The Carousel of Forgotten Places

CHAPTER ONE

The ghosts are fighting again.

This wouldn’t be nearly as much of an issue if we weren’t cramped in a storage closet filled to the brim with dusty brooms and rags that smell of something dubiously sweet.

But as it stands, my arms are squished against the door, and there’s a flickering grey leg sticking into my head, which feels a lot like being dipped into a bucket of ice.

It’s making it remarkably difficult to stare out of the pea-sized keyhole that looks onto a limestone hallway, where two handmaidens draped in cream togas have been congregating for what feels like an eternity.

Trust me, I’m the expert on eternity.

“Beam, a little personal space, please,” I say, resisting the urge to shudder.

The owner of said leg pulls away and floats down to my face. The ethereal glow around her tiny body makes her look more like a floating angel than a petulant five-year-old.

“Sorry, Ryka,” she grumbles. “But Ender won’t let me look outside.”

At the sound of his name, Ender ripples through the ground, carrying a shimmering silver string. “You’re invisible,” he remarks, blowing a curl out of his round glasses. “You can leave this closet whenever you’d like, and no one would see you.”

Beam’s lower lip wobbles dangerously. “You know I can’t leave the line, and there isn’t enough for both of us to go outside. You’re just too busy looking at your stupid little buildings.”

If ghosts could flush, they would look like Ender, his cheeks tinted a darker grey. “They’re not stupid little buildings. Do you know how impressive this city is, given how frequently it’s been destroyed?”

“They all look the same!” Beam argues. “They’re all brown and ugly.”

Ender scoffs. “You wouldn’t understand. Besides, there is enough string for both of us. You’re just scared after our last trip, you big baby.”

“Am not!”

“Stop it!” I hiss. The handmaidens, oblivious to the tantrum unfolding just steps from them, exchange an embrace and part ways.

Beam and Ender shut up (a significant victory, considering the circumstances) and I hold a breath deep in my chest as one of the attendants walks by our cloying prison.

The silver-blue string that’s wrapped around my hand tightens in warning. We’re running out of time.

“I know,” I mutter to the tugging force, giving it one more second to make sure we’re truly alone before opening the door.

We spill out into the dimly lit corridor. Well, I spill, while the other two glide with undeserved grace.

“I can keep watch,” Ender says anxiously.

Hanging between Ender’s hand and mine is one short string, tied at its center to a longer line that runs shimmering all the way down the hallway through the finally abandoned room that we’ve been trying to enter for the past thirty minutes.

As we’re studying the length of our timeline, it notably contracts. Message received.

“Beam!” I call, lurching into a light jog towards the chamber. Please be empty, or this will turn into a mess I do not want to have to clean up.

“Right behind you,” Beam says, and there’s a chill on my right calf as she clings to my side. The door swings open, and a gloriously vacant room welcomes us – except it looks like a storm ravaged the insides.

“It’s all tangled up,” Beam exclaims, running her finger along the string at the doorway.

Sure enough, we can see the timeline tangled all over the room: looping over the giant canopy bed piled with clothes, knotted atop the disheveled vanity, with ropes of pearl and trays of facial powder hanging precariously off the edge.

One coil dangles over the ornate gold bracelets lying by my feet, right next to a giant copper shield.

I track the string until it falls out the open window next to the armoire, which looks out onto the sloping terrace of bricked buildings sitting within a walled city.

“This is worse than Everest’s room,” Beam says, wrinkling her nose as I walk over to the bed and dig through the clothes. “And at least his is an organized mess and he doesn’t let all his telescopes get dusty.”

I scowl, holding up a white chemise and gingerly placing it to the side. A golden button falls out, glinting as it spins briefly before coming to a stop. “Rule number four?”

Beam gapes. “You haven’t followed rule number four in forever!”

“Right, we’re going to reinstate it,” I declare. “No talk of Everest on our trips.”

“But you talk about Everest all the time!” Beam protests. “Stop acting like you’re not friends.”

“We’re temporarily not friends,” I affirm, assessing the color of the pool of string buried beneath the stack of clothes all while reining in my annoyance.

