When Gomorrah is standing still, a three-foot-tall fence separates the Downhill and the Uphill. The stakes are painted black and sharpened into points, and trinkets and trash hang along their entire length, from top to bottom. Empty bottles stuffed with cigarette ash. Animal bones from food picked clean. Broken charms. Flyers advertising attractions and services, such as a short-term moneylender in Skull Market, where you could find anything from stolen jewelry to pickled lizard eyes for charm-work. Occasionally, there is a white ribbon for memorial of someone passed.
I haven’t decided what I’m going to say to Luca. Villiam is convinced the killers are from outside Gomorrah, so convinced he is allowing me to train as proprietor two years early. I am inclined to agree with him. Before meeting with Villiam today, I intended to tell him about Luca’s proposition, but it didn’t seem to matter by the end. I’ll find Luca and tell him thanks, but no thanks. The thought of doing so thrills me a little. He rejected me once; now I can reject him.
To my left, a man missing his left eye sharpens a machete on a stone block. He holds it up to glint in the green torchlight. Behind him, a vendor sells rice and meat that he claims is lamb, but I’m fairly certain it’s either horse or rat, judging from the tough-looking exterior. Farther down, a woman nearly six and a half feet tall sits on top of a group of cages. They’re exotic animals, she says. Some better than hunting dogs, others the warmest of pets. But that dragon snake, with its horns and spiked tail, only looks half dragon snake. Most of the animals are mutts, a little bit what she claims but mostly descended from rodents or pests found wandering the Festival during our travels.
Someone taps my shoulder. Reflexively, I whip around and shriek. It’s an older woman, her skin covered in age spots, and she cringes away in the face of my outburst.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
She grumbles something unintelligible and holds up a strand of vials full of a pink liquid. “Someone so jumpy shouldn’t be in the Downhill,” she says. “Maybe you’re looking for something sweet? A little love juice? Just a drop in that special someone’s tea, just a dab behind the ear—”
“No, thank you,” I say. That sounds like the sort of thing Unu and Du might slip into Hawk’s drink to give her hives. Besides, I like to think that when I eventually find love, it won’t be from a charm. That is hardly fit for fairy tales, and I don’t intend to settle for anything less.
“It’s from Madame Lamoratore, an experienced charm-worker—”
“I’m not interested.” I brush past her and hurry down the path, retracing the route to Luca’s tent.
Cheers cry out from my right. I turn and face a crowd gathering around a platform, one I realize I’ve seen before—while it was empty, anyway. An enormous man the size of two or three people is strangling someone beneath him. I can’t make out the other person, except for a hint of blond hair and the fact that the victim is much smaller than the giant attacking him. After another fifteen seconds, his arms go limp, and he slumps against his stool. The larger man turns and throws a fist in the air. The crowd cheers louder.
I didn’t realize killing was now a sport in the Downhill. I’m about to turn away in disgust when the smaller, dead man with blond hair stands up. It’s Luca—almost impossible to recognize out of his usual, obtrusive clothes. He coughs up a bit of blood and spits it onto the stage.
An Up-Mountain woman next to me blesses herself. “That’s devil-work,” she says. “Cursed are the demon-workers, for they will return to the depths.”
The large man swivels around. “What?” he roars. “You were dead. I killed ya.”
“And now I’m back.” Luca smiles his insincere smile. “That was a remarkable attempt, sir, but I think we should let someone else take a turn.”
After some cursing and grumbling, he leaves, and another man climbs onto the stage. He has a wide nose and dark, beady eyes. He reminds me of a cockroach.
“What’s your name, sir?” Luca asks.
“Garrett.”
“I have poisons, knives, rope...you can take your pick—”
“I’ll use my own sword, thanks,” Garrett says. He pulls it out of its sheath. It’s jagged but appears sharp enough. “You don’t mind if I use my own sword, do ya?”
“Not at all.”
