The pain in Lira's hand woke her. She fumbled in the dark for a candle, air hissing through her teeth as the action of striking a match caused the agony to intensify. In the flickering light, the burns on her hand looked even worse. She cradled them in her lap, wondering if she could go wake Atlas, when a scratching at the door made her look up. It was faint, almost lost in the sounds of the creaking funhouse and thick silence that descended in the early hours of the morning, but Lira heard it. At home she would've dismissed it as mice nestling in the walls, but in her four years here she had never once seen a mouse in the spirit world.
The scratching got louder and then became a tapping, like the first few hesitant drops of a rainstorm. Her door squeaked open. A small, dark shadow stood on the threshold and Lira raised her candle to cast the pool of light wider. Wide, gray eyes stared back at her. It was Lydia.
"What are you doing here?" whispered Lira. The little girl glanced over her shoulder and back at Lira. Her lower lip was caught between her crooked front teeth and the hem of her pale blue nightgown was twisted around one hand like a dish rag.
"You can come in if you want," said Lira. She set the candle down, wincing, and patted the bed beside her. Lydia closed the door and shuffled over, her bare feet rasping against the stone floor. Lira was struck again by how young she seemed. While she was only a year or two younger than Atlas, she carried all the uncertainty and naivete of a child that Atlas did not. When she sat down on the bed beside Lira, it barely sank under her slight weight. She held out a lumpy cloth. Lira took it on reflex and almost dropped it. She hadn't expected it to be cold; it was full of ice that clacked as she gripped it.
"I thought it might help your hands," Lydia whispered.
Lira smiled, feeling warmth spread through her despite the ice. "Thank you." She gently placed the cloth wrap on the back of her left hand and sighed as the cold soaked into the burn. "Thanks," she sighed again. The wyvern Bebinn had tried to get Lira to tame that morning had four claws on each foot, a vicious barbed tail, and mouth full of serrated teeth, but it was the gout of flame that spilled from its mouth that was truly terrifying. And though the crippling fear had forced her to subdue the creature-duress it seemed was still the only way she was able to control anything-it wasn't enough to avoid the last lick of flame that reached just far enough to caress her hand and leave behind a spray of angry blisters. Bebinn hadn't offered to heal them, saying it would sharpen her learning curve.
"Your music is beautiful," said Lydia, sitting beside her. "I've never heard you play before."
The corners of Lira's mouth lifted out of her grimace of pain. "It's funny isn't it, after all the time we've spent here you've never heard it."
Lydia nodded, mimicking Lira with a girlish grin of her own. The gap of her missing tooth stood out in the brightness of her smile. "Bebinn keeps us busy."
Lira sighed and shifted the ice to her thumb. A bead of water slid down her wrist and plinked on the floor. Everything always came back to Bebinn. But, as Atlas had pointed out, she now had her chance to talk to Lydia and find out where she stood in the carnival.
"And how is your-work-going?" Lira had no inkling of what the girl did or even where she came from. Frankly she knew nothing about her at all.
"Very well," said Lydia. "Bebinn says I'm improving all the time." Lira shivered and hoped Lydia would attribute it to the ice. She didn't like the sound of that.
"Can I ask you something?" Lira prompted gently. Lydia nodded and relaxed her grip on the nightgown, letting it spool at her feet. Her hands, now clasped in her lap, caught Lira's eye. They were stained. Big splotches of color dyed her bronze skin, almost as if she hand been finger painting and used the backs of her hands and arms instead of a towel. Were they spirit marks? Lira wondered. They didn't look like any of the others'. So, did it have something to do with her work?
"Do you know where Bebinn keeps the children? Do you see them after I bring them here?"
Lydia shook her head, dark hair swinging. "Bebinn doesn't allow me to see them because she doesn't want me to get sick."
"Sick?" asked Lira puzzled. She didn't understand what the girl meant by "sick." None of the kids she summoned looked ill, at least not externally. They didn't cough or sneeze or act lethargic. There were no rashes or bumps or feverish lights in their eyes. And Bebinn didn't seem to be worried about Lira getting sick. Besides, she had thought common human diseases couldn't be transferred in the spirit world. So what sickness could she be talking about?
"So I bring them here, Mitsi takes them to the dining hall, and then...what? Do they go to quarantine?" Lira was mostly talking to herself, trying to deduce an idea from this new bit of information, but Lydia piped up, "What's quarantine?"
"It's kind of like a room you keep very sick people in so they can't spread germs," explained Lira, distractedly. She was flicking through thoughts in her head like a stack of notecards. If Lira was allowed to interact with the kids and then after they were brought to Mitsi, Lydia wasn't allowed to see them, then it must be something to do with the food Mitsi was preparing for them. But what, and why? There had to be another step she was missing, but she made a mental note to bring the subject up with the carnival chef the next time she bothered him for a snack.
"I don't think they get put in quarantine," Lydia said, frowning. "They aren't sick with human world bugs, so I don't think they can spread them to one another."
"Bugs?" repeated Lira, emerging out of her thoughts and hoping the little girl hadn't noticed her lack of attention.
But Lydia just nodded eagerly and crossed her ankles. "Bebinn said the human world is full of invisible bugs that can make you sick all kinds of awful ways. Some make you burn up on the inside so your skin turns red and hot. And some make it so hard for you to breath it's like your lungs are filling up with water.
