Conjured

Chapter Twenty-One

I knelt behind the memorial on the carnival side of the fence.

“He must have been careless,” I said. “Her death must have been traced to the carnival. They must have all fled.” The flowers were half wilted, their blossoms closed or drooped. Leaves hung limp on the stems. A few were roses, their petals wide open. Others were flowers that I didn’t recognize, tight clumps of purple petals with spikes of white in their hearts and teacup-like delicate blooms of pale yellow.

“You don’t know any of that for certain,” Zach said. “She could have fallen from the Ferris wheel or choked to death on popcorn or—”

“Aunt Nicki and Malcolm said that he’d started again. If it’s true, then we’re walking straight into the danger that they tried so hard to protect me from.”

I felt his hand on my shoulder, a comforting weight. “If it’s true, then he doesn’t stand a chance against you,” Zach said. “Together, we wield more power than a dozen superheroes.”

I faced the memorial again, all the notes and the photos. One wreath of flowers had the word “sister” pinned to it. Another said “beloved daughter.” I thought of the antlered girl, Victoria’s sister, and all the other faces on the bulletin board. “Do you really think I can stop him?”

“Yes. And I think Lou wants you to.”

“I want to.” As I said it, it felt right.

“I know.” He squeezed my hand, and I looked at him. He didn’t look resigned or afraid or angry. He looked … proud and pleased. I wondered if he’d had this in mind all along … if he’d come for that reason … if the agency had encouraged him to come or even forced him. I wondered if he was manipulating me too, and then I pushed that thought down as hard as I could. It was my idea. If I discovered that my past held horrors, then I’d try to end them.

A voice came from the other side of the dock. “Hey, what are you kids doing?”

I spun, looking for the speaker.

“Just paying our respects!” Zach called.

Softly I said, “I don’t see …”

Zach pointed to a man off the side of the pier, half in and half out of the water, bobbing with the waves. Shortly, several more mermen drifted to join the first man.

I stood up and dusted my knees. “Let’s go.”

The first merman hoisted himself out of the water. Seaweed dripped from his arms, and his tail split into two legs. On scaly feet, he jogged toward us. Behind him, others pulled themselves out of the water.

Hand in hand, we ran around the fence and back to the silver mirror. They ran after us. We heard their footsteps sloshing on the sidewalk. But we were faster. We plunged into the silver … and found the carnival.

Banners and flags were strung between brightly painted poles. An elaborate archway marked the entrance. It was carved to look like clowns dancing, but the paint was chipped and peeling, so only the clowns’ eyes were left in bright blue and green.

On the archway, a sign proclaimed, BE AMAZED AND ASTOUNDED BY THE FINEST FEATS OF MAGIC, STRENGTH, AND WONDERMENT FROM SEVENTY-SEVEN WORLDS! The banner fluttered in the wind and then hung limp and twisted.

“I think I’m home.” The words tasted like cardboard in my mouth, and I had the nearly overwhelming urge to dive back into the mirror.

Beside me, Zach squeezed my hand. “Remember the plan? Kiss me?”

Wrapping my arms around his neck, I kissed him as if I were drinking him in. I tasted his breath in mine, and I gave him my magic in return.

Stepping away, I took a deep, shaky breath of air that tasted like stale cotton candy, and we walked up the hill toward the entrance. I’d been on this hill before. The antlered girl had run over it to visit the carnival.

Beyond the banner, the carousel turned slowly, the hundred bits of mirror in its top flashing in the sun. Music drifted down the hill, a complex melody of flute and fiddle that twisted and wove in on itself.

A woman was perched on top of the closest tent. She wore a billowing red dress and a hat with multiple feathers. She blew into a silent brass horn, and clouds shaped like horses, dragons, and rabbits ran, flew, and crawled from the mouth of the instrument. The clouds drifted across a bleached-blue sky and then dissipated. On the ground, a few kids ate cotton candy and watched. I remembered watching those clouds.

“Should we disguise ourselves?” Zach asked.

“I am disguised. That’s what the surgery was for.”

He stared at me. “What did you look like before?”

“I don’t know.”

“Huh.”

“Do you mind? Not knowing?”

He considered the question for a moment, and I waited. “No. But then, I liked you as a dragonfly too.”

Despite where we were and what we were about to do, I smiled.

We passed through the archway and entered the carnival. There were seven tents with a ring of wagons beyond them. Game booths were to our left. An outdoor stage was to our right. On the stage, the contortionists were performing.

