AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m telling you that carnival is responsible! There were monstrous creatures there, all of which would love nothing better than to devour our young ones. Or worse! Jamie told me that one even threatened to mate with his intended. An innocent girl! I don’t even want to think of what they may have done. We’re going to storm the carnival now, and all we want to know is if you are with us.”
Jason’s mouth tightened grimly and turned his head toward Max. “Stay here and keep an eye out. I’m going to head up to the carnival to check things out.” His gaze lifted to MaryAnne. “Tell Tibby that I’ll be back soon. I don’t expect to find anything, so this shouldn’t take long. No doubt the carnival pulled up if they had a nasty confrontation with a local.”
Max nodded, his hands tightening around his rifle and they both watched silently as his father’s ground-eating stride carried him away from the house and into the woods with the other men from town. MaryAnne stared after him with some misgivings. If the carnival was gone and the children didn’t show up, then what?
Swallowing back a sick feeling that crept up her throat, she stepped back into the house, closing the door behind her. She felt numb all over as she headed for the stairs. She didn’t bother to go into the kitchen. She didn’t know what to say to Molly that could be of any help, and she didn’t think she could meet Tibby’s questioning gaze.
MaryAnne didn’t even know she ended up in her room. She didn’t remember walking there but something solidified within her as she looked at the worn backpack hanging in her closet. She didn’t know why she’d kept it, but it had hung there in that exact spot since she arrived at the children’s home. It was, in a way, a memento of the life that she’d left behind when she came to the home, and possibly also a reassurance that she could always leave—always escape—if she needed to. Now, however, it represented something else entirely.
Now it offered a way.
A way to survive as she followed the carnival. The children didn’t just go missing for no reason, and if the children weren’t found soon, then it stood to reason that the only place that she would find answers would be with the monsters and fae who ran the carnival.
Her jaw hardened as she snatched the bag out of the closet and dropped it on the bed. She didn’t bother with more than a spare change of clothes. The rest of the space she would need for supplies. The clothes packed neatly in the front zipper compartment, she carried the bag downstairs into the kitchen.
Molly and Tibby watched her silently as she walked past them and into the pantry. She couldn’t take much, so she would need to pack carefully. Dried meat and cheese would keep, so she put them in small containers and added them to her sack along with a large chunk of bread carefully wrapped along with a small tin of salt and a satchel of herbs, several of which would serve medicinally in a pinch. At the back of the pantry, she grabbed a bar of cured soap, some fishing line, and a pair of hooks that she promptly slid into a small leather bag along with flint and a hunting knife. A flashlight joined her supplies, though she would have to use it sparingly since batteries were hard to find now, as she didn’t want to lose further ground once night came.
She packed mechanically before finally dropping into the chair across from Molly. Spreading her hands out on the table in front of her, she frowned down at them.
Molly sniffed quietly. “Did Mr. Jason find them?”
MaryAnne shook her head. This was all her fault. She was the one who took them there despite her misgivings. If she hadn’t taken them to the carnival, the monsters may have never stolen the children. Perhaps never even knew that they were there. “I don’t think so. Looks like the whole town is looking for their kids. He went up to the carnival to see if the kids headed up there.”
“Oh.”
Silence fell between them as Tibby slowly sank into a third chair. There was nothing more that could be said. All they could do was wait as the sunlight shifted in the room as the sun slowly arced through the sky. Tibby stood every now and again to fetch some tea or food, unable to keep herself from mothering someone just a little as they waited.
The sound of the front door banging brought their heads swiveling around, but any hope MaryAnne might have felt was smothered when she noticed that the echo of the footsteps was not the sound of children rushing into the house. Her lips pinched together as Jason stepped grimly into the kitchen with Max and shook his graying head, his face drawn and pale like he’d aged years during the short time he’d been out there.
“There’s nothing there. No sign of the carnival at all. Couldn’t even tell that it had been there, much less what direction it left in. Nor was there any sign that any of the children even made it up there or anywhere within the woods. It’s like the carnival and children both just altogether vanished.”
A sharp sob broke from Molly as she buried her face in her hands. Tibby immediately wrapped her arms around her.
“We will just wait a little longer. They will turn up. You’ll see,” she whispered.
MaryAnne shook her head. She couldn’t sit any longer. She couldn’t wait any longer. She stood and scooped up her pack. She didn’t speak—she didn’t want to give empty promises. Without meeting their eyes, she swung her pack onto her back and stepped past Jason, aware of their eyes following her as she left the kitchen.
She didn’t try to meet their eyes. She didn’t look back. Anger stirred within her with every step as she left the house, the only home she’d known since the Ravening. She left it behind and stepped back into the once familiar world of chaos that lurked ceaselessly outside the walls of the children’s home where she’d spent so many years surviving.
The men may have failed to pick up on the carnival’s trail, but she wouldn’t. One way or another, she would track them down and discover what happened to the children.
ChapterEight
Raskyuil blew out a cloud of cigar smoke as he walked beside the wagon. As miserable as it was being confined within the damn thing, at least walking for an hour or two allowed him to stretch his legs and enjoy some of the fresh air away from the incessant noise of the orcs that he now traveled among. Their wagons were far larger than any other among the fae, so it was simply decided upon by the clan males, and before he knew it, he was ensconced within their rowdy clan.
Forest trolls tended to be more solitary, living only with their immediate families far apart from other trolls in loose, sprawling villages that covered large expanses of forests. All the activity of the orcs was difficult for him to adjust to, though he found the familial atmosphere to be a pleasant one. It had served one unanticipated benefit—it had distracted him from thinking overly much about the female he’d left behind in the early hours that morning.
Unfortunately, now that he walked alongside the carnival caravan, easily keeping pace with the fairy mares pulling the wagons, there was little else to distract his wayward thoughts from returning to her. The itch of desire that teased him under his skin was getting worse with the knowledge that the distance separating them was slowly growing by the hour. It was a restless beast attempting to claw its way out from his sinew, flesh, and bone. Anything to get to her.
He snorted irritably. What was so special about this human? Sure, she smelled right, the way a compatible female would, but as a troll, he did not have a mate woven into the tapestry of his fate. There was no reason she should pull at him in such a way with nothing more than a glance between them. And yet he felt like he was caught in a rose briar, the thorns cutting into him, bleeding him the more he struggled to get free of her.
Walking outside would have been a far greater reprieve and worth the cost he suffered if they were not traveling along the harrowing fairy roads. Most fae species did not take the roads. Even those fairies who enjoyed the hunt and traveled frequently down them between the worlds had a master between them to navigate and lead the way. It was dangerous otherwise. That the caravan was traveling along them struck him as odd and unnecessarily dangerous as the wagons followed the light of Elwyn’s lead wagon.
He glared suspiciously at his surroundings. The fairy roads were not something that he enjoyed taking, and he preferred to steer clear of them unless he absolutely needed to use them as they were neither within the human realm or that of the fae, manipulating the fabric between the worlds. That the caravan used it indifferently disturbed him as he watched the surrounding forest warily from the corner of his eye.
The trees gathered and curved around them as they inched closer, their roots burrowing beneath the ground, shifting the weight of their trunks as the branches bent and swayed slowly as they curled like a vortex closing behind them. A mysterious wind funneled through since they’d entered, pulling the leaves up from the ground to spin up around them, creating a veil of fluttering foliage in hues of red, brown, yellow, and orange.
Grunting, he peered over his shoulder at the burning hues of autumn trees closing in behind them, the entire forest bending in around them, closing the path that had been opened.
