━━━ ꧁ད ✶ ཌ꧂ ━━━

CHAPTER 32

━━━ ꧁ད ✶ ཌ꧂ ━━━

Frey ran his fingers through his smooth, black hair as if suddenly wanting to pull them out. It was a gesture that Thomas often repeated. I never thought I would meet someone with such twisted desires, and his goal was to eliminate others. Anyone who had permission from the owner to use the medallions was an obstacle in his path.

Frey possessed two of the medallions, and he planned to make me obtain the third to keep it away from the pair. All of this was to prevent the curse from lifting until he finished off the remaining members. Only then would he become the next successor. And since one of the artifacts followed me everywhere, would he also kill me?

I didn't take my eyes off Thomas as he started moving around Ashton and me. In the end, he left us in the middle, with Frey on the opposite side.

"I have never made such an effort on this stage. The medallion you both have, the one that forges this kind of foundation, was far away just minutes ago, so it's not fully functional. That's why it activated as soon as we came here."

Frey kicked the stage support, and one of the sets of spotlights fell to the ground, tangling the cables and shaking the pair of columns from which the curtains hung. I thought they would collapse, but they barely held. However, once the cables touched the ground, they sparked and traced a path of fire, as if someone had ignited a fuse that immediately fizzled out.

The sand that composed everything could ignite. And that was terrible news.

"At least it has power," Frey announced, "and I have other plans."

Not only his words troubled me, but also the small figure that hid behind him. It was like a child bouncing.

I hoped it wasn't a shadow, but they hadn't shown up yet. Where in the town would they be searching for me? Port Fallen wasn't that big, so they would appear sooner or later.

On the other hand, I couldn't fathom that Thomas, my best friend of a lifetime, was Frey. Ashton had warned me that the people you trusted the most were the ones who hurt you the most in the end, but I didn't want to believe him. Maybe that's why I never liked Thomas; I suspected him. But Ashton couldn't risk telling me; I wouldn't have believed him, and it would have strained our relationship even more.

I suddenly convinced myself that it was a joke. I couldn't hate my best friend. In my memories, I couldn't find a reason, not even because he dragged me into this circus of terror.

But I could blame Frey, whom I felt I didn't know at all. Just hearing him talk was enough to realize he bore no resemblance to Thomas. He wasn't him at all! Nevertheless, I needed to be sure, so I stepped away from Ashton and walked toward Thomas as fast as I could. I grabbed him by his sleeveless sailor shirt and shook him vigorously. He stood still, his arms hanging on each side of his body, looking at me expressionless. As I touched him, I confirmed that Thomas was as real as me.

"Tell me this isn't true!" I screamed, my voice breaking. "I know you! Tell me you are! This isn't true!" I was desperate. And I felt a glimmer of hope when he shrugged, as if he had been jolted, and chuckled softly, sending shivers down my spine.

I had come there for my family and, of course, for my best friend. And in some way, I wanted to believe it would remain that way.

A burst of explosions made me jump to the last place where I saw Frey. The spotlights were about to fall, and the stage threatened to collapse on us.

"Zara!" Ashton called, alarmed.

A wall of sand rose from the ground, the work of Frey, who kept one hand raised towards us. He moved his wrist, and the sand compacted, barely allowing me to see Ashton behind it.

The sand wall turned into a kind of whirlwind and descended rapidly. Then it changed direction quickly behind Frey's back, striking the stage foundations forcefully and making them wobble. Finally, the sandy vortex came towards me, swirling in the air.

Through the whirlwind, I saw Frey standing on the other side, and for a moment, I thought his eyes had turned crimson red. However, it was the stones he carried that caused the infernal hue, as they clashed, releasing sparks that turned the sand into a fiery blaze, like a dragon's breath that nearly reached me.

I stepped back until my back hit Thomas's chest. I stopped breathing as he held me in his arms, and together we turned as if he had decided to protect me or prevent me from intervening.

The flames surrounded us; I managed to glimpse Ashton's silhouette fading among the fiery light tunnel, and I shrank from the heat that came and went so quickly.

When I finally pulled away and turned, I realized that Ashton was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the stage was ablaze and collapsing into pieces. Only a piece of intact curtain remained on the floor, and one column clung desperately to the ground.

"No... No... No!" The words came out of my mouth between sobs, and soon tears overwhelmed everything else. My hands trembled, and my heart beat wildly as I frantically searched for Ashton, hoping he would appear somewhere.

The stage crumbled before our eyes; flames danced and devoured everything in their path, while the sand roared furiously, like a lake during a storm.

"I hope you understand. As a half-living successor, he was my biggest problem. I will take care of the old pair later."

The person behind me was not Thomas; that much was clear. He continued repeating everything Frey said.

"You're crazy!" I blurted. My throat burned, and something in my chest hurt at the thought of losing him. Unlike my family, Ashton would be gone forever. That was definitive.

Thomas approached Frey and offered him his hand. Frey took it, and before my eyes, something incredible happened: the body of my supposed best friend began to tremble and go back in time. Like a movie played in reverse, I saw his sixteen years vanish until he became a small, unkempt doll, the same one Frey kept in his pocket the first time I talked to him.

