CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next week brings with it yet another failed trip. This time, we’re unseen, but the end of the rot takes us to an unsuspecting bicyclist riding up the slopes of Darjeeling.
“I could chase after them,” Beam says forlornly. We watch as the string of time trails behind the cyclist, drifting further and further away from us. “Have we ever had moving rots like this before?”
“Nope,” I confirm, but this isn’t the first thing that feels odd about the trip.
Besides Everest, the ghosts, and the cyclist, we’re all by ourselves out here.
The heat beats down on our necks, but within the warmth is something else.
A palpable presence. It reminds me of the fair’s consciousness when it’s at its peak during the eclipse, or upon the arrival of a new visitor.
“Are you okay?” Ender asks as I turn around for the fifth time, squinting down the beaten trail.
I wave him off. “Just a little jumpy.”
Everest meets my gaze and it’s so brief, this flash of knowing or recognition, that I wonder if he senses it too.
To add to the disorientation, the string wound around my hand feels unusually thin and light, and I check it repeatedly to make sure it’s still there.
The effects of the rot are growing; I feel it in my bones.
Uneasy, we bid goodbye to the terraced tea plantations and bright summer sun before whisking ourselves back to the fair, defeated.
Things only get worse from there. Iris urgently informs us that Boyshev, a former Ukrainian Knight who fell into a coma and slipped into the carousel, has disappeared.
After hours of searching for him in every tent, with special attention paid to the performance arena where he masquerades as the fair’s opera singer, we find him tangled up in the carousel itself.
Beam lets out a bloodcurdling shriek when she sees his head sticking out of the rot.
And before I know it, I’m on my knees, bartering with the increasingly erratic carousel to let us extricate his body.
All the ghosts begin avoiding the heart of the fair more than they already did.
Winter grows from a gentle nibble to a voracious beast in a matter of days.
No one, including Geneva, comments on its rapid onset.
“This tends to happen before the eclipse,” I tell Valentin, who is not a fan of the snowfall that coats the fair.
At least our home appears to be keeping up with the drop in temperature.
More candles go up, catching crystals in their warm glows, and there’s a sense of coziness that can’t be captured in any other season.
And the swift approach of the eclipse brings with it other auspicious events. I breathe a sigh of relief at the clear night sky that greets me as I poke my head out of my tent before gathering a warm blanket and heading out.
Everest finds me in his tent, pulling uselessly at his biggest, most precious telescope.
“You are so impatient,” he says, picking up the blanket that I’ve left on his bed and slinging it over his shoulder. He joins me opposite this beast, placing two sturdy hands on the other end of the telescope.
“Pull your weight,” I tell him as we lift it up together.
“I’m sorry, captain,” he says, using one leg to sweep away the tent entrance before expertly maneuvering his end outside. “It’s just so heavy, I can barely breathe.”
I roll my eyes. The truth is, Everest could probably lug this thing out himself. One time, though, he nearly rammed the optical tube into his desk; I’ve made it a point to direct his movements ever since.
“We should get a good view tonight,” I say.
The Milky Way is a patchwork of brilliant stars sewn into dark velvet, and I’m eager for a sense of normalcy amidst the problems with the carousel.
Tonight is a rare, long-standing tradition that should give me just that.
Valentin is reclusive, the ghosts are on edge, and it’s still too early to dive into the carousel.
All this sitting around and waiting isn’t good for any of us.
We work with the quick effectiveness of people who have made this routine. Everest has the most incredible collection of space-viewing tools I’ve seen, and they’ve become a hearth for my nostalgia.
My mother was a lover of Vedic astrology, and while I didn’t care for it during my human life, looking above now makes me feel closer to her.
I remember the awe-inspired tenor of her voice as she talked about the heavens, and how my father and I would exchange fond but skeptical looks, letting the information in one ear and out the other.
I would do anything to be sitting across from her, drinking tea and letting her regale me with celestial folklore, while my father, the mathematician, lovingly refutes her arguments.
Moreover, stargazing makes me feel small and insignificant when I’m overwhelmed, and all my problems diminish into a blip. My version of Beam’s fort.