Before Luca can ready himself, Garrett swings his sword straight through Luca’s neck. His head thumps to the stage and rolls off and onto the grass at my feet. I cover my mouth with my hands and fight back the urge to vomit. Red blood stains the dirt. Luca’s bedroom brown eyes look very dead.
I sway and put my hands on my knees to regain my composure. It doesn’t matter if I didn’t like him. Too much blood. Too much death. My chest tightens, and the anxiety from earlier returns in full force, as if it had never left at all. I back away so the blood doesn’t touch me.
“I killed him,” Garrett shouts. “I killed him. So I get the four hundred gold ones.”
A middle-aged Southern Islander woman looks hesitantly from the bag of winnings to Luca’s limp, bloody body on the stage. “I’m not sure—”
“He’s dead, bitch,” Garrett says. He rips the bag out of the woman’s hand.
Below me, Luca blinks his eyes and stares up at me. I scream. He mouths something, but no sound comes out. I suppose, without lungs, he wouldn’t be able to speak.
Revolted, I gently pick up his head and lift it to my level. A bit of blood dribbles onto my tunic.
Luca’s eyes dart around until he notices his body. One by one, his limbs move on their own. He stands up, headless. Garrett turns around and shrieks as Luca’s body tackles him at the feet of the Islander woman. Garrett doesn’t put up much of a fight, and Luca stands, the bag of winnings clutched in his hand, blood spilled all the way down his clothes. He walks to the opposite side of the stage, toward me, and reaches down. I hand him his head, my stomach performing somersaults.
He screws it back on as if he’s a doll, flesh reattaching to flesh.
“That ain’t right,” Garrett yells. He clutches his religious necklace. “You’re some kind of demon.”
Luca grins and stuffs the heavy bag of winnings in his vest. “I think that’s it for the night.” He hops off the stage and lands at my side. “Thanks, princess,” he says. I’m too stricken to bother correcting him for using that nickname. “I usually have a block ready in case someone beheads me. I don’t like to get myself dirty.” He licks his hand and rubs some dirt off his chin. Around us, the crowd dissipates and moves on to a new attraction.
“That was repugnant,” I say.
“I usually do better the bloodier it is,” he says. “Some people put money in without even trying to kill me. They just get a kick out of watching me die.”
Maybe that’s because you’re an ass, I want to say, but then feel ashamed of the thought. These people don’t know him. They’re merely cruel.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” I ask.
“Only for a moment.” He taps my mask. “I like your mask today. Very sparkly.”
“Thanks.” My mask is silver and covered in glass fragments, smoothed by a translucent coating. Its reflections shimmer green from the Downhill’s torches. “Why do you let them do that?”
“The money, of course,” he says, his voice hollow. “Even demon-workers have to eat.”
What a pitiful way to survive.
“I didn’t intend for you to witness my gruesome spectacle,” Luca says. “You’re early.”
“I said nine.”
“And forgetful.” He studies my messenger bag. “What are you carrying?”
“Some books,” I answer.
He swiftly snatches a book out of the bag, nimbler than a pickpocket. “A Complete List and History of Gomorrah Proprietors?”
I grab it from his hands and return it to its place. It’s no secret in Gomorrah that I’m Villiam’s heir, but I don’t want anyone overhearing clandestine information.
“Can we talk in private?” I ask.
“Yes. Let’s take our discussion elsewhere. Away from prying ears.” I peek over my shoulder, and there are others watching us. Children crouching behind the stage or tents, wondering if the seemingly blind girl would make a good target to pickpocket—as if they can assume anything about me simply from one appraisal. Some of Luca’s audience members, lingering for any additional entertainment.
Luca avoids their stares and leads me to his tent next door. The gossip-worker sign I kicked down the other day has been put upright. He must think I’m such a child. How embarrassing. I take a seat at the table while Luca pinches at the fabric of his shirt, damp from blood. “Would you like something to drink?” he asks.
“I’m fine.”
“Gin it is,” he says. He sets two glasses on the table, pours them a quarter of the way full and then slides one to me. “Here. Drink some. Compose yourself. I’m going to change into something more comfortable.”
