The Graveyard Festival

Chapter 6 - Colorless

But perhaps most curious of all were the flowers that grew in the center of the tent.

From where Thana stood, the flowers seemed to form a perfect, circular carpet. Their sweet scent, coupled with the sugared essence of the Festival sweets, was making her rather dizzy. But she soon realized just how queer these flowers were: Each blossom was as dark as the circus they grew in, their petals closed tightly like they protected some treasure. But the stems and leaves were pale, such that to Thana they looked like brilliant white stars against the blackness of the tent they were in. They moved and rustled and seemed to stir, and Thana shivered, a sudden chill slithering down her spine.

All at once, a great gust of wind swept the tent. The skull lamps extinguished, and the tent was thrust into complete darkness—all except the flowers.

Their white leaves glowed. Thana peered at them, brows furrowed as she realized that they pulsed, like a heartbeat pumped the iridescence through the plants. Brighter and brighter, until the entire tent was basked in their soft light.

High up in the air, a lone figure stood so very still, on a string so thin he may as well be floating. Thana slipped past the curtains to take a closer look, crouching at the edge of the ring. There was something eerily beautiful about the silence and the stillness of the scene in front of her, she decided—it was the quiet breath of the ocean just before a storm.

The man in the air moved.

He danced a brusque dance above the audience in the melancholy cries of a distant violin, amidst the muted song of the piano. A twist, a flip, a longing reach for something Thana couldn't see.

As he danced, the flowers throbbed. Their radiance grew painfully intense, but Thana couldn't look away. Everything sang of bitterness—of a harshness that Thana knew only all too well.

But the light of the flowers did nothing to rid the darkest shadow perched on the man's back.

From the distance, Thana couldn't see what it was. But as the dance ebbed and flowed, and the strange, lonely man danced more impossibly on the wire, Thana decided that it was anything at all: just a silhouette so black it ate at the light of the flowers below.

The thing had no features—it was simply a black figure with unusually long limbs and an aura like death.

And it grew—it swelled with every stretch, every leap, with any movement at all, until it was larger than the man himself. The gigantic figure sat hunched on the man's back as the dance grew slower still under the weight of the dark figure. The cable groaned and curved beneath them. 

Thana chewed on her lips. There was something odd about this performance.

Then, under the anguished moan of the cello, the wire snapped, and the man fell.

"No!" Thana gasped. Her heart jolted and she jerked to her feet. But before she could do anything more, the man hit the ground, and moved no more.

In the ensuing silence, all Thana could hear was her own ragged breathing. A moment dripped with quiet, then two, and then the crowd erupted. The women screamed. The children cried. The men yelled and rose to their feet. All eyes were trained on the still body cradled in the midst of the pulsing white flowers—a sweet, final embrace.

Thana stood at the fringe of the shadows, unmoving. Her breaths regained their rhythm and her heartbeats steadied. The sadness burned; she closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, it was raining blood.

The drops fell from the dark, dark ceiling of the tent. A speck of scarlet stained a white leaf, and then with a great, anguished roar, the blood-rain fell in earnest. The red washed over the pure brilliance, dowsing them in flaming crimson, until all around the black tent everything was set in the color of blood.

Thana, mesmerized by the flood of color, stretched out a hand into the blood-rain and watched in mild fascination as it gloved her hand. Red was a pretty color, she decided. She ought to use more red in her dreams—

The smallest flicker of white light.

Thana shifted her gaze, curious now. Around her, the crowd had cowered, whimpering under the glow of red. She was almost certain that she had imagined it when something white twinkled again, in the dead center of the blood and the body and the flowers.

A flower had bloomed.

The black petals had unfurled in the most intricate of dances, layer after layer curling backwards until in the center of the blossom a white light glowed, ever so still. Slowly, one after another, each deathly bud unfolded. The silvery radiance pierced the red in shards of alabaster.

And in one combined exhale of breath, the small lights rushed at the body. They eased the man from the earth and whirled around him, carrying him up into the air. As they climbed, the lights grew brighter until all Thana could see was the man's waxen halo.

The lights exploded, and stars rained on the audience like snow. As the brilliance faded, so had the man, and the crowd rose to their feet in thundering applause that shook the House and all of its stars.

As Thana stood underneath the starry downpour, a dreamy smile crossed her lips. Her Festival rained blood and snowed stars—how curious.

With a twirl and a skip, she exited the tent, intent on exploring the other bloody, starry mysteries of her new home.