Thomas's clothes lay scattered on the floor, while the tiny doll wore only the sleeveless sailor shirt, which seemed extremely large for its tiny body. Although I couldn't see its appearance fully, I knew that Thomas had always been an inanimate object thanks to the magic of the ring and the circus.

He had never existed.

Tears streamed down my face as I heard the familiar clicking of the pair of stones that barely stood out in the dim light as they collided in the air.

Frey clicked his tongue while playing with the objects as if showing them off to me. "We all have a good reason for doing things," he said. But there was no way.

"You spied on me because you couldn't find Ashton. You used me from the beginning!" I suddenly felt suffocated.

"No, I approached you initially because of the resemblance, but then I genuinely liked you. Also, thanks to you, I found the others," he said, returning the stones to his pockets and balancing on his feet. "But I still need one more little favor from you."

"Screw you!" The word came out as a growl, falling short of the countless bitter feelings battling inside me.

Frey advanced toward me, lifting my face with his fingers, and through the darkness, he almost seemed capable of seeing through me. Now he was angry.

"I'll start being frank with you."

"Isn't this enough? What else do you want?"

"My best friend is by my side."

"I'm not your best friend." At the end of my words and his crooked smile, I found myself engulfed in a whirlwind of new memories.

I bury my face between my knees.

"Why are you crying?" She asks me, and it's when I look up that I can see her.

"Ellinor," I murmur in awe. She's hiding something behind her back, and I don't know what it is.

"It doesn't matter what others say; you have talent." She leans down in front of me, reaching my height.

"They're right. Every time I try to do something, I mess it up badly."

"I'll be the judge of that. Come on, take it." Ellinor reveals what she had hidden.

"I made it myself; it was my first purpose in life. It's mostly made of fabric, and I thought I could improve it over time." I take it in my arms. "Thomas. I thought I had lost it."

"I'll tell you this: to put on a great show, you have to become one with what you hold on to, in this case, your ventriloquist dummy."

"Like we're one?" I ask.

"Like you're one," she repeats.

There are several time jumps, apparently days, where I see myself improving a bit. I train with Thomas, but I'm not satisfied with the results.

"My uncle Ashton won't allow me access to magic before I turn sixteen, just like with the others. But I want to prove to everyone that I'm capable and that I can make Thomas a part of me. Being twelve shouldn't be an obstacle to achieving great things."

I wander in the wardrobe tent, among the circus's various props. Then, right at that moment, Ashton comes in through the entrance.

"He's lucky," I mutter. "Cousin!"

Seeing me, Ashton smiles and enters. He wears his performance costume, and I can hear the cheers from the distance. I wish I could warn him about what's about to happen, but I can't control this body's actions.

"You're lucky to perform with the master of ceremonies. As the heir, you'll learn everything, including his act."

My heart tightens as I contemplate Ashton's kind smile, a smile that seems like a goodbye. Sadness overwhelms me as I sense that this could be the last time I see him.

I wish I could stop time and freeze this moment so it doesn't fade away, but I know it's impossible. Life goes on, and farewells are part of it.

Here, he is alive. His cheeks show a slight blush. His hair is a bright, silky reddish-brown; when it looked black in the dark, although he remains pale, the hue of his skin contrasts perfectly with his light green eyes. He is even more handsome during the day.

Maybe I should have returned the kiss he gave me in the tent by the lake; then I wouldn't be regretting having missed the chance to tell him how I feel.

"What do you need?" Ashton asks.

"I wanted to know if..." It's like I don't know how to finish the sentence.

"Do you want to play something?"

"Yeah... Yes, that's it."

"How about hide-and-seek? You like that one, right?"

"Yes, but you hide when I count to three. One, two, three!" I ran out of the wardrobe tent. "How can I ask him to lend some of his magic to Thomas? He should be able to do it; he's the heir."

I go around the tent, losing sight of the grass, and play with the pair of stones in my pocket until I squeeze them hard and feel pain.

"And this is the only thing my parents left me," I mutter, disheartened, taking them out to throw them into the air and then catching them between my fingers.

Having let some time pass, when I return, I stop in my tracks when I smell the spilled alcohol near my last footsteps. I peer through the small opening between the curtains hanging like doors.

Inside, Hans is moving clumsily and swaying. The bottle he holds in one hand spills its contents on the floor and the props. His face is wrinkled with anger, but suddenly he stops and tilts his head as if something has caught his attention.

He leaves the bottle on the floor and approaches a group of costumes and wooden boxes. Among these, there seems to be a smaller, inconspicuous one that no one else would have paid attention to. However, when his shoulders relax, I know it's something important.

"So, they left it here after all," Hans teases as he turns, and then I can see the box better. It looks like blue-tinted glass is circular, and is decorated with white lace. When he opens the lid, his eyes widen, and he hurries towards the exit in my direction.

He pushes back the curtain and sees me. Surprised, he drops the box. The stones fall from my hands too, and their sparking starts a fire.

Hans quickly picks up the monkey medallion and runs away.