He disappears into the other, more private tent. While he’s gone, I take a sip of the gin and then immediately spit it back into my glass. I untie my mask for the moment, to release some of the pressure on my forehead and my sinuses. All the crying in the past week has turned me into a mess. And Luca’s show outside managed to agitate my anxiety. But gradually, my heart rate slows. I tap my fingers against the table to the rhythm of the Freak Show’s opening song to avoid thinking about Luca’s blood on my tunic.
Then Luca returns, so quietly I hadn’t heard him approach, and I freeze. My nose is running, I’m sweating and I’m maskless. He pauses, studying my face, and I brace myself for an expression of disgust or discomfort. But it never comes.
He sits across from me. “Are you all right?” he asks.
“I’m managing.” I fiddle awkwardly with the mask in my lap, tracing over the glass shards with my thumb. I rarely remove my mask and never in front of near strangers.
I’m still beautiful without my mask, I tell myself. Nevertheless, I tie my mask back on and hate myself the entire time I do it. My face shouldn’t matter. I shouldn’t care what he thinks. But I do. And it’s hard enough to sit here, salvaging what remains of my pride after asking him for help, and talk about Gill and Blister.
He takes a generous sip from his glass.
“Should you be drinking?” I ask.
“It makes me nicer,” Luca says.
“Then drink up.”
“I wanted to thank you for helping me earlier. That man could’ve run off with a lot of money, and I’m not quite as rich as I used to be. So...can I get you anything else?”
“I’d rather we talk about Blister and Gill.”
“Of course. I—”
“I don’t think we should work together.”
He sets his glass down on the table with a clunk. “Does your father disapprove?”
“I haven’t even told him—”
“Good. I doubt he’d like to know his only daughter is spending her nights in the Downhill.”
“Anyway,” I say with annoyance, “Villiam believes the perpetrators are from outside of Gomorrah, looking to shake him. I agree with him.”
“Didn’t you tell me the other day that you didn’t believe that? Someone knew Gill slept alone in the other tank. Someone knew how to kill your illusions. You think a group of Up-Mountainers, however cunning Villiam believes them to be, could accomplish that?” Luca stands, abandoning his drink, and begins pacing his tent. “It has to be someone inside Gomorrah. Someone targeting your family, not Villiam. If they wanted to target Villiam, they would have simply killed you. That would have been easier and more efficient.”
“Why don’t you have more of that gin?” I mutter.
“You agree with me, don’t you?” He stops pacing to examine me.
“I... I don’t know what to believe.” Both he and Villiam make sense. I wish I were smarter, able to weigh each perspective equally. One argument from Villiam or Luca is enough to sway me, and I am rocking back and forth like a seesaw.
“It doesn’t matter,” Luca says. “You don’t have to decide. But it makes sense to research both ways of thinking. Just...stay. Hear me out.”
“Why are you so eager to help me?” Doesn’t the gossip-worker have better things to do? If he is right about the killer being in Gomorrah, I don’t want to abandon the opportunity to find him by only investigating Villiam’s political enemies. But I wish I understood Luca’s motives better. Especially if we’re going to become partners.
“This is a fascinating puzzle,” Luca says.
“I’m glad you find the murders of my family so fascinating.”
“What did you think I would say? That I’m a saint? That I love coming to the rescue of damsels in distress? We both know that I’m no hero and you’re no damsel. Sorry, princess, this isn’t that sort of story.”
I purse my lips at his condescension. Luca is hardly my idea of a fairy-tale hero.
“Fine. I agree with you—the killer could be in Gomorrah,” I admit. “We can be partners. We don’t have to be friends.” My voice is biting.
He hesitates. I can’t possibly have offended him after that speech of his. “Fine.” He resumes his pacing. “It strikes me as odd that Nicoleta is the only one without any strange abilities.”
I suppose the pleasantries are over.
“Nicoleta does have abilities,” I say.
“But she doesn’t have an act.”
He’s certainly done his research.
