Carnival Souls

Kelpie Tales

The prospect of talking to the spirits—and potentially learning something new—had Owen jittery with anticipation. Or maybe that was the lack of sleep.

"Probably both," he thought.

He had spent the first half of the night wondering about his family. He couldn't help but imagine the worst. In his mind's eye, he saw a running reel of various scenarios ranging from mild to extreme.

There was Ethan lining up toys for hours while his mom capitalized on his distracted state by doing whatever it was that she did during the day; Ethan perhaps looking up at different sounds to see if it was Owen coming through the front door.

In the next scene, Ethan had another episode where his mom tried to restrain him for once only to do it incorrectly because that was usually Owen's job, and Ethan hurt her, knocking her out cold. In the following one, Ethan again acted out, but this time his mom did nothing but cry and wait anxiously for it to stop, her lack of intervention resulting in Ethan hurting himself badly.

It culminated with a final scene where his mother relinquished custody of Ethan to a shadowy-faced social worker and simply gave up.

Owen could not really believe that his mother would do that, but exhaustion was taking advantage of brain. He wondered briefly if Ethan would understand abandonment. He had been too young when their dad left, but would he eventually realize that Owen had never come back? The image of a chubby-faced Ethan coming to the realization that Owen had left broke his heart.

To stop dwelling on his family and save his sanity, he convinced himself to plan out how to approach a spirit and what he would say.

But what did you say to something that was dead?

"Sorry you kicked the bucket; hope the afterlife is treating you well. Nice weather we're having today. By the way, do you think you could help me escape an evil sorceress?"

And how could he tell who was in league with Bebinn? Lira had made it clear that the spirits who frequented the carnival were of questionable moral fiber more often than not. If he asked the wrong person, he could find himself answering to the witch and from what he had seen and heard so far that was the last thing he wanted.

When Owen had exhausted everything that could go wrong with his plan and was still turning up blanks on potential conversation starters, he finally turned to the one thing that might put his mind at rest: wondering what Emma Thompson was doing.

Jared and Kyle had probably assumed he'd been called for Ethan when he didn't show. But would Emma wonder where he was? Probably not. She would have no way to know if he was coming not having trusted his friends to lay the ground work for him. Owen liked to hope that maybe she had at least paused and scanned the crowd for him.

He smiled at the thought of her standing on tiptoe, blonde hair shining in the light from the bonfire, a slight pout to her red lips when she saw Jared and Kyle arrive without Owen.

"If I ever get out of here, I'm going to finally ask her out," vowed Owen.

It was this though that finally carried him into sleep.

"We'll take it slow today," said Jacks. They were approaching the paddock were a few of the horses were grazing. "These aren't like regular horses. They're—"

"Magical?" ventured Owen, a tad more sardonic than he intended.

Jacks' mouth pressed into a thin line and he tapped his whip against his leg.

Owen assumed it was for this comment that Jacks started him with mucking out the stalls. Within twenty minutes his back ached and he had sweat through his t-shirt in the stuffy barn.