“To the Carnival?”
He nodded. “It was filled with dreaming kids. It was the first time I’d seen other children. I was six at the time, in Earth years anyway. I had no idea how to approach them. But luckily for me, when kids dream, they open up. They are no longer shy or frightened. They become the people they wish they were in waking life. So they approached me. I never had to do anything. We were… instant friends.”
Addie moved that through her mind, smiling at the thought. She knew exactly what he was talking about. She’d always been a terrified child, considered anti-social by her parents, shy by her peers, bitchy by people who had no patience with tentative emotions. In her dreams, she took charge. She’d always been a lucid dreamer, a trait she’d realized in her adulthood that she shared with few. She was not only a lucid dreamer – she could control her dreams.
In that special, sacred realm, she was Wonder Woman. She was Xena. She was Sarah, standing in the midst of the Labyrinth, knowing the Goblin King was watching her, and relishing every second of it. She was Storm from the X-Men, bringing the fury of the heavens down upon her enemies – enemies she constructed with her own thoughts, out of her own subconscious need to regain control over adversity. To be in charge of her fate once more.
In dreams, you became what you always wished you were. Just like he said.
“I can’t tell you how much I understand that,” she said softly.
Nicholas moved in his seat, rolling over on his side to face her. It was a feat of agility and athleticism to maintain balance as he did in that position, and he seemed to do it without any effort at all. “Sure you can.”
She blinked. Then she licked her lips, and her fingertips absent-mindedly brushed the inner skin of her wrist. A gold balance of choices teeter-tottered back and forth in her head… yes, no, yes, no… tell him, don’t tell him. Just spit it out. Just be honest.
I’ll lose him.
Then he wasn’t worth keeping.
She closed her eyes and sat up on the beast, swinging one leg over to sit side-saddle. Then she took off her leather jacket, laid it down beside her, and took a deep breath. She rolled up her shirt sleeves and held up her arms, wrist-out.
“When I was fourteen years old, I reached a breaking point in my life. I had been bullied relentlessly for four years. They’d broken my nose, my jaw, and killed two of my teeth. They set my locker on fire, trapped me in a stall in the locker room, and spread false rumors about my sexuality in a time when people were a lot less accepting of anything but vanilla.”
She shook her head, hopelessly. “I am a high functioning adult on the autism spectrum. Something I didn’t discover until a few years ago, but something that explains so much of what I was like when I was a kid. I was so shy, so quiet… and so very miserable. I felt the desperate need to be in control of my surroundings, so much so that I used to take the blankets and sheets off of my bed so they wouldn’t wrinkle. I couldn’t control my family life or my school life, so I tried to control my room… or rather, part of my room since I shared it with my sister.” She licked her lips, gazing far away. “Awkward, outspoken in the wrong way, sensitive to heat and cold and discomfort, quiet and distant? I was fodder for bullies….” She closed her eyes again as her heart began pounding and her fingers and toes tingled uncomfortably. Control, she told herself. You have it now. High-functioning adults with autism were ten times more likely to commit suicide than adults without autism, and it was worse for teens. She’d learned the hard way. You’re here, not there. You can remember without re-living. You are in control now. You have been for a long time.
Another deep breath had her continuing. “That morning, I made it into my father’s closet. He had so many guns, shot guns, rifles, revolvers… I stared at them, trying to decide which one to use. I had come to a decision. I was going to use the gun on someone. Either them – or me. One way or another, I was going to end the pain once and for all.”
It was silent on the Carousel. The music had stopped, the breeze was gentle. But in her mind, there were noises. Sirens. The beeping of machines. Distant screams. She would always hear them – always.