“That’s because she’s terrible at performing. We need a stage manager, anyway,” I say. “Nicoleta is much stronger than she looks. She could probably snap iron, if she wanted to. She just...isn’t always strong. Only when she’s upset or scared, so it’s hard to work something like that into the show.”
“And you didn’t plan the abilities, right? They were, um, born that way?”
I wonder how he could possibly know this and hesitate before giving my answer. “Yes.”
“What is your inspiration for each illusion?”
“I wanted them to be my family.”
“In theory, could you recreate Gill or Blister if you tried?”
I grimace at the idea of trying to replace them. That wasn’t what Luca was implying, but that is what his words conjure, nonetheless.
“No. I could, I suppose, create people similar, but much of their personalities—and their abilities—weren’t in my original plans. I could make up, for instance, another two-year-old boy, but he may or may not turn out to be like Blister, regardless of how much I try.” I picture Blister in my head, his sweet face and big, brown eyes, and the anger and grief settle in my stomach, heavy and hollow. “And usually before creating that sort of illusion, I feel, I don’t know, a spark. Inspiration, I guess.”
“You just said your inspiration was family members,” Luca says.
“I don’t know how I do it, exactly. But the idea comes to me somehow. To make a sister. To make an uncle. I wake up picturing them in my head, and there is a need to create them, like an empty space in my mind that needs to be filled. It’s the same space they go when I make them disappear. The locked Trunks.”
There’s a pause. “Maybe you could elaborate—”
“It’s hard to explain. Why does this matter?”
“I like having the whole picture.”
“But it’s not an exact science. It’s an art.”
“You’re not a thinker, are you?” He runs his hand through his chin-length blond hair while I seethe at the insult. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about jynx-work,” he says, sitting on the floor and motioning for me to join him. “About all the different sorts. Where I come from, people only spoke about them as if there is one type: demon-work.”
He slides into a seat at the table, and from this close, I can smell his sandalwood soap. “Where are you from?” I ask.
“The city-state of Raske,” he says matter-of-factly. I’m surprised he even answered at all. He seems the sort who’d be private about himself. Or maybe I only think that because he’s so different from everyone else in the Downhill, all clean and polished. “Very minor city. In the northeast. The one with the clock tower.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” I say.
“You’ve never heard of the Tower of Raske?” Now that he says it...maybe. In one of Villiam’s lessons.
“Isn’t von Raske your name?” I recognize it from when Nicoleta was talking about him.
“I just go by Luca now.” He drums his fingers against the bamboo floor. I remember that we’re not friends; he has no obligation to share anything about himself with me. “So, jynx-work. It appears to me, from the time that I’ve spent in Gomorrah, that there are three extremely common types: fortune-work, charm-work and shadow-work. Seems like eighty percent of jynx-workers here practice one of them.”
“Are you just going to ramble the entire time?”
“Yes, I am. It’s not like you’re paying me. The least you could do is listen to me ramble.”
“Do you do this to all of your clients or just me?”
“What would give you the impression that you’re special?” He lies down on his back so that I can’t see him because of the table between us. Always moving. It’s hard to keep track of him. “There are also a few less common forms of jynx-work that are still well-known. Like fire-work and mind-work. I’d put illusion-work in this category, because almost everyone has heard of it, but you’re the only illusion-worker I’ve actually met.”
“There isn’t another illusion-worker in Gomorrah,” I say.
“So I assumed,” he says. “Now, there’s one last category of jynx-work. The abnormalities. The ones that only one person is known to have, particular to that individual. Like my poison-work.” Luca’s words begin accelerating beyond the point of comprehensibility. I wonder if he’s even talking for my benefit or simply to hear the sound of his own voice. “I want to focus on the possibility that these incidents have nothing to do with your illusion-work and everything to do with the jynx-work of the killer. Assuming that your illusions are, in fact, entirely illusions, and unable to be killed without the use of jynx-work.”
“Do you always do this?” I ask.
“Do what?” Luca asks.
