The Darker Carnival (The Markhat Files) by Tuttle Frank

Author:Tuttle, Frank [Tuttle, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: detective, private eye, humor, High fantasy, witches and wizards, gods and goddesses, dark fantasy, fantasy, mystery, cross-genre, magic, film noir, Markhat, vampires
Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Published: 2015-04-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Again, I dreamed, and walked in my dream.

My body lay sleeping beside Darla, deep below Avalante’s tilting slate roofs, far from the charred remains of our tidy little home on Middling Lane.

For a time, I dreamed of fire. I walked to the night and the hour my home was attacked. I watched as the witch dropped from the dark, leading the rest as they spiraled down and sought to force their way inside while Darla slept.

I heard Cornbread bark, saw a candle flare to life at our bedroom window. Saw the Witch cackle and hurl a handful of tangled shadows at the tiny flame.

Her shadows didn’t make it. Instead, they gathered around the lightning rods protruding here and there from my roof. After a moment, they coursed down the rods and down the copper lines and vanished into the ground.

The witch shrieked. Her companions, half a dozen flapping things I couldn’t begin to name, drew close about her.

The plain old fire they hurled quickly spread.

I watched Darla run away, Cornbread at her feet. She emptied her pistols into the sky.

My house caught fire, and the flames quickly rose.

I turned from it, pushing down the rage.

“Now is not the time,” I thought, and yet I heard my words echo across Rannit, and it seemed that a peel of mad laughter from the east rose up in reply.

I walked. Night and day changed places. The sun hurtled across the sky, once, twice, slowing, stopping.

I crossed the river easily. The stench of smoke still filled my nostrils. I’d not realized how much I’d come to love that modest little box of a house.

I looked down, saw a scatter of rags at my feet, and then diminished until I recognized the carnival.

I walked among them, unseen.

Tents were being erected. The fires were out, save for a pair of big ones being fed with debris. Hammers fell. Ropes were stretched taut. A pair of mastodons trumpeted as they pulled the wreck of a balloon’s ornate gondola down the littered midway.

Clowns charged about, cussing and hauling and pushing and shoving.

It didn’t take long to see that the carnival folk weren’t breaking camp.

As I watched a new stage being built in front of Malus the Magnificent’s tent, I realized they were setting up for the night’s show.

I grew, until I was tall enough to tower over the mastodons.

I let loose my rage, and I kicked at the nearest tent.

My boot passed through it. I raised my heel and brought it down, wanting nothing more than to crush the carnival down into the dirt, tent by clown by tent.

I could feel the earth, but nothing above it was disturbed.

I cussed. I railed. I swatted at the riding wheel, tried to wrest the carousel from its mooring and hurl it into the Brown. I may have dislodged a flock of blackbirds from the trees, or I may not have, but I inflicted no vengeance on the carnival or its folk.

I walked on, fuming.

I knew Buttercup lay wrapped in a doll’s unyielding embrace, though I’d never found the black tent.

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