“I chose my weapon. It was already loaded, so I didn’t need to mess with bullets.” She shook her head, trying to clear it of the clouds of pain. “I don’t know how long I stared down at it. In the end, I decided… taking their lives would hurt others, not them. It would hurt their parents, though I barely gave a shit. As far as I was concerned, their parents could die too for letting them do what they did to me. But I thought of little brothers and sisters. I thought of grandparents. I don’t know why, but I did.” She sighed heavily. “In the end, it wasn’t going to be them. It was going to be me. I was how I was going to put an end to the pain. I was going to put an end to me.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Adelaide paused as the past claimed her heart and squeezed. “But when I put the gun in my mouth, I couldn’t pull the trigger. I kept thinking of the mess my own little brothers and sister would find. I kept thinking of how they would have to live with that sight the rest of their lives. All the blood and the mess.”
She turned her wrists inward and her gaze refocused on the long, thin scars that traveled down the center of either arm. “I put the gun away, closed the closet, and went upstairs to my room. I opened a bottle of allergy medicine and poured half of it into my mouth. All I could hold.”
Pain went through her chest, a spike of agonizing, sharp fear at the memory. She touched her neck and lowered her head, breathing deeply. When she could talk again, she said, “Once I got the pills down, I realized they might not work. I got so scared they wouldn’t. No one can understand that kind of fear, that fear that exists between barely living and death. Even if I made it and wasn’t permanently disabled, I would wake up to the same religious family that would tell me I was going to hell and that I’d done the worst thing a person could do, a cowardly thing and a selfish thing, and I would never be forgiven. That was what my mom told me once when I ran away, after all. ‘You’ve embarrassed me and I will never forgive you.’ I couldn’t stop thinking of the scowl on her face, the cold shoulder, the silent treatment she’d give me as she stuck her nose back into a Stephen King novel and pretended I didn’t exist.”
She shook her head, placing her hand to her forehead. “I was already in so much pain – so much – I knew I couldn’t handle this on top of it all. I would rather not exist for real. So in a blind panic, I ran to the bathroom, pulled a shaving razor from one of the drawers, and smashed it under my boot. All thoughts of family finding a bloody mess flew from my mind. I took the razor out of the broken plastic, and….” She hiccupped, realizing suddenly that her cheeks were wet. Her chest was so tight, she couldn’t fully breathe.
Suddenly, she was enveloped in warmth. Strong arms were around her, steely but gentle, secure and tight, but absolutely welcome. She sobbed, no longer in control of the pain coming out of her. The memory was too much, and she had never told another living soul her story. “I was dead in that emergency room for seven minutes and thirteen seconds,” she said between sobs that racked her memory-torn body. She was drenching his shirt, she was sure, and for once in her life, she didn’t care. She just didn’t care that her pain was showing, that it was coming out, and that it was fucking messy. That was life.
“They thought I would come back with permanent brain damage, maybe unable to function. But when I woke up,” she said as she pulled slightly back and rubbed the tears from her face, “I was just… different.” She shook her head. “I… I could see things. The future. Sometimes, anyway.” She turned away, and he let her. But she was seriously wishing she had a tissue.
Around her right arm, his hand appeared. Between his fingers was a tissue.
She almost laughed. But she wasn’t quite to that point yet. Instead, she noisily blew her nose and took a shaky, but deep breath. “My mom never told me that I was selfish. Instead, she took me to her Bingo get-togethers. She took me into gas stations when s
he bought lottery tickets. She started to want to be around me as much as she’d always wanted to be around my much more witty, much more out-going sister. I began to think… Maybe this isn’t so bad. Maybe it was meant to be. My father even sued the school and had the kids who’d bullied me expelled.” She shrugged and turned back to face Nicholas.
“I wore long-sleeved shirts to hide the scars, and they had an air conditioner installed in the house so I wouldn’t be too hot. It was southern New Mexico,” she shook her head. “It was always hot. But I was finally starting to feel comfortable in my skin….” A darkness passed over her, and once more her chest was too tight. “And then my father was in a car accident. He was T-boned at an intersection by a teen in a pickup who was texting on his phone.”
She lowered her head again and closed her eyes. “He didn’t survive. The teen who’d been texting survived. He was paralyzed, but alive. But my father was taken from me that day.”