“Talk at someone rather than to someone. So fast I can’t keep up. Then I end up looking like a fool.”
“I always just assumed you are a fool,” Luca says from the floor. I open my mouth to retort, furiously, but then hear him chuckle softly. “Joke. I was joking. Don’t look at me like that. Sometimes I make jokes. I’m not a total freak.”
The word freak makes me tense. It’s not a word I associate with many others except myself and my illusions, so it’s strange to hear it from someone else’s mouth in reference to themselves. Luca may be an Up-Mountainer in Gomorrah—a rarity—and have a rather unusual jynx-work ability, but is that worthy of being called a freak?
“Did you leave Raske because you were a jynx-worker?” I ask.
“Why the personal questions?”
“You don’t have to answer. I was just curious.” I look around his tent, which lacks any personal possessions besides a few books and essential furniture. Even when misfits run away from home to join Gomorrah, they take a few things with them. If I were going to run away somewhere, I’d take my bug collection. Judging from his home, Luca doesn’t have anything he truly values. If he could only take one item with him, he’d probably reach for his bottle of gin.
“No, it’s fine,” he says, in a way that makes me think maybe it’s not fine. But I don’t bother stopping him, as he’s already started talking at a hundred words per minute again. “For most of my life, I didn’t know I was a jynx-worker. I left after the last of my family died. I didn’t have any reason to stay. And if the people in the city found out what I was...they’d probably have burned me at the stake. Sometimes I amuse myself by thinking about what they would have done after I wouldn’t die.”
“Is that a joke, too?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I suppose my jokes are rather morbid.”
He smiles his full smile, the one with the dimples, and I catch myself smiling back. I immediately stop. It’s not fair to my family to be smiling when everyone else is grieving. It’s not fair to Gill and Blister. Not so soon after their deaths.
“Back to where we were before,” Luca says, as though he never paused his initial thoughts. “You say your illusions can’t die. For the moment, let’s assume you’re right. So who can kill someone who can’t die? Well, someone with a unique ability to do so. The common jynx-work, like fortune-work and charm-work, hardly seem capable of that. Nor do some other well-known kinds, like mind-work or fire-work. It seems the best guess is that whoever did this has a unique ability, one like mine.”
Luca turns his head and assesses me coolly, as if examining a rabbit turning over a spit. I dismissed Nicoleta when she claimed Luca was dangerous. He’s only a few years older than me, with less muscle tone and far less tact. But there is an emptiness in his expression that makes me doubt. Because it’s not empty—he’s too intelligent for that. So what truly lies behind his blank stare?
“What?” I ask.
“I was waiting for you to guess that I’m the killer. I have a unique ability.”
“For getting yourself killed. Not other people,” I say.
“Glad that isn’t an issue.” He rubs his hands together. “There are eight in Gomorrah, excluding your illusions, who are, well, freaks and don’t count.” He pauses. “You don’t suspect any of them, do you?”
“Of course not,” I snap. “Besides, they were all together when Gill died. And mostly together when Blister disappeared.”
“Even Tree?”
“You know the names of my illusions?” The only ones I’ve told him about so far are Blister, Gill and Nicoleta.
“I know everyone in Gomorrah,” he says simply. I find that difficult to believe. Villiam doesn’t even know a third of the people in the Festival by name.
“Well, first off, Tree isn’t as violent as people assume,” I say. “And you think in an area as busy as the games neighborhood with the dunk tank, no one would notice a half man, half tree walking around?”
“I was simply asking. Tree would be strong enough to smash the glass of Gill’s tank.”
“So would anyone with a proper weapon,” I hiss. Tree may be prone to tantrums, but he wouldn’t hurt anyone, least of all Blister and Gill.
“So it wasn’t Tree.” Luca sits up in one graceful motion and spends a few moments counting off on his fingers. “I think the unique-ability idea sounds like a better option. So those eight people in Gomorrah are our suspects. Seven, excluding myself.”
“You want to question them and figure out who could’ve killed Gill and Blister?” I ask.
