Carousel Sun-eARC

by Sharon Lee

  I heard his steps, and then the clatter of the storm gates being opened.

  Tentatively, I got to my feet, slid carefully across the bench and exited the chariot from the money side, holding tightly onto the edge so that I didn’t over-balance on the climb to the floor.

  By the time I’d gotten myself onto solid land, Vassily had the walls locked back. I straightened, forcing my spine straight by millimeters. My mouth tasted too much of magic, and my nasal passages seemed to have captured the odor of ripe peaches, so that every breath brought me the scent.

  I’ve never really liked peaches.

  “Am I to bring Anna?” Vassily asked from beside me. “You do not look well.”

  “Just a little bug; gone in no time,” I assured him. “I’m going to go home and lie down. Be back at four.”

  “If you are ill, later,” Vassily said, sounding stern, “you will not come. I will work longer, or Nancy will come.”

  “You got it, boss man.”

  “This is a joke?”

  “Joke,” I affirmed, swallowing hard, and tasting only peaches. I reached out and patted him on the arm. “I’ll be fine.”

  I could walk a reasonably straight line, if I concentrated and took it slow, which I did, leaving the carousel by the exit gate, rather than risk ducking under the safety rail.

  Outside, the sunlight was a hammer, striking my head. And with each blow, I tasted more peaches and less butterscotch.

  Kate, you idiot, what did you do?

  I could barely see in the blare of sunlight; it felt like the next hammer-blow would knock my head clean off. Eyes watering, I let the land guide me, staggering like your drunken sailor, to the fountain.

  I collapsed to the lip, closed my eyes against the punishment of the sun, and concentrated on not throwing up. The land whimpered, and pawed my hand, but I didn’t dare…didn’t dare open myself to its healing until I knew what I had taken on. Poisoning the land—not in the job description.

  Phone, I thought laboriously, and, eyes screwed shut, fished it out of my pocket, flipped it open and hit speed-dial, wondering who I’d just called.

  “Kate?” Peggy’s voice was brisk. “Listen, can I call you back?”

  “I need help,” I said, my voice slurring.

  “Where are you?” she asked, sharp now.

  “Fountain.”

  “I’m sending somebody. Stay on the line.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Stay on the line! Kate?”

  “Here.”

  “What happened?”

  What happened, the woman asked.

  “Kate. Tell me what happened.”

  “Ate something…that didn’t want to be, to be…”

  “Have I told you never to eat the blue cotton candy?”

  I half-laughed, which was almost disastrous, and swallowed hard.

  “Here you are, now, Guardian,” a low familiar voice was cool in my ear; a hand comfortable on my shoulder.

  “Felsic,” I said.

  “That’s right.” I felt something settle on my head. “This’ll help, maybe. Wicked bright today. Now, you just lean on me; we’ll get you up an’ out o’the sun in a shake.”

  “Felsic, am I glowing?”

  “A mite; nothin’ to notice—not in this light. Come on, now, I’m putting my arm ’round you.”

  True enough, a strong arm came around my waist and the next moment, with no real sense of how I’d gotten there, I was on my feet. I felt a touch of vertigo; opened my eyes to slits. The brim of Felsic’s gimme hat threw an improbably deep shadow; I felt like I was standing in a cave.

  “Nice cap.”

  “Does what it’s s’posed to. Had it donkey’s years. Peggy?”

  “Here,” she said. Hell; I’d forgotten about the phone.

  “We’ll be at The Mango in a few—Kate needs to take it slow. Best if she puts the phone away.”

  “Got it. Should I call an ambulance?”

  “No!” I said sharply. “I just…need a place to sleep it off.”

  There was a slight, charged pause, before Peggy spoke again.

  “If, in my sole judgment, based on what sort of hell you look like when you get here, you don’t need an ambulance, you can sleep in the office.”

  “You’re a champ, Jersey,” I said, and signed off; sliding the phone into the pocket of my jeans.

  We’d gone two slow, easy steps, when I noticed a cool, salty energy seeping into my veins. It cooled the fever and for a moment I was only profoundly grateful. Then, I remembered.

