The Wild in her Eyes

by Karina Giörtz

  The Wild in her Eyes

  Karina Giörtz

  Published by Never Did Point North Publishing, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 - by Karina Giörtz

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the consent of the author, except where permitted by law.

  THE WILD IN HER EYES is a work of fiction. All characters and subject matter are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, alive or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Editing by Jaclyn DeVore @ Devore Editorial

  www.devoreeditorial.com

  Cover by Regina Wamba ~ Creator of Awesome Things

  www.ReginaWamba.com

  www.MaeIDesign.com

  Final Proofing by Barb Piper

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  The Wild in her Eyes

  Chapter One | WRONGS TO BE RIGHTED

  Chapter Two | COME ONE COME ALL

  Chapter Three | THE RIDER

  Chapter Four | FLOYD

  Chapter Five | THE DANCE

  Chapter Six | MABEL AND MAUDE

  Chapter Seven | SEQUOYAH

  Chapter Eight | HOMER’S SUPERPOWER

  Chapter Nine | A NEW BABY

  Chapter Ten | THE MAKINGS OF A FAIRY TALE

  Chapter Eleven | WANTED

  Chapter Twelve | BESS

  Chapter Thirteen | THE STORY

  Chapter Fourteen | A FIRST TASTE OF SPOTLIGHT

  Chapter Fifteen | A JOB TO DO

  Chapter Sixteen | EMMELINE

  Chapter Seventeen | THE LAMB

  Chapter Eighteen | THE ALCHEMIST

  Chapter Nineteen | THE BEGINNING OF THE END

  Chapter Twenty | THE STORM

  Acknowledgements

  Further Reading: Bittersweet

  About the Author

  For the misfits ~ the world needs more of us.

  My hope...

  “A moment of consciousness among unconscious thought. And the courage to change it.”

  ~ K

  Chapter One

  WRONGS TO BE RIGHTED

  The damp earth gave way under her feet and her palms landed in the brush and dirt to catch her. Rather than stop to find her footing, she dug in her fingers and clawed herself forward until her feet found the ground again beneath her. She stumbled breathless through the dark and willed her eyes to adjust to the black of night but feared what they might find there.

  Nothing ahead could be worse than what I left behind, she thought. She held tight to this naïve thought. All her seventeen years may have been sheltered and filled with lavish luxuries like those only her father’s kind of wealth could provide, but she’d seen the chasm between the world her parents had created and the one beyond their fancy colonial home, built on a hill overlooking the heart of her hometown, or the extravagant parties and her exceptional schooling. She’d always been grateful to live life on her side of the divide, free of financial strain and societal struggles, far removed from the filth and unsavory sort that roamed the streets at night, begging for a handout they’d only have squandered away again come morning. Always, until tonight. There would be no going back. Her survival depended on traveling deeper into this dark night, uprooting herself from all that she knew was the only way to stay alive. Beyond that, nothing was certain anymore.

  As the heels of her boots stuck in the mud and her dress dragged along the ground, catching on brambles and ripping to shreds, whispers of nightmares still ahead hissed in her ears. She clutched at the branches that scraped her skin and she pulled herself onward. She was sure that by now he most certainly knew she was gone. There was no telling how quickly he would discover how she’d successfully escaped.

  She pulled the worn wool coat tighter around her to insulate against the cold chill sweeping through the forest. A thick woven belt replaced most of the coat’s buttons, lost from years of use. She wrapped the sides of the long, rough material so it overlapped across her stomach and then retied the belt tighter without slowing down. She kept moving forward, but her thoughts drifted back to the woman who’d wrapped her in this coat. She and the woman, her housekeeper, had exchanged every article of clothing they both wore that night. She’d shed her gown of rose-colored satin and hand-stitched details, along with her polished white boots, and put on an olive day dress and shoes with hole-riddled soles and frayed black laces, one thicker than the other. She might have been stripped of her past tonight, but it was the other woman who’d paid the greatest price. She had sacrificed her future.

  The wind burned her skin raw as tears smeared her cheeks. She hardly noticed the painful friction her hands caused as she swiped at her face. Somewhere in the distance she heard the howl of dogs. Her breath caught in her throat at the sound of the hounds, as bloodthirsty as their owner. She knew they were tracking her. She had prepared for this moment. Her shaky hands moved for the pocket sewn into the side of the dress as she silently begged her thundering heart to quiet, certain the dogs could hear the panic pounding in her chest. Her fingers searched the linen pouch until they closed over the cold, slick, raw beef and flung it far out to the right of her. She didn’t wait to hear it land. A cold sweat rushed down the crease of her back as her eyes stayed locked on the night sky and her legs kept running over the uneven terrain. Follow the North Star, she remembered. It would lead her to the water.

  The creek was small and shallow enough to wade across, but the current was strong enough to cut the scent of her trail. It was a better way to outsmart the hounds than the meat she’d used to distract them. It would buy her time, but not much of it.