“Well, yes and no. The problem with people with unique abilities is that no one knows for certain every aspect of their jynx-work except that person. It would be easy to hide something. It’s smarter to try to determine if any of them would want to kill your illusions.”
“But that line of thinking means someone else in Gomorrah could also be hiding an ability,” I say. Unease prickles down my neck. Anyone in Gomorrah could be hiding their powers from us. And their motives.
“Yes, it does,” Luca says. “If all seven suspects seem innocent, then we’ll have to move on. Then we can think of anyone, jynx-work or not, who would have a reason to attack them. But that’s broad. The seven are a better place to begin.”
He pulls his golden pocket watch out of his vest and checks the time. It’s a beautiful watch, with ornate engravings all over its case. If he sold it, he wouldn’t need to perform that ghastly show of his. But maybe it has sentimental value. Strange—Luca doesn’t strike me as a sentimental person.
“Tomorrow we can visit the first suspect,” Luca says. “Are you free?”
“Yes. Later tomorrow night.” We won’t have any shows for the rest of the week in mourning of Blister, but I imagine I will be spending most of tomorrow with Villiam.
He stands. “Excellent. Tomorrow.” He grabs his black top hat off the books I brought him and then pauses. “Would you like me to walk you home? The Downhill gets dodgy this late at night.”
“You look like you have a place to be,” I say.
“I was going to have tea and biscuits with a prettyman known as the Leather Viper, but that can wait until you’re safe back in the Uphill.”
“The Leather Viper?” I smirk.
“Maybe I should just call him my friend Ed,” he says. “So how about that walk? I have time to spare.”
“Are you really that good of a bodyguard?”
“Truthfully, no. I usually just save myself the trouble and let them kill me.”
At home, such a morbid joke wouldn’t sit well at the moment. But I’m not at home. I don’t feel like home Sorina.
“Fine. You can walk me back to the Freak Show tent.”
We step outside into the green light of the Downhill. It’s roughly three in the morning, the high point of the night for business. The air smells of torch smoke and sweat, even though Cartona’s forests provide cooling shade. Rhythmic music plays from somewhere behind us. It sounds like a party Venera might attend. There aren’t quite as many people on the paths as there were earlier, as most of the visitors have found their ways into the tents of prettywomen or taverns by now, where they will remain until Skull Gate closes at dawn.
“Do you actually know everyone in Gomorrah?” I ask.
“No. Maybe a fifth or so directly, and about half through information.”
I smirk. Not quite as impressive as he makes himself seem.
“And you get all your information from...prettymen and prettwomen?”
“A lot of information but not quite. I also make friends with everyone who sells necessities, like food, water, the tax collector. Because if you know them, you’ll have a connection to everyone in Gomorrah.”
“I suppose that makes sense. But why bother with any of this? Why are you a gossip-worker? You don’t get paid for it, like you do for your shows.”
He shrugs. “Like I said, the people here interest me. They’re nothing like the people at home, who are bound by the rules of Ovren and purity.” The bitterness gives his voice a sharper edge. His walking stick clacks against the shards of a broken beer bottle, and he kicks it. “You know, now that you’ve seen one of my shows, maybe I should see one of yours. When is the next one?”
“Probably once we reach the next city.” No one feels in the mood to perform without Blister or Gill, but unfortunately, we’ll run out of money if we’re not generating ticket sales. Villiam gave us the rest of the time in Cartona off, but once we reach Gentoa, we’ll need to put our performance smiles back on.
We pass a bordello tent nearly five stories tall, leaning to the side and looking like a strong wind could blow it over. The tent is entirely bright pink, and dancing outside the door is Yelema, the prettywoman who was having tea with Luca when I first walked into his tent. She waves at him, and I try not to stare too much at her dancing, even if I’m a little transfixed by her suggestive routine.
Luca waves back with barely a passing glance.
“I’ve heard there’s a man at your show whose hair is made of nails,” Luca says.
I pull my gaze away from Yelema’s hips. “That’s Crown.”