  “Don’t!” I snapped, stumbling in my distress. “I don’t know what I got into. You don’t want to—don’t want to share this.”

  “That’s all right,” Felsic crooned, adjusting for my stumble with no noticeable strain. “Don’t fatch, Kate. Just a little home brew; nothin’ taken; only givin’.”

  “I can’t wait to see the bill for that,” I muttered.

  Felsic laughed.

  * * *

  “You look like hell,” Peggy said, staring hard into my face. “Falling-down-drunk-hell. Or maybe epic-migraine-hell. Not ambulance hell.” She pointed at the desk. “You may use the emergency couch.”

  “Thank you. ’Preciate.” I sat on the edge, and took a deep breath. Felsic’s little draught of home-brew had settled my stomach, and cooled the fever; but my tongue was still saturated with peach; my nose clogged with it.

  “Just by the way,” Peggy said. She pulled Felsic’s hat off my head, and held it out to its owner. “You are glowing. I knew the blue stuff is radioactive.”

  “Cracks in the head?” I asked.

  “None visible. You want some Advil?”

  “Won’t help, thanks.”

  She looked like she was going to argue that, but the buzzer rasped, cutting her off.

  “When do I wake you?” she asked, moving toward the door.

  “In time to relieve Vassily at four.”

  “Got it.” She passed through the door into The Mango. I heard her voice, brightly suggesting today’s special smoothie—banana-raspberry.

  Felsic had replaced the gimme hat, and gave me a hard look from under that deep brim.

  “What happened?”

  I sighed. “Somebody was trying to take out the Gate.”

  Felsic’s eyes widened.

  “Anything we ought do?”

  I sighed. “If you see an unfamiliar glowing Ozali come into the midway, run.”

  Felsic nodded, looking serious; patted my shoulder, and went away.

  I got myself into the middle of the desk, rolled up the purple sweatshirt for a pillow, closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep.

  * * *

  I dreamed.

  I dreamed that I stood in a world strange to me, dazzled by a landscape so saturated with light that the very air burned. There was music—singing, so I thought, and then thought that what I heard must be the voice of the wind in this place.

  The light was thick and heavy, like honey, or molten gold. It coated me where I stood, binding me to the brilliant land.

  Before me, I descried bell-shaped flowers on bending stalks lining a winding path, and in the distance; trees with branches limned in silver, leaves dripping with the heavy light.

  The golden air rippled above the path, and a shape appeared—manlike, tall and lissome. Rainbow wings arced from his shoulder blades, each feather as sharp as a shard of glass. He was quite naked, and, to my dream-eyes, sexless.

  “Release me!” The voice that disturbed the wind’s whisperings was raw, dark with anger and pain. “Release mine!”

  “I’m not holding you,” I objected, my voice a meager thing against the majesty of this place.

  “Who are you?” the angry voice demanded.

  “I’m the Gatekeeper,” I said.

  “Gatekeeper! Say, more truly, jailer!”

  “That, too,” I agreed. “We’re all of us many things.”

  “Then, hear me, Jailer. I give you the opportunity to avoid mayhem.
Release what is mine!”

  “To the best of my knowledge, I don’t have anything of yours,” I said.

  “You hold Jaron, Varoth’s fairest son, my second self. Release him to me.” Slowly, he sank to one knee. “I abase myself. I beg you.”

  “I am powerless,” I told him, spreading my hands against the heavy air. “It’s not given me, to know who the prisoners are. Petition the Wise—”

  “The Wise!” He came to his feet with a great clashing of wings. “It was the Wise who tore him from my arms!”

  “I am powerless,” I repeated—

  The rainbow wings clashed. The light tore, the landscape shredded, and a maelstrom shrieked from the black air; I took flight on wings of my own, battling the winds, until I rose, panting, into my own body…

  …and woke to the scent of pineapples and strawberries, on the desk in the office behind The Last Mango.

  I sat up, shaking my head to clear the vision of the angry Varothi.

  “I definitely need a cat.”

  The door opened, and Peggy put her head into the room.

