by Leanne Leeds
“Okay. That’s good, then. I guess.”
Way to go, Charlotte. That wasn’t awkward.
You said it. I didn’t.
Shut up, Samson.
“How come you didn’t bring Delilah with you?” I asked Gunther as I stepped over to my stove and put on a kettle for tea. I found myself missing his kitten familiar. “Isn’t she lonely without you?”
“She still very young, yet, and I didn’t feel like a festival was a good place for her. She somewhat rambunctious, and doesn’t think things through very well,” he said as he moved the circled chairs back to the dining table. “She likes you, you know.”
“I’m a very likable person,” I told him, regaining some of the confidence I had before I stumbled.
“Hopefully, that will get around soon, and people will stop trying to kill you, kidnap you, or glamour you.”
“Hey, no one’s tried to kill me.”
“Alexa and the water snake?”
“Oh.” I had forgotten about Anya’s naiad sister and the slow-moving, relentless poisoned water snake. That wasn’t really a conspiracy to kill me, though. That was an attack of opportunity. “You’re right. I forgot about the water snake.”
I fell silent again, rinsing out the cups my friends had used. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with a boyfriend. When Aidan and I had faked a relationship, it was easy. We were just friends, and there was no pressure. It wasn’t going anywhere.
Now… now there was pressure.
“You’re so quiet all of a sudden, Charlotte,” Gunther observed behind me. “Is everything okay?”
Sure. Everything’s fine. You told me that you’re in love with me, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that. I don’t know if I’m in love with you. But, you know, let’s just pretend none of that ever happened.
Are you talking to me or talking to yourself? Samson asked.
Get out of my head, Samson. Seriously.
“Charlotte?”
“I’m sorry,” I told Gunther as I turned off the water, finished with the busywork I was using to avoid him. Turning around, I leaned against the counter and crossed my arms. “I’m not sure how this works. I just… to be honest, all of a sudden I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say to you.”
“Okay, that’s a good place to start, I guess,” Gunther said, gesturing to the couch with a smile. “Thank you for being honest with me, at least. To be honest with you in return, my biggest worry is that you would just push me away completely. Again.”
“I don’t do that.”
“You kinda do,” Gunther smiled as we sat down. “You’re really good at compartmentalizing, Charlotte. I think it’s what’s allowed you to get good at this paranormal thing so quickly.”
I burst out laughing. Gunther raised his eyebrow. “Wait a minute, you’re serious?” I asked him as my laughter trailed off.
“Of course I’m serious. I think you’ve been thrown a bigger change than any paranormal I’ve ever known, with the possible exception of Mark and Fortuna,” Gunther said seriously. “No matter what tries to knock you off your feet, you get right back up again. I don’t think you realize how impressive it is.”
“Stop. I’m serious, just stop,” I told him. “There isn’t a moon cycle that’s gone by yet where someone’s life hasn’t been threatened. Or lost.”
“And last month, you saved three people. Me, Fortuna, and Mark. I’d add the lion pride to that, as well, when you came up with this citizen legal system.”
“I didn’t come up with that,” I argued. “That was based on the human world that I came from.” And a television show I watched a lot of. But I decided not to mention that.
“And Alessandra?”
“Okay, just stop. I get it, I’ve done some not so harmful things that made life marginally better for some people,” I told him.
“You’ve done that, though, by juggling all of the competing needs people have from you. I’ve become one more need, and I get that can feel like pressure. Compared to catching a murderer or keeping you out of jail, working on a new relationship doesn’t really seem like a wise way to spend your time.”
“Geez, Gunther, are you arguing for or against our relationship here?”
“What I’m saying is I thank you for not simply pushing me out, or ignoring me to focus on the other things,” he said. “I would be the easiest problem to ignore. And you’re not doing that.”
Gunther reached across the couch and gently took my hand.
“What I’m trying to say is I want to be a help to you, not just one more obligation you have to learn to juggle. Believe it or not, I have some understanding of what it’s like to be in a relationship with a ringmaster,” he pointed out. “I watched my mother and my father for a number of years before she passed away. I know the toll it can take on a partner. I go into this with eyes wide open, Charlotte.”
“How did you get to be so kind and understanding?” I asked him, squeezing his hand.
“Childhood tragedy, and teenage isolation, I suppose,” Gunther said seriously. “It’s not a pathway to empathy that I would recommend. But it was mine.”
“I’m sorry I’m such a weirdo,” I told him, scooting closer to Gunther on the couch. I laid my head on his shoulder. He pulled me gently forward to wrap one arm around me so I could snuggle in. With my body in such close proximity to his, his thoughts and emotions became more evident the longer we touched.
Well, that was a side effect I wasn’t aware of.
“You are my weirdo,” he said, sighing. “Don’t ever apologize for who you are, Charlotte. I couldn’t imagine you any other way.”
Gunther tucked me in and then settled in on the couch for the night. I felt safer with him in the yurt, but nervous that falling asleep would lose us time we couldn’t afford to give away to rest.
“You’re already asleep,” Ethel Elkins snapped. “Get with the program, eh? We need to talk, so get up. Time moves strangely in dreams so we may not have much of it.”
