by Leanne Leeds
The silence that greeted my mind’s voice, though, chilled me. I had grown used to having ready access to my uncle and that cat, and their absence made me feel very isolated and alone.
I needed to buy time for my head to clear or one of them to reappear in my mind.
“How long… have I… been here with you?”
“Here? Only an hour or so. The other hours we spent cavorting around the Magical Midway and the Werebear Jamboree were quite illuminating, Charlotte,” Bolt said. “I had no idea you had such feelings for me. Though I must admit, I’m flattered that one such as yourself would be so attracted to me, being a lowly elven carnie and all.”
That sobered me up rather quickly. I stared at the elf with suspicion.
Every spider-sense I had was screaming at me to be on alert. Bolt was calm, and I didn’t sense he meant me any immediate harm, but he was hiding something. In fact, it felt like he was hiding a lot of somethings.
“What the heck are you talking about?”
“Are you sure you don’t remember? I don’t recall everything you said in your yurt, but I’m quite sure that Gunther will be able to recount it nearly word for word the next time you see him if you are curious,” he told me as he leaned back casually against the image of a sparkling rock. “Your friend seemed quite jealous of your choice to spend time with me instead of him. You were quite… emphatic in your rejection of him.”
I rubbed my eyes, desperately trying to push away the black curtain that had draped itself across my most immediate memories. It was as if someone had punched a hole in my life’s timeline. I couldn’t even access vague or hazy memories at all even though my mind was clearing.
Bolt smiled at me again and handed me a bubbly stemmed glass.
“I don’t drink things offered by others,” I told him as I pushed him away. “Especially not things offered to me by people I don’t trust, and at the moment, Bolt, nothing coming out of your mouth makes any sense.”
“I imagine most of the fairground feels the same way about your own drunken rant, Charlotte,” Bolt said as he pulled back the glass and smiled. A ring of pure white metal with a sparkling blue stone flashed in the cold moonlight that streamed over us from the elven scenery. It was so bright for a moment that stars danced before my eyes. “You expressed a deep—and loud—aggravation with the former werebear leader. It was quite shocking, really.”
“That’s impossible. I didn’t even know the man.”
“Really? I never would have guessed from what you said.”
Charlotte? Where are you?”
Samson, where the heck have you been?
Your uncle and I have been combing the Jamboree looking for you! Every paranormal in the place is talking about your behavior earlier today! What the heck got into you?
I don’t know. I think… I think something was done to me. I’m in Sticky Walls, with Bolt.
We’re coming.
“How did you know Chase Trout, Bolt?”
“I didn’t. Never met the bear. Why do you ask?”
“How about Scout? He seemed awfully relieved to see you walk into that clearing the other night.”
Bolt frowned, and a whirlwind of dizziness knocked into me aggressively like a crashing wave. My head fell against the wall as I gasped for air.
“Something wrong, Charlotte?” Bolt asked. “You really do need to learn to hold your wine a bit better. That might get you into trouble someday.”
The blue and white room spun as vertigo ravaged me, and it was all I could do to hang on without sliding in a heap to the ground. As the blackness pulled me down again, I heard the door to the Sticky Walls open.
My last thought before I lost consciousness was that I’d never been so relieved to hear my uncle’s voice before in my entire life.
The sound of people arguing greeted me as I clawed my way out of the blackness for the second time that day. At least, I think it was the same day. It could have been longer, and if I opened my eyes and talked to the angry people yelling at each other in my bedroom I could probably find out.
The chaotic debates, though, convinced me to keep my eyes closed just a bit longer.
“No one can make her say anything, Phil,” Gunther snapped at my uncle. “Elves can glamour someone into saying how they really feel, but they can’t influence them to say what they don’t believe.”
“I don’t think you’re correct, Gunther,” Fortuna said quietly from a distant corner of the room away from me. “Nothing you are claiming Charlotte said to you are things I have ever read from her or felt from her. Not at all.”
“Yeah, well, you haven’t been doing this for long, have you? You’ve been a witch for, what, all of a month?”
I had never heard Gunther so angry before, and I certainly never heard him talk to Fortuna like that.
Stay asleep for now, Samson broke into my thoughts.
No one could sleep through this.
I mean you should keep your eyes closed. Let your uncle and Fortuna try to calm Gunther down. Your entrance into this discussion at this very moment is likely not going to help.
What the heck happened to me?
I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know.
You don’t know? You don’t know? Aren’t you the one always telling me you know everything? The steady presence of the cat’s energy within my mind recoiled from my anger.
I was not on the Magical Midway grounds, Charlotte. There’s a reason I don’t go, and I don’t leave. I have no strong connection to you or to this place when I am not physically on it while the power resides in you. If one of us is not here, our communication link is broken at the border.
Where were you?
I was… busy.
You were gorging yourself on salmon at the Werebear Jamboree, weren’t you? I’m laying on this bed with a pounding headache because you were treating the festival like a cat all-you-can-eat buffet.
I said I was sorry. And I was looking for you while… snacking.
You did not say you were sorry.
Well. Perhaps. But I just did.
