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"'In the midst of life comes death.’ How often did our village priest pray those words. Yet I have also heard that ‘In the midst of death comes life.' If this be a riddle, so was my life."
-Edward Irving Wortis, Crispin: The Cross of Lead
--
“Oy, Yasha.”
Yasha didn’t notice Gustav right away. He was on the side of her that was carrying a bundle of large, wooden tent stakes over one shoulder. They were easy enough to shift so that she could see him. It annoyed Yasha that in spite of all this, the top of his ridiculous hat could be seen past her cargo. “Yes?”
“Can I borrow you? It’ll only take a second.”
“I need to take these to the main plot so I can go help in setting up the big top,” Yasha said.
Gustav looked over his shoulder. “Bosun!” He called. Bo, who had just finished mending a break in the plot’s fences, stood and jogged over to them. Bo was the only person at Moondrop Fletching as tall as Yasha, and there was something comforting about it. She would tower over everyone else otherwise. Gustav pointed to Yasha. “Take these stakes over to the big top plot, Orna should be done laying the lines. Yasha and I have something we need to take care of.”
“You got it, Gustav,” Bo affirmed. Yasha handed the bundle of stakes to Bo, bewildered, who gave her a toothy, tusked grin. “Try not to break your back, greeny.”
“Look who’s talking,” said Yasha. Bo laughed and walked off with the bundle.
Yasha gave Gustav a confused look. He waved his fingers in a motioning gesture. “Follow me.”
The otherwise dull blue of the tents and ribbons seemed vibrant in contrast to the grey, colorless sky, but it made the silver of the ribbons and tassels look tired and faded. That could only mean that Yasha looked the same. But it made sense that she should fade into her surroundings, being such a new hire to an organisation that functioned as a family. It was cold, but it wasn’t wet. Yasha would have noticed if it was wet. It was the kind of cold that bit and clung to you, the kind that made metal burn if you didn’t wear gloves. Yasha saw several gloved hands as they carried small steel beams and the like as they passed. Some were hammering pikes into the ground to make sure that certain foundations held.
The temperature didn’t bother Yasha. She was the only one working outside who wore no sleeves or gloves. Desmond also went gloveless, but he was in his tent filling out paperwork for the city and penning signatures. His diligence had earned him the privilege to stay inside. The air almost seemed sweeter when it was this cold. Maybe that was why whenever you let your breath go, it looked like clouds of white candy floss before it faded.
Breaking a sweat felt good in cold weather. Yasha liked doing work outside when it was cold, be it cleaning animals won in a hunt or mending fences. She had always told Zuala that she would build them a house in the winter so that they could enjoy it in the summer months. Zuala had laughed at her.
“You build the house in the summer so that it protects you in the winter, Yasha,” she had said.
“The sun can beat down on you twice as hard,” Yasha had argued.
“You’re just cold blooded.” Zuala would run her hands over Yasha’s biceps. “And I’m just honored that you’ll break a sweat for me.” And then she would kiss her. “So that I may reap the benefits.”
I still would , Yasha thought.
Gustav wore so many clothes on a regular basis that Yasha imagined he was always warm. She did not assume the cold affected him, nor did heat, as he wore the same things regardless of the weather. “What do you need, Gustav?” Yasha asked.
“Yasha, do you remember how Desmond and I have been talking about trying to set up a way to bring in some income more or less independently of the carnival?” Gustav asked as they wove through a narrow passage between workers.
“Vaguely.”
“Well, I’ve got an idea that I’ve been, ah… workshopping lately,” Gustav said. “And I want you to be my guinea pig.”
“So what is it?” Yasha didn’t care for how everything that Gustav said had to have some kind of “big reveal” aspect to it.
Gustav continued. “I think you’ll like it, and it would be a great draw for some publicity as well. I might have secured us a fortune teller. My thinking was they could have a booth close to the entrance, and people wouldn’t have to pay admission for a fortune.” He smiled. “You know, to give them a small dose of the flavor of the carnival to entice them to join us further down the rabbit hole.”
“Oh,” Yasha affirmed. “Did you and Desmond hire someone new?”
“Well…” Gustav began. “Yes and no. Desmond doesn’t know yet.”
Yasha furrowed her brow. “He doesn’t?”
“Again, very early phases of conception, Yasha.”
They passed two workers setting up the carnival’s sign and spreading the rope that guided the queue to the door. “So… did we or did we not gain a new hire?” Yasha asked.
