by Leanne Leeds
“I can’t—”
“You have to.”
Silence settled in the room, and I was afraid to breathe. Roland hesitated and squeezed his son once more ruffling his sandy colored hair as if he was a boy. Stepping back, Roland held his hands up and concentrated in his son’s direction.
Nothing.
“Must be doing something wrong,” Roland muttered.
“Try again, Dad.”
Roland took a deep breath and raised his hands again, palms out toward Gunther. This time, energy sparkled along his skin as he stared into Gunther’s eyes. His face was tense with the effort as he concentrated.
Nothing.
“I told you it wouldn’t work,” Roland snapped at me.
“It has to,” I told them. “Were doing something wrong. If they can do it, we have to be able to do it.”
“I’ll take care of my own here, young lady,” Roland Makepeace said as he walked over and grabbed my arm to steer me toward the door. “Each circus has a ringmaster, and each ringmaster has a job. That’s how it’s always been, that’s how it will always be. You go worry about your own problems and leave us alone.”
My brain echoed with Roland’s isolationist statement, but other words from my subconscious bubbled up and bounced against his pronouncement.
Of course.
“You’re wrong,” I told him as I shook my arm from his grip. “I know you’re wrong. Yes, that’s how it’s always been. But it hasn’t worked, don’t you see? Once we were so many circuses, and now there are just two. Just us. Do you understand? It can’t be that way anymore.”
“Get out,” Roland said as he opened his front door. “Get out, and leave us alone. Go tend to your own crisis. Let us tend to ours.”
I tried to call to Gunther, but the heavy wooden door slammed in my face.
“You gonna let those men treat you like that?” Ethel Elkins called from across the path.
I was right. I knew I was right.
I just had to prove it.
13
“It’s never been done before,” Uncle Phil told me again.
“But there’s no reason it can’t be done. No addendum, no preclusion, no rule, no law. No explicit reason it can’t be done. There is no specific thing that will happen if I try and do it. Right?”
No, Samson said.
“That’s good enough for me. We need to go back there now. How do I do this?”
“Just think what you want. No humans are left at the fairground since the witches showed up with their threats, so everyone is here. You just need to ask for what you want and focus. The Magical Midway should do as you request.”
I closed my eyes. I want to move the Magical Midway to a safe position next to the Makepeace Circus. Our new location should adjoin the Makepeace Circus. I want this done now.
I felt the energy shift and settle more quickly than any move I had ever made before. The midway itself seemed… concerned and restless. Eager, even. I stepped out of the yurt quickly and got past the carousel to look toward the western boundary. “It’s not there.”
“Look, Charlotte, to the east. It’s behind the Sticky Walls ride.” Uncle Phil pointed toward the werepens and a centrifuge ride that used science, not magic, to stick riders to walls. The ride was now outlined against another carnival. A larger, taller, fancier carnival. I swallowed my jealousy.
“Come on, let’s go see if we can make a doorway,” I said as I dashed across the clearing near the children’s petting zoo. As Uncle Phil, Samson, and I sprinted toward the Makepeace Circus, Fiona and Anya ran toward us.
“What on earth is going on? Why did we move? And why on earth are we by them?” Anya asked as soon as she was within hollering distance. “Are we trying to make sure that the Witches’ Council has one big target to hit when they thrust a lightning bolt at us?”
“If they throw lightning bolts at us, we’ll both be fine,” I told her as Fiona and Anya jogged with us. “I have figured out how to solve the Witches’ Council issue, but I need to convince Roland Makepeace, and we have to both be near each other.”
“Good luck convincing that daft jerk of anything,” Fiona pointed out as she jogged toward the barrier.
“There.” I pointed toward a place that both spheres adjoined. There was ample room on either side to craft an underpass. “If no one sees a better spot, I’m going to put a tunnel here.”
“Can you do that without their agreement?” Fiona asked.
I looked at Uncle Phil. He shrugged. Samson said nothing.
“I guess we’ll find out,” I responded.
No one spoke, and I closed my eyes to ask for a tunnel that would allow the paranormals in both circuses to pass back and forth between the two properties protection. I opened my eyes, and an extended half circle led straight into the Makepeace Circus. A gargoyle head appeared around the side at the other end.
“Ambom?”
“Yes, lady ringmaster,” the gravelly voice screeched through the tube.
“Get the other gargoyles and go to the ringmaster’s cabin. Tell Roland and Gunther what I did, and bring them here. Can you do that?”
“He gonna be mad?”
“Probably, but eventually he won’t be,” I hollered.
“I go do that right away. You be here?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Charlotte, why are we connected to the Makepeace Circus? What in the world is going on?”
“I promise I’ll explain, but I need you to go get Mark and Fortuna. Bring them back here as quickly as you can.” Fiona looked as if she wanted to argue with me, but she nodded and went racing toward our yurts.
I hope you’re right about this, Samson said.
I hope I’m right about this, too. If I’m not, I have nothing. No other ideas, no other solutions.
The tube was about 10 feet tall and 15 feet wide. I could see heads from the other circus peeking in, but no one traversed the path I had carved between the two carnivals. In the distance, an angry Roland Makepeace hurried toward the opening with Gunther in tow.
