"Baleros is dead, isn't he?" said Atlas, after Bebinn disappeared down the hall. It was more statement then question; one that spoke of acceptance rather than worry.
Lira did a kind of pirouette on the spot, still reeling from Bebinn's callous demand and subsequent dismissal. The sheet music fluttered to the ground. Atlas was in the same position, regarding her in an unsettlingly motionless way.
"What makes you say that?" asked Lira. Her dilemma of the unreadable sheet music was momentarily forgotten as she looked at the girl again; this time taking stock of her thin legs clad in black leggings that cut off at the ankle paired with a simple, white tunic belted at her tiny waist.
Atlas motioned to the violin still hanging limply in Lira's hands.
"You're here," she said simply. Her words curved with the slightest trace of a Spanish accent.
"I didn't kill him," said Lira, quickly, suddenly afraid the girl might seek revenge for her friend. "Bebinn—she—"
"I know," Atlas interrupted. "He wasn't the first. Nor will he be the last."
Young as the girl looked, she spoke with the quiet assurance of someone much older. Even the measured expression on her face hinted at a maturity beyond her physical years.
"How old are you?" asked Lira, suspiciously. Her arms ached to set down her belongings, but she dared not move further into the room until she knew who—or what—she was dealing with. "Are you one of them?"
"I'm ten," said the girl. She still had yet to move; her hands remained clasped in front of her and even her head held its slight tilt. Lira shifted uncomfortably, as though she could make the other girl move by force of thought. "And no, I'm not a spirit. I'm a human like you."
"Then, what's wrong with your hands?" Lira blurted out. Even as the words left her mouth, she knew how rude she sounded. Her mother would be appalled.
At the thought of her mom, Lira's heart twisted like her blood vessels were hardwired to her emotions. Would she ever get the chance to roll her eyes at her mom's gentle reprimands again?
Atlas looked down at her hands, which she had finally raised and turned over. Large streaks of red curved like scythes from the center of her palm to the back of her hand to form a sort of blossom. It reminded Lira of the henna tattoos offered at the carnival earlier that day. Atlas merely shrugged.
"The spirit world does something to our pigment after we are exposed to it for a long time. The others have similar marks. You will too, eventually."
Lira glanced quickly at her own hands expecting to see red creeping up her skin, but it appeared unchanged, smooth and white except for where sun exposure had bitten her and left behind freckles.
"There are others? Kids you mean?"
Atlas nodded.
"Where? What do they do? Were they taken too?" she demanded breathlessly. The familiar coils of anxiety began to creep around her limbs, locking over her wrists and ankles like shackles. Shallow breaths rattled in her thin chest and the blackness of oxygen deprivations flickered in her peripherals.
A warm hand on her wrist brought Lira back to the present and her vision cleared to reveal Atlas mere inches from her face. Lira leapt backwards, dropping the sheet music so it fluttered to the ground. The close encounter had allowed her to see that Atlas's dark eyes were tinged crimson as well.
"It will be all right," said Atlas gently and Lira actually found her accented voice soothing, like hot chocolate laced with cinnamon. "Bebinn is fair to those who do good work."
"What does she want with me?" Lira hated the whimper in her voice, but the hard veneer fear had given her was melting quickly, exposing her insides to the harsh elements of this world of horrors.
"She needs you to play."
The word "need" didn't escape Lira's exhausted mind, but her thirst for answers overrode logic.
"But why?"
A flicker of emotion crossed Atlas's features, but it was so fleeting Lira couldn't even guess at it.
"It's best if you learn that on your own."
Lira felt her fears only root more strongly in her heart with the other girl's words and tears welled in her eyes again. Remembering Bebinn's harsh rebuke, she wiped them away.
"So what do you do?"
Atlas regarded her for a moment, that unnerving stillness returning. "I'm a messenger, a surveyor, and a locator."
Whatever all that is supposed to mean, Lira thought.