“Yes, he’s a new hire, but…” Gustav tried to find his words. “He isn’t necessarily that new… around here.”
Yasha stared at him for a moment before the realization came to her. “Oh.”
“I mean, my thinking was that if Molly’s going to be traveling with the circus, we might as well give him a job to do. He hasn’t shown any indication that he plans on leaving.”
“What did you just call him?” Yasha asked.
“Oh,” Gustav caught himself. “Well, I also figured that if he’s going to be staying here we’re going to have to start calling him something else. I’ve been calling him Mollymauk, it’s a breed of albatross found on the Menagerie Coast. Molly for short. He seems to be alright with it, even though he looks more like a peacock.”
Yasha merely stared at Gustav, perplexed.
Gustav held up his hands defensively. “Look, if he wants to be called something different later down the line, it can be a placeholder,” he explained. “But I figured it was miles less demeaning than everyone continuing to call him ‘Empty.’" He put a finger to his lips. "Would be a bit of fun with a 'T' surname..."
“No, it’s not that, it sounds fine,” Yasha said. “I am just… confused by your thought process, Gustav.”
“How so?”
“You say he’s going to be our fortune teller, but…” Yasha let her breath fade again. “How is that going to work? I’ve only ever heard him speak once.”
The two of them arrived at the carnival’s perimeter, the sounds and voices of labor growing a bit distant. “He talks to me,” Gustav said. “Enough that I know this is something he’s interested in doing, anyway. I’ve been teaching him how to read tarot cards, I felt like it would be a good starting point. From there he can learn more complicated methods of the trade.” He beamed. “He’s been making significant progress in a very short amount of time. Hell, even despite the fact that the poor bastard can’t even read. He’s memorized the images instead. Damn near incredible to watch, but I feel bad for him if he ever needs to use a different deck.”
Yasha thought about it. If the idea was followed through, Yasha would no longer be the greenest member at the circus. Barely a month ago while they were traversing a forest to the north, the name of which Yasha had forgotten, Gustav had held up one of their carriages to help a man standing in the middle of the road. Yasha hadn’t been there, she had manned a transport cart with Desmond that had set out to their next destination a day before. When Gustav and the rest of the caravan arrived at their plot the next morning to set up for the weekend, they had gained a companion: A tiefling man with skin like pressed lavender and horns that curled to frame his ears. He was wrapped in a white sheet and tattered, bloody clothes, half-starved and vacant.
He was a strange creature to look at. Yasha had thought that he was a woman at first glance, as his hair fell a little past his shoulders and his features were very soft despite being so angular, save for two deep stress lines carving divots across his face. One of the strangest things about his appearance was a strange array of tattoos dotting his skin, depicting intense red eyes that seemed to stare wide at whoever was near. Gustav had said that the tiefling man was walking in the middle of the road, and when Gustav approached him, he collapsed in his arms. Since then he had been a sort of honorary ward that the circus kept, and was often found aimlessly wandering the grounds or curled like a cat asleep in Gustav’s quarters. As the weeks wore on, he became more active, and would help in selling tickets or executing general labor for the carnival. But even still he never spoke and still clung to Gustav, appropriate for his cat-like self. At the times when he did speak, all he said was one thing.
Empty.
So among the circus, he simply became known as just that. He never objected, and after a while people wondered if he even could.
It wasn’t as if he was disliked among the troupe, necessarily. Empty was generally well received by many members, in fact. Orna let him borrow her costumes from time to time, as he seemed to take pleasure in the activity. Sometimes he would sit and let Toya put flowers in his hair, and Bosun kept him on the construction ledger even though he was not terribly adept at physical labor.
A few times, when Yasha had seen Empty alone, he would simply stand in one place, lips parted, staring at nothing at all. Sometimes she would stare at the spot he was looking at too. To see if perhaps he was noticing something that she wasn’t. Once he had broken his vacant gaze to look at her, and it had startled her a bit. She had waved awkwardly.
"Empty," he had mumbled. And then he simply wandered off. And that was where their list of interactions began and ended.
Gustav led Yasha to a colorful tent decked out in red and purple with golden baubles and tassels dangling from its appendages for flavor.
Gustav spread his arms. “What do you think? It’s a work in progress. He actually helped pick out a lot of the colors.”
Yasha ignored the question. “So… what am I doing here?”
