CHAPTER FIVE
Beam has a tendency to leave out the most important details.
Example: the time a new ghost crossed into the fair on the night of the eclipse, the one evening a year when the ghosts are as close to alive as they will ever be.
She told us that she saw him enter through the woods, meandering towards the celebrations.
She left out that he was carrying an axe and looked quite vengeful.
I don’t know why I thought today would be any different.
The fair’s energy churns like a tidal bore, its rumble foretelling something sinister ahead.
As Everest and I race towards the carousel, parting the hordes of ghosts pointing not at the black crevices in the rotten loom, but down below, I register that it’s not something that’s fallen out of the carousel.
It’s someone.
A woman, to be precise. Long, Black arms stretch across the dew-kissed grass.
She’s in a yellow lace-trim dress that has miraculously remained in a respectable position, held in place by her knees.
The style of her clothing makes it seem like she could’ve come from my time, but it’s hard to tell with the way fashion trends cycle in and out.
Beaded braids fan either side of her head, which is face-down (this reminds me so much of my many a split lip from time travel), and very still.
“Is she dead?” I whisper, recognizing just how thoroughly any medical training has abandoned me.
I’ve met a few humans at the fair, but they’ve been mostly healthy (at least physically) questers trying to make a wish like I did, not potential patients.
I should be rushing to this woman’s side, checking her pulse and breathing, but I can’t bring myself to move.
Questions scurry through my brain like mice under experimentation: Who is she?
How did she get here? Why is she here? What does this mean?
“She’s definitely breathing,” Geneva says to my right.
Everest walks over to the woman and studies her back, as if it’ll help him divine answers. “Who saw her appear?”
“I did,” Keshav says, then clears his throat when Geneva snaps towards him. “I mean, we did. We were out on a stroll and we saw the carousel…shudder.”
Every ghost present shivers.
“We rushed over here, of course, and she was just there,” he finishes.
“Should we get her a blanket?” Ender asks quietly. “It’s cold, and she’s been lying on wet grass.”
That jolts me out of my stupor. “We have no manners,” I say, joining Everest by the woman.
At this point, I’ve run through all scenariow in which this could go wrong.
Almost everyone here is already dead, and Everest is as powerful as the universe itself.
“Someone get her a blanket and warm clothes, we might need to clear a tent for her as well.”
There’s an instant uproar.
“She’s going to stay here?” Iris asks. Today, she’s in a long dress with a thigh-high slit. “But she’s alive!”
“We have human questers come here all the time. You’re more than happy to accommodate them.”
“Yes, but they work to get here,” someone else says. “And we have to be nice to them in case they’re our new keeper.”
“Oh, is that why you were all so kind to me?” I ask drily.
I had a less-than-warm reception to the fair, largely because I’d swung a broken tree branch right through the first ghost I saw.
You’d think more questers would act on self-defense instincts, but no, I was referred to as the wannabe Horace Goldin for a long time, the nickname passed on even as some of the ghosts moved on to other resting places.
Geneva gives me a pointed look. “Maybe we’d remember how to treat humans if one had shown up in the last century.”
She loves reminding me that the carousel, frustrated with my continued dismissal of questers, has stopped sending them along all together. As if it were a god displeased with the lack of sacrifice.
I wave her off. “That’s a conversation for the higher-ups.”
“Me?” Everest says with a laugh. “I’m happy with the arrangements as they stand.”
“Of course you are,” Geneva grumbles, looking between us. “The two of you continue to enable each other–”
“And we’re going off topic.” I don’t particularly love interrupting Geneva, but she often forgets that she isn’t in charge anymore. “If we don’t let this lovely woman stay here, what would you all suggest we do with her instead?”
“Throw her out of the bounds,” someone calls.
“And leave her to die?” another ghost says, and suddenly, they’re all yelling over one another.
“She won’t die–”
“It’s below freezing at night, and she’s dressed in a pillowcase!”
“Okay, it’s not that hard to give her a damn sweater.”
“What about shoes, Boyshev? Do you want to give her your boots?”
“My boots won’t fit; she’s got small little feet–”
“We’re not going to throw her out of the fair,” I say firmly.
This dimension is made up of the fair, and some of the surrounding exterior, but it’s largely wilderness, unless you count the mountains.
And no one ever goes up those – if the journey doesn’t kill you, Mother Time’s magical garden up there might.
