Chapter 34 Ignacio
Ignacio
She didn’t write the letter.
She didn’t want to leave me behind.
He rubbed his eyes as he lay on the cot, listening to the other carnival hands softly snore as the train wheels bumped over the tracks toward their next destination.
They had been chugging along for hours now but all he could do was think of her.
That was nothing new, of course, but this time, for the first time in far too long, he felt a cautious sort of hope.
He had tried to find her before the train took off, but he’d missed her. He figured some sleep might do them both good, and yet, here he was, wide awake with a phantom Esmeralda plucking at his thoughts.
He turned onto his side. He should try to get some rest. But then he imagined what it would be like if she were lying beside him. If her hair were fanned out onto the pillow and she smiled at him sleepily before leaning in for a kiss.
Grumbling, he sat up. He needed to clear his mind.
Ignacio stuffed his hand under his pillow and pulled out the inkwell they’d snagged from the ringmaster.
Tiptoeing on bare feet, he quietly crossed the shared boxcar. He fumbled in the dark until he found a chair, then sat at the small desk. He looked over his shoulder at the people sleeping in cots as he lit a kerosine lantern. No one woke.
After a bit of scrounging through the desk drawer, he found a fountain pen and dipped the nib into what was left inside the jar. He lifted the inky tip to the lantern and watched as with each twist of his wrist, various sparks of color appeared in the warm yellow light.
The paintings on the posters hanging around the carnival could morph into something entirely new.
Esmeralda said the sketches on her cards shifted to reveal a person’s deepest desires.
And then there was the note left for him within the hollow of the dove tree.
Written exactly in her hand, but clearly not.
He carefully penned four words onto a blank sheet of paper.
I am Ignacio Olivera.
Nothing strange happened.
Esmeralda had said the cards shifted when her customers touched them. He pressed the pad of his pointer finger onto the ink. That same buzzing sensation fizzled through his skin.
Shift this writing into something else, he thought.
Tiny sparks bubbled up from the ink like soda pop. He jerked back his hand and watched in awe as the letters fanned out and in, transforming into words that were an identical match to his own handwriting.
No. You are not.
His brows furrowed. He dipped the nib in the ink again and penned a response.
Who am I, then?
Tell me the truth, he commanded as he pressed his finger onto the ink.
The words reshaped once more.
You will learn soon enough.
Ridiculous. This ink was nothing more than another one of the ringmaster’s silly tricks.
He grabbed the parchment and started to tear it, but the ink shifted.
Dovie. I am a coward. I let innocent people die. I couldn’t even protect you from my own father. I’m a failure.
Ignacio dropped the parchment and jumped to his feet. His chest heaved as more of his deepest insecurities were laid on the page.
I am a bore. I am too uptight and too serious and could never make you laugh like Gabriel. Of course you’d never love me. Look at me. I’m a disappointment. I broke the promises I made to you. I let you go.
Disgust churned inside his stomach at seeing his twisted thoughts on display. He had half a mind to flip the desk. But he knew this was but a portion of who he truly was. He was more than these thoughts. More than the negative voices inside his mind.
He snatched up the paper and folded it shut. This wasn’t simply enchanted ink. This was a weapon. It toyed with the mind. And it was such a deep and convincing fake that anyone could be tricked. He had been.
This must be why his father and the ringmaster were in correspondence. Father coveted whatever terrible magic lay inside the ink. He could use it to pretend to be anyone he wished. He could pretend to be the king himself.
A whistle sounded. The train was nearing the next stop.
Ignacio cleaned off the desk. The second he had a chance he would send his findings to the Defiant.
He stuffed the inkwell under his bed and sat heavily.
His knees bounced as his anticipation grew.
His father and the ringmaster were working in tandem.
But then why would Father ask ángel to send Ignacio back unharmed?
What sort of power did the ringmaster hold over Father?
That was simple to answer. The ringmaster knew Father was using enchanted ink to prevail in the war.
