Carnival Souls

Prisoner

Owen hadn't realized that he had never felt true terror until he heard the sharp, sawed-off cry of the bird and jerked his head up to see Atlas, framed in the window, snapping its neck. It was as he watched the tiny body crumple in her hands that he understood why people called it "sheer terror". The fear that started in his heart and moved through his body to pool in his feet made him feel as though the ground had bottomed out and he was on the edge of an impossibly tall precipice, about to teeter into the chasm.

Around him time slowed frame by frame, and in the brief pause Atlas took to look down at him, a hundred pin-pricks of white hot heat erupted over his body, burning all the more strongly for the cold that paralyzed him. Atlas turned away from the window, leaving behind a square of deceptively peaceful light, but Owen still couldn't seem to move. Every nerve in his body said to flee, to get as far from the funhouse as he could, but something else, another emotion, another thought, kept him suspended in that frame by frame moment.

He had seen awful things since he had come to the spirit world, but nothing had hit him so hard as watching the murder of Zabaria's messenger. Because it meant Lira was in danger. An invisible clock had started ticking in his body, lodged behind his heart. Owen knew the further it wound down, the smaller his chance of ever seeing Lira again. And if he wanted to see her again, he had to make sure Zabaria got the message Atlas was determined to erase.

Owen turned on his heel and walked between the two tents on his left to the outside ring of the carnival. He knew a bird came to Lira's window every few days, but there had to be another one of Zabaria's spirits here somewhere. Nothing so conspicuous as the tall, lithe forest women, but nothing so diminutive as the bird either. It would have to blend in. But it was only mid-Ebb and the occupancy of the carnival was sparse. A handful of spirits wandered about to the few open tents, but a quick glance was all Owen needed to know they were not Zabaria's. He peered around tent after tent as he made his way around the outskirts of the fairgrounds, trying to catch sight of anyone or anything that might know the reigning forest spirit, but hope dwindled with each stall he passed.

How can I even be sure to trust anyone I do find? he thought. Would Zabaria send another bird when the first one didn't come back? Or would she stop risking her subjects once and for all? Could he even afford to wait to see if she would send another? Could Lira? Reaching the end of the tent, Owen stopped, undecided and unsure.

What would Lira do? he wondered. He felt an ache in his chest when he realized she would have sought him out to ask his opinion only to vehemently disagree with it. He couldn't let her down now, not like this. In the distance, the peaked roof of the barn poked over the rise that hid Genzel's cabin from view, and he decided to find Jacks. He kept his pace to a brisk walk so as not to draw attention to himself and found the horse keeper in the farthest stall, brushing down a red roan mare. The horse nickered at his approach and Jacks looked up.

"What's wrong?" he asked upon seeing Owen's likely distraught face. "Lira...Atlas, she..." Owen stuttered, unsure how to explain his fractured thoughts.

Jacks got to his feet, clenching the horse brush. "What happened?" he demanded. "Start at the beginning."

Owen mentally backpedaled and attempted to explain what Vivian had told him, how he had gone to find Lira only to witness Atlas crush the small bird, and what he now feared of Lira's fate.

Jacks' mouth went thinner and thinner until tendons strained along his jaw. "We need to get a message to Zabaria. Now."

"I can't find any of her spirits," said Owen. "The bird was our chance."

"Then we wait until Flow for another. And if it doesn't come then I'll find Zabaria myself."

"But Lira—" protested Owen.