She turned away from Nicholas and leaned against the massive crystal monster, lowering her forehead to its cool surface. It felt good. “I never had a vision about it. There was no warning. And my mother has never forgiven me for that. She never will.”
Addie lifted her head and stared at nothing. “I was right back where I started, in my own little hell.” She ran her hand over the crystal absent-mindedly, then picked up her jacket and put it back on. Wherever the Carousel was flying, the air was growing cooler. “So I got my GED and I left. I bunked with three roommates in Lubbock, TX and decided I would get a job and save to go to school. But then I had a vision that changed the course of my life for the better.”
Talking about this aspect of her past eased the tightness of the band around her chest. It helped. So she kept going. “They were the winning numbers in a massive jackpot lottery that covered several states. I figured, ‘what the hell?’ and I bought a ticket with those numbers. I honestly didn’t think I would win. I mean, I couldn’t save my father... why would fate decide this was more important?”
Suddenly, the band around her chest was back.
“But it did. And I won.” She smiled tightly as she looked up at the handsome king before her. “It was a two-hundred and eighty-six million dollar jackpot. There was one other winner. After taxes, we each walked away with ninety million. And I started doing what I do now.”
Nicholas looked down at her for a long, long time. His eyes were doorways to another world, one filled with all the attention she had ever needed, and twice the approval. It was a wondrous thing to see. There was no judgment in his features, no shock, no pity. Instead, he smiled a slow and beautiful smile and gently, so gently, cupped her still-damp cheek.
“Saving the world,” he said softly.
She sniffed a little, and shrugged deprecatingly. “Yeah… I guess.”
“I know,” he said. “Adelaide… I already knew all of this. I know you, more than you think.”
Addie felt confused. “You do? I mean… you did?” He knew about her wrists? Her past? Her… dying?
He nodded. “And I also know it tears you up that you can’t save the whole world,” he told her, his thumb brushing gently across her cheekbone, wiping away the last of her tears. “Despite what it has done to you, you still want to save it. But it’s too damn big, Addie. No one can save it all. You’re an angel for even trying.”
An angel? she thought, “Not likely.”
“Okay, then,” he compromised, smiling. “Maybe a bodhisattva.”
“A what?”
“Buddhists believe that bodhisattvas are souls who have found Nirvana, but who care so much about others, they come back to the world of the living. They leave Nirvana behind to help others reach it.”
Bodhisattva… she thought slowly, sounding it out in her head. She was convinced she was no great soul, and she was pretty sure she wasn’t a Buddhist. But when she’d died, she’d seen nothing except – well, nothing. It wasn’t light, and it wasn’t black. There’d been no tunnel, no spiritual guide, no meeting people from her past. Instead, it was a rainbow kind of nothing she’d floated in. It was this thing that literally could not be described, and it was beyond peaceful.
In the moments it took her pulse and blood pressure to bottom out, she went from overwhelmingly nauseated and terrified to feeling nothing whatsoever. It was the most welcome release, and the purest relief. She’d gone from abjectly horrified of her present situation to distant, drifting, and unaware. She’d entered a state where thought didn’t really happen.
And then she’d been pulled back. She’d opened her eyes to find people all around her hospital bed, machines beeping, doctors shouting orders, someone saying her name over and over again. She’d realized it wasn’t over, there was no release yet. She’d returned.
She laughed, shaking her head. “Well, it’s certainly a nice thought.”
“You’re a nice thought, Addie,” he told her, dropping his hand and smiling like he meant it. “Now I want to show you something else. Come with me.”
Addie watched him turn and move to the edge of the Carousel, once more making her pulse speed up by getting too close to a ledge. But this time, she had some control over it, knowing what she now knew about him and the Carnival.
“Come here,” he repeated, gesturing her over.
She moved around the glass monsters to where he was standing. Slowly, she inched forward until she could look over the edge. The wind played with her hair, knotting it terribly. But she ignored it. The view below was too good, too perfect for her to screw it up by caring about anything else.