  “It’s three-forty. You good to go, or you want to call in relief?”

  I took stock. The inside of my head felt tender with the aftermath of the headache, but it wasn’t actively throbbing. The queasiness had passed off, leaving me hungry; and I felt like my skin was a good fit for me, neither too loose nor too tight.

  “I’m good to go,” I told Peggy, rolling off the desk. “Thirsty.”

  “I’ll make you a smoothie,” she said. “Dinner and a thirst quencher, all in one handy cup. In the meantime, the bathroom’s back there.” She pointed. “You need to wash up and rebraid.”

  I nodded, and turned in the direction of the point.

  “Oh, and—” Peggy said. I looked at her over my shoulder.

  “You’re not glowing anymore,” she said, opening her eyes wide before she ducked back through the door.

  Chapter Thirty

  High Tide 8:25 p.m.

  Sunset 8:26 p.m. EDT

  I reached the carousel, smoothie in hand, on the stroke of four, to find a line snaking from the operator’s station all the way back to Fun Country’s front gate. Vassily reported that he had been exactly this busy all day. Apparently, overwork agreed with him—he seemed almost happy; his face animated, and his eyes sparkling.

  “It is beautiful.”

  He actually smiled, waving at the carousel, a rider on every animal; random rays of sunshine caressing the brass and teasing glints from the mirrors.

  “It is,” I agreed. “Very beautiful.”

  His hands resting lightly on the controls, he turned his head to look at me.

  “You are well?”

  “I’m well,” I told him—not a complete fib. “It’s after four. How ’bout you go get your dinner and let me have some fun?”

  He started and blinked, as if I’d derailed a serious train of thought.

  “Yes,” he said after he’d caught up with himself again. “My shift is over and I will eat my dinner. Good night, Kate Archer. Thanking you.”

  “You’re welcome—now, git!”

  He got.

  I stepped up to the control board, after putting the smoothie out of harm’s way on the floor; rang the bell twice to signal the end of the ride, and slid various levers gently downward.

  The carousel spun slowly to a stop. Riders disembarked, and headed for the exit gate. I turned to the first person in line, and gave her a smile.

  “Good afternoon. Two tickets, please.”

  …and that was pretty much my next eight hours. The crowd started to thin around eleven-thirty. At eleven-fifty, the lights began to go out on Baxter Avenue. I took that as a Sign, turned off the roof light, and shut the storm walls, locking myself inside the carousel’s enclosure.

  Privacy thus assured, I did a complete inspection, physical and magical, of the carousel; its critters and keepings.

  Everything was as it should be; I detected no secret stashes of jikinap, nor any rogue wards. The animals were as they should be; the prisoners were as they should be; the wards and spells associated with the Gate were intact. Even the damn’ rooster was looking good.

  Mindful of my bad reaction earlier in the day, I stepped back and considered the state of myself. The headache had completely vanished, my stomach was steady, and my mind was clear. When I breathed in, all I tasted was salt, sand, hot grease, and sea rose.

  It would appear that my unwilling prize had been assimilated.

  A trill sounded from the depths of my pocket. I fished my cell out and flipped it open.

  “Sorry I’m so long calling back, Kate,” Nancy Vois’ low, raspy voice told me.

  “Not a problem. I just wanted to let you know that I came down to the carousel early this morning—and the door was open.”

  There was a longish pause.

  “I locked ’er up good ’n’ tight last night before I left,” Nancy said. After a much briefer pause, she added, cautiously, “Is everything…good?”

  “A little mischief made; no lasting harm done.”

  “That’s all right, then,” she said with a sigh. “You change the lock?”

  “Haven’t yet. Will by tomorrow. I’ll leave the new key with Anna.”

  “Right.”

  “Thanks for calling back,” I said.

  “No problem. You take care now.”

  She hung up.

  I looked up at the carousel as I slipped the phone back into my pocket.

  Eight hours of honest labor had given my brain time to sort out what it was willing to believe and what it wasn’t willing to believe, leaving me with a list of what I was willing to call facts.