I struggled to open my eyes, sure that I had not fallen asleep yet. When I opened them (or I thought I’d opened them), I was in a sunlit meadow I didn’t recognize. Twenty feet away from me, the gnarled old woman leaned against a tree at the center of the clearing. Like her, the tree was enormous, her bejeweled cane leaning against it.
“What is this place?”
“It’s a meadow,” she squawked as her hand slammed down against the thick trunk. “You’re dreaming, I pull you out of the dream, I talk to you, and with all those things happening your first question is where we are? You’re in a meadow! In a dream! If you keep questioning the obvious, girly, things are going to take you much longer than they should!”
Why did everyone from the Makepeace Circus feel the need to call me girly?
I thought I was still laying in bed, but I was standing with my feet firmly on the ground. Everything seemed so real. I could smell the heady scent of the spring flowers, feel the warm breeze over my skin. I looked down at a simple white cotton shift that draped me. My feet were bare upon the softest grass.
“Why am I here?”
“Because you’re dreaming!” Ethel said with exasperation. The old woman rolled her eyes and looked up at the leaves of the enormous tree that shaded her. “This is really who you picked? Really? You couldn’t give me something easier to work with?”
Ethel Elkins was a norn. She lived at the Makepeace Circus and waddled around like a crazy old woman. At least the norn had every time I had seen her, which wasn’t frequently, but the old woman made one heck of an impression. Gunther seemed to have a particular affection for her, and she for him. I sensed it from them both.
She was confusing, though.
She would rant and cackle about prophecies and the future, destinies, and balls and I don’t know what else. I didn’t know what to make of her rantings then, and I wasn’t sure what to make of her showing up in my dreams now.
Except for one thing.
My dreams ha
ve always been the one place I can’t sense anyone else, even if I try. Not my uncle, not Samson, and not any mental image of anyone else that may show up for a joint jaunt through my subconscious. It’s been the one time of day where I can be alone with my own thoughts.
I was sensing thoughts and feelings from the old woman.
What’s more, there was a… a presence here, and I was sensing thoughts and feelings from it, too.
Not just here. Everywhere, really. It had thoughts and emotions and feelings and they were all around me. They were so vast, so overpowering that it chilled me to the bone.
“Why am I here?”
“Not the right question,” she snapped and crossed her arms as she leaned against a tree of such monumental size, I couldn’t see to the top of it. “I already told you that. I already answered you. And it’s the only answer you’re going to get to that question.”
“Why are you here?”
“Ah, better question,” the old woman nodded. She pushed her ample weight off the tree and grabbed her cane to steady herself. “Moving in the right direction. Closer to where you need to be.”
Ms. Elkins shuffled toward me slowly as her watery eyes stared me down. Time seemed to slow as the old woman made her way toward me. I sensed so much from whatever presence was here besides Ms. Elkins that it was hard to keep my own thoughts straight.
It felt like I was being tested. Judged. Weighed.
The gentle breeze slowed as Ethel moved closer.
Finally, she stood directly in front of me. The breeze stopped, and the air felt heavy. The wizened old woman stared eye to eye with me. Again, her size seemed adaptable to her point.
“You are the Thirteenth Witch. We knew you were coming into being. What shall be now watches over you.”
I waited for an explanation.
She did not continue.
Moments passed, and the air hung stationary waiting for something.
In a flash, the disembodied energy’s impatience at the silence made it clear that everyone was waiting for me.
“What is the Thirteenth Witch?” I asked.
As soon as the words left my mouth, Ethel raised her cane above her head and twirled with it so fast I would’ve sworn the old woman was a prima ballerina. Pink blue and purple fog poured out from the old woman’s twisting tornado. It flew through the air like billiard balls bouncing around the pool table.
As the ricocheting fog slowed, the pink mist coalesced into the faceless silhouette of a woman, the blue into an anonymous man. The purple mist swirled around them in a circle.
“There are two!” the old woman shouted as her frenetic turning came to a halt. “Two are the thirteenth witches. Two that must become the one. The Thirteenth Witch will release the energy that returns the power to the paranormal world. It is the shape of the world’s destiny.”
“I don’t understand,” I told Ms. Elkins as the fog figures clasped hands.
“The power was taken, and hidden! It was a dangerous power, and it corrupted the supernaturals. When the world changed, they did not. When the world evolved, they did not. And so it was taken from them!” Ethel shouted, raising her cane high in the air. Lightning seemed to shoot from her cane to the sky.
“Taken by who?”
“It is time,” she said, calming. “It is time for the power to return. It is time for hope to return, for the magic to heal! For the benefit of all! It is time for the punishment to end. It all ties together. Everything ties together like the roots of a tree. When you think you have walked far from its shade, you still stand upon it. Remember that.”
“What punishment? I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I told Ms. Elkins, grabbing her arm. “You’re making no sense.”
“You understand enough,” Ethel Elkins told me quietly, and she reached her index finger out to gently poke my forehead. “Remember when I said you could safely ignore me? Now, you can’t. Keep that in mind. You understand enough, for now. You and I will meet again.”
With a gentle push against my face just above my eyes, the world went black, and I felt myself falling, falling, falling into darkness…
I awoke with a scream.
