The constantly loud music, a cacophony of a multitude of many different tunes, drums through me painfully. I feel dizzy, dazed by it all.
Like a rush of blood to my brain it can’t handle.
The asses I’d watched been formed in the darkness have each risen onto their four feet: or, rather, hooves. With a confused shake of their long ears, they both begin to amble off towards an area of the carnival where a string of bright lights hover above them like exploding supernovae.
Are they heading back into the real world? Are these just two more of the donkeys and asses we so often find stumbling out of the darkness.
As they pass beneath the strung lights, they vanish.
I dash after them, wanting to follow, to appear out of the darkness back in my own carnival, my home.
But I run on beneath the lights without experiencing any sense of change.
Ahead of me, it all looks pretty much as it did only a second ago.
Spinning around on my heels, I see for definite that, frustratingly, I’m still here. Still in the Carnival Diabolus.
Twirling in the air everywhere about me, the trapeze artists demonstrate an enviable talent, seemingly soaring through the air. They glow like enthral beings amongst the darkness, bathed in a cocooning light.
I’d like to be up there with them. Feeling effortlessly weightless, somehow superior to those relegated to a more stable ground. More than that, however, I’d prefer to be back with Jeserel and Verelda, who pass amongst and through them all as swooping wraiths.
Despite all this mass of people surrounding me, this chaotically throbbing populous of entertainers and audience, of freaks and animals, I feel alone.
‘Hello Sel.’
The voice isn’t excited. It’s wary.
That’s because it isn’t Lorn stepping out of the milling throng towards me.
It’s Mom.
*
Chapter 25
I’m rigid, deliberately holding myself back from approaching her, embracing her.
Because I know I want to hold her.
But I also know she doesn’t deserve it.
Then I feel a part of me give way: relent.
I dash forward, arms open.
‘Mom!’
As I wrap my arms around her, her arms curl around me, hold me tight.
It’s so so so long since she held me like this.
I hide my tears, bury my face in her shoulder. Yet she knows I’m crying. Because she’s crying too. I can feel her tears running down through my hair.
‘Why did you leave me, Mom? What did I do?’
‘You didn’t do anything, my sweet! I had to leave; it was time. We all face that time at some point in our lives.’
‘But you choose to leave! You didn’t have to go?'
‘Didn’t I?’ There’s a touch of lightness, of humour, to her doubt. ‘You can’t really determine when your time will be! The choice I had was to be prepared and therefore prepare for it. To make the best of what many say is a bad deal.’
‘Why here, Mom? Why did you chose to come to the place of the Devil?’
‘The Devil?’ She chuckles. ‘Who ever told you such a silly thing?’
I pull back at last, separating only slightly, my arms and her arms still partially curling around waists.
‘But it’s the Carnival Diabolus!’
I glance about me, drawing her attention to all the horrors I’ve seen.
‘Just look at it all, Mom! It’s horrendous! Evil!’
She nods sagely, as if understanding.
‘But who is it who brings all that evil here, Sel? All that which they have to atone for? Diabolus came to mean “Devil”: but it really stands for “accuser”, “adversary”. Our Carne-vale offers a time to say a final farewell to the flesh: to cleanse ourselves and ultimately rise once again as pure, spiritual beings!’
‘But the Senator–’
‘The Senator?’
Mom jerks farther back, holding me now as she used to do when I was little, when she’d heard I’d been taking part in foolishly dangerous escapades, ones she’d frequently warned me not to get involved in.
‘He came here with me–’
Suddenly, it’s Mom rather than me who’s staring everywhere about her with an expression of horror carved across her face.
‘Then it may well be that you were right, Sel: the Devil himself may well be here after all!’
*
Chapter 26
‘The Senator’s not the Devil!’ I insist, grinning at Mom’s foolish overreaction. ‘He believes we are descended from angels! He’s here to find Lorn, so he can prove it to the rest of the world!’
Far from being reassured by my words, Mom’s eyes widen: she’s even more horrified than before. Taking my hand, she begins to quickly drag me through the still excitedly thronging crowds.
‘Then we have to hope we find Lorn before the Senator does!’
‘But Mom, Mom,’ I persist, stumbling along after her as she expertly weaves through the mass of people. ‘He thinks Lorn is an angel! With wings–’
‘He’s right! That’s why I sent Lorn the waters: so he would believe. The only thing preventing Lorn’s wings from developing is his lack of belief – until he believes in what he’s capable of, they’ll remain calcified! Nothing but enlarged, deformed shoulder blades!’
‘Then he can prove–’
‘Not if the Senator gets to him first, he won’t. The Senator intends to rip out Lorn’s wings!’
*
Wherever Mom’s dragging me, she’s so determined to get there she’s barging past anyone in her way.
Even though so rudely pushed aside, the revellers continue to grin amiably, crazily. They’re drunk, excited. Uncaring.
Above us all, the trapeze artists continue their routine of hypnotic whirls.