But there was more to it. There had to be. He thought back to the Sánchezes’ accident, and the fire breather’s, and Anella’s. Every time the same glinting properties were there.
The glue that sealed Anella in the glass box was incredibly strong. The stitches woven through the Sánchezes’ cuffs and Esmeralda’s gloves burned hot. Surely, whatever happened with Paco came from this enchantment.
Had he seen anything like it during his training with the Blackbirds?
Esmeralda had spoken about canisters of gas used on the front lines that sucked the air out of a person’s lungs. Could they be made from the same enchantment?
The locomotive was beginning to slow. Even from within the thick walls of the boxcar, the cheers of excited admirers of the carnival could be heard.
That beastly creature in the mirror played in his mind. There was a connection. He just couldn’t figure out how or why.
Ignacio stood. Normally he would fix his sheets to ease the growing tension. But he left them as they were. They reminded him of her. And they reminded him that it was okay to not be so rigid all the time.
He put on his boots and marched toward the door. With a grunt, he pulled the heavy metal ajar.
“There he is!” someone yelled.
A dense crowd had formed in the valley that rested just beyond the city of Milagro. People held up signs and cheered as they waited for the train to stop.
“It’s Paloma’s noviecito! Paloma Amor!”
Of all the stage names to be given, Paloma Amor had to be the worst. Love Dove. That should have been a crime. Wincing, Ignacio raised his hand and waved, causing a group of young women to scream and swoon.
The second the train came to a complete stop, he jumped down and landed on golden grass with a crunch. He needed to find Esmeralda right away. But the crowd swarmed him like flies to honey.
“Are you and Paloma truly in love?” a woman holding a teacup-sized dog asked.
“Will you perform again tonight?” queried a man with a single spectacle resting on one eye.
“Will you be taking your shirt off for our parade, or was that a one-time thing?”
Ignacio’s head snapped to the young man who had asked that last question. The young man winked.
“I’m sorry,” Ignacio said. “I really need to go.”
He tried to weasel himself free from the horde without being rude, but they wouldn’t let him escape.
His eyes flicked upward, searching for help.
He spotted Gabriel, and a tiny monkey of all things, sitting on top one of the boxcars sharing a caramel apple.
Gabriel laughed and shook his head before disappearing.
Thirty minutes later, Ignacio was exhausted from the impromptu meet-and-greet and had somehow lost two buttons on his shirt. He rubbed the back of his neck as he walked toward where Esmeralda’s wagon should have been in the train procession, but it had already been detached and moved.
It truly was a wonder how quickly the carnival formed.
He started toward the center of the carnival, but just as he rounded the parade floats, he heard voices he recognized. He stilled.
“Pilar is well enough to move. I plan to take her home,” Camila said.
“Are you sure you wish to leave so soon?” the ringmaster asked gently. “I told you that you could stay on until Pilar was in the clear.”
Ignacio edged closer. He peeked around Isadora the tigress’s float.
Camila nudged the dirt with her toe. “Yes. I…I’d like to thank you for all your generosity, but I think Pilar would fare better elsewhere. She should be with family. We aren’t so far from El Sueco. That’s where we’re from.”
After a long moment, ángel grasped her shoulder. “I’m sorry to see you two leave us. I hate that this is how we must part.”
“Not more than me,” she mumbled.
A flash of anger pooled in the ringmaster’s eyes, but he quickly tamed it. “I’d like to offer you and Pilar your severance pays. Your time here was cut short during a challenge I gave you. I hold myself responsible in every way.”
Relief flooded Camila’s features as if she’d been afraid of what he might do.
A worker called after the ringmaster, asking him about where he’d like the menagerie to be raised up. ángel held up a finger, a signal for the man to wait. He turned his attention back to Camila.
“I better go,” he said with a kind smile. “Please find the treasurer. He’s called Tezcán. I believe he’s in the Fun House. Tell him I said that you deserve the works.”
Tezcán? Ignacio had heard that name before. But where? When?
Camila gulped. “Th-thank you, senor.”
