by Jaden Wilkes
“I’ve done some asking around, and looked up some things in my old books. I have an idea of where you come from, but not the full extent of your powers,” she said leaning closer.
“And?” I asked, holding my breath.
“I believe you are from a long line of women who were descended from the goddess Brigid, as she’s known in Gaelic. I would have to research her names in other lore,” Mila told me. The name meant nothing to me though, I wasn’t familiar with deities of other countries, let alone my own.
“What does that mean?” I asked, intrigued but not convinced.
“It means your ancestress was crafted to offer support to the shifter people. She was drawn together from the energy of the goddess and placed in human form. From everything I’ve read, there were originally three sisters, each representing different aspects of the goddess, your powers seem to be concentrated on controlling beasts. You are able to help people take their powers back from the moon.”
“This is all a little much,” I said, laughing. I couldn’t help myself, it sounded so airy fairy. Like I should be dancing in a ring of mushrooms with gossamer wings on my back.
“You seem skeptical, which is good. The less you believe, the more you will learn.”
“And what do I need to learn?”
Mila moved even closer until our noses were just inches away from each other. I fought my usual urge to jump back, I hated people invading my personal space, but she seemed so sincere in her intensity that I stayed put.
“You have so much to learn, Olivia. I am just scratching the surface with my research. This is ancient shit here, it runs deep and there’s a common thread through most cultures. This lore is universal, and you seem to be a living embodiment of mother earth. You are able to balance the pull of the moon and give freedom to my people. I don’t think you understand how fucking epic that is.”
She grinned and her teeth suddenly seemed much sharper than before. I wondered if she was a wolf, or if her particular animal was something different.
“I’m back,” Cairo said, breaking the strange contact Mila and I had going on. “I bring you sustenance and caffeine. Two of my favourite things.”
I sat up and pulled back, let Cai slide my food towards me on the table. He did the same with Mila, but didn’t take his eyes off me.
“Thank you,” I said and tucked into my eggs. I was starving. I didn’t know if it was from the abundant sex with Cai, or the fact that people seemed to be using me as some sort of buffer against moon magic. As crazy as it sounded, I did feel as though there were some sort of connection between myself and the shifters in the Cirque.
“Is everything okay?” Cai asked, putting his hand on my back and rested it there in the hollow. It felt good, an intimate act.
“It’s good,” I said, “I’m apparently a descendent of the goddess Brigid. How crazy is that?”
“Brigid?” Cai asked and he furrowed his brows. “Are you sure?”
“I’m not really sure of anything,” Mila said, “This is all just conjecture, but it’s the best lead we’ve got at this point.”
“True,” Cairo said, “but where do we go from here? What does it mean?”
“That’s where I’m afraid I can’t be of much help. I can continue to research her background with the resources I have. There are some people I can contact as well, but I wanted to come here to meet her in person to find out exactly what I was dealing with, what kind of power she radiated,” Mila told him.
“I told you she was incredible,” Cairo beamed and reached over to take my hand.
“You two have...mated?” she asked suddenly, leaning in again.
I blushed, red heat creeping up my cheeks. I glanced at Cairo and caught him eyeing me up intently.
“Yes,” Cai said, “we have, and we have bonded.”
“Fully bonded?” Mila asked, her eyebrows raising questioningly.
“Not fully,” Cai replied, “but we are almost there.”
“Bonded? Mated? What’s the difference?” I asked.
“I’ll explain it to you another time,” Cai said, looking a little embarrassed himself.
I stammered my protest, but shut my mouth when Mila looked at me. “I believe you are close,” she said, “and it’s between you and Cairo, not anyone else. He is following the way of the old folks by not discussing it in front of me, he’s not being deliberately obtuse, I promise.”
“Okay,” I said, “I guess I’ll wait.” I felt vulgar all of a sudden. It was strange, being part of this new culture with their own prescribed sets of behaviour and manners.
We finished our breakfast and decided to go back to Mila’s guest trailer to pour over the texts that she’d brought with her. Some of them were nothing more than unreadable symbols scratched on parchment, and others were books bound in leather and obviously extremely ancient.
Cairo was called away so I was alone with Mila for the afternoon, reading and discussing things I found needed clarification in the books.
We didn’t find much pertaining to me in particular, but I did manage to find out that I was apparently weakened by silver of all things, which made sense. I’d always hated the way silver jewelry felt on my skin, often giving me a rash or turning my skin a greyish tinge.
I also managed to glean a little more information about Cairo’s world. Although I still didn’t fully understand the power his father held over him and the rest of the performers, I did have more respect for the kind of power it was.
In this world, the power was mystical, it was ageless and ancient, and it was Orion’s by birthright. It must rankle him to have somebody come in and knock him off his throne. Especially somebody like me who had no idea what I was doing, and no concept of the sacredness of the entire flow of the Cirque.
Reading their history made me feel vulgar, uncouth, ungainly. All those words that had haunted me my entire life. The Cirque had a certain pattern of behaviour, it was almost a living creature itself, a living, breathing organism.
