A/N: Sorry I haven't updated in so long! SO much stuff has happened in my life and I couldn't keep up. My crush who I have been trying to get to go out with me for about seven months now has a girlfriend and it hit me hard cuz this guy means a lot to me. My parents got a divorce, also very difficult, and I'm constantly feeling tired and emotional. Again, very, very sorry for the delay.
Chapter three: A tangled web
Twig paused in the middle of her sentence and sighed heavily. "When I was younger, my parents and I lived far away, in Ukraine. I never learned to speak much Ukranian though. My house was built by my mother and father somewhere in a forest, deeply secluded. We lived in a miniscule, tightly knit communitity. Everyone knew everyone else. My kin were not like ordinary people, though. We were some sort of ancient race, but no one ever really explained to me about our past." She paused again, her marmalade eyes burning with ire.
She continued. "My family and I were not close. My father was incredibly strict and showed little if any love for me at all. My mother tried to make up for his lack of affection, but it hardly did much for me. I had a good friend though, Sphynx. She was like my salvation from my father when things got really bad at my home. Me and her would go off and pick flowers in a nearby meadow for hours on end, talking about whatever came to mind. We were only little toddlers, but we talked about the deepest subjects.
"One day, many men with white coats and white cars came, invading our hidden-away village. They burned everything." She began playing with a small flower petal. "My mother, Sphynx and I were picking flowers that day." Her voice grew considerably quieter. "That day was the last time that I saw them, before the maleficent men seperated us. They threw my mother into a van with all the women, and me and Sphynx into a van with the children. I don't know what they did to my father." She glanced at me before moving on. "The men toke me and my people to a laboratory and began performing experiments on us. I remember watching from my plastic cell, a baby being injected with poison. I could hear the mother sobbing somewhere. I was so afraid then.
"They treated us like dirt and kept us in solitary confinment chambers. To them, we were strictly scientific expiriments. They gave me shots of chemicals and diseases but I never reacted to them, and this frusterated the scientists. They did all they could to see what would kill me. They ran me over with cars, dropped me off twenty-foot buildings, and kept me in rooms filled with carbon monoxide. Though I suffered, I survived.
"I remember that day. The day when one of my people finally died. I could hear the white-coated men talking about it, and I also remember feeling that same fear when I saw the baby being injected. Soon after, another one died, then another, and another. Until more then half of my race was eaten away. That was eight years after I was captured, and I decided that for my own sake, I needed to get away. Gathering whatever was left of my strength, I clawed painfully through the walls of my cell and ran away as fast as my legs could carry me, vowing that when I was older, I would return to my home and avenge the deaths of my loved ones." She glared at me with such a passionate hate that I had to look away. Evra was thoughtfully stroking his snake.
"That was nearly six years ago. Right now, I'm 15 human years old. I've learned to speak around 7 languages, and travelled to around twenty countries searching for others who had survived. I'm almost positive there are others." She pluckde a soft petal off of the flower clutched in her hand.
"What happened to your mother and your friend?" Evra asked softly.
Twig raised her eyebrows quizzically. "I don't know," She answered, her voice clear and empty of the emotion that she had felt just minutes ago. "All I can do now is pray that they're alright."
I was, once again, shocked that beneath that rock solid extrior, Twig had feelings other then hatred.
"Well, now you know my lovely life story," She leaned on back on her hands and looked my way. "What's yours?"
I openly told her, although with some heartache, about how I had stolen Mr. Crepsley's spider and how she bit steve, causing the chain of events that led to me becoming a half-vampire, faking my death, leaving behind my friends and family and joining the cirque. I told her about Murlough and Debbie and my adventures with Sam and the wolfman and R.V.
Evra then chirped in with his bitter past, explaining how his parents were completely normal, and they had given him away and left him in an orphanage. Twig nodded her head almost empathetically, if she was capable of empathy at all. Evra told her about how he stayed with a different circus until Mr. Tall showed up and in turn she shared her journeyes through the Spanish Catabrian desert and how she stowed away on a theive's ship and ended up traveling here a year ago.
"You hid away on a theive's ship?" I gawked in disbeleif. She snorted.
"There's a lot you still don't know about me," She smirked. "And just 'cause we had this little 'heart-to-heart', don't expect us to become friends."
"Don't worry about that," Evra rolled his eyes with a grin and stood. By now it was getting dark and the three of us began to head towards our tent.
Mr. Tall rapidly approached us, a discontented look upon his face. "Twig," he said in his alto voice. "Mr. Tiny needs a word with you." His face darkened. "They're close by, he says."