My case is different because while I recover my legacy from the floor with the help of my foot to avoid the quickly spreading flames, in my ears, the sound of a coin crackling and rolling like a great coin that stops spinning and comes to a halt inside the tent lingers. I don't need to see it to know what it is.

Before the fire spreads even more, I enter and spot the man's medallion not far from my position. As I pick it up, I'm aware of the chill that runs through my entire body. I felt the same when I touched the tent's medallion the first time Thomas gave it to me.

"Frey?" Ashton's voice directs my attention to the area where the fire hasn't reached yet. There are more boxes, and they are bigger.

"I'm not useless," I mutter. "I'll prove to everyone that they're wrong about me. My uncle Ashton will have to accept it. Somehow, he'll recognize my talent, just like he did with my cousin's."

Suddenly, one of the boxes rises and then crashes to the floor with force, breaking apart.

"That's right." Among the wooden pieces, a toy hand crawls on the floor, carrying an object to the battered chest: a padlock that locks the lid just before it jumps open. Ashton's voice comes from inside, and then I notice the medallion in my hands completely extinguishing. "So, I can make inanimate objects come to life if I desire it from the heart. I envied Ashton, and sometimes I hated him too because he had everything: attention, magic, an act of his own... The desire made you work, the desire of an invisible one who just wants to be seen."

Later, I heard them crying.

I open my fingers, and the light shines through the small opening, hurting my eyes.

Everyone is standing, trembling, and staring at the wardrobe tent where they used to keep the costumes. Nothing remains but ashes.

The fire has consumed what was once their home, and the reality of what happened finally hits me.

I can't help but feel a mixture of pain and guilt. Our past and dreams are devoured by the flames, reduced to ashes.

Ashton, Frey, and I are three disturbed souls amid the ruins, trying to understand how we got to this point and what the future holds for us.

"Thankfully, the fire didn't spread to the main tent," someone says.

"Ashton senior and junior got trapped in the fire," another adds.

I don't know who said what. Frey has covered his eyes again.

"And Hans?" Another intervention remains hanging in the air, but I understand that he's probably locked up somewhere drinking.

There's a jump to a new memory. To another day.

I am sitting on the floor in a place with barely any light.

"Ellinor died, and no one has said anything about it." Thomas' doll is on my lap. I'm talking to him. "It's like a funeral, except the dead are alive, silent, avoiding the topic, and looking at the ground. And it turns out to be the same group that often mocked me, those six at the top of the stage who almost made me quit. But the remaining six nights of performances are enough for those born stars to become fallen stars. Ellinor must be proud of us, Tom."

I take out a small booklet from my pants pocket.

"I found this in Hans's room because he left it there. That's how I learned about hidden secrets and events recorded in his handwriting. It was also thanks to the first blackout caused by Hans that I understood what I had to do. Only this way, they will remain seated in my place, at the end of the railroad, where the spotlight cannot reach with its light... In the darkness. Six upcoming blackouts, and only from there will they comfortably watch the moment the last spotlight shines on you and me."

His memories ended there, with the stabbing pain in my head urging me to open my eyes. I observed spots and particles still floating in the air and around me. All the memories I had gathered throughout that time galloped through my mind, culminating with Ashton's silhouette merging into the fiery tunnel's light.

On my knees, my legs weakened, making it difficult for me to stand up. I looked around in all directions. There was no one and nothing left, only the charred structure of an ungraceful stage and a trunk consumed by flames.

I reached for my belly. The medallion was still in my pocket. However, where and why had Frey left?

Part of the stage collapsed completely, raising an even darker cloud. The only comforting thought was that the sky was also weeping, as it had done frequently since Ashton's manifestation as if it had wanted to warn me of the ending that he and I would have.

There was no trace of the mist either. But now I had a shadowed audience, the only one capable of moving extremely slowly and without the need to touch the ground.

Ashton had apologized so many times, making it clear that he didn't trust Thomas, but I didn't want to see it. I still couldn't believe that Frey was his family, but he was also like a part of mine. And he had stayed hidden in the darkness, using a ventriloquist for his purposes.

I made an effort to breathe deeply and stifled the screams that gathered in my throat. I closed my eyes due to the horror of thinking it was the end. And what I least wanted was to open them, but when I heard the soft laughter, I pleaded for the silence to return. I had no strength to get up. However, a horrible screech forced me to open my eyelids.

I lifted my head and saw him sitting on the only column still standing, albeit depressingly. The curtain had hung there just minutes ago.

The small figure waved its arms and shook its head as if there was still hope. It entangled its tail in the foundation and opened its hand. A piece of red fabric came off its palm and swayed in the air toward where the larger piece of the curtain still covered part of the floor.

The fabric moved gently like a heart struggling to keep beating. Then it shook vigorously, reminding me of a fierce ocean tide.

As if I had regained some of my energy through hope, I managed to crawl to the spot. With a trembling hand, I pulled the curtain carefully. If I ever thought it was impossible to open my eyes wider, I was mistaken.

"Ashton," I exhaled, but the relief was short-lived. The stain on his hand spread across the back, staining his skin black.

To be continued...

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