“It’s breathtaking,” she said.
“It’s the Nightmare Realm,” he told her. “The first time I flew over it all those years ago, I fell in love. And I knew I was meant to be king.” He turned to her. “You’ve been to hell and back. Those scars on your arms are the marks that appear when you suffer so much pain, it literally kills you. Yet you returned. And now your soul has the depth that can only come with dying. You paid the ultimate sacrifice for someone else’s cruelty. Yet you remain here in the world that harmed you so that you can do for others what no one would do for you.” He took her hands in his and gently lifted one to his lips, where he placed upon it a tender kiss.
“You are the most beautiful soul I have ever known, Adelaide.” Still holding her hands, he turned back to the glittering world below them where the Nightmare Realm stretched to an unknown and dark horizon an eternity away. “This is my kingdom.” He was silent a moment. And then he said, “And now it’s yours.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
There was a storm brewing over the land. In the distance, clouds gathered dark and low atop the ocean. They roiled and rolled, drawing closer, moving in. Trouble was coming. So much more than any of the Kings knew.
William Balthazar Solan stood on the roof corner of one of the tallest buildings in the city and cast his gaze out toward the sea. Countless stories below, traffic trudged and mulled, people tread back and forth in their daily rhythms, and time kept them all strictly in line. It ruthlessly doled out their schedules, and gave silent orders that everyone heard and no one could defy.
William smiled a wry smile that no one saw and pulled a very special pocket watch from the inner pocket of his three-piece suit. He glanced down at it when something on the street below caught his eye. His vision adjusted, and he frowned.
Then he blinked – and suddenly, he was stepping onto the sidewalk to get a closer look.
A man was getting into the back of a limousine. The man… was Arach, the Dragon King. Very much alive and breathing.
The man who was supposed to be dead, supposed to have been destroyed by the Entity, was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket that probably cost as much as William’s suit, and he was climbing casually into the back of a Bentley limousine. He gave a cautious glance over his shoulder at the crowd on the street, then ducked his head and disappeared in the black interior.
William gave his next move but a second’s thought. And then he smiled and vanishe
d.
When Arach looked up from his phone, he froze. The car had already begun to pull out into the busy taxi-laden traffic, and he and William were the only two sitting in the back of the car. It took a moment for Arach to adjust to the sudden and unexpected intrusion, but he did so. He put his phone in his inner jacket pocket and leaned back against the car’s leather upholstery.
“I was wondering when you were going to confront me.”
“I was too,” said the Time King. William folded his fingers over his knee and cocked his head to one side. “I must say I’m a little surprised you’re showing your face in public so soon.”
“It’s been seven months.”
“The Kings are immortal. Seven months is seven seconds. As far as they are concerned, you just died.”
The former Dragon King smiled. “As far as they are concerned, maybe. But what about you, Cronos? You were never convinced, were you?”
William watched him for a moment. Cronos. it was a name he hadn’t heard in a very long… time.
“By process of elimination alone, it would have been ridiculous for me to believe you were anything but the Traitor,” William told the Traitor. “But no.” He sighed. He’d known all along. It was a part of who he was. “You’re right, of course. I was never convinced. But I never expected to see you walking in broad daylight through Seattle.”
“I’m antsy,” the former Dragon King chuckled. “The old hag left me with an injury that needs stretching out from time to time. And hiding has never come naturally to me.”
“I’m not certain you realize your choices,” said William coolly as he, too, leaned back. “Hide or kill the Kings, Queens, and the Entity.”
The former Dragon King watched William a good while before he finally took a breath and said, “Yes, I suppose that sums it up rather succinctly.”
William smiled. “So you plan to kill them.”
Now the Traitor smiled too. “That sums it up quite nicely as well.” And then his smile faded, slipping away as he leaned forward, and his green gaze focused on William’s. “You know whether I will succeed or fail, don’t you Cronos?”