“It is the least I can do. I shall miss you both.” He hugged Camila and patted her hard on the back. She winced, still sore from the accident. “Safe travels,” he said.
Right before the ringmaster walked by, Ignacio dove beneath Isadora’s float.
A large man with a bald head and overalls fell in line beside ángel.
The ringmaster leaned close to the man and said something into his ear.
The man’s brows furrowed, and he nodded.
His gaze flicked toward the spot where Camila had just been.
He let out a sharp whistle. Two guards slipped from behind a nearby candy cart and slithered after her as she limped away.
They had the nicked ears of the Blackbirds.
Ignacio’s eyes snapped back to the larger man. He had the marking too.
Why were the Blackbirds here? Why were they working for the ringmaster when the army was so busy snagging people from prison cells and thrusting them into the front lines?
Camila moved through the gaping mouth that served as the entrance to the Fun House.
Not five seconds after Camila faded into the darkness of the tent, the ratas slunk inside. Cursing, Ignacio came out of his hiding spot and dashed after them.
The Fun House was a labyrinth of peculiar mirrors.
They were dark and oddly shaped. Some appeared to be invisible and had him walking forward until he ran straight into them.
With each step through the maze, his reflection changed from tall to short, thin to curved, blurred to distorted.
In some, he swore he saw a figure in his peripheral.
But as he walked deeper into the Fun House, his reflection started to change.
He halted. One of the reflections wasn’t a reflection at all. An image played from within the glass as if he were watching a picture show in a theatre. He recognized the scene. Because he had lived it. He had watched it with his own eyes. He saw golden wheat underfoot, saw the train speeding away.
This was his memory from when he first met the ringmaster.
He spun to the next mirror. He viewed a girl wearing a dove mask briskly walking through the carnival. She bumped into him and offered her apologies.
It was Esmeralda the night he’d found her.
Ignacio ran to the next mirror. Within the dark glass, he observed himself dressed in his Blackbird cadet uniform, vomiting behind a building as screams rang out.
He twisted to face another mirror and watched as he and Esmeralda argued about running away together.
In the next, he was younger, folding his very first paper dove.
“Hello?” Camila called out.
Ignacio jerked his attention toward the direction of her voice.
“Tezcán? The ringmaster sent me to find you. Hello?”
“In here, child.”
The hair on the back of Ignacio’s neck stood on end. Tezcán’s voice sounded like it had been scraped from the bottom of a cavernous pit.
“To your right, my dear.”
The red bulbs overhead shuddered as he spoke, and the tenor reverberated in Ignacio’s bones.
Every instinct in his body told him something was terribly wrong.
He bolted through the rows of mirrors, hunting for Camila. But it was hard to track her with so many twists and turns.
Finally, Ignacio spotted her within the reflections. But where were the ratas?
As Camila spun in a slow circle, eyes searching the maze for Tezcán, a face appeared in the towering mirror behind her.
Ignacio’s pulse pounded. The face was slender and human, but not.
His skin looked like clay. The eyebrows were too high on his too long face.
And his grin was spread too wide. Where eyes should have been sat glowing orbs.
“Turn around,” the man in the mirror said.
Camila whirled and gasped.
“What is this?” she asked, her voice raised to a horrified pitch. “Is this some sort of jest? Some trick the ringmaster plays on people who leave before their term is over?”
The man in the mirror gave a rumbling laugh. “There is no trick. I am the treasurer. I ensure each performer pays their fair dues.”
“Har. Har.” She turned away from the mirror. “You all can come out now! Enough with the razzing.”
“There is no one here to laugh with,” the thing called Tezcán said.
“This isn’t funny!” she yelled.
“I disagree.”
She faced the mirror. “Go to hell.”
“I’m already here. Care to join me?”
She stumbled back, ready to run, but the ratas jumped out from seemingly nowhere, clamping their hands around her arms.
Ignacio rushed forward but skidded to a stop when a billowing fog emanated from within the mirror itself.
Camila’s skin blanched of its color.
And then she screamed.