“I feel stupid,” I finally said after a couple hours of shared research. We had barely exchanged ten words up until then.
“Why?” Mila asked, her head snapping up from a thick leather bound volume she was pouring over.
“All of this, it’s so strange to me. I feel as though I’ve been walking on glass my entire life. Like this one time when I was a kid and we went to this shopping mall in Edmonton. I was being an idiot, dancing and jumping around without a care in the world until I looked down and realized the floor was glass and I was exposed to the level below. People were looking up at me and laughing, nothing mean, just enjoying the happiness of a little girl, but I was humiliated.”
“I see what you mean,” Mila said, “but please don’t feel embarrassed by your lack of knowledge. Even I don’t understand most of this and I grew up with it.”
“So you just used magic without thinking about it. Although, I mean, is it magic? Can I call it that? I feel like we’ve been beating around the bush and calling it vague generalizations like energies and flow of power. But this is magic, isn’t it?”
“It is,” she replied with an amused grin on her lips. “It’s magic, there’s no reason to call it anything else I suppose, but saying it out loud in English always makes it feel so...I don’t know, real?”
“It does feel real, doesn’t it? God, this is magic! I use magic! I’m like a dirty sexy Harry Potter or something,” I exclaimed as it all overwhelmed me at once.
Mila laughed heartily, her light airy laughter bringing lightness to my soul. Now that I had acknowledged it, I could feel the magic in everything around me.
“You are truly a delight,” Mila said, “you bring new perspective to all of this, and it’s amazing to me to meet somebody completely new.”
“And I don’t mind being completely new, but I hate that we still don’t have a concise definition of who or what I am.”
“We’ll find out,” Mila said, leaning towards me and patting my leg. “The information is
here somewhere, it’s just a matter of piecing it together. At least we know where you’re from and what your function is among shifters.”
“I just don’t know how I’m supposed to do it,” I laughed and waved my hands around in the air, pretending to cast a spell.
She mimed being knocked down and we ended our afternoon of reading in hysterical giggles.
I’d started out hating Mila just because of who she was, because circumstances had her engaged to Cairo, but at that point she was becoming one of my best friends.
It was funny how quickly life changed.
Chapter Twenty Eight
“Did you find anything new?” Cairo asked me later that evening, kissing me on the cheek.
I was still reading and researching online, finding even more information about the supposed cult of Brigid that had sprung up in Western Europe sometime in the Stone Age.
There were carved idols depicting what appeared to be a goddess of beasts, but these beasts were carved as half men, half animal. The goddess of shifters more accurately, now that I knew what I was looking at in the ancient record.
“Some things, but I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing with all this...well, magic that I seem to possess,” I told him.
He sat down next to me on my bed, it was covered with scattered papers and books everywhere, but he managed to find a spot anyways. “I’m sure you’ll be able to unravel this thread,” he told me and rubbed my back with his huge hand.
I moaned and leaned back against him, feeling the heat from his body soaking into my aching muscles. Now that I knew what he was, I could sense the differences in his body. The heat, the higher temperature, but also the coiled tension I sensed right under the surface. He felt feral on some level, and it excited me. It made every cell in my body vibrate when he was near.
“So, what did Mila mean by mate? Or bond?” I asked suddenly, needing to know, needing information now like I needed air.
Cairo had the decency to look mildly embarrassed. “Mating is obvious, sexual intercourse between two shifters, or a shifter and another gifted individual.”
“So I count as gifted?”
“Definitely. More than gifted, magicked. Most gifted are clairvoyants, or they read tarot, standard kind of stuff. You’re on a completely different level, babe.”
“That’s nice to know,” I said with a grin. “Now what about the bonding thing?”
“Bonding,” he said, pulling me into his arms, ignoring the drifting papers and books that scattered as I slid across the bed. “Now bonding is completely different. I think you sense it, every time we’re together. Has anyone ever made you feel like this?”
“God, no,” I breathed out slowly, “not even close.”
“Same with me,” he said, “I’ve had fun, but it always felt incomplete somehow. With you, it all fits. We fit. We make sense.”
“Are you telling me you weren’t a virgin?” I asked with a laugh.
“About as much as you,” he winked. I rolled my eyes and gave him a little shove. He laughed and wrapped his arms around me tighter. “It doesn’t bother me, you know.”
“I know, me neither.” And it didn’t, that was the craziest thing about being with Cai. Nothing else mattered, everything I’d done until the moment we’d met had just been leading up to finding him. “What did she mean about fully bonding?” I continued.
“Fully bonded is when we perform a ritual and are recognized by the pack leader. It’s like a wedding, only it completes the life bonding event.”
“We’d need your father’s blessing?”
“Kind of,” he said with his mouth set in a grim line, “we could make do with the support of the pack. Community recognition, I suppose.”
“You suppose?” I asked. “Are you certain?”
“Nothing is certain where you are involved,” he replied and wrapped his arms tighter around me. “Nothing except how much I love you, and how much I want to fuck you,” he added.