“I can’t believe that you would accuse Charlotte of murder! You! The half-human witch that she saved just a month ago from a lifetime of being ostracized by his own people! From death! You, who helped to run the circus that kidnapped Mark! You, of all people! You don’t trust her now?” Fiona shouted. I could hear Ningul’s whispering as he tried to calm his girlfriend.
“I didn’t say that. Don’t put words in my mouth, and don’t blame me for what people in my circus did to her. I never said I thought she killed anyone.”
“No, you just said you don’t know what to think about her drunken proclamations! The ones that she made about Chase Trout, who she never met, and you, who she now claims to despise, and Bolt, who she now claims to love.”
I said what now?
From what I understand, Bolt entered your yurt as you and Gunther were finishing up lunch. You turned on Gunther and attacked him verbally, telling him you never wanted to see him again. You threw yourself into Bolt’s arms, telling him you adored him. Then you and Bolt linked arms and went on a stroll through the Werebear Jamboree as you drunkenly proclaimed your glee over the death of Chase Trout to anyone that would listen.
Even my mind fell silent in shock as I absorbed Samson’s words.
Charlotte, Uncle Phil broke into the cold emptiness of my head, Gunther is simply hurt. His jealousy over Bolt is causing him not to think straight. Just give me a few moments more.
I rolled over as unobtrusively as I could and pulled a pillow over my head. I didn’t want to get up and deal with this, so if Uncle Phil thought he could fix it, he could have at it.
Laying in that bed, I felt ready to quit. No matter what I tried to do, everything at the Magical Midway and in the paranormal world felt like two steps forward and three steps back.
Charlotte, you are the most powerful witch in the world. On the planet. Maybe in the universe. That comes with benefits, but it also comes with a tar
get. We have all had to deal with it to greater and lesser extents, Uncle Phil told me.
A big target, apparently, because people seem to have no problem hitting it.
“Son, I understand this is difficult for you. I see how you feel about my niece. I’ve seen it since the moment you laid eyes on her,” Uncle Phil’s soothing voice said from far away. “But have you stopped to think even once that separating her from you was the goal?”
“Well, clearly it was her goal. She went off with Bolt.”
“Not her goal, Gunther,” my uncle said gently. “Someone’s goal. My niece may be the most powerful witch in the paranormal world, but you are the only other lawgiver. Isolating the two of you from one another is a perfect way to divide a power that intimidates many people. It would certainly make it easier to frame my niece for a murder that she didn’t commit.”
“And stoking your jealousy is a good way to make you act like a right git, Makepeace,” Fiona growled. “Which you are. Acting like a right git, I mean. Ya kin’?
“Having Charlotte parade around in public telling everyone she’s never met how much she disliked Chase Trout makes it much more likely no one will even suspect anyone else,” Fortuna pointed out. “Honestly, Gunther, everything about this situation seemed designed to isolate Charlotte, and make her the clear suspect.”
“But how could someone make her do that? How could someone make her say things that she didn’t believe? That weren’t true?” Gunther asked them. “She was in the Magical Midway.”
“We program our defenses to fight against things we, or our ancestors, have faced, Gunther. We have omnipotent power as ringmasters, yes. But we also have a responsibility to weild it, to shape it, to craft it. We are the minds behind the power,” Uncle Phil explained. “If no one has fallen to an attack, would we know it could happen to defend against it?”
Maybe you should wake up now, Samson said.
Do I have to?
No. You could nap in bed until they come to take you away. That is one option. As a cat, I can’t honestly fault you for considering that. The bed is quite comfy, and napping is quite relaxing. I’m sure you could nap quite frequently in jail.
I groaned loudly to announce my consciousness to the gathered throng in my yurt.
When I designed this living space, I loved the open air one room arrangement. Everything was close to everything else, and like a true yurt, it was one big room. The drawback, though, was that my bedroom was just twenty feet away from the sitting area and the dining table.
I resolved to devise a new design that gave me a bedroom.
A private bedroom.
With a door.
Just make sure you install a cat door, Samson told me. I ignored him as I rolled over and looked at the crowd.
As my eyes met Gunther’s, I felt the wave of pain and hurt that rolled through him like a storm. His eyes were clouded and dark, his body tense. He stood the farthest from my bed. From me.
“Gunther, I’m so sorry,” I whispered, my voice hoarse.
“For what?”
“Honestly? I don’t even know,” I told him as I sat up. Fiona ran over to my bed and piled pillows behind my back to support me. As she pulled away, her hand extended with a glass of something that I took without question. As I sipped, energy flooded through my body, and I smiled a thank you.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” The edge in Gunther’s voice stung me, but I put it aside for now.
“I mean I don’t remember anything. I don’t even know what day it is.”
“We arrived yesterday.”
“Good. Good. That means we haven’t lost much time,” I told him. “I don’t think, anyway. What time is it?”
“It’s nearly sundown, Charlotte,” Uncle Phil told me.
“So, I’ve had a blackout that lasted nearly the entire afternoon.” I shuddered. “Obviously, considering the look on your faces, I wasn’t curled up here in bed the entire time.”