  One, the dream I’d had in The Mango’s backroom? Wasn’t a dream; it had been an actual conversation with an Ozali of Varoth, the Land of Air and Sunshine. Considering that I’d consumed a good amount of his jikinap, such a conversation was completely in the realm of the possible.

  Two, the Varothi threatened mayhem, unless I freed his lover.

  Which—point three—I couldn’t do. I didn’t know who the prisoners were. Gran didn’t know who the prisoners were. The prisoners didn’t know who they were, because the Wise had taken their memories.

  Four, the Varothi felt that a petition to the Wise would be useless. Happens I agreed with him there.

  Five, his plea to myself having gained a negative result, he was going to try to free Jaron again.

  I sighed, and wondered if I should call the Wise. I was loath to do it, for all the usual reasons. And, even if calling the Wise was the best course, a call tonight was unlikely to garner an instant response. I’m not precisely sure on what plane or land beyond time the Wise dwell in—if they even live together—but the mail delivery to wherever they were was wicked slow.

  All of which meant that the Gate had to be warded like hell, right now, tonight.

  I frowned at the unicorn, thinking.

  The Gate was heavily warded and opening it in a non-explosive sort of way required a very tricksy bit of magecraft. Screw up, and all that would be left of the carousel would be a smoking crater. Given what I’d found cooking here this morning, it seemed safe to assume that the possibility of an explosive outcome didn’t bother the Varothi.

  Which meant that I was, right now, going to build the biggest, baddest, toughest ward possible, and then I was going take advice on how to proceed on the larger questions of the Varothi, his lover, and the Wise.

  Wards are easy, relatively speaking. Righteous wards that won’t buckle under a bulldozer just wanted a lot of power to fuel them. I thought about that, given the amount of power I’d seen burning here this morning, and flexed my fingers.

  A medium heavy-duty ward with a reflector woven into it, I thought; so that anything tossed at it would bounce.

  I could do that.

  Tomorrow, early, I’d get with Mr. Ignat’ about building something more flexible. I also wanted to talk with Borgan, and Nerazi, and Gran about the situation
and the pros and cons of calling in the Wise.

  Hell, it was late enough, I’d probably find Nerazi at her rock, if I cared to walk that way after I got done here.

  First, though, I needed to get done here.

  I straightened, centered myself, and called upon my power.

  It flashed up my spine, burning, searing every cell, filling me with light so heavy I crashed to my knees. I gasped, gagging on peach-tainted air as thick as cream. Heart pounding, half-strangled, I thrust the power back to the base of my spine with the strength of pure panic, filled my lungs with salt-soaked air—

  And the burning flare of jikinap came roaring back, knocking me flat to the floor, my mouth clogged with too-thick air.

  Instinctively, I snatched for the land, but the land couldn’t help me, not with this.

  Or—

  I brought the land…close, and I whispered into its distressed, doggy ear: I need help.

  Every trenvay in Archers Beach would hear that message. Which begged the question of what they might do, that the Guardian herself could not.

  In the meantime, the situation had gone from bad to worse. My lungs were burning; it felt like my blood was burning, while the weight of the light ground me into the floor.

  If I didn’t do something, I was going to die. Right here.

  Right now.

  I gathered my fragmented will, dark spots swirling before my eyes, and pushed.

  The punishing power retreated, just a little.

  Just enough.

  I could breathe.

  One breath. Two.

  Again, I gathered my will.

  …and the door in the storm gate, that I had so carefully locked from the inside, blew open.

  * * *

  “Kate!”

  A wave of blessedly cool water lifted me above the agony, my skin tingled with salt, and the air was fresh, bracing, and plentiful.

  I slammed my will against the burning power. It gave, but not much. I hit it again, but it was like punching a rhinoceros; my puny efforts were only making it mad. A little tongue of flame tickled the center of my chest; my heart cramped; I lost my concentration, and the rogue power flared.

  I think I screamed.

  “Kate!”

  I was…somewhere else. If I had a body, I couldn’t feel it. The only thing I could feel was Borgan, holding me—holding me in his strength—inside his power—and if I exploded, or ignited, would I poison the sea?