Abodement [uh-bode-ment], noun. 1. A foreboding, an omen. 2. A sign that something either good or bad is about to happen.
"It's a cougar," said Blair, busy weaving Tsubaki's hair into a fantastical waterfall of elaborate braids.
"It could be a raccoon or something," Liz protested. "Or a wolf."
"Or just the monster," Maka put in, yawning.
"It's a cougar," Blair, the feline expert, repeated firmly, looking haughtily down her button nose at them all.
Soul snorted, sitting across the crackling fire from all of them . His eyes gleamed opaque rose-gold in the light. "Does it matter? It's obviously big, it's probably got sharp teeth, and it sounds hungry. Nothin' makes a sound like that unless it's hungry."
Maka grinned at him, then got up and walked around the firepit to sit beside him. He scowled half-heartedly when Blair giggled, but he lifted one arm anyway and slung it around her shoulders. She waved away the smoke from his cigarette, wrinkling her nose; he took one last drag, blew it away from her face, then put it out on the bottom of his boot. When she kissed him, he tasted sweetly of smoke and lemonade.
"Got your scythe, bearcat?" he said quietly. The corners of his mouth kicked up, just a little. He still rarely smiled, but it stopped her besotted heart every time.
"Please," she scoffed, staring into the glowing center of the leaping flames until her eyes began to water. "You think I'd forget it?" Ever overprotective, Soul just shrugged.
The thing in the night yowled again, a high, haunting scream like a woman gone mad. The hair on Maka's arms stood up, and her stomach began to flip-flop.
"Cougar," said Blair again, frowning as one of her caged tigers answered its wild kin with a challenging rumble. "She's angry, too."
"I told you all there was something out there!" Pattie shouted, pointing at everyone in turn before spinning her gun around one finger and making them all nervous. Her laughter was as sweet as ever, rising like a chain of silver bells to mingle with the stars, but her smile was too wide and showed too many teeth. Liz, faithfully beside her sister and holding her own gun, was calmer on the outside, but by now Maka knew when the Brooklyn girl was about to ignite.
Soul curled his fingers possessively through Maka's hair, then stood, brushing off his trousers. "Stein and everybody're watching the animals," he said impatiently, jerking a thumb towards the neat line of colorful train cars gleaming dully behind them. "Let's go already. Moon's up."
He was right; they had light aplenty for what they were about to do. They didn't all need to go fight what was probably one lone monster, two at most, but they'd been on the road for a long time now, licking their wounds and brooding. The circus was still smarting from the midsummer's night attack. Now, four months later, their canvas tents were still stained and torn, and the train cars were equally battered. Maka said it gave them 'character' but Soul had his doubts. More importantly, if such a massive army of monsters had happened across them once- or been herded to them somehow in one great pack, as Chrona still insisted was the case- then it could occur again. Lord Death had sent them fleeing north at high speeds, until Harvar's ferocious golden sparks lit up the humming tracks like a gorgeous nightmare.
They'd been running, but finally, in this gentle, forested place, they felt safe enough to rest. The people who lived in this valley needed help, and that was something the circus could give. More than that, the act of helping would be sweet catharsis.
Maka grabbed her scythe from where she'd left it, leaning safe against the indigo-blue shingles of Tsubaki's wagon. The new shaft Black Star had made her was still strange against her palms, strong and sanded silky-smooth, but unfamiliar. He'd made certain she wouldn't get splinters, but the weight was wrong, and the whorls rippling through the wood weren't what she knew. "What about Chrona?" she said uneasily.
Soul regarded her with raised brows, both hands shoved into his pockets. "Chrona's afraid of the dark. You know that."She swallowed. Chrona was more than afraid. "They'll be fine with Mira tonight, and Lord Death wants whatever's been eating the livestock around here dead."
She sighed and brushed the back of her hand against his. "All right."
"Come on, bearkitten," Black Star shouted teasingly, appearing from the darkness with a whoop and speeding by them, snatching Tsubaki up by the waist and giving her a twirl. "Let's go kill some big, bad monsters already!"
Maka felt her whole body light up, and her own laugh surprised her. The night was so beautiful that it was hard to believe anything evil could survive in it. The thickly forested mountains all around them were washed in glorious, icy blues, drenched in stark moonlight and nightmare shadows, and the cool winds made the branches dance. There were fireflies blinking in the grass and white moths twirling like lost spirits above the flames. The cougar howled again, closer now, and somewhere else, a branch cracked. Maka held her scythe tighter, closing her eyes to listen to the pounding drumbeat of her own heart. She'd had her memories back for a while now, all of them, and it still amazed her how truly alive being with the Dire Circus made her feel, how much it had become home.