“Now, I don’t know a lot about how illusion-work is done, but I’m assuming you came up with that idea. My question is...how?”
“Not exactly. I imagined all my illusions in vivid detail before creating them, but I never imagined them to be, well, freaks. That part is beyond my control. I don’t know why. Villiam thinks it’s my subconscious.”
“Your subconscious?” he asks.
“I’m a little unique.” I tap my mask. “So I tend to like people like myself, apparently. And it’s hard to run a Freak Show if we’re all normal.”
“I can see the sense in that. People who are different—freaks, as you say—tend to enjoy the company of those like themselves.”
We near the stake fence at the edge of the Downhill, with all its trash and charms. Lightning bugs blink throughout the Uphill, gathering around the glowing paper lanterns or along the dewy grass. Luca reaches out and cups one in his hand.
“I used to put them in jars as a kid,” he says. “Don’t worry. I let them out afterward. I recall your sentiments about cockroaches.”
“There are huge lightning bugs in the Great Mountains called blinking beetles. They’re the size of hummingbirds.”
Luca lifts up his cupped hands and peeks at the lightning bug inside. “Another bit of information I’ll never need to know.” He lets the bug go, and it hovers between the two of us, blinking.
“As if spying on people and learning every detail of their lives is somehow useful information.”
“I do not spy on people,” he says haughtily.
“Then what do you do?”
“I...” He pauses. “I also do other things, besides my gossip-working and being publicly killed. I like stargazing. I know quite a bit about stars.”
We pass through the clearing and enter the Uphill, where most of the activities are winding down for the night. Everything closes here much earlier than in the Downhill. Residents clean up the food wrappers and trash littered throughout the grass outside their caravans. Some take their laundry off the lines or throw tarps over their tents in case of rain.
“Like what?” I ask. The only things I know about stars are the nonsense Villiam tells me.
“Right now, it’s the constellation of the lion.” Luca points to a pattern in the night sky. “Once a year, the moon will position itself directly behind the lion’s head like a mane. It’s said that on that day each year, a king is either made or falls.”
“When is it?”
“It already passed a few days ago. I don’t know about any kings coming or going, though. It’s just a story the town loon used to tell.”
We approach the Freak Show tent, with its black and red stripes and shimmering glass ball at its peak. Tree stands beside our sign, slouched slightly but not quite sleeping, and blending into the forest scenery. He watches us approach, particularly Luca. “A bit fancier than my little platform,” he says, then startles. “Oh, I didn’t see him there.” He eyes Tree up and down and then extends his hand.
Tree doesn’t move.
Luca moves the hand away and shoves it in his pocket. His eyes narrow as he inspects Tree, as if making sure he’s awake. I stifle a laugh. No one seems to understand Tree besides me. “So,” he says awkwardly, “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
Both of us pause, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps because this walk has felt very casual, that a lot of our relationship feels casual, when it is centered around the deaths of my uncle and baby brother. It was somehow surprisingly easy to forget that fact when I was at his tent, bickering about things that don’t matter, but now we’re here, in front of my tent and the grief it houses.
A few minutes ago, I was someone else. Someone distanced from the despair here.
But now that I’m back, I’m Sorina again.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say. “Thanks for the company.”
He doesn’t say anything but simply nods and walks down the path.
I decided earlier we weren’t going to be friends. But as I watch him disappear into the smoke, I suppose I could warm up to him. This partnership won’t be a complete disaster.
I turn to Tree, who leans down over me so that his leaves itch the back of my neck. One of them falls at my feet. “You’re shedding,” I tell him.
He pokes my cheek with one of his twigs, which scratches me. He forgets which parts of me tickle and which do not.
I tickle him under his arm, and his laughs make his leaves shake as if a wind blew through him. “You’re not usually in the Festival at night. Are you keeping watch?”
He nods. His eyes are wide. He’s worried. He’s missing Gill and Blister.
I rub behind his ear. “We’ll protect them, don’t you worry.”