One of the female contortionists bent backward and placed both hands on her ankles. Another stepped onto the first woman’s raised stomach and lifted her own leg over her head and wrapped it around her neck. One of the men then stood on his hands in front of them and wrapped his feet around the second woman’s neck.

Her head snapped off from her neck. She caught it in one hand and rolled it up her arm and then down her other arm. She then continued to stretch her leg around her body until it popped out of its socket and detached.

The other performers then silently removed their heads and rolled them up and down their arms. They traded heads once, twice, three times, and then they rolled the heads back to the necks of their original owners. The heads fused seamlessly back onto their necks.

Behind me, I heard Zach make a retching noise, and I turned to see him bent over a trash can. He raised his head and wiped his mouth. “Sorry,” he said. The crowd applauded as the contortionists bowed, and I led Zach away from the stage.

We stopped at a water fountain, and Zach rinsed his mouth and splashed water on his face and neck. The water sparkled as if flecks of jewels had been mixed in it. When he finished, the fountain rose up on four legs and scuttled away.

“Now what?” Zach asked.

“Our wagon should be in the back corner.” I pointed in a direction blocked by a tent … a tent of tattered red. I slowly lowered my arm.

That was it, the tent.

I took a step backward.

“You can do this,” Zach said. “That is, if you want to do this. If you don’t want to, I’m with you too.” His eyes widened, bug-like. “Is that a mermaid?”

In a rusty tank, a mermaid swam in lackluster circles. Her pale-orange tail flopped against the glass walls. Algae had grown on the glass, and the water was so murky that when she swam away, she vanished into mist. Circling, she suddenly appeared again, distorted and blurry, against the front glass. She was an older mermaid with thin seaweed-green hair, wrinkled skin, and sagging breasts. Her eyes were bloodshot red. As she circled through her tank, her eyes fixed on me. My skin prickled as she vanished and reappeared, each time looking directly at me. I looked away, wondering if the mermaid would remember that the girl from the Magician’s wagon had green eyes.

A line of boys and girls waited at the game booth to chuck balls at the algae-coated plastic treasure chest at the bottom of her tank. She caught the balls without altering her lazy circles and without looking at anyone but me.

I didn’t know her name. Maybe I never knew it. I remembered she’d tried to leave the carnival once. She’d returned when she’d learned her family had died.

Tugging on Zach’s sleeve, I led him away. His neck swiveled as he tried to look everywhere at once. In one tent, the wild boys were conducting their show. Riderless motorcycles shook the canvas walls as they roared past, racing upside down onto the ceiling. Six boys in loincloths and war paint chased after them with whips and nets, herding the cycles into more and more elaborate tricks. In another tent, an eyeless woman guided her audience into a dreamstate. She’d let them talk to their lost loved ones while she emptied their wallets. I’d never seen her perform, but I’d heard the Magician and the Storyteller say once that no one ever objected. As we passed by, I saw that her patrons were all levitating prone in the air. She walked beneath them in a tattered shawl and a dozen crystal necklaces.

Soon, the Magician’s tent was directly in front of us. A gold sash tied the curtain doorway open, but it only revealed dark shadows. I knew candles lit the foot of the stage, but from here, I only saw the silhouette of the back of the audience—the backs of heads and the curve of empty chairs. I half wanted to step inside, to see how closely it matched my visions, and I half wanted to run as fast and far away as I could.

Zach held my hand as we passed by the tent, close enough that I could hear the applause from the audience inside. The Magician was performing. I stepped softly, as if he could hear me, as if he had any way to know I was here. I clung to Zach’s hand as if it were a lifeline, as if he were a rope that could pull me out of a hole if I needed him to.

As I circled the tent, I saw the wagon.

Carved from wood, the wagon was as ornate and colorful as a gingerbread house. The walls were covered in swirls and curls, painted green with gold trim. The window shutters, all sealed closed, were blue. The wheels were gold with metal leaves and vines. Cherry-red steps led to the round door, and talismans of feathers and bones hung on it. A lantern was beside the door, lit with the broken wings of a will-o’-the-wisp.

It looked exactly like I remembered.

The Storyteller should be here. She used to sit on a woven blanket beside a table covered in a velvet cloth. Tarot cards would lie on the table, spread facedown, waiting for a customer. Silk pillows with tassels would be strewn on the grass around the table for listeners to sit on, and a tip jar would be on the corner of a blanket. But she wasn’t—and the Magician was performing. It was the perfect opportunity.