Even if half her life now involved killing humans who'd changed into demons.
It was mad, but also simple. At least, it seemed so, in comparison to her life before Medusa's attack, before her visit to Jack Barrow, before the knowledge of how easy it was to turn men into monsters came to her. They were evil, turned inside out so all could see it, and she put them down before they could hurt anyone else. Easy enough, almost black and white, and at least she had her friends by her side during all the bitter bloodshed.
Still, in her books, the heroes always knew they were in the right with complete and utter certainty. They knew the dragon had to die to free the princess. She only felt absolutely, completely at peace when she was in Soul's arms, listening to the beat of his heart and feeling him sleepily tap out a gentle rhythm on her bones. The rest of the time...
She still hated killing what had once been human, still feared the inconvenient shades of grey. But this was her life now, wild and magical, and she was, had always been, the kind of person to embrace that.
Black Star whirled by and scooped her up, scythe and all. She shrieked in surprise, startled out of her dark thoughts. "Put me down, you blithering idiot!"
"No way!" he bellowed, spinning her in a sickening circle, until the stars blurred into a heavenly mass of glittering, ghost-white streaks. "We're going prowling, Albarn! There's monsters in them there woods!"
She had to laugh again as he flung her over his shoulder and barrelled into the swaying trees, after the rest of their friends. Soul, following behind them at a lazy jog, rolled his eyes.
Maka blew him a kiss, dizzy with joy.
She'd changed so little, Soul thought, and yet so much.
He sat on the steps of his wagon, head still pounding from the blow he'd taken during last night's rumble, and watched her load up the dogs, laughing as they bounced eagerly around her feet. She was as short and sinewy as ever, deceptively strong, her golden hair grown longer now, and even more addicting to the touch. He caught the smile in her green eyes when she glanced at him.
It wasn't as if he weren't used to Maka being a confusing bundle of delightful contradictions. Confounding him was basically her mission in life. Yet he found himself quietly taken aback when she said things like, "Oh, did you know that our whole entire galaxy's just one out of many?" or, "Can you believe that Mary Shelley was only eighteen when she started writing Frankenstein?"
She was so very clever, his new-old bearcat. She read like she breathed, and his poor wagon creaked and groaned, laden in every corner with wobbly stacks of books. He'd been right to think her smart, but that had only been half of it. She was brilliant, and she was so far out of his league that it was frankly ridiculous. Before, he'd known without a doubt that she was special, but he hadn't realized just how bright she shone until he met all of her. The discoveries were intoxicating, but terrifying. Every time she touched him, he found himself doing something ominously close to praying.
She came over, brushing her hands off on her dusty trousers, and awarded him a glowing smile. "Dogs are all loaded."
"Kilik'll get us moving soon, then. About time." He stood up, ignoring the way his vision spun, and went inside. Her scythe was there against the wall, freshly cleaned, but she'd missed a single, bloody fingerprint on the blade.
The monster they'd hunted last night had begged Soul for its miserable life, in words only he could hear.
"How's your head?" she said softly, sliding the bolt of his brand-new door and plopping down onto the bed, toeing her boots off.
"Fine."
"Liar."
"Mostly fine?"
She laughed. "That's better."
"D'you know your laugh's different now?" he muttered, shoving a few of her books out of the way and slumping next to her.
"Happier?" she asked saucily, snagging one of his suspenders to tug him closer before she started rubbing his temples.
He made an involuntary sound of pleasure, gave in, and collapsed entirely, ignoring the spine of Jane Eyre that was digging into his kidney. With the way she read and re-read that thing, it'd fall apart any day now, and then he wouldn't have to duel with it for her attention. "And less afraid."
"I was afraid, all the time, at least a little bit." She poked his nose. "Not anymore, though."
Soul sighed blissfully, then grabbed onto the edge of the bed as the train gave a lurch and started to slowly rattle forward. "What's your earliest memory?" he asked, once they'd steadied out. They had to speak a little louder now, over the rattle and rumble of the train and the humming wind.