He dipped his head and bit my neck, and sent a thrill through my body. I smiled, sighed and said, “I believe that.”
He stopped in mid motion, tilted his head and listened.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, and he motioned for me to be quiet.
After a few seconds, he said, “There’s a meeting, I’ve been called.”
“How can you hear that?” I asked.
“Concentrate,” he said, “it’s a call to any shifters or gifted in the region, not just the Cirque. I believe my father is the one calling it, he’s probably trying to make a play to keep his power.”
“How will we stop him?” I asked. “Or should we? I mean we just want to figure out who’s killing girls, we don’t really care about the future of the Cirque, do we? Can’t we leave all this? Can’t we let him have it?”
“What would everybody do without us?” he asked, “My father will destroy it if he’s left on his own. And his dark methods are what is leading to girls dying. I just know it. Now concentrate, listen for it.”
I was still and closed my eyes, hoping my other senses would increase at the lack of sight.
I was about to hit the edge of my patience and tell Cairo it was no use when I heard it.
I suppose more accurately, I felt it.
I’d once seen a nature show about elephants, and how they communicate over great distances using infrasound, wavelengths too low for humans to pick up on.
This is how it felt to me, how they’d described it.
It was a humming in my bones, a deep, sinewy thrum that matched my pulse. Or did my pulse match it? It was intoxicating and undeniable in its pull.
I snapped my lids open and saw Cairo staring at me, a look of wonder and love on his face. “You got it,” he said.
“I did,” I replied breathlessly and stood abruptly. He joined me and I said, “This way.”
I pulled him, knowing the direction the meeting was in, where it was, and how many were there already. I didn’t know if Cairo got all this information, or if my particular powers increased some things for me.
I didn’t have time to ask, the compulsion to move towards the cafeteria was too great.
We snuck into the back of the tent and I was surprised by the people who were in attendance. People I’d assumed were normal, and here they were responding to a shifter call.
Acrobats, performers, clowns, and even some Freaks...they were all drawn to Orion’s call. I wondered how many people in the Cirque would even be considered normal these days.
I saw Lara, the giantess, and raised my brows at her across the space. She smiled and shrugged, and I contemplated what she would change into if she shifted.
“A raven,” Cairo said in my ear, as if reading my thoughts.
“A raven?” I asked and laughed. “I would have thought an elephant or something larger at least.”
“Yeah, this shit makes no sense,” he chuckled.
“Is it genetic?” I asked. “Like if you and I had a baby, would it automatically be a wolf, or would something even crazier crop up?”
“Oh no, it’s genetic. Wolves beget wolves, ravens beget ravens, and so on and so on.”
“What if a raven married a wolf?” I asked.
“That’s a crapshoot, but it’s always one or the other. They don’t mix or anything,” he said, “but it is the cause of many family fights. Like mixing two religions. But it doesn’t often happen, most shifters stick with their own kind, they pick up on pheromones or something.”
Orion flipped the back flap of the cafeteria tent open and strode through the crowd to the front of the room.
He paused dramatically, looked around the group, rested his eyes on me and smiled, that oily smile that made me shudder.
Cairo noticed and put his arm around my shoulder, pulling me into the protective curve of his body.
“You might wonder why I’ve called a meeting,” Orion began, and silence fell upon the group. His voice wasn’t particularly loud, but it was deep and commanding. He’d lived a l
ifetime of performance and had a showman’s natural talents.
“I called you because you might have noticed we have experienced a certain change recently. The last full moon wasn’t as difficult on you, was it?”
Several people agreed with him and he continued. “They will get easier and eventually you will be able to completely control your shifting.”
This resulted in a quick titter of surprise rushing through the crowd.
“We have among us a woman of particular talents, a woman whose talents you’ve been reaping the benefits of lately,” Orion announced in a booming voice. One by one, everybody in the crowd turned to look at me.
I felt my face burn with embarrassment, I hated being in the spotlight like this. It was strange, I could be mostly naked in front of strangers and it didn’t bother me a bit, but at the moment I felt exposed and vulnerable.
“So what is she then?” asked a young man near the front.
“She is an unknown,” Orion said, “which is why we are here.”
He wobbled and slurred his words, took a long draw from a water bottle in his hand, coughed, and I realized it wasn’t water.
He was drinking vodka, and it was starting to show.
I had a performance with him in a few hours, I narrowed my eyes and watched him, wondering if he would be sober enough to string me up tonight.
All eyes were on me by then, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.
“Hey all.” I gave a shy wave and immediately felt like a dork. I glanced at Cairo who was staring at me encouragingly. “I don’t really understand this any more than you do, but I’m here now, and hope you will give me the time and space I need to figure this all out.”
“And there she is, folks,” Orion said sweeping his arm in front of him, sarcasm practically dripping off his lips. “Cairo’s new lover, the toast of the town, and apparently a self-appointed detective.”
“What my father means is that we are looking for information about the missing girls. There have been three of them so far,” Cairo said, stepping in for me.
“They’re not shifters or gifted though,” one of the fire eaters informed us, “why do we care about them?”