  Her own panting rushed in her ears as she struggled for breath. Her lungs cinched from the icy air. Adrenaline pumped through her in almost unbearable surges of energy, making it difficult to control her body’s movements. The sounds of water lapping over the rocks along the shore went unheard until she held her breath to listen for the dogs again. Relief tingled through her in waves as she parted the brush with her arms and turned her slender body sideways to pass through. She was almost there now. Almost free. Just a few more feet and she’d be in the creek, washing away her trail and making herself invisible to the night and the monsters hiding within it—those on this side of the water, at least.

  The sandy bank of the small river was softer than she’d expected and so she stumbled. Her hands landed under her and shards of small rocks dug deep into her palms, slicing her soft skin. She swallowed the pain and let it land in the pit of her stomach with all the rest of her accumulated hurt. The whole of it twisted in her gut like knives through her abdomen. Teeth gritted, she locked her jaw and forced down all that threatened to overtake her, until the numbness spread and she could feel nothing—nothing except the cold of the water rushing alongside her calves, then moving up around her thighs, until she passed the deepest point of the creek and waded through the dark, waist-high water. It silently coaxed her body to sync with the current and disappear forever in the flow of the creek. She was tempted to surrender and be free of this night and all the terrors that would live inside her mind forever after. Her eyes closed. She let her ankle give way to the current’s force. Until she heard it. Her housekeeper’s voice rang in her ears, an echo of words lingering inside her. “You make this right. Whatever wrong comes of this night, you go out there, and you live, and you make it right.”

  The sole of her boot kicked hard into the rocky ground beneath her, sending a dull ache through her heel. It felt good. It felt alive. In that pain she knew there would be no giving in to the current tonig
ht. Not ever. Not when the cost of her freedom had been paid by another. She owed it to her housekeeper, to her father, and to herself to stay alive, to keep moving, to make things right, no matter how long it took.

  The water began to sway around her, gliding past the curve of her body as if it understood somehow that it would not claim her. Her passage grew easier with every inch that moved her closer to the opposite shore. The cold slipped down her hips and past her knees until it pooled only around her ankles. She felt the squish of water inside her boots as they found dry land. She’d imagined herself collapsing from exhaustion as a false sense of security settled over her after crossing the creek, but she felt neither tired nor weak as she placed one foot in front of the other on the bank, with her shoulders straight, chest out, and head high. There would be no trace left for the dogs to find. There would be no trace left of her at all.

  By morning, she’d traveled miles from home. How many, she couldn’t say for sure, but she’d kept moving until the orange glow of dawn began to creep up along the horizon. Only when she knew for certain day was upon her did she finally allow her body to rest. Curled up along the curve of a fallen tree trunk, she slept nestled in the leaves and soft moss, hidden away behind the brush and overgrowth that had long ago welcomed their fallen friend back home to the earth from which they’d all grown.

  When she awoke, the sun sat high in the sky and the growl of her own stomach reminded her how many hours had passed since her last meal. Even as her hollow insides whined in discomfort, her appetite remained absent. Still, she knew she’d need her strength. And so, her body sore and weak, she began to search for viable sustenance. It took some time and foraging, but the forest supplied well, offering up a fair share of wild blackberries and a handful of mushrooms she recognized from hikes with her father. Those adventures with him seemed an eternity ago now. On the rare occasion he’d been in town to do so, they’d spend the day exploring the woods behind their home, wandering together, basking in the midday sun, and enjoying whatever treats they’d stumbled upon on their walk. Her father had always been good at finding treasured morsels among the weeds and forest debris. His years of travel had taught him much, and so he’d seen to it that she too learned to tell the poison from the berry, the edible from the deadly. It had been all in good fun once upon a time. Now she could hardly bear the pain of dwelling on the memories beyond the details she needed to remember to survive.

  Before long, her stomach quieted and she returned to her journey, following paths walked only by hooves and padded paws before her.

  She navigated by the sun during the day and let the stars guide her at night, slept and ate only when her body demanded it, and kept far from the bounds of civilization. As the days passed, her blistered feet became bruised and bloody. She left rusty red marks in the dirt with her every step, the evidence of her pain oozing through the holes in her battered shoes. All but one of her fingernails had ripped off at the nailbed—nine casualties of clawing her way through the wild terrain and fending for food and building fires on the coldest nights. Keeping to the woods had sheltered her from rain and sun, but it had done little to preserve her overall appearance. Her dress was filthy and torn. The exposed parts of her body had suffered cuts and scrapes after repeated lashings from wayward tree limbs and debris, which was carried on a whipping wind that left her cheeks and lips burned and raw.

  She tripped on a long, knobby root of an ancient oak and let out a hoarse yelp from falling face first and realized the absence of her voice. Startled, she touched her throat. The rough calluses from her own hand against her tender skin caught her off guard a second time. She didn’t recognize her own body anymore. Slowly, she climbed back to her feet and steadied herself against the tree whose roots had thwarted her.

  There, standing tall and staring blankly at the horizon, her new body and reborn spirit glimpsed their new fate. The silence of the woods, which had been like an invisible veil keeping her secluded during her journey, lifted. Beyond the trees lay a vast, green valley. And it was filled with life, human life. She relished the buzzing of voices and bodies hard at work. She looked closer. The people she saw below were members of a traveling circus.