Her scarred fingertips paused for a moment against his skin as she thought. The question wasn't as random as it seemed. It was a sort of game they'd played since she first got her memories back. They'd both had to re-learn Maka all over again. For him, it had been a secret delight, asking anything and everything to while away the coldest midnight hours, as their wounds healed and the circus rolled onwards. For her, it had been comforting, a way to weave her past and present selves together.
"I was three or four, I think," she said slowly. Soul laid his aching head down on her lap. "My mother and father were fighting. Shouting, you know. I don't remember what about, but probably another woman. After, we went to town for sundaes, and it was so confusing. I thought they hated each other, but when they wanted to, they lied about it so well… That's my first memory."
"Shitty," he muttered. "I'm still traumatized from meeting your idiot old man, by the way."
"I'm not surprised." She grimaced and huffed out half a laugh.
He decided to turn her attention to something happier. "Next place we stop, we're opening for business, Lord Death said. About time, too!" He was dying to play again. It had been far too long. His red mask and the keys of his piano were gathering dust. "You can get the rubes with that new routine. They won't know what hit 'em. We'll make so much money."
Maka laughed a little, then curled to kiss his forehead. He went a bit cross-eyed, the better to stare at her. "Only as long as I've got my new song to ride to."
He smiled. It only felt natural in her presence. "You know it."
Once, he'd been so afraid, to see her and her blood-red horse moving to his music. Now he only felt anticipation burning his fingertips; that, and her silken-fire skin.
Four days later, the train ground to a stop and the tents began to go up, swelling like mushrooms in an empty field three miles from a glittering city.
Maka finished helping Mira set up the ticket booth, then went looking for her Soul.
He'd been waiting for her, smoking a cigarette, slouching against the side of the dogs' train car and staring out at the forest through his hair. He looked tired, and she frowned at the cigarette- she hated the smell of them, and he usually tried not to smoke anymore unless he was especially stressed. Yet he seemed calm right now, as if he had all the time in the world just to stand there, breathing ghost-grey curls of smoke into the chilly, late-autumn air and watching the trees shiver. He was perfectly at home in his loneliness.
She became aware that she was staring at him with a start, and he turned to blink at her. "Why does your face look like that?" he said suspiciously after a moment, stomping out his cigarette.
"My face is my face," she said haughtily, hoping to distract him.
It didn't work. He just raised an eyebrow and waited her out, gnawing absently on a nail until she smacked his hand away from his mouth. She tried to slump against the train car for a while and outlast him, but it failed. Finally she mumbled, hiding her smile behind her hand, "I love you."
"Ah, there it is." He snickered, and then he took a deep breath that she pretended not to notice. "I love you too."
The thin braid of red horsehair wrapped around his wrist glowed in the watery sunlight. "I'm so happy," she said quietly, stepping forward and pushing her face into the curve of his neck in a bid to hide her pink cheeks. "I keep thinking- I keep-"
"Thinking it's too good to be true?" he suggested, tugging one of her pigtails with ungentle fingers that made her shiver.
"Yes," she said. "Yes, but I'm glad. I think we can settle now. You know, we've stopped, we're performing tomorrow." It was hard to put into words, but she tried. "It feels like we can go forward now, maybe?" She was so glad to finally have a past, because somehow it made the idea of a future seem much more attainable.
"Mmm," he hummed, and she melted beneath the force of the beautiful, boyish grin he aimed her way. It was an expression she saw so seldom from Soul- the best things about him struggled, always, beneath the guilt. It was also an expression that hurt for all the lost potential in him it implied. Not that she didn't love him exactly as he was; he was the one who felt broken. "I like that."
She grinned back helplessly, and his eyes warmed as he bent to kiss her.
To their right, something crashed. They both jumped, then spun to see.
"We're leaving. No show here," Marie said sadly, wiping her forehead as she kicked the heavy wooden bench she'd just dropped. It flew another five feet.
"Why?" Maka bellowed back, ignoring Soul's wince as he half-covered his ears.
Marie just shrugged, made an annoyed face, and pointed towards Lord Death's dark wagon.
Maka squinted at it thoughtfully. "Guess that's it for actually making some money," Soul said, clearly disgusted. "I'm going to murder someone if I can't play soon."
"Don't be a baby, just go play your piano for the dogs or something," Maka mumbled.
"There's an idea," he snorted. "I'll train 'em to bark in harmony."