Lira's attention fully refocused, her mouth filling with a sharp, bitter tang as she listened to Lydia describe what sounded like pneumonia-what Bebinn's mother had died from-before turning to people she called "white masks."
"They appear all in white to make you think they're an angel who can save you from the bugs, but if they take you away you never come back and their white clothes turn red from all the blood they steal from you." Lydia shuddered at the thought and Lira felt a flare of anger that Bebinn had used the tragedies of her own human life to frighten this girl into thinking she was much safer a prisoner in a haunted carnival. But her idea of the human world seemed to be vastly warped. Young as she was, she wasn't young enough to truly think of the human world as she was describing it-like a child's dark fairy tale. It was obvious that Bebinn had grossly exaggerated the shortcomings of what it was like to live there, but Lydia seemed to believe it true.
"But didn't you ever catch a cold or the stomach flu?" asked Lira gently. "They make you feel bad for a few days, but they don't kill you. And most doctors are very good at making you feel better."
"Doctors?" asked Lydia.
"The people in the white coats."
Lydia shook her head. "I've never been sick," she said proudly. Far from relieving Lira, the girl's announcement made her instantly suspicious. What child had never once been sick? Unless...
"Lydia, when did you get here?" whispered Lira.
"Bebinn brought me here when I was very small. She adopted me."
"Adopted?" Lira nearly choked.
"Mhm. From an orphanage. I don't remember it very well except that it was loud and smelly. She said my parents died in a car crash when I was a baby." The girl didn't seem upset at this fact; on the contrary, she seemed quite happy that Bebinn had taken her in.
"So, you grew up here?" Lira said, faintly. "You don't remember the human world or your life there at all?"
Lydia shook her head again. "Bebinn says the human world is a scary place." The little girl shuddered as she recalled some other far-fetched tale the witch had probably told her as a bedtime story.
"Not any scarier than this place is," said Lira.
Lydia tilted her head. "You think the spirit world is scary?"
Lira put the melting ice wrap in the trash now that it was dripping in earnest. She flexed her hand, wincing as her seared skin pulled taut. "Maybe not the whole spirit world, but the carnival and the spirits in it frighten me."
Lydia looked to the window where the tops of the tents and the Ferris Wheel were just outlines against the violet sky. "Bebinn says that the human world is dangerous because people can hide behind pretty faces. That they can smile and you'd never know they want to hurt you." Lira bit her tongue, wondering how to respond, but the young girl kept going. "Here, everyone's insides are on their outsides, so you can tell if they are really ugly or really beautiful."
Lira thought about how broken and twisted some of the spirits were who frequented the carnival-of the one who had tried to steal her soul when she was newly taken. But so many of them were ambiguous, their features neither good or bad, at least not to Lira's eye. "What if they are somewhere in between?" she asked. "What if you can't decide whether they are ugly or beautiful?"
Lydia shrugged, not seeming concerned about the ethics of the question. Lira let it go, not wanting to get into a philosophical debate about the morality of the carnival's souls.
"So if the children aren't sick when they get here, what makes them sick? Why would Bebinn want sick children?" wondered Lira.
"We make them better," answered Lydia.
"We?" asked Lira.
"Me and Bebinn."
Lira's heart beat faster and her hand throbbed. "How do you make them better?" she asked, forcing her voice to remain light and calm.
Lydia chewed her lip and looked towards the door. Lira recognized her tells; she was clamming up as she always did when questions about her work went too in-depth. "It's okay,
said Lira, placing a hand on her tiny knee. "I won't tell. It'll be a secret." Lydia still looked unsure, her wide gray eyes widening with distress. "I pinky promise," added Lira. She held out the small finger of her uninjured hand.
A frown creased Lydia's face. "What does that mean?"
A small pang went through Lira's chest as she realized that when Bebinn adopted Lydia, she not only took the human world as a whole away, but also any chance she had at a childhood. She hadn't spent her years digging in sandboxes, or learning to ride a bike, or turning her head at the sound of an ice cream truck. She hadn't made up games about catching falling leaves in the autumn or imagining different worlds in the clouds. She didn't have the chance to make any pinky promises.
"It's a promise you can't ever break," said Lira. The little girl looked only slightly more reassured as she wrapped her little finger around Lira's. "We can start with a smaller secret," she whispered conspiratorially, trying to set her at ease.
Lira realized she wouldn't be able to get the whole story out of Lydia tonight, but maybe she could get the first piece. And even if she could only get the girl to tell her a little at a time, eventually she would have enough to figure out the bigger picture. After all, she had finally figured out the second part of Zabaria's riddle. Lydia was the hidden one of six, and she had the answers to the present.
Lira smiled at Lydia. "Why don't you tell me what you work with? I work with music, Mitsi works with food, and Owen works with wood."
Lydia looked up at Lira. "I work with souls.
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Hey, everyone! I am profusely sorry for the long wait. April was a crazy month. I rewrote this chapter three times and I'm still not in love with the way it turned out. But I thought I'd give you guys a chance to read it over and tell me what you think. Thank you for sticking with this story and me! I promise I've already started working on the next chapter :D