Iris says, “We could throw her into the carousel.”
“We’re not throwing her into a rotten carousel,” I say sharply.
My muscle memory kicks in and I place trembling fingers on her pulse, acutely aware of the fact that this is the first person I’m touching in forever.
Everest does not count. There’s a slow but steady heartbeat that loosens my stiff shoulders.
I need to check her eyes for signs of a concussion, but I don’t want to conduct a full examination out here with an audience.
“Obviously, I will work on returning her to wherever she’s from, but I’m not going to do that on our first trip back in.
With the nature of the recent rot, we need to be well prepared. ”
“Do you think this is related?” Beam whispers.
Necks crane towards us. Beam’s question is certainly present on everyone’s mind. I answer loudly, “The rot and the woman are probably related, but we need to come up with a plan. Until then, she stays. Any issues?”
I look straight at Everest, probably reeking of despair. He doesn’t typically get involved with more prickly fair matters, but I need all the backing I can get on this one.
“I vote she stays,” he says.
“Me too,” Beam chimes in. “And Ender, as well.”
Geneva points a long finger at me and makes a beckoning motion. Sighing, I follow her a safe distance from the crowd.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” she barks once we’re out of hearing range, even though I’m certain one or more of the ghosts is edging closer in the hopes of eavesdropping for the team. It’s nothing they haven’t heard before.
I fold my arms. “Not particularly.”
“That attitude will be the end of you,” Geneva scolds. “If only you’d have listened to me all those years ago, we wouldn’t be in this position.”
“You think she’s here because I take Ender and Beam with me on trips?” I argue. “Or because of my mending techniques?”
“It could be!” Geneva yells. “You’ve never stopped to think about all these changes you’ve made and the impact they could have. The fair is angry with you; can’t you tell?”
Geneva had tried mentoring me to be a “good keeper”, but young Ryka was defiant and angry and refused to do things the “old way”.
Geneva took this very personally, and she’s never let it go, even though I’ve made it abundantly clear that I do respect her knowledge and experience.
I just happen to disagree with her on a thing or two.
“Look, I’m doing the best that I can, based on what I know,” I plead. “And I’m going to need your support so everyone doesn’t lose it. You can talk a big game all you want, but you wouldn’t throw an innocent person out. You know you wouldn’t.”
Geneva mutters something under her breath in Mandarin, and I actively try to not translate. But despite how much she disagrees with my decisions, I’ve watched her care for new questers and humans. Her heart is softer than she’d like people to believe.
She orders me back to the crowd with a strong jerk of her chin and I quietly obey, picking my battles.
“I fear I cannot let this girl turn into an icicle either,” Geneva declares to the group.
I breathe a silent sigh of relief. There’s a definite thread of discontent in some of the murmurs, but most ghosts have bought in. It’s hard to go up against Everest, Geneva, and me.
Ender brings back a blanket from my tent.
“What did I miss?” he asks, panting.
Everest takes the cover-up and spreads it over the woman’s back before answering. “Nothing, just doc wrangling in the troops.”
Ender looks deflated. “Did I miss a vote?”
“I voted for you,” Beam says.
“How would you know what my vote would be?” Ender asks, adjusting his glasses.
“You would never vote against Everest,” Beam reminds him.
Everest leans in towards me. “Should we move her?”
“Yeah, we can put her in the spare tent behind mine for now,” I say, feeling a sharp pang of sympathy for this stranger.
How terrifying it will be for her to wake up here, stolen from her time and place.
I don’t know where she’s from, but unlike the questers, she hasn’t come here by choice.
There’s a kinship with her that I wasn’t expecting to feel, and I resolve to make sure she goes home where she belongs.
As I turn her over to her side, her face is revealed inch by inch: a strong nose, a delicate jawline.
Her lips are lightly glossed, and a soft gold powder illuminates her cheekbones.
“She looks around my age,” I say. “My human age, I mean.”
“She looks like she was headed to Sunday brunch,” Everest comments.
I scoff. “Who taught you about brunch?”
With his nose upturned, and that smartass smile, he’s the picture of arrogance. “I like to stay up to date with food-centric events across the dimensions.”
He’s never shown the slightest bit of interest in mortal-realm terminology, but maybe this is a fleeting hyperfixation given his obsession with the troll culinary scene. “Everest, do you want to carry–”