Chapter Four

The dust has just begun to fall

Sinking feeling

Awake, there was no escape from the darkness. No sunlight dared shine on this hell-place. The jester stood over me, smirking. Mr. Cainson was nowhere to be found.
"Strange pair, you two," he said. "So protective and caring of each other, yet such an impossible coupling."
"You don't know what it is," I spat at him from my sitting place on the ground. I was blushing. "He's a wonderful guardian, and friend."
"Strange all the same," he said.
"No more than you," I muttered under my breath, so barely spoken that I couldn't even hear it and I prayed he wouldn't, either.
"You will begin to meet your fellows," he smiled. "While you are here you are one of us, as is why that skull is embalmed in your skin. .." he smirked and ran his fingers through a candle flame. "We do not take kindly to those who do not belong here."
"Great. Then I'll make sure the thing stays on my arm," I snapped, in no mood to listen as he dragged me out of the cell and out to the carnival itself. His words really didn't make sense to me anyway...I had thought that as I and my teacher were strangers, we would be brutally killed...

"Oh, no," he giggled. "I like to watch you scream. You make it very entertaining."He reached as though to touch my hair and when I jerked my head away, I realized he had seized my long hair indeed and I had just about pulled it from its roots. You think a teacher and student is strange? I couldn't help thinking. The thought screamed itself to me as I gritted my teeth from the pain I dealt myself.

Into another tent we went, to meet the women. One was a fire-eater, one a lion tamer, one an acrobat, and one was a baton twirler. They stared at me through white makeup and black-rimmed eyes and shadowy-red lipstick. On their cheeks a dab of rouge stood out making them seem even more unearthly. Their hair was tied up in bunches on top of their heads-from the grime it was difficult to tell what color they were. I touched my own hair, glad of its cleanliness, although I did find some straw as I ran my fingers through.
The women wore what I had seen the previous night-revealing clothing, most of it grimy and frayed.

"We must pick out something especially nice for you," the jester laughed, twirling a piece of my hair around his finger. He pushed me down into a chair in front of a mirror and the women gathered around me. Looking up at them in the mirror, I could tell they were not at all pleased to see me. One of the women in a black and red dress with raffia sticking out of her skirt began to tease the jester. She was trying to get his attention by fooling around with the bells on his hat-ringing them with her fingers and giggling.
The jester was leaning over me, as I could see in the mirror, and with his hands parted my hair. "I want it...like this," he said quietly.
Another woman bent over next to him and took my hair in her hands where he had parted it in two.

"Like this?" She asked him slowly, so he could see her tongue work the words in her mouth. She gripped my hair tightly and was holding it so that it was pulling at my scalp. I was sure it was on purpose, so I tried not to wince. She was leaning toward the jester so her breasts were practically falling out of her tight corset. For once, I was glad I was an underdeveloped fourteen-year-old and glanced down at my own flat chest. The woman gave a ferocious tug on my hair and shooed the jester away.
"OUCH!" I cried, gripping the arms of the chair.
"Oh, shut up," the woman snarled, slapping my hand viciously. She tugged on my hair some more, pulling it back and twining it around itself till it was off the back of my neck.
"She looks older," the jester said with a small smile, and the woman scowled.
"Aw, come on, Umlaut," one of the others said. "Why don't you ditch the kid and have some grown-up fun?" She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.

Disgusting... I thought to myself, in terms of the women and their romantic obsession with Umlaut, and then I saw the dress Umlaut had picked out for me to wear. I wrinkled my nose and one of the women scowled as Umlaut held the dress out to her and she threw it in my lap.
"Get yourself dressed," she hissed.
"Here?" I squeaked. "In front of..."
"Oh, hell," she snapped, taking my wrist and tossing me behind a dressing stand. I knew they had no modesty and would gladly strip off their scanty dresses in front of themselves and Umlaut, but I would not...

At first I thanked all that was goodness and heaven that the dress was not like the other women carnival workers', but soon I was second-guessing myself. The skirt reached just to my knees but like everything else it was ripped, stained, and chewed (mice, I suspected) at the hems. Some of the rips were long and vicious-perhaps the girl who had worn this had been chased or grabbed by one of the creepy carnival workers, or Umlaut himself? The thought made me shiver. The skirt was a bit full. It hung off my hips. The top was more questionable-whether the black lace straps were to go over my shoulders or were meant to hang off them.

The dress was acceptable when I pulled the straps up but they were so long they simply fell off and hung on my arms. The top was tight-fitting. Black lace framed the low neckline where the dress dipped like a sideways B and was probably meant to show cleavage but alas, I had scarcely anything to show. And the strangest thing was while the other women often wore striped skirts or zigzag patterns, my dress had a pattern of diamonds-orange, gold, and purple diamonds. With a glance at Umlaut as I came out from behind the dressing stand, I noted with a shiver that I looked like I should match him.

The women were not happy, not at all. Their pouts became more pouty and their eyes were clouded, like I had won some favor they had not. I was only a child, barely, and they fully-grown women that actually liked Umlaut and wanted to please him. I wanted to scream that I would be glad to leave, when one of the girls came forward and stuck a black feather in my hair.
"That's just for shows," Umlaut said with a smirk, looking me up and down not just once but several times, and making me shiver uncomfortably.
"Wha-what?" I asked, feeling my hand twitch.
"When you perform, my dear."
"Perform as what?" The question came out as a whisper. One of the women laughed and I blushed.
He smiled once more. "You shall see."

They took the feather out of my hair and let it down again, but this time Umlaut magicked me. He took off my dress and left me in a towel, much to the amusement of the women. Then he changed me into a chicken suit, a bikini, a lion's skin, and finally the battered white nightgown. He called outside to one of the men to take me back to the cell, and when I turned to see where he was he had begun kissing one of the women and stroking another.

Well, good for him, I thought to myself, furious that I had been treated like this by the women, as though they believed me competition. I would never, ever, feel that way.
And I knew I wouldn't. It wasn't that I hated Umlaut-I hated when he hurt me and made me do things I didn't understand, but in the short time of knowing him I knew I just didn't care about him. If I had hated him, I would have feeling for him, but the anger and betrayal was so intense I knew that if he died in the night I wouldn't have cared. He was sick, deceitful, sadistic and always, I noticed, hungry for something-the look was in his eyes as he stared me down in a mirror or real life. The hunger was what scared me, not being in this carnival of hell.
"Oh, Hell!" I called once I was thrown again into the cell and Mr. Cainson awoke from a fitful sleep.

"You're too young to say that word," he yawned.
"Hell is a place, not a swearword," I said. "And we're there. Didn't you see the signs outside?"

He chuckled and I smiled a genuine smile. It was the first since that frightful night...

Goodness, was it only just last night?