“I want you to tell me if you think he’s ready to do this for our next show,” Gustav answered. “He’s only done readings for me, so I don’t know how he’ll be with others, let alone the general public. Have you ever had a reading done for you before, Yasha?”
“Ah…” She tried to recall. “In the place where I grew up there was a woman who read tea leaves. She did mine once when I was a little girl, but other than that no.”
“Perfect. It’s just like that. You’ll be fine.”
“But why me?”
“You have a way with people, Yasha," said Gustav. "You calm folks, and he’s a nervous one.”
Yasha disagreed, but she wasn’t in the mood to express it. “I’m not sure I even really believe in this kind of thing, Gustav.”
“You don’t have to, Yasha. Humor this for me?”
Gustav had already pulled her from her work and dragged her here.
“...Ok.” She would play along.
Gustav gave her a pat on the back as she headed for the draped entrance to the tent. “Attagirl.”
Yasha parted the drapes with one hand, her fingers brushing strings of beads that clacked against each other upon being disturbed. Yasha found herself feeling a little nervous. Despite being as mild mannered as he was, he still held some element of fear. There were things about the tiefling that were dangerous, though he did not mean to be. And if anything happened, the two of them would be alone.
His vacancy and silence was not his only oddity. At times, his face would begin to bleed at random intervals, and sometimes strange things would happen when it did. Once during a mealtime, he had spit out blood in the middle of a coughing fit, and Yuli, who was sitting across from him, cried out and doubled over in pain. Another time, a trickle of blood had crept down his face from his nostril while helping Desmond carry wooden planks. Desmond collapsed, stiff as marble and unable to move. These incidents happened less frequently as of late, but they still occurred on occasion. Gustav worried that it was creating friction with the rest of the troupe. Desmond had brought in a doctor from one of the towns that they visited to see if something was amiss, but nothing seemed to be wrong with him.
If anything did happen, she was bigger than he was, Yasha thought. How she spoke to the man should not be ruled by fear.
Just like reading tea leaves.
The inside of the tent was dark, the only source of light being from the outside and a small lantern that hung from the apex of the tent. It was small, and very intimate. One second in and Yasha could tell that the room had been pumped with incense and lilac perfume. It was Gustav’s. He had let her borrow it a few times. Baubles still hung from the ceiling, but the makeshift room was empty save for a low table covered in a white tablecloth that was too big for it. Two sitting pillows filled the room as well, one of which was being filled by a purple figure whose features were framed by shadow.
His uninhabited, red eyes gazed up at her. “Hi.”
Yasha lingered in the doorway. His voice was much deeper than she thought it would be. Though Yasha knew not what nothing would sound like. “Hallo,” she said.
“Are you here for a reading?” The words sounded like they had been rehearsed.
“I suppose I am.”
“Sit.”
Yasha had to bend down to fit through the entrance and be mindful of her extremities as she sat down. The tent clearly wasn’t built for people her size. The tiefling was a rather petite man himself, and though he wasn’t as frail as when he had first arrived, he was still very thin. The theatrical clothing that he was dressed in helped add substance to his build, which from what Yasha could see was a simple white shirt with a frill that began at the collar accented by strings of gold necklaces and rings. His hair had recently been cut much shorter, and it no longer hung past his neck. As he began palming a large deck of cards, Yasha could also see that his nails had been painted a dark, wine red. On one hand, anyway. The other wore a discreet black glove, covering the eye on the back of it. Yasha could only barely see one of the red eyes, on Empty's neck peeking out of his shirt's collar.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“I’m Yasha.”
The tiefling looked up at her, and Yasha clearly saw the center of his eyes for the first time. “Yasha.” His face remained blank and unanimated, but there was something strangely blissful about the way he said it, as if he were a child slowly turning a piece of candy over in his mouth instead of her name.
“What is your name?” Yasha asked.
“I’m Mollymauk.”
“It’s nice to meet you properly, Mollymauk.” Yasha did her best to sound sincere. “Do you like that name?”
“I think so.” He laid the cards in the center of the table. “Cut the deck, please.”
Yasha tentatively halved the deck as best she could tell and set it aside. After he reversed its angle, Mollymauk placed the latter half on top of the one that Yasha set aside and continued to shuffle the deck. “Do you have a question you would like answered?”
Yasha searched in her hand. “Not particularly, no.”
“We’ll do a fan spread, then.” Mollymauk began drawing cards by three and placed them in small stacks in a semi-circle facing him until there were seven, with one card in the center. It had an intricate illustration of a hooded figure with a skull for a face mounted on a black horse, with text beneath it that read “DEATH.”