“No, you weren’t,” Fortuna told me.
“How long is it been since you got me from Bolt? How long have I been here?”
“An hour, perhaps. No more than that.” Uncle Phil nodded.
“Thank you for that, by the way. I don’t know what his plan was, but he seemed intent on keeping me there for a while.”
“I think that elf has some things to answer for,” Fiona fumed.
“You’re probably right, but I don’t know that confrontation is the best way to go here,” I told her, sipping more of the drink she brought me. “He’s hiding something. No, that’s not completely true. I mean, he is, but…”
“But what?” Gunther asked with gritted teeth.
“He’s hiding someone,” I told them, ignoring Gunther’s bitterness. “When I woke up at his place, I could feel that there were things he was working to hide from me. Like he had stuffed facts and connections and thoughts into a big bag and sealed it away from me so I couldn’t read them. It was odd. It was like nothing I had ever sensed before from anyone.”
“Elves are secretive about their powers. While we know some things, we don’t know everything that they can do. It is possible he has the ability to do something like what you just described. Highly possible, in fact,” Uncle Phil said. “They are not inconsequential creatures.”
I think that’s a safe assumption, Samson agreed.
“Could he make me say the things I supposedly said with his glamour?”
“It’s possible.”
“Of course it is! You would never say that!”
“No.”
“Maybe.”
Fortuna, Fiona, Gunther, and Uncle Phil answered my question simultaneously. I ignored the pained answer from Gunther for the moment, hurt that he dismissed any possibility I was influenced. Jealousy, rejection, and anguish continued to swim within him coloring everything he was saying.
“I’m going to take the three out of four,” I smiled weakly. “Let’s assume for the moment that he could make me say and do and act the way he wanted me to and my protections are not as all-encompassing as we assume. Figuring out that he can and how he did it isn’t nearly as important as figuring out why. Why would Bolt betray me like that?”
I thought back to everything Bolt said in the clearing to Wayland and Scout, and no matter how many times I went over it, I just couldn’t understand what he was doing there or why he had gotten involved.
“Charlotte, wait, go back,” Fortuna burst out.
“What?”
“The thing you’re going over in your mind. Go back a bit. Go back to what Scout said about Bolt and the Elven code.
“Not when one is suspected of the murder, and the other has a history of protecting the one suspected,” Bolt disagreed. “Forgive my insinuation, Ringmaster, but we must ensure that the inquiry is above reproach.”
“You’re a member of the Magical Midway. How is your assistance supposed to be above reproach?” Wayland asked.
“Elves are well known to cleave to the law,” Scout told Wayland. “His loyalty is to the highest law in the land based on the elven code. He’s fine. Better than you.”
“Anything’s better than those two witches!” someone shouted from the crowd.
“That’s it! Charlotte, you are not the highest law in the land.” Fortuna said.
“The Witches’ Council is,” I said, and sighed.
“Oh, unicorns horns, are you kidding me? Those women again?” Fiona raged as Ningul, quiet as ever, folded her in his arms and hushed her. As usual, she accepted the affection while ignoring the suggestion she be silent. “I am getting right tired of those ninnies turning up in the middle of every single stinking problem that we have.”
“It’s just a theory. We don’t know that they’re are the cause of this, or behind it, or orchestrating it. Whatever. It’s just a theory,” I told her.
“Want to take a bet on that?”
I looked at Fiona and shook my head no.
“Ya, didn’t think so,” she said smugly.
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As we finished up verbalizing Fiona’s suspicions about the Witches' Council, I sent everyone away one by one.
Except for Gunther.
My friend had been incredibly quiet during our discussion, and when he did speak it was clear that he and I still had a problem.
“What?” he asked me sharply from across the room. I slipped out of bed and went over to him, seating myself far enough away that I didn’t crowd him but close enough to remove some of the distance between us.
“I don’t know what I said to you today,” I began quietly, leaning forward and staring at his face even though Gunther refused to look me in the eye. “It sounded like I was pretty terrible.”
“No, just honest, I’m sure,” he snapped, staring at his hands on his lap.
“Gunther, come on,” I chided him. “Do I really strike you as the type of woman that would throw herself at some elf I barely know? The type of person that would say the things you implied I said?”
“I didn’t imply anything. You said straight out that he was twenty times the man that I was, and that you would never be caught with someone like me if you didn’t have to be,” Gunther answered. “You tore apart my feelings for you in front of him. And then you left with him.”
“What feelings for me? What are you talking about?”
Gunther sighed and flexed his fingers in his lap.
“Gunther, I don’t know what you mean. Talk to me!”
“I talk to you all the time, Charlotte,” Gunther said, finally looking up. “I flirt, and I imply, and I’m always here when you need me. I know that this transition has been hard for you, and I’ve tried to give you the space that you need to become the ringmaster that you need to be.”
“And I appreciate that, Gunther.”
“But I’m in love with you, and you treat it like it’s nothing.”
It felt like a bomb exploded in the middle of my living room. Despite what I just said to him, I knew that Gunther had some feelings for me. I didn’t expect him to say what he said.
We stared at one another in silence.