber dripped from his maw as he tipped his head like a dog.
“Sure, why not!” I turned my head as the monster’s horrible breath bathed me in waves of stink. “We’re all circus folks, right? Why not be friends.”
“I never had witch friend before,” Ambom mused.
“Well, now you do. I need to talk to Roland and Gunther, though. Do you know where they are?”
“In circus somewhere,” Ambom waved behind him. “You my friend now. You go.”
“Thanks, Ambom,” I smiled and nodded.
As soon as I walked onto the grounds, I saw Ethel Elkins shuffling toward me with an intricately jewel-encrusted cane. The old woman ambled, hunched over, but a chill ran through me as her eyes connected with mine.
“You’ve returned!” I returned her smile, but the cold continued to run through my body. Although I had seen Ms. Elkins at the meeting a few days ago, she could not have seen me. I hadn’t brought my body, and I was supposed to be invisible. “I told you it begins,” she nodded and cackled to herself.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I think you have me confused with someone else. I don’t believe we’ve met.” The old woman smirked as I walked toward her. “I’m Charlotte Astley, the ringmaster of the Magical Midway.”
“Oh, I think you know that I know you just fine. How did you sleep last night, young lady?” The old lady cackled as my face froze. “Any interesting dreams?”
The large old lady was hunched over, gnarled hand clenched around her cane. Two dark eyes peeked out at me over old-fashioned wire spectacles. Her face was a map of lines topped with a wild shock of white hair.
As I came close to her, I also realized she was at least ten feet tall. How did I not notice that the other night? Wait, she was shorter than Gunther then. What the heck?
“I, uh…”
“What’s the matter, girl, cat got your tongue?” the gigantic old lady said as she took two rickety steps forward and shoved her wizened face into mine. “Never seen a norn before? Huh? Have ya?”
“No, ma’am,” I snapped in response, standing straighter. Holy crow, this old lady was intimidating.
“I’ve seen your fate, girly,” she said as she backed up and shook her cane in my direction. “Destiny is a funny thing when it comes like a thief in the night. Two big balls,” Ethel Elkins cackled. “Brighter than stars, and planted in the earth. Boom! They won’t know what hit ‘em.”
I stared at the old woman in confusion.
“Who are you?”
“Oh, I’m just old Ethel, young one. No one special. No one special at all. No one listens to the jabbering from an old woman. You can safely ignore me.”
It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. At this point, I felt there was almost nothing in the paranormal world I could safely ignore. As I considered what I would say to her next, Gunther popped out from behind a cotton candy stand.
“Hey, thought I heard murmurs of an interloper ringmaster wandering around,” he smiled as he walked up to Ethel and me.
“I think I literally took twenty steps into your circus so far.”
“Yeah, well, everyone’s getting even more on edge than usual. Just a little. Good morning, Miss Elkins. How are you doing this morning?”
“Oh, you’re such a handsome boy, Gunther Makepeace. And sweet, to greet a little old lady with such friendliness. Are you taking our girl to see your father?”
Our girl?
“Yes, ma’am. I don’t want to be rude, but we need to get going. I know that Charlotte is in quite a bit of a hurry.”
Ethel shuffled and turned her steely eyes on Gunther. “Don’t think old Ethel is crazy anymore, do you? Didn’t I tell you? Of course I did. I told you. I’m not greedy, I tell, I tell. You thought old Ethel was just a crazy old lady. Norns know. We know more than you think.” Ethel pinched Gunther’s cheek and chuckled. “Are you ready for it? You should be ready!”
“Ms. Ethel, that’s not what we’re here about,” Gunther said as his eyes shifted in my direction.
“You don’t want to talk about the future, hmm? No talking of fate, no talking of destiny? No karma, no kismet? You youngsters, always looking back. What is to come is where you should look! Not behind you. Not even to this morning of the past,” the white-haired woman said as she shook her finger at us.
I stared at the old woman, trying to follow what she was saying but it was as challenging as getting Fiona to calm down. Gunther clearly did, though.
“Ms. Ethel, you know I love you, but we have to go. Time is running out, and we have a lot to discuss with my father.”
“We all are running out of time, now, aren’t we, Gunther? Time just ticks away. Tick tock tick tock.” The old woman smirked as if she knew far more than she was saying and whirled away from us while whistling. “You two hurry on now,” she called over her shoulder. “Times a-wastin'.”
“That is a very, very strange old woman,” I told Gunther as we both watched Ethel Elkins sashay away.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Gunther admitted.
“It won’t work,” Roland Makepeace barked at me as he paced in his living room.
“I think it will. If they can do it, or threaten to do it to my parents, then we must be able to do it, too. It ensures that they can’t come after us, or you.”
Gunther sat on the couch, his face white. His emotions were so chaotic I couldn't get a definite read on how he felt about my proposal. His father’s confidence in our failure was not helping to calm him.
“Look, neither one of us have delved into the full range of the ringmaster power. I can do things that you don’t do. It's not because you can’t do them but because no one has thought to do it in your line. I suspect that you can do things that I don’t do, but I could if I tried. If a human being with a tiny drop of paranormal blood can walk onto our grounds and be smacked with a full-blown paranormal power, we have the power of transformation. We do it all the time.”
“How so?”
“Did you hire an architect to build all this? When you move, do you run it with a convoy?
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br /> “Don’t be daft, young woman. And don’t treat me like I’m stupid. I’ve been a ringmaster longer than you’ve been alive.” Gunther’s father scowled at me. “These are all things.”
“These are all things that were manifested or transformed. I’m telling you, it will work. The ringmaster power transforms us so that we can’t be hurt as easily. So that we have powers far beyond what any regular witch can do. It’s all the same principle. It’s just transforming one thing into another thing.”
“I’m not risking my son’s life on your harebrained scheme to outwit the Council!”
“Okay, then let’s test my hypothesis. We have two people that committed crimes, one each. Get Deo. I’ll get Alexa and Leo. Let’s try it out.”
“You’re very glib about changing a paranormal’s very essence, Charlotte,” Gunther breathed without looking up. “Even as a punishment, I can’t agree with what you’re proposing to do as a test. I can’t allow someone else to risk their life.”
“Gunther Makepeace, don’t you dare! What this girl is saying—”
“Makes sense, Dad,” Gunther told him as he rose up to face him. “It makes sense, and you know it. If you and Charlotte can pull this off, not only does it protect Mark and Fortuna’s lives, it safeguards both circuses. And it makes sure that when you’re gone, there is a successor to the Makepeace Circus. An heir that can, without question, receive the ringmaster power.”
“Gunther,” Roland choked out as he strode toward his son. “I can’t risk your life. I can’t lose you. I lost your mother. What would she say if I lost you as well? You are all I have left of her…” Roland Makepeace enclosed his son in his arms.
I felt awkward. This was a desperate, warm side of Roland Makepeace I had never seen before, and I could feel his anguish. The man had carried his wounds buried deep within the rage and smugness that wrapped around him like armor.
“Dad, we have to try this. Charlotte’s right. But I can’t let anyone risk their life for me. You need to do this. Now. Before I get cold feet and change my mind.”