Yasha wondered if all forms of fortune telling were this self explanatory and predictable.
Mollymauk folded his hands and rested his cheek on them, staring at the cards. It was difficult to tell if his eyes darted between them, as he had no irises or pupils. He stared at them for a long while, the only sound in the room being the clinking of baubles as a breeze blew through the entrance. He lightly touched a pile on top of which rested a card with a graphic of ten swords piercing a man’s torso.
“Did you lose someone?” he finally asked.
The bluntness of the question caught Yasha off guard. It brought a sudden pang to her chest. “At one point, I did,” she said quietly.
“They were very important to you,” he said.
“Yes,” Yasha said. “But it was a while ago.”
“It doesn’t matter how long ago.” Even still he did not look at her. “If it’s coming up in the reading, it still follows you.”
Yasha didn’t quite know what to do with that comment. “Is that what the death card means?” Yasha asked.
“No.”
“Alright,” she said, skeptical. She was convinced it was a fluke. It had to have been. “Is that all?”
“No, there’s more.” Mollymauk paused again, lifting his face from where it rested. “Miss Yasha…”
“Yes?”
“Do you have any goals?”
Yasha opened her mouth as if to say something, but quickly closed it. “I mean…” she began. “I want to survive.”
“Hm.”
“I know it is mundane, but… there is nothing else I really wish to do. Not in the Empire, anyway,” said Yasha. “Do you have any goals, Mollymauk?”
“This reading isn’t about me.”
Again, his bluntness was very surprising and precise. “Well… when my reading is done would you tell me?”
Mollymauk said nothing. He didn’t meet Yasha’s gaze. “Your vindication is so strong, but I only see oblivion. Why does someone who has nothing want to survive so badly?”
“I could not tell you.”
“Hm.”
He was asking a lot of questions for someone whose potential profession rode on them claiming to regularly look straight into the eye of fate, Yasha thought.
“I can see your future,” he said.
“What is it?”
He touched the pile closest to his right hand. On top was a card with two naked figures devoid of gender facing each other. Its subtitle read “THE LOVERS.”
Unlikely , thought Yasha.
“You don’t trust easily, do you?”
“Don’t all sensible people?”
“I wouldn’t know.” Molly looked at her again. “You will need to make a choice soon.”
“To do what?”
“To trust.”
Yasha frowned. “Trust is not a conscious choice.”
“For you, it will be,” he said. “People will come into your life who trust you. They will tell you about their lives. They will put those lives in your hands. And they will love you.” Mollymauk tilted his head. “Whether or not you choose to trust them will have consequences.”
“I find that hard to believe,” said Yasha.
“It’s what it says,” said Mollymauk. “This is your near future.” He dragged his finger to the card in the center with the cloaked, skull-face figure. “This is what the distant future has in store for you.”
Yasha’s heart skipped a beat. She hated that it did, that this had any affect on her at all. “Where I die?” Yasha asked. “Will this trust that I place in these perfect strangers kill me?”
Mollymauk lifted his finger slowly, and his face changed. He almost looked stern. “Miss Yasha, the names of the cards are not meant to be taken literally,” he said. “The Death card does not mean that you will die.”
“Oh.” Yasha withdrew, staring at her hands. “My apologies. What does it mean, then?”
“You will be reborn,” he said. “If you choose trust… you will be reborn. Any chains that may bind you will be rended asunder. You will change, but it will not be a change from which you are able to escape.”
Her hands were cold. Their coarseness felt like the stone on the altar where she had awoken, scraping her skin as she rose, the membrane of the wings on her back being soaked by the rain. Grasping at the clouds, looking to the heavens like a babe.
“These people… or this person... will change me.”
“Yes.”
Yasha leaned back. “I know a little bit about being reborn,” Yasha said.
“Then you’ll be just fine,” Mollymauk said. He began scooping the cards up with one hand. “That concludes the reading.”
“Thank you very much,” Yasha said. He seemed very focused in putting the cards back in their slots within the deck. “If I may…”
“Yes?”
“I still want to know about your goals here.”
Mollymauk stopped.
“I-I mean, you know, this is the first time we have ever really talked,” Yasha asserted. “Nobody knows anything about you. And… I know that Gustav has this vision of you being our fortune teller, and I think that you would be good at it, but… is that you want?” she asked. “Do you want to stay here?”