‘Mom! How can you believe anyone could be so cruel! No one could rip out an angel’s wings!’
‘They could if they don’t want anyone to know the truth! Even a body with the stubs of angelic wings is too dangerous for such a person.’
‘But where will Lorn be? I looked before–’
‘The Future Fates booth–’
‘We came in that way: he wasn’t there.’
‘I mean to use the cards, the crystals, to find him!’
Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?
And then, as Mom said this, I recalled the vision of my future, of Lorn’s, in the woman’s crystal-like eyes.
At least, it was a vison that proved Lorn’s wings hadn’t been removed. Far from it: his belief had been restored.
He had regrown his wings!
Only for us both to fall. And, possibly, to die?
‘Mom, Mom: I’ve just remembered! The Senator doesn’t remove Lorn’s wings! I saw his future in a woman’s eyes!’
‘And if that future is dependent on us finding him?’
She didn’t slow her pace. If anything, she seemed to put on a fresh burst of speed, a new determination to push everyone aside even more aggressively.
It was a future, of course, that I feared.
Yet I feared Lorn losing his fledging wings even more.
*
Chapter 27
The darkness seems to instantly and totally envelop me as we step inside the Future Fates booth.
I recognise the décor: the strung up lanterns, the centrally placed table and chairs. It looks so much like Lorn’s booth, barring only a few differences.
As I’d now come to expect, there are two people seated at the table facing us, waiting to tell any customer’s future.
On our side of the table, the ghostly presence of a customer from the other, more worldly carnival is already taking the chair there. The fortune teller moves swiftly, talking inaudibly to the customer she’s invited to sit before her at her table.
Strangely, the fortune teller in each world appears remarkably similar; a young girl, with a black bob of hair. More remarkably still, apart fr
om their head and arms, they appear to take up almost exactly the same space.
As one deals the cards, the other also deftly manoeuvres and changes the cards, no doubt affecting whatever reading would be made.
Did that mean these cards might actually reveal the truth to the customer expectantly waiting to hear his fate?
The girl manipulating the cards glances up towards us as we enter. She smiles.
Strangely, the other girl also gives us a sidelong glance, as if she too is aware of our presence.
‘What do you seek?’ the first girl asks.
‘We seek the Devil!’ Mom admits.
Once again, the other girl glances our way.
She’s heard, heard Mom’s declaration to seek the Devil.
‘A strange thing to seek; the Devil!’ she says, her own customer apparently unaware of what she says. Unaware, too, of her interest in us.
‘Most people wisely wish to only avoid the Devil,’ the other girl adds in what could be the same voice.
They are enjoined twins.
The girl is one, not two.
She exists, somehow, in both worlds.
*
The girl begins to deal out another pack of cards, cards that squirm and squeal as she pulls them out from the pack and flicks them across the table.
‘We seek him because we believe he is here,’ Mom explains.
Mom hovers over the table, watching the cards as they’re swiftly dealt. Watches as the cards are swiftly and expertly arranged across the cloth-covered top.
In this world, the cards dealt out have a life of their own.
They’re hardly cards at all, but actually moving, three-dimensional beings.
‘Such honesty!’ says one of the girls.
‘Many seek power, wealth, lust, unbridled pleasure,’ continues her twin.
‘Some of us wish to be overwhelmingly beautiful!’ She observes her twin with a wry, suspicious expression.
‘Some of us wish to be pre-eminently wise!’ She, too, looks towards her twin with a look approaching disdain.
‘And in this way, they too are all seeking the Devil!’
She deals out the Devil card
The Devil seems real, only, thankfully in miniature; and therefore a hopefully more controllable version. A mere representation, I hope.
He isn’t confined to his card however. He moves across the table top, from card to card, interacting, merging with the characters there.
‘This,’ the girls begin to explain, ‘is how the Devil really operates.’
Not, as we so falsely presume, as a separate entity, standing apart from all he surveys, handing out orders, making his plans.
Far from it; he is as much a part of the earth, of its peoples, as your empowering soul.
He moves from person to person, fooling them into believing they do good: for how else would he persuade them to do as he wishes?
They see themselves as good people, as acting for the common good. And therefore they insist that anyone standing against them can only be evil.
When he entered our leaders, they saw that their people were bad.
The people’s sense of superiority had to be curbed, our superiors declared adamantly. The people couldn’t be trusted, for their ideals, unlike those of our leaders, had gone astray.
To ensure a peaceful Earth, there would have to be a levelling of the peoples.
Only the truly enlightened could be allowed to rule, to pronounce on our fates.
And conveniently, that very levelling of the other peoples would ensure the truly enlightened would never be threatened by the possibility of replacement, of being held to account for their actions and deeds.
Yes, our leaders had benefited most from our past: but now they showed that they deserved to lead us, to lead everyone, for they had at last seen the light – their people would be forced to make amends for the trouble and anguish they had caused throughout the world.