I set up the telescope mount while Everest lays out a blanket on the ground, smoothing out curled corners. We make adjustments to the settings and debate the best angle. Then, we settle onto the blanket and wait.
“Do you remember the first time we saw Halley’s comet go by?
” I ask him, lying down. It was jarring, realizing that the astronomical events that occurred here were the same as the ones back home.
Everest explained to me that the fair’s skies change per its disposition, typically to suit its occupants’ needs.
That night it must have sensed my potent homesickness, and as my interest in its activities grew, we were granted more time with the Earth’s sky.
Many familiar constellations are visible at all times, and it fills me with a surge of affection for the fair.
It gave me a window to back home, and some of my happiest memories involve lying down on the ground and savoring the unrelenting consistency of the universe despite the disruptive changes it brings.
Everest lies down next to me, adjusting my fanned hair so he doesn’t pull at it. His fingers brush the top of my head. “Wasn’t that right after the axeman?”
I laugh. The axeman showed up to the fair shortly before the comet passed by.
He was confused and deranged, threatening to chop off the necks of all the ghosts at the fair if they didn’t give him back his axe.
How he was going to commit said crimes was unbeknownst to him and us, but the ghosts were not thrilled, so it fell upon me as keeper and ghost babysitter to get rid of him.
I roll over to my side, resting my head on a folded arm. He mimics me so we’re lying face to face. “That was the first time I felt like I really knew what I was doing here.”
He grins. “What, because you hatched the plot to lure him back to the carousel? That was a stroke of genius, by the way. Pretending to be his wife. What a lucky man.”
I poke him hard in the chest, hoping the night veils the blush that rises to my cheeks. “There’s a lot you can learn about people if you pay attention to what they’re saying.”
The axeman was mumbling something about a ‘Maria’, and how she’d left him in the middle of the night.
I’d felt a stab of pity for him, watching as his fury had turned into pain.
After that, it had been a matter of some sweet-talking, pretending to want him to come home to me, and bringing him close enough to the carousel so Everest could push him into a different resting place.
I hope the axeman is okay.
“I remember,” Everest says. “You’d been so upset until that day. It was the first time I heard you laugh.”
It’s difficult to maintain eye contact when he’s this close to me, his hair pressed into his cheeks, eyes sparkling with wit, mouth upturned. I draw my gaze down to the soft pool of his black sweater. “I was so depressed my first year here.”
It haunts me even now, the shadow of the person I’d been.
“I’d just felt like I was finally coming into myself at twenty-seven, you know?
Your twenties are so strange. I felt like I was constantly playing catch up to everyone around me; they were all getting married, having children, buying homes, and I was trying to feed myself one proper meal a day between pulling all-nighters at the hospital.
The year I came here – the year that Nova fell sick – was the hardest of my residency.
I could barely breathe, but for some reason, I felt closer to everything than I ever had before.
I could see the decades of hard work and planning paying off. ”
Everest says nothing, but every inch of him is listening.
“This feels like that,” I tell him, swallowing hard. “Like I finally had things under control, but it’s all spiraling so quickly.”
I like order, rely on it insistently. I was the student who woke up at five a.m. every single day to run then study.
I had color-coded binders and an hour-by-hour schedule.
I planned for unforeseen variables and then some, but the universe loves to play games with planners like me.
It felt like the stars were laughing the day I walked into the fair.
He touches my chin, prompting me to meet his gaze. “You’re not handling this alone, you know? You’ve got a fair full of people to help. And a god.”
I smirk. “Has anyone told you what a useless god you are? Aren’t you supposed to be able to snap your fingers and make this all go away?”
He laughs. “I would if I could.”
I drop my head into my elbow. “I’m over five hundred years old. This should be easier by now, but I feel like an imposter adult. Like…all that’s changed since I was eighteen is a dulled edge to my persistence, and a staggering blow to my confidence.”
Everest scoffs. “That’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. I think the ancient and the newly born have one thing in common: the urge to scream into the universe. And it gets harder as you get older, because you quickly realize how few people there are who will listen to you cry.”