9
“It felt like the whole dream happened in just five minutes or so,” I told Gunther as I poured cream into his coffee. “But it’s morning, so it must’ve lasted all night. It’s just completely bizarre.”
“Time moves differently in the dream world than in our world,” Gunther told me as he nodded and sipped the coffee I made. “I’ve never had a visitation like that so I can’t tell you what it feels like personally.”
“Wait a minute, are you saying that for some reason the crazy old lady at the Makepeace Circus literally visited my dream to talk to me?”
“Sit down, Charlotte,” Gunther said gently. He wiggled his finger and magically pulled out the dining chair to his right. Gunther’s demeanor had shifted as I recounted my dream to him, starting with polite attention and ending… well, with an expression similar to my father’s when he wanted to talk to me about my breaking curfew.
Gunther looked fantastic first thing in the morning, by the way. His sandy hair was disheveled, and sticking up in so many directions I’d need magic to count the directions quickly. There was a sexy, rugged stubble all over his face I desperately wanted to touch to see what it felt like.
But I didn’t. We needed to focus.
“Okay, I’m sitting,” I told him as I plopped down on the chair.
“Do you remember when you met Ethel Elkins for the first time? The first time you visited my circus to rescue Mark?”
The first time I visited the Makepeace Circus and the first time Gunther remembered I visited the Makepeace Circus were two different times. I decided not to mention that and merely nodded.
“Do you recall her telling me she wasn’t crazy? That she knew more than I thought, and I should be ready?”
“Yep, I remember,” I told him. “She’s kinda hard to forget.”
“She’s been talking about the prophecy of the Thirteenth Witch for as long as I’ve known her,” Gunther told me, taking another sip of his coffee. “To make a long story short, Ethel claims that the reason the magical circuses exist is that true paranormal power had to be hidden.”
“True paranormal power? What does that mean?”
“She claims paranormals used to have the power to shape reality. Not just their own, but all reality. At most, now, an individual paranormal can affect themselves, maybe a couple of other people, but no one has enough magical power to, say, level a town.”
“I do,” I told him with more than a little ego.
“Actually, you don’t,” Gunther pointed out. “Your massive power stops at the borders of the Magical Midway. So does my father’s.”
“Well, if you want to get technical about it…”
“Technicalities are pretty important in magic, Charlotte. In any case, Ethel believes the circuses are guarding the power because it was taken away from the paranormal world.”
“Why? By who?”
“Who is a paranormal mystery, I suppose,” Gunther said. “She’s never told me. Why is an easier question to answer. The paranormal world became aggressive and manipulative and used their magic to hurt one another and the humans they were supposed to help. So the power was taken away from the paranormal world.”
“But if what you’re saying is true it wasn’t taken out. I mean, we have it.”
“Yes and no, and it’s contained in some important ways. Remember, energy has to go somewhere. Ms. Elkins says it was given to the most moral, ethical, and goodhearted families in the paranormal world to guard. It was their job to hold it until the paranormal world relearned their natures, their purpose. Relearned how to be… good, I guess? Benevolent might be a better word.”
“I still don’t get what the Thirteenth Witch business is.”
“The other part is that the energy would be withheld from the paranormal world for thirteen generations,” Gunther sai
d. “You and I, Charlotte, are our families’ thirteenth generation after the founding of the circuses.”
“So you and I are the thirteenth witches?”
“According to Ethel Elkins, we are.”
“Well, that’s cute and witchy and everything, but why does that matter?”
“What I told you up until now is history and myth. The prophecy part is that the Thirteenth Witch will have the chance to remove the last of the immoral corruption from the paranormal world and return the power to the paranormal citizens. If the Thirteenth Witch failed, the power would disappear from the world forever.”
“Wait a minute. You just said energy can’t disappear.”
“No, it can’t, but our access to it can,” Gunther pointed out. He clasped his mug and downed the rest of his coffee. “And all energy is connected, Charlotte. If the paranormal world’s magic was a body, the magical energy animating the two circuses would be considered its heart. Once that goes, I can only guess what would go with it.”
“Do you believe any of this?” I asked Gunther.
“I don’t know,” he answered after considering my question. “In the magical world, it’s sometimes hard to separate truth from the myths, and even the myths may have gotten corrupted over time. What I do know is if it’s true, I can’t dismiss it,” he said. Gunther shifted in his chair, his eyes downcast. “And Ethel foretold some other things that I can’t dismiss…”
“Like what?”
“Like you.”
Shivers ran down my spine at Gunther’s answer even though some part of me expected it.
The night I traveled astrally to the Makepeace Circus, the old woman seemed to speak directly to me even though no one at the circus was supposed to be able to see me. Gunther didn’t even know I was there and witnessed his conversation with her. It was a conversation that confused me at the time but which made slightly more sense, given the story my boyfriend just shared with me about the nature of Ethel Elkins.
“Ms. Elkins foretold you, Charlotte. That you would come from the human world, that you would need guidance. That you would be alarmed at the corruption you witnessed from the Witches’ Council. That you would be a catalyst for my finding my place and becoming who I was always destined to be.”