Authors: Nerine Dorman
“Etienne.” For fuck’s sake, why was he so timid all of a sudden?
Their footsteps crunched, too loud on the gravel. Old caravans pulled up next to each other formed a barrier to their left. Then a rumble and a grassy stench, like horse but far, far more pungent. Elephant!
Rattle! Bang!
A large beast threw itself against bars before loosing another ear-splitting roar. The sound triggered a primal response within Arwen, urging her to flee, to find safety.
Yet all this drew forward those memories she’d long since buried, in which she reveled. They seemed more dream than reality.
Etienne jumped against her so that she fell against a truck’s grille.
“Do you mind?” she whispered. Then she looked up at the logo on the door. “Thorn Paladin’s circus.” Yes. She remembered.
“Circus?”
“Yes, Etienne, a circus. My uncle’s frigging circus. You know, trapeze artists, clowns, tigers, elephants, dwarves...you’d fit right in.”
“Bitch.”
“Ah, but the old man’s been dead for twelve years already. I barely remember him. That’s where my mother met Szandor. He was the escape artist and magician.”
She clutched at the distant memories of sawdust and horse-droppings, of candy floss and popcorn. Bead-fringed curtains on the fortune-teller’s caravan, how she’d clutched at her mother’s skirts while she juggled with fire. Straw. Frost riming the animals’ drinking troughs in the morning. When she’d dabbed her fingers into the water, the ice had split into bits of broken glass floating on the surface, chilling her skin.
Some of the trucks were new but she recognized the silver hulk of her late uncle’s trailer. The snarling Paladin lion leaped, fading from a dozen emblems.
“Can I help you two?” a woman inquired.
Etienne gripped Arwen’s hand, squeezing hard.
Arwen gulped and turned around to stare at a veiled, tall figure. She pulled back the veil to reveal long, angular features, the hair on either side of her face as colorless as her skin. Only her eyes stood out, pitch black, like the carapace of a beetle.
“We were just going to get something to eat.” Etienne pointed in the wrong direction, toward the road.
The tall woman turned her head slowly to where Etienne gestured, a faint smile on her lips. “Indeed.”
“You’re with the circus, aren’t you?” Arwen said.
“Perhaps.”
To Arwen it seemed as if the woman’s eyes peeled back every layer of her skin. She had a weird buzz about her, similar to a vampire’s but somehow infinitely more...violet and crackly at the edges, more organic, like a handful of snakes about to strike.
Etienne interrupted. “Arwen, can I go pee so long?” He hopped from foot to foot, his gaze straining toward the pub.
“Uh, yeah,” Arwen said.
The woman laughed, a hook of cruelty singing in the tone. She pulled the veil back over her head. “They’ll never let you two in. You may as well come join me for breakfast in my trailer. Unlike your friend in his car, I won’t eat you. And your little friend may use my bathroom.”
“Hey?” Etienne asked.
“Okay.” Arwen inhaled sharply. “Right, you expect us to just follow you, a total stranger, into your caravan to eat and drink your food.” Fuck, did she think they were crazy?
“I’m disappointed in you, daughter of Szandor, child of Molina Paladin, that you don’t remember me.”
Arwen gasped, stiffening as these words triggered more long-buried memories. A tall woman, yes. Darkness. Whips and large cats leaping through hoops of fire. A name flickered. Cold, white hands, firm hands, holding those of a small girl. A woman telling her to not be afraid, to touch the velvety forehead of a black panther that watched her with topaz eyes.
“Eleanor?”
Teeth clicked together. “Indeed. Does that knowledge prove to you that I am not apt to poison you and your little friend?”
“Perhaps,” Arwen said. She’d been four when they left and her new life in Nieu Bethesda had made those early years with her uncle’s circus seem like they belonged in a story book.
Etienne spoke. “Arwen, what about Trystan? What about the car?”
Eleanor stiffened and stretched her neck in the direction of the stand of acacias where the Hudson was parked. She tensed then relaxed. “The car and its occupant will be fine. Few will even notice the vehicle.”
What the hell? Arwen had felt a shift in power, as if the fabric of reality had melted and reformed. Why had she never noticed Eleanor’s abilities before? Why had she forgotten this enigmatic woman in the first place? More witchery beyond her ken?
Eleanor pulled her cloak closer to her spare frame and started walking.
“C’mon, Etienne,” Arwen said. “We’d better go with her.”
A ferocious scowl disfigured Etienne’s features. “I’m not sure that I want to.”
“It’s going to be fine, really.”
“How sure are you?”
“Sure.” Well, not really, but to admit that... “It’s either this or you go pee in the bushes then wait for death breath to wake up.”
He hesitated before running after her and Eleanor’s retreating figure.
Arwen sucked in air slowly and tried to control her breathing. To be honest, she remembered little of her early childhood. How much of what she recalled could be trusted? Bravado only got a person so far before she was quite maimed or dead.
The last thing she needed right now was for Etienne to see that she was scared.
Chapter 30
Sister Salvation
A tall woman with lustrous black hair climbed out of the BMW, moving with all the assurance of a big cat about to make a kill. The smile on her face spoke of violent intent.
Mama Ruthie responded by gripping her carved wooden stave then leaping from the passenger seat in a fluid motion that belied her size and age.
“Get thee gone, soul-stealer!” She pointed the carved stick at the woman.
