~*~
Their parents wouldn't let them go, despite how much he'd begged.
No matter how many times he'd said please- the sum was thirty-four, by the way- or how many chores they offered to do in exchange for the price of admission.
If all had gone as planned, he and his sister would have been filing their father's research papers for the next three months. Looking back now, he wondered if their father would have indentured them those three months if it meant sparing his son and daughter the fifty years they'd already served. If he just would have handed over the money and saved his daughter's voice and son's humanity.
He still remembered that day, even though his attention span had been on par with that of a goldfish. The Forever Song, it must have been, that had taken hold of an eight year old's heart and sucked it in.
She'd told him not to, over and over again in a voice he couldn't remember. But she'd gone with him anyways. Witch. That was the last thing she'd said, he was sure. Witch. She'd said it in a low, terrified hiss. Like an insult. Like the very word 'witch' was a judgment of character.
That, he disagreed with.
Rosalind Maybrush was a witch.
He'd smelled it on her when they'd met. He smelled the metal of human blood- and then something more- something stale and sweet and savoury at the same time. She was a witch. He'd always known that.
And he didn't care one bit.
~*~
YOU ARE READING
Circus of Silence
FantasyThe Witch's circus is in town, and you've got the best seat in the house! We only come around once in your pitiful, mortal lifespan. We've got feral beasts and feral children, knife-eaters and fire-feasters. We have fortunes guaranteed to come...