Mollymauk looked bewildered by the question. “Well, I… I like it here. I like all of you… I’ve nowhere else to go.”
“Well, if that is the only thing keeping you here… I mean, I understand, and I am not trying to convince you of anything. When I watch you, it feels like everything is decided for you by Gustav and Desmond. It does not seem like you are the captain of your own ship. And I don’t want to overstep my bounds, it’s just that I was...”
Yasha trailed off. She noticed something strange yet familiar about Mollymauk’s face. His head had drooped, his lips were parted, and his eyes no longer met hers.
“...Curious.”
He stared below Yasha, his eyes boring holes in her chest.
“Mollymauk?”
"Empty," he whispered.
She sighed. Even after getting over his initial state of muteness, he wasn’t immune to spells like this. She waved a hand in front of his face. There was no response. Her sight wandered to the deck of cards, still under his palm. Slowly, he looked back up
When she saw his face again, she thought that he had begun to cry, as the corners of his eyes began to shimmer. But her heart fell into her stomach when thin trails of red began carving paths down his face.
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
Yasha reached for him. “Molly--”
She felt her limbs lock up. Her breath hitched in surprise.
Mollymauk snapped to a sudden sense of alertness. “Yasha?”
Not even her fingers responded. When she tried to move, her muscle merely tensed, and the strain hurt. Mollymauk held his fingers to his temples. He looked upset. He murmured something that Yasha didn’t understand. Something in a different language.
Yasha grit her teeth. She tensed her muscles to the point that she felt like they would pop. Grunting from the stress, she was able to move her fingers and flex them. She released, and she slumped onto the table, sweating and breathing hard.
Mollymauk grabbed her. “Miss Yasha? Are you alright?” he stammered frantically. “I-I’m sorry!”
Yasha continued to heave. Every muscle in her body was sore. “You don’t know?” she said between breaths.
“I don’t.”
Yasha pushed herself back up, her breathing still uneven. “What is that?” she asked. “That thing that happens to you.”
“A blood maledict.”
“A what?”
Molly still held fast to Yasha’s biceps. Their faces were close. “I can’t control it yet,” he said. “Desmond told me that it’s something certain orders of warriors are able to do.”
“Could you do them before?”
“Before what?”
“Before you came here.”
“I don’t know.”
Yasha pushed her palm into Mollymauk’s face, cupping it gently and pressing her thumb into his cheek. The blood that had run down it smeared under her fingers as she did. He showed no discomfort or resistance, not even when Yasha pressed her thumb to his lips and tilted his head.
There she was.
She could see her reflection as clear as day, in a pool of rainwater by the altar of the Storm Lord.
Feel the pulsing of your heart against your bones, Orphan Maker. Like rolls of thunder or tremors in the earth.
She saw more. She saw her reflection in the bowl carved out of wood, trying to finish the bitter tea given to her by the woman in her village.
Don’t drink it all, Yasha. I won’t be able to see the kind of person you’ll become.
Frightened. Unsure. But overtaken by a lust of some kind. A lust to continue living, despite everything.
“Do you have gaps in your memory, Mollymauk?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“What do you remember?”
Mollymauk leaned into her hand. “Walking. Trees. Seeing Gustav. Coming here.”
Oh.
Oh.
It took a moment, but suddenly it made a world of sense. The silence. The vacancy. The assumed regression from a man to a child.
Yasha had thought before that she had nothing. She had been wrong.
Now, she held in her hands someone who truly had nothing.
And she knew not what to do.
Yasha placed her other hand on his own that rested on the table, much smaller in comparison. The blood from his face had begun to drip in beads onto the tablecloth. “Um.. are you here for a reading?”
The life and animation returned to Mollymauk’s face. Slowly, he shook his head free and stared at her curiously. “What?”
“Are you here for a reading?” Yasha repeated. “Let me do one for you.”
“But you don’t know how to read the cards.”
“You can tell me their meanings,” Yasha said.
He still looked unsure. “Gustav says that tarot cards don’t work unless somebody gives them to you.”
Already this man was so steeped in the superstition that surrounded these frivolous practices, Yasha thought.
“Will you give them to me then?” she asked. “At least to borrow. I’ll take good care of them.”
Mollymauk considered it. At last, he said, “A three-card spread.”
“Hm?”
“Three cards, one for the past, one for the present, and one for the future,” he explained. “Shuffle the deck and fan them out. I’ll pick three.” He released the deck. “It’s the simplest one.”