Slowly, I walked up the cherry-red steps. I reached forward to open the door. The handle rattled in my hands—or maybe my hands were shaking. The door didn’t open.

Leaning toward me, Zach breathed in more magic, refreshing his supply, which had most likely faded by now. “We could walk through …”

I shook my head. “I remember how to unlock it.” Rose, leaf, stem … I pushed on the carvings on the door, and they sank in, a hidden combination lock. Click, click, click—the door swung open. The smell of sage and cinnamon and copper rolled out and over me, and I swayed on the top step, surrounded by the taste of the air—the taste of home.

Breathing deeply, I stepped inside.

Inside was brightly painted with hundreds of tiny mirrors embedded in the walls. Feathers, talons, and bird skeletons hung from rafters, broad beams that curved like whale bones. Bottles lined the shelves on the wall—green, blue, and purple glittering glass bottles with labels written in swooping black ink. He sold those bottles, I remembered. Ointments and potions that he’d gathered from the worlds we’d traveled to. Some worked, and some didn’t. They were strapped to the shelves with leather belts to keep them from falling as the wagon lurched down a road.

And then of course there were the boxes. They were strung on a colored ribbon that stretched across the wagon. Silk scarves hung between them. Gathering my courage, I stepped closer to the first one and peered into it. Empty. All of them were empty.

“Do you remember this?” Zach asked.

“Yes.” Except that sometimes the boxes weren’t empty. But I didn’t say that. Instead I pointed to the dolls that filled the cots and benches: life-size with porcelain faces and cotton arms. Some were unfinished, their faces unpainted or their limbs not yet attached. Others were dressed in lace and jewels. “Except them. I don’t remember so many of them.”

In one vision that I’d had, a doll had been strapped beside me on the Ferris wheel. The Storyteller had made her out of stray bits of fabric and a porcelain masquerade mask. Clearly, she’d made more after I’d gone.

“Listen,” Zach whispered.

I held still.

There was breathing, soft and steady. It was so faint that I thought I was imagining it. It sounded as if it was coming from all around us. I scanned the wagon, looking for the source of the breathing. There weren’t any places to hide—

“It’s the dolls,” Zach said. “They’re breathing.”

He was right. Motionless, the dolls were breathing in unison. Now that I focused on the sound, it was all I could hear. The dolls stared sightlessly at us.

“Are they … alive?” Zach asked.

One of the dolls held a box, a match to the ones that hung from the string. I crossed to it. Inside the box, through the slats, an eye blinked. It was a filmy white-red eye, edged in wrinkles. I knew that eye. “She’s inside.”

“Who?” Zach asked.

Carefully, I lifted the box out of the doll’s hands. The doll’s fingers were rigid, posed to hold it. The doll stared glassily through me and didn’t move. Her lips were painted red and parted slightly. Her cheeks had been painted white with three black drops on each side, like a sad clown. Her eyes had painted eyelashes that curled an inch below and above her eyes, over her eyebrows. Her hair was black yarn. This close, I could hear her breathing, distinct from the others.

I held the box up to one of the lanterns. Inside, shrunken, the Storyteller was knitting a gray scarf. Her knees were jammed into her chest, and her feet were curled awkwardly under her, but she held her gnarled hands with her needles up by her face. I couldn’t hear the click-click of the needles, but I could imagine the sound. Kneeling, I placed the box on the floor and pulled at the clasp. It was rusted shut, as if it had been out in the rain. The Storyteller must have been inside for a long time. I chipped at the rust with my fingernails. “Help me,” I ordered. Zach’s hand closed over mine, and together we pulled at the clasp. It creaked and screamed as the metal bent and scraped against itself. “He’s punishing her. Maybe because of me. Maybe because she set me free.”

Zach helped me pull at the clasp. Suddenly it snapped, and the box fell open. Sitting on the floor of the wagon in the shards of the box, the Storyteller looked tiny, as if she were distant, and then suddenly huge, as if she were instantly close.

She matched my memory perfectly. The eyes, the wrinkles, the plump lips, the limp hair, the corseted dress, the gnarled hands, the pointed shoes, and the ever-present knitting on her lap. Deftly, the Storyteller lifted the box with one hand and closed the sides, the top, and then the clasp. She tossed the box from hand to hand as she smiled at us. She had few teeth left, and her gums were red and raw. “I thank you for freeing me.”