Twig's ginger eyes widened and she hurried away, towing after Mr. Tall. I turned to Evra, who looked a bit disturbed. "What do you think that's all about?" I asked. He shrugged, but I could tell something was bothering him.
It was well into the night, but neither me nor Evra could close our eyes and sleep.
"She's an odd one, isn't she?" He said while laying in his hammock, stroking his snake's throat lovingly.
"Yeah," I agreed, staring up at the ceiling of our tent. I glanced to my left. A hammock had been posted up for Twig today, even though she said she preferred sleeping on the floor.
The tent flap flew open and Twig ran in, promptly falling into her hammock. I sat up to see her clearly. She seemed worried.
"What happened?" I asked. Evra sat up too, his snake coiling around him.
"Nothing," Her voice trembled, but I knew better then to ask anymore questions. She'd just push me away.
"Tell us more about your travels through Spain," Evra said hopefully.
She smiled rottenly. "My, my, aren't we nosy?" She snickered.
"Oh come on," I groaned. "We're dying of boredom here, we need something to keep us alive, and besides, do you have anything better to do?"
Another smirk crept onto her face. "You need something to keep you alive? Come here." She ordered, sitting on the floor. Evra and I jumped out of our hammocks, sat in front of her and waited. She crossed her legs into an indian style.
"This game is called, 'Scream', and it's simple. The only rule is that you can't scream, or else you lose the game."
Evra and I exchanged suspicious looks but decided to play, agreeing that we were not cowards.
For the longest ten minutes, we just stared at her in complete silence. I don't think Twig ever moved or blinked once during that period of time.
Without any warning what-so-ever, she leapt foreward in one effortless motion, letting out a tiger-like growl. Evra and I were caught competely off guard and fell back, letting out an inevitable scream.
Twig brust out in a hysterical fit of laughter, grasping her sides, tears forming at her eyes from her laughing.
Slowly, Evra and I began to laugh as well until the three of us were dying with laughter.
Mr. Crepsley popped his head in, looking rather annoyed. "I have already received several complaints about the noise level rising in this tent. Make sure I do not get anymore," He warned before slowly leaving.
Twig wiped away her tears and sighed. "You should have seen your faces, they were so priceless!" She laughed. I noticed then that I had never heard her laugh before. I had heard her cackle like a witch, but never really laugh.
"Now will you tell us about Spain?" Evra pleaded after regaining his composure.
Twig huffed, "You are never gonna leave me alone, are you?"
Both of us grinned wickedly and she sighed in expasperation but began telling us about her emprises. "Hmm, there was this one time when we sailed to Africa and bartered with other theives along the Ivory Coast," She dug back into her memory.
"Are that many theives sailing the seven seas?" I asked.
She nodded. "Yep. Anyways, it was there that I aquired my quartz knife." She pulled a small, translucent knife on a silver blade out of her pocket. "It's not rare or difficult to make, but it's definetly an asset."
"Have you ever used it?" Evra asked.
"No, but I will if I have to," She answered, then went on. "We also traveled to Somalia, Emen and Oman. Nothing special. We did go through the Carribean Sea though. The Bahamas are inexplicable. I also got to see the Panama Canal, the Gulf of Panama and Chiclayo, which is near the Andes. The Galapagos islands were interesting." She stopped, thinking. "While we were on the Sargas Sea, the captain, Diamond, fell ill and I talked the crew into a mutiny. Unfortunatly, Diamond was too smart for me and that plan backfired. They eventually dropped me off here, and I've been a wanderer ever since. Before that, though, I saw the Celebes Sea, the Banda Sea, the Bermuda Triangle, the Flores Sea, the Philipine Sea…" her voice drifted away a bit as a distant look appeared on her face. "Burma was the most memorable of them all, however." She drawled.
"What happened in Burma?" Evra asked, poking her shoulder and trying to snap her out of it.
"I'll tell you later," She snapped. "Besides, I'd like to keep some things to myself."
"How did you earn all the money to go to those places?" I asked.
She shot me the glare to end all glares. "I performed services, all right?" She barked.
"Sorry," I mumbled. She bid us good-night right after and quickly crawled into her hammock. Evra did too, and both fell asleep quickly. I was left wandering about Twig's mysterious past and how much she hadn't told me. I eventually fell asleep. But there was one little mistake I had made.
I had forgotten about Mr. Tall's expression when he told her about the ones who were close by. If only I had remembered, then Evra and I wouldn't have been caught up in Twig's tangled web.
A/N: Yep, that's it. Oh, by the by, I only own Twig, Captain Diamond and the sailors under his command, Sphynx and Nephthys (who'll appear later on). The rest belong to the talented Mr. Shan.