“...Alright.”
The deck had weight. It was difficult to fan them all out so that each was exposed. Mollymauk carefully picked three cards, two on one side and one on the other. As per his instructions, she laid them face down in front of her. It felt silly, out of place. But she allowed herself to indulge. She turned over the first one to her right. What came up was an image of a youth carrying a satchel over one shoulder, with text that read “THE FOOL.” It was flipped upside down. Yasha tried to correct it, but Molly stopped her.
“Don’t. It has a meaning when it’s reversed as well.”
“What does it mean?”
Mollymauk sighed. “Carelessness. Recklessness. Stupidity.”
Yasha turned the second card over. On it was a graphic of a man walking away from a tower of goblets. “What is this one?”
“The Eight of Cups,” said Mollymauk. “It means aimlessness and abandonment. Wandering.”
Yasha turned over the final card, only to reveal one all too familiar, depicting a hooded figure with a skull for a face.
Mollymauk’s eyes widened. “That’s--”
“I know what it is.” Yasha put a fist to her lips and stared at the cards. She pondered their meanings. It all still seemed dreadfully pointless. The fact that familiarity was involved in their meanings was a trick of the psyche. Still, it was Mollymauk’s only source of identity that she knew of.
She pointed to the Fool. “Um… you’ve made mistakes in the past. Stupid-- No, reckless mistakes. And then, ah…” she pointed to the Eight of Cups. “You were left behind. By someone. O-Or something. And I think now you feel like you’re alone, but…” she rested a hand on Death. “You will be reborn. Any chains that may bind you will be rended asunder. You will change, but it will not be a change from which you are able to escape.”
Silence.
Yasha felt embarrassed. She was not nearly as articulate as Mollymauk. The words left a strange taste in her mouth. “Um… how was that?” she asked.
“I can’t say.” Mollymauk began to sop the blood from his eyes with the back of his hand. "My past, to me, is as much a mystery as my future.”
Yasha squeezed Molly’s free hand. “Thank you, Mollymauk. For the reading. I need to go back to work now.”
“Mm.”
“Um... “ she began. “Where I come from, people have more than just one name. They have the name that their parents give them, and then the name that the tribe gives them,” she said. “Which, you know, is also sort of like family.”
“Interesting,” Mollymauk responded, still wiping the blood from his face.
“Is it alright if I give you a name?” she asked. “You don’t have to use it if you don’t like it.”
“What would you call me?” Molly asked, intrigued.
Yasha moved in close, ripping a piece of her cloth tabard with which to wipe Mollymauk’s face clean. Again, he was receptive. There was no struggle to be had, and the streams of bloody tears came off. Yasha bumped her forehead against his, bracing her hand against the back of his head.
“Tealeaf.”
Yasha rose, pushing aside the beads and curtains to the tent. She looked back once, to see him holding the makeshift rag gently against his cheek. “Thank you, Miss Yasha.”
“Please, just Yasha.”
The sunlight was harsh. Yasha had underestimated how dark it really was in the tiny, jury-rigged tent. She had to squint for her eyes to adjust properly. She wondered if that was part of the “small taste of the carnival” Gustav was talking about, a small palate cleanser to prepare you for spending an hour in an even darker tent and then coming back out into full sunlight. The man in question was still waiting for her expectantly about eight yards away from the tent.
“Well?” he broached, somewhat nervous. “Did it go alright? You were in there for a while.”
Yasha kept walking, not even looking at Gustav. “He’s ready.”
“He’s…” Gustav doggedly followed her. “Wait, Yasha, what does that mean? Did it go well? Was he amiable?”
“I don’t know, go ask him. I have work to do.”
Gustav groaned, exasperated. “Damn, Yasha.” He disappeared into the tent.
A cold, bitter wind blew Yasha’s hair behind her as she walked. It would chill anyone else to do the bone, but to Yasha it felt invigorating.
She wondered, for a moment, if all those years ago, she really had glanced Gustav, Desmond, the circus, Mollymauk, staring down at leaves at the bottom of a bowl all those years ago. Or even past that. The people that Molly had talked about. The invisible strangers who would someday give her their love and lives.
You will change, my Orphan Maker. You will grow tired of being complicit. You will travel, you will grow, and you will change.
And you will be reborn.
“Horseshit,” Yasha whispered.
The sounds and songs of labor filled her ears again.
There truly was no better feeling than breaking a sweat in the shivering cold.