And no one should be allowed or have the wherewithal to challenge them in their appointed task.
Just as inconvenient truths had to be removed from texts, wings would have to be surgically removed from bodies. Until all this angelic nonsense was no longer part of our belief, of our DNA.
The Devil, of course, still moved amongst us.
Still used as a conveyance anyone willing to allow him entrance.
Anyone who had become used to power, such that they regarded it as their right, and no one else’s.
He entered now a Senator, a Senator arriving in a plush, smoothly running car.
A Senator who stepped out by a gravestone, and watched with a thrilled smile as a foolish young girl showed him how she could bring stone to life.
By them, unseen by either, was a young man with a ridged, crippled back.
In the next card, the Senator wrestles with the boy.
He flashes a long blade, one that glitters like stars, like a sun: a beam of light, rather than mere metal.
The light slices effortlessly through the flesh of the boy’s back. The flaps peel back like ironically useless wings.
Beneath, revealed to the boy’s dismay and shame, are the overly large shoulder blades, the cause of his deforment.
He sighs, sags; there’s no fight left in him.
He feels more freak-like, more despisable, than ever.
And the Senator twirls his blade of light; readying himself to carve the latent wings free of the boy’s body.
*
Chapter 28
There’s no way of recognising where they are!
No clues. No signs.
The Senator and Lorn could be anywhere within this vast carnival.
And even if we knew where they were, we wouldn’t get there in time to save Lorn.
Without speaking, Mom urgently takes my hand. She pulls on me once again, dragging me with her.
She steps through the table, strides into the whirl of cards.
It feels much like stepping through the swirling trapeze artists of the Carnival Diabolus, the ropes extending everywhere like a vast web, the performers whirling and glowing like exploding suns.
The bursts of light vanish. I’m plummeted once more into what at first seems, by comparison, to be a surprising darkness.
Yet, of course, it is just a relative darkness. There are lights here, only nowhere near as bright as the brightly coloured whirl of planets.
It’s the darkest place the Senator could find within the carnival.
He briefly halts his vicious carving, surprised when Mom and I abruptly appear out of nowhere alongside him.
He grins.
‘Too late,’ he smirks. ‘You can’t stop me now.’
In a sudden blur of a sparklingly pure whiteness, a vast pair of wings sprout and unfurl from his own back.
Then, wrapping an arm firmly around an almost unconscious Lorn, he runs, leaps: and soars effortlessly up and up into the air.
*
Chapter 29
Without thinking this through – if I had, I would clearly have never done anything so stupid – I run after him.
I leap first onto the edges of a performing animal’s stand, then onto higher boxes. Using these as a springboard, I propel myself even higher as I leap out into dark space.
After all, I’ve been trained to do this since only a little after my birth.
I land with a violent thud onto the ascending angel’s back: and momentarily shiver, suddenly recalling where I’ve seen myself doing exactly this – taking a ride to my death.
Despite my landing on his back, the angel remains untroubled by it. It has no effect on his rising.
And we are indeed rising. Rising in a place where I thought it would be impossible to rise upwards.
A place where I didn’t think there was anything above us to rise into, except evermore of the Carnival Diabolus.
Yet we are rising, rising into a greater, deeper darkness.
In the corner of my eye, however, I catch a flash of light
; the light of the angel’s blade as he prepares to continue his cruel operation on Lorn.
Rapidly crawling higher up the angel’s back, I desperately reach over his shoulder, reaching out towards his slashing arm and attempting to grasp it.
I’m in danger of falling, of being slashed myself by the curving blade; but what choice do I have?
Didn’t Mom say something about having to make the best of what many would say is a poor deal?
The darkness suddenly seems to evaporate, replaced instead by the flickering scarlet glow of immense flames. It’s like we’re heading towards the centre of the sun itself.
But it’s not the sun.
It’s a cerubim; one of the cherubim, the most deadly angels of all.
*
The cerubim is vast, magnificent.
He – or should that be ‘she’? – appears to be made of flames. Of every type of fire there is both in my world and any other world.
Bursts of flames flare off into space, as if a sign of the glowing angel’s anger or irritation.
Beyond it, however, there isn’t yet more darkness. There is, rather, peace.
It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. A garden of every green, every colour, you could ever imagine.
The Garden of Eden.
The Garden guarded by the cherubim.
Taking advantage of my awe, the angel I’m riding elegantly flips over: and suddenly I’m falling, falling back towards the darkness.
*
Chapter 30
My arms, my hands, are flailing, reaching out frantically for anything to stop me from falling.
My fingers tighten gratefully around a clump of large, white feathers.
Naturally, the angel isn’t expecting this sudden increase in weight towards the farthest extent of one of his wings.
It pulls him completely off balance. He’s struggling to lift, let alone to flap, the wing I’m desperately keeping a firm grasp of.
He lashes out fruitlessly with his blade of light. His wings are too vast, his reach, even with the blade, nowhere near adequate enough to strike out at me.