“He gave us too little time, again! How often has this happened now? It’s the same old story: I ask him for more and he sends us into another dimension with the equivalent of stale bread for a long quest. But focus on the task at hand.

The string is still blue here, let’s check the vanity. ”

Beam flits towards the unkempt desk, examining the string there with a knot between her brows.

I rush over to join her, searching for where the color turns black: a sign of time rot, of a moment where something has been accidentally swallowed by the timeline.

Usually an object, sometimes an unsuspecting person.

I really hope it isn’t the latter.

“We’ve got company,” Ender says, appearing over my shoulder.

I jump, accidentally touching my string-wrapped hand to my chest. The timeline leaves an icy kiss behind. “How long?”

Ender worries his lip. “I saw someone walking this way, a couple corridors down. I’d say we have a few minutes.”

“Astyanassa!” someone calls from outside. Ender flinches so hard he flies right into me, sending a shockwave of cold through my body.

“A few minutes?” I ask Ender, desperately tracking the string. How is there so much of it? This is untangling jewelry on a galactic scale.

Another voice – now much closer – replies something indecipherable in Ancient Greek.

She’s right outside our door. Shit.

“I’m on it,” Ender says.

You don’t have enough time, I want to scream.

We all need to remain in contact with the line while we’re here, and the little extra that we were able to bring only stretches as far as the door, having rapidly shortened in the last few minutes alone.

I watch, horrified as Ender drops his end and disappears from the room.

He has minutes, if that, before this dimension claims him for itself.

“I should have known this would happen,” I mutter, sweat prickling across my back. “Can’t ever count on Everest to do his job properly!”

“Rule number four,” Beam warns, floating towards the window.

I gesture at her to join me – no one can hear her, though they’ll hear me – but, naturally, she’s chosen the worst moment to be distracted.

I’m fighting the call of unofficial rule number five (never use the string to lasso in stubborn ghosts) and turning inwards to my frankly egregious amount of experience with situations such as this.

I kneel to check under the bed, pull out drawers, and open armoire doors.

Nothing. Rots work like infections; the goal is to create distance and prevent spread. Which means…

I twirl, searching for stray ends that wander to places we haven’t looked.

A dark brown pot painted with faded human figurines sits on the ground, feet from the bed. A sickly, thin strand of blue tucks around its back and snakes into the narrow mouth.

“Ryka, they’re almost here,” Beam urges.

“I know.” Despite my fluttering nerves, I reach for the end of the string that pours into the aryballos and pull.

“The rot!” Beam cries, her pigtails flopping in the air as a dark, hairball-looking thing emerges from the flask.

Outside, the woman screams. “Ataphoi!”

Ghost.

Our time is up.

Ender darts back in, heaving as though he actually has breaths to haul into his chest. “I manifested in front of her,” he admits. “I may have scared her half to death.”

His body is so translucent he’d disappear in sunlight.

Ghosts can appear corporeal but at vast cost to their energy.

Ender wobbles in the air, but Beam’s there to lift him up.

I loop a piece of healthy string around my finger and press it on the dark cluster of rot.

Energy buzzes up my arm. The knot loosens and shimmies before the air unfolds like a piece of paper and a clump of fabric falls to the ground.

“What is that?” Beam asks, examining the cloth. It’s cream colored, with intricate embroidery around a waistband.

“I think it’s a girdle,” I reply, too distracted by the wound of time that flares open, hanging in thin air, that the stolen object had emerged from.

Instead of appearing bloody, it’s a dark, mottled black, similar to the rot that spreads through the infected timeline and into the carousel back home.

In some ways, what I do now isn’t very different from surgery.

After the foreign object (the girdle) is extracted from the timeline, all that’s left is to suture the wound.

Biting down on my tongue, I feel for the staticky edges of the gash and pinch it together, weaving the healthy string around my hand through the edges.

Once complete, the color of the string lightens, turning more silver, then blue.

My shoulders loosen just an inch. We did it.

“What is a girdle?” Beam asks, sticking her nose into the fabric while still holding onto Ender.

“It’s like underwear,” Ender answers and she recoils, leaving him to drop into the ground until he’s only visible from the waist up. “Ow! How do you not know anything?”

Beam’s face twists. “I know things. You’re the one who–”