She laughed, but she was having a hard time tearing her eyes away from the small black wagon, where so many strange moments in her life had occurred. When she blinked she could almost see Jacqueline's shining, rainbow jewels reflecting against the back of her eyelids. Finally, unable to help herself, she bobbed up on her tippy-toes to kiss Soul on the cheek and walked on down the tracks to knock.
The black door swung open immediately of its own accord, silent on rusted brass hinges.
Lord Death managed, in that odd way he had, to convey a smile, though his mask, of course, didn't move at all. "Hello, Maka," he said amiably. "What's the occasion?"
She stepped inside with a cautious nod, a little amused by the way the ragged edges of his cloak writhed up to touch her boots. Amused until the motions reminded her of Medusa's golden snake, anyway. "Hi." She supposed she might as well dive right in headfirst. "Listen, level with me. How come we're moving on already? We were just getting set up. Everybody's tired." He knew that, of course, but she thought a pointed reminder might be in order. Curiosity might have killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back, and Maka was nothing if not curious.
He started to do his creepy, looming 'shadow of doom' thing, though she didn't think he was aware of it. "Well," he said after a moment, tapping one gloved finger against his arm. "This particular town isn't what I thought initially. I forgot… We'll stop soon, but not here."
She frowned at him and crossed her arms. "What's wrong with here? Is everything okay?"
There was a somber tension in his voice when he said, "No, everything's not okay, and we're leaving as soon as we can. Maka, I'd like to ask you for a favor."
She stiffened. The dim, musty air in his tiny wagon was suddenly more suffocating than ever. Lord Death had been good to her in many ways, but she hadn't forgotten the other things he'd done. "Like what, exactly?" she said finally, trying hard not to sound suspicious.
She failed. He coughed out a soft, raspy laugh, shook his head, then told her, "I'd like you to keep Soul busy until we leave."
"Excuse me?" Maka aimed her gaze at his nose-hole; direct eye-socket contact made her twitchy, though she felt that was understandable.
"Distract him. I don't want him going into the city, or paying attention to it at all. Please."
It was the last word that made her pause. Lord Death was a dignified, scary, complicated man, and he wore his role as ringmaster well. He was always in command, always cool, even when things were completely balled up. To hear the weariness in his quiet 'please', to see the slump of his sharp, bony shoulders-
"Fine," she said grimly, scowling down at her scuffed boots. "But later, you owe me an explanation. Understand? No more lying to me because you think it's better or safer. And if he asks me outright, I'm not going to lie to him. I'm only doing this because it's obvious you're trying to protect him." Or protect yourself, she thought silently, but she didn't say it. Just because she respected Lord Death, and was grateful for his ferocious protection, didn't mean she liked how easily he manipulated people.
The strange, empty mask looked at her inscrutably, shining like the moon in the dark. "Thank you, Maka. I'm grateful. You know, you remind me more of your mother every day."
"Can the sweet talk," she snapped, storming out into the blinding sun and only just refraining from slamming his door.
Twenty minutes later, with Soul nowhere to be found, Maka was standing next to the railroad tracks, staring at the distant smoke of the city, confusion and cold fear creeping up her spine.
"He just went to go buy some smokes, what's the big deal?" Black Star said again, waving a hand in front of her face like he thought she might explode.
She didn't know why Soul needed to stay away from this place, but whatever was going to happen, she had to be there for him.
"Gotta go," she choked out, taking off at a dead run.
NOTES:
When Maka references 'galaxies', plural, it's something she realistically could have known. In 1923, Hubble showed that galaxies exist outside the Milky Way galaxy (our own, containing our solar system and billions of others!). Cool, right? Especially for the '20's.
'Rubes' is circus lingo for the people who come and pay to see the show, i.e. the crowd. Sort of has a mildly mocking, othering connotation.
'Level with me' was then, as now, slang for 'tell me the truth, be honest.'
WHEW. SO!
RESBANG 2015!
HERE IT IS. The long-awaited sequel to Dire Circus- I hope and pray everyone enjoys it. I've had a really hard couple of months, and if you follow me on tumblr you'll see I've barely written anything, so this was a huge fucking struggle for me. I don't think it's my best work, and I wish it was longer, I wish I'd done better by the original and I hope nobody's too disappointed- I hope you guys are entertained anyway 3 3 It makes me happy to make other people happy!
Oh! Go to my tumblr (raining-down-hearts) to see the art that goes with this story too, by the amazing eisschirmchen! And a big thanks to my betas, fab, odat & wings. Love you guys!
-RDH