Helen felt an inrush of energy, the lights grew dim around her and the temperature plunged. Now would be a good time to get out of the car, make a dash for it. Where?
The engine was still running and Bijou revved it.
“Hold on Miss Ashfield,” she said.
The car lurched forward straight at the raven-haired woman as though to squash her like a bug between the two vehicles. Helen gripped the seat in front of her and closed her eyes.
Metal screeched against metal as the cars impacted, and the Toyota slewed to one side, its bonnet crumpled.
“Maman!” Bijou flew out of her seat.
Helen looked to her right, behind her, where Mama Ruthie had stood only seconds before. She sprawled on her back, in the tall woman’s embrace. Why was her head dipped over Mama Ruthie’s neck?
The black-haired woman looked up, her pale eyes ablaze and scarlet smeared around her mouth. How?
Some instincts were good to obey and Helen found her feet without bothering to look back as she pelted down the road. Rather leave the carnage behind her.
I’m not going to think about any of this. I’m going to run as fast as possible, and as far as possible, until I cannot run anymore.
Getting lost was the easy part. All Helen had to do was take as many random turns through the leafy green suburb as possible. The houses with their high walls all looked the same to her, as did the expensive German cars that cruised past. She listened for the labored gasps of her breathing, the slap of her shoes on the tarmac. People she passed cast her curious looks, which she ignored, narrowly missing being run over by cars more than a handful of times. She didn’t stop running until she reached a busy, dual-carriage road.
To compound matters, night had fallen. Helen leaned against a wall then slid down to her backside as she struggled to draw breath. The sweat on her skin turned cold and her lungs wanted to explode.
The woman had bitten Mama Ruthie and that had been blood staining her face. What manner of person attacked another like that? Bijou’s anxious cries as she called her mother’s name still rang in her ears.
What now?
Helen didn’t have her phone, and had no idea in which part of Johannesburg she was. She had no money, had no idea how she could get hold of her friends.
What was the most intelligent thing she could do right now?
For one, she could catch her breath. Then she’d find a restaurant or cafe and ask if she could make a call.
Helen held
up her hands. They trembled and she was sure small filaments of light like fireflies buzzed around her fingers with a blue-green brilliance.
Funny, she’d never noticed that before.
Her scalp tingled. If she stayed here, someone would find her eventually, which was not a good thing, yet her body did not want to respond. With a grunt, she pushed back, using her elbows to prop herself up against the wall. Every muscle in her body protested, alternating between numbness and excruciating agony.
“Fuck it!”
Helen managed a limping stumble in her intended direction. Not far ahead, the familiar red-and-yellow lights of a service station cast a pool of illumination. Surely someone there would be willing to help her?
That’s if they didn’t mistake her for some dumb junkie out for a quick score.
All the times she’d been approached by people on the street, who’d spun some sort of tale of woe–keys locked in a car, a lost wallet, and here she was, in the same situation only she wasn’t trying to con anyone out of a buck. It would be a bitch to get help. She was sure she looked a mess, with her hair plastered down on damp skin, clothes disheveled.
“Need a lift, baby?” A car had slowed down without her noticing and a man had spoken.
“No! No!” Helen put some speed in her steps. She turned around and walked in the opposite direction. Briefly she caught a glimpse of the driver, a rather squat man with close-cropped, balding hair and an almost non-existent chin.
She imagined his cold, clammy hands resting on her thigh, and her stomach contracted at the thought.
A sharp, shooting pain stabbed down her left leg, forcing Helen to lean against the palisade fencing to her right, only to stumble half off the pavement when a pair of large German Shepherds threw themselves against the bars, barking like mad.
What could she do but pause, rubbing vigorously at her cramping leg while the beasts jumped, slavered and snapped at her through the barrier.
That was too close. The ghost of a tooth had shaved past her skin. The dogs’ eyes bulged and foam flecked their jaws, their heads snaking out at her through the gaps.
People drove by, encapsulated in their cars, safe in their ignorance. Helen drew a ragged breath. The first man to stop had driven on but she may not be lucky if there was a second or third. She couldn’t run anymore.
Why was she in danger? Why had those two foreign-sounding women sought her out? How had they gotten their car past her father’s security? What about the woman with the black BMW?
She daren’t go back home to her father. What if they were waiting for her there?
She must call Anabel, or someone. Helen cursed herself for not having memorized her brother’s number, but that was the price one paid for overreliance on gadgetry. She shouldn’t involve anyone in this lest they get hurt but where was she to turn?
Phone Anabel. Get out of Joburg. Go home.
But, where was home? Home was no longer the house in which she’d grown up, in Hout Bay. She’d hardly spent time in Nieu Bethesda, she could not call that place home, either. Her father’s house in Houghton was the last place on earth she’d be right now.
Adrift. Everything she took for granted meant nothing now. It would be so easy to fall between the cracks, to vanish like mist before the sun. All she needed to do was lie down, to allow events to flood her, but a fierce flame burned in her heart kept her going.
The soft hiss of sprinklers sent their droplets to darken the cement, releasing the baked sun smell of the pavers, and unaccountably reminding her of the swimming pool at her old primary school, of aquamarine water and the sharp tang of chlorine.
A wail of sirens split the air and she pressed herself against one of the acacias forming part of the regiment marching down this road. A fire engine roared past, its light creating a red-and-white staccato. When it had gone, Helen had to pause, leaning against the smooth bark which smelled of bitter tealeaves.