Carnival Souls

Power and Control

"You did it!" exclaimed Lydia. "Or you did something."

The young girl had come back to let Lira out of the cell only to find her sliding slowly down the wall and the nymph immobile in the pool of water. The creature wasn't frozen per se; there wasn't any ice like Lira had imagined, but the spirit was completely motionless. Not a blink of an eye, a twitch of a finger, not even a sway of flyaway hair betrayed any movement. She was stuck, mouth half-open and eyes wide, her tail curled halfway out of the water. Only her hands, clutching the lip of the pool, prevented her from sinking like a stone.

Lydia walked around the perimeter of the water, fascinated. "How'd you do it?"

I did that Lira repeated to herself. She didn't know how. Just like with the kelpie, it had been a reaction not a decision. But I had wanted her to stop. Lira has never used to violin out of anger before. With the kelpie it had been about survival, with the children it had been fear of the alternative. But this wasn't about either-this was about controlling the spirit to get it to do what she wanted. To make her stop. And that revelation terrified her.

"I'll go get Bebinn," said Lydia excitedly. "She'll want to see this."

#

Lira was avoiding Owen. Or at least, that's how it seemed to him. She hadn't come to see him after her meeting with Bebinn, which had prompted to him seek her out. He found her sitting on the floor of her room, staring up at the window. The flower that had previously sat on her windowsill had been replaced by a spindly plant whose vines twisted up and around the window frame. As he watched he saw them move ever so slowly.

When he asked Lira how she was, she wouldn't expand on anything more than, "Fine," and that she was tired. She didn't appear injured in any way, but her detached manner concerned him. When she politely asked him to leave, he knew something was troubling her. Lira was never polite to him. She jabbed at him like a rose thorn; pretty and bright but with sharp edges if you weren't careful. He knew she would only get sharper if he pushed, so he left the room. That was three days ago.

To make matters worse, with Genzel still injured and unable to work, Owen had to put in more hours at the carpenter's house to make up for lost time. The last thing he needed was Bebinn poking her nose into the workshop to see what was taking so long. And so, Owen worked enough for the both of them while the old man hovered over him and barked orders and complained about his arm being in a sling. Which meant he was rarely able to get dinner at the time Lira usually ate, and when he knocked on her door at night she either wasn't home or wasn't answering.

They were no closer to figuring out Zabaria's riddle, Jacks seemed to want nothing to do with Owen after their "failed" attempt to escape, and even Mitsi spoke less and less to him as though he was afraid that staying too long in Owen's presence would get him into trouble.

Owen realized that he felt truly alone for the first time since arriving here. It was a hollow feeling, like someone had scooped out his organs and replaced them with wooden counterparts. Stuck in a daily routine without a plan of action to fuel his sense of hope, Owen felt himself slipping one rung at a time down a ladder to a black well of despair. For the first time, he understood why it had been so hard to convince Lira to climb back up.

At the worst moments he concentrated fiercely on Ethan, picturing him sitting on the floor and lining up his trains one by one. He tried to find the earlier conviction in his heart that he would find a way home. But as the days slipped by, he found it harder to hold onto his conviction. Monotony and compliance covered him in a thick glaze until on the eighth day he knew he had to do something, anything, to dissolve it before it he became nothing more than a robot just going through the motions.