Her voice washed over me, and I shivered like a puppy quivering in anticipation of either praise or punishment. The Storyteller didn’t seem to recognize me. “Do you … do you know me?” I asked. I wanted to reach out and touch the wrinkles on her cheek. I wanted to curl against her and breathe in the smell of her, the smell of my childhood, the smell of my memory.

“You are the young adventurers who saved the wise old woman. I owe you a boon. Or advice. But I have nothing like that to give you.”

“I think you are my mother,” I burst out. After the words were out, I couldn’t breathe in more air. It was as if those words had taken all the oxygen out with them. I didn’t know where the idea had come from. My mother? Yes, of course, she had to be! Who else? I waited, breathless, for her response.

The Storyteller squinted at me. “I have no child.”

“I have pretty eyes.” I reached out to touch her—and then I stopped, not quite daring.

The Storyteller peered into my eyes, leaning closer and closer until I could smell her breath, rancid and sweet at the same time, and then she reeled back and laughed wildly, a dozen notes clashing together one after another, a cacophony of a hoot and caw and howl and giggle.

Zach gripped my arm to pull me backward. I stood firm. She didn’t frighten me. She’d cared for me, comforted me, freed me. She’d mothered me. “You cut the ropes,” I said. “You set me free.”

The Storyteller giggled. “And you blossomed into the princess that I always knew you could be.” She touched my face, tapped my shoulder, and tugged on my hair. “They did a finer job than I ever could.”

“Mother.” I tried out the word, letting it roll around my tongue. “I need to know—”

“I’m not your mother.” The Storyteller wasn’t laughing anymore, and there was sadness in her milky eyes. “You shouldn’t be here.”

The words felt like a blow to my stomach, and again I couldn’t breathe. “But I …”

“You never had a mother,” the Storyteller said.

I shook my head. “I don’t understand. I was … adopted. Abandoned? I remember you…. You told me stories … lullabies…. You were always there. You cared for me….” But I also remembered needles in my skin, ropes around my limbs. She hadn’t always been kind. “Did you steal me from someone? Where do I come from? Who am I?”

“You shouldn’t ask. And you shouldn’t have come back.” She bustled toward us, shooing us as if we were chickens. “You must leave. Leave before he sees you and never come back!” She herded us toward the door, but I dug my feet into the wood floor.

“Please! I need your help! I’ve lost my memories—”

The door clicked.

The Storyteller quit pushing me. “I’ve helped you more than I should have and less than I could have.” She retreated and sat heavily on a wooden bench between two unfinished dolls. “Once upon a time, a young witch fell in love with a boy who feared death … and it was beautiful. For a time.” She wrapped one arm around a doll. It fell limply against her shoulder. Its head sagged forward.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the box, hiding it behind my back. All I had to do was flip open the lid and touch him with the clasp—a simple plan. Ready, Zach waited behind the door. The Magician wouldn’t see him. I stood in front of the door and waited.

Click. Click, click.

The door swung open.

And I saw the Magician.

That is what the Magician’s hat is supposed to look like, I thought. It was crushed velvet with a white ribbon around its base. It was tattered and worn near the rim from years of use. It shadowed his face so I couldn’t see his blacker-than-black eyes, only his snowy beard, which he had braided with multicolored beads. I had forgotten the beads. I stared at the beads swinging from the tip of each braid. Some were glass; some were wood; some were bone. The bone ones had been carved with symbols and leaves.

His eyes fixed on the Storyteller first. “You’re free.”

“It’s her,” the Storyteller said. “They changed her body, but it’s still her in all the ways that matter. She came back.”

Then the Magician stared at me.

“Father?” I said.

“You’re alive,” he said. And joy lit up his face.

And then Zach worked magic: a blanket flew off a cot and wrapped around the Magician as tight as a strait-jacket. But I couldn’t make myself open the box. My father! Maybe the agents were wrong about him. Maybe the visions lied. Maybe he—

The dolls moved.

From both sides of the wagon, they lurched onto their feet. They swarmed over Zach. From behind me, two grabbed my arms. Their knitted hands squeezed like wire garrotes. My left hand was still plunged into my pocket, but I couldn’t move to draw the box out, though now I realized my mistake.

Across the wagon, his supply of magic gone, Zach struggled as four dolls held him fast. He was forced against the wall. The bottles shook from the impact. “Zach!” I cried. Without thinking, I threw magic at the dolls around us.

The dolls burst into flame.

And I collapsed.