Her eyes flickered from Atlas to the far corners of the room having been too preoccupied with Bebinn to take stock of her surroundings. It was a modest sized room with only the barest of furnishings. Two twin beds were tucked into opposite corners across the room separated by a weathered wardrobe leaning against the far wall. The beds were hemmed with washed out wooden desks each set with an old fashioned lamp. A thread-bare red carpet seemed to have been tossed on the floor as an afterthought.
Only the lamp on Atlas's side of the room was on, casting what would now be Lira's side in deep, uninviting shadows.
"Were you kidnapped too?" asked Lira.
Atlas's gaze flickered to the still open door. "Bebinn asked me to join the carnival about a year and a half ago. She sensed that I had—a keen sense of direction. Baleros was the one who greeted me as well."
Lira wasn't sure "greet" was the word she would use.
So Atlas had been lured her as well, although it would seem for a different purpose. An ache gathered strength slowly in Lira's temples as her mind worked overtime to process everything. The conclusions it was manufacturing weren't helpful and anything but comforting marred as they were by exhaustion and fear.
"The carousel—" Lira began.
"Some questions are best left unspoken," interrupted Atlas, dropping her gaze and kneeling down to collect the fallen papers.
Lira glanced at the open door again. It was cruel, she thought, to be tempted with a false freedom.
She switched gears, wanting to glean as much information from Atlas as she could while she was being talkative.
"You said you were human. That those things are—spirits? That we're in the—the Spirit World?"
Atlas shrugged, patting the papers into place and going to place them on the empty desk—Lira's desk.
"World, realm, use whatever word you want. It's a kind of purgatory. An intermediate place between the human world and the afterlife."
"The afterlife as in heaven?"
"Or hell," said Atlas. "If those are the places you choose to believe in."
Lira shook her head, wisps of blond hair escaping her braid. They curled into her eyes and she brushed them away impatiently.
"I don't understand."
Atlas let out a long breath through pursed pink lips and looked over her shoulder at Lira in a pitying sort of way. Though the other girl was a good three inches shorter, Lira suddenly felt like she had shrunk.
"When people die, their souls pass into the Spirit World to await a judgement of sorts."
"So you're saying I'm dead?" asked Lira, her voice shrill with panic. She didn't feel dead, but when Bebinn has stolen her soul, had she killed her? Would she be judged as Atlas had said?
Every little transgression she had committed raced through her head. The time that she had filled Shannon Fitzgerald's shoes with rotten milk after she had called Lira a freak. Or the day she had deliberately played badly at an audition after her music teacher had reprimanded her for going to a school dance instead of practicing. And then there were all of the times she had back talked her parents.
"No," said Atlas. "You are very much alive, but your body is here as well as your soul. You are Bebinn's servant, as am I. The same rules do not apply to us.
"For the others, their fate depends on the deeds and actions they took part in in life. Those whose souls are pure get to—move on. Those whose souls are stained are condemned. Or souls may simply choose to remain here. The longer they stay here, the more their soul manifests itself as a representation of how they lived their life. The spirits out there look—different—based on how their hosts lived their life.
"The Spirit World is also where those from the afterlife can come to meet the ones they left behind—in dreams or through mediums and psychics—the real ones anyway. And then there are the true spirits, those of animals, rivers, forests, and elements who reside here and have the ability to influence the human world."
"And all of them come here? To the carnival?" asked Lira.
Atlas shook her head, seeming to grow tired of Lira's questions.
"The Spirit World extends far beyond Bebinn's Carnival. It is ever-changing, always shifting as souls and spirits enter and leave. This place is a very small part of it. A kind of respite for weary souls."
There was nothing Lira had encountered thus far that would make her soul want to come here, but judging from Atlas's words and the motley collection of spirits outside, this wasn't a place pure souls came to often.
Lira opened her mouth again for even as Atlas fed her answers, she still felt just as lost, but the girl held up her hand.
"You will come to understand more in time. For now, it's best if we get you bed clothes and some food. Come tomorrow, your performance begins."
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Okay, so Lira is slowly learning her place in the Spirit World. What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts on what Atlas has to say!
Also, the story's got a brand new cover created by the wonderful fallzee !!
Do you like it? Let me know!
Thanks as always for reading, it means a lot :)