  She’d heard stories, of course, about the freaks who ran with the circus. Scoundrels always on the hunt for their next schemes. Shameless women willing to do depraved things too lurid to even contemplate. Tales of two-headed men and bearded ladies, creatures so deformed and unnatural that the devil himself had a hand in creating them. These stories had been meant to scare her away, to encourage her to keep her distance from the likes of those who sought out the open road, the shows, the tents, and the paths that led from sordid pasts to torrid futures. The tales had always worked, but none quite as well as that of the one-eyed man her mother had called the Human Snake, who hypnotized his audience into submission, leaving them in his control forever after, none of them ever the wiser of the terrible acts he had them perform while in their trance.

  Fear of the unknown had held her curiosities at bay. But now the unknown was all she had, and it would take more than scary stories to frighten her away after all she’d experienced. Besides, she couldn’t help but notice that the circus people were laughing and working together. Some were even singing! She failed to sense any wickedness, especially after she’d learned that real beasts could hide in her own home. It was unlikely, she decided, that truly evil people would display their traits for the world to marvel at—and charge an entry fee to do so.

  Her feet moved ever faster as she gained momentum down the hill, her only focus on reaching the circus camp. Beyond that, she had few plans and nothing to offer. No one seemed to take notice, at first, of the stranger in their midst. Then, one by one, eyes strayed from their tasks and toward her. Motions grew slower, conversations stopped, and the quiet slowly set in. Her footsteps, thudding over grass and gravel, grew louder with each step. She squared her shoulders and lifted the crown of her head skyward as she felt the heat of a hundred stares following her every move. Still, she remained focused, staring straight ahead at her goal: the carriage, nearest the engine, flagged with the brightest red banner and marked in bold yellow lettering. Brooks and Bennet Circus—Come One, Come All.

  She was inches from reaching for the handle when the door swung open, seemingly of its own accord, and a rail-thin man nearly seven feet tall strolled out. “What the blazes has got you all tongue-tied all of a sudden? I can hear your peace and quiet all the way in here!” He laughed to himself, then stopped when he spotted her. “Oh. I see.” For the first time in her life she had to wonder what, exactly, he was looking at as he stood before her, his head tilting sideways toward his slumped left shoulder to get a better angle.

  Any other time, she’d have known exactly what he was looking at. Golden hair pinned up in the front, with long, tight curls flowing down her back. Naturally rosy cheeks highlighting a flawless complexion and bright green eyes sparkling under the sunlight. Her whole life she’d never left her room unless she was impeccably dressed. This was most certainly not the case today as she stood there in her housekeeper’s rags. Nevertheless, she held her head high and waited patiently while the man assessed her. His tan skin bore scars all around his arms, visible where the sleeves of his shirt had been rolled up. His clothes fit awkwardly due to his height, and the only item that looked entirely in place was the blue linen cap he wore. It hid what was left of his graying hair. Laugh lines were well worn into his leathery skin. The silver shadow of hair reaching around his mouth and down his neck, proof he hadn’t shaved in at least a day or two, wasn’t able to hide how his thin mouth twitched at the corners, always threatening to break into a smile.

  Then, a sadness darkened his narrow blue eyes as he reached one lanky arm up to stroke his stubbled jaw. “You have a name then, love?” he asked with a tenderness that surprised her.

  She cleared her throat, remembering the absence of her voice. It took several attempts, but she found the words she needed. Her answer rattled on
a long, desperate breath she feared would suffocate her if she didn’t release it.

  “Annis, sir. Annis Josephine Watson.”

  She breathed in. Her chest felt light. Her heart beat steadily. And just like that, five simple words had brought her back to life.

  Chapter Two

  COME ONE COME ALL

  “I need a job, sir,” Annis said, her voice getting stronger with every syllable.

  “I imagine you do,” he said, nodding at her pitiful appearance. “Imagine you could also do with a bit of water.” He pulled the canteen he wore strapped over his left shoulder up over his head and handed it to her. “Go on then, have it,” he insisted when she didn’t take it. “Only just refilled it, so there’s plenty.”

  Annis was torn. She’d gone without a drink for so long, she hardly remembered what thirst felt like. Though she knew her body was desperate for fluids, her less rational thoughts forbade her from accepting such a gift so easily. Kindness aside, he was a stranger and her trust in people was sparse these days. Everyone had an agenda. No one gave anything for nothing. Not even water. Not when she so clearly needed it. It would be too easy to use against her later.

  “I’m alright, thank you,” she said, pushing the canteen away. Maybe the days alone with her overwrought mind and terrorized thoughts had made her paranoid, but she couldn’t chance it. Anything she received from here on out, she would earn. There would be no risk of blackmail or unpaid debts left for someone to collect on. “I’m not looking for handouts. I want work.”

  The man shook his head, his eyes narrowed as though he were attempting to sort out his own thoughts about her but was coming up short. “What you need is water. You take it, you see to yourself, and then we’ll talk about your wants, understood?”