“Stay here, don’t come in, and keep anybody else from coming in,” I told my Uncle Phil as I walked toward the halfway point. The dividing line that represented the infinitesimal barrier between our two circuses.
“What on earth have you done, young lady!” Roland roared as he entered the tunnel. His admonition echoed loudly, and I flinched.
“I told you, this will work. But we have to do it simultaneously.”
“You must be out of your mind!”
“Maybe. But I still think it will work.”
Roland and I came up to the line between our fairgrounds. It wasn’t marked by anything, no energy or paint. No real indication it even existed, and yet both of us instinctively knew where it was.
“Gunther, I want you to stand right there,” I pointed against one side of the circular shape tube. “Put one foot on that side, and one foot over here. Basically, I want one half of your body to be in each circus. You understand?”
Gunther nodded as his father continued looking at me with skepticism.
“Okay, Roland, stand over there and I’m going to stand over here next to you.” I settled on the Magical Midway side and held out my hand for Roland’s. He paused and looked back and forth between Gunther and me. With a sigh, he did as I asked and snatched my hand.
“We will try again on three. Ready?”
“I am, but I don’t see how this could conceivably work…”
“One, two, three!”
Roland and I raised our hands concentrating on turning Gunther from a half-human witch to a full witch. Lightning bolts shot from our joined hands toward Gunther, and he stiffened then raised two feet in the air. I felt Roland’s hand relax if he was about to pull away, and I clutched it tighter. “Concentrate! Don’t let go!”
I felt Roland’s hand stiffen in mine, and the colors that glittered through the lightning became deeper and sharper. The wind swirled around the three of us and my ears drummed
with energy. It built, and strengthened, and crowded the small space. Suddenly my ears popped as the light flashed and then faded.
Gunther fell to the ground.
“Gunther!” I cried, dropping Roland's hand and racing to my friend. “Are you okay? Can you hear me? Gunther!”
“I’m… I’m okay. That was… something else,” Gunther smiled. I helped him up off the ground, and he raised his eyes slowly toward his father. “Did it work? I can’t tell. Can you tell? Dad, did it work?”
Roland Makepeace stood stock still, staring at his son as if he had never seen him before. Tears rolled down his face in his hands shook.
“I could have saved your mother,” Roland whispered as he covered his tear stained face with his hands. “How could we have known? Why didn’t we know we can do this? I could’ve spared her, Gunther. I could’ve made her a witch and saved her…”
“Dad, you didn’t know.”
“I should have known. All those years, all of the ringmasters so jealous of each other. So suspicious. Yes, son. It worked. I can sense the ringmaster tie, the blood bond, in you.”
The two men embraced each other as one comforted, and one mourned anew. I fell back, leaving behind the two to process what had just taken place.
A bittersweet victory that guaranteed the endurance of Gunther and the Makepeace Circus. A win that came too late to save the mother they both loved.
“I don’t understand,” Mark said after I described to the group what had just taken place. “You can make me into a witch? Is that what you’re suggesting?”
“Well, not precisely. I mean, I can. Well, Roland and I can. But we can alter you into anything. If you preferred to be a cat, we could probably make you a cat. A giant. A wereshifter of any variety.”
“We will no longer be human anymore?” Fortuna asked. I shook my head no. “And this will put us in conformity with the law?”
“Yes. You would officially be paranormals, just like anybody else.”
“I think I need to sit down,” Fortuna said as she looked around. I summoned up a chair behind her at the edge of the tunnel. “This is a lot to take in.”
“I get it, and normally I would give you more time to make a decision of this magnitude, but we have a day. Roland is here, and while I think relations between the Makepeace Circus and us are going to be better now, I don’t want to bank your lives on it. Roland’s here, we need to do this now.”
“You have scant confidence in my gratitude, girl,” Roland said as he came out of the tunnel with Gunther. “You have saved my son, and you have preserved my circus. It is clear that the old ways do not serve us anymore. Well, some of them.”
“They never did, you old goat,” Uncle Phil snapped at him.
“Aren’t you dead? Do I still have to listen to your nonsense?”
“Thirty years ago I tried to make an alliance with you!”
“Thirty years ago you were an idiot.”
“Oh?” Uncle Phil laughed. “Now I’m not?”
“Oh, you’re still an idiot,” Roland told my uncle. “Now you’re not the ringmaster. She is.”
Fortuna and Mark sat whispering with Serena as the two men quarreled and exchanged gentle insults about each one’s intellectual proficiency. Gunther walked over to the three and leaned down, speaking with each extensively. Finally, all four stood up.
“I would like to be a lion shifter,” Mark declared. “I know I will never find as loyal or loving a mate as Serena. The pride here deserves a better leader than someone that would betray one of its members, not to mention the circus.” I nodded as Serena beamed.
“I… I don’t know if this is allowed, but I would like to be a witch,” Fortuna said shyly. “I’m used to the way I look, and I don’t know that I want to change that much. I just wish to be me, if I can. But not have people want to kill me.”
Roland and I looked at each other and nodded.
“If you all will follow me into the transformational tube, we can get right on that,” I announced.
“The transformational tube?” Gunther asked laughing as he slipped into stride beside me.
“What? What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all, Charlotte,” he said as he stepped in front of me. I stopped walking and stared at him.
Slowly, he stepped in to embrace me. Gunther’s arms wrapped around me and his hand caressed the back of my head through my hair. It was… an intimate embrace and shivers zinged up my spine.
“In fact, there’s nothing wrong with anything today,” he whispered. “Everything is just perfect.”
“So, we’re in compliance,” I said as I passed a plate of food down the large table. “But there’s still the matter of Deo, Leo, and Alexa, and what we will say to Mina, Mabel, and Mercy.”
“Why say anything to them?” Roland asked as he grabbed some roast. The Makepeaces stayed for dinner so we could discuss our plans for the inquiry from the Witches’ Council, and my parents had joined us after being brought here by Jeannie.
Though we had solved all the direct violations of the law, no one here felt Mina, Mercy, and Mabel would be happy about that. “We should just keep our shields up, and let them rant away if they wish. They have no power over us.”
“If we continue to isolate ourselves from paranormal governance, Mr. Makepeace, things will always stay the way they are,” I pointed out. “We will always be playing this game of them coming after us and us defending ourselves.”
“We’ve done fine with that so far,” Uncle Phil said.
“I agree with the old goat,” Roland Makepeace concurred.
“Maybe Charlotte and I don’t want to spend our entire lives fighting a war,” Gunther told his father as he reached over and gently squeezed my hand. “They have destroyed or taken down every other circus in existence. If we keep doing things the same way? At some point, it will happen to us.”
“This is why we left the paranormal world,” my father told Gunther. “I felt that it was better for Charlotte to grow up in a place that didn’t have the potential to break out into a war all the time.”
“Alan, eat some of those vegetables,” my mother pointed at his plate.
“Yes, dear.”
“The human world has its conflicts,” Roland said.
“Well, sure it does, but in most countries and systems there is a method to address grievances,” I told him. “There are laws, judicial systems, elected officials, petitions. Rights to protest, even. I see none of that here.”
“That’s because we have none of that here,” Uncle Phil said.
“Maybe Gunther and I don’t want to be warlords in a dictatorship.” Gunther nodded as he chewed.
“Then change it, Charlotte,” Uncle Phil said waving his fork at me for a mouthful of roast. “You have a seat on the Council now. Use it.”
“I cannot believe you did that to your own niece,” Roland Makepeace said. “Throwing that girl into that nest of vipers alone. You should be ashamed.”
“I should? If you have such an issue with it, help her out. Make Gunther a lawgiver. It would be two against three, so Mina, Mercy, and Mabel would still have one vote on you, but it would give them a fighting chance.” Uncle Phil turned toward Gunther and me, waving his fork at us. “Since you two are so much smarter than your elders and all.”
“That’s preposterous. I need the boy at the circus. We only tried to make him a lawgiver before to protect him. He’s protected. Problem solved.”
“Dad, I’m not a boy, you know,” Gunther said, leaning away from me toward his father. “There’s nothing you need me for at the circus, and you know it.”
“Not true,” Roland told him.
“Unless you’re dead, that is true,” Gunther countered.
“All right, then how about this? We just got out of one conflict with the Witches’ Council by the skin of our teeth. I don’t want my son to go provoke another. This ring will not be worn by anyone.”
Roland Makepeace reached into his
front vest pocket and pulled out a gold ring that looked very much like the one my uncle had given to me. He placed it on the table in front of him and pointed out it. “No one will be the lawgiver for the Makepeace Circus so long as I am the ringmaster.”
Gunther reached over and grabbed the ring, turning it over and examining it. Without saying a word, he slipped it on his finger. Uncle Phil laughed so hard that tears rolled down his chubby cheeks. My parents looked at Roland Makepeace, who seemed to be in shock.
“What just happened?”
“I just joined the Witches’ Council,” Gunther told me.
“Wait, what? How?”
“This isn’t one of the more complicated magics of our world. You put on the ring, you become the lawgiver. It's as simple as that.”
“Take that ring off your finger, Gunther Makepeace!” Roland shouted at his son.
Gunther held his hand out flat to his father. Roland grasped the ring and yanked, but could not budge it from his finger.
“Years and years ago when these were crafted, lawgivers got killed in the line of duty an awful lot. If someone tried to apprehend the criminal and got killed, their partner could simply slip the ring off the body and put it on their own finger to get the powers,” Gunther explained. “Once the ring’s on a finger, it’s a done deal.”
I reached down to tug my own ring off my finger. My skin pulled with it as if the jewelry had somehow fused with my body.
“Don’t tug, Charlotte, it will just make your finger swell,” Mom said.
“No, it won’t, Martha,” my uncle told her. “Your daughter is still invincible. The ring doesn’t change that.”
“You are a terrible influence on my son, young lady!” Roland told me as he waved a fork in my direction.
“I disagree with you there, Dad,” Gunther smiled as he turned to me. “Since Charlotte showed up, life has gotten pretty exciting.”
Oh, barf, thought Samson.
14
We waited at the back of the clearing.